by Alana Hart
“So fucking tight,” he groaned.
“Stop,” she gasped.
He grinned in the dark. “Stop what? This?” He moved inside her, the heat of him burning her from her core. He was bigger than before, in every way.
“Stop saying things like that.” She was surprised she could form words at all, shaking as she was, but this time not from the cold.
“Aw, sunshine, I’m gonna say things that would make your daddy blush.”
This wasn’t the Aidan from her past. This Aidan was vulgar. He braced himself on his elbows and rocked his hips into her. She held back, fighting the sensations washing over her. She wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of making her feel anything.
“Go ahead and fight it,” he said. “When I’m done you’ll be screaming my name.”
She turned her head away again. A mistake. She felt his lips pressing against her exposed neck, kissing and sucking at the sensitive skin. She tried to turn her head, push him away, but he grabbed her chin with his hand, keeping her head turned.
“Say my name,” he said against her throat.
“No.” she squeezed her eyes closed.
“Tell me you missed me.”
She shook her head in his hand. His grip tightened.
“Tell me how you’ve waited ten years for me to fuck you, to make you come.”
“Stop it,” she said, but her voice was no more than a hoarse whisper.
He let her chin go. She met his gaze; the fire in his eyes frightened her. Anger and hatred burned in them, charring her heart. His hips moved fluidly against her, driving him in and out with a building speed.
“Tell me you love me.” The tone of his voice changed, it was deeper, angrier, aching.
She couldn’t tell him that. It would hurt her too much to say it out loud. She had spent the last fourteen years of her life in love with him and unable to tell him or see him.
“Come on, sunshine. Tell me you love me and I’ll make you come so hard, it’ll be like fucking Christmas.”
“No,” she growled. “It won’t work. Just stop.”
“I’ll make it work.” His fangs erupted, claws came out, and he growled. The light in his eyes burned like blue fire. He pulled her legs onto his hips and trailed his claws over her belly. She shivered. His other hand went behind her head and lifted it up. She could see him pumping into her, pulling almost all the way out and then driving himself in so deep they seemed to be connected.
“Touch yourself,” he said. She balled her hands into fists, her breath coming too quick. “Come on. I’ll help you find that sweet oblivion.”
When she still didn’t move, he took her hand, gripping her wrist so hard she cried out and opened her fist. Then he guided it between them, pressing her fingers against herself. She bucked against the sensations.
“Feels good, doesn’t it? Keep going.”
She whimpered, moving her fingers over herself, the fire building.
“Shh, stay quiet or Liam’ll hear you. We’ll have to stop if he hears.”
She bit her lip, biting back her moan.
“Good girl. Now,” he tilted her head so she was looking at him. “Say my name.”
She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. She slammed into her hard, making her cry out. He dropped down, leaning close, pinning her arm between them. She moved her fingers ineffectively. He moved achingly slowly inside her.
“Say my name and I’ll let you touch yourself.”
She could say his name. It was nothing to give that to him. Or she could stop this madness before it went any further.
“Aidan,” she moaned.
The fire in his eyes sparked. He lifted himself enough that she could move her arm, rubbing herself harder. He pumped against her, faster.
His fangs glistened in the moonlight. They retracted, and he slid an arm under her hips, lifting her, pushing deeper inside her.
“Tell me you love me.”
She didn’t make the mistake of avoiding it, but she hesitated. She was close, the fire inside her burning so hot it would only take a few more seconds and she would be lost in the oblivion that had evaded her since she was a teenager.
He slowed slightly. “Tell me you love me,” he said again.
Still, she hesitated. He grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand from her where she throbbed between them. He moved still, slowly pushing deep and pulling out until he was just inside her.
“Tell me.” His eyes burned, searched hers, reached into her and compelled her to speak.
She opened her mouth, the words stuck in her throat. If she gave this to him, she would have nothing left, nothing to hold onto when she was back in Hank’s violent embrace. Her hope of ever having Aidan come to her would be dashed, because she knew how he felt about her.
