by Holley Trent
“Why?”
“Did anyone see you?”
She furrowed her brow. “No. Only my mother knew the whole story before I came here. Most everyone else in the old pack assumed he fell on his own. He reeked of vodka, and they all knew he was a sloppy drunk.”
“No one asked you if you pushed him?”
She shook her head. “Few wolves would think I could. If they did—”
“Shh. Stop frettin’. You’re worried about somethin’ that’s not gonna be a problem. We’re gonna keep what happened inside this pack. It’s no one else’s business. Self-defense isn’t a crime, anyway.”
“But within a pack, it’s a crime. I touched him. I pushed him away. I didn’t comply.”
“You saved your own life. Don’t feel like you have to be punished for surviving. I’m sure if there was any other way the mess could have resolved, you’d prefer that would be the case instead, but that’s not the way things shook out. Would the situation have been different if y’all hadn’t been outside on that balcony and had been in some confined room? Who knows? Maybe if that were the case, you would be the one who didn’t walk away, and honey, the thought of that makes the wolf in me want to come out snarling.”
“I was afraid you’d think I wasn’t a safe bet.”
“If I were the kind of wolf who intended to push you repeatedly past your breaking point, I might be worried.” He swiped the pad of his thumb across her tears and let out a breath. He needed to get a hold of himself. He was so mad about all she’d been through, but if she hadn’t endured what she had, he may never have met her. That thought made him even sicker to his stomach than her scent did.
“I’d hope you’d tell me if I upset you, honey,” he said. “I hope you don’t let me push you to that place where you’d feel so trapped and pinned that your thoughts go only to survival. I don’t want to be someone you have to endure. I want you to love me, and I know that’s asking a lot.”
Either she was taking in the words to completely digest them, or she thought he was bullshitting. She blinked several times and then looked down, putting her hands against his bare chest as if preparing to move away from him.
But then she sighed and put her forehead against his shoulder. “I just want to be held.”
Gods, she’s gonna give me a stroke.
He rubbed her back in gentle, slow swirls. “I’d like to hold you. You know I can’t, though.” He chuckled. “There’s only so much one wolf can endure.”
“So bite me, and then hold me, okay? I shouldn’t…well, you know what.”
He knew. Lady wolves got frisky after getting their bites—the bites set off the sequence of hormones that enabled female werewolves to shapeshift and had the interesting side effect of stimulating their sex drives in the immediate period after.
But, Esther had already been bitten. She could already shift. All Nixon was doing was changing her scent.
“I’ll try not to make you bleed too much,” he whispered. “I can’t promise I won’t get carried away, though. Pull my hair to get me off you if you need to.”
“I think you’ll be better behaved than that.”
“Gods willing.”
She pushed her shirt down her arms and wadded it into a ball, which she set down beside her.
Her arms went immediately to cover her breasts, and because Nixon was a man with certain fetishes, he gently pried them away.
“No need to hide, honey. Let me see you.”
His gaze fixed on the swatch of skin to the left of her sternum again.
He let his fangs drop and passed his tongue over the points as he dug his fingertips into her ass.
“Don’t move, honey. Stay real still so you don’t incite the wolf. He’s wonderin’ if you taste as bad as you smell.”
“Nix—”
He bit her while she was distracted—while she tried to figure out whether or not he’d offended her. He sunk his fangs in deep and tried his damnedest to compartmentalize her scent and her bitter taste.
He kept telling himself as he lashed his tongue over her heated skin that her flavor would get sweeter to him in time—that she’d be like nectar to him and not poison.
She’d be his.
His body already thought so. His heart had started beating in double-time to move around what little blood there was left after his cock had taken more than its fair share.
And she was wriggling against him, her little pants and sighs damn near undoing him. Making him want to be inside her.
She was the one who was supposed to be hot and bothered, but he was the one feeling like he was going to burst if he didn’t get touched, sucked, or fucked.
Shit.
He pulled his teeth from her flesh and lapped the wound with his tongue until the bleeding stopped.
She was digging her nails into his back and squeezing his thighs tightly between her knees.
“Nixon,” she whispered.
Oh, Lord, here we go.
He braced himself for the kind letdown—the pat on the head before she went home to relieve Christina of babysitting duty.
“What’s wrong?” he asked anyway, though he wasn’t convinced he really wanted to know.
She sucked in a breath and curled her fingers into his lower back. She lashed her tongue along the edge of his bottom lip and pulled it between her teeth. “Something—something’s happening.”
“Oh?” That was all he could say. Her tongue was in his mouth, and he couldn’t move his enough to talk.
He didn’t really want to talk, anyway. She was a nice kisser, and he was very much enjoying his first time being devoured by a werewolf.
“Y-you’re wearing too many clothes.” She scratched over the elastic of his boxer shorts and he chuckled, in spite of where her tongue was again.
He was wearing less than her, and the shorts weren’t even doing that great a job of hiding anything. His cock poked through the flap, and she bumped him every time she writhed.
“You’re wearing more than I am.”
