The Wolf's Mate Book 2: Linus & The Angel (21 page)

Now this was torture. Hot, sexy, lovely
torture with the man that was going to be her husband. He drew
closer and closer with each pass to her tingling core but never
stopped until he’d covered everything with little patterns but the
one place she wanted him to touch.

Gritting her teeth with another unsuccessful
pass by her pussy, he chuckled. “Aw, am I doing this wrong,
baby?”

“You know exactly what you’re doing.” She bit
out.

“True. I just wondered how long it would take
you to actually say something.” He leaned up and kissed her,
slanting his mouth to hers and pushing his tongue to slide against
hers. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she kissed him back and
forgot he had a humming little pleasure toy in his hands until he
pushed it inside her suddenly and she came to blistering awareness
on the crest of a powerful climax. She twisted her fingers in his
hair as she cried out in pleasure. He pressed his forehead to hers
while the pleasure danced freely up and down her body.

He experimented with the vibrator, pulsing it
inside her weeping body in varying speeds and angles until her
thighs trembled with tension and her heart attempted to pound out
of her chest.

“Time for the real thing, baby,” he kissed
her once and moved away, stretching out on his back across the bed.
She practically launched herself at him and he chuckled while she
adjusted herself to straddle him and take him inside. Wasting no
time at all, she threw her body down onto his until they were as
close as possible and she cried out with the fullness of him. She
could have cried real tears of joy for making love again, but
something wet and vibrating on high speed pressed into her clit and
she nearly rocketed off him.

One hand gripped her thigh and the other held
the vibrator against her swollen nub. With growled words, he
encouraged her to ride him as hard as she wanted, to take what
belonged to her. She could not have stopped if the world was
crashing down around them. She found a rhythm that called to a deep
part of her, closing her eyes to everything except the feelings and
sounds between them. So deep together, it was as if they were one
person now, her body humming with the vibrations against her clit
and his cock filling her so perfectly. When a second orgasm from
the toy on her clit pounded down on her, he tossed the vibrator
aside and grasped her hips, pushing her down onto his body while
his hips thrust up in wild rhythm.

“Ah, Linus!” She screamed, digging her nails
into his wrists and twisting on him as her body tried to split
apart and liquid heat spilled from her.

He came right after her, “Fuck, Karly!”

She slipped carefully to his chest, gasping
for breath and slick with sweat. A shiver wove through him and he
kissed her forehead. “You’re okay, baby?”

“I’m wonderful, Linus, thank you.”

“Well, I couldn’t have you falling in love
with a toy that has unbelievable staying power.”

She laughed and sighed. “Nothing’s better
than your cock, Linus, and that’s the truth.”

“Good to know,” He chuckled.

“I love you, Linus.”

“I love you, too, Karly”

With the danger of her past erased except
from memory, they decided to go back to their original plan of
going to her parents’ pack before the March full moon and having
the Angel ceremony as well as the full moon hunt. Linus’ family was
coming but because it was a full moon, Linus decided not to ask any
of his friends to join them. He reasoned that they could enjoy a
full moon hunt with her family on the full moon for their pack
joining and Angel ceremony for the Tressel pack, and he wanted to
enjoy their time together with her parents with the two families
coming together.

Linus spent a lot of time with Pops and Alpha
Jason’s grandfather Abraham, talking about the “old ways” and what
the pack used to be like. She knew he was worried about being
deficient in some way to Alpha Krayne or her father and she wanted
him to ease his own mind. Her father understood that Linus had not
been raised in a pack like theirs, and without his father as a
strong influence on him, he was like that last leaf on a branch in
fall, left to fend for itself.

The night before their trip, after they made
love and were tangled together in her favorite way, he broke the
silence of the dark bedroom. “I wanted to tell you about my father
and his family.”

She tried to move, to sit up and look at him
but he locked his arms around her and said with a rough voice, “It
will be easier, baby, if you don’t look at me right now, okay?”

“Okay.” She settled back to where she was
splayed across half his body, her head against his shoulder and her
arm and leg spread across him.

