20. Harley #2
Val keeps moving through it, his body tight and powerful over mine. The sensation of him holding me, claiming me, surrounds me completely. Then he goes rigid, a rough sound escaping him as he follows me over the edge.
I dig my fingers into his back and shoulders, scratching at sweat-slick skin. Some primitive part of me wants to leave a mark. Wants everyone who sees him to know he’s mine.
As the intensity slowly fades and my body turns boneless beneath him, another realization occurs to me.
I probably can’t mark him back. Not the way he just marked me.
And Val still has his teeth buried in me.
“Val, leggo.”
I try tugging on his hair, but my coordination has abandoned me completely.
“Stop biting me.”
It’s starting to sting now, though a ridiculous part of me is already thinking about the ache I’ll have later and how it’ll remind me exactly what happened in this bed.
“Sorry.” Val finally lifts his head.
“Fuck, honey, I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t,” I interrupt immediately. “Just don’t. I asked you to. Is that a mate-thing, the biting like that?”
“Yeah.”
He studies whatever kind of mark he left behind.
“Wow. I’ve seen them on other mated pairs before, but seeing it on you is different. I want to feel bad for it, but I just feel horny all over again.”
That makes me grin. Maybe the bite is worth even more than I originally thought.
“I liked it,” I admit. “Want to do it to you, too, but I don’t have wolfy-teeth.”
Val runs his tongue across his teeth thoughtfully.
“Didn’t think I did, either. I’ve not been able to shift, and the canines dropping, that’s part of shifting, even if it’s a small part.”
Then he smiles.
A huge, brilliant smile that steals my breath.
“That must mean that my wolf is coming out of whatever trauma-induced state it’s been in.”
“Val?”
“Yeah?”
He starts kissing my face, one soft kiss after another.
I squirm a little before forcing myself to ask.
“You said there’s another way to become a shifter?”
Val goes completely still. His mouth actually falls open.
I roll my eyes.
“Come on. I don’t mean right now. I just—I don’t know. If I ever decide I want to, I mean. And the other thing we talked about? I need to find out if the clinic is open today. I didn’t let anyone fuck me, but I can’t assume I was safe doing other stuff.”
A scowl immediately takes over his face.
“Can we not talk about any other lovers after this? I’m feeling more and more of the mating bond, and right now I want to hunt down anyone who’s ever had you and break them.”
I bite my lip and giggle. Unfortunately, I have to ask.
“You do know I ended up in this mess—not that it’s a mess now, exactly, but you know what I mean—because I had sex with—”
“Alex, yeah, I know,” Val huffs. “And he has a mate, did you know that? Dobson’s younger brother, Sean.”
“What?”
I sit up so fast I nearly launch myself off the bed. In the process, I pull myself free of Val and then immediately forget all about that because my brain has snagged on one particular detail and refuses to let go.
“How did that happen? Are they at the pack where I was? How—”
“Harley, please, just a sec, okay?”
Val shifts upright beside me and gives me a look.
“Thought you were going to pull my dick off, honey.”
“Sorry.” I snort and shake my head. “You’re distracting me.”
“Sorry,” Val says right back, sounding anything but apologetic.
Then his expression sobers as he sees the look on my face.
“But, about Sean. He isn’t anything like Joshua.
Sean is a sweet kid, well, young man, he’s legal and all that.
He’d been abused by Joshua almost all his life, I think.
I don’t know the whole story, just what I heard.
Joshua left him staked out in the desert not too far from here.
Left a couple of women with him too, all of them by or on those red ant mounds.
He used them as bait to get Alex off his trail.
Sean was in bad shape, beaten and covered in ants.
It was bad, so maybe you should meet him before you decide he’s like Joshua. ”
The more Val talks, the smaller I feel because I couldn’t keep the distaste I felt off my stupid face, knowing Sean is Joshua’s brother, and that he’s now part of the pack I’d spent time with. But that’s just wrong on so many levels.
I only spent days with Joshua.
Days.
Sean had spent a lifetime with him.
The thought makes my stomach knot. God. I feel like a complete asshole.
“Yeah, I can see from your expression that you feel bad.” Val reaches for my hand and brushes a kiss across my knuckles.
He does that a lot. I’m starting to think it’s one of his favorite things.
“Don’t keep beating yourself up over it.
Alex didn’t want him for a mate, but we don’t get to choose.
Our mates are our other halves, that’s all there is to it.