She knelt up and eliminated that particular problem. She may have been shy before and not wanting to show herself to him, but she moved then like she didn’t have a choice—as if she’d been compelled to strip.
He sat entranced, watching her garments fly over the bedside and letting her yank his boxers down to the knees.
Reflexively, he grabbed them there. She couldn’t pull them farther without her seeing what else was beneath the covers. Or rather, what wasn’t there.
She snarled at him as if he were some asshole who’d looked at her kids the wrong way and he pulled his hands back.
She yanked his boxers the rest of the way down, paying no heed at all to his legs, or if she did, he certainly couldn’t tell.
She was on him in a flash, straddling him, breathing through clenched teeth.
“You don’t have to fuck me,” she rasped. “Just put the tip in. The mania should stop after that.”
“Uh huh. If you believe that, then I’ve got a bridge to sell ya, honey.”
He put the tip in, all right. A little more than that, too, but that was all on Esther.
Nixon tried to behave, but that was surprisingly hard to do when his mate called the shots.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Esther had never been the kind of woman who’d ask for sex, but as she straddled a wild-eyed Nixon and struggled to not bloody up his chest, she realized that she’d never wanted it so much before.
The first time she’d been bitten, her body had done all the right things, or so she thought. Her wolf had been freed and her body primed for coupling, but that hadn’t felt specific to Michael.
She’d been horny, but figured anyone could have relieved her of that condition.
Nixon’s bite made her feel like only he could fix her. Anyone else would be unwelcome, and would likely fail to get close. With the way she was feeling, she’d claw up anyone else who’d try to get near her.
“Not used to being on top,” she whispered.
“Mmm. From my perspective, you seem to be doing just fine, honey.”
Her toes curled as she rode him up and down, savoring every thick inch of him and trying to milk out what was hers. At least, that was what she thought she was doing. So much of what she was doing was instinctive on the part of her inner wolf, who was more energized and enlivened than Esther could recall.
But of course she is. She’s with her mate now.
Esther was behaving exactly the way female wolves should have when they’d been bitten by their rightful mates, and she’d forgotten the lore. Giving one’s self to the right mate was like breathing. Easy and automatic.
“Do I still reek? Oh, fuck.” He’d swiveled his hips and hit some spot inside her that ignited a cascade of pleasurable sparks throughout her core. They made her lungs constrict and legs noodle-limp, but she wasn’t ready to get off. Not until she’d been fulfilled, for a change.
“You’re smellin’ better and better.” He sat up a bit and raked his teeth gently over one of her nipples. “Good enough to eat.”
“Do I really?”
“Mm-hmm. Kind of reminds me of the scent of a home-cooked meal after I’ve been away for too damn long and have gone for too long without comfort. Been a long time since I’ve smelled it.”
“And hopefully you won’t be smelling it on anyone else.”
He chuckled and pressed his hands to her waist, guiding her increasingly erratic riding. She may have been a disordered mess, but he had everything under control.
At least one of us does.
Her body was going limp and weak, and yet each thrust of him into her stoked her resolve—kept her trying to last, though she knew she couldn’t. The wolf inside her was too excited to have finally come home, and Esther had never felt so good—so wanted.
She wondered briefly if having an orgasm just from being happy were possible, but only briefly, because she had one then by entirely physical means.
Obviously Nixon couldn’t tell because he kept thrusting, and she kept screaming wordlessly with her face pressed to the crook of his neck and her pussy clenching rhythmically around him.
“You all right?” He stopped thrusting.
She didn’t want him to stop. She needed for him to finish—to complete the ritual, because that was what it was. As much as she was giving to him a promise of partnership and trust, he was giving to her the assurance that she would be his one and only.
Not one of many.
She had no delusions that Michael hadn’t slept around, but at least she knew he wasn’t really her mate. He was just the man he’d been given to, and whom had only made two good things in his entire life.
“I’m fine,” she whispered against Nixon’s neck, but perhaps her voice held too much of a catch, too much moisture.
He sat up a bit and held her back, looking into her face as if she were some archeological specimen he needed to study.
She didn’t mind.
She smiled. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“Limp. Happy.”
“As long as they’re good tears—”
“They are.” She pressed him back down. Put her face back to his neck and inhaled his earthy recent.
His hips started working again, and she just lay there grinning, enjoying pleasurable laziness—letting him take control even with her on top, because she liked what he did to her.
Liking sex was so much easier when she could trust the man giving it.
He threaded his fingers through the back of her hair and held her head still as his hips moved faster, his cock surged deeper, and his chest rumbled with a growl.
He was going to have to let the wolf out. The claiming sex usually worked the other way around.
“Go ahead,” she whispered.
And he did. Pulsing, throbbing heat inside her, and his strong hands and arms gripping and holding her, and the alpha wolf magic simmered under the surface, heating her skin and forcing her to squirm closer to him. She had to.
It was binding them together completely, as if they’d needed the reminder of where they should have been.
