Within a matter of minutes, Renny found herself back in Mick Kennedy’s isolated house in the woods, but this time, she didn’t get anywhere near his sofa. He hauled her from the purloined vehicle straight through to his bedroom and tossed her down onto the mattress so hard she bounced.
Given that she was still naked from her shift, the resulting movements drew a hot look of appreciation. In fact, for a second, she thought he might scoop her up and throw her again, just to watch her breasts jiggle.
He prowled toward her, unhindered by the need to stop and strip. Being a shifter did have its advantages in the romance department, it seemed.
Renny watched while instincts and emotions twined inside her until they had her knotted up tight. Lust, of course, colored everything. How could it not when her mate had brought her to his bed and now crouched over her like a living god carved in muscle and sinew? His golden skin seemed to glisten with the light sheen of perspiration caused by arousal. It made the rich, brilliant color of the ink decorating his arms almost too intense to look at, but she had to touch.
Her fingers moved without her guidance, settling on the hot skin covering his biceps and tracing the curve of a deadly claw drawn in black and shades of gray and stained with crimson.
“Did you draw these?” she heard herself ask.
“No. I only draw on paper.” His voice sounded tight and deep and so rough she could barely make out the words. Maybe words weren’t what they needed right now.
She dragged her gaze from the collage of tattoos and met his, dark and intense. His blue eyes looked nearly black, even in the afternoon light that still filtered through the curtains. The pupils had all but swallowed the irises, and he looked as if he wanted to swallow her just the same way.
Well, maybe he looked like he’d pause for a little taste.
The thought barely registered before his head dipped and she felt the wet heat of his tongue press against the side of her throat. He licked a trail from collarbone to jawline, an agonizing journey that seemed to take days to complete. Everything in her softened and tightened, tensing and melting simultaneously. She felt the pooling dampness between her legs and the clawing fist of hunger below her belly.
“I thought I wasn’t your mate,” she gasped, struggling to hold on to the sanity he was slowly ripping away. “Thought you didn’t want me.”
He gripped her hips on either side, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. She didn’t care. All she could feel was that he was touching her. Her mate was touching her.
“Never said I didn’t want you.” He scraped his teeth across the base of her throat, the edges catching on the tendons at either side and making her shiver in reaction.
“You haven’t acted like you want me.” Her voice shook as Mick closed the sight gap between their bodies, settling his weight on top of her like a living blanket. A hot, hard, aroused living blanket.
“No?” He nuzzled the tender spot behind her ear, and a whimper escaped her. “How about now?”
A big, rough hand pushed between her legs and cupped her heat.
“Oh, fuck,” Renny gasped.
“Good idea,” he all but purred.
He dragged her under a tide of relentless need. His fingers probed and stroked, sliding through her wetness and dragging across nerve endings that seemed directly connected to the dopamine receptors in her brain. If this felt anything like the sensations using drugs gave Jordan, it was no wonder the coyote was an addict. She thought she could get hooked as well. In fact, she might already be.
Her arms rose to wrap around his shoulders, drawing him closer to her. At first, the move felt awkward, hesitant. He’d spent so much of the time that they’d known each other pushing her away that part of her couldn’t believe that now he was letting her touch him. Now, he was pinning her to the softness of his bed and using his knee to spread her thighs until his hips could rest in the cradle of hers.
His fingers continued to tease her, and the hand acted as a barrier that prevented her from feeling his erection where she most wanted it. Instead, it pressed against her hip, hot and hard, while he dragged a callused thumb in slow circles around her clit.
Goddess, he was killing her.
“Mick, please.” She lifted her hips into his touch, begging for more. She felt hollow and aching inside, could feel her muscles clenching around nothing, and she moaned.
“Shh,” he murmured against her skin, stringing kisses down her breastbone, nudging the soft underside of her breasts, and making her nipples tighten into hard little points of need. “Smell so good.”
His tongue swept out and curled around her nipple in a caress she would swear went straight to her core. She bucked against his fingers and dug her nails into his back.
Mick.
She wasn’t sure if she’d spoken his name, wasn’t sure if she could still speak. She’d become a creature of sensation, her body nothing but the experience of his hands on her, his skin pressed close, his weight bearing her down. Goddess, was this what it was supposed to be like? Having a mate? Didn’t it scare people? Because she was terrified.
She was terrified of being overwhelmed, and even more terrified that he might stop. He’d gone from being something she wanted to something she needed, like air or water. She had to have him or her wolf would go mad.
