Chapter Twenty-Two

“What are you doing?” Willa whispered later that evening when Blue scratched at her back door. Pulling her robe closed at the collar, she got out of the way to let him in.

He didn’t respond until he’d planted himself onto the seat of her armchair and pulled off his shoes. She’d never seen him in sneakers before.

Or sweatpants.

Or even a T-shirt, for that matter, and yet he was wearing one that read, “There’s Magic in Maria!” The chamber of commerce sold them. At thirty dollars per shirt, they were a bit of a racket.

“Came to see if you had dinner.” He grabbed the remote control from the back of the chair and turned down the television volume.

Raising a brow, she closed and latched the patio door. “And yet you didn’t bring me any?”

“Figured I’d ask first.” He grinned.

She rolled her eyes and then laughed. She suspected he was trying to get a rise out of her. “Yes, I ate. One of the pack ladies invited me and Diana over for dinner.” Chuckling some more, she pulled the curtains closed and then sat on the edge of the bed. “In all the years I’ve been with the pack, that’s never happened.”

“How was the meal?”

“Oddly normal. She even made pie and was chatting about mundane things like the condition of the sidewalks in Maria and whether it was a good idea for her son to try out for the football team. Want some tea? I’d just put the kettle on before King alerted me to your presence.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t mind some tea.”

“Okay. Give me a minute.”

She’d hoped to see him again since he’d left school at lunchtime, and she’d been surprised by that wishful thinking. He’d started representing comfort to her, which had always been so hard for her to come by. It wasn’t something she was ready to give up so quickly, even if she didn’t yet understand what pitfalls she might have to endure soon from the connection.

Solitude was so exhausting.

She padded around King and into the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “You can’t keep skulking in my yard after dark. People are either going to call the cops or suspect that we’re having some kind of sordid affair.”

He leaned against the doorframe, smirking. “I can see where the latter thing would suck for your reputation. Would do wonders for mine, though.”

“I’ve worked hard to keep a pristine reputation. You don’t get to piggyback on mine. Do your own work.”

“I’m trying. I didn’t even throw Darren Cartwright into the basement tonight after I caught him trying to break into my truck.”

“What?” Willa scrambled to snatch up the box of herbal tea she’d been holding before it could fall to the floor.

Grunting, Blue joined her in the kitchen and strode to the counter. “I’d parked around the corner from the dry cleaner’s. Was gone from the vehicle just long enough to find out they’d already closed. Hauled my laundry bags back to the SUV, and there he was trying to slim-jim the damn door open.”

Eek.

She’d hoped Darren had grown out of that juvenile habit of his.

“Maybe he didn’t know it was yours?” she offered.

“That makes it better?”

She shrugged bashfully. “Well, not really, but you can’t naturally assume he was being purposefully malicious toward you.”

“Just generally malicious, then?”

“Ugh. No.” She sighed and dropped tea bags into the mugs. “You think I’m foolish.”

“No, I don’t think you’re foolish. I just think sometimes you give people too many chances. It’s a wonder the kids you teach don’t walk all over you. Middle schoolers are universally known for their callousness. Preteens are awful people.” He snorted. “Trust me. I remember being one.”

“I think they feel sorry for me.”

“Nah, I don’t get that vibe.” He accepted the mug she thrust at him and walked back down the hall.

She turned off the burner and followed, turning off lights as she went. With him there, she didn’t need so many lights on. She could tell herself that nothing bad was going to happen, and that her father wasn’t going to make any surprise visits, and actually believe it.

“What kind of vibe do you get, then?” she asked.

He was back at the armchair, sipping, gaze on the muted television.

She found herself holding her breath and waiting for him to grace her with some words. She’d never before cared so much about what a man was thinking. Her curiosity was overflowing.

Talk to me.

“I think they honestly like you,” he said.

“I find it hard to believe that would be such a rare thing.”

“That’s because you didn’t grow up like they did. You didn’t go to a public school like that.” He leaned back and propped his foot up on the edge of the bed. “Who taught you, by the way?”

“My mother, mostly, until I was around ten or eleven. She’d taught me everything the nuns had taught her plus some things her father had. My grandfather was good with numbers, but bad with luck. Could never seem to get ahead.” She shrugged again. “Beyond that, I didn’t have any formal education until after I left Spain.”

“How old were you when you left?”

“Oh, I knew eventually we’d get back there,” she said with a giggle. “That’s a dangerous territory to get into with a lady like me.”

“You want to swap numbers?”

