by Jody Wallace
She wanted to devour him, wanted him to devour her, until they were inside one another. Forget the consequences. This was Harry, and she had to have him.
She slipped a hand beneath his T-shirt, his warm skin gliding beneath her palm. In response, he yanked off his shirt, practically ripping it. Lean muscles bunched in his arms, his abdomen, his skin golden-tan. The hair that grew on his chest was as silky as she’d always imagined.
When she followed the path downward and tried to free the button on his jeans, something inside her popped.
No, not inside her. Thank the Goddess, it was her sprained wrist. The pain restored a semblance of sanity.
She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see his dark head bent over her breasts, her legs spread wantonly around him.
“Harry.”
He pinched her nipples, his whiskers rubbing her raw. Delicious.
So she bent her hand backward until her wrist flared with agony. June clenched her teeth against it. “Harry, stop.”
His teeth scraped her tender skin, and she wondered if they’d sharpened. If his eyes were pale blue. If Harry continued to exert his alpha to persuade her into bed, what was she going to do?
She wasn’t strong enough. A few witches claimed to have bedded a shifter and kept their magic, but June feared she’d be one of the others. One of the lost ones.
She shoved him. “I hurt my wrist, Harry, and my cut could get infected. We can’t do this right now.”
He rested his forehead against her, his breath sighing over her moist nipples. “You’re right, honey, you’re right. Give me a minute.”
She did. When he raised his head, his expression was tight but not angry.
“I can’t believe how much I want you,” he told her. “Did you cast a spell on me?”
“Of course not.” There were spells for that, but she’d never cast one. “In fact, I normally…” Her face heated.
Harry raised the straps of her bra and buttoned her dress with lazy hands, caressing each inch of skin before he concealed it. “Normally?”
“I run a…well, we call it a dampener. For the libido.” She didn’t want him to think she’d been drowning in lust the past eight years. “I dropped that spell along with my older face to conserve magic. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Really.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.
“Yes, really.” She sighed.
“Being horny isn’t a problem, June. It’s healthy.” He finished her top button and winked. “Besides, what else are we going to do until your power comes back?”
He made it sound so casual, something to pass the time. She was no virgin, but she didn’t hop in bed to relieve her boredom.
And she absolutely couldn’t hop into bed with Harry.
“What can we do? All sorts of things.” She slipped off the counter, bumping him with her elbows and knees. “We can eat. Sleep. Surf the internet. Bake a pie. Play poker.”
“I was teasing.” He stepped out of her way when she stomped to the sink to tidy the dish drainer. “If you’re not in the mood, I get it.”
“It’s not that.” She couldn’t tell him what it was. “Sex would complicate matters.”
“Matters are already complicated.” He winced and adjusted his jeans, which bulged at the crotch.
She tore her gaze away. “Complicate things more.” If she slept with Harry and lost her power, she couldn’t imagine how she’d be able to help him tomorrow—or herself.
He bent to pick up a plate, his jeans hugging his heinie in a way she had always appreciated.
Just not with such erotic hunger.
His light brown eyes gleamed when he caught her watching, and he smiled—wolfishly. “I think I can handle it. Can you?”
No, she couldn’t. “End of discussion. Put some food in that mouth and quit arguing with me.”
“Now I definitely believe you’re Sandie,” he grumbled, but he opened the fridge, just the same.
June retreated to her stillroom at the back of the house as fast as her feet would carry her. She couldn’t explain why sleeping with him was a horrible idea, and it both thrilled and disturbed her that he’d been so aggressive. From what she’d heard from his dates, who’d all adored Harry’s sweet old lady friend, his habitual indolence had extended to his love life. He didn’t hunt. He didn’t pursue. If he’d been roused to seduce her today, he might be roused out of it again.
She had no idea why. The nerve-racking situation? Their friendship? Her resistance?
Didn’t matter. As soon as her power returned, she was going to hit herself with a dampener spell the size of a tractor.
Right now she lacked the strength to soothe a sunburn. To tend her wounds, she’d have to dig out her stash.
The Millington coven didn’t just specialize in cake. They were also one of the top producers of primed medicants, pre-spelled substances that could heal without more magic. Nothing fancy—no cures for cancer—but her coven’s ability to combine psyches gave them an edge over other covens in this lucrative area. It took a lot of power to create medicants, power that solo witches rarely had.
Nearly all their product went to market. June didn’t have much on hand. Burn cream, a few orals, an all-purpose healer. She had more in her emergency pack, but she didn’t think she’d need it. After donning clean clothes and washing her arms and hands with antibacterial soap, she smeared a dab of healing salve on the cut.
Then she gritted her teeth and counted to one hundred because it burned like fire as the wound closed.
For the wrist she popped ibuprofen and slapped on an elastic bandage. Time and patience could work their own magic.
After June raced out of the room, Harry considered shoving ice down his pants instead of fried chicken down his gullet, but then he smelled the meatloaf.
His stomach growled like two badgers fighting over roadkill.
He piled meatloaf, baked beans, scalloped potatoes, cornbread and, what the heck, some chicken on a plate and nuked it. The odors of beef and carbs slowly overpowered the scent of woman. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, only to realize his hands smelled like June’s body.
