31. Thirty-One

thirty-one

H umiliation burned within me. How did he know? Had he overheard me talking to Evera? Was it really a sex dream if it had actually happened?

The wind changed directions, carrying a heavy musk that stank of strays. Penn stiffened, his focus shifting to the incoming threat.

“They’re coming from the south,” he said.

“Do you think they know we’re here?” I asked, forgetting my embarrassment.

“Not if we’re lucky. We’re downwind at the moment.”

“But if they’re tracking—”

“They’re not,” Penn interjected. “Not yet, anyway.”

His certainty inspired confidence.

“Let’s get out of here before the winds shift,” he added.

I wasn’t ready to return to Frann’s, to face her and Walter after fleeing like a coward. Nor did I want to go back to the farmhouse, where the threat of Malia showing up on the doorstep seemed high. My house wasn’t an option either for obvious reasons. Plus, if I saw Finneus or his caster pet anytime soon, I was likely to do something regrettable.

I didn’t share any of these thoughts with Penn, though he seemed to sense them anyway. He started up the mountain again instead of retracing our path back to the Widows’ Den. I considered not following him, but I didn’t want to risk an encounter with the strays alone.

Penn regulated his speed so I could keep up. He didn’t speak inside my head again, and I was grateful. My thoughts were loud and conflicting enough without his influence.

We cut through a stretch of forest, climbing higher and higher to where the air was thin and hard to breathe. Snow fell in heavy wet flakes that weighed down my fur and soaked through to my skin. The icy gusts didn’t help. Lightning zigzagged in a sideways pattern across the dark sky, illuminating a sprawling cabin.

Penn slowed, and I fell in step beside him. The house felt familiar, though I’d never been there. At least not that I recalled. He shifted to open the front door, which took a considerable amount of finagling since ice had crusted over the lock. He finally resorted to using his shoulder like a battering ram to force our way inside.

I hurried across the threshold, determined to get out of the storm. Sheets covered the furniture, suggesting no one had inhabited the cabin in a very long time. I shed my wolf and snatched the dustcover from a leather sofa to wrap around my shivering body. Penn did the same, though he knotted the sheet around his hips.

Water dripped from the ends of my hair and ran in rivulets down my back. My teeth chattered uncomfortably. The weather hadn’t affected Penn, or maybe he just hid it better.

“Where are we?” I asked, pulling the sheet tighter around my shoulders.

Penn glanced around the dark room. “I can make a fire, but it’ll be a while before it heats up in here. There’s a hot spring in the courtyard. That’ll warm you up.”

I frowned. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

He started toward the fireplace. “The storm is just starting, Drake. We’re stuck here until at least the morning. There will be plenty of time for you to finish yelling at me once your lips return to a normal color.”

I sat defiantly on the sofa and tucked my legs beneath myself in the corner. Penn’s shoulder muscles bunched, his voice eerily controlled when he spoke.

“You still aren’t at full strength. Your body needs more time to heal itself. That’s why the cold is bothering you so much.” His tone was almost patronizing.

“I’m fine,” I snapped.

Penn whirled, golden flames twisting in his eyes just as the logs in the fireplace started to burn. “No. You’re not, Drake. She almost killed you. Do you not understand that?” He shook his head, confusion softening his features. “Why couldn’t you let her take it from me?”

Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, I now wondered the same thing. At the time, it didn’t seem fair to let Penn suffer for me. Of course, it also wasn’t fair of him to keep secrets from me about myself, yet that had never factored in for him.

“Why do you make it so fucking difficult to protect you?” Exasperated, he ran a hand through his damp hair.

I was on my feet. “No one asked you to protect me,” I shouted, a loud crack of thunder punctuating my words. “I can fight my own battles. I’m not weak.”

Penn blinked. “Of course you’re not.”

I threw my hands up in the air and the sheet slipped from my shoulders. “Then why do you treat me like I am?”

His eyes went wide, and he stepped back like I’d slapped him. “I don’t,” he stammered.

“You act like I’m too delicate for this world. Too fragile for the truth.” I took a step toward him. “No more lies, Penn. Who are you really?”

His jaw worked back and forth, gaze fixed on my face instead of my body. “It’s complicated, as you know,” he said after a long stretch of silence, save the storm raging outside the cabin. “In my dreams, I have gone by many names. In my earliest memories, I was called Lucien.”

I rolled the name around in my head. In my dream of him, I’d never called him by name. It hadn’t seemed strange at the time since the man had looked just like Penn.

“Diana was my mate—my true mate,” Penn continued in a low, emotionless voice. “I saw our ceremony.”

