For a moment, Derren just sat there, unmoving. Then came the sudden urge to bolt, to get outside and inhale the fresh air. Without a word to anyone, Derren barged out of his office and out of the main lodge. He didn’t give a thought to which direction he was heading, he just walked. He waited for some kind of emotion to hit him.
Something.
Anything.
But there was nothing.
He wasn’t sure how long he wandered aimlessly, but he realized that at some point he’d subconsciously made his way to the lodge he shared with Ally. He found her drinking coffee at the dining table wrapped in a terry robe, her hair damp. She looked up at him with a smile. That smile quickly faded.
“Derren.” Rising, Ally slowly moved to him, alarmed by the numbness coming from him, causing one continuous drone to ring in her ear. Something was very wrong. “Derren, what is it?” He didn’t respond. He just stood there, his expression blank and his eyes cold. She fisted her hands in his T-shirt. “Has there been another attack?”
“No.” His tone was flat, emotionless. “I had a call I wasn’t expecting.”
“Who called?”
“My sister.”
Okay, well, that had been the last thing she’d been expecting to hear—particularly since she hadn’t even known he had a sister. Since that day at the hot springs, he’d shared more and more with Ally. But the subject of his old pack had always remained untouched, and she’d respected his wish to keep it private.
“My parents are dead.”
Ally rocked back on her heels. “Oh God.” She didn’t know what to say to him. “I’m sorry” didn’t seem like enough. Instead of speaking, she slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him. His skin was cold beneath his T-shirt. “I should be good at comforting people who are grieving, considering I lost my family.” But she’d been too young to grieve in the same way adults might.
Loosely curling his arms around her, Derren rubbed his cheek against hers. “I’m not going through the same grief that you went through, baby. I haven’t spoken to my parents since before I was sentenced to juvie. They believed I was guilty.” And they’d died still believing it.
“That’s why your sister didn’t come and tell you to your face,” she realized. Even so, telling someone that their parents were dead over the phone was a shitty thing to do unless it simply couldn’t be helped.
“I’m surprised she even bothered to tell me.” His sister had disowned him as openly and easily as his parents had. “It’s even more surprising that she told me about the funeral.”
“When is it?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Ally met his empty gaze. “Do you want to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t think you have to go, that you owe it to them,” insisted Ally. “I don’t know what happened in your old pack, but if your parents turned their backs on you, then you owe them nothing. Only go if you want to. And if you do, I’ll be with you.”
Derren cocked his head. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t want you to be alone.”
Her words warmed him. This thing between them might have started out casual and easy, but it was becoming increasingly far from it. “A funeral isn’t a good place for you, baby. All that grief . . . it’ll hurt you.”
Like she cared about that. “I’m not letting you go alone.” Her wolf hated seeing him this way, wanted to rub up against him to offer comfort. Ally felt so freaking helpless. Physical pain she could take away with her gift. Emotional pain wasn’t something she could heal. “How can I help? What can I do?” In a mere moment, his dark gaze went from cold to feverish with need.
Derren answered her question with a hard kiss, ravaging her mouth with his lips, tongue, and teeth. He wanted to lose himself in her, feel something. When he was with her, all he did was feel. Everything about Ally incited his senses. He drove his tongue deep into her mouth, just as he wanted to drive his cock deep into her pussy.
Drawing back, Derren skimmed the pad of his thumb along her bottom lip. “One day, I’m going to have this pretty little mouth on my cock.” Her eyes narrowed in defiance, so he bit her lip. “Because it’s mine.” With one tug, the belt of her robe was undone. He pushed it off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, revealing every perfect inch of her. “I want to fuck you hard and deep. But not yet.”
His hunger called to hers, brought her body to life; that was how it always was between them. Ally moaned when a hand knotted in her hair and arched her back slightly. He swooped down to suck a nipple into his mouth. His hot breath seemed to burn her flesh, sending sparks of fire through her body. A strong, calloused, confident hand cupped her neglected breast. He knew exactly what she liked and exactly how she liked it, and he always gave it to her.
She loved the way he touched and licked her as if he’d never get enough of her; he was aggressive and desperate yet careful not to use his strength against her. The hand in her hair moved down to clutch her ass and yank her against his cock. Ally shivered as he ground against her clit through the denim of his jeans, needing more. The abundance of raw sexual energy that always hummed beneath his skin beat at Ally’s control. She clawed at his T-shirt, tearing it from his body, smoothing her hands over sleek, hard muscle.
“I need your taste in my mouth.” The scent of her pussy was driving Derren insane. “Don’t move.” He kicked her legs apart and dropped to his knees. He gently parted her slick folds with his thumbs and slid his tongue between them, groaning at her taste. As his tongue lapped and teased, she whimpered and moaned; her claws dug into his shoulders hard enough to draw blood. “That’s it, Ally, scratch me.” Mark me. He flicked her clit with the tip of his tongue before suckling on it just hard enough to push her over the edge.
Panting, Ally watched as he shot to his feet; his face was a mask of raw hunger, and there was a merciless glint to his dark eyes. For an instant, those eyes flashed wolf, making her own wolf try to lunge to the fore.
