Wolf on a Leash

by Virginia Nelson

  Clamping her lips together, she resisted answering him. The act of obedience—he’d told her not to speak—coincided with her eyes darting his way—direct disobedience, since he’d also told her not to look at him.

  “I saw that,” he added. She huffed out a breath in frustration, and he decided to please them both. “However, I’m willing to overlook it if you manage to pass the next little test I have planned.”

  He’d secured her wrists and ankles to the bed, but he’d left the restraints loose, a test of sorts of his own. Too many times he’d started a scene to find the woman thought being tied down would be sexy, then panicked when she realized she had no escape. The dark bits of himself might enjoy the momentary panic, but it wasn’t good to freak out his subbie. Not if he hoped she’d come back for seconds.

  This time she didn’t look at him, but a fine tremor rippled through her. Her neck flushed, and she gnawed her full red lip, just visible through her leather mask.

  “Your next challenge is not to move. No matter what, I want you to stay still, Lupine. Disobey me and there will be consequences. Obey and there will be pleasure.” Based on her responsiveness to his thus far explorative play, there would be pleasure for her either way, but he added the repercussions out of old habit.

  She didn’t move or respond, but her breath sped up. Selecting a spiral-wrapped leather whip, he stroked it across his palm before glancing at her body, exposed like some decadent treat before him against the dark sheet he’d spread on the bed.

  For a moment, he savored the knowledge of what he’d do and imagined the moment. Too often, play was rushed, and Doms didn’t slow down enough to enjoy both the imaginary pleasure of what could be along with the actual joy of enacting a scene.

  He’d starved himself from his needs for so long, he appreciated the moment and tried to make it last. He watched her trembling with the knowledge something—she couldn’t be sure what—was coming. Leaning low over her and holding the whip close to her face, he whispered, “Smell it. Can you smell the leather? It has a bite to it, an almost savory aroma you can taste on your tongue. If I use it on you, the scent will be mixed with your sweat and the sweet juices between your legs. Do you want that, little wolf?”

  She shuddered, the blush spreading down her neck to leave the slightest dance of color across the ripeness of her pale, leather-wrapped breasts. The single nipple he’d freed from her clothing restrictions hardened beautifully, a delicate fruit rigid and waiting for his teeth.

  He stroked the loose leather strips across her body, watching as she tried to hold herself still under what must be a combination of tickling and tempting sensations. When her eyes darted his way again, he cracked down with the whip, red lines marking her where the leather contacted with the flesh of her thighs. “You’re a rule breaker, aren’t you, Lupine?”

  Her eyes closed, her chest heaving with panting breaths, as she bit down on her full lower lip. Shaking her head, she resisted answering him.

  A bit of obedience twined with disobedience. She’d not verbally answered him, but nonverbal counted as a response, and she’d moved on top of it.

  Deciding to reward them both, he straddled her prone form on the bed and her body arched up, fighting her restrains in a wave, as if to meet him. With one hand, he smoothed her back onto the mattress, reveling in the blend of her warm softness against the cool, rough leather she wore.

  “You’re still not obeying me. What do I have to do to earn your trust and submission, my little wolf?” He scraped his fingernails down from her collarbone to stomach, thrilled at how his touch marked her pale flesh. Her breathing went jagged, and she seemed to try to remain still, but a fine sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead.

  The obedience in her stillness and lack of response meant he could touch her. Deciding to test his subbie and her interest in his play so far, he reached behind him to cup her mound, one fingertip tracing beneath the leather covering her to find the seam of her body. Bald skin met his touch, hot and smooth.

  Wet.

  She was drenched for him, soaking the leather. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out, so he further rewarded her by rolling his fingertip over her hard little clit. “You’re doing much better,” he crooned, explaining his stroke.

  Her breath hissed out and, if anything, the pulse beneath his touch sped faster. Her smooth skin was so hot, barely touching it seemed to almost burn him.

  He burned, his dick so hard he thought he’d erupt in his pants like some teenage boy with his first sight of titties. Forcing himself away from her, before he lost control of the situation and his own starved flesh, he again stood by the bed and looked at her. She might be lovely, one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met, but he’d never edged so close to losing his ability to master the situation as he felt he teetered right then.

  Her eyes opened, blazing into his senses. The rich sent of her arousal filling the room increased, a heady drug he craved. To punish her for breaking the rules again, or perhaps to scare her away because she left him feeling so much, he cracked the whip across her thighs three times in rapid succession.

  Red streaked paths where the leather straps connected with her delicate flesh, the tracery resembling an exquisite raised tattoo of passion on her pale skin. While he marked her with his dominance, another part of him hungered to kiss and lick the paths of fire he’d laid on her body. The last strike, he aimed with precision, so the ends of the leather whip smacked soundly against the leather covering her quivering mound.

  Her eyes closed, but a moan escaped her lips as her hips bucked upward—as if to collect more of the stinging sensation from the whip rather than in an attempt to get away from the pain he had inflicted.

  “You moved.” His voice sounded gruff, almost painfully so, to his own ears. “You’re forfeiting your covering.”

