Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

there was a war between his muscles and mine, our eyes locked together.

“You’re scared.”

He balked at my pronunciation, his head jerking back like he’d been slapped. His body went with it, edging away as he glared down at me, eyes bright silver now.

“You think I’m a fucking coward?”

“Jesus, not like that. Lorcan…” I went to grab him, to hold him again, but he kept on backing away. “Stand still. That’s not it.”

“Damn fucking right it’s not.”

“But you’re scared that…that my aunt, or the police, or some other fucking nutbag in this town is gonna somehow tie what happened to Dad to you.” He swallowed hard, but he stopped moving. “You’re scared I’m gonna see the name, not the man. You love me, don’t you?”

I asked that much quieter, much more gently, because even I didn’t have the balls to just declare that. He might see himself as some kind of town refuse, but that wasn’t what I saw, and I hoped like hell he got that in my eyes when I stared at him.

My answer came when I moved closer and my fingers touched his skin, feeling that bond, our bond, jump like a live wire. His hand went up and cradled the back of my skull, just teasing the hair there gently.

“With everything I’ve got,” he ground out. “I always have. My heart dropped through the floor when I saw you on that throne on the stage. It was you—a dream made flesh. Possibility, potential…destiny.” He shook his head. “I was a cunt because as I walked up onto that stage, I knew I needed to throw everything I had at your feet, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be enough.”

“It is.”

“It’s not. What if…? What if one of my family did this?”

“What if one of mine did?” I snapped back.

We just stared for a moment, so much in that gaze, but I wouldn’t let it drag out.

“Lorcan, you’re not an Engel or a Roth or anything other than what you want to be,” I said, pulling his head down. “But mine, you’re mine.”

“I didn’t want to make it about this, about my family, about—”

I stopped him with a kiss, something he resisted for just a moment, then dove right into because he knew. When I kissed him like a woman drowning and he was all the oxygen I was going to get. When I clawed hopelessly at his shirt, the thin fabric too much of a barrier. When I pushed him down on the bed, forcing him to sit on one side. When I followed him down, straddling his thighs, pushing his head to one side and finding it, the thing that joined us. He groaned, his hands shooting up the back of my shirt when I fitted my mouth to the mating mark. I had nothing else to reassure him, convince him of what we both knew. My fangs slid down, his hands clamping down on my hips while his bucked upwards as I drew his scarred flesh into my mouth.

Humans would never understand this, biting being either abhorrent or sexual, but for us, it was so much more. A mother wolf grabbed her pups with her teeth, carrying them by the scruff of their necks. Wolves nibbled at fleas, lashed out and bit, wrestled when young, gulped down food and ripped out the throats of prey. Our teeth were all an integral part of the way we negotiated the world. So when we bit someone, it carried meaning.

It told the person we bit, I see you, I know what you are, who you are, who you’re connected to, and I accept you. I wed all that I am to all that you are. I knew he felt that when his arms went around me, when I pulled away and his lips found mine, when he rocked me against his body, sexual and emotional needs warring.

“I just wanted you to know,” he croaked out finally. “I…”

He gave up on words and just stared as I smoothed that unruly hair back from his face.

“You’re my mate, Lorcan, mine. Is there something sweet thinking about you pining for me? Yes, of course there is.”

“Pining?” He threw me down on the bed, covering me with his body moments later, but he was grinning when he did so. “I’d like to think I was waiting for the woman I knew was my mate in a very restrained and manly way.”

“Restrained? You offered to go down on me under my father’s desk, in our first conversation.”

“Mm… We could still try that, you know. Could be hot, the others watching you try to keep your cool as I—”

“Hey, sorry to interrupt,” Zack said from the doorway. “But I think you’re gonna wanna see this.”

I saw the fear in Lorcan’s, then Zack’s eyes, right when I was hoping to see something reassuring. Both men pulled away as I got off the bed. There was nothing welcoming in the office when I got in there either. The guys all stood around the laptop, staring at the screen before turning it around for me. I frowned as I peered at it, seeing picture after picture in a gallery on the screen, and it took a few looks to work out what was happening. I didn’t recognise the setting, but I worked out who one of the women was eventually. There was my cousin Selma, wrapped up tight in the embrace of several women.

Chapter 6

“Selma’s…gay?”

“I’d say that’s why everyone’s been adamant about her not being a contender,” Declan said. “The guys’ gaydar was being tripped.”

“She might be bisexual,” Zack said, moving in and rubbing his hand up and down my back. “But yeah, definitely that at least.”

“If she was bi, we’d feel like there was some kind of potential,” Micah said. “I’ve never got anything from her. She’s always been polite, easy to get along with, but…”

“But you felt no urge to get her naked.” I finished his sentence for him, drawing his focus, those