Carnival of Hearts: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (18 page)

The big top show that evening had felt, for Lucien, like it went on forever. He had gotten so frustrated that he’d taken a swipe at Baptiste in his lion skin, the great cat’s heart overwhelming his own for a moment. Baptiste had scrambled back and the crowd had gasped, and Lucien had realized he needed to get himself under control, and quickly.

Now he was in his little dressing tent attached to the big top, pacing back and forth across the faux bearskin rug he always threw down to freak out audience members who tried to sneak in to meet him. He was pacing, half-dressed, a glass of bourbon in one hand, because it was the only way he knew to rid himself of restless energy. Liam had told him that Thomas and Max had come to the carnival, that Greta’s fight was at dawn, and it was all Lucien could do to keep from going to the pack to rip Thomas’s face off himself. But that wouldn’t help Greta, and it wouldn’t make her happy either. He just wanted her to be happy. He wanted her to be
his
and happy, but if he couldn’t have that, he’d just settle for her happiness. If only he knew how to give that to her. He wanted Greta happy and Kat safe. Why did those things seem so impossible suddenly?

He wanted to go to Greta, but he was afraid they would fight again, and he would only make it worse. So he’d gone out of his way to avoid her all day, to give her the space she seemed to need and want. It killed him. It made that darkness in his heart pulse. It made the lion pace back and forth in his soul, so he paced to satisfy it, but it wasn’t working. By his second glass of bourbon, he’d more or less decided to kill Thomas and take control of the pack himself, because he couldn’t think of another way to keep the women he loved safe.

As he turned from one end of the tent towards the other, the entrance flap got shoved aside and he stopped walking, watching Greta duck into the tent. He went still, looking at her, and she went still, looking back at him. How was it that she got more and more gorgeous to him as time went by? Every time he laid eyes on her, whether it was years or hours apart, she was more beautiful than the time before. Whether they were fighting or making love or just looking at each other, she was perfect to him. Frustrating and powerful and perfect.

“Lucien,” she said, and he heard her voice shake a little. “I love you.”

Fireworks popped behind his eyes and inhaled a deep breath, his heart pounding suddenly in his ears.

“What?”

“I love you,” she said again, more firmly this time. “I love you, but I don’t want to be submissive to you. I don’t want to submit to anyone.”

He nodded, slowly, trying to understand. “I love you too, Greta. You know I do. I always have. But…you said it was impossible.”

Her expression tightened and then relaxed. She twisted her fingers together in front of her and then let her hands fall to her sides and walked towards him. The closer she got, the more he felt his blood heat up in his veins. The more desire crackled between them, as it always did.

“Lucien,” she said softly. “Let me mark you.”

Surprise snapped through his brain and he blinked, staring hard down at her. “You mark
me
?”

“Yes.” Her eyes searched his face, and he wondered what exactly she was looking for. “Let me mark you. Become my mate. I’ll be strong enough then to defeat Thomas in the morning.”

“And what about me?” he asked. “What about us, after you defeat Thomas?”

She took one of his hands in hers and he let her, but his heart was still knotted with conflict.

“You wouldn’t be happy if you stayed with me, with the pack,” she said. “And I wouldn’t be happy if I left with you, if I rejoined the carnival. But what if…what if we stayed with the pack for half the year, and traveled with the carnival the other half? You stay alpha of the carnival, and I will be alpha of the pack.” Her eyes met his. “And we can love each other and have each other without hurting each other.”

His fingers curved reflexively with hers. “You really think it could work.”

She nodded a little. “Yes. And maybe eventually one of us will want something different out of life, Lucien, but I’ve never wanted or loved anyone the way I have you. I know that won’t ever go away. And I realize I’m stronger, I’m the best me I could be, with you.”

“And I with you,” he murmured. The admission made his heart hurt, but it was the best kind of ache. A true ache. “Greta, if we do this and you don’t defeat Thomas, I will kill him.”

Greta sighed, but she nodded. “I know you will. I won’t lose, Lucien. Not with you by my side. It’s taken me so long to realize it.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go,” he told her, voice thick with how real that was, how hard a reality it had been to accept. He should have found a way to make her stay. He should have worked harder. He should have known that the mark was not a thing that ought to be used to bind them. It was meant to be used to strengthen them, to unite them, to bolster their love and mutual respect. It wouldn’t have worked before. They hadn’t been ready. Now, though, now perhaps they were, at last. Almost twenty years later. Lucien found himself smiling. Better late than never.

