Wolf at the Door

by Christine Warren

  His fingers slid reluctantly from her warmth and closed about her hip, holding her in place as he set himself against the snug barrier of her entrance and began to push carefully inside.

  She froze at the first contact of flesh against flesh. Her breath caught in her throat, and her muscles clenched in tense anticipation. He kept his eyes on her face, searching for any sign of fear or discomfort. He saw none. She gave no evidence of nerves or of being intimidated by the thick length pressing her for entrance. Her head was tilted back, her neck a pale, graceful arch. She looked like a statue, like Bernini’s Andromeda, spread naked and waiting on the rocks, but she felt a thousand times warmer than stone.

  He could hear the ragged pant of her breathing, feel the faint trembling of her muscles, but her body remained pliant beneath his. He could feel her hips twitch up toward his as he forged deeper. Teeth clenched, Quinn threw his head back and tried not to come at the feel of her tight passage closing over the head of his cock. He felt as if he were drowning, waves of sensation overcoming him. He’d never felt anything like it, but he knew in that instant he would never have enough.

  “Quinn!”

  The sound of his name on her lips nearly ended him. She choked it out, all breathless and frantic, and he had to picture his primary schoolmistress, Sister Mary Augustine, to keep from exploding. Even that almost wasn’t enough.

  “Please,” she gasped, her hips lifting up off the sofa in an attempt to lure him deeper. “More!”

  Far be it from him to deny a lady. Especially one so eager to have exactly what he wanted to give to her. He bowed his head, feeling the light sheen of sweat building on his body from the exertion of self-control, and eased deeper. He was trying to be careful, trying not to hurt her, knowing some women found him difficult to take the first time, and preferring to tear out his own intestines than cause this woman any undue pain. He would rather wrestle Hydra. Walk from here to Tasmania. Become a vegetarian. Give up strong drink—

  Small, sharp teeth bit hard into his forearm and jerked him back to reality.

  “Ow!”

  “For God’s sake,” she panted, glaring up at him with fury in those clear, yellow-green eyes, “would you stop screwing around and fuck me already!!!”

  Quinn’s mind indulged in a single moment of shock before springing into action, but his body didn’t wait half that long. Before the last vowel sound had finished echoing through the living room, he was thrusting full force inside of her and reveling in the brand-new shout that filled the apartment and probably made more than one neighbor very curious.

  “Yes!” she screamed. Bent like a bow beneath him, she took every inch of him eagerly and wrapped her legs around his hips to keep him from leaving.

  Quinn had no intention of going anywhere. He’d just found Shangri-la, after all. Did he look stupid?

  But it didn’t take long for his instincts to outweigh his common sense, and a few seconds later he was battling against her powerful hold so he could muster the leverage for a hard thrust. Once he managed it, she stopped fighting to keep him close.

  In fact, she began to lever her hips up and down beneath him, as if trying to force him away just so she could take him back again. He obliged her with pleasure.

  One hand was still clenched at her hip, the other wrapped hard around her wrists. Not because he feared her trying to get away, or even because he couldn’t stand for her to touch him—at this point he was so hot he doubted he’d even notice—but because his fingers had locked into place and he didn’t think he could let go if he tried. It felt as if all nonessential bodily functions, the ones not involved in claiming her, had shut down, leaving him with nothing to do but to thrust in and out of the amazing, delicious woman underneath him.

  As if there were anything else in this world or the next that he would rather be doing.

  He heard her cries reaching a fever pitch and sped up his thrusts. His hips moved in a fury of motion now, so fast the human eye would have detected little more than a blur, but this woman took everything he had to give and demanded more. She met him stroke for stroke, taking him deep, deep, deeper than he would have thought possible. He could feel the tingle of impending climax building in the base of his spine, preparing to overwhelm him, and he gritted his teeth against it.

  “No!” he growled, the tendons on his neck bulging with strain. “Not . . . before . . . you . . . !”