He lay very still beneath her, his breathing ragged and skin slick with sweat. His beast wanted out. She could tell, because the part of her that was wolf reached out to the compatible part of him. They were mates in every possible way, and her wolf wanted to run with his.
“You—want to go outside?”
She heard his gulp, and the hesitance in his exhalation.
“We have some time to run before dawn,” she said. “Maybe you could show me the terrain. I haven’t scouted the area yet.”
He swallowed again. “You sure?”
“It’s either that or you roll off the bed and say see you later, right? I don’t particularly want to be abandoned in your bed. I don’t want you to leave me alone. Not yet.”
He raked his chin across the top of her head idly, and then nodded. “Okay, honey. Let’s go run.”
She eased off of him, watched him slide to the edge of the bed and put his legs over the side.
He let out a long breath and looked over his shoulder at her. “Doesn’t make sense to put on the prosthesis. I’m gonna shift here so you don’t have to watch me hobble down the hall.”
“Hobble if you have to, Nixon. Don’t worry about what you look like when you’re showing me how you get around. I need to see so I know when you need help and when you don’t.”
“Smart lady,” he whispered again her cheek, and then kissed her. “Gonna shift here. Get the door open?”
“Okay.”
She went on ahead, casting one more glance over her shoulder at Nixon as he transformed at the bedside.
He was a shaggy-haired wolf with piercing amber eyes and a confident gait, even on three legs.
He nudged the backs of her legs with his nose and got her moving to the door.
“Okay.” She laughed. “I had to look. You can’t blame me for looking. A lady only gets one first look at her mate wearing fur.”
He gave her another nudge.
“All right. I swear, you’re even more impatient than Kevin.”
She stepped outside into the cool, pre-dawn light, looked around for witnesses, and then closed the house’s front door.
Nixon padded on ahead toward the path, his compensated, three-legged run hypnotic to watch. He expelled a quiet barking sound that was easy enough to translate: Shift, woman.
“Fine. Let’s run, then.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Esther poked some lettuce back into her sandwich and raised her gaze to the wolf beside her at the deli table. “Be honest about the leg. You forget who you’re talking to.”
Nixon grumbled in his typically cheerful way.
She had never pictured herself in the role of nagging wife, but sometimes, he needed her to be a nag. She’d learned that over the course of three months living with him, and loving him.
She was getting better at being assertive about his health and the needs of the children, but still, the fear of punishment remained that one day she’d say too much and in the wrong tone, and she’d be put in her place.
She had to keep reminding herself that she was in Norseton, and around people who loved her—people who didn’t want to hurt each other. Ashley kept telling her that she’d need time to really believe that was her new reality, and Esther was content in being well along the learning curve for the new pack’s style.
Nixon folded his arms over his chest and ground his teeth. He looked from Esther to Adam, and let his lips sputter. “Okay. The leg hurts a little, but there’s nothin’ to be done about the pain for the time being. There’s no therapeutic solution right now except to wait until the bone stops extending.”
Nixon’s leg wasn’t exactly growing back, but he’d gained some shin length during the last few full moon shifts. The best the doctor could speculate was that Nixon taking a mate who had some innate power of her own—even if she couldn’t tap into it the way Anton might have be
en able to—had prompted a healing spurt. Nixon’s leg would never be whole again, but what was left would be stronger.
In theory. He was a medical mystery, but most wolves were.
“I put the new prosthesis order on hold for a little while. Doesn’t make sense to get them to build the thing if the component specs are off. I’ll get on for the time being with what I’ve got.”
“You don’t have to wear the old prosthesis if it’s bothering you.”
He scoffed. “Honey, when I’m at the mansion sitting behind a computer, I don’t wear it. Office has a door and its own bathroom. I can hobble in peace.”
“You never let me see you hobble.”
He shrugged and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I’ll get out my crutches and hobble for you later, if you’d like.”
Adam finished the end of his sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. “I won’t bring up your leg again for six weeks, then, but don’t think I’m gonna let the subject drop.”
Nixon snorted. “Oh, I’d never think that. My own momma probably doesn’t care as much.”
“Mine certainly cares,” Esther said.
“Your mother only cares because I knocked you up,” he said. “And it’s not me she cares about, per se, but the father of the fetus.”
Esther wrapped up the remnants of her sub and tucked the packet into her purse for later. Her appetite came in fits and starts. She tended to carry food around to eat when she could. At first, she’d refuse most invitations from the ladies in the pack when they invited her out for lunch on school days, but Nixon had urged her to go—to connect. She’d needed to get knitted into Norseton in the same way she was knitting her little household of four together. The ladies were good friends to her, and so smart. Devious, even.
Anyone else might have thought Esther’s drive to get the rest of her family out of the Jersey pack to be a waste of energy, but the Norseton ladies were about solutions, not judgment.
They couldn’t change the system entirely—not yet—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t swing some elbows around to make things happen.
Adam snorted and stood with his tray. “I’m sure my sister-in-law cares about you as a person very much. You’ll find out as soon as she gets here.”