Chapter 26 Percival
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Percival
It had been three days. I was being punished. Literally.
Despite Solomon running traces and Lucian using his connection in town for more clues, we still didn’t have a solid answer. I wasn’t sure who to hit and where exactly to go from here on because we were still fucking clueless.
I mostly take things lightly but not this. Because this threat we couldn’t name knew about the bond. Knew about Mira.
I couldn’t exactly calm down. So I handled it the way I handled most things that scared me.
By putting a training dummy through the equipment room wall.
In my defense, it wasn’t on purpose. My fist just connected with it during a solo session and through my bottled frustration, the thing flew off its stand, cleared twelve feet of open floor, and punched a hole through the drywall into the locker room.
Whitfield had been changing on the other side making him squeal.
And yes, it was a squeal, not a shout. I would have laughed but I knew I was in trouble.
The crew spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how a mounted dummy ended up embedded in a wall. I blamed faulty equipment. Nobody believed me, but nobody had a better explanation either.
Lucian pulled me aside that night. Not the captain pulling aside a subordinate. The king addressing his warrior, jaw set, voice low enough that only lycan ears could catch it.
“We cannot afford attention right now.” His eyes held mine. “Be. Careful.”
Hence the punishment.
He wouldn’t call it that though. He’d call it “rotation maintenance” but really it was nonsense that translated to scrubbing the engine bay alone at nine PM on a Friday.
The firehouse was empty. Night shift had clocked in at seven and rolled out on a call within the hour, leaving me alone with a mop, a bucket of industrial cleaner, and the quiet hum of overhead fluorescents.
I dunked the mop and dragged it across the concrete. The motion was meditative, repetitive, the kind of mindless task that let my brain wander to places it shouldn’t.
Mira carried two heartbeats now. I could feel them through the pack connection, faint echoes filtered through Lucian and Solomon. Every time I caught their resonance through the bond it reminded me that my thread was still waiting.
I wanted her.
The wanting had gone past a physical ache and into the territory of a fundamental need. Watching Lucian claim her, watching Solomon claim her, being genuinely happy for both of them while my own wolf howled with an impatience that bordered on feral.
It was fine. I was fine.
The mop hit a stubborn spot of dried hydraulic fluid and I scrubbed harder.
Totally fine.
Footsteps arrived from the side entrance. A specific gait I’d memorized months ago.
Mira rounded the corner with a paper bag in one hand and a thermos in the other. Her copper hair was pulled back, and the obsidian pendant Lucian had given her caught the fluorescent light at her throat. She wore one of my hoodies. The gray one I’d been looking for all week.
“Solomon dropped me off,” she said before I could ask. “I told him to go home since I’m staying.”
“You came to the firehouse at nine PM on a Friday night?”
“I heard you were being punished.” She set the bag on the bench beside the gear racks. “And I know for a fact that Lucian didn’t feed you before he sentenced you to scrubbing.”
“It’s rotation maintenance.”
“It’s a punishment. Apparently, you decapitated a training dummy?”
“More like embedded it on a wall.”
She grinned. “I brought dinner. The diner was still open. Pancakes, because I know your stance on time being a construct.”
My heart did that thing it did around her. The full-body lurch that felt less controlled with every passing day, more desperate, closer to the surface.
“You’re my favorite person,” I said.
“I know.” She pulled the containers from the bag and set them on the bench. “Eat first. Then you can show me around.”
“You’ve been here before.”
“Briefly. With all three of you hovering.” She popped the lid on a container and the smell of blueberry pancakes filled the bay. “I didn’t get to actually explore. Now I can.”
I ate. She sat cross-legged on the bench and stole bites off my plate while telling me about the bookshop. Solomon had built the romance alcove she’d wanted, and apparently the exposed ceiling beams had turned out better than expected.
Mira was animated, hands moving while she talked, and the pendant swung at her collarbone with each gesture.
I watched her mouth more than I listened to her words. Terrible habit I couldn’t stop.
When the food was gone, she stood and wandered toward the gear racks. Her fingers trailed along the turnout coats hanging in their designated slots, each one tagged with a name. She found mine and ran her thumb over the nameplate.
“VALDRIS,” she read. “All three coats say the same thing. The Valdris brothers.”
