Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2) (25 page)

Then he shoved his hand underneath her body and pinched her clit.

Stars. She saw stars, and she bucked so hard against Rafe, she nearly lifted him off the couch. The climax bit down on her, trapping her in its steely jaws, for what felt like eons worth of pleasure.

And it still wasn’t over.

Rafe pulled out of her. “Alisha, come here.” In one smooth move, he flipped her over and attacked her center with his tongue, first licking her through the sheer material at the crotch, and then pushing it aside, so her pussy lay directly in front of his mouth.

He slurped his tongue over her entire mound from the back to the front. “Just as good as I remembered,” he said, before diving back in. He kept at this for an unbearably long time, like he was making up for all the lost years. And when she came with a high-pitched whimper, squirting into his mouth like the X-rated she-wolf she was turning out to be, he gave her the most feral of smiles, as if he’d won something after a particularly vicious match.

He pulled her forward so she was facing him, and he lifted her up easily with one arm, as if she weighed nothing, before settling her down on his long, thick shaft.

They both watched, mesmerized, as the big head of his cock pushed the lips of her mound far apart before slipping through her walls and into her tight tunnel. And then there was nothing left to watch because he was all the way inside.

He bowed his back, and began working a seated Alisha up and down on his dick. Alisha easily caught his rhythm, undulating her hips as she took the tie out of his hair. She loved the silky feel of it waterfalling over her arms as it escaped its bind, and she ran her hands through the inky black locks while searching Rafe’s face for emotion. Any emotion. Did he feel the way she did? Like they were healing the holes inside one another with this joining?

But she felt nothing coming off of him. Nothing at all. And though her body desperately wanted to give in to the orgasm he was building inside of her with mechanical precision, Alisha couldn’t enjoy the moment. It felt like she was alone in the act. Like she was performing for him, while he coolly watched.

She took his stony face in her palms. “Oh God, Rafe, I want to come so bad, but I don’t want it to be like this. Please don’t—” she stopped, not quite knowing how to finish, but his hazel eyes flicked up to hers, with reptilian focus.

She had his attention.

“Please don’t shut me out. Please don’t hold back,” she said, her voice catching on all the emotions she was feeling without any kind of restriction. “I want to come with you. All of you. I want it all: your wolf, your human, your emotions. Come
with
me, please.”

The request was breathy and awkward but his response was immediate and unequivocal. He hugged her to him tight and pumped his dick into her, so hard and fast, it felt like his rod was pistoning inside of her.

Then he simply pressed his thumb against her clit as if he were pushing a button. She came violently, her whole body shattering and collapsing, like a building with lots of windows being blown up.

But if her climax was dynamite, Rafe’s was a supernova. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he seemed to contract inside her arms… before he became impossibly big, and exploded, releasing inside of her with a hoarse yell. There was so much cum, she could feel it filling her up and spilling onto both of their thighs.

Then his uncensored emotions hit her like a train, feelings washing over her in tsunami-sized waves, before calming into something so unexpectedly gentle… a warm spring day after the coldest winter, a burning light on the darkest of nights, the most delicious meal after a long starvation.

It was the nicest thing she had ever felt in her entire life, and she closed her eyes wanting to savor it, wanting to live in it forever. But then just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. And when she opened her eyes, there was only the emotionless version of Rafe there, watching her as carefully as a true wolf watches its prey.

“Rafe?” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Can we talk about that?”

He averted his eyes and shook his head.

“What happened?” she asked.

His face went blank as a television that had been decisively turned off. “I’m not ready to let you come to the house. Not yet. I need…”

He lifted her off of him and turned his body, so he was hunched over next to her, his forehead on his fist. It made Alisha think of Rafesson, the way he would go inside himself when he was upset, instead of seeking his mother out for comfort as his two brothers did.

So she sat up and rubbed Rafe’s back, as she would have their oldest son. “You need time,” she finished for him. “You want me to feel like you felt all these years unable to see your children. You’re not done punishing me, and you don’t trust me not to leave again.”

