Shameful by May Dawson
7
Legacy
My wolf streakedthrough the woods, enjoying the feeling of bounding through the trees, of my paws finding the earth and then soaring again as I leapt.
Someone came alongside me, bumped my shoulder. They smelled good. Pack. Not Tania—too big. I caught a glimpse of a broad, furry face, of powerful sinewy muscle, and I ranon.
It turned into a game. He wanted me to stop, and I wanted him to chase.
The two of us flashed through the woods, and finally he tackled me. The two of us rolled over and over across the forest floor.
I loved to wrestle. I squirmed to escape him, nipping at his throat playfully.
The two of us fought back and forth until he pinned me, his paw settling across my neck to hold me down. His teeth brushed my throat, but his mouth wasn’t open. No bites.
No bites good, or no bites bad? Married mates marked each other in my pack, marked with abite.
I stilled beneath his paw, finally getting a good look at him. My wolf had familiar, bright blue eyes. I exposed my throat to him, relaxing into submission.
He looked at me meaningfully, and I knew what he wanted. Shift.
It felt good to be the wolf, and I didn’t want to switch. I whined, but obeyed.
A moment later, Lucas and I were sitting on the ground together. The moonlight reflected off his broad, tanned shoulders.
“I hoped it would be you,” he admitted. “Maybe I knew it wouldbe.”
He caught my chin with his fingers, still dominant in human form, and some part of my soul softened. When his lips pressed mine, I tried to mimic him, moving my mouth in the same ways he did, parting my lips when he deepened thekiss.
Maybe my effort didn’t work that well, because he was smiling when he pulled back, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m glad it’s you too,” I whispered.
The two of us shared long, slow kisses. The breeze brushing over my skin made me cold at first, then Lucas pulled me close. The warmth of his body felt likehome.
Mate. I’d found mymate.
After a while, the two of us walked hand-in-hand back through the forest. The table was still abandoned. In the distance, I heard wolveshowl.
No one else had found their mate so quickly.
I slipped on my dress, and when I struggled to zip it, Lucas stepped close. His fingers overlapped mine briefly before he ran the zipper up. He paused at the top, then kissed my shoulder. I swayed against him, feeling how right we felt together.
“I’ve had a crush on you for as long as I can remember,” he murmured into my ear. “In kindergarten, I told my mom I was going to marryyou.”
Warmth glowed in my chest. “Oh? Did she approve?”
“Yes, of course.” His fingers glided through my hair, tugging gently so I’d turn my face and he could nuzzle my cheek. His scent—masculine, leathery, smoky—washed overme.
That of course encompassed all the things that Tania teased me about. I was a good girl according to wolfish ways. The packs wanted she-wolves who were fierce with outsiders and submissive with their husbands.
Tania made a lot of revolutionary noises about that submissive business, but then her parents weren’t happily married. My parents adored each other. It didn’t matter if my dad was technically in charge; he adored my mother, he’d give her anything she wanted. It would be the same way with my husband and me. I wasn’t afraid.
The two of us went across the field to get his clothes, then headed back to his house. Cyrus was waiting on the back porch, and a smile broke across his face when he saw the two ofus.
“Welcome to the family, Legacy,” the alpha said, his tanned face crinkling when he smiled atme.
Lucas beamed at me too, and I felt my cheeks heat even as I smiled back atthem.
“Proud of you,” Cyrus told him, clapping his shoulder. Then he headed back through the house.
The mating ceremony was always followed by an afterparty. Tonight, we would stay on the deck behind the alpha’s house, drinking beer and talking.
“For now, let’s go inside,” Lucas said, even though the rest of the pack wouldn’t be invited inside the alpha’s home. He ran his hands up and down my arms, smoothing away the goosebumps. “You’recold.”
“Okay.” I smiled back athim.
“Do you think Tania will find someone tonight?” he asked as he led me into the expansive kitchen. He went to the glass-walled wine fridge in the corner, then turned, hoisting a bottle of champagne and arching his eyebrows at me. I nodded in agreement. “It would improve her disposition.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk bad about my best friend, and that felt like what Lucas was doing.
He popped the cork, which exploded like a bullet, jolting my heart into my throat. He didn’t seem to notice the way I jumped. I wasn’t exactly used to champagne, and it made me feel embarrassed.
“Champagne flutes are in the cabinets above the wine fridge.”
“Okay.” I had to bob onto my toes to open the cabinet. I set two flutes on the table, then he filledthem.
He toasted me. “To the rest of our lives together.”
I repeated the toast, then bumped my glass with his and took a long sip. Like most wolves in my pack, I’d been drinking since high school, but I’d never had champagne before. I’d thought the drink would make me feel sophisticated. It made me want to sneeze.
The two of us drank our champagne and Lucas took me on a tour of the house. “Someday this will be yours.”
I smiled uncertainly. Lucas put his hand on my back, drawing me close as we walked through the many bedrooms, all ornately decorated.
When we wandered onto the deck again, there were others starting to come up. Lucas talked to his friends, his arm still loosely circling my waist. I felt other girls staring at me and ignored them, pretending to listen to the guys’ conversation when really, I was worrying about Tania.
Then she came up the porch steps, her hair damp to her face. We all looked odd in our formal gowns after running as wolves, tuxes and poofy skirts contrasting with mud streaks and leaves in ourhair.
