Untamed: An Alpha's Kiss (Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance) (9 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The next few days were a blissful montage of sex and conversation and more sex. They wallowed for endless hours in bed and then twined together, her small, smooth, ivory limbs tangled in his longer, tanner, hairier ones. They talked about everythin
g under the sun, from children (she said two and he said four. They laughed and met in the middle at three) to what she'd do for a career now that working for her parents was out (maybe not, he encouraged her. It might just take time) to what Parker should do about his father and Jamison. He was surprised that she agreed with his father in letting Jamison challenge him.

He cooked for her and she complimented him endlessly on every morsel that went into her mouth. She regaled him with her impressive rise through her father's company and he was awed by her passion and drive. Together they hashed through their individual plans and the implications of their new, blended life. He'd had several more conversations with his father and though she had not yet spoken to her dad, she was getting to a good place with her mother, maybe close enough to meet soon.

Scottie still haven't called her back.

The desert cabin was their cocoon, and they took full advantage of the time and space it afforded them to learn each other, to express their fears and desires. They rarely strayed from it. It was like an island for them, self-contained, its own little world.

One night they phased together and ran as they had in their dreams, flank to flank through the desert. She was surprised at the beauty of the desert at night, when the plants opened up to the dark world and worshiped the moon. And she felt that she and Parker, similarly, opened up to the night. They prowled together for hours, and when they returned home and were back in their human forms they made love on the deck, under the stars. Parker took her from behind for the first time, and Charmaine loved the way it made her feel more animal than woman to be on all fours, crying out in primal pleasure as Parker plundered her depths. She begged for it again and again, and he delightedly bent her over nearly every piece of furniture in the house until they passed out from sheer exhaustion.

A week passed, and another, before Charmaine finally got her mother to agree to a meeting. Parker, meanwhile, had already met with his pack to make the announcement that he and his father would run the pack together. Dominic finally conceded to telling them about his degenerative condition, the cancer that he had kept from everyone but his immediate family.

The entire pack rose in solid support of the new Alpha and the new ways that the change in leadership would bring. Even Jamison seemed subdued, though Parker knew not to trust him too much. He would not be Parker's Beta, but for now the ranks would remain the same out of respect for Dominic.

Brunch in Juniper the next morning was the plan they made. Parker was going to drive her into town and wait for her. She felt it was too soon for him to meet with her parents; she still had so much ground to cover with them on her own first. So they decided he would drop her at the restaurant a bit early and drive back to the Ridge to visit his own family before picking her up again. He'd only be a fifteen minute drive away if she needed him.

"It'll be fine," he reassured her that night in bed, idly playing with her fingers as she rested her head on his chest, one leg thrown over his. "I think you and your mom have discussed this a lot, and she had to have been talking to your dad all this time. He just needs to look you in the eye and tell you how disappointed he is with you. Assert his dominance and all that."

She giggled. "Spoken like a true Alpha."

He growled and flipped her onto the bed, nipping at her playfully and tickling her as his teeth grazed her sides.

"Mmm, assert your dominance with me," she breathed huskily, her eyes dancing as he pinned her to the mattress with his hips.

"That's what you want?" his eyes were dark with lust as he dipped his head to kiss her.

She nipped his jaw and he drew back, surprised and excited.

"You want me to take charge of you? Is that it?"

She nodded excitedly and struggled slightly against his weight. "Tell me who I belong to," she begged, panting. Her cheeks were flushed and her nipples were puckered pink pebbles. When he reached down between her thighs, she was drenched.

He slicked his fingers into her heat and growled, "Mine."

She moaned and he said it again. "
Mine.
"

CHAPTER TWENTY
SIX

He was on top of her, his fingers plunged inside her as his tongue sought out one of her aching nipples. His voice saying that word made her shiver, and she begged him to say it again.

Mine.

She didn't want to think about her parents, or Scottie, or even the future. She wanted to lose herself in Parker, drown herself in the pleasure of being taken by him. She wanted his hands to be rough, she wanted him to fuck her relentlessly till she felt like she might break. He was strong, powerfully built, a gorgeous specimen of a man, and tonight she wanted him to take control of her. She wanted him to forget she was the love of his life and the future mother of his children and ravish her until she couldn't speak.

Mine
.

Parker suckled her nipple, then nipped it with his teeth, making her cry out in delight as the little shock of pain stabbed right into her core. He seized the other one in his teeth and tugged on it roughly before flicking against it again and again with the tip of his tongue.

Mine.

He dipped his tongue into her navel, trailed across the little swell of her tummy, and then closed over her hipbone, laving the sensitive skin there. His hands spread her thighs wide and then wider still; she was bared open to him, ripe fruit laid out before him, and he growled softly as he smelled her arousal and gazed at her glistening pink folds nestled beneath a tidy patch of silky curls.

Mine.

He buried his face in the nest of soft hair, breathing in her delicious musky scent, each inhalation shooting straight to her groin and making her drip with anticipation. Her thighs quivered as he brushed his face back and forth in her fragrant muff, teasing her with his lips just inches away from her swollen clit. She was all raw need and he was taking his time, savoring her.

Please, Parker.

He blew against her and nuzzled her puffy labia, making her grip the sheets and whimper as he flicked his tongue against her exposed nub. She bucked on the bed and he held her hips fast, flicking again and again with the tip of his tongue until she was begging in earnest, unable to stop the trembling of her legs.

Oh God... Oh God. Oh God!

