The Wolf Moon (an erotic paranormal romance) (The Wolf Ring)

by Harris, Meg

  “Mine,” he said hoarsely, and pulled her against him. She felt the huge, hot shape of his cock, pressing into her like a brand. Despite the incredible physical satisfaction he’d given her, something inside her growled.

  The animal inside her still needed to possess, and to be possessed.

  But it was too soon. She knew that. Without a ring, he couldn’t effect the transformation until the full moon—and the full moon was still more than a week away. She couldn’t allow him to suffer until the full moon. And if they made love now—if they fucked now—he would most certainly suffer.

  “I am yours,” she whispered, aware of the submissive tone of her own voice. Ordinarily she was the furthest thing from submissive, but for him, she would submit. “But we cannot—it’s not time yet—”

  “I came out here to find you.” His voice was the growl of the predator, demanding, forceful. Dominant. He lifted her to her feet, then pushed her up against the trunk of an enormous oak. “I came out here to make you mine.”

  “I told you.” Her voice quavered with excitement and need. “I am yours.”

  “Not yet.” He pressed against her, letting her feel his enormous cock, hot against her belly. “But before the night’s over… you will be.”

  Chapter Five

  He was going to fuck her.

  Graeme heard himself panting with excitement as he rubbed against the soft skin of her belly. It felt so good, and yet he knew he couldn’t come this way. He could only come with her active participation. He knew that now, even if he didn’t understand it.

  He didn’t want to come like this, anyhow. He wanted to slip into her warm, wet pussy, to claim her as his own, to fuck her until she screamed. He’d already made her come, over and over again, until she was dripping with moisture. She was wet and hot and ready for him, and he wanted to thrust into her soft body and fuck her until he came deep inside, spilling his seed into her, making her his forever.

  Vaguely, he was aware that he should be thinking about reaching for his jeans and finding a condom. He was a responsible guy, and he didn’t go around spilling anything into women—certainly not into women he barely knew. But the idea of a condom seemed foreign, somehow. Alien. He couldn’t imagine using a condom with her.

  He had to spill himself into her. He had to.

  He gripped her by the waist and lifted her against the oak. It was easy, as if she weighed nothing at all. He ought to have been taken aback by his own strength, but somehow it didn’t surprise him in the least. It seemed entirely natural—just as natural as his need to fuck this woman he hardly knew.

  “Graeme.” Her hands settled on his shoulders, and she tried to push him away, without much sincerity. “We can’t. Not until the moon is full.”

  “I have to.” His voice sounded like a low growl, even to his own ears. “You’re mine, and I—I can’t wait, Rhea. I have to have you.”

  “Listen to me.” She stared into his eyes. “Trust me. If you do this tonight, you will suffer terribly until the full moon.”

  “I don’t care.” He let the swollen head of his cock slide against the slick warmth of her inner thigh. God, it was good. So hot so wet so good. He whimpered with need. “Please, Rhea. Say yes. I’ve never needed anyone this much.”

  She closed her eyes. “Nor have I,” she whispered, and then her eyelashes fluttered open, and she stared straight into his eyes. “Very well,” she murmured. “I am yours.”

  He heard himself make a noise that sounded almost like a sob of relief, and then he flexed his hips, pushing the head of his cock against her wet, hot core. The feel of her moisture over the sensitive glans of his cock was almost too much to bear, and a spasm rocked him.

  For a terrible moment he thought he might come then and there, but he gritted his teeth, holding himself back. Good though this felt, it wasn’t enough. He needed so much more.

  In a moment, the overwhelming need passed, and he rubbed against her, feeling her creaming on him, her moisture crowning the head and running down the shaft. He was so sensitized that he could feel each trickle of wetness as it made its way down his cock. He rubbed very gently, making no move to thrust into her, and as her arousal grew, he felt more trails of moisture caressing his flesh.

  It was amazing. He’d never been this sensitive before. He wasn’t even inside her, and it already felt like he’d died and gone to heaven.

