by C. D. Gorri
It was as if she were drinking in the soft moonlight. Pulling it into herself. As if she too were a part of the night, the air, and the water around her. Her hair hung down past the graceful arch in her back in soft cascading waves. Randall itched to run his fingers through it, to test its softness.
This woman was wreaking serious havoc with his brain and he’d barely met her twenty-four hours ago. The dull thud of the robe hitting the sand was nearly his undoing. Randall’s mouth hung open at the sight of Tulla Nirvelli bare and beautiful with only the moonlight touching her supple skin.
Her body was womanly, soft and elegant with dips and valleys aplenty. Her toned curves were enough to make him bite back a growl. She was a damned knock-out. From his position, he saw every inch of her. It should have felt wrong and maybe a little bit perverse, okay, maybe a lot, but it didn’t.
The act of watching her unguarded in this moment was something he would cherish always. Beautiful did not begin to describe how she looked to him. Strong. Fierce. Goddess. Desirous. Lovely. Fire. Mine. To his Wolf, she was already his.
The tension in his body increased. He felt himself harden inside of his sweats and tried to ignore the instinct raging inside of him to take her and claim her right then and there. Inevitable as it might be, Randall wanted her to have a choice in the matter. He had secrets to share with her when the time was right. He couldn’t just pounce on her for God’s sake!
His mind went blank as she straightened. He focused. Something was about to happen. Anticipation made him grow harder. She stretched and rolled her shoulders as if ridding herself of all the stress from her day. He particularly liked the little wiggle of her hips. Damn, she was cute.
He could have watched her for hours, but his perusal was over far too quickly. The object of his intense study walked or rather jogged straight into the waves without flinching at what he assumed was seasonably cold water. Her satisfied sigh carried over the sound of the surf to his waiting ears.
Damn, he wanted to make her sigh like that. And more. He felt his growl reverberating in his chest. The need to go to her was growing stronger with each passing second. He watched her stretch out her long, toned arms over her head. One second she was there, her back curved, head tucked, like any seasoned diver, and the next second she was gone, under a wave of frothy saltwater.
Randall’s heart skipped a beat. His little vixen dove straight into the ocean in the middle of the night without a stitch on! Carefree and fearless as anything he had ever seen! He waited a few seconds and was about to jump in to look for her when she resurfaced a few dozen feet from shore.
Brave. Maybe reckless. He couldn’t help, but admire her. Still, he pushed back his long hair and finally released the breath he was holding. The Wolf in him was having a hard time with her being so far away. The man in him was struggling not to strip down and join her.
Hell, he was more than tempted, but Randall stilled himself. This place was her home. It was where she lived and this was clearly a ritual of hers. He had no business intruding. His Wolf snarled at him in his mind’s eye, but Randall controlled him with his own dominant stare.
She was not his. Not yet, came the reply. He forced himself to sit back and admire the view. He could keep watch from afar. The thought settled the Wolf in him, but only slightly.
She swam around in the cool night air for a good twenty minutes before making her way back to shore. She stopped and whipped her head out of the water. Tiny clear droplets sailed across the night sky like diamonds being tossed to the wind. God, she was beautiful.
She looked like an oil painting he’d once seen somewhere in Greece of a sea nymph returning to her home in the dead of night. He’d travelled to the Athens once for a gaming convention, but he managed to steal away a few hours to explore.
Randall appreciated art in the sense that it was not the chaos or happy accident some people thought it was. No, art was something much more sacred to him. It was order, planning, mathematics, perspective, logic, fractals, and symmetry or the absence of it. The human soul expressed through calculations that sometimes only the artist could understand. Few people recognized it, but software development and programming required that same kind of artistic skill.
He’d like to spend more time studying art someday, but right then he only wanted to explore one thing and she was swimming around completely naked in the Atlantic Ocean under the light of the moon, not forty-feet from where he crouched against the sand. She was more captivating than any painting or code Randall had ever seen.
