Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
bloom
Maverick pinned me to the shower wall and kissed me hard.
My bare ass pressed against one of his forearms while my heels dug into his lower back, and he fucked me with his fingers.
The t-shirt I’d woken up in clung to my skin thanks to the water we’d stepped under, and his boxer-briefs were soaked too.
Our tongues fought, my hips arching and rocking as I chased my first climax.
His kiss was almost as brutal as his touch, and it was everything.
I came quickly. Too quickly.
It wasn’t enough.
“I want you, Mav.”
He adjusted his grip on me for long enough to pull his fingers free and shove his boxer briefs down. His cock met my entrance, and I gasped into his mouth as he thrust into me, slowly at first.
When it was clear that my body offered no resistance, he drove in the rest of the way, filling me completely in a single, rough motion.
I stopped breathing.
Saw stars.
Touched heaven.
He swore viciously against my lips, pausing as his chest heaved.
His fingers gripped my ass and thighs.
Mine dug into his shoulder and pulled his hair tightly.
Our foreheads pressed together, our breaths mingling as we struggled for air.
“You feel...” I struggled to remember what I was going to say.
“Yeah. That’s really fucking good.” His voice strained. “Not sure if I’m going to knot you.”
“Knot me?”
“Yeah.” He let out a slow breath against my lips. “Fated and unmated is a gray area. Could go either way. Kind of feels like I might.”
“What does that mean?”
“Fuck.” He filled me again slowly, and my nails dug into his skin a little harder.
“Maverick.”
“Yeah?”
“There was something about a knot.”
“Fuck.” He groaned, squeezing my ass hard. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“I’ll pull out. It’s fine. Won’t matter.”
“You can barely—ahhh.” I gasped as he withdrew, then drove in hard. Whatever we’d been talking about no longer mattered, because he was fucking me—and it was so damn good.
My eyes shut with the insane hit of pleasure.
He tilted my head back. “Eyes open.” The growled command was too intense to ignore.
I opened them.
My bright red orbs locked with his glowing greens.
“I want you to know exactly who’s fucking you, Bloom. You’re mine. That’s all there is to it. Are we clear?”
I nodded.
He filled me again.
And again.
And again.
Until I was coming around his cock with a wave of pleasure so intense, I nearly screamed.
He snarled, driving into me harder and dragging out my climax as his cock swelled thicker. He pulled out in time to come all over my lower belly, still holding my weight up as he watched his release paint my abdomen.
Our chests heaved together, and our eyes locked again.
He adjusted his grip but didn’t let me down. “No knot yet.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I whispered.
His face reddened just slightly, and he gave me a small, reluctant grin. “You probably don’t want to.”
“Well now I’m curious. Tell me.”
“It’s a breeding thing for natural male wolves. Affects werewolves in human form, during breeding season. Or all of the time, with our bonded mate.”
“Okay.”
“The base of my cock will swell, to trap me and my release inside your body. Your muscles will contract automatically to hold the knot in place. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The pleasure will be… unbelievable.”
I blinked.
And blinked again.
“Okay,” I finally repeated. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I guess we’ll figure it out.”
“Nothing to worry about now.”
“Nope.”
He kissed me again, slower, before he filled me again. “Werewolves also don’t need much down time.”
“How much?”
“A minute, maybe two. Three, if we’ve been fucking for a while.”
“So you could get off again, already?”
“A dozen times, if you didn’t tap out by then.”
Holy shit.
His lips curved wickedly when I tightened around him, and his cock throbbed in response. “What do you say?”
“Just fuck me.”
He did exactly that, making me come over and over until my body was jelly and I was questioning why I hadn’t just asked him to bite me again already.
Eventually, we stumbled back to bed. I had another one of his hoodies on, and he was only wearing a pair of sweats. Maverick was a few steps behind me, drying his hair with a towel.
“I don’t think I want to know what time it is,” I mumbled, still a little shaky.
“Doesn’t matter. You’re not going back to work.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay.”
He grabbed my hips, stopping me a few feet away from the bed. “It still smells like Harper in here. Let me change the bedding.”
I nodded, following him across the apartment and finally taking everything in.
His space was similar to the guest room I’d stayed in. Modern. Clean. Simple, but obviously expensive. His was done in darker colors, and had enough cozy items to make it significantly more comfortable than my gilded cage.
It also had one strange style of décor:
My dirty clothes.
Everywhere.
Well, not everywhere. Just draped over the backs of chairs and couches, tucked in closets, and placed in random nooks.
