Somewhere New (Isle of Doughnut #1)

Chapter Thirty-Three

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ASTER

A fter perhaps our longest cuddle yet—which said something as Callum and I were undisputed champions of the prolonged hug—Callum deposited me in the bathroom. He ran hot water and added my dried flowers to the tub, then helped remove my boulder-smushed clothing.

It wasn’t sexual, something I’d never expected to say about getting naked in his presence. Callum touched every inch of skin he carefully revealed, like he was reminding himself I was here. I smiled whenever he looked up, determined he would understand people could react positively to him being a wolf-man. He left me stewing in the tub to make dinner, and my brain kicked into gear.

I was living with a freaking werewolf. Callum was not human. He looked human, acted human most of the time, but he wasn’t. His essential nature was different to mine.

I didn’t know what that meant, but I wanted to.

‘I have questions.’ I tugged one of his jumpers over my head as I stumbled out of the bedroom.

Callum looked up from stirring tomato-y sauce. His face wasn’t shuttered, but his tiny smile wasn’t as warm and unguarded as it could be. ‘I thought you might.’

I walked over and hugged him from behind. My number one mission: to bring Callum’s proper smiles back. Really, I was performing service to the world. A proper Callum smile was a thing to behold.

I’d use everything in my arsenal to coax him into feeling comfortable with me again. My words, my smiles, a thousand hugs. Whatever he needed.

Despite the inches he had on me, Callum huddled in the circle of my arms. ‘Ask away.’

‘I need the book.’ I squeezed him, then plonked onto the sofa with Frank’s tome on my lap. While I flicked through to the werewolf section, Callum served up steaming bowls of tomato-slathered pasta topped with melting cheese.

‘Thank you.’ I took my bowl and balanced it on one knee, the book laid open on the other. ‘Right. Let’s see how much of this is true.’

The answer: a lot of it. Which had me rethinking how easily I’d dismissed all the other magical creatures. If most of the stuff about werewolves was right, then maybe fairies and trolls and even yetis walked around in the midst of us unsuspecting humans.

‘What can you smell right now?’ I set my empty bowl on the floor for Tim and Albert to lick clean. While eating, Callum and I had covered his healing abilities—phenomenal—and his strength—I no longer needed to worry he might hurt his back hauling me about the place during sexy times. But I was freaked out by the advanced senses the book talked about .

Callum put his bowl on the coffee table—much to the disgust of the goats—and closed his eyes.

‘This would be different outside. I can scent across most of the island when there’s nothing in the way. I would be able to smell the goats and the village and my old home.’ A small frown marred his perfect features. ‘I can just about smell all that now, but the scents in the cabin are much stronger.’

‘What are they?’ I shifted to sit cross-legged, facing him.

He breathed deep. ‘Our dinner. The garlic is strong. I can smell the goats, the fire, the chopped wood. The freshness of outdoors on my clothes, the flowers from your bath.’

That was a lot of things to absorb at once. It didn’t stop my squirmy discomfort. ‘Can you smell me at all?’

Callum’s eyes snapped open. ‘I can always smell you.’

‘Shit.’ I grimaced. ‘Sorry. That must be annoying. No wonder you didn’t want me here when I first came to the island.’

Callum scowled. ‘I could smell you as soon as you arrived.’

‘Is everyone like that, or am I particularly pungent?’

His eyes narrowed, then he tugged on my arm. He kept tugging until I straddled his legs. He pushed his face into the join between my neck and shoulder.

‘Aster, the day you arrived on the island I couldn’t concentrate because of a new scent I couldn’t get a handle on. I didn’t know what it was.’ He inhaled against my skin. ‘When you came up here, I didn’t know how I would keep away from you. All I wanted was to breathe you in.’

‘Oh.’ I swallowed. ‘So being able to smell me all the time is a good thing?’

Callum took a shuddering breath. ‘I’ve never smelt anyone remotely like you. Other people stay the same. Their key scent might change depending on what they’ve done that day, but the core remains unchanged. But you. You’re the smell of dawn on a spring day. You’re the freshest bread and new roses and crashing waves. You’re sweet and warm in a hundred different ways.’

I clutched at his shoulders. ‘Is it because I’m a witch?’

Callum pulled back from my neck, his eyes glazed like he was drunk on my unpindownable scent. ‘I don’t think so. It’s because you’re you.’

I blinked at him. I didn’t know how to take that. Callum kept saying things like this, things that—if we didn’t have a clear end date to what was happening between us—I could interpret in deep and meaningful ways. Callum couldn’t mean it like that though. He knew the deal. He just thought I smelt nice. Anything extra I interpreted from that was wishful thinking.

I lent forwards and inhaled against his neck. Because of the position Callum had pulled me into, I could feel how it affected him. His jeans tightened, his back arched. A low rumble vibrated in his chest.

