Page 12 of Howling Eve (Ragoru Origins #2)

Chapter Twelve

A lthough she loved everything about the trick or treaters who flooded the market and made more credits than she ever had before—even more than when Victor was alive and handling the sales and finances—Eve was glad to be home. The encounter with Victor’s cousin had left her uneasy for the remainder of the day and throughout their entire trip back to the farm. Even Skal’s complaints over the mule as “smelly and foul-tempered” failed to entirely alleviate her grim mood.

At least she had a distraction now that she was home. Tomorrow was Halloween so she was busily making various treats and prepping the food she wanted to have for the dumb supper. She had explained the concept to Skal as she stood chopping food at her counter. He seemed to get the concept—all except why it was called dumb supper, which she never understood either, just that it was a custom handed down through her family for generations—much easier than how to carve a jack-o-lantern. She smiled over at the Ragoru as he sat crouched on the wooden floor in front of the largest pumpkin pulled from her patch. She had known immediately that it was to the one she wanted.

Skal wore a look of complete concentration as he held it firmly between his lower hands as his upper hands carefully cut some semblance of a face as she had described to him. It had quite a few pointed teeth and two sets of eyes, but she thought it was absolutely perfect. The male’s grumbling over using a knife rather than his claws and his initial awkwardness with it had been worth the final result. It had also been funny watching him scowl at the knife every time it cut in a way he hadn’t planned.

At least she cleaned it for him. Eve bit back a grin as she imagined the terrible mess that would have ensued if she hadn’t. He would have had pumpkin guts clear up to his elbows staining all of that pale fur. She didn’t know how he always returned from hunts so spotless, but she hadn’t wanted to chance it with the pumpkin.

She began to whisk the spices and cream into the roasted and pureed pumpkin, her gaze drifting repeatedly to him as she worked. Thunder had been rolling overhead for a while, announcing the approach of a storm and she was certain that hot pumpkin pie would be just the thing to finish their evening. She would make two so that there was another for tomorrow. Her smile grew as she recalled just how fond Skal was of her pie.

Lightning cracked over her head and Eve jumped, upsetting the spoon from the bowl. The mixture splattered across the counter and her eyes glanced upward as she listened to the rain pouring down. From his place on the floor, Skal grunted and rose to his feet, hauling the pumpkin up with him. The candle she’d left out for it flickered in its wickedly grinning mouth, and smiled at it, appreciating how spooky it looked despite the brightness of the kitchen. Skal looked over at the door and back at her uncertainly.

“Are you sure you want this to go out?”

She shook her head. “Not tonight. We will put it out tomorrow night, that’s the important night. Just set it on the small table in the living room. It will look appropriately spooky in there.”

He smirked down at his work and nodded. Just as he disappeared with the pumpkin into the living room another crack of lightning struck but directly overhead. Eve jumped, her heart leaping into her throat as the power flickered and went out, plunging the house into darkness. But that wasn’t what made her shriek. It was the image of a man—the familiar silhouette of her late husband standing outside the kitchen window in the rain, back lit by the flash in the sky.

“ Eve… My Eve,” he called, his voice distant and echoing in a hollow inhuman sound.

She stumbled back from the window, her heart pounding in her chest, and screamed in earnest when she collided with someone behind her. Two sets of arms immediately wrapped around her, holding her close.

“Eve, what is it?” he rumbled quietly, his muzzle tucking behind her ear.

Her lips parted. She felt numb but she lifted a hand toward the window just as the lightning flashed again, the sound cracking violently over the house. Nothing was out there. She shook her head. That was impossible.

“I… I saw him. I swear he was just right out there,” she whispered brokenly around a sob, worried that perhaps she had finally truly lost her mind. “I heard him this time, too. I’ve never heard it before but this time he spoke.”

“Who?”

She turned in Skal’s arms, looking up at his four yellow, glowing eyes beseechingly. “Victor. I’ve been seeing him for weeks before you arrived, but he was there again. A—and I swore I saw him in town as well when we were at dinner. He looked just as he always did, and I thought I was just imagining him, but I know I didn’t just imagine him speaking to me. He called my name!”

