by Sky Winters
They’d clicked in an audible way. Her style of playing, her husky voice, and her sense of rhythm. It was all perfect.
Bedding her would be stupid. She was perfect for the band and mixing business with pleasure was a really bad idea.
His cock was so hard he was afraid to drop the guitar though.
Angelina unstrapped the Gibson Dove he’d given her to play and set it in its case gently. “That was amazing!”
Color lit her cheeks. Her ruby lips were parted, giving him a glimpse of her pink tongue and white teeth. Her body swayed toward his, her every movement graceful, and his cock gave off a powerful pulse.
“Yeah, it’s crazy.” It was. Everything about her called to him. He’d never met a woman, shifter or human, who made him want her so much and that triggered so many reactions in his body.
Angelina said, “Man, I’d love to play with you again.”
I’d love to play with you in a whole lot of ways, and if you don’t back away I might just forget how much I want you in my band. His cock was subsiding though, enough that he dared to take off the guitar.
Immediately, he wished he hadn’t, because she moved closer yet. His cock sensed her presence and renewed its throbbing, making his jeans too tight and downright uncomfortable.
He didn’t mean to kiss her, but his arms came out and he leaned toward her. Her ripe lips met his, and he reveled in the feel of them, soft and warm and firm. His tongue streaked past her lips and hers answered his; their tongues met and twined together.
Her breath rushed into his mouth. Her body met his. Her full breasts smashed flat against his broad chest, ratcheting up the sensations already pouring through him and making him forget about everything but her and the way she felt in his arms, the taste of her mouth and the scent of her hair as it swung around her face and his.
His hands traveled along her shoulders, feeling lean muscle and supple, satiny skin that begged to be touched yet again.
His animal urges and instincts kicked in, and he felt the shift trying to happen. He fought the shift back, but he could not stem the onslaught of desire washing over his body.
His cock thrust into her pelvis and she ground her hips closer, making his ass clench and his hips jerk forward.
He broke the kiss off and picked her up, no longer caring about anything but getting her to the nearest flat surface so he could fuck her hard and fast.
His bed met their bodies. His hands stripped away her clothes to reveal creamy flesh, golden brown in hue, and then he unhooked her cute little red lace bra and her tits bounced out and into his hands, her nipples rosy discs that he had to taste.
Those nipples tightened in his mouth. Her fingers tangled into his hair as he sucked hard, making her nipples stiffen and arch. Her tits were soft but heavy and he kneaded them expertly as he suckled at her breast.
His hands tugged loose her jeans and then she kicked her boots off. Her legs spread and the scent of her arousal met his nose, spurring him onward. His mouth moved lower, his tongue running over her belly and then his face was at the junction of her thighs.
His tongue slid along her pink outer lips, parting them. Heat and fragrant oils met his tongue. He moved higher, seeking out her clit. He found it and her nails tore into his scalp. Her ass lifted and a low groan broke from his lips.
Drake was lost in the taste and smell and heat of her body. He used his tongue to pleasure her, taking her right to the brink as he slowly circled her clit with his tongue and then alternated those circles with fast back and forth motions that had her crying out his name as more fluid fell from her inner folds. Those coral-and-pink walls drew his attention as he slid his fingers deeply into her, thrusting slowly at first but increasing the speed with each withdrawal and entry.
“Oh God.” Her cry was a beacon. He slid upward, one hand already on his swollen and throbbing cock. He thrust into her, hard. Her walls cradled him, sucked him deeper inside her as she began to come, her walls fluttering and closing as she milked his cock with her body. He gave in, driving harder and harder as she came and then rolled through a series of aftershocks that caused her folds to clench and loosen around his rigid and demanding flesh.
He came. His fingers curled around her shoulders and he groaned, his body arcing and tossing.
He felt the shift happening and he tried to stop it, withdrawing from her as his thick hot seed splashed out of his body and onto her flat belly.
His eyes went feral but he held the change back.
He looked at her face, hoping her eyes would be closed.
They weren’t.
He was looking into the eyes of a wolf!
CHAPTER 5:
I can’t even believe this! Oh, my God!
Angelina rolled off the bed, her instincts kicking in. Even naked and still caught in desire’s web, she was fast. She held a hand up, holding the shift back, but barely, as she faced Drake, who had also left the bed and now stood, naked and so goddamn sexy it hurt to look at him.
Judging by the look of his shock on his face, he was just as rattled as she was. Angelina said, “You’re… you’re a shifter.”
“So are you.” His words floated across the bed at her. Angelina grabbed for her clothes. She had to get out of there, and fast. “Yeah, well, yeah. What the fuck?”
“Beats the shit out of me. I never… I didn’t know.”
Angelina yanked on clothes. Her thoughts tangled and split into fragments. “I have to go.”
“I’d rather we at least talked this out first.”
“I just slept with a bear! Are you kidding me! You want to talk… how… I didn’t know.”
“I think we have determined that.” Drake was dressing, too, his movements fast and precise. He raked a hand through his hair, sticking it up on end, which just made him look even hotter. Pulses of desire still fired off in her belly and so she let her head drop low, her eyes zeroing in on her feet. “How did we not know right away?”
