“Cal,” she called, her voice sounding like she sensed the turn of his thoughts.
“Yes, baby doll?”
Her hand flattened against his chest as if his skin could absorb it.
Or she could absorb something integral from his skin. Something she needed. Something she couldn’t exist without.
Then she whispered, “You know I love you, right?”
He closed his eyes before his arm about her tightened and his other hand came across his chest to slide into the soft, golden hair at the side of her head.
How could he ever not have fancied blondes?
Because, he knew, they were never her.
“I know, honey.”
“You’ll never forget?” she was still whispering.
His neck arched slightly but he forced his body to relax.
“I’ll never forget.”
She cuddled close and her hand slid across his chest to wrap around him tight. “I want you to promise to be happy but I don’t want you ever to forget.”
“I won’t forget.”
“Promise to be happy?”
Impossible.
“I promise.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I love you, baby doll.”
“I know,” she said on a fluttering sigh and his chest got so tight, Callum found it hard to breathe.
* * * * *
They were running, roaming, as wolves, he and his mate.
Not Sonia.
A wolf.
She was fast and kept up with him, close to his right flank, where she always ran.
Callum took them deeper into the trees. They’d been running for hours. He could hear her pants. He knew he was pushing her. He knew what she wanted.
He kept pushing her, knowing the anticipation would be worth it.
How could he ever have imagined he’d feel content with a human queen?
Then again, he had no idea he was missing this.
Finally, he turned, headed for home and he sensed her instant excitement.
He felt it too.
* * * * *
She was beneath him, on her belly, her long, thick, mahogany hair spread across her back, obscuring her face, tangled with pine needles. Her sweet, musky wolf scent assaulted him, coming from her hair, her skin, between her legs.
But there was something familiar about it. Something beautiful. Something nostalgic. Something he fucking adored.
He was up on his hands, giving his hips leverage to thrust into her wetness with savage brutality.
Her moans weren’t filled with pain but each one a temptation to take her harder.
So he did.
“Spread your legs wider,” he ordered.
She did as she was told.
“Tilt your ass, take all of me,” he commanded.
Again, she did as she was told and he drove inside her then ground his hips between her spread-eagled legs and her moan was so deep, he could feel it vibrating against the tip of his cock.
That felt so fucking good, Callum ground into her deeper and he knew he couldn’t take much more.
“Let go,” he demanded but she defied him, clenching her sex around his shaft in an effort to hold off her climax. He shifted his weight to one arm and twisted her dark hair around his fist, yanking it back, arching her neck and driving her further down on his cock. “Let go, wolf.”
He got off on calling her “wolf” as Sonia had done to him. He fucking loved it.
Her legs spread even wider. Her ass tilted further. He dropped his head and saw its perfection. Not an ass marred with pinpricks, a constant, hideous reminder of his old mate’s vulnerability and he felt a feeling of triumph so complete, the sight set him thrusting into her again.
Which was what she wanted.
“Harder, Cal,” she breathed her demand, her voice barely a whisper, even he could hardly make out the words. “Fuck me harder.”
He was losing control, his orgasm was coming and he knew it would be staggering.
With her, it always was.
The best he’d ever had.
“Goddamn it, let go!” he roared the instant her sex convulsed around his cock.
She lifted up on her own arms, propelling herself onto his shaft so intensely he feared he’d split her in two.
But she threw back her dark head, her hair flying over his hand still fisted in it, over his forearm, down her back and she howled her release.
He pulled out and surged back in, burying himself to the root one last time and then howled his own.
* * * * *
Callum woke with a start, still wolf, lying on his side in the snow under a pine tree.
The dream was still vivid. His skin under his fur heated not from his coat but from fucking the faceless, dark-headed, she-wolf.
Fucking hell, he thought, coming to his paws, his mind troubled.
The parts of his dream were not syncing. So contradictory to each other, to his feelings for Sonia now, the deeper ones he had in his dream, the heartbreakingly deeper ones he felt from her. His instinct as wolf to be faithful to his mate abrading against the episode with the she-wolf, an episode so lucid, so fucking real it was like it happened.