I got a sex dream, and he relived the bonding ceremony.

He stepped closer and cupped my face in his hands. “I swear to you—that is as much as I saw of our time together in that life.”

I wanted to believe him so badly.

“That night, nobody asked me to protect you, but I swore an oath that I would.” One hand slid into my wet hair as his thumb traced the outline of my mouth. “It was the first dream I had. In front of our pack, I claimed you as my mate and swore to protect you above all others. To be loyal to you above all others. Forever.”

Whispers of the past filled my head. I heard the same words in Penn’s voice, only he spoke in old faerie. Magic burned inside of me, though I didn’t know whether it was left over from Walter’s healing or part of a memory I couldn’t quite reach.

“Do you know how maddening it is to be in love with you in my dreams, only to wake up and remember you hate me?” he muttered, brushing his mouth across mine.

Goosebumps peppered my skin, heart beating painfully fast in my chest. In my entire life as Drake, only one man had ever said he loved me and meant it—my father. And the love between a parent and child was very different than the love Penn spoke of.

The true mate bond gave both parties a strength that neither would ever possess alone, or so I’d been told for as long as I could recall. No stronger connection between two people existed in our world.

What no one ever mentioned was the way it felt to discover your true mate and just how terrifying it was to realize the fates had spoken with no input from you. The intensity of my feelings for Penn shook me to my core. It was more than physical attraction, greater than sexual chemistry. His soul called to mine.

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered, pressing my clammy palms to his chest. “I’ve never hated you. Not sure I ever could.”

That much was true. Even when I wanted to hate Penn, when it should have been easy to hate him, or at the very least dislike him, I’d never been able to muster the emotion. Now I understood why.

Heat radiated off his body, engulfing me in a warm embrace. My fingers shook when I reached up and ran the tips down his stubbly cheek. He wrapped his hand around mine and brought it to his mouth.

“Do I make you nervous?” He took my index finger between his teeth and ran his lips up and down.

My own lips parted, heat pooling low in my abdomen as I stared at his mesmerizing mouth. I started to shake my head but reconsidered at the last second. No point in lying. My erratic heartbeat was just as clear to him as it was to me. Not to mention he’d been oddly dialed into my emotional highs and lows lately, which I supposed should’ve been a clue as to his potential identity.

“A little,” I admitted as he guided my arms around his neck.

Penn’s hands settled on hips, expression turning serious. “If you’re not ready—”

I silenced him with a kiss. It started out soft and sweet, if not a little restrained. Even when Penn slid his tongue between my lips to dance with mine, he held back. His fingers dug into my hips as though determined to keep them from roaming to more interesting parts of my body.

My wolf stirred inside me. I pressed my hips into his, desperate to be closer to him, to feel more of his skin against mine. Through the thin sheet, his rock-hard cock rubbed against my stomach. I ground against him until he moaned into my mouth.

“Gaia, Drake,” he growled, peppering biting kisses along my jaw. Sharp teeth caught my earlobe, his voice husky when he spoke. “Do you understand how long I’ve wanted to touch you?” His grip tightened. “To taste you.” The tip of his tongue slid down my neck. “To know you inside and out.”

The ache between my legs was almost painful. My fingers tangled in his hair, my breaths coming faster and faster.

“Hold on tight,” he murmured, sweeping my legs out from under me.

Caught off guard, I yelped and scrambled to tighten my grip on his neck. He flashed me a rare, genuine grin that would’ve made me weak in the knees had I still been standing. I thought Penn might lay me down in front of the fireplace—strong silent types were often closet romantics.

Instead, he carried me down a hallway where one side was entirely glass. Outside, the storm raged like a hauntingly beautiful and somehow appropriate soundtrack to the night that lay ahead. Or maybe it was a warning from Gaia that I shouldn’t have been so quick to discount.

Penn used his elbow to press a sensor on the wall and two glass partitions slid apart, allowing an icy blast inside the house. I started shivering immediately.

“You’re making me think I’m right to be nervous,” I teased, teeth clanging together as I spoke.

Penn hugged me tighter against his chest and crossed to the center of a wintry garden, where steam rose from a gurgling neon blue pool. He didn’t remove the sheet around his waist before plunging down the stone steps into the hot water.

The warmth seeped into my bones and relaxed me. Jets sent hard streams of water that battered my knotted muscles, causing a deep ache that felt ambrosial. I twisted in Penn’s arms. He guided my legs around his waist and tore the sheet loose, balling up the wet fabric and tossing it into the snow surrounding the pool.

“Healing spring?” I guessed.