She gave her head a vigorous shake. As curious as she was about his age, he didn’t need to know that exact number. It didn’t mean the same thing as it did to mortals. Some days she felt old. Other days, not.

“Younger than I am now?” he asked.

She wrung her hands, wondering if the number meant more to her than it did to him, and he wasn’t going to tell anyone. She knew that. Giving up some secrets would be healing.

“Younger. Yes. I . . . was twenty.”

“Twenty. Damn.” He sat up straighter and set his mug on the nightstand. “That’s a hell of a thing to go through at any age, but that’s practically a baby.”

“People lived half their lives by twenty back then. My mother had been dead for two years. When I was going through the worst of the torturing, I kept telling myself that at least she wasn’t alive to endure it. And at least they didn’t dig her up and burn her for being a heretic like they did to so many others.” Willa had been more or less on her own then. She fidgeted her shirt hem, wondering if she still had family on her mother’s side. They’d be cousins far removed, but they’d be something.

Blue put his foot down from the bed and reached forward to loosen her grip on her shirt. “Shit, you just carry this stuff around in your head every day? How do you do it?”

“How?” She shrugged and turned away from him before he could catch her blush, but it didn’t really matter. He could probably smell the tendrils of anxiety starting to coil through her.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, and then more until the tightness in her chest abated. “It’s not like I have a choice. I do it because I have to. The problem is that I don’t do it very well.”

• • •

“Come here, sweetheart,” Blue told her.

She could try to hide her face all she wanted to, but when her mood went south, he got tugged down right along with her. She may have started to think of him as her rock, but she was his anchor. She was the reason he was committed to making a stand against his father in Maria, the reason he finally had a place he wanted to make a home—and a home with someone.

Making her feel safe wouldn’t be the worst chore he’d ever had. In fact, he looked forward to every one of her frustrated sighs and under-her-breath disparagements about domineering dogs. No one got her raving the way he did, and he was glad she’d saved all that passion for him.

Padding across the room, she proved that she could actually be docile, when she wanted to be. Or perhaps when she trusted. She set her cup atop the lace doily on the dresser and joined him on the chair, taking up the tiny sliver to the left of his outstretched legs.

“What was she like?” he asked her.

“Who? My mother?”

“Yeah.”

She fidgeted with the cuticle of her thumbnail, staring ahead at nothing in particular.

He took her hand and laced her fingers through his. Redirecting her nervousness in a way that would benefit him as much as her. He loved touching her. Loved the barrage of her honeyed scent. Even loved the way the wild animal in him steered and nudged Blue toward something he’d never wanted. He hadn’t wanted that domestic life. Hadn’t wanted to be pinned down and bound into the same suffocating Coyote expectations that had made his mother flee.

But leaving Willa on her own would be a mistake. She needed to belong to someone, and he needed that someone to be him. No one else would understand her. No one else could love her without demands the way he could.

Getting her to love him back was going to require some strategizing, though.

“She was . . . always singing,” Willa said. “Mostly when she thought no one was listening. She’d make up songs. She had a lovely voice. I loved hearing her sing. I think she did it to self-soothe. Maybe making art requires us to use a part of the brain that demands others be shut off.”

“Was she attentive?”

“Oh, yes. I think I was her favorite distraction. An unplanned one, for sure.” She scoffed. “Given the circumstances, she had to believe she’d never have children, but you know what they say about making assumptions.”

“Was that really her only choice? Becoming a nun?”

“She may have thought it was at the time, and she never wanted to feel like a burden to anyone. She confided in me when I was fourteen or so that she’d felt like the worst kind of fraud the day she went to the sisters. She worried she’d be rooted out as a liar or that God would strike her down the second she crossed the threshold.”

“Why?”

“I don’t remember anymore how long my family had been in Spain. Many hundreds of years by the time I was born, but they had only converted to Catholicism in the fourteenth century. The thing about converting is that you may accept a code and adopt a new rulebook, but you don’t shed your culture. Sometimes, culture is as genetic as . . . eye color and . . . ” Swallowing, she pressed her other hand around their joined two. It shook a little, but stopped when he picked it up and kissed the back of it. “Illnesses.”

“Where did they come from?” He stroked the uneven wisps of hair over her ear.

“You’re asking me, but I think you already know.”

“I don’t want to assume. I want to know all the bits and pieces that went into you so I can understand you.”

“Some of those bits and pieces aren’t worth talking about.”

