Chapter 15
Brick
“I honor the dead who fought for pack and glory.” I know I’m speaking through numb lips, but I can’t hear my own words. My head is splitting from Madi’s whistle. It was like a machete hacking between my ears. I’d take a thousand cuts from a knife rather than endure it again. “Pay your respects. Leave the bodies. We will burn the place at nightfall.”
Explaining away this much death to the Newark police and coroners would be an impossibility. We’ll have to be sure all the bodies are incinerated.
I turn from the stage and lock gazes with Madi.
Quiet rings between my ears. A muffled silence despite all the noise around me.
It’s not from Madi’s dog whistle.
I’m in the eye of the hurricane. The stillness of the conjuncture of me and my destined mate. If I’d thought she was magnificent before, that was a superficial admiration. What I feel for her now goes beyond bone and blood. Straight into the cosmos where Madison Evans has belonged in my arms since the beginning of all time and will continue to hold my heart for the billions of years after my death.
“Madi,” I croak through dry lips. She’s glowing, serene, still holding her tiny weapon of mass eardrum rupture.
“Could’ve warned me,” Billy mutters, glaring at the dog whistle.
“And ruin the surprise?” She pretends to raise it to her lips, and someone whimpers like a little puppy. She pockets it, and every wolf in the building relaxes.
Wolves move all around us. My team barks orders to the pack. Someone sets off the fire sprinklers without the alarm, sending the blood spilling over the stage in streams.
Her hands flutter as she brings them to my bare chest. Her gaze is shocked. Worried. I’m covered in blood. It’s running in rivulets down my skin now because of the sprinklers.
I advance, backing her into the wings of the stage until she hits a wall. “My beautiful mate.” I crowd against her.
My fingers hover near her cheek. I’m almost afraid to touch her–she’s too precious, and I’m covered in blood. Water soaks her hair, making her dark locks stick to her temples. I nudge them back with the barest of a touch.
“Madi. Madison.” Now I cradle her face. “My mate.”
She smiles perhaps the most genuine smile I’ve ever seen on her. Open, trusting, guileless.
I lean forward and stroke my lips across hers, my tongue delving deep into her mouth upon arrival.
Her arms twine around my neck, and she returns the kiss, her own tongue tangling with mine. There’s something different about her. Something more whole, more integrated, more beautiful.
There’s none of the guardedness she sometimes carries. Nothing tentative about the way she pulls my head down to kiss her more deeply.
“You chose me,” she whispers in awe when I ease back to look at her face.
Now I can hear perfectly. My ears are trained only to her.
Tears jump into her eyes. “You could’ve died today. Again.”
“I’m no leader to the pack without my mate. And you’re my mate.”
One of the tears streaks down her face as she nods in agreement. “I’m your mate.”
I tip my head toward the stage. “You were fucking magnificent out there.” My hands drop to her waist and close possessively, desire overtaking my reverence.
I need my mate. It feels like years since I last touched her. Last held her. Last claimed her.
“Bath first,” she murmurs, as if sensing my need.
Right. I can’t be pawing my mate when I’m covered in blood.
As if he divined my dilemma, Nickel appears behind us and clears his throat. “The team can handle the rest. Let’s get you two to the Berkshires in the chopper.”
Eagle already took Ruby, to the manse with Auggie, April and my mom to be guarded. If I’d died today, the royal bloodline still would’ve been secure.
“Thank you, Nickel.” I sweep Madi up into my arms and carry her toward the door, Nickel right behind me. I nod to my men on the way. “Vance.”
Vance stops what he’s doing and gives me a formal nod.
“Sully.”
“Alpha.”
“Jake.”
“Alpha.”
“Billy.”
“Your brother,” Billy says.
I’ll have to take him to task later for bringing Madison into the fray, but I can’t fault him for the way things turned out. My mate proved herself to the entire pack. Made them cower.
And all with a simple dog whistle–something only a human would be able to wield against us.
My clever, clever mate.
We walk out the door and get into the back of Nickel’s waiting car to go to the closest helipad.
“Turn on the heat,” I bark because Madi’s shivering from getting wet in there.
“It’s on.” Nickel steps on the gas, propelling us out of here.
I hold her on my lap like I’m afraid to let her go. Like I’m afraid something else will come up to keep us apart again.
I press my face against her wet neck. “Are you mine now?” I murmur against her skin.
She runs her fingers through my wet hair, holding my head like she, too, finds me achingly precious. “Always. I didn’t stop being yours, Brick.”
“You just needed me to get my head out of my ass.”
She chokes on a little chuff. But her voice is warm with love. “You had a huge decision to make. You thought you had to choose between me and the pack.”
I shake my head. “I was looking at things backwards. I thought you were my weakness, when you’re actually…you’re actually my greatest strength.” As I say it, I realize the words are true. Madi’s changed me. Knowing love has opened me up to an entirely different possibility. The dark determination of the cut-throat CEO I was once is gone, replaced by something far more alive. More human, perhaps. Someone capable of experiencing life. The joy, the pleasures, and the pain. All things I’d blocked out on my way to destroying the Adalwulfs through the success of my company.
Madi makes a tortured sound and drops her head to rest on mine. “I love you.”
My arms tighten around her. “I love you so fucking much. You have no idea.”
She gives a watery laugh. “No, I think I do. You just fought your entire pack for me.”
I close my eyes. I’m weary from battle, but the lingering sense of madness that’s been simmering beneath the surface ever since I marked Madi has ebbed. Maybe that was the quiet I felt backstage of the theater.
My demons are gone.
Madi is truly mine.
“From now on, we’re in this together, though,” Madi says. “Don’t keep me out of pack business. I may not be a wolf, but that doesn’t mean I can’t contribute.”