The shadow of his head turned toward the window and she knew that he was peering out the window, his brow likely lowering in a scowl as he very gently pulled her away. “There is something not right about this, but it is not you,” he growled. “There is nothing we can do about it at this moment with the rain. I likely would not even be able to pick up a scent should I attempt to look now. We will secure our den and ignore it. Someone wishes to frighten you, but we will not give them that power.”

Eve drew in a deep breath and nodded. He was right. She didn’t know why anyone would want to frighten her. It was true she never quite got along with the townspeople who thought her entire family were odd living alone so far from everyone else in their hidden little valley. The fact that most couldn’t find the entrance to it if they didn’t know the way did help rumors any. But she simply didn’t understand who could have found their way there and why they would be so intent on scaring her.

“Wait! I need to put the pie mix in the cold box to keep it while we are without power. The generator can take a while to kick back on and I don’t want it to spoil.”

Skal rumbled in acknowledgement and left her side, his soft footsteps heading back toward the kitchen and the creak of the cold box opening. She couldn’t see anything at all in the kitchen. The only light they had at all was the dim glow from the living room from the fire burning in the hearth. A hand touched her side and she jumped, swallowing back another scream when three more immediately followed suit.

“Warn somebody when you’re sneaking up on them in the dark,” she whispered.

The wind rattled the trees around the house, and the branches tapped on the windows and sides while the rain beat down with cacophonic thrum. Skal’s hands smoothed along her arms and hips in calming strokes that gradually dissolved her tension.

She moaned softly as he rubbed just below her hip against the joint there. “Your hands are like magic. That feels so good.”

He rumbled quietly and his hands fell from her hips as he shifted positions and moved out from behind her to draw her by the hand with a seductive pressure toward the living room. Her breath caught in her throat as she followed him, her senses wide open and reeling in the darkness. Was this really happening?

Skal paused by the door, and she heard the locks click into place before they headed into the living room. The faint light of the fire was reassuring after being practically blind in her own home and she turned toward it for a moment before her eyes searched out where she knew the window to be. She didn’t like the idea of anyone potentially out there… watching.

“The curtains?” she whispered, and she felt his body sway as he stopped, and the soft sound of the living room curtains being drawn shut.

She shivered in relief and once again his hands returned to her, stroking along her arms and sides. They didn’t drift anywhere particularly intimate but there was a sense of anticipation and maybe even a question in his patient, explorative touch. His muzzle brushed her neck, his soft fur caressing her skin and Eve sighed and leaned into him. He had an extraordinary skill of making her feel so alive. How was it that only Skal could ever manage to do this? How was he the only one to ever stir her desire?

As if to prove her point, his thumb grazed the underside of her breast and she arched into the touch, her breath shuddering out of her.

“I love the way that you respond to my touch,” he growled softly in her ear. “Even when you look at me, the dark points of your eyes expanding and the sweet scent of your desire stirring—even the color rising into your cheeks—all of it is perfection. I have never wanted as much as I have wanted you.”

The brush of his tail slid along the back of her leg beneath her skirt and Eve smiled as she leaned into him. He was reassuringly nonhuman, everything about him so different for the hard, indifferent hand of what she’d experienced before.

“I love the way you touch me,” she admitted breathless. “And the way you look at me as if you would eat me and savor every bite.”

His groan vibrated through her and she squeezed her thighs together to relieve some of the tingling need that was now centered on her clit and her slit that was quickly soaking through her panties.

“I would,” he rasped, his fingers sliding from her hip over her belly until they brushed her mons, trapping her cloth-covered clit between two of his fingers. “I would lap that this like I eat the filling from your pie. I know it will taste as good… better.”

