Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Stella stood behind the counter of the Fate Mountain Diner.
Mr. Henson was at his usual stool with the paper folded to the sports page.
The radio behind the pass was on low, the public station out of Bend, and the smell of bacon grease was thinning as Eddie wound down the line.
She’d been doing four-hour shifts for a week.
Shane had been working full days while she eased back in, giving her time to heal.
Hunter held the diner door open for Brie as they walked in. Brie was nine months pregnant and ready to pop. She crossed the dining room and slid into the booth. Hunter took a seat across from her. Stella walked over with two menus and smiled.
“Morning, you two.”
“Morning, Stella.” Brie smiled up at her.
“Decaf?” Stella asked.
“Please. And blueberry pancakes.”
“Hunter.”
“Breakfast special. Sausage. Eggs over medium. Hash browns crispy.”
“Coming up.”
She put the order in at the pass, and Eddie pulled the ticket. She walked down the hall past the staffroom. The DO NOT SERVE sign with the members of Savage Steel MC was gone. Shane had taken them down the morning after the family dinner.
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her apron. She pulled it out on her way to the office and read the screen. It was a text from Nell.
Mom and I are driving up next weekend. I want to meet Blaze.
She thumbed back. We can’t wait.
Later that night, in her bedroom, Blaze and Stella kissed naked in the candlelight, soft music playing on her speakers.
His cock was already hard, thick and flushed dark at the head, a bead of wet dripping from the tip.
He picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down on her back across the comforter.
The cotton was cool against her bare skin.
He climbed over her, kissing her in long unhurried strokes, his tongue working hers, the bond crackling every time he sucked her bottom lip between his teeth.
He cupped her breast, and his thumb dragged across her nipple until it was so tight it ached.
He hummed against her skin, and the vibration sent heat into her core.
He slid his hand between her thighs. The first touch of his fingers through her soaking wet folds made her gasp. He found her clit and stroked in tight circles. She arched off the bed, her hands fisted in the comforter.
He sucked her nipples and stroked her clit at the same time, and the pressure built until she was right at the edge. She made a sound that was half whine and half threat. He laughed once against her stomach and licked down to her hipbone.
Blaze settled between Stella’s thighs and pushed her knees apart.
The cool air of the room hit her wet pussy, and the bond throbbed white-hot in her chest. He licked her in one long flat stroke from her opening to her clit and her hips came off the mattress.
His mouth was hot and wet and patient and exactly where she needed it.
He alternated wide flat strokes of his tongue across her clit with tight pointed ones. Then slid two fingers inside her, curled them up against her g-spot, and worked her in time with his mouth, humming against her clit.
The vibration went up her spine, and she came so hard her vision went white at the edges. Her thighs clamped around his head, and she fisted his hair. The orgasm rolled through her in long pulses, her body clenching down on his fingers. He stayed on her through it, his mouth gentle.
“Come here,” she said, dragging him to her.
He moved up her body, kissing his way along her stomach and her ribs and her chest and her throat. She tasted herself on his mouth when he reached her lips, the wolf bright in his eyes.
He angled his cock to her soaking entrance and pushed inside.
Her body opened around him and her eyes rolled back in her head.
As she stretched to accommodate him, the mate bond amplified every nerve.
He sank into her in one long slow press of his hips, watching her face the whole way.
She felt him at the deepest part of her, and they both stopped breathing.
He pulled back almost all the way out and slid back in.
His cock stroked her g-spot, and she gasped.
He did it again, making a low sound against her throat, the bond humming hot between them.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and he went deeper.
His mouth found the side of her throat, and his teeth grazed her pulse point.
He picked up his pace, his strokes getting harder.
The slap of his hips against the inside of her thighs filled the room.
His hand came up off the mattress and cupped her breast, and his thumb rolled her nipple in time with his hips.
She groaned at the feeling of him sliding in and out of her, the wet of her on him, the heat of him stretching her open every time he sank back in. She dragged her nails down his back.
He fucked her with steady hard deep strokes, and his thumb found her clit and pressed in tight circles in time with his hips. The orgasm was building from somewhere deep in her core. It was the thing the bond had been pulling toward all week and all month and her whole life.
He fucked her harder. The headboard hit the wall once and then again. He buried his face in the side of her throat, and his teeth grazed her pulse. The wolf was loud against the bond, and she felt his cock thicken inside her.
She tipped her head back, offering herself to him.
His fangs sank into her throat, deep and clean and exact, and she felt the bite as a hot bright sting that bloomed into something bigger.
Her own fangs descended, sinking into his shoulder.
The taste of him exploded on her tongue, copper and salt and wolf.
He groaned against her throat with her flesh in his mouth and her blood on his tongue.
She made a sound against his shoulder, low and animal and not quite human.
The venom passed between them and they came together.
Her body clenched around him in long hard pulses.
The wolf in him roared, and the bear in her roared back.
The bond exploded in her chest. He buried himself in her to the hilt and held there.
His cock pulsed inside her, and his hot release filled her in waves.
Her body gripped him through it, milking him, and the heat of him spreading inside her.
She felt the mating venom move into her, hot and golden, and she felt her own venom move into him.
The world disappeared.
Stella was no longer in her bedroom. She was in a wide black expanse spangled with stars. Galaxies wheeled slowly overhead. Nebulae bloomed in pinks and golds and blues. The light was everywhere and nowhere. She was weightless. She was in her bear body, golden-brown and powerful.
Across the starlit plain, the wolf stood gray with blue eyes. He walked toward her, and they met in the starry expanse. The wolf pressed his shoulder against hers, and the bear lowered her head. In that moment, everything that was Blaze flowed into her.
His mother. The way she had smelled. The night she had died, when he was seven, and the way the room had gone quiet.
The hands of his father. The first time he had hit him.
The last time. The night he had left at fifteen with what he could carry.
The fights he had taken to eat. The trainers who had been kind to him.
Manny in Manila with the Kris dagger. Pi Noi in the kitchen.
The day Dom had walked into the gym and looked at him without flinching.
His love. Steady. Iron. Without conditions.
She offered him back her own life.
Her mother in the doorway with flour on her hands, telling her she could do anything she wanted.
Her father at the pass in his whites, the bear in him held in check by the work and by Lily across the room.
Her own bear quiet inside her from her earliest memory, easy, no problem to manage.
Holding Arlo the first time and the want in her chest so big she had to put him down.
Nell at the back booth with her textbooks, the girl Stella had looked at and seen a version of herself.
Her love. Steady. Patient. Without limits.
They stood in the starlit space, their bond a luminous thread that tied them together.
And then they were back in her bedroom, their teeth retracting from each other’s flesh.
She gasped as he rolled away and gathered her in his arms. They lay together with the new awareness of each other bright and hot and new, cycling potent love and connection between them in an infinite loop.