“Jack Mayfield got my mom pregnant and
married her out of obligation. He didn’t want to be married or have
a child so he began to drink and whore around town, or rather, he
never stopped doing it even after he got married. He would come
home smelling like perfume and whiskey. He didn’t bother to hide
it. When I was 8, I was playing in their room and I saw the edge of
a picture sticking out from the drawer, one of those Kodak
pictures. I pulled it out and turned it over, and it was the girl
that babysat me and she was naked. I didn’t understand why there
was a naked picture of her in my father’s drawer, so I took it to
my mom and she freaked out. I was in bed when he got home that
night and she confronted him, and then the yelling started. I crept
from my room in time to see him slam her against the wall and tell
her to stay out of his things. I cried and ran to her and he kicked
me, like a dog, and told me I was the worst thing that ever
happened to him.”

He stopped talking for a long moment and she
blinked back the tears that threatened.

“Once he hit her that first time, he started
to hit her all the time, and when I would try to protect her, then
I was in the crosshairs, too. She tried to protect me, but he was a
big man, not muscular just big, and he just hit her all the more
when she stood up for me. She hid the abuse from everyone. Then one
night I went to stay at my grandma’s house and she walked into the
bathroom when I was getting out of the shower and saw the bruises
on my back. Pops went over there with some of the other men in the
pack, but he was already gone. He grabbed that underage babysitter
he’d taken the picture of and ran off. Maybe he knew it was just a
matter of time before his behavior became pack knowledge, or maybe
he just got tired of the pretense of being married, I don’t know.
But he was gone and he never contacted us again. His parents were
part of our pack. They never wanted anything to do with me or my
mom. They thought we were beneath them, just so much trash. It
wasn’t too long after my father left that they left the pack and
went out west somewhere.” His fingers traced invisible patterns on
her back in the silence that followed. She waited for him to say
more or not, but to let her know either way, and eventually he
did.

“I worry sometimes about being a father,
because I don’t have a very good image in my mind of what a father
should be like, but Pops reminded me a few days ago that I did have
that all around me. In the men in the pack that looked out for us.
And the men in my mom’s family are all the examples that I ever
needed. All the stuff that I’ve been learning about the history of
our kind has just made me all the more determined to raise our
children right. To give them that sense of belonging and family
that comes with being a werewolf, but also to teach them the weight
that such a special family carries. If my father had been a better
man and wolf, he would have just walked away and left us be, but
something kept him around long enough to torment us.” He tipped her
chin up so she could see him.

“I just needed you to know about some of the
things that haunt me. I know you’re smart enough to have figured
out that I have issues with my father, and before we make the
commitments to each other with your parents’ pack, I wanted you to
know what creeps around in the dark parts of my mind.”

She kissed him tenderly, and thanked him
softly for telling her about his demons, and they made love once
more and chased the darkness away from both of them before coming
down from the heavens to sleep.

Chapter 16

Linus couldn’t believe what the Soualit Pack
was really like. It was like a small city that revolved around the
alpha, a man his grandfather’s age who looked like he could take on
anyone, anytime and win. He wasn’t a big man, but lean and muscular
with a face that was wrinkled, but not from smiling too much. His
hair had been dark once, but was mostly gray now, and his wife was
a small woman with short curly white hair and soft blue eyes.

Karly was hands down the most beautiful woman
he’d ever laid eyes on. And it was very clear where she got her
beauty from. Her parents were almost too beautiful for words, like
living pieces of art, and her brothers were just about the most
handsome men he’d ever seen, although he’d never admit it out loud.
Karly’s mother Sophia looked like a porcelain doll, with ivory skin
and dark hair. Her father Kamren was very tall and well built, with
olive skin and thick black hair cut short. Her three brothers were
just younger versions of their father, all with the same olive skin
and black hair. Bren, Rico and Graise gave him a good once over and
then grinned and slapped him on the back in what he assumed was a
brotherly sort of thing. Since he had no experience with siblings,
he would have to just take their lead.

