About Face (Wolf Within) (18 page)

On fire, I watched him. I wanted to scream in frustration because we weren’t touching. All I wanted was his cock buried deep inside me. The four seconds he was away from me seemed like aeons.

With a growl, he leaped on top of me and slid his hand beneath my t-shirt so he could rake his nails across the sensitive skin on my belly. I wriggled my hips to help him strip off my jeans and panties, then he buried his face between my legs, and I dug my fingers into his hair.

His goatee was soft yet bristly against me. This was a new sensation between us. Sensing I liked it, he rubbed his rough cheek against the tender flesh of my thigh and I bucked beneath him.Wickedly expert, he licked me until I screamed. He watched me as I came, even as he continued to suck and swirl his tongue. He had two of his fingers buried inside me, and I wanted more. I needed more.

I loved him so much it ached.

He moved so his body covered mine and looked down at me. I kissed his chin, scraped my tongue across his goatee, and he shuddered.

“I love you,” I whispered. Tears trembled on the edges of my lashes. “I missed you so much.”

“God, I want to be in you so bad. I want to fill you up, feel you come.” He kissed me, and I tasted the dark honey of myself on his lips. We thrashed together on the bed, until I thought I would go crazy.

When he slid into me, we both gasped into each other’s mouths and everything went blurry.

I came again, hard, and he held me as I cried out. Waves and waves of love crashed through me and left me limp. His feverish caresses revived me, and we shifted to our favorite position, with me on my knees, braced against the headboard, him behind me, my hair pulled tight in his fist, my head turned to the side so he could kiss me until I was breathless.

With each thrust, he talked to me in Irish, and I never wanted it to end.

“Come for me, Stanzie,” he coaxed and bit my earlobe, which always sent me over the edge, and he knew it.

I screamed his name, and when I came, he did, too. His whole body shuddered against mine as we collapsed to the mattress, soaked with sweat and out of breath.

Bliss. This was bliss. Perfection.

His weight against me was comforting and wonderful, and I tried not to move so he wouldn’t either.

He whispered something in Irish and stroked my hair. I closed my eyes to savor the sweet afterglow, and when I opened them again, I saw he’d fallen asleep.

My own eyes slid shut, and the last thing I did before sleep claimed me was entwine my fingers with his.

* * * *

Our fingers were still linked when I opened my eyes hours later. The bedroom smelled of sex—of us—and while he wasn’t snoring, Murphy’s breath was slow and heavy, the way I remembered from the nights we’d spent together in America.

For a moment I was filled with such aching happiness I almost expected to levitate off the bed. But then I remembered everything, and black despair bit into me so hard I wondered I didn’t bleed.

He’d rolled off me at some point, but we were still on top of the covers. I let go of his hand and slid off the bed. I found his t-shirt and my panties, put them on and fled to the living room.

The remains of our dinner had congealed on our plates on the table. The lights were still on, and I got as far as the sofas before my legs went out from beneath me and I couldn’t breathe through the tears that poured down my face.

Murphy appeared like a ghost in the bedroom doorway. His eyes were very dark.

“Can we talk about it, Stanzie?”

“What’s to talk about?” I drew one of the throw pillows defensively close to my stomach. I loved him but he didn’t love me. I’d tried so hard not to let that overwhelm me and make peace with it. Of all the people in his life he protected, I was the last on the list and that’s not where I wanted to be. “You chose Paddy and Mac Tire over me, and I guess I get that, but it hurts.”

“I had no idea you loved me.” His tone was raw and desperate. “I thought I was doing the right thing. You didn’t need to be put at risk in this, and I thought I could—”

“Fucking what? Don’t lie to me, Liam. You didn’t want me involved because you’re going to do something stupid to save Paddy and your father. Why should you martyr yourself for them?”

“Paddy came to me for help,” Murphy shouted and the muscles in his face strained as he struggled to regain control. “He had nowhere else to turn, don’t you see? It’s not like I could tell him to go screw himself. He’s my best mate.”

