“Before the darkness, we would’ve made a great team. We would’ve had this conversation and I’d have hauled you back to the cabin and taken you every way you’d let me.”
His words caused desire to wash over her in heady waves. She wanted every part of that sentence to be a prophecy of things to come.
She didn’t understand why they couldn’t be.
“This isn’t fair, War. You can’t offer me everything I want in one hand and take it away in the other.”
“I know. That’s why I have to let you go. It’s because I want you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re just trying to hide a fuck-you-sundae in sprinkles. No thanks.” She pulled away from him and put her hands on her hips. “You talk about this darkness. I haven’t seen it. Where is it? Show me.”
“You really don’t want that.”
“Don’t tell me what I want. Furthermore, stop trying to push me out of this pack. You know what my life was like growing up. Remember that Christmas my family hosted yours in Tahoe?”
“I remember all the other wolves were outside playing. All we could see from the great room window were tails sticking up out of the snow.”
“Where was I, War?” she prompted.
He didn’t say anything.
“You probably don’t remember, so I’ll tell you.”
“I don’t need you to tell me, I remember. We sat quietly, reading by the fire and drinking cocoa.”
“I loved you a little then for not abandoning me like the rest of them. I’ve never fit in anywhere. Except here. Except as a Woolven. Here, it’s okay for me to be exactly who and what I am. Please don’t take it away.”
“You’re still Woolven. I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
“Well, stop it. Because you’re screwing it up.” She swallowed her tears and what was left of her pride.
She should leave him there in the cemetery clinging to memories of the dead saint and take all that he offered. Take her freedom and make some kind of life for herself. She wouldn’t be anyone’s property, asset, or chattel. She’d go somewhere and buy herself some peace.
Except that wasn’t what Mari wanted.
She wanted what all the other Woolven brides had and she wanted it with Warner Woolven.
Mari looked down at him. At the questions in his eyes and the earnest expression on his scarred face.
Yeah, she wanted him for exactly the reasons he tried to send her away.
“What is the right thing, then? Tell me.”
“Can’t you just try?” she asked.
“What does that mean to you?” He pushed his hand through his hair. “Shit, what am I doing? Fuck. I can’t let you risk yourself.”
She cocked her head to the side. “And when did that ever work for your nephews’ mates?”
“You’re different, Mari. You know that.”
“You mean I’m not strong enough. Not good enough. Just not enough.”
“That’s not what I said and not what I meant.”
To her shame, she couldn’t stop thinking about the answer to his question.
What does that mean to you?
What was her idea of Warner trying? What did it look like?
Damn it, she could see it all as if it played on a drive-in theater screen. He’d take her in his arms right there on the hill underneath leafy arms of the oak tree. He push her down in the soft grass and it wouldn’t matter that Arianna was buried there. He’d let her go and embrace what he had right in front of him.
Literally.
He’d make love to her. He’d fuck her. He’d mark her for real. It would be enough.
Mari would be enough.
Only that was just a fantasy, wasn’t it?
She remembered his broad, scarred hands on her flesh when he’d stolen her out of that limo. When he’d ripped the roof off with his bare hands. His eyes flashing amber with the power of his wolf.
He’d made her so wet.
Yet to her eternal disappointment, he didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it. Just like now.
He’d closed his eyes, breathed deep. She watched as his chest rose and fell with the mechanics of breath.
“You smell good, Maribella.”
Goddess, but she felt like a shit. She wanted nothing more in that moment than to seduce him right here. She’d even shed her human skin and run with him. She wanted to know what it felt like to run through the dark woods by his side. She wanted to know what it was like to be his in every way. She wanted it so much she thought the ache of it would kill her. She’d never wanted anything like she wanted Warner Woolven.
She swallowed hard. “What do I smell like?”
“Like hot, wet female and strawberries and champagne. I bet that’s how you’d taste too.”
His voice had dropped an octave. Lower than any human could go. It made her shiver with desire.
“So why don’t you taste me?” she dared.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“We do lots of things in this pack that aren’t a good idea. It seems to work out,” she taunted.
He didn’t move. He didn’t accept what she offered, but that didn’t stop her.
Maybe it should have.
“Unless you really don’t want me.” Her voice wasn’t small and soft, it wasn’t the utterance of a woman who was unsure about her appeal. It was sex-kitten sultry. It was like she was under some kind of spell.
She leaned in toward him, some polarity pulling her forward, guiding her. His eyes burned with the amber light of his wolf and he narrowed his intensity on the fullness of her lips.
Mari would swear she could feel them swelling under his scrutiny, plumping to welcome his mouth on hers, to entice his body into hers.
Oh yes.
Her desire spiked and his nostrils flared.
Part of her began to understand why it was good to be a wolf.
She could scent his lust too.
It was like caramel and burning leaves. There was a scent underneath it all that was different. Wrong. It smelled like no natural wolf or were. It was different. It was other.
