One True Mate 3: Shifter's Echo

by Lisa Ladew

  The name she would whisper to the dark wolf who bounded to her side as she lay dying in the snow.

  ***

  Crew put his arms around Dahlia, sensing the change that had come over her. She shivered against his chest and he felt anxiety swirl around her. He couldn’t take the words back, and he didn’t want to. He spoke his heart, or nothing. She deserved his heart.

  But when she didn’t calm, he got worried. “Dahlia, hey, talk to me. It’s ok. I swear. No matter what’s wrong, I’m going to make sure it’s ok.”

  The room shimmered and he tensed, eyes widening, ready to throw Dahlia behind him and fight. But fight what? His eyes narrowed as he realized he was seeing something, but that he could see right through it, almost like a movie projected on a transparent screen. In the scene that was playing out in front of him, his viewpoint was from on the ground. He could see trees and the sky. A wolf bounded into view and Crew swallowed, hard. He was staring at himself.

  He felt her eyelashes flutter against his chest and her voice was muffled but understandable. “Do you believe in fate?”

  At her question, the scene disappeared and his living room looked normal again, leaving Crew shaken.

  Crew considered for a long time, looking around as he hugged Dahlia to him. When he decided the phenomena wasn’t going to reappear, he pulled his mind back to Dahlia.

  Fate. He knew fate was a real live thing, and it had a strong pull over his real world, but this world? He wasn’t so sure. But since this world seemed to be a distorted version of that world, it must. He kneaded Dahlia’s shoulders, trying to work out the knots there. “Yes, I do believe in fate.”

  His answer forced a sob out of her, but only a single one. He felt her getting herself under control by sheer force of will and wondered what secrets she was hiding. He ran his hands lightly down her back. “You can tell me anything.”

  Her silence seemed to indicate she didn’t agree. He swallowed but didn’t force her. He had enough secrets of his own to deal with. Maybe he could distract her.

  “Tell me what you like to do.” he said, kneading the muscles in the small of her back, enjoying the way her ass looked as she bent over him. By Rhen, she was lovely and he was enjoying her closeness more than he should in the wake of her distress.

  “Like to do?”

  “Hobbies. For fun.”

  “Oh. Right. I write.”

  “You write?”

  “Stories. I make stuff up and I put it on the Internet for people to read.”

  He smiled into her hair. She was creative. An artist. He should have known. Her haunted eyes spoke of many worlds inside her head. She stiffened suddenly, as if she’d realized she’d said something she shouldn’t have. He worked her back more, then dropped his hands to her hips. “I’d like to read one of your stories.” She softened slightly.

  “Oh, ah, I don’t think you would like them.”

  “Why?”

  “Mostly, ah.” He could feel the heat of her cheeks against his chest. Was she embarrassed?

  She sat up and looked at him, her lips pressed resolutely together, her cheeks bright. “Romance. I write romance stories.”

  Crew felt a rush of pride at her will and her passion and the fact that she could put a story together. He respected writers as artists who could do what he did; live in two worlds at the same time. “I definitely want to read them.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You read romance?”

  He dug around in his mind to find a quote in his eidetic memory that she might consider romantic. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

  She frowned and he had a moment of panic during which he tried to remember if Wuthering Heights existed in this world.

  But she knew it. Her face turned skeptical. “Contemporary romance. With sex.”

  Blood surged to his groin. She wrote sex. He wanted to peel her clothes off right there and give her something to write about. Instead, he found another quote for her, trying to speak in Graeme’s accent. “When the day shall come that we do part, if my last words are not ‘I love you’─ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”

  Her eyes widened. “Outlander?”

  “Aye.”

  She laughed at that, making him smile. He would give anything to get her to do it again.

  Chapter 12

  He was well-read. The kind of books she liked. She should have known. His eyes said he was intelligent and a deep thinker, and the quotes he pulled off the top of his head? She wouldn’t have thought anything could have made him sexier, but they did. And he wanted to read her books. The last time she’d told a man she wrote romance, he had rolled his eyes at her. But not Crew.

