Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  I could throw off his command if I wanted to, but I didn’t. Instead, my hands went to his hips, holding him in deep before reaching up to kiss him. I didn’t want to string him along or make him hang on my words, but I needed it first, a taste of him. But he didn’t let me for long, pulling away, his eyes burning into mine before he prompted me for an answer. I rolled us over so I sat astride him, placing my hands on his chest.

  “I will always love you, Declan. I’m yours.”

  “Why do I feel like there’s a but coming?” he asked, and for the first time, I saw actual fear in his eyes. I shook my head and smiled, my hips unable to stop from moving in small circles, and then bent down.

  “No buts, just you. Learning I was a nix, an ulva, it wasn’t exactly fun, but do you know what the first good thing to come from it was? I could give myself permission. To love Zack and Mason, to love Lorcan and to love you. I didn’t have to shove the vast majority of what I was and what I felt down into a box labelled childhood, put it in the past where I thought it belonged. Instead, I was given the freedom for the first time to really follow my heart, and who was in there first but you?”

  My words were coming between small pants, which you could be forgiven for thinking came from the movement of my body against his. This small, sensual motion wasn’t enough to force my breath, but he was. I reared back, gazing down at him and just staring for a moment, then wiggled my hips slightly before feeling that goddamn stretch.

  “Yes…” he hissed, grabbing for me as I worked his knot in. I covered his hand with mine and then sank down, fighting to take him, until finally, he was inside me.

  For a moment, I could only stare blank eyed at the wall, that intense feeling of fullness driving all thought from my mind. In my unfocussed stare, the shadows on the wall shifted and changed, showing leaves and branches wavering in the wind and then, them.

  She rode her wolf lover as I did mine, my body moving as hers did, or was it just a shadow of mine on the wall? I cocked my head, unable to tell, but then he moved. The two of them moved, silent witnesses to what was happening, their hollow gaze directing mine. He lay beneath me, broken open and aching by me, but he looked so fucking beautiful.

  “Baby…” he said, stroking hands down my body, as if to soothe me. “You’ve taken all of me.”

  “Not all,” I croaked out. “Not yet.”

  I felt my fangs snap down as I began to move in earnest, only able to move in short strokes, the great lump inside me dragging over something that flared hard with every pass.

  “Yes, Paige…” he hissed, over and over with every stroke as my hips snapped faster and faster, as I squeezed him tighter, racing towards something, but what? It was him, of course. It felt like I’d always been on a collision course with this moment, the realisation hitting me when his head turned away, baring that muscular column of his neck. He surrendered, opened himself to me, making himself as vulnerable as a wolf could. I dropped down low, my hips still working, feeling it swell inside me. Between my legs, in my chest, my body couldn’t decide, the whole of me rising up to meet the whole of him.

  I sobbed when my teeth sunk into his neck. This was the homecoming I should always have had. His arms snapped around me, holding me hard, his voice calling my name over and over, a prayer, an invocation. He raised our teenage relationship up from the dead and recreated it as something entirely new.

  He was my mate.

  Tears rained down on his skin, diluting the blood I shed as I pulled back, but not for long. He wouldn’t let me, would never let me now, I realised. Something hard and desperate was in his eyes as he yanked me down beside him, the pop of his knot pulling free a little too abrupt, but I was caught up in the cage of his arms, his body cradling mine. He stared at me like he couldn’t believe I existed and then pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to my forehead.

  “Is this what it was like?” Lorcan asked. I looked up reluctantly, unable to do anything else, held fast as I was. “When she bit me, was that what it was like?” His eyes shone, a single tear falling free. “Was it?” he barked harder when no one responded.

  “Yeah,” Zack replied, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, looking impossibly tired. Somehow, whatever had happened had taken something out of all of us. “It’s… I dunno about other blokes, but it tears me in two every time. It’s like all the bullshit of day-to-day life is torn away so fucking completely and there’s only her. Her and her love, her heart, her mate.”

  “I…” Lorcan scrubbed his eyes dry and then looked down. “I know you two are having a moment right now, but I really need to touch her too.”

