Chapter 16 Connall #2
“Stop.” Connall squeezes Elias’s hand, heat blooming between their palms. “I like it. I’m just…not used to it.” The flat words are a surprise; he hadn’t expected to admit them out loud.
What is it about Elias that makes Connall speak truths he won’t even admit to himself?
Something about him reminds Connall of a little woodland mouse—twitchy nose, big eyes, and the urge to run. But Connall’s pretty little mouse isn’t timid; he’s brave.
“Oh…uh…that’s good.”
Connall catches his eye—pink cheeks and starry eyes behind glasses slightly askew. A tendril of floppy brown hair falls into his face, and he’s so beautiful that Connall can’t look away. “You’re so pretty,” he murmurs—more truth.
“What? No. Isaac is the beautiful one. But me? I’m just regular Eli, you know?” He shakes his head, his scent giving nothing away. He’s speaking honestly, just telling it as he sees it.
That won’t do.
“No, I don’t know. You are beautiful, Elias Durand.” It’s awkward to say the words he’s never spoken to anyone else, and they don’t have time for Connall to tell him—or show him—all the ways it’s the Goddess’s truth.
“Oh? Well…maybe you should get your eyes checked.”
Connall growls, caging him against the car. The sound drags a low whine from Elias’s chest, soft and wrecked. His hips chase contact with Connall’s.
He’d worried Elias might shy from his wolf—but that’s not what he sees now. Not with the quickened breath, the sweet, aroused twist of lemon in his scent. Not with the soft, desperate tug of their joined hands.
This isn’t fear. It’s want.
“Alpha.”
The urge to pin Elias’s hips is impossible to ignore. So he doesn’t—he gives in, pressing Elias’s ass back into the side of the car and grinding once, then twice, until they both shudder.
Dark pleasure floods him, and in an instant, his cock goes from the slow throb he’s carried since seeing Elias on the stairs to a leaking mess.
His wolf shows him flashes of what could be—Connall dragging his mate’s pants to the floor, bending him over the dusty hood, tasting the soft skin of his shoulder. Biting and claiming him until he was Connall’s forever.
But it’s the unbearable need to kiss him that nearly makes it all a reality. Still, Connall won’t give his mate their first kiss in a dank warehouse, surrounded by the competing scents of motor oil and the rancid remnants of his jailer.
Leaning in, Connall fills his nose with his mate’s tart lemon-tea scent instead. Presses his lips to his ear. “We should go, little mouse.”
Elias shudders, eyes clenched shut, and a high whimper that makes Connall’s wolf even more insistent.
Then he blinks, breath hitching—like his mind’s just now catching up to his body. “Oh shit. Isaac!” He taps Connall’s shoulder with a playful fist. “You are trouble.”
Yes, Connall knows. He allows himself a chuckle. “And you are distracting. Come on, Isaac is waiting.”
Leading Elias around the car, he opens the door, handing Elias in just like his mother taught him.
He even reaches across to do up his seatbelt, aware of Elias’s burning gaze on his cheek.
The heat of it makes him hard to resist; he wants to press his wrist against that soft thigh, to ghost his frost-winter scent along his sweater and throat, staking a quiet claim he hasn’t yet earned the right.
With a muttered curse, he stands and gently shuts the door. Two deep breaths later, and Connall is in the driver’s seat before he’s reminded that they’re not even sure if the car is going to start—maybe he should try Beau one more time.
“Just pump the gas twice and turn it over. It’s going to start, I know it.”
He holds Elias’s gaze as he turns the engine over, as if Elias’s certainty might actually transfer through the air. When the engine does exactly that, purring like a kitten, Connall thinks Elias might be magic.
“Yee-haw!” Elias whispers.
By the time the gates seal behind them, relief hums in his chest, chased by a sharper beat of unease.
Now that they’re moving, his worry for Isaac hits hard, so he presses his foot to the floor and lets the Mustang roar beneath him.
