by Holley Trent
He wouldn’t let her. “I’ve already seen them,” he said. “I know why they’re there. I’d kiss them away if I could, but I don’t reckon that’s how wolf magic works.”
“I wish the magic did work that way,” she whispered. She wanted to be kissed—wanted him to kiss her, anywhere he liked. Her body tightened at the thought that he just might, and at the fact that she actually craved such a thing.
“I—used to cover them,” she managed to squeak out after a difficult swallow. “People would stare, and I knew that they knew why they were there. I never saw anyone else except other wolves.”
“Why’d you stop?” He dragged his fingertip up from the top of her cleavage to the underside of her chin again, keeping her chin propped up and her gaze on his face—on his lips, parted and so kissable.
She had to close her eyes, or she would have kissed him, unbidden. “Um. Everyone had already seen them, so hiding them was pointless. Explaining to the kids why they were there was the hardest. They don’t know the whole truth, only that I got clawed.”
“I think they’ll work out what happened on their own in time. They’ll put two and two together.”
“And will pity me. Or worse, they’ll hate me for being so weak.”
“Don’t talk like that around me. I don’t care if you really believe that shit you’re saying, but I don’t want to hear it. You’re not weak. At least, not in that way. Open your eyes.”
She did. She looked up, past his flaring nostrils, to the narrowed slits of his eyes, the irises having taken on a yellowish glow that entranced her.
“I want you to look at me when you’re standing in front of me. And I want you to like looking.”
“I do.”
“Yeah?” He traced the edges of her lips with his fingertip and sucked in a deep breath through his mouth. “You make a man question that with the way you’re always looking down.”
“I’m a lesser wolf, and that’s what we do.”
“There’s nothing lesser about you. Maybe you’ve been taught that for as long as you can remember. You’ll probably need half as long to be convinced otherwise, but I’m telling you now not to let anyone feel like you’re only good for one thing. You can do whatever you want. No one here is going to stop you. I’m not going to let anyone stop you.”
“You?”
“Mm-hmm.” Another deep breath through his mouth. He leaned in and grazed his lips along the shell of her ear and lower, to her neck. Caresses became kisses. Kisses became licks.
His tongue seared at the bend between her shoulder and neck.
Her breath sped as his fangs grazed over the sensitive flesh, and her fingers dug into the meat of his back.
Is he gonna…
“No one’s coming to your rescue,” he said. His tongue replaced his teeth, and he licked some more, and then kissed across her ruined chest. “No one’s gonna save you from me, because they’re not so sure you need saving.”
She wrung the fabric at the back of his shirt as she had been her own and pushed up onto her tiptoes.
Bite me.
“Do you mind?” he whispered. “That they’re leaving me to pursue you, unchaperoned?”
“I’m—well, I guess I’m surprised they would, but them not interfering explains some things. I thought they didn’t care.”
“They care. They’re just staying out of my way, seeing what’ll shake out of this before you get too comfortable.”
“I haven’t yet gotten comfortable.”
She’d be far more comfortable if he’d just bite her already—claim her and kill the suspense.
Does he want me or not?
“No. You’ve been awake for less than twelve hours. You haven’t had a chance to turn on your Wi-Fi, much less decide which wolves you need to run from.”
“I don’t need to run from you. You just told me that.”
“But I want you to believe me.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“I—”
She clamped her lips and furrowed her brow, because she didn’t know why. She just believed him, and she was certain in that belief in a way she’d been with few other things in her life. She could count on one hand the number of certainties she kept in that special lockbox in her brain, and numbers one and two were Kevin and Darla. She’d loved them unconditionally from the moments they’d been born, and she didn’t have to wonder about that. She knew what love felt like. They’d taught her to trust her recognition of the feeling.
In the same way she knew that she loved her kids, she knew Nixon was a safe bet. A noble wolf.
She was the one who wasn’t a good bet.
“I want to bite you, Esther. Your scent—I gotta be honest, honey. The scent’s turning my stomach, and it’s getting stronger.”
She groaned and hid her face against his shoulder. Her odor—Michael’s odor—would only grow with her arousal. Nature’s perfect deterrent to the female wolf’s infidelity.
But the protection wasn’t supposed to be for him.
The scent was supposed to keep women safe from other wolves who would claim them without permission, but like everything else in wolf culture, the old ways had gotten bastardized soon after wolf settlement in the New World.
Nixon wasn’t a threat, and she wanted him to claim what was his.
She was his. She’d probably known that from the moment she’d decided he was safe enough for her to put her kids into his truck.
“Bite me if you want to.” Please want to. “I’ll understand why you wouldn’t want to, though.”
“You don’t get to change your mind. You don’t get to decide you like some other wolf better, and hate me because you should have waited to see who else was out there.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Look at me.” He pressed his hands to her upper arms and held her a few inches away from him. His forehead held the same scowl as before, but his eyes were wide open and seemingly panicked.
“Nixon, what’s wrong?”
