Shit, the Redmaven alpha was doing his level best to box them in. It was customary for the she-wolf to spend a three-moon cycle with the pack of her potential mate. It gave her time to decide weather to accept or reject her suitor.
He looked up into Saffa’s eyes and saw the flicker of uncertainty and the plea in them.
If the Redmavens gained custody of Saffa, they wouldn’t calmly wait for her decision. Her refusal had been anticipated by Redmavens. It explained why they made their move at the particular time, while they were without a supreme alpha, who might have overridden the council’s edict. Yes, a crime would be committed. She’d be forcibly impregnated.
To hell with this. “It’s not a crime for a man to keep his mate by his side.” Justice’s declaration elicited a round of hisses and snickers.
He hoped to God she’d forgive him when he was forced to reveal his secret to her. He prayed she’d see this was the only way to keep her safe.
“You lie. I smell no hint of her spoor on you, but maybe you Ambervanes breed your women by osmosis.” Maxime’s taunt was a blatant insult, and Justice felt his hackles rise.
“The Ambervanes like their women perfumed and powdered, not smelling of stale sex and sweat.” Saffa’s dulcet voice washed over them, calming him.
God, my girl can deliver an insult like nobody else.
“I was washing the perspiration from my body before slipping into bed to await my mate. I smelled of the fear your son made me feel when he chased me unlawfully through the forest. As a multimorph, I should have been afforded more respect. If any law was broken, I believe it would be the decree all multimorphs were never to be threatened.” She jumped down from the second floor, the silky weave of the robe billowed out around her. The bare length of her legs gleamed in the moonlight.
She sauntered across the snow-dappled ground, walking deliberately through the group of Redmavens as if they posed no threat at all. They were collecting insults tonight like a stripper collected dollar bills.
Justice’s cock stirred in spite of the cold. The picture of her walking through a crowd of a hundred nude people aroused him, even though she was fully covered by the red, over-sized robe. She moved like a flame through the sea of moonlit bodies. The only thing of warmth in his world, and she was his to take.
She took her position on his left side. By his heart.
“This is unconscionable! Justice has usurped Bardo’s prior claim. I demand the right to redress,” Maxime protested, his face contorted into a furious scowl.
“Actually, your assumption is incorrect. A request was put forward by the Ambervanes when she was sixteen, at her maturity as is our custom. Their claim takes precedence,” Gretchen interjected, calmly looking at Maxime.
Justice had forgotten the precautionary move taken by Gretchen and Hawkin. Justice grinned. At the time, Justice had balked at the idea when the old man and Gretchen suggested it because Saffa was at the verge of blooming into womanhood.
“Has she said the words of acceptance?” Maxime barked. Frustration at the realization Saffa was now placed beyond his pack’s reach set his face into grim lines.
“I believe they’ve indicated their union has been cemented.” Gretchen sent him a scathing glower of disdain, affronted. “I too demand redress for your son’s appalling attack on my granddaughter.”
“Alleged attack. We won’t let this insult to our pack go unanswered.” The deadly, malevolent glare Maxime fixed on Saffa made Justice step in front of her. He met Maxime’s glare unwaveringly. The silent communication simmered between them. It seethed with unvoiced animosity.
Essentially, the feud between the Ambervanes and the Redmavens was now out in the open.
Justice had never meant to claim Saffa as his mate, but she was now his. The knowledge of it made him drunk with euphoria. His concerns and fears about the future of his pack were overridden by one singular thought—Saffa was his.
Chapter Four
Pack after pack shifted and took off into the waning night. After a fulminating glare at the Ambervanes, Maxime stared directly into Saffa’s eyes. His face twisted into a parody of a smile. Cold and humorless, it was a threat directed at her personally.
Although her insides had turned into a soupy mess, she forced herself to stand firm and didn’t flinch under the weight of his glare.
Justice emitted a warning growl, the timbre of it low, aggressive and challenging.
