Big Bad Wolf

by Christine Warren

  “You take my advice,” Edward Fleet said as he slapped Graham on the back with a surprisingly firm hand. “Give the girl a day or two to come to her senses. Then, if she doesn’t fall into line, you take her down and do a little hiding and seeking. Once she’s got a cub on the way, she’ll fall into line.”

  Somehow, Graham wasn’t sure how likely that was to be true with his skittish, stubborn mate. Still, he maintained his smile and shook hands with all three elders as they made their way out of his office and into Sam’s. He was very aware of Curtis’s brooding presence as he was swept along toward the front of the club.

  The old men each stopped to flirt with Graham’s assistant on their way out, and Sam handled them with the naughty, breezy charm of a favorite granddaughter, leaving them grinning and chuckling on their way out the door. As it closed behind them, only Curtis looked back over his shoulder for a moment before he, too, departed into the late-afternoon sunshine.

  “Wow,” Sam breathed as she waved away the club’s butler and closed the front door herself. “You might want to pat yourself down for holes, boss. I know looks can’t really kill, but I’m not so sure the ones your cousin was giving you couldn’t at least leave a puncture wound or two.”

  Graham snorted and shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. It was either that or punch a hole in the club wall, and he didn’t want to deal with the hassle of finding a plasterer to rush out here on a Saturday evening to do the repair work.

  “I’ve survived worse,” Graham said.

  “True. But I wonder what got him so stirred up.”

  Graham eyed his assistant with amusement. “Doing a little fishing, are you?”

  Sam grinned up at him. “If I don’t dip my line in now and again, I’ll never catch anything.”

  “I’m just surprised you didn’t have a glass pressed up against the door so you could hear it all for yourself.”

  “Just poured myself fresh coffee. I didn’t want to waste it.”

  “Hm, that’s rough.”

  Graham turned toward the rear of the hall and the door that led back to his own home. Behind him, Samantha sighed gustily.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

  After twenty-something years of teasing Samantha like the little sister he’d never had, it was hard to ignore the reflex. Still, there was no reason he couldn’t tell her the basic truth.

  “There’s nothing to tell that you haven’t heard before. Curtis is just playing another round of The Boy Who Would Be King.”

  The woman squished her face up in disgust. “Ick. Well, if he ever wins that game, at least you’ll get to see my impression of the girl who would be gone. I swear, I’d run from here to Connecticut so fast the drivers on the Merritt Parkway would be jealous.”

  Technically, the pack in Connecticut that Samantha would be running to owed fealty to the Silverback, so it wouldn’t get her completely away from Curtis’s influence, but Graham could appreciate the metaphor. But not the possibility she might ever need to act it out.

  “Actually,” he corrected her as he strolled toward the connecting hallway, “I wouldn’t get to see your impression.”

  “Why not?”

  He flashed her a grin that owed all of its character to fangs and none of it to humor.

  “Because the only way Curtis gets to be alpha of this pack is over my dead body.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Glancing at the alarm clock on the side of the bed, Missy calculated that it had been a hour since she’d raced up to this room bare-assed naked in an attempt to avoid the avid stare of a tall, dark-haired man whose name she still didn’t know.

  “God, what is happening to me?” she muttered aloud. Well, semi-aloud. It came out slightly muffled due to having her flaming-red face buried in her hands. “Less than twenty-four hours ago I was afraid someone might catch a glimpse of the tops of my stockings under that ridiculous dress. Now, a strange man has stared at my naked ass after catching me having sex in a front hallway in broad daylight.”

  She shook her head.

  “My mother would kill me if she ever found out. I’ve become a total slut.”

  Sighing, Missy dropped her hands and pushed to her feet. Her original plan, formed while doing approximately 24 miles per hour toward the sanctuary of Graham’s bedroom, had been to shower, dress, and hide in said sanctuary until the red stain of embarrassment faded from her skin or the beautiful antique rug sprouted a hole and swallowed her alive. Apparently, the carpet around here had no mercy, and she knew from experience that her blush wasn’t likely to fade until she stopped remembering the scene in the hall with a mixture of humiliation and horror. Which meant she could be dead of old age long before her skin returned to its normal fair tone.

