Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Grant stood a few feet away from her. The space between them was alive with a kind of palpable friction, each of them wanting to move toward the other without doing so.

  To break the silence, Paxton asked, “What happened?”

  Grant’s eyes were waiting for hers to find them now. His serious expression projected a fierceness that left her pulse pounding.

  “Friends are watching for your bear,” he replied.

  That information would have been mildly pacifying if she hadn’t known he was lying. Either lying or not telling her something vital to her peace of mind. After her brief conversation with Shirleen, the word bear had lost its shine as the monstrous opponent she’d met on the dark road to Desperado. So, what kind of animal was as large and as heavy as a bear? That question, posed moments ago to Shirleen, still awaited an answer.

  “What’s really going on?” she managed to ask, feeling a flush heat her cheeks due to the intensity of Grant’s blue-eyed observation.

  Grant didn’t answer her question. Instead, he closed the distance with three long strides to stand close enough to her to make her look up to see his face.

  “We’ve been hearing things about a trespasser for a few months now,” he said. “This might be the same one.”

  “Man or animal?”

  “We’re not entirely sure,” he replied.

  “If it turns out to be a person and not an animal that you’re searching for, would that person be dangerous?”

  “He’s already a danger to livestock in the area. By default, and because we’re trying to stop the thievery, we can’t rule out the possibility of drawing that freak’s anger. That’s why it’s safe to be on the lookout.”

  She felt better, knowing this. Felt better thinking that it might be a man, rather than a giant animal. Still, having a human trespasser didn’t explain why the man standing in front of her right now believed she might be in danger, personally.

  “You’re not telling me everything,” she asserted.

  “No. Not everything,” he admitted after taking time to think about his response.

  “You believe I might be in danger and won’t tell me why? Is that fair? What good can come from keeping me in the dark?”

  “I don’t want to frighten you,” Grant said, and his remark rang true.

  “It would only upset me if I had something major to fear. Since I don’t know anyone here, except for you and Shirleen, what is there to link me to the danger you seem to be expecting?”

  “Nothing concrete. And not just you. This concerns everyone around here. My neighbors aren’t happy about the missing livestock and are out there with guns.”

  Paxton tried to break eye contact. Grant’s smile, weak, though still dazzling, kept her from turning away. Even with all the mystery and secrets, she wanted him around. She wanted him, period. She couldn’t imagine him being hurt by a livestock rustler and didn’t want him to leave her again, for any reason.

  Who the hell cared about any outside event when Grant was looking at her the way he was? When her first instinct each time she saw him was to jump his bones?

  They were adults. There was no danger in this yard that she could see. So it truly seemed as though they had some unfinished business to attend to and get out of the way, so that she could again think clearly and pave a new path for herself in the days ahead.

  Sex was the obstacle to more negotiations. Sex had to be taken off the table so they could get on with things. She had to stop thinking about how much pleasure she’d derive from running her tongue over every inch of his unbelievably honed body. And vice versa.

  Paxton looked away.

  “What now?” she asked breathlessly.

  “This.” He placed a finger under her chin to tilt her head back.

  Holding her captive with no more than one single finger, and proving himself a talented master in the art of seduction, his mouth did exactly what Paxton wanted it to.

  Chapter 14

  It didn’t matter that she had questions Grant couldn’t answer or that now wasn’t the time to give in to the impulses overwhelming him. Insatiable hunger ruled the moment, and Grant was all for that.

  The woman in his arms kissed him back with the fervor of a female with her wild side taking over. She might be demanding on the outside, but her mind no longer seemed to be revolving around the concept of reason.

  Unlike him, she had no idea why she was feeling this way—so hot and so very bothered. She could no more have resisted him than he could have stayed away from her. Their attraction was supernatural in scale. Preternatural. Inescapable.

  He kissed her long and deeply, curving her spine backward, holding her tightly. Warnings about voices at the gates and monsters on the loose scattered, burned away by the incredible heat of their embrace.