His lips whispered over hers, the words a breath in her mouth. “Tell me.”
Finally, as the cusp of her orgasm ebbed so close, she met his gaze. “I’ve always loved you,” she breathed, tears escaping her eyes.
The fire in his eyes hardened to ice. He put his hand between them and touched her, as he did, he lifted her and slammed into her over and over.
Her orgasm hit her like a tsunami. A scream built in her throat, and Aidan slapped a hand over her mouth, stopping it. He pumped into her as she floated above them, watching him on top of her. And then she came back down, shaking.
He drove into her several more times, and then pulled out, spilling himself onto her stomach.
They lay there, panting in the dark, the cold air creeping into the heat between them. And then he rolled off and sat on the edge of the bed. She heard something tear and then he tossed a chunk of ripped blanket onto her stomach. She cleaned herself, watching his back.
He stood, ran a hand through his hair, and looked down at her, his eyes icy.
“There, you’re warm enough. Now go the fuck to sleep.”
And then he left the cabin.
Reagan curled into the blankets, staring at the door, suddenly cold again.
Chapter Nine
Aidan stood outside on the small porch for a moment, breathing in the cold, crisp air, the snow falling on his shoulders. He shouldn’t have done that. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until tonight, while he was inside her. But his great-uncle Gavin would call that lust, not love. He’d spent a year with her, during a time when he was feeling depressed and abandoned. She made him feel better. Of course he had missed her.
That’s all it was. He couldn’t still love her after ten years, after she had turned him away so cruelly at her mother’s funeral. She didn’t want him, she wanted oblivion, and he’d given it to her.
And she didn’t love him, despite having said it. Saying you love someone during sex and no other time doesn’t count. The surge of emotion he’d felt in her when she said it was just lust, not real love. He wasn’t that stupid.
Well, not entirely true. They would be going to the Den in a few hours, and his family would know that he’d fucked her. Thank God he didn’t bite her. Marking her as his would be a huge mistake when she was supposed to be his job.
She was going back to Hank because that was what the alphas had decided. She didn’t have to stay with the bastard, but in order to complete their job, she’d have to go back and face him at least once more.
He was exhausted. Aidan went to his cabin between the other two, shifted into a wolf, and let his animal mind drift to sleep, his human problems taking a backseat to his instincts.
He was awakened by a scream. Leaping from the bed, he shifted into a human and ran out the cabin door.
The sun was just rising, a bright orange glow on the horizon, and the snow was thick and crusted, glistening in the growing light. Running from Liam’s cabin was Reagan. She spotted Aidan and ran to him, tears in her eyes, ignoring the fact that he was stark naked.
“Where is she?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “He took her. He got her.” She shoved a hand through her hair, staring around the snowy w
oods with wide eyes.
“What are you talking about?” He took her shoulder in his hand, but she yanked out of his grip, stumbling away from him.
“Harry’s gone! Liam’s gone!”
Aidan’s insides clenched. Had more shifters got to them? Had they been taken while Aidan quenched a ten-year thirst?
Before he could panic or call for Liam, two wolves trotted from the tree line, one a pup, the other fully grown with a rabbit in its jaws. Reagan’s relief was palpable. He felt her fear vanish, replaced by a wave of love. She ran to the pup and scooped her up, hugging her and crying into her fur.
“I’m so sorry. I thought you were gone. I thought he got you.” She mumbled into the pup’s fur, the pup returning her love with a lick of her chin.
Liam had shifted and stood, naked, his tattoos bright in the morning light. He stared at Reagan, his eyebrow cocked in confusion.
Aidan cleared his throat. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
Liam held up the rabbit. “Food first.”
Aidan let him start a fire, cook the rabbit, and dish up handfuls of the juicy meat. Reagan kept Harry the girl on her lap, wrapped in a blanket, and refused the rabbit.
