by Calin, Ana
“Where do you want it?” he asks.
“What?”
“I’m cumming, Janine. Damn it, I can’t hold it anymore, where do you want it?”
I take my hand to my cheek. “Here.”
Conan pushes himself up on his knee that’s still between my legs, bringing that big cock sticking out of his fly to my face. The scent of him, of rustling fire and horny man, envelops me.
“Are you sure?” he says huskily, the purple head of his cock close to my lips, but not touching them. One touch could be enough to trigger imprinting, and I understand that he doesn’t want to risk it, but still. I wish he would, so badly.
His warm cum splashes my cheek, the sexiest sound filling my ears at the same time—him, moaning. A deep but vulnerable moan like an animal being hurt. I can’t stop staring up at him, taking in the scene, a scene that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
I’m still not sure what hit me as Conan drops to his knees on the floor. I come slowly up to a sitting position, my legs trembling from the way I worked myself against the dildo and the orgasm it gave me while I watched Conan’s face. Now he’s on his knees in front of me, looking down, and all I can see is the dark crown of his head.
I watch him breathe hard, his muscular shoulders moving up and down, the jeans stretching over those thighs that could smash rocks.
“Forgive me.” His voice sends a shiver down my back. He sounds regretful, almost broken. “I shouldn’t have used you like that.”
“I asked you to,” I whisper.
Conan looks up at me, and I can see he’s feeling guilty.
“I wish,” he says, “I wish I could kiss you. I wish I could take your face between my hands, lay you on your back and kiss your neck, and your breasts, and the inside of your thighs, even if only to make up for this.” He looks around as if what we just did was an act of sacrilege.
Even if only to make up for this... That’s the only reason why he’d do it. Not because he wants me, or because he’s falling for me like I am for him, hopelessly.
“What exactly is it that you regret,” I hiss through my teeth. I’m so frustrated that I grip the duvet with both hands, hoping he doesn’t notice it. “That you had to let yourself be dragged into this, or that your cum is dripping off my face?”
“Both,” he replies without hesitation. “This should have never have happened between us, much less this way. I shouldn’t have used you.”
Used me. That’s all it was to him.
I stick out my chin. “Seems your memory is playing tricks on you. I was the one using you, Conan. Remember?”
He doesn’t say anything, which only fuels my spite, the hurt now consuming me.
“You liked taking me in this dirty way, and you better own it. Because I’m not going to deny this is the way I wanted it. But you know what? I won’t fall madly in love with you just because we got almost intimate. I’ve given you my body, but I will never give you my heart.”
Conan
THE GONDOLIER STANDS behind me, pushing us slowly through the dark and murky canal into what seems to be Lorenzo’s Venice water driveaway. It’s chilly, the walls of his historical family estate rising from the dark water.
I have three plans ready for getting Janine out of here alive and unscathed if things go South, and I’d normally feel confident about them. But this is Lorenzo Piovra and his pack that I’m up against, the Italian mafia of the werewolf world. They can be cruel and bloody despite the good-guys façade they put up for Janine. But that’s not even what worries me most.
I’m worried about her in ways that make me feel vulnerable. When the hell did I get emotionally involved? I didn’t imprint on her, I’m sure about that. Deep down I’m also worried that Lorenzo will win her over, and it has nothing to do with the pack’s safety. It has to do with the cocktail of feelings bubbling up inside of me for the woman, and my primal instinct to make her mine.
I get off the gondola directly onto Lorenzo’s granite patio, holding out my hand for Janine. I know Lorenzo would have liked to help her off himself, but I keep too close to her, making it awkward for him to even try.
Janine puts her small white hand into mine, allowing me to pull her onto solid ground. How very unfit we are for each other, aren’t we? We’re so different, people feel compelled to stare wherever we turn up together, like they stared a few nights ago at the hotel terrace restaurant. My hand looks like a large rough paw compared to unblemished porcelain hand, not to mention the difference in size is notable. She’s so delicate and feminine it seems almost a sacrilege to see her by the side of a large brute, like me.
