The Scent of His Woman (Northern Wild Book 1) Read online

  They slowed as the bush got thicker, but neither of them spoke. The expectation was too palpable, too intense to acknowledge with feeble words. She felt it flow through her veins like honey, coating her soul with anticipation.

  Trace lifted a branch that was blocking their path, and she stepped beneath into a natural paradise. Kennedy gasped aloud at the beauty of the small clearing and stepped forward into the sunlight.

  She turned slowly, taking in the tiny meadow, the slowly trickling brook that edged it, and the wildflowers that interrupted the verdant green with splashes of bright, joyful color. Kennedy grinned and twirled around like a child.

  “You’re so beautiful.” Trace’s rumbling voice made the butterflies in her stomach come alive again. They were alone, with nothing between them but the air they breathed. No people, no animals, no shift, and no hesitation. Kennedy dropped her hands to the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head, revealing her bare breasts. She smiled slowly and walked forward into his waiting arms.

  He lifted her so easily, his strong arms settling at her waist and then wrapping around her as she twined her legs around his hips. Instantly, he settled her lower, so his thick erection pressed against her most intimate space. The pressure made her moan and throw her head back, exposing her throat and breasts to Trace’s waiting lips.

  He took her invitation, bowing over to touch his lips to her neck. He feasted, trailing his tongue over her skin, lapping at her jawline and collarbone until she couldn’t draw a breath. Kennedy bucked her hips, riding the exquisite hardness that was bringing her closer to the edge.

  Trace moved one hand from her back and lifted it to her left breast, cupping it in his hand. His mouth shifted from her throat, capturing her mouth, just as his rough fingers closed around her nipple. Kennedy gasped into his mouth, shocked at her own reactions. Never before had she enjoyed having her breasts touched, never before had she gasped and moaned and rode a man to…

  Kennedy screamed as an orgasm hit her like a locomotive, slamming into her too fast to see it coming. She squeezed her legs around Trace as waves of pleasure washed over her, sending spasms through her entire body. As they ebbed, Kennedy felt her legs give way and she slid, utterly spent, down his body while Trace’s hands held her.

  He lowered her to the grass and wildflowers, never taking his eyes from her face. Kennedy peered at him through heavily, satiated lids, and smiled, unable to speak. He grinned down at her and brought his mouth to hers.

  Trace kissed her sweetly, skimming his lips overs hers while she rode the end of her orgasm. The world around felt blurry and soft, and her skin hummed with something she couldn’t quite put a name to. Kennedy sighed as Trace trailed his fingertips downs her ribcage and over her hips, slowly stroking her heated skin.

  Kennedy closed her eyes and let the sensations drift over her, trying to memorize every second. This wasn’t her first time, but it may as well have been, because nothing else she’d ever done compared to this, to Trace, in any way.

  Kennedy opened her mouth to speak just as Trace lowered his head again and licked out his tongue, parting her lips. She opened to him, moaning into his mouth as he moved his hand slowly down her abdomen and under the waistband of her shorts. She shivered and raised her hands to his broad back, holding onto his shoulders as he breached her panties.

  “Oh!” She moaned, unable to keep her eyes open as his thick fingers slipped into the damp heat of her sex. She was wet and ready for him, her body anxious to accept him, to become one with him. It felt right, but more than that, it felt necessary. Like breathing. She needed him inside her.

  He moved slowly, taking his sweet time. Kennedy tilted her hips and opened her thighs wider, welcoming him. Trace added another finger and immediately picked up speed. The thickness stretched her just enough to awaken all her nerves, sending shocks of intense pleasure through her, making her even wetter for him. The thought of him filling her with his manhood sent shivers down her spine.

  Kennedy climbed higher toward release with every pump of Trace’s fingers, but when he pressed his thumb against her clit and circled it around the tiny nub of bundled nerves, she skipped the climb and went straight to the explosion. Throwing back her head against the grass, Kennedy cried out and rode her second orgasm to completion. By the time it faded, she lay boneless with tears of pure joy lining her cheeks.

  Trace grinned, seeming to know what he was doing to her, and slipped his fingers free. Then, like the cat he was, he lifted his fingers to his mouth and licked her cream from them. Kennedy watched him silently, too spent to react.

  He moved to hover over her and Kennedy sucked in a deep breath, almost afraid of the pleasure to come. She didn’t know if she could handle so much, so soon. Then he lowered himself down, his body covering her completely, and he licked from the base of her neck to her ear, taking a nibble of earlobe as he reached his target.

  “You’re going to want to hold on for this,” he whispered into her ear.

  Kennedy’s eyes flew wide open as he slid the tip of his cock into her wet opening. Just the tip, and already it stretched her, like his fingers had. Then he moved.

  His thickness pushed against her, expanding her slowly, inch by agonizingly delicious inch. Kennedy focused on breathing and keeping herself from tensing up. Then Trace drew her legs up and settled them on his shoulder, opening her to him, and they locked eyes. Trace pushed home, settling his girth between her thighs, and then stopped and let her adjust. Kennedy stared at him, in awe, wondering how she could have been so lucky as to have found a man so sensitive to her needs, so physically amazing, so perfect for her.

  He moved slowly, thrusting in and out to the tempo of her heartbeat. Kennedy clung to him, digging her nails into his broad shoulders, and hung on for the ride. Trace’s breath came in frantic draws, and his face looked so serious and focused, she almost giggled. He buried his face in her neck and picked up speed, driving himself home with every plunge.

  Kennedy’s mind expanded. She felt everything around her: the animals, the plants, the land. Then bursts of colors exploded behind her eyelids, sending shimmering drops of limitless pleasure showering down on her. She felt every drop, every sensation, and she let herself float up and up, higher and higher, until everything disintegrated and she slipped into Trace’s mind.

