Chapter 16 Caleb
CALEB
Ireach her door before I've made the conscious decision to move. My knuckles connect with the wood three times—sharp, authoritative knocks that brook no delay.
"Ellie."
The door opens faster than I expect, revealing her paler-than-usual face and wide eyes. She's holding her laptop, clutching it against her chest like armor.
"How did you…?"
"We need to talk." I step forward, not waiting for an invitation.
The mate bond screams at the distress radiating from her, and my wolf pushes against my control with protective fury.
"Now."
"Excuse me?" She backs up but doesn't retreat far enough.
I'm already inside, already too close to the scent of her fear and the sight of her reorganized research spread across the table.
"You can't just…"
My wolf growls. He’s moved beyond just wanting to be near his mate, and is now desperate to protect her at all costs.
"Someone was in here."
It's not a question. The air carries traces of an unfamiliar presence, masculine and predatory. My hands clench at my sides as I catalog the evidence—the too-neat papers, the adjusted curtains, the laptop she's holding like it contains state secrets.
"How could you possibly know that? Unless you or your deputy did this to throw me off balance?”
"You’ve been reading too many mystery novels. I know because I know when things are wrong in my town." The words come out rougher than intended, edged with the authority I've spent years learning to wield. "And right now, you're closer to something dangerous than you realize."
Her chin lifts in that stubborn way that's becoming familiar. "Dangerous how? According to who? You keep throwing around vague warnings like fortune cookie prophecies, but you won't tell me anything concrete."
"Because, in this case, concrete gets people hurt."
"People are already hurt!" She sets the laptop down with deliberate care, her movements controlled in a way that signals barely leashed anger. "That's why I'm here. That's what I'm trying to…"
"What you're trying to do is stumble blindly into something that could get you killed."
The words hit the air between us like a physical blow. Her face goes pale, then flushed.
"Killed." She repeats the word like she's testing its weight. "Finally, some honesty. Who wants to kill me, Sheriff? The same people who made those hikers disappear? The ones whose tracks you've been covering for years?"
"I haven't covered anything."
"Then explain the missing files. Explain why everyone in this town gets nervous when I ask questions. Explain why you always seem to know exactly where I am and what I'm doing."
The mate bond is demanding I tell her everything—about the pack, about the rogues, about why every instinct I possess screams at me to keep her safe. Instead, I force my voice level.
"Some explanations are more dangerous than ignorance."
"That's not your call to make."
"It is when you're reckless enough to go wandering alone in the woods after dark."
"Reckless?" Her laugh carries no humor. "I'm doing my job.
I'm following leads. I'm trying to find the truth about what happened to those people, and you…
" She steps close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her eyes.
"You keep treating me like I'm some fragile thing that needs protecting from reality. "
"You do need protecting."
The admission slips out before I can stop it, raw and honest in a way that makes my chest tight. Her expression shifts, confusion replacing anger.
"From what?"
I watch her face, memorizing the curve of her mouth, the way her breathing has quickened. Everything in me wants to answer her, to lay the truth bare and let the consequences fall where they will.
"From things you're not equipped to handle."
"Try me."
The silence is deafening, filled with everything I can't say. Her eyes search mine, looking for answers I can't give without destroying everything I've sworn to protect.
"Please." Her voice is barely a whisper. "I need to know what I'm really dealing with here."
My mouth opens. Closes. The weight of decades of secrecy wars with the desperate need to keep her safe, and I realize I'm trapped between two impossible choices.
I say nothing.
Her face changes, disappointment replacing hope. "Your silence is an answer too, you know."
I don’t mean to reach for her. My hand moves on its own, fingers closing around her wrist. Her pulse hammers against my thumb, a frantic, living thing. “You have no idea what you’re playing with.”
“Then tell me.” She doesn’t pull away. Her breath hitches. “Or is shutting me down easier than actually talking?”
That’s when the dam breaks. The fear, the anger, the eternal days of fighting this gravitational pull between us—it all snaps. My other hand finds the curve of her waist, pulling her against me. She gasps, but her free hand fists in my shirt, dragging me closer.
Our first kiss isn’t gentle. It’s a collision of teeth and desperation, a battle for control neither of us wins.
“God, I hate how much I want you,” she gasps against my mouth.
“Then stop,” I growl.
She drags me closer instead. “You first.”
“You know I can’t,” I admit, breathless and raw.
“Exactly.”
I back her against the wall, my body pressing hers into the plaster. Her nails scrape against my scalp, pulling me deeper into the kiss.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she breathes against my mouth.
“I know.”
I yank her sweater over her head in one rough motion, the worn cotton catching briefly on the stubborn jut of her chin before I tug it free with impatient fingers.
My mouth finds the pulse at the base of her throat—that delicate hollow where her lifeblood thrums just beneath the surface, betraying the rapid-fire rhythm of her heartbeat.
Her skin tastes of salt and defiance, a heady combination that makes me groan against her, the sound vibrating through both of us.
Ellie's hands fumble at my belt with uncharacteristic clumsiness, her fingers trembling with urgency as she struggles with the buckle.
Her breath comes in short, sharp gasps against my temple, each exhalation warmer than the last.
“Slow…” I start, because even now I’m trying to control something.
“Don’t you dare slow down,” she snaps, fierce and breathless. “Not this. Not now.”
