I tried for the third time to slip out of his bed. “I need to get up; I have to stop by my place to change before work.”
His arms tightened around my waist as he nipped at the sensitive skin below my ear. “You should have brought your clothes with you when you came over yesterday.”
I nodded, trying—and failing desperately—not to succumb to his gentle caresses that were slowly igniting my desire. “There hadn’t been plans to spend the night after I came over for lunch yesterday. I didn’t know I would need them.”
One calloused hand blazed a trail of heat under the covers from my waist to the juncture of my thighs where he found an undeniable wetness. I moaned as his fingers slid along my folds until they began to play with my oversensitive clit.
“You should have known I wasn’t going to let you leave. If it was up to me, you would have moved out of that apartment and into this house a month ago.” He rolled me onto my back and leaned over me, his fingers busy underneath the sheets.
I bit my lip, helpless to stop him and honestly without the desire to do so. He stared at me for a moment, probably to hear my rebuttal, but when he realized I had no more argument for him, he bent his head, capturing my lips in a sensual kiss. As he sucked on my tongue, he removed his fingers from between my legs and replaced them with his dick, breaching my walls with shallow thrusts until he was fully seated inside of me. Lifting my thigh to rest on his hip, his lips fell to my neck, and my hands grasped at his back as he began to rotate his hips above me.
The stillness of this time of day, before even the roosters rose to call out the sun, was filled with my panting and his groaning until I whimpered through my release, and he clenched his teeth through his. Moments later, after we’d untangled our bodies and lay with his chest pressed against my back, Langston pressed a brief kiss to the side of my face followed by a less brief kiss to the exposed spot just above my collarbone that held too much significance for me to count the move out as nothing. I blinked up at him, eyes easily making out his form even in the darkness of the early hour.
“You just make sure you bring clothes with you when you come back tonight.”
I grinned, and though it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him when I had agreed to come back, “Yes, Alpha” was all I said instead.
♥♥♥♥
I let myself into my apartment, immediately frowning at the stale air that greeted me. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since I’d been here, and that wasn’t nearly enough time for the apartment to lose the feel of being lived in. Then again, it could just be that after connecting with Langston on an intimate level made me no longer feel like this was my home.
My first move was to the control panel on the wall to switch on the air conditioner, and my second was to the nightstand in the bedroom to plug my cell phone into the charger. I’d been too preoccupied the night before to ask Langston to borrow his, and as a result, my phone had died overnight.
The fifteen minutes it took for me to shower was apparently enough for my phone to power back on because as I stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, the generic ringing caught my attention. I crossed the narrow hallway and entered my bedroom, picking up my phone to observe the screen. I thought it might have been Lenny calling to question my whereabouts, but it wasn’t her. I didn’t recognize the number, and not even the area code was familiar. That was probably a sign right there, but it was one that was ignored as I swiped my thumb across the screen and held the device to my face.
“Hello?” There was a moment of silence before the sound of someone catching their breath filtered out of my speaker.
“Neen?”
My heart stuttered in my chest as I instantly recognized the voice. We hadn’t spoken since six months before I left Houston, but hers was a voice I would never in my life forget, not to mention no one else on the planet called me by that name. It was specific to her.
“Mama?”
The relief in her tone was palpable. “Thank goodness you’re okay. Listen, Neen, you gotta come home, baby. I know it’s a long drive, but you have to. It’s the right thing to do.”
My mouth hung open. The right thing to do? What the hell! This was why I had ignored all of her calls since I’d been in Madow. I didn’t need to hear her tell me how wrong I was for leaving in the first place.
“Mama, there is no way in hell I’m coming back. In fact I—” my words dried on my tongue as her full spiel sank into my brain. “What do you mean ‘you know it’s a long drive’?”
In the silence that followed, a sick feeling developed in the pit of my stomach and dread crept up the back of my neck. When she spoke again, my mother’s voice had morphed from concerned to… something else. Her register had lowered until she was speaking just barely above a whisper, and though I didn’t have to strain to hear her, it put me on edge. What was she saying that she didn’t want someone to hear?
“Janine, listen to me. They know where you are, and they are coming for you. I tried, baby, you have to believe me. I tried so hard for so long to keep them away from you, but once they realized what you were, there was nothing I could do. They threatened you, and I had no choice but to give you up, and now, they won’t stop until they get their hands on you beca—”
My mother’s clear and firm voice was replaced with grunts and the sound of a struggle until I heard the distinct smack of skin connecting with skin before the call ended abruptly. I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared down at it in horror. Someone had attacked my mother as she was talking to me. I knew exactly what a fight sounded like, and that was what I’d just heard.
My first thought was to jump in my Jeep and speed back toward Houston, but that was exactly what I’d just told her I wouldn’t do. Then I remembered the first half of her utterance. Somehow, the Elders knew where I was. More than that, they were coming for me. That was the baffling part. People disappeared from the pack all the time, but no one ever attempted to retrieve them. For the narrative to change so suddenly was terrifying.