‘Do you like it when I smell you?’ I sat back.

Callum nodded, his eyes even more unfocused. ‘Especially there. It’s a vulnerability thing, baring my neck to someone. It feels dangerous, but in a good way.’ His eyes flicked between mine. ‘I trust you with every bit of me.’

There he went again, saying something that could easily be misinterpreted to mean way more than what was allowed. To avoid saying something that needed no unpicking to be seen as way over the line, I leant in to trace my nose up his neck.

Callum groaned. His hands leapt to my waist when I repeated the action with my tongue .

‘How does being a werewolf affect sex?’ I whispered into his skin. ‘Is that why you waited?’

Callum shuddered as I ran my teeth across his collarbone. ‘No. I think that’s a me thing.’

I smiled. ‘Don’t avoid the first question, Cal.’

His skin heated under my lips. ‘I’m not sure. It makes things more intense, maybe? The smell of your cum is a concentrated shot of you.’

My turn to moan. Who knew being smelled so intricately and intimately could be a turn-on?

Callum stilled underneath me, so I raised my head. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth.

‘Whatever you have to say, I want to hear it,’ I reassured him.

His eyes fixed on my chest, he said, ‘It was the reason I didn’t want to top. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to keep my claws and fangs inside.’

I braced my hands against his chest to rear back. ‘There is so much in those sentences we need to unpack.’ I shook my head, trying to reshuffle my queries into priority order. ‘Right. Claws?’

Callum stared at me for a long moment before raising his hands on either side of my arms. Slowly, his long fingers topped with ordinary blunt nails grew into blackened claws. They extended inches beyond where his fingertips had been, the ends intimidatingly sharp.

I touched along the edges of the hard, black skin. ‘You have motherfucking claws.’

When I looked up, Callum’s mouth was open. His upper canines had extended and sharpened.

I leant forwards to get a better look, his clawed hands curling around my forearms to keep me steady. The sharp tips pressed into my skin. ‘I thought being a witch was cool, but you are so much cooler.’

Callum retracted his claws and fangs. I turned one of his hands over. No hint of what waited underneath.

‘You really don’t mind?’ Callum had put on his neutral mask, which meant this was of the utmost importance.

‘I don’t mind.’ I leant forwards to kiss him. ‘I wish you would stop upstaging me, though. I’m not sure there’s a competition in the world I would win against you.’

‘Talking,’ Callum said promptly. ‘And you know more types of flower than me.’

‘Wow.’ I kissed him again and leant back to rest on his thighs. ‘You’re giving me nattering and botany.’

Callum’s face was serious. ‘You’re braver than me. And kinder. You’re generous and funny and clever.’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘I guess I am all those things.’ Like an irritating neighbour—who I would shower with gifts—my brain reminded me we had something more pressing to talk about than the many wonders of Aster. ‘You didn’t want to top because you were scared of revealing you’re a werewolf? Well, you don’t have to be afraid of that any more.’

If he hadn’t already done it multiple times, I would have yelped when Callum slotted his hands under my thighs and stood up. As it was, I made a totally unstartled high-pitched noise. I clung to his shoulders as he walked through to the bedroom and lowered me onto the bed.

I’d only put on two items of clothing after my bath, so my—Callum’s—jumper and pyjama bottoms were quickly stripped away. Callum’s undressing was more complicated, not helped by his fingers slipping over his shirt buttons and his hands shaking as he pushed off his jeans. I didn’t know whether his unusual lack of coordination was a result of emotional overstimulation or the prospect of getting in me soon. I hoped the latter.

I wanted Callum to lose control. I wanted him to bury himself inside me until he howled, helpless to keep his claws and fangs contained.

I reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the lube. ‘You want me to do this bit or you?’

Callum looked slightly offended as he took the lube and dripped it over his hands. He knelt between my legs and watched intently as he pressed his finger against me. He rubbed there for a minute, making the skin flutter.

‘Please, Cal,’ I whined, writhing on the rucked blankets as though that would persuade him to actually put something inside me. ‘I want you to finger me.’

His gaze grew intent. I couldn’t stop my hitching moans as he slowly pressed a finger inside.

Callum preparing me was beyond anything I’d experienced before. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t done this in a while. I hadn’t done it with someone I was so profoundly attached to. I refused to put any other label on it, but my feelings for Callum were stupidly deep. They made his every move overwhelming.

He added a second finger. The expensive lube made the way slick as he pressed and scissored. I was tempted to tell him that was enough, but it had been a while and Callum was well endowed. I didn’t regret the decision when Callum added a third finger and immediately rubbed across my prostate.

‘Oh, fuck.’ I arched off the bed, my dick leaking onto my stomach. ‘Stop that soon or I’m going to come.’

