ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (159 page)

He moved from my lips to my neck, and every time he moved down after a kiss I could feel where his lips had been.

His hands found my shirt and he stopped, tugging it over my head. I pulled off my own pants, and I stood in front of him in my underwear. He’d seen me in risqué swimsuits before for photo shoots, but suddenly I was shy. I crossed my arms over my chest, covering up, but he took my wrists gently and opened up my arms again.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured and kissed me again. I got his shirt off and fiddled with his buckle, getting it loose and dropped his pants to his feet. He laid me down on the bed and unclipped my bra. His eyes roamed over my body, and in them I saw approval and affection. The shyness went away and I took off my own panties, and then his boxers.

He crawled on top of me, and when he breathed out I realized he was trembling.

“Are you alight?” I asked. He nodded and swallowed.

“I never really thought I’d get to do this,” he said.

“Have you thought about it?” I asked and he looked away, then nodded. I smiled. There was something hot about the fact that he’d thought like that about me, that I wasn’t the only one that had fantasized about my bodyguard like an idiot.

He kissed me again. He body was hard against mine, with muscles that rippled under his skin. I could feel his hunger for me, and lust hung around us in the air. When he pushed into my I gasped. He was bigger than I’d expected, but he was gentle, and he stroked in and out of me slowly, so I could get used to him.

My body stretched around him, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. His face was close to mine, and he kissed me every now and then while he pushed into me and pulled out again.

He was so gentle with me, soft and caring, even though he had so much raw power and strength he could probably have broken me in half.

He built at something magical, something deep inside me that grew with ever push and pull, and threatened to take over. I gasped and moaned, and let the feeling take over.

It wasn’t long before he brought me to orgasm, reducing my body to nothing but pleasure. It started between my hips and shot out to the rest of my body. When I came down again, my body deliciously spent, Colt was smiling at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. He moved inside me again, building up another rhythm until his own body jerked against mine and he released inside of me. It was the purest form of pleasure I’d ever seen.

He collapsed on top of men and pulled out. We lay together under the covers, holding each other.

“What’s it like?” I asked him after a while. “Changing.”

He thought for a moment. “I can’t really say,” he said. “It’s like I’m leaving one half of me to slip into the other. The only difference between the two sides of me is that the one is wilder, harder to control. When I’m angry or something happens, I lose it the wolf draws me in.”

“Like the night the witches came?”

“Like that,” he said.

“How did you know?” I asked. “You can’t read my mind, can you?”

Colt smiled and shook his head. “I came to the house to make sure you were okay without me there. And then you weren’t, so I took care of it.”

He was watching over me even when it wasn’t his job anymore. He loved me, after all.

I sighed and stretched languidly, and he ran his hand down the length of my body.

“I don’t think—“ I started, but the door rattled, cutting me off. Colt look up and frowned. He slipped out of bed and pulled on his pants. He threw his shirt to me and I pulled it over my head. Slightly decent, at least.

The door rattled again.

“Who’s there?” Colt called out. Whoever it was didn’t answer. Instead they kicked in the door and a crack sounded where the mechanism ripped out of the wood due to the force.

A large man walked in, rough looking. He had a scar over his face, from his forehead around his eye and ending at his lip, hooking it up in a permanent snarl.

“Thought you could just disappear on us, eh Colt?” the man asked. He grinned but it didn’t look like a smile at all.

“We all choose our sides, Malcolm,” Colt said. He looked calm and cool, but I noticed he was opening and closing his hands next to his sides.

“Thought Peter would start to bore you. But you had to stay ‘til the end. Now you have the LaGrange girl, too. Think you can make up for the loss of her old man this way?”

His words didn’t make sense, but it felt like my stomach turned to stone. It was dragging down, and with it came a terrible nausea. Colt glanced at me. His eyes were still dark and foreboding, but there was something in them, something hesitant.

“This has nothing to do with you,” he said, his voice still calm.

“Well, of course it doesn’t. You made sure of that when you ditched us.”

“You know why,” Colt said. “I wasn’t going to turn. It wasn’t right.”

Malcolm laughed and it sounded like gravel. “You better watch your back. I’m not here to pick a fight but the boys are itching for some blood, and yours calls out to us. We’re not going to be this nice the next time we meet.”

He nodded at me, and walked toward the door, but when he reached it he turned. “I hope for your sake she doesn’t end with the same fate as the old man, but, you never know. Terrible creatures out on the streets these days.”

He grinned, and when he looked at me again my skin crawled and my throat swelled shut. He closed the door but we couldn’t lock it again. Colt walked to it and pushed the armchair in front of it. He also hooked the burglar chain.

“What was he talking about?” I asked. My voice sounded thin, far away.

Colt shook his head.

“He mentioned my dad, Colt. You can’t say it was nothing. Did you…” I swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump that had suddenly risen in my throat. “Did you know him?”

Colt looked at me for a long time, thinking about what he was going to answer. But I knew it, I knew by his hesitation that he had known my dad. My eyes burned, and I couldn’t bite back the tears anymore. Suddenly it all seemed so dark. My stomach turned and I was filled with the horror that by marrying Colt I’d made a terrible mistake.

“I knew your father,” Colt finally said, and I looked at him. He looked withdrawn. He sat down on the armchair in front of the door, elbows on his knees, fingers interlinked in front of his mouth.

“I was his guard. I looked after him, because they were coming for him.”

“They who?”

“The witches. They wanted to punish him for what he did. For taking you away. From your mother.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me this because?” I was still crying, but I was getting angry.

“Because he asked me not to. When he died… I’d failed. I was supposed to look after him, and I’d failed because they’d managed to kill him anyway. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone.”