“I’m sorry that I was such a fool,” he whispered.

She let go of his hand and reached up, hands cradling his face as she smiled back. “I forgive you. I love you.”

Lucien snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her body against his, bowing his head to sink a fierce, hot kiss to her mouth. Outside, the carnival crowds were beginning to thin and dissipate, and soon the night lamps would twinkle on and the flood lights would wink out, leaving the big top dark. Lucien decided, as Greta kissed him back and grabbed handfuls of his hair, that Liam would handle shutting down the carnival for the night. He had more pressing matters to attend to at the moment, desire coiling rapidly inside him. It came so swiftly with Greta, passion so intense and instantaneous that it left his head spinning. He backed her towards the writing desk in a corner of the tent, grabbing her by the hips to lift her to a seat atop it.

The marking could be a ceremony, but between them it was not. They didn’t need a ceremony or mysticism to tell them what to do, how to honor the love between them. It was instinct and it was natural between them, and though Lucien’s heart thundered in his ears as he tugged the cutoff shorts from Greta’s legs and stepped between her thighs, every heavy breath that escaped her lips drove him wild with want. He spilled her down across the writing table and bent over her, putting his lips to the pulse in her throat, and felt a jolt of satisfaction when it jumped beneath his tongue, when he could taste her desire on her skin. It was a familiar, beloved flavor.

She wrapped her legs around his waist as she lay back on the desk, blond hair spilling over the edge, and he watched as she pulled the t-shirt up and over her head, pale breasts bared. He traced the flesh beneath them with his fingertips, already so hard that it was beginning to throb between his legs. But this was not about a quick rut to satisfy impulses; this was about making love. Not in anger, either, but in adoration and acceptance.

He leaned down, kissing the valley between her breasts, and then began kissing a trail down her stomach, fingers slipping beneath the band of her panties to slide them down and over her knees. She toed out of them, let them drop to the floor, and he sank to his knees and began kissing up the inside of her thigh. He smiled against her skin when he heard her breath quicken. He was going to worship her as he always should have, as she deserved.

She was already wet by the time his lips found the hot center between her thighs. He stroked a pair of fingertips down into the folds of her sex and licked once at her clit and she jerked on the table, a spasm going through her. He felt her sink her fingers into his hair as he put his lips to her clit and began to suck, slipping his fingers in and out of her in time with the suckling, of his lips and tongue. She started to writhe on the desk, gasping, her legs spilling over his shoulder as he sucked and licked and curved his fingers deep inside her. He could feel his own desire almost painfully now, but every little noise she made and every time he felt her legs tremble, he felt that hunger, a hunger to satisfy her first.

She lifted her hips suddenly, pressing herself against his face, and he slipped his tongue all the way inside her. She cried out, bucking, and gripped the edges of the desk as she came. Then, as Lucien was still licking her towards another climax, her grip on his hair tightened and she was pulling him up. He went, leaning over her, looking down into her flushed face, and smiled.

Greta had never had an orgasm like the one she had with Lucien’s mouth between her thighs. She looked up at him, still shivering with the aftershocks of it, and let go of his hair to reach between them and start unbuttoning his trousers. She could feel it building between them, the power of their love and the desire to mark and mate him forever. She could feel it blooming like her next orgasm. It would have to happen soon. She shoved his trousers down off his hips.

“I need you,” she told him softly, as she sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck, urging him between her legs again. “I’ve always needed you.”

“And I you,” he whispered. He slid his hands down her back, baring his teeth as his erection pressed against her sex, sliding over it. He tilted his head back, letting out a deep breath, and Greta lifted her hips, rocking slightly back until his cock met her entrance and slowly, slowly entered her. Lucien let out a low groan, sinking into her inch by delicious inch, and she dug her fingernails into his shoulders, back arching once he was fully inside her, filling her completely.

She drew her nails down his back and curved her fingers over his ass, cupping him, pulling him even more firmly into her. He planted his hands on the desk and it creaked softly as he withdrew a little and then bucked sharply back into her. She squeezed him and he groaned again, tucking his face against her throat, breath hot on her skin, in her hair, his cock pulsing inside her.

He pulled out further and drove back into her, and she let go of him to spill back down to the desk’s surface, arms above her head to hold on to the desk’s edge as he started pumping in and out of her more quickly, every slide of his length inside her driving her towards what she knew would be a powerful climax. She could feel it begin to burn in her belly and then light all through her, every nerve in her body brightening with pleasure and ecstasy.

