My Secret Werewolf Lover (My Secret Lover)

by J. Rose Allister

  “You’re a damn idiot,” I muttered a short while later as I flipped a pancake in my little iron skillet. “Get over it.”

  My brain seconded the motion, but the tiny pulse of need in my clit spiked another wave of loneliness. Still, I had to admit the coffee and bacon smelled damn good, and that lifted my spirits a little. I felt a huge surge of guilt, though, when I sat down to eat by the fire pit I’d neglected to douse the night before. That was damn careless of me—almost as careless as the other fire I’d let burn hot and out of control all night.

  On closer examination, I saw that the wood hadn’t burned all the way down on its own. Dirt had been thrown in and mixed around the ashes. Elijah had extinguished the blaze at some point.

  Elijah, Elijah, Elijah. That name would not stay out of my thoughts, nor would images of his long hair, penetrating eyes, and intensely perfect body. He’d left me, but hadn’t gone away. He was a frequent companion while I numbly went about the activities I’d been looking forward to all month. Fishing didn’t net me a damn thing, since I’d gotten such a late start. I narrowly escaped a brush with poison oak during my hike, but I did spot a darling baby squirrel and a doe stripping bark from a tall tree. I kept busy, however, so by the time I’d returned to camp, finished lunch, and stacked wood in the fire pit for that night’s fire, I was able to go twenty minutes or more at a time without thinking about the man who had taken my uneventful life and shaken it by the roots. Maybe by the time I packed out the next day, he’d be banished from my mind completely.

  That’s when I looked up and saw him standing near the edge of my camp.

  The wolf stood perfectly still, staring at me with unsettling intensity. The name that had been echoing in my mind all day fell off my lips.

  “Elijah,” I breathed.

  The animal reared up, pushing onto its hind legs while its limbs began growing outward. As its body lengthened unnaturally, its shiny, jet-black fur shortened and disappeared within the skin that was stretched most appealingly over Elijah’s rippling muscles. I blinked at the disorienting transformation. While I had known all along that he really was the wolf, seeing the change from beast to man somehow made it more real.

  Without a word, he stalked toward me. He had bathed since I’d seen him last. The bandage on his shoulder was gone, as was any and all trace of the bullet wound. He hadn’t been lying about the benefits of sex, after all. Nor had he seemed to have forgotten them, judging by the way his cock transformed as he approached. It grew longer and jutted higher from his exquisite body with every step. I just stood there, gaping ridiculously at his perfection as he came for me. I could barely find my tongue when he stopped a scant couple of inches away.

  “You were gone,” I said in a small voice.

  He reached around to grab both of my ass cheeks and pull me roughly against his straining erection. I gasped, and he groaned as he ground himself against my tight denims, kneading my bottom with his big, powerful hands. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe the beast hadn’t become a man, after all. Perhaps I was about to see the real beast Elijah could become.

  He evaded the lips I raised for him to claim, however, and when he released me, I whimpered in frustration. He wasn’t finished with me, though. With a maddening impatience, he tugged my simple, black T-shirt out of my waistband and stripped it off my head while I kicked off my shoes. My jeans went next, and when I was completely naked in broad daylight in front of him, I shivered despite the warm air.

  A fine breeze lifted strands of his long, tousled hair as he paused for a moment to study every inch of me. My nipples tightened while he watched, and the relentless need raging in his eyes was all I needed to get my cunt slick and wet. His nostrils flared briefly a moment later, and I think he somehow smelled I was ready for him. With a fleeting, satisfied smile, he lifted me until my legs wrapped around his waist. Then he carried me to the woods.

  I didn’t have a chance to ask where we were going, because he stopped at the nearest tree and pushed my back up against it. The bark was mercifully smooth, almost decadent against my bare skin, but I wouldn’t have given a damn even if it wasn’t. He worked his cock inside me as soon as I was trapped between his body and the tree. I cried out as he rammed me deep, and rather than circle his neck with my hands, they flew up to grip an overhead branch.