It’s been so long since he’s driven that he forgot how much he loves it.
One more thing Patrick Carnell took from him.
“You’re really loving this, aren’t you?” Elias asks.
Connall can feel the heat of Elias’s gaze lingering on his mouth and the fingers guiding the wheel. When he glances over, the passing streetlights catch Elias’s face, revealing parted red lips, the lower one indented by a single small fang.
When Connall can’t find the right words, Elias reaches across the center console, taking Connall’s hand from the wheel so he can lace his fingers through his and hold it against his soft thigh.
The heat from his mate and the purr of the engine settle something in Connall that he hadn’t let himself think about since he was eighteen.
It’s unfamiliar, and if he had to put a name to it, it might be contentment.
Even knowing that Isaac needs them, this moment in this car with this man feels…
good. And for the first time in what feels like forever, he doesn’t beat the feeling back.
He lets Elias’s warm palm and sweet scent replace the rancid olive oil and the horrible memories.
He lets himself forget that he’s not a good man.
That this isn’t safe—not for Elias, not for Isaac, and certainly not for Connall’s heart.
“I should apologize for this,” Elias squeezes Connall’s hand, “but it makes me feel better. Uh, physically.”
Oh. The contentment he’s feeling isn’t just about the car and the man beside him.
He hadn’t noticed that the tightness in his chest eased.
Only now realizing that in addition to soothing that eternally empty Soren-shaped hole, the terrible headache and nausea—relentless since he’d left Isaac and Elias at the restaurant, and it had only worsened on the bus—has finally faded to a dull roar.
Would it only get better when he’s at the hospital with Isaac? Would he feel almost “human” again if he looked for the gorgeous cherry-and-smoke-scented man from the bus? What if he could find Soren in New York? Would Connall finally feel thirty-six instead of a hundred-and-six?
“Me, too.”
Nose twitching to catch Connall’s scent, Elias’s eyes twinkle in the low light of the cab. “Oh, yeah?” The twinkle is made even more devastating by a sexy-as-fuck smirk.
“Mmm. You seem surprised.” Connall wishes he could open another button on his shirt. Is it hot in here?
“I guess I’m just surprised you’d admit it,” he murmurs, pleased. “Oh. Hey. That’s Lupine Park. Isaac likes to feed the ducks and have picnics there in the summer. We even tried a yoga class there once, but Izzy’s not the quiet stretching type.”
“Really?” Connall couldn’t comment beyond that, given that most of his first acquaintance with Isaac Fletcher had involved more tongue and less Namaste.
Connall signals and pulls into the ER parking lot. Finding an empty spot, he turns the car off.
“He didn’t want to go back. I think it was because the instructor didn’t like us,” Elias says through clenched teeth.
Ah. The instructor hadn’t liked Isaac.
“Bitch,” he growls, wondering if it’s possible to get Ollie to find out who the instructor was so he can visit them later.
Elias unsnaps his seatbelt and opens the car door before Connall can ask their name.
Stepping out, he slams the car door. The sound echoes in the quiet car, sharp enough to make Connall’s wolf twitch.
Before Connall can ask what has him smelling sour beyond the unpleasant memory, Elias is already circling the hood, impatience in every quick movement.
He pulls Connall’s door open and waves him out, eyes bright with something like fear—or resolve.
When he doesn’t say anything right away, Connall turns toward the wide glass doors, but Elias tugs him back again.
“I should tell you something.” Elias gathers himself beside the car, his gaze flicking past Connall’s shoulder before finding Connall’s eyes. “Please don’t hurt him. Until now, I’ve not given you a choice, but he hasn’t seen you yet, and if you hurt him again—”
It isn’t a threat so much as a promise, and Connall’s wolf howls at Elias’s bravery—this little mouse standing toe-to-toe with a wolf to protect his mate. He’s hard-pressed to keep his pride off his face. “I hear you.”