Chapter 9 The Boatyard Loft
Nora POV
The rain started around four and hadn’t let up.
I finished the last injector reseat with water hammering the bay roof so hard I could feel the vibration through the concrete floor.
The two good injectors were cleaned and torqued back to spec.
Before I put them in, I’d run a borescope through the open ports.
Heavy carbon coated the piston crowns, and two of the cylinder walls were scored.
That engine needed a full teardown, not a patch job.
I cleaned my tools and hung them on the pegboard. I wiped down the workbench, swept the concrete around the diesel, and covered it with the shop tarp, the same routine as every night since I’d started. The rhythm of closing up settled something in my chest that the rest of the day had rattled.
Wade’s loft light was on above the office.
I could see it through the rain, a yellow square against the dark metal siding of the upper story.
He’d gone up an hour ago after checking the mooring lines on the boats in their cradles.
The wind off Superior was driving the rain sideways, and everything exposed was getting soaked.
I stood in the bay doorway and looked at that light.
Since yesterday morning, when his hand had caught mine and the Goddess had announced her opinion with a blinding flash, Wade had kept a careful distance across the service bays.
He handed me tools without letting our fingers touch and stepped back when I stepped forward.
He hadn’t pressed, hadn’t asked, hadn’t done a single thing that would’ve given me a reason to run.
It was driving me out of my mind.
I crossed the yard in the rain. My coveralls were soaked through by the time I reached the office’s exterior stairs, the metal steps slick under my boots. I climbed them with my hand on the wet railing and my heart in my throat.
The loft door was unlocked. I knocked once and opened it.
Wade stood by the window with his back to the door, watching the rain hit the harbor.
He’d changed out of his work clothes into a clean flannel, unbuttoned at the collar, and jeans pulled snug across his heavy thighs.
The loft was small. A narrow bed against one wall, neatly made.
A woodstove ticking with heat in the corner.
A chair, a side table with a lamp, a shelf of books.
The whole space smelled like cedar, woodsmoke, and Wade.
He turned when I came in. He looked at me, and I watched some of the tension leave his face, though his expression stayed careful and waiting. Rain dripped from my hair onto the plank floor.
“You’re soaked,” he said.
“I know.”
I shut the door behind me. The latch clicked, and the sound of the rain changed, muffled now by the metal roof and walls into a constant, private roar.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Wade said.
“You asked me to.”
“Nora.”
“Wade.”
He waited without moving, and I could see the effort it cost him. His wolf watched me through his eyes, patient and hungry and held back by a man who’d rather hurt himself than crowd me.
I crossed the space between us. Reached up, took his beard in both hands, and pulled his mouth down to mine.
The kiss undid something.
His lips were warm and tasted like coffee and rain.
I pressed up onto my toes and opened my mouth against his, and a sound came out of him that I felt in my ribcage.
Deep and rough, almost pained, like a man who’d been holding still too long.
His hands stayed at his sides for one more stubborn second before they came up and gripped my waist, pulling me against him so hard my boots left the floor.
Heat surged through the bond, rising from my belly through my chest into my skull, turning every point of contact between our bodies electric. My wolf rose to meet his, and this time I didn’t force her down.
I pulled back just enough to see his face. His pupils had gone wide, turning his brown eyes almost black, and his grip on my waist trembled.
“I want this,” I said. “I came up here because I want this.”
Wade searched my face. Looking for doubt, for obligation, for any sign that I was here because a bond told me to be instead of because I chose it. I held his gaze and let him look.
“All right,” he said, rough and low.
I unbuttoned his flannel one button at a time.
He stood still and let me work, his chest rising and falling under my hands.
Underneath was a white undershirt stretched across his broad chest. I pushed the flannel off his shoulders and pulled the undershirt over his head, and the lamplight caught the breadth of him.
Sandy hair covered his chest, denser down the center of his stomach. A pale scar crossed his left side.
Wade’s hands found the zipper of my coveralls.
He drew it down while watching my face and eased the wet fabric off my shoulders.
I wore a tank top underneath, damp and clinging.
I took his wrists and guided his hands beneath it, pressing his rough palms to my ribs.
Then he peeled the tank top away too. The cool air raised goose bumps across my skin before his palms returned, rough and hot, sliding from my ribs to my waist.
He unhooked my bra with sure hands and let it fall. His eyes dropped. Hunger tightened his expression, but his hands remained open at his sides.
I kicked my boots off. He knelt to help me out of the coveralls pooled at my ankles, and once he was down there, he stayed.
His mouth found the inside of my knee first. Then he moved higher, pressing patient kisses into the soft skin of my inner thigh while his hands curled around the backs of my legs. I grabbed his shoulder for balance and heard my own breathing grow uneven.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and pulled them down. Then he lifted me like I weighed nothing, sat me on the edge of the narrow bed, and settled between my thighs with his shoulders spreading them wide.
The first stroke of his tongue made me gasp. The second made me grab the blanket beneath me in both fists.
Wade took his time, using his mouth in long, measured passes before switching to tight circles with the flat of his tongue that made my thighs shake against his ears. When he slid two thick fingers inside me and curled them while his mouth kept working, I stopped thinking.
