Chapter Thirteen
Morning light escaped around the edges of the thick blackout curtains and sliced like long blades across the hotel room. It was just enough to cast a glow across Kimberly’s sleeping face. Shane had been awake for a couple of hours but hadn’t moved.
The night before went from unbearable to euphoric to a near disaster.
Her sex was better than any horny wet dream his teenage self could have conceived.
When she went down on him, he thought he would come completely undone, in the best way possible.
Being inside her was an unimaginable thrill, better than any shift or run as a wolf.
Not one moment of his life ever came close in comparison.
Then, he nearly ruined it all.
Shane bent his forehead to touch hers and breathed her in. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let himself and his wolf get so out of hand?
It only took one thought, one earth-shattering, mind-blowing thought to extend that mating bond in an unconscious offer.
He wanted this to last forever, to belong to Kimberly and vice versa.
He loved her, he knew that now, completely and recklessly.
He didn’t think about his pack, his responsibilities, her current attachments, or anything about their pasts.
He wanted her as his mate … but she didn’t.
Shane respected her wish, took her rejection at face value, and tried not to think too deep into it, but what else could he do while he lay awake half the night, then in the hours after dawn? What held her back?
Then, there was that other thing. When his wolf entered her to make the bond, he found her wolf. It was only for a second or two, but the contact was enough to tell him something was wrong.
As an alpha, his wolf was strong enough to reach through the spiritual and connect with other shifters, wolf-to-wolf.
He could do it to force submission when dominance didn’t work, or to assess issues within the shifters themselves.
Shane had only done it a few times in his life, and never without consent, just as he had done with Kimberly.
But it yielded much more to worry about.
Something was wrong with her wolf. It was there, definitely alive, but there was a touch of sickness to it that was alarming.
The connection between a shifter and their wolf spirit extended through all the realms. Physical, mental, emotional, everything.
What Kimberly felt, the wolf felt. Knowing that Kimberly had some psychological issues to work through, it shouldn’t have been a shock that her wolf suffered alongside her.
It explained a few things, like how he hadn’t seen her eyes go completely gold since they reunited; only specks or flickers of gold.
When the wolf was at the door, leaning into the driver’s seat but not exactly taking the wheel, a shifter’s eyes turned gold as a warning.
Anger, joy, and fear could bring the wolf forward.
Kimberly had stared right at him through all of these emotions, and the wolf never showed up.
Now, he knew the truth. It simply didn’t have the strength to take over.
Kimberly had to know. There was no way she couldn’t.
But she didn’t tell him about it. Again, she kept secrets.
Again, she didn’t trust him with the truth.
Again, he was in the dark. Her reprimand came back to him, reminding him that she had every right to withhold information if she saw fit.
He wanted to accept that and battled with himself for hours in order to do so.
Shane had much to atone for. Not just the unwarranted failed mating bond, but to fix whatever happened to her wolf.
Maybe, if he could mend whatever was broken, she would finally realize that Shane could be her person, her mate, and the idea of being bonded wouldn’t be so repulsive, and they could plan their future together.
Kimberly inhaled deeply and her bare legs shifted against his. They were both still unashamedly naked beneath the sheets, but after what happened last night, he resolved to respect her space and not initiate any serious intimacy unless she was the one who wanted it.
He brushed the tip of his nose on hers in an attempt to ease her further into the world of the conscious.
When that didn’t work, he carefully reached up and traced tiny circles across the back of her hand that rested on the mattress between them.
She stirred and gorgeous green eyes, perfectly and enticingly lit in the dim light, cracked open to look at him.
A small, sleepy smile tugged at her lips.
How could anyone be so beautiful, sexy, brilliant, strong, and utterly feminine like Kimberly? She was a dream, a goddess among shifters. Once again, he thought of the years to come and how he wanted her like this in his bed every night and morning. Completely his.
Her voice, soft and low, broke the tranquil silence of the room. “I don’t want to go back.”
He leaned up and kissed her forehead, unable to keep his lips off her for another waking moment. “Neither do I.”
