Ride the Wicked Woodsman (A Night Falls Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance)

by Christa Wick

  "That would make skirts awkward," I joked nervously as his questing nose seemed determined to burrow until he found the split in my lower lips.

  Gold eyes glanced up, the brows practically knitting together in a question mark. He lifted his head for a second as if he were going to say something then shook it and dropped his mouth to the line he'd just been tracing.

  His tongue parted my labia and traced a slow path along its length.

  My fingers clawed at the bedding beneath me until I had fistfuls of the quilt clutched in my gnarled hands.

  Yeah, no questions, no answers, no talking at all, just this sweet sucking that had my back arching and my eyes rolling up.

  Taron bunched the crotch and back of my jeans in one big hand, pinning me in position while the fingers of his free hand splayed my lips open. He dipped two fingers inside me, the tips emerging with a thick covering of a sticky, translucent liquid.

  I watched, mesmerized, as the fingers disappeared into his mouth then emerged clean.

  "This," he growled, "is the only honeycomb I want, baby."

  The muscles of my chest wrapped tight around my rib cage. It wasn't just the words or the way they rumbled past his lips, but the hot promise in his eyes.

  Could this work -- beyond him taking my virginity and offering me a few weeks or months of safe harbor filled with nights like this?

  His molten gaze told me it could.

  "Please," I whispered, straining against the grip he had on my jeans that kept me locked down on the mattress.

  Lifting up and onto his haunches, Taron quickly stripped my pants away. But when he settled against me once more, his head was level with mine, not even his thick fingers between my legs to tease me.

  "Kiss me," he commanded.

  I lifted my head, uncertain of the mechanics. A peck wouldn't do, but I couldn't practically devour his face as my hunger urged.

  I pressed my lips to his, found them closed and unyielding.

  Squirming with frustration, I sucked his bottom lip into my mouth and chewed lightly at it as my hips pushed upward.

  His mouth softened, just a little. I dared a push of my tongue, then a lick against his top lip when he refused to submit. But he moaned at that lick, offered his own and then our tongues were sliding against one another.

  With my legs free, I pressed my knees against his hips, my mound butting insistently against the thick shaft. He let his weight drive my ass down to the bed, his cock wedging my labia apart as he slicked up and down my clit and took control of the kiss.

  Strong hands curled around my head, held me immobile as Taron's tongue probed deeper. I trembled, threw my arms around his shoulders and squeezed as if that would stop the shaking.

  He slipped free, kissed his way down my neck and began to nuzzle just below my ear. No longer holding my head, his hands freed my breasts from the bra and began to squeeze at the fleshy mounds, his fingers and thumbs plucking at the nipples as he laved my neck.

  Our hips never stopped moving, the friction of cock against clit over and over making me wet and tender and wild.

  Small vocalizations accompanied the soft spray of kisses he left as his mouth moved down my neck and across my collarbone before settling on one thick, pouting nipple.

  Huffs, rumbling growls, grunts. He licked, sucked then took the aching tip of my breast between his teeth and rolled it.

  I threw my head back, howling out my need and frustration.

  "Soon, baby," he promised and pulled back onto his haunches, his fine ass resting against his heels. Big hands forced my thighs wide open so he could stare at all my swollen, dancing need.

  "Pink like salmon," he teased, his long tongue salaciously unrolling from his mouth for a second before he quickly pulled it back in.

  Holy fuck, I wanted that tongue on me, in me.

  "Please," I whimpered.

  "Please, what?"

  His alpha voice kicked in, its lower vibrations sending the nerve endings along my breasts and pussy into a full meltdown.

  "I want your mouth on me...your tongue..."

  The rest of the words wouldn't come as a fever seized my brain.

  Taron shifted forward as if he was going to pull my nipple into his hot mouth.

  "Lower," I rasped, the look in his eyes telling me he had known with that first whimper I wanted him teasing my clit again.

  "This," he said and tortured me with a slow stroke of his finger along the line of my pussy.

