Chapter 7
Bennie
The Hemlock Wolf Pack, Star’s Territory
After dinner was finished, we both headed off to shower.
I almost followed Alby into the room we’d set up for him and into his shower but thought better of it.
He hadn’t actually asked me to shower with him.
So, I took my shower in the guest room I always used when I slept over at Raziel’s house.
It had been an enjoyable afternoon if you could ignore the mystery of what was going on with my best friend.
Which either to my credit or dishonor, I’d been able to do almost all together once I was alone with Alby.
His scent drew me in, and I wanted to nibble and lick every last bit of him.
I’d mark him as mine and disembowel anyone who tried to touch a single fur on his body. Alby was mine.
It was that exact line of thinking that gave me patience.
As badly as I wanted to drag him into that four-poster bed that already smelled a bit like me because I had set up the curtains and take him over and over again, I knew we had time.
Waiting until he was ready would only make our first time that much better.
After all, what was the rush when you had forever with someone?
Still, that didn’t stop my dick from hardening under the hot water and throbbing harder with each thought of Alby that crossed my mind.
Yep. This was something I definitely needed to take care of before I headed back out into the rest of the house with my mate.
I didn’t want him to feel pressured by my desire.
Sure, desire was a gift in a true-mate relationship, but it was only a gift when the other person was both ready and in the mood to be desired.
Besides, my hand had never let me down yet.
I leaned one arm against the shower wall, letting the hot water rain down over me as I stroked myself.
I lost myself to the rhythm of my hand and to thoughts of Alby.
He was a beautiful wolf, both in his natural form and his human form.
He smelled delicious. Even now under the rain of the shower, his scent stuck to my nostrils, sweet and delicious.
His scent only urged me on. I squeezed and stroked myself faster, losing track of place and time until all I could think about was Alby and the weight in my balls ever since I laid eyes on him.
I held onto that as my fist worked over my dick.
Each and every stroke only made me wish it was Alby’s hand moving over me.
I closed my eyes and imagined that it was.
A growl choked in the back of my throat as I came, spraying the proof of my longing and self-found pleasure onto the shower wall.
As soon as my head stopped reeling from how hard I came, I cleaned up the mess and finished up my shower.
While I was washing my cum off the shower, it occurred to me that perhaps Alby was jacking off too. I shook the thought away before it laid down roots in my brain. If I kept this shit up, I’d never get out of the shower again.
Eventually I was dressed, thanks to the fact I kept stuff at Raziel’s house for an emergency and met back up with Alby downstairs in the kitchen.
He’d broken out the cheesecake bites and was reading a book at the table.
Leaning against the doorframe, I watched him read for a long time.
There was something so sweet and content about his eyes moving across the page as he devoured the tray of sweets one by one between turning the pages.
So, I did the only thing that was logical.
I headed out to the car and grabbed the book I was reading.
I had finished up The Trouble With Lion Dads the night before and moved onto Tiger’s Blight.
It was a thriller where a deranged antelope shifter was killing tiger shifters because a wild tiger had eaten both of his parents on a family vacation.
It was scary as shit, but it was a little off putting.
Sure, wild tigers ate what they could hunt, but would a shifter really blame other shifters for that?
“More evil things have happened,” my tiger reminded me, stretching out inside his inner sanctum.
I joined Alby at the table and he’d eaten through several layers of the cheesecake bites before he noticed that I joined him.
“Oh, hey,” he laughed at his own obliviousness. “New book.”
“Me too. Almost finished,” I said, setting it aside in the middle of a chapter. That’s how I knew this was the real deal. I couldn’t count the times in my life when I said, “I’ll be with you as soon as I finish this chapter.”
Alby rubbed his bare foot over my calf under the table and instantly undid all the hard work my jacking off did in the shower.
He scooted his chair closer to me, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
The kitchen probably wasn’t the best place for snuggling in human form, but I’d have snuggled my wolf on the brim of an active volcano if that’s where he wanted to be.