Sophia and his mom and grandma dove right
into getting things ready for the ceremony at dawn and he felt
Karly’s fingers slipping from his hand as she was pulled away from
him.

“Don’t worry, son,” Kamren said, “you’ll see
her at dinner. You know women.” Linus' grandfather was invited to
visit with the alpha, so he left Linus with his future in-laws.

“Hades,” Bren frowned as they walked together
towards her parents' house, “when Kelina gets wind of this ceremony
she’s going to want me to drape her in fucking expensive orange
blossoms, too!” Kelina was Bren’s wife and they were alpha-mates of
a pack in Ontario.

Bren said to him, “My wife’s up in my folks’
house with the babies. She just had our third over Christmas, so
she’s kind of, you know, busy.”

“Congratulations.” He offered.

“Well, you’re their uncle now. Add Angel,
instant family.”

Graise snorted, “You’re so damn lucky. Ma
said it’s like love at first sight. You didn’t have to fend off a
whole pack full of wolves to claim her.”

Rico laughed, “You’re just mad because you
almost lost your wife to that stock broker!”

Without warning, Graise launched himself at
Rico and they went tumbling to the grass, throwing playful punches
and calling each other names. Rico managed to get to his feet, but
Graise grabbed his pants leg and he tripped and went down and Rico
cursed and flipped to all fours and pounced on Graise.

“They’re such idiots.” Bren laughed as they
stopped to watch the show.

“Yes, they are. But they’re your brothers, so
you’re stuck with them.” Kamren said.

“And now you are too, brother.” Bren looked
at Linus and gave him a sincere smile.

He marveled at the sense of family that
surrounded him so easily here. Bren was the oldest at 32, Rico was
29, Graise was 25. They were all married to she-wolves, alphas of
their packs, and all had children. And what was even more amazing
was that they just accepted him right into the fold like they’d
known him for years.

Inside the huge home that was more like a
boarding house than anything, the first thing Linus saw was a tall
blonde woman cradling a baby in her arms and rocking it back and
forth while it wailed. “Oh good!” She smiled tightly, “Your son
wants his father.”

“How come when he’s crying he’s my son?” Bren
groused good naturedly, crossing the room to kiss his wife on the
cheek and take the squalling child from her arms.

After introductions were made first to
Kelina, Bren’s wife, and then Lorna, Rico’s wife, and then Katie,
Graise’s wife, Bren handed the still crying child to Linus. “Here’s
your nephew Kellan. Get him to calm down, would ya?”

Linus stared down at the red faced baby in
half alarm, and did the only thing he could think of. He put the
baby over his shoulder and patted him on the back like he’d seen
the she-wolves in the pack do. After a few good pats, little Kellan
burped loud enough to wake the dead and then quieted down with a
happy sigh.

“Aw, Uncle Linus has the golden touch. Quick,
go grab Metz!” Graise grinned, speaking about his own young
son.

As the day progressed and the pack welcomed
them as visitors and soon to be relatives, they prepared for the
full moon by way of a large sit down meal at the alpha’s home. The
dining room table easily held twenty, and another table set up in a
connected room held another ten. Adults-only, the children were
spirited away by she-wolves in the pack so the parents could enjoy
the meal.

Alpha Krayne and his mate Mary presided over
the elaborate meal that Karly had helped her mother and the three
other caretakers make, consisting of different kinds of roasted
meats, large bowls of side dishes, and a side table full of
desserts. Joining the alpha pair, Karly’s family, and Linus’ own,
the table was full and inviting, just like the picture Karly had
painted for him. After the Alpha said a prayer of thanks over the
meal, everyone dug in, plates were passed and meat was carved into
huge wedges for the hungry wolves.

When dinner was over, Karly pulled him away
from the table after assuring her father they would return in less
than an hour to prepare for the full moon hunt. Once outside on the
porch, she gave him a crooked smile and took off, racing towards
her parents’ home. She was fast, but Linus was faster, and although
he let her win, he was just a step behind her and swung her up in
his arms to carry her through the door and into the empty
house.