by Marie Mason
To say she’d been disappointed would be an understatement. He was much better at the foreplay part than the actual act itself. She’d felt a brief moment of pain and then nothing else. He’d rolled off her and hurriedly zipped up his pants and left. They’d continued to see each other for a little while, neither mentioning what had happened. The end of the semester had brought the end of their relationship.
Sitting on the toilet, she used the hair dryer on the wall to dry her hair. It wasn’t very heavy duty and she got tired quickly, leaving her hair still very damp. She slipped on the panties that she’d washed out the night before. She bet that had been a lovely sight for Hunter last night and this morning. Her sad, white cotton panties.
Opening the door, she listened carefully before she walked into the room. Grabbing her suitcase, she quickly dressed in a pair of jeans and sweater.
Once she was done dressing, she pulled her hair into a ponytail and looked outside. The snow had stopped but she still didn’t hear any traffic go by on the interstate. She debated turning on the news, but thought better of it. What could they tell her that she didn’t already know.
She was stuck here until the snowplows came their way.
Putting on her shoes, she pulled her coat on, making sure she had a door key, and braved the cold.
She laughed softly to herself, thinking how she’d cursed the white stuff just twenty-four hours ago and now…she drew in a deep breath, taking in the clean, crisp—cold—smell of the snow. It had formed a thick blanket of pure white over everything. It hung heavy in the tree branches and reminded her of the snows they’d had when she was little.
It didn’t take her long to reach the lobby. The first thing she did was ask for some more soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Surely they would be gone by tomorrow, but she wanted to be prepared. And who knew, maybe Hunter had to bathe every time he shifted? She really wished he’d shift for her. She’d love to see his wolf. Her knowledge of the shifter world was limited.
She made her way through the surprising number of people congregating in the lobby. Maybe everyone was getting tired of each other’s company. She’d want nothing more than to spend the day wrapped in Hunter’s arms.
Deciding she didn’t want her own company just yet, she said hi to a couple with two young children. She took an empty seat beside them and decided to make the best of the bad situation.
Almost two hours later, Hunter came into the lobby, shaking off the snow from his coat. In his hand was the backpack he’d taken with him, now full and plump.
He started toward the registration desk, then stopped, his eyes searching the area. When his gaze stopped on her, she realized he had scented her when he’d entered the room. His eyes narrowed when he saw the man sitting beside her. Her game of War with the two young children had given way to a game of poker with another woman and two men.
She divided her attention between her cards and what Hunter was doing at the front desk. An older gentleman was working, probably the owner of the hotel. They exchanged a few words and then he was shaking Hunter’s hand with a great deal of enthusiasm. Hunter handed him the backpack, keeping a smaller plastic bag for himself as he turned away.
He was watching her, she could tell. Watching her every move. Suddenly she felt like an animal being stalked by a predator. A big, bad wolf ready to pounce and devour her.
“Are you cold?” The man beside her smiled. He wasn’t bad looking, about her same age and in in other circumstances she would probably have been charmed at the attention he was paying her…but he wasn’t Hunter so she really didn’t want the attention.
“No, I’m fine.” She resisted the urge to rub her arms. It was slightly chilly in here, the hotel’s heating system not quite keeping up with the cold outside.
Julie tried to concentrate on her hand. She’d played poker before with some of her friends in college. She’d relied more on her luck than her skill. Right now, she knew she needed all the luck she could get because Hunter was distracting as hell.
Julie laid down her cards, tossing in her hand as Hunter got closer. She smiled at the people and got up to meet him halfway.
“So what did you do, buy everything in the store?”
“No, just what I could carry.”
“And then you gave it to the manager.” It was a statement more than a question.
“I doubt if anyone else could have made the trip.” He wasn’t bragging, just stating a simple fact. He was a wolf shifter and he was bigger and better than his human counterparts.
“Are you ready to go back to the room?” He looked around at the other people in the lobby. It wasn’t unusual for people under duress to start to congregate together. That was one factor that made his military missions so difficult at times. People—good and bad—came together during a conflict and there was no way to tell them apart. Until they tipped their hand.
Just like the man who had flirted with Julie was doing. Tipping his hand that his wolf needed to tear his fucking throat out.
“If you are.”
“I’m more than ready.” He helped her on with her coat and took her elbow to guide her out of the building. The cold was still bitter, probably more of an issue now than the snow. The sidewalk wasn’t as difficult to navigate as it had been last night, having been packed down by the guests making their way to the lobby. It did have some slick spots and Hunter kept a strong hand on Julie’s arm so she wouldn’t fall.
Once inside their room, he put the plastic bag on the small table. “The man at the store said the owner of the diner should be in tomorrow morning. Hopefully, we can get something hot to eat.”
Julie hung up her coat and pulled her sweater down as she walked towards him. He wanted to pull her to him and kiss her hello. Why did just being in her presence feel like he was coming home? “I did get us some sandwiches.” He put the cellophane wrapped fare on the tabletop along with a bag of chips and two bottles of water. He stood there waiting for her join him. As she passed, his hand reached out to touch her ponytail. “You didn’t dry your hair.” He stopped her and pulled the blue scrunchie from her hair, letting the still slightly damp hair fall around her shoulders.