  He needn’t have worried. As if on cue, he felt Cassidy begin to tighten and shake. Her body clenched around him, trapping him deep inside her as her orgasm hit, buffeting him with waves of pleasure. Her inner muscles squeezed and released around his cock, massaging him until he couldn’t hold off any more. His control snapped with a dull roar, and he spilled himself inside her, howling his pleasure to the far ends of the universe.

  They may very well have heard him there.

  Sixteen

  “Fabulous,” Cassidy said, just as soon as she was capable of speech, oh . . . fifty-eight millennia later. “Listen for sirens, would you? I’m pretty sure my neighbors have called the police by now.”

  The huge Lupine pinning her to her sofa cushions never budged. He didn’t even grunt.

  “Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if people all the way in Queens heard us.”

  “Screw them. And screw the cops,” Quinn finally muttered, though the sound got half-buried in Cassidy’s hair.

  She shifted, looking for a position under her two-hundred-pound heating pad that would allow her to, you know, breathe. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  Quinn raised his head and glared at her. “You won’t be screwing anybody. Ever.”

  Considering he was still half-buried inside her as he said that, Cassidy decided to let the ultimatum go. For now. She could always bring it up later. When he least expected it. And it could be best used to her advantage.

  For now, she joked it off. “That’s too bad. I thought this was pretty fun, all things considered. But if you really think we shouldn’t do it again . . .”

  “Anybody but me,” he corrected hastily, a note of panic creeping into his voice. “You won’t be screwing anybody but me.”

  She snorted. “Right. That’s different, then.”

  He gave her a suspicious glare, which she countered with a look of wide-eyed innocence, then grunted and dropped his face back into her hair. He relaxed again above her, and his weight made her feel as if someone had rested a grand piano on her chest. Shifting as much as she could, she unlocked her ankles from around Quinn’s back and let her legs drop to her sides. No good. She still couldn’t breathe. Maybe this required a more direct approach. Before her skin turned blue.

  “Um, Quinn?” she questioned quietly and oh-so politely.

  He grunted again, and his hands began to stroke lazily over her hips and thighs. Her stomach flipped, and her breath might even have quickened, if she’d had any left.

  “Not that I don’t enjoy a good snuggle, ‘cause, hello? I am a woman and all, but maybe we can try snuggling with me on top? Because I think about thirty more seconds of this and I’m going to pass out from the lack of oxygen to my brain.”

  That earned her another unintelligible man noise, but this one was followed quickly by a sigh and the feel of his body slipping free of hers. Before she could even register the twinge of regret, he had flipped off her, landed on his feet, and scooped her up into his arms. He was halfway across the living room when her mouth caught up with them.

  “Urn, where are we going?”

  He didn’t bother to look down at her, just shouldered open the door to her bedroom and kept walking. “I got you all sweaty. I thought the least I could do would be to clean you up. And I thought you’d prefer a shower to a quick hosedown with the spray nozzle on the kitchen sink.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I love a man with that kind of intuition.”

  “I try.”

  When he set her down, her feet made contact with the cold ceramic tile of her bathroom floor, and she shivered. Whil
e he slid open the shower curtain and began fiddling with the faucets, she reached into a cabinet and pulled out two fluffy towels that she set on the counter. Then she watched as he tested the water temperature, set the showerhead to full-spray massage, and turned back to her.

  “After you,” he said.

  He meant it, too, because he scooped her up and set her down under the hissing shower before she could move.

  She blinked water out of her eyes and glared up at him as he climbed in after her. She probably now resembled nothing so much as a drowned rat, but she was getting used to this man seeing her at less than her best.

  “Do you think you might let me make use of these things I call legs from time to time?” she grumped. “Just a suggestion, but I find if I don’t practice walking now and again, I start to lose the knack.”

  He grinned down at her and reached for her bottle of shampoo. “I was being gallant, Cassie love. Thought you lasses liked that sort of thing.”

  He sniffed the shampoo, shrugged, poured a dollop into his hands, and began scrubbing it through his thick hair.