So basically, everywhere.
The space was laid out fairly similarly to mine and Harper’s apartment, with his second bedroom being the office I’d visited when he told me we were fated. Everything was oversized, but that was to be expected.
“Want a tour?” Maverick asked, as he opened a closet and pulled out a set of spare sheets along with another blanket. The blanket was gigantic, electric blue, and made of what looked like fake fur on one side. I figured there was a story behind it.
“I’d love one.”
He turned back to me and gestured sweepingly to the space in front of us with the arm he hadn’t tucked the blue blanket under. “There’s the kitchen. It remains untouched and unused despite its glory. My true skill is in buying food. I haven’t baked anything since before the war.”
“Virgin appliances. Nice.” I nodded approval.
“Living room’s to the right. Giant TV included.” He spread his hands as if he were framing it.
I mimicked the spreading. “Gotta love a giant TV.”
“Exactly. The extra bathroom’s nothing special, but it’s there.” He tilted his head toward a door that stood open. I could see part of a mirror through it.
“Come this way.” Maverick slung his free arm over my shoulders, and we walked into the bedroom. I was actually starting to like the weight of his arm resting there. It made me feel sort of... loved.
His bedroom was pretty normal, with one (oversized) bed in the center, a nightstand on either side of it, and a lamp on each of the nightstands. He’d forgone a dresser and organized all of his clothes into the closet’s drawers.
In one corner, he had a comfortable-looking chair (also oversized), and in the other, what looked like a giant wolf’s equivalent of a dog bed.
“To our right, we have a priceless lamp, pulled out of a prestigious collection.”
“Seriously?” I eyed the lamp. It didn’t look special.
“Nah. It’s just a lamp. My pack’s decorator asked me to approve a pair that were more than a thousand dollars each, and I told her to fuck off.”
“Did you phrase it like that?”
“Of course. She replied that I was being rude. I sent her the link for a five-dollar one.”
“Mav, you’re a billionaire.”
“Doesn’t mean I need to waste a thousand bucks on a lamp. It’s just a fucking lamp.”
“I bet she spent more than fifteen dollars on those.”
“She did. Almost a hundred.” He shook his head. “Ridiculous.”
“Is everyone in your pack this stubborn?” I asked.
“No. The docile wolves stay at the estate full-time.”
I’d love to see the estate sometime, but the odds of that happening were slim. Eventually, Maverick was going to realize I’d manipulated him to give Harper his blood, and he was going to hate me.
Or kill me.
And her, when she devolved.
For her sake, I hoped we could get her to the Guild if that happened. As much as it would kill her to let her mom take her life, I knew she would want to talk to Neve before she died.
But there was still a chance Velour’s urban legend was true.
If she stopped zoning out after she drank another bag of Maverick’s blood, we would know.
“Is that a dog bed?” I gestured toward it.
“Technically, yes.”
“Do you actually use it?”
“Of course. It’s insanely comfortable, regardless of what form you’re in. Come on.” He tugged me toward it.
“I don’t think I need to lay in an oversized—“ He pulled me down on it with him, ignoring the gigantic blanket and sheet that were still beneath his arm. “Okay, then.”
“It’s nice, right?”
I moved around a little. It was incredibly soft, and the cushions were the perfect combination of squishy and firm. “Yeah, it actually is. How does a person find a dog bed large enough for a monster-sized wolf?”
“A person special orders one for every were in their pack because they’re a fantastic Alpha.”
“Sounds expensive.”
“Like you said, I can afford it.” He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him tighter. His voice lowered, the playfulness disappearing. “Hey, Bloom?”
“Yeah?” My question was soft.
“I’m really fucking glad you didn’t die.”
“Me too. Thanks for saving my life.”
“It should never have been at risk. I should’ve checked your office better. I should’ve realized that someone could get in with wolfsbane during the camera outage. I—“
“You’re not infallible, Maverick. You can’t protect me from everything.”
“Like hell I can’t.”
“We’re going to find the killer, okay? Harper said Sutton is on it, and she’s an assassin herself, so she’s good at figuring these things out. Right?”
His silence wasn’t comforting.
“Right?” I repeated.
“There’s a chance. But she’s not a detective, and she doesn’t have any leads yet.”
Oh.
Damn.
“I don’t really care about the company at this point. It’s not worth your life. We could dissemble it and be fine,” Maverick said, running his fingers through my damp hair and pulling it away from my neck.