He didn’t deny it.

“Oh, Rafe…” she said. “You know I could run, right? Now that you let me out of that turning cage, I can go wherever I want and have Janelle file a custody claim with the Lupine Council-she says they'd definitely give me joint custody, might even give me full, considering there are three cubs involved and I raised them by myself this long. According to her, I didn't break any law by time traveling back to the future-mainly because there aren't any laws in regards to time travel. And you can't sue me for kidnapping since the boys weren't born when I left. Janelle says the parenting laws aren't clear cut on this, especially with triplets, but as with human courts, the judge usually errs on the side of the mother.”

A flare of anger broke past all the emotional white noise Rafe was throwing out as he turned to her and said, “Alisha, understand that even the Lupine Council won’t be able to regulate what I’ll do if you try to take my sons away from me again. If you disobey my order to stay here, I will hunt you down, I will—”

She held her hands. “Before you start threatening me again, because that worked so well the first time around, let me finish: I’m saying that’s what I
could
do, not what I’m
going
to do, or even what I
want
to do. What I want to do is marry you. I want us to try to be happy together, not just for the boys’ sake, but because we’re mated. I want us to communicate and act like two people who don’t hate each other. Most of all I want you, Rafesson, Knud, Nago, and me—I want us all to be a family. But I can’t do that if I can’t talk to you, if I can’t trust we’re both going to try our best to make this work, if I don’t know for sure we both want the same thing. So let’s cut the bull and speak plainly. Is that something you want, too? Are you on board with us making a real go of it as mates, with us trying to be a real family?”

The only indication she had that any of her words were getting through to him was his manhood thickening between his legs, swelling to full proportions despite his epic release just a few moments before.

But his voice remained a cold, dead thing. “You want us to be a real family, to be real mates, but what happens the next time we disagree?”

“Then we talk it out. We both act like adults and we talk about whatever it is. But I won’t disappear. We’re in this for life, and I’m promising you right now, I will never leave you again.”

He studied her face with sharp eyes. “That’s exactly what I want to hear.”

She let out a sad breath. She knew Rafe well enough by now to understand what those words meant, especially coming as they did without the restoration of their emotional link. “You’re scared I’m trying to manipulate you.”

Again he didn’t deny it, just studied her with those judgmental eyes.

There was a lot Alisha could have said then. She could have given her word, offered to sign a pre-nup, tried getting him to open up with sex again—he was obviously ready for a second round. But in the end, she knew none of it would work. Rafe had already announced his decision not to let her come back to the kingdom house with him tonight, and this whole “discussion”—it was dressing on the side, an option he’d let get set on the table, but that he had no intention of putting on his plate.

She stood. “Listen, Rafe, I just spent a lot of years scared out of my mind that my return spell wouldn’t work and I’d end up mated to someone who only wanted me for my body and the fact that I’m apparently really fucking fertile. I like you. You’re smart and you’re sexy and you’re the father of my children. I don’t mind working for your forgiveness and trust. But I do mind that you have no intention of giving either to me unless I’m tamed. I mind that you don’t want me as I am, but as some completely docile version of me. Hashtag taming of the shrew. Because I’m more than just a body, or a princess, or a chess piece, or some bitch who ran out on you—”

“Here’s what you’re still not getting,” Rafe bit out, rising to a stand next to her. A fireball of his rage hit her as he pointed at her, then slammed his hand against his own chest. “You destroyed me, Alisha. Do you understand that? You didn’t just run out on me,
you destroyed me
. For years, I fucked myself with my own hand, wondering if you were still alive, if I’d ever see you again—”

He stopped and his face went carefully blank again, like the heated words had escaped his mouth without his permission.

But this time, she didn’t let him retreat. She thought of their heat mating, the way he had insisted her human stay for the duration. “Stay with me, Rafe,” she said, cupping his face in her hands. “Don’t go back behind that wall.”

