“I’d be happy to watch it for you,” he rumbled, pressing his body down over hers, not enough to crush her, but enough to remind her who had the upper hand. “I can keep very…” He paused to nip her lips. “Close.” Lick. “Track.”
Then his mouth closed over hers, and he feasted.
She wanted to hate it, waited for the rough surge of rage that had consumed her the last time any Lupine had dared to touch her uninvited. She braced herself for disgust and outrage and fury to come to her aid, but all she got was melting and hunger and greed. She wanted to devour him as surely as he devoured her.
She cursed her body for its betrayal, her hands that clenched into fists instead of sprouting claws to tear him to shreds. The thighs that spread and knees that lifted to cradle him closer. The lips that softened and parted under his, clinging and encouraging. Goddamn it, but her life would have been so much easier if this man had repulsed her. Even just a little. A mild sort of nausea whenever she got too close to him. Was that too much to ask?
Apparently.
Instead of feeling her stomach roll, she felt her body shiver when his tongue tangled with hers. She tugged at it, let her teeth scrape the surface, and struggled in vain to suppress the moan building in her throat. It boiled out of her, a muted sound swallowed in the fever of their kiss. Still, even muffled it seemed to excite him. He answered with a growl of his own and shifted his grip on her wrists until he pinned both of her hands with one of his own. She could have broken the hold if she’d tried, but she was too busy trying to remember how to breathe when his newly freed palm closed over her breast and squeezed.
When she gasped in reaction, she breathed in the air he expelled on a satisfied grunt. It carried the taste of him even deeper inside her, the rich, warm taste of heat and spice and passion. She wanted more of it, wanted it filling her up and making her blind to everything else in the world. The luxury of the thought went to her head almost as fast as he did.
Then he went for her skin even faster, and she forgot such a thing as the world even existed. He caught the center of her tank top in his fist and yanked, and the garment shredded in his grasp. He threw away the tatters with an impatient motion, then paused for a breathless moment to stare down at her. His gaze fixed on her breasts, nipples already tight and beaded in arousal, and she could almost see his mouth watering. His scent intensified, drowning her in the heady fragrance, and she knew hers must be doing the same to him. Not only was she at least as aroused as he was, but her heat was now only forty-eight hours away.
If he knew, though, he was already too far gone to process the information rationally. All he seemed to know now was hunger and urgency. He pulled her hands, forcing her to straighten her arms more, the action lifting her breasts higher until he could lean down and set his mouth to one tightly beaded peak.
Honor screamed.
She didn’t mean to. In fact, she’d have given her left incisor if she could have caught the sound before it emerged, but no such luck. It tore from her throat, low and raw and hoarse, like an animal’s cry. He heard and answered, not with a matching sound, but by taking her nipple between his teeth and tugging. Then his mouth closed over the entire peak and began to draw on her. The hot, wet suction sent her body bowing beneath him, bending in a taut arch in response to the unbearable pleasure of the sensation.
He growled a low, tense encouragement, and she felt his hand shift from her breast where it had toyed with her other nipple down over the smooth expanse of skin of her belly. She felt a nail catch in the soft fabric of her pajama pants before it slid beneath. His palm glided over the softness of her stomach to tangle in the damp curls at the apex of her thighs. One long finger dipped, parting her slick folds and finding the center of her pleasure.
Again she screamed. This time the sound of her frustration shook the entire house, but she couldn’t have cared less. She began to fight him in earnest, not to escape his touch but in her fever to do some touching of her own. She ached for the feel of his slick skin under her fingers, and she intended to have it. Rearing up, she turned her head and sank her teeth deep into his bicep, the nearest bit of his flesh she could reach. He yanked his mouth from her breast and snarled down at her. She met his gaze fiercely.
“Want. More.”
His eyes narrowed at her hoarsely panted demand, but his expression only turned more predatory. He didn’t seem to object. Instead, he slowly pulled his hand from between her legs, letting it stroke every individual nerve ending it could reach along the way. The entire length slid along her clit, making her buck and shudder and curse him. Then his nail caught it in a wicked flick, and she yelped.
