Growling, he batted her with the top of his head. She growled back at him but complied with his wishes. That felt better. He could run again. His first priority was the she-wolf. Now and always it would be she who mattered most.
Az shook his head, trying to force his own consciousness back into the wolf. It was easy to let him take control, easy to just let his mind drift into the animals, to exist in nothing more than what he smelled, heard, and tasted, to not be plagued with endless questions and worries.
Are you there? Leah’s voice sounded worried. How long had she been trying to reach him?
Sorry, sometimes he takes control. Or rather, sometimes I let him.
I like your wolf. He’s very…protective of me…but I missed you.
Let’s shift. He called the white light unto himself loving the heat and the warmth for the few seconds he was blessed with it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Leah do the same.
In the background he heard the sound of the waterfall that led into the largest lake on Westervelt Island. He hadn’t realized they’d run that far. No wonder Leah had sounded worried she hadn’t been able to reach him.
He turned to look at her, his breath catching in his throat. Bathed in a ray of moonlight, Leah was a sight to behold. Az was glad there was a strong tree behind him as he leaned back against it, not sure his knees were all that steady. He’d seen her naked—a few times now, with all the shifts they’d been doing but this was different. There was no pack around to distract him, no task that needed to be preformed, just his mate and the nighttime to tempt.
“You’re the reason men write poetry and sculpt artwork.” After he said it he realized how cheesy it sounded and wished he had a rewind button so he could redo his decision to speak it aloud.
To his amazement, Leah grinned from ear to ear. “I should be embarrassed being naked. I certainly wasn’t raised walking around in my birthday suit all day long.”
“It’s different here.”
She moved forward, her gaze locked with his. “My mother used to tell me about this place, not by name, of course. She probably didn’t want me, during my rebellious years, to try to come looking for it. I used to think it was in Ireland or the West Indies. Somewhere exotic. It never occurred to me it could be less than an hour from where I was born.” Leah stopped right in front of him, her head pushed back so she could look up at him, which gave him a perfect view of her long, luscious neck. Gods, he wanted to mark her.
He reached out and touched her hair with both of his hands, loving the way the silky strands felt on the pads of his fingers. “What did she tell you?”
“That it was a shame that I’d never get to come here because it meant that I’d never know what real freedom was—the freedom to be who I was born to be—and that if I didn’t find my mate then what I thought love was would always be a shallow interpretation of the real thing.”
Az swallowed hard. “It’s counterintuitive. Why tell you how fabulous it is if she knew you’d never come here?”
“Maybe she hoped that I would.”
Closing his eyes, he smelled the nighttime wind on Leah’s skin. Because he couldn’t help himself, he rubbed his forehead on the top of her hair covering his face with her hair.
“I’m so glad that you did. When Malcolm handed you to me in the lab, I knew you were different. I had nightmares of you dying. My wolf begged me to keep you safe and I was terrified that you wouldn’t be.”
“I don’t remember much from the lab, just vague impressions, but you were there and I knew you, if I was unaware of everything else, I knew you.”
He didn’t know which one of them kissed the other first. All he cared about was that their lips met. Her mouth felt soft and her breath tasted sweet against his tongue. Never in his life had he been so glad to have his eyes closed, there was no way she could look at them right now and not see the hundred of emotions he knew would be pouring out of them.
She made a small moan in her throat and he pulled her closer up against him. Using his hands, he explored her back from the top of her neck to the spot right above her buttocks. Leah was so small, so thin, but under his hands she didn’t feel delicate—instead she felt solid and secured like the most perfectly put together machine ever constructed.
Azriel…
Her voice in his head only added to the moment. Did she even know she was projecting? He didn’t think so.
Pulling his head back, he stared down at her face. Her chin jutted out stubbornly and the one dimple she had on her left cheek grinned up at him. In her blue-grey eyes he saw nothing but trust and desire reflected back at him. Still…
“We should be doing this in a bed the first time.”
Leah pushed him backwards against the tree wrapping one leg up against his thigh.
His groin jumped even further to attention.
“Bedrooms are overrated.”
He ran his hands through her hair as he stared at her. “Leah, are you sure? Are you absolutely positive? Whatever happens here—it’s going to change us in a significant way. You’re sure you want to do that here up against a tree.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re right, Az, I don’t.”
His heart flip-flopped. He’d known it when he asked her that it was possible she would say no. Nodding, he stroked her cheek. “Okay, we’ll go back to the house, we’ll do this slowly. I’ll court you—gods know you deserve it…”
“I want to do it over there.” She shoved off him and rushed toward the waterfall.
“Can you catch me?”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. He was part canine, there was nothing he liked better than to chase, unless you counted catching his prey—which he intended to do this time.
Still in her human form, Leah shrieked as she ran toward the falls. Stopping at the edge, she looked down at the lake below and he had one second to realize what she planned before she leapt over the edge into the water. Without a thought, he followed her over barely noticing the rather cold water that surrounded him, as he was so intent on locating Leah.
Pushing himself to the top, he saw her laughing as she swam toward the side. Finally catching up with her, he grabbed her leg as he hauled them both to shore.
“Are you crazy?” His heart pounded hard both from Leah’s naked form spread out beneath his body and also from the mini-adventure she’d just put them both through.
“You could have been hurt.”
She shook her head. “No, my wolf said we’d be fine. It was fun.” As she grabbed the back of his neck, he let her pull his head down to her own. Her lips met his and he sighed.
She was right; there was no way she would have been seriously injured. That still didn’t mean he wanted her to know just how scared he had gotten watching her do it. Breaking their kiss, she raised a brown eyebrow at him. “Now stop stalling and mate me, Azriel.”
They were both wet, the ground was hard and he couldn’t care less. Life became all about Leah, what she wanted, what she needed, what they could do together.
Touching her pert, pink nipples he teased the buds until they became engorged. She moaned and he smiled at the sound, guessing that they had to feel tender. That’s how he wanted her, aching, desperate, and begging for his touch.
Moving so he could see her better, he pressed his lips to her already touch-ravished nipple, sucking on it hard. Her back arched off the ground and she drove her hands into his hair. He was on fire from the taste of her, sweet and salty at the same time. Leah’s breasts were small and firm, he’d never considered himself a ‘breast man’ but right at that moment he couldn’t think of a more heavenly, female thing than the two mounds of ecstasy that sat on Leah’s chest.