Chapter Nineteen

They barely made it through the motel room door.

The walk had been one brutal push to keep from mauling each other in some random alleyway, and Will had counted himself lucky that the motel she'd picked was only a few blocks away, and that they'd made every light and crosswalk along the path. His hand hadn't left her ass and hers hadn't left his hip, their bodies pressed up against each other the entire time.

As soon as she opened the door, he'd shoved her into the room, stepping in and slamming the door shut behind them with a loud WHAM! She started to unbutton the flannel shirt, but Will's most bestial nature had taken over, and he just reached forward, hooked his fingers into the openings and yanked, making some of the buttons pop off and go flying around the room. She had a sweat-stained sports bra underneath, and Will would later find out Trish hadn't worn her 'good bra' because she hadn't thought she and Will were going to get up to anything that day.

Will's shirt didn't end up all that much better.

He shoved her back against the wall and kissed her hard as she wrapped one leg around his waist, practically thrusting her hips against his, and he could feel the heat scorching between them, the two of them grinding into each other as forcefully as they could.

One of his hands slipped up and cupped her breast through the bra and he was damn near afraid his palm was going to get sliced open with how hard her nipple felt against his touch through the fabric. He shoved it up to touch bare flesh and the resultant moan told him he'd done the right thing as she reached down and pulled it up and over her head, castigating it to the floor with the rest of their damaged and discarded clothing.

"Get your fucking pants off," she growled at him, reaching down between them to pull angrily at his belt. "Off! Off! OFF!"

Will had to push her leg from its deathgrip around his waist and practically pin her shoulders to the crappy wallpaper of the motel room just so he could use his left hand to get his belt off and shove his pants and his boxers down past his knees. He couldn't slide them off because neither of them had bothered to take their boots off yet.

They couldn't get Trish's legs far apart enough with her jeans and panties still clinging to her ankles when she was face-front so in frustration, Will spun her around and shoved her chest against the wall as she tried to shimmy her feet back a little and spread her legs as much as she could.

He placed one hand on her hip and the other against the space between her shoulder blades, pinning her top half against that wall as he slowly and firmly forced his cock inside of her pussy, while she let out a primal roar, her hand lifting up to bang against the motel wall room, thankful there wasn't another room on the other side of it.

"Fuck yes, you fucking bastard! Hammer that pussy!" Trish shouted at him, trying her best to push back into him as he started a bucking rhythm against her. She was shoving back at him with as much gusto as she could, while he thrust against her with enough force to make the wall shake a bit.

There was nothing soft or gentle about this - this was raw, carnal fucking.

They lasted in this position for only a minute or two before Trish wanted to kiss him again, turning herself just enough to look back at him as he leaned in and mashed his face into hers, the two of them kissing sloppily before breaking from it, his cock sliding out of her as they both decided they needed to divest themselves of the last of their clothing.

The two of them stayed locked eye-to-eye as they struggled to undo their boot laces, afraid that if they looked away from the other, they would pounce upon them while they were distracted. Each of them rushed to get one boot off, then the other, before pulling the last of their clothing off their feet, leaving them both finally naked, as both waited for the other to flinch.

When neither did, they both stood up, unwavering, wondering who would step forward first.

Neither did.

Will reached forward and grabbed Trish's wrist, pulling her over and tossing her on top of the bed, her arms pushing to shove the comforter and sheets into a scrunched up bundle, partially exposing the cheap white sheets of the motel bed as Trish rolled over and reached out to grab Will in turn, yanking her back towards him, pulling him down on top of her, the bed creaking in desperate protest.

She clawed her legs back around his waist and got his cock back inside of her with little trouble, her body shoving against his once more, her body shivering once his shaft filled her pussy up once more, another carnal sound splitting the air.

"That's it! Fucking give it to me!"

His hips collided with hers again and again, her hands raking her nails against his back sharp enough to draw blood, grinning at him as she brought one hand to her face and licked the taste of his life force from her hands. In response, Will grabbed Trish's arms by the wrists and pulled them over her head, pinning them to the top of the bed, holding them there. "Quit scratching me, you daft bitch!" he cackled with laughter before he kissed her, tasting the copper sear of his own blood still on her lips.

