Reese took her last bite of cobbler and set her spoon down. “I want the bond,” she said. Axel’s eyes widened. “I want you to claim me.”
His hand tightened around his spoon. “Reese.”
“I know what I’m saying.”
“I need to make sure you do.” His voice was careful now. “The mating bite is permanent. It can’t be taken back if you change your mind. Once I claim you, the bond is forever.”
“I won’t change my mind.” Reese put one hand over her belly. “This is me, choosing you.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
They did the dishes together,the way they had every night since she’d moved in. Axel washed, and Reese dried beside him. A record played on the turntable across the room. Out the window, Main Street was going dark, the shop signs blinking off one block at a time. Her jar of green onions sat on the windowsill by the table, the cut ends having grown back green over the rim. She’d started it on her own sill months ago and carried it here after they’d survived that night at the cabin.
When the last dish was put away, they got ready for bed. She slid under the covers and settled against his chest. Her new pregnancy book sat on the nightstand on her side. Her clothes hung in the closet next to his. She let herself relax against him in the dim lamplight. This was the kind of night she had never had before coming to Fate Mountain. In the quiet warmth, she was no longer braced to run.
His hand moved along her back, tracing lazy lines.
“It’s strange to think about,” she said. “That out of everyone in the world, it was always going to be you.”
“For years I waited for that hundred percent. Turns out, I was just waiting for you to show up.” He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head. “I’d have waited a lot longer.”
“It scared me,” she said. “The whole idea of the bond. That it was permanent. It felt like one more thing that could just happen to me. Whether I agreed to it or not.”
“I know.” His voice was low above her. “I understood that then. I understand it better now. All I ever wanted was to make it something you got to choose.”
She lay quiet for a moment, listening to his heart.
“I’m ready,” she said. “After everything... I know what I want now. It’s you. I want the bond.”
He shifted so he could see her face. “Before I bite you,” he said, “I want you to know exactly what it does. The bite makes the bond permanent. Once it’s done, it can’t be undone.” His thumb caressed her hip. “But it’s more than that. It opens us all the way up to each other. You’ll feel what I feel. I’ll feel what you feel. We’ll be able to read each other’s thoughts. There won’t be anything hidden between us, not on either side.”
Reese lay still, thinking it over. Her marriage to Wade had taught her to hide what she felt, to give nothing away that could be turned into a weapon against her. What Axel was describing was the opposite of that. To be known all the way down to her core, by someone she trusted to know her that deeply.
That was the part she wanted most.
“There’s one more thing,” he said. “There’s a second bite, one that would turn you into a wolf. I’m telling you because you should have the whole picture. But it’s not on the table. You’repregnant. I wouldn’t change you right now, even if you wanted me to.”
She nodded. “That’s something we can talk about again after Elsie is born.”
His hand settled low on her belly. “If I claim you tonight, it reaches her. I’ll bond with her too.” He held Reese’s eyes. “Not as a stepfather. Not as a man who’s bonded to her mother. As her true father. And she’ll feel it too.”
Reese went still against him.
“I grew up belonging to no one,” he said, quieter now. He looked at his hand where it rested over the baby. “After I claim you, I’ll belong to both of you.”
Her eyes stung. She hadn’t known, until he said it, that this was the thing she’d wanted most.
“I want that,” she said, her voice thick. “I want us to be a family. I want to be bonded to you for life.”
He kissed her, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head. When she opened for him, his tongue slid against hers. He tasted like mouthwash and Axel. He kissed her deeply until her breath went ragged and her fingers curled in his shirt. Heat bloomed low in her belly, and her nipples tightened. Desire flooded between her legs, and she ached to be touched. When he drew back, the look on his face made her chest hurt.
She sat up and pulled her shirt over her head. He watched her do it, and then he undressed himself too, dropping it all off the side of the bed. He lay back down, his naked body hot against her bare skin. He kissed her mouth, her jaw, the soft place under her ear, and she ran her fingers through his dark hair.
He gently took a nipple into his mouth, working it with his tongue while his hand cupped and kneaded the other. The pull of it sent a flood straight between her legs. He moved from one nipple to the other and back until she was breathing hard and pushing up toward his mouth. Then he kissed down her chest and along the curve of her belly. His hands then slid down to open her thighs.
She had spent four years making herself small and unreadable so no one could use what she felt against her. Now she lay open under a man who wanted to feel everything she felt, and it was everything she wanted. Forever.
