by Thalia Eames
He forced himself to relax and explained the best he could. “I need to see her. I need to touch her and make sure for myself that she’s okay.”
“Then you don’t need my help,” Lennox said with a brilliant smile. “Go home, Daz. You don’t have to wait much longer.”
Daz smiled back at her. If Lennox said to wait a little longer, he’d wait.
Stopping in front of her husband, Lennox held out her hand. “Come, drunk man, let’s go to bed.”
Garrett ignored her outstretched hand and stood up on his own. While they watched he shook off the drunken posture he’d worn only a moment before. “No,” Garrett said, “I’m going to stay over at my place.”
“Why? Trust me, Daz doesn’t need our help.”
The laugh Garrett huffed out had no trace of humor in it. “Trust you?” He looked at the stars, his shoulders tense with the effort of controlling his anger. “You want me to trust the woman who says she wants my baby but takes birth control?”
Lennox covered her mouth. “No, Garrett.” Her heartbeat pounded so hard it echoed within Daz’s shifter hearing.
Garrett’s brow rose. “Oh, or maybe you want me to trust the woman who only wants half of me and is happy to throw the rest away?”
“No, Garrett.” Lennox grabbed the front of his shirt. He took her wrists and gave them back to her. His rejection caused hurt to darken her eyes. “I’m just so afraid,” she whispered.
“I know that, Elle.” Garrett seemed to relent for a moment. “But how long do you want your fears to be my hell?”
She didn’t have an answer. Daz saw it on her face.
Garrett gestured they should get going with a jerk of his head from Daz to the street and turned away from his wife. He looked at Lennox over his shoulder. If Garrett’s last words haunted Daz, they must’ve broken her. “You come find me when my wolf can rest his head in your lap the same as I do. Maybe then you’ll be ready to be my wife and my mate. Until then, you’re neither.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A few days later, Daz answered his phone in the middle of the night. “Hey Lennox, we’re working on him. Cash and I will do what we can.”
Her voice broke. “This call isn’t about me, Daz. It’s about you.” He quieted, barely allowing himself to hope. “Jules told me to call you. Gran says it’s time for you to come over and Jules agrees. I know that sounds weird but you’ll understand when you get here, okay?”
He nodded. Then remembered she couldn’t see him. “I’ll be there as fast as a wolverine can run.”
Lennox grinned; he could hear it over the phone. “Or you could drive. Your choice.” She disconnected.
Daz rushed out the door, only pausing to tell Cash and Garrett where he was going. Garrett called after him. “Remember how you couldn’t tell me what you knew because it broke your woman’s trust?”
“Yeah,” Daz said.
“Remember that when you get to Averdeen Manor. And forgive me for being a little jealous.” Garrett nodded toward the door and went back to what he’d been doing.
Inside Averdeen Manor, Lennox led Daz to a bedroom he’d never visited. He smelled his woman’s orange blossom scent before he saw her, but it was different, fuller, with new top notes.
The bed faced away from the door, looking out at a set of windows into the full moonlight. On one side Gran waved at him. On the other side, a wolfen woman spoke to Jules in low tones. Anxious but excited, Daz rounded the bed.
His goddess lay propped up on what had to be twenty pillows. At the sight of her Daz grabbed the bedpost. Jules looked more amazing than she ever had. Her skin glowed and her exposed belly was round with child. His child.
She welcomed him with an extended hand and he walked around Gran to sit on the bed beside her. “How long do we have?” Jules asked the woman Daz guessed was a wolfen midwife.
The midwife gave them both a knowing look. “We’ve got time.”
“Surprise,” Jules said softly to Daz. “I’ve got a lot to tell you before…” She gestured at her stomach.
“I’m listening,” Daz said, hoping whatever she had to tell him ended with them being together raising their family.
“First, I got rid of my touch aversion.”
“How?” he interrupted, afraid she’d found another mate. The wolverine would kill anyone who touched her and Daz wouldn’t stop his animal.
She scrunched her face at him. “This is listening?” Daz dismissed his worry. She was his. Rather than reply he let his eyes dance. She continued. “I reprogrammed myself. Forced myself to change how I responded to the pain.”
It had to have been torture for her. He knew the agony of their shared condition intimately.
“It must be the honey badger ancestry in you,” Daz said, amazed.
