by Skye Jones
The way he searched for his words touched me. Then reality slammed into me. It hit me full on with icy shards of terror. What the hell was I doing? Standing here, actually contemplating having sex with the thing in front of me. Because it was a thing and not a man. Oh, it might look human, but the beautiful, primal male in front of me wasn’t human. My instincts told me as much, and I needed to hold the fact front and center every second of our interaction.
He frowned and his eyes darkened. “What are you so afraid of?”
“How do you know I’m scared?”
“Your scent, your heart rate. They changed.”
“What are you?”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, his hand moved slowly back up my arm. Every millimeter of skin his fingers touched became hypersensitive and goose bumps broke out along my flesh. When he neared my shoulder, he took a strand of my hair between two fingers. He rubbed it and smiled then uttered a word I didn’t recognize.
“Rua.” He smiled again and brought the lock of hair to his face, looking intently at it as he moved the silken tresses between his fingers. Slowly, he leaned in and took a hesitant sniff. Only this time he didn’t smile; this time he groaned and said the word again.
“What does rua mean?” I asked.
“Red.” He smiled a wide, confident, hungry grin that ate up all the air in my lungs. “It means red.”
“You seem to be avoiding answering my question.” I pulled back and he let go of my hair, something flickering in his eyes. I couldn’t read the emotion and it unnerved me.
“Maybe I should simply show you. I could tell you, but your kind doesn’t believe things unless they see them. Not things outside your normal experience, anyway. But then again, you might faint clean away or become hysterical. Human females tend to do these things.”
“Erm, your ideas of human females seem to come from Gothic literature. I suppose your own women would never do such things?” I yearned to reach out and trace the strong, shadowed line of his jaw. To feel those full lips against my fingers. As I stared, he swiped his pink tongue over the lips I so coveted, and my insides clenched in response.
“Our females are strong, but they are rarer than human women. For some reason, we don’t produce as many females as males. And many were killed in times gone by. Humans who knew of us…to cull our numbers, they hunted our females in the past. It means many of our males are left without a mate. They can become dangerous.”
“Are you without a mate?” I hated to think of him having a mate, which I imagined meant a girlfriend, even though I understood such emotions were ridiculous. I didn’t even know him.
“Of course! A mated male wouldn’t be sniffing around other females. Not even empathines. I would find it easy to take a mate, though.” He puffed out his broad chest.
Yeah. I bet he would!
“Because of my status in the pack, I am regarded as excellent mate material.”
“Pack?” What an odd choice of words. My mind whirred, and I thought back to the wolf I’d seen earlier. Slowly the pieces clicked together, into a fantastical jigsaw of possibility. “You’re the…the wolf. The one I saw earlier.”
“He is a part of me, yes. I can change my form at will.”
My mother used to like telling me that curiosity killed the cat. But I’ve often found having an inquiring, scientific mind to be an advantage. Right now, it saved me from the hysteria this wolf-man expected and instead filled me with a need to learn more.
“Can you take any other form?”
“No. My wolf is part of me; we are one. I can be as you see me now, as the wolf you saw earlier, or a hybrid of the two.”
“Wow! A real life, honest to goodness, werewolf.”
“Yes. Except, we don’t howl at the full moon and can control when and where we change. Every culture has different names for us. Werewolf is the Northern European term. Others call us skin-walkers, loup-garou, shifters. There are more names for us than I care to recall.”
The biologist in me overrode any remaining fear, along with my disbelief and my last shred of common sense.
“I want to see you. Change for me. Show me your wolf again.”
“You liked my wolf?” He seemed hesitant for the first time. Unsure somehow.
“It was the most beautiful animal I’ve ever seen.”
He nodded toward the corner, and I turned to see Sandy still lying in her basket, utterly focused on the male in front of me.
“Sometimes they attack.”
“Sandy, kitchen.” I pointed at the door, and she got up with a put-upon sigh and waddled to the door, which I opened and then closed softly behind her. “She can’t get in here now. You won’t hurt me, will you?”
