Chapter 15
My jaw suddenly ached, my fangs tingling, and I rubbed my cheek. “I still don’t understand how they can scent that, Harkin.”
The wooden shutters rasped from a breeze that’d blown through the shed. The single lightbulb with a thin, long string swayed, making the filament flicker.
He watched me massage my face, his eyes narrowing on my exposed fangs. “What I don’t understand is, if you were a shifter before a vamp, why the hells were you with a vampire that night?”
That took a hard right at What the Hells Road.
“Excuse me, what?” I dug my nails into my antler charm.
Harkin puffed his chest as he crossed the room. “You knew you were a shifter and yet, you were still partnered with a vamp. Why?”
His hostility gave me an odd mixture of lust and fury.
“I was and still am as much of a shifter as a rock is a flower, Harkin. I can’t shift.” My hand haughtily found its way to my hip. “Besides, you’re one to talk.”
Harkin folded his arms, making his muscles grow to titanic proportions. “That so?”
My lips formed a thin line, heat rising in my belly.
“Yeah. You were there with ‘ol what’s-her-face and you didn’t even care about her, let alone her care a flying shit about you.” My voice rose because of irritation from that night. “All she cared about was having you on her arm.”
Harkin’s intense stare would have made me attack him with my claws, had I not been aware of his lack of threat. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I observed. It was obvious, Harkin.” I mirrored his pose with crossed arms. “You were an arm trophy. And all because why? She was your mate? What kind of life is that?”
He flicked his nose with his thumb. “True mates aren’t like that.”
“Yeah? And yet there you were, steeped in misery, convinced she was yours.”
Harkin’s top lip bounced, a twitch forming in his cheek. He stayed silent just long enough for it to grow uncomfortable before adding, “And you were there with Dickface because your kind is too inclusive to go anywhere outside your undead circle.”
“My kind? What happened to you being hung up on the shifter side of me that no longer exists?” I poked a finger at my chest, a sudden flush heating my cheeks.
Harkin snarled, raked a hand through his hair, and turned away. “Don’t deny that you purposely did everything possible to make me aware you were his.”
My jaw dropped at his utter audacity. “You were doing it all back to me, wolf. I practically hated you by the end of the night because you had made it abundantly clear.”
Harkin shook his head, that same tic bouncing in his cheek. “You hated me? The feelin’ was mutual, vamp.”
It was so crystal clear to me now. I could have told Ricardo to take a hike and would have. Harkin couldn’t have done the same, honoring his would-be mate, who would later come to reject him.
“You big, stupid wolf,” I breathed out, almost laughing at it all.
“What?” Harkin growled.
Taking small steps forward, I glued my gaze to his. “After that moment in the hallway, I would’ve left with you that night, Harkin. I never gave a damn that you were a wolf. I would’ve left with you.”
Those quartz eyes flashed once in his gaze.
That look was new to me, yet I was still fully aware of what was about to happen. After twenty-five years of the could-haves and would-haves, I was going to have him.
His massive hand curled around the back of my neck, pulling me to him.
His mouth crashed against mine, my chest pressed to his ribs.
I kissed him back, possessively, ferociously, like I’d been blood-starved for months.
We were a fevered, sensual, chaotic bout of sliding lips, tongue-swipes, and the occasional nip of teeth.
This is what I wanted that night in Texas. This is what I’d always wanted. I had never forgotten the wolf. Not his cowboy swagger. Not his confidence. I’d melted into his honey eyes a quarter century ago, and now I was ready to drown in them.
Tangling my fingers in his hair, I yanked his ear to my mouth, whispering, “I hated when you pulled her into your lap.” I bit his earlobe.
Harkin grabbed my ass, hoisting me up and wrapping my legs around his waist. “I hated when you let him graze his teeth on your neck.”
My head fell back, exposing my nape to him, that spot I’d seen him staring at so many times now.
After pressing a kiss to my cleavage, he licked up to my collarbone, pausing at my neck.
He didn’t bite me like I craved him to do, but his canines coasting over my skin was like a blissful agony I never wanted to lose.
Harkin spun us around, holding my ass with one arm.
He swiped the tools from a table, making them scatter and clank haphazardly onto the floor.
The shutters flapped, the wind outside picking up speed.
After dropping me onto the table, our hands tore at each other’s shirts, yanking, tearing, whatever we had to do to get them off.
