by M. L. Briers
“I can assure you that my body is in total peace and harmony with itself,” Joy rushed out, the closer that he got, the more her body was hyping itself into a frenzy.
“And yet, you still deny that you want me to sleep in bed with you — not that there would be much sleeping…” Clark teased and watched as she fidgeted in place.
That sounded good to her ears, her body, and the X-rated movies that were playing in her mind told her that she was losing the battle of wills with herself. Everything sounded so good when it came from his lips. That deep, gravelly voice of his was soothing, and yet, so damn potent to her mind and body that it was like being on a fast wash cycle of emotions.
“No… Yes!” Joy bit out a curse as her brain farted.
The sound of his deep, gravelly chuckle rolled over her body like a touch of his fingertips. She was more than flustered, flushed, or confused; she was every good feeling rolled into one and some that she couldn’t even readily identify.
Horny. Boy, was she horny, and it wasn’t like her mate had laid a hand on her yet. Yet. By the look in his eyes, that might just be about to change.
Funny, but she relished the thought – all of those x-rated thoughts that were shooting through her mind, lust, desire, and need were rising like a whirlwind inside if her, and she didn’t know how to make it stop.
She didn’t think that she wanted to spend too much time trying to figure out how to make it stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
~
With Clark closing in on her, Joy’s heart was pounding in her ears. She was praying that she wouldn’t have a heart attack before she got to mate with him because that would just be a cruel twist of fate.
“Tell me that I can kiss you now,” Clark growled.
“You’re asking permission?” She sounded surprised.
“Shouldn’t I be?” Clark looked confused. He’d always treated women with the utmost respect, and she was his mate – that put her up there above anyone else.
“Yes.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I just thought as you were a big, macho, shifter type that you would just go in for the kill…”
“Kill? I have no intention of killing — but there will be some devouring,” he chuckled.
That comment shot her blood pressure up through the roof. She was grateful that her heart skipped a beat instead of exploding in her chest, and she wasn’t sure why her knees were weakening as he stopped in front of her with that cocky book on his face and a body that looked as if it was built for pure sin.
“Why’d you stop?” Joy asked without putting her brain in gear, and mentally kicking herself for it.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Clark chuckled.
He knew that he had his mate exactly where he wanted her. He could feel the waves of emotions coming from her body. But that was nothing compared to the scent of her arousal in the air.
Still, he wasn’t about to make a move without her say-so.
“When did you ask a question?”
“Just because I want this to stop, and get to the good part — I’ll ask again — can I kiss you?”
Joy knew that her mouth was moving and not a sound was coming from her lips. She was doing a goldfish impression — how damn embarrassing was that?
“Is the answer to that question so hard to find?” Clark chuckled
“Yes,” Joy rushed out in a voice that definitely sounded like a mouse had squeaked.
“Yes I can kiss you, or yes the answer is hard to find?”
Just as Joy went to speak, a howl like she’d never heard before rattled everything inside those walls, including her. She lifted her hand and pointed a finger back over her shoulder, questioning him with her eyes because she wasn’t sure that she could find her voice again.
“Alf just completed the bond with Harper,” he offered back. He was more than envious of his brother in that moment in time.
Every inch of his body wanted Joy. He knew that for her he’d needed to do the mating dance, and he had. He’d just hoped that he’d done it well enough to woo his mate. He’d asked the question, and he was still waiting for his answer.
“Oh.” It was the only word that she could force from her lips.
Harper had become a mate. She was now part of the pack.
That was what Joy had been worried about, leaving Harper behind if she had walked away from Alf. Now she didn’t have to worry anymore, if she mated with Clark then they’d still be together. She hadn’t wanted to lose her best friend.
“It’s not as bad as it…”
“Yes!” Joy snapped out, cutting him off, and confusing the hell out of him in the process.
“Yes? Yes!” Clark exclaimed.
A heartbeat later and she was in his arms where he needed her to be.
Clark didn’t waste a second more; he brought his lips down on her warm, soft lips, and growled with the need within him.
~
~
~
Darby couldn’t see where she was going, wrapped around her mate’s body, being devoured by his hungry kisses, practically brain dead towards anything that didn’t involve the desire within her, and carried through the house at high speed; she was all in.
The mating howl that had gone up and rattled the windows had been like a starter’s pistol fired beside Kent’s ear – he’d taken off like a racehorse, and she wasn’t objecting one little bit.
He was a speedy sucker when he wanted to be, and she guessed that need was as great within him now as it was within her. The sound of a grunt, followed by wood against wood registered somewhere in her poor addled brain because as her world tipped, and he lowered her down with him, she expected the feel of the mattress at her back.
She wasn’t disappointed.
“Mine…” Kent growled as he broke away from her lips and planted hot kisses down her throat before detouring back towards her ear.
“Definitely – one hundred percent – yours,” she breathed out on an almost whisper and felt his hands start to work on getting her out of her clothes.
That feeling of skin on skin couldn’t come fast enough for her. She had needs of her own, and one of them was to touch every inch of Kent’s body, and squeeze those damn muscles like she’d longed to do.
