A Werewolf's Valentine: BBW Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance (6 page)

Seven

McKenzi

It was so perfect.

He
was so perfect.

No demands. No dangerous promises, just . . .
purrrrr
-fect.

He teased her by gently rubbing his stubble against her inner thighs until she stretched out to the utmost. Then she gazed between the hardening peaks of her breasts and watched him looking down at her deepest places as if she were the world’s most awesome art.

And then he gently pressed a kiss at the top of her folds. She was now dripping wet, a volcano of want. Her stomach tensed with white-hot urgency as he licked and lapped and teased  . . . and sucked, shooting her to impossible heights.

When she came down, he said, “I’ve got an idea.”

She sat up on her elbows, weak-limbed with after-bliss as he bent and picked up the balled apron she’d kicked against the fridge. “You brought this home to put in the laundry, right?”

“I spilled coffee down the damn thing. Unfortunately, it’s made out of indestructible synthetic.”

“So let’s try something. Put it on.”

“What?”

“You have no idea how hot you’ll look in that thing, and nothing else. And after I bang you quite thoroughly, every time you put it on, you’re gonna remember that.” He finished with that whisky voice so low her thighs quivered all over again.

She snapped the apron out of the ball, and pulled it on, coffee stains and all, and watched his eyes watching her. “Tie it tight,” he ordered.

Heat shot through her. She reached behind her, and yanked on the stupid sash. Feeling the way the bib squashed her breasts up into an extravagant cleavage.

“Now lean back on the table.”

She did, her entire body alight with expectation.

“Oh, yes,” he breathed, running his hands up her hips to the sash, and caressing the naked skin over her ribs before he outlined the ruffled edges of the heart-shaped bib, his fingers meeting at the V in the center over her cleavage.

He teased her nipples through the fabric, then pulled each breast up for a thorough laving before he sucked until she was breathless and trembling.

He slid his hands under her butt, pulled her against him and lifted. Two steps, and he had her back to the wall. She locked her ankles around his hips, bucking against him as he kneaded her butt, then worked inward. His hard-on touched her wet, aching opening, and she whimpered, her head lashing from side to side, her nails digging into his shoulder.

He fitted his cock to her and thrust home, hard, all the way to the hilt. It felt insanely good, but then it got better as he plunged into her and she rocked with him, arching into him as the friction scoured her clit into an explosive climax. Her head dropped back and she howled.

Then he came, and she clenched him with all her muscles so that he hissed, his muscles rock hard. As they spiraled down, throbs echoing back and forth, she slipped down his length until her feet touched the floor, and they leaned together, breathless, only the wrinkled, sweat-damp apron between them.

Then she felt the vibration of his laughter as his chin rested on her head. “Think that’ll do it?” he asked.

“Oh. My. God,” she managed to say.

She brought her candles into the bedroom, and shut off all the other lights. They stumbled to the shower, and then to the bed. She glanced at the clock—no wonder she was so tired. That morning she’d slipped out of bed extra early to put together those blueberry muffins so he’d have a warm breakfast to wake up to. But though her body felt like polished silk ribbon, her mind was still wired. As they got under the cover, she said, “Will you sing to me?”

“I’m still finding your song,” he said, his smile surprisingly shy. “But I can give you some of my older songs. What do you want to hear?” He sat up on the bed, still shirtless, but he didn’t seem to mind the cold.

“Whatever you want to sing. I know I’ll like it.” She snuggled down under the covers, and he sang a long, slow song about a wolf chasing the moon across the hills, across a river, across the meadow, to the sea, where it beckoned on a road of light that the wolf could never reach.

It was sad and poignantly sweet, and her eyes were closing when he laid aside the guitar and slid into bed beside her. She wrapped her warm body around his cold one, and felt him relax into her with a quiet sigh.

She startled awake. “You’ll be here in the morning?”

“Do you want me to be here?”

“If you want to be here.”

