Blood of Eden: A wolf shifter romantic suspense (The Guardians Book 1)

by JJ King

  All of her experience hadn’t prepared her for this moment, for the overwhelming act of consummating a relationship with the man you loved. Her body burned and her mind ignited with pure pleasure until finally he surged deep into her and broke, taking her with him over the edge of sanity.

  ♀♀♀

  The early morning sun beat down on Katherine’s body, warming where it touched. She moaned and turned over onto her back, flinging her arm across the bed.

  The bed groaned and cursed.

  “Sanctuary,” the bed mumbled, “I need refuge from an insatiable beast who’s trying to kill me.”

  The grin that spread over her face made her skin hurt but she didn’t stop. She felt used all over, from head to toe and back again. Her muscles ached as she stretched and, for the first time in her life, she knew exactly what it was to have been thoroughly loved by a wolf. She felt spectacular.

  She rolled over onto her belly, her breasts pressing into the soft mossy ground, and smiled at her equally exhausted lover. “Seeing as who you are, I’ll take your request for sanctuary into consideration.” She pushed up onto her knees and took the sight of his naked body in. She growled. “Then again…”

  He caught her body as she sprang onto him and rolled her over so that he was on top looking down into her face. His hard body pressed heavily into hers and already she could feel him responding to her.

  His good morning kiss lasted twenty minutes and left her more awake than any cup of coffee she’d ever had.

  After they had gathered up their clothes and begrudgingly put them on, Katherine and Quinn alternately walked and ran the distance back to the house. Quinn’s hand would occasionally steal out to grasp hers; sending warm flutters through her stomach.

  The house was still quiet when they arrived.

  “Oh thank God,” Katherine spoke quietly, looking around to make sure they were still alone. “I was sure we’d run into mom or dad and then you’d have some pretty serious explaining to do.” She laughed and reached for two mugs.

  Quinn leaned back against the large kitchen island and took the sight of her in. “Maybe at first, but I’m pretty sure they’d give in and forgive me when I tell them that I plan to spend the rest of my life with their only daughter.”

  The coffee pot that she had been lifting seemed to evaporate from her fingers and it dropped without breaking back into its slot. Her breath refused to work properly, so for a few seconds, she just stood still and didn’t breathe.

  Then a slow, languid smile spread across her features and she abandoned the coffee, walking straight into Quinn’s arms and rested her head on his chest.

  ♀♀♀

  Half an hour later, Katherine lowered her stiff body into a giant tub filled with steaming hot water.

  She sank deep into the bubbles, letting her whole body slide under their protective cover and relived one of her favorite scenes from Pretty Woman. All she needed was a giant Walkman playing Prince and a John’s offer of money for her services for the scene to be perfect.

  There was no John and, thank God, no Walkman playing Prince, but there was this indescribably perfect feeling that her life was going in the right direction and that she had finally found her destiny.

  The heat of the tub turned the soft pink of her skin a deep red but it was an entirely different kind of heat that filled her stomach as she gave in to her rebelling brain and let herself think over Quinn’s comment.

  They had only met each other 8 days ago but it felt like she’d know him all her life. The connection between them was deeper than anything she’d ever experienced, even within her family, even between herself and her mother. He was her soul mate.

  Quinn would make beautiful babies.

  Katherine blew some bubbles off her hand and let herself dream about what those babies would look like. They’d have a little girl, of course. She would have red curly hair and bright blue eyes. Her name would be Scarlett. Not after the silly and trite Ms. O’Hara but rather after the only female G.I. Joe, codenamed Scarlett, a strong and powerful woman who just happened to have long auburn hair like hers. She’d loved those comic books.

  Katherine smiled and lay back in the tub. She turned on the tap for the hot water with her toe and relaxed back into the quickly refilling tub to dream about the future she would have with Quinn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The family was up and about by the time she descended the stairs to scavenge herself up some more food.

  Sylvie was the first to notice Katherine. She greeted her daughter with a hug and a smile that knew almost too much. Katherine smiled back knowing that a mother-daughter conversation would be on the agenda as soon as possible.

  As soon as possible came a lot sooner than Katherine could have expected.

  Pierre was sitting at the large kitchen table eating what looked like cherry Danish. Although she’d just eaten, the thought of the pastry made Katherine’s mouth water.

  She slid across the room and into her father’s large lap as she had when she’d been a little girl. She batted her eyelashes at him and gave him her best smile. “What you got there?”

  Pierre’s laughter echoed off the ceramic surfaces of the room and filled her heart with warmth. He muttered, “Greedy guts,” good-naturedly and broke off a piece for her.

  “Nice to see you haven’t grown up on us completely.” He gave her a big hug then pushed her off his lap gently, making room for Sylvie who, with perfect comedic timing, slid into the still warm spot her daughter had just vacated.