  Declan smiled the slow lazy smile of a well satisfied cat, pressing his nose into my hair before rumbling, “You all do. I can feel it now. There’s enough to go around.” His eyes closed at that, as if those words were what he needed to hear and say. I felt Lorcan first, slotting his body against mine, then the others climb onto the bed, settling around us. I closed my eyes, just for a minute, and breathed my pack in.

  Chapter 38

  I woke up to darkness, stillness, and the sounds of my mates sleeping. My mouth was dry, my bladder protesting loudly, so I carefully extricated myself from my love’s arms and tiptoed out of the room.

  I saw the light on in the kitchen when I came out of the bathroom, so I threw a towel around myself and walked out to find Mason having a quiet beer, gazing out the big glass doors to the dark landscape beyond. His expression didn’t change when he saw me, but his eyes warmed, watching every step I took, observing in particular my precarious grip on my towel. I walked into the kitchen, feeling a little odd about stepping into his space.

  Would we ever let go of the past? Would it always feel like someone else was standing between us? He just watched me, raising the beer bottle to his lips and taking a slow swig before setting it down on the bench and moving closer. His movements were deliberate, careful, one hand going to the bench behind me so he could lean in, the sour, yeasty smell of beer on his breath fanning across my lips. I froze as he moved in, as if at any moment I could do something to fuck this up all over again. He shook his head, like he could see my thoughts, and then pressed his lips to mine. It wasn’t a deep, hungry kiss, more a pressing, claiming, reorienting thing, then he pulled away all too quickly.

  “You did well with Dec,” he said. I blinked, taking a second to process what he was saying. “You’re building a strong pack. Your dad would have been proud.”

  Words froze in my throat. I wanted to ask where he fit in all that. Wasn’t it our pack? But as was often the case with Mason, I couldn’t force the words out. When I was pissed, sure, I had plenty to say then. But not in the quiet stillness.

  “But you’ve got another mate who needs you.” He pulled back somewhat, retrieving the beer and using it to point out the glass door. “Micah, he doesn’t have the years with you. The memories, the mistakes, the growing up with you. He just has now, a mate bond, and some kind of fucking supernatural force that takes him for a ride sometimes.” He took another swallow of beer, then set it down and pulled off his shirt, handing it to me to put on.

  I just stared at it for a second, all of a sudden seeing the similarity between him and Zack. It came and went, that brotherly bond. They’d spent so much of their formative years apart, the distance made sense, but right now, I could see it. He was equipping me, prompting me, sending me out to see to a problem only I could deal with.

  But what of Mason and me?

  I let the towel fall suddenly, just standing there for a second, stark naked, the seed of one of his men drying on my skin. He froze, his eyes flaring bright as the moon beyond as they raked over me, taking every bit in. But he mastered himself, again, prompted me, again, by pulling the shirt over my head but leaving me to pull my arms through. I nodded to him, grabbing his beer and swallowing a mouthful of sourness and him before turning on my heel and stalking outside.

  Micah was easy to find, standing in the circle of moonlight beneath a full moon, communing with i
t maybe, clad only in his board shorts, his long tawny hair rumpled and messy. He had to have heard me approach, as I wasn’t quiet with it, dead leaves and twigs crackling beneath my feet, yet when I laid a hand on his shoulder, Micah jumped. He spun around, eyes bright, fists balled, ready to…?

  “Paige…” He breathed my name with way too much reverence, his fists opening and reaching for me, then stopping. “What are you doing up?” he asked, much more calmly. It was an act, of course, which made me wonder what else he put on for me. I lifted a hand, the cold light exposing the faint crisscross of scars across his chest, some that I’d left there. I fitted my fingers to a long sweep coming down one shoulder, but his hand snapped out to wrap around my wrist and hold it there.

  “I hurt you,” I said.

