“Shh.” As if he’d read her mind, touched a finger to her lips. “Trust me, Zan. Trust me to know what you need.”
She did. She’d known him less than a day, and she trusted him completely -- more than she ever had any other lover. She’d held his heart in her hands… now he held hers.
Tucking her legs up against her belly, John lifted her hips, positioning his cock at the entrance to her weeping pussy. Zan breathed out a little moan of ecstasy as he pushed deep into her. After the condom pup, his thick girth didn’t seem so much an invasion as a welcome heat, awakening her deepest desires.
His arms supported her cradled body, his thrusts slow, lingering brushes that claimed her completely. “Ohhh,” she moaned. “Feels so good…” She wanted more, faster, harder, but that could wait, because for now he wasn’t going anywhere. His pace was just fast enough to ignite intense waves of spiraling need within her, without having reached that frantic warning level that told her this would soon be all over. She wanted him to stay like this -- hot and heavy and filling her to capacity -- for hours. As if she could lock him there in her body, keep him with her forever.
His hands moved to her breasts, stroking in time to his thrusts, kneading, then rolling and tugging at her distended nipples. The need built higher, pushing toward the climax she knew would shatter her.
“Come for me, Zan,” he commanded.
“Noooo… not yet…” She writhed in his grip, resisting, fighting the urge to come, to end the moment, even knowing how good the final explosion would feel. She’d lose him then, and she wasn’t ready to let him go.
“It’s all right. Let go. I’ll be here to catch you.” He changed his angle, leaning forward so each deep, delicious thrust ground his coarse hair over her clit, teasing, tempting, demanding.
He would go, but she’d have this to remember. Zan surrendered completely, her body his to command. He leaned over, licking her from navel to breastbone, as if learning her taste. When he reached her neck, he moved down again to suck one nipple into his mouth, slipping his hand between their hot, slick bodies to pinch her clit.
Zan screamed, her back arching off the bed, her fists pounding into the mattress. The room went dim, and the sound of the ocean echoed in her ears for a moment.
When she drifted down, he was there, sitting up a bit now, his hands on her waist, watching her, waiting for her, her wolf man, holding steady, his muscles tight with the strain, still buried deep within her while the pulsing contractions of her pussy faded to a less fierce grip on his still hard cock.
He’d not come yet, then. Good. That was something she hadn’t wanted to miss. Would he cry out, like a human? Or was there more? Something only wolves shared? She wanted to see him, wanted to watch him come, wanted to capture the moment, the image of his face as he came, to have it to hold in her memory forever, knowing that for this moment in time he was hers, all hers. Nothing would ever be able to take that away from her.
He held perfectly still, watching her with a subtle play of a smile on his lips, and a wicked glitter in his eyes. She grew restless, waiting, wanting… Need rose hard in her again, spreading from where his cock pulsed within her to her clit, her breasts, reaching out in spiraling waves to touch her thighs, her ears, the back of her knees. Places she’d never thought of as erogenous screamed for his touch, lust, and something more, something so heady she had no name for it, consuming her.
Move, damn it. But he didn’t. He just watched. The ultimate in control. She couldn’t come down -- not with him still buried inside her. She couldn’t come again, either, even if she was capable of coming again -- she was only just now beginning to consider multiple orgasms as a potential reality outside paperback romance novels. All she could do was lie there in his arms, waiting, as need and want consumed her.
Frustrated, she curled her spine, rolling her hips into him, creating the subtlest of movements. She felt more than heard the hiss of his sharp intake of breath. Ohh. Two could play at this slow tease of a game. Yes. She rocked back and rolled again, achieving a slow, deep grind that did little to relieve her need, but a great deal to deepen the strain showing in his every muscle. Again, and yet again, she rocked and curled, each little tremble of a movement rubbing his coarse hair harder against her clit. She squeezed her thighs together on each upsurge, clenching hard around his cock.
Although he still held himself rigid, John’s eyes glinted with silver lights, and his chest moved in hard, deep gasps for air.
“I want to feel you inside me. Come for me. John.”
His jaw thrust out, all hard, square angles, and his voice came out in a low growl. “I… can’t… I…”
She knew what he was doing now. He was holding back the change, the shift, whatever it was, trying not to cross the line between man and wolf. “Fuck me. Fuck me hard. Now. Sing for me, Wolf.”
His reaction was more than he could control. She felt him tremble, and his face changed, his jaw lengthening, the coarse dark hair that dusted his body getting thicker, though his face was still man, still John, but Wolf, as well. His cock thickened within her tight, wet pussy, growing, if that was even possible, harder and longer as well. His hips surged forward, pounding into her in a relentless flurry of hard, fast thrusts that shoved her backward across the bed, only to be pulled back against him with every counter thrust.
Zan did her best to match his rhythm, trying desperately to keep up with his punishing pace, but she was hopelessly lost, the frantic pounding setting her senses to overload. She felt his cock swell impossibly large near the base, the knot hitting the spot deep within her she’d never found before, barely believed existed. “John!” she cried out. “Now! Come for me now!”
