Chapter 18 - Dominic
She had gone slack on the journey back down the mountain, the steady, rhythmic movements of his body lulling her exhausted body into sleep. He slowed his descent, something in him not wanting to disturb her.
Childish sentiment.
All the same, he moved gently.
It was nearing midnight by the time he slunk around the edges of the town, eyes wide and ears pricked for any humans out late.
The majority of the human population of Skymist was utterly oblivious to the two thriving packs that lived amongst them, and as such, being in his wolf form in the town itself was strictly forbidden.
Being Alpha had to have some benefits.
Luckily, he was used to blending into the shadows, his enormous, dark form melting into the darkness.
He crept through the trees, sticking to the edges of the houses, not stopping until he reached The Anchor.
The lights were on, pack members inside.
He could scent the blood, Julian and Theodore’s wounds.
His lips peeled back over his teeth. He didn’t want to deal with them right now.
Gently, he reached back, nudging Layla’s leg with his snout. She murmured out a sleepy “Wha-a…” before blinking away the sleep.
Instantly, her cheeks turned red.
He tried not to think about how adorable it made her look.
Carefully, he lowered himself to the ground, letting her slide off before disappearing around the back to the caches of clothes and boots they always kept hidden in some old crates.
After shifting back and chucking on some clothes, he found Layla waiting for him, her breath whispering white against the cold.
“Come on,” he murmured, “let’s get you back home.”
She didn’t argue, just took his hand, letting him lead her back to the bookshop.
He could scent the tiredness in her muscles, the acrid twang of lactic acid from her hike. He swallowed down the urge to reprimand her, to try and get it into her head how foolish she’d been.
She knew.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as they walked through the darkened streets. “I had a vision of the northern lights above the Peak. I thought that if I went up there, if I could prove it, that you might—”
“Hush,” he said, the reminder of his dismissal of her vision catching in his throat. “What’s done is done. I wish you’d told me, let me at least come with you, but we’re back now. You’re safe.”
She slowed, her feet shuffling against the stone. “Are you hurt?”
He chuckled, low and rumbling in his chest. “No, little mutt, I’m not hurt. Not badly. Your brother got the worst of it.”
She winced. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow, I don’t think he’ll—hey!”
He looked back, raising an eyebrow.
“What did you just call me?”
“I called you a little mutt.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I never said it was.”
She squirmed slightly, heat rising in her cheeks again. “It’s not exactly a nice nickname,” she grumbled, “you used to call me that…before.”
He sighed, any amusement fading fast at the memory of all that had transpired between them. “It wasn’t particularly clever then. I mean, I was hung up on your inability to shift. Calling you mutt seems rather contradictory to that.”
“Great,” she said, rolling her eyes, “you’re scoring yourself on how clever your insults were.”
He stopped suddenly, and she bumped into him, the first few syllables of complaint dying on her lips as she peered into his face.
“About all that…” he said, fighting the urge to turn from her face, to hide from the raw, open hope written there. He was no coward. And it was time he faced this particular battle.
“Yes?” she breathed, tugging her lip between her teeth.
He swallowed, throat bobbing, “I…regret it. All of it. I could tell you that it was my father’s influence, that I was taught to root out weakness whenever I saw it, but…
but it’s not true. I was an asshole. Plain and simple.
When I finally realized what I actually felt, it seemed too late.
I should never have slept with you. Should never have given you hope like that and then taken it away. I was scared. And I’m sorry.”
She blinked, mouth falling slightly open, eyes glimmering.
Suddenly, she cleared her throat and looked down, eyes darting as if hoping the right words would appear on the cobblestones.
“I can’t pretend that it didn’t…that I wasn’t…
that you weren’t cruel. You were. All of you.
But…” She looked up, hand finding his, squeezing tight. “Thank you. For saying it.”
He nodded stiffly, searching her face, memorizing the way her dark lashes brushed against her cheeks, the barest hint of freckles smattered across her nose. He didn’t know who moved first, her or him.