“Maybe.” He set his feet on the floor and pulled her onto his lap. Closer was always better where she was concerned. “So tell me about the pieces that are.”

She drew in a long breath and let it out in a sputter. “Morocco. Berbers had been in Spain for a very long time. At some point, you lose track of where one culture ends and another begins. History isn’t always honest about who deserves credit.”

“I’m sorry you feel like you can’t go back.” He knew what that felt like, a little—not wanting to go home because home was the birthplace of all the hardest memories.

And because home was where guilt and unfair obligations lived.

She shrugged and hung her head. “Maybe some day a long time from now, I’ll go. Track my relatives, perhaps.”

“I hope I’m alive long enough to take you. Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t bring home any more wild dogs to take care of. I think one is probably enough for you.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but she didn’t laugh. She notched her teeth into her lip and shifted atop his thigh.

“Are you . . . spending the night?” she whispered.

“If you need me to.”

“I’m supposed to be off tomorrow, but I need to go finalize fundraiser stuff. And Hank’s supposed to be there to work with some of the kids. Not until eleven, though.”

So they had until ten.

He set her onto her feet, turned off the television, pulled off his shirt and pants. They were the only clothes he had until the cleaners had processed the order he hadn’t even dropped off yet.

Willa draped her robe over the chair arm and climbed into bed.

Wrong side, so he scooted her over.

He was a creature of habit, even in other people’s houses.

He turned off the light and joined her under the covers.

“Strange having someone in my bed,” she murmured.

“Is this even stranger?” He pulled her closer. He was going to have to teach her that she didn’t have to hold herself so far away from him. Her presence wasn’t a nuisance, but the opposite. It was becoming a requirement.

She laughed, then, and tentatively stroked at the hair on his chest, fingers slowly finding a nipple. She withdrew her hand at the discovery only to return it moments later—after he didn’t scold or flinch.

He realized then the difference in texture between the pads of her left hand and right. The left pads were rougher, had more calluses. The rights were soft and pliant.

“Strings?” he whispered.

“Hmm?”

“Calluses from strings?”

Her hand fell away again. When she didn’t return it, he brought it back himself and pressed her hand over his belly. “I wasn’t complaining. Just wondering.”

“I wore gloves for two centuries because of them. My nails were ugly and deformed.”

“Because you make pretty things.”

“A sacrifice I’ve questioned more times than I care to admit. Sometimes, I wish I could just . . . be dainty and put together, but it seems like too much work to do to get there.”

“You’re perfect the way you are.”

“I think you’ve just told me your first lie.”

“I’m not lying. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Then maybe you should get your head examined. Have you had any concussions lately?”

“No more than usual.”

Her laugh was light and sparkling, like bubbles popping in champagne or taffeta crinkling. He couldn’t remember ever making a woman laugh like that. Most laughed right on cue, but not with genuine enthusiasm. Willa’s laughs made him want to keep talking, keep learning.

Her fingers trailed down his belly, taking a slow and curious detour around his navel, stopping finally at the elastic of his boxer shorts.

She flicked it with her thumbnail, her sunlight-gold gaze finding his face in the near dark.

“Go ahead, if you want.”

Dangerous, but he didn’t care anymore. He wouldn’t deprive her of his touch or access to his body if she needed it. And he wouldn’t deny that he needed it. Needed his mate the same way he needed to slip out of his human skin some nights and run until the only thing keeping him going was inertia.

Needed someone to depend on him for reasons other than the fact that his energy had a subduing effect on lesser creatures, because she wasn’t lesser. He wouldn’t let anyone ever make that claim in front of him.

“Does . . . it hurt?”

The words were so quiet he wouldn’t have been able to make them out if his senses weren’t as evolved as they were.

“Touching me?” he asked. “No, you won’t hurt me.”

Her fingers dipped beneath the band.

Not far, though.

He’d been half hard since stepping into her bedroom. She was the only woman who could trigger his erection without showing any skin beyond her face, hands, and feet. She didn’t pulse with sensuality the way shapeshifters did. She wasn’t showy or provocative, but she was his, and that was all the seduction he needed.

“Go ahead,” he murmured, trying his damnedest to keep his hands to himself and not rush her. This was new for both of them. Her touching a man in such an intimate way. Him being patient when he’d never been required to be before.

“Are you going to tease me about this later?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Seems to be a game some men like to play when things get awkward.”

“This isn’t awkward for me.” Driving him insane with need, yes, but definitely not awkward. “And boys play games, not men. I don’t fuck around with games. I’m too old for them.”