He bit back another growl as she stood up and stepped free from the surf. Water rivulets rolled down her luscious curves in places he longed to follow with his hands and mouth, but had to be content with just his eyes. The woman was a goddess. Mine. This time it wasn’t the Wolf who snarled in his mind. It was all him.
He wanted her in a way he’d never wanted another person in his whole life. The level of possessiveness was new and kind of disturbing. He needed to get out of there. He had to stop watching her before he acted on his baser instinct to claim her succulent body for his own.
His Wolf demanded he go to her. It was like an ever-growing wave of noise and yet there was nothing but silence around him. This roaring sensation was inside his head. It made every nerve in his body stand on edge, screaming at him to take her, to dive into her the way she did that cool saltwater, to cover her in his scent. The scent thing was to ward off any other males who came sniffing around her. They would know she belonged, that she was taken. Mine.
He ran a hand over his smooth face and almost groaned aloud. The changes in him in a matter of hours were unbelievable. He shaved! Of all the things, he never thought he’d do, he shaved off that long beard of his. That beard was a part of him for years and years, camouflaging his expressions, hiding him from the world so he could easily sink back into the screens of code he wrote and analyzed for weeks at a time.
Randall excelled at keeping himself separate from other people and Wolves. He had for some time now and the beard made it easier to keep away. It made him seem aloof and maybe a little scary. He used that to his advantage. He was not a coward, but he preferred to remain at an emotional distance from others. Even his Pack. It was something of a shock to discover that, after all this time, he no longer wanted that.
He didn’t need the beard anymore. Not here. Not with her. He wanted the foot-long growth off his face the second he landed on this island. Well, not really, he admitted. He wanted it gone the second his eyes landed on Tulla.
He needed to slow down. The Wolf wanted her now, but the man knew better. Visions of her body, cool and wet, fresh from the sea water, pressed up against his, made his mouth water. Mine, growled his Wolf in his mind’s eyes. But Randall needed time to approach her properly, to test the mutual attraction he felt between them. You don’t force a connection, you have to proceed with a smooth and steady hand.
It was funny how he recalled advice he’d given to the junior developers who worked for him while he sat crouched against the sand looking at the first woman he wanted in years. He sunk farther into the shadows and backed up a little further.
He intended to wait for her to go inside and then he would return to his bed where he was certain he’d toss and turn all night long. It would be worth it if he dreamt of her though. Just as his mind started to wander through all sort of delicious images, his acute hearing picked up the sound of someone breathing heavily.
He whipped his head around, homing in on where the sound was coming from. He inhaled and picked up the scent of deodorant and something akin to sour cream and cheese flavored chips. Someone was definitely close by and the guy brought a snack. Grrrr. The Wolf was on edge. Randall went into protect mode.
He reacted before he could even think to stop himself. He stood quickly and knocked over the small side table that sat next to one of the hammocks. He ignored Tulla’s gasp and moved out from behind the palm trees racing silently across the sand. The culprit was thirty feet away and, apparent
ly, he didn’t sense the immediate danger he was in. Good, thought Randall, that should make this more fun.
He held his fingers to his lips while a stunned Tulla grabbed her robe and wrapped it around herself. He needed her to remain quiet so he could catch whoever it was doing all the heavy breathing. Whoever it was, he didn’t have the sense he was born with to leave himself so exposed. One thing Randall knew for sure, this guy was going to get the message that he didn’t belong here and after he was through with him the fucker was never gonna forget it!
Randall moved with all the stealth and speed a Werewolf in his human form possessed. The sand dune was about four feet high off the ground level where he stood. He stilled for a moment and listened to the sounds of a cell phone being used. Was that the camera app?
The rapid tapping of the screen told him someone was typing. Oh crap. It had to be a kid, no adults he knew could type that fast and with their thumbs too! Ah, blessed technology! He rolled his eyes. He could probably set off a bomb and the kid wouldn’t notice, as long as his attention was focused on his phone.