“Welcome,” Lorenzo says, his musical voice bouncing off the stone walls when the three of us come face to face. “To my true home. This palazzo has belonged to my family for hundreds of years,” he explains as he leads us inside, flanking Janine on her left while I walk alongside her on the right. Only a few of his men trail us, but I can feel the eyes watching from shadowy archways and from behind pillars.
We’re soon inside a dark and chilly main hall that, I must admit, has some serious charm. Janine is fascinated, I can smell it and see it. Her lips are slightly parted as she gawks at our surroundings, absorbed by Lorenzo’s story, a story that I stop listening to. I can’t help stealing glances at her, she’s so compelling it’s not even funny anymore.
I keep staring at her mouth, wondering what it would have felt like to push my cock between those nicely shaped lips. She’s wearing transparent lip gloss that enhances their size. I’ve been around her for some time now, and I know she’s unhappy with them because they’re thin. If she only knew she has the prettiest mouth I’ve ever seen.
Obviously I’m not the only one with that opinion. I mean look how that jackass Lorenzo stares at her mouth as well. He must be thinking about fucking it. I clench my fist. I swear I’m gonna split his jaw before I leave here.
Janine shivers as we head deeper into the dark but fascinating palazzo with its long labyrinthic halls. I shrug off my jacket and whirl it around her shoulders, rubbing her arms over the sleeves to drive her body heat up. But is that really all I want? Or am I taking advantage of the situation to put my hands on her?
“The rooms are prepared for you,” Lorenzo says. “Mr. Wolf, yours is right next to Janine’s, I imagined you’d want it that way. I must warn you there won’t be much privacy here because, well, you, Mr. Wolf will understand. The pack Piovra have a reputation, security matters.”
“I understand you mean there are surveillance cameras, Lorenzo,” I say with grit in my voice. “But I don’t see in what way Janine could be dangerous to your pack from inside her room. I understand why you want to have me monitored, but her? Besides, that’s no way to treat a guest.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightens. “You’re right, maybe I should have the cameras removed from Janine’s room. But I’ll do it only because you’re special, Janine. I wouldn’t do it for just anyone.”
“Come on, Lorenzo,” Janine puts in with fake sweetness. “I can’t possibly be a danger to you, so I’ll hardly take that as a favor.”
The mask of noble generosity vanishes from Lorenzo’s face, and my cock twitches as she displays her smarts.
“I’m purely human,” she adds, “with only one werewolf to protect me from an entire pack if things go nasty. What could I possibly do against you from a guest room in your palazzo?”
“Well,” Lorenzo says with a slimy smile, “that one werewolves protecting you is one of the deadliest men in the world.”
“You say it yourself—one. Do you honestly think he could take down your entire pack?” She motions around at the walls and shadows as if she knows what lurks behind them. She keeps that sassy smile on her face, which makes it hard as hell for me to look away from her.
Lorenzo motions with his hand for us to follow him deeper into the palazzo. He seems a raven with the black sleeves hanging off his forearms, wavy white fabric around his wrists.
“If you please.” He invites us
up the landing to our rooms.
His men follow into Janine’s, uninstalling the cameras. But I know Lorenzo too well, and I expect that he’ll try to keep at least one, so I check the room myself while he tries to distract Janine, showing her the magnificent view from her window to a lovers’ bridge under which gondolas float lazily.
“Oh, look, you missed one.” I turn around with the camera I found under the ornate frame of the vanity table mirror. Lorenzo whips around from the window where he was trying to keep Janine distracted.
“Maybe your men would like to check again, make sure they got them all?”
Hatred crosses Lorenzo’s face, which delights me. I will split this asshole’s jaw no matter what, so help me God.
My room is right next to Janine’s, and there’s even a door between them. Lorenzo locks it and pockets the key.
