Legacy Page 9

  Escher clicked off the TV and drew me to sit on his lap. “This is plenty, mate.”

  I reached for a sandwich, but he batted my hands away.

  “Let me.”

  I was starting to think I could give up my silverware skills. Every one of these guys wanted to feed me. Either by bringing me food or cooking it if they had the ability, or flat out putting it in my mouth. Which, I learned a moment later, was what my sweet, angry Escher had in mind.

  He held the sandwich to my lips and urged me to take a bite.

  “Escher, I can do it myself. I have since I was very tiny, you know.” I’d lost the use of my legs but not my hands.

  “Would you deny me the pleasure?” He held a triangle of sandwich to my lips, and, with a small head shake, I bit into it.

  “That’s so good,” I muttered, chewing. “Someone makes a great sandwich.”

  “Not me. I always rush them.” He took a bite from the same piece. “This is wonderful. The right ratio of mustard to mayo to meat to cheese…and, are there little bits of pickle in here?”

  “Mmhmm. I like that touch of sharpness, so I always do that, if I have any pickles, of course. Do you mind?”

  “Mind?” He fed me another bite then took a larger one himself. “I never want a sandwich without them ever in my life.”

  “I am starting to get what you like about this, I think.” I took another bite of the second half. When I’d swallowed it down, I mused, “I really enjoyed preparing these things. It made me so happy to think of you eating what I made. Is that it?”

  “Part of it.” Nuzzling at the base of my throat, he let his teeth scrape the skin there, and I shivered. “The part for public consumption.”

  “Are you saying there’s more? Like, it’s a turn on?” Everything about being alone with him here was for me. Not that I’d say so.

  “And that’s another part of it.” We ate in silence for a few moments before he went on. “I never stopped to consider the anatomy of it or what it means. My parents, for all their pathetic life, had one another. Without it, they’d have done what most families did when they were thrown out of the main life of the pack.”

  “You mean the males, right?”

  “Yes. And after a relatively short time, they usually caved and begged to rejoin the pack. And if they seemed sincere, sometimes, the elders let them, but usually the back cabins were a one way trip. Go there and never come back.”

  “That’s so sad.” My heart ached for those families, but especially his. I laid my head on his chest, feeling his heart thudding reassuringly. “So, they stayed in those awful cabins for years on end.”

  “No.” His voice held such bitterness, I didn’t know what to think. “Usually, they died after a couple of years. Either by their own hand, by the hand of another unhappy denizen, or they just faded away.”

  I looked up at his face, at his eyes, and suddenly regretted getting into this subject. I couldn’t imagine the pain he felt, and I wanted to cheer him up. “You know what? I think we should finish up all this food then watch the first Guardians movie. Would you like that?”

  His smile was very small, but it was there. “I would, I think. Is it as good as the second one?”

  “Maybe even better.”

  And so that was what we did, and I spent the next couple of hours curled up in his lap, snuggled close and enjoying some of my favorite characters ever.

  “Would you love me if I were green?” I asked him at one point, which led to his checking me for any green patches, uncovering bits of me and kissing each one after confirming I was not in fact green. Or blue. He seemed more concerned about the possibility of blue.

  We didn’t carry things as far as I had with Moss, but it was such an intimate day, in its own way. I learned so much about my mate, about his sense of humor and how it could lead to my being in a heightened state of arousal for hours on end, while laughing my ass off. And since I was sitting on his lap a good bit of that time, I knew he also was not unaffected. Far from it.

  Finally, I left him cobbling together something for dinner—I gathered it would be a breakfast-for-dinner situation since Escher excelled at breakfast—while I went up to my/Moss’s room and considered how I could make it a little more my own. After all, I might be here for some time, and for all its beauty, it was a very masculine space.

  In the end, I dragged Escher outside in search of flowers to pick, and the guys came back to find him following me about with a basket while I picked dandelions and other wildflowers.

  The fact he didn’t hit anyone with the extreme amount of teasing he was subjected to made me have even more respect for him. In the past, he’d been pretty unapproachable, but I wondered if it was our connection that made things better for him. Shifters took such things seriously, but my level of knowledge was, of course, super low. I was shifter-uneducated, but with four mates, I suspected it was about to change.

  We had dinner together that night, all five of us, and I laughed myself into tears while Escher, with a totally straight face, told the others about Guardians as if it were high art.

  My bad boy had a major goofball side.

  And I loved it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I walked downstairs in my favorite pair of form-fitting jeans coupled with a short-sleeved shirt, despite the chilly temperature outside. Moss said, during the night, I’d kicked the covers off and complained about it being hot.

  And today was no exception. I blamed it on being around all of these hot guys all the time.

  Harem fever. That was what I was officially going to call it.

  “So, what’s the plan?” I asked a visibly nervous Cash who was pacing the floors like he was guarding a tomb.

  “I’m having second thoughts,” he replied, and my heart plummeted into my stomach. He was having second thoughts about us or me or our date?

  “About me?” The words came right out of my mouth, circumventing any sensical thought.

