United (The Ushers) (12 page)

“What does that mean?”

“It’s not what I expected.” She shrugged.

“What did you expect?” He put his hands on her hips and pulled her close, nibbling at her ear.

“More color,” she confessed. “You’re a colorful guy. And it’s so sad, isn’t it?” She gestured to the photograph.

“Mmm. It’s beautiful. Their love for each other, the passion in the photograph. They didn’t know it was his last day on Earth, but they loved as though they did.” He tugged her earlobe into his mouth, and she shuddered, a frisson of heat running down her spine.

“Fionn,” she whispered. “I need you.”

“I know.” He looked in her eyes, and something in them changed. “Do you trust me to give you what you need?” His voice was smoky-low.

She nodded.

“Take off your clothes and lie on the bed.”

Monica shivered, then started pulling off her clothing. As she lay on the bed, she wondered what he would do. She heard a drawer opening in the bedside table, then felt his hand caress the back of her head.

“I’m going to blindfold you. Then I’m going to tie you up and do whatever I want to you. You’re going to like it, Monica,” he whispered.

She felt him slip the blindfold over her head, felt him secure it.

“Can you see?”

She shook her head. She felt something soft fasten around her wrists as he secured them to the bed posts. She groaned as she felt him tug her legs apart. She knew he could smell how turned on she was, could feel how much she was liking this. She felt his hands sliding up her legs, over the soft flesh of her buttocks.

“Your skin is the most satiny-smooth thing I’ve ever touched,” he whispered. “I want to touch you every time I see you. I fought against it for so long. I didn’t want to want you like this. But now, I can’t believe I resisted.” His hand traced one of the tattoos on her back. “I love your tattoos. They each tell me such a story. This one is so old, you couldn’t have been much more than a pup. You fought someone. A man?”

“Yes,” she whispered, remembering the fight. She’d been a very young wolf, not long after her first shift, and a man had made an unwelcome pass at her. She’d turned him down, and he’d attacked her.

“You tore him apart.” Fionn sighed, seeing the moment in his head. His brave, beautiful woman standing over a bleeding wolf, watching in visceral satisfaction as the wolf’s life seeped away. It should have been chilling, but he was filled with pride that she had defended herself like that.

“I wasn’t going to let him take by force what I wouldn’t willingly give. I was still a virgin—both to loving and to fighting. It was my first fight as a wolf. Robert tattooed me himself.” She referred to her first mate with a wistfulness that tugged Fionn’s heart.

“Was he the Alpha then?” Fionn traced another tattoo, a more recent one.

“He was. I was very young, I thought I just had a crush on him, but he recognized our connection for what it was. He asked me to mate with him the night he tattooed me.”

“Did you?” Fionn asked. He watched as she nodded.

“I was honored to be the Alpha’s mate, and we were well suited. I loved him.”

“I know. It’s the strangest thing…through the bond, I love him, too, for what he was to you.”

Fionn’s hand had wrapped around her body to cup a breast. He pinched her nipple the way she liked, taking satisfaction in the hiss that erupted from her. Her body leaped from the bed, pulling against the restraints as she reacted to the rougher touch after his soft caresses and quiet conversation. He leaned over her and pressed a series of gentle kisses down her spine, then bit down on her beautiful ass. She shuddered and groaned at the feeling of his teeth. He didn’t break the skin—he didn’t want to let her come yet. His hand slipped down the seam of her buttocks to her pussy, and he smiled to find her wet for him already. His fingers teased around her clit, making her arch and whine.

“Please…” She didn’t recognize her own voice.

“Please what, love?” he asked.

“Mount me. Mark me, make me come,” she begged.

“Oh, I like the sound of that, but you’re not ready yet. First, I need to taste this beautiful pussy.” He untied the leg restraints and pushed her knees up under her, her ass in the air. She felt his hands spreading her, and then, oh thank Goddess, his mouth was making magic on her. He hummed against her clit, letting the vibrations stir her fervor as he worked two fingers inside her. Shamelessly, she ground herself down against his face. He slapped her ass, growling, and she stilled. She felt tension building in her spine as he curled his fingers inside her, his lips still humming against her clit, occasionally punctuated with a lick or a nibble.

He pulled away to whisper, “Don’t come yet. If you come before I tell you to, you won’t get my cock tonight.”

She swallowed. There was no way she was going to let that happen. She needed him like she needed the air she breathed. He resumed his tender ministrations, and she wanted to weep, he felt so good, his beard brushing the insides of her thighs, his fingers buried inside her, his lips on her clit.

“Please, Fionn, I need…” she begged.

She felt his hand slap down on her ass again, and she bucked against him.

“I know what you need,” he told her. “You’ll get what you need, my greedy love.”

She felt her wolf whine as he pulled his fingers out of her. He chuckled as he pulled away from her, and she wanted to hit him. She growled.

“Oh?” he murmured, taking her breasts in his hands. He pinched both nipples at the same time, and she felt herself literally panting her need.

Then she felt him pushing against her entrance, and she hissed, “Yes.”

She was rewarded with another firm pinch on her breasts as he slid inside her so slowly, she could hardly stand it. When he was all the way inside, rocking into her, she felt tears gathering in her eyes. He felt so vital, so
right,
in her body, like nothing she’d ever experienced, not even with her first mate. The tears spilled against the blindfold. Fionn’s hands left her breasts, stroking down her body. One stirred against her clit, the other rested on her ass. He flicked his thumb across the star of her anus, and she bucked.

