Puma

by Jorrie Spencer

“Um. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  Silence hummed back for a full ten seconds before he responded with, “Look, you can keep saying no, but I won’t go away. I like you, and I would like to take you out for pizza and get to know you better. Is that really such a bad thing?”

  Damn him for being logical at a time like this. “Cadon—”

  “One date, Brielle. One. Pizza. Public. Come on, you know you want to say yes. Please?”

  She did, and the sweetness of his “please” clinched the deal. “When?”

  “Well.” He hesitated. “Any night really. I didn’t get that far in the plan. Why don’t you pick one?”

  A soft laugh erupted from her throat.

  “Aw hell,” he said. “I’m lying. I wasn’t thinking about pizza.”

  “Pasta then?” she taunted with a grin.

  “No.”

  “Cookies?”

  “Nope.”

  “My dark chocolate ripple fudge you always buy?”

  “Mmm, but no.”

  Brielle frowned, positive she wasn’t going to like this train of thought, and shifted on the bed to get more comfortable. “What then?”

  “I was thinking about that kiss. Our first kiss.” Then Cadon muttered, “Dreaming of it, actually.”

  She blinked. “Oh.”

  “Yes. It woke me up, the dream.”

  “Oh.” Good one, Brie!

  “I miss you, Brielle.”

  Oh. Damn. Pudding, that’s what this man created with his voice. A body and will made of pudding. Bye-bye, shields. Bye-bye, body scrub and meditation. All that work down the drain for a single whisper.

  “Every morning I come into your store, and I get my coffee and my muffin. But all I really want to do is grab you, haul you across the counter, and kiss you like I did that night on the street. In the snow.”

  “Mhm” was all she managed to get out.

  “I don’t care if it was magic. I don’t care if it was wrong. I want it back. In fact, I’d do just about anything to taste you again.”

  Her eyes closed with a grimace. “You—”

  “Can you see it, Brielle? The night we kissed?”

  “Yes,” she answered, the word a mere wisp of sound from her parted lips. Desire hummed along her nerves, and Brielle felt too warm for the T-shirt she had chosen to sleep in. Not good. So not good.

  “My hands,” he continued, “they were tangled in your hair. You licked my lips until I let your tongue in to brush against mine. Damn, you tasted sweeter than any treat in your shop. Do you remember that, sugar? My kiss?”

  “Mm…mhm…” She nodded, eyes closed, and made a desperate attempt to stop her free hand from wandering beneath her T-shirt.

  “I wanted you, Brielle,” he admitted on a near growl. “Just as I’ve wanted you every night since. Just as I want you now.”

  The whimper slipped out before she could stop it. Her magic flared, bursting out from her skin. She held on to the image of his face, the faint layer of snow upon those thick chestnut lashes of his. Lashes that framed his gorgeous butterscotch-colored eyes.

  “Where are my hands right now, Brielle?”

  “B-Behind your head?” she stuttered.

  “Behind my head?” He chuckled, a soft velvet caress of laughter. “In a manner of speaking, yes, but not the one you are thinking of, love.”

  Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

  “Where are your hands, sweetling?” Cadon asked, his voice low and dark, teasing and suggesting something that caught Brielle’s breath in her throat. “I bet I can guess.”

  Like an arrow, shot straight and true, her gift crossed the distance of time and space, and wrapped against the shell of his personal shields. “Let me in,” Brielle whispered, no longer caring where her fingers walked.

  “What?”

  “Let me in,” she demanded, voice sultry and drumming with heat as it echoed in her head.

  She felt the first flutter in his natural shields and shoved her way through. Every person with magic who Brielle encountered had some level of shielding for their own protection. Cadon’s was thicker than she’d seen in a long time. Given the ease with which her magic affected him that first night, she was surprised to find him resistant tonight. Resistant, but not unbreakable.

  It was considered bad form to bust in on another like that. Had she not been so hot and bothered, she might have paused to question why he affected her so much after she’d just spent an hour trying to prevent this very thing. But right now, the thought tumbled from her mind on a groan. Her body slammed into his, mouth latching onto his ear as her fingers reached down and stroked the hard flesh he spoke of, dragging a rasping groan from them both.

  “What the hell is going on?” Cadon asked, the question a harsh pant in her ear.

  “You wanted playtime, angel. I’m sweetening the deal.”

  For longer than she can remember, Veronica has been wolf. Dreams give her a name and the image of a brother. Memory gives her nothing and no one.

  The Strength of the Wolf

  © 2007 Jorrie Spencer

  One late winter day, David Hardway saves a malnourished wolf from a trap and takes her in. During her time with David, the wolf finds in herself the desire to be human again.

  David loves the wolf he saved, but dislikes the strange woman who asks for his help. Still, he is incapable of turning away someone in need and, despite himself, David becomes intrigued. As Veronica strives to remember why she abandoned humanity for wolfdom, David becomes determined to save her from her violent past.

  But others are in danger and Veronica will have to act to protect her newfound pack.

  Warning: This title contains explicit sex.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Strength of the Wolf:

  She sat forward and he realized she was nude. “The knife scared me.”

  He reached for her scored side, touching the scars gently.

  “Why would he knife me?” she asked. “Because I wouldn’t sleep with him?”

