Page 35 of A Wolf in the Garden

He doesn’t waste any time, gripping my hips, slamming into me again and again, his heavy balls — bigger than a human man’s — swinging forward to hit my clit with each thrust. At this angle he hits my G spot just right, and my toes curl at the force of it all, all this frantic fucking. I love that I do this to him, love that I bring out the wilder side of his nature.

As if on cue, he leans forward, his body covering mine, his large hands resting over my small wrists. “You were made for me,” he says, grunting with the force of each thrust, the sounds we’re both making obscenely loud. “You were made to be mine.”

“Yes!” I cry.

“Mine.”

“Yours!”

With a roar and a final thrust his knot pushes into place, setting off an orgasm that rips through me hard and fast, leaving me shaking and panting against the bed, moaning incoherently. My cunt pulses around him, his hot cum filling me once more, making me wonder how much fluid can actually fit inside.Evidently quite a lot.

Slowly, carefully, he manoeuvres us back into our original spooning position. My heart races, thunderous in my ears. I’m wide awake, and when his hand curls around to finger my clit, I lean into the sensation despite the sensitivity, the words out of my mouth growing more and more incoherent until I’m coming again, spasming around his knot, squeezing it tight and making him hiss against my ear.

When I’ve caught my breath, I turn my head towards him. “Feels good?”

“You coming around my knot?Yes.It’s indescribable. If I could spend the rest of my life just buried inside you here, I’d be a happy man.”

“I’m so happy, right now.” I say it without thinking, the admission a little more vulnerable than I planned on being. It’s one thing to open your legs to your ex, it’s another thing entirely to open your heart up again, but here I am, doing just that.

“I am too,” he says without missing a beat. “Being with you is the best, baby.”

I pull his arm tight around me, pressing my nose to his skin, breathing in the scent of him. It’s shocking, just how many memories can rise back to the surface from a familiar smell alone. Now in the aftermath, with the urgency between us settled for the moment, the haunting questions come to mind once more.If being with me is the best, why did you stay away for nine years?

* * *

When his knot pulls free for the second time I finally make my way to the bathroom, dashing across the room with my hand cupped between my legs in a desperate attempt to catch the flood of cum, his laughter following behind me. After a quick rinse in the shower I fall asleep in his arms, my head on his shoulder, my leg thrown over his.

Dawn has come and gone by the time I wake once more, and the room is bright in the light of the morning. This time I straddle his lap, and he rises on his knees, fucking into me while I hold on for dear life, my arms flung around his neck and his grunts hot against my ear. He cleaves me in two and pulls me apart, every whisper of “Mine,” and “That’s it, baby,” and “So fucking beautiful,” a hook that sinks into my heart just as he sinks into my flesh. When I come around his knot it is with his lips on mine, a moan into his mouth, his tongue against my teeth.

The aftermath is for slow kisses, for staring into his amber eyes, for learning the lines on his face that weren’t there before. There’s a scar on his shoulder, jagged and silver against his olive skin, and another on his right arm, an old puncture wound. “Seth bit me on his first shift,” he murmurs lazily as I draw a circle around it with my finger, his voice betraying just a hint of melancholy at the mention of his estranged younger brother, still connected to his father’s pack. “It was my fault for getting in the way.”

I lie atop him, his hand stroking my hair, listening to thetuising outside the window. I laugh as I recognise the odd sound in the middle of it’s song, and Van pauses his gentle touches. “What is it?”

“Listen. Can you hear the beeps, like a car unlocking? They mimic everything they hear; yourtuibirds here probably listen to people’s cars all day with all the visitors coming and going.”

His chest shakes under me in a silent laugh. “Why did you have to point that out? Now that’s all I’m going to focus on every time they sing. And they sing every damn morning.”

“You’re lucky. You have lots ofharakekeflax on your property, and they’re all in bloom. The native birds love them.” I yawn, pressing a kiss to his chest. “I put a lot of native trees and plants into the garden design for you. Lots of flowering ones for the birds and the bees.Manuka,kowhai,ngutu kaka.”

“I saw that in the plans.” His hands roam down to my buttocks, skimming over my flesh, reaching between my thighs to touch where we remain joined. “There’s a joke to be made here about the birds and the bees, I’m sure, but I’m too tired to think about it.”

“Hmm.” I close my eyes, relaxing against him, enjoying the warmth of his body. I’m too awake to snooze, and as time passes the worries from yesterday begin to creep in, licking at my brain.

“Tell me what’s going on in that mind of yours,” Van requests quietly, and I lift my head, wide-eyed.

“Can you read minds?”

His lips twitch. “No, but I can hear better than you can. Your heart rate began to spike.”

I am speechless for a moment, and I’m pretty sure my heart rate just spiked even more. “There’s so much I don’t know,” I whisper. “It terrifies me.”

“I will answer every question you have as best as I can. And I will keep you safe.” He brushes a lock of hair back from my forehead. “If there’s something I don’t know, we can find out the answers together.”

There’s that twisting, bruised feeling in my chest again. “I haven’t relied on anyone in a long time,” I tell him, not exactly sure what I’m trying to say, or how to say it.I want to trust you. I’m so scared to trust you. I need to trust you, I don’t have anybody else.

He stares at me for some time, far longer than comfortable, really, and when he says, “I know,” I’m almost certain he’s seen through my flimsy defences, to the crux of the matter, to my heart that wants so badly to be mended by the very same person that tore it to pieces. Am I scared about the fae that seem to be after me? Yes, of course, but I’m equally as terrified by the way I’m falling so quickly again, this hope in my chest threatening to take flight, to take me too close to the sun where I could very well get burned.

There’s a lump in my throat and a sting at the back of my eyes as I lay my head down once more, listening to Van’s heart, the steady drum of it strong against the backdrop of crashing waves and birdsong. His arms wrap tight around me, even as a traitorous stray tear pools under my cheek, cool against his hot skin.

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