by Emma Dawn
“Lyric, why aren’t you touching me?”
“I have your permission?” he asked. “I want you to want me. To not do this just because you feel you must, because you are my Alpha.”
I took his hand and slowly slid it between my legs, let him feel the heat and moisture of my pussy aching for him. “That answer your question, big boy?”
He stepped closer, sliding his other hand around my waist, holding me tightly to him. “It does.”
His lips were on mine, and the notes between us were sweet and full of a heady desire as his mouth demanded more and more of me. I gave it to him, demanding the same from him. Demanding that he open himself to me, and give me everything he was. I clutched at his shoulders, the feel of him under my hands an aphrodisiac I didn’t know was possible before that moment.
We went to our knees together, hitting the soft bed of furs laid out for us. A snap of winter wind whipped through the amphitheater, cooling my skin for the briefest of seconds before I was once more flushed with heat and desire for the man in front of me. I made a note to ask Lyric about that, about why we could be naked in the dead of a New England winter and not be literally freezing to death.
It had to be a werewolf thing, because no sex was that hot.
But I had better things to think about right then. Like the way his abs rippled as I slid my hands over them, testing the feel of them with each fingertip. “All night?” I asked softly, my words melting into the song around us. “Think you can keep it going all night?”
“The problem will not be if I can keep it going, but whether or not you will be able to walk tomorrow,” he said with a twist of his lips.
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me. “That sounds like a challenge I am willing to take.”
Lyric’s eyes sparkled as he eased me onto my back. He was being so gentle, and while I wanted a bit more fierceness, I didn’t push for it. This was Lyric, this was his time, and I wanted to see who he was and what made him tick. I had a feeling this was a huge part of him.
He knelt beside me and ran his hands over my skin in a feather-light touch. Playing me as if I were an instrument. I groaned and shifted, trying to get his hands to the pleasure centers of my body that ached to feel him strum along them.
He bent his head to mine but he dodged my lips as I turned to capture them with my own.
“I have other business I must attend,” he said.
I started to laugh and then his mouth was making a hot trail down my neck to my collarbone and the laughter turned into a low moan of wanting. There was nothing but the need for his touch and the music to bring me to a crescendo only he could. This was like nothing I’d ever experienced, which made me wonder if he was the one for me.
That thought caused a spark of pain that sent a discord through the music. He lifted his head.
“What is it?”
I looked away from him in a small attempt to gather my thoughts. “Nothing.”
Lyric didn’t ease up. “The music doesn’t lie, Cassandra. What thought sent that skittering of half-notes through us?”
It took all my heart strength to tell him the truth. “It made me . . . sad to think of choosing only one of you. This feels like magic to me, which makes me think you are the one I should choose. But that makes me feel like I’d be missing out on other things.”
He propped himself on one elbow and gave me a smile. “The time to choose is many days away.”
“Not that many,” I pointed out.
Lyric continued to smile. “My point is your choice is not now. Now is for feeling, for connecting. Nothing more.” He bowed his head and placed a kiss on my lips. He shifted his weight on his arms and went back to his sweet caresses.
My thoughts vanished like smoke on the wind as his fingers began to pluck little cries from me. He caught one nipple in each hand, rolling them gently between his fingers as if learning their contours, memorizing their every curve and dip.
“Lyric.” His name was a whispered plea on my lips.
The music around and between us softened as he worked his magic on me, as if allowing me to concentrate on his hands, mouth, and nothing else.
His lips left my neck and worked their way south, to my breasts. He pulled one nipple into his wet, hot mouth with a sudden suck that had me clenching the furs beneath us. Another blast of winter wind blew through the amphitheater, drew my hair up and around my face, and tangled it with some of Lyric’s blond locks. I let myself touch his head to feel the soft shimmering strands that slid between my fingers. Satin, he was all satin-sheathed steel.
I groaned, and arched my hips up, begging for him to touch me there, to pet me and bring me to a screaming climax while he thrust into me over and over. I wanted him, every inch of my skin was on fire with the need to feel him. To never let him stop.
Though he knew how badly I wanted him, he took his sweet damn time. He made his way south, his fingers pressing and touching, massaging their way to my hips, and then lower to the V of my thighs while I writhed under him, all but panting his name over and over. Begging him to fuck me.
I didn’t care what I sounded like. What I knew was that this feeling was magnificent in a way I couldn’t fully comprehend and wasn’t sure I would ever feel again.
“Stunning, you are stunning.” He breathed the words over the trembling folds of my aching pussy, and I let my knees fall to the sides, an open invitation for him to explore further.
His tongue was tentative at first, touching carefully, as if he would break me if he weren’t careful. He flicked it through my folds, not really searching for my clit, I didn’t think.
I was right.
“You taste amazing, and I am going to fuck you until you don’t know your own name.” He growled the words, and that rumble of his voice vibrated across my skin and set off miniscule explosions deep inside me. I groaned, breathing through the pleasure with some difficulty.
“Lyric, I am so close.”
“Oh, I know. I’m holding you there for a while.” He looked up at me from between my legs, his eyes full of desire and longing, and the music around us swept upward again. With each flick of his tongue, the music pulsed in a growing crescendo.