“Old enough to be her father,” she said quietly, pondering.

“I told you. And stop worrying about her, okay? I’ve made my choice, and it wasn’t a rash one.”

“You must think I’m an antique.”

“That thought hasn’t crossed my mind a single time.”

He could only be so patient. He rocked his hips, tapping the end of him against her fingertips and startling her upright.

He didn’t let her flinch too far from him. He was developing an instinct to know when to reach for her, when to guide her back home.

“I don’t,” he said, easing her hand where it’d been, and farther.

Her body tensed as he placed her cupped palm over his shaft and curled her fingers around it.

“Hard to think that when I look at you,” he said, “and see a bewildered young woman who’s so damned agreeable even when she’s earned the right to be cynical.”

“You’re better at compartmentalizing than I am, then.” He thought he was going to have to show her what to do with her hand, but she started moving it again on her own. Soft, experimental strokes of his sac that had his nuts jumping up toward his core. A tentative slide of her palm up the length of him.

He swallowed and laced his fingers behind his head. “Maybe so. All I know is what I see.”

Her touch was gentle, and she didn’t need to be, but he wasn’t in a mood to criticize. The last thing he wanted was for her to back off of touching him because he’d been too didactic, too opinionated.

It was her rodeo. He could let her have that.

Grimacing, she pulled her hand out and rolled her wrist a few seconds.

The bad wrist. He wanted to kiss it better, but he wasn’t even supposed to know about it.

“Want me to take them off?” he asked instead.

“I . . . ” She stopped massaging the tendons between her hand and forearm and sat up straight, nodding.

He shucked his boxer shorts, tossing them toward the grubby clothes he’d visited her in. He leaned back again with his hands behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles, letting her examine him the best she could in the dark. He didn’t know what she could see, but everything was there for her pleasure. “No” wasn’t in his script for the evening.

“Now I’m wearing too many clothes,” she murmured, looking down at her garments.

He kept his mouth shut. If she wanted to defrock, he wasn’t going to stop her. He wanted to feel the press of her against him, soothe his inner beast with her warmth and closeness. Give pleasure she hadn’t had before, but she was the one conducting the song. She got to set the tempo. She got to call the whole thing off, if the parts weren’t coming together as well as they could have.

She unfastened her robe, pushed it off, and dropped it onto the floor. The pajamas beneath were patterned with little roses, the fabric worn and faded. Laundered to softness and much loved, probably.

Her hands shook as she unbuttoned her shirt, and his itched to stop her.

She’d accused him of thinking she was an antique, but he saw someone who was just fragile and in need of protection. Touching her wasn’t protecting. It was selfish, reckless.

Limiting.

She’d always be his, and she hadn’t asked for that.

It didn’t matter, though. He was going to look after her no matter what. Even if she sent him away, or circumstances forced her to move on from the place where she’d settled.

Her shirt fell to the floor in a soft whisper. Kneeling beside him, she hooked her thumbs into the elastic of her pants, contemplating, perhaps.

He pressed his lips tightly together, staving off the “You don’t have to” protest, because it was self-defeating. The animal inside him needed her to undress. It needed to mark her in every possible way. She may not have had magic, but Blue had an alpha’s power. No outsider Coyote would bother her if she carried the taint of what was his—not unless they wanted a war. No good alpha would stand for his mate being insulted in any way.

Nude and skin burning hot with shame, as evidenced by the fright in her scent, she folded her arms over her chest and looked down at her knees. “You have to tell me what to do,” she whispered.

“You can do whatever you want, sweetheart.”

“I don’t have . . . instincts for this.”

“I don’t want to tell you what to do. I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have a say in the matter. You get to choose the adventure.”

She scoffed, but slowly, she extended a hand to his navel again, softly tickling the hair around it with a fingertip, carefully avoiding the terminus of his erection with each pass.

Killing me.

“Should I . . . lie down?” she asked.

“If you want. What do you want?”

“I want you to decide.”

He chuckled and rolled onto his side. “I thought you didn’t like when I made decisions.”

“Decisions without my input. Not the same thing.”

“I see.”

He sat up. Helped her onto her back. Settled himself between her legs and smoothed his palms down her ribs and up again, smiling when she squirmed more when he touched her golden places—places no one but him had touched.

“Selfish of me, maybe.” He pulled the tip of one pert breast into his mouth and sucked it until it pearled and her torso shuddered with her gasp. “That I’m glad no one really pays attention to you. I’m glad no one else sees what I do.”