  “We also like not to be treated like invalids.” She understood him not taking her griping all that seriously, since she wasn’t, either. But she felt she had to make some sort of protest before he got used to doing everything his own way.

  “I’ll mind that the next time.” He rinsed the soap away and shook his head like a sheepdog coming out of the rain.

  Cassidy flinched away from the spray and ducked back under the shower, grabbing the shampoo herself and wishing she went in for some sort of girly, floral thing instead of an unscented brand. It would serve him right to walk around smelling like a petunia for the rest of the day. “Yeah, I’m sure you will. You’ll be an absolute cheerleader for women’s liberation.”

  “That’s my girl. Always have faith in your man.”

  “Who said you were mine?” But she let him take the shampoo without a struggle, even tilting her head back for him to massage it into her scalp. “And what’s the return policy?”

  He chuckled. “All sales are final.”

  “Oh, well,” she hummed, leaning back against his slick chest, enjoying the feel of his hands tangled in her hair.

  He turned her into the spray to rinse the suds out of her hair, carefully sluicing the water away from her face so the soap couldn’t run into her eyes.

  She opened her mouth to make another wisecrack, but all that came out was a yawn. The late night and the strenuous activity seemed to be catching up with her. She leaned against Quinn’s chest while he soaped and rinsed the rest of her body, too sleepy to even quibble over the places where he decided to pay extra close attention.

  When he had them both scrubbed and rinsed, he turned off the water, lifted her out and dried her off. The yawns came fast and furious by the time he had her hair toweled and picked her up to carry her back into the bedroom. She felt as though one more would crack her jaw clear in half.

  Her eyelids were drooping when he pulled back her sheets and laid her gently on her pillowy mattress. She snuggled under the blankets, barely noticing when he crawled in next to her, making the bed dip and shift with his weight. But she did notice when he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her back up against his chest. She shifted more comfortably in his embrace and sighed, feeling sleep overtaking her. Her last thought before she slid into total unconsciousness was that it felt good to have someone lean over like that and kiss her good night.

  Given that it was Sunday morning, the lack of an alarm clock jangling her awake didn’t surprise Cassidy. What surprised her was that something else felt compelled to do the honors. Reaching blindly from under the covers, she groped on and around her nightstand, throwing two books, a flashlight, a bottle of vitamins, and a shoe across the room before she woke enough to realize the horrible wailing buzz was coming from a telephone. Fumbling it off the cradle, she dragged it under the blankets with her and held it somewhere in the vicinity of her ear.

  “H’lo?”

  Silence. From the phone, anyway. Unfortunately, a new and equally infernal buzzing began almost immediately.

  Something stirred beside her, an infinitely more interesting and warmer thing than her telephone. Then a low, husky rumble asked, “Where the hell did I leave my pants?”

  Her eyes flew open and focused on the rumpled, sleepy, and incredibly naked Lupine beside her. She squeaked.

  Quinn pushed himself up on the mattress and looked around blearily. “Come to think of it, where did I leave your pants?”

  Cassidy shook her head and tried to look casual as she clutched the sheet to her chest. She knew it made little sense at this point, but there was a big difference between being seen naked in the heat of the moment and being seen naked the morning after with bedhead and morning breath.

  “I distinctly recall both of us having pants. Damned things kept getting in the way.” He grinned at her and flopped back onto the bed. “Luckily, I’m a man who believes in never leaving things half done.”

  “Uh . . .”

  That was about the best she could manage in the way of conversation. Mostly because it didn’t involve opening her mouth very far and exposing him to the harsh reality of life before toothpaste.

  “Cassie love,” he said gently, still grinning. “I believe that buzzing sound you hear is a cell phone. Your cell phone, I hazard to guess.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  Cassidy jumped as if she’d been electrocuted, tucked the sheet under her arms, and leaped from the bed to sprint into the living room, which was the last place she remembered seeing her cell phone. The sneaky bastard had other plans for the sheet, though. His hand darted out and grabbed the corner of it as it slipped away, leaving Cassidy streaking buck naked through her apartment before she even knew she’d lost a round of tug-of-war.

