My pace quickens as I grasp her thighs and drive faster, deeper than before. Tension hardens every muscle in my body. And when she parts her cloak to reveal her luscious breasts and begins to stimulate herself, sliding her nipples between her fingers, I nearly lose it.
“Ivy…” I still at her entrance, throbbing, on the verge of releasing myself into her.
“Don’t stop…please, Reaper, don’t—I’m so close.” She writhes her hips against me, breasts swaying in time with my relentless thrusts, thighs wrapped around my waist, and when I stroke her clit, she comes apart. The orgasm rips through her, and she rides it well, right over my straining length.
It’s too much to take.
With every staccato thrust, and every hard clench of her core over my cock, the sensations gather and spread through my spine. And as she cries out, locking her eyes on mine, I roar with the release of my seed. I pour myself into her clenching depths as passion consumes me.
I’m hers.
“If you’re ever looking for a sex slave,” I say, stroking my hands between her breasts as I linger inside her, “look no further. I’m your guy.”
“Hmm.” Her breasts cover with gooseflesh as I gently graze my fingers over her nipples. “I’m afraid I’m looking for a better offer than that.”
“Better than this?” If there is any color left in my face, it’s now drained completely. “Were you in the room just now? Don’t you know how fucking amazing that was?”
A delicate string of laughs spill from her lips. “Oh, you’re good—borderline sex god status, actually—so don’t get me wrong, but I have to bond with someone at midnight. That means you’ve got”—she cranes her neck around to glare at the clock—“three hours to fulfill all the duties of my sex slave before I’m officially off the market.”
“Better get started, then,” I say, and toss her back on the bed to start rough and wild round two.
Chapter Five
Ivy
My legs are mush, my mind is blank, and the remnants of the last six orgasms are making my ears ring.
“You blew right through that borderline status.” I drape my arms over my head and whack the edge of the hearth. Somewhere along the way we fell off the bed and rolled near the fire. Blowing out an exhausted breath, I readjust my arms. “Official sex god stardom. You’ve reached it.”
He’d only come three times, but had pleasured me until my eyes crossed. Originally, I thought he might’ve only been gifted with his mouth, but I’d been wrong. Way freaking wrong. His dick was a masterpiece—never thought I’d think the words—but they were true. And I’d never tell him out of fear it’d go to his head. The other one. The talented one.
“The partner makes it perfect,” he says, and I swoon a little inside, even though I know I shouldn’t.
I can’t have him.
Deep down I know it’s the truth. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering what our children would look like and how my first name would sound paired with his last. Once again, not admitting those things, because, um hello, I’ve seen Psycho, and I’m not going there, but still. He’s sort of everything. Super scorching hot and built for orgasm delivery. Smart and witty. And he’s protective of me. After spending so many years helping my mother and caring for my father, it’s incredibly nice to have someone looking out for me for a change.
“What now?” I ask, watching the firelight flicker over his ruggedly handsome face.
I feel his eyes on me as he rolls over and props his head on his elbow. “Now you wait until ten o’clock. And when you don’t hear the knock on your door, you realize Lukas didn’t choose you, and we get another hour to be alone before the ceremony.”
As he leans over and kisses my shoulder, his words sink deep.
Lukas didn’t choose you…
Something inside me shifts as the words repeat in my head. I’m completely happy in this moment, lying next to Reaper in front of the fire, but…
What would it be like if I was chosen? Would we spend the last hour before the ceremony in Lukas’s bed? Would he be a skilled lover or have I assumed wrong? Would he savor me as the brandy, absorbing me into his senses before consuming me, or would he be violent and abusive as Reaper warned? I suppress a shudder at the thought.
“What then?” The question rips from my mouth before I can stop it. “Whether Lukas chooses me or not, it doesn’t matter”—there’s that pang in my middle again—“because the outcome is the same. Either way, I’ll be bonded with someone by the time the night is through.”
And that person’s not you.
“But what happens after that?”
Reaper drops his head into the crook of his arm and nails me with a glare I haven’t seen on him yet. It’s hardened, not from anger, but pain.
“I know you must’ve heard by now, but I’ve been in Europe hunting down the monster who killed my parents.” His voice turns grave, sending chills up my spine. I drag the sheet over my lap and clutch it against my chest as he says, “I’m leaving…as soon as I take care of something for my grandmother.”
“You’re leaving again?” I rest my head on the floor so I’m staring at him face-to-face, eye to eye. “Just like that?”
What about me—us? I bite back the words.
And then cringe as I mentally slap myself across the face. Wake up. Reaper walked into my life a few hours ago, and I’m already envisioning how our names would look emblazoned together on wedding stationery. The invitations would be totally gorgeous, though, with swirling silver letters, a bright red ribbon and—damn it. There I go again.