Randall decided to surprise the little punk. He crouched down and vaulted over the four-foot tall sand dune in one pretty damn impressive jump. He reached out and grabbed the kid by the collar of his sweatshirt and hauled him off the ground into the air. The kid screamed and kicked his feet to no avail, Randall narrowed his eyes and shook him before telling him to shut up.
“What the hell are you doing creeping around at this time of night?”
“Nothin’ man! Let me go! You can’t do this! Put me down or I’ll call the cops.”
Randall raised an eyebrow. The kid was fifteen years old at most, his Bieber wannabe haircut hung over a pair of scared blue eyes, but his mouth was yelling all sorts of nonsense. It was quite the show, but Randall ignored him. the Wolf had no interest in fighting children. However, the little creep had a cell phone and Randall could just imagine what he’d been doing with it. He let the Wolf out a little, and brought the kid closer to his face.
“I asked a question. What were you doing out here?”
“Let me go, man! I swear I’ll tell the police you attacked me!”
“Yeah, let’s call them and tell them what you’ve been up to, you little perv! Give me that phone!” Randall was finished with the games. He dropped the kid on the ground without hurting him and took the cell phone. It was a fairly new smartphone and the little fucker had definitely been up to no good.
The camera app was open as was his UrShotz account. His handle was PayaDaPlaya. He had a PayPal account link in his profile and accepted private messages. A little more poking around and Randall’s gaze flew to the creepy little entrepreneur.
“For real, bro? How much you make a month?”
“Couple of bucks, it’s no big deal, man.”
“No big deal? This is some seriously illegal shit right here. You do this here before? Tell me-” The sound of footsteps brought his head up.
“Oh, my Lord! Brayden White is that you? What on Earth are you doing outside this time of night? Oh, let him go, Mr. Graves, he’s my neighbor’s nephew!” Tulla tied the belt to her robe tightly and brushed back her wet hair with her fingers trying to make sense out of the scene in front of her.
“Not so fast,” Randall’s voice was barely more than a deep growl as he looked through the kid’s cell phone and opened it to find the video of Tulla’s night swim.
“This is what he was doing,” he flashed the screen to Tulla who gasped, her eyes going wide with embarrassment or horror he couldn’t tell, but he wanted to pummel the pimple-faced brat with his fists to make that look go away.
“Shame on you, Brayden! How could you do something like that? I am going to have to talk to your aunt! Can you erase it?”
“Well, the good news is he didn’t get a chance to upload it anywhere, so it is just local to his camera. However, it seems Mr. White here is a businessman. He’s been selling images like these online and making money. Tonight’s photos and videos haven’t been sold yet, but the bad news is, it looks like he was here last month and took a couple of photos of your uh, night swim. He did upload those to a few sites. They are pretty grainy images though.”
“Oh, my Lord! Brayden! How could you? Is there anything I could do?”
“Well, I’d need a computer and a working modem, but I’m confident I can trace them and get them down. Now, I deleted everything from his phone-”
“You can’t do that it’s my personal property!”
“Brayden, you have invaded my privacy, you are trespassing on my property, and I’m sure it is illegal to take nude pictures of someone without their knowledge never mind selling those images!”
“She’s right, kid, not to mention the fact that I will personally beat you to a bloody pulp if I hear one word about Ms. Nirvelli’s fondness for swimming at night anywhere on this island, do you understand me?” Again, the Wolf surged forward and he knew from the way his face turned a sickly shade of gray that the kid got the message.
The boy nodded his head up and down like one of those bobble headed figures and shuffled his feet. His nerves were like a treat to Randall’s Wolf who wanted nothing more than to hunt down the culprit who disturbed the sanctuary of Tulla’s privacy and peace of mind.
“Okay, I’m sorry I won’t do it again, just give me my phone back.”
“I’m afraid I won’t do that, Brayden. Not until you have your aunt come by for it in the morning and you tell her what you were doing.”
