The Wolf's Mate Book 7: Lindy & The Wulfen (8 page)

“This is cleansing paste for your teeth.  It’s made from fairymint and is milder tasting than what you are used to.”  He touched the top of a small jar with a wooden toothbrush next to it.  A mirror hung over the sink, and she saw the two of them together.  He was taller than her five-feet-six by at least eight inches, lean and muscular where she was curved and soft.  Her mind began to compare them, casting doubts on the truemating that he seemed so certain of.  Her wolf snarled the worries away.  Each minute that passed made her more aware of a connection between them that was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.

He pointed out the tub.  It was huge and oval shaped and appeared to be carved out of the wall.  The black stone was polished so it shone like glass.  It was at least big enough for two people.  His fingertips skimmed down the backs of her arms as he whispered in her ear, “That’s not where we’re going to bathe today, Lindy.”

She shivered from head to toe.  “No?”

“Another time yes, but not today.”

He pulled towels from a shelf along one wall and grabbed a bar of soap from the counter that was white streaked with pink, tucking the bundle under one arm.  He took her hand and tugged her out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and into a hallway.  Another, smaller, bedroom was across the hall and was empty except for a rocking chair made of bent tree branches.

The main room had a sofa made out of an animal hide that she was betting was from an animal she’d never heard of before.  A low table, made of a polished section of tree trunk, sat in front of the sofa.  She noticed there were no lamps or overhead lights, only candles, lanterns, and sconces.  When he showed her the kitchen, which contained another sink with a lever for the water source, a cook-top stove with some sort of oil underneath the burners, and a fridge carved of stone, she knew she’d never been inside a home like this before.

“You don’t have electricity?”

He leaned against the small square table.  “No.  We don’t have vehicles, either.”  At her confused look, he smiled and said, “We use horses and carriages.  I’ve heard that women from the Mortal Realm tend to think of it as quaint.”

At the mention of other women, her wolf growled in jealousy.  Crimson’s eyes widened, and he shook his head, pulling her into his arms and placing a kiss on her forehead.  “I didn’t mean that I’ve brought any women from the Mortal Realm here, sweetling, but there are women from your realm here that are mated to fae.”  His hands stroked up and down her back, and the tension eased from her.  His voice lowered into a whisper, “Do you think I’d be so crass as to mention something of that nature so casually?  There will be time to talk about our pasts, but not now.”

She nodded as a knot of fear lodged in her stomach.  What would he think about her past?  The way that she had tried so hard to fuck her way into a mating with a highly ranked male?  And, worse, the way that no male of worth in her pack had wanted anything to do with her?  Shame filled her.  She wished she could go back in time and save herself for Crimson, so she could be just his.

He tipped her chin up, frowning.  She felt like he could read her mind, and she was ashamed of all that she’d done.  He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, tracing the edge.  “Your past doesn’t matter to me, Lindy.  Our life together began the moment I picked you up in my arms.  Whatever you did before only matters in the sense that it shaped you into the beautiful woman in my arms and brought us together.  Whatever is troubling you, let it go.  Nothing  —
nothing
— will ever change the fact that we are truemates and meant to be together.  Do you understand?”

Relieved tears stung her eyes, and she blinked quickly and nodded.  He kissed her, just once, a simple press of his lips to hers.  Picking up the bundle he had set on the table, he took her hand and led her to the front door.  He stepped into a pair of leather shoes that reminded her of moccasins and told her to do the same with a slightly smaller pair that he said he had purchased earlier in the week when he knew he was going to find his truemate.

“It’s not far to the hot springs, I thought we could walk,” he said, opening the door and ushering her out.  The sun was setting, turning the sky a pretty gold color.

“How long was I unconscious for?”

“Past lunch, why?”

“It just seems early for the sun to be setting,” she mused.

“I suppose it is for your realm, but things are different here in the Fae Realm.  You’ll get used to it.”

She paused, and he stopped to look down at her.  “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been gone almost a day?”

“Not quite.  Why?”

“Do my friends even know that you took me?”  She knew that Faith would never have left her if she were injured.  She would have stayed right by her side no matter what.

He looked uncomfortable.  “I told the woman who was with you that I was going to take care of you.  You were bleeding to death so I just broke the trap and took you through the portal back to my realm.”

Alarm filled her.  “I have to let them know I’m okay!”  She turned to run back into the house, but he grabbed her arm.

“It’s not as if you can use one of those cell phones to call them, Lindy.  We’re in a different
realm
.”

The way he said realm made her feel like she’d been taken to another planet.  “You brought me here.  Take me back.”

