by Meg Ripley
"I don't think that looks like…you," he said, but his voice lacked the criticism she would have expected.
"You're right," she said, suppressing a smile at his charade, "I think I would like something a little simpler."
Kathryn immediately jumped into action, corralling her back into the fitting room and handing her another gown.
Three more gowns hung discarded on the back of the door by the time Vivian stepped into a sleek satin sheath that draped across her breasts and hung low on her back. The color was soft like champagne and the delicate straps over her shoulders were narrow braids of tiny satin strands. She knew Aurora's slightly fuller body would fill it out perfectly and that she would appreciate the more muted color.
Vivian stepped out onto the platform and noticed that Kathryn was no longer standing sentinel beside a rack of gowns. She could hear her voice in the front of the store talking to another bride, and exhaled, relieved that the pressure of her watching every movement was gone at least for the moment.
"What do you think?" she asked Cade, turning slowly so that he could see the entire dress.
In the mirrors that surrounded the platform she could see Cade stand from the sofa and approach her. Without saying anything, he took her by her hips and led her backwards through the open door of her dressing room. Vivian gasped as he pushed her back against the wall. Keeping his hands pressed to her hips, holding her in place, he lowered his mouth to the swell of one breast and ran it along her skin. His lips were parted just enough that she could feel the heat of his breath roll between her breasts and down the front of the dress to her belly.
Cade pressed into her hips slightly harder as he moved his mouth to her other breast, turning his thumbs so they massaged into the soft valley between her hipbones. Vivian whimpered at the slow, deliciously torturous touch and tried to push her hips forward, wanting to will his hands lower. Maintaining complete control over her, Cade lifted his mouth from her breast, only to rest it in between them and draw his tongue gradually up the center of her chest and along her neck.
His lips hovered just above hers as he met her gaze intensely.
"What color are my eyes?" he asked in a direct, serious whisper.
The smell of sage was stronger now, its earthiness somehow building on the desire tightening in her belly. Her breath was coming in ragged pants and she couldn't bring the words forward. Cade dipped his head down to nip his teeth into her neck.
"What color?" he asked again.
"They look like honey," she murmured, bringing her hands up to his shoulders and kneading her fingers into the strong muscles there, "but with streaks of other colors."
A sound like a low growl rumbled in Cade's throat and he caught Vivian's mouth with his, urging it open with his tongue. Vivian complied, welcoming his tongue against hers and lifting her arms to wrap around his neck. He kissed her feverishly, and when he finally pulled his head back she felt breathless.
"Only women meant to be a part of the clan can see the colors in a dragon's eyes," he whispered to her through his own rough breaths.
Before she could reply, Kathryn's voice came to them through the dressing room door.
"Is everything alright in there?"
"Everything's fine," Vivian answered, forcing a high, casual note into her voice, "My zipper was just stuck so Cade was helping me."
"Did you find something that you like?"
Vivian felt Cade's mouth return to her neck and his fingers gathering her skirt so that it rose up over her knees and was slowly inching up her thighs.
"I did," he whispered against her skin and Vivian laughed, trying to push his hand away from her skirt.
"Yes. I think I found the perfect one. Thank you for your help."
"I'll just be in front when you're ready," Kathryn said and Vivian heard her footsteps scurry away from the fitting room.
Cade started inching her skirt up again and Vivian playfully batted his hand away.
"We have a lot more to do today."
His tongue flicked across her bottom lip and Vivian felt her knees weaken. Suddenly his hand swept her skirt out of the way and she felt his fingers trace up the inside of her thigh and slip beneath the elastic at the leg of her panties. She drew in a breath as they touched her, gathering the hot slickness already there and swirling it into her. Her hands gripped his shirt and she rose onto her toes in response to the touch, biting her lip to avoid crying out.
"It seems we do," he murmured before sucking her bottom lip into his mouth.
She surrendered to his kiss and tilted her hips forward to offer herself completely into his hand. Muffling her sounds with his mouth, Cade continued the masterful movement of his fingers until suddenly Vivian felt her control shatter and her body release in a climax that left her sagging against him and sobbing for air. Cade trailed gentle kisses across her face and down her neck as he carefully withdrew his hand and let her skirt fall back into place.
"I'll wait outside while you get dressed," he said, reaching behind him to open the door, "I don't think Kathryn would like what would happen if I saw you naked right now."
Still trembling from his touch, Vivian quickly removed the dress, hung it back on its hanger, and got dressed. Cade took it from her hands as she stepped off of the platform, brushing another kiss across her lips. They went to the front of the store to buy the gown and Vivian noticed the incredible quiet of the boutique now that Kathryn was doing everything she could not to make eye contact with them.
******************************
The last thing on Vivian's list for the day was to stop by Aurora's house and gather some of her belongings to bring back to her, and the sun was already set by the time she and Cade pulled into the long circular drive at the front of the house. It sat uncomfortably dark and quiet, and Vivian immediately felt anxious.
