Lone Wolf: A Rejected Mates Wolf Shifter Romance (Reach for the Moon Book 1)

by Sam Hall

  “Jesus!” he yelped, and sure enough, his knee faltered for a moment, dropping down before he righted himself. But when he turned to face me, I saw it was no more Mr Nice Wolf. “So you wanna play, do you?”

  “Have been since we started,” I said, raising my fists as I grinned.

  This might not have been well thought out.

  He was a whole lot faster when pissed, and I saw the glimmer in his eyes as he charged. Another few much tighter, much more controlled strikes, not leaving his ribs bare this time. This was good, I told myself. The more speed he put on now, thinking he had a short, decisive win in his sights, the less he’d be able to bring later. I ducked, ducked, blocked, something that had his eyes widening. Stupid boys, thinking they were the only ones who could take a hit. What he’d done hit him just before I did, his fists dropping, his hands up, as if to ward off the consequences of his actions, but I just came on hard. Bang, bang, two punches to the gut that, for all his perception of my weakness, had the air rushing out of him, his body doubling over as he tried to protect his now sore midriff. I raised my elbow, striking down on his shoulder blade, avoiding his spine. I didn’t want to immobilise him. He dropped lower.

  “Fuck yeah!” Declan shouted. “Finish him!”

  Finish him? Oh yeah, the leg. I shot a cheeky grin at the crowd, saw all the boys were up off their feet, waving money and beers around, Stevie just pouring out more tequila in anticipation of a victory. I shook my head and went to stand at a safe distance away from the now sore Mason, sitting there on his hands and knees.

  “Ready to relent? Don’t make a big deal of me staying for the wake, and I’ll stop.”

  “I can’t.”

  There was something serious there, something that was ready to tug at me, have me asking why, but I shook it off. Not now, not yet. I had all the time in the world for serious. I just wanted this—one break, just one. I didn’t know how he didn’t see that.

  But maybe he did. There was regret in his gaze, which gave me pause. I’d never expected to see that on Mason Klein’s face, ever. Which was probably how he caught me off guard.

  “If they charge you, there isn’t a lot you can do to block that. You don’t have the weight or the muscle, but you do have physics. Show her.”

  One of the female masters that frequented the gym stood there, small and wiry in the face of Beast, one of the biggest, though gentlest guys we had in the gym.

  “You sure about this?” he asked us.

  “I can take you, big boy, don’t you worry,” she’d replied.

  I’d watched in alarm as he’d shrugged, then barrelled towards her, all of his massive bulk gathering momentum.

  Which she used against him.

  She ducked under his grasping arms, not even trying to stop him from grabbing her, dropped down low, and wrapped hands around his arm and thigh before righting herself and sending him flipping over her shoulder.

  We all walked over to where poor old Beast lay on the mats, looking dazed.

  “Told you I could take you,” the master said with a wink, then turned to show me how.

  It was harder, he was much lower to the ground, but a fighter moves to meet their opponent, so I slammed down onto my knees, ducking under the torso that was launching itself at me, and threw him as best as I could.

  “Oh, ow!” I said, getting to my feet and rubbing my back. That was deafened by the whoops coming from the crowd, the guys rushing in, but I wasn’t focussed on that. I stalked over, putting my foot on his right knee when he went to get up.

  “So, I get to stay?”

  He shook his head, looking to one side before meeting my eyes, and there was something a little different there, reinforced by the slow smile.

  “A few drinks.”

  “I won. I do what I want.”

  “Then you go back to Zack.”

  “I won. I do what I want.”

  “Fine, will someone get me a beer?”

  Chapter 15

  “Your dad would shit, seeing what you just did,” Declan said, steering me over to the table. Several had been set up in a long line in the living area near the kitchen, probably where they ate their meals. “But you just made me one hundred and fifty bucks.” He swept out a chair, making a show of brushing it off. “For milady.”

  “So you still love acting like a dickhead?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow but taking a seat anyway. My body was almost vibrating with the leftover adrenalin, and I needed to dial it back again.