His face fell. “No. I am in full control. My wolf isn’t some slathering beast like your kind reads about in those Gothic novels you spoke of earlier.”
“Call me Brooke,” I said. “I’m sick of getting referred to as a kind. You must have a name?”
“Drew. You can call me Drew.”
In a fluid motion, he shrugged off his shirt. He whipped his T-shirt over his head. His body appeared, and my gaze crawled all over it, eating up the sight of so much beautiful skin. He was flawless. As the cloth dropped to the floor, he stood, pectorals flexing, skin shimmering over powerful muscles. A fine dusting of hair covered his chest, and a trail led down to his jeans.
Those jeans were next to go. Deft fingers popped the buttons open and shucked the worn denim down over lean hips. He wore nothing underneath, and as his most intimate parts were revealed to me, I couldn’t look away.
Just as his height and build were larger than most males, his cock hung down heavy and thick. It twitched when I continued to drink him in and began to thicken in front of my eyes.
Oh, but I wanted to touch. I yearned to sink to my knees, to lick up the length of him and pull him into my mouth. Moisture surged between my legs, and I cursed not wearing any panties to bed.
A deep inhale had me jerking my head up. Drew stared at me, his face harsh with hunger.
“Your body, it prepares itself for me.”
I couldn’t answer. Didn’t know what the hell to say. He wasn’t wrong. I’d never been so turned on. He moved toward me, only to stop about a foot away. Never taking his eyes from mine, he reached down and ran his hand up the inside of my right thigh. Feather light fingers brushed over my core, so light the caress felt more like air than anything real touching me. He exhaled in a rush of breath and pulled his hand away.
“So wet, so ready.” He brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them, flicking his pink tongue out to taste my essence.
“Let me see your wolf?” I stepped back, away from his grasp, and sat down heavily on the bed. My limbs felt weighted down, sluggish, and the air in the room suddenly seemed too thick to breathe. But I wouldn’t be sidetracked. I wanted him, but the scientist in me needed to see the wolf first.
“I won’t change fully. There’s a hormone we give off, and I don’t want those outside to get any more wound up than they are. When an alpha changes, it can make others want to change too, and trust me, we don’t want them all out there in wolf form.”
Light fell on the planes and angles of his body, highlighting his heavy build and solid muscles. Odd ripples began to move over his flesh, and his arms elongated right in front of me. His legs cracked and flexed, and they too began to change and grow. Full lips parted to reveal long canines. Most startling of all were his eyes. The slate blue began to bleed out around the edges and blades of ice blue pushed their way in. The intense color reminded me of the glaciers I’d seen in the Arctic.
He didn’t move toward me and, remarkably, I didn’t feel afraid of him. Even though I was looking at something preternatural, something primal and powerful, it didn’t scare me.
His body rippled and shimmered again, and a strikingly handsome male stood before me once more. Only totally nude. And heavily aroused.
“You weren’t scared. You didn’t fear me,” he
rasped, raw and edgy.
“No. I didn’t fear you.” I repeated his strange phrase back to him. “You were…beautiful.”
He growled, actually growled, low and deep in his chest and took a step forward. “You are true empathine. You see our beauty. You see what I am and still want me in the same way I want you.”
I did want him. In the worst way. More than I’d ever wanted any other man in my life. And why wouldn’t I? He stood there, tall, powerfully built, handsome, and straining for me. No red-blooded woman would have found him easy to refuse. And I’d been a long time without the company of a man. Ever since my last boyfriend had dumped me for daring to gain a few more pounds, I’d kind of sworn off men. Except he’s not a man, that insistent voice reminded me again.
A line popped into my head as I looked at his big, brawny body. Something from a childhood story long forgotten. Something about a wolf in disguise with big eyes and big teeth, and a girl being eaten. The edge of danger, the size of him, it only served to fuel my desire, not to quench it or moderate it, as surely it would if I were remotely sane.
