—and she was trying to help him with his jeans, and her hands felt like they’d grown extra fingers, and none of the fingers could hear her brain’s commands; she was clumsy at the best of times, and now she was almost paralyzed.

While she was puzzling the intricacies of his belt—

(shiny thing equals buckle, buckle must be pulled on until prong is released equals jeans down equals jeans off equals sex)

—his mouth came down on hers in a kiss so scorching, she felt the jolt to her toes.

(Buckle must be destroyed equals jeans off equals sex.)

She could feel his hands on her waist, her thighs, pulling, and then her (beltless!) sweat pants were reduced to a few sad tufts of faded cotton and she finally defeated her ancient (or so it seemed; how long had she been battling the fucking thing?) nemesis, the belt buckle, and yanked at his zipper and jeans hard enough to jerk him forward. Then he was laughing into her mouth and she could see the funny side to their insane urgency. Not so funny they’d be willing to stop and discuss how amusing it all was, but, yeah, still funny.

“Hate your—nnf!—jeans.”

“Let me—agh!” He slipped in butter or bacon grease and winced; she smelled blood and realized he’d cut his foot on broken glass.

“Dammit . . . dammit! Come here.” She grabbed his forearms and pulled; he skidded with her. She glanced down at the sideboard to take inventory—

(candlesticks, bread basket, biscuits, more butter, pitcher of orange juice, three juice glasses, pile of napkins, several clean forks, I hate orange juice!)

—and then swept it all off—

(Kara’s gonna kill me)

—and hopped up. She realized she still had her panties on and hopped down and yanked and then hopped back up. A clever man, Jack had caught on and put his—

(warm, strong, ummmmmmm)

—hands on her knees and spread them, dropped his pants—

(screw you, belt buckle! You have no power now!)

—and surged forward and put his arms around her lower back and yanked her to him, and he slid into her warm wetness like a knife through butter (like the kind he was standing in and she was sitting in). He’d barely seated himself inside her when he pulled back, and she opened her mouth to groan in protest. (Was the belt buckle having the last laugh after all?)

His next stroke forced the air from her lungs in a gasp, something that, if she’d read it in a book, she would assume had hurt.

It didn’t. She hooked her ankles just above his ass and held on tight, clutched his shoulders, and bit his ear so hard blood squirted in her mouth and he shuddered. “Never stop,” she hissed, her words slurred with so much desire she thought she might die of it, and his blood was in her and his cock was in her and this was the secret, this was how it was supposed to be. “Never stop, Jack.”

“Never,” he said, and bit her back, and her orgasm was on her like a breaker.

CHAPTER TEN

“Okay. That was . . . buttery.”

Jack, who’d sort of slumped to the floor after his explosive orgasm, had just enough strength to laugh. “Exactly what I was going for.”

Lara, still sitting on the sideboard, studied him, this man she’d dreamed of for years, had feared for years without knowing why. Now she knew. It made her no less afraid, but the fear changed nothing. They were supposed to be together. They were mated long before they had fucked. Her other self, the self with four legs and fur, the part many Pack members thought of as their true self, had known.

“You know, when we were younger and you’d come to visit, I’d have to—”

“Leave the room so you wouldn’t pick up on how badly I wanted you.” He’d staggered to his feet and was gingerly picking the remains of his clothes from the mess of butter/sugar/broken glass covering at least a third of the floor. “You were always beautiful. You always seemed so far above me. I didn’t have the courage to let you see how badly I needed you.”

“Don’t worry,” she cheerfully confessed, “I was a big chicken about my desire, too.”

“Relief! Ouch.” He made a futile attempt to wipe the bottom of his foot clean. “I wonder that our fathers never picked up—ouch—on it.”

“We should just stop moving except to find the door.” Lara pushed some broken glass out of their path with her big toe. “And maybe they did but never discussed it. Or maybe they didn’t, because they’re our fathers and will always see us as children to be protected. Not adults who—” She cut herself off. Who should be doing the protecting. The bat. The fish. And what next? And why?

“It’s ours to protect,” Jack told her. His arms were scraped and scratched, like her back, like the bottoms of their feet. Every step was a crunch and a wince.

