My Mate Was Buried at Christmas, So His Three Brothers Claimed Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Stove

In the trapper's cabin she sets her terms and puts the eldest brother's hand on her, and he goes to his knees.

The cabin was half a mile across the ice, and I walked every step of it with the lantern held out in front of me.

Nobody carried me.

The three of them came behind me in their coats, close enough that I could hear the snow squeak under their boots.

Not one of them spoke.

The white season caught me somewhere past the middle of the lake.

It started low in my belly, a slow warm pull.

By the time we reached the porch my skin felt too tight and my thighs were wet.

I knew what it was.

Every wolf in the pack was feeling it tonight, and every one of them would feel it for two weeks.

Alexis got the door open and lit the stove while I stood in the middle of the room.

It was one room, with a woodstove, a table, a cast-iron tub in the corner and one enormous bed under a quilt.

There was a latch on the door, on the inside only.

Remy saw me looking at it.

"You can lock us out," he said. His voice was rough. "Any time you want."

"I know."

Alexis dropped to a crouch by the stove and fed it split birch.

He did what he always did when he was nervous, which was talk.

"It's a good cabin, Mimi. Dry roof. I rebuilt that porch myself, you could dance on it, I'm not saying we should dance on it."

"Alexis," I said.

"Yes. Sorry. Shutting up now."

Hugo stood by the table with his coat still on.

He took a small black notebook out of his back pocket, looked at it, and put it back.

"I wrote down the old rules for this," he said quietly. "In case you wanted to know them."

"Tell me one."

"A wolf holds one bond. A widow's stays with her a year and a day."

He pushed his glasses up his nose.

"A bite on the nape won't take on her until it's gone."

"Good," I said. "That means nobody has to be careful."

His ears went red.

I put the lantern on the table and turned to face them.

"I have terms," I said. "Four. Listen."

The stove cracked.

"I choose. Nobody takes me, and nobody asks me for anything I haven't offered."

I held up a second finger.

"Nobody calls me his. Nobody says Etienne's name as a reason, not to touch me and not to stop."

I held up a third, and then a fourth.

"And when the white season ends, so does this, and I go home to my own house."

Alexis stopped smiling.

Remy said, "And if one of us says no?"

"Then I'll sleep alone, and you can tell your father I was a bad bargain."

Alexis laughed, once, a short helpless sound.

"Nobody here is going to say no," he said.

"Good. Go and split wood, you two. Take your time."

Alexis looked at Remy, and Remy gave a small nod.

Alexis took Hugo by the sleeve and steered him out into the snow.

The door closed.

I was alone with the eldest.

Remy stood in front of the door with his hands at his sides.

He was a big man in a gray wool coat, with snow melting in his beard.

He was thirty-eight years old.

In six years he had never once sat at my table.

"You said never," I said. "Come here and prove it."

He crossed the room in three steps and stopped an inch away.

He did not touch me.

I could smell pine and cold air on him, and the smoke of the pack house.

Under that was the warm animal scent that made my knees go loose.

I took his right hand in both of mine and put it flat against my stomach, under my sweater.

His palm was hot and calloused and enormous.

His breath stopped.

"Lower," I said.

His hand slid down inside the waist of my jeans.

His fingers found how wet I was, and a sound came out of him that I had never heard from any man.

"Mireille," he said.

"I know," I said.

"You're burning."

"So are you," I said. "Kiss me, Remy."

He kissed me hungrily, and he had waited a long time to do it.

It was slow at first and careful, his hand cupping my jaw.

Then I opened my mouth under his, and he groaned and pulled me up against his chest.

His beard scratched my chin.

His tongue stroked mine, and the hand between my legs pressed and slid.

I made a noise against his mouth and gripped his coat.

"Take your clothes off," he said against my lips. "Please. I want to see you."

I pulled my sweater over my head.

I unhooked my bra and let it fall.

He looked at my breasts and said nothing at all, and the look on his face was worth the whole walk.

I pushed down my jeans and kicked them away.

I stood in front of him in the stove light, naked and flushed and shaking.

"Now you," I said.

"No," Remy said. "Not yet."

He lifted me by the hips and set me on the edge of the table.

Then he went down on his knees on the floorboards between my thighs.

"Remy."

"Let me."

He pushed my knees wide with his big gentle hands and put his mouth on me.

I cried out and my head fell back.

His tongue was slow and wide and sure, flat against my clit, then pointed, then circling.

He groaned into me, deep and greedy, and the sound went through my whole body.

I tangled both hands in his hair.

"Yes. There. Don't stop."

He didn't.

He slid two thick fingers inside me and curled them.

He found the place that made my hips jerk off the table, and he worked it while his tongue stayed steady on my clit.

I heard myself babbling.

I heard myself say his name, and his brothers' names, and a string of words that had nothing to do with any of them.

The pleasure wound tighter and tighter, low and hot.

I clamped my thighs around his shoulders.

"Remy, I'm going to. Remy. Oh, God."

He growled against me, and that did it.

I came hard, my back arching off the table and my cry bouncing off the log walls.

My whole body clenched around his fingers while he licked me through it.

He went gentle at the end, until I shivered and pushed at his head.

He looked up at me from between my legs.

His beard was wet and his eyes were black.

"Better than I imagined," he said hoarsely.

I stared at him.

"You imagined it?"

He did not answer.

He kissed the inside of my thigh instead, slowly, and then the other one.

"Tell me where else," he said.

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