I'll Be There, page 15
part #19 of His Mate - Brother Series
“More like farted in an enclosed space, and I smell pure bullsh…”
“Unfair,” he said, tipping his chin up and looking down his nose at her. “I am…”
“Full of it,” she said, sidestepping him and getting to the backdoor before he could get in her way again. “And what’s more – you know it.”
Santino was at her side, his shoulder pressed against the wall with his arms folded and a big old grin on his face as she did a double-take on him. “Admit it – you’ve missed my BS.”
Merry opened her mouth to speak, but when he tapped his temple, she growled instead. She didn’t know how it was possible, but his grin widened until he looked like the Joker.
“Told you,” he said in a singsong tone that tempted her dark side to kick him in the balls just for the fun of it.
“Fine,” she said, tossing open the door in front of her. “Whatever.” She stepped inside and turned back towards him.
Santino rolled his shoulder against the wall until he was facing her, and that was when she tossed the door closed in his face. “Is that your idea of a goodnight?” he called, and waited until she snatched the door open again.
“Where are my manners?” she asked, shrugging. “Goodnight,” she said and slammed the door closed once more.
CHAPTER THIRTY
~
“Not even a goodnight nightcap,” Santino muttered, playing to the crowd of one. He knew she was on the other side of that door listening to him, and he was vindicated when she snatched the door open again.
“You already drank half a bottle of Tequilla,” she informed him.
“Not alone…”
“I’ve run out of limes,” she lied.
“We could move on to Scotch.”
“I’m not feeling it, maybe next time,” she said, light-heartedly, and with a smirk that lit her eyes.
That was what he’d wanted to see – the sadness banished and light there once more. “Fine, close the door.”
“What?” she asked frowning. “Why?”
“Just because,” he said, throwing her words back at her.
Merry cocked an eyebrow and tossed the door closed. A millisecond later and there was a firm knock. “Go away,” she called and sniggered to herself.
“Play nice,” he called back and was rewarded with the door opening once more.
“Fine, nice,” she said and shrugged again.
“No, you spoilt it, close the door,” he said and motioned for her to do it. With a sigh, she complied.
Then he knocked again, and she wrenched the door open with a huff. The look that she gave him was akin to a woman getting close to the end of her tether. “Yes?” she asked, her voice full of sarcasm and a tinge of a warning for his antics.
“Oh look,” he said, motioning around him. “It’s the next time.”
“Next time?” she asked, confused.
“You said we could devour the Scotch, the next time,” he said with a devilish grin as he started forward, but Merry put up her hand to stop him in his tracks.
“I said; maybe next time,” she offered back with a victory wiggle of her eyebrows.
“How about if I ask nicely?”
“You do nicely, do you?”
“Sometimes,” he said, and she could practically see the devil in him.
Merry knew one thing when he wanted something; then he usually chipped away until he got it – like earlier – like he would now. She could stand at her door the whole night doing the back and forward thing, or she could just cut her losses and let him in before he wore her down anyway.
Merry groaned. “Do not make me regret this,” she growled.
He took the first step inside. “Well, you know there aren’t any guarantees in this life…” He stopped the door from hitting him side on, but she had already turned on her heels and was walking away.
“Muppet,” she muttered and heard him chuckling behind her.
Santino was right where he wanted to be – friends again – and maybe, given time – more than that. He just had to do what he did best, be himself, and wear her down a little.
“I’m a little muddy, say you have a washing machine,” he called after her and heard a groan in return.
~
Lorna had to admit, it hadn’t taken that long for them not to have their clothes on, and the feel of his hard body pressed against her soft one as he laid over her on the biggest bed she’d ever seen, felt so damn good that she never wanted him to move.
Until she did want him to move because kissing him might have been the best thing since the last time she’d kissed him, but she wanted more, and she knew that feeling was mutual because the hard press of his twitching length, the ravenous kisses, and the hungry growl told her so.
Nash knew he couldn’t hold it together much longer. He’d kissed her until he couldn’t think of his own name, but in the back of his mind, he wanted so much more.
His beast was clawing with the need to rise to the surface and mark her as theirs, and Nash was just holding onto his willpower by a single thread and the skin of his fangs – fangs that he wasn’t about to allow to show until he was buried deep within her making her his.
There was a hunger inside of him that couldn’t be denied any more than it could be ignored. He wanted her – he needed her with every fibre of his being – and yet, he couldn’t stop kissing her.
How damn un-alpha-ish was that?
His beast was tormenting him, urging him on, doing everything in its power to stoke the wildness within him to act, and he’d held it at bay – until now.
Now, she’d made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded like a damn growl, and he’d gone wild.
Nash tore his lips from hers with the need to touch, to taste, to explore her body, but he knew he didn’t have the damn willpower left for that. He’d gone slow, he’d been good, and now he needed to be very, very bad.
Lorna’s hands were on his body, and she tried and failed to drag him back up, but it wasn’t going to work. He had a need that wouldn’t stop pounding within in, and he was going to silence it.
