14. Dom
14
DOM
A crack of thunder illuminates the dark sky, and I slow my run to peer up through the leaves as a raindrop lands on my nose.
My wolf grumbles his irritation at the thought of rain, and with it, wet fur.
The rain is welcome to the man because Kira…
Kira does not make it easy to be a gentleman.
Watching her slowly climb the ladder with her ass inches from my face was torture…
Until I saw her lying on the straw, her head twisted my way, and a soft smile curling her sweet, rosebud lips. I will never know how I didn’t lean over and kiss her the way I’d wanted to.
I am losing my ability to keep my distance.
Touching her is automatic, as it should be between mates.
She hasn’t noticed. I hope. But I have.
I keep finding reasons to move closer to her. To touch her, to drag the wild fragrance of her skin into my lungs.
But it isn’t enough.
The signed divorce forms have drawn a line under her and Bryce. None of us believed he would sign them, but the fact he has means Kira is free.
Completely free.
I walked her back to the house, but I skipped out on dinner, a little too pleased at Kira’s disappointment when I told her I wasn’t staying.
I’ve been running since then.
It’s been nearly an hour as I try to chase this need for Kira out of my system. This urge to pin her to the nearest wall, strip the clothes off her luscious body, and put my mark on her neck is building.
My paws trample over sodden grass and leaves as the rain turns torrential, lashing me through the trees. It soaks my fur to my body, making my wolf growl.
But either I run through the forest in the freezing rain, or I stay human, and risk losing the battle with myself.
As I run, my mind turns back to Missouri.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” Kira’s hug surprises me, as does the small square box wrapped with bright blue wrapping paper she pulls from the back of her car.
I hadn’t thought she would turn up to say goodbye before I leave for my deployment.
She didn’t come alone.
Bryce’s lips flatten as he hovers behind Kira.
“Here.” She presses the present into my hands. “It’s not much. Just a few things, so you have something to remind you of home.”
I don’t have a home. Never have. Until now. My home is not a place. It’s the woman who has her husband standing behind her shoulder, watching me like a hawk.
I nod tightly, tuck the present into my bag and back away from her. The cab driver taking me to the airport is looking impatient, and Bryce is suddenly smiling as I once again do my utmost to put space between Kira and me.
If only he knew the reason I do it is so I won’t tear his throat out.
Kira’s smile fades. Bryce noticed my retreat, and so did she. And I hate that, but I can’t have my mate touching me. Not with her husband within ravaging distance.
I toss my bag in the cab's trunk and he drives me away from my mate.
I carry the imprint of Kira’s scent with me. To the airport, on the plane, and to the base where I’ll be flying to my deployment. Far beyond the point I should’ve stopped smelling it. She’s imprinted her scent onto my skin. My bones. In me. If the war I went to fight was on the surface of the moon, I would still carry a piece of her with me.
In the plane bathroom, I open her gift for me. I smile as I read her note, saying she hopes I stay safe, and she’s thinking of me, carefully tucking everything into my bag again. And I leave before the person banging on the door thinks I’m up to no good.
Nearly forty-eight hours later, I’m with Aaron, and I shouldn’t still be smelling Kira’s scent on my clothes, yet I do.
Everything over the intervening days and weeks and months is about driving all thoughts from my mate out of my mind.
I go through the motions of being the perfect Marine. I do my assigned nightly patrols. I do everything right. And when I have a moment, I slip into the night, shrug out of my clothes and let my wolf free for a few minutes so I don’t go mad, and neither does he.
But I never stop thinking of Kira.
Then the first of the mail comes.
I’m not expecting anything. I don’t have a pack. Don’t have a family. So I sit on my bed, polishing my boots and checking my weapons, head down as all around me, my platoon catches the mail tossed at them by the mail guy. They tear into their packages, laughing and chatting, showing off their goods.
I remember that small package Kira gave me before I left Missouri. Like she’d said, it wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be when it came from her.
She could have given me a staple and it still would have felt big. She’d baked cookies, wrapped up some socks, added some gum, a small card with a handwritten note saying she hoped I would come back safely and she was thinking of me.
“Matherson!” A thud hits the palms of the Marine in the bed beside mine. Aaron getting his mail.
I peek up. It’s a box, wrapped with the same paper as the one Kira gave me.
He’s tearing into it, grinning as I lower my head to my task, then…
“Wolfe!”
