“I know you do, sweetheart. I saw it at Thanksgiving. I saw what you mean to him, too. I’m sure it’s complicated with you being human. I just want to offer my full support and official welcome to the family. I’m not a Blackthroat, but Brick is my son, which makes you my daughter, now.”
Tears sting my eyes for the relief of having at least one wolf shifter welcome me to their kind.
But it also feels so empty. Like I got married but missed my wedding. Here I am, locked into a lifetime as Brick’s one and only mate, and my own mother doesn’t even know I’m dating him.
She wouldn’t approve if she did.
“Thank you.” My throat is clogged. “It’s, um, it’s a lot to absorb. I don’t understand it all, and that drives me crazy.”
“Well, I’m here. Like I said, I’m not a Blackthroat, but I know Brick, and I can tell you anything you need to know about wolf culture. You’re one of us now, Madi. You’re in our world. I don’t know what it’s like to mate out of species, but I do know what it’s like to mate out of pack. It was awful. I will do everything I can to make it easier for you to integrate.”
I don’t know why I feel like bawling. I clear my throat. “That means a lot to me. Thank you. Do you think we could…get together some time?” Of course, as soon as I suggest it, I realize it’s not possible. Not if I’m under lock and key. There’s no way Brick would allow his mom into his apartment, and if I go out to meet her on my own, I’d surely have bodyguards who would report back. “Or just schedule a phone chat?” I hear Brick enter through the front door. My pulse quickens like I’m going to be in trouble. “Now isn’t a good time, but maybe later?”
“Any time, sweetheart. Just call me. This is my cell number.”
Brick enters my bedroom, his eyes fixed on the phone at my ear.
I walk into the bathroom, like I’m still packing up my toothbrush. “Okay, thank you. I’ve got to run. Bye!” I turn and find Brick has followed me in. I bump into him, and he catches me, those large hands molding around my upper arms gently.
“Who was that?”
I turn the tables and attempt to give him one of his Big Bad Boss arched brows. “Am I going to have any privacy at all in this relationship?”
He draws back. If I didn’t know better, I would say I wounded him.
It wasn’t my intention, but I am still sore about him locking me in his apartment this morning. Still, as I justify my caginess in my head, it feels wrong. Everything about me and Brick feels wrong right now.
No-not everything. The ever-present intense physical chemistry is here. But nothing else feels solid. I’m supposed to be his life-mate. His mother is calling to welcome me to the family, and the ocean that divides me and Brick only seems to be getting more choppy.
I push past him, throwing more belongings into my bag, but he follows me, catching me around the waist and pulling my back against his front. He strokes my hair back from the side of my face. “Am I suffocating you, Madi?”
The tension melts from my body just from being in his arms. My cells begin to vibrate like my body is celebrating his presence. “Locking me in your apartment might be considered suffocating behavior.” There’s no tartness to my voice-my words come out husky and soft.
He traces his tongue around the shell of my ear. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “It’s just that you belong to me now.” If he wasn’t continuing with that insane nibbling along my ear, I might reject that sentiment. “I can’t help but be all up in your business because it’s my job to make you happy.”
Oh, damn him.
“But mostly what I’m aware of is that I haven’t wooed you properly. Wolves know their mates by scent. Humans require a different kind of courtship. I know I’m late to this game, but I am going to court you properly, Madison Evans.”
I’m melting into a total puddle at his feet.
“Are you?” I didn’t even know I had a bedroom voice. Apparently I do.
He kisses my neck. “Mmm hmm. Do you think it will work?”
My core clenches and quivers. “I think there’s a definite chance it will work.”
Brick
Madi shifts in the leather seat of my private jet, not touching the wine or cheese plate our attendant served her. It’s close to midnight, and we’re in the air en route to a private Greek island-a place I can keep her safe, where we won’t be disturbed.
Sully’s already there arranging a full security team, so I will know she’s safe when I leave to attend the Swedish pack games.
My confidence in my plan is flagging, though. Far from being impressed by the luxury of the private jet, Madi just seems out of her element. She’s as ill-at-ease as she was the night I picked her up in a limo for the ball.
I don’t know if it’s her sense of not belonging to my world or a general resentment toward the upper class stemming from the Harringtons’ rejection of her mother, but she isn’t impressed by any of this. I need to modify my idea of wooing her.
Marking Madi may have cured my madness but didn’t magically solve anything for her.
She doesn’t have the shifter biology to tell her we’re right for each other. Destiny isn’t speaking to her the way it has to me.
I know she’s mine-no matter how much I tried to deny that fate, it’s true.
She picks up her phone and opens the
New York Times app. “New puzzle,” she murmurs and starts filling in the boxes on the crossword. I watch over her shoulder, marveling at how fast her mind works.
“You’re bored,” I realize.
Of course she is. I took her from a fast-paced, high pressure job where she felt like a success and somehow expected her to enjoy the luxury of being a kept woman.
When she meets my gaze, her eyes are troubled.
“You need problems to solve. That’s what you’re good at.”
“I feel like I’ve been dropped in the ocean without a floatation device.” She casts a glance toward the window.
