Chapter 8
Silas
I found the motel first.
The Turquoise Sands. The vacancy sign was missing a letter and the parking lot smelled like gasoline and a mix of a variety of illegal substances.
Her trail went to a first-floor room, second from the end.
The door was closed but the window was shattered.
Glass shards fanned across the asphalt in a pattern that suggested something had crashed through it from the inside, and the creature’s blood, dark and almost chemical, ran in a trail from the window across the lot and into the brush at the far edge, where it disappeared into the scrub cedar.
A few drops of my mate’s blood were mixed in with the creature’s, perhaps having dripped from its fangs or claws as it fled.
Cold, visceral fear took hold of my heart and squeezed.
I crouched at the window and looked into the room.
It was destroyed. There were lamp shards strewn across the carpet and a desk chair discarded in the corner.
Cracks in the drywall indicated where something heavy had slammed into the wall.
The crumpled bedspread had been pulled halfway off the bed, and there was more of the skinwalker’s blood on the floor near the dresser, a substantial amount, and a smear of it along the wall where the thing had most likely gone down and then gotten back up.
She’d fought it. In a motel room, alone, with a lamp and a desk chair as her only weapons.
And it looked like she’d won.
My wolf surged against the cage of my human form so hard my vision blanked for a full second. Not from fear, though that was there too, beneath everything else, but from the savage satisfaction of knowing my mate had not just fought that thing off but beaten it bloody with a chair.
Then the fear surged to the top again and my hands shook.
She’d been alone. She’d been alone because she’d left, and she’d left because I’d let her.
I tracked her from the motel and off through the city. Her scent braided with the faint residual trace of a vehicle, which told me someone had given her a ride, and I followed both until the trail terminated at a small compound behind a stucco wall on a quiet street in the old part of Santa Fe.
I circled the compound once in wolf form. Her scent was everywhere. Someone had seen to her injuries. I could smell antiseptic and some kind of herbal remedy along with cotton gauze.
After shifting in the brush as the sky went from black to slate, I climbed over the wall.
The lock here was quite a bit more of a challenge than the one at the apartment had been, but I finally prevailed.
Turning the knob and opening the door, I found myself in a kitchen where a light had been left on, casting a small warm circle on the counter and the first-aid kit sitting open beside it.
The back room was dark, but I could see her clearly in the gloom.
She was on her back with the blanket pulled to her chin, shoes still on, one hand resting on her stomach and the other curled loosely at her side. Her face was turned slightly toward the door. Gauze bandaging was visible on her forearm above the blanket’s edge, white against her skin.
I stood there for a while, letting myself drink in the fact that she was safe and mostly unharmed.
My stubborn, reckless, magnificent mate had beaten an ancient predator with motel furniture because she was too stubborn and too resourceful to let it be the end of her.
I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
Her eyes opened before the mattress had finished absorbing my weight, her pupils wide in the dark. She saw me and recognition moved through her expression, then assessment, then what looked like escape planning.
Her nostrils flared, just slightly, and whatever her wolf read in my scent satisfied the part of her that needed satisfying, because the tension in her shoulders released to an extent.
“You found the motel,” she said.
“I found the motel.”
She watched my face, reading it the way she read everything, with that focused intensity that missed nothing. “I handled it.”
“You did.” I held her gaze. “You also ran from me again.”
Her jaw set, her chin lifting. I knew that angle by now, knew it meant she was loading a counterargument and preparing to deliver it.
I didn’t give her the chance. I pulled the blanket down to her waist in a single motion. She gasped, her hand flying to her chest, but I caught her wrist and held it gently against the mattress beside her head. “I’m not going to bother spanking you this time, little mate.”
Her eyes held wariness, but beneath that burned a heat she couldn’t hide.
“It’s time I put a baby in you.”
Her breath stopped. Not a gasp, a full cessation, her lungs going still, her ribs locked. Her pupils dilated almost instantly.
The sweatshirt she’d borrowed was rucked up above her navel, showing a strip of bare skin. I reached for the hem and began to lift it. Slowly. Not because I was giving her time to object, but because I wanted to take my time revealing every inch of what was mine.
