Page 28 of Operation Wolf: Eli
“Come for me,” I growled, sliding a finger into her ass the way I knew she liked and pressing against the sensitive spot just inside there. “I need to hear you come again.”
“Oh God,” she gasped as I fucked her even harder, her entire body vibrating with the motion.
I watched as the orgasm hit her while she threw her head back and cried out to the heavens, her inner walls pulsating around me, and it was all too much. I felt the wave of my climax approach, and my entire field of vision went white, hitting me with the force of an oncoming car. Colors exploded in front of my eyes, swirling kaleidoscopes, seeming to coalesce into two separate figures drawn together like magnets and then merging as one, drawing all the colors into a big sphere that eventually burst into shimmering light.
I knew immediately what the light show meant from what a shifter friend had explained to me about what happened to him when he found his mate and what Gunner had detailed to me when he first had sex with Celine.
It’s a sign that Olivia is my true mate.
But I’d already figured out that shit years ago. The kaleidoscope of lights just confirmed the fact.
Groaning, I came, crying out her name in release.
When we were done, we both collapsed on the grass, breathing hard.
“I guess we’re not returning this picnic blanket,” I joked, using it to dispose of the condom and to wipe my hands.
“I have a feeling they weren’t expecting it back anyway.” She turned her head my way and smiled contentedly. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, strands of it stuck to her flushed, sweaty face, but she was radiant, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen someone so lovely.
“You’re beautiful,” I murmured, leaning down to kiss her. “So incredibly beautiful.”
We lay in the grass for a long while before the breeze began to take on a chill, forcing us to don our clothes.
“Guess we ought to head back,” she said, packing up the picnic basket. “Those clouds coming in might rain on us soon.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed the picnic basket and blanket with one hand. Then I took her hand in my other and led her back down the path. “We should beat the rain if we get going now.”
We walked beneath the canopy of trees in comfortable silence for a long while before Olivia spoke. “I was thinking about what you said earlier . . . about the ham and local meat and stuff. And it sounds to me like you’ve been here before. Am I right?”
“Well, not here, specifically, but yes.” I nodded. “I was stationed in St. Albans in my second year in the Army. Stayed there nearly two years before I was reposted in New Mexico. New Mexico was one of my favorite places, I have to admit.”
Her eyes softened. “Would you have eventually chosen to come back here on your own?”
I looked out onto the water, considering. “Maybe. Probably,” I said. But I wasn’t sure that was the truth. Wasn’t sure I would have been content to leave Olivia forever, even if all I’d been able to do in Chicago was watch her from afar. “But I would have missed Chicago.”
She frowned now, her eyes suddenly dark. “You never should have come back.”
I was taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. “Now, look, I know you’re upset about the way things turned out—”
She shook her head forcefully, cutting me off. “I saw what the Outfit was doing to you,” she bit out, ripping her hand away from mine in a motion that hurt far more than the bite in her tone. “The way it was eating at your conscience and your morals and the danger you were putting yourself in. I couldn’t let you do it to yourself anymore. So, why, after all the hard work we put into getting you out, would you insult everything we did by coming back?” she shouted. “I just don’t understand it, Eli.”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping. I knew Olivia was right. She was the one who had come up with the plan for getting me enlisted in the Army to get me out of the Mafia. Something I never would have considered had she not been so insistent. I’d never wanted to leave her, but the truth was that it had been best for the both of us. Her father never would have condoned our relationship had he found out about it, and the mob life had been taking a toll on our connection as well. We had been secretly seeing each other in high school, and we were passionately in love with each other. But we had to hide our relationship from her parents because they had labeled me as a no-good street thug. Touching Olivia after I’d had blood or drugs on my hands was never easy, and the knowing look in her eyes always told me she knew the hands that touched her were soiled by unspeakable acts. The fact that she’d allowed me to continue to touch her was as true a testament to her love for me as anything was.
“You know my mother died a few years ago, right?”
Olivia frowned. “No, no one ever told me.”
“Well, I was abroad when it happened,” I said in a clipped voice. “She died very suddenly from a stroke, and I was in the middle of a war, so I didn’t hear about it until months later. By that time, she’d already been buried, and I wasn’t in a position to come home.” I scrubbed a hand across my face. “I know I could have gone anywhere, but when I got out, the first place I came to was my mother’s grave to pay my respects.” Old grief and anger welled up inside me, but I choked them back. “I should have been there for her when she passed,” I whispered. “Not off fighting a war I never even believed in.”
“Oh, Eli.” Olivia stopped on the trail and pulled me into her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
As she stroked her hands up and down my back, I remained rigid, unwilling to let the emotion spill forth. But eventually, I relaxed into her arms and buried my face in her hair, allowing the grief to drain out of me.
“I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I said gruffly, but there was no malice in my words. “You’d moved on from my life to live your own. I didn’t expect you to keep tabs on my mother.”
Olivia pulled back, shaking her head. “You know I never really forgot about you,” she said, reaching up to place her hand against my cheek. “I used to hope that maybe, one day, I’d run into you during my travels,” she said, a blush stealing across her cheeks as she glanced away. “That maybe I’d see you in your Army fatigues, looking all dangerous and sexy, and we’d fall into each other’s arms again and run off into the sunset, away from the Outfit, my father, and everything else.”
I chuckled, touched by her admission. “That’s got to be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said.
I turned my head so I could press a kiss into the heart of her palm. She smiled then, and a weight lifted from my shoulders that I hadn’t known was there. A weight of grief, guilt, and shadows that had evaporated as soon as I cleared the air between us.
“Let’s head back,” I said, taking her hand in mine again. “If we make it in time, we can watch the rain from the windows and sip some hot chocolate.”
She grinned. “Boy, you sure do know how to show a girl a good time.”
