The night after Ian and I mated wasn't the best night of sleep I'd ever had.Strike that, it was the worst. For one, Ian hogged the bed. That shouldn't have surprised me, since in all fairness he should have gotten two thirds of it to start with. But I ended up with a tiny little sliver of mattress, and only sleeping against the wall — and I do mean against the wall, squished on my side with my spine crammed against a wood panel — kept me from toppling off and rolling under the bed, possibly never to be seen again. I'd glanced around a little more while Ian was at the pack house getting food, and it quickly became obvious that the only part of the floor Ian swept was the middle.For two, I was still hungry. Ian's idea of ‘food that came from a grocery store’ was a dented can of minestrone soup and half a loaf of whole-wheat bread with all the gross seeds in it. Without butter.And third, even if my fucking useless mate had scrounged up something more to eat and had a better mattress —
Chapter 8 Give Me Coffee or Give Me DeathWaking up alone in a strange room that smelled like dust and werewolf was starting to be a pattern — one I didn't like much.And since I was now mated to Ian, that might be every morning for the rest of my life. That was a cheerful thought before I even had any coffee.Coffee. I'd finally fallen asleep sometime after dawn, probably right before Ian got up and left. Exhaustion had kept me under while he moved around. Now it looked like it was about noon, going by the angle of the light. Of course Ian didn't have a clock, and my phone was smashed somewhere on the floor of a warehouse. Just as well. If I'd had one, Ian probably would have kept it anyway. I could picture him hunched over it, waiting for a text that read, “Oh hey this is the Kimball shaman. Killed Matthew Armitage yet? Report soon! :) Good luck!” I was pretty sure Ian actually did think I was that dumb.Asshole.I swung my legs out of bed, winced at the chill of the floor against
Chapter 9 Dishonesty Is Important in a RelationshipSeconds ticked by, and Ian didn't move.“Ian,” I whispered, and reached out, gently pushing his hair back from his clammy forehead. I laid my hand against his neck. He had a pulse, and the relief of that nearly bowled me over. Of course, of course I'd have known if he was dead — the bond would have snapped, and possibly taken me out in the backlash. But it took me a minute to remember that, and to start to think clearly.And see clearly. At that moment, I saw Ian in a way I'd never seen him before. He was always wary, often scowling, constantly primed for action. Now he was more vulnerable than I could have imagined him: the thin skin around his eyes shadowed purple from exhaustion, the stubble on his cheeks and chin dark and rough against his waxy skin, his lips parted a little, mouth slack.I wanted to stroke his forehead again. I wanted to cradle his head in my lap and cry. I wanted him to wake up and hug me and tell me it was a
Chapter 10 Kiss It BetterIt felt like a long time before the shower shut off. I was drifting, the tears dribbling out of my eyes burning hot, and the puddles of saltwater in my ears and along my collarbones ice cold. It was even longer before the door opened, letting out a massive cloud of pine-scented steam.“Nate, look, I — what the fuck?” Heavy footsteps thudded across the room, vibrating the bed through the floorboards.I didn't even have the strength to move my eyeballs, let alone my head, so I glanced up at him with my peripheral vision alone. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, his chest bare and gleaming with a few rivulets of water. Fuck, but his shoulders were big. And both of my hands would barely have wrapped around one of his biceps.Then he dropped the towel. My heartrate accelerated, ramping up from sleepy-slow to painful in two seconds. The jolt of adrenaline made my stomach lurch and my head pound, but it didn't give me any more energy, somehow.“What,” I gasp
Chapter 11 Getting the Last Word“Don't move,” I warned him. “I mean it.”Ian narrowed his eyes at me, but that glare didn't have quite as much of an effect when I was sitting on his hips with both of us totally naked.Strike that. It had at least as much of an effect, but it was different from the usual. I wasn't pissed, and I wasn't afraid. I wanted. I wanted to win this round, which was petty as hell, but even worse, I wanted him. Luckily I'd come so hard I wasn't nearly ready to get another erection, so I could pretend for a minute that he was the only one so worked up he could hardly think. Unless he could interpret the sound of my pounding heart. Hopefully he'd mistake it for anger.I kept eye contact as I shifted backwards, sliding down his thighs. He swallowed hard enough that I heard his throat click, and his body tensed under me. Carefully settling between his legs, I smoothed my hands up his thighs, tracing the rigid muscles there. His skin was still a little damp, from t
Chapter 12 Hope for the Best, But…“Look, this stuff isn't going to work,” I said for the millionth time.Maybe only the fifth or sixth time. But still. Ian and Matthew were both leveling identical glowers at me, their brows furrowed and their arms crossed over their broad chests. I turned a laugh into a cough, and they frowned in unison. I choked down another laugh and leaned back against the kitchen table of the pack house, taking a load off, since it looked like we'd be here arguing for a bit. My ass ached, and the boots I'd found in the pack house's hall closet to cover my stolen super-socks didn't fit quite right. I needed the boots, though, if only to keep Ian from ripping the socks off my feet. He’d actually growled when he saw them on me that morning.I was finally caffeinated enough to deal with it, though. Ian and I had slept all night tangled up in each other's arms, and he'd slipped out of bed at the crack of dawn, taken a shower, and set a hot cup of coffee down beside
Chapter 13 Out on the Town“I’m not actually a bad driver.” I jumped, startled out of my funk, as Ian spoke for the first time since we’d gotten in the car — I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Ten minutes ago.“What?”Ian pressed his lips together, hit the gas so hard I jolted back in my seat, and shifted gears with a force that would have cracked the shifter in a car that wasn’t as sturdily built as this one. Figured that Ian would have some muscle-car nightmare. He’d probably restored it himself, since he had more time than money.“You’re white-knuckling your seatbelt,” he said. “You don’t need to. I drive just fine. Matt drives like someone’s grandma. I mean, he drives a hybrid.” There was enough contempt dripping from that last word to qualify him for a bit part in a BBC costume drama.I started to laugh, and then I pictured Ian in a waistcoat and my brain shorted out for a minute.“Hello? Nate? Anybody home?” he asked irritably. I came back to reality again, a little dist
Chapter 14 On the RunI wiggled my hips, trying to hoist myself a little higher on Ian’s back. “Sorry, I keep slipping,” I muttered.“At least you stopped telling me to mush,” Ian shot back.“Only because I believed you when you said you’d drop me.”Ian snorted and tightened his grip around my thighs. It had taken all of half an hour of fighting our way through thorny bushes and tall weeds and mud, and more mud, before he’d rolled his eyes, stopped, and leaned over so I could climb on — and another thirty seconds before I pissed him off. But hey, in my defense? I honestly wasn’t trying to be a jackass. I thought maybe what we needed in this situation was a little humor, so sue me.Note to self: alphas had no sense of humor about dog jokes. To be fair, I probably should have been able to work that one out on my own.“You still not getting any signal?” he asked.I pressed the button on the side of Ian’s phone, where I had it awkwardly poised in my left hand. My right arm was wrapped a