  He stopped in his tracks. His eyes widened and his mouth gaped open. “What? Wendi, no. Never about you. Get over here, female.”

  With the relief making me weak in the knees, I made it over to him before falling into his open arms. He whispered sweet things in my ear while holding me tight—just what I needed.

  “I was having second thoughts about our plans tonight. But it looks like we both could use some relaxing time.”

  I nodded. “What did you have in mind?”

  “It’s cheesy,” he replied. “Level ten cheesy.”

  “Good thing I love cheese. Lead the way.” He took my hand, and, after insisting I take a jacket despite my harem fever, we left Moss’ house and headed toward the forest. After a few minutes, I wondered if the other guys were somewhere in the forest, watching over us while Cash took me to our destination.

  As we went farther away from the house, my wolf kicked up inside me. More and more I was beginning to feel the things she was relaying to me—through our bond. She loved my men, all of them. Unlike myself, there was no worry about whether or not the harem thing was true inside her. She had no doubts—no qualms.

  Just raw, unblemished love for each one of them and all of them as a whole.

  “Where’d you go?” Cash asked me, tugging on my hand, bringing me out of my wolf-human connection.

  “Just chatting with the beast inside me,” I shrugged. No reason to hide it.

  “That’s a good thing. Sometimes, they know more about what’s good for us than we do. Most of the time, actually. So…here we are.”

  He shrugged one shoulder, and as I looked in front of me, I gasped. Yes, it was cheesy. And my heart melted.

  A blow-up swimming pool lay in a clearing in the woods, with blankets and pillows filling it up almost to the top. Beside it was a table with a radio on it and an ice chest.

  “You don’t like it,” he stated instead of asked then blew out a breath laced with disappointment.

  “Look at me.” I turned toward him, but his gaze remained downward. I tried another tactic, hoping to the word would help him. “Mate, look at me.”

  That did it. His green eyes met mine. “Wendi?”

  “This is absolutely perfect. Watching the stars from this pool and spending some quiet time with you. It’s just what I need. But what’s the radio for?”

  He swallowed audibly and looked at the setup. “I thought I might have a few dances with my mate.”

  Cash was the romantic.

  “Sounds incredible.”

  We lay in the pool and stared at the stars for hours. We discussed shifter history, well, I asked questions about shifter stuff I’d read in books and he would laugh and tell me if it was right or wrong, but always did so gently, taking the time to explain things and give me all the details.

  “And how did you know I was your mate?” I turned, causing the makeshift bed jostle us both.

  He took my hands in his and kissed each one. “When I saw you on the porch, a flood of tingles rushed down my body. My wolf…” He put a fist over his chest like that was where his wolf was, right under his sternum. “He went completely nuts. If he had his way, I would’ve scooped you up from that chair right then and there and taken you to my bedroom.” He chuckled after saying it, but I knew it was true.

  “Well, now you have me in a bed of sorts.”

  “I do. My gorgeous mate right here for the taking. But we haven’t had our dance.” By the time he finished his sentence, his lips were hovering over mine.

  “We have a long time to dance. I need you to kiss me right now.”

  I didn’t have to wait longer than a second. He tested my lips, first with a few soft pecks, but when I reached up and grabbed his shirt to pull him closer, all bets were off.

  Our mouths moved together in a pulsing, needy, almost desperate rhythm. But Cash wasn’t in a hurry. In fact, when I rocked my hips into his, he broke the kiss and pulled back. “Wendi, we have time.”

  “But maybe I don’t want to wait,” I’d intended to say, but it came out like more of a whimper.

  “You tempt me beyond reason, mate.” He ran his thumb over my lips. “But mating you in a blow-up swimming pool is not how I want this to happen. You deserve more. We deserve more.”

  I nodded, a mixture of disappointment and joy. I wasn’t just some lay to him. I was special, and he made me feel that way every second. “How about that dance? That way, we aren’t tempted.”

  We got up, but by the time the music came on and his body was flush with mine, I realized the same temptation was there, but vertical instead of horizontal.

  He kissed me as we slow-danced. “Dancing, laying down, eating dinner, anything. There’s never going to be a time when I don’t want you, Wendi. I know it’s too soon, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore.”

  I felt my brow draw down. “What?”

  “I’m in love with you, Wendi.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, and I stopped swaying. He cupped my face and kissed me tenderly. “Cash, I love you, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I woke up by myself, in a state of complete bliss, but also not expecting to be alone.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” I heard from somewhere else, like a murmur of Moss. I flung back the covers and ran to the top of the stairs and looked over the railing to see him in the kitchen, smiling like he’d just won a prize. “You heard me.”

  “Did you yell it?”

  “Nope. Just normal tone.”

  I jumped up and down with excitement but then remembered I was in just a T-shirt and no bra. “Shit!” I crossed my arms over my chest, rushed back to the bedroom, and quickly put on a pair of jeans and a tank top. I knew I went to bed with pants on, but I must’ve gotten overheated again and taken them off sometime in the night.

  A chuckle tickled my ears. “Wendi, I’ve seen way more of you than that. But the shyness is endearing.”

