Chapter Twenty-Six #2
But there was also the confusion and betrayal that came with knowing that it was one of their own.
Brutus had to be forcibly restrained from murdering Simon.
A guard was set on him as well, just in case.
Orla continued to stay trapped in her wolf, fighting her chains so violently when she smelled Simon that she ripped through her fur.
Sorcha was just as torn as the Lycan. She thought they had been friends.
She had stitched Simon’s ankle. He had slept in her house.
Just thinking about it made her stomach roil angrily.
He had tried to kill her. More than once.
But he had never managed it. Was that because he had not truly wanted to, as he’d claimed?
Or because there was always someone there to stop him? And did it really matter, in the end?
Aidan was already healing, the blood dried on his chest when he found her watching the dancing around the fire. Someone had created a wolf out of will-o’-the-wisps, and it bounded overhead, howling.
“Freya has him now,” he said.
“Will she…kill him?”
“I doubt it. She prefers far more painful measures.”
“That is not an improvement.”
“No. Treason is not taken lightly among the wolves.”
“We’ll need to find the others working for him,” Sorcha said. “Not to kill them, mind. Maybe turn them over to the Order? And free the rest of their fighters.”
“Aye, but not tonight.”
“No, not tonight.” Her paper birds had not found her in some time. She wouldn’t know where to find the others. It scratched at her.
“Take your triumphs when you get them,” Aidan murmured.
Three young wolves were having a howling competition.
Someone else was playing a tin whistle. Tavish walked by, naked, and singing a song definitely not fit for polite company.
“Enjoy the celebrations. I won’t be long,” Aidan added before disappearing into the shadowy woods.
She took a sip of ale. She ate an apple. She danced a round with Tavish.
And then she decided she had waited long enough.
Perhaps she did not think hard enough, as Granny accused her of every time Sorcha spontaneously brought home a fox kit or a badger that smelled exceedingly bad and chewed the chair legs.
But Aidan thought too hard. And he carried too much. This was not a night for brooding. He had said so himself. It was a night for celebrating.
By the time she found him, up to his waist in the river, she’d made herself quite cross over it.
But even feeling peevish as she did, she had to give herself a moment to enjoy the sight of him. The moon was bright enough to silver his bare chest, casting the ridges of muscles into light and shadow. His hair was wet, tousling at his nape.
He turned his head, gold eyes pinning her instantly. “Sorcha?”
“You took too long,” she informed him.
“And it made you cross?”
“Yes,” she admitted, halting at the river’s edge. The grass was thick, spotted with white flowers. “I don’t know why.”
“I know why,” he said softly, before closing the distance between them and tugging her into the river.
She landed against him, the cold water swirling around them, seeping into her gown.
She gasped. “We should get this off you,” he murmured as the beads on her hem glittered under the ripples. “Before it gets ruined.”
He pulled the ties at the back, pushing the embroidered fabric over her shoulders, past her elbows and down her body before lifting her out of it.
It landed on the banks. He followed with her stays, her chemise, peeling them from her as if she were a gift created just for him.
His touch was bold and possessive as he stroked over her skin, and also reverent.
He pressed his palms to her spine, her breasts against his chest, nipples pebbling.
He stepped back into the deeper water. “Too cold?” he asked, dipping his head to suck each nipple into his hot, wet mouth. She moaned, heat streaking down her thighs, sparking between her legs. “Sorcha,” he reprimanded. “Answer me. Too cold?”
She shook her head. He was warm enough that, after a quick shiver, she felt as languid as if she had spent an hour in the hot tide pools of Haven. The water was so clear she could see the stones, the reflection of the moon, a sprinkling of bright stars.
And the fact that he was naked.
“Everyone is rejoicing and you decided to take a bath?”
“I was covered in blood.” He said it calmly, but she saw the way his jaw clenched.
And the way he maneuvered them away from the moonlight, into the shadows under a weeping willow.
“You’re getting cross again,” he pointed out, dragging his mouth along her jaw, nipping at her.
She was, even though it was a hazy sort of cross, as his lips were on her throat now and it made her whimper. “You can smell it on me when I’m cross?”
“No, songbird, you’re digging your little claws into me.”