  My hips shot up in answer. I pulled a handful of quilt towards my mouth because I couldn't unclench my fist and then I bit at the knuckles, moaning and grinding out my need against the air.

  "You," he murmured, his big hands pushing my ass back down to rest against the mattress, "are truly a sight to behold."

  I didn't know, had no reference beyond the disgusted looks the males in my pack had thrown my way. But with Taron's gaze scorching every inch of my flesh, I could truly believe I was beautiful, if only to him.

  At least until estrus ended.

  A growl sliced through that last thought.

  "Baby, whatever just flashed through that pretty little head of yours deserves a lashing."

  Before I could finish processing the threat and register fear, he pressed his chest flat against the mattress and lowered his mouth to my mound.

  "Lucky for you, all I have in me is a tongue lashing when you're this hot and aching."

  I blinked, my lashes flinging the needy tears that had accumulated at their tips. Letting go of the quilt, I knotted my fingers in Taron's hair and tugged him closer to my flesh.

  "That's it, love, show me what you want -- what you need," he murmured. "I'm the only one who can give it to you. You're mine now."

  His, yes. I could pretend tonight that he meant forever and that his will to make it so would obliterate all the obstacles between us.

  I pulled at his hair until his mouth made contact with my mound, the lips instantly sealing around my clit. He sucked, pulled, throttled the swollen bud at the end until I had to release my hold and muffle my screams.

  Each time I felt ready to cross some unknown but very tangible line within me, some barrier I had never explored beyond, he jerked me back with a new sensation.

  His tongue curled under the hood of my clit to torment and bully the small pearl tucked inside. He pushed, circled, spooned at it until my body vibrated along the bed. Then his mouth abandoned me and I unleashed another indignant howl.

  "Cruel," I whined, tears in my eyes from the need to cross that line, smash that barrier.

  "Truly?" he asked, gaze amused as he slid two fat fingers inside my pussy.

  All the bones and muscles in my neck turned to water. I couldn't keep my head up to glare my admonishment at him, could only let it loll back and watch the ceiling swim above me.

  "You have to stretch wider to fit me, she-wolf," he warned just before inserting another finger.

  "I will," I promised and squirmed around his fingers. All those dirty little kisses he had left along my clit had kickstarted hard clutching contractions deep within my pussy. My muscles wrapped around the thick, locked invasion of his fingers, sucked at their textured skin, tried to pull them deeper into me.

  Tilting my hips, I reached down and spread my legs wider.

  He had started huffing again, the sound mixed with long rolling growls, his top lip dancing with a barely suppressed snarl of need.

  "Hungry, bear?" I asked, the look on his face and the tension coiling in his torso giving me the confidence to tease him back.

  His fingers still in me, he flung his mouth against my clit once more, the lips taking possession but not before I heard his threat.

  "Oh, baby, you're going to pay for that."

  Three fingers wedged hard and fat hammered at my novice pussy. Teeth scraped along my labia before the sweet salve of his tongue whispered over the tenderized flesh. All of me contracted around him, my eyes squeezed so tight I couldn't see the barrier until it exploded around me, it
s shrapnel sinking deep to wake nerve endings I didn't know existed.

  Panting, moaning, my eyes awash with mindless tears, I came hard for Taron.

  And still he drove me on.

  ********************

  After sucking and fingering me to my third climax, a gloat entered the bear's gaze.

  He got off the bed and stared for a few seconds at my still squirming body. My fingers reached for the unflagging erection but he sidestepped my grasp.

  "Patience, love. I'll only deprive you a few seconds longer before I take what is mine."

  Me -- he was talking about me, or at least that part of me that lived between my legs.

  Rolling onto my side, I watched him cross to the bathroom and open one of the vanity drawers.

  Seeing him pull out a condom twisted like a knife through my gut.

  He saw the change as soon as he turned to leave the bathroom. Absently gripping the source of my pain, he returned to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress.

  "What?" he asked, not moving to touch me.

