by Holley Trent
He let out the breath he’d been holding since aiming the gun and lowered the muzzle. “Shit, woman.”
He slid the weapon back onto the nightstand and fixed the covers around him. Early on after the accident—soon after he’d been fitted—he slept in his prosthesis in case he needed to get up in the middle of the night.
Or at least, that was what he’d told himself—that he might need to get up to take a piss, or that he needed to be able to fight at the drop of a hat. In truth, he hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to that part of him. He’d only been sleeping without the prosthesis for three months and, oddly enough, his quality of sleep had improved.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Um. Around two.” She shifted slightly in the doorway, moving weight from one foot to the other and wringing her hands in front of her.
“What’s wrong? You need me for something? Something on fire?”
“No. Um…”
He couldn’t be sure because of the dim light, but he thought she cringed.
She tucked her loose hair behind her ears and unglued herself from the doorway.
As she made her way to the bedside, he put his back against his pillows, probabilities flooding his brain and ramping up his wolf’s anxiety.
“Kids okay?”
“Oh. Yes, they’re fine. Christina is watching over them. She was up pacing with Cecily, anyway. Cecily’s been clingy all day. Has a little fever.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah. Parenting is always harder when the kids can’t tell you what’s wrong.”
He nodded. Waited.
There had to be a reason for her visit—not that he didn’t enjoy seeing her at any time, but two a.m. was an hour he preferred experiencing only when horizontal, and preferably with his eyes closed.
She perched on the edge of the bed and wrung her hands atop her lap.
Her nervous energy made the wolf in him pace circles. Her agitation stirred his—piqued him to fix whatever was wrong. He couldn’t allow his mate to hurt. His job was to make sure she didn’t.
“Something’s got you upset this time of night.” He looped the ends of her thick, silky hair around his fingers and rubbed his thumb over the strands. “Either the problem is something you think I’m uniquely qualified to fix, or you’ve come over here to let me know in person that I’m the problem. Which?”
She laughed quietly and laid her chin against the back of his hand when it skimmed along her jaw. “You’re not the problem. You’re the fix.”
“Am I?”
She nodded, and turned more toward him. She took a deep breath, and he got ready for the proverbial shit to hit the fan.
“Where I come from, being so bold as to ask this would get me in a heap of trouble.”
“With who?”
“My mate. The alpha. Anyone who found out, really.”
“Well, that tells me a whole lot of nothing. Pretty much anything would have gotten you in trouble in that toxic cesspool, so you’ve gotta give me some better clues as to how I should be responding right now, honey. The wolf inside me is all hopped up, wanting to be let off his leash because he thinks someone hurt you.” Or worse, that she had a problem for Nixon to fix and that she was too scared of him to ask.
Please, not that.
He looped an arm around her waist and pulled her toward him—made her cuddle up next to him, and tried to ignore the fact he had her more or less straddling his bum leg.
Her body relaxed incrementally and her scent soured, and Nixon opened her mouth to breathe.
Mind over matter.
His discomfort didn’t matter. Hers did.
“Nixon, I need you to just—go ahead and bite me. That’s what this is about.”
He swallowed the saliva that had been pooling in his mouth. “Pardon?”
“You need to bite me. I mean, if you were going to anyway. Ashley got me in touch with our old pack, and there have been some whispers that Michael’s family might try to recall the children. I can’t let them. They weren’t there to help when we were suffering and miserable, and I don’t trust for a minute they’ll do what’s right for Kevin and Darla. They can’t have them.”
Nope, the wolf in him said. Mine now. Finders’ fuckin’ keepers.
Nixon didn’t understand why she was staring at him with that wide-eyed shock until he registered his own damned growl.
He swallowed again, and then cleared his throat. “Ignore me. Wolf’s close to the surface. He has opinions.”
“About the kids?”
“Mm-hmm. Go on. What were you going to say?”
She blinked several times and sucked in a breath. “You have to bite me before they can claim them.”
“I’d certainly do that if you’d like, but I would hope that’s not the only reason you’d want my bite.”
“I think you know it’s not.”
He shrugged one shoulder.
“Has Adam told you? Because he forgot to tell me.”
“What, that you’re meant to be mine and vice versa? No, he forgot. Lil might have said something along those lines, though.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“I want to feel good, but I’m trying not to let myself get too excited.”
“Why?” She pushed herself upright, and he hated that she’d taken her warmth away. The wolf wanted it back, but the man part of him knew she needed to set the pace of the conversation. She was skittish, and entitled to be.
“Like I told you before,” he said. “I’m a forty-one-year-old wolf reject. The current culture says I’m not supposed to get a mate. I’d sure like one. I want a family I go to work everyday to support. I want a woman to come home to and love, but I’m a skeptic.”
“I should be more skeptical, too, but I don’t have the luxury of being hesitant. I’ve spent three decades of my life being timid and hesitant, and I—when I…” She closed her eyes and pounded her thighs with her fists. “I decided I couldn’t be that way anymore. Or rather, the wolf part of me decided that for the both of us. I’m scared now, don’t get me wrong. I’m just scared for different reasons. Still, I’ve got to hope that I can make things better—I can be proactive, instead of weak and idle. Honesty is important, so let me say that I need you to bite me. I also know you need more than that, so let me tell you, also, that I want you to bite me.”
