“One book at a time, yes.” His head jerked at the book I was currently reading on my bed, noting how much I’d devoured of it, the already read pile neatly stacked on my dresser, waiting to join the ranks of the rest of my favorites. “Knew you’d blow through those ones. Told you they were good.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know of any half tentacled men just lounging around or Kraken dudes, would you?” Fanning myself with the book in my hand, I batted my lashes. “Asking for a friend.”
“Got a tentacle right here for ya,” he said on a growl, his hand sliding to his groin to cup the sizeable bulge tenting his crotch.
“My heart, it doth beat so. Please, Arturo, may I have another?” I tittered, then snorted.
“You can have all you want,” he fairly purred as he approached, “come and get it, baby.”
My nose scrunched at the lovey dovey endearment. It so wasn’t us. “Ah-ah-ah,” I tsked, backing away, “not so fast, Asshole.”
Ansel paused, cocked his head, grinned, and continued across to stalk closer. “Was it the ‘baby’?” Eyeing my comfy pajamas, his wolf eyes trailing down my length, you’d think I was naked or posing coquettishly in lingerie. Glancing down at my dumplin’ lovin’ panda gear, I frowned. Were we seeing the same me? Or was this... “Them matin’ pheromones amped up or what? Lookin’ at me like a fat, juicy steak. Don’t know whether to run or brace and strip.”
Ansel’s nostrils flared. He paused for the longest moment, standing there inhaling deeply, fur easily sprouting up along the sides of his face, along his jaw and cheekbones, and down his thick arms. A shudder wracked his frame. His nose was a little too long, chin growing pointy. His ears looked elven like this, pointed, tipped, long, with tufts of dark fur starting to sprout up along the ends. Sharp canines peeked, resting on his bottom lip. “You smell like mine,” he growled out gutturally. “Take off your clothes.”
Plucking at my jammies, I clucked my tongue. “That bad, huh? I rather like these. And while I’m sure you’d prefer something smaller, with a bit more lace, this and sleep shirts are pretty much all I got, bud.”
“You’re fucking adorable. I don’t want to rip them.” His hands flexed at his sides, curling and uncurling into fists, careful of the thick, dark claws sprouting from his fingertips. Turquoise eyes flashed, darkening. “Barely hangin’ on by a thread here, Roly. Want you so bad I can taste you.”
Damn. It was getting hot in here. It totally was. My hand curled around the book I belatedly realized was still in my hand. The urge to fan myself for real this time grew.
“Emmy,” he growled out warningly.
Darting to my nightstand, I set the book down carefully, aware of his presence at the end of the bed, and straightened. A few feet separated him from me, and me from the door. Old me would have rushed out that door in the face of this, because perhaps I’m more coward than Alpha, or a cowardly Alpha? I couldn’t quite work all that out for myself right this minute and with my mate looming, ready to tear it up, now was not exactly the time.
Newly mated me was shivering with anticipation, relishing the coming power struggle as we vied to be boss in the bedroom. Normally, as such situations had loomed with past pseudo relationships, there’d be these moments of panic, and, could they handle me? Would it send them running? Am I enough? Shit. There was the crux of it all. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d been treating my dominant nature like a curse. It didn’t feel that way with Ansel. He’d never made me feel like the Alpha side of me was anything but a part of me. Hell, he picked at it, prodded, drew it out of me. Then the crazy ass smirked in the face of it. Had that asshole knowingly been doing this? I definitely had thicker skin due to the teasing arse, I could attest to that much.
“You can feel me,” I mumbled, as a wave of emotions that weren’t mine rushed me. “I mean... there’s always been some kind of loose connection on your end, hasn’t there?”
Ansel grunted in answer, which didn’t mean shit, kicking out of his boots to chuck them haphazardly towards my overcrowded closet. His shirt was next, a sun faded black t shirt that had stretched with his partial shift and remained that way. It hung loose on his wide frame.
“You knew...” I trailed off. Mates always know, Mom is always teasing Dad. My gaze traveled my mate’s carefully blanked expression. Concentrating on him, hard, I jerked, almost as if I’d just started to slink forward telepathically or some shit, to slam right into an invisible wall. “You’re keeping me out...?” Hurt, sharp and tangy in the air, like I’d just sucked a lemon, stabbed at me.
