She scowled and leaned back in her chair, mumbling, “You’re telling me.”
“Then I guess it would be pretty useless for me to ask if you had any theories about what that all means?”
She just looked at him.
“Right. That’s what I thought.”
Max opened his mouth to speak, but before he got the chance to utter a single additional syllable, the door to Honor’s office slammed open and a clearly belligerent man shoved his way inside. He flew to Honor’s desk, slapped his meaty hands down on the surface, and inhaled deeply.
“I want to know if it’s true, you little slut.” His growl was deep and menacing and Honor didn’t even blink. “Half the pack is talking about it, but I want to hear it from you. Did you really let that stranger paw you like a bitch in heat? He hasn’t even been here for forty-eight hours, and you let him touch what’s mine?”
One eyebrow arched up, and when she spoke, Honor knew she could have added several inches to the polar ice caps with her tone of voice. She’d practiced often enough. “Yours? I must be having trouble with my hearing, because I am certain that there is nothing in this room that belongs to you, Darin Major. And the next time you call me a bitch, by the way, I will lunch on your liver. Now would you care to rephrase?”
“You heard me fine the first time, and I meant what I said. I heard three different people today say you let that Silverback cur bend you over like a cheap whore. They’re laughing about it. And now I’m going to picture that in my head every time I look at you. When the call to mate the alpha comes, you’re going to be mine, and I’m going to wipe that image from my head by replacing it with the sight of you on your knees in front of me.”
Honor raised her left hand, curled into a fist with the back of her hand facing Max and Darin. Coolly and very quietly she ticked off her points on her fingers as she replied. “One, let me repeat, nothing in this room can be called yours, least of all me. Two, what I do and with whom I do it is not, and never shall be, any of your goddamned business. Three, there will be no alpha mating at the next Howl, because I do not choose to mate right now, and I’ll be damned to hell and back before I let some antiquated, misogynistic, dumbassed excuse for a tradition dictate who I have to screw.” She ignored the protest between her legs and continued. “And four, remove your hands from my desk before I remove them from you.
Understand?”
Nine
Silence fell between them, brief, tense, and marked by the meeting of two gazes, one brown and chill, one green and maddened. But it ended abruptly when the door to the office opened again and another male voice rang out in the now crowded room.
“If I were you, I would do what the lady says, Major. Somehow I doubt she’s joking.”
Honor never broke her stare with Darin, but her jaw shifted and clenched. “The next one to walk into my office without knocking will find himself decorating the floor in front of my fireplace.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Logan’s lip twitching. “That sounds kind of nasty, Darin. I think I’d back off if I were you.”
“That promise wasn’t made exclusively to Darin.”
“Maybe not, but he’s the one who’s going to have to defend himself from both sides in about thirty seconds, if he doesn’t back off.”
What started in a reasonable and slightly amused voice had become decidedly serious by the end of that statement. Honor clenched her teeth to keep herself from screaming. If she’d been human, she probably would have screamed a split second later when Darin obeyed orders by removing his hands from her desk, but then ruined the moment of sanity by swinging around and launching himself straight for Logan’s throat.
The force of Darin’s attack pushed Logan back through the door of the office and down the front steps of the small cabin that housed it. The two figures landed on the ground in the snow-covered front yard, teeth snapping and hands clawing. The flakes barely had time to settle before Darin made the stupidest decision of his life and howled a challenge at a man who was not only stronger and faster than him, but also a hell of a lot smarter. As evidenced by the fact that Darin had attacked him to begin with.
Instead of screaming, Honor roared and leaped out of her chair and over her desk to launch herself after the two combatants. By the time she found herself in the yard with them, she could already see blood—though she couldn’t be sure whose it was—and the sounds of vicious growls and snarls seemed to echo in the air around them. If she’d had a water hose, she’d have turned it on the two of them, but as it was, all she could do was stand on the sidelines and recite every curse she’d ever heard and a few new ones she had just made up herself. Necessity being the mother of invention and all.
She heard the sound of Max thundering outside right behind her and braced herself for impact just before he skidded to a halt at her side.
“Holy shit! They’re totally throwing down! Right here!”
“This is not WWE, Max.” She figured if she clenched her jaw any harder her teeth would shatter, but hey, she could still get the words out. “And I’m going to kill one of them if they don’t cut this out in the next ten seconds.”
“Gotcha. One. Two. Three—”
Honor howled then for herself—not a happy sound—and leaped for the struggling figures. She landed on top of Darin’s back and tried to yank the two men apart. When she couldn’t do that, she sank her teeth deep into Darin’s side and tugged. That at least got his attention. He snarled something obscene, but mostly unintelligible, and backhanded her across the face with casual force. A human might have been killed by the power of the blow snapping her fragile little neck, but Honor was neither human nor fragile. All the smack did to her was piss her off. Royally.
Rearing back, she let the reins of her beast slip just a little and felt a set of razor-sharp claws springing from the tips of her fingers. Sturdy as metal and sharp as glass, they ripped through Darin’s muscular flesh like a jackhammer through tissue paper, leaving deep, bloody furrows behind them. Darin jerked and screamed in pain, momentarily losing his concentration and giving Logan the advantage. The Silverback didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed Darin by the throat, lifted him off the ground and threw him into a tree forty feet away from where he stood.