"We'll see who's whose bitch by the end of this, Bowland!" Her voice was full of lust and amusement, though, so he was pretty sure they were both going to come out on top.

His hips continued their war drum dance against hers, colliding like two sweaty, fleshy machines, the metal frame of the bed beneath them threatening to bend or break at a moment's notice, each of them panting and gasping for air, before finally Will's endurance could only handle so much and he found himself cresting that orgasm, his body clenching up before that telltale shiver flitted through his body, just in time to trigger one in response from her, although the cocky grin told him that she was aware he'd gotten there milliseconds before she had, a mark of pride for her.

A minute or so later, she rolled him over onto his back and slowly slipped out from the bed, moving over to the minifridge, popping it open to grab one of several bottles of water, unscrewing the cap of it, taking a swig from it with a giggle before moving to pour some of the icy chilled liquid over Will's hairy body. "C'mon, Bowland," she teased. "I'm hopin' that ain't it."

"Get your ass over here, Trish," he countered, grappling her and yanking her back onto the bed, pulling her body down on top of his. "This time, I'm gonna make you do some of the work. No more lazing about, laying there while you get pounded senseless. Your turn to show me what you've got."

"Oh, I see," she purred at him as she positioned him on the half-undone bed with his head on the pillow, giving him that much at least. She got him lined up how she wanted him before she slowly crawled over top of him, letting her breasts hang down over his face, her nipple brushing across his lips a little before she would pull back and away from him. "Get ready to feel like a stallion, Bowland."

It was mere seconds before Trish had climbed atop of him, sliding his cock back inside of her once more, a grin as she poured the rest of the cool water over her chest and then tossed the plastic bottle aside before grabbing onto the cheap wooden headboard. The water made her skin glisten and shimmer, the freckles on her body more visible to his eyes now, the thatch of ginger hair at her crotch turning dark when it was matted down. "Gimme all you got, Colt. Unless you can't handle me."

He knew how to tease right back.

She gasped in mock offense before she shoved her ass down hard onto his lap, pushing his cock as deep inside of her as she could get it, straddling him to the point where the bed beneath them was starting to buckle. Both of her hands reached up to grab onto the headboard as she started to snap her hips back and forth, up and down, the whole piece of furniture beneath them threatening to give way.

The clamoring of their two bodies against one another set up an orchestra of angry crashes in an ever-increasingly violent tempo, and Will wondered for just the briefest of moments if the cops were going to get called on them. But her clapping thighs yanked him away from that thought as soon as it occurred, not letting him focus on anything other than her, there and now.

Will hadn't had a workout like this since the one time he'd gone and tried out for the college football team, the most grueling four hours he'd ever been put through. He'd left drenched in sweat, his every muscle aching, so exhausted he could barely lift his arms.

This looked to put that to shame.

She posted atop of him like a jockey trying to egg her horse across a distant finish line, her knees pressing against his hips, her feet folded over top of his thighs, one hand rattling the headboard like a cage, the other pressed down on Will's chest, her chest rising and falling, her hair falling in her face, having partially shaken loose from how she had it done up before.

For all her prior confidence, he could see her facial expression starting to drift, as if the exertion of it all was starting to get to her. Which was good, because Will's second orgasm was not far off, and he was going to think of the most boring things possible to distract himself from the sensations so she would get off before he did this time, even if it killed him.

He was halfway through his multiplication tables when he felt her start to crumble and quake, and that was a relief, so he let go, and joined her in the orgasm that clawed through both of their nervous systems like a wildfire run amok.

Her tempo and speed came to a screeching halt, her spine curving as her face looked up towards the crappy motel ceiling, as she began to spasm over his cock, and he responded by popping his second load up inside of her, while they both moaned in tandem.

Then she gave one last pull on the headboard.

And the whole bed collapsed beneath them.