He flashed her a feral grin, raising his glistening fingers to his mouth before he growled, “So do I.”
Honor watched as he licked her moisture from his hand. She saw the way his eyes narrowed as he tasted her, saw the knowledge light them, and she swore.
“Heat.”
She had rolled out of his grasp before the word cleared his lips. Seeing the flare of dominance and possession in his eyes poured a bucketful of icy cold common sense all over her enflamed skin. Damn it, she should have known all the bath salts in the world couldn’t disguise the flavor of her heat from a mature male Lupine. He’d known the minute he lifted his fingers to his lips that the new White Paw alpha was just hours from the start of her heat cycle. It was irresistible to any male Lupine, but to one with as many dominance tendencies as her Silverback visitor, it was like the proverbial red flag in front of the bull. She might as well have tattooed “Come and get me, big boy” across her forehead.
“Here,” he snarled, even as she sprang to her feet and looked for a clear path to the door. “Come. Here.”
She growled in response, baring her teeth at him, body coiling in preparation for flight. If she could make it around him and out of the kitchen, she might have a chance of outrunning him. If not, then she could definitely lose him in the woods. He wasn’t familiar with them like she was, and there were ways she could mask her scent at least well enough to confuse him.
“Now.”
She shook her head and crouched. She wished she still had her tank top on, or that she dared to take the seconds it would cost her to shift to her wolf form. Running bare breasted through the woods at three-thirty in the morning hadn’t made her top ten list this year, but it looked just about inevitable.
“Here.”
She opened her mouth to defy him again, but she never got the chance. Before she could speak, Joey stepped into the room, wide-eyed with concern. “Honor? What’s going on here? Is everything all right?”
Honor nearly burst out laughing. She might have, if the tension weren’t thick enough to choke the sound out of her, and if she weren’t keeping her gaze glued to Logan’s face in anticipation of his next move.
“Get out.”
Logan barked the order as if he had every right, but what pissed Honor off was that Joey actually started to obey.
“I didn’t say leave, Joey. And you still take your orders from me. Don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, and Honor didn’t bother to look in Joey’s direction to gauge her answer. She refused to so much as blink. She didn’t trust the Silverback visitor not to use the slip to his advantage.
Logan snarled. “You’ll take them from me.”
“I’ll take them from no one.” All the days of tension and struggle and uncertainty suddenly overwhelmed Honor, and she struck out where she could. At Logan. “I am the White Paw alpha. Not you. Not Winters. No one but me. And the alpha does. Not. Answer.”
They stared at each other, teeth bared, eyes narrowed. Honor could feel the skin between her shoulder blades shift and tighten, raising the hackles she didn’t actually have in her human form. She’d bet Logan could feel the same subtle crawling beneath his skin. She almost said a prayer of gratitude for it, since if they’d been in their were or wolf forms, they’d likely have already been locked together, either ripping out each other’s throats, or mat
ing furiously on the kitchen tile. Which one it would have been was entirely up for debate.
“Can I get anyone anything? A cup of tea? Or I could make cocoa…”
Honor snorted. If the tension had been any less thick, she might have laughed. Instead, she straightened her spine and reached out a hand to her cousin, never taking her eyes off Logan’s. “No. We’re done. Give me your robe.”
Joey didn’t hesitate, but untied the thick, terry-cloth robe she wore and shrugged out of it, laying it over Honor’s outstretched arm. She shivered a little in the thin cotton nightgown she wore, but she didn’t say a word.
Honor pulled the robe on and belted it closed, concealing her bare breasts from the two people in the room she felt really didn’t need to be seeing them right now. “I’m going to bed. Because the White Paw Clan is an honorable one, I won’t ask you to leave tonight, Mr. Hunter, but I expect your bags to be packed in the morning.”
Then she did what she never would have done if Joey hadn’t been there. She turned her back on Logan Hunter and walked out of the room.
Four
Like he needed this to get any more complicated.
