Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) (10 page)

Anger was usually an emotion Esther couldn’t afford to carry. Anger got female wolves in trouble with their men. Women were supposed to suffer in cheerful silence. Esther had always been good about the silent part. The cheerful part was harder.

Sitting in the living room of her little house with Aunt Lilith and Ashley looking on, Esther found the silent part impossible, too.

“Who does your father think he is?” she hissed at Ashley. “He can’t do that. Not after telling me I could go.” Esther tried to keep her voice low. The children were asleep after their afternoon of aggressive socializing, but there was no place else to have the discussion. Not at Aunt Lilith’s, because Uncle Adam still didn’t know what Esther had done. Not at Vic’s, because he didn’t know either, and once he found out, he’d tell Anton and Anton would
certainly
tell Uncle Adam. Esther wasn’t ready for them to know yet—wasn’t ready for their overprotective urges to kick in and
not
in her favor. They’d want to protect the pack, not Esther.

“Honestly,” Ashley said, “when he finds out whose pack you’re in now—and he’ll find out eventually—he’s not going to do anything that’ll break any rules. He understands Adam knows them all and that Adam will fight him on any dirty dealings. But, he he’ll never leave an advantage on the table. He wouldn’t have said such a thing unless he thought he had one.”

“Do you think they know more than they’re letting on? Do you think they found out I pushed Michael?”

“Calm down,” Aunt Lilith said. “I think if your mother knew she was going to agitate you this much with that throwaway comment she made, she would have kept her mouth shut. I don’t think she meant to get you upset. She was just telling you the news as fast as she could before she had to hang up.”

Ashley had facilitated the call to Esther’s mother. Ashley had a number that couldn’t be traced, and had insisted Esther make the call so she could put the older woman’s mind at ease as to whether or not she’d arrived at Anton’s safely. Her mother had started spewing news faster than Esther had been able to keep up, including the fact that her old alpha was entertaining the idea of forcing Darla and Kevin to return to Jersey. He’d turned up at the Denis house to antagonize, as he sometimes did at dues-collection time, and had suggested that the kids belonged to Michael’s family and not to Esther. Esther would have rather died than to let the Marches have them. They weren’t warm people, and she didn’t want to uproot her children from a place where they’d already started to bond with the residents. She’d never seen them so openly happy before.

“Knowing my father as I do,” Ashley said, “I guess he
could
force the issue. There’s certainly some precedent.”

“For taking a woman’s children away?”

“You’re not thinking like a possession,” Ashley said. “They’re not
your
children. They’re property, the same way as the rest of Michael’s things—transferable from one owner to the next.”

“
No
.”

Aunt Lilith laced her fingers, unlaced them, the repeated the actions. She often did that when she was thinking, or trying to order her words. “Esther, I wish you’d told me sooner what happened.”

“So that you could have told me not to come?”

“I would
never
tell you not to come, but if you’d told us before you left Jersey, we could have tried to get the rest of the family out before mean-old Madeira started to regret letting you leave. Whether or not he’s blowing smoke right now, I think from this point on, the folks who are left there won’t even be able to breathe in peace, much less stage a move.”

“At the time I was leaving, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had a chance to go, so I packed up Kevin and Darla and got the hell out.”

Ashley crossed her arms over her chest and slouched against the sofa’s back. “We’ll figure something out. I’m sure we will, but we can’t make plans with just the three of us. You have to tell other people. I seriously doubt anyone here will think you have a single malicious bone in your body. No one’s going to hate you for putting out your hands to defend yourself. It was always going to come down to him or you. Most of the time, the lady is the one who suffers, and as much as I hate to say such a thing—much less
think
it—the world needs you more than it needs Michael.”

“Do you think they’re really going to press for me to return the children?”

Ashley scoffed. “My father is good at finding ‘legal’ ways to wriggle out of his mistakes. He probably thought no other wolf in his pack would want you, but regretted letting you leave the moment he realized the kids were leverage. They were two more heads for him to levy dues on, and also bargaining chips for whomever he needed to impress or recruit at the time. There are some wolves who have no problem at all absorbing other men’s children into their households, especially the little girls.”

