Page 23 of Claimed

“What’s an elemental?” she suddenly asks as she slowly turns herself so her back is against my chest and I can wrap my arms around her. “And are vampires really real?”

“Did you not know other supernatural beings existed?” Maddox asks her gently.

“Just other shifters.”

“Elementals can manipulate the elements,” Gage starts to explain. “So an earth element can move earth and stone with their power, basically.”

“Wow. What about demons? They sound bad.”

“Most of them keep to themselves. They aren’t minions of the underworld like myth would have you believe. Some are good, some are bad, just like shifters,” Maddox tells her.

She looks down at her hands, which are resting on my arms as she speaks, a little quieter now. “I feel like there’s so much I don’t know.”

“That’s okay, pretty girl,” Chase says with a smile. “There’s lots I don’t know, either. That’s why we keep Gage around. He’s like a walking encyclopedia.”

A small smile tugs at her lips as she glances up through her lashes at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, but don’t ask him about cooking,” he says in a mock whisper, earning him a glare from Gage.

“My cooking isn’t that bad,” Gage argues.

“It’s okay,” Cherry says as she reaches out and pats Gage’s arm. “You’ve still got your brains and your good looks to fall back on.”

Chase and Hunter start laughing as Gage stares at her, his face doing a weird twitchy thing. Finally, he tells her, “I don’t know if I should be upset that you agree that I can’t cook, or happy that you think I’m good-looking.”

She nods her head excitedly. “Definitely the second one.”

That finally pulls a smile from him.

“Shall we try to lie down and watch some TV now?” Maddox asks. We all agree, and it takes some careful maneuvering to get Cherry into a position where we can all easily touch her. We end up moving her into the center of the bed, with my upper body pressed to her left side, Maddox on her right, the twins each wrapped around her legs, and her head resting against Gage’s stomach.

I move a little closer, pressing my face against her arm and inhaling her addictive scent. My wolf is pushing me to bite her, to knot her, and complete the bond. He’s even shown me an image of doing it in our wolf forms so we can get it done. But I refuse. It has to be done in our human forms first.

“Bain, is that your dick poking me in the shoulder?” Chase asks through the bond.

I smack his shoulder as I tell him to “Fuck off,” while making sure my hips are nowhere near him.

“He’s all worked up from the kiss,” Hunter teases.

“You two are just jealous,” I snap back.

“Of course we’re fucking jealous. I’ve been dreaming of kissing her since I first saw her face,” Chase says through the bond, sounding a little more upset than he sounded a moment ago, making me feel a little chastised. They’d all given me a moment to kiss her, and yet three of them hadn’t even had a peck yet.

We watch the TV in silence for a few minutes before Gage speaks through the bond. “We need to figure out how to get her to shift at will. It’s dangerous to leave her unbonded.”

What he isn’t saying is that if we don’t bond with her, and Blaze finds her here, we risk him trying to force one on her. Of course, I will never allow him to get within ten feet of her. But until she’s fully bonded to me, and I can feel her emotions I’m not going to be able to fully relax.

Although I probably never will until I’ve rid the world of all‌ her enemies.

At the top of the list is Dr. J and the guards from the facility. If I ever figure out a way to track them down, I won’t stop myself from ripping their heads off. Blaze’s name is right under theirs.

I wrap my arm a little tighter around Cherry’s, placing a kiss on the side of her arm. Feeling her staring, I tilt my head up and see her beautiful blue eyes on me. She smiles, then her fingers find mine, threading her tiny ones through my giant ones and squeezing tight.

A sudden, small burst of her arousal hits my nose, and my nostrils flare. Her eyes grow a little wide as her cheeks heat, and she quickly looks away, pretending her best to suddenly look invested in the TV.

“Oh, fuck,” Chase grumbles through the bond. “Who caused that? You realize my face is less than a foot away from where that addictive scent is coming from?”

“Nobody’s doing anything,” Maddox tells him. “She’s watching TV.”