She turned on him with a growl and snapped her teeth in his direction. “My fight. Mine.”
Logan’s hand shot out, wrapping around Honor’s neck this time. But instead of squeezing and lifting, it curled around the back of her neck and yanked her forward until her breasts flattened against his chest. He stared down at her with glowing golden eyes and growled possessively.
“Mine.”
* * *
Logan saw the way his statement sent Honor’s temper into overdrive, but he really didn’t give a shit. This was his mate, and every hour that passed brought her closer and closer to the peak of her heat and to ovulation. The changes in her scent maddened him, and after searching for her—unsuccessfully—for hours the day before, he didn’t intend to let her get away.
And if she thought that he would just stand aside while she was verbally abused and physically threatened by another male? Well, she wasn’t half as intelligent as she’d led him to believe.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the lanky young man who’d rushed out of Honor’s office behind them hurrying to the now unconscious Darin. If the youth had looked to be tending to the fallen challenger, Logan would have stopped him, but all he did was grab the moron by the ankles and begin dragging him away from the small cabin out of which Honor reportedly ran her father’s business. Dismissing them from his mind, he shifted the struggling burden in his arms and growled in pleasure at the way her squirming rubbed all her softest parts against his most appreciative ones.
“Let. Me. Go!” Honor herself sounded less appreciative. “Hands off, Fang.”
“No.” He ignored her fighting, except that he grabbed her flailing hands in one of his and pinned them behind her back. Then he began backing her up towa
rd the cabin they’d just left, his hips bumping against hers as they walked. “Told you. Mine.”
She snarled. “Told you! No!”
He didn’t intend to take that for an answer. He could smell the heat rolling off her in heady waves, making his heart race and his cock stand at attention. If he didn’t have her soon, he’d explode. In more ways than one.
Ignoring her demands, he continued backing her to the cabin, one step at a time. He almost had her there, too, and was already imagining the things he would do to her once he had her bent over her daddy’s desk, when she got sneaky. Going suddenly limp, as in falling completely boneless in his arms like dead weight, she forced him to hesitate and look down at her to see what had happened.
That split second of inattention nearly cost him all his grand plans for fathering cubs with this woman. As soon as his hold loosened a fraction, she brought her knee up hard between his legs. She might have damaged him permanently if he had moved a fraction of a second slower. As it was, he ended up with a baseball-sized bruise high on his thigh and a howling bundle of rage and frustration in his arms.
She yanked so hard at the arms he had pinned behind her that he started to fear she’d break her own wrist struggling to get away from him. He shifted his grip to take one hand in each of his, and she fought even harder. She threw herself bodily against him, disrupting his balance until the two of them went crashing to the ground not three feet from the cabin steps. Snarling like a she-wolf guarding her den, Honor launched another attack, surprising Logan. He had thought she must be nearly done. She went for his eyes with her curving claws, but she got a shoulder instead, tearing several wide strips through his thick hide. She threw herself forward, trying to get her teeth around his throat, but found herself flat on her back instead.
Logan pinned her carefully, making sure not to use too much of his weight and strength against her, but she made his gentlemanly behavior nearly impossible. She fought like a cornered badger, only meaner. She was going for his eyes yet again when he finally got fed up and flipped her over onto her stomach where it would be harder for her to reach his vital areas. He covered her from behind, weighing her down, but it still didn’t deter her. She began to buck like a Brahma bull at a rodeo, nearly unseating him twice.
The third time she did manage it. She bucked and twisted so hard and fast that Logan lost his balance and fell, tumbling off to the side of her. Luckily he managed to keep his hold on her arm, or she’d have been part of the ether before he could so much as sneeze. Still, she writhed like a snake and managed to get to her hands and knees and crawl for the cabin before he fell on her again.
She’d gotten as far as the second step when he took her down, draping himself over her back like a blanket and pressing her stomach against the rough, wooden boards of the steps. She growled something obscene and tried to claw her way out from under him, but he held firm. One deep breath told him she was fighting herself just as hard as she fought him. He could smell the sharp, spicy sting of her arousal perfuming the air around them, made even more intense by her rapidly approaching heat. Just sniffing her made his mouth water, not to mention what it did to the fit of his jeans.
For all that she refused to admit it, Honor felt the attraction between them as deeply as he did. He knew that if he reached between her legs just then, he would find her warm and wet and dripping with the honey that he had drawn from her. The idea made his mouth water, and he licked his lips.
“You ran away from me this morning, Honor love. I don’t think I’m going to let you get away again. This is too important to let that happen.” He leaned down and let his tongue tease the shell of her ear. “You smell much too good to let that happen.”
“Not … your … decision … bastard.” She panted the words out, as if she had trouble drawing breath, but considering he had her pinned beneath his considerable bulk, anything was possible. “Let go.”
He shook his head and nuzzled through the thick curls of her hair to get to the skin beneath. He drew her in, savoring that spicy fragrance and ignoring what it did to his self-control. Who needed self-control?