  Paxton’s lips were pliant. She was desperate for feeling and had come to the right place. Through the deep, drowning kiss, Grant willed her to believe he had her best interests at heart and that he would be there to help when the moon came for its newest Were acquisition.

  Then even those thoughts left him.

  The kiss was unending, a true devouring and an example of experiencing the sublime. Ruthlessly, they explored with moving hands, their hips rubbing in all the right places. Mindfulness became a thing of the past, overruled by the blistering heat of Paxton’s body pressed to his.

  But they were in the open and nowhere near a bed. The ground beside them was hard.

  Paxton’s eyes held a golden glint when he pulled back far enough to meet them. Her cheeks were flushed a becoming shade of pink.

  Grant waited for her to argue that this behavior was one of his tactics for avoiding more of her questions, but in truth, she had asked for the kiss.

  Smiling, Grant stroked her right cheek with his fingertips. Without returning the smile, she said simply, “Not my room,” and turned toward the steps leading to the house.

  Grant stared after her, earlier dilemmas returning to haunt him. In order to protect Paxton, he had to rely on an acute awareness of his surroundings and tune in to the Weres guarding the ranch. In spite of that and the possibility of her future anger, Paxton was expecting him to follow through on the invitation she’d just issued.

  Not my room…

  Grant’s gut twisted. He desperately wanted to follow her up those steps. If he did, the damn beast roaming out there somewhere might tune in and take advantage of the situation.

  What the hell had that monster said to taunt him?

  “You know nothing.”

  Paxton walked slowly, using the railing to haul herself to the porch. Her jeans molded to her legs, showing off each luscious curve he’d glimpsed once before.

  Her spine flexed fluidly as she climbed. Her shiny blond hair fell to her shoulders in tangles. When she reached the porch, she paused to glance at him over her shoulder. Are you coming? her eyes seemed to ask.

  Hell, he was already moving, consequences be damned. Only in having her, having one intimate moment with her, would he be able to get on with things, even if it meant piling more trouble on top of the trouble already at hand.

  She led him through the main room of the house and down the hallway without stopping at any of the rooms or using the stairs to the upper floor. Grant didn’t question this. Her words echoed inside his head.

  Not my room…

  From the kitchen, she exited through the back door. She led him across the fenced backyard and toward the bunkhouse where he had lived before Andrew Hall died. In the doorway of that rustic building she stopped, turned to him and offered a weary smile.

  But she had not changed her mind.

  Shoulders rippling, chest on fire from withholding the swift rise of an exquisite kind of passion, Grant moved to the doorway where she stood and put a hand to the wall for support. Inches from Paxton, he breathed in her heady scent while watching her expression alternate between acceptance and defiance, her features changing mercurially, second by second. She knew nothing about Wer
e imprinting, or the factors behind their almost dizzying attraction, but she was game, nonetheless.

  The gentlemanly thing for him to do would have been to wait until she landed on one of those emotions so vividly expressed on her beautiful face. A gentleman would have allowed her all the time she needed to realize where she was and what she was suggesting they do…and been offered an out. But being this close to her had its disadvantages in terms of his behavior. With his body calling for action, Grant could hardly keep from taking her right there in the open doorway.

  Paxton was the first to end the temporary standoff. Rising on tiptoe, she brushed her mouth over his. No touching or meeting of their bodies this time, just those warm, supple lips, featherlight on his.

  Grant pressed closer, sandwiching Paxton between his body and the wall. Moonlight flooded the room beyond the doorway, streaming in from the yard through a series of windows to cast long shadows across the floor. Grant would have felt the moon’s presence without having to see it. Though his insides shuddered in recognition of the moon’s presence, the light illuminated Paxton with a silver caress.

  He liked everything he saw and everything he was going to touch. Paxton had become as addictive for him as the moon was. And, like Madame Moon, the woman whose scent and body he craved had lured him into a dangerous and possibly permanent relationship.

