With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(161)

Callum taking her sledding, playing board games and watching Christmas movies then, later, taking away the pain when her blood started to boil.

Callum bending over backward to give her the best Christmas she’d had in thirty-one years.

Callum coming direct to her after a bloody, eight day battle and sleeping his exhaustion away with her held close and later trusting her to bury the hideous memories by taking her, again and again.

Callum’s gentleness when she discovered Waring had died.

Callum letting her be who she was, the first person since her Momma and Papa died.

Just who she was, without hiding anything.

He’d been right those weeks and weeks ago.

And she’d been there for weeks and weeks.

She was there at that very moment.

She was home.

“I love you, baby doll,” he said, his voice no longer annoyed. It was filled with tenderness and her eyes flew open to see his face was filled with the same thing. “I loved you before you took your first breath on this earth because that was my fate but you made me love you because you’re just… f*cking… you.”

Her heart fluttered, her belly melted and, of its own accord, her hand lifted to the side of his face. Her fingers slid in his hair and she watched as her thumb smoothed his eyebrow then along the beautiful angle of his cheekbone then across the fullness of his bottom lip.

When her eyes went to his, they were closed and he looked, for some reason, as if he was experiencing a weirdly painful ecstasy.

“Cal?” she called. His eyes opened instantly, they were golden, she loved that so much she felt her heart swell and she whispered, “You love me?”

He answered without hesitation. “With everything I am, baby doll, and everything I’m meant to be.”

She felt the sob move up her chest. She lifted her head to shove her face in his neck and her breath hitched from the effort of holding it back.

Callum heard it, rolled to his back, pulling her on top of him and he held her close, one arm at her waist, the other cocked along her spine with his fingers in her hair while she pressed her face into his skin, battling the tears.

Then a thought occurred to her. It was so huge, her body jerked with it and her head snapped up.

“You’re real!” she cried with joy as if she’d made some fabulous discovery that was going to light the world on fire.

He grinned at her and said, “I’m right here, baby doll.”

She stared at him, her dream man, her handsome wolf. She was in his arms in their bed in their room in their castle.

“You’re real,” she whispered.

His arms got tighter and he whispered back, “I’m real.”

“And… and,” she gulped as the enormity hit her, blocking her throat, “you’re my puppy too.”

His grin turned to a smile as he moved a hand around to caress her cheek tenderly with his thumb. “I’m thinking me being your ‘puppy’ should stay between you and me, little one. Not likely to strike fear in the hearts of my enemies, being known as The Puppy.”

She giggled, shoving her face back into his neck and his arms wrapped tight around her and she felt him there. Right there. Not a dream. None of it a dream.

All of it real.

“Cal?” she called into his neck.

“Yes, honey?”

“You remember you asked me if I was happy?”

“Yes.”

“I lied.”

His arms tensed.

She lifted her head and looked at his wary eyes a moment before she put her mouth to his and whispered, “Now… I’m happy.”

His hand slid back into her hair as his head slanted, crushing her mouth to his at the same time he rolled and he kissed her.

And his kiss was hot, sweet, wet, deep, long and, best of all, perfect.

* * * * *

Sonia woke in the middle of the night held close in Callum’s arms.

They’d spent the entire day in bed making up for lost time with Callum leaving her only to go down and order food to be brought up.

All day, she’d been what she told him she was.

Happy.

Ecstatically so (as well as hot and bothered, but that was ecstatic too, as only Callum could do).

But things happened to your mind when you woke in the middle of the night and they happened to Sonia.

Taking in a quiet breath, she slid carefully out of his arms, out of the bed and walked to her robe. Pulling it on and tying it tight, she went to the window and stared out at the night, the cloudless sky allowing the moon to shine bright on the snow making the forested hills a winter wonderland.

For a moment, she wished with everything that she was out in it, like Callum could do, turning to wolf and running though the snow in the night.

Or, at least, like she’d do with her Papa, walking, seeing, listening, hearing, smelling, experiencing.

But then these pleasant thoughts melted away and Sonia realized that the cosmos wasn’t quite done with its joke.

“Honey?” Callum called and she turned to him.

He was up on an elbow, his beautiful eyes on her.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

“Thinking,” she replied.

“Well, think over here,” he ordered.

She felt her mouth quirk into a smile because he was really so gosh darned bossy.