The Wolf's Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats (24 page)

Groaning, he managed to lower them both to
the floor without dropping her, and he rolled to his back and she
settled on his chest, draped over him like a blanket, the robe
covering both of them. Within minutes she was asleep. He wasn’t as
comfortable as he could have been if he’d been in bed with her, but
he’d lay on broken glass to see to her pleasure, that was for
sure.

With some gentle maneuvering, he kicked his
legs free of his jeans and rolled to his knees with her in his arms
and took her upstairs.

Eryx was crashed out on the couch so he
carried her into the bedroom and laid her down, covering her and
giving her cheek a caress.

He didn't bother to cover up. He and Eryx had
been eye-fing each other ever since they’d made love to her the
first time and he didn’t have a shred of modesty left in his body.
He tapped his brother on the arm as he sat down with a groan on the
coffee table.

Eryx gave him a one-eyed stare and smiled as
it slid shut, “She take you to town, too?”

“Yeah.” He yawned and ran his hand through
his hair. “I marked her. At the end. I felt like I had to.”

Eryx’s eyes popped open. “No shit? I did,
too. I don’t think I could have stopped if I’d had any blood in my
brain to think, it was like she smelled better than normal. You
think it’s because of the full moon for her?”

“Don’t know. Something’s going on with us
because of her, though, don’t you think? It’s like yesterday when
you beat up Alek because he saw her naked.”

Eryx grimaced at the memory. They’d all been
surprised and it had been totally innocent on Alek’s part. He was
bringing in packing material from the garage and Callie didn’t know
that anyone was in the house except for them, and she hadn’t
bothered to dress. She’d grabbed the blanket from the back of the
couch and wrapped up, but Eryx had come out at just the wrong time
and lit into Alek as if he’d planned to hurt her. Poor guy was
still nursing a pretty serious busted lip and black eye.

Scrubbing his jaw with his knuckle Ethan
said, “Well, if we both did it then it’s either a lion mating thing
or a wolf full moon thing, or a combination of the two. Since none
of us have been in this situation before, it’s not like we have a
book to refer to. I’m going to crash with her in the bedroom. You
coming?”

“Yeah.”

Another yawn worked through him and his eyes
shuttered as soon as he had his arm around her and Eryx had stopped
making the bed shake as he got comfortable on her other side. He
figured that since they’d first made love to Callie, they’d been
having sex about two or three times a day each, not counting his
fantastic night alone with her. And more than just quantity, it was
that he flat out loved being with her. He loved making love to her,
slow and tender so it took hours, and he loved fucking her hard and
fast until she screamed his name. And it was even enough to just
hold her while she dozed off after a go-around or at night while
they slept. He’d worried in the beginning that they wouldn’t be
able to share her, but things were going well so far. Not that he’d
jinx it.

She wasn’t much in the mood to eat dinner
when she woke up, and she said it was just full moon jitters.
They’d already agreed to both shift and go with her while she
hunted, but promised to stay back as long as it wasn’t something
huge like that elk.

He was looking forward to watching her shift.
On the back porch, she dropped the robe she’d taken over and draped
it across a dry spot on the rail and tossed them a small smile
before crouching down. She shivered and then made a strange sound
like something hurt.

“Baby?” He asked.

She blinked those pretty eyes up at him and
they were even lovelier, amber and wide. “I’m okay, I just felt
weird for a second there.”

Before he could ask her to elaborate, she
shifted and went from a beautiful woman to a pretty wolf in a few
seconds. Motioning for her to come over, they both crouched and ran
their hands through her fur. Thick and warm, she smelled like her
honey scent plus something like the woods in the fall, a nice
combination.

She licked both of their palms and then
bounded off the deck and turned, sitting in the snow on her
haunches and waiting for them to join her. Dropping their jeans to
the rail, they both shifted and moved to her, circling and sniffing
and she sat passively and let them scent-mark her by rubbing their
cheeks against her body.