His erection sprang back to life as he remembered how he’d spread her out on the counter like a wishbone waiting for his wish. Christ, he hadn’t been this horny since he was a teenager, the man and wolf inside him struggling to break free.
Teenaged shifters had it rough. Not only did they have raging hormones, pimples, growth spurts and bottomless pits for stomachs, but their wolf stirred around that time, as well. Their animal nature tormented them. Their senses sharpened too, which made things worse. Fucking, eating and their hair was pretty much all they thought about. When they weren’t having an existential crisis, that is.
Not that different from human teenagers.
In a biological blessing to parents, no shifters turned four-legged until they controlled their animals, usually in their late teens. Mastering the wolf was a huge rite of passage. Wolves who displayed weakness afterward were considered feral. Defective. Pack risks. They were banished, and after a day or so in foreign territory, the defective wolf lost his powers, maybe his life.
Indies who lost control—well, their best bet was to never do it in the first place.
Harry had been in California at the time of his first change, with one of the packs that took in orphans. His mother had told him to go there before she died. The human social services system was no place for a shifter. He’d been considered a prodigy because he’d shifted before he got his driver’s license.
Combine that with the alpha gene that revealed itself after the shift, and he’d had more chicks than he could handle. Werewolves dug alphas, even when the alpha wasn’t pack. But women, he’d found, wanted you to date them. Stay with them. Join their packs.
And so Harry had quit handling them. Unless they brought food.
He was a sucker for a woman who could cook. If she wanted him to mow her yard, he showed up with the John Deere and an appet
ite. If she wanted him to help pick out a car, he found her an awesome deal. If she wanted him in her bed…
Well, he had limits. He didn’t go for married women, miserable women, underage women or pack wolves.
Hell, a man who could cook could probably talk him into a lot of shit too, but men never showed up with pie. Sometimes a six pack, which wasn’t as persuasive.
That being said, if June’s cooking skills had been equivalent to his, meaning nonexistent, he’d still have wanted her. Since now wasn’t a good time to have her, when would be?
Next week, when this was all over?
Tomorrow morning, when she’d rested?
After supper, when she’d bandaged her arm?
To keep his mind off sex, Harry scrubbed her odor off his hands with dish soap and followed with a slice of onion to be safe. The pungent veggie brought tears to his eyes. He sniffed, rubbing his nose against his shoulder.
When his meal dinged, he fixed June a plate with chicken, potatoes and beans. Her favorites. As he waited, he cracked the window over the kitchen sink and listened for any signs of shifters outside the house.
Nothing but tree frogs and birds. He poured two glasses of milk and went to fetch June.
He’d been to her neat-as-a-pin house any number of times. It was surreal to walk down the hall knowing everything was different. June wasn’t the same, obviously, since he got hard as steel when he thought about kissing her. But the more he considered the day’s events, the more he realized her mannerisms, her way of speaking, her inherent bossiness—her dislike for profanity—were all Sandie.
While he hadn’t had any complaints about Sandie the past eight years, her new appearance roused him in a way her previous one hadn’t. His feelings for her were being transformed by a major dose of lust.
If that made him a shallow bastard, nobody ever said wolves were profound.
Her bloody dress was draped over the foot of her bed. The bathroom door stood open, lights out. No sign of her in the Florida extension, watering plants. He finally found her in the back parlor she’d converted to a craft room. The sink, fridge, counters and cabinets were organized with the supplies she used for potpourri and fussy stuff.
And, apparently, magic spells. His nose twitched at the odor of grapevine and herbs.
She was immersed in whatever she was doing, using a tiny ladle to sift green flakes onto an electronic scale. A book lay open on the counter. Muttering to herself, she bent forward to squint at the digital readout. A pair of jersey pants hugged the curves of her rear.
Harry swallowed.
“June.”
When she didn’t turn, he advanced on her. “June, I heated you a plate.”
She lurched forward with an “eek,” bumping her skull on the counter. Her ladle flew one way; she flew another.
Harry caught her before she hit the floor, and his hands lingered after she gained her footing. Her fitted T-shirt was as blue as her eyes. He’d never seen her so casually dressed.
“You startled me.” She rubbed the top of her head where she’d hit the marble. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, wolf man.”
“Your arm looks great.” He traced the nearly invisible scar that had recently been a claw slice. “You should patent that. You’d be rich.”
“I agree, we should go public with the fact we can magically heal cuts.” She pulled a face. Her other wrist was wrapped in a tan bandage. “Right after you wolf out on national TV, okay?”
“Touché.” He pretended he was fascinated by her healed wound as an excuse to keep touching her. “Are you ready to eat?”
“I’m overhauling my kit.” She inclined her head toward her giant purse on the next counter. “I need to be better prepared.”
“Can it wait?” He smiled. “You know I don’t like to eat alone.”
Her eyelashes lowered as her gaze ventured down his torso. He hadn’t put his shirt back on after their encounter.
“Hmm.” She wet her lips. “What are we having?”
If she kept looking at him like that, he’d be having her. She was clean now, her cut healed and her wrist taped. “Chicken, potatoes, beans.”