  I clung tightly to the limb while I tried to hang onto my sanity, utterly failing at the latter when Elijah began pounding me with rapid, unforgiving thrusts. My head dropped back, my breasts bouncing wildly with each shove of his hips while my cunt contracted and pulsed around his hot shaft. The lack of bedroom talk, not to mention that Elijah hadn’t even bothered with a “hello”, would normally have left me feeling doubtful and second-guessing my partner’s thoughts and intentions. Not this time. His tight features and near-violent fucking made his desperation for me clear—and it fueled my own lust for him. In short, I could give a shit what he was thinking. I just wanted to feel what he made me feel.

  Orgasm arrived quickly for us both, and it wasn’t until I had writhed and bucked against both the tree and my lover for some time that I finally released my hold on the branch and sagged onto Elijah’s chest.

  With the exception of crying out his name once or twice, not a word was spoken until late that night, after he’d taken me two more times in the tent.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said as I lay curled against him, listening to the rhythmic sound of his breathing.

  There was no reply, but his arm tightened around me. I raised my head to look at him, wondering about his silence. Maybe I’d imagined him speaking to me the previous night. Maybe werewolves couldn’t talk. I studied his chiseled profile in the lantern light while he stared up at the roof of the tent. I noted the way his chin dimpled in the center, how flawless the stretch of tanned skin was as it rose over his high, exotic cheekbones, and the careless waves of shiny, dark hair that fanned over my pillow. My gaze fell to his lips then, and their perfect, pink bow started a pulse of longing deep inside me.

  “Kiss me, Elijah,” I whispered.

  I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “No.”

  The word pierced through my stomach, leaving a tiny, but no less empty, hole. So, he was capable of speech, after all.

  I licked suddenly dry lips. “Why not?”

  There was a pause, and I thought he wouldn’t answer.

  “Because you are not mine.”

  That poked at me more than I’d like to admit, even though the practical side of me understood the logic of it. “So, I’m good enough to fuck, but not to kiss?”

  There was a sharp, dark edge on my sarcasm, and Elijah didn’t miss it. He shifted to look at me, running a hand over the curve of my hip. I slapped it away and rolled away from him, getting off the bed and dressing in silence.

  I was being ridiculous, I knew. Acting like a petulant, jealous female when I didn’t even know the man was hardly my style. Besides, letting a guy fuck me within an hour of meeting him meant I had relinquished all rights to justifiable possessiveness. Not that the normal rules of sexual engagement necessarily applied when a werewolf was involved.

  I was turned away from him, buttoning up a fresh plaid shirt—and I would make sure that meant all the buttons this time, clear up to the neck—when he came up behind me and gripped my shoulders.

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I can smell the shift in your emotions.” He turned me to face him. “What have I done wrong? You enjoyed my lovemaking, Shawna. I know you did.”

  My face burned with heat as I yanked free and turned away again. “It wasn’t lovemaking. It was fucking.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  I snorted. “Apparently there is none—to you.”

  He brushed the back of my hair aside and pulled on the neck of the shirt I hadn’t finished buttoning to expose the top of my shoulder. He pressed his nose to the spot, igniting nerve endings that threatened to take my res
ervations and chuck them out of the tent. His lips didn’t caress my skin as I’d secretly hoped, but just the sensation of him inhaling my scent shot tingles down every one of my limbs.

  “Shawna,” he murmured in a soft, seductive whisper. Damn if my nipples didn’t harden again. But so did my resolve.

  I pulled away and finished buttoning my shirt. “No, Elijah. I need to get some sleep. I’m packing out early in the morning.”

  Parts of my body protested my resistance, practically screaming at me for rejecting his touch. I was tired, it was true, but much of the weariness seeping into my body had more to do with the sudden inanity of my life than the vigorous sex I’d spent the weekend indulging. The sensation of no longer fitting inside my own life made my skin itch, as though it, too, no longer hung properly on my bones.

  He stared at me for a moment, confusion evident in his expression. He looked ready to argue, and I wondered whether he would throw me down on the bed and convince me to give up my stubborn reluctance. Instead, he turned away.