“I really like the spiral staircase. It makes the house feel old fashioned,” Alby said and I mentally laughed at how difficult that staircase made it to get the four-poster bed onto the second floor.
I didn’t tell him that, though. The bed was up there now and would live up there until either the floor collapsed or it died.
“Raziel put it in. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but it definitely makes the house unique.”
We sat like that for a long time and there was something so comfortable about being squashed together between two chairs and trying to touch as much of each other as possible without falling off or getting sexual.
Still, eventually, I pulled Alby onto my lap before either of us got a crick in our necks or something.
He straddled my legs and rested his hands on my shoulders.
We gazed at each other for a long moment before our lips brushed together.
His mouth was soft. He tasted like cheesecake and vaguely of toothpaste.
So this was very much planned kissing. I kept my hands on the small of his back, until he shifted his weight so that they dropped down to cup his ass cheeks.
His fingers laced together behind my neck as our tongues danced back and forth between our hungry mouths.
Underneath Alby, I was rock hard. So hard that it almost hurt despite jacking off not even an hour ago.
His scent buried itself deep inside me with each breath I drew into my lungs until all I could smell was him.
He was slick and hard too. His hips rocked, grinding down over my dick as my fingers kneaded into his ass cheeks.
Somewhere in the upstairs guest room my phone vibrated where I left it.
Someone said something over the group link, but I slammed it shut without paying attention.
Someone else could save the world tonight.
Someone else could be the hero and make the territory safer.
Hell, Star was around. He could eat the threat for all I cared because I wasn’t moving one inch further away from Alby than I had to.
If someone really needed me Ryder or Sylvan would use the family link. Someone would at least.
Ignoring the interruptions, I pulled Alby closer to me. His breath hitched and he let out an adorable little gasp that made me want to lick and suck every last inch of his body. Letting go of his ass, I toyed with his nipples through his t-shirt and then trailed my fingers up and down his torso.
Something scratched at the door between the garage and the kitchen.
We both froze in place. Either someone was out there or there was a really big rat that Raziel failed to tell us about and who had managed to hide his scent from every shifter coming and going.
I sniffed the air and groaned. That wasn’t a rat.
“Huh?” Alby asked, half in a daze.
“That’s Daisy,” I whispered.
“Whose Daisy? Do you have a girlfriend?” Alby blinked at me and licked his swollen lips. How long had we kissed for?
“Not nearly long enough,” my tiger grumbled as my dick went soft.
“Never had one of those,” I laughed. “Daisy is my sister. Well… It’s complicated. Daisy is technically my niece. Like biologically but Ryder raised me. So she is my little sister for all that matters.”
“How little?” he asked as I lifted him back into his chair.
“Four,” I laughed.
“Why is she here? Are her parents here?” Alby asked.
“Probably not. That’s probably… Shit!” I swore. “That’s probably why the family link was going crazy.”
“Daisy,” I sighed, opening the back door and looking down at the little lioness who yawned and walked in as if she owned the place.
I’d locked the garage door earlier, so I wasn’t sure how she got in.
She walked straight past Alby and jumped up onto the table to sniff the cheesecake bites.
Then glanced at me over her shoulder before taking one into her mouth.
“Daisy, how did you get here?” I asked, scooping her up off the table and looking her over.
She slapped at me with a big brown paw that she hadn’t quite grown into yet.
Images danced through my head over the family link.
She’d climbed into my car on the back floorboard while I was volunteering to take a nap and then proceeded to sleep for hours through all the driving and us leaving the car in the garage.
Alby only half-laughed when I told him what I found out. Daisy leapt out of my arms onto the table and took another cheesecake bite.
“Maybe we should get her some deer or something. She needs more than cheesecake for dinner,” Alby said, but had a look that made me wonder what he was really thinking.
Reflexively, I reached out to his mind, but found nothing.
Despite both of us technically being on the pack link our connections were too scattered to really get a read on him.
I wouldn’t be able to do that until we exchanged our claiming vows.