Chapter 23
JARED
She walks in with the keys and squats, reaching for the ring around my throat. I grab her wrist, seeing the back of her hand looks bruised and raw.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What happened?”
Her eyes hit mine and infuse with warmth. She falls into me and wraps both arms around me, planting herself on my lap.
My arms close around her and I hold on tight, burying my nose into her hair, kissing my mark, reveling in the feel of how the goosebumps rise on her body at my touch.
Everything inside her is emotion. She’s feeling a lot of things right now. And they’re cutting through me like a thousand knives, making me want to go to my default of avoidance. But comforting her is the least I can do. She needs this from me.
And fuck, she feels good melting into me like this, as if she believes me holding her is the key to fixing her problems.
I don’t know that I’ve got hope that there’s a way around all this.
I don’t know if it’s true that my monster didn’t kill my mother and my sister.
I don’t know what it means – if anything – that my father could still be alive.
Don’t know much of anything right now, except that everything about having her in my embrace feels right.
“Where were the keys?” I ask.
“Want the truth?”
“Always,” I tell her.
She looks me in the eyes. “I want the same, okay?”
My throat feels clogged, so I nod instead of answering.
“Dad stole them after he saw the surveillance of what happened outside.”
“It hurt you.”
“A little,” she says.
“Tell me.”
She says, “Your wolf couldn’t get the muzzle off so used his claws on me.”
“Fuck!” I bark.
“The patrol guys got here super-fast. Cade baited your wolf and that meant a few more claw marks as you sprinted off me.”
“Fuck sakes. Babe, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”
“I’m okay. Dad was in the surveillance room at Joel’s, unfortunately. He turned up and he was ticked. See this?” She places her palm on my ribs. They’re sore and bruised.
“Yeah?”
“Dad’s boot.”
I laugh. “Don’t blame him.”
She doesn’t look amused. At all.
I pull her tight to me and bury my nose in her hair.
Cicely in my arms is so different than Cicely at arm’s length.
That’s for damn sure. And it reaffirms what I need to do, what I’ve been afraid to do.
Lean into this. Hope for it. And if my monster shreds it all to ribbons, at least I’ll have had a sliver of time with everything I’ve ever wanted but never believed I’d get.
“I’m sorry,” I say into her hair.
“It’s not your fault,” she says.
She pulls back and looks into my eyes and repeats, “It’s not your fault.” She’s not just talking about her injuries, she’s talking about all of it.
“Erica gave me this fancy new bracelet, too.” She gestures to her wrist. She’s wearing a silver charm bracelet with dangling alternating green and blue jewels.
“The blue is pretty. Same color as your eyes. The green…” I touch one. “Sorry but this is the color of phlegm.” Radioactive phlegm at that.
She lets out a laugh. “My thoughts exactly. But there’s a purpose that makes it a fancy bracelet instead of just a booger-green one.”
“What’s that?” I ask, but I don’t give a shit.
I tuck her hair behind her ear and play with a lock of it distractedly.
Because I don’t want to talk about jewelry.
I want to take her into the trailer and fuck her on that bed.
And then I want food. A lot of it. And then I want her again, maybe in the shower, against the tiled wet wall with her legs wrapped around me.
“I like your train of thought,” she says, grinding on my lap, pulling pleasurable shivers from me. “If you wanna fuck me, I promised I wouldn’t take this belt off though, so…”
I laugh, then sober, then let the laugh out fully.
She looks surprised and delighted.
“The green beads will immobilize you for a minute if I’m at least three feet but not more than a dozen feet away.”
“How’s that?”
“I pull one off and toss it at you.”
I examine it again before I decide I’m done sitting here in this little prison. For now at least.
After I get the other irons off, I lift her up into my arms in a way I’ve never held a female before.
My bride.
The sweet scent of her arousal hits my senses, and I want to fly to the trailer to fuck her there, but enough good sense kicks in that I squat to grab the muzzle from the floor before I do that.
She’s alternating between tonguing my neck and sucking on my earlobe while I walk back to the trailer.
I set the muzzle on the bedside table before I lay her on the bed and drop my shorts.
She pulls her shirt, then shorts off, then goes for the belt.
“Wait.”
“I’ll set it right beside your mask.”
I hesitate.
“You feel like you’re about to shift?”
“No.”
I will need to shift soon and let it run or it’ll keep pushing in.
“We’ll be careful,” she insists and presses her mouth to mine.
So I grab her and take her to her back in this bed, the place I lay night after night from the moment I knew my mate was in Arcana Falls, thinking about the possibility of that and what it’d mean for me if I wasn’t as fucked up as I am.
