Brady stared at Ren. Surely he hadn’t heard what he thought… “Say that again.”
“Michelle is your mother. You’re her biological child.”
“And my father?” Every muscle in his body locked up.
“Matthew.”
“Who the fuck is Matthew?”
“He’s the man I asked you about before. The one who lived here. Are you sure you don’t remember him?” Ren asked.
Shaking his head, Brady paced the living room. “No. I barely remember my—Malcolm—being here. I tried to stay out of his way, stuck close to Mom, or hid in my room.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Are you sure she’s my real mother?”
Ren confirmed with a simple nod.
God, he’d hoped. Prayed. And the relief rushing through him told him just how much he’d needed to be Michelle Watson’s child. Anything else he could deal with, but obviously that would have been his breaking point. “Okay,” he breathed out. “Okay.”
“I want to skim through the rest of the journals, see if I can find out who Matthew is and where we might find him now.”
“Find him?” Brady shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. He’s mentioned in the journals up until now. There’s no way he didn’t know what Malcolm had done—was doing—to Michelle. I don’t want to find him. I want to kill him.”
“But—”
He held up a hand. “No.”
Before Ren could argue further, he left the room. The walls were closing in on him. His skin felt too tight. His bones itchy.
Knowing exactly what he needed, he headed for the back door, stripping along the way. Naked, he grabbed the handle and yanked the door open. Brady let the shift take him and bounded out of the house into the snow-covered yard.
His thought processes worked the same in coyote form except he always found they flowed more easily when he worked his canine body into a sweat. Doing it in human form never had quite the same result.
He ran between the trees, dodged around drifts of snow. Within a few minutes, his heart pumped as fast as his paws, and his mind worked in rhythmical circles until he felt calm enough to return to human form.
Return to Ren.
She waited for him on the back porch, his clothes clutched to her chest. “Better?” she asked as he crossed the yard toward her, his pace far slower than it had been moments ago.
From one step to the next, he changed to his human body, a smile curling his lips. “Yes. Sorry. I seem to run out on you a lot.”
With a shrug she held out his jeans. “It’s what clears your head. I cook. You run.”
Smiling wider, Brady stepped one leg into his pants. “I seem to run more than you cook.”
“I don’t have as much weighing on my mind as you do right now.”
Brady stopped with his jeans halfway up his thighs and frowned. “Not exactly a prized mate, am I?”
Ren’s gaze traveled down his torso until she reached his groin; a smile kicked up one side of her mouth. “Oh, I don’t know. You look like a prize to me.”
“Oh?” He couldn’t stop his body from reacting to her blatant stare of approval and he didn’t bother to hide the fact either. Letting go of his pants he stood straight. “See something you want?”
“I see something I have.” Her eyes met his once more.
Understanding, compassion, love, lust, so many emotions swirled in the dark brown orbs that Brady felt it like a kick to the gut. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
Smiling, she shook her head. “Not on threat of death.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this complete devotion from you but I swear, I’ll spend every second of my life making sure you don’t regret giving it to me.”
“All you have to do is give me the same.”
“You have that already.”
“Then we’re good.” She held out his shirt. “Want to finish getting dressed or do you want to take those jeans off again and come help me with mine?”
Brady didn’t need to think about it. He shucked his pants and kicked them away before stalking toward her. “You want me to help you out here or inside? Because you have about two seconds before I make that decision for you,” he growled.
When they returned home from her sister’s house, Ren had gone straight to his mother’s journals and not lifted her head until a few minutes ago when she had told him Michelle Watson was his biological mother.
He’d found it hard not to drag her off to their room the second they’d stepped foot in the house but he had done it. She hadn’t seemed as wound up as he was or she’d been able to put it aside to focus on his mother’s words.
He wasn’t so lucky; she’d had him in a slow simmer of lust since the minute he’d entered the Den and after she’d teased him earlier, Brady had spent an uncomfortable few hours surrounded by people and with no hope of getting his mate alone and naked.
Of course once there was hope, Ren had other ideas.
It seemed as though he’d spent most of their recent relationship fighting to get close to her in one way or another.
At least now she was his and when he could get close, there was nothing stopping him from taking her. Claiming her.
“Ren?”
The smile she sent him had his balls tucking up tight. Her next move had his groin throbbing in a painful beat. And the next thing she did seized his lungs. Watching her strip out of her clothes just might kill him. Piece by piece, she discarded each article of clothing without taking her eyes from his.
Naked she stood tall, her shoulders back so her breasts thrust out, tempting him with their taut peaks. “Here.”
“You want me to take you out here? In the cold?”
“On the swing.” She pointed to the old seat he’d repaired the third day he was here. “I want you on the swing.”
Arching an eyebrow he contemplated how best to do this without either of them suffering an injury.
“I’m not sure it will support us…”
And if it didn’t, he wanted to be between her and the splintered remains of the chair.
Images flashed through his head, in a second he knew how he wanted to do this.
Striding over, he sat down and patted his thighs. “Climb on.”
Ren walked toward him, an exaggerated sway to her hips. “You going to take me for a ride?”
“Think you can handle it?” he asked, knowing it would get her back up a little, which meant he was in for one hell of a ride because she’d be out to prove she could.
“Oh, Brady. Brady, Brady, Brady.” She threw a leg over his, giving him a close look at the wet flesh between her legs. “You can’t fool me. You know I’m up for it. The question is, are you?”
“I’m up for whatever you want, whenever and wherever you want and if I’m not”—breath hissed through his teeth when she wrapped her hand around his cock—“I’ll die in my effort to keep up.”
“No one’s dying here. Unless we’re talking about what the French refer to as the little death.” Eyes on his, she rose, maneuvered his shaft into place, and held it tight. “Are you ready for a little death, Brady?”
“I’m ready for anything—everything—with you.” Grabbing her hips, he lifted his own and drove his length deep then paused. “Only you.”
Cupping one side of his face, Ren leaned in and brushed her lips on his. “Only you.”
With a grin, Brady bucked his hips and said, “Let’s ride off into the sunset together.”
Ren groaned, rolled her eyes. “Jeez. Corny much?”
“You love me,” he answered and rocked into her once more.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then marry me.” It wasn’t really a question and he accompanied the words with a tweak of her nipples.
“Yes.” She moaned, her head falling back before it snapped back up. “Wait. What?”
Brady smiled. “We’re doing this so let’s do it right. Marry me.”
“God. You’re insane. We’ve only just—”
“Ren.” He took his hands from her breasts and cradled her face. “I love you. You’re my mate. I plan to spend my life with you. I want to do it with my ring on your finger and yes, we’ve moved fast but we know. We know.”
Her eyes bounced between his, emotions tangling and tumbling in quick succession, and he saw it the moment she got it, got him. “Yes. Okay, yes, let’s get married,” she said with a laugh.
“There’s my Ren.” He loved seeing her sparkle with joy, and he hadn’t realized until now he hadn’t seen it this pure since before he left. Right then he vowed to make sure every day she felt this happy, smiled this brightly. “I missed you. Fuck, did I miss you.”
Smiling, her eyes watery, she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his. “I missed you too. Don’t leave me again, Brady.”
“Never,” he promised.
“Good.” She rolled her hips. “Now, let’s take that ride into the sunset.”