Her breasts came into view, her nipples already drawn tight despite the warmth of the room, and I paused with the fabric bunched above them.
She lay beneath me with her chest bare and her hair fanned across the pillow, her dark eyes holding mine with an intensity that was equal parts defiance and desire.
I roamed my gaze over her body, taking it in the way I’d wanted to since I first set eyes on her. Without urgency. Without my wolf trying to claw his way out of me to hunt. Just looking.
My eyes found her collarbones first, the hollows at their centers catching shadows. Then lower. Her breasts were perfect, each one a handful, the nipples a shade darker than her skin and so stiff they cast their own tiny shadows in the dim light.
I ran one finger down the center of her chest as it rose and fell with each rapid breath. Between her breasts, over her sternum, following the midline. The muscles of her stomach contracted in my wake, and goosebumps raced outward from the path of my fingertip.
“Every time you run,” I said, “every time you go off traipsing on your own, you risk the skinwalker finding you before I can track you down myself. That can’t happen again, little mate.”
“Knocking me up isn’t going to—”
“Your belly swelling with my pups is exactly what you need to remind you that you’re mine to protect now.” I pulled her shoes off one by one, then hooked my fingers into the waistband of her leggings and pulled them down.
Slowly.
Over the swell of her hips, past the shaved mound between her thighs, down the length of her legs.
She lifted her hips to let them pass, and the act of cooperation, that small yielding arch of her pelvis, made my cock throb against the constraint of my jeans.
“It will complete the bond. Your wolf will fully activate. You’ll be able to shift.
And the next time that thing comes for you, you won’t be fighting it with a lamp.
Plus,” The leggings cleared her feet. “it’s the perfect way to put a disobedient mate in her place. ”
I tossed the leggings aside and looked at her, fully bare now except for the gauze on her arm and the socks she was still wearing.
I pulled the socks off too.
She lay naked on the bed in the dim spillover from the kitchen light, and I took my time enjoying the view.
Her legs were long and lean, shaped by years of climbing and trail running. Her thighs were toned, the skin there paler than her forearms, smooth and warm when I ran my palm along the inside of one. She flinched but didn’t pull away.
I met her eyes briefly, then let her watch my gaze drop lower.
Her mound was bare and slightly pink, and beneath it the lips of her pussy were already flushed, glistening with the evidence of what my words and my proximity were doing to her body.
I could smell her arousal, thick and sweet and unmistakable in the close air of the room.
“Look at you.” I traced the crease where her thigh met her hip, and her breath stuttered. “Soaking wet already and I’ve barely touched you.”
She turned her face into the pillow. “I can’t help it.”
“I know you can’t.” I brought my other hand to her opposite thigh and parted her legs wider, watching the resistance in her muscles give way. “Your body knows exactly what it needs.”
I knelt between her spread thighs and looked down at her. Her pussy was swollen and slick, her inner lips parted just enough to show the deep pink underneath. I ran my thumb over her slit and she arched off the bed with a sound that was not quite a word.
“This is what you were made for.” I pressed my thumb against her clit, just hard enough to make her gasp, then held it there.
“Not a law degree. Not hiking and climbing and bouldering. Those are things you chose, and I know they matter, and you’ll have them back if you want them.
But this—” I circled slowly, watching her hands fist in the sheets.
“This is what your body has been waiting for since before you were born.”
I stood up and stripped, watching her eyes track the process and seeing them widen slightly when my cock sprang free, already thick and hard and aching to be thrust deep into her core.
She stared at it, standing rigid and heavy between us, her face filled with a combination of apprehension and hunger that made me want to pin her to the mattress and not let her up until morning.
Climbing back onto the bed and leaning over her, I planted my hands on either side of her head and my knees between her spread thighs. The head of my cock dragged across her slick folds as I lowered myself, and she whimpered, her hips lifting involuntarily toward the contact.
“This might have been gentle,” I said, holding myself just outside her entrance. She could feel me there, I knew, a promise and a warning. “If you hadn’t been such a disobedient little mate.”
Her eyes found mine. Wide, dark, full of a mix of need and trepidation.
“Silas—” she started.
I pushed inside her.