  “I will leave.”

  I stood staring after him as he went through the bedroom flap. When I heard his footsteps outside in the dirt, I flung myself out to stand in the entrance to the tent. “Wait,” I called after him. He turned with a taut expression. “Don’t go,” I said. “Sleep here with me tonight. Please.”

  With his usual lack of comment, he followed me back inside, where sleep was the last thing to happen. Not that he ravaged me all night long. There was no more sex, no late-night rousing because he couldn’t wait to thrust inside me again. Elijah dropped into slumber easily. I crashed into it only after hours of troubled thoughts that carried me almost through to dawn. I tossed and turned beside him while I listened to his steady, even breaths. When sleep finally did take me, bizarre dreams and cold sweats came on its heels.

  I awoke feeling like I’d been drugged, and in a sense, maybe I had been.

  Elijah was gone.

  There was a heavy, somber mist in the air as I prepared a modest breakfast I didn’t even want. Coffee was welcome, considering the gear I would have to haul after a night of no rest, but the hot java gurgled unpleasantly once it was in my stomach. It was time to start loading up the truck. Time to get back to real life.

  No rhyme or reason accompanied my half-hearted attempts to get my crap organized and hauled the short distance through the woods to where my truck was parked. The lanterns, camp stove, and cooler went first, but I couldn’t bring myself to deflate the air mattress. Clothing, the food duffel, and all my accessories followed. By noon, the tent was still up with only the air mattress inside. My canvas chair still sat by the fire pit I’d never gotten around to lighting the previous night. I plopped into the chair, exhausted. And I waited.

  I wouldn’t admit to myself that I was, in fact, waiting. I was tired, after all, and needed a rest before tearing down the tent and making the drive back. I drained the final beer I’d brought along and held the empty bottle in my lap, staring into a non-existent campfire while sunbeams drifted from one side of the clearing to the other. Minutes turned to hours, and the sun turned my exposed arms bright pink. Finally, I could no longer pretend I wasn’t hoping Elijah would come back. I’d never gotten a chance to say goodbye. I hadn’t thanked him for making me feel things in bed that I hadn’t dreamed possible. Maybe it had only been fucking. But it had been fucking I would never be able to purge from my thoughts. His touch lingered in my DNA, creating a genetic memory that would likely screw up my positive perception of future lovers. Shit.

  Elijah didn’t come, though, not even after the sun had shifted into the same position it had been in when he’d returned to me the day before. No doubt he thought me already gone. Or maybe he no longer cared.

  By the time I forced myself out of the chair, my ass was numb and my legs were painfully stiff. Neither helped while I finally broke down the tent and stuffed my remaining gear into the back of the truck. I returned one final time to the camp site, giving it a once-over to check for trash or smoldering firewood or any other signs that a ridiculously irresponsible, out-of-control camper had stayed there. When all traces of my weekend existence were gone, I carried out my empty beer bottle and tossed it in the trash bag in the back of the truck.

  Driving away brought a sick feeling to my stomach, and every turn of the wheel made it worse. A lump rose in my throat, and even worse, while I was busy cussing myself out for it, the sting of moisture in my eyes temporarily blurred my view of the winding road. I wasn’t seriously going to cry over a man who wasn’t really a man, was I? A man who’d barely said a dozen words to me after the first night, other than to make it clear that I wasn’t a keeper.

  I blinked away tears just in time to see a dark figure leap out into the road.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, slamming on my brakes.

  My heart almost launched from my chest as the truck came to a squealing, rubber-burning stop in front of the animal. I shoved the transmission into Park, and my hands clutched the steering wheel while I squeezed my eyes shut to help slow down my panicked, heaving breaths. The whole thing had happened so quickly I hadn’t even processed what exactly had jumped in front of me. Not until my door yanked open and my eyes flew open to find a fierce, golden gaze.

  “Shawna,” he said, and then somehow he was inside the cab with me, pushing me down on the front seat.