But it was as though he were deliberately avoiding my clit, and then I realized he was doing exactly that. That tease. I gasped as his tongue dipped into my pussy, swirling and pressing against the aching walls, away from the throbbing center.
My breath came in gasps and pants as I tried to hold off the climbing orgasm on the edges of my nerve endings. Another touch to my nipples, another brush against my clit, and I was going to lose it completely and I wanted to lose it, God, how I wanted—
Lyric sat up between my legs and gave me a lazy, self-satisfied smile. “How are you feeling?”
My jaw dropped and I stared at him from flat on my back. I just stared, unable to think words around the desire pulsing through my body. At least, at first. Finally, I managed cohesive thought that sputtered out in words.
“You are shitting me. You stopped to ask how I was feeling?”
He grinned and a flash of naughty slid in those eyes of his. “Just checking.”
“You did that on purpose!” I struggled to sit up, my skin and pussy still singing with the touch of his hands and tongue.
He crawled up my body with a pace that reminded me that this man was all wild, all wolf. “Oh, don’t worry. We’re just getting started.”
Chapter 6
Lying in a forest, hearing music only I and the very naked man—check that, werewolf—with me could hear was not something I would have ever guessed I would be doing, even a week before. Either I was losing my mind, or I was seriously in heaven. I was going with heaven.
Lyric slid between my legs, the tip of his cock pressing against the hot wetness between my legs. I gave a mock pout. “Not fair. I want to come first.”
My experience with men thus far was that you either came first, or you didn’t come at all. And I was not going to end this night d
iddling myself because he got all rushed and in a hurry to get his own rocks off.
His laughter rumbled along my skin, soothing me. “I’m far from done with you. All night, remember? A whole night of orgasms and pleasure that will make you struggle to move come morning.”
I leaned back and lifted my hands above my head, going for a casual look. Which was rather hard to pull off when flat on your back and completely naked. “I suppose.”
He bowed his head to my mouth, and spoke softly. “I want to fuck you so you remember me when the seventh night is over and you have to choose your mate. I want to imprint on you so that even if you don’t choose me, you will never, ever forget me.”
Inside me, that uncurling sensation rolled again as it had at the pond after I’d fought the females. It was like a large furred body was waking from a long sleep. I clamped down on it, not willing to let it out. “I won’t ever forget you, Lyric. Who could show me music like this? Who could play my body like an instrument meant for your hands alone?”
His grin was genuine, as were my words.
“I can’t imagine you not in my life,” I said. “I can’t.”
The smile slid and his eyes grew serious and perhaps more than a little hopeful. “Are you saying you would choose me?”
I opened my mouth and then shut it. “Don’t ask me that now. Not here. Like you said, this is here and now. Just be with me.”
He nodded. “Fair.”
He slid his body up once more, and the tip of his cock slid through my wetness and up through my folds, and pressed against my clit, which sent the music into another pulse that seemed to be in time with the throbbing between my legs.
“Oh, hell yeah.” I groaned the words and he slid back down, the tip of his cock in my pussy and then back up again over my clit.
“Hold your hips still,” he said. “Just let me do this for you, let me take you where you need to go.”
It took all I had not to work with him, to rock my hips in time with his to bring that throbbing of my clit into an exploding orgasm. His pace was slow and deliberate, taking me to the edge and then dropping off the other side, over and over again. That velvet tip was a deadly weapon he used with an efficiency I wasn’t sure wouldn’t kill me. My breath came in gasps as my body heated and cooled between his touch and the wind around us.
At least I would die with a smile plastered on my face.
“Please, Lyric,” I whimpered. How many times had he drawn me close to the edge and then backed off? I’d lost count.
His mouth dropped to my nipple as he continued with the stroking of the tip of his cock against my clit with the same maddening pace that had me whimpering and fighting to keep still as he asked. Every brush over my skin spiked the desire and pleasure higher, had me gripping him and the furs below us alternately. Had me sucking in lungful after lungful of icy cold air that instantly heated inside of me. My world narrowed to nothing but his touch and the music pulsing through my ears.
Steam rose from our bodies as Lyric groaned around my breast, his mouth hot and wet as he lapped at me at the same pace as his cock worked over my clit.
“Lyric, please!” I screamed for him because I was not sure how much longer I could stand on this razor’s edge of pleasure and not fall off the cliff. He’d asked me not to come, and I was trying, but he was also doing his best to push me into the abyss.
A game we would both win in the end.
“Cassie,” he whispered and I knew, I knew, he was going to let me come.
I whimpered.
“Come for me, Cassie.”
He thrust hard against my clit, the pace redoubling as I screamed, clutching his shoulders as he brought me to an orgasm that burst over me, and the music around us swelled to the crescendo I knew had been waiting. The notes of the music, the feel of his hands, the smell of our combined skin.