“I want you bent over that table with my dick in you.” Spinning her, Derren placed a hand on her lower back and shoved her forward. She slapped her hands on the table to brace herself, but she growled over her shoulder—a warning that he’d gone too far. She was a dominant female wolf, so of course she didn’t like being manhandled. When Ally would have reared up, he curved his body over hers, caging her.
Knowing it was a weak spot for her, he hummed against the hollow below her ear. “I’m going to fuck you until you scream for me, Ally. I’m going to shove my cock so deep in your pussy, you’ll feel me for days.”
She struggled against the hands that shackled her wrists. “Get off me.”
“No. You’re strong, baby, I get that. I’m not dismissing it. But both of us can’t be dominant in bed.” He didn’t mind that she battled his dominance. But the more their relationship had crossed the realm of “casual,” the harder Ally had fought his dominance—as if she was also fighting what their relationship could become. Derren wouldn’t allow that.
He needed her to acknowledge what pulsed between them, needed some level of submission. “You have to trust me enough to let me lead.” There couldn’t be a power exchange without that trust. He licked over a brand he’d left on her shoulder. “I’ll take care of you, make you come so damn hard. But you have to let me lead.”
Guys had tried to dominate Ally before, tried to show her who was in charge. But that wasn’t what Derren was doing, wasn’t what he ever did. Oh, he dominated her as best he could, sure. But he never did it in a way that disrespected her. He battled her dominance, acknowledged it was there. But he’d never bent her over a freaking table before.
The submissive position prickled at her dominant instincts, making her wolf bristle. Ceding all control—it required strength and trust. She had the strength, but her trust? She didn’t think she could give him that. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel she could trust Derren. It was that she didn’t know if she could trust herself to make good judgments.
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Sensing her struggle, Derren pressed a kiss to her throat. “You can trust me.” He rocked his hips forward, making her clit grind against the table. Her gasp made him smile inwardly. “Let me ask you something. Do you think I’d ever harm you?”
“No.”
“Good girl.” Another kiss to her neck. “You know I’ll always keep you safe. Don’t you?”
Ally did believe that. He was honest, reliable, and he’d protected her from day one—even when he’d thought she was someone he could never trust. “Yes.”
With that one word, a slight fissure in Derren’s defenses repaired itself. “I’ll never hurt you. And I’ll never let anyone else hurt you. You can trust me.” He traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. “Trust me enough to let me lead, Ally.”
It was so easy to say, yet not so easy to do. If he’d demanded her complete trust, she would have fought him. But he was simply asking her to trust him enough to submit in bed. She could give him that much. So she let her body go lax against the cool surface of the table. A growl of approval rumbled out of Derren. The stubble on his jaw grazed her cheek as he again spoke into her ear.
“That’s my girl.” His voice was thick, possessive. Ever so slowly, Derren eased his weight off her upper body, loving the sight of her there like that, submitting to him—just how he wanted her. He skimmed a finger between her folds, finding her slick and ready. She squirmed against his finger. “Tell me what you want, baby.”
“You know.” She gasped as two fingers slipped into her pussy. He slowly pumped them in and out of her. It was bliss, but it was also torture because it wasn’t enough.
“So fucking hot and tight.” He withdrew his fingers. “I think you’re ready for me.”
The sound of a zipper slowly opening sent a tremor down the length of Ally’s spine. The anticipation that had built inside her was now agonizing. She ached for him, for the carnal release her body knew he could give her. When the head of his cock bumped her folds, she arched back, trying to take his cock inside her. A strong hand on her lower back flattened her against the table once more. “Derren . . .”
Jaw clenched, he smoothly thrust himself balls deep inside her. Her pussy quivered and tightened around his cock, wrenching a guttural groan from him. “I love sliding my cock in you.”
The tips of his claws dug into Ally’s hip as he fucked in and out of her with rough, branding, powerful strokes. All the while, one hand remained splayed on her back, pinning her in place. She had to fight her instinct to buck against his hand, and he rewarded her by upping his pace. Her body wound tighter and tighter, and her claws sliced out, leaving deep grooves in the table.
He roughly tangled his fingers in her hair and yanked her head up. “Fucking come, Ally. Do it.” Then he lunged down and sank his teeth into the crook of her neck. She fragmented, and her pussy contracted around him as she screamed his name. Derren reared back and jammed his cock deep as he exploded. “Fuck.”
It was as if he’d poured every ounce of his strength inside her along with every bit of his come, because he had to brace his elbows on the table so he didn’t collapse on top of her. When he could finally move, he placed a kiss between her shoulder blades and slipped out of her.
Ally’s postclimax cloud began to disperse as she felt strong arms lift her and cradle her against a solid chest. Derren took her straight upstairs and laid her on the bed, and she let her eyes slide shut. He disappeared into the bathroom, only to come back moments later with a wet cloth to gently clean her. When he finally lay beside her, he pulled her flush against him.
“Have I fucked you to sleep?”
“No,” she mumbled, forcing her eyes open to find a glint of amusement in his own. “But it was close.”
