by Amanda Milo
Lucan scarfs down a couple slices of pizza that Finn tosses to him before he heads to the basement to Change and get dressed. When he rejoins us, he polishes off the rest of the slices in his box.
I try the broccoli and pineapple. It’s good. I’ve never eaten the pizza at the pub before, and it’s probably a good thing. I’m pretty sure I can feel the carbs sinking straight onto my butt.
As long as I can still fit into my tiny work shorts? It probably won’t hurt tips.
The girls are excited to have the surprise pizza and friends. Rooker stays pretty quiet, maybe because he’s worked all day with Finn and me or maybe because he can tell Lucan and I are a bit distracted so he’s giving us space, as much as he’s able to.
Finn talks to the kids, winks at me, and inhales three pizzas in the time it takes me to shake off the calorie guilt and finish three slices.
When I feel eyes on me, I glance over and meet Lucan’s gaze.
“Hey,” I murmur to him. We’re seated kitty-corner to each other, close enough to talk, but with only three people in the house having human ears, there’s not a whole lot either of us are going to feel comfortable saying. Not here.
I bite my lip. “So… Do you want to head to the dens for the weekend?” I add quickly, “All of us, I mean. We can all go, and maybe you and I can find a few minutes to talk about… things.”
Lucan’s gaze doesn’t shy away from contact; but it strays over my face, reading me. “I’d like that. I need to talk to you.”
My belly flips, just hearing him say this.
His eyes meet mine again, and hold. “There’s a quiet place at the dens I want to show you.”
I don’t glance away to check the wall clock or my phone. Because it doesn’t matter what time it is. I stare into Lucan’s eyes and say, “Then let’s go together.”
CHAPTER 43
LUCAN
When we arrive at the dens, Ginny and Charlotte give me significant, gleeful looks as they take Maggie’s hands and haul her into a game of tag with several other children in both forms.
With a grateful nod to them, I take Susan’s hand. My gaze is drawn to her fingernails, which are done in alternating colors: a lemony-bright hue from a bottle labeled Hay There, and a royal scarlet shade called Can’t Be Beet!
Ginny and Charlotte were grinning as they surprised her with the latter bottle of polish the other night. And Susan laughed.
I was amused at the name too. When I examined all the little bottles of polish the girls had brought out to the coffee table in the living room, I found myself chuckling softly at all the color names. Tickle my France-y. To Infinity & Blue-Yond! Teal The Cows Come Home. And my favorite: Alpaca My Bags.
The girls began giggling at how much fun I was having with the inventive shade names. “You’re such a dork,” Ginny had wheezed. But she said it fondly, and I felt the friendship in the words.
The nail polish smell and polish remover stench are hell on my nose, but the girls all sit down and paint each other’s nails on a weekly basis. It’s all so… domestic. Bafflingly, Ginny has been part of the family’s nail care days for years. It makes me wonder how her sensitive wolf’s nose hasn’t been burned away. It’s one more thing on a list of things I’ve started chalking up to the mystery of feminine creatures.
And speaking of feminine creatures, I’m gearing up to declare my intentions to one. I clear my throat and ask Susan, “What's the difference between a cat and a comma?”
She gives me a slow, slow blink.
“One has claws at the end of its paws and the other is a pause at the end of a clause,” I blurt.
“Lucan…”
Before I lose my nerve, I tell her, “While there’s still some daylight, there’s somewhere I want you to see.”
Her eyes are on me, searching me, but I can’t meet her gaze. In a tone that reveals her understanding, she asks, “Is this the quiet place you promised?”
Her fingers squeeze mine.
“Yes,” I say, my hand tightening around hers, returning her affectionate squeeze. “Come with me.”
I watch her lips curve up sweetly. “Lead the way.”
We’re almost to the church—our destination—when I realize that she’s grimacing to herself.
I stop, and now I do manage to meet her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
She gives me an abashed smile. “It’s my feet. They’re complaining.”
I look down at her sneakers. “You have been on them all day.”
