Matthew's Chance (17 page)

He shuffled forward until his hips were close to Ash’s bottom and he gave Ash’s spine one last wet lick, a move that made Ash growl and whimper and dig at the floor, and then Matthew slipped his fingers free of Ash.

“I hope—well, I know I’m going to like this and I hope to hell you do too.” With that, Matthew grabbed his dick and pushed himself in against that puckered hole and he started a slow glide into Ash’s body.

“Mate,” Ash said.

“Yeah,” Matthew said. “You’re mine now, just mine.”

A rumble rose from Ash’s chest, not quite the same as the rumble that set Matthew’s nerves on edge. A warm tingle spread through him, from scalp to fingernails to toes. Matthew thrust forward, burying his cock to the root inside Ash, gasping with the pleasure of sinking into such tight heat.

Ash roared, making Matthew’s fingers clench tight on Ash’s hips, and he fucked Ash through whatever pleasure he seemed to be finding with Matthew inside him, rocking forward until his knees were like stumps holding him up and his breath came ragged and fierce and his orgasm swelled through him, drawing his balls up tight.

He came inside Ash, grunting with the effort to push himself in as deep as he could get, and his release came quickly, shooting off so powerfully he thought he wasn’t going to be able to catch his breath.

Ash’s elbow slid from under him and he rocked back against Matthew’s hips.

Matthew dropped his head to Ash’s back, his forehead sliding in the slick sweat coating Ash’s skin. “You okay?” he muttered.

“Mate me again,” Ash said.

Or “fuck me,” because Matthew honestly couldn’t distinguish between the intonations that differentiated the words in the wolves’ language at that point through the blood rushing in his head.

Two seconds after that Matthew’s brain finally made the connection and he recognized the problem he was about to have.

Heat season meant the wolves had almost no refractory period when they were in the midst of a heat cycle. Fletcher had told him that years ago and Brendan had confirmed it.

There was no way in hell he was going to get hard again fast enough for Ash.

Fuck.

Matthew grasped the back of Ash’s neck. Ash stilled.

“We should go back to your house,” Matthew said. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see Kem, but the space where Kem had stood earlier was empty. “Alpha Craig and Ian should have some privacy.”

The sounds coming from their direction were hard to ignore.

Ash raised his head, looking that way. “We should show our submission,” he said. “Alpha would like that.”

Matthew slipped out of Ash more quickly than he’d intended, and he heard the hitch in Ash’s breathing. He nearly fell on his ass in his hurry to yank up his pants.

He’d never participated in group sex before and although his heart jumped in his chest at the idea, he wasn’t anywhere near ready to take that step—not today, maybe not ever—but definitely not today.

“I, uh—no,” Matthew said, hands fumbling his first button. “I don’t see how that’d be safe for either of us right now.”

He’d heard the wolves became extremely possessive during the heat season, and everything he’d seen backed up that belief.

“We’re a mated pair now. He won’t feel threatened. And Alpha’s mate enjoys it when—”

“No—don’t tell me,” Matthew said, more vigorously than probably necessary. “I don’t want to know what kind of submission you’re talking about or what you might’ve been doing to Ian over the last three years while I’ve been—while we weren’t—” Matthew blew out his breath noisily and finished buttoning his pants. “I can’t. Maybe it’s a human thing but I can’t share you like that right now.”

Ash made that weird rumbling sound again and knelt, then pulled up his trousers with shaking hands. He had to be working hard to keep control over himself with his heat cycle still on him.

Matthew reached around Ash and covered Ash’s hands. “Let me,” he said softly. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to take care of you but I’ve heard about how you treat your mates during the heat season, and I know it’s my place to try.”

Ash released his grip on his waistband and Matthew leaned over just a bit so he could see what he was doing as he pushed the button through the holes.

“I know this isn’t your custom,” Ash said, low and hoarse, “but it means something very important to us.”

Matthew shook his head and his cheek rubbed against Ash’s shoulder. “I know. Tell me if I don’t do something I’m supposed to do. I don’t want you to think—”

Ash clasped Matthew’s hands tightly. “I’ll only think you’re human and that you don’t have any experience with mates.”

“Okay…” Matthew let his breath out slowly. “Good. Because I meant what I said earlier. I would never want to hurt you and I’m not just talking about physical pain.”