It wasn’t wise to use that name, but it’s mine.
Locals who found a nearly naked ten-year-old boy wandering around the Minnesota backcountry gave me my first name: Dom.
Social services gave me my surname after no one could find out where I belonged or whose family I belonged to: Walker.
They figured that since I was out there walking on my own, the name fit.
Dom, I didn’t mind. After I shifted for the first time at seventeen and discovered I was something that shouldn’t exist, I decided Wolfe fit me better than Walker. So I changed it.
I became Dom Wolfe.
Neither are my real name. Whatever it is, I’ve never known it, and likely never will.
I drop my boot and catch the box hurtling my way. It slaps into my palms instead of my face, the contents bouncing around inside. What the hell is in this box with the pretty turquoise spotted paper?
When I lower my nose to it, I swear I catch the faintest hint of Kira’s scent. I shouldn’t. Not with where we are. Not with how many hands have touched that parcel.
But I swear I do.
I don’t tear into the parcel the way everyone else does. This might be a one-time thing. A sympathy parcel. I intend to savor this experience. It might never come again.
I ignore the conversations, the laughter, the questions filling the tent as I take my time unwrapping this unexpected gift.
I set the paper aside, flip open the box lid and the scent of her would’ve brought me to my knees if I wasn’t sitting on the edge of my bed.
There are weight limits and items not allowed to be sent to soldiers and Marines. I saw the list, heard those rules in basic, and then later, before my first deployment. I was given a copy of the list to pass to any family members who wanted to send me anything.
I took the list, nodded that I understood, and tossed it in the trash at the first opportunity. No one would be sending me a thing.
The contents of this parcel is perfect.
A plastic container with a screw-top lid of homemade cookies. I can tell because they’re not perfectly shaped. I like that they aren’t. Shows that she made them with her own hands.
The best thing of all, everything smells like Kira.
If I’d been alone, I’d have lifted the box to my nose. I’m not alone, so I close the lid, set it under my camp bed for the moments I need to remind myself that I have a mate, and that she’s thinking of me.
Another box comes the month after.
Then another.
I made her think I wanted nothing to do with her, but the boxes keep coming, each one lovingly wrapped, my name carefully handwritten, something sweet baked from her hands, something warm, something useful, and a short letter telling me about something that happened in her day which put a smile on her face.
My paws slide and my shoulder slams into something. A tree.
My wolf snarls, and I return to the present.
I’m soaked through. The rain is getting heavier by the minute, and it’s time to put an end to this run.
I turn back.
My clothes are a sodden mess I don’t even attempt to force on. I left them in the forest near the house instead of the outbuilding, needing to get away from the memory of Kira lying on the straw beside me.
Bending to scoop up my sodden clothes, I swipe the rain from my eyes and head to the house to dump these clothes in the washing machine and borrow sweats from one of my packmates.
I’d prefer to sleep in the outbuilding, but I need a hot shower, dry clothes and something to silence the growl in my belly. It’s late. The only people I’m liable to bump into are my packmates since I’ve noticed Kira has a tendency to go to bed early.
I step out from the forest and jerk to a halt.
This night, Kira has not gone to bed early.
She’s sitting on the top step of the porch, wearing the same dress as before, feet bare, hair loose, with her arms wrapped around her knees. I know that spot well. I spent years sitting right there, hoping my mate would come find me.
But to see my beautiful mate there, in that same spot, freezes me.
Her eyes are wide as she slowly pushes herself to her feet, and her gaze is hungry as she sweeps them over my naked body. There’s no hiding what seeing her—and smelling her—is doing to me.
Not while naked.
Her breath hitches and her fingers curl. She must be digging her nails into her palms.
“Go back inside,” I call out. My voice is unsteady and breathing ragged as second by second, I forget how to be a gentleman. “Please go back inside.”
She doesn’t move.
I will her to go because I can’t be the one who walks away from her.
Not with the way her nipples are pebbling the front of her dress, as the rich scent of her arousal floods my senses.
Not with the memory of watching her climb up the ladder so fresh in my mind.
Not today.
My clothes thump to the floor as I prowl toward her. A predator staking his prey. A shifter claiming his mate.
Go inside, Kira. Because the second I put my hand on you…
She doesn’t move.
Just stands on that top porch step, eyes hungry as I stalk toward her.