“How can I know before they do if my dad already knows? If he knows, every damn person in our clan knows.”
“They don’t know you don’t know, though.”
“Oh, my God! Just tell me,” she said, dragging her hands down her face dramatically.
“I used to work for some shady people. Smugglers, if you will.”
“Drugs?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Didn’t really give a damn. I kept watch when they loaded and unloaded, and if they had trouble reaching a certain location, I got it there for them. They paid me very well.”
“And you stole from them.”
“Why does everybody keep saying that? I did not steal from them.”
“Then how did you piss them off so bad? And who’s everybody?”
“Your dad. And because I started killing them, picking them off one by one.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, that’d do it.”
“I figured out their usual shipments had changed. Gotten more frequent, and shipping was much more active than their receipts. Started digging around and figured out they were poaching. Taking advantage of the natural resources around them. I warned them. Told them to stop butchering the animals. Didn’t listen, so I gave them one last chance. Told them I’d take one of them for every animal they took. They didn’t like it when I followed up on it.”
Hellen’s eyes were wide as she simply stared at him.
“Don’t feel bad for them. They deserved it.”
She sat for a few more seconds with the same expression on her face before she launched herself at him, wrapping herself around him as she kissed him for all she was worth, her arms wrapped around his neck so tightly he couldn’t have pried her off if he’d wanted to. But he most certainly didn’t want to. His arms went around her, holding her to him tightly as his hands smoothed their way up her back as she began to grind her hips into his lap. She only pulled her mouth away from his long enough to look down at him. “I’m so sorry they hurt you.”
“I’d live it a thousand times if it brought me you,” he whispered.
“You’re really not leaving…”
He shook his head and leaned toward her to capture her lips in another kiss.
Hellen’s lips came down on his, and their kiss melded them together for what seemed like eternity, until a pained rumble bubbled up out of his throat. Hellen opened her eyes to see what had hurt him only to find herself moving through the air as he tossed her onto her back and came down on top of her. She caught her breath and looked up into his eye as he hovered over her, his face just inches from hers. “So, we’re doing this.”
“No way around it. Seems like everybody was right.”
“I don’t understand.”
He grinned wickedly. “I belong in Hell.”
She looked at him for just a split second with a bit of puzzlement on her face, before her expression morphed into a snide smirk. “Really?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he confirmed, beginning to slide his hands down her body, and somehow, despite her brain telling her to resist, when his hands completed their slow slide down past her waist, across her hips and down her thighs toward her knees, her panties were balanced on his fingertips, and almost effortlesslyslid down the remainder of her legs to be tossed away by his right hand as his left remained resting on her hip.
The sultry grin he wore faded as his gaze met hers and realized that the smoke and mirrors they'd been tossing at each other had just shattered to the ground. For this one single moment, they were both bare, seeing each other fully for the first time — their souls exposed, poised nervously, hoping for acceptance. He spoke honestly, the first words that entered his mind. “I trust you, Hellen. I belong to you.”
She quickly blinked away a surprising rush of tears. “I trust you, too, Lucien. I’m yours.”
Lucien leaned his body toward her again, his lips pressing chastely against hers, before he used one knee to separate her legs and nudge his way between them. His hips lay against hers, his forehead against hers as well, as with his eyes closed, he took a few minutes to savor her scent, to savor the feel of her beneath him, to savor the rightness of this moment in time. He felt her hands moving over his body and gloried in emotions she stirred in him; then heard the sound of material ripping. He opened his eyes and looked down to his own waist where he found what remained of his shorts in shreds, her Wolf’s claws having shredded them from his body.
He raised his brows and looked up at her.
“I need,” she said simply.
He wasted no further time as he kissed her again, while at the same time lifting himself above her just enough to rock his hips and line himself up with the center of her heat. The head of his cock notched itself against her opening and thrust forward without pretense, sliding himself all the way home in the flood of slickness that welcomed his arrival. He wasted no time getting down to giving her exactly what she wanted as he very thoroughly played her body like it was his own, stroking forcefully, angling himself deep inside her just so, and hittingevery inch of need she’d been ignoring for months and months on end. Her body responded to his every touch, pulling at his, demanding he give her everything he had, everything he’d never given to anybody else. Some time later, after they’d worked themselves into a state of raw instinctive bliss, he shifted his body just enough to be able to caress one side of her face. “Look at me, cher.”