“Yep,” she agrees. She tugs my hand. “Let’s keep going. I’ll power through.”
I slide my hand from hers only to take her elbow. “You don’t have to suffer. Let me help.” With no hesitation, I step close beside her, wrap my arm around her back and bend down to catch her under her thighs. I pop her up into my arms and tell her, “Put your arms around my neck.”
Her hands are clutching my shoulders. Her heartbeat has doubled and she ducks her head, shy. “You don’t have to carry me! Gosh, Lucan, I’m—”
“Perfect,” I tell her, staring at her. “C’mon. Arms around my neck.”
Eyes wide, heart thudding in a startled song, she timidly clasps her hands behind my nape. As she does, I watch her face, unencumbered by the challenge of meeting her eyes because she’s so steadfastly avoiding my gaze.
She’s easy to carry and doesn’t slow me down in the least. In fact, I’m able to cover more ground because I’m not matching her walking pace, but moving us at my own. She stays quiet, her body tensed like she’s afraid if she moves, I’ll lose strength and drop her.
I won’t. “Hey,” I murmur. And when her eyes tap mine and glance away again, I frown. “Why so uncomfortable?”
“I’m too heavy,” she claims, sounding ashamed.
I heft her, an action that takes no effort and makes the point plain that she’s not, in fact, too heavy. “Not for me.” My mouth curves up in a crooked smile. “You’re lighter than any adult wolf I’ve ever carried. And even if you did weigh more, sweetheart, you have to know I could carry you for miles. If I can distribute the weight properly, I could carry a horse.”
This surprises her. She not only steadies her gaze on mine, she seems to really see me—she absorbs the fact that I’m not struggling to hold her at all.
I glance around, and not seeing anyone nearby, and not hearing anyone close either, I lay it out for her. “I’m crazy about you,” I admit.
Her eyes turn into lasers, the intensity of her focus becomes so strong.
I’m forced to drop my gaze to the inside of her elbow where it rests against my sternum. “I know this probably seems sudden.”
Voice cracking the tiniest bit, she shares, “We’ve been living together twenty-four seven for like two months. Maybe this isn’t really all that sudden.”
Heartened, I look directly at her face—only to find she’s now gazing around us.
Feeling my excitement building even more as I clutch her in my arms, I know I’m probably smiling like an idiot, but I can’t care. I’m too happy. Holding her feels too right. I inhale Susan’s scent, absorb her warmth against my chest, and train my gaze ahead of us, to the house tucked unobtrusively behind the church.
“What is this?” Susan whispers as it comes into view, sounding awed.
I’m warmed at her obvious appreciation. “This is the parsonage.”
It’s a small stone house flanked by twisting apple trees, with a slightly overgrown garden patch off to its left. The exterior is of a warmer color stone than the church, as are the paver stones that lead up to the doorway. Three steps see us to the porch, and with a twist of the handle, we’re inside the unlocked dwelling.
“Who lives here?” Susan asks, and my body is humming so loudly at her nearness I almost can’t track her question. She hasn’t unclasped her hands from where she’s got them anchored around my neck; she’s not giving me any signal that she wants me to let her go.
“Technically, no one,” I tell her, content to hold her as she looks
around the home. The three-bedroom, two-bath home, perfectly sized for a small werewolf family. “But it’s mine.”
Her gaze swings back to me.
I hold her eye contact. “And it could be ours. If you ever want to explore—if you…” I curl my lip and roll my eyes at myself, frustrated with the way I’m struggling to express what I want her to know. “This place is here. It can be our… whatever we need it to be. A quiet spot just to talk, if you’d want that.”
“Lucan?” she whispers, and her voice and her scent and her nearness are, as always, soothing to me… at least until she utters her next words: “I want way more than that. I’d like to kiss you now.”
CHAPTER 44
SUSAN
His face, which is caught in a very bushy-but-not-yet-creature phase, immediately turns hungry. It’s thrilling. So is the fact that he carried me here—he’s still keeping me cradled to his chest in the tenderest hold—and he’s not even out of breath. It’s impressive. He is impressive.