It didn’t matter.
Their lips collided, wild and frenzied. Before he knew it, her back had struck a wall, his hands bracing either side of her, trapping her beneath him as he claimed her mouth.
She gave as good as she got, hands scrabbling in his shirt, nails scraping the fabric.
Little sounds, desperate and mewling, fell from her throat.
And beneath it all, he could scent her arousal. Her desire. Her need for him.
It had happened like this before, all those years ago, in the kitchen of her parents’ cottage. He had kissed her, had taken her, and then—
The memory was like ice water poured over him.
Almost violently, he ripped himself away, staggering backwards. She watched him, eyes wide and glassy, one hand hovering over her lips, her chest rising and falling.
“Fuck,” he said, one hand running through his hair, “fuck, I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“To kiss me?” she interrupted, her voice barely more than a whisper.
He managed a nod. “I said I wouldn’t…said that this—”
“I want you to kiss me, Dominic,” she said, stepping forward into the halo of a streetlamp, “and the rest.”
He blinked. She looked like some sort of angel, gold light shining through her hair, eyes guileless and trusting.
When he sucked in a breath, it was as if his wolf was calling for him to go to war.
“And the rest?” he asked, his voice dropping low, dangerous. They may have been here before, but that was years ago. He was a male, fully grown now, one with blood on his hands. He would not hide any part of himself from her. He needed her to see. To be certain.
Slowly, she looked him up and down, eyelashes fluttering slightly as she took in the muscles, his clenching fists, the dark heat in his eyes.
Then her gaze caught his, and she gave him an impossibly beautiful smile. “And the rest.”
This time, he knew it was him colliding into her, dragging her into his chest. She let him, falling into his arms, pressing her face upwards to receive him. With a snarl, he swept her off her feet, lips not leaving hers as he carried her towards her shop.
They were a tangle of teeth and passion and need by the time they got to the door. Layla barely had a chance to unlock it before he was kicking it open, storming inside, sweeping piles of books off a display table so he could sit her down.
She keened, legs wrapping around his hips, pulling him impossibly closer to her.
He growled, falling forward, just catching his weight by gripping the table on either side of her as he dragged his teeth down the side of her neck, relishing the moans and whimpers falling from her lips.
Furiously, he ripped his shirt off, desperate to feel her hands on his skin.
She was clinging to him, forced backwards beneath him, practically hanging from his neck as she threw her head back to accommodate his hot kisses.
He picked her up again, hand splayed across her ass, relishing the soft flesh yielding beneath his grip. Blindly, he stumbled towards the stairs, too caught up in her to bother looking where he was going.
Through some miracle, he managed to get them up the stairs and into her room, and with a savage grin, he threw her down on the bed, barely pausing to admire the sight of her swollen lips and flushed cheeks before climbing over her, grasping both her wrists on one hand and pinning them above her head.
Trailing a hand down her torso, grinning with savage satisfaction as she arched into his touch, he let his fingers trail at the bottom of her sweater, teasing it upwards.
“Exactly how many layers are you wearing?” he purred into her ear.
“Lots,” she panted, squirming. He bit back a snarl as her movements unknowingly brushed against his aching cock, damnably still trapped inside his trousers.
“The h-hiking guide said it was b-best to…ahh,” she breathed out hard as his fingers finally found a thin seam of soft skin, nudging her clothes upwards.
“B-best to layer up. We’re…we’re in Alaska, after all. ”
He leaned down, kissing along her jaw, hand splaying out across her stomach. “I see.”
He wasn’t gentle as he ripped the layers, from sweater to sports bra, straight down the middle, revealing the pale expanse of creamy flesh of her torso.
“Hey!” she gasped, instinctively moving to cover herself.
He caught her hands again, pinning them with a growl. “Don’t. I want to look at you. If you’re mad about the clothes, I’ll buy you new ones.”