His eyes narrowed, and his body tensed.  “I will not.”  His eyes began to change color, and his lips pulled back in a possessive snarl.  “You’re mine.”

She frowned and tried to step away from him, but his grip on her arm prevented her from moving.  “I didn’t say I wasn’t yours, Crimson, but my friend Faith was with me, and she’s probably worried sick.”

He relaxed fractionally, but his eyes stayed red mixed with green.  “It’s too late.  In the morning, I’ll take you back so you can reassure your friends that you’re safe, and then we’ll come back.”

Suspicion roared inside her.  She stepped away and pulled her arm free of his hand.  “Why are you acting as if I’m going to live here forever?”

He frowned.  “We’re truemates.  Where else would you live?”

“In my house in my realm.”

The elation she’d felt since she’d realized that Crimson was her mate was evaporating quickly.  He closed the distance between them with one step, his body brushing against hers.  “Don’t be upset, Lindy.  I hadn’t really thought any further than you being here with me.”

Well, things
had
moved pretty quickly over the last day.  “I have a job, friends, my pack, my mom…all of that is back in the Mortal Realm.  Right now I don’t know you well enough to say that I want to be here permanently.”

He seemed to will himself to calm down as she watched the red slowly fade from his green eyes.  “I’ll take you back tomorrow morning for a few hours so you can speak to whoever you need to.  But promise to come back here with me for a few days, and then we can spend time in your realm.  Maybe you’ll want to live here instead, or maybe I’ll want to live there.”  He placed one hand on her neck and stroked his thumb along her jaw.  “We have the rest of our lives, Lindy.  We don’t have to make any decisions today.”

She stared into his eyes and felt the truth of his words.  He was an interesting mixture of possessive wolf and honorable gentleman.

“I promise we can come back here for a while.  I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions,” she said.

“I’m sorry I gave you a reason to do so.”  He picked up her hand and kissed it.  “Let’s go relax.”

They walked away from the house on a stone path that led to a paved road.  Crossing the road, they stepped onto another stone path and followed it across a narrow strip of thick grass until they passed into woods.  The trees were thick and tall, with white-and-gray-striped bark.  Her hand tightened in his as they moved deeper into the woods, and her wolf was on alert, but she felt safe with Crimson and knew that he would protect her.

Because they were truemates.

Chapter 10

Crimson didn’t expect to find anyone at the hot springs.  Most of the warriors used the springs after training to soothe overused muscles, and training for the day had ended several hours earlier.  Some of his fellow warriors were mated, however, and it wasn’t uncommon for males to bring their females to the springs to bathe from time to time.

The springs came into view, and Lindy’s appreciative gasp was music to his ears.  Steam rose from the surface of the water.  Smooth, multi-colored stones edged the pool, and thick grass surrounded it.  The bottom of the pool was made of fine, black sand.

He put the towels and bar of honeysuckle soap down on one of the stones and stepped from his shoes.  Tugging his shirt over his head, he folded it and set it on the grass then turned her to face him.  His beast practically pranced as her eyes dropped immediately to his bare chest and darkened with pleasure.

“The springs have been here for millennia.  The water has healing properties.  When I first trained with the military, some of the old soldiers said that water nymphs used to come here at night and dance naked on the surface.”

She glanced at the water and then back to him with a smile.  “Was that so the young recruits would spend the night hiding, hoping to see naked nymphs?”

He chuckled.  “How did you know?”

She smiled.  “When I first shifted, my grandfather and some of his friends took me and some of my cousins out to teach us to hunt.  He said we were going to hunt ‘snipe’, which he assured us was a tasty, easy-to-catch bird.  The three of us stood there in our wolf forms, waiting for the adults to chase the birds out of the shrubs, but instead they came racing out banging wooden spoons on metal pots, yelling that the snipe were getting away.  My cousins and I raced around trying to find these elusive birds, but no matter how many times the adults told us where they were, we never saw them. Eventually we heard the adults laughing and realized that the ‘snipe hunt’ was just for fun.  Apparently snipe aren’t real.”

He liked hearing about her past even though he could tell that she was ashamed of something.  He didn’t think she was a virgin, so he assumed she’d had many partners and thought he would be put off by that.  He wasn’t, because he was no innocent either.  As long as she understood they were each other’s only from now on, her past — and his as well — was going to remain exactly that.  In the past.

He reached for the hem of her top, and she made a startled sound and stepped back. “What are you doing?”

He jerked his head toward the water.  “Taking care of you.”

She bit her lower lip with her top teeth.  His wolf growled at the sight.  “I, uh, you’re going to see me naked?”

Aw, his mate was shy.

