Chapter 8
She woke up wrapped in both him and the blanket.
Correction: wrapped in the blanket, entirely hogged, cocooned in it like a particularly satisfied burrito, while Rex lay on the grass beside her with one arm behind his head and absolutely none of said blanket.
She had migrated on him in her sleep, and now lay tucked on his side, head on the flat of his shoulder, his arm keeping her close.
And yet, his warmth seeped through the blanket and into her.
The morning was indecently perfect. The first real day of summer, ripe and gold in the warming morning light—a light coming through the tree line in long, soft angles.
She could hear birds. She could hear her own heartbeat, easy and slow.
What she could not do was remember the last time she’d woken up and didn’t immediately think of fourteen things she needed to do.
Can’t really complain about how it started, she thought on a sigh, settling her head back on his arm.
She felt a clear echo of neither can I before he’d made a sound.
With something that was a growl, a yawn, and a satisfied rumble all collapsed into one, he rolled onto his side, one arm coming over her to cage her loosely as he buried his face in her hair.
Good morning, Moonbeam. Not words exactly, more like she could take a feeling and put his voice to it.
He’d asked her last night if that bothered her, the way the bond leaked through their thoughts.
She might want to ask him, at some point, if there was an off switch—she didn’t particularly need him to know when she had to use the bathroom, for instance, or to spoil a surprise, or to hear the more chaotic loops of her brain at two in the morning.
But the rest of it? Him, warm, solid, and bleeding contentment into her without meaning to? No. That she didn’t mind at all.
“There’s a way,” he murmured into her hair. “To close it off, when you want it.”
“I want to learn it, then. But I like it. This is very convenient and also extremely sweet, and I’m not giving it up.”
“You don't mind.”
“No. No, I really don’t.”
She untangled herself from the blanket enough to reach for him and found warm, smooth skin and the hard planes of his chest. What an exceptional chest. She’d never considered herself particularly moved by chest hair, but people grew and changed, and she had, apparently, undergone a full conversion overnight, because she ran her hand across it slowly, enjoying the way his heart stuttered slightly under her palm even though the rest of him stayed perfectly still.
Which was lovely, all of it. But it was morning now, and there was light, and she could see him. All of him, if she just—
She extricated herself fully from the blanket and nudged him onto his back.
He went with a small frown, brown eyes questioning.
She sat up and looked at the display of absolute physical perfection laid out in front of her, entirely unconcerned, golden in the early light.
She was going to need a moment. Possibly several.
“Are you in a hurry to be anywhere?” she asked.
“No.” The corner of his mouth curved into the least innocent smile she’d ever seen on a face. He put both hands behind his head, completely at her mercy and appearing to know and enjoy it. “Pack’s quiet. We have a day off after Letha. We can stay here as long as you want.”
And she, a woman with a perfectly ordinary sense of propriety in every other context of her life, had absolutely no hesitation stepping off the blanket in all her naked glory and swinging a leg over to straddle him.
The wave of want that hit her wasn’t entirely her own.
It rolled in hot and forceful, his desire flooding through the bond until it tangled up with hers, and she couldn’t have told you which was which.
She felt him go taut underneath her, felt the effort it cost him to keep his hands behind his head.
Good. She had plans in that direction. Because last night had been.
.. There weren’t words, actually, she’d need to invent some, but she’d been too caught up in the current of it to take her time.
And there was a lot of him to take time with.
She started at his chest. Spread her palms over the strong planes of his pecs, the impossible breadth of his shoulders, learning the geography of him with her hands first, then her mouth.
He was warm everywhere, almost feverish, and she felt every small sound he swallowed, every muscle that jumped under her lips.
She worked slowly, with great personal satisfaction, trailing down over bones, muscles, and skin.
It made him shiver when she pressed her mouth to them.
This enormous, controlled man, shivering because of her.
And then further, to that deep cut of muscle between his hard belly and—
He was a big man. She’d known it. Had felt it in more ways than one. She had not fully appreciated the sight of that.
He was already hard, thick and flushed, and so obviously ready that her mouth actually watered, and she took exactly one more second to appreciate the view before she looked up at his face. Which was when he moved to sit up. “Don’t you dare, Rex.”
He stopped. Held her gaze for one long moment.
Then he lay back, jaw tight, one hand behind his head and one pressed flat against the grass like he needed something to grip.
She could feel through the bond the white-knuckled effort of holding still, the want coiled in him, and it was the hottest thing she had ever experienced in her life.
Officer Growly. The big bad wolf. Entirely in her power.
Cruel, came through the bond, rough at the edges.
“You won’t be mad in about ten seconds.”
It was a promise. One she kept. She took him into her mouth and felt him pull a sharp breath through his teeth.
The taste of him, of them both from the night before, hit her all at once.
She worked him slowly at first. Lips, tongue, the careful edge of her teeth where she’d learned he liked it, and his pleasure came back through the bond like a current, electric and direct, pooling low in her until thinking straight required actual effort.
She took him deeper. His hand found her hair, not directing, just there, as if he needed to touch her.
His thighs were steel under her palms. She sucked until she felt him start to fracture, until please came through without words, and she couldn’t see past her own greed for him.
She pulled off, climbed up, and sank down onto him in one long slide.
For a heartbeat, everything went still. Everything was settled, whole and right; a sound she hadn’t known was missing had finally resolved into the chord it belonged to.
And then she started to move.
His hands found her hips as she rolled into a rhythm he met, felt the double current of both their pleasure running through her.
His head pressed back into the grass. Her name in his mouth sounded like a plea.
She chased it, chased the wave of it, until his cock started swelling, the morning went white, and she came apart, his hands the only solid thing in her world.
He followed her over the edge with a sound that scared the birds out of the trees.
She collapsed onto his chest.