  Since she was again fully dressed—in a second set of borrowed clothing—Missy decided to bite the bullet and head back downstairs. She padded down to the first floor and peered cautiously into Graham’s study. His assistant had come over a few minutes after Missy had gone upstairs to tell her Graham had some urgent business to take care of but that she should wait for him in this room until he finished. She tried to ignore the knot in her stomach that insisted he wanted to make sure she didn’t disappear before he had the chance to tell her how disgusting he thought she was for behaving so shamelessly in a location where anyone could stumble in on them at any moment. Obviously. He wanted to tell her he’d changed his mind about having her stay this weekend and he’d call her a cab, but she had to get out of his house before she made him sick.

  Okay, calm down, she urged herself, pausing outside the door and taking a deep breath. I doubt he’s going to tell you he’s disgusted by something he started, so don’t panic. Whatever happens, happens. You knew going in that this wasn’t permanent, so don’t whine about it ending sooner than you hoped. Just think about the memories he’s leaving you with. You’re lucky to have those. No sense in getting greedy and wanting the real thing, too.

  Her inner voice made a lot of sense, but that didn’t mean Missy liked what it had to say. She knew very well that her arrangement with Graham was never destined to go beyond the weekend, but that hadn’t kept her from hoping. She knew she was a closet romantic, but even she had a hard time believing there would ever be a chance for something more. They had great sex together, but nothing would convince her that a man like Graham couldn’t have great sex any time he wanted, with anyone he wanted. He certainly didn’t need her around.

  Tugging the hem of her donated shirt, Missy pushed the depressing thoughts from her mind and stepped into the study, surprised to see Graham already returned from the club. Her shower must have taken longer than she’d thought.

  He glanced up from a pile of papers and looked her over with a penetrating gaze. Her T-shirt was a little too snug and the jeans a pack member had lent her were a size too big everywhere except around her butt, so the waist had an alarming tendency to slip down and let her navel play peekaboo with the outside world. Before today, none of Missy’s parts had ever played peekaboo with anyone.

  She tugged at the shirt hem and knew Graham’s eyes followed the movement. She felt his gaze like fingers on her skin, and even before she looked up to see them glowing, she felt the heat they radiated.

  “Thank—” Missy broke off on a squeak, cleared her throat, and tried again. “Um, thanks for finding me something else to wear. I feel like I’m raiding the closets of every woman you know.”

  Then it occurred to her just how many women he knew, and she quickly changed the subject.

  “Catching up on paperwork?” She nodded to the documents he’d been looking over and played nonchalant. His expression told her how obvious her ploys were, but he went along with it.

  “No. My manager is handling the club for the rest of the weekend. This was just a time killer until you came back downstairs.”

  Missy shrugged and buried her hands in the front pockets of her jeans, then quickly pulled them out again. Pushing down on that par
ticular garment was a bad idea, though the look in Graham’s eyes when they followed the movement said he approved.

  Heartily.

  “Well, I’m dressed. What’s next? I’m not hungry enough to order Chinese, but didn’t you say something about watching movies? I really want to see the new haunted-house movie that just came out.”

  Graham rose from his seat behind the desk and took her hand, leading her away from the door and tugging her to sit beside him on the sofa. When he didn’t say anything, she started to get nervous.

  Okay, more nervous.

  “Oh, wait. Something came up, right? Wasn’t that why your . . . friend, um . . . dropped in?” She winced at the memory. Maybe he really did think she was a slut. “So that means you’re going to be really busy for the rest of the weekend and you have to cancel on getting to know me better. It’s okay. I understand. You’ll call when you get free to reschedule, so I should just wait to hear from you. Okay. Let me just grab my purse—”

  She made it almost off the sofa before Graham closed one strong hand around her elbow and tugged her back down, straight onto his lap. This time he pinned her in place.