“Maybe we did.”
The answer was not the one she had been hoping for. She had hoped he would say something like he was a mutie—a person with one shifter parent and one human one. Muties were harder to scent out, harder to unmask. They didn’t give off scent like shifters and in fact, many of them shifted very rarely and usually that shifting was something that only happened under bouts of extreme stress.
Drake said, “So you’re from East LA, I take it?”
“Yeah, but I wanted to be here from the moment I saw this place.” Her face heated. “Not in your house. Jesus. I didn’t mean… I mean, I don’t think what happened makes us mates, if you’re tripping on that. I meant, I love Silver Lake, and always have. This is where the music is right now—and where my pack isn’t, at least for now.”
“You running from your pack or did they exile you?”
“Neither. Both. Fuck if I know.”
Drake approached. She snarled at him, but half-heartedly. He held his hands up. “Whoa. Truce. Let’s… let’s talk. I mean, this is unusual…”
“You think?”
He pulled a face. “Okay, it happened, right? No going back. But so what? I still want you in the band and… look, I’m an exile, sort of, so I get it if you’re running or if you’ve been put out.”
What the hell was he talking about? “Sort of?”
His lips canted up. “I’m a semi-exile, I guess you could say.”
“Now’s not the time to talk in riddles, okay? I have to go. Jesus Christ, if anyone finds out about this—you could get hurt and I don’t want that.”
He looked at her, no expression on his face. “How so?”
Goddammit. She had to be honest. If she wasn’t, he would get caught in some bullshit he had never signed on for. “Drake, my dad was second in the pack over in East LA. It’s the biggest and most powerful wolf pack, as you probably know. My dad died with our Alpha; now we have Joaquin, and he’s screwing the whole hood.”
“I know.”
He knew? Of course he knew. She sigh
ed. “I got promised to Joaquin back when I was a kid. I never had any say in it. My dad was about to call that off—he knew Joaquin was no good. But he died before he could, so his promise stands. It doesn’t matter, not to them anyway, what I want or who I don’t.”
His fingers gripped her chin and lifted it. “You don’t want Joaquin.”
“Not in my bed, not in my life, and not as my Alpha. If that means I have to be exiled, I can take that, but I have to tell you now that I can’t stay—not in your band or anything else. Joaquin’s not just selling drugs; he’s got plans to take over the city and he means to do just that. He’s power crazed and hungry. He’s also vicious, and he won’t hesitate to kill me or anyone else who gets in his way. You see, he wants kids, fast, heirs to his kingdom. Sons would cement his position, according to him, and well, our culture. It’s the whole machismo thing.”
“I get it, but I don’t want you to leave the band. Hell I need you.”
Her breath caught in her throat. He needed her in the band, but not in his life, was that what he was saying? “I know you probably can’t find another singer fast enough, but you might have to. I mean, until last night, you had no idea you had a singer and so nothing has really changed. You still need a singer.”
“I need a whole band.” His words were hard and his voice fierce. “You are one hell of a rhythm player and there’s something about us, Angelina, we just click. Not just as people but as players in the same song. I can’t promise you he won’t find you, but I can promise you if he finds you here, he won’t take you back, not without a massive fight and some death.”
Her heart sank. “That is exactly what I am afraid of. I don’t want death and blood. That’s why I don’t want to go back to the pack. There’s bound to be blood and now—well, now I pretty much put you into the middle of it. As much as I love Silver Lake,” and as much as I feel drawn to you, too, “I can’t do it. I have to go somewhere else, somewhere that Joaquin can’t touch me, or you, or anyone else I might come into contact with.”
Drake asked, “Angelina, do you want to stay here? With me, I mean?”
Shit. He really went to the heart of the matter, didn’t he? Her chin came up. “I have to go back.” She didn’t want to, but she had to. There was no way she could stay here. She had just slept with a sworn enemy, and she had a feeling that there was even more to that than met the eye. Drake was a bear shifter in exile and a biker at the same time, which meant he still rode with the MC that had bear shifters at its head. So there was definitely something he was not telling her, and she was pretty sure she did not want to know exactly what that was.
There was already too much at stake, even with Mario gone.
Mario!
She stood. “Shit. I have to get to the trails.”
Drake looked confused. “What?”
Say nothing. For God’s sake, do not give him a weapon. You don’t know if you can trust him, and you know damn well you can’t trust yourself around him!
Despite her brain’s warning, her mouth opened. “He’s my brother. He can’t shift. He’s wolf, mostly. He has never shown any sign of going human. I have other brothers, of course, all from the same litter, but Mario is the only one who doesn’t shift.”
Loss settled in, making her heart ache. She had no idea which loss was the greater—the loss of Mario to the wild or the loss of what had been a wonderful and far too brief dream of being with Drake and having the normal life she had always dreamed of, a life filled with music and passionate love.
Drake pondered that for a second. “You came from the same birthing?”
She nodded. “We did, and he can understand everything but he doesn’t speak. I was the only one he would ever try to communicate with in any way. He’s the only reason I didn’t leave before.”
“I see.”
