Page 18 of Blood & Bond (The Bouchers #2)

Lucy

I nodded, desperately wanting to believe Ambrose. I couldn’t accept a world where my big brother was never able to crawl out of the pit he’d fallen into—not without crawling into it with him.

“So…Reese and Beau completed it right away, huh?” I said, trying to distract myself.

“Yes,” he rasped, gripping my thighs.

“I mean, that would definitely simplify things.” I tugged on his shirt, and he lifted his arms to let me pull it off. It was only fair, considering he’d already seen most of my body.

My breath caught when I took a look at what I’d uncovered. It couldn’t be, but it was .

The tattoo was faded as if it had been there a very long time, but the design of the thick geometric lines was still easily recognizable.

“You have a wolf tattoo,” I whispered in amazement, tracing the lines with my finger.

“ Ulf ,” he replied in explanation, pushing my hair gently behind my shoulders. “Wolf.”

“Holy crap,” I breathed. My shock must’ve been written all over my face because he let me go easily as I climbed off his lap.

Turning around, I whipped my tank top over my head and pulled my hair over my shoulder. Ambrose let out a sound before his hands came out to dig into my sides.

I knew what he was seeing. It wasn’t exactly the same—the lines were more delicate, and the design was more intricate—but a geometric wolf stared back at him from the center of my back.

“When did you get it?” he choked out, running his hand over the delicate design.

“When I was twenty,” I replied, looking at him over my shoulder.

“Why a wolf?” he ground out, his eyebrows pulled together as he stared at it.

“I don’t know,” I replied quietly. “I was screwing around with a ruler one day and ended up with the wolf, and I just…knew I wanted it as a tattoo. Charlie and I found a shop. He chickened out, but I was determined.”

I remembered the day clearly. I hadn’t been able to sleep, and I’d been screwing around with my sketchbook. Mostly, I just doodled to clear my head, but that morning the lines had almost immediately taken on a recognizable shape. I’d spent over an hour carefully finishing it.

“Gods,” he whispered, leaning forward to kiss the center of the tattoo.

It wasn’t small. The edges spanned almost all the way across my back.

When the tattoo artist had originally printed it, he’d scaled it down to only a few inches.

He’d been really surprised when I’d explained that I didn’t want it smaller.

I’d wanted it larger than the original. It was my first and only tattoo, and it took up half of my back.

“Did Zeke see this?” he asked roughly as he gripped my hips and urged me back around.

“I’m sure he did,” I replied, running my fingers through his hair. “He saw me in a swimsuit plenty of times.”

“And he never mentioned mine?” he asked.

“Not your tattoo, no.” He pressed his forehead against my sternum. “But he talked about all of you all the time. He told us that we needed to find you if he didn’t come back. He insisted, actually. He made both of us promise that we’d make our way to Oregon.”

I paused, remembering those days after we’d realized that Zeke wasn’t coming back.

“It was so hard to keep Charlie moving. By the time we got to the Rennos, he was barely even trying to help me. He just wanted to—” The words caught in my throat.

“Just lie down and die or something. So I figured it was the perfect time to go back to the apartment and get some things, since I didn’t know when we’d be back. ”

“That’s when we found you,” he said, looking up at me.

“We were already on our way here,” I explained. “We would’ve met, eventually.”

“Inevitable,” he said softly, kissing the skin above my belly button.

“I guess so.”

“He had to have known,” Ambrose muttered, letting out a sigh against my skin.

“Who?”

God, when he looked at me like that, I felt it all the way to my toes. It wasn’t attraction, though the heat was evident in his stare. It was something deeper than that. Reverence. Awe.

I’d done nothing to deserve it.

“Zeke,” Ambrose replied. “He had to have known when he saw your tattoo.”

“It’s strange, right?” I asked, looking down at his chest. The similarities to mine were startling.

“Our souls are two sides of the same coin,” he said gently. “Not so strange.”

I wasn’t sure who moved first, but the moment our lips met, it felt like I’d been doused in cool water on a hot summer day. The relief was instant and addicting.

Ambrose had half risen out of his seat to reach me, and he straightened without losing contact.

One of his hands cupped my breast, and the other wrapped around my back as he shuffled us away from the couch.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the change in scenery as I took my time discovering the ridges of his chest and belly.

The man had muscle upon muscle. I couldn’t even guess how many hours it had taken to sculpt a body like his.

We stumbled to a stop as my ass hit something soft. When I pulled my mouth from his to look around, I realized we were in his bedroom.