And the headboard snapped.

And the curtains fell from in front of the windows.

They both started laughing so hard tears were streaming down their cheeks.

"Well, you did say we'd better trash the hotel room," Will said as Trish rested, spent, laying on his chest. "I feel like Mick Jagger."

"Thank God you don't look like him," she snorted with amusement. She lifted her head and giggled a little bit. "We left the bathroom unharmed."

"Yeah, well, we'd have broken water fixtures if we did that, and that's probably a lot more damage than we want to pay for," he said, stroking her hair. "Shit, we're already going to have to pay for a new bed."

"It's okay, I think I can cough up the fifty bucks or whatever they spent on it." She reached her arms out and stretched them. "Fuck, we should probably get up and shower."

"Let's just sit here for ten or fifteen minutes and catch our breaths first, okay?"

"That's fair. That's totally, totally fair," she agreed with a laugh. "I'm not sure I could stand up right now anyway. I'm still leaking your cum."

"That's as much on you as it is me," Will countered. "I would've done things differently if I thought it bothered you."

"Oh no," she growled. "I love the feeling of being all sloshy and filled. It's a nice feeling."

About twenty minutes later, they finally had the energy to get up from the bed and hop into a shower, although they had to work a bit harder to keep their hands from sparking another round there. Eventually, they got dressed and Trish ended up leaving a large roll of cash for the damage as they headed out.

Will felt like walking and talking would be a good way for them to keep their hands off each other for a bit, because the tension between the two of them seemed to ramp up at the drop of a hat. "Should I be worried about your brother?" he asked her as they walked through the cool night, spring threatening to head in soon, but not present quite yet.

"Nah," Trish said. "Clayton thinks you've got a good head on your shoulders, and I told him all about what happened with the gala. I think he was a little surprised you bested Nathan in a fight, but he said that was a good sign and meant I'd have a good man on my hands to keep my more... temperamental side in check."

"Clayton didn't think I could take that kid?"

"That kid has been training with his werewolf form for almost a decade now, and you've barely got a season under your pelt," Trish snorted. "I figured you'd put up a good fight, but beating him?" She shook her head a little. "I was worried I was going to have to duel Nathan myself to get out of it, and I'm sure I could've handled him, but you saved us both the embarrassment."

"He was arrogant and reckless," Will said. "Something I've seen in a lot of werewolves, honestly. We're a headstrong species, it seems like. Leap first, look later, if ever."

"At least we come by it honestly," Trish said with a sigh. "How's school been going, with all this other background noise?"

"I'm doing what I can to keep my head from getting lost, but it hasn't been too bad, keeping the two worlds separate," he told her. "It's my junior year, so I'm supposed to be narrowing things down, focusing on the stuff I need to get into my head before I go out into the real world."

"What're you studying for?"

"Health administration," Will said. "Coordinating and managing a hospital. I'm not cut out to be a doctor, but doctors need someone looking out for them, keeping them focused on taking care of people and not all the boring day-to-day shit. But I also want to help find a way to make sure that everyday people can afford to have their health taken care of."

"Sort of a shepherd for doctors and nurses, huh?"

"Never thought of it quite like that, but yeah, I guess," he admitted. "What about you? What are you planning on doing for the rest of your life?"

"I'm in nursing school, actually," she said with a laugh. "So we're not that far apart from each other, really. I like taking care of people, and it seemed like we werewolves are always getting into scraps. We're constantly in need of medical help, so why not just keep it internal?"

"Makes sense."

"What about the rest of your partners?"

' "Well, Dina's a professor, so she'll probably continue teaching. Lacey's planning on opening her own business, although she's not sure what that'll be. Hell, maybe she'll take over running the diner for me. April's interested in going into either politics or public relations, so we'll see how that turns out, just because of her relationship with me, well, us, I guess. And I get the impression that Freya's life is devoted to hunting, although, again, now that she's with me, that's probably going to change as well. She didn't seem to care for it all that much."

