by Молли Харпер
Nick stayed in Samson’s guest room most nights, which had me worried. Samson seemed to think of him as some sort of human chew toy. For instance, just the other night, I’d come home to find Samson in my mother’s living room, holding Nick upside-down in some half-nelson wrestling hold.
“Hey, Midget, Nick won’t tell me whether he has sisters. I figure, he’s pretty, he would have to have pretty sisters.”
“You’re a sick man, Samson,” Nick said, his face reddened by the sudden flow of blood to his head.
“But you laughed, so what does that make you?”
Nick deadpanned, “Humoring you.”
“Samson, put him down!” I cried.
“But he’s so light and portable,” he said, jiggling a bemused Nick.
“When you wonder why we don’t introduce humans to our pack’s secrets, this is why,” I told Nick.
Samson jostled Nick again to get his attention. “OK, Dr. Werewolf Whisperer, you told me you could get out this. Now, the rules are: One, no punching me in the junk. And two, see rule one. Let’s go.”
“This is not healthy.” I sighed, shaking my head. “Even for werewolves, this is messed up.”
Nick grinned at me, bent at his waist, and did some weird finger-strike thing against the back of Samson’s kneecaps. Samson yowled and dropped to his knees, bringing Nick’s head precariously close to the floor. Nick stopped short of cracking his skull by catching himself with his hands. He sprang to his feet and put Samson in a headlock.
I think Samson was more shocked than strong-armed.
“Never fuck with a guy who worships at the altar of Vulcan martial arts,” Nick told my cousin as he administered a merciless noogie.
“Seriously, you Vulcan-nerve-pinched him?” I barely suppressed the grin that threatened to split my cheeks.
“Awesome!” Samson exclaimed, shaking Nick off like a troublesome Pomeranian. Nick was flung ass-over-teakettle onto the couch. “You’ll have to show me how to do that sometime,” Samson said before he wandered into the kitchen looking for food.
Nick hopped up from the couch. He was warm and slightly sweaty. I could feel the happy thrum of his heartbeat under his skin. I cleared my throat and stepped back from him before I did anything drastic. “You in one piece?”
“It’s kind of fun. I never had a big brother growing up. I always wanted to be hung upside-down by my ankles.”
“I worry about you,” I told him.
“Guess who’s been invited to guest-lecture at University of Alaska’s Anchorage campus?” he asked, grinning.
“Mo?” I suggested. “They have a great culinary department there.”
He frowned. “Me. They’ve asked me to lecture on shape-shifting creatures and their prevalence in northwestern American tribal culture.”
“In academic terms, I’m pretty sure that was supposed to get me all hot and bothered.”
He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Well, I want you to come with me. We can snowmobile as far as the highway and then drive in. We can go to a movie or some of the bookstores. There’s a restaurant I wanted to try. I just think it would be sort of cool to get you all to myself for a little while.” Then he added hastily, “As a friend. We can spend time together without things getting all naked and confusing.”
“When have we ever been able to spend time together without one of us getting naked or confused?” I asked.
“There’s always hope, Maggie.”
It sounded awesome. Seeing Nick in his element. Going somewhere where I wasn’t known, so I could relax a little. Soft hotel sheets and a certain bespectacled hottie . . . enjoyed separately, of course. And I was on the verge of saying “Yes, yes, take me now, yes,” when “I can’t” came out of my mouth instead.
“I’d like to, but I can’t leave right now. I know nothing has happened in a while, but I don’t think it’s OK for the alpha to go waltzing off on what will be seen as a sexy weekend with someone who is not her boyfriend, when there are maddeningly vague threats on the horizon.”
He groaned. “Why’d you have to say ‘sexy weekend’? I was going to be all noble and selfless and understanding until you said ‘sexy weekend.’ “ I snickered at him.
He sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. You have to take care of your responsibilities. I respect that. I just got excited about it, that’s all.”
“And I want to go. I just wouldn’t feel right about it,” I said. “Maybe Samson would go with you.”
