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She said something that sound a lot like Knull mæ i øret, but in English, and he smiled, closing his eyes, reaching for the strength on which he prided himself.
“Be still,” he murmured, and placed his palm on her belly, letting his thumb slide lower, delving into her tight curls. She was slick, swollen, perhaps as close now as he. He began to move just a little, in and out, flicking his thumb up and down.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Yes.”
And that single word, uttered in a voice he could only describe as woman, made him remember instead of forget.
His hand on another woman’s stomach as they lay in their bed, all tangled in the sheets and each other. Her dreams, his hopes, the argument that had torn them apart, then sent her away.
To her death.
Julian yanked his hand back, and the chill night air burned across his fingers. Yet he could still feel her skin against his palm, and her body drawing from him his seed.
“I can’t,” he croaked.
“You are,” she responded, “and so—” She thrust against him, hard and sure. “—am I.”
Fury flashed, like lightning through the sky above, and in the distance he thought there was thunder. Why wouldn’t the earth shake; why wouldn’t the skies open up and rain down fire? He was fucking another woman, and not just any woman, but the woman.
The one who had killed his wife.
Of course if it hadn’t been for him, Alana would never have been out there alone.
He threw back his head, roaring his fury to the heavens, and she clenched around him, the pulse of her orgasm fueling his own. But in that instant before he spilled everything, a memory sparked.
A boy with his golden hair. A girl with her green eyes. A dream that had become a nightmare through a bizarre combination of love and lies and impossibility.
The thoughts were agony, and Julian snarled again, his beast rumbling so close.
Alex drew his mouth to hers, and right before their lips met, she whispered, “Julian.”
He came in a rush so strong, if he hadn’t had the wall for support he would have fallen. As it was, he lost his grip on sanity, plunging into her, the thud of her spine against the house only fueling the violence within him.
She didn’t seem to mind, clasping him to her, arms wrapped around his back as she took all that he gave, gave all that he took, gasping in his ear, “Again. Again. Again,” to the rhythm of his thrusts.
When he was spent, when she was, he pulled out of her body without meeting her eyes. His hands and feet became paws a mere instant before they hit the ground running as some of the last words his wife had ever said to him rang in his shaggy wolf’s ears requesting the one thing he could never, ever give her.
A child.
“Just like a man,” Alex murmured as Julian’s bushy golden tail disappeared into the darkness. “Get what you want, then shift into a wolf and run away.”
She shook her head as she went inside. Talk about irrational, but then she was. What on earth had possessed her to let Julian Barlow do her against the side of the house?
“I didn’t ‘let’ him do anything.” She sighed as she turned the shower to a temperature just short of scalding. “I begged him to.”
Alex sat on the edge of the tub and took inventory. Bruised ass? Check. Scraped back? Check. Burning, slightly blue feet? Check. Self-esteem at an all-time low?
“Double check.”
She’d never begged for sex in her life; she hadn’t begged for anything except—
“Hell,” Alex muttered, and let her chin fall down to her chest. She was right back where she’d started. Not wanting to remember, but unable to forget that night in Alabama.
The werewolf had come right at her. How she had missed killing it, Alex would never know. The whole night had been a disaster from the instant the beast first appeared. Charlie hesitating, when Charlie never did, and because he did, Alex had done the same.
She’d never made that mistake again.
The water was hot; so Alex climbed in and let the beat of it on her face wash away the grainy tracks of her tears. But the memories would never wash away.