Aidan swallowed his bite. “If you’re going to run on us,” he said, and her head snapped to him. “You’ll need your strength.”
She stared at him, her face a blank wall, while she contemplated. Then she lifted the rabbit to her lips and took a large bite, her eyes on Aidan, emotionless. It was as if last night never happened, except that Liam kept shooting them furtive glances.
When he’d finished eating, Liam smacked his knees. He had dressed before cooking, complaining of the cold. “What’s the plan, brother?”
Aidan kept his eyes on his rabbit, not sure if he should tell Reagan about her going back to Hank just yet. But, she was already planning to run from them, so why not?
“The alphas need to find out where the pup came from. If she has parents, she’ll go back to them, unless they sold her. Otherwise, she’ll stay with the pack.”
“What about these other shifters attacking us?” Liam asked.
Aidan shifted his shoulders, eyes on his food. “I’ll talk to Cormac about their collars killing them before they could tell us who they work for once we’re on the road. Right now, no one, not even the alphas, knows where we are.”
“Think someone in the pack sold us out?”
Aidan shrugged. “Not sure. But thought it’d be safer to keep where we are a secret.”
Liam nodded. “Right, so get back to the Den and finish this job.”
Aidan nodded.
“What happens to me?” Reagan asked, her brown eyes colder than the winter morning.
“We need to find out where the pup came from. Emmett can’t find it anywhere online, and he’s got my whole setup at home. All payments made to them end in dummy corporations that can’t be traced. All phone calls and emails leave no trace. We need Hank to call them, demand a new pup or refund or something. If he calls, we can trace it right then, find out where they are, and then Liam is going in to find out what the hell is going on.”
Liam cast a glance at Aidan and then nodded, resigned to the idea. He’d gone under cover before for operations like this. He might not like it, but he was the only one who could do it.
Reagan persisted. “How are you going to get him to call? Are you going to show up and tell him you took his puppy?”
Aidan pressed his lips together, trying to word this right. “No. You are going to tell him you lost it.”
Her reaction was much more subtle than what he expected. She cocked an eyebrow, but he could feel the apprehension and fear and anger coming from her. “That’s a shitty plan. He won’t buy it and he’ll—he just won’t.” He knew what she was going to say; he wouldn’t buy it and he’ll beat the shit out of her for leaving him. But there was nothing he could do about that.
He sighed and wiped his hands. “I’m sure the alphas will come up with something better. Everyone go take a piss. We’re leaving.” He stood, cutting off any more interrogating from Reagan.
She didn’t take the hint. “I’m not going back to him.”
“You are if the alphas say you are.”
She glared. “I’m not in your pack. I don’t have to obey their orders.”
He thought quickly, coming up with something that would assure him she would do as she was told. It was low, but he needed her cooperation.
“Fine,” he said. “If you don’t go back to Hank, she’ll have to.” He nodded at the kid.
Reagan stared at him in horror. “How would that help?”
He shrugged. “We’ll assume he’ll want her verified,” he lied. “He only saw her shift into a little girl for a moment before you took her, right? So he’ll need to make sure she’s the pup he ordered.” He didn’t even know if this was true.
She eyed him, not quite believing him, but she stopped arguing, which was all Aidan needed right then.
While she took Harry to pee in her cabin, Aidan and Liam found a bike trailer behind the main office and hooked it up to the SUV. While they did, Aidan could feel Liam’s eyes on him, narrowed as if trying to read his mind.
“What?” Aidan said without looking at him.
“You fucked her.”
He tightened the bolts. “I’ve fucked a lot of women.”
“But you never cared about any of them.”
“I don’t care about her either.”
Liam watched Aidan, making him feel uncomfortable. “You can’t have her,” he said. “The alphas won’t let you.”
Aidan sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“Better off anyway,” Liam said as Aidan straightened. They watched Reagan carry Harry from the cabin and head toward the SUV. “She’s going back to her husband soon. And if he don’t forgive her for losing the pup, he’s gonna kill her.”
