With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(160)

“Baby doll, I’m running at night.”

She blinked at him, sudden confusion swept through her at his words then she asked, “Running?”

“Transforming to wolf and running. I did it at the cabin too. I have to do it, compelled to by the wolf in me,” he told her and she stared because no one had told her that. “I couldn’t do it when we were in the city but I do it here all the time. You always slept through it, me leaving and returning.” He paused and then finished, “Until lately.”

She kept staring, trying to wrap her mind around this strangely logical fact.

“Do you… do you,” she shouldn’t ask, she really shouldn’t ask but, on a barely there whisper, she asked, “run with someone else?”

His lips twitched and he said, “No, little one, I’m a lone wolf.”

“But you smell like –” she started.

He cut her off. “I smell like wolf.”

“But, I’d never smelled it before except when –”

“The scent wears off quickly, definitely by morning.”

“But it smells like after we –”

He grinned. “Yes, honey, that’s exactly what it smells like.”

She thought that was kind of neat, and definitely sexy, and she felt her body getting soft under his. “So you’re not meeting someone?”

His face grew serious when he replied, “I’d never f**k around on you, Sonia,” then his face dipped closer when he finished on a growl, “never.”

Relief started sliding through her but she couldn’t let go. “But…why? You don’t want me. You said… and Caleb and Yuri –”

“Forget what Caleb and Yuri said.”

She was back to staring at him and getting annoyed so she snapped, “Forget?”

“I’ve lived for nearly four hundred years and you know I like to play,” he calmly explained.

Yes, she was definitely getting annoyed. “Right, so –”

“No, baby doll,” he cut her off firmly. “You said what you had to say. It’s my turn to talk.”

She clamped her mouth shut and glared at him.

He watched her as if waiting for her to defy him and then he went on, “I’ve had a lot of lovers but I’ve never had a mate.”

She opened her mouth and shot back, “A mate you don’t want.”

Now Callum looked like he was getting annoyed when he informed her, “Sonia, you’re talking.”

“Yes, I am,” she retorted. “There’s no reason to do this. I get it. I understand my place. You know I understand it, so it’s over.”

“But you don’t understand your place,” he bit out.

And yes, he was definitely getting annoyed too.

“I –”

“Sonia, shut up,” he clipped.

Sonia glared.

Callum scowled.

This lasted a while.

Sonia finally lost patience. “You wanted to talk… talk.”

“Christ, you’re a pain in the ass,” he told her.

“Thanks,” she snapped.

His eyes narrowed and he lost control of his temper. “All right, baby doll,” he gritted out through his teeth, “I never thought this was the way I’d tell you but here it is. You’re perfect.”

Sonia stopped glaring and her mouth dropped open.

Callum kept talking, “You have to know, I didn’t think I would feel that way at first but every f**king second I was with you I realized it more and more. Every day, I would wake up and think you were perfect and every night I’d go to sleep thinking, somehow, during the day, you got even more perfect. If I could have wished what I thought was my perfect mate on the wind and had her come back to me in a storm, I could never have come up with anything as exquisite as you.”

Sonia gazed wordlessly up at her king.

She had never, in her whole life, heard anything so beautiful.

Not said about her (even if it was said with clipped irritation).

Not ever.

She felt the tears welling in her eyes as she whispered, “Callum –”

But he talked over her. “I don’t know what you heard when you were listening and no one knew you were eavesdropping or what was said to you flat out but whatever it was, they didn’t know what the f**k they were talking about. The minute you woke up in my bed in the cabin, I wanted you. I questioned it, that first day wasn’t great but I questioned it for about an hour before you started to get interesting. Then more interesting. And when we lay on the couch that first night I thought our lives together would be sweet…” His hand slid in her hair as she stared at him in loving shock. “And I knew by the night of your claiming when I fell asleep connected to you that our lives would be beautiful and I’ve never thought anything since except, every day, it seemed to grow impossibly more beautiful.”

“Callum –”

Then he concluded, “Until the last three weeks.”

She closed her eyes and everything that was him danced across her eyelids.

Callum holding her in his lap and telling her she had family.

Callum holding her close in his arms while the Christmas lights twinkled, telling her she was home.

Callum fiddling with her charm on her chain, wanting her to wear it outside her clothes so he could see it, his people’s symbol, like her wedding bands, telling everyone that she was his.