Heart Of The Wolf (13 page)

“We did?”
Somehow, that shocked her more than her alleged marriage.

“Yes. And
haven't you wondered why your surname is Harper, and how his name
is Taylor Harper on your marriage certificate?”

“I … I don't
have a marriage certificate. I mean, I have deed poll certificates
upstairs in the filing cabinet showing that I changed my name to
Harper.”

“And is
that
something you remember doing? Changing your name by
deed poll?”

Her breath
caught in her throat, and that fainting feeling swam around her
head again. “No,” she confessed, her tone hushed, “I don't remember
that.”

Beth and Holly
both stared at her, Beth now looking as confused as her, and Holly
looking hopeful.

“I just … I
just assumed there must be a good reason why I had. I've never …
shit … I've never had a reason to really sit down and
think
about it before, you know? I don't remember getting my name
changed, or … oh, my god! What's my real name?”

“It's okay.”
Holly rose from the sofa and came towards her, tentatively touching
her arm in comfort. “Your birth name was Allen – Sarah Allen –
before you married Taylor.”

“My family's
name is Allen – my mum, dad and sister. Why have I never stopped to
wonder why I don't have the same surname as them?”

“Because you
never knew anything was wrong with the life that you have. And
something is
really
wrong here, Sarah. Someone's fucking
with you, and it's freaking me out thinking about it.”

“It's freaking
you
out? My parents … do
they
remember the
wedding?”

“There's only
one way to find out,” added Beth, rising from her chair and
bringing her mobile phone out of her pocket. “Let's give them a
call.”

~*~

The shrill
sound of Lydia's phone ringing brought her out of her deep
thoughts. The police were finally leaving, all three of her mates
practically barging them out the door… And they were worried about
her
overreacting. She felt emotionally drained, but relieved
that the interrogation was over – at least for now.

She
had
had to speak to them alone after all, accompanied by the lawyer,
but it wasn't half as bad as she had feared. The questions were
probing – questions about her and Brendan's relationship – which
she had been expecting, but since she had nothing to hide,
answering them had come easily and she had divulged pretty much
everything, including their 'friends with benefits' agreement. The
hardest question to answer, she concluded with the grimace, had
been the one about why she'd had so many packs of condoms in her
rucksack at the time of visiting Brendan.

Lovely.

“
How many
'benefits' do you receive exactly?”
one the officers had asked,
without a hint of remorse at his snarkiness.

Wonderful.

“
They were
buy one, get one free,”
had been her pointed reply. Completely
true, as the receipt proved, and it had shut him up, and earned her
a small smile from policeman number two.

Now, she was
going to have to deal with all the questions she was no doubt going
to get from her males, because there was no way they hadn't been
listening in on the conversation with their super-sharp
hearing.

And her dad
was phoning her.

She cursed
under her breath, wondering whether to answer it, or ignore him.
She hadn't spoken to him at all since she'd discovered she was a
werewolf a month ago, and she didn't know what the fuck to say to
him. But then, did she really want to face him tomorrow without
having some clue as to how that meeting would go?

With another
muttered expletive, she pressed the answer button and held the
phone up to her ear. “Dad.”

A pause at the
other end as he gathered himself. Maybe he hadn't expected her to
pick up. “Lydia.” His voice crumbled a little over her name and an
unexpected surge of tears shot to her eyes. “Baby girl … how are
you?”

'Baby girl?'
Sod it, that was the most endearing term he'd used for her since
she could remember. How was she? How did she answer that?
“Mated.”

“Right. Of
course. I wanted to … see how you are – your first full moon since…
I've been worried.”

“Are you
kidding me? My whole life you tell me nothing about what I really
am, and now you're worried?”

“I had my
reaso—”

“It's too
little, too late, don't you think?”

A sigh. “Hear
me out, Lydia, please.”

God, she was
tired, and upset, and angry. “Tomorrow. That's what tomorrow's for,
right? I'll see you then.”