Ash turned on his knees and took Matthew in his arms. “You haven’t hurt me.”

“Okay,” Matthew said, pressing his overly hot cheek tight against Ash’s warm ear. “I just, I—I—”
Love you so much
, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t get the words out just then and he gave up.

“I need to fuck.” Ash’s voice wavered as he spoke. “I can’t think.” He dragged his face against Matthew’s jaw. “It’s time to go or I’m not going to be able to resist any longer, even if you demand I do.”

“Okay,” Matthew said, rising to his feet. He offered Ash his hand.

Ash took it. “My mate, my life,” he said, looking up at Matthew from where he still knelt at Matthew’s feet. “I’m afraid of my fate. We can’t always understand what the Diviners words mean, but they scare me.”

With those strange words, Ash clutched Matthew around his waist and squeezed, hugging him so tightly that Matthew had trouble keeping his balance.

He tangled his fingers in Ash’s hair. “Can’t be that bad, can it?”

“My fate—I never wanted you to be my true mate,” Ash said, voice cracked and raw. “I still don’t want you to be my true mate—”

Matthew’s lungs felt like they were made of glass.

But Ash wasn’t done speaking, and what he still had to say did more than steal Matthew’s breath.

The words sent a shiver of cold hard dread into Matthew’s very bones.

“They tell us our fate,” Ash said, speaking in the wolves’ language, “and I don’t want your fate tied to mine. But I can’t deny it any longer. You are my true mate. ‘Your fate will find you on the eve of your true mate’s death,’ they told me. ‘Your pain will know no bounds and your heart no comfort until what’s lost has been found.’”

“He isn’t going,” Ash said, his voice tight and hard in the cold light of the overcast afternoon. His latest heat cycle had ended shortly before a wolf had come knocking at the door of Ash’s room, asking for Matthew and Ash to meet privately with Alpha Craig and Alpha Rick for a meal.

“This isn’t for you to decide,” Alpha Rick said from the far end of the table. “He’ll submit to First Alpha’s request and you’ll submit to him.”

Alpha Rick seemed to have recovered from the events of the night before last, and like Ash, Rick had only the faintest marks left on what Matthew could see of his face and neck.

Even though Rick appeared to be on the repression drugs or in the lull between heat cycles, he hadn’t moved from his place at the far end of the long table since Matthew had walked in behind Ash, leaving the other end for Craig and Ian, Matthew and Ash.

Rick also hadn’t eaten, even as Matthew had followed Craig’s lead and fed Ash every bite of his meal—a way to show his appreciation for Ash’s submission, Ian had explained.

Having Ash lick food off his fingers had been strange, and Ash had actually nipped his fingertips once.

“Son of a bitch,” Matthew had said while shaking the sting out of his fingers. He hadn’t been able to hold his glare with Ash looking at him so wide-eyed and solemn.

“I’m hungry and you’re too slow.” Ash gestured across the table where Craig was feeding Ian the very last bite from his platter and then at Matthew’s own platter, still half-filled.

Matthew snorted and touched the bottom of Ash’s lip with a piece of bread. “I’ve never done this before.”

Ash snatched the bread right out of Matthew’s fingers with his teeth. Matthew jerked his hand back.

He’d glared suspiciously at Ash. The son of a bitch had been laughing at him—Matthew had seen it in the crinkle around his eyes.

He’d known then he could really get used to seeing a less serious side of Ash—if only he could get Ash’s words from earlier in the day out of his mind.

Would he die tomorrow? Matthew had never really believed in any kind of predetermined fate, and so he couldn’t believe that someone—anyone, even these Diviners the wolves had—could tell him what tomorrow would bring.

If everyone’s lives had already been planned out for them by the universe then what was the point of
life
?

His thoughts had been interrupted by three young wolves who had arrived to remove the platters. Just before the last of the three youngsters had picked up Matthew’s platter, Ash had reached out and snagged the boy by the back of his neck. The boy had flashed his teeth and growled at Ash, but Ash hadn’t reacted to that other than to twist in his seat and pull the boy forward toward Matthew.

“My oldest,” Ash had said. “From my first.
Atishetishiki er tio Kemeareaieskiat
or Ethan as he’s chosen to be called now that First Alpha has asked us to choose human names.” Then Ash had introduced them, told Ethan to wait, and Matthew had spent the next few minutes uncomfortably aware of the boy’s nervous stare as Matthew had hurried to finish feeding Ash.