“You want to be my mate?”
“I am your mate. I’m just telling you that I approve of the fact that I am.”
Smiling was never hard for Nixon when he was around Esther, but that small confession made his grin particularly broad.
He dragged his tongue across his parched lips and pulled a hand through his messy hair. Small actions to stave off bigger ones. He had to allow himself time to think of all the possible traps and pitfalls, like he always did before undertaking big endeavors.
He certainly counted Esther as a “big endeavor.” A beautiful, soft, sweet, big endeavor.
“This couldn’t have waited until morning, hon?”
She gave her head the barest shake. “I mean, perhaps it could have, but I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. I’m too worried.”
“I understand. Come here.” He wriggled down flat onto his back and gestured for her to straddle him. “Climb on. That way you get a little control.”
She furrowed her brow.
“If I’m on the bottom, I’m not going to be able to get a good angle to bite you too deep. You put your body where you want it. Tell me where you want the bite.”
Brow still furrowed, she moved slowly onto him, her hand pressed to the top of her chest, her fingertips working over the end of a scar at the top of cleavage.
Gently, he took her hand and pressed the palm to his chest along with the other hand. “Just keep those there for the moment, okay?”
Her hands were shaking so hard, anyway, they weren’t going to be of much use for any procedure requiring dexterousness. Like unbuttoning her pajama top.
Trad
itionally, wolves bit their mates somewhere over the heart, right or left side didn’t matter. When the mood struck, aim wasn’t important. The exact location of the bite didn’t matter. He’d heard of wolves receiving bites on their shoulders, their hips, their thighs. The chest was symbolic—a sign of submission.
Nixon didn’t particularly want bite her there, but he didn’t want to make any new scars on her, either. She already had too many.
With the first button he undid of her pajama top, her breath sped and eyes blinked rapidly.
“Breathe, honey,” he whispered, and then waited. Waited for her to stop tensing, to stop digging her nails into his chest.
Then he moved on to the next button. Her hands were shaking again, so he kissed them, backs and fronts, peering up at her in the near dark.
“Tell me what scares you so much. That the bite’s going to hurt?”
She shook her head hard. “Your bite can’t hurt any worse than what’s already been done to me. I—I don’t want you to see.”
“Hey, I could close my eyes and feel my way around, but if I’m only using my hands, I’m gonna pay more attention to what I’m feeling. The textures and bumps where there should be smooth skin. I’m gonna memorize you that way, and then when I open my eyes, I’m going to learn you another way. I know trusting comes slowly, but if you’re gonna give your body to me, you’ve gotta let me see it.”
She pulled in a long breath, and then nodded. Eyes closed. Lips parted, moving as if in silent prayer.
If that made her feel good, he wasn’t going to tell her to stop.
He kept unbuttoning, all the way down to the bottom. The air escaped his lungs as his hands moved on their own to her waist, her warmth.
His thumbs worked along the bottom of her ribcage tracing the natural pattern there—a pattern that was perhaps somewhat too prominent, but that he didn’t doubt Lilith would do her part in obscuring with a lot of good food and a lot of love.
He couldn’t cook worth a damn, but he could certainly keep a fridge filled. And he’d definitely do his part with the second thing, too. Esther wasn’t a hard woman to love, even if she seemed to think she was.
“I can’t remember the last time I had a woman straddling me like this.” He chuckled.
She growled.
That made him laugh harder. He couldn’t help himself. Besides, he’d rather have her pissed at him than afraid.
He danced his fingertips up her belly toward her heart, parting the plackets of her shirt as he went, exposing more of her in slow inches.
“I’ve never been with a wolf before. I’m kinda making shit up as I go along.”
Soft, full breasts, nipples beaded in the cool night air, firm and taut beneath his thumbs.
“I—” Her knees tightened against his sides and back bowed a bit. “I’ve only been with the one, so…”
One too many, in his opinion. Nixon didn’t want to think about that one, because he’d think about what that one had done to her. He didn’t like thinking nasty thoughts about dead people. That shit was toxic for the soul, and he’d never been the kind of guy who liked carrying around that kind of darkness.
He leaned up for a taste of her before he could talk himself out of biting her—before her scent overpowered and warned him off, and it was already strong enough. But if she changed her mind and said “no” to the bite, he’d at least have gotten to touch her.
He hoped she didn’t say no. Just sitting on him with her body insinuated as it was made him so hard, he hurt. He wanted to be inside her—wanted to complete the mating bond the way wolves did. He welcomed all the snarling and clawing that came with the bite, as long as she still wanted to be his by the time all was said and done. That she was still his by the time she remembered that he didn’t move as well as he used to. Not yet, anyway.
But soon. He’d find a way to get his old swerve back since she’d likely be the last woman who’d ever get to benefit from it. He couldn’t imagine being with anyone else after having set his heart on Esther.
