Wild Instinct (16 page)

HIS smile lasted all of about two seconds. Right up until he remembered the look of surprise on her face when he’d said he’d court her. She didn’t look up when he entered the kitchen. He leaned against the doorjamb, watching her make a pot of coffee.

“I may be only half werewolf but that doesn’t mean I lack any finer feelings.”

She shrugged. “I guess I never . . .”

“Never what? Thought I had any softness in me?”

She shrugged, filling the pot with water. “It’s not immediately visible.”

“I thought it was very visible in bed.”

That drew her up short and put a blush in her cheeks, but it didn’t remove the speculation from her gaze. “No, I think you’re right. That’s one of the things that occurred to me while I was talking to Teri today.”

“What? That there’s no going back for us?”

“No, that I’ve never given
you
a chance.” She measured in the grounds. “I just had it in my head how it was going to be and I couldn’t seem to see anything else.”

“That must have been some conversation.”

Her smile was sad. “In some ways, it was. And in others.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid it wasn’t enough.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know if Teri can take this.”

“Take what?”

“So much change on top of so much loss. Being mated to Daire won’t be easy and Teri hasn’t had an easy life.”

“Neither have you.”

“But when I was young, I grew up protected. I know what it’s like to have someone care about you.”

“You also know what it means to lose.”

“But the loss was my choice.”

“You were disowned.”

“It was still my choice. I’m not saying it wasn’t a bitter blow when my parents disowned me when I wouldn’t accept Colin as my mate, but it stemmed from my choice. None of this is Teri’s choice.”

“You couldn’t have expected them to go against pack law?”

“No.”

But she had. He could tell from the way she rubbed her arms, as if still needing to shield herself from the blow. “You had siblings.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“Your parents had to protect the family for them.”

“I know.”

“It would have been easier for you to adjust than for them to throw away everything.”

“Garrett, I understand the logic behind their decision.” She closed the coffeemaker and jabbed the on button. “It just doesn’t help me to accept the decision.”

Garrett couldn’t hold out anymore. He pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry.”

He liked the way she leaned against him. The softness in her eyes when she met his gaze. “For what? It was my decision to leave the pack.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I didn’t want to mate with the one chosen for me.”

“You had a chosen mate?”

“I seem to be one of those rare women who has many options.”

Not anymore. “None of which you seem to like.”

He felt the press of her lips against his chest. Pressure built in the spot, bleeding outward in a lush spread of desire.

“Well, don’t be too hasty. I might have it right this time.”

The pressure exploded into flames of desire. It was the first time she’d made a move toward him. “You do. What happened with the proposed mating?”

“I refused the mating. My parents threatened to disown me.”

She was lucky that was all they had done. In the most traditional families, a woman would be beaten for such defiance and carried unconscious through the ceremony. And Sarah Anne came from a very traditional pack.

“And they carried through with their threat?”

“Yes.”

“So you went to the human world.”

“It’s where I fit best.”

“Because you can’t change.”

“Yes.”

“It was a wise decision at the time.”

She blinked. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”

“Why?”

A small smile graced her mouth. “Because you seemed to put a large store by tradition.”

“Actually, I don’t hold with a lot of it but sometimes”—he watched as Sarah Anne’s smile grew—“I find it has its uses.”

He got his wish. “So I noticed,” Sarah said.

Pressure at the base of the skull tilted her head back. He let his thumb slide over the chin down the underside. Her throat muscles worked against his thumb as she swallowed hard. It was his turn to smile as the scent of her desire teased his nostrils. He let his thumb rest against the hollow of her throat. The increase in her pulse was as visible as the interest in her eyes. “So, is a love for tradition the reason you are not denying us today?”

“No. It’s more understanding of what’s real.” He loved the way the little tiny flecks of gold sparkled like jewels in her eyes. “And I’m real.”

Her fingers clenched in his shirt. “I think you’re the most real thing I know.”

Twenty-one

GARRETT leaned in, recrossing the distance that so often had stood between them, seeing the hope in her eyes, seeing the aching sense of loss for her son. Seeing the longing for his reassurance. He had no right to touch her as a mate when he was failing her so, but he couldn’t stay away. That warmth drew him like a flame. That need prodded him forward. He wanted to be the man she saw him as. Wanted to be the only one that made her smile, gave her confidence, held her when the world turned black.

His heart, the one that had never missed a beat in its life, skipped a beat as she sighed and relaxed against him. The total acceptance in the gesture floored him.

“Be very sure, Sarah Anne.”

He had to give her a warning. It was his duty as a mate to protect her, even if he had to protect her from himself. Her arms came up around his neck, sliding over his skin in a whispering promise.

“It’s too late to make me doubt you.”

“There’ll be no going back after this.”

She cocked her head to the side and smiled that witchy smile that shot straight to his cock and filled him with the need to possess. “I thought we established that wasn’t an option.”

There was an option. He hadn’t bonded her life force to his. As long as he didn’t do that, his death would end her commitment, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Couldn’t have the possibility between them. Didn’t want to see the hope for freedom spring back into her eyes. Instead, he slid his hands down over her shoulder blades, making a small circle at the points before continuing down to the hollow of her spine. “So we did.”

The moistness of her breath teased his lips. He pressed with his fingertips, encouraging her up onto her toes. As always, she came up on her tiptoes, willingly. Eagerly. The fire between them arced.

The knowledge whispered through his mind, picking up the cadence of his pulse, riding it, growing stronger as he mated his mouth to hers. She was his. No one else’s. The urge to protect her drowned under the need to own her. To have what had always been missing in his life. The softness. The heat. The belonging. He’d make sure she didn’t regret it. He’d control the wild side inside him. He’d be the wolf she deserved rather than the one everyone expected.

