“I don’t wear socks when I shift, Nate.”
His eyes gleamed, and his smile widened mischievously. “You could always start. I mean, I know you don’t have opposable thumbs, but I could put socks on your paws for you if you — oh shit, please, stop —”
I tickled him until he was red-faced and helpless that time. Socks? On a werewolf? Flea-repelling fucking socks? I poked his armpit again, just because.
“Anything else to say, Nate?”
He glared at me, his eyes watering, panting for breath. “Go fuck yourself?”
I kissed him instead, kissed him until I couldn’t even remember why we’d been arguing. “God, I want to fuck you,” I panted against his mouth. “But I’m so filthy right now. I shouldn’t even be touching you until I clean up.”
“We can take a shower together. But you can’t knot me here. We’re too close to the pack house, and I don’t want to have to stand here leaning on this tree for twenty minutes.”
Well, there was an easy compromise at hand. I’d knot him at home later on, after we’d done whatever family crap my mom insisted on, and in the meantime…I dropped to my knees and unzipped his jeans.
“You’re going to have to stay quiet, though,” I said, looking up at him. “We’re still close to the pack house. And my dad wanders around while he’s smoking.”
Nate nodded, his eyes wide. “Yeah. I can do that. If you do that.”
I pulled out his cock, giving it a long stroke from base to tip. He hardened in my hand despite how cold it was out here now that the sun had gone down. “What, this?” I teased. I leaned in and flicked the head with my tongue. “This? Or am I getting it wrong?”
Nate bucked and shuddered, and his hands landed in my hair, clenching and pushing me toward his cock. “You have to actually do it to have any chance of doing it wrong,” he growled.
I laughed, took the hint, and swallowed him down.
He moaned so loud it could’ve woken up the zombies again.
I pulled off. “What was that about you being able to stay quiet?”
“The air’s so fucking cold, put your mouth back — yes, I can stay quiet, of course I — no, I probably can’t stay quiet,” he gasped as I suckled on the head of his cock.
I reached up and found his mouth, thrusting three fingers into it and gripping his jaw with my thumb. “Mmm,” Nate moaned around my hand, and…oh, fuck, that zinged straight down my arm and along my spine and right into my cock. He teased his tongue between my fingers, and I groaned around my mouthful, sucking him down so deep and hard I nearly choked.
I fucked his mouth with my hand while I fucked my own mouth onto his cock, grabbing his ass with my free hand and groping my fingers into the crease of it. The little noises he made around my fingers drove me insane, whimpers and murmurs and moans, and he thrust into my mouth and then pushed his ass into my hand, writhing between me and the tree. He throbbed against my tongue, and I sucked as hard as I could, pulling the head of his cock into my mouth and swallowing every drop as he came in burst after burst, hot and salty and mine.
At last I slid my fingers out of his mouth, letting his cock gently out of mine at the same time. “Oh, fuck,” Nate murmured. “That — I don’t need another Christmas present either. That works.”
I started tucking him back into his jeans, and I froze with my hand on his zipper as I heard the back door of the house open, and then voices.
“Do you want me to —”
“Shh,” I hissed. “Someone’s outside. If we can hear them, they can hear us.”
“Stupid supernatural hearing,” Nate grumbled in a near-whisper. “I’m really starting to understand why you live in the Shack of Solitude. Even though it’s probably more termites than wood at this point. At least termites don’t eavesdrop when we’re having sex. I hope.”
“Right?” I whispered back.
“Is that Santa flipping us off?” My dad’s voice carried clearly through the chilly stillness of the night. “Seriously?”
Nate started to shake, and I lunged to my feet and clapped my hand over his mouth. His eyes glittered with laughter over my fingers.
“We had two boys, John.” My mom sounded like she was trying not to laugh herself. “I’m not sure what you expected. I think the middle finger’s pointed at Matt’s window.”
A low grumbling sound followed. It took me a second to realize my dad was laughing. How many years had it been since I’d heard him laugh?
I realized I was smiling too, helplessly. God, here we were, hiding behind a tree after getting off in the woods by the back yard like teenagers, and my mom and dad were laughing at the Santa. Like…sort of what passed for a normal family. A family who snowblows zombies together, stays together? Or something.
I carefully pulled my hand away from Nate’s lips, once it seemed like he might be able to keep it together, and I replaced it with my own mouth. He melted into my kiss like every fantasy I’d ever had over the years, before he was mine, when I watched him from a distance and wanted him and never thought I’d get to know what he tasted like. What made him smile.
