by Vaughn, V.
“I’d probably end up back at home, with a fancy diploma and a bunch of someone else’s little boys to tend to. When the mate call comes, no one cares how smart or educated you are. You pack up and go, because you might not have another chance.”
“Is that what you all believe?”
“It’s the truth. I’ve seen it time and time again.”
“You don’t have to take a mate. You know that, don’t you? There’s no good reason to, unless you just want to let your wolf out. You could take a—a human lover.”
Was that a note of hesitancy in his voice?
“I’ve considered that,” she said. “In spite of how much I dislike the culture sometimes, I want to be a wolf. I like to think that I could be a better wolf than most.”
“I think you already are,” he said softly. He nudged the shower curtain aside a bit and put his head out. His wet hair clung to his face and over his eyes, making him look even more winsome, if such a thing was possible. “I hate to ask, but since you’re here—”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can you scrub the mud off the middle of my back? I’m sure there’s some there that I can’t reach.”
“Oh.” She nodded eagerly and took the cloth he held out, pleased to do something—anything—for him. All he had to do was ask.
He pushed the curtain a bit more to the side, nudged the shower head to spray away from the curtain, and moved a bit more toward the tiled wall. “We can try not to flood the bathroom.”
His movement away from the tub side meant she had to put her shins right up to it to reach him, and even that was a strain. He was so tall, she had to grab hold of his waist to leverage herself as she scrubbed.
She started at his shoulders and worked down his tanned flesh, pausing every so often to finger bruises and scars and ponder how he’d earned them. At one wide, jagged scar just over his ass, she just had to ask. “Did you get that as man or wolf?”
His buttocks clenched as she traced along its ragged outline. “Uh, man. I rarely get injured in wolf form.”
“What happened?”
“Got pushed off a roof during a fight. Hit my back on the side of a garbage skip when I fell.”
She cringed.
“Par for the course, given what I do for a living. But don’t worry, I’m pretty resilient.”
“I guess you are.” She scrubbed across the base of his back and swiped a trail of soap across the top of his ass.
“I thought I got all the mud there.”
“Uh, just a little spot.” She thrust the cloth toward him and reached for a hand towel.
He laced his hands beneath his hair and lifted it off his neck, then turned in a slow circle. “See any more?”
As she dried between her fingers, her gaze fell down the length of his body, focusing on the thick, heavy shaft between his legs when he paused.
“I don’t think I’m muddy there, little wolf.” He pressed his hand to his balls, shifting left and right as if the check the crevices.
“Uh.”
“You seeing something I don’t? I’m relying on you to be my eyes right now.”
“Uh.”
He was growing right before her eyes. She swallowed down the lump in her throat and raised her gaze to his face.
He wasn’t hiding from her now, but why would he? Everything else about him was bare and exposed. Why not his face? His scars?
“You like looking at me, Christina?”
“I thought I told you that already.”
He reached past the spray of water and turned off the shower’s flow. “Some parts of me more than others, huh?”
She grabbed a towel off of the linen closet’s shelf and tossed it to him.
He dried his face before stepping out, and wrung the water out of his hair. Shoulders next, followed by arms, belly. His thighs and calves in turn. He shook out the towel and dried his back, watching her all the while. “You didn’t answer me.”
“I didn’t think you really wanted an answer.”
“I wouldn’t waste the words if I didn’t want some in return.” He pressed the wadded terrycloth between his legs and rubbed it along his lengthening cock.
“Umm.” She dragged her tongue across her dry lips and ground her palms against her eyes. “Stop doing that, and maybe I’d be able to answer you.”
“Doing what? Drying off?”
“No. Teasing me.”
“How am I teasing you? I’m sure you’ve seen dozens of naked wolves in your time.”
“I have, but none of them were you.” And none of them could ever hope to be anything remotely as fine.
“One dick’s more or less the same as another.” He eased past her, his hard shaft brushing against her arm briefly as he crossed into the hallway.
He was all the way in the bedroom before her brain defogged enough for her to come up with a retort. “It’s not just your—your dick.” She flicked the light switch off and followed him into the bedroom.
He stood in front of the dresser, adjusting the cord of his eye patch around his wet hair. His cock was still at half-mast in the mirror. He opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of sweatpants.
“Why won’t you take a chance?” she asked.
“On what?”
“On me. Give me a try.”
“You’re not something to sample and play with. Not a candy in a chocolate box to be bitten into and put back if the filling’s not to my liking.”
“You’re my mate. I was picked for you. That shouldn’t be an issue.”
He stepped into the pants and bumped the drawer shut. “You ever wonder if he picked wrong?”
“Not even for a minute.” She cringed at her hasty response, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her dress, pondering. “Well, maybe a minute.”
“See, you do have doubts.”
“Not for the reasons you’re thinking. From the way you looked at me at first, I thought maybe Adam might have picked wrong. You were thinking about sending me back before you even talked to me.”
“Any wolf with half a scruple would have done the same.”
“Why?”