  “Oh, babe, I don’t know.”

  She came forward then, wrapping her arms around his neck, and kissed him full on the mouth. He responded to the hum of her skin, the urgency underneath, and the kiss went long and deep. She broke off to pull his shirt over his head and explore his skin with her mouth, teeth and tongue. Her touch was expert, his body sang in reaction, and yet he could feel her speed up when he needed them to slow down. He touched her arms, the scars, the long, narrow spine that ran down her back.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured. A weight lifted off him as she became his total focus. He pulled her to him so he could kiss her mouth again, the intimacy entrancing him with her sweet taste and her eagerness. Joy even. They sat chest to chest, tongues entwined. One hand captured her lovely breast.

  He tried to keep her there at foreplay and touch, where she didn’t tense up with fear, but the pressure was building, and not just within her. Still, her pliant body could, he knew from past experience, stiffen to shatter. He wanted soft and slow, and he didn’t want their mutual need to break the spell they’d woven.

  She pushed against him, depriving him of her touch while she pulled his boxers down. As he shifted to help her, the seductive haze was broken by David’s memory of the other time they had gotten naked together, when they had moved too quickly.

  He caught her wrists in one hand.

  “What?” she demanded a little wildly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why so fast?”

  “This is fast?” Her bewilderment added tension to her body and he worked to ease it, skimming a hand over her side and back, lightly running a palm over the cleft of her buttocks to see if that calmed or unnerved her.

  She seemed to be at a loss for words. With her wrists still trapped, he leaned forward and kissed her, closed-mouth, tender. She began to pant.

  “Hey.” He released her and pulled her into a hug. She liked hugs and kisses. He knew that. May
be this was where they should begin and end. He hoped to manage that without too much frustration.

  She was shivering in his arms. “I want to make love with you,” she said through gritted teeth.

  A part of him was gratified by her intensity. But he needed the sex to finish well.

  She pushed at him. “David.”

  He rested a hand on the inside of her thigh and she looked down at it. His fingers brushed the fold between her thigh and pubis, stroking closer. She jumped when he touched her clit.

  “Yes,” she said, but faltering.

  “Okay, but let’s wait until you’re wet.” With some relief he understood kissing and hugging was not going to be enough for Veronica either.

  He kept his fingers there, circling the sensitive skin, coming back to her clit, and she gasped.

  “Should I stop?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He leaned her back and trailed kisses down her neck and breast until he caught her nipple between his teeth. She jumped again. He kissed the nipple in apology, then spoke. “No?”

  “Yes.” She was panting again, but not the tense, tight pants of earlier.

  He continued.

  “It’s just, David,” she began.

  He made an encouraging sound.

  “I’d forgotten,” she blurted.

  He stopped teasing the nipple but didn’t remove his fingers from her sex. She was softening under his touch, getting ready to ride his hand.

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “What did you forget?”

  “What this is like.”

  “Tell me,” he murmured.

  “The heat, spreading outwards, the, uh, feeling hazy good. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Maybe,” he teased.

  “I can’t explain. Especially right now.” She arched and moaned. An orgasm, perhaps, but not an intense one. Still, that was good, very good.

  She came back to him. “I’ve missed it.” She kissed him hungrily, some of her desperation coming back, but not out of control. He was more comfortable with her, too. He no longer feared he would lose her along the way. Her hands roamed his skin, exploring with less urgency and more wonder.

  She gripped his cock, one thumb circling the glans expertly and he almost said, You’ve done this before, then censored himself. There was open and there was too complicated for the moment.

  She broke away, smiling. “You’re wet, too.”

  “Uh, yeah.” With the pressure building again, he didn’t know how well he was going to control this wave.

  “I was worried you didn’t want me.”

  “That is not something you have to worry about.”

  He reached for a condom. As he ripped open the package, she stared down, biting her lip as he rolled it on.

  “I’d forgotten this, too.”

  “So I gathered. But you’ve remembered a few things,” he added appreciatively.

  She looked pleased.

  He caught her chin in his hand. “Are you ready?”

  She pushed him down and climbed on top. He hadn’t actually wanted the same position as last time, but perhaps she was most comfortable this way. At least he would be able to hold on past entry this time.

  She slid down his length and he groaned, no longer able to think about anything except this connection. Placing her feet on either side of his thighs, she settled into a crouch. She rode him, hard and fast, overwhelming everything but the rising need of his cock. Her hands pressed down on his chest and she breathed quickly, too quickly. He broke the enchantment by pulling her down to him so she lay on his chest.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He nibbled her earlobe. “You’re wonderful.”

  “Then why did you stop me?”

  “Just a coffee break.”

  She laughed, the note a little high. “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you like that?”

  “I like not thinking,” she admitted. She kissed his shoulder. “Is that bad? Did you like it?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “Oh good,” she said with clear relief. “I thought I’d had it wrong.”

  “No.” He was emphatic. “There are many rights. I thought I’d try another.”

  They kissed for quite some time. He moved beneath her, kissing her, one hand on the back of her nape so she couldn’t get away. The lovemaking was slow and languorous, exactly how he wanted it. An appreciation. Then the tension built and she pushed up again.

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