“I should finish up.” She plucked up the ladle and rubbed it with a cleaning wipe before hanging it on a swivel rack.
He caressed her arm. “This stuff isn’t going anywhere. Come on. The food will get cold.”
She followed him into the kitchen, and he seated her at the dinette table where he’d enjoyed many a meal. Conscious of her stare, he slipped into his T-shirt. A gentleman did not come to the table bare-chested or wearing a hat.
Unless his companion was bare-chested, but she wasn’t. More’s the pity.
“Thank you,” she said as she rubbed her hands with an antibacterial wipe. He wasn’t sure if it was for the food or putting on his clothes. “I checked my messages, by the way. My coven suspects I’m helping you, but they think we’re long gone.”
“Are you being censured?” He set his plate across from hers. It didn’t seem right that her friends would punish her for kindness.
“Not as of right now.”
“Good.” For several minutes, they tucked away leftovers in silence. The sound of forks on plates provided quiet background noise, along with the fridge’s hum.
“Want anything else?” He rinsed his plate in the sink and reached for hers. When they had meals together, she cooked, he cleaned. Annette and the other ladies wouldn’t let him lift a finger, but his relationship with Sandie had always been egalitarian. He didn’t even mind that she went behind him and redid everything.
She swirled her milk, watching the liquid. “There’s cake and ice cream. None for me, though. It’s too late for sweets.”
It was never too late for her cake. He glanced around the kitchen until he spotted the tin. Harry cut himself a slice of the chocolate dessert and scooped vanilla ice cream on the plate beside it.
This time he sat beside June instead of across from her. In the other room the grandfather clock struck twelve. “Hey, it’s your favorite time of day. The witching hour.”
A smile curled her lips. “You know I go to bed at ten sharp. I’m hardly ever awake at midnight.”
Yet here it was, and he hadn’t seen her yawn for some time. “Can you turn people into pumpkins?”
“Myth.”
“Frogs?”
“Myth.” She rested her head on her hand and watched him enjoy the cake.
“Broom?”
“I use a vacuum.”
“For riding?” It wasn’t much smaller than the Smart car.
“For cleaning the floor,” she said with a laugh. “It’s bagless. Fancy, huh?”
He loaded the perfect-sized bite of cake, icing and vanilla on his fork. “Cake?”
“I’m full.”
“You know you want it.” And he knew it too. June had a sweet tooth to rival his own. “Just one bite. Open up.”
After a second, she complied. Their gazes met. He withdrew the fork from her mouth and deliberately licked the tines.
She exhaled, her eyelids lowering halfway.
Oh, yeah. After supper was the perfect time to finish what they’d started.
Harry took another bite, allowing his knee to brush her leg under the table.
“You’re bossy,” she observed after she swallowed. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”
He readied the fork with more cake. “What can I say? There are more things I want from you now.”
“Harry,” she began unsteadily, “we can’t—”
He fed her more cake. She accepted it, desire warring with uncertainty in her expression.
What was she afraid of, sex with a shifter? No reason to be. His kind was devoid of STDs and unable to breed with humans. Shifters might get rowdy in the sack, but they didn’t hurt their partners. They had more control than that; their painful teenage years saw to it.
If she was afraid of screwing up their friendship, that was plausible, but he didn’t think it would happen. W
ith few exceptions, his exes didn’t become enemies. Some of his best customers were former dates and their families.
June was single, he was single. They were attracted. They liked each other. They trusted each other. They spent half of their free time together. They’d survived a near-death experience together. No reason they couldn’t hook up.
He alternated bites between them, teasing with hers and making her work for them. By the time the cake was gone, she was practically sitting in his lap. Either she wasn’t wearing a bra or it was a thin one, because it did nothing to conceal her nipples.
She clearly wanted to sleep with him. He intended to see she got what she wanted.
Harry circled the last bite around her. “Do we need another piece?” He’d go for whipped cream this time. And nothing else.
She licked a dab of icing off her lips. “You’re a bad influence.”
He smudged ice cream on her cheek. “Oops.”
“You rat.”
When she raised a hand to wipe it off, he stopped her. “Let me.”
He leaned forward and licked the vanilla off her skin.
“Ohhhh, boy,” she said, “I already explained—”
He slid the last bite of cake in her mouth. After a moment, he pressed his lips against hers.
It didn’t surprise him when she opened for him, the sweet flavors of cake and ice cream lingering on her tongue.
Harry took his time kissing her. Earlier, he’d been so excited, he’d had her on the counter before he’d given her a chance to adjust to the change in their relationship. Now he kissed and fondled, nothing heavy, learning her breathing, the sound of her heart. He rubbed her back, on top of the shirt. As long as he kept it light, she displayed no hesitation.
Encouraged, he drew her into his lap. He intended to place her legs to one side but she straddled him, her pussy close to his groin. His hands dropped to her hips, but he forced himself not to grind their lower bodies together. He began to caress her thighs through the thin jersey pants.
Her fingers threaded through his hair, and then one hand dipped beneath the neckline of his shirt in back. She rubbed his spine, her tongue winding around his. Her hips rolled against his cock as she reached farther down his back. Finally she tugged his shirt over his head.
