A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) (12 page)

Letting go of him also wasn’t an option. Not yet, anyway. Breaking contact with him…she didn’t have the strength.

Staring up into his gaze for a long, long moment, she realized whatever
this
was, it was something strong, and weird, and unlike anything she’d ever known before.

And that it was all she wanted.

“What do you want from me?” she eventually managed.

“To spend the rest of my life taking care of you, protecting you, and loving you,” he said.

No melodrama. No bravado.

A simple, softly spoken statement of fact.

“You don’t even know me,” she said.

“I don’t have to know you to love you. You wanted someone to love you the way Beck loves your sister. Well, I don’t understand the Goddess’ sense of humor, but apparently your wish is granted.” He smiled again. “Lucky for me.”

With her heart racing in her chest, her pulse roaring through her ears, it was hard to think, to breathe.

How could he have known her exact thoughts?

She
did
know she wanted to kiss him again.
That
she couldn’t get enough of. She pulled his head down, his lips onto hers this time, and thoroughly kissed him. Even better than the first one, her body craving him, wanting him.

Needing
him.

They eased down to the ground, onto the cool grass beneath them, still kissing. Now she lay in his arms, cradled against him.

“Please, let it happen.”

This time when she heard his voice in her head she didn’t break their kiss. Instead, she deepened it, her arms around his neck, one leg hooked over and around him, holding him close.

Her body sure as hell wanted him, even if her brain and heart were still trying to understand the gist of whatever
this
was. Wrapping her mind around it to understand it might be a waste of the hottest sex of her life.

And while the guy she was seeing…well, before this man had walked into her life, she’d liked him okay enough, just not enough to start sleeping with him yet.

No virgin, but she didn’t just fall into bed with guys. She had to really like a guy, really want him, her body responsive to him before she’d take that step with him and make herself vulnerable like that.

It had admittedly been a while since she’d last had sex.

A long while.

Rolling on top of him, she forced herself to sit up, hands pressed flat against his chest. Through his shirt she felt his ripped pecs, his steely muscles.

“You not lookin’ for some one-night stand, are you?” she asked, her body not caring at this point. It was all she could do not to rub herself against the hard bulge pressing against the front of his jeans.

“No,” he said, laying his hands over hers. “I’m looking for a mate for life.”

No man had ever looked at her in this way before.

The way Beck looked at Nami.

The way Ken looked at Dewi.

The way Joaquin was now looking at her.

In the deepest recesses of her lizard brain, some lone watchman tried to flip an alarm switch to slow this down, to make her step back and think things through. But the switch broke off in his hands before he could fully activate it.

She leaned in and kissed him again, enjoying the way he cupped the back of her neck with one hand, the other hooked around her waist. Then he was rolling on top of her, hands working at her shorts and her helping him. He pulled them and her panties down and off her before he plunged face-first into her pussy as she stripped off her shirt and bra.

With her fingers tightly fisted in his hair, she let out a gasping moan as his lips immediately latched on to her clit, his tongue flicking it and making her come in seconds.

Holy…crap!

She’d never come that hard before, or that quickly.

Then he let out a delicious growly sound, wrapped his arms around her thighs, and settled in for a while. Licking, sucking, teasing, every time she orgasmed and tried to push him away, he’d let out that growl again and hold on even more tightly.

And she’d swear in her mind she kept hearing him mutter,
“Mine.”

* * * *

Joaquin found the taste, the scent of his mate intoxicating. Despite the way his cock screamed to be inside her, the way he wanted to bite down and mark his mate as he fucked her for the first time, he couldn’t pull himself away from making her come.

He didn’t know how many orgasms she’d had by the time he finally couldn’t stand it any longer, but it had to be a bunch. Every time she’d come and start trying to push him away, he’d ease up just enough, and just long enough, until she came down from that one and he’d start building her up again.

He sat up, fumbling and finally getting his jeans unfastened and them and his briefs shoved far enough down his hips before lining up his cock and sinking home with a relieved sigh.

