Christian
Christian woke to a beam of light across his face. They’d slept until sunrise, which in November in Texas, meant it was after seven. Later than he wanted to get on the road, but the warmth of Ellie in his arms was close to making him forget the rest of his life.
He couldn’t forget, though.
Molly.
Christian climbed out of bed, still naked and caked with the scent of Ellie. He liked that more than he should have. He’d been a rebound before—he was pretty good at rebounds. They were usually full of hot, desperate sex, and over before you could say boo.
He didn’t want to be Ellie’s rebound.
But he shouldn’t want to be her anything.
It would hurt her too much when he had to be the Quades’ breeding boy to rescue his sister.
Dodger perked up when he passed, and Christian ruffled the dog’s head. Good kid. He’d spent the entire night on the floor in front of the bed like he was guarding them. It was pretty damn cool.
Christian slipped into the bathroom, keeping the door open so he could keep half an eye on Ellie, still sprawled on the bed. All naked limbs and sleep sounds. She was damn adorable.
He used the bathroom and did a quick college shower, just to freshen up. Just as he was pulling on the clean boxers, he’d bought at the convenience store the night before, he felt something wet on his foot. Like the dog tongue that had woken him up last night.
But when he looked down, there was no dog. He touched his foot. Dry.
Glancing up, he caught the ball of fur out of the corner of his eye. Dodger was staring at him from near Ellie’s foot, around the other side of the bed.
Weird.
Christian pulled the boxers all the way up and felt the wet lick again. Right on his damn foot. He saw Dodger’s thick pink tongue on Ellie’s toes. Just where the wet feeling was, on his own body.
Nope. This was fucked up weird.
He turned back to the mirror, staring at his scruffy face. “Am I dreaming?” he asked himself. But why in the hell would he dream about his foot getting licked vicariously across the room by his girlfriend’s dog?
Not girlfriend.
No.
Do not go there.
Christian smacked the side of his face. “Wake up, man.”
From the other room, Ellie whimpered. He slipped out into the main room, walking toward her. She had swiped her hand over the side of her face and was turning over. Her naked breasts poked out above the sheets, and he couldn’t help stopping and admiring them. She had perfect, handful-sized breasts with perfect pink nipples.
Fuckin’ gorgeous.
No. He smacked his face again. Focus, man.
She whimpered again, her fingers sliding across her cheek.
What the damn hell is going on?
Dodger whimpered along with his mistress, and Christian shook his head at the dog. “I don’t know, dude. This has to be a dream. Right?”
Ellie’s nipples puckered and hardened, and he felt a strange, ghostly tightening in his own chest.
No. This is not possible.
More curious than aroused—but also pretty damn aroused—Christian reached down and grazed his fingers over one of her nipples. That ghostly tightness was back in his own chest as Ellie squirmed on the bed. She made the sexiest rumble in the back of her throat, and her eyes flickered open.
She smiled up at him, sparkling like a diamond, and he would have enjoyed it more if he wasn’t in the middle of the Twilight Zone. He looked down at his hardening dick, tenting the front snap of his boxers. Ellie’s attention went down there, too.
Her hand slipped from the sheets to the blue flecked material of his shorts, stroking his nearly hard erection. But as soon as he felt the exquisite friction of her touch, she jerked her hand back and looked down at her own crotch.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He pushed out a breath. “This is definitely not a dream. I thought it was a dream.”
She gripped her breasts, hard, and he felt it like the breasts were his own. Ellie stared at him. “Did you feel that?”
“I sure did.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked the dog’s head absently.
She stared at the inside of her palm. “I felt that, too. Oh, shit.”
The way her voice had just changed from curiosity to certainty made something drop inside him. “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the bond,” she whispered. “The… it must… when we…”
“What?”
“Fate.” Her brows came together, more worried than he enjoyed seeing on her. She looked at her wrists, turning them over. “But I still have Donny’s tattoos.”
“Of course you do,” he said, trying to ignore the sting inside that those words produced. “They’re tattoos.”
“But if you and I bonded…” Her attention went to his wrist. “But you don’t have tattoos.”
“I don’t understand, El.” He shifted around to face her. “You’re not making sense.”
“This happens when you… when you bond with someone.” One shaking hand dug through her bed-head hair. “Shit, Christian. I think we bonded, somehow. Or partially bonded.”
“Like… like I was supposed to bond with Kate?”
She nodded. “Only you don’t have tattoos. And I can’t feel any of your feelings.”
“Feel my feelings?”
“When you’re bonded, there’s this…” She pushed out air and looked around, like she was searching for words. “It’s hard to explain. It’s a connection, though. Like… I could feel what Donny felt. And at first it was the worst. Eventually, I could control it. Shut it on and off, even. But at first, it was overwhelming. I could feel everything he felt, physically and emotionally.”
He sat up straighter, moving backwards on the bed. “You felt each other’s emotions?”
“Yeah, it’s part of the bond. We couldn’t read thoughts or anything, but I could always feel him, and it made me able to find him if I concentrated on where he was. It was how I knew, the night when—” She stopped herself, and Christian could see the flicker of guilt come back. The one he’d seen last night.
The one that had driven her into his arms. Her desire to save her mate.
The guilt that she’d failed him.
He may not be able to feel her feelings, but that one was still written on her, even if it was only for the briefest flash.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he said, trying to get away from that sharp pain, sliding back into the familiar oblivion of retreat.
