Red Moon Rising

13. warning

Chapter Song: A New Mission - Josh Whitehouse

XX

"Marry me, Layla."

"What?" We're lying in bed after breaking in our new mattress, one of the few new things in this whole apartment. I feel a little like a queen after sleeping on the floor for a month and a half, and it doesn't hurt that Cameron's lips are tracing over ever inch of my bare skin now. His fingers reach to slip over my neck and into my hair.

"If we're going to live like humans we might as well do it properly."

"But Cam, you know I'm yours."

"Oh, I know." The sly grin that creeps over his face makes me wrap my legs around him again. He kisses me long and slow, and then just looks at me softly for a long moment. "Maybe I want everyone else to know it too. And I think I'd like the sound of introducing you as my wife."

I don't like the feeling tugging at my chest, the one that makes it so hard to be happy even when all I want is in my arms right now. "What if you change your mind about all of this?"

"I won't."

"But Cam, what if—"

"I know what you're thinking, but I'm not going to let you say it. I choose you." He kisses my forehead and smiles softly down at me. "My family chose to cut me out, but that's just it—it was a choice."

"Don't you miss them?" I whisper, and I hate the part of me that is so sure he's making a mistake by staying with me. I don't know why I dare him to leave, or why I can't find it in me to admit that I would be destroyed if he ever did.

"Of course I do. But what they're trying to do is wrong."

He lays down beside me and rests his head on my chest, and I find my hand instinctively brushing over his soft blond hair. His mom always said that his hair never changed since he was a little boy, even when his sisters' hair turned auburn like their dad's, Cam kept his fine, blond waves. He's her oldest, her only son, and I always thought that it would kill her to not have Cam in her life anymore—so why is she the one that's cutting him off?

"So," he says slowly. "You going to marry me then?"

I can't help but smile. "I'll think about it."

When he kisses my stomach, I feel the butterflies there, the way I can't help but melt when his hand slides over my hip and thigh. "I've been waiting for too long to have you all to myself for a day."

"Mm is that so?"

It's hard to think when his lips brush across each hip bone, then just below my belly button, and then his breath lingers along the sensitive skin where thigh meets hip. I find my fingers twisting more into his hair, and I can feel the vibration against my skin when he hums a laugh. Cam knows how to make me feel like I am the only thing that exists in his world. And maybe it's because he really does love me like that, or maybe it's also because when he wraps his hands around my thighs and dip his head between my legs it makes it a little harder to focus on the world around me.

I like the idea of marrying him, more than I want to let on to even him. I want to believe that it's a silly custom that doesn't belong to us, but I can't help but notice the way some married couples are, how they are linked to each other subconsciously in the way they move. I want to be connected like that, and more than anything, I long for what we have to be recognized by something, anything, even if it isn't our pack or our elders. Maybe a union confirmed by the U.S. government would be enough.

But really, I don't need anything other than this—lying naked together, making love until late morning, eating breakfast in each other's arms in the quiet of a place that is our own. If gods are real, how could they oppose this? Why would fate deign to meddle in our lives, to drive us apart from something this wholly good? Maybe there are no gods, but devils. Or maybe there is nothing at all, and our pack has turned on us for no reason other than their own superstition.