  Sylvie took another sip from her coffee mug and looked at Katherine. “I was thinking that I would run into town in a bit for an ice cream and a bit of shopping. Would you like to come?”

  Subtlety was a woman’s finest power, something that men seemed never to understand. Katherine was a master at the art, however, so she understood her mother’s strategy; a brief scheduled absence from Quinn so they could talk about him behind his well chiseled back.

  She nodded her approval of the plan while she chewed on a grape she’d plucked from a near basket of fruit. She hadn’t felt this ravenous in years. “Well, Quinn has a few things to do on his computer first but I guess we’ll have to find something for him to do after he’s done. Daddy, maybe you could think of something.”

  Pierre was pretty adept at picking up on his wife’s schemes so he was easily following the line of thought here. He smiled and finished off his Danish then stood. “I think I can come up with a few ideas, my love.”

  He placed an endearing kiss on Katherine’s cheek as he walked out of the kitchen and gave a saucy swat on the rear to his wife. She wondered if their children would feel as comfortable with public displays of affection between their parents as she did. It was comforting to see the intimate bond between two people who had loved for so long. She only hoped that she and Quinn would be as happy as her parents.

  Since she was already dressed and made up, Katherine loitered in the kitchen picking through random leftovers while her mother got ready. Quinn still hadn’t poked his head out of his room but she understood the sanctity of the laptop more than most. He had business to attend to and she didn’t see the point in sticking her nose in his private affairs. She trusted him and that was that.

  Still, she had to let him know that she’d be leaving for a few hours with her mother and that Pierre had big plans for their afternoon. She ran up the stairs, eager to give him a long lingering kiss to remember her by while she went shopping.

  The door to his room was closed when she got there. The deep carpet on the floor of the hallway muffled the sound of her approach though she, in no way, tried to sneak up on him unawares. Still, when she heard the sound of his voice, raised in anger, coming from the room she stopped in mid step and froze.

  A wave of embarrassment over unintentional eavesdropping filled her but it was quickly replaced by an overwhelming sense of curiosity. Whoever wrote that curiosity killed the cat obviously didn’t know any wolves.

  The sound of
his voice was dulled by the distance between him and her and by the thickness of the door but she could make out a few words here and there; “woman, stories, and guardian.” She strained her ears but couldn’t make out any more than that.

  His voice lowered considerably for a few minutes while he talked calmly then she heard him say “goodbye” and hang up.

  Since it would be way too conspicuous to knock right away, Katherine waited for two and a half agonizing minutes before she stepped forward and knocked loudly on the door, calling out “Quinn? Can I come in?” in a loud voice.

  The door opened wide revealing his tall form, naked to the waist. There was a light sheen of sweat on his skin from the pushups and pulls up she knew he performed each morning out of respect for routine.

  Katherine let her gaze linger on his abdomen and the curve of the muscles as they rippled under his skin. Her reaction was immediate. Her stomach did a little flip-flop and her eyebrows rose, arched in acknowledgment of her acute sexual interest. She grinned and growled in the base of her throat then stepped forward and wrapped herself around him.

  The kiss was soft, despite her urge to eat him whole, and sensual; full of love and lust and desire. His lips molded to hers and his arms took her even closer to his skin. She could smell the arousal flaring in him and her body responded. She arched her back to get closer to him, knowing that she’d have to get a lot more naked to get as close as she wanted.

  The trip into town was a dim memory, easily forgotten, until she heard her mother’s muffled voice through the half closed bedroom door, calling out to her from the foyer below.

  Katherine stepped back, immediately feeling the loss of Quinn’s touch, and smiled up at him. His face was flushed with blood, as was another part of his anatomy that, presently, stood majestically at attention.

  “Nice of you to stop by.” Quinn’s eyes sparkled with delight and more than a touch of sexual frustration. “I take it you’re stepping out for a while with your mother?”

  “Yup, girl time and all that good stuff. You know what we women folk are like.”

  He reached out and snagged her waist, drawing her in for a quick kiss that gave the promise of more then turned her around and patted her butt in a very patronizing way that she might have hated if he’d actually had the attitude to accompany it.

  She looked back over her shoulder and stuck out her tongue, reviving a favorite childhood tendency that she’d dropped many years ago. “Oh, when you’re done up here you should go find dad. He says he’ll find something for you boys to do while the women are spending the hard earned cash.”

  Katherine turned to go then stopped short of the staircase. She felt a visceral tug inside her chest and looked around again to see him still standing there, his erect manhood slowly deflating, watching her intently.

  “I love you, Quinn.”

  “I love you, too.”

  His words filled her chest with a sense of swelling that she found hard to describe or understand. It was as though a balloon was being pumped full of air inside her in the most wonderful way possible. She walked down the stairs slowly, feeling as if her life was a dream that was too good, too beautiful to be true.