He closed his lips around one pert nipple and dug his fingertips into her haunches when she writhed against him, torturing his cock with warm friction.
He clamped her tender flesh between his teeth and circled his tongue around the peak.
“I—”
“You don’t like when I do that?”
“I’ve never—”
Don’t say it. Don’t tell me what he did or didn’t do.
Nixon wanted to roll her onto her back and kiss every peak of her, lick every crease of her, but her scent precluded him doing much else. As pleased as he was that his touch aroused her, there was only so much compartmentalizing a normal brain could do.
Her scent was warning him off, even if her body was saying, Yes, please.
Sighing, he worked his hands up to her chest and smoothed his fingers across the battleground of scars, stopping every time her breath hitched or nostrils flared.
Nixon couldn’t fix her imperfections. He couldn’t take them away any more than he could make his lower leg grow back, but he could show her that nothing on her body would turn him off. He’d take her as she was, joyfully, and hope she could do the same for him.
He found a smooth patch over her left breast and drew a circle around the area, peering up at her.
She blinked.
“I think here looks good, unless you had your mind set on somewhere else.”
“Um. Any place is as good as another.”
“You have a say. This is your body.”
“Never been allowed to feel like it is.”
“You own your body. Right now, you’re just letting me enjoy all the parts.”
She pressed her lips tightly together and put her hand where his had been. She looked down at her chest—at that small patch of unmarred flesh—and pulled in a long inhalation through her nose. She let out the breath through her mouth and then swallowed hard.
“There, then,” she whispered.
She inched farther up his torso, and pulled her hair out of the way as she leaned into him.
At her skin’s soft press against his, he let out a reflexive breath and dug his fingers into her ass, both to hold her in place and to get his grip.
He had to be gentle. Bites were supposed to hurt—there was no way around that—but he didn’t have to let himself get carried away, even if he knew getting carried away was part of the ritual. There was a good chance they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
“I’m gonna try to be as delicate as I can, Esther, but forgive me if my fangs hurt you.”
“I’m not used to folks asking for forgiveness.”
“You should spend more time around people who aren’t shit stains, then. That’s the only advice I can give you about your lifestyle.”
She let out another breath and leaned into him, pressing her heated flesh against his lips, her body thrumming like a guitar string that had been plucked.
“It’s all right,” he whispered.
He smoothed his hands up and down her back trying to soothe her, but he didn’t have any good magic for that. Some of the wolves in Norseton’s pack did, from what he’d heard. Most of them had unusual abilities of some shape or form. Not Nixon, though. His greatest magic trick to date had been simple survival.
He thought that going so slow and letting her take the lead a bit would put Esther at ease, but she shook harder, and when her tears hit the side of his face he lifted her off him.
“Esther, what’s wrong?”
She couldn’t talk through the sobbing.
She shook her head again hard and tried to wriggle off him, but he kept her still. He wasn’t going to let her run from herself. He got a sneaking feeling he wasn’t the problem.
“Did you change your mind about me already?”
“No!” she squeaked.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“You’re not gonna—want me when you find out what I did. I don’t want to be thrown away.”
“Well,
what the hell did you do?”
She stopped crying long enough to sniffle and scoff. “Michael. I—I couldn’t let you bite me unless you knew the truth.”
“The truth about what?” Nixon wriggled himself up straighter, pulling Esther along with him so she was straddling his lap.
Not going anywhere, honey.
“He didn’t fall,” she said.
“He didn’t? Did the coroner lie?”
“No! I mean, he fell. He hit the ground and the fall killed him, but—”
She took up that violent sobbing again and started scratching at her chest, and the flesh was bloody before Nixon knew it.
“Esther, stop.” He grabbed her wrists and pinioned them between their bellies. If he wasn’t going to hurt her, he damn sure wasn’t going to let her hurt herself, either. The woman apparently needed a lesson on her worth. “Be gentle with yourself. Hard for me to be romantic when you’re bleeding.”
“I did it!”
“You did what, honey?”
“I—I pushed him,” she spat. Her eyes took on a crazed roundness, as if she was replaying the ordeal in her head, and he needed her to stop.
He knew too damn well what reliving the painful past was like. He did that again and again whenever he looked down at his leg at a certain angle—the same angle he’d been in when he’d been pressed beneath that collapsed rig. As badly as he wanted to, he couldn’t manipulate time. He couldn’t go back and change the past. He could only take the lessons of what had happened with him into the future and try not to repeat his mistakes. Esther obviously hadn’t made the same kind of mistake, but she was suffering—blaming herself. She wasn’t going to get over what she thought she’d done so quickly.
He pulled in a breath and chose his words carefully, still squeezing her hands gently. “You pushed him. Tell me why.”
“He was drunk.” She said the words quietly as if she didn’t think the fact mattered, but had to tell him anyway. “And I was afraid. I didn’t plan to hurt him, but I think the wolf in me was tired of being afraid.”
“Who knows?”
Esther opened her mouth, then closed it and gave her head a slight shake. “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Who knows you pushed him? Who did you tell?”