Fate, destiny, they wouldn’t give us an evil mate if we were good men, you know?
Because we don’t need that. We need another good man to share our life with.
So I know that Sean is a great guy, because Alex is, even if it pisses me off that he and you had sex. ”
“It wasn’t as good,” I offer helpfully.
Val stares at me.
“Okay, but can we just never talk about it again?” he asks, lifting one eyebrow. “Please?”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“Sure. I don’t want to know who you banged in the past either.”
“Banged?” Val repeats. “How old are you?”
“Shut up, I’m old enough.” I poke him in the ribs and his reaction is immediate, jumping and sucking in a sharp breath.
My eyes widen and a devilish grin breaks out on my face. “Oh ho, ticklish, are we?”
“No,” Val squeaks, rolling away. The squeak does me in.
Absolutely does me in.
I tackle him before he gets far and immediately start counting ribs with my fingers.
“One, two, three—”
“Stop,” Val rasps.
Then he giggles.
Actually giggles.
I freeze for half a second.
Val giggled.
Nobody warned me he could do that.
Determined to hear it again, I dig in harder.
Val squeals.
Squeals.
My heart nearly gives up right there.
Eventually I stop only because I’ve managed to end up sprawled across him. The laughter fades, leaving him breathing hard beneath me, and I find myself staring at the black strap running across his brow.
The eye patch.
My hand lifts before I can stop it.
“Can I?”
Val catches my fingers before they reach it. For a moment he just holds my hand, rubbing his thumb across my skin before pressing another kiss to my knuckles.
“It’s ugly, Harley. I mean, the eye is there, but it’s misshapen, and the pupil is huge, stays that way, Shania said. I won’t hide it from you, but I do want you to be prepared.”
I shrug.
“It doesn’t matter what it looks like, really, but I don’t want you to ever think you have to hide anything of yourself from me.”
Gently, I free my hand and lift the patch away.
For a moment I just look.
His lashes are ridiculously thick. The eye itself is different, shaped a little oddly, as if a small piece is missing, but it isn’t nearly as shocking as he’d made it sound. What stands out most is the pupil, blown so wide that only a thin ring of brown remains around it.
“You can’t see out of it at all?”
I lean back slightly, watching both eyes.
No.
They don’t move the same way.
“Not at all.” Val touches the skin beneath it. “There’s some kind of nerve damage that makes it jumpy, I guess you’d call it. Shania isn’t sure what all is ruined in there, and it doesn’t really matter. The end result is the same. I’m blind in that eye.”
He says it matter-of-factly, but I still hear the pain underneath.
“It doesn’t make you any less of anything, you know. Not less a man, or less a shifter.”
“Actually, it does.” Val scoffs softly. “Less of a shifter anyway. There are no others fucked up like me.”
I open my mouth to speak.
He immediately holds up a finger.
“But I don’t feel sorry for myself. I had my pity party and ‘poor me’ time already. Now I’m just glad to be alive, and optimistic that my wolf will come back to me fully. I will be okay, and so will you.”
Looking at him, listening to the certainty in his voice, I realize something.
For the first time in a very long while, I believe that, too.
For a long time afterward, neither of us moves much.
Val stays stretched over me, still buried deep inside my body while his breathing gradually slows against my throat.
The bite at my neck throbs warmly beneath every lingering pulse of pleasure, not really painful, but intensely noticeable.
Every time Val shifts even slightly, heat rolls through the bond again in soft aftershocks that make my stomach tighten all over.
I lie there dazed beneath him, one hand tangled lazily in his hair while the other strokes up and down his back in slow absent motions. My whole body feels loose and heavy in the best possible way, thoroughly satisfied yet strangely emotional too.
Mate.
The word no longer startles me when it drifts through my head now.
It fits.
Dangerously well.
Val finally lifts his head enough to look down at me, dark eye still blown wide from sex and emotion and whatever the mating bite did to both of us. He looks almost shocked.
“You okay?” I ask softly.
He stares at me for another second before laughing quietly under his breath. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Well, I asked first.”
One corner of his mouth twitches. God, I already love that tiny almost-smile.
“You feel different,” Val admits after a moment.
I blink up at him. “Different good or different bad?”
“Good.” His large hand slides slowly up my side, touch lingering and almost reverent now. “Closer. Stronger through the bond.”
I swallow hard as warmth flutters low in my chest again. “I can feel you more too.”
The bond tightens almost immediately with sudden sharp attention from him.
“What do you mean?”