Just a Wolf

Dominic

As soon as Evan goes I get ready too, using the bathroom and grabbing my shoes. I’m trying to plan. If Evan just got done with the meeting and wanted to come up to his room, probably she’d want to do the same? Should I go around the back to the door leading down to her room? Or should I give her a couple of minutes of privacy there and instead wait for her in the kitchen?

I hate to wait, though, I feel like I am literally dying to see her, with the stinging pain in my heart feeling even stronger the more I think about her, the closer it gets to the moment that I know we’ll be together again. I think I’ll go out the front door after I get downstairs and go around the building. I can’t make myself just wait.

Oh man, the second I open the door to my room and step into the hallway I can already smell her again, the sugar cookies and wildflowers, and my heart starts pounding. I am almost sprinting down the hallway, I’m so eager to find her.

But she has found me first. There she is, standing at the foot of the stairs, her head tilted down at some papers she is holding, but her eyes looking sideways, obviously just waiting for me to come down to her. When she sees me, she abandons her pretense of studying her papers, and just looks up and beams at me, her dimpled smile the most beautiful thing in the world, and I skip down the stairs.

I know people are around, but I can’t stand it, I have to touch her. I reach out, just very lightly, very briefly, and touch her hand. I slide my fingers across hers, where she is holding her stack of papers. Just for a second, really, nothing that I think anyone would really notice.

But that one second makes all the difference in the world. The pain in my heart instantly vanishes and is replaced with the most wonderful warmth, a sense of completion replacing the sad emptiness I had been feeling. I exhale with relief, and hear her do exactly the same at exactly the same time.

“Hey,” she says to me, so much feeling held within the one little word.

I lean closer and murmur, “I’ve been dying to see you all day.”

“Me too,” she whispers, and her blue eyes are glowing up at me, and just standing next to her makes me feel so much better. “You hungry?” she asks.

“Um, I am now,” I tell her, realizing that I had no appetite all day, just languishing without her, but now it has caught up to me and I am starving again.

She gives me another little smile and tilts her head to the side, indicating that I should follow her into the kitchen. I do, walking along behind her, and fully enjoying the view of her swinging honey hair and her pert little butt moving from side to side.

Oh man, boner time again.

“Get used to it,” my inner wolf reminds me, but he doesn’t seem cranky anymore like he was all day. He’s as happy to be back with her as I am. With our mate.

Amelia

My wolf is as happy as I am to be back with him. With our mate.

I had a good day, and was able to concentrate and do a good job at the meeting, despite how much I was missing him. Every time that I felt like I couldn’t stand being apart for one more second, I would just brush my fingers over the area on my throat where I know his mark will be soon, and it would soothe me, bring me relief.

But nothing is like actually being with him again, and smelling his delicious aroma, the chocolatey beach smell. When he touched my fingers, like he couldn’t resist doing it, my entire body tingled with pleasure. I can’t wait to go back to my room downstairs with him, but I know he’s hungry and wants dinner first.

So I lead him into the kitchen, and we both grab plates and fill them with food from the buffet table. I get some pasta and veggies, and have to giggle a little when I see what he is piling on his plate. Meat. All the meats. He has ribs and chicken legs and a pile of hamburger patties stacked up like pancakes.

I puff out a laugh, and he sees what I am looking at, and objects, “I feel like I really need some protein!” He grins at me and makes a show of placing a single piece of broccoli on top of the pile. “There. A balanced meal!”

We head back to the same table we were at this morning, in the back of the room, isolated from everyone else. As I am passing the table with all the surfer guys, Theo lifts his eyebrows at me, and Evan gives me a little smile. I hear Dominic behind me make a funny little growling noise, and I glance back over my shoulder at him. What was that?

But the rest of the room vanishes for us as soon as we are sitting at our table. It is just the two of us here, eating together. Our second meal. I spear one of his hamburger patties off the top of his pile with my fork, and it makes him laugh. “Good,” he says, “you need your protein too!”

We talk about our days. He tells me about the cars, and taking a walk, and fitting in a nap. I tell him about the meeting, and how it looks pretty likely that our packs are going to form an alliance. “You know what that means, right?” I ask, and he shrugs, holding a chicken drumstick up to his teeth. “We’ll be able to find a way to see each other. People will be going back and forth between River Moon and Dark Woods all the time.”

He puts down the half-gnawed drumstick, and looks at me seriously. “It wouldn’t matter,” he says. “Whether or not there’s an alliance. It won’t matter to us. We’re staying together. One way or another, one place or another. I can’t be apart from you. It almost killed me today.”

Oh.

I look at him, realizing something for the first time. The pain that I had felt earlier seemed to be resolved because he nearly marked me, and my day was much better for it. But I didn’t do the same for him. Does that mean…? “Almost killed you?” I whisper.

He nods. “The whole day that I was waiting for you to finish your meeting, I felt like my heart was breaking. Like literally.” He puts his hand on his chest. “Right here. But as soon as I touched you again, the pain went away.” His hand comes down off his chest, and goes under the table, to touch my leg very lightly. Again, the tingles of pleasure fill me, and I see his eyes close, and I know that he feels it too. “So,” he goes on, opening his beautiful dark eyes again and looking earnestly at me, “we are going to have to figure it out. How not to be apart. I can’t stand another day like today.”

I feel guilty that he was experiencing that pain all day, but that he had fixed it for me when he nearly marked me this morning. I have the benefit of the bonding process having gotten further along while we were in the garage, but he didn’t get the same from me.

I have to fix that.

“Finish your food,” I tell him. “Then we’re going down to my room.” I know he can hear the resolve in my voice, and that he doesn’t have any idea why. But his eyes widen, and he looks very intrigued, and starts wolfing down the rest of his meat.

Pardon the pun.