Last Chance Luna: The Bond Wouldn't Heal Her novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Bad Morning

The old healer and the Council elder come to watch the mending, Roe sends them off, and Elke lets him lift her into a bath where she takes him slowly.

Roe did not say a word about my legs.

He sat up beside me in the gray light, bare to the waist, with his hair sticking up on one side.

He looked at the alarm clock.

"What time are your pills?"

"Six thirty. The blue organizer. Sunday." My voice came out flat. "It's a bad one. They come sometimes. It'll pass by noon."

"Okay."

He got up and found the organizer and a glass of water and set them on the nightstand.

He propped two pillows behind my back without lifting me, because I had not asked to be lifted.

I swallowed the pills and hated every second of it.

"You can go," I said.

"Do you want me to go?"

I looked at my hands on the quilt.

They were thin hands, with needle bruises yellowing inside both elbows.

"No," I said. "I want you to stay."

It was the truest thing I had said in a year.

He nodded.

"Then I'll make coffee."

He had just filled the kettle when somebody pounded on the back door.

I knew that pounding.

My mother has a key, and she never uses it when she thinks I might be dressed.

"Elke! Elke, honey, open up!"

Roe looked at me.

"Let her in," I said.

He opened the door in his jeans and nothing else, and my mother stopped on the step with her mouth open.

Behind her stood Frieda Tollefson in the gray coat.

Behind Frieda stood the old healer, small and brown as a walnut, with her stick and her bag of herbs.

"Alpha," Frieda said sweetly. "We came to see our Luna walk."

"She's resting," Roe said.

"The bond is a day old. By now there should be a change. The healer only wants to look."

"She's resting."

Frieda smiled the smile from the Gathering.

"It would put the pack's mind at ease."

Roe did not raise his voice.

"The pack's mind is not what's wrong with her," he said. "When she wants to see anyone, she'll say so. Goodbye, Frieda."

He closed the door.

He turned the lock.

From the other side, I heard the old healer say in a puzzled voice, "But it should have worked."

Then my mother started to cry, and somebody led her away.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said. "She isn't a bad person. She's scared."

"I know."

"I could've told them it wouldn't."

"You did tell them," Roe said. "In front of seventy people."

He came and sat on the edge of the bed.

His hand found the nape of my neck, warm and heavy, and he rubbed his thumb under my hair in slow circles.

My whole body unlocked.

A sound came out of me like a sob and a laugh together.

"I feel disgusting," I said. "My legs hurt, and I slept in a sweat, and I want a bath so much."

"Do you want me to run one?"

"I can't get to it."

"I know," he said. "Do you want me to carry you?"

I hated that question.

I had hated it for six years, from nurses and cousins and my own mother, always asked in a voice like I was breakable.

But he had asked it the way he asked about my pills.

It was just a fact about my legs and his arms.

"Yes," I said. "I'd like that. I'm choosing it."

"I know you are."

He slid one arm behind my back and the other under my knees.

He lifted me like I weighed nothing, which wasn't far from the truth.

I put my arms around his neck.

His skin was hot, and he smelled like cut hay and clean sweat.

The bathroom was small.

He ran the water, hot, and added the lavender salts I use for the aches, without asking where they were.

Then he lowered me into the tub, still in his arms, and his knees were wet.

"Move up," I said.

"What?"

"Get in. There's room if you sit behind me."

He stripped off his jeans.

He stepped in behind me, and the water rose, and his chest settled against my back with his legs on either side of mine.

I closed my eyes.

For a minute I just floated.

The heat sank into my thighs and my shoulders, and the ache let go in long slow pulls.

Roe took a washcloth and wrung it out over my collarbones, and ran it down my arms.

"Tell me where it hurts."

"Everywhere."

"Tell me anyway."

"My thighs. Mostly the front. And the backs of my shoulders."

He put his big hands on my shoulders, and his thumbs dug into the knots.

I moaned, and I could not help it.

Behind me his chest rose and fell a little faster.

"Don't make that sound if you want me to behave," he said.

"I don't want you to behave."

His hands stopped.

"Elke."

"I can still tell you what I want," I said. "I want your hands on me. Here."

I took his wrist under the water and drew his hand down over my stomach and between my legs.

He sucked in a breath against the back of my head.

His fingers slid through the water and found me, slick and swollen, and I let my head fall back onto his shoulder.

"Slow," I said. "Two fingers."

He gave me two.

He curled them inside me, already familiar with my body from the night before.

"Yes. There."

His other arm wrapped across my chest and held me up against him.

His thumb found my clit and circled, and the water slopped over the edge of the tub.

"That's it," he said into my ear. "That's my Luna. Let me hear you."

I let him hear me.

The sound bounced off the tile, loud and unembarrassed, and he groaned and pressed his hard cock against the small of my back.

"I want you in me," I said. "Now. I want to feel you while I come."

"You tell me how."

"Sit back against the end. I'll turn."

I turned in the water, slowly, with his hands steadying my hips.

I straddled his lap and the water poured off us both.

His cock slid into me in one smooth push, and I sank down onto it with a cry.

We stayed still for a moment, forehead to forehead.

"Elke," he whispered.

I laughed against his mouth.

"Don't stop. I'll tell you what I need."

"Yes, ma'am."

I rocked my hips, a small slow roll, and the water lapped around us.

He kept his hands on my waist and let me set the pace.

His mouth found my neck, then my shoulder, then the swell of my breast, and he took my nipple between his lips and sucked.

I gasped and pushed down harder.

"Roe, just like that."

"I've got you."

"Don't let me slide."

"I won't."

The pressure built low and heavy, and I held onto his shoulders and rode him in long unhurried strokes.

The ache in my thighs was still there, but the warmth ran over it, and I could move without fear.

"Look at me," I said.

He looked.

His blue eyes were dark and wet, and his lips were parted.

I watched his face as I came, and I did not look away.

It broke over me in a long soft wave, and I squeezed around him and heard him say my name in a cracked voice.

He thrust up once, twice, deep and shaking.

"Elke," he groaned. "Fuck, Elke."

He came with his face pressed to my chest.

I held his head against me, and the water went still.

We sat there for a long time.

His arms were around me and the lavender steam curled up around our heads.

"This is a bad morning," I said at last, dazed.

"Is it?"

"It's the best bad morning I've ever had."

He laughed, a real one, that shook the whole tub.

Then somebody tapped on the bathroom door.

"Elke?" my mother said, hoarse and small. "Honey, I let myself in. I'm sorry. I'm just going to say this."

Roe went still under me.

I put a hand on his chest.

"Say it, Mom."

"The healer says the bond needs a week."

I closed my eyes.

"A week," my mother said, and her voice broke. "Just give it a week, and then you'll walk."

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