Tangle of Need (Page 58)

“First time I wore you out.” Riley’s lips brushed her neck, his voice a teensy bit smug.

Leopard and woman both had to admit he was entitled. “Too bad the energy wave didn’t cross over to me.” It had proven that the connection between the SnowDancer and DarkRiver webs formed by their mating, was very much only a mating bond. Nothing else came through. As a result, after Sienna’s abilities went supernova, Riley had been bursting out of his skin with energy—all of it focused oh-so-sexily on Mercy—while she’d alternately moaned in breathless pleasure and begged for sleep.

The memory made her toes curl. “Got any new etchings to show me?” She closed her hands over his arms, loving the warm, solid feel of him. My Riley.

“As a matter of fact…” Riley nuzzled at Mercy. “Want to go for a walk first?” The night was stunning as only a Sierra night could be, lit by a full moon and a million stars.

Mercy did a feline stretch in his arms. “I feel too lazy after Bas’s concoctions. Can I sit in your lap instead?”

“Come here, kitty cat.” Tugging her back, he took a seat in one of the large cushioned wicker chairs her parents had gifted them on their mating. Mercy immediately curled into him, her legs hanging over the arm of the chair, her head against his shoulder. Fiery curls of hair cascaded down his arm where he braced her back, the lithe muscle of her thigh warm under his other hand.

Content in a way he’d rarely been before Mercy, he simply stroked her until she purred. It delighted him as it always did. “I made you purr.”

A lazy yawn. “I’m faking it.”

Lips curving, he dipped his head to kiss her. It was a familiar exchange, a little private game they could play because they were utterly besotted with one another. The word “besotted” had first been used by a disgusted Sage, but Riley didn’t mind being besotted with Mercy. “Fake it some more,” he said, his hand on her abdomen.

However, when she tilted back her head, a smile tugging at her lips, he froze, caught by a delicate softness to her features that struck him out of nowhere. Mercy wasn’t a vulnerable woman—and yet at that instant, his wolf roared to the surface, wanting to protect, to shelter, to take care of her. The urge was so violent that he fisted a hand in her hair, the one on her abdomen flexing until all his tendons stood out in stark relief.

“Riley? What’s wrong?” Sitting up from her languorous position, Mercy ran her hands through his hair, over his nape, down his chest.

Petting him. She was petting him in an effort to comfort.

“Talk to me, tough guy.” Open concern, her eyes night-glow.

Riley tried to fight the primitive impulse, only to feel it shoving back with so much urgency he stood no chance. Shocked, he shuddered as the wolf took over, but instead of using that control to initiate the shift, it retreated … leaving him with a luminous piece of knowledge, a brilliant faceted jewel that almost blinded.

“Oh,” he whispered, looking down. “I didn’t understand.” It was an apology to his wolf. “It’s my first time.”

Mercy tugged on his hair. Hard. “You’re scaring me.”

He looked up, wonder in every heartbeat. “Guess what?”

Mercy’s gaze dropped to where he’d spread his hand. She went motionless, eyes huge. “Riley, are we—Do you—How—”

“Yes,” he answered. “We are, and I know because a changeling male always knows before anyone else when it comes to his mate.” He’d heard the healers hypothesize that the realization was caused by a minute change in a woman’s scent, a change so subtle no one else would sense anything, but that the wolf in Riley had scented at once.

Mercy’s eyes held equal parts shock, and delight. “Riley.”

He felt his lips stretch even wider. “I think we need to celebrate with some brand-new etchings.”

His cat’s laugh was surprised and warm and the sound of home. “It’s your etchings that got us into this position.” Stealing a kiss when he bent his head, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m so happy.” It was a conspiratorial whisper.

Cuddling her tight, he said, “Can I tell everyone?”

AFTER Drew tugged Indigo away somewhere a small distance from the den, Tai and Evie decided to stop at the waterfall, leaving Riaz and Adria to make the rest of the journey alone. Neither of them spoke, and it wasn’t quite a comfortable silence, but it wasn’t the edgy anger that had existed between them for so long either.

The night air a cool kiss against their skin, they passed into the White Zone not long afterward, and then they were at the den. Instead of splitting with her, he walked her to her room. Reaching the door to her quarters, he waited for her to unlock it, but made no move to cross the threshold. She, in turn, made no move to invite him in, her eyes dark with a dawning awareness that something had changed, the bonds they’d forged that afternoon deeper than they should be. “Good night.”

“Good night.” Waiting until she closed her door, he walked back out of the den, his wolf needing the quiet freedom of the night. Stripping in a secluded area, he put his clothes carefully in the hollow created between two pines that had grown into each other, and shifted.

Agony and ecstasy, pleasure and pain.

The black wolf that lived within him took form in sparks of color, its nose picking up a thousand unique tendrils of scent. Shaking its head to clear it after the shift, it began to run, disturbed by its own confusion. All its life, the wolf had been the one who felt nothing but certainty, been alternately amused and frustrated by the man’s way of complicating things.