Naked, she got her wish, skin on skin, devouring him with her hands as he devoured her with his lips, his tongue, and his touch. She could barely contain the excitement within her. She wanted to explore him, but Kent had other ideas.
Spread naked before him on the bed; he’d tasted and teased her for as long as he could stand before that lust to taste her feminine essence on his tongue clawed within him like a beast in the making.
When he finally settled his broad shoulders between her legs, he found that he couldn’t get enough, and it took Darby almost wrenching his hair from his scalp to bring him back to his senses.
On all fours, he crawled up the bed, over her body, looking every inch the predator that was inside of him. When his mate reached for him, he locked his hands around her wrists and pushed them up over her head against the mattress.
“Held captive by the sexy hungry wolf shifter – I think I read a book about that,” she teased.
Her eyes were on fire with mischief, but there was so much desire in that look that Kent thought he just might go insane if he didn’t bury his cock deep inside of her.
“Any objections?” The underlying growl told her that her man was barely holding onto his sanity, and she liked it.
“Not this side of forever.”
Kent’s hard length was pushing against her inner muscles, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that her body was ever going to deny him. He took her down his length in one, long, demanding thrust that made her gasp in pleasure and welcome him with a tight clench of her inner muscles around his cock.
Kent grunted at the tight hold that she claimed him with. He was close to losing his mind and letting his wild side out, and she wasn’t making it a
ny easier to hold on.
From the look in her eyes, easier wasn’t on her to-do list. He was okay with that.
Kent pulled back his hips and buried his cock to the hilt once more. Her body was ripe for him, more than ready to take him at his most feral, and he was more than ready to lose his mind inside of her.
He cursed at the way that she tightened her inner muscles around his length on every stroke, and she matched those dark words every time he buried his cock to the hilt. He hadn’t even noticed that he was getting faster on every thrust until her inner walls were tightening on their own, making him work for it on every deep thrust.
Darby knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t shy about telling him. When she demanded that he take her from behind, he wasted no time in pulling out of her body, flipping her onto her hands and knees, and thrusting his cock right back to the hilt inside her.
Kent traced his fingertips up the curve of her spine. His eyes took in the bounce of her breasts on each thrust, making him harder than hell as his length devoured her.
He fisted her hair in one hand and drew her back against him with his other arm wrapped around her waist. His eyes feasted on the smooth skin of her shoulder, and his beast pushed forward.
Kent’s fangs elongated. His mind, his body was lost in her, lost with her as she climbed up toward release. One last thrust took her over the edge into sweet oblivion, and he sank his fangs into the flesh of her shoulder and marked her as his.
His beast howled at the joining as they reached into her very soul and she reached right back. Kent savored the last taste of her blood on his tongue as he licked over the mark, sealing it into her skin, and then he couldn’t fight off the desire of his wild side a moment longer.
With her hair still fisted in his hand, he dragged her head back against his shoulder and ran his flat tongue up her neck. His hips were slapping hard against the curvy cheeks of her backside as he thrust to the hilt over and over.
He traced his other hand down between her legs, and his fingers worked over her sensitive clit as he grunted with pleasure on each thrust. Her inner muscles were clamping down around his cock once more and his blood fevered with the need for her to come undone around him again.
Darby didn’t make him wait. The orgasm exploded inside her like a tsunami, claiming every inch of her body, and making her inner muscles suck the seed right from his aching balls.
Kent thrust his cock to the hilt. Every muscle in his body locked up so tightly that they burned. He bucked, giving her his seed, as he tossed his head back and howled at the bond between them.
CHAPTER THIRTY
~
“It’s been two weeks,” Alf said, plopping his backside down in the wooden chair on the porch next to Harper’s and eyeing the vampire with a certain amount of trepidation as he walked away from them, deeper into the garden with his sister by his side, and out of earshot.
“I think I remember, but there’s brain fog, so…” Harper shrugged.
“You haven’t broken him yet,” Alf said with the kind of grin that teased her to the point where she wanted to zap him.
It was true. Their son had been born healthy, and although she’d had several mishaps through her pregnancy with a few sacks of flour that Joy had made her take everywhere as training for the big event, and she’d managed to kill off several plants that she was supposed to be nurturing in that time, Lucas had come through his first two weeks unscathed.
“He’s a baby; there’s still sixteen years to go until I can breathe,” Harper offered back on a whisper.
“So, for the next sixteen years, you are going to make one of us shadow you in everything you do with our son?” Alf chuckled.
From what he’d seen, and he’d been there every step of the way, not only was Harper, a damn good mother, but she was as protective as any shifter could have been of their son. In his mind, her worries were unfounded, and their son was thriving.
“Pretty much, yes.” Harper even gave a small nod to back up her decision.
“That’s insane…”
“There you go again, accusing me of being nutso. I killed Fred!” She snapped back. “Poor, unsuspecting Fred…” Harper felt the irrational prick of tears at the back of her eyeballs and growled with annoyance at them.