“So they can be bartered away later.” Esther rolled her eyes, thinking back on her own so-called “transfer” to Michael’s family’s household soon after she’d turned eighteen. “Not gonna let that happen to Darla. She’s a person, not a thing, and I don’t want to risk Kevin being disposed of after puberty if he grows too big and too fast and turns into a threat for some weak alpha.”

Ashley scoffed again. “You keep forgetting that my father isn’t technically a natural alpha, not the way the guys here are. Almost all of the male wolves here could be pack alphas, and that’s why they all got kicked out of theirs. Technically speaking, Adam should have been the alpha of the pack in Jersey, but he’d never expressed interest in the job.”

“We just wanted to be left to live in peace,” Aunt Lilith said. “That wasn’t good enough for your father.”

Ashley nodded slowly. “He’s always been good at putting the right people or the right
number
of people around him. He manufactures strength in numbers rather than possessing natural power.”

“You’re in the right place,” Aunt Lilith said to Esther. “I just wish we’d had more time to strategize.”

“I couldn’t call you from there. Almost everything I did was being watched.”

“We’ll get everything smoothed over. For the time being, the best thing you can do is try to order your life here, for the kids’ sake.”

“I’m not going to be able to stop fretting that the Marches will recall them.”

Ashley shrugged. “Don’t let the Marches recall them.”

“You say that as if I have a choice.”

“You do. In spite of his dirty tricks on occasion, my father knows there are inter-pack policies, and he obeys them for the most part because he can’t afford to start a war. Adam does the same. He obeys the rules and does his best to work around the ones he finds abhorrent. That’s why Graciella and Leticia are here. They were brought to Norseton to be ready for mates that didn’t technically exist. Adam knew bringing them here was a risk. If he couldn’t prove to their old alpha they’d been matched up after eighteen, their alpha could recall them. Adam hoped the cards would fall the right way, and I guess they did. Graciella found a true mate in Finn, and we all pretend that we don’t know what Jim’s waiting for.”

“There isn’t any such transfer request I could do for my parents, or the rest of the family left in the pack.” If Esther had her way, all the wolves like the Carbones and Denises would just leave. She was becoming increasingly more certain that they’d all be welcome in Norseton.

“We’ll worry about your parents later,” Aunt Lilith said. “Adam may know of some rule we can exploit. The more pressing consideration right now is getting Kevin and Darla off the stock exchange.” She rolled her eyes.

Esther didn’t think she’d ever seen her aunt roll her eyes.

Ashley twirled a length of her hair around her fingers and narrowed her eyes, looking at nothing in particular. “They can’t be recalled if they already belong to someone else.”

“I don’t like the idea of them belonging to anyone except
me
,” Esther said.

Ashley put up her hands. “The language is shitty, but we have to think like they do. We’re playing by their disgusting rulebook, but if we’re going to play the game, we’re gonna win.” She looked to Aunt Lilith. “They can’t be recalled to Michael’s family if they already belong to another wolf’s family, right?”

Aunt Lilith grunted softly. “Right. Your father’s flaw in logic is that no other man would want Esther because she carries Michael’s scent, but he doesn’t understand fated matches. He’s never facilitated one, as far as I know, and likely has never happened upon a fated pair who found their ways to each other without help.”

“Wait—” Esther put her hands up. “What are you implying?”

Aunt Lilith canted her head. “Adam didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

She pulled some air between her teeth and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Must have slipped his mind.”

“
What
must have?”

“I’ll explain,” Ashley said. “Alphas are supposed to come equipped with these psychic hotlines to the wolf goddess, right?”

Esther shrugged. “Supposedly.”