“Clearly,” Nickel murmurs in appreciation from the front seat not even pretending to not listen.
“You saved the pack,” I agree. I cup her neck and nip at her skin. “And my life–again.”
* * *
Madi
“Brick…Brick,” I gasp.
He’s already made me orgasm five times. When we arrived at the Berkshire manse, he took me in the shower, then carried me out and spent a solid forty minutes with his head between my legs. Now I’m pinned to the wall, a foot above the floor, and he’s driving into me relentlessly.
I’ve lost my mind completely, and my bones have turned to rubber. “Brick. Oh God, please.”
“Please, what, little mate?”
“I need to…I need–” I shriek as he circles my asshole with a finger. “Oh! Um…”
“I’m taking you here tonight, Madi Evans.”
“No…oh!”
He penetrates my back hole. The pleasure is intense. It feels so wrong and so right at the same time.
“Brick!” I cry in alarm although I don’t want him to stop. I definitely want him to go on. It’s just that it feels so naughty. So forbidden. So thrilling.
Before I can draw a breath, I’m coming, my internal muscles squeezing and tightening around his thick cock, my hips bucking against his, making his pumping finger stretch my anus wider as my clit grinds down on his root. I’m gushing, my fluids dripping onto the floor in my first female ejaculation.
“Oh my God!” If I sound shocked, it’s because I am.
No matter, Brick takes care of me, carrying me to the bed and laying me down, our bodies still intimately connected.
“Oh my God,” I repeat, incapable of anything more than babble.
“That’s right, little girl. Who makes you come so hard you forget your name?”
I orgasm again, my inner thighs squeezing around his hips, muscles shivering with the release. “You do,” I rasp. “My Big Bad Boss.”
When my vision clears, I realize Brick is smiling down at me. His normally stoic or even severe expression is transformed in the swoon worthy grin.
I blink up at him, my heart melting and joining the puddle that is my body. “What?”
He removes his finger from my ass, but rocks into me with his still erect dick. “You heard some words after I called you little girl.”
I laugh. “Don’t count it as a win. My frontal lobe was temporarily incapacitated.”
“Mmm.” He rocks in and out again, his lids drooping in pleasure. “Marry me, Madi.”
It shouldn’t be a surprise that he proposed. He tried in Greece, and I’m wearing his ring already. Still, this time, I have the fairytale reaction–the kind you’re supposed to have when the man of your dreams asks you to marry him.
I lose my breath. See moons dance across the ceiling.
Fall further in love.
“Okay, Big Bad,” I whisper.
He flashes another one of those panty-melting smiles. It’s hard to imagine I’ll ever be able to reason again with the few brain cells that haven’t gone south.
He pulls out of me. “Good thing you said yes.”
“Why is that?”
“I was about ready to show you that you’re mine.” He rolls me to my belly and delivers a few light spanks.
I cover my ass, laughing. “Yes. I’m definitely yours.” I roll back over. “So…if this is a medieval sort of marriage, am I expected to be your breeder? Oh.” I remember why Brick’s pack rejected me. “I guess I would muddy the bloodline.”
Brick climbs over me, pinning my wrists to the mattress beside my head. “Not would. Will. You’re having my pups.”
I roll my hips to meet his. “Am I?”
“Yes. Preferably as soon as possible, but I’m open to negotiation.” He nibbles at my neck, his cock lengthening between my legs. “I know how good you are at getting your way with me.”
I scrape my fingernails along the back of his neck. “I’m going to need at least four years before we start that discussion. I’m taking the helm of a major cosmetics company.”
His brows pop. “You are?”
I nod. “Yes. Eleanor says she’s leaving me controlling interest, and I’d better come and learn at her side before she bites it for good.”
Brick appears slightly alarmed. He goes still. “Damn. I…don’t want to manage without you, but I understand. That’s a big opportunity.”
“If we’re going to be partners in this relationship, I can’t go back to working under you.”
A wicked glimmer appears in Brick’s eyes. “Oh, I intend to keep you working under me the majority of the time. We’ll just need a new title for you,” he rumbles, rocking his pelvis so the head of his cock slides over my entrance again.
“Like what?”
He shoves into me without any assistance from his hands. “Mrs. Blackthroat.”
I gasp at the sudden thrust, sore from all our sex play. My lids droop as he arcs in and out of me, starting up a slow rhythm. “I’m keeping my own last name, Big Bad.”
He slows his rhythm and lowers his head to kiss me. “Mrs. Blackthroat,” he murmurs.
I laugh. “I prefer Madi.”
“Madi. Madison. Mate. Wife.” He thrusts in harder, building momentum.
I arch, my body so attuned to his now that my own need rises and surges in concert with his. “I’m not your wife, yet, Big Bad,” I remind him. “There will need to be a wedding first.”
“Ah yes.” He shifts his grip to brace one hand against the headboard. “The wedding. We’ll do all your human rituals. Every one of them–engagement party, bridal showers, bachelorette festivus. No prenup, of course. I want the human law to reflect pack law. What’s mine is yours.”
His eyes change to gold, warning me he’s about to come. I dig my nails into his shoulders, rock my pelvis to take him deeper. We peak at the same time, our orgasms gasped out with mingled breath, our bodies locked together. I receive him, and he gives.
“Mrs. Blackthroat,” he murmurs, rolling us onto our sides, our bodies still connected.
My lids close in pleasure. “Evans-Blackthroat,” I mumble, my lips grazing his throat.
He wraps his arms around me, holding me tucked against his chest. “Evans-Blackthroat,” comes his satisfied rumble. “That works.”