“Fuck, kvietka. Promise me,” he said as he gripped her hips and began to meet her strokes with his own.
Glory ground her clit against him, fell forward and screamed as she came. “I promise!”
Emin tumbled over the edge after her, grinding into her, holding her close and growling into her ear. “I promise you, kvietka. Only you. Only us.”
She sprawled across him, breathing hard and playing absentmindedly with the hairs on his chest. “How did my little cat do that time?”
He laughed, a full laugh that she could feel reverberate all the way through the cavern of his chest.
“Your little cat, ah, I don’t know the words.” He thought for a second. “It makes me not. It, it unmakes me.”
Glory, moved and delighted with his answer, reached out to press a small kiss to his lips. “If I’m your little tiger with a little cat, then you’re my bear with the secret eyes.”
“Hmm?”
“Your eyes,” she murmured, snuggling into his arms. “They’re lighter than they look at first. It’s like a secret.”
Those eyes stayed open through most of the night, stroking her hair and watching the stars out his window. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had peace.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Anton sipped his beer and looked out at the people milling around. He liked beer, sure. But it still mystified him that people would choose to drink it in loud public places, when you could drink one at home in the quiet. But he was trying to be more social. Glory was the one who had told him that he should be.
His brothers, Glory, AJ, and Dora were all going to the bar tonight. And Glory had said that he had to come, too.
She was the first person to ever tell him that he was hurting his family with the way that he was.
Instead of scowling, he kept his face neutral. Because she’d also told him he needed to look less scary now and again.
He hadn’t meant to hurt anybody. Especially his family. But sometimes the things that had happened to him, the things that Navuka had done to him, well, sometimes they snuck up on him. The memories were like unexpectedly getting pins shoved under your fingernails. It was enough to make anybody testy. He found himself absently toying with the shock of white hair behind his ear.
He watched as they all leaned forward, clinking glasses and grinning. Dora’s finished article on Navuka had run last week. It was getting a lot of press. A lot of attention. She hadn’t mentioned animal shifters, of course. But she had gone into great detail about the animal abuse and testing that Navuka was currently performing. The shipments of chemicals, the smuggling, the experiments. Anyone who already knew that animal shifters existed would be able to read between the lines of that article easily.
And since then, things had been quiet in the forest. Navuka, who had come to the Spokane area a few years ago, probably to find Anton, had all but disappeared. He had Dora to thank for that. And he had Glory to thank for getting him to sit at this table and celebrate the victory with his family.
He looked across the table at Glory sitting next to Emin. He liked her, and he liked her with his brother. If you asked Anton, Emin had gotten a little too cocky for his own good these past few years. It was nice to see him knocked down a peg or two. Anton watched in amusement as his brother nudged a glass of water toward Glory, brushed her hair back, whispered something in her ear that made her laugh.
Wow. He’d never seen Emin like that before. He was acting a hell of a lot like Danil. Who currently sat with Dora draped across his lap, having a heated argument, punctuated only by the demanding kisses he gave her now and then.
Who would have thought? Two brothers down in half a year. He knew, with a kind of smug satisfaction, that that was never going to be him. If there was one thing he’d learned in the last decade, it was how to keep a lid on his feelings for a woman. He was never going to be springing to the side of any woman.
“So your father is home for good?” Maxim asked AJ where the two of them sat to Anton’s side.
Anton’s back went ramrod straight as he immediately leaned forward, trying to catch AJ’s answer. Her father was back in town? She hadn’t mentioned anything to him about that.
AJ cleared her throat, acutely aware that Anton had just started paying attention to them again. He’d been a bit removed all night but now his eyes were burning into her. “I guess so,” she answered Maxim. “At first, a few weeks ago, he’d said that it was just for a short vacation, but he hasn’t gone back out since then. I think he wants to spend more time in Spokane.”
“He wants more time with you,” Maxim said.
AJ couldn’t help but scoff. “Yeah, sure.”