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” he grumbled, and Missy saw the glowy green thing was happening to his eyes again. “I am going to be busy this weekend, but you’re going to be busy with me. We’re not nearly done yet.”

  Missy thought about her sore thigh muscles and the ache between her legs that for once was not caused by lust—at least, not by a resurgence of lust—and her eyes widened.

  “We’ve got a whole bunch of things to talk about, and not a lot of time, so you get the Reader’s Digest condensed version. Listen up.”

  She couldn’t quite decipher the reaction she felt to having him clarify that “we’re not done yet” had meant they weren’t done talking, rather than that they weren’t done with sex. If the idea of more sex aroused her, she’d be a masochist, because walking had already become an interesting challenge, but if it didn’t disappoint her just a little, she figured she wouldn’t be female.

  “All right. Fine. But can I get off your lap first?”

  He tightened his arms and shook his head. “No. So, I know you ran off before you got to hear any of what Logan had to tell me—”

  Missy blinked, scowled, and crossed her arms over her chest as she felt the crimson tide of her blush returning. This time she guessed it would be a rather unique shade of crimson. “Do we have to talk about that?”

  Graham looked puzzled. “Well, yes. Why wouldn’t we?”

  Rolling her eyes and wishing she lived in the alternate reality her Lupine lover seemed to inhabit, Missy fixed her gaze on the rich brown leather of the sofa and gritted her teeth around her answer.

  “Because I find it a little humiliating to remember being seen fully naked on a hallway carpet, obviously having recently concluded having sex with a man I just met, by another man to whom I have never been introduced.” She paused to glare at him. “But maybe I’m just funny that way.”

  His chuckle made her eyes narrow and her fist swing, but he caught the blow before it could impact against his chest. “Ah. I understand.”

  He raised her hand to his mouth and nibbled the backs of her knuckles, which only succeeded in making her angrier. Damn him for still being able to arouse her even with the memory of that embarrassment fresh in her mind.

  “You’re not being funny, just human.” He grinned. “Sorry, but I forgot about that little quirk of yours.”

  “Quirk?”

  He ignored her yelp and freed her hand so he could pull aside her shirt collar and examine the reddened bruise where he’d bitten her. She’d seen it when she changed and had wiped away the faint traces of blood that had dried there, only to find that he had barely broken the skin. All in all, it looked worse than it actually was.

  “Quirk,” he repeated, tracing the faint marks left by his teeth. “It’s easy for me to forget you’re human when you smell so damned good, but then you get all embarrassed about something perfectly natural, like nudity or sex, and it all comes back to me. You people are so weird about that.”

  “Weird!?”

  “Weird,” he repeated, leaning forward to lave the bruise with his tongue and nearly making her swallow her own. “Lupines aren’t embarrassed by our bodies. We come into this world naked, and the only reason most of us wear clothes is because it gets damned cold for part of the year, if we’re not planning to spend that whole time sporting fur.”

  “Also, there are laws,” Missy pointed out.

  “Sure. Human laws, but the practicality argument trumps those. And as for sex, it would just be silly to be embarrassed about that. It’s natural and healthy, not to mention a hell of a lot of fun. We all know everyone does it. At least, they do when they have the opportunity—otherwise how did the rest of us get here? How will the species survive? When you look at it that way, it’s hard to see reason for the kind of inhibitions you humans like to wrap yourselves in.”

  “I am not wrapped in inhibitions,” Missy protested, struggling for dignity while her bare toes curled and her belly launched its newly familiar tumbling routine. The man’s tongue was talented. “I’m not ashamed of sex, but that doesn’t mean I want strangers to come face-to-face with the evidence that I’ve just had it.”

  Graham’s hand slid under the loose waistband of her jeans and cupped her warm mound. His fingertip briefly tickled her dark curls before sliding between her lips and finding the moisture hidden there.