  She froze stock-still in the middle of her living room, shivering at the chill, and looked around for her cell phone, only to realize the buzzing had stopped. She cursed again—this time with much greater fervor and imagination—and scooped up Quinn’s jeans and her cell phone, which she found half-buried in the sofa cushions. Along with the remains of her panties.

  Torn between wanting to bury her head in a sandbox and wanting to grin and high-five the universe, Cassidy grabbed the rest of their scattered clothes and turned back to her bedroom and to the only man who’d ever managed to confuse, arouse, exasperate, and melt her all at the exact same time.

  She’d gotten two steps past the sofa when she heard the chime of her doorbell, followed by the scrape of a key in the lock and a voice shouting from the hallway.

  “I’m coming in! If you’re naked, you’d better put some clothes on! Stat!”

  Randy!

  Cassidy bolted for the bedroom.

  “Cassidy? I know you’re home. I heard your bedroom door close. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  Pressed flat against the back of her bedroom door, Cassidy looked around in wide-eyed panic before the sound of the water running in her bathroom managed to register. Quinn was taking a shower. Bless his cleanly Irish soul. She tossed his jeans onto the end of the bed and yanked the first thing she touched out of her dresser drawer, which turned out to be a pair of pink and blue pajamas emblazoned with the phrase “GIRLIE GIRL.” She could have cared less. She whipped them on in two point seven seconds flat and hurried out of her room before her cousin could take it into her head to walk in there uninvited, too.

  “I’ve got a date tomorrow night,” her cousin yelled, and Cassidy heard the apartment door close behind her. “Any chance of me conning you into lending me those brown dress boots of yours? The ones with the kick-ass sexy heels?”

  “Damn it, Randy, did you ever hear of giving a person notice before you barge right into their home?” she called out, tugging on the hem of her pajama top and hurrying out to the living room. “I really was naked.”

  Randy dumped her purse, coat, scarf, gloves, hat, and keys on the chair-and-a-half and carried a
large, white bakery bag into her cousin’s small kitchen. “If you didn’t want me barging in, you never should have given me a key.”

  “Yeah, trust me, I’ll remember that for next time.”

  “So, since I do have a key, why should I wait for you to answer the door?” Making herself at home, Randy popped the two miniquiches she’d brought into the microwave and grabbed plates and utensils to carry into the dining alcove.

  Cassidy looked from her cousin to the door of her bedroom and back again. “The thing is, this really isn’t a good time.”

  “Besides,” Randy continued as if she hadn’t heard, “it’s not like my cousin the nun was likely to be doing the nasty with some stud on the middle of the living room floor.”

  Cassidy choked on her tongue and began coughing uncontrollably, causing Randy to jerk around in surprise, her big brown eyes open as wide as garage doors.

  “Oh. My. God!” Randy shrieked. “You mean it. You really were naked when I knocked. You got laid!”

  The squeal nearly punctured Cassidy’s eardrum, and the tackling hug shoved her back into the refrigerator with a grunt.

  “Geez, Ran! Lay off. You’re acting like I just told you I won the lottery.”

  “Ha! Lottery, schmottery. You needed sex a hell of a lot more than you needed money, missy.” She looked Cassidy over from head to toe and raised an eyebrow. “Well, you can still walk, so I’m a little disappointed. Was it any good at all?”

  “It wouldn’t be any of your business if it was.” Cassidy watched her cousin making herself thoroughly at home and prayed Quinn wouldn’t run out of hot water before she could get rid of their uninvited visitor. If she could get rid of their visitor. “Like I said, Randy, this isn’t a good—”

  “Damn it! I had hopes for this guy. I thought you said he was Irish.”

  “He is.”

  Okay. Casual. She had to play this casual. If she tried to hustle Randy out of the apartment on one of their regular Sunday brunches, the other woman would definitely get suspicious. Damn it, how could Cassidy have forgotten it was Sunday?