Kimberly let out a breath as her eyes closed again. “Then let’s stay. Just us.”
That sounded wonderful. Just Shane and Kimberly, together, their own little pack of two.
Them against the world. When they were kids, they played make-believe with a similar story.
Together, they stormed the castle, sailed the seas, and rode through the wilderness on giant raccoons, of all things.
In all their plans, it had always been them, going through life side by side.
When they started dating, the plan never changed.
Life tore them apart and they had a chance to do it right again.
Who could say they caught the girl that got away?
He wanted to make this work. He wanted to make this last, and he hoped that she felt the same.
But they couldn’t forget the people who waited for them in Tolstone. He had a pack and so did she. They could make it work, but they had to go about it carefully.
“The weekend isn’t over, and there’s always next weekend too.”
“A finite number of weekends.”
The sadness in her voice nearly broke him.
Shane wrapped his arm around her and fanned his fingers across her back. “There’s also the weekdays. I don’t have much. You saw my apartment, but you’re welcome to stay over, or I can stay with you some nights.”
Kimberly angled away and searched his eyes. “You’d want that?”
“Of course. After this weekend, I don’t know if I could survive a night without you again.”
That level of honesty surprised them both.
Kimberly fluttered her lashes in flustered shock, matching the erratic uptick of her heartbeat. “To tell the truth, me neither.”
If that were the truth, why didn’t you accept the mating bond?
Shane squeezed his eyes shut against the intrusive thought. This time, that was all him. His dad had nothing to do with it.
“You okay?”
Shane cleared his through. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m … I’m just glad you feel the same way, especially after what happened last night.”
With her naked, he could see the exact place where her blush started on her chest and ended in her cheeks.
“Yeah … I’m sorry I freaked out.”
“No reason to be sorry. You’re not ready. It’s understandable. It was unexpected for both of us.”
It was her turn to crimp her eyes shut. “It’s not just that.
It’s … Shane, I don’t know how to do this.
For most of my life, I believed it could never work.
Who we are, it just … It wouldn’t make sense because I have no dominance and you were always born to be an alpha.
There are so many facts that make this complicated and—”
Panic rose in her voice, and he shushed away the lying demons in her head. He stroked his thumb along her smooth cheek. “We don’t have to figure it out right now. Let’s just take one day at a time. And for the record, you know your dominance never meant a damn thing to me.”
“It always did to our parents.”
“My dad is dead and you’re a big girl. You don’t have to believe everything your daddy said about you.”
She didn’t look like she believed him. “What about your pack? What would they think of us?”
“I know this is going to sound so Isaac, but they can deal with it. It’s my choice who I’d want by my side. The Prime Alpha has a human as a mate, and no one seems to mind. This isn’t the Stone Age. Alphas can have whoever they want as a mate.”
Kimberly tilted her head so it was half buried in the pillow. “Please stop talking about mates.”
Shane continued to caress the cheek she permitted him to touch. “My point is that your dominance is not a factor in who we choose to be or not be. If I want you and you want me, that’s all that matters.”
She peeked up at him. “I think you said something like that when we were teenagers.”
“Some things will never change, Kim.”
Kimberly smiled and let him caress her face and neck with the tenderness she deserved. For the moment, she seemed to drop whatever worries and fears harassed her and changed the subject. “So, what are we doing today? It’s Sunday. What places are open?”
Shane shifted closer, sharing body heat under the covers, but mindful not to touch in case that would scare her out of this fragile moment.
“Well, the big thing is I have to scout the woods. I didn’t exactly have time to do it last night before every molecule in my body was beating me up for being so far away from you. ”
She gave him a toothy grin. “Was that why you rushed back?”
“Yep. It was like in those cartoons where the character pulls themselves back on a long slingshot and it seems to go on and on forever until it snaps back into place and they go flying.”
Shane let out a high whistle and imitated the sound of a crash, making Kimberly laugh. If only she knew how much he adored that smile and the way her eyes twinkled with her laughter.