“I want to be here,” he whispered into the curve of her neck.

“And I want you to be here,” she replied, then slid into sleep.

She dreamed.

Maybe it was the lonely wolf and the moon, maybe it was West looking at Kesley’s mural, but she was lost, trying to wade through rising streams, ducking past all the people she knew, including a stream of past lovers, as she searched and searched and . . .

“Hey, hey.”

She gulped, and woke, staring around wildly. She was in her room. Everything was quiet—the rain had stopped. That was it, the rain had stopped, and the light was dim from one last guttering candle. West’s arms held her tight, and she dug her fingers into his shoulder.

“It was just a dream,” he said. “I got you.”

McKenzi’s cat stirred inside her. “Don’t go.”

“I’m right here,” he whispered.

She flung her knee over him, put her head on his shoulder, and fell back to sleep.

This time her sleep was dreamless, and she woke abruptly four hours later. Though her family all had different sleep habits, it had long been a joke that McKenzi was the only cat-napper. She eased herself out of the covers, making certain no cold air got in underneath, and pulled on her bathrobe as she padded softly into the kitchen, where she spotted the apron on the floor. She picked it up, smiling with memory. Oh, yeah. The color was still toxic but she knew what she’d be thinking of every time she tied it on.

As she started toward the back door, she got an idea. She’d figured out that West only owned what he stood up in. As she picked up his things, his scent rose off them, making her toes curl. She loved his smell, masculine and musky. But maybe he’d like to wake up to warm, clean clothes.

One of the gifts Kesley’s Jameson had given her was a washer and dryer, set on the back porch between the cottages, on the other side of Kesley’s bathroom. McKenzi hopped out in the cold air, her breath clouding, and popped a load into the washer.

Before reentering her place, she glanced upward at the pure, rain-washed sky. Ordinarily that would have called for celebration, as she hated getting wet. But would clear weather make West push off?

She was aware as she moved back to her kitchen that all her usual rules had suspended, and she wondered if this weird sense of being poised between two roads, or choices, was why her cat had gone quiet inside her. It felt as if the entire world held its breath, waiting for . . . something.

Kesley’s present (as a new rich bride) to McKenzi as maid of honor had been a new stove to replace the fifty-year-old clunker she’d had before. McKenzi no longer had to do her baking in Kesley’s cottage. She pulled out some buttermilk and whipped up a batch of scones. As soon as they were done baking, she switched the laundry to the dryer, set out the scones to cool, then tiptoed back to the bedroom, and was in the process of slipping back into bed when West stirred, turned over, and when his eyes opened, he smiled.

Her world turned to summer. She slid the rest of the way in, and he kissed her, then said, “The mural. It’s real, isn’t it? I mean, the animals. This town is full of shifters?”

McKenzi blinked, a lifetime of habit keeping her from answering. Talking about her own family violated no promises, especially given what he’d done for Rolf. But the town secret? “No one has ever asked that,” she said slowly.

He leaned up on an elbow. “I’ve never found a whole community of shifters before. Or if I did, I didn’t know it. Passed right on through.” After a hesitation, he said, in a cool, light tone, “You don’t have to answer.”

Just like that, they’d come to one of those turning points that McKenzi had promised herself her easy lifestyle would always avoid. She felt her cat stirring inside her, making her feel itchy inside.

It’s about trust, she thought. And in a rush, “Jeremiah Upson, who started this town and named it after himself, was a dragon. A nasty one. He collected shifters to work on his estate. He wanted to be a king back then. He got in a dragon fight, and lost. Hoard taken, house burned down. The former bond servants stayed, and kept the name because ‘Downs’ had taken on new meaning when they watched him fall out of the sky, crash into his mansion, and burn up. And, well, it’s been a secret ever since.”

He said, “I’m sure the town has a mayor, a human. Is there a shifter header?”

She shook her head, then paused. “Well, Kesley’s new husband is a kind of alpha.”

“Kind of?”