Aidan’s chest felt tight.
Reagan climbed in the back with Harry while Liam took the passenger seat. She didn’t look at Aidan once. Her eerie calm over this whole situation worried him.
Chapter Ten
The drive home was quiet and not long enough. They never stopped during the two and a half hour drive, so there was never an opportunity to try and run. She wouldn’t leave Harry. The little shifter might be safer with others like her, but not this pack who would give her back to a man intent on hurting her. She didn’t think Liam would let that happen, but these shifters were loyal to their alphas, which was why Reagan was going to be delivered back to Hank.
He was going to hurt her for taking Harry and smashing a lamp over his head. If he didn’t kill her first, that is.
Too soon they were back in Mass, heading toward the pack’s bar, the Den, north of Boston. She was already too close to Hank in New Hampshire.
The sky was a brilliant white, the trees bare and black, glistening in the sunlight as the snow and ice melted from their branches. Spring was nowhere near close yet, but it seemed Mother Nature had taken a break from the snowstorms for now.
Aidan steered the SUV through the small town, over streets slick with melting snow, the gutters trickling with dirty slush. Storeowners shoveled the slush from the sidewalks in front of their shops. People were out, bundled against the chill, enjoying a little fresh air.
This is where Reagan had grown up.
Her grandmother’s church stood tall, its steeple pointing to the sky, the stained glass windows bright in the weak light. The grocery store was just a little ways beyond that, and then the liquor store with the neon signs in the windows where she had been sent far too often as a little girl to get this or that for her parents. Around the corner from that was the Den. And just beyond that was her childhood home. It was far enough down the street that she could see no more of it than the mailbox when Aidan parked in the Den’s lot, but it was there nonetheless.
Someone else lived there. Some other family walked the front steps and crossed the creaking porch littered with cigarette butts and crushed b
eer cans. They opened the screen door with its ominous squeak. They walked down halls stained yellow from cigarette smoke, and cooked in a kitchen that smelled of old beer and fish sticks. Someone, maybe another girl, slept in her room upstairs, the lock broken and repaired several times in an attempt to keep her parents out. That girl sat in her window and stared at the bar up the street, waiting for the light in the upper corner room to flicker.
Reagan knew that the walls had probably been painted, the kitchen cleaned, the screen door replaced. Nothing was the same, and yet, nothing would change. Not for her anyway.
Aidan parked against the building. The lot was small, the gray brick building wide. A black sign hung over the door that read, “The Den: Home of the Alpha MC. est. 1966.” A huge oak door stood closed against the winter chill.
Liam opened her door, and gestured for her to descend. Aidan stood nearby. Both seemed to be waiting for her to make a move, to run, to scream for help, to break down. She did none of those things.
Climbing onto shaky legs, Reagan carried Harry in her blanket, and followed Liam, Aidan behind her.
Her heart beat hard in her throat. They would all hear its panicked flutter, but she couldn’t help it. Harry perked up, her nose in the air, and she yipped curiously at the smell of more shifters.
Inside, an old, wooden bar took up one entire wall, lined with stools and taps. Behind it, shelves were filled with bottles, their liquids catching the dim lights set into the ceiling. Tables were strewn about the rest of the bar, and a stage took up the opposite wall. Black and white photos of the various club members were hung here and there.
They walked through the empty bar, the TVs all blank, and passed through a door at the end. A large storage area and hallway was all that separated the bar from the house. Reagan had been here a few times, sneaking in with Aidan in the middle of the night, their hearts racing, praying no one would hear or smell her.
She felt him behind her as they walked through the hall they had crept through before, passing the staircase that led to the upper floors. Was he also remembering those times?
At the end of the hall they came to a wide living room where about six pups played. Some were young kids jumping from one couch to another, while others were pups, yapping and nipping at the heels of those who jumped. A TV played cartoons.