I watched her fingers trace the stitched letters. “Fewer questions when everyone shares a last name.”
She pulled my turnout coat off the rack.
Then she slid her arms into the sleeves.
It swallowed her. The coat hung past her thighs, the sleeves extending well beyond her fingertips, and she had to roll the cuffs four times before her hands emerged.
She grabbed the helmet off the shelf and settled it on her head, the visor tipping forward over her eyes.
My brain short-circuited.
She kept doing this. Stealing my clothes, drowning in my shirts, borrowing my jackets. And every single time, my wolf lost its mind. My scent wrapped around her body, soaked into her skin, marking her in a way that was more primal than any bite.
My jeans got painfully tight. Fantastic.
“How do I look?” She struck a pose, hands on hips, drowning in gear.
“Ridiculous.”
“I think I look heroic.”
“You look five years old wearing her dad’s clothes.”
She tilted the helmet back with one finger. Those mismatched eyes found mine, bright with mischief, and my wolf paced against my ribs.
“The buckles are wrong.” The words came out before my brain vetted them. “The chest clips. You’ve got them twisted.”
I crossed the space between us. My hands found the front of the turnout coat where the closure buckles had crossed over each other. She’d fastened them incorrectly, the chest strap sitting too low, the collar loose around her throat.
“Here.” My fingers worked the first buckle free. The metal clinked as I unlatched it, straightened the strap, and refastened it properly. My knuckles brushed her collarbone through the coat’s inner lining.
“And this one.” The second buckle sat at her sternum. I adjusted it with both hands, pulling the strap taut, and the motion brought my arms around her, bracketing her body inside the coat.
Mira went still.
Suddenly, we were aware of every inch of space between her body and mine.
I looked down just as she looked up.
The helmet had tipped back on her head, exposing her whole face. This close, I could see the gold flecks in her brown eye and the ring of darker blue around the edge of her blue one. The claiming mark on her throat sat just above the collar of my coat.
“Percy.” My name in her mouth, barely above a whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to kiss me or just stand here fixing my buckles?”
That was all it took for me to kiss her.
This one was not gentle or playful, not the easy, teasing energy we had.
Every ounce of restraint I’d maintained snapped in the space between her question and my mouth finding hers.
She grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled. I stumbled forward, she stumbled backward, and we moved in a messy collision of mouths and hands and the rustling of turnout gear that was too big for her and too far in the way.
Her back hit the engine.
The Pierce Arrow XT, custom-built, eight hundred gallons of water capacity, the pride of the station. And my mate was pressed against it with her legs wrapping around my waist while I kissed the breath out of her.
My hands roamed her body, gripping her hips hard enough to leave marks, pulling her tight against my growing erection. She gasped into my mouth, her fingers digging into my shoulders, and I growled low, loving how she responded to my touch.
I reached behind her and yanked the cab door open. Grabbed her waist and hoisted her up through the opening in a single motion. She scrambled backward into the driver’s seat, pulling me with her by my collar, and I climbed in after her, the cab creaking under our combined weight.
She landed in the wide bench seat, turnout coat splayed open around her, helmet knocked sideways, hair spilling across the headrest. “So beautiful, love.”
My hoodie had ridden up, exposing a strip of skin above her waistband.
I didn’t waste time. I pinned her down with my body, my knee shoving her thighs apart as I settled between them.
My hands slid under the coat, pushing up her shirt to expose her breasts, full and heaving with each breath.
I cupped them roughly, thumbs circling her nipples until they hardened into tight peaks.
“Have always wanted to taste these perfect tits,” I whispered, leaning down to take one nipple into my mouth, sucking hard while my teeth grazed the sensitive flesh.
Mira arched beneath me, a moan escaping her lips, and I felt her pussy clench against my thigh through her pants. I ground against her, letting her feel how hard she made me, how much I needed to bury myself inside her.
I braced my arms on either side of her head and looked down.
The sight of her sprawled beneath me made my head fuzzy.
My eyes burned at the edges, and I knew without checking that gold was bleeding through the hazel.
“I’ve been picturing this,” I said. My voice came out lower than I recognized. “You. Here. In my gear. In my truck.”
Her eyes widened a fraction.
Then she grinned.
“Kinky,” she said.