Page 38 of Blood & Bond (The Bouchers #2)

I cleared my throat. “I was there,” I said quietly, still looking at the stern woman in the photo.

“Where? What are you talking about?”

“I was part of the team that led her and other children through the Alps,” I explained, looking up into my mate’s bewildered eyes. “There were four of us. I remember her because she carried one of the younger ones on her back.” I stopped.

I didn’t want to take out that memory and examine it.

“She escaped from Austria,” I said, tapping my finger on the photo.

“You were there ?” Lucy asked, like she couldn’t quite grasp what I was telling her.

“The United States hadn’t joined the war yet,” I explained. “So our hands were tied. We did what we could.” I glanced down at the photo again. “It wasn’t enough.”

“You saved my grandmother’s life,” Lucy said slowly.

“I was part of a larger network,” I argued, unwilling to take on full responsibility.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, looking down at the photograph. “That’s insane.”

“Improbable,” I agreed.

“Everything is connected, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head. “Like a giant spider web.”

“The world is smaller than we realize.”

“You saved her,” she said softly, reaching out to cup my cheek. “How many did you save?”

“Not enough,” I rasped.

I didn’t like to think of that time. The misery, the fear, the inability to fight for what we knew was right. So many people had suffered. So many had died.

“You’re incredible,” she whispered, running her thumb along my cheekbone.

“She wore a dark-brown coat,” I said, uncomfortable. “And a dark hat with a little bobble on the top of it. She was tough. Quiet. They were all quiet.”

“I can’t believe you remember her.”

“I remember them all,” I replied. I pulled my face away and rose from the bed, gathering the food wrappers and garbage.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Lucy said, handing me a half-eaten sleeve of crackers.

“I don’t like to think about it,” I replied, taking the wrappers out to the garbage in the kitchenette. When I came back into the room, she’d stuffed her treasures back into her bag.

“We could’ve finished looking,” I told her.

“Another time,” she said, carrying the bag back to the dresser. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” I shook my head.

“We all have things we’d rather not revisit,” she replied, walking toward me. She wrapped her arms around my waist. “I just want to say one thing.”

“All right.”

“You saved my grandmother, not knowing that eighty years later you would kidnap me from a hotel room. How cool is that?”

I chuckled. “Pretty cool.”

“You still look like shit,” she muttered.

“I’m fine.”

“Oh crap,” she breathed. “You need blood. That’s it, right? When’s the last time you had it?”

“You were there,” I replied dryly.

“I thought you needed it every day?”

“You needed it more.”

“Well, I’m good now,” she said, tipping her head ridiculously far back. “Do your thing.”

I choked and started coughing.

“What?” She jerked her chin down.

“I’m fine,” I said, herding her toward the bed. I turned off the light and unplugged the projector on the way, blanketing us in darkness.

“This is part of it, right?” she said as I threw the crumb-covered comforter off the bed. I wasn’t about to sleep in that shit, and with the heat keeping our body temperatures higher than normal, we wouldn’t need more than a sheet anyway.

“Part of our relationship?” I asked.

“Yeah. The whole mates thing.”

“Yes, it’s part of it.”

“Well, then.” She crawled across the bed and flopped onto her back. “Get to it.”

“Part of it,” I clarified, slower as I got in beside her. “Just like anything else. You’re healing. I can wait.”

“I’m practically healed,” she argued, rolling toward me. “I’ve eaten…a lot. I’ve showered. I’m good to go.”

“As tempting as that sounds…” I joked. To be honest, it did sound tempting.

Very fucking tempting. I’d been ignoring the craving since the night before, instincts urging me to feel her skin between my teeth and her blood in my throat to assure myself that she was alive, but I wasn’t an animal.

I wasn’t going to die if we waited a few days.

She’d lost a lot of blood, and her body was still recovering.

Lucy huffed and pressed herself against my side. “What if I told you that I need it?”

“Is that what you’re telling me?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I thought I was going to die,” she said softly. “And I’d never see you again.”

“Baby,” I whispered back, turning to face her.

“And you’d be left here without me.” The words were so soft that a human probably wouldn’t have heard them.

“I would’ve been right behind you,” I replied, tipping her face up so I could see her eyes.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“No, you don’t get to do that.”

“Get?”

“I forbid it,” she snapped.