“You could have anyone you want.”

Maybe.

He wanted only her.

“No one’s as interesting as you.” He sucked the other nipple to make it match, then alternated one then the other until they were glistening and erect.

Hard as him, even.

Whatever return quip she might have had to his statement, she couldn’t get out and gasp at the same time. He’d kissed down her belly and lashed his tongue between her thighs.

Her fingers curled into the back of his head, clumsily holding him in place, or pushing him away—he couldn’t tell, but he ate up her delighted moans the same way he consumed her body.

He slid a fingertip into her juncture, pausing at the entrance when her body went taut, pressing it in more when she relaxed. “Give me some input, sweetheart. Decide if that’s something you like.”

She unclenched her hands from his hair, clamped them around his hand, and guided him in deeper, slowly, as she hooked her legs around him.

He laughed. “How about another?”

Two fingers inside her, his thumb over her engorged button.

Her fists in his hair again. Thank the gods he had enough for her to pull.

“Tell me if you like that, Willa.” He stilled his hand again, and put his lips just over the soft hair at the top of her sex. “I’ll stop if you don’t want it.”

“D-don’t stop.”

“Whatever you like.” He put his mouth where his thumb had been and sucked and fingered, making her wet and ready, until her belly caved in and she dug her nails into his back. Her heels tried to pull him up and away, but her faltering breaths hinted to craving, not dissent. “If it feels good, hold on to it,” he said. He eased his body up without disturbing the work of his fingers and kissed her jaw, her chin.

It was she who took his lips, shrinking back momentary, likely surprised by the taste of her on her mouth. Any hesitation she may have had quickly fled. She worked her tongue into his mouth assertively trying to reach all of his corners, to delve deep into him up high as his body strained to do the same down below.

She worked her hand between their bodies, grabbing the base of his shaft pointedly, directing it toward her center, but he broke the kiss and put some air between them.

“You sure?”

Her nod came as she worked his bottom lip between her teeth, drawing it out sensuously before letting it snap back into place. “Here. Now.”

“Hate to admit it, but I find myself a bit unprepared.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, because of my former obligation, I’ve been chaste for the past six months. Pretty sure I don’t have a condom.”

“Oh.” Her brow furrowed, body shifted minutely toward him. She probably didn’t realize she was doing it, and he was trying his damnedest not to capitalize on it. “What are the risks?”

Having a lovesick Coyote attached to you for the rest of his life.

He cleared his throat and ran his fingertip around a swirl of hair near her temple. All that glorious hair shorn off for an opinion that was almost entirely wrong. Perhaps she had hair like her father’s and bore minor proof of inheritance of facial structure, but Apollo had probably been telling the truth when he’d said she looked like her mother.

“Coyotes are resistant to STDs,” he said, “so there’s just the other issue. A major one, in the scheme of things.” Another potential Coyote for his father to harass . . . unless the child wasn’t a Coyote.

Blue didn’t know what the end product would be of a recipe of shapeshifter and demigoddess.

Of course he was curious to find out, though. Dogs didn’t take mates without wanting the product of the coupling. He wanted that with her—something binding and proof of his good intentions. Proof that he could be decent.

“I can’t afford a child.” There was more wistfulness than frustration in her voice, and he never wanted her to go without anything she desired. She’d lived too long without having her wishes come true.

“Crass to say it, but I’m filthy rich.”

“I . . . don’t expect you to take care of me.” Heat poured off of her. A surge of humiliation, perhaps, but she didn’t need to be ashamed. She would never have to beg him for anything that mattered.

“No, of course not.” He held himself up on his forearms and watched the litany of emotions flitting across her face. Confusion. Curiosity. Wonderment. The last one was harder to peg, but it looked a lot like determination.

“If it happened,” she whispered as if to herself, “at least then, I’d always have someone.”

“You already have—” Biting his tongue on the retort, he let his head hang so she couldn’t see the frustration on his face. Things would be easier if he could just tell her what she was to him, but she had good reasons not to trust him, or to trust him too quickly. He could tell her he’d always be around, but she wasn’t going to believe him. Their relationship had started on the wrong foot, and that was his fault more than hers. She’d only been trying to do the right thing.

She was always trying to do the right thing.

But is this right?

Her decision. She pulled him into her the best she could, hardly a breach. Plenty of opportunity to change her mind and call it all off, but she whispered, “Help me,” and he knew there was no chance at that.

She’d asked him.

He couldn’t deny her anything.