  “Of course. Laughing’s the same mechanism as an orgasm.” He took a seat on my left, putting his elbows on the table and leaning in. “If you can get them doing one, it ups your chances of getting them to do the other.”

  “This is what you got from Mrs Rogers’ biology class?”

  “Not all I got, was it?” He moved in slightly, eyes going heavily lidded, his teeth scoring his bottom lip as he just watched me until I remembered what he was on about.

  “Oh!”

  “Your girl,” he said to Stevie when she sat down, “liked to torment me when we were kids. She was my first real serious girlfriend. Well, the one who let me touch her boobies.”

  “He really did call them boobies, even when we were making out,” I said with a shake of my head. “What the hell was I thinking?”

  “A whole lotta squirmy, hot thoughts, if memory serves. But perhaps in revenge for said unfortunate naming conventions, Paige used to like to…push my boundaries a bit. I was a walking hard-on, like most blokes my age, so perpetual wood was my curse to bear, and then came Paige.” His eyes sought mine, just holding them for a second, taking me back years in an instant to sitting with the cool kids with him by my side. “She smelled so fucking good and was funny and awesome, and then she decided I was the same and picked me out of all the blokes in school to be her boyfriend.”

  Those eyes on mine again, holding them well past what was polite, just watching me with that warm gaze, softened by the ever-present smile.

  “You asked me, remember?” I said, filling the silence.

  “Only because I knew by then you’d say yes. Anyway…” His eyes went down the table, his mouth twisting in a smile. “She worked out pretty quick how…responsive I was.”

  “So you had premature ejaculation issues back then as well, did ya, mate?” said one of the guys down the table. He had longish mid brown hair he kept tucked behind his ears.

  “That’s not what your mum said the other night, Will.” Declan grinned when the guy stuck his finger up in response. “So anyway, seeing as I was cracking a fat on the regular, your girl figured she could manipulate that for her amusement.”

  Every eye down the table turned to me, my hand going to the beer bottle and raising it to take a looong drink, just to deflect that attention for a second.

  “Do we really need to tell this story?” I muttered.

  “Yeah, we really do. So we’re sitting in year eleven biology, and Mrs Rogers is talking about reproduction. It’s all urethra this and gonads that, and Paige decides to do a little…hands on exploration herself. We had to wear these fucking stupid grey shorts that didn’t hide a lot on a good day.”

  “Not that you have much anyway, Dec.”

  “Fuck off, Jason. And sitting on a stool, my girl has access to pretty much everything she likes under the table. So she’s doing that thing that drove me nuts, just running her fingers along my inner thigh because the damn shorts were so short. And my teenage brain is just like ‘touch my cock, touch my cock,’ but at the same time, is completely fucking transfixed by the feel of her fingers so damn close yet not close enough.”

  Why did I think this revenge was a long time in coming? He took a swig of beer, winking to me as he did.

  “So my dick’s like fighting to get out of my shorts. Down the leg, out the waistband. It’s like the thing’s fucking prehensile and semi sentient. It just wants her. Then the fucking teacher starts showing slides of diagrams of boners. I do not need this right now, having become very much r
eacquainted with the phenomena, and as the bloody teacher uses this pointer stick thing to point out the different parts of the male anatomy, bloody Paige is doing the same beneath the table.” An explosion of laughter from the table had my eyes trained on the table. “I’m fit to fucking burst. Like I wanna fuck off to the toilets and choke the chicken until my nuts stop fucking boiling, but that’d mean walking out of class, announcing to one and all what I had raging in my pants.”

  “Like anyone would wanna look at your dick, you wanker,” someone shot out from the end of the table.

  “So there I am, caught on the horns of a mighty dilemma—keep letting her stroke my dick through my shorts like every cell in my body wants or push her away and think about dead kittens or something. But I want it, want to feel her little hand wrapped around my cock. I want her stroking it long and slow, like she always did.”