  Something had brought them together. Maybe fate, maybe something else, but she wasn’t going to question it anymore. All she’d wanted for years was to die well, without crying or running from it. She’d known she was going to die when she was twenty-five for years, and now that her 25th birthday was three days in the past, she felt like she was living on borrowed time. Time to be done with all her fears, her doubts, anything that held her back from doing what she wanted. Her time left grew shorter every second. Brave and wild. From here on out.

  She stared at him, then brought her hands to her shirt slowly, pulling it up over her head and casting it on the floor. His eyes raked her body, the smooth skin of her stomach, her small breasts contained by a pink bra. He didn’t smile, didn’t encourage or discourage her, just stared as if she were something beautiful and amazing. A sunset on a watery horizon, perhaps.

  She hooked her fingers around her back and unclasped her bra, casting it aside also. His fingers convulsed on her hips but he made no move to touch her, still staring intensely. She brought her own fingers up to her nipples, which he couldn’t take his eyes off of. She pinched them, watching him. His face hardened and he shifted his body, then brought his hands up to her hair. He pulled it forward so it fell in two sheets down to her breasts.

  “You’re stunning,” he rasped, and his words felt like power to her. She wanted to thank him, to ask him to say it again, to write it down in her notebook. She’d never been called stunning before. She positioned her hair so it hid her nipples in a kind of peekaboo, watching as he licked his lips. His hands slid down her sides and cupped her breasts from below, barely touching the skin there. His thumbs slid across the groove where her breasts met her torso, causing goose bumps to ripple out across her body. His eyes lowered with heat. He liked the anticipation, and discovering that burned her up from the inside. He didn’t want the release. He burned for the discovery, for the playing. Oh shit, now he was even sexier. Had she ever met a more interesting man?

  “Tell me again,” she said, dropping her eyes to his jeans. He was hard, his erection straining against the stiff fabric. She’d felt it earlier, against her stomach, but it looked bigger than she remembered. Really big. Her turn to lick her lips. The way he made her feel, she didn’t care if it hurt when he took her. She wanted it to hurt. He made her feel wicked in the most delicious way and she wanted to see how far he could push her past what she was used to and comfortable with.

  She wanted to feel alive.

  ***

  “You’re stunning. Beguiling. Your breasts make me wish I were a poet,” he said, his breath coming faster. She didn’t have more than a handful, which was just how Crew liked them. He itched to palm them and tweak the nipples like she was doing, but watching was better, especially when her yards of hair covered the nipples so he could hardly see them. He shifted underneath her, trying to keep from adjusting himself. The only way he was going to get relief was by getting his jeans off, and he did not want to do that yet. He could watch her play with herself all night.

  He licked his lips and she took it as an invitation, placing her hands on his shoulders and raising up so her breasts met his mouth, her hair tickling his cheeks. Heaven. He licked one nipple, then the other, watching as she closed her eyes and arched her back. He took her hands and held t
hem behind her back, clasping the wrists with one hand, working his other hand back to her breast. He did palm it then, feeling how perfectly it fit there. He moaned into her skin at how good she felt.

  He released her breast and plunged his hand into her hair, pulling until she came down and he could capture her mouth with his. They kissed and all the secrets between them ceased to matter. They knew what they needed to know about the other right then. Crew knew she was stunning, sweet, artistic, and that they fit together. And that she wanted him.

  He released her, and pulled back so she could see his eyes. “Stand up,” he told her. “I want you naked.”

  She licked her lips and nodded, then glanced down at his painful erection which was still clothed. He smiled wickedly. “You want me naked, too?”

  She nodded, and when a whispered, tortured “Yes,” escaped her lips, he groaned.

  “You first, doll,” he said, grasping her by her hips and placing her on her feet. With her every movement, her hair swayed around her shoulders and breasts, her bare skin making him bite back a moan. He loved a female with a lot of hair. He was already imagining holding onto it, gathering it into a ponytail, and using it to direct her lips down his shaft.