“You like that?” he asked.

She couldn’t answer, could only bite the pillow. Then she felt something cold against her ass, realized he was working lube into her. She felt one long finger sliding inside, and she pushed back against him, racked by this new pleasure.

“Someday, I’m going to fuck you here,” he whispered, finding a rhythm between the finger in her ass and his cock in her cunt.

She felt her teeth lengthening in his pillow.

“Not tonight, though. Now, Monica, I want you to come for me.”

His fingers went to work in earnest against her clit, and she felt the heat and tension she’d been holding back erupt as he gave her permission to feel everything he gave her, to let go and let him take control of her pleasure. She shook and sobbed his name as the waves of it crashed over her. As though from deep underwater, she heard his shout of release as his seed spurted inside her. He released her hands from their bonds and pulled off the blindfold, dragging her into his arms and holding her tight against him.

“Oh my god, Mo,” he whispered. “Do you know how beautiful you looked, tied up with your pretty ass up in the air?”

She laughed weakly, still feeling tears seeping from the corners of her eyes.

“Are you crying? Did I hurt you?”

She felt his alarm and shook her head.

“No, I just had the most amazing orgasm of my life.” She grinned at him through the tears. “I think my brain is short circuiting.”

He chuckled and pressed a kiss to her hair. “You were amazing,” he told her.

“Me? I just laid there and let you do all the work,” she scoffed.

“I know. That was what was so amazing. That you trusted me so completely. My hot Alpha bride gave up control and let me have my wicked ways with her.”

“I like your wicked ways.”

“I noticed.” He grinned.

Standing, he made his way to the adjoining bathroom. He returned with a damp cloth and cleaned her, then himself. She smiled at how gently he cared for her. Her mate was more than a lover, but her partner.

When he returned to the bed, she spooned herself around him, pressing kisses to his satiny flesh.

“Thank you for telling me about Robert,” he whispered in the dark.

“No, thank you for listening. It means a lot to me that you can accept what he was to me before.”

“Darling, you’ve had to accept a lot more about me.” He rolled over onto his back, pulling her into the circle of his arms. “It’s true that I’ve never been mated before, but it’s not like I’ve been a monk, either.”

“But those women don’t matter,” Monica explained. “Robert did. And Annie does.”

“Are you upset that I slept with Annie? We haven’t been intimate in twenty years.”

“Shhh…no, love. Annie and I talked about that. It wasn’t like a mating with you two. You wanted it to be, but that’s not the same. Annie matters because she’s important to both of us still. And I need you to know that what happened between you and her is okay with me.”

“Thank you.” The words were simple, but the gratitude was sincere. For the last several months, Fionn had ached to ask forgiveness for the mistakes of his past. Even though he hadn’t realized at the time it happened that it had been a mistake, it set in motion a series of future mistakes that ended up keeping him from trusting his need for her. He’d been unable to find the words to ask, but his mate, his woman, she knew exactly what to say, how to redeem his heart to his own eyes. “Thank you,” he murmured again against her hair.

Monica’s eyes were heavy as she snuggled into Fionn’s chest. Before long, she’d drifted to sleep.

Monica awoke to a dull throbbing pain in her hand and realized she was feeling Annie’s injury through the link. She reached for Fionn, realized he wasn’t in bed with her, and felt along the mental link for her mate.

“I’m with the Guide, love.”

She smiled as his thoughts poured sunlight into her mind. She crossed to his closet, slipped on one of his shirts, and then tiptoed into the hallway. She saw the guest room door cracked and, pushing it fully open, made her way inside. Annie was sitting up in bed, propped with pillows against the headboard while Ellen slept next to her. Graham was nowhere to be seen, but Fionn sat at the foot of the bed, facing Annie and Ellen.

“Hi,” Annie said with a weak smile. “You okay?” she asked.

Monica nodded, approaching the bed. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to Annie’s forehead.

“Don’t you dare scare me like that again, sweetheart,” she whispered tenderly, cupping the Guide’s face with her hand.

“I promise to try not to get shot again if I can help it.” Annie smiled.

“How’s your hand?” Monica gestured with her chin.

“Motherfucker shot my ring finger off.” Annie scowled. “And the pinkie, too.” She held up the hand, showing where the skin had healed over the two missing fingers. Shifter healing was a wonderful thing, but it couldn’t regenerate missing pieces.

“I’m so sorry, Annie. They were shooting at me.”

“Hey, it’s a good thing they didn’t hit you. The last thing
you
need is silver poisoning.”

“I hate that you got hurt for me.”

“Oh, fuck-it-all, Mon. I didn’t do it for you. The guy was a lousy shot.” Annie laughed. “I’m no martyr, I’m not jumping in front of guns on purpose.” She sobered, and Monica felt her thoughts flicker to her sister, Sara. “One martyr in the family is enough, don’t you think?”

Monica felt tears stinging her nose as she sat down on the bed next to Annie and hugged her tightly. “Yeah, Annie. I do.”

Fionn watched as something unspoken passed between the two women who had been so close to Sara, Bianca’s Guide. He felt a shimmer of it, there in the link, that his mate and his Guide were comforting each other. He stroked Monica’s face and then Annie’s.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, Ann.” He smiled at her. “I guess you were right about West Virginia.” He flinched as she threw a pillow at him.

Ellen groggily sat up in bed and looked around at the others.