She made a humming noise that was a lot like
a purr and he thought she was probably smiling. With a growling nip
on both of their shoulders, she darted off into the tree line. They
could easily catch her because their stride was so much longer than
hers but she was going at a fast clip to get ahead of them. They
definitely didn’t want to really play at her being out of their
sight, so they beat paws to catch up quick.

He had always thought that mountain lions,
hell any big cat, were the most graceful creatures, but watching
his mate as she darted between the trees and over brush as if she
instinctively knew where everything was, gave him such a sense of
pride and love for her. She was incredible. Sleek and lean, a
perfect color for woods in the wintertime, and just beautiful,
woman and wolf.

She found a nest of rabbits and gave chase to
one of the larger ones, and they sat back and watched her as she
stalked and caught it, shaking the dark brown body in her jaws
until the neck snapped before dropping it between her paws and
tearing it apart. He darted a glance at Eryx who had a look of
sheer pride and love in his eyes, and he wondered if she’d picked
up that neck snapping bit from them.

Finished in a short time, she bounded off
again, more leisurely this time as if now that she’d hunted she
could just run and enjoy herself and they joined her. At the top of
one of the larger hills, she sat down on her haunches and lifted
her muzzle to the sky and let loose a loud howl that gave him
shivers. It was both happy and sad, joyful and mourning. As the
howl echoed around the hillside, it was joined by natural wolves
and they sat in stunned silence as they listened to the song of the
natural wolves to their mate. It was almost like they were saying
goodbye to her.

As the last of the howls slid into the
darkness, Callie made a groaning, sighing noise and turned, darting
a look to both of them before bolting between them. Silly girl, as
if they couldn’t catch her. Pounding through the woods, the snow
kicked up from them as they moved to catch up to her while still
giving her the sense that she was calling all the shots with the
game.

As they drew close to the house, he glanced
ahead of them all as they ran and he saw something odd glinting in
the snow in her path. He had just a heartbeat before he realized
that it was a trap. Without a second thought, he tackled Callie to
stop her from getting to the trap, tumbling with her in the
opposite direction. She snarled and growled furiously and he wished
to hell he could talk and tell her what was going on. A loud crack
sounded through the forest and Eryx was standing in his human form
with a thick tree branch sticking out of the jaws of the tripped
trap. Callie froze.

“Callie, you were heading right for this.”
Eryx's voice was filled with wrath. He gestured to the trap and she
blinked her amber eyes a few times and then shook her head with a
whine and padded over to him, rubbing the top of her head against
his knee. “It’s okay, love, it was your beast. Let’s get home. I’m
going to freeze off a part of myself I like a great deal.” Eryx was
smiling, but his eyes were dangerously dark.

Callie padded back to him and nuzzled under
his neck with a gentle growl and then they headed back, and she
stayed right by his side as Eryx jogged ahead. Fortunately they
were close to the house. But unfortunately, that meant that the
trap had definitely been meant for her. Because of the dense
population of were-lions, no one hunted in the area with traps, and
no one would put a trap so close to a were-lion’s home unless they
were purposely looking to trap one of them. Or a sweet little
wolf.

Eryx stalked right into the house and put the
trap inside the door. He was most likely going to call their dad.
Ethan shifted and grabbed for his jeans keeping one eye on Callie
and one ear on his brother. She shifted and reached for the robe
and hit the ground with a soft whimper. “Callie?” He grabbed her
off the ground and moved into the house quickly.

Her head dropped back like she fainted, and
then she shook out of it. Blinking several times, she said, “I felt
dizzy there for a second.”

He wrapped her in the blanket from the couch
and sat her on his lap. “Has that happened before?”

“No. Maybe it was just a little case of
nerves, thinking about the trap that could have taken my leg off.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder. “I didn’t bite you, did I?
When you pushed me away my instincts just went nuts.”

“No, you didn’t get me. I wish I could talk
in my shift sometimes. It would be damn handy.”

