Leyden parked the car and turned in his seat to look at the man who would be with him forever. Connor had a worried look on his rugged face and Leyden wondered what was behind the question.
“I’m not sure,” he said echoing Connor’s earlier words. “I think that’s different for everyone, too. For me, I get the compulsion to touch your skin and feel you naked against me. I get a burning in my stomach whenever you’re around and my skin tingles as though craving your touch. My lips ache with the desire to want to kiss you, to taste you, and my hands seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to wanting to touch you.”
“You feel all that for me?” Connor seemed almost awed by his response and again Leyden was struck with not knowing why.Hadn’t anyone tried to talk to the man before they tried to get him into bed?
“From the moment I saw you,” Leyden said honestly. He turned, and opened his car door and was pleased when Connor did the same. The two men quickly walked through the house, and Leyden opened his bedroom door, smiling at Connor who blushed as he went through. Then Connor let out an almighty roar and leaped, shifting as he went, clothes ripping and falling to the floor as a ginormous wolf pounced on something in the room. Hurrying into his room, Leyden stopped, his mouth wide open, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Connor, still in his giant wolf form, was on Leyden’s bed. But that wasn’t what surprised Leyden. It was the sight of Lonnie and Trixie - naked on his bed, currently cowering under the wolf - that Leyden didn’t understand. He had explained to his two previous lovers when he got back from the meet and greet that he had found his mate, and he had told Lonnie exactly the same thing in his office earlier in the day. What the hell were the two of them doing, infusing their fucking scent in the bedroom Leyden wanted to share with his mate?
Connor hadn’t stopped growling and the sound was so loud, so powerful, that Leyden knew he was going to have to control his mate before he could deal with his two pack mates. Hurrying to Connor’s side, Leyden gently touched the wolf’s shoulder, fully appreciating the roll of muscles under his hand. Connor had the power to be an Alpha in his own right if he had wanted to and Leyden was struck again about how lucky he was with his new mate. That is, if the man didn’t leave him.
Under his hand, Connor’s growling slowed to a deep rumble, but the wolf’s eyes never left the two people on the bed.
“What the hell do you two think you are doing here? You know I have a mate and won’t have anyone else in my bed now,” Leydensaid. It surprised him that he felt so calm. He had thought that Connor would rip the two interlopers to pieces but instead the wolf had done nothing but threaten the hapless pair.
Trixie looked at Lonnie and then back at Leyden.
“Well…er…Lonnie said that you and your mate weren’t having sex, so we figured you hadn’t claimed him yet. Given that you two just seemed to want to talk to each other…well, when Lonnie was in your office he knew your mate didn’t desire you. So we thought…”
“So you thought what exactly?” Leyden snarled. “You thought you would come into my room like common tarts laid out for consumption and I would rather fuck you than my mate? That I would claim you two?”
“We desire you. He doesn’t,” Lonnie burst out, with a cautious look at Connor who still hadn’t stopped growling and was looking more menacing by the second. Leyden strengthened his grip on Connor’s shoulder knowing that his mate would understand.
“You deserve someone who worships your body, who gets hard at the sound of your voice. Someone who will submit to you willingly every night if that’s what you want,” Lonnie went on. “That’s what a true mate would do. That’s what we would do for you.”
Connor nudged Leyden’s hand off his shoulder and climbed off the bed. Shifting into his human form, Connor stood magnificently naked. But Leyden didn’t have a chance to appreciate the miles of muscles, as Connor walked over and grabbed his overnight bag and made to leave the room.
“They’re right, and I can’t do that to you,” he said as he walked away, leaving Leyden with his mouth open and a hard-on that wouldn’t quit. Damn, that man looked amazing in the buff. Toostunned to do anything else, Leyden watched his mate walk out of his house and out of his life.
Chapter Seven
A week later
Connor buried himself further under the bedclothes as he heard the sound of a vehicle coming up his driveway. He knew the only person it could be was Davis, and Connor was not in the mood to talk to his Alpha. Actually since leaving Leyden’s territory the week before, Connor hadn’t felt much like doing anything.
All he had done, since that fateful night, was think about his mate. Sometimes the memories were happy ones - Leyden being all alpha in his office, the way the man looked so beautiful in the candlelight at dinner. As Connor had spent all of his time thinking about what he knew about Leyden, even though they had only been together for less than twenty-four hours, he knew he would have loved the man, given half the chance.
Leyden was kind, which was unusual for an alpha. Connor remembered how Leyden had described the fight he won when he took over his pack. Every word reeked of compassion for an older alpha who wanted to leave with dignity. And Leyden had given it to him. In the office, Leyden was strong, but friendly. He took the time to listen to pack concerns, no matter how trivial. Connor realized the man had a knack of making everyone seem special.
Yes, and just like always, that’s when Connor’s memories hit the dark side of things. Leyden was special and an amazing person in every way. Which was why there were two interlopers in Leyden’s bed when they got home from their date. It was clear from first glance that both Trixie and Lonnie were comfortable in Leyden’s space, so they had clearly been there before. That would have been obvious even without Lonnie’s obnoxious comments earlier in the day.
Connor didn’t think he had ever been so angry in his life. Through the course of the day, from Leyden’s passionate speech when he pledged to bite and claim Connor as his, right through to the wonderful date the two men had shared, Connor had started to relax. He had started to consider that Leyden was his. He even felt some slight tingles of the things that Leyden had described when he was talking about desire. After all, Connor had never felt it before, which was why he had asked the question in the first place. The more Connor felt confident not only in his position as alpha mate, but also in Leyden’s promise not to rush him into anything, the more optimistic Connor had felt about wanting to have sex in the future. And that was a definite first for him.
Connor hadn’t wanted to walk away. But he’d smelled Leyden’s arousal at the sight of the two people in his bed. He couldn’t forget Lonnie’s words. They might have felt hateful at the time, but the little shit was right. Leyden deserved somebody by his side who wanted him, as badly as he wanted in return. No matter his personal feelings on the subject, Connor would take strength in the fact that he had put his mate’s needs first.
“Connor get your ass out of bed, or I’ll pull you out personally.” Davis’s roar damn near shook Connor’s small house. Knowing that Davis could not be ignored, Connor bowed to the inevitable, stumbling out of bed, and pulling on a pair of jeans. Striding through to his small living room, he was all for tearing strips off Davis for interrupting his thoughts, when he was stopped short. Lonnie. Sex-mad, pretty, Leyden’s Lonnie was standing in his living room.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Connor growled. “Come to rub my face in the fact that Leyden’s claimed you and your friend as mates? Felt I had a dying need to know how many hours the three of you spent fucking after my date with my mate?”
“Leyden’s in trouble,” Lonnie said. Connor could barely hear the man’s tiny voice over the pounding in his ears. He couldn’t believe the man had come into his house.
Then the words the little shit had said made sense.
“What do you mean, in trouble? Leyden’s the alpha, and perfectly capable of taking care of himself, especially if he’s mated now.”
“He’s not mated,” Lonnie confessed, tears in his eyes. “He kicked me and Trixie out of his room and won’t even let us in his house anymore.”
“Whatever,” Connor said, refusing to show how much Lonnie’s words meant to him. “Why is Leyden in trouble?”