“You aren’t ready,” he said simply. Perhaps I was being transparent, maybe my face was doing that thing it did that Fynn said looked like I was going to cry as I went on a murderous rampage, or maybe he fucking felt it through that magical, mystical mate bond I’d heard about, but his face softened. “Roly, baby, it’s not like that. I- ” His hands lifted in a placating gesture. “I know you get scared,” he started to say.
“I am not scared,” I burst out. Oh, I was starting to get there, though. And panic, sadness, and anger were right on its heels.
His eyebrows shot up and he lifted his chin, staring down the length of his odd, semi shifted nose at me. “You don’t like change,” he said instead. “And too many things coming at you at once can feel... overwhelming.”
“You’re saying you’re locking me out to protect me?” Gah, Em, with the tiny baby sounding hurt voice and the watering eyes. Pathetic. No wonder he was blocking you. You’re weak. You can’t handle him. The mere thought I couldn’t handle him had me seeing red. Mine. A growl rolled up my throat. I could fucking handle it! What the fuck?! “I’m not made of glass,” I gritted out.
Ansel remained unconvinced. “You’re not, and I’m not saying you are,” he’d all but lost his wolf at this point, his eyes softening to their subdued but no less alluring dark brown. “It’s just a lot for anyone to take in. I thought maybe, over time, I’d ease you into it.”
“Because you think I can’t handle it,” I muttered drolly. My back hit the door and I crossed my arms and leaned against it.
“Because I don’t want to send you running from me in a panic.” At my unconvinced look, he gritted out, “Roly... I have loved you since the moment I set eyes on you, shared an unfettered bond to you since we were kids. I’ve had years of a connection to you. I’ve never had to try and curb what I’m thinking, feeling, and how that might affect you if you get it coming at you a million miles an hour. It can be...” He was struggling for words. “Adjusting to mate connections, it can be really hard,” he finished.
“Was it really hard for you?” I mumbled, contemplating this, biting at my lip.
“At first, yes, and it took me a while to figure out the feelings I was feeling weren’t always my own. Realizing the first time I pissed you off, those were actually your feelings. You’d get so mad and start imagining all the ways you could get back at me. I sat there stunned the first time a barrage of images of me being hog tied and dumped in a vat of pig fat, slimed with green sludge, tied to a tree while you painted dicks on my face, flashed in my mind. I pissed you off every chance I got.” His smile was wide, devilish. “You think very loudly when you’re pissed. You shot daggers at me with your eyes, your emotions sharp, crisp, clear across our connection. Did you know emotions have colors? I grew hooked. Sharp waves of you filling my subconscious? I craved the rush, the heat.” Glancing around my room, his hand fell to the neatly folded bed spread at the end and he fingered one of the mint green tassels lining the hem. “It was always worse when I couldn’t feel you, when you were in hiding, in your shell, safe in your hiding place in your head, hidden away from the world. I hated it then. Getting you riled up sends those waves of emotion rushing towards me, to hold me over, crashing into me. It wasn’t much, but it was more than enough, considering it was all I was going to get right then.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked. I’d have gone mad trying to make heads or tails of all that. His explanation
definitely answered many a question I had about all of this and yet brought up thousands more.