  She stepped out of her pants so quickly he never even got to see her panties. Next time, he’d spend more time undressing her. He raked his eyes down her body, starting at all that delicious hair, past her breasts, to the softness of her middle, down to her flaring hips and thighs, her strong calves, delicate ankles, and tiny feet. Her hands dangled loosely by her sides as she let him look his full. “Doll.” He was barely able to speak. “Dahlia.”

  “Tell me I’m pretty, then take your pants off,” she said, a sinful smile on her face.

  Oh, he had his hands full with this one. Which he loved. He couldn’t have ordered a female more perfect than her. “You are pretty. So pretty.”

  He kicked off his boots, then unzipped his pants and lifted his hips, yanking all his clothes off at once and kicking them away, watching her reaction closely. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as she took him in. Her hands closed reflexively at her sides and he smiled. She wanted to touch him.

  She straddled him again, her hands on his thighs, her eyes on his cock. “Crew, it’s just so big.”

  He chuckled, then ran his hand over the head, loving that her hands clutched his legs when he did, her nails scratching at him. He gave his cock a thick stroke, his eyes on her face. “You know how to make a male feel good.”

  “No, I mean, it’s really big. I’m almost afraid.”

  He stroked it again for her benefit, then pulled her up against him, his hands spanning her hips. “If we do it right, it won’t hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  She looked at his eyes for a moment, her expression brimming with trust, and he vowed to himself he would never take that trust for granted. She would know all his secrets. Then she moved so that her wetness rubbed against his hardness. He groaned at the connection and closed his eyes, then opened them again when he felt her hands on him. She wrapped one hand around his shaft exactly like he had, and stroked it.

  “Is that how you like it?” she asked, her breath heavy. He could hear his blood pounding in his ears and he wondered why he hadn’t turned any music on.

  “Just like that, doll. That feels so good.”

  He pulled her forward to kiss her again, but her hands, wrapped around him, pulling as she shifted her weight, felt so good he worried he was going to come before they ever got a chance to get started. He reached for her sex, dipping his thumb into her wetness, then gliding up to her clit. She cried out, her hands tightening wonderfully on his cock, then bucked her hips forward. She was swollen, deliciously swollen, and he was gratified to find she was as close as he was.

  Her hips bucked forward again, and she ground into his available flesh, pulling at his cock in a forceful way he’d never experienced before. He put his head back, holding on for the ride as pleasure built inside him to an unbearable peak.

  ***

  “Oh God,” Dahlia cried out, her eyes slitted shut, blocking out the visual world so she could only feel as an orgasm pounded through her. Thick waves of pleasure pulsed at her harder and faster than she’d ever experienced. She hadn’t realized she’d been on the verge until he’d touched her the first time and she almost went off right then. The spasms intensified, making her cry out again. Dimly, she heard Crew’s husky groan as his own orgasm took him, and she felt his seed spill over her hands, hot and thick.

  As the all-consuming sensations receded, a sense of goodness, of rightness filled her.

  Then a sense of tearing loss that he would be taken from her soon. If not when she next went to sleep, then surely when she died, whenever that would be. Sometime in the next three hundred and sixty two days, she knew, before she turned twenty-six.

  Chapter 13

  Dahlia watched as Crew cleaned up, then got her a blanket and some water, his muscles flexing beautifully as he moved about the room, naked. On his back, on each of his shoulders, was a tattoo of a starburst pattern, not quite a five-pointed star, but almost. She touched the tattoo behind her ear, rubbing it, her thoughts racing.

  “What time is it?” she asked Crew, exhaustion settling in on her.

  He looked at the window on the far side of the room. “Almost daylight. I would guess 6:30.”

  Dahlia gasped. She’d been up all night? “Won’t Mac be coming home soon? I should get dressed.”

  His eyes raked over her body, mostly covered by the blanket. “Don’t put on a stitch. We’ll move into my bedroom.”

  A sound at the door caught her attention and she looked that way. Too late.

  But when the door opened, it wasn’t Mac. It was a beautiful woman with long, blonde hair who entered with a key, saw Crew first and beamed at him.

