Page 39 of Lone Wolf
“Your home,” he reminded me, as if he could read my thought. “You do as you please.” He kissed me again, deeper this time, then pulled back with a sigh. “If I don’t go, I’ll never get back. I’ll try not to be too long.”
I let him go, watching as he punched Oscar in the shoulder and immediately went for the door, with his team leader on his heels. And then I was alone, in this cement box, with a million and one things to do, and no idea where to start.
I had my shower and wrapped my robe around me to go back to the bedroom. It felt colder there without Damian in it, which was strange. It wasn’t like we knew each other at all, but that wasn’t unusual for omegas to mate someone they’d only just met. Maybe it was a little less than usual for Nevada Ashes, but that was because most of the packs held themselves aloof from us to a certain extent.
It was weirdly quiet, like the walls were so thick that the normal noises couldn’t get through them. I’d thought it would be restful, but it felt like the silence itself was pressing on my ears. I dug through my bag and found my phone, plugged it in and set it to play some soft music in the background. As soon as I did, that oppressive stillness disappeared and I was able to breathe again.
The bed wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t up to being a long-term mated bed. I sighed and pounded the pillows into a semblance of comfort and hoped Damian would be back soon. Maybe I should have taken Holland up on his offer to stay there until the baby came. I bet he made sure everyone had good mattresses. He seemed like the type.
I was half-drowsing against the pillows when I heard the door from upstairs open and close, and the soft sound of feet on the stairs. Funny how I already knew what his footsteps sounded like. He dropped some things off in the little kitchen—I heard the bags rustle and the sound of glass clinking, then crept down the hallway toward the bedroom.
“Oh, you’re awake.” He stopped in the doorway, as if afraid to come in.
“Mostly,” I said, and then embarrassed myself with a huge yawn.
“I got some better pillows. I read somewhere that pregnant people like to pack pillows around them. And I found this blanket.” He held up a couple of massive plastic bags, one stuffed full of pillows, the other overflowing with the softest-looking knitted blanket I’d ever seen. “Here.” He held them out at the ends of his fingertips, and I had a sudden hilarious vision of him inching into the bedroom, trying to appease the cranky, pregnant omega monster.
“Thank you,” I said, and reached out to take the bags. “They’re beautiful.”
“The blanket reminded me of your eyes,” he admitted.
I glanced up at that, startled. Was he blushing? He was! Just a little, but he definitely looked like a teenager courting his first omega. “That’s sweet.” I ran my hand over the blanket and sighed. “This will feel wonderful to sleep under.”
“I thought I’d better get started on this mated thing, since I missed the first five months.”
I laughed at him and pulled everything out of the bags to arrange on the bed. But as I worked away at this homely little task, his scent started to fill the room and I remembered that weweretechnically mated now. Our mating contract was still in that little envelope, tucked carefully in with the rest of our papers. And it hit me in that moment that it was okay for me to want him and to act on that. Because we were properly mated, both in the old style and the modern one.
And it wasn’t like he could get me pregnant now, was it?
He had started to step out into the hallway when I slipped off the side of the bed closest to him to straighten the blanket and I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d let you get some sleep.” He looked down, for all the world like he was the omega and I was the alpha.
“It’s our mating night.” I sidled up to him and eased myself in under his arm. It closed around me, his hand spreading itself out over my waist, and he scented me with a rough, primal-sounding intake of air. “Yes, your nose isn’t lying.” Four months of faking it and all it took was for him to be in the same room as me and my priorities completely changed. “Come make it official.” I pulled his head down to mine and kissed him like it was the beginning of a date and I wanted him to stay all night.
Except that I miscalculated and whatever it was that had been between us that first night, it rose up like the moon and the sun combined and I was moaning, my hands shoving at his clothing trying to get to his skin, and I was going to shift and shred the damn things if I couldn’t get them off him. He didn’t help—his arms came around me like the branches of an old juniper, strong and unrelenting, pinning me against his chest while his kisses made my head spin.
“You’re sure?” he asked when the kiss finally ended. He was panting, his chest rising and falling like a startled bird’s beneath my hands.
I took a step back, though my body protested, and put his hands on the collar of my robe. It was half off me anyway, the left side of my chest and that shoulder already bare to his sight. “Yes.”
He licked his lips, his eyes dark and intent. Something of the fighter in him glided through them and it made me shiver, though I’d never been one of the ones that liked to be overwhelmed by my partner. I was always about control, but maybe that could be my gift to him tonight, to give him me without strings, without limits.
We stood there until I thought I might scream with frustration and then, as if reading my mind, his hands moved down to the belt at my waist and he tugged it free and pushed the satiny fabric off my shoulders. It landed on the floor and I kicked it out into the hallway so we wouldn’t get tangled in it. “Now you,” I told him. “Let me see you.”
He nodded sharply and pulled his shirt off over his head. Then the jeans joined my robe in the hallway and he was naked before me and I was a very happy shifter.
Damian bent and scooped me up against his chest, carrying me into our bedroom like we were in some old-time romance. He laid me on the bed and climbed on beside me. The blanket was a soft as I’d thought it would be and my skin was a mass of sensation, from the velvet tickle of the blanket on my back to the warm solidity of his body against my front.
We kissed some more and I let my hands roam where they wanted to, which was everywhere. He was solid and reassuring and the promise of power in the corded muscles that covered him made me moan in delight as he teased my mouth with his, tracing my lips with his tongue or catching at the corners of my mouth with his teeth in the gentlest of dominance.
The baby was quiet for once, though impossible to ignore at this point in the pregnancy. It pushed Damian off to the side, his weight mostly on the mattress and not on me where I wanted it. My skin was desperate to take the feel of him and press it deep inside and I tangled my legs around his until we could hardly move.
His lips left mine, traveling over my jaw and down to my neck. I’d had dates want to kiss my neck before and never quite understood the attraction of it, but the feel of Damian’s mouth against my skin made me whimper and arch against him.
“You like that?” he whispered. “Tell me what you like, Salem. I want to do all those things for you.”
Later. I’d tell him later that no one had ever bothered to figure out what I liked, thatIbarely knew beyond the hunger the pheromones of an alpha woke in me. That I understood pleasure but not preference and I’d never before realized the difference between them. “I like you,” I whispered and thought starry-eyed of all the experimenting we could do now to figure out what it was that I preferred.