I run my tongue over my bottom lip, slowly, suggestively, and I’m further delighted when his gaze snags on my mouth. “What I mean is, I’d like to take advantage of this incredible alone-time to kiss the heck out of you,” I tell him.
Gently, he lowers me to my feet. Taking my face in his hands, he does a rare thing. He searches my eyes for a prolonged, beautiful heartbeat. “I’d like this. Very much. Please kiss me.”
It’s not at all what I expected him to say. Or do. I thought he’d take advantage of my permission and he would move in to kiss me.
But I didn’t fall for an alpha.
And… I’m really okay with that. I’ve been a single mom for so long that I’m used to taking the reins in every situation, because there’s been nobody leading the way.
With Lucan though, I don’t feel like I’m doing this all on my own anymore. He may not be a leader, but wouldn’t I rather have a partner? He can be that. I already know, rock-solid, he can be great at that. And his eyes tell me he’s here, ready to do anything with me.
Smiling, I wind my arms around Lucan’s shoulders and angle my head, lids lowering as I fit my lips to his.
His lips are firm, but his touch is tentative. He lets me be the one to add the pressure. Lucan, as with everything, cedes control of the situation to me, letting me take full charge of our kiss.
Thumbs sliding along the corded muscles of his neck, my fingers sink into his hair, sliding up, pushing it to stand straight up in back.
I freeze when he involuntarily growls—not because I’m scared, but because his chest vibrates against my perked nipples and even through my tunic and bra, it’s perhaps the most amazing sensation I’ve discovered in a very long time.
My eyes slowly open to find Lucan with pupils blown wide, his focus fully on me.
This much direct eye contact, in quarters as incredibly intimate as this, prove to be too much for him—his lids snap closed almost as if he wasn’t ready to stop meeting my gaze but his body forced him to lock it down.
I laugh softly, my breath puffing against his lips, and I get to watch them stretch up into a wry, sexy smile. He still can’t look at me, but he’s responding to me. He’s right with me.
It takes my breath away.
He takes my breath away.
His hands are clamped on my hips, but his left one leaves its hold, skating up my side, my arm, my shoulder—fitting itself along my cheek. His fingers sink into the hair behind my ear, the near-caress from his strong digits making my scalp tingle deliciously.
His thumb fits gently to the hinge of my jaw, the rough brush of his skin exciting all by itself. But then he applies a little pressure with his fingers where they’re buried in my hair and braced against my neck, all joining in to clue me into a silent, demure cue.
Charmed, biting my lip and staring into his downcast eyes, I follow his polite lead and tilt my head for him.
He kisses me this time, taking charge with a quiet, modest authority. There’s hunger, I can taste it not from his lips, but from the hardness of his muscles everywhere he’s pressing against me. I can feel it in the needy grip of his hands. Yet nothing in his manner is aggressive in urging me along. He doesn’t even force us to madly kiss until we’re breathless; he breaks away just as gently as he began.
“You are so sweet,” I breathe.
His gaze meets mine, just a flicker, and then he’s staring at my lips. “You are too, you know.”
My hands make their way to his ribs, wondering if I can get him to untuck his shirt so I can feel his bare skin. “How long do you think we have until the girls miss us?”
His eyes connect with mine again, longer this time. More comfortable. “That depends. I’m pretty sure Ginny and Charlotte are rooting for us. They’ll be disappointed if we come back at a time they’d deem too early. Maggie is the wild card.”
I tease my fingers up and down along his sides, secretly thrilled when this makes his hands tighten on my hips. “She’s got Liam to entertain her. I think we might have some time.”
Lucan’s swallow is audible and visible. “Good… because we need to talk.”