She heard him growl, his pace hastening, and she knew he was coming close to the edge as well. The desk shook beneath them, their hips slamming together again and again and again, and Greta moaned as it mounted, lips parting against a gasp and a snap of her teeth. Then she sat up, even as he lanced into her once more, and she grabbed onto his shoulders and lifted in her seat, biting into the soft flesh of his throat as she came, the orgasm tearing violently through her as Lucien’s blood touched her tongue.

His arms cinched tight around her, and he turned his face into her neck and bit down. The sharp pain of the bite mingled with the helpless pleasure of her orgasm, sweetness and rage, and the wolf in her heart howled in triumph as the mark blazed between them. Lucien began to shake with his own orgasm, and they clutched at each other, blood and sweat and satisfaction mixing between them, binding them together forever.

They stayed like that for a long time, just holding each other as the ebb and flow of their passions receded. Eventually Lucien picked her up off the desk and collapsed with her onto the bearskin rug, tucking her close against his chest. They stayed tangled together, breathing, hearts beating in time, until after a long while they slept, as the carnival night lights popped on and the quiet of the fairground descended.

After several hours of sleep, Greta awoke with an awareness of the world around her that she had not had before. She could feel her heartbeat and Lucien’s, knew that the sky had begun to lighten with impending tomorrow. She kissed her Ringmaster awake and whispered to him that it was nearly time. Together, they got themselves ready, showering together in his little trailer, getting dressed and sitting with their heads bowed, having coffee. She found that though she had expected to be anxious about fighting Thomas, the mark had erased those feelings of anxiety. Lucien would be with her, always, no matter how far apart they might be physically, and that left her feeling strong and confident.

They were walking together hand in hand, across the carnival perimeter and into the forest, when they heard someone call out. They turned, and there was Kat, hurrying towards them.

“You can’t go without me!” she cried. “Dad! Stop!”

But she drew up short as she got close, looking them over, and saw the matching sigils on their throats, the same as the one that marked her own.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, and suddenly she smiled. “You did it!”

Lucien smiled back to her, nodding. “We did.”

“I’m strong enough now,” Greta confirmed. “Come on, let’s get you back to Max.”

Kat fell into step alongside them, and the three of them tromped through the forest, the sky above their heads easing from black to purple to a deep slate gray as they took the well-trod path back to the wolf pack’s clearing and the little cabin Greta so preferred. As they passed through the tree line, the scents of smoke and cooking meat accosted Greta’s nose. The fire pits were blazing, the hunters having brought back a feast, no doubt at Thomas’s order to prepare for the dominance fight.

The wolves were all awake and Greta perceived the skate of tension running through the pack as the three of them walked across the clearing to the cabin. The fire pits, she realized, had been rearranged into a circle in front of the cabin. And Thomas was waiting for her, sitting on the cabin’s front porch steps. He got to his feet when she stopped across the circle from him, throwing wide his arms as he stepped into it, naked and covered in the blood and ash of having killed his dinner and cooked it himself.

“Your would-be alpha comes to fight me with her orphans,” Thomas bellowed to the pack.

Greta felt some satisfaction when she saw the other wolves flinch. Max stood just at the edge of the circle, looking right at Kat. Greta toed Kat’s sneakers off her feet and stepped barefoot into the fighting ring, pacing to its center to meet Thomas there.

“Enough bullshit,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You don’t stand a chance,” Thomas snarled.

Greta arched an eyebrow at him, tilting her head slightly. The movement shifted her hair off her shoulder, away from her throat, and Thomas’s sharp eyes darted to that stretch of pale skin, no longer unblemished. His eyes widened as he realized what he was looking at.

“You let him mark you,” he said, dumbfounded.

“And I marked him in kind,” Greta confirmed, nodding. “Not so confident now, are you?”

Thomas let out a furious growl and stepped back, dropping to his knees as he shifted, bones crunching and skin bristling with fur. Greta took a step to the side and then dove for the ground, shifting in one smooth breath as she landed, her clothes cast off into the grass. Thomas bared his fangs and she bared hers right back, and they began to circle each other as the other wolves arrived at the edge of the ring to watch.

Greta felt the wolf overtake her and she gave herself over to it, rage and hunger and strength flooding her heart. It linked her right to Lucien, and she felt the pride and the power of the lion bolster her. She didn’t wait for Thomas to make the first move, but lunged at him, tackling him to the grass in a furious snapping of jaws and snarling.