  Oh no. She’s in love with him. Is she his girlfriend?

  Dahlia’s heart split in two pieces. She froze, unable to think of what to say or do, taking in the scene in some sort of awful slow motion that made her want to puke.

  Crew looked up, nervousness clear on his face. He glanced at Dahlia, then looked back at the new woman. “Mackenzie,” he said tightly. Her brow furrowed and she checked to see what he had looked at. When she saw Dahlia, a furious understanding crossed her features and she stepped all the way inside, bowing her shoulders and clenching her fists.

  “Mackenzie, no,” Crew warned.

  Mackenzie didn’t listen. She dropped the purse she was holding and began to crouch. Before Dahlia understood what was going on, Mackenzie had turned, shifting into her werewolf form. Dahlia shook herself, trying to unfreeze, knowing she was about to be torn to pieces and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Crew ran for Mackenzie but Mackenzie was closer, jumping for Dahlia even as her body was still twisting, changing, conforming to fit the white and deadly wolf shape it sought. Just before Mackenzie’s teeth closed around her throat, Dahlia forced herself to move. She ducked and slid under Mackenzie, rolling onto the floor, getting caught in the blanket. Mackenzie’s claws raked painfully across her shoulder and tore the blanket to shreds.

  “No!” Crew shouted, running full speed, catching Mackenzie in a flying tackle, his arms around her, pulling her to his chest. She ripped at him with her claws and bit at his head. Blood flew and Dahlia scrambled away, looking around for a weapon. Anything to protect herself with.

  The door opened again. “What in the hell?” Mac asked, his voice strangely calm. “Mackenzie, shit, girl, didn’t we talk about this already!” He shifted into a white wolf just like Mackenzie’s but bigger, his clothes tearing and falling off him. Dahlia gathered her blanket around her and backed into a wall, breathless with shock, her shoulder throbbing. Mac jumped on top of Mackenzie, grabbing her throat in his teeth and shaking until she let go of Crew and turned to fight Mac. As soon as she did, Mac shifted until he lay on the floor as a man, her teeth clamped around his throat.

  “You g
onna kill me, Mackenzie? Will that make you feel better?” he yelled, and he almost sounded like he was laughing. He was completely naked, but Dahlia couldn’t look away.

  Crew scrambled to his feet and skirted both of them, picking up his and Dahlia’s clothes and pushing her into a bedroom. “What about Mac?” she forced out as he slammed the door, cutting off her view.

  “She won’t hurt him. They fight like that all the time.”

  Dahlia eyed him, not sure what to think. Flesh hung from his skull in flaps and blood flowed freely from his shoulders and arms. She backed away from him, running into something. She turned and it was a dresser with a mirror on the top. In the lower right corner was a heart drawn in lipstick. Dahlia stared at it, unable to think.

  Facing away from him, she watched Crew in the mirror. He examined the wounds on his arms and shoulders and held a hand to his head. He pressed his lips together and seemed to concentrate, then he crouched like Mackenzie had done. Hair grew where only skin had been, his face changed shape, and his ears grew and moved. She whirled around, wide-eyed. Unable to run, unable to hide, as he turned into a gorgeous but deadly silvery-white wolf with black-tipped ears and fur, his eyes that flat orange-yellow she’d seen earlier. But he was only a wolf for a second, not long enough for her to get a good look at him. As soon as the transformation was complete, he reversed it, and stood there as a man again, his wounds gone. Her mouth dropped open. He was completely healed, blood on his skin the only reminder left of his injuries.

  When he saw her look of astonishment, his eyes narrowed in confusion. “You’re hurt,” he said, almost gently.

  Dahlia swallowed hard.

  Was he about to discover she was human? She almost hoped so. She felt like she was lying to him by not admitting it.

  She held her breath as he approached her, then brushed her hair away from her shoulder to get a better look at the scratches there. “It’s nothing,” she murmured, hoping that was true. With their regenerative ability, they probably didn’t own even a tube of Bacitracin.