by C. J. Cooke
“We all know that you are a badass female and that you could kick our asses any day kitten. It’s just going to take him a while to get his heart where his head is at.” Liam said giving me a squeeze.
“Argh, now why did you have to go and be all logical and shit. Now I feel bad for shouting at him.” We walked for a bit in silence as we wandered through the front door and through the forest which was essentially right on our doorstep. I was just about to ask Liam if he was sure that he knew where he was going when we walking into a small glade in the forest. It was absolutely perfect. The small break in the trees was big enough for us to be able to move around comfortably and set up the picnic blanket but small enough that anyone would struggle to find it if they didn’t know that it was there. The ground was covered in a layer of soft grass and the sunlight dappled through the leaves on the few branches which shaded the glade. There was even a little brook running down one side. It was the kind of place the children’s storybooks would have little fairies living in. I sighed in relief as I felt the stress of the last few days move off my shoulders and sat down on the blanket snuggling up against Liam. It was like we had stepped out of reality and found our own little world. It was nice to take a vacation from life, even if it was going to only be for a few hours.
“How did you find this place?” I asked looking around. “It’s beautiful.”
Liam smiled down at me and ran his cheek across the top of my head. “I think only me and the guys know about it. We found it when we were out on a run one night when we first got here. Now we have this kind of ritual when we go out for a pack run. We run for a couple of hours and then come back here and just chill out before we go back to the school. I think Sykes actually has a stash of spare clothes around here somewhere.”
“Thank you for sharing this with me.” I smile up at him. He was truly beautiful. It felt weird thinking that about a guy but he really was. He had such a boyish smile that when he truly smiled he had a dimple in each cheek which came out. His grey eyes shone looking almost silver and his unruly black hair looking like he had either just got out of bed or spent about half an hour in front of the mirror trying to replicate the look. Now that we shared a room I could confirm that it was definitely the latter. He dipped his head down and kissed me gently on the lips. It would have been a perfect moment, laying here on this blanket kissing my mate, if my stomach hadn’t taken that moment to loudly protest about how hungry it was.
Liam laughed and gave me one of his dimple popping smiles. “Maybe we should feed that beast.” He leaned behind him and dragged the basket onto the picnic blanket in front of us. When he flipped the lid open I swear to god I nearly fell in love with him right then and there. He had two of the most enormous looking turkey subs in there, what looked like a container of fruit salad and two bottles of water. My mouth instantly watered when my eyes fell on the sandwich. It was more like a sandwich on steroids and possibly the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life. Liam laughed again. “Is it weird that I find myself strangely jealous of a sandwich.” He scooped up one and passed it to me. When I bit into it, I moaned in delight. It tasted even better than it looked. Food was fast becoming my favourite thing.
Liam reached forward and pushed my hair behind my ear and I leaned into his hand. There was something about them that when they touched me it made me feel at peace. It was better than any workout I had. It was like the raging storm of magic inside of me finally quieted. I sighed as Liam’s touch calmed the magic and I felt like my heart was about to burst. “How do you do that?” I whispered, looking up into his smiling eyes. “How do you calm my magic like that?”
“My mother and father were fated mates.” He told me. “Before she met him, they all said she was a wild force of nature. Nothing could stop her. Panthers don’t live in packs like the other shifters do but we do form family units. When my father first caught my mother’s scent he knew that she was his fated mate. She never let males onto her territory until she met him. He used to say that his magic was made for her, that it sang to her and calmed the magic raging inside of her. I was made for you Aria. My magic sings for you.”
“So, your father had game?” I joked and Liam barked out a laugh.
“I guess you could say that.”
“It’s a beautiful saying though.” I said running my hand through his hair.
“I miss them so much.” A sad smile took over his face. “Every year I feel like my memories of them are fading away. What if one day I don’t remember them at all?”
“Tell me about them, and I will remember them with you.” I whispered pulling him close to me.
Liam spent the next hour talking about his childhood and everything that he remembered about his childhood. He laughed and after a while we both cried. It was so sad that he had lost so much. Liam gently wiped the tears from my cheeks and smiled at me. “I was lucky to have had what time I had with them. We were happy and they loved me. I wish you could have had that.”
I smiled sadly at him. “It wasn’t meant for me. But I found Alfie and the gym became my happy place. I was lucky that I had him.”
Liam looked at me and I could see the sadness radiating from his eyes. “Let’s talk about something else.” He suggested. Liam laid back on the blanket and I snuggled in against him.
“Don’t you have any lessons that you need to get back to this afternoon?” I asked, getting myself comfortable next to him. Soooo warm. He was like my own personal radiator and I loved it.
“Nah, nothing important. I just have one class this afternoon and it’s one that I’m going to be dropping so really there isn’t any need for me to go anyway.” He said shrugging his shoulders and jiggling my head about in the process.