“You need to know what you’re getting. Wolves don’t court the same way human folks do, so you’re not gonna get weeks or months to decide if you like me enough to go forward. If I bite you, you’re stuck with me.”
“I know that. Even after—” She swallowed. She wasn’t going to say that man’s name. Michael didn’t belong in the conversation. “Even after everything, I understand the risks. But I’m tired of having all risks and no rewards. I’m tired of always being the one who never gets anything out of my end of a bargain. I want a prize, too.”
“I’m no prize, honey. Trust me when I say I’d be the one who’s marrying way up.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Of course you don’t. You’ve been conditioned to not know your own worth, and I reckon part of my job will be to teach you just how valuable you are.”
“So bite me.”
“No.”
He drew in another of those long breaths through his mouth, because she stank of another man.
If she’d been a decent woman, she would have put some space between her and Nixon, but she apparently wasn’t decent. She wanted him to keep touching her. She worried if he stopped, he’d change his mind about the whole thing and would leave her in the dust, heartbroken and craving him like he was the next breath she needed to take.
She’d never felt that way about any man before, and given the intensity of her feeling, she didn’t think that yearning she was dealing with amounted to a crush. There was more in play than just want.
She needed him. Not just for her, but for her kids, too. She couldn’t keep being both mother and father. She needed help.
“If I bite you—if I take on the responsibility of you and Seven and Darla—I don’t want to see you upset about not getting what you hoped for. You have options. You don’t have to be with a wolf. Only a wolf would be bothered by your scent. You’d have fewer problems taking a mate outside the species. Maybe a coyote or a cougar. Or, you can find a
nice human guy who’s tolerant of having furry stepchildren.”
“You’re telling me my options as if I don’t already know them.”
He nodded slowly and rubbed the scruff on his chin. “Yeah, well, I’m just makin’ sure you do. I don’t want to leave anything left unsaid. This isn’t going to be another situation where you don’t have a choice, and where you’re being pushed into some circumstance because you being there is the will of some other asshole.”
“I gave you my consent. What else do you want from me? I don’t know what else I can possibly say. Maybe I’m not used to having choices—you’re right about that—but you think I’m not intelligent enough to know that I want you? You want me to change my mind? I’m not sure if I can.”
“Come here,” he said softly. He took her gently by the hand and led her to the sofa.
He pointed to the middle cushion.
She sat.
He perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of her, cringing a bit. He pulled her hand forward and down, placing it on his left shin.
“Squeeze that, honey.”
She didn’t understand the point of the exercise, but all the same, she did what he asked.
His shin was hard.
Too hard.
She squeezed again and felt around to the back of his shin. Hard there, too.
“What is that? A cast? No, you wouldn’t be wearing a cast with your boot.” She started lifting the hem of his jeans.
“Wait.” His hand bracketed her wrist, and he carefully uncurled her fingers from his pants. “You don’t have to look. I just want you understand where I’m coming from.”
“What is that? What are you trying to show me?”
He let go of her wrist and sat a bit more upright. “Suffice it to say, I’ve got a lower leg with fewer cumulative miles than the rest of me.”
“A—”
His tapping left foot pulled her gaze down to his cowboy boot. Stiff motions, as if the ankle wasn’t moving quite right—as if the ankle wasn’t real.
“Fucked up my leg in an accident,” he said. “Amputated below the knee. Right now, my leg is as good as it’s ever going to get. There’s no magic wolf cure for a clean surgical cut made when you were in your human form.”
“You’re an amputee?” She gave her head a hard shake and forced out a breath. She had to keep reminding herself to breathe. Becoming overwhelmed was far too easy. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“And that’s why I wanted to tell you, honey. If you get me, you’re not getting a whole wolf.”
Although his voice carried its usual sultry notes, there was nothing enticing at all about his scowl.
He actually believed that shit he was saying.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nixon waited for Esther to show some sign of disgust, but her expression remained the same curious mask she’d worn before he’d made his reluctant confession.
Her brow was furrowed, lips parted as if she were about to launch some words, and hand remained poised against his prosthesis.
“Say something,” he said.
He couldn’t take the silence. Having her verbally recoil—having her clear the air on the subject—was preferable to being left in the lurch. He’d been with plenty of women since the amputation, but he’d kept his clothes on every time. If those women suspected anything was amiss, they didn’t speak the thoughts.
Esther scoffed quietly and placed her hand atop his knees. “What’d you do to yourself?”
“What did I do to myself?”
She looked so battered over his apparent carelessness. The pain in her expression took his breath away. She looked like someone had told her that her pet dog had been run over.
He squeezed his hands around hers and stretched out his stiff leg in front of him. “Old oil rig. It decided to lose a little weight one day while I was walking beneath it. Rafter fell on my shin. There wasn’t much the docs could do for me. Bones were shattered, and my skin was too beat up. Infection was going to set in. I tried to force a shapeshift, but the wolf in me wasn’t having it. Pain level was too high.”
“That would have made a difference.”
