by Flora Dare
Josh smiled at the man and put on speed. He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring everything except getting his shivering mate to a warm, safe place. He stepped through the indicated door and kicked it shut behind him. He sat on the edge of the bed, finally really looking down at the bundle of fur in his arms.
Her russet fur was streaked with dust and she was bound up in a tight little ball, shaking still. Was it shock? Should he have waited for an ambulance? He lifted the edge of the blanket and rolled to his side. Josh curled around Zane’s body and pulled the blanket over both of them.
He lightly stroked her fur and whispered softly, “Baby, you’re safe. We’re inside, lying on a bed.” A little shiver ran down her back and the tight ball eased open some. He just kept stroking her and whispering softly until her face emerged. His thumb scratched gently between her eyes that finally fluttered open. Her body gave one last shudder and she was finally able to shift back to her human form.
“Josh…”
“Shh. We’re safe here. We’re in one of the guest suites. You were in shock, I just needed to get you somewhere safe.”
Her head collapsed against his arm and he pulled her into an embrace. I could have lost her and she never would have known how much she meant to me. He pressed his lips against her temple as her arms snaked around his waist.
“Zanea, I thought I’d lost you. I couldn’t get to you in time.” Her body pressed against his and a tear slid down his face as the enormity of it all hit him. “I would have died with you.” He pulled slightly away from her and looked down at her beautiful face. “You’re my mate. Mine. I will never let you go. I’m sorry my idiot self made it harder for both of us. But you are my mate, I felt your heart beating, it led me to you.”
He pressed a gentle kiss against her mouth, needing the reassurance of her warmth and life.
Thirteen
Zane melted at his touch. The shock of the accident melted away as his hands gently stroked her back. She whispered, “Mate? No wonder Jolie and Gabe are so insufferable.”
She felt his body shake with laughter. “Insufferable?”
“The warm glowy sparks filling my body. How safe and secure I feel with you. I was pretty sure I was going to die.” There, she said the words. Only the warmth of his body against her kept her from plunging back into the darkness under the bench, hearing the muffled sounds of people trying to reach her while the oppressive darkness pressed down on her.
“I wasn’t going to let that happen.” His voice was so sure it helped sweep away the darkness. “I didn’t just find my mate to lose her to an accident.”
Mate. Zane knew she’d been fighting the link because her feelings were hurt and deep down, she didn’t believe a red-hot wolf could settle down with her. Her drive to protect herself had kept her away from Josh. She curled into his warmth. She’d never felt safer.
She snuggled into his warm, hard body. Her hands moved restlessly over his body, reassuring her that he was really there, in her arms, that she wasn’t trapped under rubble, going mad. A surge of heat and moisture between her legs set her trembling with need and the growing hardness against her stomach mirrored her turn in thoughts.
His hands cupped her face tenderly, like she was a fragile, precious gem. Not a curvy, sturdy shifter. Josh’s hands tilted her face up to his and Zane blinked tears away, moved by his soft touch. This wasn’t the scorching energy of their first meeting, but a gentle flame being stoked.
Josh’s voice was practically a whisper in her ear, “Say it, say it to me.”
She murmured, barely able to speak the words, “You’re my mate. My one true mate, forever and ever and ever.” Then she pressed her lips against his, desperate to feel him. He devoured her lips, pulling her into a deeper kiss, his hands going from soft to commanding. He cradled the back of her head with one hand while the other traced a fiery path down her body. He skimmed down her neck, to her shoulder.
Her hands were splayed against his back and she pressed against him, spreading her legs as he rolled her to her back. His weight settled into the vee of her legs and Zane couldn’t stop her hips from rising to grind against him.
His mouth never stopped ravishing hers and he kept lightly tracing the edge of her curves with his fingers, never stopping, only teasing until she moaned against his mouth. “Please, I need you.”
More than anything, she needed to feel her mate between her legs, taking her, claiming her and proving to her she was alive and, more importantly, loved. Her hand slipped between them, loosening his belt. She needed to feel his hard length.
He grabbed her hand, “Don’t rush me, vixen.”
Josh pinned Zane’s hands above her head in one hand, leaving his other hand free to roam her body. He rolled to the side, and continued teasing her with his work-roughened fingers. He traced lines down her arms and back up her hips, around the sides of her breasts. Zane writhed, panting with an almost unbearable lust for her mate.
As he reclaimed her mouth, his hand finally slid under her tank top and under the lace of her bra. His fingers deftly moved over her hardening nubs until she was practically wailing beneath him.
I’m going to kill him if he doesn’t claim me soon. Josh lifted his head and stared into Zane’s eyes. She said, “If you don’t claim me soon, I might actually expire of unrequited need.”
He threw his head back and laughed heartily, “We can’t have that happening, can we?” He threw his leg over her, straddling her and pinning her arms down. “Not when it took this long for you to finally realize that you belong to me.”
“I might belong to you, but how are you going to get me naked like this?”
His wicked grin should have warned her, but when the fabric of her shirt disintegrated under his hands, exposing her, a white-hot bolt of pure desire shot through her body, until she was just a puddle of need beneath him.