“He’s new to the town. Anyway, they’re gone for a few months. It’s not like we’ve gotten used to having him around. Why do you ask?” She drew in a breath. “This is about Rolf, isn’t it?”

“I never thought of myself as an alpha,” West said. “I lost my pack as a kid—I don’t have a first name because I don’t remember mine. I was just ‘little buddy’ and ‘the cub.’ Not proper names for the authorities.”

“But you remembered Weston?”

He shook his head. “It was marked on a label in indelible ink inside the jacket I was wearing when I was found.”

“No first name?”

“No first name. So various cities’ Social Services tried to issue me a new first name. Let’s see, I’ve been Jason, Mark, Billy, Lester, Eric. Those are the ones I remember.”

“You didn’t like any of those names?”

He shrugged as he took her hand and stroked his rough, callused thumb over her wrist. “None of them stuck because I never stayed long enough anywhere to learn to answer to them. All I knew was, none of ‘em were
my
name. My family knew my name, and I meant to find them. Spent years looking for them when I finally ran. Got used to being alone.”

He shook his head and rolled his shoulders, a little like a wolf giving his fur a shake, as if shedding water, or grass, or emotions he didn’t want clinging to him. “So no wolf packs, or dog packs, no alpha I can talk to about him? I don’t have a clue to where to go from here, but I don’t want to abandon the kid, especially one who shifted so late.”

“I don’t know much about canine shifters. Well, nothing,” McKenzi said. “But this much I know. The older you are when you shift, the tougher it can be.”

“Yep.” West’s hair in the pure, bright morning light looked like spun silver—like his wolf coat. “That’s what I’ve heard. Where do I go from here? I’m sure as hell not running off with someone’s kid,” he said. “I don’t know if it would be better to take off now or wait until he’s gotten used to having me around. This is new territory for me.”

“I think it’s safe to say it is for everybody in the family,” she said, breathing past the sudden ball of pain inside at the idea of West taking off. “Look, I know what we agreed about expectations and the rest of it, but . . . this is Saturday, so Rolf is home and my dad and uncle are off today. I’ll bet you they’re all over there in a cat huddle, trying to figure out what to do next. They might want to talk to an actual wolf. Or is that an intimidating thought?”

“Family talk is new territory, too,” he said. “As for wolf talk, pretty much all I know I picked up as a loner on the road.”

The ball of pain turned into something she didn’t recognize, except as a different sort of pain, only felt on his behalf, and not on her own. It curled her cat up into a tiny ball right under her heart. “How young were you? Was foster care that horrible?”

“Some were, some weren’t,” he said, shrugging. “The only consistent thing was, the best ones turned out to be in large cities. I kept trying to stay human. When I couldn’t fight off the need to shift, there was nowhere to run except as far outside the city as I could get. And of course I was always looking for my pack. Whenever I did a run like that I got caught pretty much soon as I found open land. Never dared tell anyone I was a shifter, so I got written off as an incorrigible runaway.” He lifted his shoulder. “They began putting me in stricter situations. You can imagine how successful that was when I got to my teens. Finally ran for good after six really bad places in a row.”

He flexed his hands, his long eyelashes sweeping his lean cheek as he looked down at one of the older scars on his arm. “Anyway, I’m here now, and I want to do right by the cub. But I’m not sure where to go from here.”

She touched his hand. “How about deciding after breakfast? I made scones. They should be about perfect right now.”

His face lit up as if she’d handed him a gift of gold.

A few minutes later they sat together at her table, he wearing her robe. He’d given her that special smile when she’d told him his clothes were drying. “I suppose they were pretty ripe,” he said.

“Smelled great to me,” she said, and gave him a cat growl in the back of her throat. “But who likes the feeling of gritty jeans? And I have some stuff I got for my favorite purse, that’s great for cleaning leather. I’d love to furbish up that awesome coat. Where did you get it, anyway? It has to have cost a fortune.”