I couldn’t stay here. I had to leave. I couldn’t let them bring their bullshit to beautiful, untainted Madow. It was time to go.
♥♥♥♥
She wasn’t at the pupcare when I arrived. Fancy said that she hadn’t called or texted her either. It was possible that she had gotten to her apartment and fallen asleep, exhausted after this morning’s lovemaking, but my gut told me the truth wasn’t so simple. As I exited the building, I called her, but the call went straight to voicemail. I told my wolf not to panic, that she was probably in the middle of a conversation with my sister and that was why she wasn’t answering.
He snorted, urging me to find her before he forced his way out to do it himself. I couldn’t blame him; in no way did I believe the lie I told myself, but I had to stay calm. A flustered mind wasn’t a focused mind. I rushed to my truck and drove toward the apartment that Janine had moved into when she settled on her career almost three months ago. What I saw when I pulled into the parking lot set my blood on boil. Janine had a stack of small boxes at her feet and was shoving them into the backseat of her Jeep at breakneck speed. It sure as hell didn’t look like she was packing up to move in with me; that was for damn sure.
I wanted to believe that I wasn’t seeing what it looked like I was seeing, but there was only so much lying I could do to myself a day. It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to read the scene in front of me. Those boxes most definitely were not destined for the pupcare, nor did they hold cloth diapers or burping cloths. Janine was so preoccupied with her task of arranging her getaway items into her vehicle that she didn’t even look up as I parked next to her and rounded the front of my truck to face her.
“What the hell is going on here?!” I demanded loudly.
She jumped at the sound of my booming voice. When her eyes found mine, those whiskey-colored orbs I had become increasingly fond of waffled between remorse and determination before blinking away the former to settle on the latter, spiking my concern into the sky. After a moment, she broke our connection and continued to place the boxes in her Jeep.
“I’m leaving.”
I reared back. Though I’d had an inkling that might have been the case, to hear her admit it so matter-of-factly was like a punch to the gut. “What did you just say?”
She shook her head, eyes on her task. “You heard me.”
I had heard her, though I wish I hadn’t. “Why? What happened between you leaving my bed and me showing up here? What has you so spooked that you would just dip without so much as a see ya later? Did you change your mind about being with me?”
She said nothing, but she didn’t have to. Her scent spoke volumes, saying all of the words her mouth hadn’t moved an inch to say. Her fear was acrid, singeing my nostrils and enraging my wolf simultaneously. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into my chest, needing the reassurance of her body heat against mine to placate my seething wolf. A threat to our mate wouldn’t go ignored, but first, I needed an explanation.
“Janine. Talk to me, baby. Tell me what happened.”
She shuddered against me, and it was nothing like the moment we had shared only hours earlier during our mutual release. This was full of angst and a thread of relief at my involvement.
“I received a phone call from back home. The Elders know I’m here and are on their way. That’s why I have to go.”
Her words were muffled against my chest, but I heard them loud and clear. These were the men who had taken her as a teenager and used for their own benefit. They hadn’t exactly terrorized her, but they had made her wolf miserable and controlled her human side with a close, watchful eye. I never said it to Janine, but those men had been grooming her. For what, I didn’t know, but what I did know was that those type of men wouldn’t let their years of hard work just walk away without trying to get it back. This wasn’t going to go how they planned, though.
“So your plan is to leave? Just up and disappear?”
Her eyes found something interesting behind my head to focus on, but from the tightness in her jaw, I assumed the answer was yes. Framing her face with my hands, I touched my forehead to hers.
“You don’t have to run. That doesn’t have to be the only answer.”
She shook her head, pulling back from my grasp. “You don’t understand. The Elders won’t let this go. They rule the pack with fear and the type of violence that no one saw but everyone felt. If they are coming for me, it’s to make an example out of me. They won’t stop until I’m dead or worse.”
“I’m not going to let that happen. If they want a fight, they can get it, but if they think they are taking you out of here in any form, the only blood that will be spilled will be theirs.”
She stared at me and I cocked my head. “Do you trust me?” Unplanned, the question fell from my mouth too quickly for me to call the words back. I hadn’t meant to put her on the spot like that, but I’d be lying if I said the answer didn’t mean anything to me. So, I held my breath as I waited for her response. Finally, she nodded and my shoulders dropped in relief. I held out my hand, grateful when she didn’t hesitate to give me her keys and clutched the metal in my hand. I pulled her from beside her Jeep and pushed the door closed, pressing a button on the key ring to lock the doors automatically. Then I led her back toward her apartment.
I sat her down in the living room and took it upon myself to relocate all of her belongings into my space. She moved into my home without complaint, allowing me to stack the few boxes she’d had in the corner of my bedroom and clear out half of my dresser and closest for her remaining things. After returning her now unnecessary key to the housing department located in the career center, we returned to the ranch. The image of her packing her things with the intent to leave Madow tormented me, and I could think of no better way to extinguish it than to lose myself inside of her wet warmth for the second time that day.