39. Naomi

Naomi

I was no longer in the lake, but drowning. And the male on the other side of the door refused to save me.

Please come out … please…

I try the pledge again.

Foreign words I hadn't even known I'd memorized slurred from my mouth. But still, no answer.

Was I saying it wrong? The fever had overtaken my entire body, refusing to let me think clearly.

Everything throbbed — my brain, my breasts, my skin. The private space between my legs was drenched at that point, heat spilling out in pulsing waves. A strange piece of flesh had suddenly made its existence known inside my folds, swollen and angry — yet sensitive to the touch.

I tried…I tried to soothe it. I frantically rubbed my hand over it as I croaked another plea to Aidan, who'd locked himself away on the other side of the door .

"Please…" I murmured the pledge again, pressing my forehead into the grooves I'd made in the door with my other hand.

Some dulled sense registered the metallic scent of blood and the dull pain under my fingernails. I could see I'd damaged the beautiful wood, but it didn't matter. I didn't care that I'd hurt the door — or myself.

I kept scratching at it. "Please…" I begged again, following it with another recitation of the Gaelic pledge.

No answer. Aidan had stopped replying some time ago when I refused to accept his excuses about why he couldn't come out and mate me. Something about how it wouldn't be fair. Or right. Or moral.

But who cared about fairness? There was no moral anymore! No right or wrong.

Just the heat pulsing between my legs. There was only a primal desire that couldn't be sated — at least not by me. No matter how hard I rubbed, it only sparked pitiful flares of pleasure.

Please… please… please!

I mindlessly repeated the Gaelic vow and began scratching at the wood again. If I worked at it long enough, eventually, I'd get through to the other side.

"Flower," a rough voice said out of the blue.

I stopped rubbing at myself, certain what I saw couldn't be the truth.

Wild stood before me now — had just blinked into view after I'd been scratching at the wooden barrier for… how long had it been?

Time had stopped meaning anything after Aidan shut me out on the other side of this door. A part of me wondered if I wasn't still in that mountain hidey-hole, freezing to death while my mind soothed me with increasingly hard-to-believe hallucinations.

"Wild?" I croaked.

He bent down into that crouch of his — the one that made him look like a wolf even when he was in human form. And then, I couldn't just see him. I could smell his outdoorsy scent of wind and rain.

It really was Wild! My heart banged around inside my chest, unsure how to process his sudden presence.

"What's going on here, then?" he asked in the same casual tone I would have used to inquire with the village St. Ailbe postmaster about whether my family had received any mail.

"It hurts," I whined. "But Aidan won't mate me…"

"Aidan." Wild's eyes abruptly stopped glowing. "He told ye his name?"

"Of course he did." I gave my head a mournful shake. "He's not like you. That's why he… he… won't open the door."

My hand involuntarily scratched at the wood again.

"Come, Flower. Enough of that now." Wild pulled my hand away from the ruined wood and put it in his mouth, sucking at my fingers and cleaning the blood off with a few long, deliberate swipes of his tongue.

The sight of him tending to my self-inflicted wounds this way tugged at my belly.

Not disgust…

More heat flowed from me in pulsing waves, making my core squeeze with want.

He removed my hand from his mouth with a wet pop and laid it over his bearded cheek. "I could smell ye from outside, ye know."

He ran his mouth along the inside of my wrist but didn't quite touch it.

So, I could only feel his breath as he whispered the Gaelic pledge I'd been mindlessly slurring out before he appeared. But his husky voice shivered through my soul.

"Will ye have me, then?" he asked when he was done making his vow. "Will ye pledge me yer —?"

Before he could even finish, I said the words I'd unconsciously memorized back to him in one long, exhaled breath.

My answer pulsed between us. Thicker than my heat.

Once.

Twice.

Then, suddenly, I was no longer on the floor. Wild scooped me into his arms, cradling me against his chest as we ascended a set of stairs, and he issued what sounded like clipped commands in Gaelic — not to me.

The heat smell blocked out anything that wasn't right under my nose. But I still had some deductive reasoning left, and I could sense Sea in the periphery of what would happen next.

In what felt like only seconds, Wild was ferrying me through an open door. And soon, my back hit a bed that smelled like the wolf who'd refused to come out of the downstairs bathroom.

This was where Aidan slept? I dimly wondered at the huge expanses of white on either side of where Wild had dropped me. Not for comfort, I sensed, but for capacity. Aidan had denied me, but had this bed been designed for exactly this?

The old curiosity attempted to peek through the haze of need, but a soft command from Wild brought my eyes back to him before I could follow the question too far. "Eyes on me, Flower."

My wolf was so close to the surface that I could feel her need, feral and frenzied. No doubt my eyes were glowing.

But Wild's expression remained calm and unlit. My mind reeled, trying to remember everything the Scottish she-wolves had told me about heat. Wasn't the smell supposed to turn males frantic and crazed? Why was he so calm when I felt so desperate?

"Did he hurt ye, Flower?" Wild wrapped one of my bare legs around his fully clothed waist. "Deny ye in your time of need?"

He wasn't naked like that morning when he showed me the difference between disgust and desire outside the circle. In fact, he was still wearing the same tunic I'd seen him in last. But the heavy sex behind his pants split my folds, pressing into the newly discovered nub of sensitive flesh.

I ground my hips against his length. So damn grateful to have him here on top of me, ready and willing to give me what I need.

"Ye haven't answered my questions." Wild cupped my face again and ran his rough thumb over an unexpectedly sensitive spot on my neck.

"Yes! Yes! " An erotic shudder rippled through me as I answered him, unable to catch my breath.

"It hurts," I gasped.

"It hurts?" Wild lifted up to smile down at me ever so tenderly. Before saying, "Good."