“Just…” she breathed out, tugging on his upper arm, but not getting anywhere.
Lorna needed more from him. She needed to feel his hard length inside of her, and it was like a clawing in her very soul. “I want…”
“Me,” Nash growled, before nipping the hard, sensitive nipple that he’d been devouring.
“Yes, inside me,” she rushed out, arching her back and feeling his tongue lick down over her stomach.
“Just gotta be somewhere,” he growled, pushing back on his heels and opening her legs wide as the scent of her arousal almost drove him crazy.
“That’s…” Her voice notched up a pitch when he swiped his tongue the length of her sex and her eyes practically rolled in her head a moment later when he went in for the kill. “Good too.”
Boy, was it?
Lorna didn’t think the word devour was strong enough to convey what came next. If she’d attacked a pint of ice cream like that she would have finished it in record time. As it was, she certainly got to where she needed to be in record time.
Her mate was a sex-god, and she was lost to the hard throbbing of the first orgasm to rip through her body, but she knew it wasn’t going to be the last.
Damn, he was good.
Damn, that was fast.
Damn, she wanted to do that again, but not without him inside of her.
Not that she was the master of her own destiny – she wasn’t – and that was made abundantly clear to her when she cried out for the second time and fisted anything she could get her hands on – which turned out to be his hair.
That was good too, as she tried to catch her breath on the way back down from the release still pounding through her, she pulled and tugged on his hair to bring Nash back up her body, and she didn’t care if she made him bald in the process.
“Ouch!” he growled, flicking his head and shucking off her hands as he climbed his way up and over her body.
“Well, take a bloody hint,” she managed in one full breath and then gulped in the air.
“I was kind of busy,” he said, and offered her a cocky, but roguish grin.
“Yeah, I caught that – twice,” she said, chuckling as he settled above her, caging her in with the thick, solid muscled arms that she had the urge to squeeze just for the hell of it.
Lorna didn’t get the chance.
Nash captured her wrists in his hands and pressed the backs of her hands down against the mattress with a growl that said he was hungry again – but it wasn’t like she was going to offer him pizza – just her – all of her – heart, mind, body, and soul.
“I would have gone for a third, but…”
“Yours,” she said, and he seemed to snap to attention. “Oh, look at those puppy bright eyes and the pricked up ears,” she said, teasing him.
“Huh?” Nash frowned.
One moment he was teasing her and the next she’d confused the hell out of him – now she was comparing him to a pup?
What the heck?
“Y-o-u-r-s,” she said with the kind of wicked grin that made his hard length twitch and his mind race – faster still from that word – could she mean…? “I could draw you a picture, but I’m kind of snagged by a whole big bad alpha at the moment,” she added with glee and wiggled her fingers at him.
“Yours? As in…?”
“Mine,” she said with relish.
He made a sound like a confused Scooby-Doo, and she might just have lost it then and there in fits of giggles, but he moved his hips, and she felt the divine pressure of his hard length as he started to take her to the hilt – one thought-numbing inch at a time.
Mine…
“Mine,” Nash growled, but not before his beast claimed her with that word first.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
~
Lorna offered him the wickedest of smiles yet, and his heart lurched in his chest as she practically purred on every deep stroke within her. “Glad to see you didn’t need me to draw you a picture,” she said.
“Oh, sweetheart, I definitely got the message,” Nash growled, before releasing her wrists. He didn’t give her time to reach for him when he wrapped a thick arm around her back and snatched her up with him as he sat back on his heels.
Lorna wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, her legs around his waist, and leaned in to whisper against his ear. “Time to taste my blood on your tongue.”
Nash shivered at her hot breath and her teasing words. Caught off guard, he stood no chance against the will of his beast, and his wild side pushed forward.
His fangs elongated, he moved his hips faster, taking her deeper with every thrust – until her fingers curled against the smooth skin of his shoulders and her nails clawed at him.
Nash almost lost his mind. With a deep, hungry growl, he pushed up to his knees, taking her with him, and thrust her towards the heady heights of her next release.
Lorna could feel it building with her. That clawing frustration at not being able to get to where she needed to be faster, but when it hit her – it hit like a freaking freight train and the sharp pain of his razor-sharp fangs as they pierced her skin and went deeper into her flesh only added to the hot, pulsating pleasure that went through every inch of her body.
Nash savoured the taste of her blood on his tongue as he licked over the wound, sealing it into her skin, marking her as his, and his beast backed off. That didn’t stop the fire in his blood from surging to a fever as he lifted and turned her on the bed, placing her down on her hands and knees in front of him.
Nash’s large hands ran over the smooth skin of her backside as his fever grew, down over her shapely hips until his fingers clamped down and he held her in place while he thrust to the hilt inside of her.
Lorna’s mind was still fighting to come back to him, but she pushed back to take everything he had to give out of instinct and moaned aloud as he filled her to the hilt.