Harkin’s chest and stomach were in my prime view again.
Those carved muscles, the scattering of masculine hair over his chest and abs, the tattoos.
My gods he was beautiful. After he took in the sight of my exposed breasts for the first time, his wolf flared in his eyes before his tongue slid over one breast, his hand kneading the other.
When he sucked, his canines scraping over my nipple, I arched my back, digging my nails into his shoulders.
It seemed so primal to go from verbal whiplash to unknown danger, jarring answers from another shifter, and now to plunge into a pure physical frenzy.
Wasn’t that so like us, though? Us. It was like us.
He and I. Me and Harkin. We’d always been fused from the same source with the moon as our witness.
“When she grabbed your ass when you left to get more drinks, I almost tore into her.” Unintentionally, I dug my nails in deeper.
Grunting, Harkin flicked the button of his jeans.
He grabbed my hands and moved them down his body until they dipped into his pants.
The wolf placed them on that amazingly plump, muscular ass of his.
I seized it in my greedy palm, pulling him closer, only for his thighs to hit the table’s edge.
Harkin grinned against my skin, still teasing my nipples with his tongue. He lightly bit one. I moaned.
He kissed a trail back to my lips, claiming my mouth with his again. “Only got drinks to calm down. We didn’t even need ‘em.” With a bit of delicious aggression, Harkin undid my zipper and yanked them down my legs.
“To calm down from what?” My breath came faster, and I kicked at my pants and underwear. One leg caught on my ankle. I hissed at it.
Harkin pulled it the rest of the way off, tossing the pants behind him, a belt loop catching on one of the swinging hooks.
“He’d called you Aurora all fuckin’ night, until one moment he called you—” He grabbed my waist, his wolf’s claws appearing over his fingernails, and pulled me forward. “—Rory.”
The only thing keeping me from falling was Harkin’s steady grip.
The dips and grooves in the well-worn table scratched against my skin, its roughness only mirroring the hard edges of me and the wolf.
My eyelids grew heavy. I curled a hand around his beard, urging his mouth to mine.
“That was the one and only time he ever called me that. The nickname doesn’t belong to him. ”
Harkin squatted, his nose in line with my pussy.
He used one powerful hand, urging me backward.
I propped on my elbows, gleaming at his face between my legs.
He trailed his nose over my core, his eyes fluttering from my scent.
The overlapping aromas of oil, mildew, and rusting metal mixed with the alpha wolf’s arousal, further heightening my own.
“Fuck, Rory. This scent has been because of me.” He pushed my inner thighs apart, spreading me open.
I felt zero shame knowing he could sense my arousal from the start. I loved he knew.
“It’s always been for you, Harkin. Even that night,” I breathed out, gasping as Harkin took one slow, long lap of his tongue over my folds.
Our eyes locked as he went down on me, his feasting almost like a reward for all that I’d confessed to him. Him being here in this way, completely bare and defenseless, sent a sizzle to the base of my spine. It surged into my neck, my mind, making my entire body clench.
Suddenly, the aching desire for it, for him, consumed me. He’d been so close the night we met when he reached for his hat. So close, I could smell the cigar and whiskey on his breath.
“Harkin,” I reached for him like he was my lifeline, my sustenance, and nothing else would satiate me.
The wolf arched a brow. He pulled away from my pussy, kissing my palm, and rising. “What do you need?”
“You,” I moaned, reaching for his cock like an addict who hadn’t even yet experienced the high.
“Hey,” he whispered, husky and filthy. “I’ll take care of you, sugar.” His alpha voice fluttered over my brain like static raindrops. It wasn’t commanding. It was soothing.
Harkin pressed his lips to mine as he stepped out of his pants.
He hooked my knees under his arms. His massive tip pressed at my entrance.
I bit down so hard on my lip with my fang that I drew blood.
Moons and gods above his dick matched the rest of him—large, alpha, and fucking gorgeous.
The softened bulbous part at the base of his shaft reminded me of the wolf he was. His knot.
We groaned in harmony as he pushed himself inside me, pausing for a breath when he filled me to the hilt.
With my legs still propped on his arms, he leaned his hands on the table, caging me in by the hips.
Without preamble, Harkin started thrusting hard and erratically.
I held onto his shoulders, my back arching, head lolling back.
The metal table creaked with each pump, the shutters flapping from the breeze blowing in from the cracked-open windows.