William stopped. He’d fought in hundreds of skirmishes, he had done things that no sane man would, but he never remembered feeling that hollow at the end of it.
Cerise opened her mouth.
If she told him to leave, he would have to leave. He said he would and he had to do it.
“I love you,” she told him.
The words hung in the air between them.
She said yes. She loved him.
The chain he put on himself shattered. He lunged and caught her in a hug, brushing her hair off her neck, and kissed her, sweeping her off the floor. Her hands caressed his face.
“You should’ve said no,” he snarled. “Now it’s too late.”
“I don’t care, you stupid man,” she breathed. “I love you and I want you to love me back.”
She was his. His woman, his mate. He kissed her, eager for her taste, and she kissed him back, quickly, feverishly, like she couldn’t get enough.
Mine.
He buried his face in her neck, smelling her silky hair, licking her smooth skin. She tasted like honeyed wine, sweet and intoxicating under his tongue, and she made him drunk.
“I want you to stay with me,” she told him. “I want you to stay with me forever.”
Some part of him refused to believe it. He would never be this lucky. Fate didn’t reward him; it kicked him and knocked him down, grinding him under its heel. A terrible fear gripped him that somehow she would vanish, dissolve into thin air or die in his arms, and then he would be back in his house, awake, alone, and broken, because she was only a wishful dream.
“Will you, William? Will you stay with me?”
He gripped her to him, to keep her from disappearing. “Yes.”
She stroked his back, her slender fingers tracing the contours of his muscles, soothing, inviting him. She kissed his mouth, her soft lips pressing against his. Her pink tongue darted out, and she licked him, stroking him, again and again. He kissed her hard, trying to shut down the annoying warnings in his head, and dropped them down onto the hay. She squirmed under him, warm, flexible, and pliant.
Excitement flooded him. He pulled her shirt off and kissed her breast, sucking on her pink nipple, stroking her soft stomach and down, lower, to the sweet spot between her legs. She purred. He would kill to hear her make that sound again.
She was his mate. It finally sank in. She said yes, she was his, she wanted him to stay, and if she vanished, he would spent the rest of his life looking for her and he would find her again.
She wrapped her hand around his shaft and slid it up and down, spiking the need in him into an overwhelming hunger. She was wet for him, he could smell it, and the scent was driving him out of his skin.
“I love you,” he told her.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, her velvet eyes bottomless and black.
He thrust into her and she screamed.
“ON the hay,” Cerise murmured. “We did it on the itchy, smelly hay. I can’t believe it. Why did I even bring a quilt?”
He leaned over, grabbed the quilt, and pulled it over them, clenching her to him. “There.”
She pulled a blade of dried grass out of her hair. “This time in the hay. The last time we almost did it on a dirty floor. You’ve made me into some sort of hillbilly slut. “
Yeah, that’s right.
“Next time, we have to do it in bed,” she said.
“With wine and roses?” he asked.
“Maybe. I’ll settle for clean sheets.” She snuggled closer to him. William closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember ever being this happy.
“You will stay with me, right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Even though it would mean Kaldar would be your in-law?”
“I could just kill him ...”
“No, you can’t. He’s my favorite cousin.”
He read a real concern in her eyes and couldn’t resist. “He’s unmarried. No kids. Nobody to miss him.”
Her eyes widened. “William, you can’t kill my cousin.”
He laughed under his breath and she smacked him.
William gathered her closer. “I’m a wolf. You can’t chain me. But now you’re mine, my mate, my woman. Your family are my people now. Nothing they could do would drive me away. There are things I have to do, back in the Weird. I may have to leave for a time, but I will always be back.”
She caressed his face. “Things that have to do with Spider?”
He told her about the dead children and the blood on the dandelions and the note.
Cerise looked back at him, horrified. “Why? Why would he do that? They were just children. They weren’t a threat to him.”
At the time he hadn’t known why either, but now he had the benefit of the Mirror’s intelligence. “Spider’s real name and title is Sebastian Olivier Lafayette, Chevalier, Comte de Belidor. Very old Gaulish blueblood family. The bloodline started going weak around his great-grandmother’s time. They’re bleeders. Their blood doesn’t clot as it should, and with each generation it was getting worse. Spider’s father was bedridden for most of his life, and the family was desperate for a cure.
“Spider’s father found a woman from a blueblood family with a dirty secret—they had a changeling a couple of generations back. We’re a very healthy lot. Spider’s grandfather, Alain de Belidor, violently objected. Didn’t want his precious blood polluted. But Spider’s father married his bride anyway. The changeling blood fixed all their problems right up—Spider was born healthy as a horse.
“About that time Alain developed dementia. Since his son had one foot in the grave most of the time, Alain ruled the family. He terrorized Spider’s mother and the boy. Somehow he became convinced that Spider was a changeling.”