  But it was true and real, she reminded herself, Maxwell’s death was proof enough of that.

  Still, the feeling of joy that suffused her stayed intact as she reached the bottom of the stairs and stood there momentarily, smiling to herself.

  Katherine definitely didn’t classify herself as one of those women who needed to be standing next to her lover at all times in order to feel content. Still, there was a small nagging part of her that wanted to stay behind with Quinn and her father just so she could occasionally touch him or smell his unique caramel tinged scent. It was a sick pleasure really, but she didn’t care.

  “Are you ready to leave?” Sylvie interrupted her reverie and stood there watching with laughter in her eyes until Katherine felt a blush rise up on her face. She nodded and smiled at her mother then followed her out to the car waiting for them just outside the front doors. Katherine breathed in the scent of the polished leather when she opened the door to the passenger side and lowered herself into the plush seat of her mother’s Corvette.

  “You’re sure I can’t drive?” She knew her mother was immovable about who drove her car. Katherine found it frustrating and a bit humorous that out of the dozens of high-end vehicles her parents owned, this vintage Corvette was the one car that Sylvie cherished like a baby.

  She watched as Sylvie stroked the dashboard of the tiny car and started the engine. It was cute really, even if it was a little disturbing that her mother loved an inanimate object so much.

  “Not a chance in the world, ma fille.”

  They began driving into town to the sound of the White Stripes playing on the radio. Katherine liked them because they reminded her of Led Zeppelin and the years she’d spent in Vancouver during the early 70’s. She’d had a lot of fun to their music.

  She wasn’t at all surprised to hear Sylvie sing every word to the song, though, once again, she wondered how she’d been cursed with such a poor singing voice when her mother’s was all velvet and dulcet tones.

  Then again, Sylvie was only one-half of the genetic match-up that had produced Katherine and Pierre couldn’t carry a tune if the safety of his pack depended on it. It was obvious which on side of the proverbial apple tree she’d fallen in this regard. The only soothing fact was that most of her brothers had the same flat sound to their singing voice.

  Only Teagan could sing. Though the term singing could hardly encapsulate what happened when her youngest brother opened his mouth. Like Sylvie’s, Teagan’s voice wrapped around a person with a comforting effect, as though the world could never be anything but perfect for as long as he continued.

  The next song on the radio was by Katy Perry and this time Katherine laughed to hear her mom sing every word to “I kissed a girl” in perfect pitch. She leaned her head back against the rest and enjoyed this rare time alone with her mom.

  Sylvie parked the Corvette next to the small old fashioned ice cream shop and got out, her gorgeous red soled shoes emerging first. A few young teenage guys were hanging out by the corner, probably waiting for the local young hotties to come around. They started whistling when they saw the car and the legs that emerged then stopped abruptly when they saw that the object of their cat-calling was Mrs. LaFlamme.

  The boy’s eyes went wide, and then they lowered their heads and muttered apologies followed by the appropriate “Ma’am.” Katherine held her chuckles back until the door of the shop swung shut behind them.

  “Mom, what did you do to those poor boys?” She couldn’t keep the amusement from her words.

  Sylvie shrugged delicately. “I did nothing but teach them a few manners. I expect to be treated like a lady, after all, don’t you?” Her tone sounded imperious but Katherine could see the gleam of laughter in her eyes. She remembered just how her mother had taught her male brothers and cousins to be courteous during their rude adolescent years. She could only imagine how embarrassed these young men had been when Sylvie had finished “teaching” them their manners.

  The little shop was relatively busy even though it was the middle of the day. Soccer moms with toddlers and diaper bags sat in booths with other moms, talking about their children and trying to control how much ice cream got in their little one’s mouths as opposed to the floor or their clothes.

  Pierre had moved his family to Wild River more than two hundred years before, though the town had only existed in its present form for the last hundred. It took a lot of careful planning for the family to be able to act as part of such a small community when they didn’t age normally. It was a time-honored wolf dilemma, pun intended.

  Sylvie didn’t come into town very often. Often enough, however, to have been asked if she was the daughter or even the granddaughter of the Mrs. LaFlamme who had first lived in Wild River and occasionally attended the town dances. Sylvie took it all in stride, having
accepted her lot in life long ago.

  Katherine couldn’t help but notice the reaction of the locals when she and her mom stopped just inside the doors to let their eyes adjust to the change in light. Her wolf ears picked up snippets of conversations that stopped suddenly to be replaced by whispering about the LaFlamme family. Some of the talk was negative and distrusting of the wealthy secretive family but the majority centered around the fashion forward clothes she and Sylvie were wearing and guesses as to what high-end products were used to keep their skin so youthful and smooth. Katherine grinned when she overheard one woman gush about the Jimmy Choo’s she wore and the Louboutin’s her mother had on. It was always nice to be appreciated for having awesome shoes.