“But-”
“No buts. You messed up, you got caught, but what you were about to do was so much worse. You were going to betray another human being’s trust and privacy for your own selfish needs, you were going to exploit naked images of my body that you had no right to, to get a few dollars and maybe some more friends at school or ‘likes’ on your social media pages. That is despicable behavior from a young man like you. Now, go on home to your aunt’s house and I will see you both in the morning.”
Randall didn’t approve of letting the boy go, especially after Tulla finished her speech. He wanted to howl his frustration into the night air, but that wouldn’t do. It was too late anyway, the kid ran off like a shot towards his aunt’s house. Randall squeezed the offending phone in his hand until he heard Tulla’s gasp.
“Randall! Your hand!” She reached for him little electric shocks seem to emanate from the place her hand touched his. He lowered his eyes, he liked the way his name sounded coming from her lips.
It wasn’t until she gasped again that he realized he had crushed the damn cell phone in his fist. Glass from the screen pierced his palm and he was bleeding. She tugged him into the kitchen and he followed meekly as she pulled him past the kitchen and into his room. Randall was keenly aware of the fact that she was standing very close to him in very little clothing in what was essentially his bathroom.
Fuck, there was no way she’d mistake the, uh, condition he was in considering he wore nothing, but a pair of thin sweatpants. Thankfully, she was too intent on his hand to notice.
How could she not notice, maybe you are losing your mojo there my man, his voice taunted him inside his brain and Randall narrowed his eyes. His other hand hovered awkwardly on the counter. Should he say something? Do something? He felt like an idiot! He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the rather rare moment of panic and doubt he was having.
The sound of her soft, shallow breathing was loud in his ears. That coconut scent of hers increased. Tulla shuffled a little on her bare feet though she stood on the plush little bathroom rug so he knew she was neither cold nor uncomfortable. She carefully plucked tiny shards of glass out of his palm, but all those other little things told him she wasn’t as unaffected by his proximity as she seemed. Good.
“How in the world did you do this to yourself? That piece of junk could have sliced open a vein! What do they make those things out of anyway,” she muttered as she worked on getting the last pieces out. Her mothering stirred something inside his chest.<
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He watched as she reached for a first aid kit under the sink and held his hand firmly in one of hers as she searched through a small magnifying glass to make sure all the pieces were in fact out. She withdrew some sort of wound cleansing wipe and gently swabbed his hand. He didn’t feel a thing. He was doing his best to remain still, afraid if he moved she’d break that delicious contact that was making every hair on his body stand up.
The second she touched him it was like a punch to his solar plexus. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want it to end. Her ministrations were efficient and careful. He liked watching her tend him. It humbled him and made him want to return the favor. Nothing had ever felt so right.
“Well, you must be made of pretty strong stuff not to flinch after all this.”
He grunted and she smiled and, damn, if that wasn’t another punch to his gut! Her smile was like the sun coming out after a long hard winter. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Bright enough to take over the whole damn room.
She turned on the faucet and let the warm water pour over his cuts. She patted them dry with some gauze and applied antibiotic ointment to it before wrapping a band aid over it. Most of the cut would be gone by the morning, only the deepest ones might remain another day or so, but he didn’t stop her. Hell, he’d do anything to keep her touching him.
“Mr. Graves,” Tulla’s voice didn’t shake, but her wandering eyes made it obvious she was aware of the shirtless man in front of her. Randall smiled slowly. He liked the way she watched him under her long eyelashes. Her voice interrupted his train of thought.
“I asked what you were doing outside? Were you, uh, spying on me, like young Brayden White?”
Randall gulped. Oh shit. “Uh, no, no I was not. I, uh, was relaxing in one of those hammocks you so thoughtfully provide for your guests and was quite surprised when you came outside to, uh, swim.”
It sounded lame even to his ears, but it was the truth. Werewolves didn’t usually lie. Well, maybe except about being Werewolves that is.