She climbed the front steps cautiously, the fear only increasing in her chest when she noticed that the front door stood open a few inches. Cade pushed ahead of her to enter first and she reached forward to loop her fingers in the hem of his shirt, seeking the comfort and security of his presence.
Cade turned on the light in the entryway and Vivian drew in a terrified breath. Papers, broken pottery, and shattered glass littered the marble floor.
"Sara?" Vivian yelled into the silence of the ransacked house.
When there was no response, she broke away from Cade and ran up the stairs toward Sara's bedroom.
"Vivian, stop!" Cade yelled after her, but Vivian kept running, looking into every room she passed.
The devastation only seemed to worsen as she got further into the house. When she reached Sara's bedroom she saw her sitting in the middle of the bed, her hands bound behind her back and a black blindfold over her eyes.
"Oh my god," Vivian said, rushing to the side of the bed.
She had just grabbed onto the ropes on her wrists when she felt someone grab her roughly around the waist. Vivian screamed and thrashed against the strong grip, trying to push away from whoever held her. Her body slammed into the bed and she rolled over to see a huge man hovering over her. Sara was making sobbing, whimpering sounds and the man suddenly cracked the back of his hand across her cheekbone.
Sara fell backwards onto the bed and Vivian tried to scramble away from the man, but he descended on her, grabbing her by her shoulders and pulling her up toward him.
"Put her down," Cade said from the doorway.
His voice was low and calm, the control making it even more frightening than if he had shouted. The man turned to him and Vivian used the temporary loosening of his grip to push away from him and run across the room to Cade. He led her gently into the doorway and stepped further into the room.
"You're who they sent?" the man scoffed, "We were hoping the creature Aurora ran off with would at least come back to gloat, but instead they sent Aurora's little friend and her boyfriend to deal with the aftermath. This shouldn't been too much of a challenge, do you think?"
Two other men s
tepped into the bedroom from the adjoining sitting room and Vivian wrapped her hand around the doorframe, the fear making it difficult to breath. She could hear her own breath in her ears and terror was making her shake. Cade, however, seemed completely calm as he took two long steps toward the dresser on the wall and drew a cigarette out of the open pack laying on the top.
Vivian watched Cade turn the cigarette around backwards and put the tip in his mouth. He puffed once and drew the cigarette from his mouth, revealing a glowing end. A shiver of excitement rippled through her despite the fear and she saw the three men visibly stiffened. An instant later furniture skidded out of the way as Cade shifted and his massive form filled the space. One of the men pulled out a long dagger, but before he could even raise it, Cade lifted one claw and slashed it across the man's chest.
The smell of blood filled the room and Vivian turned her head away from the man bleeding on the floor. Footsteps pounded as the other two men ran from the room through the side door. Cade's human form swept Vivian into his arms and rested a kiss to the top of her head.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
Vivian nodded and kissed his chest. This was reality now. She was irretrievably part of this, but as long as she held onto Cade, she felt like she could get through it.
An hour later they stepped out of the house and into a night that was suddenly chilly. Fall was coming quickly and the shift in seasons seemed to underscore what was happening around them. Vivian could hear the voices of the trusted members of the operative inside the house, trying to make sense of the situation and decide what to do next. It was clear now that any talks of peace were only for show. The war was here and Vivian was a part of it.
"What do you want to do now?" Cade asked, tucking an arm around her hips and drawing her close to him.
Vivian breathed in the smell of sage and the hint of sweat from his skin. His arm felt safe and powerful around her, and her body responded to her primal need for him.
"Bring me home," she whispered.
Cade's hands were at her shirt pulling it off over her head even before the front door to Vivian's house closed behind them. She kicked off her shoes as she walked backwards across the living room, kissing him hungrily and working the buttons along the front of his shirt open. Her hands slid over the smooth, rounded muscles of his shoulders as she pushed the shirt away and let it fall to the carpet.
As soon as they made it into the bedroom, Cade released her bra and tossed it away, bringing his mouth down to suckle the breasts he had kissed so patiently earlier. Vivian arched against his mouth and at the same time felt in front of her for his belt so she could unfasten it. The button and zipper fell away under her hands and he stepped out of the pants. Cade lowered himself to his knees, easing her pants and panties down over her hips and thighs so that she stood in front of him with nothing separating them.
Vivian cried out as his tongue slipped into her core, tasting her and readying her even more for him. The sound tore from her chest like a release from the tension, the fear, and the uncertainty of the day behind them. As it left her lips, she surrendered herself to Cade, focusing only on that moment and the touch of his body near hers.
She was quickly spiraling out of control when Cade got to his feet and scooped her up so that her legs wrapped around his waist and the heat of her core cradled the swell of his erection through the thin fabric of his trunks. He carried her to the bed and lowered her onto the mattress, pausing only long enough to step out of the trunks before rising over her and pushing into her in one hard thrust.
