Page 58 of Shadow of Death

“More,” I said, gripping him. He thrust deep into me, and I met each stroke like we were two savage beasts feeding after being starved for a month.

His mouth was on my neck and then shifted to my breast; he gripped my hips as he continued to thrust into me. I exploded around him.

He grabbed my hips, flipping me over. “Get on your hands and knees,” he commanded.

I did what he said, and his cock teased my entrance, setting me on fire all over again. He held me in place when I tried to move backward, trying to get him to fill me. He leaned over me, wrapping my hair around his fist and tugging my head back.

“You. Are. Mine. I don’t care what anyone else says. Mine.”

I’d held him at bay so long that now nothing short of an utter claiming would do, on either part. I was sick of pushing himaway, letting him act or think like he was a free man. He wasn’t. He was mine every bit as much as I was his. I’d bartered away my life to save him, and I hadn’t done it so he could go off with someone else.

He rocked into me so hard my body was shoved forward, filling me with a thrust so fast and hard I was on the verge of coming again. He pumped into me a few more times and I exploded.

I lay in bed, watching Kicks stare out the window.

“I’ll survive. Whatever they give me, I’ll survive it,” I said, sitting up in bed, hoping I sounded even remotely as confident as I pretended. It wasn’t like promising to study for an English test, though. Making assurances that you’d pass the tests of gods wasn’t exactly a sure thing.

“I know,” he said.

Except he knew nothing. Neither of us did. Were we now to the point it was so bad we were lying to each other? It was becoming kinder to pretend.

He walked back to bed, every glorious inch of him, and then pulled me against him.

I put my head on his chest, feeling his heat, hearing his heartbeat. I ran a hand over his skin. This was all I’d wanted for so long, and I had no idea how he’d even come to be the man he was. How was he such a good person and yet related to such vile shifters? How could a man like his father, capable of killing so many, also be capable of creating a man like Kicks?

“How did you end up in Arkansas?”

He laughed softly, toying with my hair. “You mean how did I escape becoming one of them?”

So much for hiding my curiosity in bland questions. “It’s just that you aresodifferent.”

“My father had a charming side when he wanted to, and my mother was young and naïve. He’d mated with her before she realized who he was. By the time she began to figure it out, she was already pregnant. Still, she didn’t want me raised around him, so when she realized she was pregnant, she fled this place. She knew that if she didn’t get out then, she’d never break free.

“She didn’t even tell him he had a son until I was ten. An attack of conscience at some point. Time has a way of easing the bad memories and leaving just the good. It was too late at that point to force me to go back there. She had a new pack that would’ve gone to war if my father tried to force it. They came to an agreement that I’d go to Scotland for a month every so often. I guess it wasn’t enough to corrupt me,” he said with a laugh.

“So you grew up with the Arkansas pack?”

“Yes. She’d remated to the alpha of that pack. He was a good man. They both died during a virus outbreak when I was about fifteen, and then the pack raised me after that.”

I wouldn’t have thought that would be ideal, but seeing how so many pitched in with Charlie, I could see it still being a good life.

“Your father didn’t try to get you to stay in Scotland when you came?”

“He did, but it wasn’t my home and I was too old to be dictated to at that point.”

“But you were just a kid?”

“Yeah, but a strong-willed one, and Arkansas was my home.”

“It’s a good home.”

“And it’s yours, too,” he said, idly toying with another lock of hair and then trailing a hand down my arm. “Even in all this chaos around here, something feels like it’s calmed in you.”

He was right. Even here, with this mess, I felt more like me than I had in months. “It feels like the darkness has subsided. Like it’s there, but it feels contained somehow, like I’m not worried about it breaking loose and killing people all the time. It’s as if its grip has eased.” I looked at the foot of the bed, where my wolf had just appeared, settling in by my feet.

“Do you think it’s because Death has blocked some of your abilities?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s different.”

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