  “It’s what I’m good for,” he said with a harsh laugh. “Taking and dealing out a beating.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He angled his head down to meet my eyes. “Don’t go romanticising me into something I’m not. You’ve got blokes who are falling over themselves to bestow hearts and flowers on you, blokes who built a whole fucking future in the hope you’d walk into it, and then you’ve got me.”

  “And what are you?” I asked and actually meant it. We’d had so little time to get to know each other, frog-marched from one clue to the other in an attempt to find out what the hell my aunt had done. He shook his head, a desperate look coming into his eyes, his lips pulling back in a snarl.

  “There’s a reason why he came through me. Not Mason with his loyalty, not Dec with his laughs. Me.” He jerked a thumb at his chest, and I grabbed it, smoothing the fingers out and linking them with mine. “I’m a thug. I didn’t wait for you to come to me, to choose me, to tell me that you loved—” His eyes went wide, and I wasn’t sure if he was aware of just how much pain I could see revealed right then. “I bit you in some fucking perversion of the mating rite. He was riding me so fucking hard, and I could see it, all of it. What it’d be like, that you’d be mine. That we’d sleep tied up in each other, grow wrapped around the other person like two trees. I saw you, I saw you swelling with child. I saw…”

  He shook his head, his face closing down hard, a defiant anger rising instead.

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  He was silenced by my hand slapping down over his lips. I felt them still move as I herded him back, stumbling over rocks and grass and sticks until his back slammed against a smooth barked gumtree. I felt the breath hiss out of him before I moved my hand and then reached up to push his head to one side.

  This felt so different. He let me hold him in this submissive position, whereas Declan had opted to give me this himself. I could feel Micah’s mark on my neck tingling as I held him in position, the two of us thrumming like an electrified wire. I knew he had to be waiting, for me to bite him, for me to do something, the weight of it, the night air, the moon, all bearing down on me.

  But I don’t think he expected me to move in and place a gentle kiss on the throbbing vein there.

  I couldn’t do this again so quickly. Whatever had possessed me with Declan was completely and utterly tapped out now, and Micah had a point. We’d been jammed together clumsily by supernatural forces, and continuing that wasn’t going to help anything. I softened my grip, my hands, everything, melting into him, which seemed to allow the tension to leach out of his body. He turned back to me, collecting me in his arms and holding me close, then dropped his head down to rest it on mine and let out a long sigh. For a moment, I just listened to the night birds and the thud of his heart.

  “We didn’t do things the way we probably should’ve,” I said, and he tensed again at that. “But that doesn’t mean I regret it for a minute. Everything I’ve seen of you tells me you’re a good man.” He snorted, but I charged on. “Are you tough, blunt, and no bullshit? Hell yeah, you are. But with everything I’ve been through, you think I don’t value that?” I shifted so I could look up at him, and he met my gaze shyly. “We still need to get to know each other. I was hoping we’d have a bit of time here to do that, to go on dates or something.”

  “I dunno if I’d be any good at that,” he said with a slight frown. “I’ve never really…courted anyone.”

  “No, but you’ll spar and train for hours with me, right?” He nodded, looking almost relieved. “I’m willing to bet you’ve got some ideas for the gym?” Something flared brighter at that, his lips parting, but I charged on. “You might not know where to take me or what kind of flowers I’d like, but I’m fairly sure you’ve got an endless stream of ideas about what you’d like to do when you get me home.”

  Bingo, I’d unwittingly hit pay dirt. His gaze heated up so intensely, I felt squirmy, an unruly throb setting up between my legs. His eyes studied every inch of my face before coming to settle on my mouth.

  “They’ve all touched you before. Dec telling us about making out with you when you were a teen, Zack being your first, Mason having all that time with you growing up. Even Lorcan seems to have just strolled in and taken up place in your heart like he’s always been there. I want in, Paige, so fucking much. More than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s not just fucking, though your arse in those goddamn yoga pants is starting to feel like divine punishment because it is so bloody biteable…”

  “It’s also hanging out bare under this shirt,” I muttered, taking a belated look around to see if anyone could see us.