  Images bombarded Kennedy, layered and coming too fast to clearly see or understand. Pleasure disappeared and was replaced by despair. All around her, licks of painful emotions slashed at her skin, at her mind, trying to damage her. Grief pushed at her, pulling her under, into a sea of darkness and desperation.

  Kennedy ground her teeth together and dug her elongated nails into the forest floor, searching for traction. Voices and faces mixed together, creating a cacophony that she had to force herself to sort through. Kennedy focused and began to pick apart the layers.

  A young girl, so beautiful she practically radiated, danced in front of a roaring fire, her hands thrown up as she twirled. Kennedy could feel the pride and love surge in Trace’s heart and she wondered if he’d loved her. As soon as the thought entered her mind, the image cleared and the girl appeared, again, but this time she was younger. Dressed in a pretty pink dress with bobbing pigtails, she held out her hand and squealed with glee as Trace grasped her hand and ran with her through fields of tall grass.

  “You can’t catch me!” Her melodic voice rang out clear as bells on a Sunday morning.

  Kennedy hung on as the pictures changed, showing the same girl as a baby, as a toddler, as a young girl. She watched as the girl grew and changed, experiencing her first shift. She watched through Trace’s eyes as he grew beside her, Aria, his best friend, his sister.

  She felt Trace’s panic as he searched the beach and the forest for her, his heart beating irregularly, his skin breaking out in sweat. He’d shifted under the cover of the moon and prowled the trees, trying to find her scent.

  His parents’ fury, his mother’s fists beating at his chest and head as she screamed
that it was his fault. His father turning away and never looking back.

  Kennedy began to shake, her body and mind rejecting the harsh juxtaposition of Trace’s memories against the bliss of being with him. Her mind pushed against his and slipped out, needing escape from the pressure of his agony.

  Trace rolled away from her, pulling free from her body and leaving her naked and alone. She stared at the perfect blue morning sky and wondered how someone so strong, someone so perfect for her, could be filled with those memories. How can he live every day with that pain?

  Kennedy felt battered, not by their lovemaking, but by Trace’s past. Still, shifting her eyes to his hunched back and closed-off posture, she knew that he was more damaged by it than she could ever be. Her heart squeezed tight at the thought of his pain, and tears began to fall of their own accord, cascading down her cheeks. She pushed up into a sitting position and reached tentatively for his shoulder, not at all shocked when he pulled away from her. He knew she’d seen inside him. Had he seen inside me?

  She lifted her fingers to her cheeks to wipe away the tears, and inhaled Trace’s scent on her hands. Turning them over, she took in his unique smell and something different, something underneath. It was her blood, Kennedy realized, and it smelled different now. Since she was still really new to all this, she took a moment to try again, to make sure what she was smelling was real.

  Yes, there, beneath her own scent was his, mixed into the fluid that gave her life. She was changed again, by him. He was a part of her now, her true mate, the other half of her. Kennedy looked up at his sculpted back and bit down on her bottom lip. He was hers now, and she would help him, even if he didn’t want her help.

  Kennedy crawled across the grass on her hands and knees until she was in front of Trace, and then she pushed at his chest until he raised his gaze from the ground and looked at her. In his eyes she saw an acceptance that she’d walk away from him, and it crushed her.

  “You’re in my blood,” she said softly, brushing her fingertips over her heart. “It’s strange and new, on top of everything else that’s happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, but…” She searched for the right way to say it. “I feel whole now.”

  Trace tilted his head to the side, which she took for a good sign. He was listening.

  Taking a deep breath, Kennedy dredged up all the pain she’d ever felt over being abandoned and let it spill from her lips. “I’ve never felt whole before, not even with my family.” She smiled. “They’re amazing, and I’m so grateful they took me in and loved me as their own, but there’s always been this hole inside me”—she pointed to her heart again—“right here. And I’ve been waiting my entire life to find someone or something to fill it, but I never could. Until now.” Kennedy rested her hand over Trace’s beating heart and felt it jump beneath her palm.

  Trace sounded nothing like himself when he spoke, “I lost her. She was everything to me and I lost her.”

  Kennedy moved forward until she was sitting on his lap and pressed her face into the crook of his neck, “Oh, Trace, she wasn’t yours to lose. It wasn’t your fault. There’s no way you could have known what would happen.” She reared back and lifted his chin until they were eye to eye. “And it was your parents’ job to make you know that, on the deepest level possible. They were the ones who failed, not you!” Kennedy ground the last words out between gritted teeth.

  She reached for his neck and pulled his head forward, resting her forehead against his. Then she did something she wasn’t sure she knew how to do. She pushed her feelings for him, her connection with him, her belief in him, and her total acceptance of his worth, into his mind.

  They stayed there, foreheads pressed together, for a while, just breathing the same air and being together. Kennedy let her truth heal her mate and let his presence fill the hole in her heart. She could feel it happening inside him, as bit by bit, he saw things from her point of view and released the pain of the past. He looked into her soul and saw true parental love and took the blame his parents had so unceremoniously and unfairly placed upon him, and put it where it belonged … on his sister’s abductor.

  Kennedy waited until she felt him take his first deep breath as a free man, and then she shared the thought that now itched at her mind. “Can you help me find my birth parents?” She worried at her lip, hoping he wouldn’t think it a foolish request.

  Trace reached for her hands and intertwined their fingers, and then pressed kisses to the back of her hands. He nodded and smiled. “Of course.” He took a deep breath and let it slowly out. “And can you help me find my sister?”

  Kennedy felt shock that almost instantly fell away. If finding his sister, or finding out what happened to her all those years ago, helped her mate find peace, then that was exactly what she would do. She pulled their combined hands to her heart and swore on her life, “I promise.”

  The End

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  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com