“This changes everything,” I warn.
Her laugh is jagged. “Everything already changed. We’re just catching up.”
When her palm finally closes around me, warm and sure despite her earlier hesitation, I can't help but rock my hips into her touch, my teeth grazing the sharp ridge of her collarbone in response. The way her breath hitches at the contact sends a jolt of possessive satisfaction straight through me.
We don't so much move to the bed as crash into it—I lift her easily, her legs wrapping instinctively around my waist as I carry us the few stumbling steps to the mattress.
The way her eyes widen when I hoist her up, dark with surprise and something deeper, something hungry, sends a primal thrill through me.
“Careful,” she breathes, though she doesn’t sound like she wants careful at all.
“I’m trying,” I rasp.
“Don’t,” she whispers, eyes dark and steady on mine. “For once… don’t.”
There's no pretense here, no carefully choreographed seduction or practiced restraint. Just the raw, aching need to be inside her, to feel something honest and real beneath all the lies and tension that have built between us like layers of armor, each one thicker than the last.
I make quick work of her joggers, dragging them down her hips along with her panties in one impatient motion, barely giving her time to kick them free before I'm pushing into her in one hard, unrelenting thrust.
Ellie cries out, the sound ragged and unfiltered, as if wanting this primal moment between us was a secret she was keeping from both of us.
Her head falls back against the pillows, exposing the long, vulnerable line of her throat.
Her hips rise to meet me as her thighs tighten around my waist, pulling me deeper with a desperation that mirrors my own, like we're both trying to erase the distance between us in the only way left.
Every surge into her feels like both a punishment and a prayer—a way to exorcise the frustration between us while also seeking absolution in the heat of her body.
“Say it,” she demands, voice shaking. “Say you wanted this.”
“I always wanted this,” I grind out. “That’s the problem.”
“Then stop pretending I’m the only one who’s reckless,” she fires back, breath hitching. “You’re right here with me.”
“I know,” I say, and it sounds like surrender.
Her pussy throbs around me, hot and wet, and her heels dig into the small of my back, urging me on with silent, frantic insistence.
I bite down on the curve of her shoulder, not hard enough to mark, but enough to make her moan, to remind her that this is real, that we're here, that neither of us is hiding now.
Her fingers twist in my hair, pulling just this side of pain, anchoring me to her as if she's afraid I'll disappear if she loosens her grip for even a second.
This isn't lovemaking. It's a fight we're waging with our bodies, a battle of wills where neither of us is willing to surrender first. We’re proving something to each other—something we can’t articulate, something too raw for words, something that claws its way out of us in gasps and bruises and the slick, desperate slide of skin on skin.
But the moment I'm buried inside her, something shifts.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispers, suddenly softer.
“Like what?”
“Like I matter to you.”
“You do,” I admit, wrecked. “More than you should.”
The natural intimacy between us, the one we’ve been denying, flares to life like a struck match.
It’s not just the sex—it’s the way the walls between us crumble the second I’m sheathed inside her, the way we cling to each other like we’re starving, like the other is the only thing keeping us from coming undone.
When Ellie comes, it’s with a choked sob, her body clenching around me in waves that drag me under with her, pulling me deeper than I thought possible.
My release follows hard and fast, a wave of pleasure so intense it borders on pain, leaving me shuddering against her, my muscles locked tight as the world narrows to the feel of her beneath me.
I slump forward, my forehead pressed to hers, both of us gasping for air like we’ve just survived something far greater than ourselves—something that might just destroy us if we let it.
“We shouldn’t have…” she starts.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “But I’m not sorry.”
Her fingers tighten in my hair. “Neither am I.”
Silence hangs between us. Not comfortable. Not catastrophic.
Just honest.
The silence morphs though, and what follows is louder than any argument. I carefully slide off of her, my body already missing the heat of hers. She won’t look at me, arms crossed over her breasts as she stares at the ceiling just to the side of my gaze.
Nothing’s solved. If anything, the tangled mess between us just got more complicated.
Instead of reaching for her again, I take a step back.
"I'll have someone watch the building tonight. Make sure this doesn't happen again."
Her face is carefully blank, and I know I've failed some test I didn't even realize I was taking.
"Of course. More watching. More protection I didn't ask for." She yanks a throw around her, moving toward the door, making it clear the conversation is over. "Thank you for your time, Sheriff Hart. I'm sure you have more important things to do than… hold my hand through a simple break-in."
The dismissal stings more than it should. I want to explain, to tell her that keeping her safe is the most important thing I've ever done, that the thought of her in danger makes my wolf howl with protective fury.
Instead, I nod once and head for the door.
"Lock this behind me. And Ellie?" I pause on the threshold, not quite able to look back at her. "Be careful who you trust."
The door closes behind me with a soft click, followed immediately by the decisive sound of the deadbolt sliding home.
I stand in the hallway for a moment, listening to her move around inside, every instinct screaming at me to go back, to stay close, to stop pretending I can protect her from a distance.
But the alternative is telling her the truth, and the truth would put her in more danger than she's already facing.
So I walk away, leaving her alone with her fear and her questions and her growing certainty that I'm not the ally she needs.
The mate bond stretches thin as I put distance between us, a constant ache that reminds me with every step just how badly I'm failing her.