Impulse: Southern Arcana, Book 5 (19 page)

She rubbed her back against his chest and closed her eyes. “I’m your girl.”

“No,” he whispered, his muscles tense. “Because it’s not okay. It’s too much, too far.”

“It’s us.” Reaching back, she gripped his hip, dug her nails into his skin and tried to pull him deeper. “It doesn’t have to be okay to be true.”

“Yes, it does.” He didn’t move. “I won’t be that asshole, Sera. I’m enough of one already without adding ‘stupidly possessive bastard’ to the list.”

Frustration raked her, and she snarled and dropped her hand to claw at the grass. He was right, and there should have been relief in it. To know that Julio wouldn’t trap her, wouldn’t crush her.

Human relief, maybe, but this wasn’t a night for human things. She twisted to bite his jaw. “Mine. Tonight, you’re all mine.”

He pulled her hair again. “I’m what?”

“Mine.” She panted the word as she squirmed, needing him deeper as much as she needed to be claimed. He was hot and hard, but he was still holding back.

He drove forward, pushing into her with a grunt as his teeth closed on her neck. The force pushed her back to her elbows, body bent low to the ground with his chest burning possession against her back as he covered her.

Over her and surrounding her. Inside her. Everything about his touch was proprietary and possessive, and she found she didn’t need the words when his body spoke a language her coyote understood.

Except he wasn’t fucking her. Just pinning her to the earth, every nerve aflame, her entire being focused on how good it would be when he moved…

She whimpered and arched her back. “
Julio.
For the love of—are you waiting for me to spontaneously combust?”

He flexed his hips against hers. “Shh. Can you feel it?”

“What, your dick?” She rasped out a laugh and clenched around him. Maybe words would get him moving. “Your perfect fucking cock, which feels really good and will feel better when you’re riding the hell out of me?”

“Dirty bitch.” His own laugh tickled her ears as he slipped one hand down and stroked her clit. “Not my cock.
Us.
When we’re close like this.”

Her hips jerked, a helpless reaction beyond her control, and her knees slipped on the ground as she spread them wider, anything to grind down against his fingers. Release was seconds from claiming her, and nothing would stop it.

But his question hung between them, and she answered with the last bit of air in her lungs, the words escaping as she tipped backwards off the cliff toward glorious free fall. “Always feel it, ’cause I’m yours.”

He answered with a pleased growl, then pulled back and began to thrust, starting with one firm snap that brought bliss in a drowning wave. Only the first, because he kept going, hard and fast, power and lust tangled up together, and the combination undid her.

It wasn’t choreographed and elegant. It was dirty and crude, her eyes squeezed shut against pounding pleasure and her ears filled with her hoarse cries and his grunts and the slick, wet sound of him sliding home, and the damn orgasm had bled into a second without respite because he kept rubbing his fingers over her clit like he was going for a world record.

His teeth grazed her earlobe. “One more, baby. Just one—”

A lie, because nothing was
just
about another orgasm, not with her whole body shaking. Not when she was coming so hard you couldn’t count, couldn’t distinguish. She gasped for breath in the valleys and moaned through the peaks, moaned and begged until Julio dropped his forehead to the back of her shoulder and came with a rough groan.

She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, Julio’s body covering hers, her face hidden against her folded arms. The wind played with the leaves on the trees, a quiet rustling underscoring the pounding of his heart against her back.

As her own pulse slowed, a giggle bubbled up. “Dirty bitch, huh? Your sister would wash your mouth out with soap.”

He nipped at her skin. “Are you really talking about my sister right now?”

“That’s what you get when you fuck a girl cross-eyed.” Sera stretched her arms above her head and laughed at the streaks of dirt. “I
am
dirty. Gonna-need-a-bath dirty.”

“That should get us some fun looks when we meet back up at Syd’s place tonight.”

“Like I’ll be the only one. Shifting gets everyone riled up.”

“Mmm.” Julio pulled away, wrapped his arms around her and rolled to the ground with her on top of him.

It took some maneuvering to turn around without kneeing him in an uncomfortable spot, but in a few moments she draped herself across his chest, her cheek resting over his heart.