“I don’t like the idea of you guys cutting some of your classes so that you can babysit me. You realise that out of the four of us, I am the better fighter, right.” I said propping myself up on one elbow so that I could look at his face. I hated that they felt like I needed to be protected. For some reason it was the one thing that was really getting to me. I knew that they were doing it for good reasons but it was bloody annoying all the same.
“I understand how you feel, kitten. To be honest, if we didn’t have this threat looming over us, I think we would have done it anyway. We had heavy schedules because we didn’t think that it would be interfering with anything. But know that we’ve met our mate, can you blame us for wanting to be with her? I’d take any excuse I could to spend more time with you Aria.” He smiled at me and gave another half shrug. He sat up and rolled me to be back beneath him. “Anyway, with more time to spare with my lovely mate, who knows what we could be doing instead?” He leaned down and kissed me gently and I sighed against his lips. I think that I might be about to be seduced into agreeing with this new timetable of theirs. Actually, I was totally okay with that.
Liam ducked his head down and his hands glided up my body, slowly lifting my shirt with them as they moved. He dropped his lips down to me stomach and trailed soft kisses up my stomach and across my lace covered breasts. His hot mouth closed over my nipple and I felt his teeth graze over the lace covering me. My breath hitched at the sensation and I ran my hands through his hair. Liam looked up at me through his thick black lashes and smiled as his tongue flicked out against my hard nipple. I felt my lashes flutter in ecstasy. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me into agreeing with you.”
Liam moved his mouth across to my other breast while his hand trailed up my body and he ran his fingers just under the lace covering me. I couldn’t help but squirm under his touch. I could feel a heavy ache building between my legs and I wanted so much more from him. “Hmmmm whilst having you agreeing me would me nice,” he breathed against me before running his teeth across my nipple again. “I would prefer to just listen to you screaming my name.” He gave me a devilish smirk and kissed his way up my chest and across my neck before biting down gently on the soft skin where my neck met my shoulder. I pulled his shirt
off and glided my hands across his chest. Liam helped me out of my own shirt and slammed his lips against mine. I hooked one leg around his waist and he ground himself against me making me moan his name.
“Wait,” I breathed pulling make a few inches from him. A look of confusion flashed across his eyes and I saw the worry there. “Oh no, no, no,” I said running my fingers over his frown to smooth it out. “I want this sooooo, much but I had a question.”
“You and your questions” he smirked.
I flashed a smile up at him and then immediately felt stupid for what I was about to say. “Are we allowed to do this?” I asked quietly.
“Allowed?” He asked frowning.
“Won’t Kyle and Sykes be upset? The other day in the cafeteria Kyle seemed upset when he thought that we had been together.” This was entering the territory of being just plain awkward.
Liam flashed me a smile and started to pepper kisses across my lips, cheek and nose while he said. “It was only the first time that we had to all be together kitten. To claim each other as mates we needed to be together. From now on we can all do what we want, when we want, if that is just the two of us or all of us together, it doesn’t matter. There is no right or wrong way and definitely not any rules.” He grinned against my skin as he continued delivering me kisses. I hadn’t realised that I had tensed up until I felt myself relax when he had finished speaking.
“This is very new to me. It might just take me a while to wrap my head around it.” I mumbled as Liam kept working his kisses lower down my body, trailing them across my stomach.
“I think I can help you out with that.” He spoke against my skin. The breath from his words feeling cold against the kisses he had trailed around my belly button.
Liam’s hooked his fingers into the top of my leggings and looked up at me waiting. My heart warmed when I realised that he was waiting for my permission to continue. It was so unlike what I had already learnt about this place and it just goes to show that my guys were different. They were better. I nodded and bit my lip as I watch him pull my leggings down my legs taking my underwear with them. Liam knelt between my legs and gently kissed the inside of my thighs. “You are more beautiful than any woman I have ever seen Aria Graves and I will spend an eternity worshipping your beautiful body like the goddess that you are.” Then he lowered his head and devoured me until I was screaming his name just like he wanted.
Panting for breath I pulled him closer to me. “Please, Liam, I need you inside me, I need more.” He chuckled that masculine laugh that in other circumstances would have infuriated me but all I could think about now was having him inside me.
Liam kissed me gently at first and I felt him line up against me. My hips shifted in anticipation. Suddenly he kissed me deeply and fully sheathed himself inside me in one thrust. It was enough to push me into another orgasm and he held himself still hovering over me while he watched me come apart beneath him. Liam slowly began to move inside of me and my leg came up and around his hip. He ran his hand down my thigh and held me tight against him as he circled his hips. I could already feel myself climbing back up that delicious hill towards bliss. Liam kept up his rhythm moving slowly and steady inside me. It was maddening in the best possible way. He kept dropping kisses on my lips between whispering his devotion to me. Neither of us said it yet, it was too soon, but I could see the love shining through his eyes. As I felt myself teetering on the edge of another orgasm Liam picked up his rhythm thrusting harder inside of me before whispering in my ear, “Come with me, my love.” And I felt my heart miss a beat as I cried out his name and came around him. Liam rode me through one orgasm straight into another one before he cried out my name and came deep inside of me.
