Page 60 of Scapegoat

“Fated mates do that all the time,” he said. “In packs all over the world. This doesn’t have to be a big thing.”

But it was, for us: he and I both knew that. As I reached out to undo his shirt buttons, it was the first time I’d been able to do that. I half expected his parents or mine to leap out, but it’d been two years since I’d seen any of them. They couldn’t touch us here. And so, I was free to touch him.

Jay sucked in a breath as I pushed his shirt open, sliding my hands over his taut stomach, only for the muscles to bunch and shift as I grazed my fingers across them. He tugged his shirt off, baring himself to me and I took in everything he had to offer. It felt breathtakingly selfish, to trace the shape of his body, to watch him take short breaths, growing shorter so that he was almost panting as I reached for his belt buckle. Then it just felt good, so fucking good, to be able to undo his belt.

After a long, hot, smelly, shitty day, Jay was totally and utterly transfixed by me, his hands shifting, stroking through my hair, cupping my jaw until I eased his zipper down. I stared into his eyes, not following the trail of my hand as I pushed his jeans down over his hips, his hard cock slapping against his stomach the minute it was freed. His gasp in reaction shook us both out of our reverie.

“OK, enough of this,” he said, turning off the taps before toeing off his boots as he stripped me naked, then picking me up before I could protest and dumping me into the water. But I wasn’t going in there alone. He slotted in behind me, the warm water sluicing over the two of us. “This is what I wanted.”

He tugged me closer, forcing me to lie back against him, but I didn’t put up much of a fight. Because I wanted it too, so fucking much.

“I dreamed of this,” he continued. “Every fucking night. Not the hot stuff, though I woke up hard to plenty of that, but this.” His wet hand trailed hot water down my arm. “Like it was just me and you again, but this time a little different.” He hunched over me, creating a big, hot shelter for me to relax into. “That you were a woman and I was a man.”

A gentle kiss was pressed to my neck at that, and he chuckled when I shivered in response. He didn’t press his advantage though, instead he grabbed the soap from the dish set up beside the tub and then lathered it up between his big hands. I watched him like it was some kind of miracle equivalent to turning water to wine, rather than just soap to suds and while I was covered modestly enough by a wreath of bubbles, that did nothing to save me when he thrust his hands in the water. Not to scrub his own skin. Well, not at first. Instead he rubbed that soap all over my body.

He achieved his goal. My eyes kept darting to the bathroom door, still waiting for our parents or the alphas to come busting in. But they didn’t. We were about as far away from any of them as we could be. So it was just the two of us. It was Jay whose breath hitched the minute he touched me with his sudsy hands. Jay who moved those hands in long, slow strokes, taking the time to wash all the grime from my hands, though the residue of lanolin from the sheep’s fleece made that more of a challenge. Jay who finally put down the soap, once we were both clean, who used those same hands to create magic.

He pushed me forward, my hair dripping points of water into the bath as his fingers went to work, all of the strength of an alpha deployed in massaging my shoulders. My muscles melted under his care, turning me from stiff and sore to loose and languid.

“Fuck, those little noises you make…”

I wanted him always like that, his voice raspy and desperate. Galvanised, I surged up out of the water, a lazy smile on my face as I turned around, placing my hands on either side of the bath as I leaned over him.

“What about those noises?” I asked. He took a moment to reply, his eyes dropping down to stare at my breasts, but he forced them back up again. “What about those noises, Jay?”

“You’ve made them ever since you were little,” he forced out, his eyes wide as they met mine. “When you liked something, when it made you happy.” He made himself relax back against the rim of the bath. “It felt like I made it my life’s work, to notice what got you making those noises and to see if I could get you to do that again.” He smiled as he tilted his head slightly to watch me more closely. “It’s all I fucking wanted: to make you happy, Kai.”

“You were making me happy when you pulled my hair every time I put it in pigtails?” I asked, sliding closer.

“Well, now—”

“It made you happy to stick your foot out every time I was wearing a new dress, to see if you could get me to fall headfirst and mess it up?”

“OK, but you hated those—”

“You were making me happy by pinching and punching me every first day of the month, for years,” I said, gathering steam. “You were making me happy by stamping on my brand-new shoes. You—”

He pressed a finger to my lips, stopping me from saying anything as he stared at me, that smile of his flickering in and out like a flame in the wind.

“You,” he said simply. “You were at the heart of each of those stories. Was I a little dickhead who didn’t know what the fuck to do with the beautiful fae-like creature who was the centre of his world? Damn right I was, but I was always focussed on you.” He hauled me closer by shoving his hands in my armpits and I instinctively squirmed, expecting him to start a damn tickle fight, but instead he pulled me closer to deposit me on his lap.

Oh.

Just what I wanted from him throbbed, long and hard.

“If you think that, based on my childhood antics, I don’t know what the fuck to do with my girl, well…” He sighed. “You might be right.”

One hand went out, cupping the back of my neck to draw my head down, but he didn’t need to guide me. We were like two magnets. Sure, sometimes we were switched the same way so our polarity would repulse each other. But other times? Both of us reached for the other, not feeling whole until we were together, like this.

Jay waited with rapt attention as he drew me closer and closer, his focus flicking between my lips and my eyes, making it clear I was his entire world, and that was ridiculously seductive. So I slid closer and his hands slapped down on my hips as he let out a pained little moan, because my seam slid along his length. I traced the shape of his mouth, that was usually running a mile a minute, laughing, joking, telling wild stories, saying something, anything any time there was a gap in conversation. Except for now because he had shut the fuck up and was listening to me. To my body, my movements, trying to ascertain my intentions, and then I brushed my mouth against his.

He was a fucking alpha, so he let me take the driver’s seat for 2.5 seconds, before his hands whipped up from the water to hold my face, to direct the kiss. I wasn’t going anywhere. Not when he deepened the kiss, not when we both made little noises of pleasure. Not when I tasted him and he tasted me, our mouths hungry in ways we were still trying to come to terms with, not just in our bodies but also in our hearts, until there was a sharp knock on the door.

“Ah… dinner’s ready,” Xavier said, forcing the two of us apart.

“We don’t need food, do we?” Jay asked, going back for more, but I pressed a hand to his chest.

“Another evening without dinner?” I looked over my shoulder and down my body. “Is my bum too big now or something?”

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