Derren laved a brand on her neck before inhaling deeply. “You smell so good.” He sucked at the hollow beneath her ear, and her blissful sigh was his reward. “My wolf loves your scent.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
His wolf’s ears pricked up at that. “For you or your wolf?”
“Both.”
That answer satisfied both sides of his nature. “Good.”
As hints of his frustration and indecision flashed at Ally, her skin began to itch. “The shock’s beginning to wear off, huh.”
Derren sighed. “They were good to me when I was a kid. I never would have seen their betrayal coming.”
She wanted to ask what had happened, but she didn’t want to poke at a wound that had barely scabbed over. So instead, she gave a little of her own past, leaving the decision of whether to share his in return up to him. “I don’t remember a lot about my parents. My mom . . . she was always smiling, always on the move. My dad was a very active person, a very dominant wolf. I remember the Alpha wanted him to be Beta, but he refused because my mom didn’t want to be Beta female or to share so much of him with a job.”
Derren knew it wasn’t uncommon for females to resent their mate being Beta, since the position took up a great deal of their time and energy. “My parents were both submissive.”
Ally gaped. “Really?”
He nodded, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. “Extremely submissive. Having a son as dominant as me was a shock. My mom spent a lot of time in her greenhouse—she loved growing things. My dad was a total nerd with a Star Wars fetish.”
“Seriously?”
Nodding, Derren began threading his fingers through her hair. “As you can imagine, I didn’t have much in common with either of my parents. But they were good people.”
Not good enough. “What about your sister?”
“She’s submissive, though not as submissive as they were. Roxanne is what you might call a ‘follower’—she goes with the crowd, doesn’t always think for herself.” It wasn’t because she was submissive. Whether dominant or submissive, a shifter could be strong-willed, feisty, and decisive.
In a nutshell, there were only two differences between dominant and submissive wolves: dominants were always physically stronger, and dominants could release heavy vibes that would force the submission of any wolf less powerful than them, which therefore made all submissive wolves vulnerable to dominants.
“That’s why I’m shocked she contacted me,” he continued. “The rest of the pack wouldn’t want me at the funeral. I would have thought she’d do what they expect and not tell me.”
“It was way over a decade ago that you lost your family. A lot can change in that time. Maybe she’s not so easily led anymore. Maybe she even doubts your guilt.”
Derren snorted inwardly. “None of them doubted my guilt, Ally.” His tone turned grave. “Trust me on that.”
Ally doodled circles on his shoulder with the tip of her finger. “I take it the Seer was a damn good liar then. Maybe he was related to Rachelle.”
“What makes you so positive I’m not guilty? You don’t even know what I was accused of, yet you believe I was innocent of it.”
“Then tell me about it.” Hastily, she added, “Only if you want to. No pressure. I won’t be offended if you’d rather not talk about it.”
He’d definitely prefer not to talk about it, but he wanted to see Ally’s reaction, wanted to know if she’d doubt him. “I was accused of raping a human girl.”
Totally stunned, Ally just gawked.
“One of my friends from the pack, Wayne, was dating her friend, and that was how I met Julia. I only saw her a couple of times. Nothing at all happened between us. She had a human boyfriend—who hadn’t liked me one bit, paranoid that I wanted his girl. A couple of weeks after I last saw Julia, she was raped.”
“She told the police it was you?”
“She told the police she was followed home by a wolf. That as she was walking down an alley, someone then jumped her from behind, forced her onto her hands and knees, and raped her. It was her boyfriend who first mentioned me; he told the police I was jealous of him, that I wanted her. Unfortunately, those cops had a hate-on for shifters, so they immediately considered me the prime su
spect, even though there wasn’t an ounce of evidence. Apparently Julia had washed it all away.”
“And your pack’s Seer told them you were guilty?” Ally asked. At his nod, she added, “Why?”
“His son, Wayne, was the one who raped her. Wayne broke down and confessed to me and his father. The next day, cops turned up at our territory. The Seer, Neil, had called them; told them he’d had a vision that it was me who’d raped her. He said that I’d forced him to keep it quiet by threatening to accuse his son, but that Neil didn’t feel he could hold his silence any longer.” Derren smiled bitterly. “He was a convincing liar, I’ll give him that.”
“And, what, the police were happy to accept that?”
“They hated shifters, and they wanted justice for Julia. They wanted someone to blame more than they wanted the truth.”
That made Ally think of how Greg and Clint had interrogated her; having already made up their minds on the matter of her guilt, they’d simply wanted a confession—not the truth.
“I was banished from the pack, so I didn’t have shifter legal representation. I had a human attorney who also happened to hate shifters. Neil stood up in court and testified against me. When your own pack stands against you, that’s enough to send you to prison.”
Because packs stuck together, protected each other from outsiders. Turning their back on Derren was as good as announcing he was guilty. “Did you tell your pack you were innocent?”
“Of course. But Neil had already told everyone that the only reason he’d kept his silence was that I’d threatened to accuse his son of the crime if he told anyone. So when I spoke up against Wayne, no one was surprised. If anything, it gave further weight to Neil’s account.”
Anger and sadness rose up in Ally. “No one from your pack doubted the Seer?”
“If they did, they kept that to themselves.”