One True Mate: Shifter's Solace (Kindle Worlds Novella)(13)

He lowered his head and kissed her pussy, working his tongue into her slit, then lapping at her clit until she was gasping and trembling, head thrashing back and forth against the pillow.

At the last moment, just as she was about to come, he drew back then rose up above her, looking down at her with a feverish glitter of desire in his impossibly blue eyes.

He was kissing her as he slid inside her, and she twined her arms around his neck and held him close, murmuring encouragement as he hit all the right spots to drive her back towards quivering, clenching orgasm. She arched against him as she came, fire roaring through her blood and consuming her utterly, a heat and light that could be quenched only by his body.

Afterwards, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, lazy and drowsy and content. He drew meandering spirals on her shoulder with his forefinger.

“We should head back to the firehouse,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t want the Chief to worry.”

“I guess,” she said, but she snuggled closer, splaying her fingers across his warm stomach. “I don’t have to bunk down with the guys, do I?”

He laughed. “No. I wouldn’t subject someone I care about to Ben’s snoring.” A glow of happiness spread inside her at his words. “In fact I wouldn’t submit my worst enemy to Ben’s snoring. We'll set up a bed for you in the Chief's office.”

She played with the little trail of hair just below his belly button. “I find it a bit overwhelming, how close you all are,” she admitted. “I guess, growing up in the system…there were always lots of other kids around, but you didn’t make connections. Not after the first few times you let yourself care about someone only for them to be taken away.”

Rory stroked her hair, playing his fingers through the dark, silky strands. “You can let yourself care about me,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”





Chapter Eleven


Rory ran into the bunk room. “Where is she?” he demanded.

He’d slid from between the sheets in the pinkish-gray light and crept to the Chief’s office, hoping Ivy wasn’t grumpy when she was woken up – or at least that he could do something to put her in a better mood. The memory of holding her in his arms, of her softness and her scent, had played maddeningly in his head, over and over. He’d tossed and turned on his narrow cot, the springs squeaking, until Jasper had thrown a balled-up pair of dirty socks at his head and threatened to make him eat them if he didn’t go the fuck to sleep.

He’d dozed a little after that, but as soon as dawn had started to touch the sky, he’d given up on sleep and gone to her. So what if the Chief would go berserk when he realised they’d been fucking in his office? She was worth a month’s duty scrubbing down the showers. Hell, he’d do a year without a murmur of complaint.

Except she wasn’t there. Panic punched him in the solar plexus as he saw that the Chief’s office was empty, the blankets neatly folded on the couch they’d made up as a bed for her.

“Get up,” he demanded as his fellow firefighters cast bleary scowls at him. “I can’t find Ivy.”

They were alert and on their feet almost at once. It was the nature of the job. Lives often depended on them being ready for action in the middle of the night and at a moment’s notice. So his words did the work of a bucket of ice-water and a bucket and a half of strong black coffee.

“What do you mean, you can’t find her?” the Chief asked as the guys pulled on their clothes. But it was a rhetorical question. “Jasper and Jake, Ben and Brady – check the building. Thoroughly. Then report back. Rory – with me.”

A few minutes later, the Chief slammed a pot of coffee and two mugs onto the table and said, “Son, sit down or I’ll knock you down. Pacing liked a caged bear isn’t going to find your girl.”

Rory wrung his hands, but he stopped pacing and dropped into a chair. “I think she left,” he blurted. “I mean, I think she left me. She was talking about how she’s never been part of a family, and I think all this—” he gestured around the firehouse “—me and the guys and the pack dynamics and all the shiften shit… I think it’s too much for her.” He took a swig of coffee. It was bitter and burned his mouth, but that was nothing compared to the hollow ache in the middle of his chest.

The Chief sat back in his chair, fingers steepled thoughtfully. “Anyone can see the girl’s skittish,” he said, “and who could blame her? Sometimes dealing with you oversized cubs makes me want to hang up my hat and do something more peaceful, like alligator-wrestling. But I don’t think she left you.”

“Why not?” Rory demanded. He knew he was being disrespectful, but he didn’t care.

The Chief gave him a shrewd, narrowed-eyed look. “Because I saw the way she looked at you.”

“How was that?”

The Chief thought for a while. Then, “Pretty much the same way you looked at her,” he said simply.

“She wasn’t snatched,” Rory insisted. “We’d have heard her if she screamed or struggled… Why the fuck didn’t I stay with her?” he growled, panic beginning to rise at the thought of Ivy in danger and afraid. But then he remembered. “She couldn’t have been snatched. The pillows are stacked and the blankets are neatly folded.”