Page 9 of Pack Ruin
“Yes. Yours.” I leaned forward so that the top of his length pressed against the center of my pleasure. I wasn’t close—or at least I didn’t think so—but it didn’t matter. What mattered was this moment. Our connection.
I moved slowly, staring down at his eyes, which grew brighter as he approached his peak. To my surprise, my own climax rolled over me at the same moment that he cried out, in a slow, luxurious wave of pleasure. Like a blessing.
“If I need to remind you how I feel about you every day,” I whispered when we were done, and I was lying on his broad chest, “then I will make that sacrifice. I will suffer through as many orgasms as it takes.”
His chest bobbed up and down in silent laughter, and I let myself smile. Even if the rest of my life was a shit heap, this part—where I could make my mate laugh and forget his worries for a moment—was golden.
5
Starving
FLOR
We might have stayed in bed for another full day, but my stomach insisted on getting up. “You’re hungry,” Brand grumbled when it let out a loud gurgle that sounded a little like a cat yowling. “What kind of mate am I, letting you go hungry?” He launched himself from the bed, holding me like a baby, or possibly a football, as he carried me to the doorway.
“Brand, I only have on a nightgown,” I squealed as we moved down a hallway decorated with what appeared to be family photos and paintings of shifters in wolf and human form. Some looked really old, but I couldn’t focus on them at the speed Brand was walking.
“It covers everything,” he replied, hauling me down a winding staircase made of enormous logs. Everything in the whole house was oversized, like the pictures of fancy ski lodges I’d seen in magazines.
Northern’s Lodge had been big on the outside, but the rooms had seemed normally proportioned. This room was vast, the ceilings vaulted high, with rough-cut pine beams stretching from one side to the other and enormous leather sofas and armchairs, as well as gorgeous carved wooden tables and cabinets.
I heard voices down one hall, but Brand tacked away, toward a room that smelled like dozens of kinds of food, and something else… I sniffed.
Oh no.
“Brand, put me down,” I hissed in his ear, struggling. “I reek of sex.”
“Good. You smell like your mate,” he growled, and his eyes glinted bright. “Smell like a claimed female.” He ran his nose along my throat, scenting my skin above the neckline of the gown, before he pushed open a door.
The room behind it was noisy, filled with the lush scents and sounds of a meal being prepared, and a plump, older woman with gray hair, who was humming and moving pots and pans around as we walked in.
“Grandma Ida, my mate is starving. Help.”
She spun to face us, a wooden spoon in her hand. She had on a pair of denim overalls, a red checkered shirt, and an apron that saidTeam Jacobin block letters. She was one of the roundest shifters I’d ever seen, from her apple cheeks all the way down to her short legs. I grinned. She was almost as short as me.
Her face was immediately wreathed in a matching smile when she saw us, and she rushed across the kitchen with her arms outstretched. At the last second, she stopped mere inches away, her nostrils twitching. I blushed, knowing what she’d scented.
But she mock-scowled at him, not me. “Brand, really? You didn’t even let your new mate take a shower?”
“She was hungry, Grandma Ida. Her stomach was growling.”
Ida’s dark eyebrows lowered, like he’d shared something awful. “Understandable then,” she agreed, pointing to an empty chair with her spoon. “Put her there, and start feeding her. Biscuits for now, but we’ll have a proper meal in no time.”
Feeding me?Brand took her at her word, setting me on his lap and not allowing me to touch the warm biscuits in the basket Ida set in front of us, along with butter and honey. Instead, he smeared chunks with the soft butter, drizzled honey over the pieces, and lifted them with his hand to my mouth. It felt ridiculous, and decadent, but I allowed it.
While Brand fed me, Ida chattered at us from the stove, mentioning dozens of names of pack members. “Oh, I can’t wait for you to make some friends here, Flor. You’re newly shifted, yes? I’ll invite some of our newer wolves around. Tomas, Layla, Grace, Raymond, Brianna, and Rebin all shifted this year for the first time.
“Rebin got caught mid-shift, but Annalise—she’s a dear friend, a female who’s been living wild for two decades—well, she’d come in for provisions and saw the shift. She went up to him and laid her hand on his back, and wouldn’t you know? He was her true mate. After all this time! We’d worried she’d gone feral, by the look of her. Of course, she’s a few years older than him, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way those two started honoring the moon right there in front of the whole pack—ah, Samuel! I wondered when Verona would let you out of the library. Take a seat.”
“Thanks, Mom.” The Alpha pressed a kiss to the older woman’s forehead before sitting on the other side of the rough-hewn oak table, and I took the opportunity to wriggle into my own chair, though Brand grumbled.
Ida gestured for her grandson to help her with the food, and I peered around, ignoring Samuel’s piercing gaze as he sipped some coffee.The room was a kitchen, not a formal room like theHillier family ate in at Northern. I preferred it, though, and it was still nicer than Southern’s fanciest dining room.
The rustic table was long enough for a dozen shifters, with copper pots and pans hung high overhead down its length, and plenty of space behind our chairs for the ovens and countertops. It looked like Ida had been preparing a feast for days.
She and Brand covered the tabletop with platters and baskets of every kind of food I could imagine. There was warm cornbread dripping with butter, more biscuits with a bowl of sausage gravy nearby, a venison roast, crackling duck, quail, beef meatballs, quiche stuffed with bacon and cheese, and mounds of crispy, buttery roasted potatoes.
And one bowl of salad, about the size of two of my fists.