She made a little moan as she cuddled her breasts against his chest. His shirt chafed his skin. He wanted to feel those swollen nipples pressed into his skin as the softness behind flowed around. His mouth watered with the need to take them in. This was his woman.

“You won’t regret being mated to me,” he told her.

Her fingers caressed his nape. “I know.”

How could she know that? How could she know anything beyond the fire that burned between them? It blurred his mind to the point he felt senseless and drugged with the passion. The rightness. He would never give her up.

He must have spoken out loud, or maybe he just projected the thought into her head, because she jumped. He waited for the familiar sense of fear, but instead, behind her start came a sense of satisfaction. It was his turn to blink.

“I told you you’d get to liking my possession.”

Her smile pressed her cheek against his. “So you did. But I think I need another lesson just to be sure.”

He laughed as he remembered the time he told her he’d give her a lesson in loving him. The one who had been giving the lesson had been her all along. “You really have no sense of survival.”

She rested her cheek on his shoulder as he carried her to the bedroom.

“I beg to differ. I think my sense of survival is just fine. I think you’re the one who doesn’t have a very good sense of survival.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. You were a footloose and fancy-free bachelor. Now you’re tied down with a mate, two half-human kids not of your bloodline. Face it, your plans for the future never included anything you expected to have.”

“What do you think I expected?”

“A lot more than this.”

He kicked the bedroom door open and shouldered his way in, not taking his gaze from hers. She was right. All of his plans were as nothing now. But in going after what he wanted, he’d gotten what he’d wanted. The woman who fit the other half of his soul. The one person who could accept him as he was. Who gave him not status but a sense of self. A grounding. He pretended to toss her. She squealed, wrapped her arm around his neck. He smiled, let her legs drop and pulled her against him. “You’re right. I didn’t get a goddamned thing I’d shot for.”

He didn’t let her wallow in that statement. Didn’t want her to hurt even for one second. “Instead I got more than I ever dared dream of.”

She tilted her head back and looked at him, confusion in her eyes.

“I never dreamed I’d belong, so when I thought what my life with my mate would be”—he unbuttoned her shirt—“it was always in terms of the status she’d bring me, because I never dreamed she would want me. Not emotionally. I figured the mating heat would be there and I’d work with that. But I never thought that you’d want me, so I never dreamed big enough to hold someone like you.”

“Oh, baby.” Her hands curled around his. She removed them from her blouse. For once he couldn’t read anything in her eyes. When she pulled his hands away, he accepted it. He watched as she brought his fingers to her lips. Kissing the backs of one and then the other. Softness against hardness. “I think you really need to learn to dream bigger.”

“Then you’ll have to teach me.”

She nodded. She would, Sarah Anne understood. She would have to teach Garrett to see himself as others saw him, not how he thought they did. His view was so warped by all he’d suffered in his youth, the betrayals that had hit him so hard, he couldn’t see the man for the pain of the child. “I’ll have to work fast, though.”

He studied her with that same cautious look in his eyes. “Well, you’ll need to learn to dream big for our children,” she said.

He shied away from the wild hope that statement engendered. “We don’t have to have children.”

She shook her head, her fingers working the remaining buttons on her shirt. Not to redo but to undo. “Of course we have to have children. It would be such a sad world if a little boy of yours wasn’t running around in it. Or if a little girl of yours wasn’t making some male’s life hell.”

His hand cupped her cheek, all callus and strength. She could feel the tremors running through it. Tremors he didn’t want her to see. She’d been right. He did feel. He just kept all that buried deep where it couldn’t be used against him. Inside, more hope blossomed. She was good with hope. And before her was a man that hoped for everything, but expected nothing. Even from herself. Through the connection she could feel him building his defenses, eradicating the moment between them. Because he wanted it so much. She was beginning to understand when he wanted something that badly, he quickly built a wall against the need. He wasn’t going to shut her out.

She slid her hand up his forearm and circled her fingers around his wrist and held on. He could break her hold with a simple twist. He didn’t. “I want your child, Garrett. I want us to have many children together.” She wanted the promise the future held. “As many as we can squeeze into our lives.”

She continued to unbutton the buttons he’d abandoned.

His eyes watched her fingers, and the smile that was never far when he was around tugged at her lips. And the material fell to the side. The flicker of his eyelashes made her smile even more. She glanced down, tracing the trajectory of his gaze with a smile that kept expanding with the emotion releasing inside. There could be more here than just a man and a woman drawn together by desire. There could be a relationship. If they had the courage to reach out and take it. In this case, Garrett didn’t have the courage.

In this, she was the leader. In this, she was the one who knew which way to go. Instead of being unsure, confidence flew through her. She trailed her fingers from her throat down between her breasts, smiling as his gaze followed.

“Know what the nice thing about me deciding to keep you is?”

“You feel comfortable seducing me?”

“Well, there is that.” She shrugged the shirt off her shoulder. It caught at her elbows. Her bra was functional with a minimum of lace. It didn’t matter. She knew it didn’t matter. What Garrett wanted from her didn’t have anything to do with enticement. He wanted a partner. An anchor. He wanted what she wanted; he’d just gone about it in the wrong way. Granted, it was the typical Garrett logic. And that had thrown her for a while, but Garrett wasn’t a typical werewolf. And what he wanted from his mate was more than obedience. She could work with that.

“What else is there?” His much larger, darker finger followed the trail hers had taken. She closed her eyes as the pleasure flowed through her, chased by a trail of goose bumps that caused the corners of his mouth to tip up in his own pleasure.

“The fact that I’m willing to lead.”

“You are?”

She let the shirt fall to the floor, shaking it free as it caught on her wrists. Tucking her hands behind her back, she reached for the hooks on her bra. Only to find his were there ahead of hers.