Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2) by Sam Hall (readict books .TXT) 📗

top I was wearing until my cleavage was on display and rolling down the yoga pants until they sat as low on my hips as was polite.

“Fuck…” they both said, but Micah tapped his knuckles to Mason’s and pulled back, ready to fight, Mason responding in kind moments later. I watched them shuffle, then moved closer.

Male shifters have keen senses of smell that can pick up a lot from the scent of women. They can smell when we’re receptive, turned on, angry, or wanting them to piss right off. Apparently, the last one smells acrid, like burned hair or something. So as I moved in closer, I assumed they were getting a whole lot from me as they fought, the me that watched them work with a keen eye.

“Be careful,” Declan said from the ropes, but I moved with them, going through the steps of an especially savage dance. I knew it was working when both men’s eyes slid sideways, resulting in Micah catching Mason on the chin.

“Fuck!” he snapped, putting his fist to his jaw. “So we’re not pulling them? Good to know.”

And for a moment, I was disregarded as they each circled the other, looking for any opening. I could feel their focus like it was a buzzing inside me, a familiar feeling. My eyes flicked to Zack, who nodded, making me think he felt it too. I took a deep breath, bringing my awareness to here, now, and then tapped into that sensation. A gasp escaped my lips as I felt it—a vibrant web of threads, tying the lot of us together in so many ways. There were the bonds between me and my mates of course, but there were many threaded connections between all of us. Mason and his guys were tied tight, Zack and his brother obviously, as well as the links between the individual guys. The one that stood out was the very strong but very lonely bond between me and Lorcan.

It made me wonder if he still considered himself an Engel, an outcast within the group, because while some tentative threads reached out to the others, the vast majority narrowed down on me. I frowned, because I hadn’t realised that and certainly hadn’t done anything about it, moving forward blindly, only able to see those threads not the men themselves, so when I felt the whistle of a fist swinging through the air…

“Paige!”

The voice cut through the other sounds, shouting its warning, but they didn’t get it. I could feel it, Mason’s intent and trajectory, so I ducked under his arm at just the right time, skating past the two of them and following that intense bond back to its source.

“That was some amazing reflexes,” Lorcan said, taking me into his arms when I reached for him, his skin cool and clammy now, but I didn’t pull away. I wanted… It was hard to put into words. Now I saw how isolated he was, I needed to fix it, grab the threads of him and bind him to the others, weave a family around him to replace the dysfunctional one he’d left behind. All of that was broken off him now, with Gary, with the execution of the brothers… Maybe he was still connected to some of his Roth family, but he’d spent his life growing apart from them. I placed a hand on his stomach, feeling it tense before he covered it with mine. That connection pulsed with it, winding tighter and tighter around us.

I closed my eyes and lifted my mouth to his, felt his connect, felt the bond throb hard in response. Which seemed to summon him. I couldn’t stop kissing Lorcan. His hand cupped my jaw, pulling me into him, pouring all that hot, hot emotion that I felt down the bond into me, but as I was swept up in Lorcan, in his lips and his body and his heart, in the darkness of my mind, I saw a figure emerge. Glittering silver eyes, long black hair that flickered with an unseen breeze, he padded like the apex predator he was, in the shadow of a massive wolf.

I jerked back, breaking the contact, but Lorcan wasn’t having that. The bond wound tighter, his fingers biting into my skin as he hauled me back against his body. He sought my mouth, and when he couldn’t get that, his lips landed on any surface they could get, needing the taste of me.

“Lorcan?” someone asked, but I couldn’t see, could barely hear them. It was all him, all Lorcan, drowning me physically, psychically with him. My eyes were open, but I saw the giant wolf superimposed over everything, because the man and the wolf were the same, I somehow knew. And right now, Lorcan was his conduit.

He hunted the Moon Maiden, brought her down, tore her to pieces to get inside her, and now it felt like Lorcan was his avatar. Need slammed into me, all the aching, throbbing want that swelled in Lorcan’s soul, kept back for fear of hurting or alienating me. He, the giant wolf, whatever he was, he unlocked it. I was pushed hard against the ropes, Lorcan’s thighs between mine, his hands in my hair, his teeth on my skin, closing down on the muscle at the juncture between my neck and my shoulder.

“Mine!” he snarled when someone tried to touch him and pull him off, the sound muffled by his mouthful of me.

But that wasn’t to be. I felt them, the rest of my pack, move as one, hauling Lorcan off of me, a look of horror washing over his face when the silver in his eyes receded and the green returned.

“What the fuck was that?” he asked, frowning, staring at his hands, flexing them as if they were someone else’s.

“What the fuck indeed,” Zack said grimly. “We took this too fast, went too hard. Whatever this is, it’s powerful and unpredictable.”

“It’s him,” I replied. I didn’t explain who, because they all knew. Not Lorcan,