Jared (River Pack Wolves 3)(36)

The tears were flowing down her face now. “Jared.” She didn’t know what to do, how to say the feelings that were bursting inside her, so she pulled him closer and kissed him, long and hard and hungry. “I’m not alone,” she said when she paused for breath. “I have you.”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “Protecting you is the best thing I’ve done in a long time.”

She searched his eyes. “I want more than just your protection.”

He smiled. “The lovemaking comes included. Package deal.”

She smirked and blinked away her tears. Then her gaze fell on their hands still clasped over his heart. “I want even more than that.” She pulled her gaze up to his eyes.

All humor had fled his face.

She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “I want you for my mate.”

“Oh, Grace.” Her words seemed to pain him.

“I know it’s fast, and I don’t even really understand, and this is all so crazy, but—”

He cut her off by rolling her on her back again and pinning her with his hot, sexy, naked body. “Shhhh…” Then he smothered her words with a kiss. “Don’t say it. Don’t say those words… not until I can do something about them.” Then he erased all doubt by nipping a line of small tastes down on her neck—just with human teeth, but it ran shivers of pleasure up and down her body. Her wolf howled in triumph. Grace was light-headed with panting by the time he raised his head from her flesh again.

“I want you so badly, Grace.” His breath was hot on her face. Before she could say Yes! he pulled back and said, “But we really can’t do this now.”

She willed her heart to stop pounding so hard. “No, you’re right. We need to… think. And not just have sex like crazed teenagers.”

He just chuckled and rolled away from her, rubbing his face hard and blowing out a deep breath. “Rain check for lovemaking at a later time.”

“Hell yes.”

He grinned at her, then gave her a serious look. “What’s your plan with this, Grace?”

She forced herself to sit up in the bed. That was the only way she wouldn’t simply throw herself at him again. “Shower. Fresh clothes.” She turned to face him. “Then a strategy to destroy my father’s anti-shifter legislation.”

His face went solemn, and he just nodded.

Grace took a deep breath and prepared to start the rest of her life.

As a shifter.





Night had fallen on his family’s safehouse.

Jared had been gone less than a day, but it had been a life-changing twenty-four hours. He pulled his car into the large, graveled parking lot—it was filled to capacity with all the shifters who were staying with them now. His family’s estate was large, but it was stuffed to the rafters with all the shifters who had been rescued from Agent Smith’s medical prison—and the experiments fully authorized by Senator Krepky. At least, that was their operational theory, even though they didn’t have definitive proof of the connection. And barring some smoking-gun evidence, Grace would be the key to bringing the Senator down—she’d embraced that fact, he was certain, but she needed time to act on it. Which meant waiting until the morning.

He hated leaving her in that house with her father—his stomach had been chewing itself into pieces ever since he left—but even as her personal bodyguard, he had no plausible reason to stay there overnight. Garrison Allied’s normal security was supposedly sufficient to keep the Senator and his daughter safe while ensconced in their estate. It was probably just as well—any more time in her presence, especially in her bedroom, and Jared would’ve been making love to her again and again. They had managed to get away with it so far, and soon enough she would be telling her father she was a shifter—after that, Jared would be free to spend as much time with her as he and his wolf could handle. At least, that was his plan… assuming she would still want him.

But just being separated for the night was killing him.

The plan was for her to come out to her father tomorrow morning and threaten to take it public if he didn’t back down on his legislation. Apparently, she and her father had some kind of strategy meeting in the mornings before they headed off for the day’s schedule of campaign activities. Jared would be back at the estate bright and early in the morning, standing by her side as she told her father she was a wolf. Grace claimed this was the best approach, the best way to bring down her father’s plans, and as nervous as it made him, he trusted her. In the meantime, he needed to report back to his brothers and make sure they were on board with the plan and not moving on some separate front without him.