Chapter 13 #2
“I’m sorry about your mom,” she said. She’d lost her father young too.
It had been a defining event of her life.
And something she still hadn’t fully come to terms with.
The way her mother changed after he was gone had colored the way she viewed relationships, and it wasn’t something she could just forget.
“It was a long time ago.”
“You’re close to your family,” she said, taking a bite of toast.
“Yeah. We all ended up staying in Fate Mountain in the end. We have family dinners at Dad’s house. Parties at the orchard now that Ash is married to Eliana. With everyone mated and the babies growing up, we’re making new traditions of our own.”
She tried to imagine this big family gathered together. Kids running around. People talking over each other. It was something she’d never had.
“What about you?” he asked. “Do you have any brothers or sisters? Are you close to your family?”
“I’m an only child.”
Siren went silent and Reed didn’t press for more. When they’d finished eating, he picked up their plates without asking and cleaned up.
Siren walked outside and tossed another log on the fire before settling into a camping chair. Reed came back out of the van with his guitar case in hand and sat down in the chair across from her.
“Do you mind if I play?” he asked.
Siren looked around, knowing his guitar was part of his old life. But she didn’t see what it could hurt out here. There were no signs they were being watched.
He took it out of the case and tuned it up. The firelight caught his face, softening his features.
He started to play an old country song she’d heard a million times. His voice was low and warm, blending with the crackle of the fire and the wind through the pines.
She’d heard his recording in the car. But this was different. Live, unfiltered, just for her. The intimacy of it made her chest tight. He played a few more songs and then stopped, adjusting his fretboard.
“I’ve been working on something in my head,” he said, not looking at her. “I haven’t tried it out loud.”
He started playing. The melody was simple and tentative. Like he was still finding it.
“There’s a cabin past the timberline. Where the air runs cold and thin. Smoke rising through the evergreens. But no footprints leading in.”
His voice was low, almost uncertain. Like he was sharing something private.
“I’ve seen the lantern in the window. Burning low against the snow. I don’t knock, I just keep walking. But I always walk real slow.”
Something in his words made her wolf sit up and pay attention. It made her chest ache.
“Some things you can’t go chasing. Some things find their own way home. I’ll be down here in the valley. If you ever want to come along.”
He didn’t say it was about her. He didn’t have to.
“The northern lights don’t shine for asking. The river doesn’t tell you where it’s been. Some things you just sit with quietly. And hope they let you...”
He played the last phrase again. Hummed where the words should be, said something under his breath then stopped.
“Still working on that part.”
She didn’t know what to say or how to feel. Her throat was thick and tight, like it was hard to breathe. The fire blurred her vision.
“Sounds good,” she finally said. “You’ve got a really nice voice.”
He held her gaze for a moment, and the fire popped between them.
“Thanks. I’m glad you liked it.”
Siren stood abruptly, the weight of everything pressing down like a piano falling from a sixth story window.
“We should get some sleep,” she said, opening the door to the van.
She stepped inside, and Reed followed. Inside the van, siren reached for the dinette tables pedestal release. The mechanism stuck for a moment and then gave. She started lowering the tabletop to the seat level.
“Here.” Reed moved beside her in the cramped space. “I’ve got this side.”
They worked together without speaking. He held the table steady while she locked it in place. Then they pulled back the cushions from the bench seats and laid them across the lowered surface, filling the gap between the two sides.
The dinette was now a bed. Wall-to-wall, maybe six feet long. It wasn’t much bigger than the tent had been.
There hands brushed as they smooth down the last cushion. Neither of them pulled away.
“I’ll grab the blankets,” Reed said, his voice low.
He opened the overhead compartment and pulled down the quilt, sheets, and pillows.
She took the fitted sheet and fitted it onto the cushions, turning it into a queen-size mattress.
Reed placed the pillows at the head of the bed, and then the two of them spread the quilt.
“You can use the bathroom first,” he said, sitting down on the bed and taking off his shoes.
Siren thanked him, grabbing her toiletries from her duffel bag. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth in the tiny sink and pulled off the dress she’d been wearing. Her Glock was still strapped to her thigh, so she pulled that off too, before changing into a pair of sleep shorts.
When she returned to the main room of the van, Reed had already changed into his gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt.
She shoved her duffel bag in the storage compartment and placed her Glock near her pillow on her side of the bed.
Reed went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and emerged a moment later. Siren was already in bed when he climbed in beside her.
The switch to the overhead light was on her side of the bed. “Ready for lights out?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said in a low voice.
They lay in the dark, side-by-side under the blankets. She could feel the warmth radiating off of him.
Her wolf was scratching and clawing and howling inside her mind. The scent of him filled her nostrils, driving her inner animal wild with need.
Siren had never experienced anything even remotely like this. She wanted him in every way. But the fear of what that meant, what it would do to her if she gave in to the desire to claim him, it kept her paralyzed in place.
The song he sang for her at the campfire was replaying in her mind.
“Reed?” she said in a low voice.
“Yeah?”
“Was that song about me?” she asked before she could stop herself. Deep down she knew it was. She knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him. He’d been honest about it from day one. And she knew that if she reached out, he would be right there waiting.
“Yeah.”
The silence stretched between them. “Is that okay?” he asked.
“I can’t stop you from writing songs about me.” The words came out harsh and wrong. It wasn’t what she meant to say.
“I’d do anything you wanted if you told me to.”
She turned to him and found him looking at her in the darkness. The moonlight glowing through the thin curtains sparkled in his eyes.
“Anything?” she asked, her inner wolf demanding she touch him.
“I feel like I should test to see if that’s true,” she said.
“I’m up for it,” he said. “I want to pass your tests.”
“Really? I can be a harsh taskmaster.”
“That’s my favorite kind.”
Her wolf was pacing urgently behind her eyes, demanding she take him up on the offer.
“I don’t think you know what you are asking for.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Siren shoved Reed onto his back and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips.
His hands came up to touch her, and she caught his wrists, pressing them down onto the mattress on either side of his head.
He moaned as she licked his face. His cock grew hard instantly, pressing against her wet pussy with relentless insistence.
“You like that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said.
She purred, tilting her hips to rub herself over his length. “I’ve been thinking about this since the first night in the hotel. You’ve got such a lovely cock. Do you want to put it inside me?”
“Yes.”
She reached inside his sweatpants, through the waistband of his boxers and found him thick and hard and ready. She gripped his length and squeezed, moaning in his ear.
“You’re so hard for me. Now take your clothes off.”
She climbed off him and watched him scramble out of his clothing. He laid back down, naked and hard and waiting for her. Power hummed through her blood. Her wolf purred, finally getting what she wanted.
She quickly retrieved a condom from the first aid kit and stripped off her clothes. Siren crawled across the bed, stalking him like a predator. She climbed back on top of him, sliding her wet heat along his length.
“Oh fuck. You feel so good.” He moaned, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
She licked his face, squeezing his neck as she plunged her tongue between his lips. She kissed him hard and deep, taking every shred of his softness. Consuming his compliance, his soul, everything that made him Reed Bright.