“I’ve already seen you naked,” he pointed out.  “When you shifted, I saw your beautiful, creamy white skin and the soft curves that make my hands ache with the need to touch.”  He played his fingers along her neck, and she shivered.  “I can see you naked anytime I want.”

Her eyes narrowed.  “Excuse me?”

“Sure.  In my head, see?”  He closed his eyes.  “Oh yeah, there you are.  Naked.  Naked and all mine.”

She slapped him playfully on the arm and laughed.  “Crimson!”

He opened his eyes and captured her face between his hands.  Lowering his mouth, he brushed his lips against hers and felt like crowing to the sky when her lips parted on a sigh and she leaned against him.  He slipped his tongue into her mouth and touched hers, deepening the kiss.  He dropped one hand from her face to her waist, pulling her closer as their tongues slid together in an erotic dance.  The scent of her arousal pulsed in the air around them, and he wanted to strip her bare and make love to her right there on the bank of the hot springs.

Leashing his wolf, he pulled away from the drugging kiss.  Her eyes were closed and her lips were swollen and parted, her cheeks pink with a blush.  He didn’t want to make love to her for the first time outside where someone might see them.  He was going to treat her right and continue to take care of her, no matter how badly his wolf panted.

He hadn’t laced his trousers earlier, so he simply pushed them down his legs and stepped out of them, tossing them toward his shirt and shoes.  From the tension in her body, he could tell she was trying not to look at his cock.  Part of him wanted her to look and touch and do whatever else her mind could dream up.  But not here.  This time she didn’t protest when he pinched the hem of the shirt in his fingers and lifted it up her body.  He swore the woods around them went quiet as he tugged the shirt over her head and dropped it to the grass, and unlike her, he had no qualms about staring at his mate’s perfect body.

His eyesight was quite sharp thanks to his wolf, and he could see her as clearly as if it were daytime.  The full heaviness of her breasts.  The sleek curve of her waist.  His gaze drank her in like a man dying of thirst.  He’d truly never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.  Everything about her spoke to him on a cellular level.

“How did I get so lucky?”  He kissed her once, knelt to grab the bar of soap and a small cloth, and then straightened, taking her hand.

She didn’t answer, but a glance at her told him she was pleased he liked the way she looked.  He pulled her with him a few feet to where a set of steps had been carved into the rocks, and he stepped down into the water.

“Oh,” she said in surprise as she moved down to the first step.  “It’s perfect.”

He agreed, and not just about the water.  She mirrored him as he slowly moved down into the water and out into the pool.  At the deepest end it was almost ten feet deep and under a foot deep at the shallowest end.  He stopped when the water was above his waist.  He cast his hearing out to make sure they were still alone, and when his wolf was satisfied that no one else was around, he ducked under the water and urged her to do the same.

As she surfaced, smoothing her hair back with her hands, the moonlight caught the water on her body, and she looked exactly as he’d pictured the water nymphs looking like all those years ago.  His wolf rose up inside him quickly, and the need to mark her and make her his forever was almost too hard to ignore.  He fought the urge to turn her around and sink his teeth into her neck and bury his cock deep inside her pussy.  With some effort, he turned his attention to the soap and lathered his hands.  He buried his fingers into her wet tresses and began to work the soap into a thick lather.  Her head tipped back, and she gripped his upper arms as her eyes slid closed with a soft groan.  He’d never witnessed anything so erotic in his life.  He washed her hair and then, as she rinsed it out under the water, he reached for the cloth underwater and then grabbed the soap that had been floating on the water next to them.

She smoothed her hair back and smiled at him.  “What kind of soap is that?  It smells really nice.”

“Honeysuckle.  I’m glad you like it.”

He dropped the soap and picked up her hand.  He washed each of her fingers and then her hand before stroking the cloth up her arm slowly.  Swirling the cloth across her chest, he tended to her other arm before smoothing the lather onto her stomach.  He reached for the soap and lathered the cloth again, making sure that his hands were well lathered, too.  He pressed the cloth and one lathered hand against her waist and slid his hands slowly up her body.  Her eyes never left his, but her hands dug into his upper arms, and her mouth parted slightly as he moved his hands to her breasts.  The cloth covered one mound, but his other hand captured the swell.  Her nipple pebbled against his thumb as he rubbed the lather onto her skin.  The cloth slipped into the water, and he cupped both of her breasts with his hands, all pretense of cleaning gone.

Her breasts were large but fit perfectly in his hands as he stroked his thumbs across her tight nipples.  He hadn’t meant to turn the simple act of bathing his mate into part of the seduction he’d planned for her, but the sight of her in the moonlight, glistening with water and staring up at him with eyes so full of awe made him want to lay her down on the grass and make love to her now.