“You can’t do that. It’s incredibly successful, and the team is really good. We’re on our way to making everything compliant with the laws, and—“
“I wasn’t kidding about you not going back to work, Bloom. You’re not stepping foot in that office again until the killer’s dead. You are their target. We were right about that.”
“If I was their target, then why did they kill Celeste?”
“The working theory is that another wolf pack bribed a vampire to turn a human in the office, and that turned vampire was trained to drain the office’s higher-ups whenever their hunger flared beyond control. Turned vampires are hard to find and impossible to control, as I’m sure you were taught.”
My stomach tightened. “Yeah. Turned vampires are the devil that caused a war and destroyed our population.”
“They did. If Cassidy hears our theory, her pack will get involved. They don’t fuck around with turned vampires. No one does.”
“You never told me why she hates us so much.”
Maverick let out a long breath. “It’s not good.”
“I survived a brush with death. I can handle a story.”
His hand slid under my hoodie, slowly stroking my hip.
“Cassidy had a family with a guy in her pack. They weren’t mated, but they had been friends for a century, and agreed to coparent.
Two daughters and a son. They were teenagers.
Still kids. A vampire turned someone in her city, and he devolved.
Her kids and their dad were there. Wrong place, wrong time.
All four of them, dead in minutes. None of them were fighters.
Most of us weren’t, back then. She went to the Alpha of Alphas, who was an old friend. ”
“The one whose place you took?” I asked
“Yeah. The one I killed. She got him to start the war. Instead of reducing the number of turned vampires, his war made them explode. They were everywhere. Unstable killing machines. They didn’t even care about drinking the blood at one point—they just wanted to smell it.
Murdering humans just to smell their blood. ” He shook his head.
My eyes closed.
My throat swelled.
That was what Harper could become, and I was helping her hide. Giving her Maverick’s blood, too.
But how could I not?
I knew I should turn her in. I should ask Maverick to put her in one of his cages while we checked if drinking werewolf blood would work.
But if I told him, there was a 99% chance he would kill her.
I’d never be able to look him in the eyes again. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to breathe again, knowing I was the reason she was gone. He’d probably put me in a cage too, for hiding what she was and what she’d done.
God, I wished I could go back in time and forget about the fucking paperwork for one night. If I’d stopped her from getting together with Velour, If I’d been there for her...
I couldn’t tell him.
Regardless of anything else, I couldn’t tell him. Not when it could cost her the week or two she had left.
If she kept zoning out, if his blood didn’t work, I would go with her to the Guild or ask him for help. Until then, I couldn’t risk it.
I just had to figure out a way to get her more wolf blood.
“You’re not like the turned vampires. I know that. You should too. I lose control more often than you do,” he said.
“I grew up being taught to fear what I am, Mav. Of course I don’t lose control.”
He squeezed my hip. “You don’t need to be scared.”
“Because the big, bad werewolf’s going to protect me?” I drawled.
“Yup. Guess fate likes you.”
“Guess she hates you.”
He nipped at my throat. “She gave me a sexy little vampire who smells like cherries, so I’d say she likes me just fine.”
I was quiet for a few minutes, mentally going over what he’d told me about turned vampires and what I still needed to know.
“How long do we have before this vampire starts devolving, if Sutton’s right about them being turned?” I finally asked.
“Not long.” Maverick’s voice was quiet. “Not long at all.”
“Do you have a guess?”
“Three weeks is typical. Four is the longest. Steven’s death was about two and a half ago. If Sutton’s right, we’ll find our killer one way or another in the next ten days.”
Maybe I wouldn’t be lying to Maverick for much longer after all.
“Do you mind if I shift? My skin’s getting itchy.” He kissed my throat.
“Is that a thing?” I’d never spent any amount of time with him when he was in his wolf form.
“Mmhm. Both bodies need to stretch.” He sounded tired. I was pretty sure he’d be asleep soon.
“Go ahead. I’ve always wanted a dog. My parents worried I’d drain it.”
“Feel free to bite this one.” He rolled away from me long enough to ditch his sweats and change forms. When he was furry, he climbed over me and wormed his way under one of my arms so I was snuggling him.
Apparently, even giant wolves liked being the little spoon sometimes.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I fought like hell not to cry as Maverick’s breathing leveled out.
I was falling in love with him. There was no other way to put it, no other name for what I was feeling.
I adored his personality. I was addicted to the way he made me feel. I wanted to bare my soul when I was with him.
And I was going to have to risk what we had, ruin what we had, in an attempt to save my best friend.
But if I had to become a monster to buy her time, I would do it.
Even if it cost me an immortal lifetime with Maverick.