The Thing About Weres

“You told me you don’t remember the dreams,” I whispered.

His thumb stroked the curve of my peaked ear. “What I said was I forgot the details. I’m a guy, okay? Some things aren’t worth remembering. But I think I remember the important stuff.”

“Like?”

His arm tightened. “You were so sad,” he said. “So young. All filled up with grief and guilt. And…” A lift of his shoulder. “All I wanted to do was to hold you. Protect you. But you wouldn’t let me—night after night you stood underneath that tree beating yourself up and making me stay in the damn pool. Every night, you fought with me. Every fucking night. You are so stubborn.”

Up to that moment his penis had been forget-about-it soft. But now, I could feel it, hardening underneath me. “You know I hate water now, right? Can’t stand ponds or lakes … I’ll even go out of my way not to walk through a puddle.” A soft huff—hot and Trowbridge scented—into my ear. “I don’t hate you, sweetheart. If anything, you’re my personal addiction. I’d wake up every morning wanting you so bad my balls ached.”

My Were did a somersault as his scent grew spicy with musk.

“I learned something in Merenwyn,” he said pensively. “All my life I wanted to avoid the future I saw ahead of me—I didn’t want to run a pack. I hated being led, and figured that meant I’d be happier as a rogue. But life with the Raha’ells—it made choices real simple. It was either step up or die.”

All I could feel was his heat and his arousal hard against my hip.

“I was forced to become an Alpha in Merenwyn,” he said in that crystal-fragile silence. “And I found out that I really was born to be one. I’m a natural leader.” He gave up on my ear and used his hand to tip up my chin. “I’ve had enough of you standing under some damn cherry tree.” Blue eyes gleamed. Then he gave me a sweet smile and nuzzled the corner of my mouth with his warm lips. “Stay with me. Be with me. All that other shit, we’ll figure it out.”

“Promise me you won’t kill him.”

“I promise.”

Love’s a sneaky fighter. She whispers to your greatest need. She wins her battle not through sweat and logic, but with a look, a gesture, a feral recognition of weakness. And the other part of you thinks, I can do this. I can take a thin thread of bliss and spin it into a length of silk that will stretch a lifetime.

I gently touched his cheek and felt the smooth spots he’d shaved clean, and the bristly parts he’d missed. “There’s so much—”

“Just for once, stop thinking.” He ran a thumb over my bottom lip. “I love your mouth,” he said, his voice raw in a way that sent a shiver up my spine.

Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

His hands went under my butt, and he lifted me as he stood. Desire swamped me as I wrapped my legs around his waist.

Four strides took us to the mattress.

Trowbridge turned at the foot of it. Lifted me a little higher. I tightened my hold, preparing for the long sweet slide to the bed, but instead of falling backward, he sat us on the edge of the mattress. His strong hands cupped my waist. My knees bracketed his long thighs.

Goddess, he was aroused.

His erection was hard as a staff—a long, hot ridge against my belly. Delicious and sinful was the smell of his desire—heady, too, the combined scent of us.

Finally.

Eyes hooded, Trowbridge eased Merry off my neck. I took her from him and twisted to place her on the bedside table, but the surface was coated with grime, and befouled by a dusty coffee mug ring. With a murmur of apology, I hooked her chain on the bedside lamp’s finial instead. As I did, my lover pulled the Royal Amulet up over his head with a great deal less ceremony and delicacy than he’d accorded Merry. He passed him to me.

Ralph spat a flash of reproof as I stretched to hook him on the lampshade. The moment the two Fae gold lengths touched—Ralph’s heavier, serpentine chain covering Merry’s fine delicate filigree—the air sparked, brilliant blue-white.

My best friend’s amber stone flushed a brilliant red-orange.

“They’ve got some electricity going on between them,” I said, watching Merry hurriedly put some distance between her and Ralph. Trowbridge nodded—a quick, harsh bob—then stretched to rotate the shade. Three quick turns and our amulets were facing the quilt rack.

Alone at last.

With exquisite tenderness, Trowbridge used the pad of his index finger to blot away a tear lingering on my lower lash. “I really do hate it when you cry,” he said quietly.

“I don’t do it often.”

“I know.” Thoughtfully, he used the back of a knuckle to gently trace the slope of my cheek all the way to the edge of my jaw. There he paused for another swipe to dry my damp skin once more before his finger followed the line of my pounding pulse from my ear to the base of my throat.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” he murmured with a faint smile.

I flattened my hand on the mat of soft hair nested between his small nipples. Under my palm, I felt the surge of his blood. “Yours, too.”

My mate cupped my face. Eyes serious, face taut. He examined me—my nose, my hair, my lips, the curve of my jaw. Then he angled his head and touched his lips to mine. Softly. His mouth was slightly open, his breath mingled with mine.

It was a different type of kiss than what he’d given me downstairs when his wolf was still upon him, and his restraint was thread-thin. Gentler. A tad restrained, as if he knew me to be someone very soft, and very round, and prone to injury.

But desire streaked through me—that fast. One touch, one intimate exchange of spit and breath, and my core dampened, my breasts swelled. I needed to be closer. Instinct told me to hug his thighs tighter, to curl an arm possessively around his neck, to press myself against him until my breasts were flattened against his chest.

Trowbridge, Trowbridge.

This was what my body had been made for—his touch, his scent, his hands.

Heat built inside me as my guy’s firm lips moved over mine, skillfully stoking the fire within me. His clever tongue lightly traced my full upper lip, teasing for a response. I opened my mouth, and touched the tip of his tongue with mine. With that, his hand slid up the nape of my neck and our kiss deepened.

The soft rasp of his tongue against mine, warm and wet.

Oh sweet heavens.

My heart hammered as I slid my fingers to the nape of his neck. Short bristles instead of long locks. I tested the steely sinew of his neck, the rounded bulk of his shoulder, the little knob of his spine, the hollow behind his ear—oh, he liked that. This I stroked again, emboldened by the sudden tension in his body.

Goose bumps as he turned my head to nuzzle my ear.

Eyes hot, he slid his hand under the gaping neck of my T-shirt. This, he pushed aside, so that it sat low on my shoulder, baring the skin above the shadow of my collarbone. Head tilted, he ran his palm over the place where his teeth had torn my flesh the night we’d exchanged the mate vows.

“There’s no scar,” he said, his brows drawing together.

No. The bite mark had healed. Slower than usual, considering I was half Fae and half Were, but like most wounds, it had healed. I’d worried about that—in the back of my mind echoed a fragment of conversation overheard in St. Hubert’s cloakroom about mate bonds and teeth marks.

“Do you have one?” I asked, feeling a tightness in my chest.

My One True Thing arched his neck to the side so I could examine the place where I’d bitten him. His trapezoid muscle was as unmarred as mine. My gaze flicked downward to his hard abdomen, which bore a jagged silver line—a permanent memento from the wound he’d received on the dark night when the scent of sweet peas had mixed with the raw perfume of the wild and the woods.

“Should there be a scar?”