The Werewolf Alpha Rejected Me at the Lake and I Said Thank You novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Kitchen Light

The bond snaps on the lake house floor, Casimir stays, and at the kitchen counter she tells him exactly how to touch her; at dawn a woman knocks.

The bond let go of me completely on my own porch steps.

I'd held it together through the drive down the ridge and through the town.

I'd held it past the marina, with my hands flat on my knees.

At the third step my legs went, and Casimir caught me before my knee hit the wood.

"Easy," he said.

"I'm fine," I said, and then I wasn't.

The pain came up my ribs in one long wave and took my breath.

He got the key out of my coat pocket without asking, which I allowed, and carried me through the front door.

He set me on the kitchen counter under the light over the sink.

It was the only light on in the house.

The rest of it was dark cedar and the lake going black outside the window.

"How bad?" he said.

"It's still pulling at me."

He filled a glass at the tap and put it in my hand.

I drank it because it gave my hands something to do.

He stood between my knees, not touching me, one hand on the counter on either side.

"You don't have to tell me what was in the letter," he said.

"I wrote it Saturday at this table," I said. "I refused him as my mate, in my own name, on paper."

"I posted it registered to the pack house. The post office says it was signed for Monday, and the green card never came back to me."

His eyebrows went up, the one with the scar and the one without.

"So when he stood up there tonight," he said slowly.

"I'd already left," I said. "He just said it second."

"Why?" he said.

"Because in April he gave me this house and said wait until after the winter," I said.

"By October the council had a list with Odile's name next to his."

I shrugged, though it cost me.

"He didn't tell me, and he didn't deny it. I'm not waiting for a man who keeps a list."

Casimir didn't say anything for a moment.

Something crossed his face that I didn't understand yet, and then he looked back at me steadily.

"Then you thanked him for the best news he ever gave you," he said.

I laughed, and it turned into a gasp as the pain caught me again.

His hand came up and stopped an inch from my face.

"Can I?" he said.

"Not yet," I said. "Terms first."

He nodded.

"One," I said. "No bite, no mark, and no talk about claiming. I don't want that word in my house."

"Done," he said.

"Two. No pack business inside these walls."

"Done," he said.

"Three. Friday you cook me the dinner you asked for in front of two hundred people."

"And until then I ask before I touch you," he said.

"Until then you ask."

He waited.

I looked at his hands, big and scarred across the knuckles, resting on the counter beside my hips.

The ache in my chest eased a little, just from how near they were.

"Touch me," I said.

"Where?"

"Anywhere you want, and then where I tell you."

His palm came up under my jaw and his thumb pressed the corner of my mouth.

The pain dropped by half.

I heard myself make a sound.

"There," he said quietly. "That's where it hurts."

"Everywhere you're not," I said, and he kissed me.

It was slower than the one in the Lodge.

He took his time, and I put both hands in his hair and pulled him closer.

His mouth went down my throat, hot, open, careful to leave no mark.

I felt him decide not to bite and felt him enjoy not doing it.

"Sweater," I said.

He pulled it up over my head and dropped it on the floor.

His hands were rough and slow on my ribs, and my skin lit up under them wherever they went.

"Bra."

He unhooked it with one hand and looked at me in the light over the sink.

"Look at you," he said, and his voice had gone rough.

"Don't look," I said. "Touch."

He did.

He cupped my breasts and ran his thumbs across my nipples until they were hard and my back arched off the cabinet.

Then he lowered his mouth, and I held his head there and told him how.

"Harder," I said. "Use your tongue."

"Like that?" he said, against my skin.

"Yes. Good. Like that."

He groaned.

My jeans were the next problem.

I lifted my hips and he peeled them down, along with my boots.

Then I sat naked on my grandmother's counter.

He stepped back and looked at me again, his chest rising and falling.

"Tell me," he said.

"Kneel," I said.

He went down on his knees on the cold kitchen floor.

I put one foot on his shoulder and hooked the other behind him.

He put his hands on my thighs and spread me wider.

"Sigrid," he said.

"Do it."

He licked me once, all the way up, slow and flat.

I swore, and it echoed in the kitchen.

"You taste so good," he said against my skin, and I couldn't answer.

"Higher," I said. "No. There."

He found my clit with the tip of his tongue and stayed on it, steady and exact.

The pain in my chest turned to something else entirely.

I got a hand in his hair.

He pushed two fingers into my pussy, slowly, thick and deep, and curled them, and my whole body locked.

"Fuck. Don't stop," I said.

"I'm not stopping," he said into me.

"Faster. Yes. Good, you're so good at that."

He made a low sound that I felt in my spine, and his tongue moved faster, and his fingers matched it.

I came apart on the counter with my head back against the cupboard and my heels dug into his back.

It went on and on.

He kept his mouth on me through every wave of it, gentler each time.

When it was too much, I pushed his head away with a shaking hand.

He rested his forehead on my thigh.

The pain in my chest was gone.

I hadn't felt it leave, and that frightened me a little.

I pulled him up by the shirt and kissed him, tasting myself on his mouth.

My hand slid down his chest to his belt.

His cock was hard under the denim, thick against my palm, and he caught my wrist.

"You didn't ask," I said.

"I'm asking you to wait," he said, rough and quiet. "Not because I don't want it."

"Why?"

"If you're going to be sorry about tonight, I want it to be for what I did with my mouth."

He breathed out.

"Not for the rest."

I looked at his face.

I could not find a trick in it.

"Friday was supposed to be the dinner," I said.

"I know," he said. "I still cook it."

I pulled his shirt off and he let me, and I put my forehead against his bare chest.

We stayed like that, with the lake outside and the light over the sink, until my breathing slowed.

He slept on the couch in his jeans with a blanket over his feet.

I didn't sleep at all.

At first light, a car door slammed in the drive.

Someone knocked three times, firm and quick.

"Sigrid?" a woman called through the wood. "It's Odile Prentiss."

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