Maxime bowed mockingly and began his change. He did it slowly, another act to intimidate her, and it was a thing of nightmares. His skin separated like dough being pulled apart in long strings to reveal his eyes bulging from their sockets, bloody muscles, pulsing veins and undulating intestines. The horror in her soft gasp had the Ambervanes moved into battle formation. They protected their own and she was now theirs.
Having achieved what he set out to do, Maxime transformed into a grizzled wolf. He snarled a command to his pack and loped into the thicket.
Justice spun around to face her and for the first time uncertainty tainted her feelings for him. She’d never been unsure of Justice before, not ever.
His face was hard and grim, his eyes burned with a fervor so alien to his usually calm expression.
Distantly, she heard the padding of paw beats as his pack melted away, leaving her alone with him. She took several involuntary steps backward.
He lunged across the short distance separating them and grasped her upper arm, his breathing harsh in the sudden silence that had descended over the small patch of earth.
“Don’t, don’t back away from me. The wolf is still with me and if you run, I will chase you.” Justice’s rubbed his callused thumb over the delicate skin of her wrist, abrading it.
The slow back-and-forth motion of Justice’s finger over her skin sent rhythmic pulses of sensation over Saffa’s senses. Her gulp, loud as gunfire, earned her a strangled laugh. Justice’s eyes were fixed on her chest. Saffa looked down to see what he found so fascinating. Her nipples had pebbled into hard buds, pushing thorough the luxurious wool.
“The claiming has been voiced.” He paused and seemed to struggle to find the words. “I want you.”
“I’m yours.” The simple declaration elicited a shudder from him.
“Are you? Are you mine?” He caught her eyes and she saw the primal in him warring with his humanity. “Once we cross this line, there’ll be no turning back.”
“Do we have a choice? We’ve danced around this for far too long.” She lifted her hand and touched his tense jaw.
“You deserve more than I can give, but I’m almost grateful the decision was taken out of my hands.”
She started to ask him what he meant, but he captured her mouth with his.
Tasting, caressing and enticing her to savor this step toward their first mating.
Behind it was an urgency that thrilled her, a desperation that puzzled her. He had to want her for more reasons than the need to protect her. She prayed he did.
The press of his erection had nothing to do with pack duty. Saffa had seen couples mating after a politically brokered claiming. It was cold and perfunctory. She couldn’t bear if it was like that with Justice.
There was nothing cold about the way he held her, kissed her.
She melted into him.
“Your feet, frostbite,” he mumbled against her lips.
“I’m too hot for the cold to affect me.” His body heat combined with hers was more than enough to melt an iceberg.
He laughed throatily, the purely masculine sound of a male who’d made his kill and was about to feast. Some of his mannerisms were lupine. She knew the animal was with them on this initial mating.
He swept her up into his arms, took several running steps and bounded up onto the deck outside of his bedroom. Entering the dim room, he lowered her onto the bed and stood at the end.
Possessive yet loving, Justice allowed his eyes to slide over her.
“You know what I look like.”
“Not as a lover.
The pulse at the base of your throat is a siren’s call.” He knelt between her thighs and separated the overlapping panels of the robe to bare her breasts. His eyes glittered with a gratifying appreciativeness.
“It won’t be easy, but I won’t hurt you.”
“You wouldn’t, ever…” Whatever else she meant to say became lost in the sensation when he swiped his wet, tactile tongue over one of her aureoles. The other he flicked sharply with an extended nail.
The man gave her pleasure, and the wolf employed pain. She welcomed the soothing lave and the bite of both.
Liquid heat pooled between her already damp folds. She slid her fingers into his hair, holding his head in place. Saffa arched her back and clamped her thighs around his flanks.
Justice lapped his way down her torso, interspersing the licks of his raspy wolfish tongue with playful nips. He separated her cleft with his thumbs to reveal the quivering flesh, full of anticipation for his touch.
Bending his head, he tongued her with one long swipe from the hard tip of her clit down, in tiny, barely measurable increments, to her pulsing core.