Her pussy spasmed around him, gripping tightly to the knot, almost the way she knew a wolf’s would, and she remembered enough wolf anatomy to pull back, as far away as she could, clamping down tight. He raised his head and howled, the sound so like a wolf in the wild she wished she knew how to answer.
He thrust again and again, as if he fought to secure himself even more firmly into her tight grip. She felt the first hard, hot gush of his ejaculation burst, and she wished she hadn’t insisted on the condom, no matter what her medical training had taught her about the dangers of unprotected sex. He came in long, slow, pulsing waves, the searing heat reaching her through the condom almost as if it weren’t there.
His frantic thrusts slowed to a steady pulse, his knot raking hard over her sensitized flesh. Zan’s hips jerked with each thrust, wringing sensation from spent muscles and leaving her boneless. His cry rose in pitch, a long, keening song that seemed to speak of great loss. John gathered her close, rolling them both to their sides, his thick length still buried deep within her.
“John,” she whispered against his neck, “I… I’ve never…”
“Shh.” His voice sounded human again, though the cock within her did not feel fully human. “I’ve got you. You’re safe, now. I promise.”
As an exhausted sleep claimed her, Zan tried not to wonder who he thought he was talking to.
* * *
“Hey, there. About time you woke up.”
Zan tried to get a look at the screen, but his big body blocked her view. “What are you doing to my computer? I heard it scream at you.”
“I have no idea what it was. Some sort of an alarm went off and a yellow note popped up. Damn Macs, anyway. What happened to Windows?”
“When Windows 7 came out I decided I didn’t want to upgrade. Again.”
“Windows 7? Wait. We were on XP last I knew. We had to have passed seven years ago. I remember more versions than that, and I missed half the decade.”
“Microsoft math. And be thankful you missed Vista. Vista’s the reason I’ve got a Mac. Plus, they don’t get viruses.” Zan downed the cup of coffee John pushed her way and rested her chin on his shoulder, looking to see what he was reading. “Superman? Five years alone in the wilderness and the first thing you’re checking out is Superman?”
�
��This isn’t Superman. What the hell have they done to all the decent comics?”
Zan tried not to laugh and failed miserably. “If you think Superman’s changed, stay away from Spiderman. Stupidest thing to have hit the comic industry in years. In ‘One More Day’ Spidey makes a deal with Mephisto to save Aunt May. His marriage to Mary Jane gets erased and no one remembers anything. That’s pretty much the worst.”
“What? What the fuck were they thinking?”
“Go to Netflix, there in the toolbar. My login’s saved. You can watch whole movies online. Look for X-Men. That’s not too bad. I’d stay away from the TV shows, though. Particularly Smallville. You’ll hurt my computer. The icon over there’s the New York Times. I’ve got an online subscription. The yellow pop-up meant I’ve got appointments, if they can get here. And I’ve got other patients to check on. I’ll be back up in a few hours.” She kissed him on the cheek and started to pull away, but a hand on her chin turned her back for a full, mouth to mouth kiss that could so easily have turned into more.
“You OK?” he asked, his eyes asking her more.
“Better than OK,” she assured him. “I really want to do that again. Once I’m sure we won’t have patients, or at least their owners, knocking on the door.”
“You mean the bacon and eggs, or the sex?”
She grinned at him. “How about both?”
“How about I come down and help you out? That way we can come back up here sooner.”
“You’ll eat all the caribou.”
“Umm. Maybe, but not all of it. I’m not that hungry. I just finished your rice burger breakfast. Pretty tasty.”
“Is that why I smell Tabasco…”
“It needed some spice.”
“Duh. It’s supposed to be bland. That’s the point. You were supposed to be a sick wolf. In recovery.”
“You cook breakfast for all your sick patients?”
“Yup. But not bacon and eggs. And, just in case you’re wondering, I’ve never had sex with any of them before, either. Nor their owners.”
“Good.”
“Good? Are you going to go getting all possessive on me?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good.” Zan kissed him hard on the mouth, then spun out of his reach, heading for the door. She looked up as he opened it for her, and her smile faded. I could get used to this.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I…” He’d just gotten here. She couldn’t tell him she knew he wouldn’t stay. “Doesn’t anything ever frighten you?”
“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a long, long time. For almost five years I ran as a wolf. Nothing mattered, because I had nothing left to lose. Now I have you. That scares me. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you, keep you safe.”
Safe… Protected. It had been so long since she’d felt protected. That certainly hadn’t been one of the feelings Steve elicited.
By the time the caribou was butchered and the wolves fed, she knew she was in trouble. John was just too perfect. Too damn easy to be around. He was everything she’d wanted, expected, in a partner when they’d come here. Everything Steve had never been.
She shook her head, scolding herself. Somehow she knew losing this man would tear her apart -- would make Steve’s loss look insignificant. John Wolfe wasn’t even gone, yet, and already he was breaking her heart.
* * *
The faintest hint of light filtered in around the corners of the blinds. The sun was beginning to put in her first appearance. Spring was close. Too close. He should have done this sooner.
