Kiera didn’t use them every night, thank the Goddess. But she used them often enough that Buck had become half mad with watching and wanting her.
The first time he had seen them had nearly driven him out of his mind—those broad crimson blossoms fastening themselves to her nipples and clit, and the long, waxy blossom sliding into her wet heat while she moaned and arched beneath the trailing branches by the far ledge of the pool.
The second time, he had barked then, trying to drive the offending plant away from her, but it didn’t work. Kiera just laughed breathlessly and told him to mind his business.
Since then, he had tried very hard to maintain some dignity. So now, when Kiera drifted into the deeper end of the pool where the pleasure blooms grew, Brux generally turned his head aside and pretended to be deeply interested in some rock or moss or decorative plant while his body betrayed him in the most humiliating fashion.
Because no matter how he tried to ignore it, her scent told him everything. He could smell the rise of her desire and the slick, rich sweetness of her arousal.
But even if his nose had told him nothing, his sensitive Monstrum hearing would have supplied the details of what was going on. He heard the breathless little moans she tried not to make. And when he dared to look, he saw the way her body loosened and heated and opened as the blooms tended to her.
Every time, his shafts would slide out of their sheaths and harden until walking became difficult afterward. Every time, he had to hide his face and tell himself sternly that she was not his yet and he must wait.
But that was becoming harder and harder to do. Because with every passing day, Brux felt more and more like himself.
His thoughts were nearly fully restored now. His memories too—though some remained fragmented and painful, especially those involving his lost home and his first mate.
Words came easily in his mind. Reason had returned. Even the old warrior instincts were waking again, sharper and more disciplined than the simple protective animal impulses he had known in the first days after Kiera rescued him.
So why, in the Goddess’s name, could he still not shift to his humanoid form? He should have been able to by now, Brux thought. A Lykan did not simply regain his mind and remain trapped forever in his beast form. Not unless something was wrong.
And something was clearly wrong–Brux could feel it.
Every night, lying beneath the covers with Kiera pressed close against him, he reached inward toward that place where the change began.
He tried to call up his bipedal form. Tried to summon hands instead of paws, speech instead of barks and chuffs–he tried to retrieve the body he needed in order to stand before her as a male and claim her properly.
But every time, something held him back.
It wasn’t weakness and it wasn’t lack of contact—Kiera touched him constantly.
It wasn’t lack of affection either. He had no doubt she cared for him deeply, even if she did not yet know what he was.
No, the block was deeper than that–stronger.
Something in his mind resisted the shift every time it began. Something knotted tight with grief and guilt.
Though Brux tried not to look at it directly, he knew what it was–his first mate.
The memory of her death had returned slowly and in pieces over the week—her laughter first, then the warmth of her body, then flashes of blood and fear and the impossible horror of Darklings pouring through the broken defenses of their world like living nightmares.
He remembered the way she had screamed his name. Remembered trying to reach her. Remembered failing.
And after that…nothing but the long descent into emptiness.
He had already had a mate, and the Goddess granted only one.
So what did it mean that Kiera had pulled him back from the void? What did it mean that she smelled so right? That her touch healed his mind? That every instinct in him screamed that she was his?
Sometimes, lying awake in the darkness with her sleeping at his side, Brux wondered if he was somehow committing blasphemy simply by wanting her.
But then she would sigh in her sleep and press her lush, warm body against him, and all such thoughts would scatter like frightened birds. Because whatever the Goddess intended–whatever rules his people had once believed in–one thing was undeniable…he loved Kiera.
He wanted her with an urgency that was physical and emotional and soul—deep all at once. He wanted to curl around her and protect her…wanted to hear her laugh…wanted her scent in his lungs and her hand in his fur and her soft body under his.
He wanted to wake with her every morning and sleep with her every night. Wanted to mount her and knot her and Bond her and spend the rest of his life making certain she never had reason to fear loneliness ever again.
Because that was another thing he had discovered over the course of the week–Kiera was lonely.