  Elijah’s lips came down on mine with a hunger that consumed me, and I responded automatically. There we were, my truck still idling in the middle of the road, while our tongues danced in fury and my hands roamed along his broad back and toned, bare ass cheeks. His kiss was brutal, and my nerve endings roared to life as I gave him back every bit of that punishment. If only I’d been driving while naked, I thought, the cock pressed tight to the zipper of my jeans would be inside me.

  “I thought you didn’t want to kiss me,” I said rather breathlessly when he finally came up for air.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to.” He proved it by following up with another deep, soul-wrenching tongue kiss. “But my kind only kiss the one we will claim as our mate. It is too dangerous otherwise.”

  I stiffened beneath him. “Why dangerous?”

  “Once we give into the unspoken promise of a kiss, the urge to bite is almost overpowering.”

  “You want to bite me?”

  “So much that I’m salivating.”

  That should have terrified me to no end, especially when I glanced down to see that he was not only telling the truth, but his mouth had sprouted fangs while he said it. Instead, I wriggled beneath him, shifting position so that his hard cock was pressed right against my clit. “Would it hurt?”

  He was waging an internal battle that was evident from his clouded, tense expression and the way he held himself stiffly over me. “My sex will not change you, but my bite will. That’s why I wouldn’t kiss you, Shawna. I could barely speak, my desire to change you was so strong. That’s why I left. But I couldn’t stay away.”

  My eyes widened. “I’d be a werewolf?”

  He gave a single nod. “You would be my mate.” He stroked hair off my forehead.

  Why was I even considering this insanity? Still, as I thought about running wild through the woods with Elijah by my side, returning to the pale drudgery that awaited me at the foot of the mountain lost what little reason I could still see in it. I couldn’t help but wonder.

  “What is it like?” I said faintly, feeling his cock pulse against my throbbing cunt through my jeans.

  “Like riding the wind with the knowledge that anything you want is within your power.” He lowered his lips to mine. “Or were you asking about being a werewolf, not what it feels like for me when I’m with you?”

  For a man who had been prone to so few words, the ones he chose cut quite a path.

  I pushed him away, and he rose up with a frown and a nod. He thought I was rejecting his offer. When I unzipped my jeans, however, his gaze shot to mine.

  “Do it, Elijah.” I pushed my pants
down over my hips. “Make me yours.”

  Luckily, I’d been driving on a road less traveled, as was the path I chose while I let him claim me in that truck in the middle of a deserted highway. He shoved the cock I craved deep between my thighs. Between the steering wheel, the back of the seat, and the pants still bunched below my knees, I couldn’t spread very wide for him. But as always, Elijah thrust his way in with ease. The friction of his cock against my clit between nearly-closed legs was heaven, but it was his lips pressing to mine with a firm, unyielding touch that sent my mind soaring.

  “You belong to me,” he whispered against my neck, and I shuddered. “I’ve known it from the first time I touched you. I just couldn’t make myself believe you would truly want what I must give you in order for us to be together.”

  “I want it,” I said, raking my hands into his hair. “I want you.”

  The growl he let out in response was far from human, and I knew what he was about to do even before I felt the prick of his teeth. Fangs pierced my flesh, and the secrets of his entire being flooded my own. The pain of his bite spread into sheer passion, and I exploded. Orgasm pushed me far over the edge of pleasure and past my own humanity as well. A fierce surge of heat in my limbs kept my climax going for an endless stretch, and the wicked tingling in my mouth sprouted fangs that I promptly sank into Elijah’s shoulder.

  He pulled away with a yell that was far more erotic than tortured, and that’s when I felt it happen. My body popped and shuddered, retracting and reforming itself into contorted angles it had never managed before. My eyesight and hearing sharpened almost painfully, but the rest of the process didn’t hurt at all. When I hopped out of the truck cab, I was pure white and no longer human.

  Elijah remained human long enough to pull my truck off the side of the road, back where it wouldn’t be noticed. Then he shifted, and the two of us were off and running through the woods, side by side, our muzzles cracked wide with wolfish grins. It was like riding the wind, with the knowledge that anything I wanted was within my power.