  “Shush,” I said in a normal tone, testing if he could also hear me.

  His laughter was my only answer.

  “Who is on mate duty today?” I asked, in a great mood after the romantic night I had with Cash. He’d made sure someone was in the house, but told me he wasn’t quite trusting himself enough to spend the night with me.

  I respected him for it, but damn it, I’d wanted him to stay.

  “Mate duty. I hope you don’t think we think of it that way.” He turned from the stove, and I smelled pancakes. His brow was drawn down, and his mint-green eyes told me he’d turned serious.

  “I was kidding, Moss.”

  He paused for a while before responding. “Okay. Now, pancakes for the female.”

  I scoffed. “I thought you couldn’t cook.”

  He waved the spatula in the air after sliding a plate over to me as I sat on the barstool. He was dressed in some kind of T-shirt with a logo and casual jeans. It was the most informal I’d ever seen him. “Pancakes and French toast are about the limit of my skills. Maybe you could teach me more.”

  I nodded while putting a bite of the fluffy cake in my mouth, topped with honey.

  “And to answer your question, I’m going to happily escort you to school, walk you from class to class like a gentleman. Then Brandon will pick you up in the afternoon. I believe the two of you have a date.”

  “Is this how it’s going to be? Living on a schedule?” Gods, it sounded ungrateful and awfully negative of me, but there it was. All of a sudden, I was pissed off for no reason.

  He stopped what he was doing, leaned across the counter, and took one of my hands in his. His touch soothed me almost immediately and I came down from anger mountain. “Sweetheart, we will let these things evolve naturally, as they should. Until then and with this Rattlecreek and council stuff, it’s going to seem forced and awkward at best. We’re trying to create some silver lining here. But if you need time to yourself or need a breather, you let us know. We’re as inexperienced as you are, for the record.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know why I snapped.”

  “It’s okay. This has got to be hard for you. Finish up and grab your bag. We need to get moving, okay?”

  I stuffed a few more bites into my mouth and grabbed my bag. We drove to school holding hands, and he did as he’d said for the rest of the day, escorting me to my classes, and I knew during, he stayed right outside.

  But as I left the classroom, something in the air caught my attention. I lifted my chin and took in a long drag through my nose, trying to pinpoint the scent. There was only one word I could use to describe the scent: wild.

  “Escher?” I called out, not seeing Moss. Moss and Escher came around the corner, both smiling.

  Moss hugged me around the shoulders while Escher put a kiss on my temple. “Told you, Escher, she’s getting better. I knew she would pick up on you. I can scent you a mile away.”

  Moss got shoved into the wall for that one.

  “I smelled him?” I asked, and they both nodded. My wolf was close. More and more my senses were melding with hers, and I loved the heightened sensations. I wondered if they translated to all my experiences.

  “Yep. We are so proud of you. Your shifter senses are enhancing. It’s a good sign, sweetheart.” Moss whispered it in my ear because shifters and humans around.

  “I smelled you!” I raised my arms and yelled it out, receiving snickers and wide-eyes looks from the people passing by in the hallway.

  My men clapped, chuckling and shaking their heads at me.

  “What’d I miss that deserves applause?” Brandon’s strong arms snaked around my waist from behind, and he spoke over my ear.

  “I’ll tell you in the car. You’re here for me, right?”

  He looked down, and my heart sunk. I expected bad news. “Well, I hate to tell you, but I’m here for Escher. We’ve decided to make it official.”

  Before I could prevent it or even stop it, Escher and Brandon were play fighting, dancing around each other with their fists ready.

  “I’m leaving. All by myself. Female all alone. Warning. Warning!”

  That got their attention as I opened the door. Brandon turned to Escher. “I won, for the record.”

  Escher said goodbye to me with a wave. “You suck, for the record, Brandon. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Remember.”

  I was kind of scared for Brandon, and from his eyes getting bigger, I thought he might be, too.

  “Okay, spill what did I miss back there?” Brandon said, sitting next to me in his truck a few minutes later.

  “Moss was escorting me to classes, but, apparently, they were testing me. Escher came along sometime during the day and, when I opened the door after class, I scented him. Me. Scented him. With my own nose.”

  He chuckled and put his hand on my thigh. “Well, I’m glad it wasn’t with someone else’s nose.”

  “You know what I mean,” I said, but laughed along with him.

  “I do.”

  I wiggled in my seat a little. “And…this morning, Moss talked to me from downstairs, in a normal tone, and I heard him from the bed.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Wendi. You’re…you’re everything.” The sincere tone in his voice pierced me all the way to my core.

  “I know,” I joked back. “What’s the plan?”

  Brandon’s ears turned red at the tips, and he blew out a breath. “Don’t be upset.”

  My whole body clenched. Telling me not to be upset was like telling me not to be Wendi. I just was. Especially when he said, “Don’t be upset.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Well, I was telling my parents about you, and I’d intended on taking you out for dinner tonight, but my mother kind of wrangled me into bringing you home for dinner. I’ve wanted to for a while, but thought it might be too soon. But I can’t say no to my mom.”