Cry Wolf (Wolves of Angels Rest #7)(42)

Gypsy had used the term when she’d been explaining to Cianán about the people—not people, Willow reminded herself; people were the terrible ones who’d captured her, Cianán, and the others—the pack leaders who had organized the rescue. Everything else had been clear enough, but those words… Her wolf had leapt as Willow contemplated the meaning.

Though nothing about his stance changed, Diesel’s eyes glittered. “It’s a bond between shifters. Beyond sex, beyond love. It’s…souls, connecting.”

Her wolf howled, and Willow had to choke down the sound.

Had there ever been a time she willingly silenced herself?

“Is that what we are?”

His jaw clenched. “I don’t know. We usually find our true mates during the mating season in the spring. That’s when the wolf is high, our blood racing, and true mates are revealed.” He turned his face to the nighttime, seeming to cut himself off.

Willow studied his profile. The geeky boy whose window she’d thrown rocks at had become this powerful male. “Seems like plenty of blood was racing tonight.”

He instantly turned back to her. “Is your shoulder bothering you? I thought it looked like a clean shot.”

She shrugged, then winced. “It’s mostly fine.”

He nudged aside the drooping neck of her too-large T-shirt, exposing the edge of the bandage which he peeled back gently. “I think it won’t even leave a scar,” he murmured before sealing it down again. “You’ll be back in your bustier in no time.”

Back in Vegas. Back by herself.

She lifted her chin to gaze up at him, achingly aware of the fluttering pulse in her throat. “What if I don’t?”

He frowned, his hand rising to cup her cheek. “Don’t heal? You will. Your wolf is strong. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a powerful change.”

She shook her head, grazing her cheek on his knuckles. “What if I don’t go?”

He curled his hand behind her neck, his scowl almost ferocious. “Go where?”

“Away,” she whispered. “What if I stay? With you.”

Daringly, she settled her hands around his waist, taking him as hers.

So attuned to his expression, she caught his subtle wince when her fingers tightened.

“You’re hurt too,” she gasped. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He groaned when she flipped up the hem of his black T-shirt. “Because I deserve it.”

She grumbled a curse when she saw the blood on his side. The hole punched into the muscle oozed. “You deserve to stand there and bleed while I make a fool of myself?”

He grabbed her hands roughly. “You’re not. What I did to you—”

“We were kids. We didn’t know what we started.”

“I should’ve known.”

She huffed. “I should’ve thrown that rock at your head instead of your window.”

His grip tightened until she wriggled her fingers in protest, but he didn’t let go. “I never meant for you to be transformed against your will. I would have told you, or I would have let you go, but I never would have forced you.”

She brought their joined hands to her lips. “I know,” she whispered against his clenched fists. “But I think I chose you already, way back then. I think when you asked me to sing, I was already half in love with you.”

The moon peeked over the edge of the horizon, gleaming between the clouds to shine bright in Diesel’s dark eyes. “I think I was already half in love with you, and that’s why I asked you to sing for me.”

He backed her toward the sheltering pines, their straight, graceful trunks making bars of darkness in the moonlight. But it was no cage. Willow had never felt more free.

Her blood raced in joyful circles through her body as his mouth came down on hers in a devouring kiss. They sank down, hands all over each other, the pine needles soft and giving under their knees. She stripped the T-shirt off him and found the ragged outward-bound hole on his back.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he insisted in a Monty Python accent.

She sighed. “You are such a geek.”

He spread her out on the nest of their discarded clothes and made slow love to her as the moon rose. In its light, in his love, she felt herself healing, not just her shoulder but the loneliness that had meant her voice was always solo.

Never again.

“My Wolfman,” she whispered her possession.

“Yours,” he agreed. “Always. Even before we knew why.”

“Because you and me, we were meant to be.”

“Is that the start of a song, I hear?”

“Just for you.”

As Diesel stroked his heavy rod into her depths, she hummed her pleasure, and his gasp against her lips was the perfect melody. Then she couldn’t think at all, only feel, her body rising up to match the rhythm of his as they raced to their release.

He let her win.



***



Diesel grumbled, but after they dressed, he let Willow drag him into the house to patch the bullet hole in his hide. Gypsy claimed she’d seen bar fight wounds worse than him, wimp, and of course LT and Kane tsked at him for getting hit at all, but overall, everyone was pleased with the outcome of the night.