  "I'm not contagious," I choked out. "Fucking me with a bare cock isn't going to give you human DNA."

  I rolled onto my back, my body open and my mind resigned to letting him take what he wanted. It would seal the betrayal, make leaving easier.

  With a growl, Taron covered my body with his, the condom abandoned and his hands locked around the sides of my head so I could only avoid his burning gaze by closing my eyes.

  "What put the stupid idea into your head that I think you're contagious?"

  Stupid, really?

  "Eric," I said, giving him my brother's name before adding more. "Selisma, Ruben, Alana..."

  I moved past naming my little sister and parents and on to the shifters my age, male and female, within the pack.

  "Stop."

  My tongue ceased but I tried to burn more names into the back of his skull through my eyes.

  "This," he snarled, finding the condom and tapping it against my forehead a few times. "This is because I don't want your choice to stay with me to come down to the fact I put a cub in you."

  Who was the one spouting stupid ideas now?

  "That's not possible, so don't even think of using it as an excuse."

  "Damn it, I want to throttle you right now!"

  "Try it, Bear," I bit back.

  Throwing his arms around me, Taron jerked me onto his lap, my legs draped around his hips and my heels against his ass.

  "I don't care how many pack leaders have lied to you just so they could keep a tight grip on their power structure for a few more generations, but it absolutely is possible."

  I glared at him, my puckered lips practically yelling for him to offer up some piece of tangible proof.

  "We don't bring the little ones around the club house," he growled. "Too much shit happens there. But if we did, you'd find children born from a union of bear and cat, cat and wolf, elk and wolf--"

  "Elk?"

  Now he was talking major bullshit -- had to be. I had never even heard of Elk or any other kind of deer shifter. Shifters were predators, not prey.

  He rolled off the bed, huffing at me over his shoulder as he walked away.

  "Fine, babe. I get it. That's your 'honeycomb.'"

  Reaching the bathroom, he tossed the unopened condom into the trashcan then closed the door. I listened to the sounds of him getting ready for bed, brushing his teeth, draining his bladder, angry growls punctuating the process.

  When he emerged, I was still on the bed, sitting with the quilt pulled up to shield more than my naked body. He didn't glance my way, not that I could tell. He put a fresh log on the fire, grabbed the spare blanket I had used the night before then settled into the rocking chair, his back to me.

  I hugged the quilt a little tighter, the cold prickling my skin coming from the inside. I tried to make sense of what had happened and what I had experienced since entering Night Falls and compare it against twenty-three years of being fed "facts" and rules from my pack.

  Have no doubt -- packs are essentially cults. Within each pack, one man's word is law. There is no democratic selection of that male, and, over the last century, the practice of combat challenges has died out to avoid detection among the larger human population. It is forbidden to be part of two packs, and thus it is also forbidden to be part of two cults, so there is no practice of religion.

  Most important in identifying a pack as a cult is the threat of excommunication. Aside from leaders meeting, wolves don't mix with cats and the cats don't mix among their different species. We're told this is because offspring is impossible and shifters are an endangered species. Reproducing is not only a biological drive but a duty to the pack. Any wolf that tries to cross that line is packless with a giant target on his or her back.

  Now Taron was telling me that was a lie. Or maybe the shifter gene had learned to adapt as numbers dwindled and what was true for my generation's great grandparents was no longer relevant and pack law prevented us from making that discovery.

  And after all that Taron had done for me since I first set foot in his clearing, who did I want to believe? Him or the pack that had made me a prisoner and an outcast at the same time?

  I slid off the bed, my footsteps hesitant. Taron had remained motionless since he sat down in the chair, but I knew he was nowhere near relaxed or asleep. An angry heat emanated from him, his muscles remaining tense all through his torso and limbs.

  His hands gripped the ends of the rocker's armrests. Cautiously, I settled onto his lap, heart thudding in my chest. A week before, with this much fear and trepidation, I would have wished my traitorous body to quiet itself. But I wanted him to feel my energy, to hear the rapid pulse and smell my anxiety.