“Just to make sure you keep a real sense of privacy,” he tells Janine. “If your bodyguard wants to visit your chamber he will have to do it by knocking on the front door, on the landing, where there are cameras.”
“Fabulous,” she replies. “Now, if you don’t mind, the conference, the flights, it was all so tiresome. I’d love a bath and a few hours of rest.”
“Of course,” Lorenzo says. “I do however hope you’ll allow me to enjoy your presence at dinner. In about three hours.”
“Of course.” She gives him a tired smile.
Lorenzo’s werewolves show me to the chamber next to Janine’s. I take a quick shower, the whole time thinking of ways to break into Janine’s room without Lorenzo’s surveillance people and devices catching it. I spot and push the surveillance devices in my room just a little bit so that none of them catches the angle to the door between our rooms. I fashion a mock key from a piece of bed string, but I can’t try it yet. Could be that she’s still in the bathroom, or walking around that room naked. I close my eyes and channel the power of my six senses to scent and hearing, enhancing them.
She’s right there, behind this door, towel-drying her hair. Damn it, she’s naked. I breathe in her scent, my cock reacting. It’s beyond my control, my body wants her, craves her, needs her. I have to find release, maybe with another woman, and fast, before I do something stupid.
I force myself away from the door so that I can think. Janine’s scent is probably the only thing in the world that can make me lose control, and I can’t afford that, now less than ever. I sit on the windowsill, making plans of getting to the old secret outposts of my pack in Venice. Even though we haven’t been active in Italy for centuries, our people might still be here, leading a quiet life underground, and keeping a low profile. If they’re anything like back in the day, they must keep track of the Piovra’s moves.
There’s a hard nock on the door, and a guy with a thick voice announces dinner. I grab a pair of black denim pants and a black sweater, not caring much about Lorenzo’s dress code. The sweater is the loosest item of clothing I brought with me, but I guess I’m too large for anything to ever hang loose on my body, so the sweater is still tight on my arms, shoulders and chest.
The moment Janine and I meet on the landing, my heart stops. Lady in Red starts to play in my head. Damn, that song must have been written especially for her. Delicate and feminine in the red dress that hugs the shape of her body in all the right places, she wears it with elegance and style. Her shiny blonde hair that she usually wears in a bob is slicked back, making it look like she’s got short hair but, strangely, that only enhances her femininity and grace. It makes her heart-shaped face stand out, black eyeliner contouring her cobalt blue eyes. Damn, it lends those irises even more power of expression, they’re cutting right through me.
I look quickly away because I feel all sorts of things I shouldn’t feel. I clench my teeth, forcing myself to keep a cool head, but it’s so damn hard with her scent of ocean and woman reaching me.
She misinterprets my attitude, of course. She thinks I looked away because I’m not interested, but in truth I’m just hyperaware of her graceful presence beside me as we head to dinner, of the way her delicate muscles move under her white freckled skin. Damn, how I want to kiss those freckles, to put my large rough palms all over her body. I want to be with her like yesterday, giving her pleasure and taking pleasure from her in return.
“Ah, Janine.” Lorenzo stands the moment we enter the dining hall. The fucking idiot feels more attracted to her than he planned, I can tell. Just look at him, eating her alive with those deranged blue eyes.
I hold the chair for her before he gets to, the chair closest to the floor-to-ceiling windows. This dining salon overlooks the romantically lit palazzos across the canal. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s trying to woo her.
“Wow, Lorenzo, this whole scenery seems taken out of a historical romance,” Janine says, confirming that she’s thinking the same.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“Do you dine here every day, or only when you have guests?”
“It’s a luxury that I indulge myself in, I must admit,” he explains while he spreads the white napkin elegantly on his lap. “As reward for all the responsibility I carry for the entire pack and its business. I’m sure you know from the Wolf brothers what that implies. Or from your own family, you’re people who know business and responsibility.”
“I’ve been around the Wolf brothers less than you’d think,” she says as the man behind her pours her wine. “And I have been living only in the back offices of my hotels, my travels restricted to conferences and business. I rarely ever stopped to smell the flowers.”