Her hands slid up his arms to his shoulders, and he lowered his head to press his lips against hers.  One of his hands slid around her back to pull her close as he slipped his tongue into her mouth and slid it against hers.  She moaned, and the sound rushed to his cock.  He gently pinched her nipple between his finger and thumb, tugging on the peak.  Her body writhed against his.

Inching his hand down her soap-slicked stomach, he pushed his hand below the water.  She parted her legs and sucked on his tongue, and he didn’t have to be a psychic to know that she wanted him to touch her, maybe as much as he wanted to touch her.

He slid his finger between the soft lips of her sex.  He traced the edges of her folds and circled her clit.  Her hips moved, pressing against his hand, and he smiled as her hands slid up to his neck and her nails dug into his flesh.  Just as his finger circled the hot entrance to her body, his wolf growled, and he jerked her behind him, facing into the darkened woods.

Riyad, Merik, and two females walked from the woods, and he straightened from the defensive stance, but kept his arm around Lindy, holding her to his back.  He didn’t want anyone to see her naked except him.

“Sorry, Crim,” Riyad said. “I didn’t think we’d see you out of your house so soon.”

Crimson didn’t expect Riyad, or anyone else, to understand what his wolf was compelled to do to take care of his mate, and he wasn’t going to explain things to them.  At least not now.

The sensual tone of the bath had taken a nose-dive since his friends had intruded, and now he only wanted to take her home.  “Give us a minute of privacy, please?”

Merik made an annoyed sound, but Riyad shoved his shoulder, and the small group turned away from him and Lindy.  He turned and scooped water into his hands and poured it over her shoulders to rid her body of the soap.  As he gathered the cloth and soap that were floating nearby, he grabbed her hand and tugged her up the steps, keeping her body shielded with his own.  His wolf was snapping to make the males leave the area, but he kept his mouth shut and wrapped one of the thick towels around her.  He shoved his feet into his shoes and tucked a towel around his waist, gathering their clothes into a bundle with the wet cloth and soap, and then said over his shoulder, “Thanks,” as he hurried her into the woods.

It hadn’t escaped his notice, as he was rushing to get her away from the two single males, that the sexy look had faded quickly from her eyes, replaced with unhappiness.

He stopped on the stone patio behind his home and willed a lantern over the door to light.  She looked up at it in surprise.

“Did you do that?”

“Yes, what’s wrong?”

“How did you do that?”  She wasn’t looking at him, but at the flickering flame.

He dropped their things and cupped her face, turning her to look at him.  “My fae power is controlling flames.  Now, what’s wrong?”

Her brows rose.  “Nothing.  I just didn’t know how the light came on.”

He huffed.  “Not that.  What was wrong before?”

Her brows furrowed, and then she pressed her lips together, darting her eyes to the side.  “Nothing.”

Growling, he waited until she looked at him again.  “I can see that you’re upset, and it’s making my wolf go nuts.  Is it because of the males?  I did my best to keep them from seeing you.”  If she was upset, he clearly hadn’t done a good job of protecting her.

Her voice was bitter when she said, “I doubt they saw me, which was what you wanted, right?”

“Of course I didn’t want them to see you.  You’re mine.  I don’t want any other males to see your unclothed body.  It was all I could do to get you away from there without throttling my friends.”

Her mouth fell open in surprise. “You aren’t ashamed to be seen with me?”

He’d never been more confused in his life.  “What in hades are you talking about,
chelle
?”

A relieved smile lit her face, and then her cheeks darkened in a blush.  “I thought you might be ashamed of me.”

He felt his fangs elongate in anger.  His rush to get her away from prying eyes had led her to believe that he was embarrassed to be seen with her.  Who had filled her head with such nonsense and made her believe she should expect to be treated so poorly?

He opened the door and ushered her inside, trying to calm down the wolf that wanted to race into her realm and hurt whoever had made her feel so badly about herself.  Slamming the door, he dropped their things and lifted her into his arms, pushing her back against the door.  Her legs immediately went around his waist, and her hands clutched at his shoulders.  He ground his erection into the apex of her thighs, the towels between them doing nothing to spare her the feeling of his hard cock.  “I was so distracted by you, so intent on making you come, that I almost let two unmated males see your naked body.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of you in any way, because I’m not.  But I absolutely will not allow anyone – wolf, fae, human, or other – to see your beautiful, bare body.”

Her head fell back against the door with a soft thud, and she tightened her legs around his waist.  “I’m sorry.”

“It was my fault.  I knew I’d be too tempted to keep from touching you intimately.  I apologize for making you feel bad.  I’m proud to have you as my mate, but your body is for me alone.”