Another step closer and I could catch his scent. Warm and spicy, he reminded me of the way the house smelled at Christmas. Either he used really good aftershave or his pheromones were off the charts.
“Your smell, it drives me insane.” His thoughts mirrored my own. Smiling, he licked his lips, never looking away from my face. Those lines from the childhood tale of warning danced around my head again.
“You’re not going to eat me, are you?” I blurted the words out before I could stop myself.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Eat you. No.” Then his eyes darkened and the smile turned predatory. “I do want to taste you though.”
I nearly came there and then, sitting on my bed, legs together and arms folded in my lap. A real prim and proper lady...on the outside, at least. My thoughts weren’t proper at all. My mind played out scenarios of him doing all sorts of wicked things.
He sank to his knees in front of me, and I suddenly couldn’t think at all. Gentle hands removed my own from my lap, placing them to either side of my legs. With one quick, fevered glance at my face, he focused all his attention between my legs. My face burned when he parted my thighs, his hands riding my nightdress up as he moved me open, displaying me.
For a long moment, he simply stared, a low groan rumbling out of his throat. “So beautiful. Your hair here, it is rua too. Red,” he sighed, “My red.”
As he pushed my thighs farther apart, the cool air of the room danced over my exposed skin. I’d never been more grateful for keeping things trim down there as my flesh greedily greeted the warm gust of moist air from his breath. I didn’t like anything more than a landing strip to get in the way and had kept up my grooming routine, despite not having a man in my life for a good long while.
I trembled, awaiting his touch. Wanting the first moment his mouth would make contact with my yearning flesh. We hadn’t even kissed, and yet here we were, with him about to take me in the most intimate way. He nuzzled the inside of my thigh, soft little butterfly kisses landing for a moment and then taking off again to alight somewhere else. While he kissed and nibbled his way toward my center, I wantonly parted my legs farther, needing him to hurry, needing him at my core.
And then he was there. His tongue sliding right up the crease, all hot, wet, and intense. I shuddered and let out a moan. He matched it with a groan and grabbed my butt cheeks to pull me onto his face. All his finesse of earlier deserted him, and he really did eat me. He licked and sucked at me as if his life depended on it. I cried out with the potency of it.
I could sense my climax building. My body tightened, and my insides thrummed with pent-up energy. Drew pushed his tongue inside and I shattered. I cried out as I pressed against his face, letting the waves of pleasure wash over and through me. When it ended, he went back to nuzzling and kissing my thighs, still holding me to him.
As the final tremor abated, he looked up at me through thick lashes and smiled, tentative and almost shy. “It was good?”
“Good? You deserve an award.” I didn’t let myself think about how he’d become so skilled. The idea of him with some other woman made me sick, even while I knew I had no right to such possessive emotions.
“You are made for me. Your scent, your taste. Mine. You are mine.” He looked at me, eyes wide and full of something akin to awe. With a groan, he pulled the nightdress farther up my body, sliding cool satin over skin raw with desire. When it reached my breasts, he gave an impatient grunt and tore it from me, ripping the silky material as if it were tissue. My nipples puckered under his hungry gaze.
“I want you. Need you. Not merely taking…but mating. You are mine, need to mate with you.”
Mating? What an odd term… Still it was probably the way their kind thought of it. But I didn’t have any condoms. “I don’t have any protection, do you?”
“Protection? You mean like the gun? The males outside will not enter. Not with me here, not now you are so clearly mine.”
“No.” I slapped his arm. Smiling, despite the odd burning of my skin and the desperate, desperate need to have him on me, in me, right the fuck now. “I mean condoms. I don’t have any. I don’t want to get pregnant, and I’m clean, but…” I trailed off.
“You can’t get pregnant. You’re not at the right stage in your cycle,” he said, face serious. I started to speak, but he went on. “And I have no diseases. I have only lain with two of my kind, and they with no other… And we don’t suffer from disease as you humans do.”