Logan rounded the corner into the kitchen still brooding over the incident the previous night. Developing a severe case of the hots for the alpha he had come here to evaluate did not sit well on his shoulders. Doing the evaluation promised to be complex enough as it was. He didn’t need the added complication of a constant erection. Nor did it help much to find out that the alpha he had the hots for, the one he was here to evaluate, tasted like she’d be hitting her heat on the night of the next full moon.
Could you say, “Shit hitting the fan,” maybe?
“Good morning, Mr. Hunter. Can I get you some breakfast before you leave?”
Logan glanced in the direction of the question and saw Honor’s cousin, the small, quiet one who had interrupted them last night, backed up into a corner where two sides of counter converged. She held a pair of tongs before her like a weapon and shifted nervously when his gaze fixed on her.
“I’m making bacon, but there’s some sausage as well, and plenty of eggs. Steak, too, if you prefer.”
Logan could practically see the nerves vibrating beneath the woman’s skin. He almost expected to see her nose twitch, because to his mind, Joey Tate looked more like a scared little rabbit then a grown Lupine. If he hadn’t already been told she and Honor were cousins, he never would have guessed the relationship. Where Honor had creamy skin and hair the color of dark chocolate, her cousin appeared almost colorless, the pale skin giving way to hazel eyes of muddied gray and hair the color of a field mouse, a brown so ashen it looked almost silvery where the light hit it. Given the way she currently eyed him as if expecting him to demand her entrails on his breakfast plate, she appeared not to have inherited any of her cousin’s strength or passion, either.
“What makes you think I’m leaving?” he asked, pulling a chair out from the small table and taking a seat.
She shifted again, her eyes darting nervously about the room. “Well, Honor said. She said Greg would be taking you into town as soon as you finished eating. How do you like your eggs?”
“Sunny side up. With bacon. But I’m not leaving today.”
“But Honor said—”
“Honor is mistaken.”
Joey didn’t say anything else, just placed a mug of steaming coffee on the table in front of him and turned back to her frying pan, but he could feel the way she kept shooting him suspicious glances while he ate. Needless to say, he didn’t linger over the meal.
He took the last slice of bacon with him, munching as he left the house and followed Joey’s nervously worded directions about where to find her cousin.
She’ll be down at the stone yard. That’s where the Howls happen. She and some of the men will make sure everything is secure and safe for the pack. But I don’t think she’ll be expecting to see you.
Logan disagreed. He knew that if Honor Tate had half the intelligence he credited her with, surprise would not be her first response to seeing him again.
And he should have been less surprised when a voice called out behind him.
“Morning!”
The greeting came from the direction of the gravel road that Joey had mentioned led to some of the pack’s communal structures—a dining hall, an informal rec center, and the like. Logan turned to see a man approach wearing battered fatigue pants and a plaid flannel shirt. He looked like the illegitimate offspring of G.I. Joe and Paul Bunyan, but he was smiling widely and extending his hand as he strode to a stop.
“You must be the Silverback I heard was in town,” the man said, gripping his hand just a little too firmly, his smile broad and toothy. “Thought I’d take a minute to welcome you to the territory. Name’s Darin Major. Pleased to meet you.”
Logan had never been one to back down from a dominance challenge, but neither did he have any interest in macho pissing contests. He shook the man’s hand with his usual grip, but he met his gaze straight and square until Major’s smile dimmed a watt or two.
“Logan Hunter.” He nodded and withdrew his hand without breaking the eye contact. That would be the White Paw’s job. “But you didn’t have to go out of your way to play Welcome Wagon for me. I’ve already been greeted by your alpha. She’s been gracious enough to put me up at her house while I’m here.”
And it seemed to have strained her grace to the limit, but Logan didn’t mention that. Instead, he watched Major’s smile wilt like an unwelcome erection and the expression in his green eyes shift from calculating to resentful.
“This pack happens to be between alphas at the moment,” Major said, hooking his hands into his pockets and shifting his gaze to Logan’s left ear. “The alpha died a few days ago—from disease, not a challenge—so we’re what you might call in transition until the matter sorts itself out.”