"Yeah, hunting's definitely not for everyone," Trish said. "And especially not for someone partnered up with someone on this side of the Veil. Maybe you can get her enrolled at your college."

"That's the thing I'm thinking about, but I want to talk to her first, obviously. I'm not going to make decisions for her. That's what got her into this mess in the first place."

"Yeah, that whole story is crazy," Trish said with a laugh, her arm wrapped around his waist. "I still can't believe how fucking dumb those hunters were. How the hell did they know you were something supernatural without knowing what you were?"

"Y'know, I still don't know that," he told her. "I asked Freya and she just told me that someone pointed her Uncle Odin my direction, and it was clearly someone Odin trusted enough to take at face value, so they just decided to come after me and figure out what I was along the way. Odin didn't strike me as much of an established hunter with any real skill or knowledge. Maybe it was just someone testing me and my family, to see how weak we were, since we didn't really know anything about who or what I was for a while. Eventually my Uncle came by to tell me some stuff."

"You've seen Angelo?"

"He told me his name was Pavel, but yeah, he was the one who told me I was a werewolf," Will said. "I swear, I told you all of this."

"I don't recall you mentioning him by name, but maybe it slipped my attention. I also may have been distracted by the fact that you were pal-ing around with Jonas Silversmith," she said with a tight grin that belied how uncomfortable she was with his association with the Red Joker. "He isn't exactly what I'd call 'low profile' if you know what I mean."

"He showed up to guide me through things after the hunters took their swing at me," Will told her. "That's it. That's why he gave me the sanctuary as well, since nobody came to tell me about my werewolf nature."

"Yeah, well, your mother kept your existence very well hidden."

"My father knows, it seems."

"Who told you that?"

"Friend I made inside of the mages."

Trish clicked her tongue for a moment. "I don't know how much you can trust a wizard, but okay."

"They seem more open than anyone else has been," Will said. "This one mage has, anyway. Maybe he's different than the rest."

"Sounds like it," Trish responded. "All the mages I've known have been uptight, pain in the asses, so full of themselves, you can barely fit in the room with their ego."

"I mean, Tommy's got a little bit of an ego, but he's certainly humble as shit compared to Merlin or even Silversmith."

"Silversmith," Trish said with a shiver. "That guy scares the crap out of me. I'm not sure how you stand hanging around with him."

"He's just a guy, Trish."

"A guy who single-handedly wiped out an entire coven of vampires because they were dabbling in forbidden magics, Will. A guy who's been known to make entire villages disappear if they were giving too much resistance to being relocated for their own safety. A guy who turned the last person who tried to kill him into his own personal plaything and assistant."

Will chuckled slightly. "So maybe just don't piss him off, huh?"

"Easier said than done, I think," she said. "I mean, you were there for that duel. That didn't even make you the slightest bit nervous?"

"I had my own duel to worry about, you might recall," Will teased. "One where I won something relatively important... I wonder what that was..."

She punched him in the shoulder jokingly. "Ass. But you make a fair point. I'll try to keep a more open mind the next time we run into him."

"He does come into the diner from time to time, so if you hang around there, it wouldn't surprise me if you'd get a chance to talk to him."

"Speaking of conversations people don't want to have, I'm going to have to introduce you to mom sooner or later," Trish said with a sideways glance. "She's a lot, but she's still my mother. She's gonna want to meet you as soon as she hears about you, assuming Clayton hasn't already told her about all of this."

"I'm surprised you haven't told her."

"It's... it's been a lot to process," Trish said. "To be fair, I'd sort of gotten used to the life of just picking up a boytoy any time I wanted and then jettisoning him after I was done playing with him. So the idea of having to do the whole 'relationship thing,' it's still a bit new to me. We'll get it figured out. It's also the idea of having to share you with other women... that's also a bit new to me."

"I'd like to point out that a year ago, I considered werewolves to be the kind of thing you'd see in a late-night horror flick, not the sort of thing I'd be dealing with on a day-to-day basis."