Considering that Brendan had once told him that First Alpha had over sixty kids, Matthew hadn’t been that surprised when Ash had told him he had children. That didn’t mean he knew what he was supposed to do with them now that he and Ash had mated.

Assuming he lived long enough to do more than meet the one.

He’d forced his thoughts onto something else.

Now, though, there was no way to deny the possibility that tomorrow might be the last day of his life, because he was about to agree to meet up with Cam Lujan so that he could draw Jay out of whatever hole he was in and find out where those fucking bullets had come from.

Matthew shuffled his feet and tried not to hold his arms quite so tensely across his chest as he stood behind the chair he’d been sitting in earlier. “We should do it,” he told Ash. “It’s important. And then, after this, I’m done. One of the other volunteers can step in, just like you wanted.”

“No,” Ash said. “I don’t want you to leave the safety of the den.”

Matthew looked across the table to Alpha Craig and Ian. “He’s being overprotective. You probably know why.” Matthew looked sideways at Ash and wondered just how far Ash’s submission would get him. He sighed and leaned onto the table, slapping the top lightly. “We’ll go.”

“We won’t,” Ash said, eyes fixed on Alpha Craig across from him.

Alpha Craig didn’t respond to Ash, merely turned his intent gaze on Matthew.

Ash was still sitting, and Matthew turned to him again. “You will, because it’s the right thing to do for your people.”

Ash flattened his hands on the table, his jaw clenched stubbornly.

“Don’t you get it?” Matthew asked. “What if I trip on the porch steps and break my neck on the way back to your room?” He waved his hand in the air. “Or—or—what if I drop dead because my heart explodes, or there’s an aneurysm in my brain, or the biotech starts fighting with my immune system again—there are so many ways I could die I can’t even mention them all. We’d be here all night.”

Ash’s fingers curled against the top of the table with an audible scratch of claw on wood.

Matthew plopped down into his chair again, sideways, and put his hand on Ash’s thigh. “It’s alright, you know. Whatever happens.”

Ash closed his eyes momentarily and when he reopened them, he looked at Matthew and Matthew could read the worry in them. “I’m not ready.”

“Yeah, and neither am I, but if fate’s real then there’s nothing I can do about it, and if it’s not, then there’s no reason for us not to go.”

Ash covered Matthew’s hand, the warmth of his palm soaking into Matthew’s skin. “I won’t hide from my fate, but I’m not eager to meet it if it means you’re going to die.”

Matthew forced a grin. “We all gotta go sometime.”

“Not you, not now.”

“Ash…”

“No.”

“I don’t want to do this with anyone but you. I can’t leave you without a heat mate.”

“Then stay.”

“We need to do this.”

“Someone else can do this.”

Matthew saw Ian share a quick glance with Craig but Craig merely continued to watch silently, as did Rick.

“I’m the one Lujan knows. Unless Jay’s got to him, he’s not going to know I’m the one responsible for his people being caught.”

“No,” Ash said again.

Matthew smacked the table. “Goddammit, Ash.”

“We’re mated. Your fate matters more to me than my own. You’re my life. And I can’t agree with this.”

“Son of a—” Matthew bit off the curse and grabbed Ash’s hand. “Submit, goddammit, so we can do the right thing here.”

Ash dropped his head forward and he sat silent for a moment. “I submit,” he said and the words shocked Matthew to his core.

“Just like that? I ask you to submit and you do it? After all that arguing?”

Ash raised his head and met Matthew’s gaze. “Yes.”

“You’re giving in that easy? This isn’t a trick of some kind to make me think—”

“Give in?” Ash’s expression might have passed for a frown, but Matthew wasn’t sure. “I’m not giving in. This is no trick. I’m offering submission. It’s our way.”

Craig finally spoke from across the table. “His submission is a gift. If he argued, the gift would have less value. Accept the gift.”

Matthew glanced at Ian. Ian’s shoulder lifted in a barely perceptible shrug.

Craig turned a pointed look on Ian.

Ian stared back wide-eyed and innocent. “What?” Then, because apparently Ian couldn’t take the way Craig’s eyebrows rose, Ian added, “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I just thought he might appreciate a little empathy. This stuff is confusing.”