The bitch had finally stopped fighting her. It had gone silent, as if drugged by the scent and touch of their mate. This was what it had wanted all along, so it didn’t need to drive the human self forward. As long as they stayed close, the wolf was content.
But Renny needed to get even closer.
She shifted to wrap her legs around him and lost her ability to breathe when the movement forced his touch harder against her. Two fingertips slid to her entrance and pressed. She lifted into him, trying to take him inside, but he eased back until she felt like screaming.
What was the matter with him? He’d already marked her, bitten her shoulder and left the imprint of his fangs on her skin, and he’d done it in front of the Goddess and everyone. Then he’d practically dragged her back to his bed, breaking land speed records on the way. She’d really thought he’d quit wasting time, but now he seemed determined to move at a glacial pace.
A glacial pace before the onset of global warming.
Renny rocked against him, her body seeking to urge him faster, closer, deeper, more. His response was a nip to the curve of her breast that only made her more desperate. Two could play that game.
She slid a hand up along his spine, letting her nails scrape the skin until he shuddered against her. Encouraged, she tangled her fingers in his hair and tried to pull him back up where she could taste him, but the alpha dug in his heels. He reached up and captured her hand, pinning it to the mattress at her hip, then repeating the pattern on the other side.
Eyes glittering, he lifted his head to stare down at her, his lips curved wickedly. “Not done yet, little red,” he purred, just before he pressed that mouth against her sex.
She jerked as though she’d been struck by lightning. Hell, she wouldn’t have been surprised if she glowed from the inside out like something from a cartoon, an X-ray image of herself lit up by the feel of his tongue parting her folds and tasting her.
Her head swam, the room seeming to tilt and spin as he pressed pleasure on her, touching and teasing and devouring her. She struggled against his hands and hoped like hell she wouldn’t get away. She didn’t want to go anywhere, didn’t want him to ever stop, but she couldn’t just lie there when the pleasure grew and grew until it became so intense, it felt like a living thing inside her, struggling to get out.
He dragged from her a climax she never saw coming. One second, she felt like every breath just twisted her tighter on the rack of desire, and the next, the tension inside her snapped. She flew apart like the casing on a firework, exploding in a burst of hot, wild energy. Her ears rang with a high, clear note, and it took a minute before she realized it came from her own mouth, that she had cried out, helpless against the power of it.
She blinked against a brilliant darkness, trying to figure out if her eyes were closed or she’d just gone blind from synaptic overload. Then it didn’t matter, because before the echo of her voice had faded away, she was shouting again, overcome by the burning stretch and incredible ecstasy of her mate plunging inside her.
Mick shifted and drove himself inside her with primal urgency. With his mouth on her, she’d felt untethered and adrift, held in place only by his hands gripping her wrists and his lips and teeth and tongue driving her into mindlessness. Now, he loomed over her, blocking out the rest of reality until she felt pinned down and overwhelmed, unable to feel or see or smell anything but her mate.
Her mate above her.
Against her.
Inside her.
Claiming her.
He moved on her with a hard, relentless rhythm, his thighs forcing hers wider as he sought to get closer and surge deeper. She tilted her hips, receptive and eager, until every thrust rubbed the base of his shaft against her most sensitive bundle of nerves. Each movement sent a shock of pleasure through her, making her body tighten around him, which made him thrust harder and rub with greater pressure.
She was caught in a feedback loop of arousal, him stroking her, which made her squeeze, which made him stroke, until another orgasm began to build inside her. It writhed low in her belly and sent shivers like ripples in a pond up and out, until she swore that when she came, she could feel it in her fingers and her toes and every strand of her hair.
He wrecked her, but she wasn’t going down alone.
While he moved more forcefully above her and inside her, chasing his own climax, Renny let her wolf have its way. The animal leapt forward, swift and eager, sharpening her pathetic human canine teeth into proper two-inch fangs, which it sank deep into her mate’s muscled shoulder.
He howled and poured himself into her, shuddering through his release. The sound he made was almost more animal than human, and her wolf recognized and gloried in the ululating cry. She would have answered, but that would mean releasing her grip, and she wasn’t ready to do that. She wanted her mark deep and clear on his flesh so that even a casual glance would tell all other females that this male belonged to her.