“But it’s okay to tell me to go screw myself, I guess. I’m your bond mate. You wouldn’t come to my tribunal. You threw me out like so much garbage when Paddy told you his problems. And you couldn’t even tell me why. You’re so hell-bent on saving everybody, but it’s always on your terms and you have to be the one to give help—you never want it in return. I would have helped you. I would have done anything for Paddy—he’s my Alpha—but you decided what was best for me in your typical high-handed Liam Murphy fashion, and to hell with what I thought, what I wanted.

“And then tonight you take advantage of the fact I love you so you can, what? Have sex? Haven’t you fucked anyone in four months, or have you just fucked people over?”

His face blanched of all color, and he stared at me, his dark eyes bottomless.

“That wasn’t just sex. Did that feel like just sex to you?”

“No, not to me. I love you. But that’s what it was to you. Will you please leave me alone? I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”

“Stanzie, I know you’re tired, but we’ve got to talk about this.”

“In the morning. Maybe.” I turned away from him because I couldn’t stand to look at the entreaty in his eyes. In a heartbeat I’d be across the floor to him, and fuck that.

He abruptly gave in. “Look, you take the bed, I’ll sleep out here.”

“No, I’ll stay out here.” I was ten seconds from tears, and I wanted him gone so he wouldn’t see.

“Stanzie, take the bed.”

“No,” I shouted, and the damn tears poured down my cheeks. “It smells like
us
in there, don’t you get it? And
us
is a lie. Just let me do what I want, goddamn it.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but then, defeated, retreated and did as I asked.

Chapter 10

She hit me hard the next morning as I scraped the remains of our dinner into the garbage. The plate slipped from my hands and crashed to the tile. I would have fallen, too, except I managed to grab the edge of the counter.

A shocked, agonized cry escaped my lips, and purple fire clawed me from the inside out until I couldn’t breathe.

Murphy skidded around the corner as he frantically pulled up his jeans. His hair was tousled, his eyes wild with fear.

“Stanzie, what’s wrong?” He stepped distractedly around the broken shards of glass and put a hand on my arm. A thin, whistling scream burst out of my lungs at the contact. She clawed at me again, and it took everything I had to push her back down. I was scared shitless.

“Muh-my wolf,” I said between clenched teeth. “She wants out, and I can’t…I don’t think I can hold…her. Mur—phy, God, it hurts. It fucking hurts!”

The fear left his eyes, and he became incredibly calm. This time when he touched me, it didn’t hurt, his fear didn’t infect me. Instead, his touch soothed, and I squeezed my eyes shut in relief. But she clawed at me again, and I tasted blood when my teeth shredded my bottom lip.

“They suh—say she’s nuh-normal now, but I haven’t shifted suh—since I took the elixir. I cuh—can’t shift here, it’s too small. What if I can’t control her? Fuck, this hurts.”

“You’re fighting her,” he told me.

I screamed, “Well, Jesus Christ, of course I am! She can’t come out here. Murphy, where can I go? I can’t stay here.”

“Stanzie.” He took me in his arms and hugged me, and I clung to him so I wouldn’t disintegrate into a ball of cold, tingly, purple flame. The onset of shifting always felt like a cool crackling in my veins. I pictured it as a sweeping purple ball of flame that built higher and higher until I couldn’t contain it any longer.

I moaned aloud and Murphy said, “Just hold on, honey. Can you hold on for forty minutes or so? I can drive you somewhere, but you need to hang on. We can’t have you shifting in the car, can we?”

“I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t know.” I lifted my face beseechingly to his. Of course he didn’t want me to shift in the car, but I had no idea if I could control my wolf and prevent that.

“We’re gonna get dressed, and we’ll leave.” He walked me back to the bedroom and helped me put on my jeans and sandals and he found another shirt. The whole time he talked to me in a calm voice and told me what we were going to do next and how we were going to do it. His voice was melodic and mesmerizing and I focused desperately on it so I could drive out my rising panic. If he hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done.

Donadea Forest Park was approximately thirty miles from Dublin, and Murphy did his best to get me there as fast as he could. We weren’t going there, precisely, from what I understood of Murphy’s explanation. We were going to private Mac Tire land abutting the forest. Murphy told me generations of Pack wolves had hunted there far enough away from the public forest that no Other ever heard a wolf howl. After all, there were no real wolves left in Ireland, just us.

I reclined in the passenger seat, my arms and legs stiff and full of agony, face squeezed tight against the pain of fighting against my wolf.