  Her fingers breezed over his face as if searching for something she couldn’t see. Only Grant would have seen the irony in that.

  Their mouths parted. His eyes bored into hers.

  “Just for tonight,” she said with a whispered breath. “Tomorrow we’re those other people needing different kinds of answers.”

  And…well…who was he to argue?

  Everyone had a weakness. Patience was his. Although Grant would have preferred to take things slowly, appreciating every move and gesture between them, that kind of control wasn’t in the cards. Time was a luxury they didn’t have.

  He tugged Paxton’s shirt over her head before kissing her again. The rough wood wall behind her might had been uncomfortable for her with his weight pressing in, but that thought fled as she snaked her arms around his waist.

  The damn internal flutters he had been experiencing in her company rushed to meet her hands as she ran them up his back. His skin moved beneath her touch. Desire for her became unconquerable. With a snap of his fingers and a well-balanced move, the woman in his arms became braless. Through his shirt, Grant felt the hard, round tips of her breasts pressed against his chest and the little quakes that shook her.

  Slipping his thigh between her legs, he widened her stance. Her hands now slid to his waistband, searching for a way inside.

  Grant gracefully swung Paxton inside the bunkhouse and closed the door. One more tug and she was back with him, hip to hip and half naked, her mouth as demanding as his.

  They were standing in the middle of the lofty space, surrounded by beds and brown leather chairs. The closest piece of furniture was a long, narrow dining table.

  “Good as anywhere,” he said, stretching Paxton out on top of that table’s dusty surface, leaning over her to soak in the beauty of her bare arms and torso.

  “We’ve gotten this far once before, Paxton.”

  He vowed not to let anything stop them this time, and hoped she felt the same way. The atmosphere in the bunkhouse buzzed with a sense of urgency he couldn’t explain. Paxton was here with him, and willing, but timing had become an internal pressure.

  He had experienced this moment once before—his eyes on hers, his fingers on her zipper. That zipper now whispered down its metal track, filling the night with promise, while Paxton remained quiet, on her back, on the damn table.

  She never once took her eyes off him.

  Grant wished he had the ability to twist minutes and hours to their advantage. He had been hard, aching and erect, since Paxton had turned to him on the front porch steps.

  Forgetting about his superhuman strength, Grant tore open his shirt, losing the buttons that remained from earlier that evening. With wolf-gifted hearing, he listened to those buttons hit the floor.

  Paxton smiled up at him. She opened her arms wide, giving him an unimpeded view of her perfect breasts and issuing an invitation for him to join her on the table.

  As alpha of a Were pack, he was used to being in control, and yet that control was slipping. This small woman was besting him in ways he’d never dreamed of. All she had to do was wet her swollen lips with the tip of a pale pink tongue and let a sigh of impatience slip from between those lips…

  He couldn’t get to the rest of her fast enough to suit what throbbed beneath his waist. He had to stop kissing her and tasting her mouth if they were to do what they had come here to do. With her mouth this hot, he couldn’t imagine what sliding into her soft, feminine folds would be like.

  Her shoes were off. He removed her jeans. She let him do all the work. Wildness continued to blossom in her eyes.

  One small scrap of black lace remained to cover her—the same nearly transparent dark strip he had encountered earlier at the motel. Black lace, he decided, was even sexier than her black silk skirt. Seeing her like this was a turn-on.

  Grant tore the lace panties from Paxton with a simple closing of his fist, eagerly anticipating what would come next. Lying in complete stillness, Paxton’s eyes roamed over every inch of his shirtless anatomy, appreciating what she saw. He was happy he could please her.

  Her long, silky legs parted, as if he needed to be guided to what lay between them. He snapped his belt open. After discarding his boots and jeans, Grant stood before her completely naked, open to Paxton’s inspection. Her eyes were wide and gleaming. Her torso glistened with a light coat of sweat. It had to be ninety degrees in the unused bunkhouse, and it was about to get hotter.