Any further complaints she had died on her tongue as his mouth trailed down to one pebbled nipple, catching it in his teeth, rolling his tongue over it. She gasped and writhed, straining against his hold.
His wolf howled in delight.
He could smell how ready she was for him, how eager. Her body had changed in the years since he’d last had her; she was slightly wider, softer, and somehow impossibly more beautiful.
Rearing back, he grasped the waistband of her sensible hiking trousers and tugged, pulling them clean off, along with two layers of thermals.
He smirked. She really had read a hiking guide.
Any amusement faded away, replaced with only hard, insistent need as he looked at her splayed out beneath him. A feast ready to be devoured.
She whimpered under the intensity of his gaze, thighs trembling as they pressed together, hands twitching with her no doubt pressing desire to cover herself up.
Smirking, he leant down and captured her lips, breathing against them, “I want you to touch yourself.”
She inhaled sharply, “What?”
“I said,” he replied, one hand reaching down to unbutton his jeans, “I want to see you touch yourself.”
He pushed back, smirking down at the heat in her cheeks, the flush spreading down to her chest. She couldn’t hide her arousal.
Even if he hadn’t been a wolf, couldn’t smell the sweet musk of her body preparing itself for him, he’d be able to see it.
It was in the catch of her breath, the swell of her breasts, the pounding of her heart.
The heat in her gaze.
Slowly, brave enough to keep eye contact, she let her thighs fall apart, exposing her core to his hungry gaze.
He nearly groaned as she slowly trailed a hand down her stomach, flesh trembling, and hesitantly rubbed the pad of her middle finger through her dampening folds.
“That’s it,” he said, shucking off his trousers, kicking them somewhere behind him, “like you would if you were alone. Late at night.”
Her eyelids fluttered shut, and her lips fell open as her fingers moved faster, bumping over her swollen clit. He watched her movements, grasping his cock in a tight fist, pumping slowly. Her other hand drifted to her breast, where she tweaked her nipple, gasping lightly at the sensation.
He growled, low and hungry.
“Who do you think about,” he said, leaning down over her, “when you touch yourself?”
Her eyes didn’t open. “You. Always you. Only you.”
His alpha roared triumphantly, and he grasped her wrist, stilling her movements. Her eyes flew open in shock, and she swallowed as she glanced down at his engorged length, comically large against the delicate skin of her thigh.
“Come on, now,” he purred, “you managed to take it once before.”
She sucked in a breath, thighs spreading further. It didn't seem she had purposefully done it; it was just her body, ready, waiting.
He leant down and kissed her, thorough and warm, the head of his cock nudging against her entrance.
“Please,” she whined, fingernails digging into his shoulders, “please!”
For a moment, he paused, looking down at her, relishing the sweet abandon on her face. He had done that. Those sounds spilling from her pretty lips were because of him. For him.
He bared his teeth, pushing forward, feeling her walls tighten around him as inch by inch he sank into her wet heat. She cried out, trembling hard, grasping onto him tight enough to draw blood.
He didn’t care.
Picking up a brutal, relentless pace, he began rocking into her, forcing her body to take him and take its pleasure from him. Her first orgasm came thick and hard, her eyes screwing shut and her mouth falling open in a silent gasp.
He didn’t let up. Speeding his movements, he brushed his thumb over her clit, his lips dropping to her breast, biting hard enough to bruise. As she reached her peak a second time, he came in an explosion, roaring her name into her neck as stars exploded behind his eyelids.
For a moment, he lay there, breathing in her scent, relishing the delicious aftershocks trembling through him. And then he pulled back, rolling to the side, bringing her with him and tucking her under his arm.
She was panting, a small, amazed smile on her lips, her legs shaking.
“That was…”
“I know,” he rumbled, pressing a kiss to her hair, “sleep now. You’ll need it.”
“Will you stay?” she asked, glancing up at him.
He nuzzled her temple. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”