“It takes forever to dry.”
“It’s not good to go out with wet hair. You’ll catch a cold.”
“Okay, mother-wolf, that’s an old wives’ tale. You catch a cold because of a virus, not because you go out in the cold with wet hair.” Her eyes wanted to roll back in her head as he ran his fingers through her hair and gently massaged her scalp.
“Maybe, but don’t do it again. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Julie pulled away from his touch, not knowing how to respond. No one who looked like Hunter had ever flirted with her. She knew she shouldn’t let that throw her, but it did. He could have any woman he wanted and she found it hard to believe he wanted her. Except maybe to pass the time away. And after last night’s rejection…Despite her internal bravado, she was not the type of woman who invited men to her bed for a casual interlude. More’s the pity.
She picked up a sandwich and started to eat. Her stomach growled in appreciation and she hoped Hunter didn’t hear it. After eating half her sandwich, she slowed down. They ate in almost total silence and for once Julie didn’t feel the need to try and fill it. Even though he ate two sandwiches to her one, they were both done at the same time. Tidying up the table, she asked, “So what are we going to do the rest of the day?”
Hunter’s lower half came up with more than half a dozen ideas of how they could pass the time. They all included Julie and him—naked—and on the bed. Or the table, the chair, the shower. Oh, the possibilities were endless.
“How about a movie?” Julie climbed on the bed and grabbed a piece of brightly colored paper. “They have HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and—”
“And?” The catch in her voice snared his attention.
“Umm, they have a few pay-for-view movies.” She didn’t look up, just flipped the cardboard flyer in her hand, st
udying the back of it. The blush on her face intrigued him and he moved from his seat on the hard backed chair. Grabbing the remote, he clicked on the big-screen television before taking a seat on the bed beside her. She automatically made room for his big body. Adjusting the volume he started flipping through the channels.
As he did, he realized what pay-for-view movies Julie had discovered on the television guide.
The racy ones. Pay-for-view soft porn. He stopped on the guide, flipping through the titles they had for rent. His grin turned into a smile, than a low rumble of laughter as he read the titles of some of the movies offered.
“See anything you like?” He chuckled and immediately realized she had grown still and silent. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Nothing.” She leaned forward, the dark swath of hair hiding her face.
“Do you want to watch one?” He knew it was a totally inappropriate question to ask a woman he’d pulled from the snow. But not necessarily something he shouldn’t ask him mate. Mates should be able to talk about anything. Did she want to watch a racy movie? He had no desire to look at another woman’s body now that he’d found Julie. He sure as hell didn’t want her looking at another man’s dick, even if it was on television. He assumed from her behavior that she hadn’t experienced much in the way of sexual adventure. Would it be easier for her if she—
“No, no. Turn it off.”
He realized he’d left television on the preview guide and it was showing clips of the movies available. Nothing that wouldn’t be shown on HBO or Showtime late at night, but was making her blush. A pretty pink color that she’d probably become as he fucked her.
Laying down the remote on the bedside table, he turned toward her, propping his head on his hand. “Julie?”
“I am so embarrassed,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands.
“Why?” he asked, drawing her hands back down. When she tried to move them away, he clasped them tighter.
She simply shook her head. He’d thought this might be the time to confess what had happened between them—was going to happen between them. How the hell did you tell your human mate that as soon as you stuck your dick inside her, you were going to knot her?
He wished he’d taken the time to call Logan before he’d returned to the room. Not that his brother had any more experience than he did in taking a mate for the first time, but he might know something Hunter didn’t. Hunter was willing to embarrass himself in front of his brother if he learned something that would make this easier for Julie.
Taking pity on her, he said, “Let’s watch something a little more family oriented, shall we?”
“Like what?”
This time he grabbed the brightly colored paper from the nightstand. He read it for a few minutes then tossed it back down. “How about The Little Mermaid.”
“What?” Julie looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Big, bad wolf shifter Hunter McCall wants to watch a Disney movie whose main character is a mermaid? That’s, umm, that’s usually what little girls watch. Unless of course you have some kind of fetish you’ve never mentioned to anyone.” She thought it highly ironic he wanted to watch the movie with the villainess the storm continuing to batter them, and had made it necessary for her to be rescued by this wolf, had been named after.
“No, baby. I like my women with two legs. I especially like what’s between those two legs.” His face hovered inches from hers. Just as she thought he was going to kiss her, his fingers touched her sides, tickling her until she was laughing and wiggling, trying to get away.
He stopped, and Julie laughed up at him, a wide smile on her face. Damn, she was beautiful. Her round cheeks pink, her chest heaving from her exertion of trying to escape his maundering fingers. Her breasts rose and fell making him want to reach out and touch her. He masked the expression in his eyes so she wouldn’t see it. Desire. Lust. Want.
You couldn’t put a man and woman together in these circumstances without a little spark dancing in the air between them.
Hell, the damn fire was about ready to roar out of control.