The bond amplified everything. Every pull of his lips hit once in my body and again through our connection, stronger the second time. My wolf exulted in a desire that had nothing to do with duty, treaties, or arranged futures. I wanted the man between my legs.
I came with my hand in his hair and his name in my mouth. I wasn’t quiet about it, either. The climax seized me, and the bond carried every pulse outward. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew Rafe would feel it, and I did not care.
Wade kissed the inside of my thigh and rested his forehead there while I caught my breath. His hands remained on my hips, and his breathing was as uneven as mine.
“Come here,” I said.
He stood and I pulled him onto the bed, then pushed him onto his back. He went where I put him because I asked. I unbuckled his belt and opened his jeans, and he helped me drag them down. His boxers followed.
I took my time.
I wanted to see all of him. Wade Karlsson normally kept himself covered by canvas, flannel, and heavy work gear. His shoulders, chest, and thighs were thick with muscle from years of hauling and lifting. More scars crossed his forearm and left hip.
He was hard and thick and straining toward me, and the sight of it sent another pulse of heat through my belly.
I straddled him. His hands came up to my hips immediately, his fingers pressing into the softness there, and the bond flared under his touch.
I reached down and wrapped my hand around him, stroking once, twice, feeling the weight and heat of him, and Wade’s head dropped back against the pillow with a groan that vibrated through the narrow bed frame.
I positioned him and sank down.
The stretch drew a sound out of me that wasn’t language.
He filled me, thick and deep, and the bond surged between us, flooding me with heat.
It felt nothing like the raw cord still connecting me to Rafe.
Through it, my wolf met his and held. The sensation overwhelmed me until I had to brace my hands on his chest and breathe.
“Okay?” Wade’s voice came out wrecked.
“Yeah.” I rolled my hips and watched his face break. “Yeah.”
I set the pace. Slow at first, finding the angle that hit right, grinding down on every stroke until my thighs burned and my breath came in short, sharp pulls.
Wade’s hands stayed on my hips, guiding without controlling, his thumbs tracing circles on my hip bones while I rode him. His eyes never left my face.
The rain hammered the roof above us, loud enough to swallow any sound we made, and I was glad. I didn’t want to be quiet. Every time I dropped my hips and took him deep, the bond pulsed between us and drove me closer.
“Nora.” His voice had gone guttural. His grip on my hips tightened, and I felt his wolf surge forward behind his eyes, the Alpha instinct to roll me under him and claim. He fought it. Held still. Let me take what I wanted.
When I started to shake, Wade sat up beneath me. The shift in angle drove him deeper, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my forehead to his. Our breath mingled. Sweat slicked our chests together.
“Let me,” he said against my mouth.
I nodded.
He rolled us in one smooth motion, and my back hit the mattress with him settling over me, still inside me, close and heavy and everywhere. The narrow bed left no room for distance. His weight pressed me into the sheets, and I pulled my knees up to bracket his ribs.
Wade changed his rhythm. Each thrust became a long grind that dragged him against every sensitive place inside me. He braced one arm beside my head and slid the other beneath the small of my back, tilting my hips to meet him, and the angle made me cry out against his shoulder.
His pleasure flooded the bond, raw and close, and pushed mine higher. His wolf pressed near the surface, and I felt his need to mark me, to bite where my neck met my shoulder and seal the bond permanently.
He didn’t. His jaw locked and a tremor ran through his arms, but he didn’t bite.
I came the second time with him buried to the hilt, my body clenching hard around him while the bond drove the orgasm through us both.
I heard myself make a sound I’d never made before, something raw and unguarded, and Wade followed me over the edge with his face pressed into my hair, his cock pulsing deep inside me as a low, broken groan left him.
He held himself up on shaking arms so he wouldn’t crush me. I pulled him down anyway. His weight felt good against me, his breath hot at my neck. After the force of the climax, I wanted him close.
The rain eased to a low murmur on the metal roof. The woodstove ticked. Wade’s heartbeat slowed against my chest, and I ran my fingers through his damp hair while my breathing settled.
After a while, he rolled to his side and pulled the blanket over both of us. He fit himself along my back with his arm across my waist, and I didn’t mind. My body stayed loose and sated, right down to my fingers and toes.
“Nora,” Wade said, his voice low.
“I know.” I covered his hand with mine where it rested on my stomach. “I know what you want to say.”
He waited.
I stared at the rain-streaked window and the dark beyond it. The bond with Wade felt calm in my chest. Rafe’s remained thin and bitter beside it. Both were there, neither resolved.
“This was mine,” I said. “I wanted this. I came up here and I chose it, and I’m not sorry.”
Wade’s arm tightened around me.
“But it doesn’t settle anything about Rafe,” I said. “The rejection’s still open. Finding you doesn’t mean I’m ready to accept it.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I know you didn’t.” I turned in his arms so I could see his face. His eyes were soft in the lamplight, and his expression held all the want, fear, hope, and patience he’d kept leashed since yesterday. “That’s why I’m here.”
He brushed a strand of hair off my forehead with a touch so careful it made my throat ache.
“Stay tonight,” he said.
I pressed my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of his skin and the faint smoke caught in his hair.
The rain went on. Superior was out there somewhere in the dark, cold and enormous, and I was in a narrow bed above a boatyard with a man who had never treated kindness or desire like a debt.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll stay.”