She was panting heavily. He wished the lights were on. Although he couldn’t see the color differentiation in her cheeks, he’d bet almost anything that her face was flushed and pink. Her nipples were still standing at attention, and her breasts swayed with every breath she took. Her waist curved inward, and her hips flared out. She was the perfect picture of a sensual, sated woman.
She finally opened her eyes, turned her head on the pillow, and met his gaze. “That was—” She shook her head. “There are no words.”
And didn’t he feel ten feet tall. Didn’t matter that his cock was primed to explode or that his balls were full enough to burst.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” What he really wanted to do was shift and run, howling to the world that he’d made Elise climax.
“What about you?”
He frowned. “What about me?”
She pointed to his erection. The damn thing flexed, reaching toward her like a well-trained beast. “That has to hurt.”
It did, but he didn’t want her worrying about that. Not at this stage of their relationship. “I’ll take care of it later.” Once he was sure he could make it to the bathroom without disgracing himself. He was on a hair-trigger right now, and it would only take the slightest movement to set him off.
Elise licked her lips, and Mikhail barely suppressed a groan. “Or I could take care of it for you.”
Surely he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”
She rolled over onto her side and reached for his cock. “I could take care of it for you.” Mikhail wasn’t sure if he’d died and gone to heaven of if he was being roasted in the fires of hell.
He caught her hand before she could touch him. “You don’t have to do this.” He didn’t want her feeling obligated to jerk him off.
“You don’t want me to?” There was no mistaking the hurt in her voice.
“Baby, I want it more than I want my next breath,” he assured her. Her smile brightened the entire room, and he momentarily forgot when he meant to say. When she tried to pull her hand from his grip, he remembered. “I don’t want you to think you have to do this.”
She tugged again, and this time he released her. “I want to.”
Mikhail gave up the fight. Whether it was the right decision or not really didn’t matter. It was what Elise wanted. What she needed.
He almost snorted aloud. Yeah, he was a giver, all right. It wasn’t as though he thought he might die if she didn’t touch him soon. Not at all.
“I’m not going to last,” he warned her. “I’m wound too tight.” That didn’t discourage her at all. If anything, it seemed to please her.
Elise wrapped her hand around his shaft. Mikhail sucked in a breath at the sensation of her soft hand closing around his hardness. The scent of her arousal grew stronger, so he knew she was enjoying herself.
That was it for him. She stroked once, and he began to come. She seemed surprised but didn’t release him. She kept working his dick while he emptied himself onto his stomach. The base of his cock swelled and his balls pulled up tight.
He gripped the sheets tight to keep from dragging Elise into his arms and rolling her beneath him. The way he was feeling right now, he figured it would take at least three orgasms for him to feel remotely sated.
She tightened her grip and squeezed and set him off again. He tilted his head back and gritted his teeth to keep from howling. Nothing in his life had ever felt as good as having Elise touch him. He might not survive it when they finally had sex if her hand felt this damn amazing. But he damn sure wanted to try.
Chapter Fourteen
Elise couldn’t sleep. Not with Mikhail breathing heavily beside her. She hadn’t slept with a man since Pierre, and as much as she trusted Mikhail, she couldn’t seem to let her guard down that far. It was ridiculous considering what they’d done only an hour before.
She curled her fingers into her palm, as if she could somehow hold on to the heat and the power of the man. His shaft had pulsed against her skin, hot and vibrant. Mikhail was so quintessentially male. They hadn’t yet taken the final step in making love, but they’d touched one another in the most intimate of ways.
The way he’d looked when he came—head arched back, muscles taut, skin covered in a sheen of perspiration—made her sweat just thinking about it. He’d come more than once. She wasn’t sure how many times exactly. It had just seemed to go on and on.
When he’d finally finished, he’d kissed her senseless, rolled out of bed, and padded naked to her bathroom to clean up. When he’d returned, she’d hurried off to the bathroom to do the same.
That was—she glanced at the clock on her nightstand—an hour and a half ago now. Mikhail had dozed almost immediately, but she hadn’t been able to. And she’d tried.
She couldn’t forget the things he’d done to her. Mikhail was a series of firsts with her. She’d never had a man make a place for himself between her thighs and kiss and lick and suck her to orgasm. She hugged the delicious memory close.
Even now, she could feel the tension building inside her once again. The wanting. The need. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, and it frightened her. It gave Mikhail way too much power over her.
But if she wasn’t mistaken, she seemed to have a similar power over him. Maybe it wasn’t all one sided.
She sighed and tried to put it all out of her mind and simply enjoy the moment. She rested her head on Mikhail’s shoulder with one hand on his stomach. He’d tugged one of her thighs across his so she was partially covering him.
Outside, the wind gusted, sending a brush of snow against the window. It was a cold night, so different from the sultry evenings in Louisiana. The blankets were on the floor where Mikhail had kicked them earlier, and in spite of her werewolf heritage and the heat rolling off Mikhail’s body, she was chilly.
