By the time Brady cleaned up and reached the kitchen, the most amazing aroma filled the house, making his mouth water and his stomach rumble.
He loved Ren for many reasons but her skill with food might top the list. His mother had always said the way to his heart was through his stomach.
His mother.
God, was she even his mother?
He’d always thought he took after her but now that he was questioning it, their looks weren’t enough alike for there to be no doubt about his parentage. They had the same shaped nose and color eyes except that could be dumb luck over genetics.
Their hair was similar, except now that he thought about it, his mother’s hair had been white blond where his was more dirty creek water blond. And the man he had considered his father until today had been a blue-eyed redhead but his brother—who wasn’t his brother at all—had dark hair and dark eyes to go with his dark personality.
The more Brady thought about the family he’d been raised in, the more he saw signs that all was not as it seemed. Marcus had never been happy. Even as a child, his brother had rarely smiled. And the number of dead animals he’d brought out of the forest over the years had to be excessive. Malcolm Connelly had always praised a kill, and Marcus had been pleased with both the praise and the spoils of the hunt.
Now Brady had to wonder if Marcus’s need to kill hadn’t been a big red flag his mother should have noticed. Then again, after recent revelations he didn’t know or understand the woman anymore, so perhaps she’d been as pleased as her husband with their first son’s efforts.
Except Marcus hadn’t been their son.
And if Marcus wasn’t, then what about him?
Hunting and killing had never appealed to Brady. Even in coyote form he didn’t like to hunt. Maybe that was another sign he should take note of. So many things about his life he could no longer be certain of. So many questions and no one to answer them except a set of private journals left behind by the woman who’d raised him.
Shaking his head, Brady dispelled all thoughts of his family and the past, and brought his focus back to the woman in front of him. The one currently bent over at the stove.
She still wore his clothes and in spite of them being too big for her, the pants molded to the sweet curve of her ass as she leaned over and reached into the oven.
He opened his mouth to offer a hand but snapped it shut again. He didn’t want to startle her in case she bumped into a hot surface. Instead he rested a shoulder on the doorframe and watched her lift a pie dish and place it on the counter. He couldn’t help but admire her strength and ease as she worked. She was comfortable here, in the kitchen. He’d love to watch her at the Den.
It would be her place.
The one where she took control, held the reins, and directed others to do as she wanted.
“It’s ready,” she said without turning around. “Want to pour us coffee?”
Brady was one hundred percent sure he hadn’t made a sound and she’d had her back to him the whole time; there was no way she would have seen him in her peripheral vision.
Frowning, he pushed off the doorjamb and asked, “How did you know I was here?” on his way to the coffee pot.
“I heard you leave the bedroom, could smell you when you came into the room.” She glanced over her shoulder, her brow furrowed, her eyes squinting. “Actually, it was more that I sensed you than smelled you, but once I felt you behind me I could pick out your scent over the chicken pie.”
“Mating bond.” Grabbing the pot, he filled the two mugs she had placed on the counter beside the machine. “We might not have completed it or even marked each other but our connection is growing stronger.”
“It is. Which is why I think we should mark each other after lunch,” she casually tossed over her shoulder with a smile as if those words weren’t the most significant of his life.
“Wh—” Saliva caught in his throat. “What?” he choked out. Coughing, he cleared his throat and asked, “You want to mark each other? After lunch?”
She’d fought against their bond long enough for Brady to believe it would be weeks before she would accept him and they could do anything about the connection strengthening between them with every second they were together, and now she was giving in? Just like that?
“What happened? What did you read in those books?” he demanded.
Something had to have triggered her acceptance. She’d said she wasn’t going to fight their attraction—connection—but this was taking the reins and… Ah.
“You want to be in control, and to do that you say when and how,” he guessed.
Ren turned and faced him fully. “Yes and no.”
“Explain it to me because this one-eighty has my head spinning.” And his heart racing. He crossed his arms over his chest even though every instinct screamed to cross the damn room and pull her into his arms and against his chest.
“I’d like us both to be in control, to make active choices instead of reactive, and I want you to know that those journals, whatever they reveal about you, or your family, make no difference to the way I see you. The way I feel about you.”
“We were going to put the past in the past first.”
“The past is already in the past; it doesn’t change the fact we’re mates or that I want to be your mate.”
“You said you didn’t want to.”
“No. I said I wasn’t happy about being forced to mate. But, Brady.” She took a step toward him making every muscle in his body clench, his lungs seize. “If I had to choose, out of all the men I’ve known in my life, I’d choose you. Every time. I chose you before I knew what it meant to be mates, before I knew what love was I loved you. When you left, it hurt and I wanted to blame you for that, and for everything your family has done to mine, but you aren’t to blame for any of it. Yes, you should have come back sooner. Yes, you should have tried to contact me at some point over the last thirteen years, but I understand why you didn’t.”