I try to remove the happily psychotic gleam in my eyes and wait for his answer.
“Just like that.” He nods. “Avenging their deaths is the most important thing in the world to me. I won’t rest until I find the one responsible, no matter how long it takes. I pledge loyalty to the Omega each time I’m in the area, but I can’t rejoin the pack. I won’t do it until this is settled.”
I wait for him to continue, but he stares into the fire, and I fear talking about this has made him pull further away.
The fact that he’ll let me waltz out of Arcana Castle bonded to some other shifter is testament for the seriousness of our relationship, or lack thereof. If he loved me—hell, if he had any interest in being with me longer than one scorching-hot night—he’d have a major problem with me being married off. He’d ask me to choose him instead and run away to Europe.
Reality descends on my thoughts like a plague, drying them out.
I’m stupid for even hoping.
I’ve known the reality of the situation from the start.
“Ivy, you have to understand something.” Reaper speaks the words through clenched teeth, and I can barely make them out. “My parents didn’t just move away or switch packs because of personal conflicts—as some werewolves do—and their death was no accident. They were killed because my father was in line to rule as Alpha beneath the Omega. If I return, Lukas must step down from the throne since I’m older, which makes me Alpha. With my parents’ murderer in the wild, I can’t take a chance that the monster won’t come after my wife the same way he did my mother.”
“That’s why you haven’t chosen a mate.”
“It’s not that I haven’t,” he says, brushing a strand of hair out of my face, “but I won’t. I can’t put my mate in jeopardy that way. If I fell in love and gave my life to another, I’d never recover if something happened to her.”
It all makes sense. Why he left the pack, why he chooses to live alone, and why he can’t be the one I declare at midnight.
As he wraps me up in his arms, I forget about crossing paths and lost opportunities, and drown in his masculine scent. I’m moments away from falling asleep when he kisses me square on the lips.
“Open your eyes,” he whispers.
I peel my eyes open and stare into his, my mind blissfully blank.
“It’s ten o’clock.” He shoots me a wink and a smile. “And I don’t sense a single footstep coming
down that hallway. You did it. You’re in the clear.”
“What?” I sit up to check the time myself and clutch the sheet against my chest. “I am?”
“Lukas must’ve chosen by now. He’s never late.” Without warning, he rolls on top of me, bracing his weight with his arms, his shaft against my thigh. “That means we’ve got an hour left before you need to be downstairs. Should be plenty of time.”
I should be thinking of nothing but Reaper and the way he’s maneuvering his hips to push his swollen length inside me. But my thoughts are haywire, shooting to Lukas and the woman he must’ve chosen. Was she prettier? More demure? Did she taste the brandy when he offered it or shoot it back? I couldn’t help but wonder how I didn’t measure up.
“Where’d you go?” Reaper asks, shifting his weight over me. “You disappeared for a second.”
“No, I’m here.” I rake my nails up and down his muscular back and rope my legs around his to guide him inside me. “Right here. And for the next fifty-nine minutes I’m all yours.”
He groans as he sheaths himself in my warmth and begins to thrust in a slow grind that drives me wild. I raise my hips, letting him know exactly what I want and how I want it. My pulse quickens as a warm flush gathers in my center, and I take him all in. He’s hard and perfect and hovering over me, driving deep. Desire sparks in his eyes, but there’s something more there, too. It’s passion and heat, and the promise of something more. He pushes me to the very edge, and as the crescendo rises, the sound of our hips slamming against each other drives me—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three sharp knocks pound on my bedroom door, severing my orgasm before it could fully take hold.
Reaper stills, dick-deep inside me. “Don’t…move.”
“Ms. Ivy Douglas?” Two more demanding knocks threaten to break my chamber door into splinters. “You’ve been formally requested to respond to the Alpha’s quarters.” Another deafening bang. “We’re to escort you immediately. Open up.”
My heart freezes in my chest. “I—I don’t know what to do.”
“You can’t go.” Reaper unsheathes himself from my core and wraps in a sheet. “I’ll talk to him, tell him—”
“What? That you fucked me first? This isn’t like calling shotgun for the front seat of a car ride.”
Reaper doesn’t like my poor attempt at a joke. His jaw clenches wildly and the color drains from his face. “I can’t stand here and watch you leave.”
I cup his cheeks in my hand and stroke the stubble that grazes against my fingers. “You can’t stand here at all. They’re going to open that door in a minute, and if they find you here wrapped in my bedsheet, I can’t imagine they’re going to be pleased.”
“Shit.”
“Go.” I push him toward the pile of his clothes. “Hurry.”