Parker's tongue plunged inside her and tasted her nectar, and she sobbed from the sweet relief of the penetration. He spread her with his thumbs and licked and probed everywhere but her clit, lapping at the salty pearls of moisture that seeped from her depths. She felt her climax tighten inside her, that slow twisting itch, as he fucked her with his tongue, stabbing into her over and over again, his entire face coated with the juices that wouldn't stop flowing from within her.

He growled as he devoured her, burrowing his face between her thighs in frenzied delight, and she tightened, and tightened again, and tightened again, and he fixed on her clitoris, attacking it with his rough tongue until she snapped tight and unraveled, arching right off the bed as she came hard against his face, little keening shrieks erupting from her open mouth.

Parker kneeled above her, his thumb pressed against her clit, making every one of the aftershocks feel unbearably sharp and sweet, and tugged at his engorged cock once, twice, and again.

"
Mine
." She heard his strangled, satisfied groan as he marked her with his hot seed, cursing softly as he splashed several sticky blasts onto her burning skin before collapsing next to her.

CHAPTER TWENTY
SEVEN

They never made it to brunch.

The phone rang at four o'clock the next morning
. Her mother's frantic voice had them dressed and in the car in a flash. Parker drove faster than he ever had in his life as Charmaine stayed on the phone with her mother, trying to calm her down, all the way to the hospital. She held his hand so tightly he lost circulation. Pins and needles burst in him when she finally let go in the parking lot.

César had suffered a serious heart attack. He'd been complaining of chest pains after dinner, but Crystal had chalked it up to anxiety about the next morning and they'd gone to bed without ringing the doctor. César had grasped her, eyes bulging, in the middle of the night and she had called 9-1-1.

When Parker escorted her into the waiting room, the entire family was there. Charmaine's oldest brother Christopher glowered at him, but no one said a word. Crystal dissolved into her daughter's arms and they held each other tightly, silent tears rolling down their cheeks. From time to time someone spoke to someone else, but other than the odd question about the time or where the bathroom was, no one stirred. They were all stunned to silence.

Parker lingered a bit outside the doorway, then went down to the garden to call his father.

This is where it all began.

It had only been a few short weeks ago, but their lives were already so intertwined. He thought of everything they'd been through together in the past few weeks, the intimacy they'd built during that brief time. He'd gotten used to waking to her curls tickling his cheek, her arm flung out in slumber. Sometimes he watched her sleeping and was so overcome with tender emotion that he his eyes prickled with tears. The sense of belonging to one another was something that for all his experience he had never known. And he couldn't let that go.

He'd hoped to get a chance to meet her parents that day, to at least look her father in the eye and shake his hand to show him he wasn't some coward who would steal a girl away from her family and drive a wedge between them. He had honest intentions--the most honest intentions, he thought wryly. He wanted to care for her and honor her and marry her and give her a happy life. He wanted his babies in her belly and her laughter in his house, and he wanted her beside him every night as they talked about their days and made their plans, great and small.

He stayed in the garden for the better part of an hour, thinking of her, planning how when this was all over he would buy her a ring and plan a romantic proposal. He would get down on one knee and they would both cry and he would slip that diamond on her finger and kiss her and claim her for his own.

Mine.

He was so lost in his reverie that he didn't hear her slip beside him until he heard her voice, trembling with guilt and pain and grief.

"You should go home, Parker. I'm going to stay with my mom. She needs me. And I--" Her voice broke and her eyes were swollen and red. And something new there, a wall, blocking him out. Those eyes had invited him in up until a few hours ago, and now they had shuttered closed. A stranger's eyes.

"I think I need some space, Parker. Don't call me, please. I just can't do this right now. I'm sorry." And she fled back inside before he could even register that she had just shattered every one of his dreams.

CHAPTER TWENTY
EIGHT

"You have to remember she's very young," his mother said, placing a few more bacon strips on his plate. He was surprisingly ravenous considering the morning he'd just had. "She's basically lived at home until a few weeks ago. Her parents are her whole world--" He cut his eyes at her and she corrected herself, squeezing his arm. "
Were
her whole world, up until very recently. She probably feels guilty that she wasn't there. Maybe even responsible for her father's heart attack."

He thought about the way she always lit up when she talked about her father, how much it meant to her that her parents be proud of her and slowly nodded.

But then he recalled her shuttered eyes.
I just can't do this right now.

"It's not about you, honey," his mom continued. "She has to go through this on her own. And if she's the girl you say she is, and I know she must be if you tell me it's true, then she will come around. You need to tell her you love her and give her some space. It's only been a few days. This is all going to work itself out."

He ate in silence until his father, who hadn't said a word, finally spoke. "You're lucky, Parker, because you see through things very quickly. You don't get overwhelmed by problems all that easily. But she's different. More sensitive. I saw it in her when I was out your house. Her gifts are very different."

"A healer, maybe?" His mother's eyes brightened.

"Could be." His father slurped on his coffee calmly.

He stared at them in amazement. "You two are relentless!"

His mother feigned insult. "I'm only wondering about my future daughter-in-law. Your father says she's very pretty and well-built."

Well-built?
"Okay, that's enough out of both of you. Quit angling for grandkids. You're getting them, okay? I promise. Now just stop."

"Getting them before I die?" Dominic asked quietly.

The softness of his father's voice hit too close to home. Tears stung Parker's eyes and he drew his father into a hasty embrace, suddenly choked up as the realization hit him that they were all very much on borrowed time. "Yeah, Dad. Long before that."