“Come on, Christina. You didn’t come all the way out here thinking you were going to be saddled with defective goods. I know that for certain.”
Defective goods? “You mean your eye? For heaven’s sake. I came out here hoping to be useful to some wolf—appreciated—and if he liked me a little on top of that, it would have just been icing on the cake.”
“You sell yourself short.”
“Looks like that makes two of us, then. You don’t think you deserve someone?”
“Deserve? No. Hoped there might be someone for me someday? Well, maybe a tiny little part of me wanted that. But deserve? I wouldn’t put that word and you in the same sentence, ever.”
She let out a long groan through clenched teeth and fixed her gaze on the ceiling. Contractor white. It needs paint. Something soft and mellow to soothe her uptight wolf. “Isn’t it my choice, too, Anton? Don’t I have a say?”
“I’m not going to let you throw your life away.”
“Why do you think I’d be so miserable, huh? You think I’m so completely petty and vain that I’d allow myself to be distracted by what amounts to a very minor imperfection, so much so that I’d outright refuse a match? A good match?”
He didn’t respond, so she pulled her gaze down from the ceiling and stared at him.
His forehead was deeply furrowed and lips pulled into a grimace.
“Tell me, Anton. What woman like me, in her right mind, would do that?”
“You should hold out for a wolf that could be alpha someday. That should be what every female wolf hopes for, and let’s face it. I’ll never be that.”
He stalked around the bed, eye fixed on the doorway, and she seethed.
For him to have been so well traveled, he didn’t seem that great a grasp on the world. Why would she give a damn about an alpha, when she couldn’t even win a fair fight her
self?
Chapter 7
He tried to get past her, but his little wolf grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back into the bedroom. Well, he let her, rather. He had to be twice her weight. She seemed insistent, so he stopped. He couldn’t keep saying no to her. Refusing her was breaking him up on the inside, but what choice did he have?
“Don’t you dare walk away from me, as if what I’m saying doesn’t matter!” she said with that pretty brow furrowed. He wanted to kiss every one of those worry lines away.
“You just need a good night’s sleep. A clearer head will emerge in the morning.”
Her eyes went wide and cheeks reddened as if she’d been slapped. “You think I’m hysterical! That I’m talking nonsense.”
Of course he wanted to press his palms to her face, to soothe the hurt he’d caused, but he kept his hands to himself.
She stared at him with that innocent incredulity in her expression. So naive. If she weren’t, she would have taken his offer to just go. To leave Norseton and hold out for some whole, undamaged wolf.
“None of the others’ women have this problem.” The tearful catch to her voice just about ripped his heart into shreds. He did have one, after all.
He swiped the pads of this thumbs beneath her bright eyes before the tears could track down her cheeks. “None of the other wolves are like me, Christina.”
“And that’s probably a good thing, because I don’t think those women would know what to do with them if they were.”
“Do you know what to do with me?”
She shook her head between his hands. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. Maybe Adam put me with you because he knew I would keep trying. It hurts to be rejected, but I’m going to keep trying.”
“I don’t want to hurt you. That’s why I keep telling you to go.”
“I’m a grown woman. Remember that. I’m a grown woman. I know what it means to be desperate, and maybe I am right now, but not because I can’t rustle up some other wolf. I want this wolf.” She gave his chest a little thrash with her fists then pressed her forehead to it.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and let out a long exhale. She felt sorry for him. A tenderhearted woman like her would see him as a project—something to fix, like a car’s engine. But, engines weren’t supposed to be handsome, just functional. He’d never be handsome again. She’d never know him as what he once was.
“Anton…” Her fingers tucked into the front of his waistband, as if she needed to cling onto him to stay upright. “You’re thinking too much. You think you know what’s inside my head and what I feel. That’s why you keep coming up with your ridiculous excuses. If you would really just listen to me, you’ll see it’s all so simple. Do you want me?”
“That’s never been contestable, little wolf.”
“Would you fight for me?”
“Of course I would.”
“But you won’t bite me.”
“No. I won’t put my mark on you.”
She sighed and thumped her forehead against his chest a few times. “Fine.” She looked up, eyes narrowed. “I’m not going away. I want you to understand that. Whether you bite me or not, I’m not leaving. I’m staying with you. You leave, I leave. I keep my promises. But I’m not gonna act like your roommate, either. You can’t shame me like that in front of the others. You’re not gonna treat me like I’m less than the other mates are.”
“What are you asking me for?”
“You don’t want to bite me, that’s fine. I don’t live and breathe to be a wolf. I don’t need to be furry to know what I am on the inside. I know my heritage. But you’re gonna talk to me as if I were your mate. You’re not gonna cast me aside like trash you’re waiting to have picked up. I won’t be ignored.”
“You’re impossible to ignore, little wolf.”
“So act like it! Touch me. Hold me. Act like you like what you see, and like you still want me to be around when you wake up.”
She was trying to break him. It was becoming painfully obvious that was her end goal. She may have been little and soft-spoken, but she had an engineer’s brain, and was probably thinking up ways to unravel him, one heart cell at a time.