  “Don’t tell me that,” he ground out, then let out a long sigh. “I know we can’t rush things, but fuck if I don’t watch the other blokes with you and want every damn thing they’ve got. I want to curl you in my arms and watch movies and feed you junk food—”

  “What if we did some of that now?” I suggested, feeling bone-tired all of a sudden. It was too much today. Too much drama, too much emotion, too much everything. But oddly, in all of that, the feel of Micah against my body was comforting, grounding. He was right in that we were still getting to know each other, but on some level, we knew. This might be small and fragile, a manipulated, forced thing, but no less real. It needed nurturing, this little seed of a thing that was growing between us.

  Which reminded me of another seed.

  For a second, I saw Aidan, standing in front of the mirror, drawn face staring at his reflection, me sliding up under his boundaries and diving deep, deep inside him.

  But right now, I was with Micah.

  “Take me to bed. Hold me in your arms. Warm me with your body. Kiss my forehead and snuggle down under the covers with me. Sleep with me.”

  “Fuck, that sounds like heaven,” he rasped.

  “Just me and you.”

  I pulled away and held out a hand, a small thrill zipping up my spine when he took it. Mason was gone by the time we walked back into the cottage, locking the doors behind us, so I walked us down the hall into one of the empty bedrooms. Micah watched me pull off the shirt, baring myself to him, just staring with a reverence I felt was wholly unwarranted. But perhaps he felt the same from me when he shucked his shorts. He was hard, but when he drew me into the bed, the rest of him was soft and warm. I rested my head on his arm, burrowing into his side, and my hand moved restively over his taut stomach, not entirely sure what to do. His hand covered mine, stopping it right over his belly button.

  “I’m always gonna respond to you. You smell like sex and sugar.” I shivered as he nosed my mating mark. “I dunno about you, but I’m fucking trashed. Today feels like there isn’t one more thing that can be crammed into it.”

  I craned my neck and kissed him with that kind of sweet, soft kiss lovers use to connect with the one they care about.

  “I’ll let you save the cramming things into me for tomorrow,” I said, flopping backwards and closing my eyes finally to the sound of his chuckles.

  Chapter 39

  Someone was taking me up on my offer.

  I sighed, and my breath felt like it took corporeal form as it was exhaled, curling in the air around me like smoke, stroking my skin. Or was that
him? As if summoned by my thoughts, I felt it. Fingertips, callused slightly, rasping against my skin as they slid upwards. Not zeroing in on anything especially erogenous yet, but possessive, claiming. This is my body, mine to touch, my woman. I smiled because that pleased me.

  But it faded as I felt a line drawn up my centre, over my stomach, dipping into my belly button, up and over each rib, between my breasts, my collarbone, and up my neck to push between my lips. They parted willingly, needing and wanting something of him inside me. My mouth closed around his fingertip, sucking on it, anointing it with my tongue.

  “That’s it,” he said in a low hush. “Get it nice and wet for me.”

  So I did, with no thought as to why. I was in that no man’s land between awake and asleep, my entire focus on him. The way his body pressed against mine, how hard and ready he was. The feel of his lips, the stubble prickling when he pulled his hand away, sliding that slick finger up my thigh and pressing his mouth against me. He’d started things relatively chastely, but evidently, that taste of me unlocked something in him. His lips forced themselves between mine, parting them and then pushing his tongue between them, while my hands went to his skull, burying my fingers in his hair, feeling that same damn need. There was something foreign and exotic about his taste, some ineffable thing that had my mouth opening wider, needing to let him in. I clawed at him, my tongue tangling with his, feeling this godawful hunger for more.

  “Shh…” he said between kisses, pulling away but pecking a few more when I whined, then sucking my bottom lip before releasing it with a pop. “You’ll get more. All you need and so much more.”

  His kisses trailed lower, down my neck, then focussing on my mating mark when I began to squirm. It made my cunt twitch like a bitch, a sudden deep ache rising inside me.

  “You’re fucking soaked…” he said with a growl of pure male satisfaction. “Your cunt is slick for me, ready to take me so fucking deep.”