He nodded, sort of glum, and pushed my hair behind my ears. Samson yelled at him from the next room, threatening to kick his ass at Halo. “Big Brother is waiting for you,” I told him.
“You think I could get him to go after some kids from my high school?” Nick asked as he led me to video-game Valhalla. “I wasn’t bullied, really, but I’d just like to see the looks on some of the obnoxious jocks’ faces when a ten-foot-tall werewolf came barreling at them.”
“You’ve got some unresolved issues, don’t you, Nick?”
I tried not to mope in general, but the days leading up to Nick’s departure were a little gloomy. Even Clay noticed that something was a little off with me, suggesting that we sneak away to try to find the parts to salvage my old truck. I agreed and tried to force myself into a brighter frame of mind. No one likes a sulky alpha wolf. I’d chosen this job. I’d campaigned for it. I wasn’t going to get all whiny now that there were certain sacrifices involved, such as not getting to go on a road trip with my cute “platonic” friend.
It wasn’t even the distance or losing a few days with Nick. I just hated the idea that I was going to miss something important to him. I mean, friends cared about that sort of thing, right?
I think I’d scared him with my drive-time estimations, because he was leaving a few days before his lecture. The day before he was due to leave, I got a little anxious. What if he didn’t come back? What if he got into an accident on the long drive? What if he met someone in Anchorage who didn’t scoff at Doctor Who or occasionally leave him with bite wounds?
And so I was piling through the waist-deep snow on four paws.
“Hello?” I called as I came through the kitchen door. I shrugged into an oversized flannel shirt he kept hanging by the door.
“I’m still packing!” he called from his room. “There’s sodas and sandwich stuff in the fridge. Help yourself.”
“OK!” On my way past his kitchen table, my elbow caught on a stack of books and knocked them onto Nick’s open laptop. I chuckled at his screensaver, a picture of evil bearded Kirk and Spock, smirking at each other. I bumped the keyboard as I was gathering them up, and a Word document popped up on the screen.
It was a title page for something called “The Werewolves of Crescent Valley.” I arched an eyebrow and sat at the table with a thump. The document was more than a hundred pages long, and it wasn’t just notes. Nick was writing a freaking book about us! There were pages and pages about our origins, our social structure, how the pack broke tradition by installing me as alpha.
Hurt, hot and acidic, burned through my chest. He’d promised. He’d promised me that he understood, that he couldn’t tell anyone about us. And here he was writing a frigging book? Who had he shown this to? Did he plan to publish it? The whole damn thing was dedicated to me, by the way. “To Maggie, without whom this wouldn’t be possible.”
Unfortunately for Nick, I read that just as he came through the kitchen door. And he was met by a very large book thrown at his head. “What the hell is this?” I yelled.
“What the?”
He ducked and, with impressive speed, dodged several flying objects as he crossed the room and grabbed my arms.
“I trusted you!” I yelled, fighting my way out of his grasp and slapping his chest. “What the hell were you planning on doing with this?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Your book, you asshole! The freaking book that meant more to you than keeping your word to me.”
“What—the on
ly thing I’m writing now is a history of your pack.”
“Are we not having the same conversation?” I growled. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’m writing that for your grandfather.”
“What?”
“I’m putting a book together for Pops. I was going to bind it myself, so no one would even see it. I was hoping it would, you know, soften Pops toward me. And if he hated me a little less, you might stop fighting me so hard on the ‘being crazy in love with you’ thing.”
“What?” I huffed out a breath.
Nick’s cheeks flushed. “I haven’t told anyone about you. I’ve barely been in contact with the outside world since I got up here. If you don’t believe me, you can check my e-mail accounts, my phone records, anything you want. Your family, they were exactly what I was hoping for, Maggie. Yeah, you’re the academic find of a lifetime. You could make my career, after I proved to the world that I wasn’t nuts. But your family, for the most part, has been kinder to me than the people who raised me. I can’t expose them. I can’t put them in harm’s way. You don’t do that to people who have been good to you.”