He shook his head, and his nostrils flared, “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

He pushed her hands away and went into the kitchen. Alisha watched, her heart in her throat, as he yanked his clothes back on, recovering his chiseled body.

But when he tried to beeline it for the door, she got in front of him, not caring that she was naked and therefore fully exposed to him without clothes or fur to protect her.

“I’m sorry, ” she said. “I’m sorry I hurt you like that, and I’m sorry I ran away scared as opposed to trying to reason with you. But I’m here now, and I’m telling you I won’t leave you again. Ever.”

Rafe shook his head like she was physically hurting him with her words. “Don’t…”

He tried to get around her, but she dodged in front of him. She didn’t touch him, but she managed to pin him to the spot with her eyes, blasting him with her emotion. Feeling what she felt as truly as she could feel it, willing him to believe in her, to believe in them.

“Let me pass,” he said. An edict not a request.

An edict she ignored. “I want you, Rafe. I wasn’t ready for you back then, but I am now.
All of you.
I’m ready for you. That’s the truth, and I’ll keep on saying sorry and promising never to leave you again until you believe me. This I promise you.”

She held his gaze for a few moments to make sure her message had sunk in. And only then did she step aside. “Now you can pass,” she said.

And he did. Slamming out of the house without another word.

Leaving her behind, naked and shivering, as she wondered if their relationship, like the dishes now lying in broken pieces on the floor, was entirely unsalvageable.

25

“F
ather, you be the Fenris here, right?” Nago asked as they walked back to the kingdom house from the Wolf Springs general store. Each of his boys carried a bag with a coloring book and a box of crayons, and they were eager to get home and discover for themselves the joys of coloring that their Wyoming cousins had been going on and on about. Apparently paper had been a precious commodity in Old Norway and it would have never been given to children to color on, much less with delightful lined pictures that had Rafesson, Nago, and Knud oohing and aahing and throwing around words like “wondrous indeed.” Rafe doubted the three boys would stop attracting stares in public any time soon.

But on their way back home, Nago had taken Rafe by the hand to get his attention and ask him this question.

Rafe frowned. “Do you mean am I the alpha?”

Nago nodded. “Yes, the alpha. Everyone has to do what you say in this place, right?”

“Yes, that’s right, though not everyone understands that.” Rafe thought of their mother last night, blocking his exit with her big and beautiful naked body, refusing to let him pass until she’d had the last word.

“Then can you make Mama come home?
Please?
” Nago leaned on the “please,” clasping Rafe’s hand inside his much smaller one in such an adorable way, Rafe could tell the gesture was well-practiced.

Rafe didn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed. Over the past couple of days, he’d discovered what he’d thought was an age-based deference to Rafesson, was actually a rather smart proxy system. Rafesson handled all of the complex questions, while Knud was in charge of suggesting anything that might be fun. But if there was something they all wanted, something big, then they sent in the big guns: Nago with his chipmunk-sized cheeks and huge brown eyes.

He’d been the one to ask Erylace for cookies before dinner last night and if they could each have their own tablet the day when they’d all gone to the bookstore, ostensibly to only buy books. And now Nago was the one asking if Rafe could defy the tradition Alisha had made up on the spot, and get their mother back. The fact that neither of his brothers chastised him when he asked the question was enough to tell Rafe a discussion had been held between the three of them before Nago put in his request.

Rafe got them their smart tablets, and now he felt the same tug to indulge them again. And, it wasn’t just because of Nago’s soulful, puppy dog eyes—though those weren’t helping. It was also the image of Alisha, sitting naked on that couch, just about begging him to trust her again, to let her in, to let her play the part of wife and mother that she’d run from so many years ago.

He hated her for what she’d done. Hate was an ugly word, but he couldn’t think of another one to encapsulate how he felt about her rejecting him and taking his sons away. His plan had been to punish her. Forever. To rip their child away from her the way she’d ripped that same child away from him. It had been a good, solid plan worthy of an alpha who spent years of long, lonely nights putting it together.