Colt looked like he was going to cry.

“Why are you here?” I asked. I’d always thought I’d just been lucky that I’d found him. But now… “Was this planned? Did you do all of this so you could try to finish what you started? Why did you marry me, Colt?”

Colt’s eyes widened. “I married you because I love you,” he said quickly. “I looked for you, I signed up and I was assigned to you, and all of that was planned. But this, this wasn’t. I never meant to seduce you. Just to save you. To do what Peter had asked me to.”

It felt like my whole life suddenly crashed down on me. Everything was changing, everything was different. I hadn’t spoken to my dad for a year when I’d heard he’d been killed. A mugging, the police had told me. Not werewolves or witches. Of course not.

And then Colt had arrived as a favor from the agency because I was Gemma LaGrange and I deserved the best. I’d felt rotten for leaving my father. For walking out. I’d felt like he’d ruined my entire life because he’d kept me away from my mother, even if I knew it was because she’d been a witch and she’d promised me to the coven. He’d been the enemy, because we were all young and foolish once.

As a teenager I hadn’t known much. And I’d been so hard on my dad. And I’d lost him before I could fix it.

And now I’d lost Colt. He lied to me. He betrayed me. And I just promised him my whole life.

I promised my whole life to a werewolf who couldn’t tell me the truth.

I jumped up and ran to the bathroom. It was the only place I could think of to get away. Tears ran down my cheeks.

“Gemma—“ Colt tried, but I slammed the door shut and locked it. I wrapped my arms around myself, sat down on the edge of the bath, and cried.

Colt

I’ve only ever tried to do the right thing. Why did I always end up being the bad guy? I’d fought to the death for Peter’s life. If they’ hadn’t gotten him when they did I might have died for him. I was willing to. Peter was the best kind of person I’d ever met. I’d wished I’d had a father like him, and I could never understand why Gemma would leave someone like him.

His soul had been golden. And when he’d died it had felt like a part of me had died too.

I should have told Gemma. But I hadn’t been able to. How could I have? Until recently she hadn’t even known I was werewolf. And even that, her finding out, had been strange. She hadn’t been shocked or scared. Just surprised. Gemma seemed a lot more accustomed to the supernatural life than I’d expected. And after I’d tried to so hard to hide her from it…

“Gemma,” I knocked softly on the bathroom door and leaned my ear against it. It wasn’t necessary. With my sharp hearing I could tell she was crying. I could hear her broken breath. I could also feel her sadness hanging in the room, seeping underneath the door. It tore me apart thinking that I was the reason for it.

“Gemma, baby, please…” I asked.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, her voice muffled through the door. Her voice was thick with tears.

“Come one, Gem. Just come out. We can talk about it. Let me tell you.”

“You lied to me,” she sobbed. “You held information from me that I had a right no know.”

Closed my eyes and leaned my head against the door. She was right. It had been wrong of me.

“Everything I did was with your best intention in mind. I just wanted to save you. To protect you.”

“Why?” she asked. “Because you told him you would? I didn’t need a babysitter.”

I disagreed with her on that one, but it wasn’t exactly the time to say so. Instead I shook my head and told her the other half of the truth.

“I wanted to protect you because when I saw you I knew it wouldn’t just be a promise to your dad that I was keeping. I’ve come to care for you, Gemma. I wanted to look after you because losing you…” I closed my eyes and sighed. I couldn’t even think about it. Losing Peter had been pain but I’d survived. Losing Gemma would be the death of me. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of it.”

She didn’t answer me. There was silence for a moment, and then the lock clicked open and she came out of the bathroom. Her face was tear stained, her green eyes big and shimmering. She was beautiful, even though I wanted to make her pain go away. I didn’t move to touch her. I wanted it to come from her. The last thing I wanted was to seem like I was forcing myself into her space when she wanted to get away.

I held my breath, waiting for her, praying she wouldn’t stay so far away from me.

She stepped closer to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. I breathed out. This was different than it had been before. There were so many ways in which she touched me. The first time it had been something exotic, a need that she hadn’t been able to stop. After we’d gotten married – just a couple of hours ago even though it felt like days – it had been because she’d wanted me to the be the other half. Now it was because she looked like she was falling apart. Gemma had so many sides to her.

She buried her head in my shoulder and her body shuddered. I closed my arms around her and breathed in, the smell of her hair in my nose.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I knew I’d done a lot of things wrong. The one thing I knew I did right, though, was keep her safe. I’d never stop doing that, no matter what.

She tipped her head up and kissed me. I could feel the tears on her cheeks, wetting my own, and a hiccup shook my body. I took her to the bed and we crawled onto it. There was nothing sexual about it now. She lay in the crook of my arm, still wearing just my shirt, and I held her. Sometimes she seemed larger than life, aware of her celebrity status and the power it gave her. And sometimes she was tiny, vulnerable and fragile and she needed me more than anything in the world.

I loved both sides of her. But I loved it when she needed me.

“Will you tell me about him?” she asked after we’d been quiet for a while. “I miss him so much.”

I closed my eyes and conjured Peter up again. He always had three-day old stubble on his chin, even though he never seemed to shave. His hair had been a salt-and-pepper gray.

“It was black when I grew up,” she said to me. Nothing like the honey blond curls of hers.

Peter was calm and gentle, and stood by what was right no matter what. When I’d met him I’d just discovered my wolf and I was wildly out of control. I hadn’t wanted to be part of a pack, and my wolf ran away with me. Peter had saved me, when I’d wanted to kill him. Ironically. He’d taught me control. The urge to keep living.