“Then why do this?”
“I don’t have a lot of measurable skills, as far as your grandfather’s concerned. I figured this would be the one thing I could do for him that no one else could. I wanted to show him that I’m serious about you. I wanted to show you how much I love you. And I do love you,” he said. “Even if you don’t know whether you love me yet. I don’t care whether you’re human or a werewolf or a yeti, I love you.”
The overwhelming rush of warmth and love through my chest nearly knocked me to my knees. That was it. I had this strange moment of crystal clarity in which I knew I loved him right back. Everything outside our circle of two was sort of blurry and inconsequential. I’d never be happy without him. I’d never want anyone else. My hands slipped up to his chest to steady myself as I spluttered, “W-well, that’s just—” I grabbed his lapels and crushed my mouth to his. He hummed against my lips, slipping his hands into my hair and pulling me closer. I pushed him toward the bedroom door. He turned his head, seeing where I was heading, and raised his eyebrows.
I pushed the jacket back from his shoulders and untucked his shirt while he struggled with my buttons. I shrugged out of the shirt and tossed his belt over my shoulder, slipping my hand under his waistband. Nick lifted me and carried me to the bedroom, to his bed.
“Are you sure?” he asked, cupping his hand around my jaw as he settled his weight over me. I quirked my eyebrows, peering down at the grip I had on his manly bits. He laughed. “OK, then.”
I didn’t have time to be nervous. I didn’t know how this would feel, but it couldn’t be bad. Werewolves had very healthy attitudes toward sex. Hell, sex was one of the primary winter activities in the valley. Which was why we had so many babies every spring.
Babies.
I arched off of him long enough to dangle off the bed and grab for his nightstand. Nick nibbled along the curve of my spine, biting at my hip as I rooted around for the long string of condoms I found there. I turned back to him, giving him a speculative look. He smiled sheepishly. “I had high hopes.”
I laughed and helped him ease out of his pants. He guided my hands as we slipped on the condom. I expected him to, well, get right to it. But he pushed me back onto the mattress, kissing down my bottom, hitting all of the places I loved best, the valley between my breasts, the hollow of my belly button. His fingers were already deep inside me, stretching and teasing me, while his thumb worked little circles around my clit. His lips closed around my nipple, flicking and teasing it with his tongue.
He rolled onto his back, pulling me with him. “This might hurt a little,” he said, smiling up at me, concern reflecting back at me in those blue eyes. “It might be better if you were running things.”
He helped me position him near my entrance, and I sank down over him, hissing as I stretched. It was more pressure than pain, a strange alien sensation that disturbed more than it hurt. I stayed still for a second, waiting for my body to adjust around him. I tried not to overthink, but damn, it was a lot of stuff to process. The stretching and pulling sensations deep inside. The way his hands wrapped around my waist. Nick looking up at me, his expression so happy, so adoring, that I couldn’t help but smile at him. I moved just a little bit and gasped at the friction it produced.
“Slow,” he whispered, kissing my neck. “Go slow.”
My first couple of movements were awkward as I searched for the right angle. He lifted my hips and thrust up gently, helping me find a rhythm. His hand slid up my neck, rubbing his thumb along my jaw. I leaned into his touch, and he pulled me down to kiss him. He nibbled along the line of my chin, my throat. He pressed his teeth against my collarbone and nipped a little harder.
I rose on my knees and slid down just a little harder, huffing out a little moan. I rose a little higher and did it again. I paused to absorb the strange, hot lightning sensation that shot through my stomach. That was nice. I pushed up with my feet, riding so high that Nick almost slipped out of me. He groaned in protest until I slammed my hips down on his.
“You’re a natural.” He sighed, sitting up and wrapping his arms around me as I rode him. He slid his hand between us and stroked my clit.