“No, I should have been up long ago. We need to get on the road.” Ellie pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts and looked around the room.
“I’m not going to be able to make a move on the Quades until nightfall, anyway,” he said, picking up a pair of pink panties and handing them over.
“We,” she said, reaching for his hand instead of her lingerie. “We will make a move on them.”
“No, El.” He pulled his hand away, dropping the panties, too. “When we get to El Paso, you’re turning around and driving back home. You will have done what you said you’d do, and you’ll be done with your obligation to me.”
“Did you not just hear what I said about the bond, Christian?” She climbed out of bed, taking the sheet with her. “We are bonded.”
“But we’re not feeling the feelings or whatever,” he said, picking up her bra and tossing it onto the bed. “So, it’ll go away, I’m sure.”
“It won’t go away. It’ll only get stronger.”
“We are not bonded.” He tossed the jeans onto the bed and found his own, stepping into them.
“Yes, we are.” Ellie crossed her arms underneath her breasts, and they spilled over the edge of the sheet, tantalizing him from across the room. “I’m going to call Aunt Rosie to make sure, but there’s no way this isn’t a bond. She’s a human, too, but she’s got wolf sons and she was married to a wolf for how many years. She’ll know.”
“Will she know how to fix it?” he asked, tossing her shirt onto the bed, and finding his own. He couldn’t meet her eyes. But he knew this was a mistake. She was still hung up on her late husband. This was a disaster from minute one.
“You want to…” Her voice caught on the last word, and she dropped the sheet. “You want to… fix… this?”
Christian let his attention roam up and down her body, admiring the clefts and curves, remembering what she felt like in his arms. But he was a damn mess. Everyone he loved ended up getting hurt because of him. Ellie would be no different.
“I want you to have a normal life, El. You are turning out to be one of the best people I have ever met, and I will…” Ruin you, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t be that raw. “I’m a cowboy. A bulldogger. I don’t know anyone in my line of work who has a functioning relationship. You know what Ryan’s life is like. That’s what my life is like. Travel all the time. Bulldog in season, train and work out of season. It’s not a life for a… mate… or whatever you call it.”
“Well, that’s just bullshit.” She pulled on her panties, rolling her eyes like he was being childish. But he knew the life. She didn’t. “My late husband was in rodeo. We did just fine.”
“He wasn’t very good, then.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized what he’d said. It was true, though. The world of elite rodeo was an absolute shit show for families. Even the families who embraced it and came on the road, too. Maybe especially for them.
Come on, man, you are grasping at straws, here.
“He was great,” she said, her words trembling on the edge of a cliff. She fumbled with the clasp on her bra, and when she finally got it, she glared at him, tears in her eyes.
It slayed him to see her like this. But he needed her to pull away. He needed to pull away. This stuff with Molly was only the tip of his shitty iceberg. And he sure as hell would not let Ellie get involved in his mess in El Paso. That was his to clean up. He wanted to protect her from his mess, not draw her into it.
She had a life to go back to, where she was helping people and saving animals and being her amazing self. He needed her to go back to that life.
As much as he wanted her to come into his.
“Just let me handle this, in El Paso,” he said, firming up his resolve by focusing on his t-shirt and getting that over his head. But once he had to look at her again, he just wanted to stride across the room and hold her.
She kept putting on her own clothes, with the dog hovering around her like he was watching for her to topple. Worried.
Maybe he was just hungry. Maybe Christian was projecting his own worry onto Dodger. That was a thing therapists said. Projecting.
“You will not do it alone,” Ellie said, her own resolve solidifying in the emphasis of her words. She glared at him. “We bonded somehow last night, and it’s probably Fate’s way of making sure that I don’t leave you to get yourself killed.”
It would have been so easy to slip out a nasty comment about her letting Donny get killed. Finish this thing budding between them. But he couldn’t.
The old Christian would have. The B.E. Christian. Before Ellie.
Instead, he just ignored her intrepid promise and kept gathering his stuff. “I’m gonna go pack the car,” he said, wanting badly to escape. He had to protect her from the Quade’s shit. He grabbed the bag of stuff from the convenience store and her husband’s old boots and slipped out of the room.
He left Donny’s clothes in the bathroom.
As he put the boots on, on the sidewalk outside their little drive-up room, he breathed in the thick Texas air and tried to ignore the fact that he could feel Ellie everywhere around him. There had to be a way to shut this off.
Shut her off.
Not hurt her. God, he didn’t want to hurt her. But he wanted her to stay far away from his destructive tornado of a life. If he couldn’t rescue his sister, he was going to have to offer himself up for a Kate replacement, and that would hurt Ellie, the closer she allowed herself to get to him.
Ellie was better off without him.
Really.
He kept repeating it, hoping that would make it easier to swallow.
Christian settled into the truck, waiting for her to emerge from the hotel room. He checked his cell phone. No messages. Miranda Quade would check in on him soon. She would want to find out what had happened with Kate.
He hoped to be in El Paso, rescuing his sister, before the old woman even got back from her trip to the Piney Woods. They still had pack junk to finish, or whatever. And he would keep his mouth shut, all the way down to the border, so he could send Ellie back to Durant, and save his sister, and then get far, far away from all these crazy people and their magick.
Except the magick would never leave him. Not completely. Every full moon would bring out the reminder that they had changed his entire life.