“I love you, Ethan, thank you.” She burrowed
into his arms and drifted off to sleep nearly immediately, even
before he could reply.

After settling her on the couch and finding
his jeans too ice cold to put on, he grabbed a pair of track pants
from the bedroom and found Eryx in the kitchen, staring at the
phone.

“Eryx?”

“Hm? Oh, dad said in the morning he and the
others will come and do a grid search of our property to check for
more traps. Even if we’re leaving, the cubs play out there. I would
hope there was only the one, although that seems unlikely.”

“Agreed.”

Eryx put his hand on his shoulder. “It was
good luck that you saw the trap because I didn’t. She could have
died from blood loss if the trap had closed up high enough on her
leg, caught an artery.”

“Why won’t they just accept that we’re
leaving and be done with this bullshit?”

Eryx shrugged. “Retaliation, I’m sure. Every
time she’s met with the females she’s managed to keep them at bay.
Did she say what was wrong when she shifted? It looked like she
fainted.”

Shaking his head, he went to the refrigerator
to make them some sandwiches. “No.” The package of deli roast beef
sat heavily in his hand. “Can you believe that symphony of wolves
for her? I’ve never heard anything quite like it.”

Eryx smiled. “Me neither. She is one special
woman. And all ours.”

“Most definitely.”

**Eryx**

Four more traps were found on their property.
It boggled the mind. This went beyond trying to scare her; it was
like they were trying to kill her outright. And that made no sense,
because they were leaving soon. He didn’t know how long the traps
had been out there, but it appeared it hadn’t been very long.

The females all clammed up tight about the
traps. Even under the intense anger of all the males, they appeared
as aloof and uncaring as usual. As if they were asking why they’d
left roses lying around and not something designed to maim and
kill.

What had amazed him about the whole thing was
that when he’d gotten back from the meeting, having been so furious
and out of sorts, that Callie had just taken care of him. She left
Ethan on the couch and came into the kitchen where he’d been
slamming cabinets and drawers in an effort to find something to
take the edge off the rage he’d been feeling. Once again, he felt
like he could have lost her and been helpless to do anything about
it, and she’d just taken his hand and pulled him back into the
bedroom.

She undressed him slowly, without a word,
before stripping out of her own clothes. She kissed him teasingly
slow and thoroughly, from the top of his head to the soles of his
feet, before taking him with her mouth. She knew just how to work
him with her mouth, bringing him right to the edge and then backing
off until he calmed, before ramping up again. When he came down
from orbit and his vision cleared of stars, he rolled her over onto
her back, splayed his hands over her spread thighs and dove down on
her core. Fuck but he loved to eat her pussy. Sweet and hot and
oh-so wet, and she made the best sounds when he did it. Throaty
growls and pleading moans, and she used his hair like handlebars,
directing him where she needed him.

He drew her through a few orgasms until she
couldn’t really react anymore because she didn’t have anything left
to give. Then he slid inside her with a cock that always seemed
ready to hit the end of her, and by the time he was ready to come
the second time, she was ready, too, and they came together, and
that was such a sweet relief. To feel her clutch him as she came,
the ripples that descended his cock like waves of pleasure, and
then to feel his cock spill inside her.

He moved her around the bed like a rag doll,
because she was already in that close-to-sleep place that he loved
putting her in, when she was so exhausted she couldn’t possibly
keep her eyes open another second. Curled into his chest, his
sweetheart sighed deeply and drifted off to sleep. In a few days
they were leaving the only home that he and Ethan had ever known.
Callie worried that they would resent her for the fact that they
couldn’t stay, but it spoke to the deepest part of their kind when
it came to taking care of their mate. Certainly they were sad to
leave their brother and father and the rest of their family here,
but it was such a relief to be able to take care of her by leaving
that it eclipsed everything else. She didn’t really understand
because wolves didn’t have anything like this among their own kind.
Their males and females mated at will with humans and wolves alike,
and it seemed that as long as the humans understood that sometimes
things with the pack took precedence over all else, then there were
no problems.