“Why would you be happy with just pretending?” Would it be pretending, though? He did like what he saw, and of course he wanted her around when he woke up, even if he didn’t think she should be.
She took a deep breath and cocked up her chin. “I’m not going anywhere. You figure out a way to cope.”
“I—”
“Get into bed. It’s late. You said yourself you have to get up early.”
He furrowed his brow. “I do, but—”
“Get in the bed. It’s your bed. Get in it.”
“Bed’s not set up in the guest room yet. I can’t have you sleeping on the sofa.”
“I don’t intend to sleep on the sofa. I told you, I’m not going to be up in this house acting like some impersonal roommate. We’re going to share a bed. Whether you bite me or not makes no difference.”
It made plenty of difference, but he was tired of arguing. He let his hands fall and made his way to the right side of the bed.
She turned off the lamp, and he watched her unbutton her dress in the faint light of the moon coming in through the window. Frozen there, with his knee propped on the edge and his palms pressed flat to the mattress, he stared openly. He could pretend to be a gentleman all he wanted, but he wasn’t one. He fucking stared.
Stared at the faint outline of her nipples through her thin bra. Stared at the dark thatch between her legs, because she evidently hadn’t found a pair of panties to put on. She pulled an oversized, holey striped shirt over her head and climbed into the bed on the opposite side.
“Well, get in. I can’t promise to stay on my side, and I’m not going to apologize if I stray.”
Swallowing, he climbed in and let her pull up all the blankets she wanted. She curled into a little ball with her back turned to him, and in seconds, her breathing was slow and rhythmic, and her back rose and fell in sleep.
He could probably slip away—go take that spot on the couch again. But he realized that she’d probably follow. He’d wake up to find her on top of his chest with that shirt hiked up over her ass, and the next thing he’d know, his dick would be in her, and he’d have no choice but to keep her—at least in his mind.
Nope.
Wasn’t going there.
He fluffed his pillow under his head and closed his eyes.
Wasn’t going there at all.
Chapter 8
Anton didn’t need an alarm clock to wake him up. He had tickling breath on his chest and a warm leg slung over his thigh that kept bumping his morning wood.
He laid there, teeth clenched, staring at the ceiling and hoping she’d move.
God, he hoped she moved. Her body was situated so close to his, her pussy pressed to his hip and her hard nipples stabbed against his ribs as she slept.
What was a wolf to do?
He turned his head enough to catch a glimpse of the digital alarm clock. Barely four. Too fucking early to get up. Not enough sleep. If he wanted to get any, he’d obviously have to move her.
Hmm.
How? Maybe if he rolled a bit, he could get her off of his numb right arm, and the rest of his body along with it. He shifted a bit to lift his left shoulder, and those bright eyes snapped open beside him.
She lifted her head, and it seemed to take her a moment to find her bearings. Then she put her head back down and closed her eyes.
“Christina—”
“Too early to get up.”
“I thought the same thing, but I can’t sleep like this.”
“You don’t like it?”
He drew in a long breath and picked up her right wrist. Laying her hand on his tortured cock, he asked, “What do you think?”
“I-I think—” She freed her hand, only to take his wrist. She dropped his hand onto her ass and wriggled beneath it. “Touch me. Touch w
here my thighs meet.”
Against his better judgment, he slipped his fingers between her legs and drew back a slick hand.
Fuck. It took everything he had not to swirl it around and breach her with a fingertip, just to try her on for size.
“Dreaming of you,” she said coyly.
“You were? What was I doing in your dream?”
“Want me to show you?”
His moral fiber shouted an internal, halfhearted No, but through his lips came, “Yes.”
She shifted so she was between his parted thighs and slipped one small hand down the front of his sweatpants.
He hissed when her fingertips skimmed over his cock head and reached for her wrist.
She pushed his hand away. “No. I’m going to show you.” With shaking hands, she tugged down his waistband and worked his dick out of his pants. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly, and she looked down at the thing, as if now that she’d freed it, she didn’t know what she was expected to do with it.
He certainly didn’t expect anything. In fact, he hoped she’d get her wits back in check and settle back down to sleep. The erection would eventually go away on its own.
Probably.
Gods. He squeezed his eyelids shut as her soft palm pressed onto the head.
“I was holding you,” she said. “You were letting me touch you.”
“Was I?”
“You let me touch you here, and told me what to do with it.”
“That doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”
“I told you it was a dream.”
“And what did I tell you to do in this dream?”
“You told me to—to cup you here.” Her feather-light touch on the underside of his sac made his ass clench. “Told me to hold you tight here.” Her fingers squeezed the base of his shaft. Not tight—not in his opinion—but for all he knew, she was giving it a hell of an effort. “Told me to squeeze you up to the top, like this.” Her fist worked up his dry shaft, the gentle friction curling his toes, and the scent of her arousal making his cock leak.
She stared at it, befuddled. Has she never touched a dick before?