Mick collapsed on top of his mate and waited for the earth to settle back onto its axis. Somewhere in the middle of that epic mating, he felt pretty sure they had knocked the entire planet out of alignment. He couldn’t think of any other reasonable explanation for the experience. Together they had literally rocked the world, laws of physics be damned.
It took hours to catch his breath, but the time passed pleasantly with his lush, fragrant mate serving as his pillow. The heat they had generated had intensified her scent, the sweet, spicy notes strong enough to cut through the musk of sex and embed themselves in his memory. From now on, anytime he smelled the sweet bite of nutmeg and the soft comfort of warm sugar cookies, he would think of his mate and become aroused.
Damn. Christmastime was going to be awkward.
He nuzzled her ear, dragging in one last lungful of delicious female, before rolling off of her and dragging her against his side. Now that he’d claimed his mate, he didn’t want to smother her on their first night together. That just seemed rude.
Plus, it would pretty much rule out his hopes for round two a little bit later.
Renny shifted until her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder, one knee drawn up and draped over his. She fitted against him like the missing piece of a puzzle, and she rested there, one hand over his heart, while their skin gradually cooled.
The room had grown dim as afternoon turned to evening, but neither of them made any move to turn on a light. Their lupine eyes could see perfectly well in much darker environments, and moving would remind both of them of the reality lurking like a watchful predator outside their bubble of intimacy.
If he could press a pause button and freeze that moment indefinitely, he would have. He would have kept them pressed together in silence, connected by the act they had just shared and free from the shadows of the past and the complications of the future. Then his shifter metabolism kicked back into gear and his stomach growled at him to replace all those calories he’d just burned off. Kind of a mood killer.
He felt her breath huff against his skin. “Yeah, I could eat a cow,” she murmured, her voice husky and blurred around the edges. “We should probably get up and do that.”
“I can’t pasture cows out here in the woods, but I can keep steaks in the freezer.”
“Good enough.”
She pulled away from him and sat up, pushing her tangle of dark red hair back over her shoulders. The move exposed the mark he’d left on her shoulder, the reddened imprint of his fangs forming a shape like a crescent moon in the curve where neck and shoulder joined. Hours later it still looked raw and fresh, but then, it always would. She would bear his mark forever, a visible warning to other males that she belonged to him.
Absently, he reached up and felt the evidence of her mark on his skin. His fingers traced the dainty curve, then without thinking moved to the opposite side of his neck where another mark had once decorated his flesh.
She watched him, her expression solemn, and he immediately jerked his hand away from the faded silver remains of Beth’s mark.
“Don’t,” Renny said softly. “It’s okay. I know she had you first. I’d never want you to think that I expect you to forget about her. I don’t. She’s part of you. Always will be. The scar is just proof of what you’ve survived.”
Her smile was crooked, but it looked sincere. Mick tried to believe her, but he was enough of an asshole to have his doubts. After all, if she’d had another mate, seeing the dead male’s mark on her wouldn’t make him think of everything she’d survived; it would make him think of another male putting his hands on her sweet body.
Yup, he was definitely an asshole. She should probably know that from the start.
She had already risen from the bed and spotted his rarely used bathrobe draped over its hook on the back of the door where it lived and collected dust. She dragged it on while he grabbed the first pair of jeans he saw. They hadn’t made it into the hamper, so he assumed they were reasonably clean.
“I doubt I’d be so generous if I were you,” he grumbled, following her down the hall to the kitchen. She obviously remembered her way around from the night before.
She opened the refrigerator door and shot him a sideways glance filled with amusement. “So do I. It’s the testosterone. Makes you boys less forgiving than we are.”
Hell, she was probably right. He reached past her and snagged a package of steaks he’d been thawing. “Guess I should just shut up and count my blessings, then.”
Renny sighed and slipped away to take a seat at his kitchen table. “I didn’t say that. I just didn’t think you’d be ready to talk about this.”
Uh-oh. Her tone warned him to tread carefully. He pulled out a giant skillet and set it to heat on the stove top. “About the differences between men and women? I figured we covered those pretty thoroughly a little while ago.”
“About you and me. About us.”
Yeah, very, very carefully. He aimed for casual as he tore open the package and seasoned the meat. His wolf might be happy to tear into its dinner plain and bloody, but he’d always figured that was just because without opposable thumbs, it had never figured out how to work a pepper mill.
“I guess I didn’t realize we needed to talk.” He shrugged. “We’re mates. We both knew it, we both did something about it. Seems clear to me.”