  Between Paxton’s slim, shapely thighs, a small patch of blond fur beckoned to him. And that was just too much. Grant was with her on the table after one more unsteady breath, on his hands and knees.

  As Paxton lay back again, Grant lowered his mouth to one of her rosy-tipped ivory breasts and ran his tongue over the pink nipple. Paxton tossed her head from side to side and bucked. His weight pressed her down.

  No time for exploration, his mind warned. No matter how hungry you are.

  “All right,” he said soberly, after sampling the delights of her other straining breast, the light suckling making a direct connection with his groin. “Are you with me, Paxton?”

  Eyes closed, she answered in a tone indicative of the same need spiking through him, “Yes. We have to…”

  Her remark dangled unfinished. Her breath rushed out as Grant entered her body gently with his rock-hard cock. All the while, he studied her face. Braced on his hands, he moved his hips, inching deeper one small push at a time, relishing the fire of Paxton’s moist inferno.

  She was far hotter than he had imagined. Molten was exactly how he would have described her. As Paxton began to move, raising her hips to meet his, making way for him to find the spot she wanted him to find, their tongues danced and their lips burned. Hips slapped against hips as Grant built up a rhythm that took him deeper into her plushness. He dipped in and out of her body with a series of plunges, thrusts and withdrawals that drew moans of delight from her.

  He stroked her, worked his way deeper and deeper toward what lay nestled at her core. This is where a wolf’s soul resided, and by God, he’d have that, too.

  When he touched that sultry spot, Paxton closed herself around him. A growl tore through him that he almost couldn’t swallow. Grant wanted to howl, throw his head back and put sound to the extremes of the pleasure he was finding, locked between her sleek legs. But the woman beneath him needed him to be a man for a while longer, at least for tonight. Any sign of Grant’s wolf would have hindered that.

  Pleasure came at him in waves, tilting, churning with incredible speed. The rhythm of his fiery physical assault matched their breathlessness. Grant shut his eyes as his thrusts became faster, harder. S
he took it all, and all of him, urging him on. As he made love to her, Grant crooned to her with words that lay beyond the realm of his comprehension. Words like love and chains and futures.

  Seconds later, he hit the sweet spot he had been seeking. Rigid beneath him, Paxton gasped. The distant drumbeat he’d been aware of for some time got measurably stronger and rushed to meet him there.

  He touched that spot a second time, and a third, backing off long enough to make her claw at him for more. Nonsensical sounds bubbled up from Paxton’s throat. She started to tremble, her interior quakes indicative of an imminent climax.

  She wrapped her legs around him as if fearing he might finish before she could reach the peak marking the culmination of this union. Deep internal pulses inside her drove Grant on. Merging with that rising beat would possibly seal their fates, and at the moment, he didn’t care. Paxton’s body was issuing demands he had to satisfy. Their mating had to be complete.

  His desire to possess all of Paxton Hall, body and soul, woman and wolf, was the impetus for one final thrust, and that triggered an immediate response. Paxton came hard. She cried out, shuddered, writhed beneath him, gripping his shoulders, digging into his flesh. Bodies locked together, they rocked in unison as a tsunami of pure sexual bliss crashed over them. Peaking together, their bodies arched, strained, as they fought to hold on.

  And then it was over.

  Tangled together on a table in an unused bunkhouse, and with the possibility of danger outside, Paxton’s sexually sated cries faded. Her heartbeats slowed.

  When the opportunity arrived for a full breath, Grant looked down at his lover, not sure what would happen when Paxton opened her eyes. They had scaled the heights of pleasure together, but a rocky road lay ahead.

  It wasn’t hard for Grant to imagine how beautiful Paxton would be once she had shape-shifted. How gracefully she’d move. How it would feel to have her stretched out beneath him, opening to him over and over again. He would have given a lot to start that future right then, and grew hard again just thinking about it.