  Jesus, he always did have a way with words, Declan. I hadn’t thought too much about that day, but as he described it, all of it came back. The bright lights, squeaky linoleum, Mrs Rodgers droning on, and him, smelling all spicy and male like he did, filling my nose, which made sliding my hand up his thigh seem like a good idea. And he was right—back then, I’d felt a kind of power, being able to turn a man rigid at will. Probably anyone could have put their hand on his leg and gotten the same response, but right then, I’d been power-tripping on the fact it was me.

  He looked across at me, grinning, something that faltered a little when he met my eyes. For a second, just a second, we weren’t in our twenties, we hadn’t broken up, and we were right back there, in the classroom, the hand sitting decorously on my knee itching to reach out and do exactly what he’d described. The moment dragged on and on, neither of us moving, neither of us looking away, until someone shouted out something offensive.

  “Shut the fuck up, Dec,” I said, packing those memories back up and putting them where they were supposed to be, in the past. “Just shut up. Get this man a beer. Fuck, a ball gag will do. Anything to shut him up.”

  “Now you know what we go through on most days, love,” Will said with a smirk. “All right, keep going. I’m looking forward to hearing how the alpha’s daughter made you disgrace yourself in the classroom.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” someone else said. “So does this story end explosively?”

  It didn’t, but it got close. Now I kinda rolled my eyes, but teenage Paige had felt oh so naughty. I gulped, trying to swallow the lump in my throat, remembering exactly what I’d done. I’d palmed him in the middle of class. Well, as much as I could. Dad had hassled me about not giving my virginity away to just anyone, but to be honest, it was Declan’s considerable size that had deterred me. I’d heard plenty of stories of how it hurt that first time, and he was… But I’d loved how responsive he was, that I could take this big, tall, smart-arsed guy and reduce him to fucking putty in my hand. Putty whose breath came in short, sharp pants, something he’d tried to hide as I’d closed my fingers round as much of him as I could, someone whose hips had bucked up slightly, as if begging me for more. Someone who—

  I looked into Declan’s eyes, remembering how that class ended and suddenly feeling really exposed. That was the problem with going home—all the people that knew you, that walked around with a mosaic of memories of who you were and, in this case, what you’d done. He stared into my eyes, mouth curving into a lazy smile before sucking off the beer from his bottom lip. There it lay, a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. Would he reveal all to the table or…?

  “Nah, the bell went, and I used my books as a shield. Ducked into the boys because it was lunchtime, and took me about three strokes before I came so hard, it felt like it was gonna blow the top of my head off.”

  “Well, that’s two strokes more than you usually get, isn’t it, Dec?”

  But that wasn’t what had happened. I’d been teasing him all lesson, and when the bell went, he’d grabbed my hand, his grip like iron as he hauled us out of class and down the hall, way, way away from where both of us were supposed to be. I’d had maths and he’d had…

  He looked behind us, the farther we got away from the main student body, ducking down a hallway until we reached the disabled toilet.

  “Dec, we can’t.”

  “We have to.”

  He looked at me with eyes of molten bronze, then opened the door and dragged me in. His lips were on mine, hard and hungry, and I felt an answering one rise in response. I was young, still trying to work out who I was sexually, but right now, I liked this. Declan was always so fucking competent—fixing my flat tyre, doing tricks with his BMX, on the footy field. But me, I’d managed to undo all of that right now and replaced cool, chill Declan with this beast.

  His hand slid up my skirt, finding the seam of my underwear unerringly and hooking those nimble fingers underneath.

  “You’re wet…” He pulled back for a moment, resting his forehead on mine, just panting and examining my face, as if he couldn’t believe what he was feeling, but not for long. His fingers speared inside, making me gasp, but he swallowed that down, sucking and biting my lips.

  “Fuck…” he growled as the lewd sounds of my wet cunt filled the room. “I want in you so fucking much.”

  “We can’t… Not yet.”

  “I know, love. We have to wait, see what your dad says, but fuck… I need you so much.”

  My hand went to his shorts’ waistband, and he pulled away, unbuttoning them and yanking down the fly. He drew that thick rigid cock out, giving it a few strokes, like he couldn’t keep his hand off it.

  Off me.

