With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(125)
Author: Kristen Ashley

She did not think so.

“Are you telling me I stink?” she snapped irately.

He chuckled before he said (false) fondly, “You never stink, my little one.”

She’d had enough and therefore started to pull away from him saying, “I should move around. I don’t want to get stiff.”

She didn’t get very far before his hands went under her arms and he pulled her gently up to rest on his chest with their faces close.

She put her hands on his chest and pushed back but his arm slid around her lower waist and he held her still.

When she stopped moving, his other hand went behind her head, grasping her hair in one big fist, pulling it over her shoulder and twisting it again and again until it formed a long twine. Then he wrapped it around his palm at the side of her neck.

He watched his hand doing this as if enthralled.

“Callum,” she called and reminded him, “I was going to move around.”

His eyes came to hers and he announced, “You’re still pissed.”

Oh, he was right about that.

Apparently she could be something with Callum but “pissed” was all she was ever going to be.

“Can I have a day to get used to the fact my mate is a werewolf?” she asked caustically and then went on, “Or is that asking too much?”

He grinned at her (the arrogant bastard!).

Then he used her hair to pull her face to his and he touched his lips to hers.

Looking into her eyes, still grinning, he granted, “You can have a day.”

Now, that was when she would have attacked if she could have attacked.

But he simply marked her hair at her good temple with his (that particular business finally explained by him being half-wolf), let her go, moved away and left the room.

She washed as best she could, dressed and decided to hang out in their room because she couldn’t face anyone.

Leah came up with a tray of food in the late afternoon.

At that moment Sonia was grateful for Leah. It was good to be around her kind, for one, even if that made her a bad person for thinking it. For another, she liked Leah. Leah was funny and sweet and a little bit crazy and Sonia could be herself around her because, obviously, Leah was used to a life filled with vampires and such.

While Sonia ate, Leah talked, telling her wild stories of vampire concubines and captivating stories of places called Feasts and terrifying stories of something called The Sentence. All of this sharing how she’d fallen in love with Lucien.

The story had taken over an hour to tell and Sonia, long since having cleaned her plate, stared at her new friend when she was done talking.

“As you can see,” Leah concluded, “I’m safe, healthy and happy and Lucien is…” she smiled a sweet, eloquent smile before finishing, “happy too.”

“And I’m happy for you,” Sonia replied softly, meaning every word.

Leah grinned at her. “If you embrace it, Sonny, you’ll be happy too and, I promise, it’ll be beyond your wildest dreams.”

That was doubtful.

Sonia had had her “wildest dreams”. She knew how good it could be and it was not that.

“I don’t have much choice but to embrace it,” Sonia told her. “It’s destiny.”

“I know. Mine was too and destiny is my best friend,” Leah declared on a giggle.

Sonia laughed softly, not agreeing in the slightest but also not wanting to break Leah’s happy mood.

Ryon came up shortly after and she let him off the hook by smiling at him the minute he walked through the door.

Caleb came up not long after and she visited with them while Leah returned her tray but she came back with Lucien.

Lucien regarded her carefully as he walked in but even though he freaked her out more than werewolves, she’d lived with vampires all her life (apparently) so she knew better than to fear him (hysterically rather than generally because Lucien, the individual, was still kind of scary).

Regan arrived a few minutes later with a board game and they all started playing. Even Lucien who didn’t strike Sonia as a board game type of… being. Then again, she was getting the sense cold, aloof Lucien would do just about anything to make his bride happy, including playing a board game.

Therefore, hours later, Sonia was lying on her belly on the curvy couch by the fire. Regan and Lucien were in chairs pulled around to the side of the fireplace by the couch. Leah was sitting cross-legged on the floor at Lucien’s feet. And both Ryon and Caleb’s long bodies were spread across the floor as they lay on their sides with pillows under their elbows, heads in their hands when Callum walked in.

He stood at the couch by Sonia’s feet and stared down at them from his colossal werewolf height.

“We’re almost done with this game. You can sit in the next one,” Caleb announced.

“There won’t be a next one,” Callum declared meaningfully (and, incidentally, kingfully), walking down the couch and pulling Sonia up cautiously before sitting down, stretching his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles and setting her down with her upper torso on his thigh.

She wanted to pull away but she couldn’t mainly because her back had begun to really hurt and she hadn’t wanted to mention it and worry anyone but also because they were all watching her with Callum.

So she just settled in like she didn’t care (when she did).

They finished the game, folded it up and said their goodnights and Sonia decided now was the time for pain pills because she didn’t mind Callum worrying.

She started to push up from the couch (he’d followed everyone to the door and closed it behind them) but, quick as a flash, he was crouched at her side with a big palm in the small of her back.

“Just stay there, I’ll bring your injection out here,” he told her and then moved to the bathroom.

Holy cow.

She’d forgotten about her injection. How could she forget about that? And how could she take it with her back already on fire?

“Callum,” she called. “I need my pain pills.”

“After the injection,” he replied, walking in with the syringe already loaded.

She stared at it like it was a living thing which existed only to do her harm.

Callum saw her look, crouched at the head of the couch and his hand cupped the side of her face. “Two minutes, baby doll,” he said gently. “Then it’ll be over and that whole time I’ll be right here.”

Boy, she hated the fact that she loved him, that there were so many things to love and that all of them were lies.