It was darkness.
It was blood.
Instead of frightening her, or even setting off her warning bells, it made her that much hotter. The darkness and blood called to her like nothing had ever before.
Maybe because it was wrapped up in Warner Woolven.
Whatever the case, she couldn’t get enough and her intrinsic need to devour the beast that bore that scent—and be devoured by it in turn—would not be denied.
It was as if every wolfy instinct she’d had and ignored for so long had been magnified on a quantum level.
There was only War.
Only this pulsing need between them.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Mari.” He worked his jaw as his teeth fought to elongate and he crushed the animal inside of him with an obvious iron fist.
“Maybe I don’t, but my wolf does. I can’t control her, War. And I don’t want to. It’s been so long since I wanted to let her out.”
“Don’t say it’s for me.” His growl was low, lower even than she’d ever heard it before. Even when he was fighting to the death.
“Not for you.” She licked her lips. Their mouths were almost close enough that she could’ve tasted him, had she dared. “Because of you.”
She wanted to touch him everywhere. Trace her tongue down over the brutal mesh of his scars, she wanted to give him another scar. On his throat. She wanted to tear at the flesh there, to mark him as her own.
Mari had never had feelings this intense before.
She’d never felt so connected to her wolf.
She never knew she could.
And she wanted him to do the same to her. To tear into her throat with his long, sharp teeth and brand her as his own.
To really belong to Warner Woolven, body and soul.
The very idea caused a strange spasm between her thighs that she felt all the way to her toes. It
wasn’t quite an orgasm, but it wasn’t a stab of desire either. It was like the both the question and the answer at the same time. A yearning, and fulfillment both.
“The way you smell right now,” he confessed, “makes me want to do things to you, Mari. Things you can’t possibly want. You want a kiss in a graveyard and I want to tear open your throat.”
Another of those delicious shudders wracked her body at his words and she tilted her head to the side and tugged the sleeve of her dress down to give him complete and total access.
He slammed her to the ground and his face was buried in the tender crook of her neck, his breath was hot on her skin, but he didn’t bite.
Dear Goddess, why didn’t he bite?
Her breath came in ragged gasps and she put her arms around him and pulled him closer.
His weight pressed her down into the soft grass beneath her back and she could feel the thick bulge of his cock against her thigh.
This mating might kill them both, but she knew it would be worth it.
Every cell in body vibrated with a hollow frequency, that awareness before the strike. And the longing for the sharp pain, and the pulsing sensation that couldn’t be distinguished from pain or pleasure.
He pulled back from her neck and looked down into her eyes.
Holy Hecate, but he was a fearsome beast. His beautiful amber eyes had gone blood-red and they were no less beautiful. Mari could see the shifting skin and bones sliding around beneath the surface of his human façade and it too was horrifically beautiful.
War was still holding back and Mari, secure now in his desire for her, wasn’t going to tolerate his denial any longer.
She arched up and pressed her mouth to his.
When he kissed her back, the whole world changed. It was as if she’d only been seeing the world in faded memories of color and every sensation, every moment, every breath was brought to stark and effervescent life.
Just like the champagne bubbles she’d had to use to induce her Change as a kid.
Warner’s kiss made everything champagne.
Mari knew then this was exactly where she was supposed to be and this would be no half-assed mating.
Warner was her True Mate.
He might not know it, might not be ready for it, but she belonged to him, and he to her.
His hands began to move over her body and she drowned in a haze of sensation and pure, animal lust.
Until he had her writhing and aching beneath him, and then he took it all away. He pulled back from her, no longer touching, tasting, or grinding his hard body against her heat.
She opened heavy-lidded eyes to gaze up at her mate and what she saw didn’t make sense in her brain.
The thing that was above her was not Warner Woolven.
Yet, somehow, it still was.
He was misshapen, wrong. She didn’t have the words to describe his new form. Everything about him was other.
It seemed that even the dirt beneath them screamed in agony at his nearness. His wrongness.
Those red eyes that burned like the fires of hell had focused on her.
Specifically on the pulse in her throat, but for some reason, she wasn’t afraid.
Maybe because beneath all that “other” she knew he was still Warner. Still one of the strongest, noblest wolves to breathe air.
Westwood had said he was a dark champion.
Well, she’d be damned if she’d leave him alone in the dark.
Mari was strong enough to do this. Strong enough to be his mate.
She turned her head to the side, once again exposing the full, creamy expanse of her neck to his elongated jaws with their bear trap of razor tusks.
With a roar, Warner opened his death maw, but his jaws never closed around her throat.
Instead, with a terrible otherworldly howl, he tore off into the woods as if the very hounds of hell were on his heels.
Leaving Mari alone with her lips swollen, her body aching and unfilled, and her heart battered.
4
Warner ran through the trees. He didn’t know where he was running to, or when to stop. If he could stop.
Ever.
