Chapter 14
GUNNAR
The next week passed in a blur. For two people on a forced vacation in the middle of nowhere, we stayed busy. Sebastian needed to fill every waking moment with physical activity. During the day, we hiked and skied on two feet. At night, we explored the vast forest as wolves.
The fitness regimen would have been super fucking annoying if he hadn't left me to my thoughts. Sometimes, we spoke mind-to-mind through our wolf bond, but when I asked, he left me alone. I still didn't know what it meant to be his mate, but I appreciated the time he gave me to figure it out.
After leaving us to fend for ourselves over the weekend, Bettina returned on Monday with pancakes as thin and delicious as crepes and a proposal. "My opa would like to meet you. Would you ride with me to Lausanne?"
I glanced at Sebastian, waiting for his answer. I was surprised when he returned my gaze. "What do you think?"
"I'd love to see Lausanne," I said. "And meet your …"
"Grandfather," Bettina said. "He's the pack elder. We don't shift, but we stay together in packs. It's how we survived the Germans during the war."
She said "we" like she was there. "How old are you, exactly, if you don't mind me asking?"
She shook her head, laughing. "You are old enough to know better than to ask a woman her age!" She didn't look a day over sixty. Smiling and laughing at us, she looked even younger. "My opa is well over two hundred years old. I'm only half that."
"Half of two hundred?"
"He calls me 'young pup,' since I'm the youngest of his grandchildren."
Sebastian's eyes were as round as mine. "I had no idea."
"I apologize for not including my full work history," she said. "It would have raised too many eyebrows."
After she called her grandfather to arrange a visit on Thursday, we quizzed her on what she remembered of the last century. She answered readily, but when Sebastian asked her about her love interests, she shook her head and cleared our empty plates away. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"
"Yes." Sebastian grinned. "We're going to hike the south trail."
"Again?" She frowned at him. "What did you find that you can't leave well enough alone?"
"Nothing." Sebastian batted his eyelashes.
She shooed us from the kitchen with a dish towel primed to whip at our backsides. The movement was maternal and completely foreign to me. My mother wouldn't have cared enough to inquire about my plans for the day.
"Have fun," she called as we ran through the dining room. The laughter in her voice mostly kept it from sounding like a threat, though the undercurrent of, "Or else," pushed me to run a little faster.
"One-hundred and one." Sebastian whistled. "I know some centenarians, but they're all in some sort of assisted living. They're not cooking meals at a ski resort."
I didn't know anyone who had lived that long. It made me think about my dad's family, which always made me twitchy. Did they know about me and my siblings?
Now, another question crept into my consciousness. Were they wolves like me?
I tucked my hat and gloves into my coat pocket for the first part of our hike. I couldn't see his eyebrows through his ski mask, but I could feel Sebastian frowning at me.
"What?" I asked.
"It's ten degrees out here."
"The sun is warm."
He snorted as we turned onto the path that led into the woods and higher elevations. "Whatever."
I couldn't explain it. I'd expected to be miserable, same as I had been at Colorado's higher elevations during the winter, but the longer we stayed at the resort, the more I liked our walks in nature. The scents and sounds were all so interesting.
It was still frigid in the shade, though. After less than a minute of sidestepping branches and walking through clouds of exhaled mist, I'd had enough.
Sebastian laughed when he saw me in my stocking hat and gloves. "I feel a little better now."
"You feel it too, right? The cold doesn't affect me as much as it did before." I tucked my hands into my coat pockets more to give me something to do than to keep them warm.
"Before we became wolves?" His coat rustled as he shrugged. "Maybe. It's still cold, though."
"That's because you grew up in Hawaii," I teased.
"Not always." The first time I'd heard his voice in my head when we weren't wolves, it had freaked me the fuck out. Now, it was commonplace while we walked.
Intrigued, I said, "Tell me more."
He shared stories of the summer before his mom's illness, and how everything changed afterward. "She got sick, but I got better. My asthma and allergies disappeared almost overnight. She lost weight, and I gained it. He noticed, but he didn't say anything."
"He, your father? Or Dr. Bunting?"
"My father." The hair at my nape bristled. I considered myself a good judge of character, but I'd been wrong about Ivan Paska. "Dr. Bunting wasn't around back then."
"I'm really sorry." Through the invisible phone line connecting our minds, I shoved my regret for the mom joke I'd made on the space station toward Sebastian. I didn't know if it worked that way, or how it worked, exactly.
One moment, Sebastian hiked a few meters above me, and the next, he stumbled back down the trail. We collided, and he wrapped me in his arms, burying my face in his puffy coat.
"I don't know what you just did," he said, "but thank you."
"I'm sorry," I whispered against his chest. "I know you loved her."
"You don't love your mom?"
"It's … complicated." She gave me life. I loved her the same way I loved all my foster parents. They fed me, clothed me, and kept a roof over my head. They kept me alive, and I was grateful, but the moment I left their sight, they forgot all about me.
One day, Sebastian would do the same. Pain lanced through my chest. When had my feelings for him become this strong? The thought of him returning to his fancy life in Hawaii while I went back to Colorado filled me with dread.