She snorted. “Only because you’re a man. It’s one of those differences you mentioned.”
He drizzled oil into the skillet, then turned toward her while it heated. He kept his expression blank. “Okay, so what did you want to talk about?”
Renny made a face. “I don’t want anything to do with this topic, no more than you do. I just think we need to know where we stand with each other.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we stand next to each other. That’s what mates do.”
“Even when they never wanted to be mated at all?”
He opened his mouth to demand if she was telling him she didn’t want to be his mate, but he couldn’t do it. He knew that was a cheap tactic, deflecting his own issues onto her and using them to drive a wedge between them. It would be the easy thing to do, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything. It would just cause them both pain, and personally, he’d done enough hurting for this lifetime.
Putting the steaks on to sear gave him a minute to collect himself and to decide how he was going to get this out without it sticking in his throat. It also gave him an excuse not to have to look at her when he finally managed it.
“I don’t think it matters all that much what I wanted before today,” he said, turning when he heard her sharp intake of breath. He saw the flash of hurt in her expression and struggled to reassure her. “That didn’t sound the way I meant it. Shit. I suck with words.”
She made a rude noise. “Tell that to the bestseller lists, Mr. Novelist.”
“Graphic novelist,” he corrected. “The pictures tell the story for me. Most of what I write consists of curse words and sound effects.”
“I’ve read the Hounds of Hell, series, Fischer. Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”
He ignored the thrill he felt at knowing she’d seen his work and at the implication that she thought it deserved the accolades it had earned. He’d bled out his nightmares onto the pages of those books, reliving some of the worst moments of his life behind the mask of his fictional characters. In the world he’d created, the villains always faced justice, and the heroes occasionally managed to find some peace. Until Renny, he hadn’t thought such a thing existed outside of his make-believe universe.
“I’m not being coy,” he insisted. “I’m telling you, trying to tell you, why I sound like an idiot when I say this shit. ‘Shit’ is probably my favorite word. Well, second favorite, after ‘fuck.’ I use them a lot, in my books and in my life, because they come a lot easier than ones like this.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “Renny, it really doesn’t matter what I wanted before I met you, because you’re my mate. End of story. I can’t pretend that I don’t need you like I need both arms, even if it would scare me a fuck of a lot less if I could.”
“Wow. You really do suck at his.”
He growled. “I warned you.”
“You’re also about to burn our dinner.”
Mick swore and quickly flipped the steaks, then removed the pan from the heat and turned off the burner. The cast iron would stay hot long enough to finish cooking the beef and he needed to focus here.
“Mick, I—”
“No.” He cut her off. “Let me finish mangling this. It’s true that I didn’t want another mate. I barely survived losing the first one, and the thought of putting myself at risk for that kind of pain again? I’d rather let Dr. Wilczek neuter me like a cocker spaniel.”
She snickered, but he could see the understanding in her expression.
“It scares the shit out of me to have found another mate,” Mick continued, “because I know what it would feel like if anything happened to you, and I know that right now, you’re in very real danger. This isn’t a matter of, Oh, anyone could step outside their front door and get hit by a truck. This is, Your front door currently opens onto the fast lane of I-5. Geoffrey Hilliard already wants to hurt you, but now that he knows I’m trying to protect you, he’ll want it even more, because hurting you would be a blow to me. If he knew what kind of a blow, he’d kill himself trying to get to you.”
“He’s been trying for months,” she said. “He hasn’t managed it yet.”
“He’s come way too close for my comfort.” He crossed the space between them and crouched beside her chair. “Whatever I wanted before is gone. I know I did everything I could to pretend you meant nothing to me, but I think I can stop now, because that ship hasn’t just sailed, it’s hit an iceberg and been lost at sea. You are my mate. So, from here on out, we’re going to forget about my idiocy and move forward together. Deal?”
Her lips twitched. “Sounds pretty convenient for you, if you ask me. I just pretend you didn’t treat me like a leper for the first eighteen hours of our acquaintance, and you get all the benefits of having a mate without even having to work for it?”
He let himself grin. “Sounds good to me.”
“Asshole,” she muttered, but since she was pressing her mouth against his when she said it, he decided to let it slide. He had more important things to do.
Like untie the knot she’d put in the belt to keep his robe closed around her petite frame. And then, he figured he’d see exactly how sturdy his kitchen table really was. He’d always wondered.
Finally, afterward, he and his mate could always eat their steaks cold. They were wolves, after all.