“No it’s more like the stubborn, nothing will defeat me, Filipina in me. But more than that it’s who I am. I had to be sure my feelings are mine.”
Jules tugged on her ear. “I refuse to allow another situation outside of myself to force me into a life I didn’t choose. And I’m definitely not going to let supernatural bullshit keep me from touching the people I love.” She paused. “Did I ever tell you I was in a train accident way back when?”
“No,” he said, suddenly worried about the things that might’ve hurt her before they’d met. As though he could’ve protected her.
“I was and it was horrible. I watched people die and others fight to survive. And I don’t know whether either group had a choice in that.” She closed her eyes for a moment then reopened them. “Too many things have affected my life. That’s the reason I refuse to sit back and live with touch aversion. I won’t let my relationship with you be another thing that happened to me, another way I’d be forced to live my life, like an accident or the wrath of a bunch of fans. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“I’m not sure, Blue.”
She exhaled through her nose, mouth thinning into a tight line. “I could not let the love of my life be just another train wreck.” She reached out for the second time. “Come here, Dashiell.”
He got it. And he felt like a kid who’d fallen for a woman way out of his league. Jules scraped her fingers across his beard, then grabbed his ears and pulled him in for a kiss. She nipped his lips before she pulled away. “Fuck, Dashiell, I missed you so bad. I’m sorry I hurt you by staying away. I didn’t want it that way and it hurt me too. But I needed to make sure there are no reasons other than love bonding me to you.” She leaned back and studied his face. “I also needed to reconcile myself to suddenly becoming the mother of a wolverine family. I’ve been freaking out and I didn’t want to wait and try to deal with it later. I won’t risk allowing doubt to pull us apart the way fear is breaking Garrett and Lennox up.”
Their gazes caught and held. Jules sighed. “But now, after so much time to think, I know I can bet my life on you. I know for sure there are no other reasons for me and I have absolutely no doubts. Daz, I want to spend every moment of my life with you.”
The midwife came in to check on Jules’s progress. “Whoa,” she said. “You’re ready to go. How did you keep so quiet during contractions?”
Jules laughed. “I’ve felt agony like you wouldn’t believe. Birth pains are a holiday.”
Daz jumped up and pressed his lips to Jules’s temple. Lifting her tenderly he positioned himself behind her, cradling her body with his.
“Take out your camera, Dashiell,” Jules said.
“What?” He jumped and quickly wrapped his arms around her to steady them both.
“You’re a vlogger. How can I let you miss filming the birth of your children?”
He kissed her neck from behind. “Really?” He feared she’d change her mind.
“Yeah, really. I’m not going to be in too many of these things. And I definitely don’t want our kids to be heavily featured on your channe
l, but I do want you to be happy. And vlogging makes you happy.” Jules sighed and leaned back into him.
Daz reached for his bag and took out his camera. Once he positioned it over her shoulder Jules yelled out, “And don’t film my snatch!”
He lost it. “But my 2.2 million subscribers would love your snatch.” Laughing with her they snuggled in and brought baby #1, a little girl with a peach fuzz bald head, followed immediately by baby #2, a little boy with a full halo of dark waves, into the world together. Afterward, Jules passed out.
When Jules awoke she found Daz sitting in the chair beside her bed with both their babies cuddled up and sleeping on his bare chest. He looked happy.
Nothing in life, no moment of love or joy, could’ve prepared her for the astonishing bliss of watching her babies sleep on her man’s chest. Jules decided to make that feeling her life. To wake up to it, to take it to bed at night, and to share it with the three people who’d made this possible.
Her man surprised her by continuing their conversation without acknowledging she’d woken up. “I’ve been trying to tell you my touch aversion disappeared the moment I came back to you. Or it might’ve been when I bought that old farm on the other side of town for us to raise our children on.” He stared at her, his gaze unwavering. “That’s been months and I still came here every day for you.”
“I love you more than I love anime,” she blurted out.
For unknown reasons, his happy expression held an edge of sadness. “I’m sorry I left you, Blue. I didn’t think of going to get to know the Tahvilis as leaving. For me, it was my way of making sure I could come back to you.” He stilled himself so as not to wake their children. “Shifter life can be brutal. Sometimes it forces us to use our fists, claws and fangs. We’re animals. And the animal world has rules.”
Jules nodded, mesmerized by the power of her man.