She started to ease away from Mikhail, but he tightened his arm around her and his eyes popped open. “Everything okay?” The deep timbre of his voice caressed her.
“I was going to get the blankets.” She tried to move away once again, but Mikhail dropped a quick kiss on her lips, rolled out of bed, and gathered the covers. With patience she didn’t think many men had, he shook them out one by one and spread them over her. He even made sure they were tucked in at the end.
“Sorry about that,” he told her as he rejoined her. “I should have done that before I dozed off.” He tugged her back into his arms and rubbed her back and shoulders.
“That’s okay.”
“You didn’t sleep.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered him all the same. “No.”
“Is it memories, what we did earlier, or is it having me here?” His blunt questions were no longer quite as shocking to her. She was coming to know Mikhail. More than that, she was coming to trust him.
They’d known one another for months, but in a more superficial way. In that time, she’d had the opportunity to assess his character. She knew he was straightforward. He wasn’t looking to gain or keep power, or to find some flaw in her he could expose.
“Elise?”
She thought about the times her ex had woken her in the middle of the night to take what he considered his right, of the terror and the pain. Her breath caught in her throat, and she bolted upright, the memories overwhelming.
“Elise.” Mikhail scrambled up to kneel beside her. “Look at me, baby. He can’t hurt you now. Nothing can hurt you.” His green eyes were fierce in the dark. “I’ll kill anyone or anything that tries.”
Strangely enough, Mikhail’s brutal promise filled with violence helped her to relax. Because for once, the violence wasn’t a threat against her, rather a promise to protect her.
He began chafing her upper arms and shoulders. “You’re safe,” he told her. “You’re always safe with me.”
“I’m okay.” It was difficult to force the words past her throat, but she managed. She took a deep breath and then another. “I’m okay,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.” Once aga
in, she was ruining a special moment between them, allowing the past to taint it.
“You don’t ever apologize for what you feel.” Mikhail’s fury pulsed like a dark, living thing. She thought she saw his fangs lengthen and his face start to change before he managed to pull his anger and contain his wolf. “I just wish you hadn’t had to live through that. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be between mates.”
“I never loved him. Never wanted him.” She felt stronger saying the words aloud. “I think he always knew that.”
“The bastard should never have mated with you if you didn’t want him.” Mikhail sat in the center of her bed and pulled her into his lap. He grabbed the top cover and wound it around her. “So you won’t get cold,” he gruffly informed her.
Elise was at a loss. It was an understood agreement that she never talked about her past. She wondered now if that had been the wrong approach, if it had simply allowed the pain to fester, to give Pierre control over her life long after his death.
“It wasn’t my fault.” She said the words slowly, as if trying them out for the first time. She’d thought them many times but had never spoken them aloud.
“Jesus, Elise. Of course it wasn’t your fault. Pierre LaForge was a bastard. I don’t care if he was your mate or the father of your children, the world is better off with him gone.”
“Yes, it is.” She couldn’t deny that. The lives of the entire Salvation Pack had been improved by Pierre’s death. They no longer had to fear him or the Louisiana Pack attacking. She shuddered to think what Pierre might do if he were still alive and knew he had grandsons.
Yes, the man had needed to die. Her pain stemmed from the fact that one of her sons had been forced to kill their father, even though it had seemed inevitable.
He buried his face in her hair. “If he were still alive, I’d hunt him down and wipe him from the face of the earth. I need you to know that.”
Strangely enough, she knew he was telling her the truth.
“You were meant to be mine,” Mikhail continued. “You’re precious and special and deserve to be happy.”
A new tension thrummed through Elise. “Pierre used to say that. That I was his.”
Mikhail reared back. “You don’t think—”
“No,” she interrupted him before he could finish the thought. “I know you’re nothing like him, but it still scares me.” Being this honest, this direct with Mikhail was one of the most terrifying things she’d ever done.
In her heart, she knew he wouldn’t hurt her physically, but her body still responded to years of conditioning. Her heart was racing, and she was sweating. She was ready to shift and run at any time.
She forced herself to take a deep breath and relax. It would never come to that. Never be necessary. Mikhail would leave before he’d hurt her. She truly believed that, otherwise she would never have been able to open up sexually to him.
Another part of her was afraid he would leave. That he’d decide she was just too neurotic, too much trouble to deal with. After all, what man wanted a woman who freaked out over certain words or a particular touch? There was no denying she came with a lot of baggage.
Mikhail tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Some of it had come loose from her braid and straggled across her cheek. She touched his face, letting her fingers gently caress him. “I know you’re nothing like him.” It was important to her that he understood that. “The past still has a hold on me. I wish it didn’t, but it does.”
“Have you ever really talked about it before?” Mikhail pulled the tail of her braid forward, gently worked the elastic off the end, and tossed it onto the nightstand.
Elise shook her head. “No. It’s not something I want to discuss with my children.” She pushed through the familiar feeling of shame. “I also didn’t really want anyone to know how bad things were.”