Reluctantly, Callum withdrew his fingers. I panted, staring up at the ceiling, then reached blindly for a condom.

Callum stared at the foil package in my hand, visibly straining for the right words. ‘I don’t need protection.’

‘It’s for both of us,’ I said, baffled at having to give an impromptu safe sex talk when Callum hadn’t objected to using a condom the many— many— other times we’d had sex.

‘No. We don’t need it.’ Callum gritted his teeth, frowning over his inability to talk once all the blood in his body had relocated to his dick. ‘It’s a werewolf thing. I can’t get or pass on anything.’

‘Oh.’ I looked at the condom. ‘You want to go bare?’

Callum closed his eyes. ‘Yes.’

I’d not done that before. I’d never been with someone I trusted enough. But Callum had only ever had sex with me, and his wolfy powers meant he couldn’t catch or transmit anything. I’d have to add that nugget of wisdom to Frank’s book.

I threw the condom in the general direction of the bedside table and grabbed the lube. Slicking my hands, I ran them up and down Callum’s erection.

‘Come on, Cal.’ I wiped the excess lube on the blankets and used vaguely clean hands to pull him on top of me. ‘I want you inside me.’

He growled. Literally growled. He’d done it before, but I hadn’t registered how animalistic he sounded. Now I knew a wolf prowled under the surface, evidence it was breaking free sent a weird thrill down my spine.

Callum lifted one of my legs, slotting my knee over his elbow. He breathed deep, his eyes fixed on where our bodies met, then pressed forwards.

It was impossible to tell who emitted what sound as Callum pushed relentlessly into me. We made a fucking cacophony. It was fortunate everyone else on the island lived miles away because there was no way we wouldn’t have woken the whole village—humans and werewolves alike—with the amount of noise made.

Then Callum moaned in a way I’d become delightfully familiar with. I pressed my fingers into the muscles of his back, gasping at the shockwaves of pleasure riding through me as he hitched his hips in tight thrusts.

‘You came?’ I clarified after he stilled, his head resting on my chest. ‘That’s okay, Cal. It was your first time. No one lasts their first time. And you didn’t wear a condom. They make everything way less sensitive.’

Callum lifted his head and I schooled my expression into one of gentle acceptance. There was no shame in blowing his load quickly. Hell, I hadn’t lasted more then ten seconds my first time inside another person.

But the expression on Callum’s face wasn’t embarrassment or regret or any of the other things I might have expected. More than ever before, he looked hungry. Ravenous.

He growled, low in his throat. The vibrations shot through our every point of contact. In the split second before he blinked, his eyes burned with a strange yellow light.

Then he pumped his hips, and every other consideration except getting more of that action fled.

I should have remembered Callum could get hard again in two seconds flat. He might have orgasmed immediately upon getting inside me, but that didn’t mean this was over.

I groaned as he pulled further back, then snapped his hips forwards. More than lube made the way smooth and slick.

I wanted to comment on his ludicrous refractory period. I wanted to ask about his eyes’ yellow glow. I wanted to check his mouth and hands, see how wolfy he was. But that all required diverting my focus from where Callum drove himself inside me with the perfect amount of speed and pressure.

I cried out when he hit my prostate. From then on, thoughts of anything other than making this last as long as possible and getting as much of my skin on as much of Callum’s skin as possible was lost. My existence zeroed in on the beautiful man on top of and inside me.

He kissed me, his tongue pressing into my gasping mouth. I did the same, and could feel his sharpening canines. His hands braced on the mattress either side of my shoulders. I’d bet anything there would be claw marks in the blankets.

I felt so close to coming, but didn’t follow the temptation to grab my dick. I wanted to come from Callum inside me, his stomach rubbing over my erection, his mouth licking and kissing across my neck.

He raised his head. Nothing stopped, nothing changed, but in the maelstrom of chasing our orgasms, there was a moment of stillness. Callum didn’t speak, but I felt like he said things with that look. Things we weren’t meant to say. Things I wanted to say. Things I wanted to hear.

Then the moment ended. I was left wondering if I’d imagined it when Callum gave one long thrust and came a second time. The thought was enough to send me spiralling over the edge.

It took a long time for our breathing to calm. I whined in an incredibly adult way when Callum moved off me. He was tender as he attended to the mess we’d made, his fingers gentle as he cleaned my skin.

He settled in his habitual space at my side, his head resting on my shoulder and one arm slung over my chest .

‘Again.’ Words finally returned after my post-orgasm daze cleared. ‘We have to do that again.’

‘It wasn’t too much?’ Callum snuggled into my side.

I raised my arms to hold him closer. ‘It was freaking amazing.’

I could feel him beaming against my skin.