Heart pounding double time, I drape my crimson cloak over my shoulders and guide it down my body. Reaper’s scent is all over me—I can smell him as strongly as the redwood crackling in the hearth. I’m sure every other shifter in the castle will be able to sense the same thing.
“Open up,” a rough voice shouts from the hall. “Ms. Ivy Douglas.” Another series of bangs. “We’ll break down the door if we have to. You’re not the first pre-shifter to resist the inevitable.”
I’m disgusted by their insinuation and the thought of other women being taken to the Alpha against their will. He hadn’t struck me as a slimeball, but how could his guards be wrong?
Reaper shoves his feet into his boots, snatches his coat off the back of the bed and rushes up to me, coiling his arm around my waist.
“This is torture.”
I tunnel my fingers through his hair. “I know.”
“How are you holding up? Are you all right?”
I pause a split second to analyze what I’m feeling and have trouble putting it into words. I’m not tortured, but I’m not thrilled, either. I’m…curious. I can’t help it that Lukas intrigued me, but now I’m second-guessing. The guards have broken down doors before? Dragged girls to sleep with the Alpha against their will? The two impressions of Lukas don’t mesh in my head.
Reaper’s face drops in the wake of my silence. “Our time’s up, baby,” he says, backing away toward the windows. He pops one open, letting a swirl of snow flurries into the room. “I can sense your indecision—that you want to go to him. And that’s fine. Guess this was fun while it lasted.”
My stomach pangs with guilt as I reach out for him. “Reaper…”
A solid fist slams into the door, shaking it on its hinges. I stare, cinching my cloak, knees quaking.
“You have three seconds…two…”
In the last second before Arcana guards burst down the door, I spin back toward Reaper. He’s gone. Vanished. I rush to the window and lean over the windowsill, searching the snow-covered forest for the man who left my world as mysteriously as he’d come.
“…one!”
“I’m coming,” I say, and pull my red hood over my head. My bare feet strike the cold hardwood floor as my skin crawls with a haunting sense of foreboding.
I unlock the door and open it wide. Two guards stand on the other side. They’re giants—the largest shifters I’ve ever seen—with bulging muscles meant to demolish any opposition.
“Turn around,” the larger of the two says. “The Alpha wants you tied up when you’re brought before him.”
Oh God.
Why would he want me tied up? Why couldn’t I walk into his chamber on my own, the way I had before? I’ve made a mistake. I’ve played with fire, toyed with the Alpha, and I have the horrible, gut-sinking feeling I’m about to be burned.
Spinning around slowly, I do as I’m told and hold my hands behind my back. As a rope loops around my wrists, my attention turns to the forest beyond the window and the werewolf lurking in the shadows.
It’s Reaper. Watching from the forest in wolf form. And he’s just as menacing as he was moments before. Wide snout, blazing onyx eyes, frazzled black fur, his back raised into an aggressive ridge. He’s the last thing I see as I’m pulled out of the doorway and dragged down the hall.
The pained gleam in his eyes haunts my memory as I pinch my eyes closed and focus on calming my breathing.
It’s going to be okay, I tell myself. It’s going to be all right.
But when the slow, aching howl of a wolf resounds through the castle, my heart skips a beat and suddenly I’m not so sure.
To be continued…
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Candace Havens for believing in me, coming to me with this project, and then letting me run with it.
Huge thanks to Aggie Smith for reading everything I write, even when it’s out of her genre; to Laurie Shaw for supporting me when I want to veer off course; to Lisa Sanchez for plotting and critiquing and being a great friend; and to Lora Walker for being so freaking awesome during deadline crunch that I just can’t stand it.
Hugs and love forever to Justin, Kelli, and Gavin. You three are my world and everything in it.
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Kristin Miller writes sweet and sassy contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and steamy paranormal romance of all varieties. Kristin has degrees in psychology, English, and education, and taught high school and middle school English before crossing over to a career in writing. She lives in Northern California with her alpha male husband and their two children. You can usually find her in the corner of a coffee shop, laptop in front of her and mocha in hand, using the guests around her as fuel for her next book.
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The steamy serial continues in July…
KRISTIN MILLER’S
A DARK AND DIRTY TALE
Part Two
Dominating Red
I’ve been seduced by Lukas, the Alpha of the Arcana wolf pack. Although the sex is so good I forget my own name, I can’t deny there’s still something missing…Reaper, the Omega’s eldest grandson has my heart. But if I choose him as my mate, we lose everything.
Also by Kristin Miller…
Seattle Wolf Pack series
Gone with the Wolf
Four Weddings and a Werewolf
So I Married a Werewolf
San Francisco Wolf Pack series
The Werewolf Wears Prada
Beauty and the Werewolf
What a Werewolf Wants
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