“Well, most pack alphas aren’t
true
alphas. They pretend they have the goddess’s favor, but the truth is, she doesn’t speak to them. Adam, on the other hand, is a favored alpha. The goddess helped the pack find this place to settle down in, and she also sorted Christina, Lisa, Stephanie and me when we got here so we were attached to the right wolves. She did that through Adam.”

“I understand how mate matches are supposed to work, in theory, but I’ve never seen where the matches your father made were at all sensible.”

“Because he doesn’t facilitate fated matches,” Aunt Lilith said. “He’s just moving pawns on the game board, transferring bodies from household to household.” She leaned forward and put her elbows on her thighs. “Adam didn’t put up any resistance to Nixon potentially courting you. Unlike with Anton’s easy acceptance of Nixon, Adam’s wasn’t just because he knew Nixon and trusted him, but because the goddess had already told him the match was a good one.”

“I—get a fated match?”

Esther couldn’t believe that was true. She’d never been granted any sort of favor before, and wouldn’t even know how to recognize it. She trusted Ashley and her Aunt Lilith, though, and knew they were intelligent women. They believed Adam had the gift, so she’d trust that he did.

I’m Nixon’s…

“That explains some things,” she whispered.

“Why being around him is so easy?” Ashley asked.

Esther nodded.

“Be grateful,” Aunt Lilith said.

“Oh! I am. Don’t mistake my shock for ungraciousness. After what happened, I just don’t see how anyone would think I was deserving of such a match.”

“Our mates are supposed to fill in our gaps,” Ashley said. “Together, we’re more whole. We’re not perfect. No one expects to be born that way. But we’re not supposed to move alone through life, either. We’re not supposed to
do
things the way our culture has fostered for the past couple of centuries. What wolves do now isn’t natural.”

Esther didn’t know about natural, but she could vouch for the fact that the status quo wasn’t working. She didn’t want that to be the world her children would be set loose into one day. She wanted better for them than what she’d had, but she wasn’t in a position to change the world yet. For once, she had to take care of herself.

“You need to talk to Nixon,” Aunt Lilith said. “Ask him to set aside his courtship timeline so he could claim—” She let out a ragged breath. “
Possession
of the children.”

“Demand he bites me, you mean.”

“You could ask sweetly, or you could be nasty. I doubt your tone will matter to him. He’ll want to do the right thing. You just need to tell him what that thing is.” She chuckled.

Esther didn’t have a problem telling the man to do the right thing. She’d already
tried
, and he’d derailed the process with protestations about his leg.

She scoffed. She didn’t give a damn about what his leg looked like. The fact that he was alive at all after what had happened to him was impressive enough.

“What?” Ashley asked.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking about something Nixon said.”

“You know what to do,” Aunt Lilith said. “Any other time, I would insist that you go slowly, but with the situation being what it is…” She gave Esther’s chin a gentle chuck and then started toward the door. “Don’t be put off by speed if the connection feels right. Don’t let speed scare you away. We haven’t made a mistake yet in this pack, and I don’t imagine we’re going to start with you.”

Ashley followed Aunt Lilith out the door and shut it behind her.

Esther sat still to think for a while. The enormity of the situation was too much to process in one chunk.

“
Me
,” she whispered. “
I
get a true mate.”

The honor filled her up inside and made her want to float.

“
Finally,
something good.”

She wasn’t going to let herself get too attached to the idea of her and Nixon cozy and domestic just yet, though. She had a bomb to drop on him first. Getting near her was already hard enough for him given her scent, but he was also going to have to, for the rest of his life, combat the knowledge that Esther wasn’t a safe bet. She wasn’t a female wolf who’d quietly endure.

She was a wolf who fought back when she’d had too much, and wolves with alpha potential like Nixon generally didn’t like that quality in their mates.

Nixon wasn’t a deep sleeper—most wolves weren’t—so he was sitting up and reaching for his gun at the first click to his house’s front entrance.

He had the firearm pointed to his bedroom doorway before the person making those quiet steps made her way all the way down the hall.

In the dark, his nose was far better than his eyes, so he recognized the intruder from her scent before his gaze focused on her slight form and the familiar clenches of her fists.