How many nights I pumped my dick with my fist, coming on my belly to the idea of the woman I only knew the scent of.
A fragrance I couldn’t get out of my head.
The reality of the female behind the scent is better than anything I could’ve dreamt up.
If anyone on this planet could survive my wolf, she’d be the one to fight him off.
But I dare to hope she doesn’t have to.
***
We’ve been at it for hours. Right now, she’s got my dick in her mouth, my balls in her hand, and I’ve got my thumb in her ass with my tongue inside her pussy while I suck on her clit and savor her taste.
She detonates again, whimpering the sweetest sounds around my dick. Fuck, she’s beautiful. She feels so fucking good.
When she stops shuddering, I twist and put her on her back, turning and slamming deep into her still convulsing heat. Cold spikes in my spine before the knot comes out and like every other time, I pause for a second before I continue, being sure the cold recedes.
Her phone rings from the toolbelt and she ignores it, crying out, digging her nails into my back as we ride out the waves of pleasure my knot gives us both.
When I finally collapse on top of her, giving her my full weight for a second, her mouth presses against my throat and she squeezes her pussy walls one more time, saying, “Crush-shing me, baby…”
I roll, not letting go, and tuck her close. She kisses my chest while I stroke the mate mark and catch my breath.
Her phone starts up again, so she rolls over and says,
“Mitchell Blakely.” She answers it before I get a chance to say anything.
“Hello?” She’s put him on speaker.
“Hello. Cicely?” he calls out. “How are ya, lass?”
Did Linc call him? I thought we agreed he’d keep digging for more information first.
“Hi Mitch. I’m good. What’s up?”
“Is Jared Stone nearby?” he asks.
“I’m here,” I tell him.
“We need to talk. Not on the phone. Can you come to me? I can’t get away.”
I lock tight.
Cicely asks, “To Scotland?”
“Yes,” Blakely replies.
“No, I can’t,” I say.
She looks at me with confusion.
“I’m not leaving Cicely and I’m also not bringing her.” I don’t know how much he knows.
“Shit,” He mutters. “Let me see what I can arrange. See if I can get back over there.” He sounds aggravated. “Are you certain you can’t come here? See, I’ve just gotten back…”
“I’m sure. Can’t we just talk remotely?”
He holds the phone a minute before he replies. “I’m… not sure that’s wise. Let me get back to you.”
“You can’t give us anything on the phone? Nothing at all?” Cicely asks.
“I’ll… ring you back. Let me see what I can rearrange here.”
“Yeah, all right,” she says and ends the call, irritated.
“He’d better call soon. Curiosity is gonna burn until he calls back,” she mutters, getting out of bed and stomping to the bathroom, slamming the door.
Fuck, she’s beautiful when she’s angry. She’s beautiful all the time.
Where’s my phone? Probably dead in my truck. I get up and dig through my wardrobe for a pair of jeans and a plain tee as well as grab a pair of shoes.
When I’m back, she’s got the fridge open.
“Call Linc on speaker, will ya? This is dead.” I see my charging cord dangling from the outlet beside the couch, so I plug it in there.
“My phone’s in the bedroom. Go grab it and I’ll heat up dinner. Want beef stew or chili?”
“Chili,” I say and go fetch her phone.
***
“Linc,” I say into the phone after he answers. “Blakely called. He wants me in Scotland to talk. I told him no.”
“He called me, too, asking me to work on you. I was just about to call you. He wants to do a full workup in his office. He won’t say why, but he did tell me something good that I can share, though the way he said it I get the impression he’s paranoid about who knows.”
“Elaborate.”
“It’s confirmed: your father is alive and incarcerated.
I don’t know if he’s related to your issues but something in my gut is saying yes.
Blakely says he needs us there where he’s got the right medical equipment and an on-site lab.
He says if we do it there, we can involve minimal folks, much fewer than if he or Cat does shit here that’d mean a third-party supernatural lab and delay. ”
Cicely hugs me, holding on, looking happy for me.
Alive. I was close to my old man. He wasn’t around much, but when he was, he made our time together meaningful. Once he was gone, life went from hard to much, much harder. And maybe I blamed him a little for it.
The idea of him being alive, in prison somewhere? I don’t know how to feel.
“Not sure how my father has anything to do with this. I spent plenty of time around my folks when they were shifted. This isn’t likely genetic.”
“I could be wrong, but I got the impression from Blakely there’s a connection.”
”If I go there, bet you a dollar I end up in custody.”
Cicely’s body goes stiff. She looks at me, looking pissed.