“I’ll have you know I’ve seen this movie at least a half dozen times.”
Julie relaxed on the mattress, completely at ease with Hunter’s hand spread across the sloped hill of her stomach. It felt so natural. No embarrassment even though he was touching the most jiggly part of her body. The part, more than any other on her body, that said she was carrying around a few extra pounds.
“Why?”
“Mmm.”
She could tell he wasn’t paying attention. “Why have you watched The Little Mermaid a half dozen times?”
“Nieces. My older sister has two daughters. I use the movie as a bribe to make them behave when I baby-sit.”
“You baby-sit?”
He pulled back, his distracted expression dissolving. “Does that surprise you?”
She couldn’t control the impulse to run her fingers through his black locks. They were soft beneath her touch. He didn’t pull away and she did it again.
“A little. You’re a tough marine.”
He leaned forward a little bit more as if seeking her touch. “I’m also an uncle. A son. And a brother.”
He didn’t add that more than anything he wanted to be a mate. A husband. A father. Imagining Julie’s body swollen with his child…Let’s just say it had his body ready to get her in that condition—and fast.
“Do you have any more siblings?” She’d only ever heard of the two that worked in the city and now she knew he had a sister.
“Just the two brothers, which you apparently know.” He threw her a heated look. “And one sister. All older than me.”
“Ahh, you’re the baby of the family.”
He growled playfully, and pounced again, tickling her sides until she cried uncle.
“Come here.” He gathered her against him, placing his left arm around her shoulders. They leaned back against the headboard.
She didn’t pull away and he smiled to himself. He was making progress. “Let’s watch the movie.”
He’d told her the truth about watching it several times with his nieces. He didn’t share that he usually had his laptop open and worked the whole way through. He didn’t today, watching right along with Julie. He smiled as she hummed along with the songs and laughed along with her at the antics of Ariel and her sidekick Flounder. About half way through, he realized she had fallen asleep, her soft weight a pleasant sensation against his side. He lowered the volume on the television and simply stared at her for several minutes. The smell of her was overpowering his control. Just being this close to her, feeling the softness of her flesh under his fingers was going to his head like incense.
Deciding what he needed was a run, he eased himself out of the bed. He’d wait until he was outside before he shifted. All he needed was for her to freak out and start screaming if she woke up and saw him in the middle of a shift. Even though she said she wanted to see his wolf, seeing him shift was another matter. Opening the desk drawer as quietly as he could, he wrote her a quick note and propped it against the lamp on the nightstand. He didn’t want her to wake up and not know where he was.
He didn’t know how this curvy woman had gotten under his skin so quickly. Yeah, the mating urge might have been responsible for the hot flash that had engulfed him when he’d scented her for the first time.
It ensured that a wolf mated. That the animal found the woman fate had chosen for it attractive and desirable. It didn’t, however, make a man like the way she tilted her head when he said something that obviously puzzled her. Find the contradictions in her perfect. Her shyness adorable and her sassiness just as appealing. It didn’t control how the huskiness of her voice affected his cock, making it ache and throb. Well, maybe it did do that.
He felt like a voyeur as he watched her sleep, yet he couldn’t look away. She was out of his league. She was wholesome, nice. He clenched his hands by his sides. He didn’t do nice. He did sex. Hard and fast and rough. She wouldn
’t know what to do with his sexual appetites, much less those of his wolf.
She was so lovely he couldn’t seem to draw his gaze away. The sweater rode up on her hips, revealing that tantalizing strip of flesh that made a man want to see even more. He remembered her panties from the night before. White and utilitarian. Something functional and comfortable.
They’d watched the movie on top of the covers and he didn’t want to disturb her by moving her. Taking the extra blanket from the top of the closet, he laid it on her, resisting the urge to touch her again.
Maybe she has a bad girl inside her.
He knew that was just his wolf talking. And him hoping.
No. No. he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t seduce the innocence from her eyes, from her body.
Yes. Yes we can. Mate. Remember? She is our mate.
Down boy. Pushing his animal back, he turned on his heel and headed out the door. He needed the run to cool down his libido more than he needed to let his wolf out. Again, he didn’t bother with a coat. Outside the snow had finally stopped falling. It was dark earlier than usual thanks to the still overcast sky filled with thick clouds. He knew there would be more snow by morning.
Jogging past the small clearing at the back the hotel, he headed to the dense underbrush that gave way to a thicket of trees further back. It wasn’t the most ideal location to run, but concentrating on the unfamiliar terrain would take his mind of the woman sleeping in his bed.
Damn, he sounded like one of the bears from the Goldilocks story. Striping quickly, he shifted on the run, he got himself as far away from the tempting woman as he could.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Fuck.”
Hunter cursed as soon as he walked into the hotel room. The smell of Julie’s apprehension hit him when he opened the door. It was completely dark outside. He’d been gone longer than he’d intended, trying to run off the sexual energy strumming through him and scouting out the surrounding buildings. She was sitting at the small table with the deck of cards she’d found earlier. Her hair was down, hiding her beautiful face once again.