Two others? He’d only had sex with two women? Surely not? I flashed back to the ten or so guys I’d boned before him and decided to keep the number to myself. “How do you know about my cycle?”
“It’s your scent.” He kissed me on my shoulder, one brief, perfect touch of lips to skin. “It tells me you will not be with young. And for you to be with my young you’d have to begin the…burning… I do not know how else to translate. For you to become able to carry our young, you suffer the burning. It happens after the first claiming. After the burning starts, we hold the ceremony and the bonding ritual to ease it.”
Burning? That didn’t sound good. Not nice at all, unlike his lips, which were kissing my shoulder again. Not that it mattered, as I clearly wasn’t going to do this bonding thing. I’d have to let him down gently, later.
I opened my mouth and surprised myself with what popped out. “Okay.”
If he claimed to be clean, I believed him. I understood, on some deep level, he didn’t lie. Not ever. He’d no need of it. He held such power within his community no one would challenge him, and among humans, his strength meant he could take whatever he wanted. Although, my strange sixth sense told me he never used his power in such a way. How the hell I suddenly understood so much about him, I didn’t even want to examine, because it scared the crap out of me.
Nothing seemed real. We were locked in our own world. The room grew warm with our heated breath, and the small, humid space became our own private womb, sealing us off from the world. From reality.
Chapter Five
My whole body became languid, as if drugged, dazed. My normally racing, hectic mind for once calmed. Maybe he’d put a spell on me? I certainly could believe magic lived in the air between us, heating it, making me heady with every breath.
As he nibbled nearer to my neck, I turned my head and let my own lips graze his cheek, inhaling his lush, warm scent. Drew lifted his head and cupped the back of my neck. He pulled me in and brushed his full, soft lips over mine. It started out tender and sweet, but I wanted more. I licked my tongue along the seam of his mouth, and with a groan, he parted for me. His tongue met mine, and we tasted each other.
When he pulled me up onto the bed, I gave a squeak of surprise, for he moved me as if I were nothing more substantial than a rag doll. And as he laid me down, resting my head on the pillows, he towered over me, huge arms propping him up. If he wanted to, he could break me like a
doll, too. The realization sobered me, even though I didn’t believe for one moment he would harm a hair on my head. He stared at me as if I were something incredibly precious, the answer to every question he’d ever had.
I wondered if he’d looked at the other females, those of his kind, in such a way when he’d taken them. With a shake of my head, I forced myself to stop thinking about them. All that mattered was the here and now. The two of us in this room. I’d probably never see him again after tonight and didn’t need the green eyed monsters input.
Drew smiled then lowered his head and took one already aching nipple into his mouth. He laved at it gently, and I tangled my fingers into his hair, pulling his head closer. Suddenly, his gentleness deserted him, and he suckled on me. Tiny rasps of his teeth across my ultrasensitive flesh sent pinpricks of pleasure racing through me.
One warm, solid palm lifted my thigh, wrapping my leg around lean hips as his hardness brushed against my center. All rational thought fled. I wanted him in me. I didn’t care if others of his kind were outside, maybe listening and scenting what we did. In fact, it gave me a clandestine thrill to imagine them wanting me, too.
“You want this, don’t you?” His eyes were bright in the dim light of the room.
I nodded my head and licked my lips, my throat dry as sandpaper.
“Tell me.” He kneaded my butt cheek as his other hand grabbed both my arms and held them above my head, effectively trapping me under him. “Say it.”
“I want this.”
His triumphant smile should have scared me, the edges were so ravenous, so harsh. But I craved whatever he could give me. I’d never been so...feral with desire before.
“I want this; I want you. Just…take me.”
He growled again and nipped at my throat, making me quiver.
When the thick head of him penetrated me, I gasped in pleasure and arched my back. He bit and sucked harder at my flesh, nuzzling my neck. The sensations became almost too much, and I squirmed under him.