Fourteen
Zane couldn’t stop the moan. “Josh, I need you.”
“Oh, you’ll get me. I’m just going to make sure you know that you are my mate.”
Her tummy fluttered. “We’re mates. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
He growled against her neck, the stubble on his face rubbing her gently and sending sparks straight to her core. “Yes, I do. Over and over again, until you never doubt that we were meant to be together. That just because I’m an idiot doesn’t mean that I’m not also absolutely bound to you.” He pressed her hands to the bed frame. “Now, don’t you dare let go.”
Josh moved quickly, and Zane gasped as he whisked off her jeans, making short work of her shoes. She shivered in delight as he began nibbling his way up her inner leg. By the time his tongue reached her knee, Zane was reduced to a single aching need for her mate.
“If you don’t take me soon, I can’t be responsible for what happens next.”
Josh continued slowly nibbling up Zane’s leg. Time slowed down and Zane’s legs fell open, her hips bucking with her pent-up need. When his lips finally reached the seam of her sex, she yelped. She started to let go of the bed frame, only stopping when he looked up and growled at her.
“Dammit, Josh, stop teasing me.” Zane could barely form the words, she needed her mate. To feel alive and connected. “Please.”
“Don’t deny me my pleasure in you. But I won’t make you wait too long.” With that, Josh dropped his head and licked her slick, wet heat. She was reduced to a mewling puddle of lust and need and when he gently nibbled the center of her pleasure she howled with desire. After tormenting her with his mouth, he gently stroked the folds of her sex, finally entering her molten core with a single digit.
Zane trembled and said, “Please, Josh, please. Claim me, make me yours.”
He rose up, kneeling between her creamy thighs. Josh gripped her lush hips in his hands and rose up, pressing his aroused flesh against her aching sex. “Never doubt that you are mine. Always mine.” He seated himself fully in Zane, barely containing a roar. As glorious as their first joining had been, this
time, his teeth buried themselves in her neck, marking her for all time as his.
They moved against each other as Josh stared into Zane’s eyes, sliding his body until her eyes glazed over. He increased the speed of his strokes, intent on driving his mate over the edge. Her legs tightened around his waist and he could feel her begin to spasm around him and he pushed them both over the precipice until she was screaming his name.
As Josh slowly roused himself from the aftermath of their shared bliss, he held Zane’s quivering body, stroking her gently until her eyes fluttered open and she smiled up at him. He said, “When I thought I lost you, that you couldn’t have possibly survived…” He paused, remembering the horrible moments, then shook his head to banish his grim thoughts. “I was trying to figure out how to convince you to accept me as your mate when the shelter collapsed.”
Zane rested her head on his shoulder and she whispered, “I honestly have no idea exactly how I managed to wedge myself under that bench, which, let me say, was not nearly as strong as I would have expected.” She gave a small laugh and said, “Definitely going to order them a way more sturdy bench.”
Josh said, “Let’s avoid falling rocks for a while? I don’t think I could bear another moment like that.”
Zane fell silent for a long moment, then said, “You know there is no reason that pile should have fallen.”
“Yeah.” Josh kept stroking Zane’s hair, determined not to let those moments take away from their mating, “but that’s something to worry about later. Right now, I think I need to claim my mate again, and make sure she’s really mine.”
Zane pushed him onto his back and said, “Even if you did kinda reject me, which really hurt my feelings, if you didn’t know.”
Josh pulled Zane onto him. “Hush, I already told you I’m an idiot.” He threaded his hands through her hair, pulled her head down to his and pressed his lips against Zane’s soft lips, determined to make up for being exactly what his brother had called him: an utter walnut.
Thank you for reading Charming the Wolf, the second story of the Mate in a Minute Speed Dating Agency series. Looking for book 1? Check it out here!
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About the Author
Flora Dare lives in Durham, NC in a cute little pink house, with her husband, Scott and their hellion of a puppy, HaliToeses. She writes love, lust and mayhem in almost every flavor, and like The Pirate Movie, she wants a happy ending, every time!
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Her only hope for salvation is Leo, a self-made billionaire who left her as her mother lay dying. Anya needs Leo to save her from her father, and Leo needs Anya's name for his business... but as old flames rekindle, he realizes he needs her submission as much as he needs her name.
Will a sham marriage to a man she never stopped loving save Anya or leave her a broken sacrifice to her father's insatiable greed?
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From USA TODAY and NEW YORK TIMES best-selling author Flora Dare comes double the sexy alpha werebear romance!
When her flight is cancelled and the only option is to accept a seat in coach, Jena's luck goes from bad to worse, and then back around to good again - she might have gotten a middle seat, but it's in between two BIG hunks of manliness.
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Jena thinks that when she lets her claws out, the gig is up - how could two bears like this want a wolverine shifter? But when she stumbles into trouble she never imagined, it seems her two hunks just might part of an industrial terror plot.
Forget the claws, forget the fur, can Jena survive THEM?