  She squirmed against him, stimulating the head of his cock further, and he gripped her hips to hold her still.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Fuck me.”

  The blunt words stoked the fire inside him, but he held himself back. This was too good, too novel. He didn’t want it to end. But he was willing to compromise. He flexed his hips again, and let the head of his cock slip inside.

  His breath hissed between his teeth. She was tight, so tight, and yet soft and yielding and submissive. The heat and moisture surrounding the head of his cock was incredible. He began moving in gentle, shallow thrusts, and he felt her muscles contracting around the sensitive head, caressing him. A low groan of need broke from him.

  “Christ. Yes.”

  He kept moving, thrusting shallowly, with only the head of his cock inside her, and she writhed and squirmed and begged incoherently for more. She clutched at him, but he had all the control, all the power. He was dominating her, taking what he wanted, exactly the way he wanted it.

  She was braced against the tree, her head back, her throat exposed, and he suddenly wanted to bite her so badly he could hardly stand it. He imagined his teeth digging into her shoulder, the spicy taste of her blood—

  He fought back the strange and primitive urge, and thrust a little harder. Another inch or two of his cock slipped inside her cunt, and she was so hot, so tight, creaming all over him, the heat of her moisture caressing him…

  He became aware that his balls were tight with the need for release, and that his skin was wet with sweat. He needed to fuck her, hard and fast, but he knew that if he let himself go, he’d come almost instantly. He didn’t want this to be over. He ground his teeth, holding himself back, letting himself thrust gently, teasingly.

  She was wailing, arching against him, begging for more in broken words and helpless sobs. Her skin was wet with perspiration too, and he could feel her body spasming around his with every movement. He imagined how it would feel when she came, the hard clench of her inner muscles around his cock, and he almost lost his control then and there. He gritted his teeth again, and threw his head back, opening his eyes and staring at the moon through the latticework of branches above.

  He no longer itched. Instead he was filled with unbearable heat. He wasn’t sure what was happening to him, but he knew that the moon somehow had helped to change him. The moon, and the forest… and Rhea.

  He could almost feel the moonlight burning his skin, making his blood boil with need, and suddenly he couldn’t hold back any longer. His hips jerked of their own accord, and he thrust into her, hard and deep, crying out with the pleasure of it. She cried out too, and her legs wrapped around his thighs, giving him better access, allowing him to thrust even deeper.

  He lowered his head, pressed his face into her hair, and pounded into her.

  She smelled like sweat and sex. Like the moon-silvered forest. Like everything wild and alive. The incredible scent of her drove him to the edge of sanity. He thrust savagely, in violent, uncontrolled movements, fucking her like an animal. He was an animal, mindless and wild, driven solely by instinct.

  The desire to bite her welled up inside him, and this time he couldn’t fight it. He opened his mouth and bit into her shoulder, hard. At the same moment he felt her biting into him. It hurt, but he was so far gone into sexual madness that he didn’t care. He bit hard, drawing blood, and slammed into her in a frantic rhythm.

  He felt her body contracting as she came, and then rapture claimed him, too. An unearthly ecstasy poured over him and through him, flooding him with scalding heat, transforming him into something feral and
savage.

  It was the greatest pleasure he’d ever known.

  He couldn’t stop fucking her. Their bodies moved together, in a violent, erratic rhythm, and he heard her screaming, felt her body contracting around his, over and over. She was coming endlessly—and so was he. His orgasm just wouldn’t stop, and he couldn’t stop screaming, either.

  At long last the intense rapture faded, and he found himself slumped against her, pressing her into the tree, panting harshly. He recognized that being pushed into the bark couldn’t be comfortable, so he straightened up, not without effort, and let his rapidly softening body slip out of hers. He looked down at her.

  “Mine,” he said, or tried to.

  But what came out was a growl.