The sound of his grunts of pleasure, his growls, mixed with her moans as he took her over and over, thrusting deep, and rubbing against the most sensitive spot inside of her.
Lorna knew where she was heading, where he was taking her, and she fisted the sheets and rode with him every step of the way until she felt his deep thrusts start to become erratic as he neared his own release, a release they would ride out together.
It hit her like a tidal wave, rocking her to her very soul and when the sound of the mating howl torn from within him – it felt as if her soul was answering that call.
Nash knew he’d lost his damn mind to her, lost himself in her, with her, but slowly he was coming back to the reality that his muscles were shaking like he’d caught a fever, and he felt weaker than he’d ever felt in his life.
With a grunt for his locked up muscles, he willed every last ounce of strength that he could muster and took her gently down to the mattress with him.
On one last act of defiance against his body, he managed to pull her into his arms, protectively curling his body around hers, and hooked one leg over hers.
He wasn’t worried about her trying to escape him now, he wasn’t worried about someone trying to hurt her on pack land, but he thought he might die if she rolled over and away from him.
Now that he had her in his arms, he couldn’t envisage a time when he would let her go. Of course, that time would come sooner than he liked because they couldn’t spend forever locked together like that – but for now – he could pretend that they could.
~
“Two months,” Coleen said with a follow-up sigh to emphasise that she was frustrated. “For two months that man has been my mate, and you know what?” she asked, and Lorna shot her grin.
“Nope, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” she said, filling Coleen’s wine glass as they sat on the back porch of Nash’s cabin and watched the men playing football on the grass.
In a straight choice between playing football or drinking wine – the wine had won the day. Besides, who didn’t like watching men flex their muscles and acting like idiots?
“Us,” Merry corrected her, before biting down on one of Betty’s homemade giant cookies that should have been given a national holiday to recognise just how good they were.
“Sorry,” Lorna said, turning to her friend and pack sister. “Us.” They become good friends since joining the pack and were now the kickass Three Musketeers.
“Thank you,” Merry offered back, before grimacing when Guy, one of the enforcers took Santino out with the kind of tackle that had to hurt – vampire or not, having that man-mountain hitting you like a freight train was going to be painful. “Don’t just lay there,” she yelled, making a fist in the air. “Get up and return the bloody favour!”
Lorna chuckled as the vampire rolled from his back onto all fours and clicked his neck from side to side. “Your wish is my command,” he said as he bounced up to his feet and immediate took out the shifter.
“What the hell…?” Merry berated him.
“You said…”
“I said, return the favour. I never said an illegal move, you numbnut!” she growled.
Santino opened his mouth to speak, but one look at the two cackling witches told him to give it up. “No pleasing some people,” he grumbled and was taken down under Guy’s weight as the shifter took him out again. “Because that was in play, was it?”
Guy pushed up to his feet and grinned like a Cheshire Cat. “One good turn deserves another,” he said and walked away chuckling.
Santino grumbled to himself as he stared up at the sky. That time, he thought he might have broken something.
Betty grunted. “Don’t just lay there – play the damn game, dinner’s almost done,” she growled.
“I’m sorry if my broken collarbone is encroaching on the timing of your food,” Santino shot back.
“Apology accepted, now get up,” Betty growled back.
“And you were saying?” Merry asked Coleen, but the witch had lost her chain of thought.
“Huh?”
Lorna helped her get back on track. “Two months a mate and…?”
“Oh!” Coleen said. “And I still can’t get him to throw his clothes into the hamper,” she said, motioning a dunk shot.
Betty snorted a chuckle. “Give him an incentive, and you can make damn sure he’ll get those clothes in every time.” The glint in her eye made all three women do a double-take.
“Wow,” Lorna said chuckling. “I don’t need that picture to be drawn, anyone else?”
The other two shook their head, but all three of them were grinning at Betty. "What? I had a mate once, you know?”
“And I’m sure he was happy with your teaching methods,” Lorna said, and they all chuckled.
Betty sniffed the air and caught the scent of the meat on the gentle breeze. “Food – ten minutes,” she called, pushing up from the chair and starting for the backdoor before she stopped and turned back again. “I’m trusting you three to get them to the table,” she warned, and they nodded like well-trained seals.
“I hate to think what she’d do if we left it longer than ten,” Coleen said, and all three grimaced.
“Let’s just say there is a lot of ducking involved,” Merry said.
“Okay,” Lorna called, not wanting to find out what Betty’s wrath looked like.
“Dinner,” Coleen said, pushing up to her feet.
“Now,” Merry growled. She knew what Betty’s wrath could be like, and she didn’t want to experience it again.
“Just one more…” Flint said, but he was quickly rebuked when Coleen used her magic to whip the ball from the ground and hit him on the temple with it.
“Anybody else?” Lorna asked, placing one hand on her hip and wiggling the fingers of the other hand in the air.
Flint shook off the blow and started for the cabin, followed by Guy, Dalton, and finally the alpha.