Mikhail slowly unwound her hair from the braid, combing his fingers through the thick mass. He didn’t stop until he was done. He captured fistfuls of her hair and buried his face in it. “I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I laid eyes on you.” He raised his head and smiled down at her. “You were wearing it in a bun at the back of your head. It took every ounce of discipline I had to keep from walking to you, pulling out the pins, and letting it cascade over your shoulders.”
He let his fingers run through the long tresses. “I don’t think your sons would have appreciated that.”
She was as surprised by her smile as she was by his confession. “No, I don’t think they would have appreciated it. I probably wouldn’t have, either.”
“You have beautiful hair.” His big body shuddered as he feathered a hank of it across his chest. She’d never thought of her hair as being sensual. Yet having Mikhail touch it was bringing her pleasure, and it was obvious how much he was enjoying himself.
“I like it when you touch it.” She licked her lips and tried to find the right words to explain. “The bad memories are still there. But I want to replace them with good ones. Will you do that for me?”
“Anything.” Mikhail kissed her forehead and her lips before sliding his fingers across her scalp in a sensual caress. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
For the first time in her life, Elise understood she had great power. It would be all too easy to abuse Mikhail’s kindness and allow him to do all the giving. She couldn’t let that happen.
If she wanted a true adult relationship, a partnership of sorts, she had to be an equal in all ways. Mating wasn’t something she was ready to consider. She had too many emotional scars. The physical ones had healed over the years, but the echoes of them still remained.
“You’re a brave woman,” Mikhail told her. “I know you don’t see yourself that way, but you are. You helped your sons become the men they are, in spite of their abusive father. They owe their happy relationships to you. From what I’ve heard, you helped other women in your former pack as well, as much as you could.”
“I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough.”
“You did more than most. More than most in your pack did. And when you discovered your sons were in danger, you left your home and came here to protect them, even knowing what your mate would do to you when he found out.”
“How do you know that?” Elise was shocked to discover Mikhail knew more about her past than she’d thought he did.
“I’ve made it my business to learn as much about you as I can.” He sighed and rested his chin on the top of her head. She leaned her cheek against his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin and the beat of his heart. “The others don’t need much encouragement to talk about you. They admire you.”
That was a revelation. “They do? Surely you’re mistaken.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m not. They appreciate how brave you are, even if you don’t. They don’t speak of the past because they don’t want to upset you.”
She knew that. “I wanted a clean slate when I moved here.”
“I know.” Mikhail lifted her off his lap and set her back on the bed. The sheets were cooler after the warmth of his lap. Although he was aroused, he made no sexual moves. Instead, he tucked the covers over her. “But you didn’t erase the past. Instead, you made it bigger. The monster in the closet.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Her voice grew stronger. “I did what I thought best.” He had no right to judge her choices.
“I know you did.” That easily, he took her self-righteous anger away. “You did what you had to do in order to survive and move forward. But, Elise”—Mikhail rolled off the bed, reached for his jeans, and pulled them on—“now that you’re stronger, it’s time to take the next step and deal with the past so you can truly embrace a future.”
“With you.” She knew that was what he wanted.
He pulled on his shirt and raked his fingers through his hair. She loved the way the silky strands fell to his shoulders. “Yes, with me. That’s what I want. I’m willing to wait and to work through whatever problems
arise. Are you?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? She was the one who wanted to keep their budding relationship a secret.
“I’m not trying to pressure you, baby.” He sat on the mattress beside her and cupped her chin in his hand.
“You’re not?” Because it really felt like she was on a rocket flying totally out of control.
He shook his head. “No, I’m not. I’m just making sure you know where I stand.” He kissed her then, and this one was all about claiming instead of comfort. He took her mouth, using his tongue to remind her of what they’d shared, of the things they’d done. It was blatantly sexual, and when it was finished, Elise was so hot she wanted to kick the covers away.
She also wanted Mikhail to stay, but she knew she wouldn’t stop him from leaving. She needed time to think, and whether he knew it or not, he did, too. He might believe he understood what being with her meant, but she wasn’t as certain.
“The past will always have a hold on me in some shape or form.” She shook her head when he started to protest. “It might not have as much of a grasp as it once did, but it will always be there. I won’t know when some action or word might set me off. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to make love with you. And if that happens, I’m not sure if I want to even consider mating again. Can you accept that?” She didn’t want to hurt Mikhail. Better he walk away now if he wasn’t prepared for what might happen.
He stood and peered down at her. “I accept it. You’re worth the risk. What we might have together is worth the risk. I accept your past. It’s made you the woman you are today. I have faith you can move forward and leave it behind, but only if you want to.”
Mikhail walked to the door and paused. “Get some sleep and try not to worry so much. One day at a time, Elise.”
“Will I see you later?”
“Do you want to?” he countered.
“Yes.” That much she was sure of.
“Then you’ll definitely be seeing me later.”
Then he was gone. She listened hard but caught only the slightest click of her back door closing. Then she was alone.
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