It was gone. All of it.
In all her planning for her future, the scenario involving her money just… disappearing… had never come up.
All the lingering effects of the supersized margarita she’d consumed at the homecoming mum making party dissipated in the face of her current crisis. She paced in the great room, trying not to panic.
There was one thing for certain– any plan would require her return to Dallas.
The bank where she kept her numbered account was in Dallas.
Her backup banking information was in Dallas.
Her biometric passcode could only be validated in Dallas.
However…
Lola was smart enough to know that stealing her money was the best way to get her to return to Dallas. It had long been rumored there were certain groups who were not allowed in shifter towns, specifically, representatives of Pantheon, the same company that had supported her for ten years and managed the concubine system.
The kidnapping attempt of a few nights before was not random as she’d first thought. She sighed when she remembered Phelan had tried to tell her as much, but she didn’t want to hear it. Now, it was obvious she was a target. The person or persons who wanted her so badly were also probably in Dallas. That’s where the disappearances had all happened.
Maybe I should tell Phelan…
But what could Phelan do, really? Keep her in Perdition? He wanted to mate with her, but she wasn’t ready for that. Not now, and probably not ever.
How would she support herself in this town? Wait tables with Twyla? Make homecoming mums for pin money?
Clearly, she had to get back to Dallas. The only complication was doing it in such a way that Phelan didn’t know what she was up to. He would surely try to dissuade her, or worse, want to go with her. And of course, she’d have to do it quietly, so she didn’t alert whoever wanted her or her presence.
She took a mental inventory of what she would need to head back to Dallas. After many years in foster care, Lola was in the habit of traveling light. Everything she needed would fit in her hobo bag. It was going to be regrettable to leave the sewing machine behind, but obviously there was nothing she could do about it.
And it wouldn’t be the only thing she’d regret leaving behind.
Part of her thought about asking Phelan to go with her. To tell him about the newest developments in the case, which he probably didn’t know about. But then she would have to admit Dennis had once again accosted her. Phelan would want to exact revenge and give Dennis a beat-down for daring to talk to his mate/fiancé again. And this would get Phelan banished.
And she wasn’t sure she wanted him to know what kind of money she had. She wasn’t ready to share all her secrets. She shoved that thought back. There was nothing she could do about it. She would leave earlier than Dennis would expect in order to avoid being recaptured. She would leave during the homecoming dance, when no one would expect it.
Leave the dance, hot foot it to Dallas overnight, be there in the morning when the bank opened. Get her money squared away, get the hell out of there. Anything she wanted to hold onto she could send for later. She could move to any number of cities. Dallas wasn’t the only place worth living in, and she had enough saved to start over in another city.
She would figure out the details in the morning.
It was all going to work out.
It had to.
Chapter 40
Phelan approached the cabin on shaky legs. It had been years since he’d done a pack run, and it had been great to stretch his legs and run with people he’d known his whole life, but he had a thought in the back of his mind that wouldn’t go away.
She is fixing to leave me.
Even though Lola had encouraged him to go on his pack run, Phelan knew, somehow, Lola wasn’t on board with the idea of them mating. Not at all. What was more, she was holding back from having an honest discussion with him about her objections to their union, and he didn’t know how to get her to open up. These thoughts whirled in his mind to the point that he drove himself harder than he ever had, running to the point of physical exhaustion as a way to work through the problem. At some point during the run, he had broken away from the pack. Now he found himself at the cabin, his wolf teetering on the edge of exhaustion. It would be easy for her to send him on his way, then use that as a distraction to leave him.
He shifted from wolf to man a few yards from the cabin. The house was dark, and dread gathered in the pit of his stomach.
Had she left him already?
He dragged himself to the front door and scanned his thumbprint to let himself in. He knew right away something was off. The air inside the cabin was too still. He lifted his head and sniffed the air for Lola.
He found her scent but there was something different about it. Underneath the smell of coconut oil and her own musk lurked the pungent scent of fear. He couldn’t stop the growl emanating from the back of his throat.
His mate was afraid.
"Lola," he called out, his heart thumping hard in his chest in a near panic. His voice sounded harsh and ragged to his own ears.
No answer.
Have to find her. Have to protect her.
He scanned around the cabin. The place was tiny and he quickly took it all in. She was nowhere in the great room or the kitchen. Then he noticed a faint light coming from the back of the cabin and realized she was in the seldom-used back room where his parents had slept when the cabin was the family home. A small wedge of light peeked from the bottom of the shut door.
He nudged open the door. She sat on the floor, cross-legged, and he went light-headed with relief.
She hadn’t left him.
Boxes storing mementos he presumed his mother could not part with were stacked around her. The overhead light had not worked for some time, and he hadn’t gotten around to figuring out what the problem was. She was using a small desk lamp with a weak bulb. She had a scrapbook on her lap and was flipping through its pages.
“I somehow didn’t think your mom was the scrapbooking type,” she said, looking him up and down with bright, glassy eyes. His unclothed state didn’t seem to bother her, and her eyes barely registered a flicker of interest.