Logan had noticed the change in Major’s sight line. It was subtle, but significant. The weaker wolf couldn’t hold a more dominant Lupine’s gaze any longer, but he had tried to save face by looking just to the side in an attempt to fake the eye contact. Logan wasn’t fooled. He also wasn’t impressed. He remembered Graham mentioning the name Darin Major in their initial meeting as one of the male pack members who might pose a challenge to Honor. From what he’d seen so far, he’d bet Honor could take him. Major wasn’t alpha material.
Not to mention that the scent of him rubbed Logan the wrong way. His instincts clearly told him that Major wasn’t worth the time it would take to kick his ass, but they also told him not to turn his back on the wolf anytime soon. His scent smelled of treachery.
Logan smiled coolly. “Come on, Major, we both know there’s no such thing as a pack without an alpha, not even during a ‘period of transition.’ Nature might abhor a vacuum, but a Lupine pack hates it even worse. You might not like having Honor Tate as your alpha, but that doesn’t mean that’s not exactly what she is. And you know the way things work. Whoever claims the title of alpha holds it until someone stronger takes it away.”
The last of the White Paw male’s genial good-ol’-boy persona faded away in a snarl of resentment.
“No female is fit to run a Lupine pack. At least, not this pack,” Major spat, “and you know it, too, or you wouldn’t be here, Silverback. If your alpha had any confidence in that bitch’s leadership, he’d have thrown his support behind her with a formal acknowledgment, not sent some lackey to scope out the lay of the land.”
Logan met the sneer with a hard look. “How do you know that’s not exactly what I’m here to do? Maybe I am the formal acknowledgment of Graham Winters’s support.”
“And maybe cats make great pets for werewolves. An acknowledgment takes fifteen minutes timed for the start of a pack Howl, not a full suitcase that shows up four days before the event. The Silverback alpha knows the bitch can’t lead, and you’re the proof.”
Eyes narrowed, Logan leaned forward and curled his lip in warning. “I’d be careful about putting
words in Graham Winters’s mouth if I were you. Almost as careful as I’d be about putting them in mine.”
Major backed up a step and glared, but the object of the expression seemed to be Logan’s shoulder so the visitor remained unaffected.
“The bitch can call herself alpha until her lips turn blue,” Major growled, “but when the pack gets together and sees how weak she really is, she’ll be singing a different tune. Just you wait.”
The Lupine spun and stalked away, leaving Logan gazing after him until the trees swallowed him up.
“So much for pack solidarity,” he muttered, and turned back to the direction he’d been headed when Major had stopped him. Now he was even more anxious to lay his eyes on Honor Tate again. He wanted to see if his impressions of her from the night before held up, because the woman he remembered could have handed Major his own testicles in a fair fight. If Major was her biggest threat, maybe he really would be acknowledging her claim and heading home sooner than he’d expected.
He followed the trail that Joey had indicated through the woods. The scent of the pine trees and the crisp chill of winter air lessened a little of the tension inside him. The terrain was certainly a far cry from his home hunting grounds on the streets of Manhattan. Usually he didn’t mind the city. He’d lived there for as long as he could remember, so it felt comfortable and familiar to him. Like home. But there was something about the forest, the crunch of packed snow beneath his boots, the tang of pine and soil in the air. The smell of game and the rich sounds of a living ecosystem all around called to his primal instincts.
He snorted to himself and ducked beneath a low-slung branch. Primal instincts? If he wasn’t careful, he’d be scratching behind his ears in public any minute.
The path wound through the woods long enough for him to stretch his legs, but he wasn’t worried about getting lost. He could smell the years of Lupines winding through the trees, concentrated on the path ahead of him. It guided him more surely than signposts. Every pack had its own scent, and he thought he was beginning to recognize that of the White Paw, but he didn’t particularly care. The only scent he cared about was rich and earthy and still bore the faint trace of flowers.
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