Pressure built. The coil of lust pulled taut. Everything drew tight, and I cried out, too worked up to contain it.
“Shit!” I gasped. “I’m gonna come.”
He slowed his hips, his breaths ragged against my mouth. “Ask me.”
“Jesse—”
“Ask me.”
“Please,” I begged. “Please, I need?—”
“I know.” Releasing my wrists, he cupped my face and drove his hips forward. “Get it all over me, baby.”
I came with a strangled cry, my whole body jerking as I spurted over our cocks. Jesse followed a second later, his dick pulsing against mine as he added to the mess between us. He shuddered through his release, gasping my name into my mouth.
For a moment, we just breathed together. He stayed where he was, warm and heavy on top of me, his heartbeat slowing against my chest. He pressed his lips to my jaw. My cheek. The corner of my eye. Like he was taking inventory.
Then he kissed me again, stroking his tongue deep. I kissed him back with tears burning my eyes.
He rested his forehead against mine. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He pressed his lips to the top of my head and kept them there. “Thank you.”
I turned my face into his neck, and we held each other in the moonlight, forgiveness beating in time with our hearts.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
JESSE
Ialways woke earlier when I was in France.
It didn’t matter whether I was one day or twenty off the plane. My body was programmed to recognize the subtle differences in the air. An hour before dawn, I’d lie in bed and listen to the house settle around me, my ears pricked for the creak of old timber and the rustle of the breeze stirring the flowers in the window boxes.
Lately, though, I listened for the deep, even pattern of Caleb’s breathing. He was a bed hog, which didn’t surprise me in the least. No matter how we fell asleep, he ended up with his head on my pillow and his body plastered against mine.
Mornings in France were a lot better with Caleb around.
He was getting stronger. Four weeks of daily shifts had served him well. His transitions were faster now. His connection between his human half and his wolf was less like a standoff and more like a negotiation. He perked up before our nightly runs, shedding his clothes and racing to the courtyard while I hid a smile.
Of course, his enthusiasm probably had a lot to do with the way we spent our timeafterour evening runs. I’d promised to bend him over every surface of my townhouse. That promise hadto wait, but I was making good progress on doing the same at the manor.
Things were almost perfect. But not quite.
Because Caleb showed no sign of manifesting a gift.
I watched for it the way a sailor watches the weather, my senses primed for the smallest shift in the air. Anything to signal that Caleb’s magic was finally coming. But day after day, nothing happened.
We were safe enough in Burgundy, but how long could that safety last? The countryside was relaxing, but moonlit sprints and movie nights could only satisfy Caleb for so long. He’d grown up in a house that kept him small. Now I’d exchanged one cage for another. It was a better, more comfortable cage, but a cage nonetheless. He never complained, but he deserved more than a manor house in the middle of nowhere.
He deserved Paris. Florence. The crowded, cramped tourist spots in Venice and the quiet, secret places only the locals knew. He deserved to eat his way through every market in Madrid and sit in an Amsterdam café watching boats and passersby.
I wanted to take him everywhere. To show him the streets I’d walked as a younger man. I wanted to show him the version of Europe that existed before the war, the beauty that had survived, and the places that hadn’t changed in four centuries and wouldn’t change in another four.
Instead, I kept him in a field, feeding him hachee and waiting for magic that refused to appear.