He hadn’t bothered with the light, but it was just bright enough to make out the bed I’d landed against, a rocking chair in the corner, and a low, wide dresser against the wall under a window with filmy curtains. Moonlight just barely shone through them.

“Mine,” he said under his breath, his mouth moving to my throat.

I froze, instinct and something darker making me brace as he sucked the skin into his mouth.

He let go almost immediately, kissing the spot gently.

“Nice room,” I said as he gripped my ass and lifted me onto the bed.

“Can I?” he asked, ignoring my compliment. His fingers paused at the waistband of my jeans.

I lifted my hips to help him. Every inch he uncovered tingled with awareness as he bared the rest of me. I’d lost my shoes somewhere in Zeke’s room when we’d first arrived, and Ambrose gently tugged my socks off.

“You too,” I ordered as he braced my feet on his chest, his hands gliding down my shins to my knees and back up toward my ankles.

“Not a good idea,” he growled, lifting my foot to kiss the inside of my ankle.

“I think it’s a great idea.”

“I think you’re not ready to have me inside you.”

“Who said anything about being inside me?” I asked, taking in the wide expanse of his shoulders, the light dusting of chest hair, and the tattoo that matched my own. It wasn’t as if we had to have sex just because he was naked. There were plenty of other things we could do.

Ambrose just stared at me.

God, he was beautiful. Even when he was looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

A wave of heat pulsed through me, making my breath catch.

The feeling didn’t seem to be getting any better.

Sometimes it was a dull heat, like stepping into a sauna.

Other times, it felt like falling into a hot tub that had been set too high.

At its worst, it felt like that hot tub water had been injected directly into my veins, boiling me from the inside.

The orgasms earlier had been excellent, but they hadn’t come close to satisfying the clawing need that I’d been trying so hard to ignore.

Widening my legs, I clenched my hands in the comforter as Ambrose reached for me, running his fingers gently over my clit before thrusting them inside. I was already so wet that they met no resistance.

“Fuck it,” Ambrose said, pulling his hand back. He pushed the fingers into his mouth and sucked them clean before reaching for the button on his own jeans.

I almost jumped out of my skin when a disembodied voice rang through the room.

“Ulf, we need you downstairs,” Erik demanded.

“What the fuck?” I hissed, covering my breasts with my hands as I sat up and frantically searched the room.

“Intercom,” Ambrose announced, pointing to a little black square on the wall. Reaching out, he tugged me from the bed and helped me pull my jeans back on. Every inch of my skin was sensitized and screaming at the abrasive denim fabric, but I didn’t complain as he hurried me out of the room.

Less than a minute later, we were both dressed and rushing down the stairs. When we got to the living room, Sven and Alice were standing with another man, talking to Ambrose’s brothers and parents.

“Finau?” Ambrose barked, slamming to a halt. His arm came out to keep me behind him.

“Easy,” Chance said, moving toward us.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Ambrose asked, glaring at the man.

Beau and Reese came in behind us, and Beau cursed. “Reese, take Lucy out of here,” he ordered.

“Fuck that noise,” Reese replied.

I moved a little closer to Ambrose.

“You have two seconds to tell me why the hell you’re in this house,” Ambrose announced, his voice low and menacing.

“They took my mate,” Finau replied. Not a man. A Vampire. As I looked closer, I could see the sweat darkening the hair at his temples and the tension around his eyes. I didn’t know who he was, but I felt a twinge of sympathy anyway.

“Who did?” Ambrose asked.

“Them,” Finau replied frantically, throwing his arm out to the side. “Those men. Whoever they are. The ones Zeke was on about.”

“I thought none of you knew why Zeke was killed,” Chance replied, seeming to grow a couple of inches as he turned toward the Vampire.

“He mentioned things,” Finau said. “Just bits and pieces here and there. We all thought, you know, he was beginning to…” His words trailed off.

“You thought he was starting to lose his mind,” Danny finished for him, his voice devoid of emotion.

“It happens.” Finau’s shoulders slumped.

“Not to our brother,” Chance snapped.

“I realize that now,” Finau replied apologetically.

“Interesting how that happens,” Ambrose said bitingly. “Realizing the truth when you’re the one facing the fallout.”

“He didn’t have proof, and it made no sense.” Finau glared. “Who would go after mates? It doesn’t happen.”

“Until it does,” Erik said calmly. “Tell us what happened.”