Eve quivered as his fingers rubbed against the sides of her clit, pressing inward on the upstroke until she was sopping wet and trembling against him, her hips lifting into his touch. He was making a mess of her. She could feel her slick coating her thighs and the pulse of her empty, needy pussy. She jerked, an explosion of desire whipping through her as he pinched her clit between his fingers and gently tugged, as something hard, hot, and thick rubbed against her ass. She gasped aloud and moaned, and Skal’s chuckle rumbled just below it.

He nuzzled her ear and his hot tongue swept along her neck; the texture far bumpier than she expected. She wiggled against him and the lower hand that had remained on her hip tightened and dragged her firmly against him so that she could feel each engorged cock pressed against her clearly.

“I presented myself to you. I showed you all that I could give you, even as I realize I have also been showing you with every little the thing I did—trying to prove myself a worthy mate to a female I bonded to and half-mated without even realizing. A female I’ve come to adore and need with every part of my being.”

“And love?” she whispered.

“And love,” he affirmed, his teeth nipping gently at her neck. “The whole of me yearns only for you. If you would have me? I would be yours entirely.”

Her eyes squeezed shut, a tremulous smile curling her mouth. This was what it was supposed to feel like. Her heart felt full and an urge to laugh and shout out joyfully and scream overtook her all at once. She hadn’t imagined that he would feel that way, that she wasn’t just clinging to a male who tolerated his presence. He loved her and suddenly everything was clicking into place—a beautiful future that waited for him. But still she had to make sure that it wasn’t just a convenience.

“And if I said no?” She hated whispering the words and the pain they might bring him.

Skal’s teeth caught her a little more roughly, sending a shock of desire through her. “Then we will continue as we are, but I will not rut you. Not unless you are mine as much as I am yours. Regardless, I do not wish to live without having you with me. You have made me whole in a way I never thought possible.”

“Me, too,” she whispered, her smile growing freely as she leaned into his touch, her arm curling back behind her head to hold him to her the best she could. “I love you, Skal. I’m so thankful you barged through my door.

His breath fanned her cheek as he chuckled. “I am pleased that you shouted at me for stealing your pie. I may have started falling in love with you then, my brave little mate.”

Eve laughed at that and moaned against when his tongue swept across her neck once more.

“Do you accept me, Eve?” he rasped. “There will be no others. I will never seek another triad and never share you. I cannot share you after having you to myself. Perhaps I am selfish, but I will not allow another male here. Because of this there may not be any rogs for us, but will you love me an accept me as I am anyway, knowing my love for you?”

Tears sprung to her eyes at the pain in his voice and she understood that this was something that he was sacrificing for himself as well, all because he loved her so much that he couldn’t bear to share with a strange male. And in truth, she wouldn’t have him any other way. She loved Skal and felt completed just as they were. If rogs came then she would welcome them. If not, she wouldn’t grieve for what she hadn’t known. She had everything she needed right here already.

“You’re mine,” she whispered, and her squeal of desire as his teeth clamped on her neck as his fingers manipulated her clit and nipples, and her shout as her orgasm quickly followed, was lost beneath his possessive growl.

He stripped her methodically, his claws tearing through her clothes in his urgency. She ought to have protested but in that moment she didn’t care. She could sacrifice one set of clothes for the greater good and pleasure of their mating night. The first graze of his hot cocks against her bare ass and lower back, however, was sublime. The thick length of the upper cock with its frilled head almost tickled while the bumpy lower cock drug against her like a hot, slick rasp of something pebbled with numerous tiny beads. Eve twitched against him, her hips grinding against him, needing him within her desperately. She breathed in that need with every breath, his scent filling her nose and lungs, making her body demand even more of him even as she cried out impatiently when his cocks slipped off of her as he adjusted their angle and then pressed upward.

His fat, upper cock burrowed slowly into her pussy, stretching her around his girth with ever gentle pump of his hips. The pull and drag was exquisite as he worked himself in until at last, he was fully inside her, his cock jerking inside her with a hot splash that had him growling into her skin.

And then he began to rock his hips against her, and she dove into pleasure and was completely lost to it.