I nod to that, knowing that after he revealed what he did back at the house, we won’t get a better chance than this to have a private word. But my hormones are keyed up in a way that has me glancing around, a thrill of excitement I haven’t felt since I was a teenager striking me like a sledgehammer. “Do you have a bed in here? Or a couch?” I’d settle for a dining room chair. Shoot, if he has a rug of decent thickness, I can be convinced to lay back on it. Or maybe he’ll volunteer to be the one to take the floor—either way, the wonders of being horizontal cannot be overstated right now. Sure, we could stay standing, but I have a suspicion that Lucan will be driven to go farther with me if we’re locked more intimately. And I’d like to go far. It’s so much harder to put on the brakes when a body is hot and hard over or under you. “Does the door lock?”
“Susan,” Lucan says. “What do you want to happen?”
“I want to seduce you,” I tell him honestly. I force my gaze to his face, a feat made easier by the fact that he’s pinpointed his shocked stare on my throat. “Just a little,” I add as reassurance.
His nostrils flare. “If you mean to… to use your wiles to convince me to want you, I’m already there,” he admits softly. “I want you like crazy.” He drags his eyes up to mine, and stares at me so hard my spine sings. “And I don’t mean for just now. I don’t mean for just sex. I want you now, and I’ll want you forever. And if you don’t believe that, we should stop.” He takes my hands in his, imploring. “If you don’t agree with that, if you don’t feel the same way for me—please stop.”
My heart, my locked-in-a-vault, freeze-branded with old pain until it grew numb to feeling anything heart—it stalls.
And then it soars.
I pull my hands free and catch his strong biceps, giving the rock-hard muscles a strong squeeze. “This is insane, but I want you too.” If ever asked to write down the qualities of my ideal man, I’d describe Lucan. Not just because I like him as a person, but because he’s everything I used to wish for, and more.
Life taught me my ideal man was fantasy. But here is Lucan in the flesh, everything I told myself a long time ago to stop hoping for, everything I haven’t let myself dream about. Although sure, he’s not exactly a man. He’s my werewolf.
He moves so fast I’m not expecting it. He swoops in and slams his lips over mine, kissing me hard, shockingly hard when he’s been so cautious.
It’s amazing. Our lips slide, my belly flutters, my hands find his shoulders and anchor there.
When he pulls back, he stares into my eyes, brow knitted, face earnest. “If Finn were here, pretty safe to say he’d be cheering, ‘about feckin’ time, you two pox puppies.’”
He’s mimicking his best friend’s accent so perfectly, I grin.
“Also,” he adds with a dose of self-deprecation that, for some reason, I find unbelievably attractive, “if he were here, he’d p
robably be butting into this moment to assure you that even though I haven’t said it yet, you should know that shifters mate for life, and werewolves in particular take our relationships very seriously.”
My heart screams, LUCAN IS THE BEST!
My head is still cautious. In fact, I nearly shake my head, the urge to deny that such a thing as an unbreakable matebond actually exists.
But I search Lucan’s face, seeing only a shining earnestness. Quietly, I absorb a zing of elation that he’s still not averting his gaze from mine. “I like the sound of this.”
“Finn will be very pleased,” Lucan drawls dryly.
I chuckle, the sound soft between us. Then I sober.
He senses it, because his arms, which are brushing low on my sides, tense. His gaze jerks away. “What's the difference between a magician's wand and a policeman's baton?”
If romantic music has been playing while we’ve been enjoying this moment, here’s where it screeches to a stop.
But… this is Lucan. I don’t even blink. I just smile at him harder than before. “I don’t know. What?”
He licks his lips, gaze darting up to mine before flitting away. The corner of his mouth twitches up. “One is used for cunning stunts…”
“Lucan,” I say, dropping my hands from his broad shoulders to cover my face. “Your jokes are terrible.”
He peels my fingers off my forehead and draws my hands down, fitting his thumbs in my palms as he informs me with sincerity, “They can get worse.” He peers at me, gauging my reaction. “What did the tired lobster say to his wife when she asked him where they should have dinner?”
“You don’t have to prove that these can get worse,” I inform him, eyes wide.
He bares his teeth, abashed but unable to stop himself from spreading these bad jokes when he has a captive audience, apparently. “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a clam.” He licks his lip. “Since we’re on the topic of marine life, I have one about squids. Do you know what a GoPro camera is?”