She hung up,
half of her wishing she hadn't and half of her never wanting to see
him again.

“Heya,
darlin'.”

She looked up
to find Ryan filling the doorway, concern and what looked like love
in his eyes. For a minute her heart stopped. It reached out to him
just as it had in their shared dreams – in the dreams where he
had
loved her over and over again; where he'd said it every
time. She hadn't heard him say it in real life – not once in the
last four weeks – and all the sudden, she realised how much she
missed their dreams; the safety of them; the comfort of them.

She promptly
burst into tears, sinking her head into her hands and dropping her
stupid mobile onto the floor, her dad's voice still in her
ears.

“Sweetheart…”
He sat next to her on the large footstool and cradled her as she
tried to pull herself together.

“I'm sorry,
I'm… Everything's just happening all at once.”

“No need to
apologise. Life's a bit like that right now.” His voice was
strained and a sense of uneasiness invaded her.

“Where's
Lawrence and Taylor?”

“They're
around. I needed to talk to you alone for a minute.”

Alarm bells
sounded and she whipped her head up to make sure he was listening
to her. “Is it about the condoms? I was going to talk to you about
that. It's just … I know you're all about the breeding, but
seriously, I've only been a werewolf for a month – not even a
proper werewolf since I haven't changed yet – and I don't know if a
hoard of babies, or puppies, is really on my life plan right now,
and if we all have longevity now we're mated, then waiting a bit
before starting a family's not such a big deal, right? I mean—”

“It's not
about the condoms.”

“Oh.”

“I can't
believe you bought ten packs. What is that – 120 condoms?”

“They were buy
one, get one free.”

“So I
heard.”

“Between the
three of you, I have sex at least twice a day. That's, like,
fifty-plus times already. It's a good job I'm flexible, and I can't
believe I'm
saying
these things. I've always craved sex, so
in one respect it's no big deal, and it's kinda nice to know why I
always have – 'cause of the lovely, not-at-all hindering breeding
gene – but on another level, it feels like everything's just sex,
sex, sex.”

His arm
tightened around her and his tone dropped. “You talking about sex
is getting me hard.”

She threw him
a stare. “See what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do.”
And he didn't look in the least bit like it bothered him.

“And the worst
bit of all is,
I'm
getting horny talking about it. I'm horny
all the fucking time.
”

He pushed her
with his arm until she was lying back across the footstool they
were sitting on, her head resting on the top of it, and her knees
bent off the end with her feet planted on the ground. Ryan's chest
was a welcome weight on hers, and the rest of him firmly nestled
between her legs. “Are you sure that's the worst bit?”

“See?” she
repeated, this time on a moan. “This is why ten packs.”

“Sweetheart…”

“Mmmm?”

“I think you
should tell Lawrence about your nightmares.”

She froze
beneath him, although he didn't let her freeze too much with his
stroking of the side of her left breast, through her dress,
igniting fire all the way down her torso. “You know about
those?”

“You talk in
your sleep – sometimes, the words are strangled screams. Incoherent
mostly, but I've heard enough to get the gist.”

“I thought you
were sleeping. I didn't want to wake you just because I have an
active imagination.”

“I don't sleep
through everything, you know – not when you're in pain.”

She feathered
his cheek with her fingers. Such a familiar action she'd carried
out a thousand times in her mind since she was fifteen, and the
last ten years of hot-Ryan dreams flooded her memories. Dear god,
she loved him so much.

“Please tell
him.”

“They're not
just nightmares – they're his memories. I relive them.”

“All the more
reason to confide in him. You and he need to start
communicating.”

“You take such
good care of us all, Ryan. And you've always taken good care of
me.”
I love you, I love you…
“I haven't told him because I
don't want to cause him worry when he's got so much else on his
mind.”

“He's always
worried about something. He's a fucking drama queen.”

She
unsuccessfully tried to hold back a laugh.

“There's no
good time, so just tell him.”

“Okay.”