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered against his lips when I pulled back enough. My lips brushed his as I spoke, like I was speaking directly into him, and not just to him. “Think we have time to shower, fuck, and then get back for dinner?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Nate said. “Matt wasn’t wearing any clothes when he looked out the window. We’re not the only ones who’ll be late for dinner.” He leaned up and kissed me. “Merry Christmas, Ian.”
I wrapped him in my arms and rested my cheek on the top of his head, letting him nestle against my chest, keeping him warm. A few flakes of snow started to drift down around us, settling in his dark hair like tiny Christmas decorations. Yeah, we’d go home, and we’d eventually get ready to go have dinner, and we’d sit at the table and drink wine and talk.
And it’d be good. Surprisingly good, I just knew it.
But that could wait a few minutes.
Right then, I didn’t need anything in the world but Nate in my arms.
The End
Read book one in the Mismatched Mates series, The Alpha’s Warlock…
It had been years since I set foot in the Armitage pack's territory, and I'd hoped to keep that winning streak going for a while longer. Of course, being kidnapped and cursed had a way of changing your plans.
Not that I was really setting foot in it now, more like setting hands and knees. I'd fallen so many times that I'd stopped trying to get back up, and was just crawling through the thick, loamy mud under the drenched forest canopy.
The patter of chill rain on the back of my neck was bad enough, every drop sending new shivers down my spine, but my soaked jeans were chafing in every direction and on every sensitive bit of me. Why had I worn skinny jeans this tight again? Oh, right, going out clubbing, and not planning on being kidnapped and cursed. Mud squelched through my fingers and seeped into my ankle boots.
I'd been so careless, so arrogant. My father, such as he was, had been dead for two glorious years, and the magic he'd stolen from me all my life was finally back where it belonged. I could take anyone, right? A powerful young warlock, paranoid as only years of living in the shadow of a criminal with a lot of enemies could make me.
And all it took was a few drops of witchbane poison in my fruity cocktail.
So impressive. My father, may he rot in hell, would be laughing his freaking ass off.
With a grunt and a pitiful moan, I lurched from crawling to belly-flopping in the mud. A wet and filthy rotting leaf poked into my mouth, and I spat it out, my stomach heaving as the flavor of mold burst on my tongue. I wasn't going to make it. Where the hell were the pack's perimeter guards? Someone had to patrol this huge territory, what with rival packs only a few miles away and a master vampire and his brood in the next town over.
Especially since one of those rival packs had snatched me from the club, and especially especially since they'd done it as the first step
in a plot against the Armitage pack.
Or at least so I'd gathered as they chained me up in an abandoned warehouse, drew a circle of burnt celandine, and had their pack shaman start a ritual nauseatingly similar to the one my father used to do every month at the new moon.
“Armitage can't defend against this,” one of the werewolves in the corner of the room had said to another, gesturing my way. “Once his energy's bound to yours, he'll have all your resilience and all his powers, all under your control. He'll be the perfect weapon.”
He'd sounded like he was trying to talk the other were out of some serious doubts about the plan. I thought the other were was probably the smart one, since I had some serious doubts myself.
Strike that, I had no doubts at all. I was going to die here in the forest, my magic drained out of me by this fucking curse, my body withered away to nothing and sinking into the mud until only a few bones wrapped in skinny jeans remained.
And then I heard the growl.
It was the kind of sound that would make any human's nervous system go into overdrive; it had a low, throbbing undertone to it that raised all the hairs on the back of my neck. I managed to turn my head and peer into the pre-dawn gloom. A pair of glowing golden eyes looked back at me, set in the face of a wolf with his (probably his, but I sure as hell wasn't going to try to inspect) teeth bared.
Finally. Jesus, would it kill them to keep a better eye on their borders?
“I'm Nate Hawthorne,” I rasped faintly, drowned out by the rain. It didn't matter. With the wolf's supernatural hearing, I could have been twice the distance away and he'd have heard me as well as if I'd had a microphone. “I need to see Matthew Armitage.” The wolf stared me down. My head started to spin, and I dropped down, my cheek hitting the ground with a splat. “Take me to your leader.” I started to giggle, my chest heaving as the laughter morphed into sobs, the curse draining more of my life away. I could feel it like a physical tug on every vein and nerve.