“There would be nothing left here for me.” It was the truth. Until we had children—if we had children—there wouldn’t be any reason to stay. I loved my parents and my brothers, but without my mate, I would be a shell of the person they knew. I’d seen it happen.

“Stop it.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“About this?” she snapped again. “Yes!”

“Okay, fine,” I replied flatly. “I’d miss you for a week or two, and then I’d get on with my life.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and stretched up to pepper kisses over my chin and jaw. She slid her hand under my shirt and raked her nails softly over the skin on my back.

“You’ve still got stitches in your leg,” I reminded her as I turned my head and captured her lips with mine.

“Can’t even feel them,” she lied against my mouth.

We stripped each other slowly, taking our time rediscovering all of the spots that made each other moan. Lucy loved when my beard brushed against the bottom curves of her breasts. I almost lost it completely when she fisted my hair in her hands, guiding me down her body.

I ran my lips and tongue along the crease of her thigh as I trailed my fingers over her.

By the time I’d reached the delicate skin between her legs, she was drenched and gasping.

Running my tongue lightly over her, I savored it.

Every touch, every sight, every taste was another reminder that I could’ve lost her.

She clenched around me as I slid my finger inside her, curling it toward my mouth as I licked at the little bundle of nerves that was growing more swollen by the second.

Lucy sobbed, leaning up on one elbow to watch as her hand smoothed down the back of my neck and alongside my jaw.

She threw her head back as she came, her feet pressing against the bed as she pressed herself against my mouth.

Her eyes met mine as I rose, soft and adoring. I swallowed hard, knowing that I was looking at her in much the same way.

Reaching down, she curled her hand around my erection, her thumb gliding back and forth across the tip.

I shuddered. I needed to be inside her. But when I paused, kneeling between her legs, the sight of the bandage on her thigh stopped me in my tracks.

I ran my thumb along the edge of the tape, hesitating.

Lucy huffed impatiently and flipped over. Rising onto her hands and knees, she arched her back. The bandage disappeared, hidden between her thighs and protected from any friction.

The round globes of her ass brushed against me as she swayed from side to side.

“Gods,” I muttered, running my hand down her spine. The tattoo on her back stared at me, a reminder that she had belonged to me long before either of us had known it.

I watched as I slid my fingers along the crack of her ass before pushing one and then two inside her. She was so wet that the sound of it played havoc on my self-control.

Lucy dropped down onto her elbows, giving me an even better view, and that self-control was gone. Rising onto my knees, I fisted my erection and fed it inside, watching her stretch around me as she mewled, her hands fisting the pillow beneath her head.

“Is that better, mate?” I asked softly, pulling out and sliding back in again.

“More,” she ordered, moving in counterpoint.

Leaning over her back, I braced myself next to her shoulder. Our tattoos lined up so closely that they might as well have been kissing.

“You’re so beautiful,” I murmured into her ear, kissing anything I could reach.

How the hell had I gotten so lucky? Why had the Gods finally let me have her? Was it all just luck, or had I finally proven myself somehow? Whatever the reason, chance or fate, I was grateful.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, I found her clitoris with the tip of my middle finger and circled it, pressing a little harder with each pass until she was writhing against me, trying to both meet my thrusts and push herself harder against my finger.

When she finally gave up control and arched into me, I pressed harder, and she came with a muffled scream, her body shaking beneath mine.

Smiling, I lifted my wrist to my mouth and nicked the skin. Carefully, I slid it beneath her and without a word, Lucy’s mouth found it and began to suck. My mouth watered as I pressed my lips against her neck. I licked it softly before pressing my teeth against the pulse there.

The moment she came again, I pierced her flesh and let the taste of her roll through me. There wasn’t anything else in the world like it. There would never be anything even remotely close.

I came with my body sheltering hers and her lifeblood flowing through me.

It was what I’d been made for, I realized as she delicately licked the blood from my arm.

For that moment and all the ones that came after.

I’d done a lot of things in my life that I was proud of and a lot of things that I wasn’t.

I’d probably killed more than I’d saved.

I’d made wrong decisions and right decisions, I’d said terrible things and I’d said kind ones.

I’d led an entire life before I’d ever met her.

But all of that had just been preparation for the real reason I was there.

I’d been put on the earth to love and protect Lucy Franklin.