I giggled again until I felt my inner muscles tighten, clenching around him. I shrieked at the first pulse, clutching at his shoulders. Nick lay back, pulling me down and rolling over. He hitched my legs over his hips, pulling me up so my ass rested on his thighs. He gave one good, hard thrust, spreading me wide for him, and I yelled out. He was thrusting upward, hitting some wonderful place that made me want to squeeze my thighs together and lock him there. I tensed again, and the wave was longer, better. A rush of heat seemed to radiate up through my chest, making the blood roar in my ears. The pulses were coming quicker, more intense. Everything seemed to seize up at once, and I was screaming his name.
I must have yelled some other, dirtier stuff, because Nick answered with a yell of his own and was coming with me. He laid his head against my heart, panting against my skin and listening to its beat. I threaded my fingers through his hair and pulled him closer.
I tried to find some tiny bit of regret inside myself but couldn’t. I’d done it. I’d chosen Nick. There was no going back now. I stroked my fingers along his cheek. “This might hurt a little,” I whispered.
He blinked dreamily at me. “Hmm?”
I closed my eyes and prayed that I was making the right choice. I sank my teeth into his shoulder as gently as possible, just breaking the skin. He yelped but gritted his teeth and took it like a man. I licked the wound and nuzzled his jaw.
“You couldn’t have warned me?” he asked, frowning down at the thin trail of blood dripping down his chest.
“Sorry. You would have tensed up. It would have hurt more,” I told him, handing him a tissue. “But we’re mated now. There’s no escape for you.”
“Not looking for one,” he said, dabbing at the wound. “You OK?”
I nodded. Physically, I was great. Relaxed and dandy. But I was a little worried. While I’d refused any detailed descriptions during Mama’s birds-andthe-beasts talk, the one thing I did ask was how she was sure she and Dad were mated. She said she “just knew,” and when I gave her an irritated look, she added that she felt complete, whole, happy with her choice. But frankly, I’d felt that way for a while, so how could I tell if there was a difference?
“Is something supposed to happen?” he asked.
I propped myself up on my elbow. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should bite me again?”
I gently touched my fingertips to the edge of the wound on his neck, which was raw and red. “I think I got you pretty good the first time.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” he said, kissing me. “Personally, I am willing to do that over and over until we come to some conclusion.”
“There’s that confidence again.”<
br />
He climbed out of bed, muttering about finding his drawers, and I noticed the faint white scar on his butt.
“Oh, no,” I moaned.
Nick was back on the bed in a flash. “What? Are you hurt?”
“I claimed my mate with a bite to the ass!” I cried, pressing my face to the pillow.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Your ass. I bit it, months ago!” I moaned as he pried my hands and the pillow off my face and made me look at him. “And ever since then, I’ve felt this weird protectiveness . . . and possessiveness toward you. And I’ve been calmer, with the exception of the whole possible werewolf intruder thing. I’ve been happy, content. I’ve been mated.”
“But, but, but—”
“Exactly!” I exclaimed, gesturing at his matrimonially marked ass.
“But if that were true, if all it took was a bite, werewolves would find themselves accidentally mated to random people all the time.”
“It’s not about the bite, it’s about the intention,” I said. “The werewolf magic sort of does the rest.” I thought back to the day I bit him. I’d been angry because he thought I was Mo. I wanted to show him that I was the woman, the animal, he was looking for. And I was staking my claim, marking my territory. Permanently. My stupid instincts made my decision for me. I could have spared myself all that angst over Clay versus Nick. “Oh, this is bad . . .”
“Why is it so bad?” he asked. “It just means we arrived at our destination a little early. I think it’s kind of cool.”
“We can never tell Samson, do you understand? If he knows I accidentally claimed your glutes, I will never live it down.”
“Maggie, it will be OK. This is a good thing. You chose me. And I love you for it.”
“I’m serious. We can’t tell Samson or Cooper or Mo. Or my mom.”
His tone was exasperated as he kissed my forehead. “Maggie.”
“Shutting up.”
He nuzzled my throat and traced the curves of my collarbone with his fingertips. “So, I love you.”
“Uh . . . thanks?”
“Do you have anything you might want to express to me in return?”