  When he didn't react to my presence, I pulled my legs up and turned into his broad chest. I rested my head against one shoulder and curled my hand around his neck on the other side.

  "I get it," I whispered, my fingers petting at his neck. "You aren't like anybody I've met before."

  I waited, got nothing in return.

  Taron had said I carried the alpha strain. I wanted to push that energy at him but didn't know how. I worried that any attempt would just fill him with the same coldness that iced my bones.

  I kept stroking at his flesh, my thumb massaging the tense line of his jaw.

  "You won't lie to me."

  I burrowed my face closer against his neck. As tempting as I apparently was during estrus, I was no seductress. I didn't want to play with his body to draw him out. That wasn't me. And I hadn't hurt or insulted his body. Whether it revealed itself as a deep wound or a mere scratch, I had injured his heart.

  "You'll always protect me," I continued, my nails lightly scraping at his scalp as my nose and lips made contact with the flesh of his neck.

  Out of words, I stopped talking. My hand retreated to my lap. I didn't understand what had been so unforgivable in my actions that he would harden as he had. I had been little better than a leper in my pack, I couldn't forget that in the course of a single day.

  My reaction had been knee-jerk, but only from painful experience.

  I stayed on his lap, too exhausted to raise the flag of surrender and retreat to the bed. At some point, he had started rocking, the motion so slight it took a few minutes to register. I pressed a little tighter against him to keep from sliding off.

  That's when his hands finally left the armrests to brace me, the placement of his hold utilitarian instead of intimate. I would take what I could get. I curled my hand around his opposite shoulder and snuggled deeper against him.

  Still naked with the blanket beneath me, my muscles tightened from the cold. That brought his arms up to surround me, but he still projected the air of a disinterested caregiver.

  "You should go back to bed," he rasped in a dark tone.

  I gripped him a little tighter. "Not without you."

  If there was some magic phrase to make him surrender, that wasn't it.

  "You need to go
back to bed," he repeated, the slight change in wording bringing it closer to a command.

  I threw his arms off me, everything aching too much to produce a single tear or admonishing cry. I could barely breathe as I walked back to the bed. I thought about putting my clothes on and leaving. The woods were still dangerous, but if I was ready to shift, as he had said, then maybe all I needed was to be thrown into the pit and let instinct take over.

  Climbing onto the mattress, I didn't burying my cold flesh beneath the quilt. I crawled across to the curtain and drew it all the way open, moonlight flooding the cabin's interior. I pressed the front of my body against the glass, my palms and cheek resting against the chilly pane.

  There was no religion among the packs and prides I had known -- but there was always the moon, the sun, the many-hued earth and blue skies. The sun and moon looked down, observed or didn't and then moved on. But every day they reaffirmed that we were primal.

  I looked up at the moon, tried to draw on her energy even though I knew it would be as icy as I felt and as remote as the man sitting a few feet away from me.

  As I stared out and up, my gaze watery, a hand snaked around my neck and squeezed lightly.

  "This was not what I meant when I warned you back to bed."

  He pushed into me with no further warning, his entry hard and complete. I choked out a gasp. Heat flared inside me, fire jumping from nerve ending to nerve ending as Taron slid back and slammed inside again.

  Swinging our bodies toward the center of the bed, he pushed me into a submissive position, my cheek down low and pressed against the mattress, pussy and ass molding around his groin.

  Taron draped his long body over me, the crushing weight an odd comfort. His teeth grazed along my shoulder as one hand pushed between my body and the bed. The scraping of his teeth turned to bites and licks. His fingers found my clit, rubbed mercilessly at its quickly swelling flesh. The harder he slammed his thick cock into me, the harder he bit at my shoulder and stroked at my pussy.

  I groaned, squirmed, tension coiling tighter and tighter, its base the hot, wet core between my legs where Taron fucked in and out, his huffs and growls growing louder with each turn of the screw inside my gut.