He lifted his head and inhaled. His amber eyes flared with a golden blaze. The smell of her arousal suffused the air, alluring and more fragrant than ever before. Ripe with her heritage and the woman she was, she watched him close his eyes and savor the bouquet of her.
She stiffened. It couldn’t be. Her mating cycle wasn’t scheduled for another six weeks.
Shit, she was fertile.
There was no place in her life for a child now. “Justice…”
His response was a guttural snarl.
She wiggled her hips hoping to break the contact of the oral digit delving into her sheath. It stiffened deep inside her, slid over her tissues. Lapping greedily at her, he savored, feasting on Saffa, using his agile tongue to pleasure her.
She only needed him to continue for a few seconds more for her to reach an orgasm. Clasping her hands around his head to wring as much sensation from the loving act he performed, she rode the tumultuous first wave with a whimper of satisfaction. She wanted more. Much more.
Justice reared back and cradled her hips in his wide palms. His cock stood proudly erect between his straining thighs. A globule of semen clung to the crown of the enormous shaft. Veins lined the thick column, deliciously potent and virile to her fevered mind.
She wantonly swiped her thumb over the knob and licked the pad of her finger.
“I think I might be fertile. Condom, unless you’re ready to be a daddy.”
He crawled between her legs and fitted the head to her opening. “I know. I smelt your readiness to conceive. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.” Panting like he’d scaled a mountain, he slid the head along the length of her cleft. She was ready. Ready for him.
He eased through the first band of muscle at the mouth of her sheath.
She flinched at the intrusion.
“Easy, baby, easy. I won’t move until you become accustomed to me.”
Her head said one thing—stay right where you are—but the hungry unsated hollowness residing between her thighs needed something quite different.
Him, deep inside her.
She tilted her hips upward, easing a little more of himself inside of her. Reflexively, her body let loose moisture, making her slick. Her clenched inner muscles relaxed.
He rolled his hips, working himself into her spasming channel. “Don’t worry, I’ve found out you can’t fight fate. If it’s meant to be it’ll happen. You’re in my arms, my own personal miracle.” Justice’s voice was tight and strained, his words sounded odd to her, as if they came from a distance.
All coherency dissipated. Her snug vagina parted as his member made slow but steady progress. His small insistent movements forward were torturously delicious.
Saffa was aware of every inch, her breath caught in her throat. She waited for the last of him. When he finally gave it to her, she groaned.
He rotated his pubic bone on her clit. She ran her splayed hands over his tense back, down to his taut butt to hold him in position.
Right there. Pinned to the bed, unable to move, she was pleasured. The bulk of him was enough to set off a series of ripples through her tissues. The mere presence of his cock embedded in her sent Saffa galloping toward an orgasm.
He slid the length of himself out of her and paused. The climax receded like a waning tide.
With a grunt, he plunged back in.
Justice’s strokes became unpredictable but no less pleasurable.
Long and deep. Short and shallow. He tested the depths of her.
She locked her ankles around his waist, wiggled her butt and he settled heavily on her, pelvis to pelvis. He drove in and out of her with short, measured plunges.
The pace her mate set was a steady pussy-creaming rhythm. Justice stroked everything needing to be caressed.
He lowered his body on top of hers, bearing the bulk of his weight on his elbows. The fine dusting of his chest hair tickled her nipples. Justice’s teeth nicked the side of her neck, and he clamped his mouth onto the notch at her neck and shoulder and laved the broken skin.
He pulled out of her.
Noooo.
He rolled her over and pulled her up on all fours.
The animal in him would seek to stake his claim on her now. She had to bow to her mate. The primal always reared its head at the most inconvenient times. Lowering her shoulders to the bed, she hiked her hips, offering herself to him.
Saffa moved her head to bare her jugular to show her vulnerability.
His grunt of satisfaction vibrated though her body. Justice buried himself into her sheath in one accurate stroke. It hurt her a little. Saffa knew he was gripped by his wolf’s basic instinctual need to mate and wouldn’t think of her discomfort.