“And have someone try and ‘fix’ this?” Ansel’s eyes narrowed and he flicked the tassel away. “I didn’t want to go to anyone about it. I was terrified they’d somehow break the connection, try to find a way to take the piece of you the bond had allowed me to absorb, with it. Do you remember hearing about what I was like when I was younger?” he asked suddenly. “I mean, a lot younger. My mom talks about it sometimes. I was a wild child, their anger ball. It was my Alpha side warring with my Omega half’s needs. Then we go over to the neighbor’s house one day and this squirming little pink thing takes one look at me. I reach out to touch it. I don’t know anything about babies but she looks soft and she smells sweet. Instantly, I’m sucked in, curious, I need to know more. She grabs my finger and squeezes it like she’s putting her all into it. A tightness fills my chest and I think it might burst. I was enamored. The thought filled my head, MINE, and for the first time, after feeling consumed with others’ emotions and anger and confusion that fills me not understanding why everyone is always so emotional all the time, she grabs my finger tighter and everything else falls away. I’m calmed. There’s no barrage of emotions. There’s just me and this strange little baby I can’t stop staring at. There’s a fierceness,” his hand lifted to his chest, “in here. I wanted to be everything she needed, just as she was in this moment for me. I was fucking four. I shouldn’t remember that moment. I was too young. But I’ve never forgotten it. I can’t even remember what Fynn was like as a baby—bits and pieces but just barely.” His eyes flushed the deepest, darkest turquoise and a growl tore from his throat. “You grabbed my hand that day and showed me what the world could be like, a different one than the one I was floundering in. Your mind was simple. The older you got, the easier it was to focus on you, your emotions, soaking up the hints of happiness the simplest of things I did produced. You were my anchor, Roly, when I was fucking drowning. That’s never changed. You offered me salvation that day and my wolf had jumped on it. Ours. So when the day came and the opportunity to bond myself to you presented, I took it, and from then on you were really mine. Maybe I didn’t understand any of it, I was a fucking kid, I just felt this... can a child feel something deep down in their soul? I felt you like yours was reaching out for mine. It felt like they collided when the bond clicked into place. I sat there stunned while you wiped your snotty nose on my long sleeve shirt, and then you smiled up at me, your eyes full of unshed tears, and told me I’d made it all better. I felt it—your relief, thinking at first it was my own, because there was that weird sense of peace it gave me. No one,” he growled out viciously, his hand thumping his chest, “was going to take that from me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about... an opportunity to bond to me? I never asked you to bond with me.” A tentative bond involved a simple blood exchange. Until the mixer, our kiss, I’d never gotten that close to him for him to try, that I could clearly recall... “And the rest of that- I- I don’t- I don’t know what to say,” I mumbled. “I almost want to be mad you’ve been peeking into my head all these years, and kinda brain you for it.”
“I only hear the really loud stuff,” he admitted. “The unhindered thoughts or really strong ones.” He was dancing around laying out the logistics of this supposed tentative bonding to me that had occurred on his end at some point in our childhood, the who, what, where, when, fucking how. But this was interesting.
Interest piqued, I stared at him. “So... then you’d, like, know when I-”
Ticking them off on his fingers, he grunted out flatly, “Had your first period, first kiss, lost your virginity,” he bared his teeth at that one, “thought of killing me in my sleep, thought of me other than the asshole next door, lamented the size of your tits, wondered if those pants were getting tighter or your ass getting bigger, wished people were as awesome as animals, thought of leaving the country altogether...” Pausing, lips pursing, he cocked an eyebrow. “Should I go on?”
Red faced, I shook my head. “Nope. I’m good.”
“Good,” he muttered, tugging his shirt off over his head. Abs. just miles and miles of sexy abs. I made a mental note to trace each one with my tongue. For scientific purposes, of course. Was he as salty tasting as his personality? Science, I sang in my head. “I can feel you. You’re ready for me. Strip so we can fuck.” Blunt, to the point.
I should be upset, I mused, eyeing him. I really should be. I made no move to do as he bid, eyeing him with an insolent look. “You’ve had a rather unfair advantage all these years, don’t you think? How often did you use this super power of yours to your benefit?”
“Not near as often as I should have,” he snarled, his hands going to his hips to tug on the waistband of his jeans.
“Jeggings,” I smirked, “nice.”
“Take your pants off and they’re yours,” he quipped. “You’re stalling. I can feel it.”
Annoyed, I gave another mental push, the responding shove that sent me bouncing back into my own head making me grunt in pain. “Ow.” Wincing, eyes squeezing shut tight, it was like a sudden case of brain freeze but there was no ice cream in my gut to compensate for it.
Heat. His sudden nearness had me locking up. Brushing my hands away, Asshole pressed his thumb against the spot, rubbing it gently. His lips pressed where his thumb had just been and I melted, just fucking melted right there, molding against him. The pain was gone, poof, in an instant, as if he’d willed it so. Had he? Could he fucking do that?