He shrugged. “I try not to get too caught up on the shoulda-coulda-wouldas. Maybe if I had been able to shift right after the accident, I could have healed enough in my wolf form to put some of the bone pieces back together, or keep the infection from setting in, but speculating now gives me heartburn.”
“I want to see it.”
“What, my leg? What the hell for?”
She pinched her eyes shut and shook her head on a sigh. “I—I have to. I have to see what I’m getting.”
He let go of her soft, soft hands and pushed himself to standing. “Not necessary. I assure you, my leg looks about as repulsive as you can imagine. Probably even has a little rash from the ill-fitting prosthesis. Real sexy, let me tell ya. I don’t need to show you what’s left of my leg for you to know I’m not what you were probably hoping for.”
“You think I’m so superficial?”
If he hadn’t had a werewolf’s acute vision, he might not have caught the way her pupils in the dark pools of her irises shrunk and then rapidly enlarged, as if she’d just spotted some prey she needed to take down to feed her kids with. He wouldn’t have noticed the brief flooding of crimson in her already-flushed skin. And he certainly wouldn’t have caught the barest hints of her fangs peeking out beneath her top lip.
He’d gone and pissed her off.
Good. Glad to see she can get that way.
He leaned against the wall near the sofa and shoved his hands into his jean pockets. He was probably an asshole for being flattered that she would get pissed—that she was interested in him, in spite of everything.
“Your biological imperative,” he said, “is to find the most alpha mate you can who isn’t already attached. You’re coming out of a marriage, and you’re driven to reattach. I understand. I also understand that you should be looking for a whole wolf—someone who can protect and provide for you and the kids. I’m pretty confident I could provide for you, but I can’t make any promises on the protect part. I would have been able to a couple of years ago, no question. Not now. I don’t move as fast as I used to. Some of that’s because of my leg, and some is just because I’m an old motherfucker.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a ragged exhalation. “Gods. You’re so worked up about whether or not you’re a whole wolf, but you’re making a pretty big tactical error, Nixon.”
“And what would that be?”
“Assuming that I’m a whole wolf.”
He started a reflexive scan of her body, but his gaze had barely met her shoulders when she clarified, “I’m not talking about the scars you can see. My body is intact, more or less, even if I don’t look quite as good as I did fifteen years ago when my alpha decided my time was up and gave me to Michael. I’m talking about the wounds you can’t see. The psychological crap wolves never talk about. You don’t know what I’ve been through. What I’ve—”
She pulled in some air, cutting off the words. He waited, but she didn’t pick back up on the train of thought. She locked her gaze on the coffee table in front of her and ground her teeth some more.
His instinct was to push away from the wall and press his hands to her pretty face again to force the tension away. He didn’t want her to be stressed out—the fact that she was chewed him up on the inside—but they both had to be honest with themselves. They couldn’t leave anything left unsaid. He’d never been the kind of wolf who thought that what women felt was unimportant.
“I don’t know what the right thing to say is,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m supposed to feel some particular way about your body, but maybe I’m too stupid to know better. Maybe I’m too stupid to understand that the way you are is a problem. You’re waiting for me to reject you, but I can’t. The wolf in me won’t let me.” Esther raised her gaze slowly and, with what seemed to be substantial effort, pinned her dark gaze on him. “She
thinks I get a chance now to have something I want.”
“I worry about your taste, honey.”
“I could say the same for you. Do you want to bite me or not?”
“Of course I want to bite you. That’s not the question. In spite of how I might appear with the dumb look I sometimes have on my face, I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t reject a mate who could give me strong children, and who’d bring to the relationship a couple of kids I already like.”
“They like you, too,” she said quietly. “Probably before I did.”
“I’d like to say they’ve got excellent taste, but I think the truth is they just know I’m not gonna hurt their momma.”
He did push off the wall then, and went to her because he couldn’t take standing there like a shithead staring at her when she looked like she was about to cry, and he was under no illusion that he wasn’t the one who’d put her in that emotional state.
He sat beside her on the sofa and risked putting an arm around her shoulders. Risked pulling her closer so her face was against his neck, her breaths ticking his chest, her fingers curling against his thigh.
“Trust me, honey. I’m aggressive enough to want to swoop in and scoop you up in spite of the fact that you just got here and you probably need some time. You just lost a mate.”
She tensed up like she was about to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her. He liked her where she was, and he had more he needed to say.
“If I were behaving strictly by my programming, I would have bitten you already. I would have done the deed right after Anton and your uncle said they weren’t going to get in my way, and I asked them the morning after I brought you here. Then I sat outside waiting for you to wake up, because I didn’t want any other male to get over to you before I had my chance. If I were behaving like my inner wolf wanted, I would have bitten you while you slept so when you woke, that foul scent would have been gone.”
Again, she tried to pull away, but he held her tighter. Made her listen.
“Adam says this shit is natural. Says this is the way we’re supposed to be when we encounter the wolf who can meet our needs. But I say in spite of what your inner wolf is telling you, and in spite of your drive to belong and to not go very long without belonging to someone, you gotta think this through. I don’t just want a wolf match, honey. I want you to like me. You understand?”