Liam settled at the side of me, pulling me close against him. He reached across me and pulled the other half of the picnic blanket across us. “Hmmmm, this is definitely a good way to spend the afternoon. I think you may have succeeded in seducing me to agree with you.”
Liam laughed deeply and kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t you get it kitten? We don’t need to seduce you into agreeing with anything because we would do anything for you.”
“I don’t want you to give up what you want in life for me though.”
“We won’t. All we’re doing is dropping a few classes. We can pick them up again next year if we want to.” He shrugged.
“Do you think that we even have that much time? Until the whole world goes to shit?”
“Eloquently put.” He laughed. “With the way that things are going, perhaps not. But when we win, and we will, we will still have a life to come back to. But until then, we have all afternoon together. Now if only we could think of something to do.” He whispered leaning in to kiss me.
Chapter Twenty Four
“Lift up your guard.” Correcting Kyle’s position was quickly becoming the most fun I’d had in ages. “Keep your feet spaced and your weight evenly distributed.” The more slight adjustments I made the more determined he got. The more determined he got, the more he got this cute little smushed up look on his face. Then it went from cute to just plain funny. Now I’m just poking the bear, or the wolf, to see what he was going to do next. Sykes who was his sparring partner had picked up on what I was doing about fifteen minutes ago judging by the slight smirk on his face. “You’re lifting the opposite shoulder …”
“By the gods will you stop it woman!” He exploded at the same time that Sykes exploded into laughter.
“Dude, I didn’t think you would make it past five minutes.” He laughed.
“I had ten minutes, I’m impressed that you managed for as long as you did.” I laughed along with him.
“Wait … you’ve been playing me” he said dropping his fists by his side with a huff of exasperation. “That’s … that’s just mean.” He looked so crushed for a moment that I nearly felt bad. Then he dived for me, I twisted to the side and dodged behind Sykes with a giggle.
“Hey, no hiding behind me, I’m having no part of this.” Sykes laughed spinning round trying to catch me. I darted around to his front with Kyle chasing me and we entered into some strange game of chase between the three of us.
The past two weeks had been weird. Initially everyone had gone quiet and withdrawn. I didn’t share classes with any of the nine who had lost their lives. They were second and third year students so I didn’t know any of them. Plenty of people did though, and there was a strange mixture of the older students mourning and the first years trying to step around them and not kick up any trouble. In the first few days several fights had broken out. The headmaster’s speech had everyone ready for a fight and there was no one to fight but each other. It had however had a positive side effect on my training group. At first everyone had a weird combination of a thirst to train and fight and the guilt of wanting to just get on with life. Now that the school was getting somewhat back to normal people were falling back into everyday routines and my training group had thrown themselves into their training. All of them could now run the full fifteen miles in the morning run. We did conditioning two days a week in combat class with the other group and then fight training for three days a week when we were training alone. I’d even heard that some of the girls were sneaking into the gym on their free days to train even more. I was proud of them. It was a terrible situation but they were throwing themselves into their training to take their mind off the tragedy. Maybe that wasn’t the healthiest behaviour but I suppose they could have chosen much worse. Caleb had snuck in to our training session about five minutes ago. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to scope out the competition or if he was actually considering joining us. Once I’d managed to give the guys the slip I set them back to sparring and jogged over to the side lines to join him.
“Trying to steal some trade secrets?” I laughed.
“I can’t believe how far they’ve come in two weeks, this is incredible.” I couldn’t decide if he sounded upset or impressed.
“Hmmmm, I think it’s more that recent events ha
ve inspired them. Don’t get me wrong they are doing really well but I don’t think we would have reached this level this quickly.” We stood and watched them all spar and even I had to admit it was pretty impressive. Don’t get me wrong they wouldn’t be entering any MMA fights any time soon but when it came to the class competition in one week time we were going to wipe the floor with the other team. “Do you want to join us?” I offered sensing that we weren’t the only ones that were feeling the need to fight.
Caleb raised an eyebrow at me as he regarded me. “I would actually very much like that but I wouldn’t want my group thinking that I was defecting.” He smiled as he spoke to make a joke of it but I could see how that would actually make sense. “Once this competition is over though I would be very interested in joining you in some training if you’re still up for it.”
“You mean after my team wipes the floor with yours?” I goaded him. Caleb had the good grace to laugh. Because we shared the gym during class time I had seen where the other group were up to with their training. They didn’t do any extra sessions and they had assumed that we didn’t either. They actually thought that the strength training that we were doing was all the training that we did. The smack talk coming from their side of the room was actually starting to get a bit hilarious now. I didn’t know how my group were keeping it together once it started. Most of them could barely throw a punch at this stage and they couldn’t work as a team. They each thought that they were better than anyone else and the result was just chaos.