It wasn’t the most comfortable fit. She stretched to take him. Her small aches eased every time he slid into her. Saffa felt gorged, and with each stroke her body pushed back seeking his impalement. Soon she’d be replete. She was on the brink of coming.
Justice aligned his upper body with her back and sank his teeth into her neck. His hips flashed uncontrollably against her, and a rush of semen flooded her insides as her sheath locked onto him. A sweet, swift satisfaction ripped through her.
Their animals were mated.
Now to appease their human wants.
He rested inside her, panting.
“I want you.”
A husky chuckle escaped through her parted lips. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re having me,” she reminded him.
“No, I was fucking you. Now, I’m going to have you. Love you.” He brushed her hair out of the way, placed a soft kiss on her nape and slid his hands down to cup her breasts. Justice twirled the tips and pinched them gently. He lapped the line starting under her lobe, down to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. He devoted minutes to the skin on her upper back.
Who knew she had such sensitivity there?
Her clit throbbed under his attentions. Fingertips palpated it, strummed and swirled. His clever fingers caressed the nubbin solicitously.
He wooed, seduced and courted her with a gallant incongruity, with lips, hands and his cock. Planted deeply in her, any other man would have thought it unnecessary, and she loved him for it.
He pressed her down and rolled her onto her side until she faced away from him. Still embedded in her, he lifted her thigh and rested her calf over his leg. The lips of her slit parted like a bloom opening.
Cool air hit her clit, a sweet, erotic contrast to the hot, hard length of him inside her. It sent a shiver of reaction skittering along her skin. He fondled her breasts, squeezing the mounds lovingly. Tweaking her nipple to a tight bud with one hand, he dipped the fingers of the other into her honey pot.
“I can smell you. Do you have any idea what it was like to catch a whiff of your arousal being unable to touch you like this?”
“I wouldn’t have denied you.”
“Ahh, Saffa.” The sa
dness in his voice tore at her.
“Don’t. Don’t regret this, Justice. Don’t regret us, please,” she whispered huskily.
He slipped gently out of her, and she was bereft. He flipped her onto her back, positioned himself at the mouth of her and slid back in, very carefully.
His amber eyes darkened with his roiling emotions. “No, no remorse. You are my joy.”
He took her mouth in the gentlest of kisses. It deepened, became more demanding. Justice flexed his hips and commenced to make love to her. Swept up into the cadence of his movements, she responded fully. Writhing under him, Saffa convulsed around Justice’s shaft, the ripples of pleasure it gave her sending her into a frenzy.
He hooked her knees over his elbows, every tensed muscle on his body delineated and damp with a layer of moisture.
Her orgasms began in small bursts, grew bigger and more rapturous. It was more than she’d ever experienced. Justice pumped his hips in a piston-like, tireless motion, taking her higher and higher, bringing her to the point of delirium.
The lengthy strokes of his cock became short and erratic.
“Play with your nipples.”
She did as he demanded, taking the nubs between thumb and forefinger. She tugged and pinched, pulling them out fully.
A wave of bliss hit and her body jerked. Culmination hit them simultaneously. Come spewed into her and she gripped him with her inner muscles. Her channel pulsed in continuous waves around him. He shuddered above her, roared and jerked violently.
Justice slumped on top of her. He gave her a sleepy, satisfied smile and rained kisses on her face.
Too enervated to move, she lay there and let him worship her. His kisses were fervent and adoring. He slid out of her, pulled her chest flat against his and rolled over onto his side.
She pressed an absentminded kiss onto his chest.
Justice slid his hand soothingly over her back, calming her shudders as her body settled. A soft kiss on the crown of her head sent her off into a sated sleep.
***
The enticing aroma of grilled meat tickled her nose and pulled her out of a light doze. She blinked lazily, her eyes popping open when she saw the two-inch filet mignon inches from her face.
Her Chosen Wolf: The Were Chronicles, Book 1 Page 4