“Sorry!” Esther said in a rushed whisper. “The door was unlocked, so I didn’t knock.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding since aiming the gun and lowered the muzzle. “Shit, woman.”

He slid the weapon back onto the nightstand and fixed the covers around him. Early on after the accident—soon after he’d been fitted—he slept in his prosthesis in case he needed to get up in the middle of the night.

Or at least, that was what he’d told himself—that he might need to get up to take a piss, or that he needed to be able to fight at the drop of a hat. In truth, he hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to that part of him. He’d only been sleeping without the prosthesis for three months and, oddly enough, his quality of sleep had improved.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Um. Around two.” She shifted slightly in the doorway, moving weight from one foot to the other and wringing her hands in front of her.

“What’s wrong? You need me for something? Something on fire?”

“No. Um…”

He couldn’t be sure because of the dim light, but he thought she cringed.

She tucked her loose hair behind her ears and unglued herself from the doorway.

As she made her way to the bedside, he put his back against his pillows, probabilities flooding his brain and ramping up his wolf’s anxiety.

“Kids okay?”

“Oh. Yes, they’re fine. Christina is watching over them. She was up pacing with Cecily, anyway. Cecily’s been clingy all day. Has a little fever.”

“Poor kid.”

“Yeah. Parenting is always harder when the kids can’t tell you what’s wrong.”

He nodded. Waited.

There had to be a reason for her visit—not that he didn’t enjoy seeing her at any time, but two a.m. was an hour he preferred experiencing only when horizontal, and preferably with his eyes closed.

She perched on the edge of the bed and wrung her hands atop her lap.

Her nervous energy made the wolf in him pace circles. Her agitation stirred his—piqued him to fix whatever was wrong. He couldn’t allow his mate to hurt. His job was to make sure she didn’t.

“Something’s got you upset this time of night.” He looped the ends of her thick, silky hair around his fingers and rubbed his thumb over the strands. “Either the problem is something you think I’m uniquely qualified to fix, or you’ve come over here to let me know in person that I’m the problem. Which?”

She laughed quietly and laid her chin against the back of his hand when it skimmed along her jaw. “You’re not the problem. You’re the fix.”

“Am I?”

She nodded, and turned more toward him. She took a deep breath, and he got ready for the proverbial shit to hit the fan.

“Where I come from, being so bold as to ask this would get me in a heap of trouble.”

“With who?”

“My mate. The alpha. Anyone who found out, really.”

“Well, that tells me a whole lot of nothing. Pretty much anything would have gotten you in trouble in that toxic cesspool, so you’ve gotta give me some better clues as to how I should be responding right now, honey. The wolf inside me is all hopped up, wanting to be let off his leash because he thinks someone hurt you.” Or worse, that she had a problem for Nixon to fix and that she was too scared of him to ask.

Please, not that.

He looped an arm around her waist and pulled her toward him—made her cuddle up next to him, and tried to ignore the fact he had her more or less straddling his bum leg.

Her body relaxed incrementally and her scent soured, and Nixon opened her mouth to breathe.

Mind over matter.

His discomfort didn’t matter. Hers did.

“Nixon, I need you to just—go ahead and bite me. That’s what this is about.”

He swallowed the saliva that had been pooling in his mouth. “Pardon?”

“You need to bite me. I mean, if you were going to anyway. Ashley got me in touch with our old pack, and there have been some whispers that Michael’s family might try to recall the children. I can’t let them. They weren’t there to help when we were suffering and miserable, and I don’t trust for a minute they’ll do what’s right for Kevin and Darla. They can’t have them.”

Nope
, the wolf in him said.
Mine now. Finders’ fuckin’ keepers.

Nixon didn’t understand why she was staring at him with that wide-eyed shock until he registered his own damned growl.

He swallowed again, and then cleared his throat. “Ignore me. Wolf’s close to the surface. He has opinions.”

“About the kids?”