With her body exhausted and her head still swimming, talking was easy. “I know you don’t want to own me. And I know you need to.”

“I—” He bit off the words and sighed. “I do. I can’t help that part.”

She traced her fingernail over his skin in a looping circle. “The part that scares me is that I need it too. I’ll never be happy if I don’t have it, but I can’t fake it if I don’t feel it. I tried.”

His voice dropped. “The real question is whether it makes you feel trapped.”

A serious question that deserved a serious answer. “Right now? Naked in the woods? No. The shapeshifter part of me needs to belong to someone strong.”

“What about all the other times? Every day?”

Panic tried to rise. Her breathing sped, and she concentrated on slow, even exhalations. “It’s not as easy as that. Maybe it’s irrational. Some things I’d like. Some would make me feel smothered.”

His hand smoothed circles over the small of her back. “I guess it’d be easy if you could tell someone, make a list of what was okay and what wasn’t.”

“It’s not fair to be scared of you.” She closed her eyes and whispered her words against warm skin. “You’ve never tried to trap me. You’ve never done anything but try to make me feel strong.”

“Fair’s right up there with easy, sweetheart. Last I heard, life wasn’t either.”

No, it hadn’t been. Not for either of them. She kissed his chest and changed the subject. Not to an easier one, but to something equally important. “Your family’s not going to be excited about you wanting to keep a coyote.”

Julio lifted her gaze to his with one finger under her chin. “The only family I have left that matters won’t give a damn. You know that.”

“Carmen and Miguel?”

“And Veronica, and my Aunt Teresa.” His jaw tightened. “My uncle and father sure the hell don’t count.”

She planted a soothing kiss on his palm. “I wasn’t there at the challenge, you know. Alec fought your uncle, didn’t he?”

“He wouldn’t let me do it,” Julio confirmed. “For Carmen’s sake—just in case the worst happened.”

In case their uncle put power over family and tore his nephew apart on the challenge field, even if it meant the end of his brother’s wolf-born bloodline.

Babies. It always came back to—

Oh, damn.

Reaching between them was stupid, but she did it anyway. Brushed her fingers across that tired but still perfect dick and groaned, as if discovering soft skin instead of latex was a surprise.

She rolled off his chest and hit the ground next to him, familiar panic so much stronger this time. Give her another second and she’d be hyperventilating, three generations’ worth of senseless fear rising up to choke the life out of her. “No condom.
Fuck.
”

He sat up and held out his hand. “You’re on the pill, right? I saw them in your toiletry bag at the hotel.”

“That’s not foolproof, even if you take them every day at the same time.” Every slip-up was the same. Frantic math. Counting the days while the failure rate throbbed through her head with the rhythm of her pounding heart, and the grand finale—the memory of her mother’s crazed eyes as she shoved her under the bathroom sink.
Hide, hide, hide.

She grasped at Julio’s hand and waited for the irrational fear. Waited for the worry in her gut to break open into terror.

It didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I realize this is scary for you. I should have been more careful.”

She wet her lips, mostly to give her time to be sure her voice wouldn’t shake. “It’s on me too. I wasn’t thinking. But hell, it’s stupid. I don’t even know what would happen if we had babies. They could be human. They could be
anything
.”

Julio studied her for a moment, then touched her hand. “Hey. I would be there if you got pregnant. I mean,
how
depends on a lot of things, but if we had a kid… I wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”

Her eyes burned, and she had to squeeze them shut and look away. “I know. If I didn’t, I’d be having a panic attack.” Knowing was a relief. Wanting…oh, Christ. That was an urge she thought she’d stomped out. She had plans and college classes and glorious dreams of independence, and babies seemed mutually exclusive to all three.

He pulled her closer. “Just…remember that, okay?”

“I will.” She relaxed back against him, soaking in the heat of his body. “You know it’s not about you, right? You’re not like your father.”

He tensed. “No, I’m not.”

Stroking her fingers along his arm, she concentrated on finding her own quiet calm. The soft, comfortable place where her power could whisper over him, accepting and loving. “We don’t have to talk about him, if you don’t want. Miguel doesn’t really like to.”