She hated this newfound rush of emotion at everything from liking her dinner to watching those stupid adverts on TV where the dads were lauded for being hero’s just to sell shaving products. She watched them anyway through the haze of brain fog at stupid o’clock in the morning when Lucas was awake, and he was awake a lot.
“Fred’s a unicorn app, not our son…” Alf felt the rush of emotion that came from her, and he tried to soothe her, but it didn’t work.
“He was my friend, my pet, and I let him down…” she sniffed back the tears, and Alf opened his mouth to speak, but Darby got there first as she strolled out of the backdoor with Kent following on behind her.
“Killed the poor little sucker by starving him to death,” Darby teased.
“I know!” Harper sniffled.
“Waddle on over to the chair and behave yourself,” Kent teased her, and she shot a glare at her mate as she lowered her extra wide hips and pregnancy belly down into the chair.
“I will hurt you…” she hissed.
“Nothing new there,” Kent chuckled back.
“And I ain’t misbehaving, I’m just not sugar coating it for her,” Darby said, and Harper nodded.
“She’s the only one that gets me,” Harper said.
“I mean, she killed a unicorn – who does that?” Darby teased.
“I know – right?” Harper sniffled as she wiped the tears away on the back of her hand.
“And eighteen bags of flour,” Joy said, directing Clark to put the tray down in the middle of the table with snacks for the group, “go get the drinks.” She shooed him away. The man had been fussing around her since he’d found out she was pregnant and he wouldn’t let her carry a thing. “But who’s counting?”
“Four pot plants,” Darby said, and Joy nodded.
“And let’s not forget the incident with the dishwasher…” Joy rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know why I put the doll in the dishwasher,” Harper looked miserable.
“You felt it needed a bath?” Kent said and got a long hard growl from the alpha and an elbow aimed at his groin from his mate, which he was grateful to sidestep. “Why can you tease, but I can’t?”
“Because,” Darby said, and said no more as she glared up at him.
“The fact remains,” Alf’s tone had turned into a hard warning for the group, but it was softer when he turned back to his mate. “Lucas is fine.”
“I let him go off with the vampire!” Harper tossed up a hand towards the garden. “What does that say about me?”
“That you have baby brain,” Darby chuckled. “I caught myself putting the milk in the oven this morning.”
“Please don’t make us follow you around as well,” Joy chuckled.
“The fact remains,” Alf said. “It’s been two weeks, Harper; you’re not going to damage him.”
“Besides, we have a handy medicine chest walking around. He’s with Lucas now,” Darby shrugged.
“That’s not…” Harper tossed a questioning look at her friend. “Yuck.”
“Don’t yuck me. You let your son go off with the vampire,” Darby teased.
“Can you just relax a little?” Alf asked.
“Nope, if I relax I might drop him, or drown him in the bath…”
“She might put his nappy on his head,” Darby chuckled, reaching for a biscuit and trying to stretch over her stomach. When Kent’s hand went to reach for the plate to help her, she slapped him. “Do not touch that chocolate cream one.” She hissed.
“I was getting the plate,” he chuckled.
Darby screeched in surprise as her mate lifted her chair and placed it down closer to the table. She shot him a death glare back over her shoulder.
“
Give a girl some damn warning,” she bit with a big dollop of venom in her tone.
“If you can’t reach over your belly…” Kent bit down on his words when she zapped him a good one.
“That makes me sound fat, I’ve been curvy, and now I’m…” she hissed at him.
“Nicely rounded,” Kent grinned, and she zapped him again.
“One pup, safe and sound, and stinking like somebody needs to drain the swamp,” Karl announced as he appeared at the Harper’s side and offered the sleeping child to her.
“Why give him to me? I might put his nappy on his head,” she sneered. “Give him to Aunty Darby; she needs the practice anyway.”
“Oh, no!” Darby gave a slow shake of her head. “I don’t know what you’ve been feeding him, but I’m sure it didn’t smell that way going in.”
Darby looked at the biscuit in her hand and paused for thought. Then she shrugged a shoulder and bit into it.
“I’ll do it,” Harper said, begrudgingly.
“The head is the end that cries,” Darby chuckled.
Harper pushed up and took Lucas in her arms. When Alf went to push up, she snapped a look at him like a hungry crocodile, making him hold in place.
“Do you think I can’t change my son’s nappy myself?” She scowled at her mate.
“Wh…? No,” Alf looked confused.
“Then…?” She glared at him, and he half relaxed back in the chair. When nobody said a word, she stalked off.
“That told you,” Kent chuckled, and Darby’s well-placed elbow didn’t miss that time.
“Right back at you, brother,” Alf sneered, pushing up to his feet, and stealthily following his mate back inside the house.
“She just needed a little push,” Darby grinned.
Alf stood in the doorway and watched his mate tend to their son. He propped up the doorframe with his shoulder and folded his arms across his chest as he watched on with pride.
Harper was talking to Lucas, herself, and being meticulous every step of the way. When she was done, she scooped him up and turned to find her mate there.