“Glad one of us does.”
She smiled at him. “You know why you didn’t.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. And he did.
He’d been trying to please the one person he still had in his life, the woman who’d raised him and now might not even be his mother.
A growl rumbled in his chest. “I hate all the secrets.”
“Then let’s make a rule right now, one we live by for the rest of our days. No secrets between us. Ever.”
“I love you.” He’d planned to hold back those words but if they weren’t keeping secrets, then he needed to say them whether she reciprocated or not. He needed her to know he was all in.
Ren’s smile grew as she closed the distance between them and placed her hands on his chest. “And I love you.”
“Can we though? Love each other?” he wondered. “We haven’t seen each other in years and we’ve both changed, grown. We don’t really know each other anymore.”
“Are you doubting what you feel or what I feel?”
He shrugged. “Both?”
“Okay, then let’s agree we have strong feelings of like to go along with our mates bond and we’re prepared to build on those.”
“Then we shouldn’t mark each other.” Fuck. He couldn’t believe he was thinking it, never mind voicing it. “We should wait until we’re sure.”
“I’m sure I want to be marked by you. If you don’t want me to mark you yet, that’s fine. I’ll wait.”
“No. I want that. I just…”
She slipped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek on his shoulder, her face tucking in to the side of his neck. “Brady, I’m not going to change my mind.”
“You already have,” he argued. “Not a week ago you ordered me out of the Den, and now you’re inviting me to make the most intimate connection two coyotes can make.”
“That wasn’t about you.”
“How could it not have been about me?”
Behind him she gripped fistfuls of his shirt and tugged. “It was about everybody else. All the crazy shit that’s gone on in recent weeks, months. Jeez, years.”
“And me.”
Ren sighed; her warm breath bathing his neck sent ripples of goose bumps across his skin. “Yeah, and you.”
“Then we should wait.” God, he was an idiot who should bang his head on the nearest wall.
He had the woman of his dreams asking him to mark her, and he was trying to change her mind, put her off.
Damn. He wasn’t an idiot, he was fucking insane.
“Do you think we would wait if we’d just met?” she inquired with a smirk in her tone.
Damn her. She had him. He tightened his arms around her. “No, probably not.”
Would it be so bad to mark each other? He knew there was nothing that could possibly change his mind about Ren. She was it for him, had been his whole life, but then she wasn’t the one with all the rotting skeletons in her family closet.
Anything could come out of his mother’s journals. They’d already discovered Marcus wasn’t born a coyote, wasn’t a Connelly by birth. Most likely Brady wasn’t either.
She held tight to his shirt, her arms banded around his ribs, squeezing as though she knew he needed something to ground him, while his mind spun in circles going over the same things again and again.
Holding her close gave him strength; it also gave him thoughts of being in this position naked.
It would be so easy to take her up on the offer, to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom where he could spread her out on the bed and explore every inch of her body.
A shudder went through him. “I don’t know if I could stop myself from claiming you once we started,” he admitted.
“Is that why you’re backpedaling? You think I’ll be upset if we complete our mating bond while marking each other?” She leaned away, her arms remaining locked around him, a frown on her face. “Brady, I think you misunderstood what I’m asking. Or maybe I worded it wrong. I think we should claim each other. Mark, sex, bite, the whole bonding thing.”
If he thought his body had clenched before, it was nothing compared to right now. He was so tight it wouldn’t surprise him to find he’d lost inches in height and width; his skin felt like it had shrunk two sizes, compressing muscle and bone.
Dragging air into his lungs, he pushed it out through strangled vocal cords. “Did you turn the oven off?”
Ren’s forehead wrinkled, her nose scrunched up. “Yes, why—hey!”
He couldn’t stop a smile from stretching his lips as he scooped her off the floor into his arms and made for the bedroom. If they were doing this—and god help him, they abso-fucking-lutely were—he would do it right, do his best to make it good for Ren.
Which meant he had to get her naked and leave his own clothes on. To begin with.
If he let his cock out now, the damn thing would be shoved inside her before either of them blinked. And Brady wasn’t about to embarrass himself like that. He’d be sure to make her come and if he managed not to come in his pants while doing so, he’d jerk off so he wouldn’t be on edge when he took her the first time.
Fuck.
He was about to lose his virginity to the only woman he’d ever wanted. When did his life get so great?
Only days ago he thought he’d be run out of town by an angry mob, Ren leading the charge, and now he was lowering her to his bed, getting ready to sink inside her virgin body.
Double fuck.
There was no way he wasn’t coming in his pants this first time.