  The brilliance of her eyes was again revealed as her heavy lids parted, but she kept her gaze turned to the ceiling.

  She was trying to obey. Too bad he found such pleasure in her rebellion….

  Either the scent of him or his tone almost shattered her. She’d never been so close to orgasm with so little play, but the handsome stranger managed to bring her right to the edge with such nominal effort on his part. When he cracked the whip across the sensitive flesh of her thighs, she’d wished she hadn’t been restrained so she could open her legs to his torment.

  A ridiculous thought, but something about him triggered responses in her which didn’t make sense. Heat and fire licked across her flesh, already no doubt marked by his play, and again the idle thought that she yearned to claim him sizzled through her burning mind.

  Insane. She would never claim a human, never take on that kind of responsibility, but when he unfastened the leather getup she wore and nearly tore it away from her skin in his impatience, a low growl rumbled up from her throat. The fact the sound was more Wolf than woman startled her, almost chilling her ardor.

  Almost.

  She hadn’t ever had a hard time controlling her beast, the creature so submissive she caved to the human side of her as well as to any damned Wolf who crossed their path. But when she felt the rub of fur under her flesh, she realized she and the beast shared a common goal. They both hunted this man, making his touch more dangerous than he could ever guess. Should she utter the safe word, bring the scene to a close?

  Opening her mouth to do exactly that, although the Wolf clawed at her insides in protest, her words were cut off as his hot mouth closed over her breast and he bit down. A silent scream, resembling rough air, broke free from her throat, the contact frying every logical thought she’d considered having. When his fingertips returned between her legs, rubbing harshly against her throbbing clit, she couldn’t stop herself from bucking into the touch. Yes, more, just like that.

  Too soon, he removed his hand—she’d been so damn close. One more rough stroke and she would have shattered against his palm. She planned to protest, ached to beg him to touch her again, but for the first time in
a long time….

  She ceded to his mastery. His dominance. She’d wait; her Wolf would wait. They would obey his tenant of silence, sure whatever he had planned would bring them more pleasure than anything she could think to ask for in words.

  Her mouth closed, and her breath rushed out of her nose. Nothing in her sought patience or stillness. But he’d commanded, and she would obey him.

  “Good girl,” he whispered. He smacked his palm against her breast, jiggling the flesh and causing yet another tremulous firing of pleasure to score through her system. She ached to wear his marks, his scent. “You’re obeying me much better now.”

  She wished he would shove himself inside her. She longed to see his dick, to taste him on her tongue and down her throat until her insides were bathed in his heady aroma. She sought to rub against him until there was no way to tell where her scent ended and his began. Perhaps his mouth could cover hers—no, she would plunge her teeth into the soft hollow between shoulder and neck and claim him as her own.

  The strange thought had no sooner slid through the chaotic mess of her mind than she bit her own lip, looking for relief, and tasted blood. The Wolf scraped at her insides again, demanding her right to claim the human with claws and teeth, and tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes as she tried to force the beast down.

  Her Dom, however, had other things in mind. Instead of mounting her, riding her until they both found satisfaction, his breath grazed her hot and needing slit, bringing an unwelcome sensation of coolness when she desired his heat, his hardness.

  “We’ll have a longer session another night, my little wolf. For tonight, I’ll give you this before I go.” With that, he closed his mouth over the tender bud of nerves. At first, his tongue soothed and arched her tension higher. He brought her so near orgasm, she had to fight to keep her lips and eyes pinched closed.

  But when he bit down on her clit, she couldn’t resist. The scream left her throat on a roar, as if he’d claimed her rather than the other way around.

  The force of the orgasm hit her like a steamroller, blasting past all thoughts, all logic, everything, and then the world went dark.

  Chapter Four

  “Not normal for you to have someone else handle your aftercare,” Tish pointed out, flicking ash in the tray between them. After she’d taken another long hit of the smoke she held, she dangled it in her fingertips for a moment before staring at him again. “For sure not typical of you to ask Ogre to see to it your new sub made it home okay. This have something to do with your time in the service?”

  An hour before, he would have agreed. He would have told her, if he’d felt the urge to tell anyone, how the military had fucked with his brain and left him tainted somehow. He might have tried to explain the wildness he’d been fighting for years, the craving for dark forests when he’d been surrounded by dry, sunny desert. The constant need to move, to head toward something he never found or to escape the horrors trapped in his skull.

  After his session with his new submissive, his thoughts weren’t clear, tumbling through his mind on a sandstorm of possibilities. “No,” he said.

  It wasn’t the war. It was her.

  Something about her, something about the temptation to taste her, to feel her shatter on his tongue with a flavor he’d not gotten enough of in their brief encounter. Something about his need to shove himself inside her rather than his usually more voyeuristic play. Something about the scent of her and his sudden need to bite. He’d always considered the subbies touching him almost unwanted, preferring to palm his own dick because of the sexiness of the situation. But with her? He required her hands on him, claws raking into his spine, while their tongues tangled and he buried himself deep inside her. He throbbed, his dick wanting things he’d resisted taking.