She let go of his arms, which she had been clutching.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” he scolded. He cupped her bottom and lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around him, ankles crossing. “So, what is it, songbird? Tell me.”
It was extremely difficult to answer with his hard cock pressing against her.
She squirmed and he swore, his hold tightening.
The heat was already pooling inside her core.
Her intimate muscles fluttered in delicious anticipation.
She bit his jaw softly in retaliation. His arm tightened around her, his other closing around her hair, tugging her head to the side. Just a bit. Just a hint of the Alpha.
She wanted more than a hint. She did not know how to convince him of that, the stubborn, stubborn man. “You’re still hiding from me.”
“I’m as naked as can be, love.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“I’m right here.” He rubbed his cock between her lips and over her bud.
This was a conversation they needed to have.
But perhaps not while she was wantonly rubbing against the ridge of his erection.
The moon could wait. Because she was not convinced she could.
The kiss was more than a kiss—it was a challenge, an agreement. A laying down of weapons. A memory of what his hands could do and how he made her body respond. Of what they could do to each other. A promise of what they could do, again and again.
It was so much more than mouths meeting and breaths mingling, and, at the same time, that would have been enough.
Almost too much. It was incendiary, and Sorcha could feel Aidan’s wolf pulling at his tether, something wild and primal responding in her.
He slanted his lips over hers, again and again, nipping, licking, a hum of pleasure.
She kissed him back until that hum turned to a growl, writhed against him until he laid her down in the soft grass.
He ran his palm up her legs, over her breasts, eyes flaring. “You are so beautiful.”
The moonlight touched her, and maybe it was enough, even if he would not let it touch him, because his eyes flared again, sharper, hotter. So intense that she squirmed and gasped, and he was barely touching her. “Aidan, please.”
He prowled over her body, dragging open-mouthed kisses along her inner thigh, her belly, under her breast. Tasting, nibbling, worshipping.
She reached for him, stroking along his shaft, gripping it tight until he jerked in her grasp.
She grinned and did it again. Moisture beaded in response, and she wiggled down until she could close her lips around the head, swirling her tongue over the tip.
He tasted like the river, like salt and the forest. Like Aidan.
She sucked harder, hollowing her cheeks, using her fingers to grip the shaft.
He groaned, rumbled a choked “fuck” like a prayer.
To her. It made her wetter, made her quim feel swollen, pulsing deeply.
Made her suck harder and deeper until he swore again and pulled her back up.
She made a sound of protest. Something about it snapped the last of his restraint, and he growled, pushing her knees open to feast on her.
It was mouth and tongue and teeth, sucking and licking, stroking deeply.
It was too much, too much, not gentle or coaxing, and exactly what she wanted.
The bite mark had faded from her neck, but she felt it throb regardless.
He sucked her bud into his mouth and sucked, sucked, sucked until her back arched and her toes curled and she came so hard and fast she saw stars behind her eyelids.
And then he was pushing into her, claiming the last tremors that spasmed around him.
She met him thrust for thrust, lifting her hips, the sounds of their panting and moaning drowning out the river, the wind in the leaves, the crickets in the nearby clearing.
She bit his shoulder, right over the swirl of his tattoo, and he came hard, his eyes gold, her name on his lips.
He buried his nose in the crook of her neck and caught his breath, still caging her in with his body. It made her feel both safe and wild. Connected to the earth but filled with the sky. A woman, and a wolf.
He pushed a sweat-tangled curl off her cheek with a wry smile. “One of these days, we’re going to make it to a bed.”
She grinned. “Sounds dreadfully dull.”
They lay there until she shivered and he pulled her up to dry her with his plaid, carefully, tenderly.
And then they stood and stared at each other.
“I can take you back home if you like,” Aidan said, the merriment from the rest of the camp a soft song in the near distance.
“Is that what you want?” Sorcha asked.
“Hell no,” he said, and it was ripped from him, like ivy from a stone wall. Like the weight of it had sat there too long, strangling his chest.
Sorcha went warm where she had been cold. He pulled her into his arms, and she laid her ear against his chest and listened to the comforting beat of his heart. His chest hair tickled her nose. He was warm as a bonfire beating back the winter cold. “It might not be safe yet,” he murmured.