The anxiety in his voice tugged at her heart. “It’s okay. I’m fine. Fine. Here. Yours.”

A growl escaped his lips. “Always mine. Say it.”

“Always yours.”

“Louder.”

“Always yours!”

“Good girl.” With the hand clasping her throat he urged her to go faster as he began punching his hips up to meet her downward thrusts. “Bite me.” He groaned and shuddered as she bit his chest, sucking and branding him. “I love it when you mark me.” He moved his hand from her throat to her hair and snatched her head back as he began punching his hips harder. “Come. Now.” He sank his teeth into her neck and slipped his thumb between them to circle her clit. Just like that, she shattered.

An intensely powerful orgasm ripped through Taryn, wrenching a scream from her lungs. Her muscles closed around his c**k and he punched into her one final time, growling her name, as his own release hit and his c**k pulsed deep inside her. Totally replete, she collapsed against him, gasping for breath. He held her close as the aftershocks racked their bodies – it was a hold so tight that it was almost desperate. “I’m not going anywhere, Trey,” she assured him softly.

He grunted. “You say that as if you have a choice.”

“Ass,” she chuckled.

“I mean it, Taryn. I won’t ever let you leave. I’ll never give you up. I’ll never let anyone take you from me.”

She lifted her head and smiled at him. “Then it’s a good thing I’m planning on staying.”

The sight of her warm, reassuring smile triggered another of those strange pangs in his chest. Trey meshed his lips to hers, indulging in a long thorough tasting of her mouth. Then, content, he nuzzled her neck and breathed in deep. And froze.

“What’s wrong?”

“You smell different.”

“What? How?”

“Our scents. They’ve mixed.” A smug grin spread across his face. “It’s the mating bond. It’s advancing.” That meant that whatever it was they were doing, they were doing it right. It also meant that any shifter who picked up her scent would know she was a mated female before even seeing her mark – or marks.

Although she rolled her eyes at his self-satisfaction he could feel that she, too, was glad about it and liked the knowledge that it would be instantly clear to everyone that he was taken. He also felt her concern that maybe this was the most they would have, that the bond would never be complete because they might never feel they could be totally naked to each other.

What caused him the most unease was that beneath all that was her fear that he might never come to feel for her what she felt for him, that she would forever be in a mating with someone who couldn’t love her. It made Trey want to kick his own ass.

He wondered if she had been able to sense just how much he wished he could give her those words she wanted. It amazed him how there could be so much power in three little words. To him, they didn’t have any true meaning or hold the same power because they had never been part of his vocabulary. It wouldn’t have been any different than someone reciting an unfamiliar Japanese phrase and expecting him to not only repeat it but to also understand what it meant. His mom had been a good mother, but she hadn’t been what anyone might call tender or ‘loving’. His dad had been far from it. Even Greta, the person who had played the most part in his upbringing, had never used those words though he believed she cared for him.

Trey knew though that even if he had heard it every day of his life there was still a possibility he couldn’t have repeated it to Taryn. Considering the things he had done in his life and how f**ked up his conscience was, it was possible that ‘love’ wasn’t something a person like him could feel, that it was reserved for good people like Taryn. It made him wish that he was a better person. There was no denying that Taryn deserved a better mate. Even with that in mind, though, he couldn’t give her up. Wouldn’t.

He hadn’t thought of his life as something that was dark or empty until she came here and suddenly lit it up and filled it. Even when he had been doing his level best to avoid her he had been simultaneously drinking in her presence in his life. It pained both him and his wolf that he couldn’t give her – his mate – what she needed. What he did know was that if it was possible for someone like him to experience an emotion so strong, then Trey would feel it for Taryn.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“So…who do we think the informant is?”

Everyone at the patio table looked at Dante, but no one answered him. No one wanted to actually face the fact that one of their own had betrayed them. Trey had secretly arranged for he, Taryn, Dante, and his enforcers to meet at the lake this morning to discuss the issue in private. As sad as it was, he felt that these were the only members of his pack he could truly trust. Well, them and Greta. However, he didn’t trust Greta to keep the issue of the informant to herself. She would most likely begin confronting and interrogating everyone, and he didn’t want the informant to know that they were aware of his betrayal yet. Taryn very much doubted that Darryl’s two thugs would own up to him that they’d told her about the informant, so if Trey played dumb they might just get to the bottom of the matter before anything else happened.

“Personally, I don’t think it’s a stretch to conclude that it’s the same person who vandalized Taryn’s car, killed the bird, and left her with that bump a few weeks back.” Tao shrugged.

“Then we need to look at people who aren’t particularly happy about her being here,” said Trick around a mouth of chewing gum.

“Most of us weren’t happy at the beginning, including me,” admitted Dominic before offering her an apologetic smile – a smile that quickly turned impish, warning her of what was to come. “Of course I love you now. If I had a star for every time you brightened my day, I’d have a galaxy in my hand.” As usual, some groaned, some chuckled, and Trey hit him.

Taryn shook her head. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Dominic winked.

“Getting back to the shitty subject at hand…The obvious suspects would be Selma and Hope,” said Trey, massaging Taryn’s nape. “Although I think Hope would have only been involved if Selma was.”

Tao cocked his head. “What about Kirk? He’s sure pissed about her being here.”

“I don’t get why he’s so hateful about it though,” said Taryn. “I mean, I know he doesn’t like me, but if he is responsible for all this then it seems a bit of an overreaction to disliking me.”