Once we had to wait for a train to cross the road. I whimpered when I realized we couldn’t get around, and Murphy put the car in park. He smoothed his fingers along the side of my face and through my hair as he whispered it would be okay.

“So when’s the last time you shifted?” he asked in an attempt to distract me.

“The tribunal,” I said. “I tried once after that, but she wouldn’t come out. This was before I drank the elixir.”

“With who?” There was something weird in Murphy’s tone, and I opened my eyes to read his expression, but there was nothing there but concern for me.

I tried to focus, thankful for the distraction and even more grateful for the touch of his hands on my face and in my hair. “Alan. He’s twenty-one, member of Mayflower. When I was there, he asked me to initiate his wolf. It was all fucked up in Mayflower because of Paul. Alan asked me, and I said no because of my wolf. But Scott and Faith, the Alphas—Faith’s my cousin—they convinced me finally to do it. Scott said he’d stay with me and my wolf and Faith could look after Alan. Only Faith couldn’t sleep with Alan because their fathers were in a triad with Alan’s mother and so even though they weren’t the same blood, they were still like brother and sister, you know?”

“I understand.” Murphy’s thumb brushed something wet from my face. Tears. “But she wouldn’t come out?”

“No.” My voice was forlorn. “And your wolf wasn’t there for her, to help her come out.”

He pressed his forehead to mine. “I’m so, so, sorry, Stanzie. But my wolf’s here today for you. And any time you ever want him, okay?”

“I wish I could believe you.” I said. But I couldn’t.

* * * *

Rain drummed on the roof of the car as Murphy drove through huge iron gates that opened when he punched a code onto a keypad. Once past, we stopped briefly at a gatehouse with another checkpoint. This time there was a guard, obviously a member of the pack, who waved us through into a small car park.

Oak trees stretched up to the sky, and beyond the car park I could see the gray gleam of a lake. A long gravel drive led to a fountain and a small castle. Any other time I would have been fascinated by the thought of a real-life castle, but my mind was too crowded by my wolf.

Before Murphy switched off the ignition, I all but ripped off my seatbelt and fell in a heap when I tried to get out of the car. My legs wouldn’t support me because they wanted to shift.

Murphy picked me up into his arms and ran through the pelting rain into the forest. When I screamed at him to put me the fuck down, he did. We both tore at my clothes. My fingers were more like claws, and then…

* * * *

The rain is wet on my fur. I shake it off, but it feels good on me. I am free. I am whole. It is no longer hard to think. That is an oak tree. That is an oak leaf on the ground. Before it fell, it belonged to the tree. On a branch of the oak tree, there is a bird huddled against the raindrops. That bird is a crow. It looks at me and makes a sound. Caw is the sound. I growl, but I only play. I cannot reach the crow in the oak tree and we both know it. He caws at me again, but I do not want to play with him. Crows are not as fun as other wolves. Like me.

I smell him. I smell my Friend, and he is so beautiful. He has silver-gray fur and a white chest. One front paw is white. The others are gray. He has a thick tail he waves very fast because he is with me again. He was gone before, but now he is here. I thought he went away the same as Him and Her, and I was sad, but he did not. He is here.

Once, a long time ago, I ran with Him and Her. Their real names were Grey and Elena. They are dead, but I do not know how they died. One day they were with me when we ran through the forest, and the next time there was only Friend. But he is enough.

My heart beats fast when I look at Friend. He grins at me and waves his tail. His whine is excited. He runs and I run after him. I can run faster and I will beat him. My legs blur beneath me as I stretch into the run. I run so fast he is left behind. I hear him howl behind me and I lift my nose and howl back, but still I run. He chases me. Friend chases. Should I let him catch me? I do not know this forest, it is not mine. I think it must be his, but I can smell there are no roads ahead. No Others. The rain feels so good on my fur. The air is full of good smells. I want to roll in the wet leaves, but if I do, Friend will catch me. Maybe I want him to.

I roll. I roll and make snuffle noises. Friend pounces on me. We roll together. He snaps his teeth at me, he bites my ear, but it does not hurt. I snarl at him, but I am playing. We roll. We roll together. Friend gives me his throat.