21. Jalen
JALEN
Ihold my mate while she cries into my shirt, and the witch’s amulet sits on my quilt like junk mail. I’d trade it, the vault, and everything in it to take this shaking out of her.
Down below us, Brandy’s voice goes high and fast about something. Malachi lifts his chin.
“Let me know what the plan is,” he says, and he’s gone quick down the hall.
That leaves me alone with her, and that’s when she comes apart in a new direction.
“I have to go.” She pushes back from me, already scanning the room for her shoes. “Let me borrow your car.”
Millbrook. She means to drive herself back into the witch’s own town, alone, two days after ghouls put hands on her in an alley there.
The room goes red at the edges, and my dragon takes over.
She gasps. I have her up off her feet and laid out on the bed, and I’m over her, caging her in, so fast that all she gets out is that one small sound.
Even gone, he’s careful with her. The landing is soft. We would never be anything else with her.
“You are not leaving me,” I say, and my voice comes out with him still in it.
She swallows. She sniffles.
“I need you to trust me,” I tell her. “Trust that I’ll take care of this. Nothing will happen to your friend.”
Her lip trembles.
I take her hand and pull it to my neck, and I run her fingers over the mark she left me. It goes warm under her touch.
Then I lean down and press my forehead to hers.
This is where I go to work. Trust is the one thing she’s never given anyone whole, and I want all of it.
I ease back enough to see her face. “Baby. I know you’re used to taking care of yourself. Doing things on your own. But you aren’t alone now.”
I take her hand off my neck and press it flat over my chest, right where the heat lives. “I am asking you to trust me. Trust my dragon—your dragon.”
She groans and snatches her hand back.
I smile. The groan is for show. Under it, her scent has gone soft and giving, and I can read my own odds. I’m getting my way.
I make myself pull up off her, breathing heavy, and climb down from the bed. My dragon goes with complaints.
She sits up. “What are you about to do?”
I cross to the rig in the corner. “Record my final podcast.”
She scrambles off the bed and follows me. “What?”
I start flipping it on, mic, board, the works.
She pulls at my arm. “Last podcast?”
I keep at the board. “Yes, Zuri. You heard that correct.”
“But why?” she asks.
I look at her. Then I leave the board and go to her, and I put my hand against her cheek.
“I’ve spent years running this town’s messiest podcast,” I tell her. “I’ve aired everyone’s business but my own. And the one story I will never put on that mic is how hard I fell for the woman I stole.”
Her breath goes shallow under my hand.
“The show made me big enough to be worth hurting, and now the witch knows the way to hurt me is you. So after this last one, I’m letting it all go. The podcast, the files, the whole messy crown. You’re the only thing in this world that matters to me now.”
Her eyes go wide. Her heartbeat picks up so hard I can hear it across the little space between us.
And there it is, riding out on her scent, sweet and full and unmistakable. She loves me too. She’s not ready to say it, and that’s fine by me. Her scent said it first. I can wait for the rest of her to catch up.
The thought of losing her is driving me out of my own head. The witch wants a key with my woman’s face on it.
“Jay,” she says.
She has called me Jalen since the night I took her. Jay is the town’s name for me. In her mouth it turns brand new, and that’s all it takes. I lose it in the best way a dragon can.
I push her down onto the bed, and everything on my quilt goes over the side. Her phone, the charger, the witch’s precious amulet, all of it hits the floor, and neither of us looks.
I climb over her, and she doesn’t stop me. Her mouth is healed and whole under mine, and I finally get to kiss my mate without holding one thing back, deep and long, with no careful anywhere in it. My blood is still moving in her veins from last night, and my scent is braided all through hers.
I strip her out of the clothes I dressed her in this morning, slower than my dragon likes. Then I get rid of my own.
Last night we were starving at each other. I take this one slow.
I kiss my way down her body and put her thighs over my shoulders. She reaches down and tries to pull me up, tries to flip us and take the wheel like she did in the dark.
“No, baby.” I catch her wrists and pin them to the bed. “You had your turn. This one’s mine.”
She huffs. She also opens her thighs wider, so I know exactly how mad she is.
I take my time, long and greedy, working her with my whole mouth until her thighs shake against my ears and her hands quit fighting mine and hold on instead. She comes with my name in her mouth, and it’s Jay again.
I move up her body and push inside her while she’s still trembling, and we both make a sound the family will pretend they never heard.
I keep it deep and easy, her heels locked at my back, and I hold her eyes the whole time.
She doesn’t look away from me. All her life she’s guarded that face like a vault, and here she is with the doors wide open, letting me watch everything move through her while I move in her.
I kiss her brow, her healed cheek, the corner of her mouth, and I keep on until easy quits being possible.
Then I roll her onto her stomach and pull her hips up and put my mouth on her again, her pussy, her ass, everywhere at once, until she’s got fistfuls of my sheets and my name comes out of her bent in half.
When I slide into her from behind, we both quit pretending this is gentle.
I give her all of it, hard and deep, the bed frame knocking the wall, until she breaks around me loud enough for the whole mountain.
I pull out and turn her over. I lift her into my lap, and we both watch as I slide back inside her. This is where she claimed me. We both know it.
I lift her up and down slow again, and I watch every roll of her hips, every catch of light on her skin. My whole hoard moves in my hands.
“I love you, Zuri,” I say.
Her lip trembles. Then she breaks apart on a cry.
The urge arrives while she’s still shaking, and I finally understand what took her that first night.
My mouth floods. The curve of her neck is right there, bare and mine.
I can’t lose her. I won’t. Nothing is taking her from me.
If she wants to leave Shadow Wolf Creek when this is done, I’ll fly her out myself and never look back. The clan can follow or wave.
She’s mine.
MINE.
I sink my teeth into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder. She screams and claws down my back. She pushes closer. Her blood comes over my tongue, and it tastes like burnt caramel gone molten, and I drink my mate and come inside her all at once.
Somewhere in the middle of it, the bond finishes. A second warmth settles in behind my heartbeat, and it points toward her.
I lick the bite until it closes under my tongue.
She goes soft and heavy in my arms, out cold, the same as the first night. I hold her against me and work on calming down, her blood still warm on my lips. I move us up the bed until my back hits the headboard, the one she made me crack, and I tuck her in.
The bite on her shoulder has already sealed into two small crescents, and when the morning light crosses them, they flash gold.
I tilt my own neck and catch our reflection in the dresser mirror, her mark on me, my mark on her, a matched set.
Somewhere in this mountain, Dorian is going to be insufferable about being right.
The house goes on below us. Water runs through the pipes.
Dorian’s pans knock around the kitchen, cooking for people who keep walking out on his meals.
Brandy’s voice has settled back down to normal, whatever that panic was about.
My town, my mountain, my family, all of it hums along while the whole world quietly changes shape in my lap.
I’m not going to sleep. There’s too much to do. First I feed my mate when she wakes. Then I record the message that changes everything. Then I find out if her friend Renee is truly in danger, and if she is, I get her out. And after all of it, I put the crown down and I rest.
Nothing matters but Zuri.