"Lola. What's wrong?" he asked, squatting on his haunches a few inches away from her.
"Nothing," she said, but he knew she was lying. Her eyes were dark and sad, and she avoided looking him straight in the eyes. “Auntie dropped me off, and I guess I got bored waiting for you. Sorry... I shouldn’t have gone through your things.”
She cast her eyes down, got to her feet, and set the scrapbook on top of one of the boxes. When she went to walk around him, he stood quickly, towering over her small figure. She flinched, but he didn’t think it was because she feared him.
"I don’t care if you look at my things, Lola,” he said, swallowing the lump of emotion rising in his throat. “I belong to you, Lola. What’s mine is yours.”
Her gaze skittered over his face, and she swayed a bit on her feet. Then her brows knit together in a mix of confusion and pain. She broke the eye contact and tried again to walk past him, but he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. He meant to only touch her arm, but instead, he pulled her into his embrace. She didn’t resist, but she also didn’t melt into him the way she usually did when he touched her.
"I know something's wrong. If you tell me, I can help you." He was desperate to get through to her. Her cheek rested against his chest, and he stroked her face with his thumb. He gently tilted her face up with his hand, making her look into his eyes. “Please tell me, baby.”
She shook her head in denial, her mouth beginning to form another lie, and his heart broke a little. He wished to god she could trust him.
He shouldn’t press her when she was obviously distressed. He should put her down, take a shower to wash away the sweat that sheened his skin after the pack run. But he couldn’t let go of the thought that if he left her alone, she would leave him.
"I'm okay
." She looked away from him as she voiced her lie. Her voice was soft and had a slippery quality to it. She burrowed her nose into his chest again, inhaling deeply of his scent. "There's nothing wrong. I'm glad you’re home."
Phelan’s heart stuttered over her use of the word “home.” She was home, whether she realized it or not. She was home, and he was home, as long as they were together. Aside from her usual scents, and the fading scent of her fear, he detected citrus and alcohol.
She had moved on from sniffing him to tracing his jawline in a jerky pattern. It took him a moment to figure out she was tracing the freckles on the side of his face she said looked like the Big Dipper. Maybe she was even connecting the dots... or connecting the freckles. He grabbed her hand and kissed her palm.
"Sweetheart, have you been drinking?" he asked, putting two and two together.
"Yeah," she said. "Jasmine was serving margaritas big enough to swim in. It only took one to make me mouthy and belligerent.”
He frowned, set her away from him, and looked into her eyes. She swayed a little, so maybe not acutely drunk. Just kind of... residually drunk. Cute and drunk. "What did you just say?"
"Twyla said it was because of the mating impulse," she mumbled. She stuck her nose further into his chest and sniffed him again. "You smell sooooo good."
She wasn't exactly making sense right now, and therefore, he couldn’t think of an appropriate response.
“Did you have fun?” he asked her. He picked her up and settled them both on the leather sectional. His mother would kill him if she knew he had planted his naked, sweaty ass on the leather sectional, but it couldn’t be helped. He kept her snuggled into his chest and stroked her back.
“It was pretty good. Fun, I guess. I liked the snacks,” she stated simply. She started licking the side of his neck. Licking and sniffing, and unintentionally turning him on. He had to stay focused.
"Baby, please tell me what's wrong," he said, trying not to throw his head back to let her have her wicked way with him.
“You know, I can tell what you’re feeling at times,” she said.
He went very still for exactly one second, then resumed stroking her. This was news indeed.
“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to sound casual and disinterested, instead of curious, and horny.
She raised a hand to his chest and began tracing circles there, mere centimeters from the flat disc of one of his nipple. He tensed. She shrugged.
“I dunno. I have an idea of what you’re feeling. Sometimes.”
He sat there with no idea how to respond to that, but he did wonder what she thought he was feeling at the moment.
“Right now, I’d say you feel... confused,” she said. “Also, horny.” She shifted on his lap, and some soft part of her body grazed his hardening cock.
Yep, that was about right. On both counts.
“I’m confused that you’re telling me nothing’s wrong. It seems pretty obvious that something’s very wrong,” he told her. “Sweetheart, if you have a problem, then I have a problem.”
Her fingers drifted to one of his nipples and she drew circles around it. He sucked in a harsh breath and tensed. She frowned like she hadn’t noticed.
“I might have a problem,” she admitted. “But I can’t do anything about it tonight.”
The scent of fear was gone. Did he make her feel safe? He kept touching her, wanting to give her more of what was making her fear recede.
“Tell me what it is, and I’ll help you with it,” he coaxed.
She frowned again. “We—I can’t do anything about it tonight.”
Lola had said “we.”
Lola and Phelan.
It was probably the first time she’d referred to them as “we.” Even though she had changed her phrasing, her first impulse was to say “we,” and he had a surge of pure elation.
Once again, he threw caution to the wind with his next words.
“Lola, I love you,” he declared, pulling her into a snug embrace.
“I know,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I could tell when we drove into town with your parents.”