He couldn’t distinguish between the wrenching hungers that twisted up his guts. He couldn’t separate them—the need to devour, to consume and his need for Mari.
He should keep running.
He should run until his legs fail, until his bones break, until there’s nothing left of him but meat for the carrion.
It was the only way to keep them all safe.
To keep her safe.
What about the Pack of Peter Breslins roaming free in the north? What about the shadow you feel inside you falling over the world?
The thought was inside his head, but it wasn’t completely his own.
Something other whispered in the back of his head, growing there like an oily cancer.
Just then, he caught the scent of blood on the breeze and his hunger wouldn’t be denied. Blood was the only thing that would satisfy the raking claws through his guts.
It won’t help you.
Nothing can help you, except the flesh of the cursed.
Pictures of the animal built a slideshow in his mind.
He knew where it was, knew all of his injuries, and yes, he even knew the gender.
It had never been like this… hunting. He would catch a scent and his mind would pour through what seemed like mental files to find the animal it belonged to. It was a very human way to think—a meld of his wolf brain and his human brain.
This was… this was like he’d tapped into some kind of magic.
He was at war with himself.
Warner needed to make this pain, this raging hunger be silent, but the darkness told him it wouldn’t be the release he needed, he wouldn’t be sated.
Was this what it was going to be like? A never-ending insatiable hunger?
He didn’t want this.
Couldn’t live like this.
His new sharper, longer teeth elongated in his mouth and the Change hit him hard.
Warner’s bones all broke at once, shattering inside his skin and he heard a sound like a howl, or was it a scream? All he knew was the sound was awful and it was coming from his own throat.
The bones knit themselves back together, faster now than the last time, and he was once again bipedal.
Somehow, the hunger had intensified. He didn’t have the words to describe it.
The bear lumbered about, just beyond the creek, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
And Warner’s faint control disappeared.
He was no longer in the driver’s seat. The dark thing was.
Suddenly, it wasn’t about eating to feed his physical body. It was about the violence. The depravity.
The thing he’d become was rage personified.
When it was finished, when the darkness was sated, all that was left of the bear was a pile of oozing muck.
When Warner came back to himself, he was still hungry.
Naked and bloody, he lay face down in the grass and screamed into the earth below him.
Then, he inhaled the scents around him that were not blood and death. The green grass, the loamy earth, the trees…
He knew what he had to do.
For maybe the first time in centuries, Westwood was wrong.
He was no champion, dark or otherwise. He was a vessel for something that had hitched a ride back from the other side and it needed to be returned before it wreaked this kind of devastation on his pack.
It wasn’t fair, but life often wasn’t. Warner knew that better than anyone.
He wasn’t going to rail against what he couldn’t change.
He would do what within his power to do.
Warner would go to Minnesota. He’d kill this infected pack, and wipe it from the earth.
Then, he’d do the same to himself. It was the only option.
He only had one regret. In a long, preternatural life filled with so many sorrows, not being able to giv
e Mari the things she deserved and wanted was the one thing he wished he could change.
Not Arianna’s or Sterling’s death, they’d made their choices. He wouldn’t take that from them.
Not even stepping aside so Arianna could be with Sterling. Without that, he’d never have his wonderful nephews. The pack wouldn’t have blossomed as it had under Sterling’s and now Blake’s rule.
And they’d been happy.
That was enough for Warner.
But Mari.
As he thought of her, his breathing slowed and agony still shooting through him began to subside.
He remembered her words. How she’d reminded him of that Christmas. Warner knew she’d spent most of the holiday alone, being unable to transform to share in the wolfy festivities. She was so delicate. So very human.
But fierce too, the darkness reminded him.
He agreed. In the cemetery, when he’d been Changing, it was awful. He didn’t know how he looked, but he knew it was wrong.
She hadn’t been afraid of him.
His first instinct had been to think that maybe she didn’t know enough to be afraid, but Mari was smart, and definitely capable. She knew.
She simply had faith in him.
By the goddess, the way she tasted.
His cock throbbed to life and he had to roll on his back. He tried not to think about her. There was no point in obsessing over what he couldn’t have.
You could have her.
Remember, she offered herself to you.
Was hot and desperate for you.
Take her.
Bite her.
Mark her.
Taste her…
That was exactly why he couldn’t have her. He wouldn’t take the chance that he’d hurt her.
Although, she hadn’t seemed like she was in any kind of pain except the kind induced by his refusal to do his duty.
Even in this state.
Her mouth tasted like summer and her skin, like strawberries. He wondered if her cleft would taste the same. He wanted to lick her until she came on his face, screaming.
Warner didn’t know where this was coming from—this need for her. It wasn’t like this when he’d claimed her.
Sure, she was beautiful. But she wasn’t The One. His True Mate. And it would’ve been no hardship to bed her. In fact, he would’ve made sure they both enjoyed it immensely, when the time was right.
Stealing the Heiress Page 3