  “That’s okay, baby,” he purred as he closed his teeth around her earlobe and tugged delicately. “I don’t mind being private with you. In fact, I like the idea of keeping you all to myself.”

  His blatantly possessive tone sent arousal trembling through her. But hadn’t he said they needed to talk? Because there was no way on God’s green earth she’d be able to concentrate on what he had to say if he kept touching her like this.

  She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled hard, but his hand stayed buried between her legs, and he slid one finger deeper to press against her opening.

  “Shhh. Hush, hush.” His finger penetrated, sliding deep, the rough, callused surface abrading her already tender interior walls. “Just let me touch you, baby. It’s been so long since I touched you.”

  She bit back a moan, her nails digging into the leather upholstery. Two or three hours was his idea of a long time to go without sex? Holy Mary, she’d be dead of exhaustion before the end of the day. “H-h-has it?”

  “Um-hm, it has. And you were so tight for me last time. I’m afraid I might hurt you if I don’t keep you nice and relaxed and open for me.” His finger withdrew in a reluctant glide and suddenly thrust back, three fingers this time that stretched and filled her. Her head fell back on a moan even as her muscles clamped around him. “No, no, sweetheart. I said relax.” One nail lightly scraped inside her, and she gasped. “Let go for me, Melissa.” His fingers worked forward and backward in a relentless sawing motion that brought tears to her eyes and set her pussy on fire for him. “Trust me. I’ll take care of you.”

  “Graham!”

  His fingers thrust hard, his thumb teasing her most sensitive nerves as he drove her closer and closer to insanity. She shuddered and whined helplessly.

  He bent over her until she felt his breath against the mark he’d made on her shoulder, and his voice sounded in her ear like the voice of temptation itself. “I’ll always take care of you, baby. I’ll always make sure you’re safe and secure and so deliciously wet.”

  She whimpered a protest, even as her hips lifted toward him, pressing against his clever fingers in a blatant demand for more.

  “My sweet Melissa.” His voice was a growl and a purr, and it caressed her hot skin with puffs of humid air. “Such a pretty girl to have fallen into the clutches of the big bad wolf.”

  His hand closed around her thigh in a grip just short of bruising and shifted it to the side, spreading her. Against her ear, his tone went from teasing to
very, very serious. Something more than arousal drove him now. Missy could feel it, but there was no way her overloaded senses would let her concentrate long enough to puzzle out what it was.

  “Like Little Red Riding Hood, you didn’t know what you were in for when you left home, did you?” His fingers moved in some arcane pattern that had her eyes rolling back in her head and her body begging for release. “That’s too bad, because once the wolf has ahold of a pretty girl, he doesn’t ever let her go.”

  The tension inside her built to the breaking point, to the point where she was ready to shove her own hand down her jeans just to finish herself off. He caught her wrists in his free hand and held them captive as if he sensed her thoughts. She moaned and pressed herself harder onto his thrusting fingers.

  “A wolf never shares,” he growled. “No one else will ever touch you the way I’m touching you. I’ll kill anyone who tries.” She heard the violence in his tone, but he kept her too hot to care.

  “And the reason for that, Melissa Jane,” he continued turning his head so that his lips brushed hers and his luminescent eyes burned as they met her heavy-lidded brown gaze, “is because. You. Are. My. Mate!”

  He shoved his three fingers deeply inside, and held them there while her orgasm consumed her. She broke apart, raining down on him in tiny little fragments, each of which pulsed with the heavy rush of blood between her legs. She sobbed and curled her hands into fists and moaned her pleasure into his mouth when he caught hers for a hungry, possessive kiss.

  She tore her lips from his after a few seconds, desperate to catch her breath. His shoulder offered her a hiding place and a refuge while she tried to put her scattered wits back together. He cradled her there tenderly. He released her wrists, and she curled her trembling arms around his neck, feeling his hand slip from between her legs, ruffle affectionately through her curls, and then slide around her waist to cuddle her close.

  He petted her like a kitten, and she found it soothing. At least, until her brain kicked back into gear.