The wolf tipped his head back and let out a long howl, a call that probably carried all the way to the other edge of the pack's territory. And then he came a cautious couple of steps closer, sniffed me, let out a disgusted huff, and settled on his haunches a few feet away.
He was waiting for someone, then. Backup. Maybe, hopefully, someone who could find me a shower and a borrowed pair of boxers. At least he wasn't ripping out my throat.
I probably passed out for a few minutes, because between one second and the next, another wolf was prowling out of the forest. Even with the rising sun hidden behind clouds, and even with my vision as bleary as it was, I could see that he was enormous, easily half again as large as the first. Most of the werewolves I'd seen fully shifted had some shade of gray fur, but this one had a coat like a tawny owl, variegated hues of brown and tan, dappled like sunlight through trees.
The wolf came right up to me with a nonchalant saunter that was more than a little insulting. To be fair, if I'd been a giant predator with four-inch razor-sharp retractable claws, I probably wouldn't have been too terrified of the twink in skinny jeans lying in the mud like a lump, either.
He sniffed me like the other werewolf had, and then shoved one dinner plate-sized paw under my shoulder and flipped me like a pancake. An expression that in a human would be utter horror and disbelief was oddly clear even on that lupine face. His lips drew back, exposing a wicked set of fangs.
“I need to see Matthew,” I choked out, hoping to convince him before he ripped my guts out and had his minion throw me down a ravine. I hadn't meant to tell the details of the story to anyone but the leader of the Armitage pack, for the sake of discretion, but...wasn't saving your own ass the better part of discretion? Or something? “I was kidnapped. By the Kimball pack, and it had something to do with your pack, and Jesus you don't need to kill me —” My voice rose to a squeak as he leaned in, his teeth fully on display, his enormous muzzle way, way too fucking close for comfort.
But he didn't bite, just sniffed me again, from my head all the way down to my feet, pausing at my wrists. Finally he let out a surprised-sounding huff.
A second later his huge form blurred, rippled, and reshaped into a man nearly as enormous compared to other humans as his wolf form was compared to garden-variety wolves. Messy auburn hair curled around his temples, and his freckles might have given him an air of innocence if it weren't for the cold, pale blue eyes. Oh, and the shoulders and chest bulging with muscle. And the claws.
Either way, I knew he was the opposite of innocent, and I knew damn well who he was.
My heart sank. Ian Armitage. My dead ex-lover Jared’s best friend and cousin, the pack leader's second in command, and one of the most feared werewolves in northern California. And he hated me.
The curse might still try to kill me, but now it would probably have to get in line.
Ian flexed his hand, extended his gleaming claws, and laid them gently across my throat. My vision blurred as my heart rate shot into the stratosphere.
“What the fuck are you doing here? One flicker of a lie, and you'll be dead in seconds.”
I had to struggle for breath before I could answer, and that was irritating as hell. Yes, I was less than thrilled to have a supernatural apex predator about to rip out my jugular, but mostly I was just cursed. And having him interpret my shortness of breath as pure terror was plain embarrassing.
“You can smell them on me, can't you? The Kimballs,” I panted, and he nodded, his grip on my throat tightening a nearly-puncturing-my-veins fraction. “They kidnapped me. And they started some kind of —” Deep breath. “Ritual.” I forced another breath into my lungs. “I need to see Matthew.”
Was the sun going down again? That wasn't right. It was just coming up. But everything had gotten darker.
Yeah, I was passing out. Everything went black, and Ian's furious face was the last thing I saw.
Continue The Alpha’s Warlock on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited
Now Available: Captive Mate, book two in the Mismatched Mates series…
Get in Touch
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to my lovely Escapees! My Facebook group was instrumental in encouraging me to show how the boys were doing after the events of The Alpha’s Warlock and Captive Mate. Particular thanks to Rosalind, Melissa J., and Vantera for suggesting the names of side characters in this book!
Extra thanks are due to Amy Pittel and Jem Zero, who both read this for me and gave me their very helpful opinions.
Also by Eliot Grayson
Goddess-Blessed series
The Replacement Husband
The Reluctant Husband
Yuletide Treasure
The Yuletide Runaway
Mismatched Mates series
The Alpha’s Warlock
Captive Mate
Like a Gentleman
The One Decent Thing
Need a Hand?
Deven and the Dragon
A Very Armitage Christmas Page 7