He slid into me before I was finished, and my body latched onto his, my pussy pulsing around him. He dropped his head against my shoulder as his hips began to move again, his breathing coming in short bursts. This time I moved with him, my body unable to stay still a moment longer. I grabbed hold of his shoulders and lifted my ass off the thick furs, and my pussy welcomed him in deep, deeper. I wanted every inch of him and I didn’t care if it made me a greedy wench. He was mine, Lyric was my music man.
My body and soul sang for him to a tune only the two of us heard. His cock arched along the inner wall of my pussy and started a whole new cascading effect of ripples that left me bucking and screaming as I lost control. My world exploded in a burst of light, sound, and sensation that touched every part of me, making me wonder if I died.
There was no more music, my eyes were closed and my heart was pounding a strange rhythm that was slow to steady.
A nip on my jaw line and a soft laugh helped bring me down to earth. “You did not die, though I agree, that was fucking amazing.”
I opened my eyes and blinked away sweat as it slid down my face. “That was . . . amazing seems like too light a word, too simple for what that was.” I adjusted my body on the furs and even that little movement made me tingle all over, a whisper of what could be my entire life if I chose him.
I ran my fingers through his hair. “Talk to me, Lyric. I have so little time with each of you, I want to make the most of it.”
A tiny part of my brain screamed that I wasn’t really going to pick a man at the end of the week, that I was going to enjoy them all and run like the dickens when they asked me to choose. Because that was better than being tangled up again and having my heart handed to me on a sharp stick over an open fire while the man I loved shacked up with . . . no. Mentally, I shook myself. This was not the same situation. Not at all.
Lyric rubbed his face across my collarbone, his tongue following the gentle marking. “Ask me a question, I’ll answer honestly.”
I let my hands trace his back while I thought a moment. “Why are we not freezing our asses off out here? I’m not complaining, but it’s more than a little weird.”
He laughed and lifted his head, and his hands found their way into my hair. He rubbed his fingers along my scalp as he spoke. “Werewolves have a higher metabolism than other supernaturals. Our temperatures are always a few degrees higher than a human’s, and when it gets cold around us, our body adjusts. It also means we eat a fair bit more.”
I’d always thought my metabolism and ability to eat what I liked and stay slim was odd. That trait had always driven my friends bonkers. I’d just assumed it was good genetics.
I let my eyes flutter closed as he continued to massage my head. “And you? How long have you been a werewolf?”
I was proud of myself. I didn’t stutter over the word werewolf.
He was quiet a moment. “You assume I wasn’t born like this?”
“Havoc said the strongest tend to be those bitten, not born.” I mumbled the words, his hands lulling me.
“Fifteen years,” he said. “I was bitten as a teenager. When the fever hit me, I knew something was wrong and I slipped out of my house and never went back.”
My eyes flew open. My own parents weren’t much, but I didn’t think I could just leave and never even tell them I was okay. “What about your parents?”
He shook his head. “They thought I ran away, I guess.”
Deep sadness flickered through me. “Why didn’t you go back?”
He rolled to the side and pulled me with him. “Because in the beginning it can be hard to control yourself, and even hard to see through the fever. It makes for some pretty wicked delusions. By the time I thought I had the change in hand, they had stopped looking. Posters that had been up were taken down. The police no longer had me on their radar.”
I frowned and tightened my arms around him. “How long did it take for you to control your change?”
“About eighteen months.” The hurt in his voice was not easily heard, but it was there and I knew why.
I let my fingers trace his neck and jaw. “They should not have let you
go so easily. Maybe we could go back now. I bet they would still like to know you are okay.” I brushed a hand down his arm. He shook his head, his eyes distant.
“No, they died a few years back. I’d like to see my sister, though. Maybe.” He blinked and the distance in him was gone. “Enough about that. We only have a few hours until dawn, and I would like to make the best of it.”
Laughing, I curled my body around his and gave my ass a little wiggle. “You still think you can go all night?”
He grunted and grabbed the sides of my ass, and tucked me tightly against him once more. “I think that after the next session I’m going to have to feed you to keep you going.” He looked past me and I turned to follow his gaze.
Wilder stood far enough back to give us the semblance of privacy, half-turned away from us.
“Wilder, go get us something to eat,” Lyric called across the distance.
Wilder turned and locked his eyes with mine. “You good with that, Cassie?”
My heart did a little pitter-patter knowing I had someone fully here to protect me. I waved at him. “Yes. Thank you.”
He bobbed his head and was gone in a split second, disappearing into the shadows.
Lyric gave a grumble. “He should have done as I’d told him without checking with you first.”
I slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “He’s here for me. Not for you to boss around.”
Lyric shook his head. “Wilder has been a beta for a long time. He’s never wanted to be in charge. And he knows me. He’s here to keep you safe from other threats.” He looked away and I filled in the blanks.
“Like the Bloodfire pack? Or Raider?”
He paused, uncertainty in his eyes before he answered. “Both. There are rumors that Raider is helping the Bloodfire pack work their way into our territory. If he lets the queen in, maybe she’ll let him take over at her side.”
I shivered against him. “What would happen to Havoc and the rest of the Alphas here?”
His eyes were serious. “Same thing as would happen to the females. With Raider in charge, he’d cull us, taking out those stronger than him to cement his hold on his leadership.”