It took a moment for him to speak. “I don’t hate him for the way he kept pulling at me all those years, but I
do
hate him for what he did to my mother. And to Carmen and Miguel, even before he risked their lives with those stupid fucking spells.”

The spells meant to wake the inner wolf had failed spectacularly with Carmen. But their father had tried to force the magic on her. With Miguel they’d coaxed, and Julio’s younger brother had made the decision.

But not blindly. After the time she’d spent with Miguel and Kat, Sera knew that. “He could never lie to Miguel, because Miguel could always hear his real thoughts. I don’t know if that made it harder or easier. Maybe harder.”

Julio met her gaze. “Sometimes I think Miguel only agreed because he figured he’d need to be stronger to survive everything that was going to go down.”

“Like his big brother?” Sera touched Julio’s cheek, tracing a line down to his lips. “You’re not strong because you’re a wolf. I think he knows that.”

“No.” His gaze turned bleak. “But physically, I can survive things that would kill a human in a heartbeat.”

Torture. She ghosted her thumb over his lower lip again, then pressed her forehead to his. “Tell me?”

Julio barely moved, except for the fine tremor that shook him. “Knives. Heated wire. Pretty much the only part of the theatrical torture guidebook they didn’t break out was the car battery.”

The ground was cooling beneath them, stealing warmth, but this moment was so fragile. They were lost together in a world where no one else existed, and she took her time stroking her fingers over his cheek. “Kat told me you stayed strong for her.”

“Well, it’s a lie.” He snorted. “The only reason I didn’t crack and blubber all over everyone is because I didn’t want to give the bastards the satisfaction.”

“Uh-huh.” Another circle, stroking from his cheek to his neck and back. “You still kept her in one piece. They picked the perfect way to crush her, and you fucked it all up. If you’d let her see what you were going through, it would have broken her before Andrew and the others found you.”

He relaxed into her touch. “I grew up with an empath. I know how it goes.”

“You did what you could to protect her. And that’s the unfair part. That’s the balance.” She cupped his cheek and nuzzled his nose. “You alphas get all the power, and all the responsibility. You have to protect everyone else and you never get to be the one hurting.”

“There’s never any time for it.”

“There’s right now.”

He chuckled. “Naked, in the woods, with spiders biting your ass?”

“You’re the only thing that’s bitten my ass this week.” Not that the thought didn’t make her squirm her way back on top of him—just in case. “I know what the first thing on my not-smothered list is.”

He slipped both arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “What’s that?”

She caught his gaze and held it. “Now might not be the time, but if you don’t think you can share things with me, then I’m not a partner. When you keep all the responsibility, you keep all the power too.”

Julio arched one eyebrow. “You think I’m playing Mr. Tough Guy? That I’m not vulnerable?”

“I don’t know.” She smoothed the furrow from between his brows and tried to pick her words carefully. “I know you like me. But you keep coming into my life at the low points. When I’m beat up or bruised or broken inside, and you pick me back up, and sometimes…” She swallowed hard and made herself ask. “Do I give you anything back?”

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “Being with you… It’s loud and quiet all at the same time. Does that make sense?”

“As much sense as being sheltered and free.” A sharp breeze cut across through the trees, and she shivered. “Okay, I want a bath. Or a hot shower. If you’re nice, I’ll share with you.”

He got to his feet with her in his arms. “If? How heartless.”

She laughed and closed her teeth on his jaw. “Poor Julio. Maybe I’m trying to go easy on you. I do have the sex drive of a twenty-two-year-old, you know, and you’re an old man.”

“I’ll show you old.” He swatted her hip, and she laughed again and kicked her legs, trying to squirm out of his grip.

Laughter. She’d laughed more in the past week with Julio than she had in recent memory. Josh hadn’t laughed unless he’d thought she wanted him to. Like everything else about their relationship, his laughter had been a bribe, a calculated action meant to keep her too content to go running home.

Everything about Julio was honesty. Painful, sometimes. He wouldn’t fib or sand the sharp edges off the truth, even when they bruised her. But he let her laugh. He let her feel. He made her hope.

He was everything she’d known he would be the first time he’d touched her. He was the kind of strong a girl could drown in, but he wouldn’t let her. If she tried, he’d drag her up and tell her to start swimming again.