He ran his palms along the sides of my rib cage. “Like I said, you need your strength.”

He dipped his head, lips capturing mine, and slowly carried me toward the edge of the pool. He sat me on a warm stone bench, jets pulsating at my back.

Unhooking my ankles from behind him, he rested his hands on my knees. We broke apart, both breathing too hard. Fingers crawled up my thigh. The heat in my core overshadowed the water temperature. My nipples were so tight it was painful.

Penn’s forehead rested against mine, his gold irises holding me captive. His hand reached the top of my thigh, the other coming out of the water to grab hold of my chin.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

“The number of times I’ve thrown myself at you isn’t answer enough?”

He brought his mouth to mine. “You have no idea how hard it was to resist you.”

“Then stop trying,” I breathed.

He parted me with his fingers, keeping his gaze locked on mine. I bit back a moan as his fingers started making slow, lazy circles around my clit. Penn tugged my lip free from my teeth.

“It’s just you and me.” He slid one long finger inside me. “You want me to stop holding back—same, Drake.”

His thumb continued to taunt my clit while a second finger joined the first. My nails dug into his chest as he coaxed me closer and closer to the edge.

It felt like my first time, with all the excitement and nervous anticipation that entailed. Except with Penn, I didn’t feel awkward or self-conscious about my lack of experience. I didn’t wonder whether I was doing something wrong or if he was enjoying himself. For once, Penn didn’t hide behind his favorite mask. He watched me hungrily, my arousal satisfying him almost as much as he did me.

“Faster?” he rasped in my ear.

I nodded jerkily. His lips spread into a grin as they moved down my neck.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Faster,” I moaned, grinding my hips so he’d press harder against me.

The pressure built steadily until I wanted to beg him for release. Penn crushed his mouth to mine as I writhed against him. His desire was the perfect mix of sweet and salty on my tongue. He wrapped his free arm around my waist.

“Turn around,” he growled, spinning me so my back was against his chest. He spread my legs, positioning me directly over one of the jets and using his fingers to part my folds. I howled when the warm water beat against my sensitive skin.

Penn buried his face in my neck. “Yeah?” he asked.

“Yes. Gaia, yes,” I panted, bracing my hands on the wet stone ledge.

He guided himself between my legs, circling my opening with his tip before finally entering me. My breath hitched. I’d seen him naked and even held him in my hand, yet I still wasn’t prepared for his size. Penn didn’t rush, going inch by inch so I could adjust around him.

He swept my hair over one shoulder and nuzzled the back of my neck. The pressure from the jet made my eyes roll up in my head. Penn’s teeth scraped my collarbone as his free hand snaked around my waist, holding me securely against him.

“Do you want me to move?” he asked.

“Yes,” I gasped, not sure how much longer I was going to last.

He started off slow and steady, a sharp contrast to the water pulsing against me. The arm around my waist held me in place.

“Gaia, you feel better than I imagined,” he groaned, hips snapping as he buried himself inside me again and again.

I started convulsing around him, nails strapping the stone as I desperately clung to the ledge.

“Faster,” I cried.

Penn increased the tempo and swirled his hips. All my nerve endings were on fire. Every touch, every movement made my head spin. The hand around my stomach slid up to cup my jaw. He turned my head so I met his hooded gaze.

“Come for me, Drake,” he grunted.

It was like I’d been waiting a lifetime to hear him say those dirty words. I fell over the edge of ecstasy, howling as I climaxed. Penn followed shortly after. He stayed inside of me, riding out the aftershocks as he hugged me to him.

“Still think I treat you too much like a fragile doll?” he teased, nipping at my shoulder.

I had yet to catch my breath but managed a stuttering laugh as he pried my hands loose from the stone and threaded his fingers through mine.

That night, we made love two more times outside, with the snow falling all around us. Penn was the most attentive and skilled lover I’d known. He knew exactly how and where to touch me and derived pleasure simply from giving it to me.

At some point we relocated inside. Penn made a makeshift bed in front of the fireplace with pillows and blankets he found in a linen closet. I curled up against him like a cat, exhausted yet extremely relaxed.

“Everything changes now, doesn’t it?” I asked around a yawn.

He ran his fingertips up and down my spine and dropped a kiss on my head. “Let’s worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Tonight is for us.”

I tipped my head and reached up for a kiss, swinging my leg over his waist and crawling on top of him. Hands on his chest, I stared down into his blue eyes and watched as the bands of gold appeared.

“In that case, let’s go another round.”

His hands slid up my thighs to grip my hips, a crooked smile lighting up his expression.

“I thought you’d never ask.”