Vivian wrapped her legs around his waist again as he pounded into her, each thrust accompanied by a deep, guttural sound. Suddenly he withdrew from her and she felt his hand tuck under her hip so that he flipped her over onto her stomach. Sliding one leg up so that her knee bent up toward her shoulder, Cade entered her again. She lifted her head as a moan poured from her lips and felt Cade bite down into her shoulder with enough intensity that a shock of delectable, pleasurable pain rolled through her body, bringing her right to the edge of her climax.
Cade thrust into her harder until he impaled her a final time and roared with a release that made him throb within her, pushing her over the edge into another dizzying orgasm. She lifted her hips slightly as she milked him, wanting to be as close to him as her body would allow. As their tremors slowed, Cade lowered himself down onto her so that his body enveloped hers in warm, comforting weight. He slid his arms up over hers and intertwined their fingers, touching a kiss onto the back of her shoulder before resting his head onto her back.
Vivian could feel his heartbeat on her back and his slowly relaxing hardness still inside her. She let the feeling soothe her and ease her toward sleep. Tomorrow would come soon enough and she would return to Killington with him to face whatever awaited the dragons. For now she was satisfied to rest beneath him, lost in the scent of sage and the thought of the colors in his eyes. Her loyalties had changed and she knew that no matter what her memories held, this was the beginning of forever.
Alpha’s Howling Desire
"Son of a bitch!”
Forgetting that she was in public, Ariel quickly sank down in her seat, pulling the large book she held in front of her face, cringing. She heard giggling beside her and reached out to smack Daniel on the leg to stop him from laughing at her. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the library staring at her and she had the sudden fear that a skeletal librarian would come in and toss her out by the back of her shirt for defiling the sanctity of the public library reading room.
"Tell me again why I'm sitting here with you," she hissed toward Daniel, still holding the book up in front of her even though she had just finished reading it.
"I need moral support," Daniel replied.
"Moral support to get through your history final?"
"Yes."
"Do you know how much longer I'm going to need to be supportive because all of these people are still staring at me and I'm fairly certain that those ones over there in the corner are planning to kill me."
"We can go as long as you bring me back to your place and give me some of the good stuff."
Daniel lifted his eyebrows at her and Ariel smiled back, nodding as she helped him gather up his papers and books and carry them toward the circulation desk.
Twenty minutes later, Ariel walked into her living room carrying two bowls of ice cream. Daniel was sitting on the floor with his back against the couch and she placed one of the bowls in his lap. She settled onto the couch behind him and grabbed a jar she had tucked under her arm. Twisting off the metal top, she dipped a spoon down inside and reached around Daniel to drizzle a long golden stream of homemade caramel sauce over his ice cream.
"Oh, yeah. That's the stuff," he murmured.
"I know how you like it," she said, digging the spoon down into his ice cream so that his first bite would be mostly rich, buttery caramel.
"I'd totally marry you if we didn't have sex, I could see other people on the side, and you made me caramel every day."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Ariel curled into the corner of the couch and spooned some of the caramel over her own ice cream.
"So do you want to tell me why you decided to shout obscenities in the presence of old ladies and innocent library books?"
Ariel dropped her head back against the couch with grunt of frustration. She swallowed her mouthful of ice cream as she reached for the book on the edge of the coffee table.
"The stupid cliffhanger at the end of this book," she said, holding the book so close in front of Daniel's face he had to lean back away from it.
"Don't all of those books end with a cliffhanger? I thought that was the whole point of having a series. You hang, then they scoop you back up, then you hang, then they scoop you back up," he turned his attention back to the bowl in his hands and took another bite of ice cream, "It's all really exhausting, honestly."
"You don't understand. This was like…" she groaned with exasperation,
unable to come up with exactly the right words to explain why she was so angry at the book, "The books have been leading up to a war between the two rival tribes of wolves. There was a standoff with the Alphas of each of the packs and this book ended right as Lazar leapt into the air and shifted while the other was shooting a crossbow at him."
Daniel looked back at her with a dumbfounded expression on his face.
"Lazar?"
"Yes. He's the good Alpha who has been trying to get a bloodthirsty pack away from his pack's lands."
"Lazar?" Daniel repeated.
"Yes," Ariel said emphatically.
"And he's a wolf?"
"When he shifts, yes."
"So he's Lazar…the wolf."
Ariel chose to ignore the comment and turned the book over in her hands, staring down at the picture of the author on the back of the cover as Daniel sang "To Life" under his breath.
"He's so beautiful," she murmured.
"The wolf?" Daniel asked after a resounding L'chaim to finish out his song.
"The author," she said, tilting the book to Daniel so that he could look at the black and white picture on the cover.
Ariel had stared at that picture more times than she could count. Max Grimsley's dark eyes burned into her from the covers of more than a dozen books tucked on the bookshelf in her bedroom, and, though she wouldn't admit it, she often turned whatever book she was currently reading over on her nightstand so that she could look at his picture before going to sleep.
"Well, pretty soon you will be able to look at the real thing," Daniel said, a hint of teasing in his voice.
Ariel sighed, part of her hating how it made her feel to have a moony-eyed crush at her age while the other part loved the tingle through her body each time she read his name or saw his picture.