John propped himself up on his elbow, staring down at the woman who lay curled at his side. She was the reason he’d waited. He pushed back the hair from her sleeping face, feeling that knife-twisting wrench to his gut he got whenever he looked at her. So soft. So innocent. So vulnerable.
So human.
He’d known from the beginning it would be like this, no matter how he’d tried to deny his reaction to her. She was his woman. His mate. His body didn’t care whether she was Wolfskinned or not. She was his. That was all that mattered. Whether he’d meant to or not, he’d given her his heart, and accepted hers in return.
Leaving was going to hurt like hell. But he’d lost one woman to a madman with a rifle full of silver bullets. He couldn’t let that happen again. Rolling silently out of bed, he grabbed up the clothes he’d laid out the night before and slipped out the door. It took him less than half an hour to feed the wolves -- they might not be Ulfhedna, but they weren’t stupid. They knew better than to mess with him.
As soon as he was done, he headed for the office computer. Hard to believe she was running all Macs. He’d thought Apple was on its way out of the market years ago. It wasn’t bad, really, now that he was more or less used to it, but still. Once he had access to his accounts, he’d get himself his own laptop. With Windows.
With a few now-familiar keystrokes, he logged into his new email account.
Thank you for your interest in the Human Defense League.
Your membership application has been approved.
Please log in to create your user name and password.
Steven
Human Defense League. Like humans needed protection from the Ulfhednar. It had been the humans who’d hunted them, for thousands of years, now. Sons of bitches had no qualms about what they were doing -- butchering every pack they could locate.
It was only a matter of time till they realized he wasn’t dead. They’d come after him again. And this time they’d come after Zan, as well. He couldn’t let that happen.
Through the window he saw lights flicker on at the house. He didn’t have much time. It had been a lot harder to locate pack headquarters online. The leadership back on the island was far more circumspect than his nemesis. Still, once they’d confirmed his pack status, the legal team had moved quickly to help him restore his human identity. When he got to Seattle, everything he needed would be waiting for him.
Chapter Five
Zan wasn’t surprised to wake up alone. Not really. She held the fear back. It was early, but not that early. He might be in the barn, feeding the wolves. He might be, but he wasn’t. He’d been there, all right, but there was no sign of him now.
Her computer was off, but still warm to the touch. He’d been here, too.
That was it, then. He was gone. She’d known for days this was coming. Seen it in his restless moves, the way he sniffed, tasting the air whenever the wind changed. He’d been here long enough, almost two months, she’d begun to think he might not leave. Then the weather changed.
She hadn’t asked him to stay, no matter how much she’d wanted him to. He wasn’t really hers. She’d just borrowed him for a while, long enough to let him into her bed. And her heart. But that was a burden he didn’t need to bear. A secret she’d held inside. He was a wild thing, and she’d known he would go, when the time came.
He was just another patient who’d healed and moved on. That was the way things went. Zan told herself that lie over and over as the day wore on, and the one after that, and the next. By the end of the week, her staff had quit asking where John was, and they’d learned to pretend not to notice her red eyes or the “head cold” that wasn’t getting better.
She just wished he’d said goodbye. A note. A smiley face on her desktop. Anything.
The last thing she expected to see was the barn door opening Sunday morning. She barely recognized the man who parked his red Jeep beside her old Suburban. He stepped down from the Jeep, and she froze, her hand covering her mouth to hold back her scream.
“Hi.” John smiled at her over his shoulder as he plugged the block warmer in, then turned back to the truck to grab a duffle bag from the back and sling it over his shoulder.
“Hi?” Zan couldn’t decide whether to screech or fling herself at him, so she did neither, opting instead for a tone of voice that might not sound like the crazy woman she was fast becoming. “Hi? You disappear for a week, then poo
f, you’re back, and I get ‘Hi’?” She expected something. Anger. Denial. An argument. Anything. Best to get the leaving done before she served him her heart on a fork again.
Instead she got a shrug. “Some things have to be taken care of now, no matter when now is. Invite me in. I’ll cook breakfast.”
He stepped closer, and Zan got a really good look at him. At the cut under his right eye, and the bruise along his jaw. At the lean, hungry look to his face. At the worn cowboy hat that showed the back of his neck where the hairline ended just short of his collar. At the clothes she didn’t recognize -- jeans that fit his hips a little too well to be fresh off the rack. Boots that had seen their share of walking. The parka looked new, but the blue chambray shirt had been washed enough times to have that soft as silk look to it.
His own things. Things that fit the man, as well as the body.
More in the duffle bag. Boxes in the back of the Jeep, too.
He’d come home.
She crossed the space between them in one long stride, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, John, I was so afraid…”
“Shh. Everything’s all right now. Shh. I’m here.” He gathered her into his arms, his hands making little circles on her back, soothing, stroking. His lips met hers in a kiss that was comfort as much as passion, tasting, reclaiming what was already his.
Zan scraped his scalp with her fingers, pulling him closer, burrowing under his jacket, anxious to touch, to feel the heat of his skin. Laughing, John lifted her into the air, tangling her legs around his waist, one hand under her ass to steady her. He kissed her again, longer, harder this time, pausing only to brush a tear from her cheek. “Hey, what’s this?”
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