Her eyes flew open. Wrapping her legs around him, he leaned in, bracing his hands on either side of her head as he slowly fucked her. So sweet, so tight, so hot and ready for him, he paused at the bottom of one thrust, an agony of self-control.

Scooping her body up against his with one arm, he kissed her, hard, fiercely.
“Mine,”
he sent to her again through their quickly strengthening mate bond.

Trailing kisses down the right side of her throat, he felt her arms encircle him as he started nibbling, nipping, making her gasp.

He slowly started fucking her again, his lips pressed against the top of her right shoulder.

“Mine,” he whispered aloud this time, just before he pistoned his hips, hard and deep, at the same time he bit down.

She let out a screaming cry, but around his cock her pussy spasmed as she came. Teeth still buried in her flesh, he began fucking her hard and fast.

“That’s right, my mate. You come for me, just like that. You keep coming for me.”

Her nails raked along his back, his shirt keeping her from gouging them into his flesh, and still he held on, still he fucked her, still he bit down, enjoying the taste of her blood mixing with the taste of her juices in his mouth.

“Yes!” she gasped out loud.

“Gonna fuck my mate real good,”
he said, struggling to hold back, wanting at least one more out of her.
“And for the rest of our lives together, you’re going to know what it’s like to be a well-loved woman.”

The next cry she let out was also accompanied by another wave of her pussy clamping down on his cock.

She wasn’t in her fertile time, he could tell that, and had no worries at all when he took that last, hard, final thrust and howled around the flesh of her shoulder as he came. Only then did he loosen his grip with his mouth, licking and soothing the marks that were already starting to heal. He rolled onto his side, taking her with him, tucked against his body as she started to cry.

“What…what just happened to me?”

He heard that in his mind, and it made him chuckle as he kissed her forehead. “What happened, my love,” he spoke aloud, “is that I just claimed you as my mate.”

Startled, she looked up at him, eyes even wider now. “You…I didn’t say that out loud. I only thought it.”

He leaned in and kissed her.
“No, you did not say it out loud. You didn’t have to.”

The kiss apparently distracted her from her tears. It helped boost his interest, too, because inside her, his cock began to harden.

This time, he rolled onto his back, holding her hands and urging her to sit up on him. As she stared down at him, fear and pleasure and passion and wonder all mixed into her beautiful expression, he forced all other thoughts out of his brain.

“What are you?” she whispered.

“I’m yours,” he said. “Forever.”

“I…” She stopped rocking her hips against his, but he noticed she didn’t move from where she was still impaled by his cock. “Wait! We didn’t use condoms!”

He brought her right hand up to his mouth, turning it so he could feather kisses inside her wrist. “We don’t need them. I’m clean, I know you’re clean from the way you smell, and unless I’m mistaken, you’re also on the pill. Plus it’s not your fertile time of the month.”

Her gaze widened even more.

He grinned. “Fuck the next one out of me, my beautiful mate. We will talk shortly.” He let go of her left hand and reached between their bodies to find her clit.

Her eyes dropped closed and she let out a soft moan as she started rocking back and forth. Within seconds, she was bouncing up and down on him, coming again.

Waiting until he knew she’d finished, he grabbed her hips and thrust up into her, soon adding a second load to her delicious body.

Going limp, she collapsed on top of him as he held her.

“What’s happening?” she whispered. “Who
are
you? Why do I feel like this? This is crazy. I don’t just sleep with a guy I only met a few minutes ago!”

He rolled them onto their sides. “I have to show you,” he said.

Malyah stroked his cheek as she stared into his eyes. “I can’t believe… I don’t even know you and… It’s like something came over me that I can’t control.”

He turned his head, planting a kiss on her palm. “Something did, and you couldn’t. You are my mate and you felt it, too.”

He didn’t want to pull away from her, but he untangled himself, kicked off his shoes and socks, removed his jeans and briefs, and then his shirt.

Standing there, naked, he stared down at her. “Don’t scream.”

“What?”

He shifted.

* * * *

One moment, Joaquin stood there in front of her. The next, a huge brown and black wolf with Joaquin’s brown eyes stood there, staring at her.