He peppered kisses all over her face, her neck. He planted a long, lingering kiss on her lips. Her body bowed toward him, she exposed her neck to him, and pressed her body against his. He went instantly hard. She gasped when he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, then broke the kiss.
She stood and her hands went to the top of her pants. His eyes locked on as her long, graceful fingers slid around, hooking into the leggings. He watched as she quickly peeled off her leggings, leaving her lower body bare.
Before he could enjoy the view, she moved back on his lap and impaled herself on his length.
She was as hot as a furnace.
So hot, she just about scorched him.
So hot, he felt as if he was drowning in her heat.
They hissed together at the contact. Their eyes met, and he saw passion and raw emotion reflected in hers. In an instant, her heat consumed him inside and out. Her body fit his like they were made for each other. Because they were.
He held her hips and rolled his pelvis against hers, sliding in and out of her wetness. She was undulating her hips as best she could under his firm grip. Her eyes began to drift closed.
“Look at me, baby,” he ordered her, his voice dark and raspy. “You started this. You don’t get to tune out now.”
He pushed one hand under her t-shirt, then under the edge of her bra. His fingers closed over her breasts. He probed and squeezed the plump globes, then tweaked a taut nipple. She gasped, her eyes popped open, dark and bottomless and glazed with passion.
“I love you,” he gritted out between clenched teeth. “I love this pussy. I love these tits, this ass.”
Her eyes regarded him speculatively. She braced her hands on his shoulders and rocked her hips in time with his. Her lips parted like she was about to say something, but no words came. He moved his hand to the center of her chest and drummed the spot with his fingertips.
“I love this heart,” he told her. “I love your mind. I love you sweet. I love you bitchy. I love you, and I know you want to say it to me.”
Because he knew in that moment, he knew, that part of her was ready to leave, and part of her couldn’t bear it. He didn’t know how he knew, other than fate wanted them together and so fate made it possible for him to understand her emotions.
“Say it,” he growled, pushing her to the edge with his stroking hips. She shook her head, her eyes wide with wonder.
“No.” she said.
“Say it...you know you want to,” Phelan insisted, wondering how she could look at him the way she was now, how she could admit to having an empathic link with him, and still deny what was plain to see. Pressure built in his balls, and his strokes became erratic. He wouldn’t be able to hold off much longer.
“I can’t,” was her feeble reply. Her bottom lip trembled and her nostrils flared.
“Yes, you can,” he told her. “You can and you want to.”
He didn’t know why he was so insistent that she admit her love for him. As if it would make her stay. As if it would make her want to stay.
He angled his hips so that his cock dragged along the roof of her pussy, hitting the hungry place inside her that belonged to him, bringing about the searing pleasure she could only find with him.
“Oh god, oh god.” She released guttural groans of pleasure, and he delighted in the sound of her restraint crumbling. “I’m coming,” she said and a moment later, her orgasm overtook her and she flopped against his chest, panting.
He could hold back no longer and followed her into the orgasmic abyss shortly thereafter, shooting his seed into her as he gripped her body. He sagged back on the couch, taking her with him, and they fought to catch their breaths.
They lay there for long minutes, his mind in a daze. Her body was limp like a ragdoll and she offered no resistance when he picked her up and carried her into the shower with him. They bathed together, her near
ly asleep in his arms. As he dried her off, she swayed on her feet.
“You just had the one margarita, huh?” he teased her. She gave him a wan smile.
He carried her to the loft, wrapped her hair in the scarf she used at night, and put her to bed. He joined her, pulling her naked body into his, her back to his front, one leg draped over hers.
“I love you, baby,” he said simply. “Don’t leave because you’re afraid to love me back.” He kissed the hollow between her neck and shoulder. “Good night.”
She let out a sleepy sigh, wiggled against him to find the best sleeping position.
“I love you too,” she said.
Chapter 41
Lola awoke to the smell of pancakes and bacon. Phelan’s side of the bed was empty, and she rolled over to bury her nose in his pillow, inhaling his scent. She stretched out like a cat, luxuriating in his warm sheets, and smiled wistfully to herself. The memory of Phelan making love to her made her smile to herself. His words to her came back in a heart-swelling rush of heart-stopping emotion.
I love you. I love this heart. I love your mind.
She was Dolores Black, orphan, foster child, failed broodmare to the gods, cocktail waitress. And she, Dolores Black, had the love of Phelan Cermak.
She told him she loved him, too. It was so easy that she didn’t know what had held her back from saying it for so long. Running away from love had been silly and wrong. What had she been so afraid of? She didn’t have to run anymore.
Her money had been stolen, but she had sufficient backup information proving her ownership of her account. It was a problem to be solved for sure, but she was confident in her ability to do so. Leaving Perdition, and Phelan, in a panic, simply wasn’t a sound course of action. After her conversation with Dennis the night before, she had been all set to leave as soon as possible. But then Phelan was there, and was so sweet and loving that she found herself re-thinking her decision to leave. It wasn’t like she had to leave immediately.
The Wolf's Concubine Page 24