I pulled away from Lucas. He resisted, drawing me tighter against his body. I looked at him with a frown, but he smiled at me like he just wanted to have me close, then pressed a quick kiss to my temple. I relaxed into him, kissing him back, then he releasedme.
“Be good,” he murmured in my ear before I headed over to Tania.
“Let’s go inside and freshen up,” I told her, having the feeling she needed to talk to me away from the crowd. I caught her wrist and dragged her into the house, catching a glimpse of Lucas’s frown as he looked toward me. But my best friend needed privacy, not a whispered conversation surrounded by thepack.
Tania didn’t talk to me until we were in the half bathroom off the hallway. It was a tight squeeze with the full skirts of both of our gowns. She wiped her face with a tissue and sighed, blotting herneck.
“Nothing happened out there?” I asked cautiously, because she seemed so unhappy.
“No,” she said. “And for the first time, I wanted something to happen. I wanted to find someone.”
“Your mate might be from another pack,” I reminded her. “Or they might not be attending the ceremony.”
“Or I might be fated to be someone’s second wife, after their real mate dies,” she said with a sigh. “It’s all right. You found Lucas?”
She said Lucas as if he were a foregone—and limp--conclusion, and some of my excitement ebbed. “I found Lucas.”
“Are you happy?” Tania watched me in the mirror.
I nodded.
“Then I’m happy!” She hugged me so abruptly that she surprised me into laughing.
The rest of the night was a pleasant blur. Tania returned to her usual irrepressible self, despite the glimpse of her sadness and loneliness that I’d caught earlier. We made small talk with everyone. There were other new pairings, couples who kept their arms around each other possessively as if they couldn’t bear to be apart for more than the few steps to the beer fridge.
I heard plenty of catty remarks from the other girls about how I’d managed to find Lucas, as if I could make the moon goddess give me a mate. The remarks just made Tania and I laugh. It’s not entirely unpleasant to have people be jealous. Sometimes, it can feel like awin.
Toward the end of the night, when everyone was drunk and happy, Lucas wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into the warm, hard muscle of hisside.
“Are you staying over tonight or am I going to drive you home?” he murmured into myear.
“I can’t stay overnight,” I said with a smile.
“Right, you’re the good girl,” he said, and something about his tone made my smile flicker before he pressed a kiss to my temple. “Okay, I’ll take you home later.”
I felt his disappointment, and I hated it. “My parents will be expectingme.”
“I know.” He wrapped his arms around my waist, drawing me toward him as he sat down on one of the benches lining the deck. I straddled his lap, and he pushed my hair back away from myneck.
His lips found my throat, and desire hummed through my body, mixing with the alcohol and the mating bond until it felt like a fever sweeping overme.
I started to break away. “We’re in public.”
“Everyone’s gone,” he muttered.
“No,” I pulled away to look around. “Tania and I came together—”
“I told her to go,” he said, catching my chin and turning my face to his. Those gorgeous blue eyes of his caught me. “You’re my girl, Legacy. I’ll make sure you get home safely.”
Tania wouldn’t have just left me. “We always go everywhere together.”
His lips thinned slightly. “Not anymore.”
“Excuse me?” I snapped.
He pulled a face. “I’m going to be your husband, Legacy. I am your mate. I might want some crumbs of your timetoo.”
“I’d never give you crumbs. But she’s my best friend.”
His brows arched. “And what amI?”
He was smiling again, whatever brief storm had come between us already passing, and I didn’t want to fight. His hard cock pressed against me through his pants and the material of my skirt, and I ground down on it subtly, felt his breath give. He wasn’t the only one with power in our relationship, even if he was going to dominate.
“More than a friend,” I said softly.
“Damn right,” he said, making me smile.
It was only when his fingers were laced in my hair, when his lips descended on mine, that I wondered if he meant more than a friend meant he mattered more than Tania. Because I didn’t want to give up Tania. And why should I? The thought made no sense, but something about the way he wanted me felt…all-consuming
But maybe that was the way love was. My parents adored each other in a way that excluded everyone else. As much as they loved my brother and me, they were always going off alone, trading whispers or touches or guilty looks while Courage and I groaned.
I tried to push away thoughts of my parents because, ew, and focus on the man kissingme.
Desire arched through my body; his hands on my waist felt as if they sent fire pulsing through my blood.
I tore myself away reluctantly. I didn’t want to stop kissing Lucas; the mating bond was singing through my blood. I wanted to push him down onto the hard wooden deck and scramble for control with him just like when we were wolves—and I wanted him to win, and to kiss me, and to undressme.
But we weren’t just wolves.
“We have to wait for our wedding,” I said softly as his hand delved into my gown, cupping my breast. His palm caressed my nipple, sending sparks through mybody.
“Why?” he asked. His fingers found my nipple, tweaked. Sensations I’d never felt before flooded my breast, a mix of pleasure and pain. But I was suddenly so damp between my thighs and that was all pleasure.
“Lucas, please,” I didn’t want to stop, but then his big body dominating mine began to make me feel threatenedtoo.
He broke away, an annoyed expression on his face that was gone in a moment. “Right. Good girl.” He seemed amused, although he adjusted himself impatiently; his cock was stiff through his pants.
“Sorry,” I said in a small voice.
He softened. “No, I’m sorry. I just want you so badly, Legacy. I’ve loved you for a longtime.”
He kissed me again, more sweetly, tenderly.
And then he took mehome.