Chapter 17 #2
Impulsively, he wrapped the old woman in a gentle hug.
Even with shifter strength, she felt like a bird in his arms. “Nonna, even if I quit my job and never did another day’s work in my life…
” He ignored the terrifying boredom that yawned within him.
“There are no guarantees that there will be any more wolves. We just don’t know. ”
He looked at Cat again, trying to parse his pack’s desperation and failure with the story she told of witches’ spells. Could a witch fix it? What would happen to the children of a woman with her own magic? He gasped, shocked by the implications.
The usual way an alpha guaranteed wolves was sleeping around with a bunch of different women and waiting to see whose kids shifted before marrying them.
He was indifferent to the idea of a creator, but he was just Catholic enough to hate that.
He didn’t believe enough to save himself, but surely, he should save his children for marriage.
He thought of Cat’s hand on Gianna’s cheek. He thought of the power running through her veins, the same magic that created shifters.
He left his aunt and stalked through the wolves toward her. “Would you like a tour?”
She blushed to the roots of her hair, which meant everyone else knew exactly what he was trying to say. He didn’t care.
The scent of roses bowled him over as he pulled her away from his family, straight past Nonna glaring daggers at both of them.
He wasn’t so lost to all sense to pull her immediately upstairs, so he walked her through the kitchen on the right side of the ground floor and then across to the basement, where there was more endless seating, and then all the way up to the top of the house to an attic window they could not see out of in the darkness.
She snickered as they looked out into the black.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t think you were really taking me on a tour. And no one else did either. Even your 90-year-old grandmother knew.”
“She’s eighty-eight, or thereabouts, and she’s my great aunt.”
“Why the tour?”
Because he wanted her to see where she would live, but he could not tell her that. Because he wanted her skin on his. “You know you were curious.”
“What are we going to do, Mateo?”
He ran a palm down her shoulder. “We’re going to finish the tour, and then we’re going to go find those books.” If her coven managed to steal the wolf from all shifters, that would be an immediate and dramatic end to the pack.
“We just call them the twins. We called them by their names even after the adoption. It gave the social worker fits.”
“And we rip the books out of their hands.”
“And?”
Then they’d live happily ever after…. In New York, while he worked ten plus hours a day, and she was completely cut off from her family, whom she’d lived with and never defied before this week.
He kissed her and closed the door to the attic.
“Mateo!”
He kept kissing her. “I should mention that shifters have very, very good ears. And even though there is no squeaking bed, the slightest noise will give us the same problem.”
“What?”
“Shhhhh.”
He spun her so her back was against the door and let his hands roam over her body, dreaming of the day when they would have endless privacy and time.
He weighed her breasts and listened to her moan before rucking up her shirt to get his hands on skin that burned his palms. He slotted his hips to hers before his vision floated back to him.
He ached for her children, but he’d made a much older promise not to get a woman pregnant to appease his great aunt and because that was a shitty thing to do to somebody.
He growled in frustration; it wasn’t like he was carrying a condom in his back pocket again. He hadn’t expected her to pop onto his land. They could go down to his bedroom, but that seemed a little on the nose. This was pushing it as it was. With a groan, he dropped to his knees.
“What are you—”
Another flash came to him of the same position with a ring in his pocket, which he banished as he rucked up her skirt and pulled down the thick leggings. He lifted one of her feet to drape over his shoulder as he buried his lips in her folds.
She moaned loudly, and he told her to shush again, even as he feasted, immediately drunk on her wild scent.
He shaped his tongue to her, feeling more than hearing her respond.
Soon her supporting leg was trembling, and he pinned her hips to the wall with his hands, reveling in his strength as he sped up.
He didn’t want to. He wanted to draw this out, keeping her on edge for hours at a time until she forgot her own name and his. But they had minutes, and so he didn’t stop, even as he could feel her whole body start to tremble, and her hands landed in his hair and started to knead.
She keened wildly and came in a gush that was his new favorite dish in his life and always would be.
She slumped over him, her heart pounding, and he drew her into his arms until they were sitting on the floor with her in his lap.
When she brushed against him, she raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said through gritted teeth.
“It wasn’t exactly a worry,” she said as her hand dove between them, and he lost his breath. She looped her hand around his neck and then stiffened in his arms, staring into nothing.
“Cat? Patchouli? What—”
Her pupils were swirling pools, and suddenly, he felt a different connection snap between them as she drew on the wolf.
He wanted to rip away from her, but his wolf wasn’t panicked. It didn’t feel violent; it felt powerful.
She slumped against him after a timeless minute where he lost his breath and sense of the room; all he could feel was the magic pulsing and pulsing.
“Catarina! Cat!”
He jostled her, serious alarm flaring, until she blinked normal blue eyes.
“What happ—” he asked.
“There’s a wolf.”
He grinned. “Yes, there is.”
She shook her head and pointed her chin to the huge window. “Out there. He’s coming.”
“What?”
“I Saw it. I never have random visions like that. I don’t know what it means, but it has always been huge when I have a vision without searching for one.”
“Okay,” The whiplash of love to defense hurt for a second. “Okay, stay up here.”
“What?”
“We’re going to lock this place down. Nobody’s getting past Nico, but I’ll be out there, and I will take care of this.” He said all this as he gently pushed her off his lap and helped her steady on her feet as he got up, too.
“You’re not leaving me here!”
“I am definitely leaving you here.”
“Mateo!”
“I’m not putting you in harm’s way!”
“I was there in the woods in the vision,” she said as she straightened her skirt.
He shook his head. “That’s a new way to win an argument. I’m right because I already saw it happen.”
“I’m not lying!”
“We’re really going to have to discuss the space-time continuum.”
“The what?”
“And the, you know, paradox of time travel and how it might end the world,” he added as he tidied her shirt.
“You read too much science fiction. I’m coming.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Mateo!”
He could not make her stay. He could not ask his wolves to make her stay. And she would probably run the moment she could. “Okay, but you stay behind me, and you run like hell the moment I tell you to.”
“Okay, fine.”
“I’m serious, Cat. This is life and death.”
“I know. Besides, I’ll probably know before you do when it’s time to run, you know?”
He laughed. “Fair point.”
They flew down the stairs. Had the other pack found the body in the woods? Were they coming to declare war? How could he stay here if he had to fight? Why would she stay with him if she had to watch him fight?