“Better?” he murmured, pulling back to search my gaze. Fuck. He was deadly like this, lethal, all soft and mushy and caring and shit. I could easily fall in love with the man. He had no idea. “Roly?” his hand lifted and he gave my forehead a soft tap with his pointer finger. Ow. “I break your brain? You still in there?”
He was worried. I felt it then, bleeding into our bond. A goofy smile flitted across my face. I could feel him! He was there! Aw, how fucking cute! He’s worried. Melt. Melt. Melty-melting me. Ansel’s brows dropped down at the sight of that quirky tip of my lips, tugging his mouth and the rest of his expressive face along with it in a fierce scowl. His heart rate kicked into a gallop. Could he feel my heart pounding as well? Was he feeling that same exhilarating-
“Fuck. I broke you,” he barked, gulping. A mad rush smacked me clean in the face, just emotions, beating at my brain, bombarding me. He was... panicking? What? His hand lifted and he flicked my fucking forehead, right between my god dammed eyes, hard. “Earth to Warhola. Do you copy?”
“OW!! You fucking asshole!” I snarled, slapping his hands away to grip my face. The connection snapped, cutting off, and I yelped. Fuck. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” I started to bellow but tempered it. Parents. Asleep. Middle of the night. Shut up, Em.
“Nope.” He blinked, and his breath instantly evened out. “You’re back.” Pressing his hand to his chest, he let out a relieved breath. “You scared the fuck out of me for a minute there.”
My low growl was answer enough. “I’m going to castrate you.”
Eyes lighting up, his mouth twitched. “You’re always threatening to unman me. And I know when you mean it or not. Have I ever told you how much it turns me on?” Leaning in, he boldly brushed his nose along the side of mine and down my jaw, despite the fang I was flashing him. Of their own volition, or at least I’ll keep telling myself that, my hands went to his wide shoulders to dig in and hold him in place. His lips trailed over my ear as he moved in closer. Our bodies pressed. “You’re so sexy when you’re mad, Emmy.” His tongue snuck out, raking across the shell of my ear. Wide hands went to my hips, sliding underneath the waistband of my sleepwear to tug them down. “You’re not wearing any underwear,” he growled as his fingers brushed bare skin.
“I was... airing out,” I joked, because why not make an odd comment when your man is telling you how sexy as fuck he thinks you are? That’s not a mood killer at all.
“I
can still smell me on you. You left my scent.” MINE. The thought creeped in, seeping in through the chinks in Ansel’s armor. His fingers slid to my thighs, urging me to part them. His fingers dug in when I spread them a little, just enough, and stopped. He wanted to strip and fuck my brains out, but I had the urge to play.
“I showered,” I muttered, leaning in to nip at his chin, smiling when the chuckle in his throat died, replaced by a growl. “Did I miss a spot?”
He started to dip, snarling, “I want to taste you first,” but my claw tipped nails dug in harder, until he tensed and stilled.
“You want me? Want all of me?”
The hungry snarl that ripped from his throat was answer enough.
Reaching out, unhooking one set of claws from his flesh, I tapped his cheek, the crimson tipped digit leaving a trail of blood in its wake. “Let me the fuck in.”
“You’re not ready.” He winced as he said it. “I can’t.”
“Like fuck you can’t,” I exploded, my anger with it, and tried to push him off.
Ansel put his weight into it, not expecting me to push one moment and give in the next, sending him flying into me. With a grunt, he pressed me into the wall. My face ended up mashed against his chest. Frowning, I blinked as his scent hit me. One sniff, and the hurt over feeling shut out blew up, exploding into angry little shards of I’mma kick your ass explosion.
Another whiff, deeper, longer, that hurt grew exponentially. I sure as fuck couldn’t smell any lingering trace of ME on him. “You’ve washed my scent away.” My voice cracked as I beasted out, going hulk on his ass to lift him and shove him off, “and you’re wearing cologne.” My tone was flat, dead, voice going guttural as I spoke, until I could barely talk. It wasn’t a question. Backing away to the opposite side of the room, the bathroom door within sight, I wrapped my arms around my middle. My mouth worked, moisture filling my eyes. “Don’t lie to me,” I gritted out. It took a while to get the words out, speaking slowly, my deep voice grating.
Until I Make You MINE (Wolves of Amrok Hollow) Page 11