  Chapter Six

  Rhea saw the startled awareness in Graeme’s dark blue eyes begin to change to panic. His body was undergoing a transformation, which was difficult enough for anyone. But if the transformation wasn’t successful—

  Her animal instincts had betrayed her, pushing her into a mating that she should never have allowed. Faced with his desperate need, the scent of sex rich and sweet in her nostrils, she hadn’t had the strength to say no, and now…

  She’d bitten him in the hopes that it would allow him to transform. The transformation could happen in one of two ways—those who wore the rings were transformed by the ring, and those that they chose as their mates and bit were transformed without a ring. It was natural, therefore, that in the throes of first mating, her kind bit one another.

  But she could see already that it hadn’t worked. Graeme couldn’t be transformed by the bite because he was already in the process of being transformed by the pendant he wore. But because the silver pendant had been hammered down at some point in the past, and its magic thus partly dimmed, Graeme couldn’t transform completely until the full moon.

  She was confident that he would be able to transform then. His grandfather Gray had first transformed in the light of a full moon while wearing the very same pendant. All of the Ring had heard the story, many times. So in a few days…

  But she couldn’t wait a few days to deal with this. She had to help a panic-stricken man caught between two forms, right now.

  The first transformation was always painful. It couldn’t be otherwise, when one’s very flesh and bones had to be rearranged. There was always a fleeting moment of terrible agony. But after that, there would be no pain, and the transformation would happen easily.

  The problem was that Graeme was trapped in the midst of his transformation, unable to shift to either human or wolf form. He was caught in the midst of the pain, unable to move forward or backward.

  Until the full moon, he would be in anguish.

  He reached up, feeling frantically at his face. His dark hair had spread over much of his body, his face had lengthened, his canine teeth had sharpened to fangs, his ears stood out from his head, and he had sprouted a bushy tail. But he still stood upright, and he still had human hands and feet, albeit with claws. He looked much like a Hollywood representation of a werewolf.

  And he looked terrified.

  “It’s all right,” she said, reaching out to him. He shied away from her hand, and she didn’t blame him. He must be in dreadful pain, so much so that even a light touch might hurt. She tried again. “It’s all right, Graeme. In a few days…”

  He stared at her, his blue eyes wide. Even though he could no longer speak, his horror was clear. His expression said clearly that he couldn’t bear to live like this for several days.

  She closed her eyes, remembering her own first transformation, recalling the dreadful pain of it. Hers had been a fleeting stab of pain, as it was meant to be. But for Graeme…

  No, she couldn’t let him live in that sort of pain for days. It would be inhuman.

  “All right,” she said. “Come with me, Graeme. Maybe they can help.”

  He cocked his head. Who?

  She sighed.

  “The Wolf Ring,” she said.

  *****

  Every step was pain.

  Graeme staggered through the woods, trailing Rhea more by scent than sight. His eyes blurred with the agony that stabbed through him at every step, and his gait was unsteady. His body seemed caught between standing upright, and dropping to all fours. His legs felt too short, his arms too long, and as a result his balance was off.

  He remembered the feel of his own face. A snout. He had a snout. And fangs, and ears that stood out from his head, and…

  He looked down, seeing the dark hair all over his arms, the claws at the end of his deformed hands, and shuddered.

  He’d become a monster. A freak. A mutant.

  But this couldn’t really be happening. He struggled to push the animal part of his brain away and bring his human logic to bear. This was impossible. Yes, Rhea had talked about transformation more than once, but he barely knew her, and had no real reason to trust her. It was clearly impossible that sex—even incredibly intense, mind-blowing sex— had caused him to turn into a hairy monster with a snout and long ears and fangs. This wasn’t a movie, and it wasn’t a comic book. He was an ordinary man, not a mutant.

  Therefore, he must have been drugged. It was the only explanation. She’d given him some sort of hallucinogen, and suggested to him that he was going to transform, and thus he was imagining he’d turned into… this. Whatever this was.

  What he was experiencing could not possibly be real.

  The pain couldn’t be real, either. But it felt real. Every lurching step sent a stab of agony through him. Every brush of branches against his skin burned. Every whisper of the night beat against his eardrums, intolerably loud.