"What's wrong?" He asked.
"Panic attack from being held too close," I muttered, not wanting him to know the truth.
"Don't lie to me." He pulled back enough to meet my gaze, but he looked ridiculous in the ski mask.
I laughed, and he knocked his padded forehead against mine.
"I like being able to hear your thoughts, but that, about my mom, that was more.
And then you thought about something else, and it scared you. "
"It's nothing."
He shook his head. "It's not, but we'll figure it out together."
He tugged me close again, and I could almost feel his belief surging through our connection. I wished I could believe it, too.
By Thursday, our mild winter weather gave way to a furious snowstorm. Instead of going with Bettina to Lausanne, we found ourselves alone, thanks to impassable roads and white-out conditions.
Even my wolf was nervous. When Sebastian suggested going for a run in the blizzard that night, I balked. "After it stops snowing?"
He frowned at the snow drift as tall as the door handle, and a swirl of snow whited out the entire view. "Yeah, I think that's a good idea."
We returned to our room to read each other spooky sci-fi stories. I'd just pulled up a story I hadn't read yet, probably another variation of an astronaut getting stuck on a hostile planet, when Sebastian grabbed my phone from my hand.
"We're going swimming."
"What? We can't leave."
"Who said we have to leave?" He tossed my phone on the bed, pulled me to my feet, and walked behind me to the door with his front pressed to my back. It would have been romantic if he wasn't so overbearing.
The power went out when we stepped into the hallway, but I could still see almost as well as when it was lit.
When we reached the front desk, Sebastian picked me up and carried me through the dining room, his loping jog pressing me to his chest with each step.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, but that didn't stop my body from sliding against his and turning me on.
He took me to a service stairway I'd never noticed before. For the first time, I could see only a few feet ahead in the dark, but Sebastian felt his way down with one hand gripping the railing. He held me against him with only one arm, which was sexy as fuck.
Along the floor, battery-powered lights lined the narrow path between two glistening stone walls.
A distant trickle of water and the warmer temperature surprised the hell out of me.
When he set me on the balmy stone floor, I wondered if we'd crossed into one of the sci-fi stories we'd told each other.
Sebastian laughed at my comparison. "That last story made me think of it," he admitted. "It's a hot spring. If the solar battery lasts, we'll have enough light to find our way to and from the wading pools. The sauna's out, though. No power to blow in the steam."
We had hot springs in the Rockies, I was certain, but I'd never had the time or money to go for a spa day before. "Don't we need our swim trunks?" The pair I'd found in my LA shopping bag made sense now, at least. I'd wondered why they'd bought me swim trunks for our winter adventure.
"I prefer you naked." Sebastian kissed the top of my head as he wrapped his arms around me. I felt his cock against my ass, not hard, but getting there.
I turned in his arms and slipped my hands behind his neck, pulling him down for a real kiss. "You brought me down here to get me naked. Why am I not surprised?"
"I could have gotten you naked back in our room."
I sighed. "You only like me for my body." I rubbed my thickening length against his through our clothes.
"I like more than that." He stepped away to pull his shirt over his head, and I did the same. I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my socks. I'd made the mistake of wearing jeans this morning. By the time I pulled down my zipper, he had stripped off his sweatpants and underwear.
Finally, we were both naked. I glanced up from folding my clothes into a pile and placing them on top of my shoes to keep them somewhat dry, to find him staring at me with heat in his gaze.
I dropped my hands to cover my erection, but he shoved them away and picked me up. My outraged cry cut off from the shock of cold water. From the rising steam, I'd assumed it would feel like a bath.
"I like when you talk back to me." Sebastian's body felt warm against mine.
I shivered and huddled closer. "I kinda like it when you're bossy," he continued before kissing my jaw and down my neck, replacing the cold spray with the warm brush of his lips.
"I really like it when you admit you were wrong. "
I scoffed. "When have I been wrong?"
"I can tell." He nipped at my ear. "You had preconceived notions of me. You and everyone else. I love the look you get when you grudgingly change your mind."
"Grudgingly." I laughed. He was right. I hated being wrong, but he wasn't as bad as I had first thought. We had a lot in common, when I stopped pretending he was an asshole.
He was the total package. Hot body. Kind heart. Smart and wickedly funny. On top of all that, my wolf swore he was my mate. He was too good to be true. Though he was mine now, he would only break my heart and leave me when we returned home.
I couldn't help it. I was a weak man with a smitten wolf inside me. It might kill me later, but I couldn't resist him now.
He pulled me over to a shallow ledge where we could sit and soak up the water. It felt more like a warm bath now than when he'd first tossed me in.
He tugged me into his lap, and we kissed, soft and gentle at first, but then deep and possessive. I scraped my knee on the stone when I moved to straddle him, but I didn't care. I needed to be closer, to feel his hands around both our hard cocks as they slid against each other.
I moaned into his mouth when I came, but he didn't break the kiss, not even when his cock pulsed against mine, or when his hand finally stilled.
"Mine," his wolf said in my head. "Mine, mine, mine."