His arms wrapped around her immediately, both of them breathing hard, hearts slamming in approximate unison.
“Good morning,” she said, into his collarbone.
The rumble that came out of him was deeply, profoundly smug.
EVENTUALLY, THEY HAD to pack up and leave.
They folded the blanket, found their clothes in the grass, and a new set for Rex in the backpack. Rex shouldered it, while Zoe took one last look at the clearing before stepping into the trees.
She noticed it on the trail. The way the light sat differently in the leaves; the way the air tasted distinct and clean.
The birdsong had individual layers to it that she hadn't been able to pick apart before. She wasn’t sure if it was the sex, or him, or the bond now sealed between them, or simply that something inside her had rearranged overnight into a shape that fit better, but the world looked and sounded like someone had adjusted the contrast.
Everything was a little more there.
“I feel it too,” Rex said, and she realized they were walking hand in hand without having decided to. “All my senses seem sharper. Like the world is righter, somehow.”
“I feel invincible.” She paused. “Which I know I’m not. Maybe I’m feeling your strength?”
“Not sure. But you’ll get very few colds now. Heal faster.” He paused, then winced slightly. “Don't get hurt, though. The thought of you hurt is—”
“Wrong,” she said. “I can’t think of you being hurt in any way and not be terrified.” She lifted their joined hands and pressed her lips to his palm. “Let's just not get hurt. Ever.”
“Deal.”
They were nearly at the parking lot when something surfaced that had snagged her attention in the morning and then had been promptly buried under more pressing developments. “How did you know the pack was quiet? Do you hear them the way you hear me?”
“Not exactly. Owen, I hear clearly. The pack is more like... a sense. If something breaks the peace, like a threat or something serious, I feel a disruption in the flow.”
“But you can’t read any of them individually. Know their intentions.”
He knew where she was going. The smile that crossed his face was bittersweet. “No. But you can be certain there is very little I wouldn’t do to keep you safe.”
“I know,” she said.
Which worried her a little. He felt the shift in her mood.
He stopped walking and turned her toward him, took her face in both hands, and kissed her.
Slowly. Thoroughly. Until she had no thoughts at all, which was frankly unfair and also extremely effective.
“Are you going to fix all my moods like that?”
“I'm certainly going to try.”
“Fair.”
They reached the parking lot and stopped before taking the last step that would take them off the track and into the gravel. The mildly absurd reality of logistics still needed answers.
She looked at him. He looked at her. The idea of getting in their cars and driving to separate places and spending any portion of the rest of the day not in the same room as him was so obviously not happening that it barely needed saying. “My place is closer.”
He simply nodded. “Then that’s where we’re going.”
They drove back separately because they were two adults, and it was the only sensible option.
It turned out to be the more painful option, too, which was ridiculous.
Or, it should have been. Ten minutes, one car length between them, his truck steady in her rearview the whole time, and it was still too much distance.
For that, she took the most direct route.
They spent the day doing very little of consequence: coffee, her couch, a meandering conversation that jumped from werewolf pack dynamics to her grandfather’s recipe for salve made from calendula. Until they hit an unexpected topic.
“What’s your favorite movie?” she asked after the second cup of tea he’d loved—a blend of lemon balm, chamomile, and passionflower, softened with rose petals and a curl of licorice root.
Her creation, it was one of her best sellers and her personal favorite.
He’d liked it the first time and had lingered over the second, filling her with pride.
What We Do in the Shadows.
She stared at him. “The vampire one.”
“Yes.”
“You, a werewolf... your favorite movie is a vampire one.”
“It’s funny,” he said with a shrug.
“It’s extremely funny, I have seen it so many times, I just—” She pointed at him. “Do you have a Vladislav?”
His laugh was.... Good. Amazingly so. “You should know we don’t have the same relationship with vampires that the film suggests.”
“I do, but you never really know with you magiks.” She pulled her knees up. “Does Owen know this is your favorite movie?”
“Nope."
“So I know something about you that Owen doesn’t.”
The smirk was way more naughty than possibly intended. “You know quite a lot that Owen doesn’t.”
She kissed him, snuggled back into his side, and they watched the movie together. It was, somehow, even funnier now.
He cooked. She had not seen that coming. He grilled the meat he’d brought the last time he’d been there. So. Much. Meat. They ate at her tiny table in her backyard, where herbs and plants grew, and bugs buzzed as night quietly descended.
“Stay tonight,” she said, while they were washing up. Not a question exactly.
He’d kissed her in answer. Just that. Like there was no other possible answer.
The following few days were heroically survived.
They had responsibilities. Adult ones. Jobs, schedules, and the general infrastructure of lives that had been running perfectly fine before all of this and, apparently, intended to keep doing so regardless. Her shop needed her. His park and pack needed him.
The world, inconsiderately, did not pause.
She’d always been fine, better than fine, on her own.
She’d never been one for company at any cost, had never needed people just to fill silence.
So the missing caught her genuinely off guard.
It wasn’t exactly loneliness. It was more specific than that and more structural.
She missed him the way she imagined you’d miss an arm, or a foot—something so integrated into the basic functioning of things that its absence didn’t just feel sad, it felt fundamental.
She limited herself to two dramatic sighs per hour and considered it a personal triumph. She watched the clock with an intensity that was frankly embarrassing and that she would be taking to her grave.
But then she’d be home and hear his truck in the driveway, something in her chest would simply unlock, and she could exist correctly again.
The first evening, the one after all of ten hours away from him, she’d opened the door and launched herself at him with an enthusiasm that suggested they’d been separated by war and several natural disasters rather than a single workday.
He’d caught her without blinking and held on just as hard.
Which told her a thing or two about how his day had gone, too.
Such was her life now.
And now, days later, it was time to face the pack.