“Sometimes a show of dominance is the only means of protecting those you love.” Daz’s fingers brushed over one tiny baby head and then the other. “But we’re humans too. We have the ability to strategize, form alliances, talk things out. I had to find that balance so I could be your man.” He laughed on the slightest puff of air. “And their father. You get me?”
She nodded again, not wanting to say a word until he got it all out.
“I figured it out after I realized where I’d messed up with the tower. I tried to put all the original parts back into the clockwork. But a lot of what I repaired I made into something new. I couldn’t force all the old and new into it without breaking the works. That’s the balance, Blue. You take what you can use and you leave the rest behind. The same with the Tahvilis, that family showed me the worst of who I could be so I could come home to give you my best.”
They sat in silence for a few beautiful moments.
“You think of them as ‘that’ family?” Jules asked.
“What else could they be? I’m Dashiell Warren, The Dazzler.” He grinned but turned serious immediately. “These babies are Warrens.” He carefully reached out to lay his hand on the top of her head, cupping her crown. Breathless seconds passed. “And you, my beautiful Blue, are about to be a Warren too.”
She closed her eyes and took his hand into both of hers, kissing his palm. He cupped her cheek in return and they shared the powerful electric charge of their love.
A smile tugged the corner of Daz’s lips. “I’m going to go ahead and apologize for bringing you into my wacky family, but fuck it, Blue. I love you more than I love the Hellion.”
She squealed in laughter, waking the babies, which made the two of them laugh harder. They shared another long gaze, looked at their babies, looked back at each other and spoke their next words together—the way they’d always be—forever united.
“Now that’s love, baby!”
Epilogue
The man with Carolina-blue eyes and a fresh scar on his chin stopped when he heard the clock tower chime out the time. The damn thing hadn’t worked in ten years.
He smiled the Young-Adult-TV-show-hero grin he’d become known for. His town had changed while he’d been gone and the man wondered if LuPines, his family and his pack still held a place for him. He wasn’t the wolf he used to be. Living in animal form for two years tended to do that to a shifter.
At the local pub, where the new bartender didn’t know his face, the blue-eyed man ordered a glass of his vineyard’s signature wine. The grape held true. And just as the vines never truly changed, perhaps he hadn’t either. Some things remained immutable at their core. His laugh held no humor at all. Once again he’d come home… To chase a woman. And not just any woman, either, but a badass babe who reminded him just a bit of one who’d left him at the altar.
He downed the wine and ordered bourbon. Why? Because life was a bitch, and no good alpha wolf could live without one.
About the Author
Thalia Eames turns up the sexy fun in romantic comedies filled with attitude and steam. Action, humor and love are her favorite ingredients and she’s cooking up great reads.
You can find Thalia at:
Twitter at @ThaliaEames
Facebook at www.facebook.com/ThaliaEames
Look for these titles by Thalia Eames
Now Available:
There’s Something About Werewolves
Coming Soon:
How to Tame A Werewolf
Don’t miss the other titles in Thalia Eames’s Seven Brides for Seven Shifters Series!
Their second chance ignites with a bite.
Seven Brides for Seven Shifters, Book 1
Lennox Averdeen’s top three worst fears:
1. Anything remotely canine.
2. Finding out she has a secret baby.
3. Running into Garrett Anderson. Former best friend. Heartbreaker.
She pulls a trifecta when she realizes the stray canine and the tween kid hanging around her house are not only one and the same, he’s Garrett’s wolf shifter son.
When Garrett tracks down his runaway son and sees Lennox again, the widowed father’s heart begins to struggle against his self-imposed chains. Plus, just coming into town pits him against the local Alpha, and everything he hates about pack life. The death, the heartache.
Despite her fears, Lennox becomes the boy’s mother in all but DNA. But Garrett? He can hula-hoop with the nine rings of hell. Except the heat of attraction has never died, and there’s only one way to slake their sexual thirst. Make a smoking-hot deal, agree to part as friends…and try to ignore the sound of Fate howling with laughter.
Warning: This book will stop your heart with barks of laughter, breathless drama, dueling heroes, and sizzling sex. Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, howl with ’em.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
The Devil’s a Werewolf
Copyright © 2015 by Thalia Eames
ISBN: 978-1-61922-857-3
Edited by Latoya Smith
Cover by Gabrielle Prendergast
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: October 2015
www.samhainpublishing.com
vil's a Werewolf