He smiled.
“Good girl – now…” his voice dropped low, a hint of menace to it,
“did any of them touch you?”

“What?”

“The
policemen,” he growled out. “Did any of them touch you?”

“No. Mr
Garrison was here.”

“Did
he
touch you?”

Whoa.

“No. Oh, god…”
He sucked her left breast through her summer dress, hard, circling
her already erect nipple with his tongue.

“I can smell
them in this room – their body odours waft around you. It's
annoying me. One of them found you attractive, I can tell. There's
a hint of human male pheromones in the air.”

She gasped as
he treated her right breast to the same glorious sensations, the
ache between her legs already spreading up to her abdomen. “I
didn't even notice.”

“Good. It's us
you belong to. You're ours.”

She met his
gaze, surprised at his declaration. He'd never referred to the four
of them as a unity before, and it turned her on like nothing else.
She grabbed at his hair, writhing against him as both his thumbs
squeezed her nipples relentlessly. She bit her lip to keep from
climaxing. Shit – he hadn't even touched her anywhere else.

“Say that
again,” she pleaded.

He smiled,
knowing exactly what she meant. “You're ours.”

A wave of
euphoria washed over her, taking her out of her body, and then both
of them were sparking with electricity, tendrils of lightning
dancing all over their skin.

Ryan groaned
in pleasure, and squeezed her harder. “Do you have any idea how
totally insane that lightning feels when you wrap us in it?”

She cried out
in heated bliss when he pushed the front of his jeans, straining
with the bulge of his cock, against her centre.

“Come like
this,” he demanded, hoarsely, adding his thumbnails into the
methodical torture of her nipples. “Come for us.”

Her teeth cut
her lip where they'd elongated against it, and she shrieked as a
furious orgasm crashed over her.

Not letting
her come down from it, he hauled her legs up at the knees, until
she was splayed, dress up around her waist; then made her hiss when
he ripped her knickers off her.

He moaned long
and low. “It's
you
I can smell now. That's so much fucking
better.” And then he was stroking her slippery clit with his thumb;
building her up again, but it was almost unbearable on the tail of
her previous crescendo and she pushed against his hands to close
her legs against the beautiful torment.

He denied her
body's request, forcefully holding her open, pressing just a touch
more firmly…

“No!” An
automatic response that wasn't a 'no' of dissent, but of the sheer,
unstoppable power of her agonising pleasure. She hoped he got it,
'cause if he did stop, she'd probably go psycho on him.

He didn't
stop, but with arms keeping her thighs wide apart, added his
fingers to her decimation by sliding them inside her.

“
Ryan!”

“That's it,
sweetheart. Fill the room with your scent.”

Sinful tongue!
Oh, the things he said to her had always rendered her useless under
their intensity.

He pulled his
fingers out of her, slick with her juice, and glided them downward
until he was pressing on her back entrance.

Desire like no
other coursed through her.

“Relax…” And
the minute she did, he invaded her tight passage, his entrance
surprisingly easy considering his finger, alone, felt enormous
inside her.

“Fuck!” She
cried.

He twisted his
digit in her once, and her entire body bucked in response.

“Ssssshh…” He
stilled. “Not yet.”

“Ryan,
please!”

“Not yet,” he
repeated. His thumb resumed its stroking of her clitoris, and she
was seriously going to start sobbing soon.

“Ryan…”

“You haven't a
clue how bloody gorgeous you look. You're glistening, Lydia. Lips,
soaked and quivering. It's taking every ounce of strength I have
not to taste you; to dip my tongue inside you and lap at all that
silky cream…”

He pushed his
finger deeper into her; her tender, muscled flesh clutching him to
her. He pulled back out slightly – one of those sobs at the sheer
deepness
of everything she felt escaping her – and then he
began to thrust inside her, his thumb speeding up to match the
rhythm he set.

“I want to
drink you down, but I want to see you come more. I want to see you
squirt.”

Jesus
Christ!

“I want anyone
who walks into this room to smell exactly who you belong to…”