She shook her head, sending her silky dark hair flying. “No, you don’t. You see, I was up on the trails—he had been leaving and wandering for a few years now, but he found a she-wolf and she was hurt. They left together. I promised to go back and look at her paw again. I think it was stuck in a trap at one point or another.”
“Shit, that sucks. Was she okay?”
She smiled at the real concern in his voice. “Yeah, and I will be, too.”
Drake said, “Angelina, you don’t have to go back.”
Tears threatened. She held them back. “Yeah, I do.”
She stood and wiped a hand down her side. She ached all over and not all of it was unpleasant either. The bruises from their wild lovemaking were there, just below her skin, already healing but still lightly painful. That pain would ease fast and she knew it, but she was not sure about the other pains that were careening through her just then.
There was something about Drake that made her want to stay. It was not just how they played together, or the way their bodies and voices and musical tastes blended either. He made her feel safe, something she had not felt since her father died. That was dangerous as hell, that feeling, because he was a bear and her enemy, even if she did not want him to be.
“You know we can’t, Drake. We’re sworn enemies; our kinds always have been and with good reason. We aren’t friends in nature, and we can’t be friends or anything else in this world either. Even if we thought we could be, you know damn well nobody is going to let us be. They will all come for us. Your pack and mine, and every other shifter pack—just to keep two different kinds from being together. It is not natural, and they won’t accept it. We can’t even be in the same band and you know that. It goes against everything about the laws we all have to live by.”
“I don’t care about the laws. I’m outside the pack now. I was,” he paused then said, “I was in line to be Alpha but I am sterile, or something. I couldn’t produce children and that is a requirement for Alphas in our packs.”
Angelina sucked in a breath. Her eyes searched his face. “Ours, too.” Her brain reeled at his words. He was supposed to be Alpha? That meant he was Magda’s!
Her voice held desperation. “You’re Magda’s son.”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God!” Now she was desperate to go. And fast. The last thing she needed to do was get caught up in whatever bullshit Magda was about to bring down. Antonio, her father, had had plenty to say about Magda, and none of it was very flattering. He had admired her courage and her toughness, but he had disliked, intensely, her quest for power. Magda had a serious hate on for humans, too, and that bothered Antonio. He had said, a lot, that he would not trust her if there were just the two of them left in the world because Magda was so blinded by the need to rule she would kill him in a short-sighted bid to be the last creature standing—and Angelina believed him.
Drake grasped her upper arms in his warm and calloused fingers. His touch sent thrills spilling all along the base of her spine and those little shivers raced upward. That desire came back, pooling liquid into her panties and making her squirm away before her body could betray her yet again.
He didn’t try to hold her. He let her go, but the phantom warmth of his fingers stayed imprinted on her arms. Her nipples stiffened, growing first taut and then tighter still until the hard ridges stuck up under her shirt in noticeable peaks.
Drake’s eyes flicked downward then back up. Angelina’s emotions twisted between shame and lust, and she spoke sharply. “Look, I have to go. We can’t do this. I don’t know how we didn’t know. But we know now. I have to go.”
She stalked off, her head high as she aimed her body, which wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back to him as fast as it could manage, toward the front door. To her vast relief, he did not try to stop her.
**
Drake took a seat on the sofa. His brain reeled and his body ached with unmet need. The woman was a wolf, and she was right—it should have been impossible for them not to recognize each other, so, why hadn’t they?
Had he known in some small way and just overlooked it because he had been so eager to get her into first the ban
d and then his bed? They should have called it off last night, as soon as they had figured it out, but they had not and now here he was—with no singer and no woman in his life.
Jesus Christ, it was a one-night stand. It was not like she was your life mate you fucking asshole.
The words did not help to clear his head. The smell of her lingered in the house. He sighed and stood, heading toward the kitchen to make some much-needed coffee but he paused before he got there.
She was going back to the trail, and that was all right—but what happened when she went back to East LA to join her pack? Joaquin would smell him on her and she would probably be killed.
He sagged against the doorframe as he considered that. Angelina had a death wish, maybe, or maybe she was just so desperate to get away from Joaquin and the cluster fuck her pack had become that she was willing to die for the right to be away from it. Either way, it would end with her death, and he cursed a few times then grabbed his keys from the coffee table.
She knew his car. The wolves of East LA would know his bike. It was a toss-up as to which was the worse choice to follow her in, but one thing was clear; he was going to follow her no matter what.
CHAPTER 6:
Angelina spent the night in a small and cheap motel, and then drove to the trails early the next morning. She was tired, confused and her thoughts were still chaotic as hell.
She hadn’t been able to go home, not with the smell of a bear still on her skin. That scent would linger. She had not been able to sleep, either, and she was glad to see Mario and the she-wolf had not gone far from where she had last seen them.
The she-wolf had a bloody trail near her muzzle, and Mario smelled of blood, so it was obvious he had been hunting to feed them again. Angelina set down the supplies she had bought at a local drugstore. “Hey, there. Um, so, Mario, can you let her know not to bite me?”
Mario gave one short bark and nosed the she-wolf closer. She limped and whimpered softly, and Angelina could see that the makeshift bandage was covered with clotted yellow stuff and thin strands of dried blood.