  My foot was lifted and placed on the lid of the toilet, spreading me open for him, and he surged in, pressing against the damp cotton of my underwear, only backing off when I wrapped my hand around him, a long hiss escaping his lips as I swivelled my hand up and down.

  “Fuck…” he ground out, one hand whipping out to steady himself against the wall, but the other? Two fingers pushed inside me, too fast, too hard, making me yelp at the stretch, but then he moved, his thumb brushing inexorably across my clit.

  “Dec…!”

  We moved as one unit, stroking, tugging, thrusting, as his cock twitched in my hand and I twitched around his. I’d made myself come before, but it had been nothing like this. He surrounded me, filled me, swallowed me down, wrapping me up in this hot, gasping cocoon of sensation.

  “That’s it, baby,” he crooned as my pants grew faster and faster. “Come for me, Paige. Come on my fingers.”

  I was helpless to do anything else, holding his cock in a death grip that just made him thrust harder, one, two, three…

  I should have been concerned at the sudden splash of liquid on my school skirt, at the second bell going on the PA system, at the fact we were using a toilet restricted for people who actually needed it. But for a moment, there was only my fingers digging into his shoulders as my body went rigid, then a rolling wave of the sweetest, sharpest bliss rolled through me, so bright, my vision went white for a moment. My mouth pressed against his shoulder, the muscle hard and impervious as I panted out my pleasure, my whole body shaking with the aftershocks.

  Declan looked bloody radiant in the bright artificial light, an expression of complete male satisfaction on his face. But his head ducked down, capturing my lips, kissing me much slower, much more thoroughly now.

  “Good, baby?”

  He wanted validation, some sort of clue, but my brain was completely scrambled, struggling to find words, actions, anything. His smile curved up at that as he pulled me in close and just held me with that kind of sweetness you didn’t realise doesn’t always last past your teenage years.

  Of course when we pulled apart, we saw what kind of mess we’d made, cleaning up the floor and each other before creeping out of the toilets into the empty hallway.

  “And what are you doing, roaming the halls, Mr Werner?”

  We’d spun around to see Mr Kennedy, the assistant principal, standing there, arms behind his back, looking
the two of us over with a critical eye. The wet spots on our uniforms, our harried expressions all declared our guilt.

  “Paige was feeling sick, sir. I rushed her to the toilet, held her hair back, but…”

  “Did you, indeed? Then Ms Spehr needs to go to the sick bay, and you need to get to your English class, unless I’m mistaken?”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll just walk Paige to the—”

  “I’ll escort Ms Spehr. You run along.”

  I came back to the room with a start, the chatter having started again while I had a walk down memory lane, someone else getting teased mercilessly.

  “You did that on purpose,” I hissed quietly to Declan.

  He grinned, tipped his beer at me, then shrugged.

  “Seems to me there’s some people reminding you of the way things were around here, and I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring too. We were good together, Paige.”

  “We were teenagers, then we broke up.”

  “Course we did.” He leaned back in his chair, aware, I was sure, of what that lazy posture did to all the muscles on display under his T-shirt. “No matter what backward fucking rules this place runs on, I wasn’t ready to settle down at eighteen and neither were you. Your dad spoke to me about that, y’know.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t say he didn’t think I had the chops for alpha, but didn’t want you locked down too early. Said it hadn’t been good for your mum and he didn’t want that for you.”

  “Is that why…”

  The words dried in my throat. When we’d split up, Declan had broken my heart in the way only teenage boyfriends could. We’d made the decision mutually, talking it through and seeing only that as an option. He knew I liked him, but he also knew he wasn’t the only one. As if sensing my thoughts, we both looked down the table to where Mason sat at the head, staring back at us. His fingers traced circles in the condensation on the tabletop.

  “That’s why we broke up? Seems like the same obstacles are still there.”

  “Only if you still see them as obstacles, I guess.” His eyes slid slowly over me, taking his damn time, making it clear exactly what he was doing, and with a twitch of his hips, making me wonder if he was in the exact same state as he had been back in class. “I can show you where the loos are here, if you need me to.”