"That's fair, I guess," she said. "Growing up surrounded by this kind of stuff definitely numbs you a bit to it. You got an assful of all of it all at once, like you're trying to speedrun full Veil understanding, when, shit, those of us who grew up surrounded by it still barely get it all to make sense. But it is what it is, and we are who we are."

"For what it's worth, I think you're going to like the rest of our pack."

She grinned up at him kind of dopishly. "Say that again."

"Say what again?"

"What you just said. You know what you just said, so say it again."

"I think you're going to like the rest of our pack," he reiterated to her.

"I do like the sound of that. I know I said it earlier, but hearing you say it makes it sound more real, y'know?"

"I'm still sort of wrapping my head around the fact that Lacey's one-eighth fae, and we all just found that out," Will told her as they reached his car, where he unlocked and opened the door for her before going around to the other side, where she'd unlocked it for him. "How common is that? People with quarter or eighth bloodlines from behind the Veil?"

"It's not super common, but it happens often enough," she said. "Most people on the planet have a tiny bit of Veil in them, but almost none of them ever know it's there. A lot of people try and move away from their life in the Veil and want to pass themselves off as normies. There's a surprising number of people who were born being supernatural who wanted to just give it up, and as long as they get sign off from their House, they can. We don't really have good numbers of how many people that is, because most houses both don't keep track and don't want to share that kind of thing. Why?"

"There's something about all the people in our pack that just feels... different. I've got Tommy looking into them, and we'll see what he turns up."

"You want me to do the same?"

"I think I'd rather you meet them first before you start poking around their histories, since you're going to be partnered up with them, y'know?" Will said as he started driving them towards the diner, wanting to get away from the hotel room they'd trashed and paid for.

"How about your mother's family then?"

Will narrowed his eyes a bit. "Mom didn't have any family."

"That she told you about," Trish said. "C'mon, Will, be smart. You know that your mom bucked a lot of traditions when she hooked up with your father."

"I didn't expect that family would keep track of her after that, though."

"Family's family," she said with a soft sigh. "It's hard to shake."

"No kidding," Will said. "My father's apparently changing continents twice, and he's still keeping tabs on me, one way or another. So maybe my mom's family is still keeping tabs on me, too, but the fact that nobody reached out after Mom died? That's rough, you know..."

"Well, your father's very out of the loop with us, so he probably didn't find out about it until he was doing a check-in. As for your mother's half, I can't really say what's going on there. But I imagine they'll reach out sooner or later. Or, if you want, you could go and look into them."

"You got any idea where to start?"

Trish shook her head. "The hunters clique gets approved targets passed down by the Grand Captains of each House, and they're generally the only point of contact, although the second in command sometimes knows. Either way, that's outside of my reach."

"I kept meaning to ask - what the hell do human hunters even do?"

"They're there to make sure we all color within the lines," Trish said. "Whenever there's a Veil occupant who's not abiding by the Accords, the Hunt rules, the visibility rules or even just the laws of general decency, the Captains of a House can decide to have them removed. That's where the hunters come in. That way we don't get tempted to be kind or slack off in putting them down. Any time we're allowing people from behind the Veil to abuse their abilities in ways we don't all agree upon, then we're setting a bad example for the rest of the Houses. And the Wizards are quick to bring the thunder down when that happens."

"As well they should, I guess."

"We're a self-regulating society, Will."

When they pulled into the parking lot at the diner, Will was a little surprised to see the lot nearly full, but as they headed into the diner, he realized why - there must have basketball game that had let out, because the inside was packed. Freya was struggling to keep up, and she looked up and saw Trish, giving the newest member of the pack a smile.

"Need a hand?" Trish asked her.

"Fuck yes, girl," Freya laughed, tossing an apron over in Trish's direction. "And you! Get back in the kitchen and give Lacey a hand before she ends up accidentally dipping her hand in the fryer or something. We can have fun times later."

Trish sauntered over next to Freya with a smile, Will's two taller partners standing almost shoulder to shoulder, as he wondered how much trouble they were going to be united in for a cause.