The scream died in her throat, cut off to a terrified squeak as her brain tried to process the impossible.

And still, she heard his voice.

“We are wolf shifters. Dewi, Beck, Badger. Martin. Peyton and Trent. Gillian and Asia. The reason Beck looks at Nami with such hunger is because she is his mate. The way you are now mine.”

He shifted back into Joaquin. “We are called the Targhee pack. This land is our pack compound. Your brother and other sister, and brother-in-law, they don’t know any of this. Nami knows because Beck is a wolf, too.”

She felt like her brain had exploded. Unable to process everything flooding into her mind, emotions and thoughts and even memories she had no idea where they had come from…

“You’re apparently regaining memories they’d changed for you. When your father tried to come back into your life? Dewi and the others, they helped. Your father and his friends actually abducted you. Dewi, Beck, and Martin rescued you. Dewi is a Prime and helped change your memories of the events. That’s a whole ’nother conversation we’ll have to have, about things like that.”

For the absolute first time in her life, Malyah had no idea what to say. She didn’t think she
could
speak.

She was too busy trying to remember how to breathe.

Those were exactly some of the memories now in her head. Some of the dreams she’d had—nightmares, really—for weeks.

She’d thought they were just nightmares.

“Am…am I going crazy?”

“No. Maybe it’s from us mating, and me being an Alpha. Normally, the memories Dewi blocked would have stayed blocked.”

He walked over and squatted next to her. Between trying to breathe, and trying to keep her eyes off his gorgeous, naked body, she just sat there in shock.

Joaquin reached in and took her hand in his, pressing it to his cheek. “I know this is hard to believe. Every human mate who finds out about shifters like this goes through shock. Badger told me both Ken and Nami had an adjustment period as well. Ken actually fainted.”

She blinked. Between that and breathing, it was all she could manage.

“Do you want to see me do it again?” he asked.

She thought she slowly nodded.

He smiled and released her hand. Then he stood, backed away, and did…it…again.

The wolf stood there, staring at her.

Slowly, she leaned forward, staring at it. Reaching down to her inner thigh, she pinched herself, hard, making herself wince.

The wolf made a chuffing noise that reminded her of laughter.

“You are not dreaming,”
she heard Joaquin’s voice speak in her head.
“And yes, it’s the mating bond. When we’re close like this, we can hear each other’s thoughts.”

“Oh…my…god…”

He changed back to Joaquin. “We do, however, have one slight problem,” he said.

“What?”

He gave her that playful half-smirk again. “As much as I want to spend the rest of the night doing nothing but making love to you, we need to hide this from Beck and your sister for a few days. Hopefully until after their wedding. I don’t want to interrupt things.”

“Why?”

“I am not Beck’s favorite person. And I need to formally present you as my mate to Peyton. He’s our pack Alpha.”

“How…how is this possible? Any of this?”

“It’s just what we are.”

“But…” She swallowed. “How can I feel this about you? And how…how did you do
that
? The turning into a wolf stuff?”

“The whole immediate sexual desire thing is a little easier to believe when compared to the wolf shifter news, isn’t it?” He grinned, and she realized that handsome, playful expression would be her undoing. She loved it.

It shocked her to realize she loved
him
.

She found herself nodding. This was the kind of stuff that happened in romance novels and movies. Not…not in
real farking life
!

“We need to get you back to your cottage and take a shower. If we don’t, every wolf in the room at dinner tonight will know exactly what we’ve been doing.” He held a hand out to her.

It took her a moment to find the strength to reach out and take it. He effortlessly pulled her to her feet, as if she weighed nothing.

Another thing that made her heart flutter in a wild and good way.

A way she didn’t want to stop anytime soon.

Chapter Eleven

Malyah was glad Joaquin knew his way around, because she couldn’t have gotten them back to the guest cottage if her life had depended on it. She’d blindly followed Joaquin into the woods and belatedly realized it was a good thing he’d led her out there for the reason he had, and not a nefarious one.