“You can have your job back.” I promise it knowing I’m fucking myself. Knowing it can’t possibly work. The moon madness has worn off, but the sense of being split in two still rides me. Things are still on a knife’s edge with maintaining my leadership of the pack.
She’s too smart, though. Her narrowed gaze tells me she also knows it won’t work.
I grasp for another straw, going for her kink. “I will make your life a living hell, little girl. You won’t be able to keep up with my demands.”
This earns me a faint smile. “You kind of lost your teeth when you revealed that you need my pussy to survive.”
I growl at the mention of that particularly delectable anatomy. “Oh, I still have teeth.” I suspect my eyes glimmer with my wolf.
Madi’s body revs back to life. Her pupils dilate, cheeks flush, and I smell the sweet scent of her arousal.
I stand and reach out a hand for her. “I guess I’m going to have to show you that I’m still the boss.”
She takes my hand, but instead of lifting her to her feet, I pull her up and over my shoulder and walk with her to the back of the plane where there’s a fully-enclosed sleep pod. Madi laughs and kicks her legs.
I slap her ass hard enough to get her attention.
She shrieks.
I open the pod and drop her on the neatly-made bed. “Let me show you what happens when you disobey the Big Bad Boss.” I yank off her boots, toss them out of the pod and shut us in together. My cock strains against my slacks.
“You’re not my boss.”
I unbutton her pants and yank them down, along with her panties. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Oh my God.”
She’s excited. Goosebumps stand out on her arms, honey coats her inner thighs.
“You may own me, Madison Evans, but I will always be bigger.” I pull her sweater over her head. “Badder.” I unhook her bra. She’s now completely bared to me, and I’m fully dressed. “And bossier.”
I roll her over and deliver a flurry of sharp smacks.
“Ow! Oh God! Brick!” She reaches back to cover her ass.
I catch her wrists and pin them behind her back and keep spanking. I know I’m playing with fire-my mate is already disgruntled with me. But I have this sense that if I can bring back some of the challenges she felt from our previous power exchange, it will rekindle that sense of excitement in her.
“Oh my God.” She squirms, humping the bed, wiggling that sweet ass of hers.
My cock is harder than steel, my mouth waters for a taste of her nectar.
“Who’s your boss, little girl?” Her ass has turned a rosy shade of pink. I slap it a few more times then dip my fingers between her legs. “Hmm?”
“I don’t answer to little girl.”
I deliver five more spanks, a little harder this time. “Are you sure that’s how you want to play this?”
Her arousal soaks my fingers when I stroke between her legs, guiding me right into her swollen channel.
“No, sir.” Her voice is small, the words hold reluctance.
“Good girl.” I reward her with quick circles around her clit.
She arches her ass up and moans. “Please.”
“Are you my good girl?” I fuck her with my fingers again.
“Yes, sir. I am your good girl.”
I chuckle. “Does this magic pussy need a good pounding, sweet girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fuck. My control snaps. I unbuckle my belt and drop my pants and boxers. “On your knees and elbows, Ms. Evans.” My voice is an octave deeper than usual.
Madi doesn’t move.
I hesitate. Does she want this? The scent of her arousal in the pod is so thick I’m losing my mind.
“You need me to make you, don’t you, Madison?”
She lets out a sound-sort of like a mmh. I’m going to call it affirmation.
“You need to feel your Big Bad Boss’s strength, little girl?” I pick up her waist, lifting her entire body easily up off the bed and arranging her onto her hands and knees. I press between her shoulder blades. “I said elbows.”
“Technically, these are forearms.”
A laugh rockets from my throat, but I slap her ass. “Always sassy, aren’t you?”
“That’s why you love me.”
I climb up behind her. “I do love you, Madi Evans.” I line my cock up with her channel and nudge in. “Do you believe that?” I fist her silky hair in the back and tug gently. “Hmm?” I thrust in deep.
She gasps, her head thrown back. “Yes!”
I thrust in and out of her. “Do you?” I keep hold of her hair, punishing her with my strokes.
“Yes!”
“Because this is more than mating biology, Madi. This is real. Do you believe that?”
She soaks my cock with more of her juices. Her moan has a keening whine to it.
I release her hair and hold her with one hand at her nape, one hand at her hip to really drive into her. “You like it hard, little girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to feel where your Big Bad Boss has been all day tomorrow?”
She starts to come, her inner muscles clenching around my cock.
“Oh no,” I correct, immediately going still, my loins pressed against her soft ass. “I did not say you could come.”
She clenches again. “Please?”
“Who is the boss here?”
“You are!”
I start to move again, slowly at first, then building to a crescendo.
“I’m the guy you’re going to keep working to please. I’m the guy who calls the shots.” I reach around and fondle her nipple, pinching and rolling it between my fingers. “You are my brilliant, beautiful, naughty mate.” I’m losing control now. My thrusts are growing fast and erratic. My balls draw up.
“Oh God!”
“Come for me, Madi.” I rub her clit as I pound in, hard.
She bucks and spasms. I let myself topple over the edge into ecstasy. “I love you, too!” Madi gasps.
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