“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Reading my mind.”

He didn’t smile; he was studying her. The color of his eyes was somehow sharper as he took her in, all of her. She let him look; it was the first time someone had stared at her that she hadn’t taken as a challenge. After a long while—or so it seemed to her, but it may have been only seconds—he said, “I dreamed about you.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and went to him, and stood in his warm embrace while butter oozed between her toes. “We have to get the hell out of this room.”

He laughed again, and she realized, in all the visits when they were children and teens and young adults, she’d never seen him laugh.

He’s complete now, too.

Why had no one told her what it was like?

Likely most people don’t know.

That was a worse thought than the bat and fish “gifts.”

“Come on, then, Lara.” He scooped her up in his arms and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She clutched his waist, then his ass. “No need for you to cut your feet more than you have.”

“You can . . . heal like Pack, right?” She’d never had to ask. She’d never thought to ask. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t about what Jack could do; it was about what he was. She closed her eyes; staring at his ass was making her forget about glass, cleaning up the mess they’d left in their lust, and dead fish. And breathing regularly.

“Yes. I can heal like your father, like my father.” There was a pause as he picked his way across the room. “Everything but run around on four legs. You’ve never asked me that before.”

She shrugged as best she could, upside down. “I’m probably going to be asking you lots of things I haven’t.”

“Please let that be some odd Wyndham euphemism for have more sex until you can’t feel your legs,” he muttered, and she laughed so hard he had to tighten his grip so as not to drop her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After threatening the kitchen staff with death and mutilation if they went in the breakfast room with so much as a paper towel to start cleaning, she and Jack went to her suite and cleaned up. This led to more delights in the shower, and then on her bathroom floor, and then in her bed. By the time they were clean and dressed, they were also exhausted and it was long past lunchtime.

“Too bad,” she said, elbowing Jack so he’d move over on the bed. He groaned and halfheartedly rolled a few inches. She flopped down beside him. “We’ve gotta get the breakfast room cleaned up, and I’ve got to make a phone call. Two calls, actually. And we should eat more. I don’t think you ate at all.”

“Not eggs or bacon, certainly.” He gently touched her bitten ear. “Is this about what you’ve been worrying all morning?”

Lara had to smile at been worrying as opposed to been worrying about. Jack used it the way dogs would worry at a sore place on their paw.

“Yeah, which reminds me, you haven’t left dead bats or fish on my kitchen stairs, right?”

“Uh . . . no. I thought I’d try flowers.”

She snorted. “Sure you did.”

“I might have eventually tried flowers.” He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’ve been waiting to return to you for a long time.”

“Return to implies we were together and you left.”

“Only in dreams,” he said, his eyes far away. “I dream about you all the time.”

She nodded.

“We’ll mate and have cubs, then.”

She nodded again.

“And should probably mention this to both our parents.”

Hmm. That could be interesting.

“Your brother, I suspect, is aware.”

She slapped her forehead. “Sean! Ah, God. He might be traumatized.” Pack members weren’t as hung up on sex as Western humans—who was?—but still. When your sister and someone you barely knew started boning away in the breakfast room where you were happily eating bacon mere moments before . . . “Ah, God,” she said again, because it was all she could think of.

Jack gave up trying to keep a straight face and burst out laughing, actually clutching his stomach and rolling back and forth on her bed. “He was trying to leave the room and screaming like a witch, and my only focus was—well, it wasn’t on him.”

“All right. Dress first. Clean breakfast room. Apologize to traumatized brother. Make phone calls. You promise you didn’t bring me a dead fish before you came over?”

Jack sobered and sat up. “No. And I can tell it’s bothering you more than you’re letting show. Let me help you.”

Lara studied him, this man she barely knew who would be in her life through death and further. She still couldn’t grasp how he had become so vital so soon; she had no idea how she would explain this to her mother. (Her father would bluster but, she suspected, would also know what she was talking about. He just wouldn’t want to apply that knowledge to anything having to do with his daughter’s sex life. Especially since pre-Jack, the answer to that would have been, “What sex life?”)

“A few years ago my dad had the idea of retiring, not dying.”