  None of it made sense, so he shook his head, wishing he could shake the thoughts away as easily as he could stub out his own cigarette. The thing tasted as he imagined shit would—weird, since he’d been a smoker for years—and he didn’t want it.

  No, the thing he craved in his mouth was more of her. More of her skin, more of her taste, more of the sweet sound of her release echoing in the room as she screamed for him. Since the tether he used to bind his control had stretched taut to near snapping, he’d brought her to orgasm and fled the room. Every cell in his body screamed in protest at the action, which made him move faster. He’d snagged Ogre, advised him to care for her, to see she was safe, and hid in the smoking lounge with his body on fire for her.

  “You going to see her again?” Tish asked, oblivious to the thousand burning suns of hell his flesh had become and the tumult of his racing thoughts.

  “Oh, yeah.” And soon. He hoped she’d return soon and often.

  ***

  “You seem distracted.” Tasha’s words penetrated the haze of need fogging her thoughts, and Patch sped to pluck more tomatoes free from the vine. Though scarred, the woman was the only one in the pack with whom she felt any remaining connection. Whether bringing cookies or checking in, Tasha treated her as pack—as family—and Patch fought off a wave of guilt for her distraction.

  The seasonal tradition of picking the ripe, red fruit and then canning it for winter was a familiar enough practice—her least favorite part being the removal of the skins after blanching. Her fingers were always left sore and burned by acid, not to mention singeing her nose with the acrid scent. But the everyday task wasn’t holding a candle to her memories of the night before.

  “Sorry, you were saying?” Her voice felt raw and unused. Part of her wondered if everyone around her could tell her life had been changed, how she’d been changed, and all because she’d met a stranger in a place she’d been told not to go.

  “Yes, well, Bertha and her mate—”

  As she continued to search for red fruit past the green and sometimes orange, but not quite ripe globes, her friend’s words found some purchase in her whirling brain.

  Mate.

  Could the man, Minotaur, be her mate? But she didn’t want a human mate—talk about high-maintenance relationships—yet she already considered what she would wear the night when she went to the dungeon.

  Would he tie her up again? Would he use a whip on her, or would he have some other play in mind? Would he even be there?

  The questions rattled around in her head like dried beans in a tin can. She’d be a fool to go again, to risk awakening a nascent mating bond and making it stronger.

  Four hours later, showered, shaved, and wearing a long jacket to hide her body, she entered the front door of the dungeon. “Hey ya, Iris.”

  Trepidation had lost out to anticipation, and her palms sweated in a way she was sure the other woman had to notice.

  Instead, Iris fiddled with her collar, a knowing look glinting in her usually distant eyes. “Two nights in a row, Lupine? Unusual for you. Everything okay at work?”

  Shrugging the polite query off, she slid out of her coat and handed it to the woman before bending to sign in. “That kind of week, I guess.”

  The scent of him hit her moments before he gripped her hips, dragging her against the hardness of his dick. Her hand went limp, dropping the pen, and her pulse raced to life.

  “I hoped you’d come to me again tonight.” His voice seemed a live thing, stroking across her senses as if it were a touch. Her fingers found purchase on his wrists, nails digging in automatically. But not to push him away…no, she clung to him, glad of the hardness of his cock pushing against her ass.

  “Did you?” She couldn’t have resisted coming to him, not for anything. If he was hers, she’d take him.

  One problem remained—how could she, a submissive, claim a man who dominated her senses with so little effort?

  ***

  He didn’t want to tie her up.

  Unable to find so much as a moment’s respite away from her, he’d tossed and turned the night away and then woke to pace, needing her near. He’d arrived at the club an hour before opening time, headed to the room where he’d t
aken her the night before, and lay on the mattress, dragging the dregs of her scent inside his lungs. Poor solace when what he craved was the woman, not the faint musk of her ghost.

  He needed her. If he’d known where to find her, he would have gone to her to soothe the aching and constant need for her, rules be damned.

  Logic? Fuck logic. He’d ridden past the station for sanity and derailed at pure desire sometime the night before. Simply put, he’d take her, do the things he craved, and try to sate the beast rearing inside him, starving for the barest whisper of her scent.

  When she arrived, he’d struggled with the drive to reach out to snatch her up, barbarian style, and carry her somewhere private. Somewhere he could strip off the scraps of red satin covering her and plunge inside her sexy little body.

  Finding some purchase on his struggle for sanity, he still was unable to stop himself from dragging her backward to grind his dick against the curve of her ass. She didn’t struggle, didn’t hesitate to allow his touch, instead bowing her spine and pressing harder against him. When her nails bit into his wrists, it took every iota of his shredded control to not take her right there at the front desk.

  Releasing her, he fought against his needs and reminded himself he planned to have privacy with her. He wasn’t putting on a show for others, not tonight. No, he‘d keep his little wolf all to himself. “Come,” he managed to say, twisting one hand to grip her wrist where she’d caught his.

  His little wolf obeyed, seeming as eager as he to continue the games they’d started the night before. Once he got her in a room, he slammed her into the door. The brutal push unleashed a groan from her—music to his starved ears—and he slanted his mouth across hers to plunder for the flavor he’d so desperately craved.