“A good thing you’re doing it now.”
“We’re not here to smell the flowers, Lorenzo,” I intervene. “We’re here because you summoned Janine, interestingly enough on the very day I became her bodyguard.”
“A mere coincidence,” he says, avoiding my eyes to hide his hatred of me.
“Even if I believed that.” I grab a loaf of bread, only to keep my hands busy. I’m not going to eat it. I need meat, the meat of an enemy freshly torn from his bones. “It still doesn’t explain how Janine can help you defeat The Reaper.”
“Like I said, some things are better shown than told. But I can tell you this—It has to do with Janine’s one night stands.”
“Excuse me?” She cocks an eyebrow.
“Your secret escapades with strange men, Janine, that is what drew my attention to you in the first place.”
Janine stops breathing.
“Don’t worry now, it’s not like the entire world knows what you were doing,” Lorenzo continues as he starts to cut the meat on his plate. “I wouldn’t have found out if I hadn’t looked closely at your life either.”
He takes his time cutting the roast as we wait for him to continue, his people standing all around the dining salon holding their breath. I can hear Janine’s heart beat in her chest, and I smell her body chemistry—she wants to know, but she’s not sure she wants it out there, for all these people to hear, especially me.
Part of me doesn’t want to know about her sexual encounters with other men either, but the other part wants every detail, it craves to invade her privacy. I hunger to know which one she enjoyed most, if she fell for any of them, if there’s anyone she still thinks about when she’s doing herself. My fists clench on the table, by the side of my untouched plate.
“After I found out about Darkwood Falls,” Lorenzo begins, among bites and taking his sweet time, “I started to dig for more information. Information about the Fated Females of this incredible town. Turned out some of them managed to have a life outside of the town borders despite the serpents’ efforts to keep them in. The first escapades we found out about were yours, Janine, and those of Syria Skye—Princess’s mother—because you are the most prominent women of Darkwood Falls.” He angles his head to her. “You’re a successful business woman, speaking at conferences and meeting VIPs. But you were too smart to ever hook up with any of them, so you went for random guys in bars, often bikers that you hoped would forg
et about you as quickly as you forgot about them. Only they didn’t.”
Bikers. Big, muscular guys that probably pumped her on their Harleys in a way I can only dream of doing. I’m sure Lorenzo enjoys slapping me across the face with all this information, too. Fuck, I can’t let him see that it’s working.
“What you don’t know, Janine,” he continues, “What nobody actually knows, is that those hook-ups were not without consequences.” He signals to one of his men, who comes forth with a tablet that he places in Lorenzo’s outstretched hand. Lorenzo wipes his mouth with the napkin on his lap and turns on the device, revealing the first picture.
It’s men. But men that look sicker and sicker with every picture that he swipes over, as if they’d had contact with something radioactive.
“What the hell,” Janine whispers as Lorenzo swipes through the pictures.
“All these men have one thing in common, Janine—a one night stand with you, Janine.”
“I made them sick?” She places a hand on her chest as if to still her heart.
“Well, not exactly,” Lorenzo says, pushing the tablet over to me. I swipe through the pictures again, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. Damn it, I don’t want to see the men Janine fucked.
“In these pictures they look so sick you expect them to collapse any minute, it’s true,” Lorenzo goes on. “But even after all these years none of them died. More yet, they underwent multiple tests, and nothing seems to be wrong with them. Well, nothing aside from a slight change in their DNA.”
“Change?” Janine whispers.
“All that doctors know is that their DNA has been somehow altered, but they can’t tell how that came to affect them, making them look and feel sick even though they aren’t. They’re still monitoring these guys, in case something changes. And a couple of months ago something did change. May I?”
He holds out his hand for the tablet, but there’s no need to hand it over. I’ve already found it—the picture of a man with a split upper lip, as if his mouth were changing into the snout of a wolf.