With that he rose, opened the door and let in her girls.
They eased into the room. Their faces were bruised, Emma was limping a bit.
“Em? What happened?”
“Stupid Wolf tripped me when I tried to rush to you,” she snarled, her gray eyes flashing. “Bastard wrenched my ankle and held me down until the shooting stopped.”
“Son of a bitch sheriff slipped up on me while I was trying to sneak into the shrubs and blow that f**ker Douglas’s head off,” Sharone snapped. “Knocked me out cold as hell about the same time Douglas caught Ashley by surprise.” A tray was set on the bed beside Anya, the scent of food beneath the metal dish covers making her mouth water.
“Milk,” Ashley growled. “Doc says you need the calcium for that little hell-raiser you’ve conceived. Geez, Anya, don’t you know about birth control? Do you know what a kid of his is going to be like?” She jerked her head to Del-Rey as he leaned against the wall and watched the Coyote girl show with something akin to male horror. “Hell, he probably doesn’t know how to breed girls either.”
Del-Rey winced and lifted his gaze to the ceiling as though he were praying.
She ate and listened to the girls fill her in. Between bites of chicken soup, baked potato and perfectly grilled steak with icy cold milk, she slipped looks at her mate. He listened and watched with complete male fascination and fear as they talked.
“Well, at least that arrogant pup Jax knows his place,” Ashley finally bit out. “I should have kept his earlobe as a trophy.”
Anya almost lost a drink of milk at that one. Del-Rey winced again.
“And on top of it all, they bring in those two totally uptight doctors from Russia. Katya refuses to go to the spa with us, and Alexi is just as stick-up-his-ass as he ever was,” Emma inserted.
“Yeah, but man, Petrov is as damned cute as he ever was. Forty-two looks good on him, Anya,” Sharone all but purred.
Anya winced. Sharone had a thing for her father that Anya had just never understood.
“I’ll shoot you if you sleep with my dad,” Anya warned her.
Sharone only laughed, her eyes twinkling in a way that made Anya throw Del-Rey a desperate look. Since when the hell did he let her father in Haven? Why? Why now? She was not listening to any more of Sharone’s perverted fantasies about her father. It so was not going to happen. Anya had suffered enough after Del-Rey had shot her father. Sharone had mooned over him for months.
She finished her meal, her eyes growing heavy as the girls argued over ceremony colors and shoes. She found herself drifting off, thinking of the white dress she had her heart set on, walking down the aisle on her father’s arm. Her cousins and their families there.
She felt warm. Liquid warm and excessively happy. For the first time in so long, the daydreams returned. Seducing her Ghost. Loving him. Touching him. Sharing things with him she had always longed to share. Sunrise and sunset. A caramel apple. The fights, the yelling, the loving. And wasn’t there something about sex that Wolf and Coyote Breeds just loved?
She opened her eyes and stared at him, imagining it, feeling a tingle of warmth where she knew she shouldn’t. Something so wicked, so forbidden.
Her gaze slipped to his thighs as the girls’ chattering finally stopped. Would he, when she was well? she wondered. Would it be safe?
“Girls, time to go.” His voice was husky, rough now as he moved from the wall. “Ashley, get the tray please.”
“Oh man, there they go getting all hot and bothered,” Ashley said and pouted. “I’m going to tell Armani on them. She’ll rein his ass in.”
“It’s not his ass that’s the problem,” Emma snickered as they moved from the bed.
“Night, Coya.” She was surprised by Ashley’s quick kiss to her cheek. “Kick his ass before you give him some. He was such a male Breed.”
“Yeah.” Anya grinned in delight. “He is, isn’t he?”
Ashley rolled her eyes as the girls left laughing. They were laughing. They were happy. And her mate was happy.
He moved to the bed, beside her, his lips lowering to hers gently, whispering over them. “No sex for three weeks,” he told her. “Doctor’s orders.”
She pouted. “I won’t last three weeks.”
“Three weeks,” he repeated.
But his lips slanted over hers, his tongue touched her lips, slipped between them. That taste of the mating hormone wasn’t there, but the heat, the hunger, the need still filled her.
This was her Coyote. Her mate. Her lover. He would be her husband. But first, damn, three weeks. She might not survive it.
“Four weeks was uncalled for.” Anya was sniping when she entered her and Del-Rey’s rooms.
She threw her PDA in a chair and turned to face him. “What did you do to her this time? What did Brim do to her? Four weeks, Del-Rey. She’s made me wait four weeks.”
“Just get your damned clothes off,” Del-Rey snarled as he jerked his boots off. Black eyes gleamed in hunger.
“Get ’em off or I’m ripping them off,” he snarled in complete male dedication to the arousal that had been about to drive them insane for weeks.
She jerked her sweater over her head.
“Brim’s been harassing her again, hasn’t he?”
“Hell if I care,” Del-Rey grunted as he ripped the buttons on his shirt in his desperation to get it off. “Stop bitching and get ready to start f**king.”
Her bra clip broke as she tore at it. Grimacing, she flung the piece of lace across the room before jerking her shoes from her feet.
Damn, Del-Rey was beating her. His pants were almost off. She tore at the snap on hers and pushed them, along with her panties, over her thighs. She was barely stepping out of them before she found herself picked up, gently, and moved to the bed. On her back.
He jerked the jeans off her legs and threw them behind him. He stopped then, stared down at her.
His fingers reached out and touched the small pink scar at her side.
“Don’t start, Coyote Man,” she ordered fiercely. Del-Rey could get rather intense over that scar. “We’re here to f**k, not stress over something that didn’t happen.”
“I can stress later?” He lifted his gaze to hers. “If I never forget, Anya, then I’ll never let my arrogance get out of hand again. I want to always remember what I nearly lost.”