“
Mm-hmm
. Go on. What were you going to say?”

She blinked several times and sucked in a breath. “You have to bite me before they can claim them.”

“I’d certainly do that if you’d like, but I would hope that’s not the only reason you’d want my bite.”

“I think you know it’s not.”

He shrugged one shoulder.

“Has Adam told you? Because he forgot to tell me.”

“What, that you’re meant to be mine and vice versa? No, he forgot. Lil might have said something along those lines, though.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I want to feel good, but I’m trying not to let myself get too excited.”

“Why?” She pushed herself upright, and he hated that she’d taken her warmth away. The wolf wanted it back, but the man part of him knew she needed to set the pace of the conversation. She was skittish, and entitled to be.

“Like I told you before,” he said. “I’m a forty-one-year-old wolf reject. The current culture says I’m not
supposed
to get a mate. I’d sure like one. I want a family I go to work everyday to support. I want a woman to come home to and love, but I’m a skeptic.”

“I should be more skeptical, too, but I don’t have the luxury of being hesitant. I’ve spent three decades of my life being timid and hesitant, and I—when I…” She closed her eyes and pounded her thighs with her fists. “I decided I couldn’t be that way anymore. Or rather, the wolf part of me decided that for the both of us. I’m scared now, don’t get me wrong. I’m just scared for different reasons. Still, I’ve got to hope that I can make things better—I can be proactive, instead of weak and idle. Honesty is important, so let me say that I
need
you to bite me. I also know you need more than that, so let me tell you, also, that I
want
you to bite me.”

“You want to be my mate?”

“I
am
your mate. I’m just telling you that I approve of the fact that I am.”

Smiling was never hard for Nixon when he was around Esther, but that small confession made his grin particularly broad.

He dragged his tongue across his parched lips and pulled a hand through his messy hair. Small actions to stave off bigger ones. He had to allow himself time to think of all the possible traps and pitfalls, like he always did before undertaking big endeavors.

He certainly counted Esther as a “big endeavor.” A beautiful, soft, sweet, big endeavor.

“This couldn’t have waited until morning, hon?”

She gave her head the barest shake. “I mean, perhaps it could have, but I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. I’m too worried.”

“I understand. Come here.” He wriggled down flat onto his back and gestured for her to straddle him. “Climb on. That way you get a little control.”

She furrowed her brow.

“If I’m on the bottom, I’m not going to be able to get a good angle to bite you too deep. You put your body where you want it. Tell me where you want the bite.”

Brow still furrowed, she moved slowly onto him, her hand pressed to the top of her chest, her fingertips working over the end of a scar at the top of cleavage.

Gently, he took her hand and pressed the palm to his chest along with the other hand. “Just keep those there for the moment, okay?”

Her hands were shaking so hard, anyway, they weren’t going to be of much use for any procedure requiring dexterousness. Like unbuttoning her pajama top.

Traditionally, wolves bit their mates somewhere over the heart, right or left side didn’t matter. When the mood struck, aim wasn’t important. The exact location of the bite didn’t matter. He’d heard of wolves receiving bites on their shoulders, their hips, their thighs. The chest was symbolic—a sign of submission.

Nixon didn’t particularly want bite her there, but he didn’t want to make any new scars on her, either. She already had too many.

With the first button he undid of her pajama top, her breath sped and eyes blinked rapidly.

“Breathe, honey,” he whispered, and then waited. Waited for her to stop tensing, to stop digging her nails into his chest.

Then he moved on to the next button. Her hands were shaking again, so he kissed them, backs and fronts, peering up at her in the near dark.

“Tell me what scares you so much. That the bite’s going to hurt?”

She shook her head hard. “Your bite can’t hurt any worse than what’s already been done to me. I—I don’t want you to see.”

“Hey, I could close my eyes and feel my way around, but if I’m only using my hands, I’m gonna pay more attention to what I’m feeling. The textures and bumps where there should be smooth skin. I’m gonna memorize you that way, and then when I open my eyes, I’m going to learn you another way. I know trusting comes slowly, but if you’re gonna give your body to me, you’ve gotta let me see it.”

