“Rand!” She yanked at my wet hair.
“Come for me now, Red. Then I’ll give it to you good on the blanket when we get out.”
She came. My sweet female always came hard, every damn time I got my hands on her. It was the most satisfying part of my day to hear her breathy cries as she crested that peak.
When she finished, I carried her back to the center of the pool and floated her in my arms. This… perfection.
18
NATALIE
This was happiness.
I wasn’t sure I ever knew it before. Maybe as a child—the summers I’d spent here with Uncle Adam and learning to play the fiddle. But not like this. Not this warmth swirling in my chest. The sense that all was right in the world.
I blinked slowly in the last rays of evening light as Rand swirled my body around on the surface of the water and realized…
This was love.
I loved Rand.
Right? Well, I wasn’t sure. Love was abstract and undefined. But this happiness—it was new and foreign and wonderful. He made me happy. Made me feel… special. Whole. I craved to be with him, missed him when we were apart. I thought about him. Ached for him—and not just my pussy.
I nuzzled against his neck, savoring the moment, the feel of his hands on my ass, the hard prod of his dick against my belly. What was I going to do? This wasn’t supposed to happen. No, he was a danger to my heart. How did he feel about me? I knew how his wolf felt, but what about Rand? Could I trust him with my heart? Could this be more than what my parents ever had? Could this be what Uncle Adam never was offered?
I had no idea, but there was no going back now. I just had to trust and hope he wouldn’t break my heart.
After a while, he carried me out of the pool and onto the blanket. His eyes glowed silver.
“Show me your wolf,” I whispered, the air drying the water from my skin.
In a blink—and with complete trust—he transformed, joints cracking and popping as he dropped to all fours beside me. He was huge, so much bigger up close than I’d realized. Much larger than an ordinary wolf. I wasn’t afraid, though. I knew him. I’d seen him before. I reached for him, burying my fingers in his fur, stroking his ears and face.
“Beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
He walked in a circle on the blanket, the way a dog might before it would lie down, but he stopped by my violin case and gave it a shove in my direction with his nose.
I laughed. “You want me to play?”
He dropped to his belly and lay his giant head on his paws.
“All right, I’ll play.”
Somehow, playing for a wolf was far less intimidating than playing for my peers or professors. Especially when that wolf was Rand. Especially sitting naked at a secret pool on my land. We were alone, the entire world forgotten except for right here, right now.
I opened the case. The smell of resin brought back a flood of bad memories—the constant judgment and critiques, the competition.
But Rand wanted to hear it, so I tightened the bow and rubbed resin over the horsehair. I gave the violin a quick tune and tucked it under my chin.
That spot in the middle of my back twanged—the protest pain I’d had for the last year and a half.
Rand watched me with his wolf eyes.
“What do you want to hear?” It felt ridiculous to play the violin naked, to ask a wolf what to play, but it also helped me let go of the seriousness with which I always approached the violin.
Rand crept forward on his belly with a soft whine. I reached out and stroked the thick, gray fur.
“You don’t care?”
His tail waved.
“Fine.” I started playing a Sonata in C that had been part of my master’s concert, but the bad memories made me abandon it a few notes through. Instead, I started muddling through a string version of Coldplay’s Yellow.
Rand’s tail waved faster. His ears stood up. Those intense silver-blue eyes never left my face.
I played the whole song through, restarting every time I messed up and finding it didn’t matter if I did. Rand wasn’t judging. There was no one out here to mind if I forgot the next note.
When I finished, I struck up one of the first songs Uncle Adam had taught me—”Camptown Races.” I picked up speed playing it, a smile tugging my lips, remembering how comical Uncle Adam would get playing his fiddle as fast as his fingers could fly.
How could I have forgotten how much fun it was to fiddle? I tried another old folk song and then another. When I laid the violin back in its case, I was smiling, happier, even than I’d been after the orgasm Rand gave me. Maybe, and I wouldn’t say that to Rand.
The pain between my shoulder blades had disappeared—which seemed nothing short of a miracle.
I turned back to Rand and found he’d shifted back—and he was all man lying on his side on the blanket—his giant erection bobbing in my direction.
“Red, that was incredible,” he said, leaning up on one elbow.
The one compliment filled a well I’d thought had been dry. His simple words made me feel good, validated my playing, all the time I’d worked. The struggle. With him just watching me, I’d been able to find the happiness in my violin again.
“So were you.” I straddled him and reached off the blanket for his jeans where he kept a seemingly endless supply of condoms for us.
With a growl, he took charge in the way I loved, reversing our positions in a smooth roll and taking the foil packet from my fingers. “Get ready to lose your mind, Red,” he warned.
“Show me what you’ve got, wolf,” I dared.
19
RAND
It seemed almost domestic, finishing my day and driving to the Sheffield ranch. I could see the old house, and I put the blinker on to turn down the driveway. I wanted a cold beer and my mate tucked beside me on the back porch swing. While my grandparents had left the cabin to me and I’d fixed it up to make it mine, it didn’t feel like home. Not like Natalie’s place.
I knew it had all to do with the woman herself and not the property. I drove by it every day and hadn’t once considered it my Home Sweet Home until I’d found my mate. Natalie Sheffield was my home.
My wolf practically howled at the sight of our mate at the mailbox. I couldn’t miss her long legs in those cutoff jean shorts or the way her small breasts were outlined in the snug t-shirt. She wasn’t high maintenance, and I liked that. She was natural. True to herself and fucking perfect.
I turned my truck onto the driveway but put it in park beside the mailbox. Natalie flipped the little door closed and strolled over, a few envelopes in her hand. She squinted against the bright sun. “Hey handsome, you lost?”
My wolf wasn’t going to let me keep my ass in the truck, so I climbed out, approached her. She stepped back, and I pivoted, so she was pressed into the side of my truck. I liked her there, but with her facing this way, the sun wasn’t in her eyes. Mine were shielded by my Stetson. “I’m right where I want to be.”
Her pupils dilated, and she swallowed. “I was going to go through Uncle Adam’s things, donate some clothes. There’s stuff in the basement that could be cleared out. But the idea of spiders had me procrastinate, and I got the mail instead.”