  He wanted to drop to the ground, curl into a ball, and wrap his arms over his head. And that seemed like the most sensible thing to do. If he’d been drugged, then following the woman who’d drugged him to whatever she’d planned for him was the most foolish thing he could do. Lying down and letting the drug clear his system would make far more sense.

  And yet he couldn’t stop following her. In some strange way he didn’t quite understand, he’d bonded with her. They were inextricably linked somehow.

  It’s just the drugs, he told himself. But drugs or not, somehow he had no choice.

  He had to stay with her.

  He was hers.

  *****

  Clouds gathered in the sky, covering the brilliance of the moon, and the forest became too dark even for Rhea’s enhanced human senses. She turned to Graeme and spoke gently.

  “Watch this.”

  He lowered his head and stared at her. She concentrated, and her body shifted. A few seconds later, she stood there, staring up at him. She knew what he saw—a silvery wolf with dark brown eyes.

  His mouth fell open in shock, and he staggered backward, making whimpering sounds. She knew he was trying to talk, but was unable to do so with his elongated canine mouth. She stepped forward and licked his hand reassuringly, wagging her tail.

  Slowly, he relaxed, and his paw/hand rubbed awkwardly behind her ear, as if she were a house dog. She wagged harder, trying to comfort him. Then she licked his hand one more time, and turning, led him deeper into the forest.

  Rhea was almost as frightened as he was. She’d left the Wolf Ring after Bryce died—after Bryce had been killed—and hadn’t been back since. Most of the members of the Ring were decent people, but the law said that none of them could interfere in a fight, or stand up against the alpha who won his place fairly. And as a result…

  She remembered watching Bryce battling for his life, snapping and snarling, struggling as a larger wolf pinned him to the forest floor and…

  She pushed the memories away. She’d left the Ring because by Wolf law—a law that was generally considered obsolete, and which hadn’t been invoked in a hundred years—she belonged to the wolf who’d killed her mate. Bryce had been the leader of the Ring, but now Arthur led them.

  Rhea hadn’t been willing to mate with Arthur, not with her mate lying dead on t
he ground, his throat torn out by Arthur’s jaws. Arthur had given her two choices—to mate with him, or to leave.

  She’d left.

  Since then, she’d been an outcast from the Ring. In the forest, she’d avoided their territory, and they hadn’t acknowledged her in human form. She saw the shame and sorrow in their eyes when they passed her on the street, though, and she knew that none of them wanted her ostracized. They were afraid, because Arthur was cruel, and a vicious fighter, and none of them quite dared take him on.

  She wouldn’t have gone back for herself. But for Graeme…

  She knew that if Arthur hadn’t mated, he might still try to claim her. But he had likely found another mate already, and if not, she doubted he’d want her with the scent of another man fresh upon her. And if she crawled on her belly and begged meekly for forgiveness, they might take her back, and help Graeme. After all, he was part of the Ring now, the grandson of one of their greatest leaders, and the Ring helped its members wherever possible.

  At least, it always had… until Arthur.

  She became aware that her tail was tucked between her legs and her head was down. Defiantly, she lifted her head and her tail high, and trotted toward the Ring’s territory, Graeme crashing along behind her.

  *****

  Graeme was aware of little more than the pain, but when twenty or thirty wolves melted out of the underbrush and Rhea stopped, he staggered to a halt as well.

  The largest of the wolves, a great black beast with a tattered left ear and piercing green eyes, stared at them for a moment. And then its lips drew back, showing sharp ivory fangs. It stalked toward Rhea, every line of its body proud and commanding, and she dropped to earth in an attitude of submission.

  Despite the pain, something raw and ugly surged through Graeme. He didn’t like seeing Rhea submit to a male that way. He wanted to reach down with his clawed hands, pick up the black wolf, and throw it against the nearest tree. He held back the animal instinct, and waited, trying to figure out what was going on here.