She pulled in a long breath, and then nodded. Eyes closed. Lips parted, moving as if in silent prayer.

If that made her feel good, he wasn’t going to tell her to stop.

He kept unbuttoning, all the way down to the bottom. The air escaped his lungs as his hands moved on their own to her waist, her warmth.

His thumbs worked along the bottom of her ribcage tracing the natural pattern there—a pattern that was perhaps somewhat
too
prominent, but that he didn’t doubt Lilith would do her part in obscuring with a lot of good food and a lot of love.

He couldn’t cook worth a damn, but he could certainly keep a fridge filled. And he’d definitely do his part with the second thing, too. Esther wasn’t a hard woman to love, even if she seemed to think she was.

“I can’t remember the last time I had a woman straddling me like this.” He chuckled.

She growled.

That made him laugh harder. He couldn’t help himself. Besides, he’d rather have her pissed at him than afraid.

He danced his fingertips up her belly toward her heart, parting the plackets of her shirt as he went, exposing more of her in slow inches.

“I’ve never been with a wolf before. I’m kinda making shit up as I go along.”

Soft, full breasts, nipples beaded in the cool night air, firm and taut beneath his thumbs.

“I—” Her knees tightened against his sides and back bowed a bit. “I’ve only been with the one, so…”

One too many, in his opinion. Nixon didn’t want to think about that
one
, because he’d think about what that one had done to her. He didn’t like thinking nasty thoughts about dead people. That shit was toxic for the soul, and he’d never been the kind of guy who liked carrying around that kind of darkness.

He leaned up for a taste of her before he could talk himself out of biting her—before her scent overpowered and warned him off, and it was already strong enough. But if she changed her mind and said “no” to the bite, he’d at least have gotten to touch her.

He
hoped
she didn’t say no. Just sitting on him with her body insinuated as it was made him so hard, he hurt. He wanted to be inside her—wanted to complete the mating bond the way wolves did. He welcomed all the snarling and clawing that came with the bite, as long as she still wanted to be his by the time all was said and done. That she was still his by the time she remembered that he didn’t move as well as he used to. Not yet, anyway.

But soon
. He’d find a way to get his old swerve back since she’d likely be the last woman who’d ever get to benefit from it. He couldn’t imagine being with anyone else after having set his heart on Esther.

He closed his lips around one pert nipple and dug his fingertips into her haunches when she writhed against him, torturing his cock with warm friction.

He clamped her tender flesh between his teeth and circled his tongue around the peak.

“I—”

“You don’t like when I do that?”

“I’ve never—”

Don’t say it. Don’t tell me what he did or didn’t do.

Nixon wanted to roll her onto her back and kiss every peak of her,
lick
every crease of her, but her scent precluded him doing much else. As pleased as he was that his touch aroused her, there was only so much compartmentalizing a normal brain could do.

Her scent was warning him off, even if her body was saying,
Yes, please
.

Sighing, he worked his hands up to her chest and smoothed his fingers across the battleground of scars, stopping every time her breath hitched or nostrils flared.

Nixon couldn’t fix her imperfections. He couldn’t take them away any more than he could make his lower leg grow back, but he could show her that nothing on her body would turn him off. He’d take her as she was, joyfully, and hope she could do the same for him.

He found a smooth patch over her left breast and drew a circle around the area, peering up at her.

She blinked.

“I think here looks good, unless you had your mind set on somewhere else.”

“Um. Any place is as good as another.”

“You have a say. This is your body.”

“Never been allowed to feel like it is.”

“
You
own your body. Right now, you’re just letting me enjoy all the parts.”

She pressed her lips tightly together and put her hand where his had been. She looked down at her chest—at that small patch of unmarred flesh—and pulled in a long inhalation through her nose. She let out the breath through her mouth and then swallowed hard.