With that in mind, he shifted his weight slightly and slipped his free hand beneath her body to the spot where her T-shirt had ridden up to expose the soft skin of her belly. He felt her flinch when he touched her, heard her gasp when his finger circled her navel before dipping inside. Her hips bucked against him, but this time it had more to do with reaction than with any attempt to get him off her. Things were looking up, but that still didn’t mean he had any intention of testing it by letting her go just yet.
He caught her hands in his and drew them up over her head, stretching her out beneath him like a picnic blanket, and pinned them there. The position made her T-shirt draw up even farther, and Logan rumbled his approval at the extra inches of bare skin it exposed. She felt smooth and soft and hot to his touch, and in the cool winter air, he would bet that anyone looking at them from a distance would see steam coming off them in waves. Of course, it wouldn’t have stopped him if the entire Lupine population of North America had been watching. This woman was his mate, and he intended to have her. Now.
When he unfastened her jeans, she gave a growl of protest, but when his hand slid between her legs to her dripping core, all she could do was moan. His fingers parted her slick folds and stroked delicately, searching for every nuance of her reaction—the tightening of muscles, the faint trembling, the quiet hitch in her breathing. Sometimes those acute Lupine senses came in very handy indeed.
“Hands. Off.” She growled the threat, but the words lacked a certain authenticity. Her scent told him how his presence affected her.
Logan’s fingers slid a fraction deeper and teased small circles around her opening, drawing even more moisture from her body. Damn, but she was responsive. It made his mouth water almost as much as her scent did.
“Somehow I’m not convinced that’s what you really want, honey.” He leaned forward and nipped at her earlobe, savoring her small intake of breath. “Are you sure you don’t want something more like this?”
His hand shifted and two long fingers slid inside her, filling and stretching her eager body. She felt tight and hot and incredible around his fingers, and he moaned, nearly drowning out the soft sound of her cries. He could imagine few things more perfect in this world than the feel of her slick pussy closing around his cock and milking him to completion. And if he didn’t get his mind off that memory right now, he’d be “completing” right there in his jeans.
Quickly withdrawing his hand from between her legs, he used it to shove her jeans down until they tangled around her ankles. She growled a protest, but his urgency drove him, and he didn’t bother to pause to let her kick them off. Instead, he ripped her burgundy satin panties into shreds, not even taking time to appreciate the smooth, silky feel of the material or the contrast of the rich color against her fair skin. All he cared about was getting inside her, and the panties were in his way, so they had to be destroyed. It was that simple.
Logan threw away the scraps of fabric and reached for his own jeans, racing to get them out of the way before he died of a critical buildup of sperm. The top button defied him, refusing to slip from its hole, and he snarled in frustration. He released her hands so he could use both to tackle the issue, but the second she shifted and braced them beneath her as if to push herself up and drag herself away from him, his hands slammed back over hers. Irritated, he growled, a low, dark warning.
Honor growled right back. Shifting her weight, she braced her hands on one stair and her knees on another. The jeans still around her ankles and lower legs forced her to keep her thighs pressed together, but it made no difference. Pushing herself into place, she dropped to her elbows in front and thrust her bottom out behind her, raising her hips and curving her back until she had presented herself to him like an offering.
Logan froze in place. He recognized the mating stance for what it was, but he hadn’t been expecting it. For all the lust he could smell o
n her skin, he’d thought Honor meant to play the reluctant mate to the bitter end, and now here she was, presenting herself to him like a lusciously unwrapped birthday gift. For a few seconds all he could do was stare. Then she reached back and drew her hair forward over her shoulder and out of the way, turning to look back at him. She invited him with a look, and when she raised an eyebrow and canted her hips a fraction higher, he gave in to his instincts and covered her.
* * *
Honor fought fiercely, but in the end she was overpowered. Not by Logan, but by her own fierce desire. She needed to feel him inside her again and damn the consequences. She had done enough fighting against her instincts lately, enough self-denial, enough of what was good for the pack instead of what was good for her, and she was done. This time, this one time, she would take what she needed and damn the consequences.
If she was lucky, maybe he’d fuck her to death, and she wouldn’t be around to face any consequences.
By the time she decided this, though, and made him a clear offer, it was evident he barely remembered what to do with her. How quickly they forget. Drawing her hair over her shoulder, she put a little wriggle in her hips and looked back at him with one brow raised, as if to ask how much clearer she had to make it.
Not much.
He fell on her like a starving man on a feast table, with the same greed and the same touch of fear that the bounty before him was only an illusion and would fade away if he hesitated even a moment longer.
She heard his rough growl of hunger and approval, then felt his large hands gripping her hips, holding her in place while he positioned himself at her entrance. She felt him savoring that moment of quivering anticipation before sliding home with one deep, forceful thrust.
Honor threw her head back and screamed. He drove into her, the momentum of his body carrying him hard and high inside her. He parted her body and made a place for himself in her heat. Her internal muscles quaked and shivered and protested, but in the end they softened, letting him force his way inside. He repaid the kindness by stroking every nerve ending she possessed with his flared head and thick shaft. He reached deep inside her, to the heart of her, and paused there before drawing back for another assault.
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