CHAPTER SEVEN
HIS MOUTH MOVED OVER MINE WITH HEATED ASSURANCE, AS IF IT WAS inevitable that my lips would soften and open. When they did just that under the pressure he exerted, he deepened the kiss, tasting the inner curves of my parted lips with the tip of his tongue before sweeping inside to claim that space. He made a series of slow in and out movements, gradually growing deeper and bolder.
He made a low, growling sound when I sent my tongue to twine and mate with his. His arms tightened around me, and I realized dimly that I was digging my fingers into his biceps. It didn’t seem to bother him.
The sound of the door opening and closing registered on some dim level but didn’t intrude until the couch dipped. I tried to break away, and David brought his hand up to cup my jaw and hold me in place while he finished kissing me with thorough attention that refused to be rushed to an unsatisfactory conclusion.
By the time he ended the kiss and released my mouth, I felt dazed and breathless. I turned to look at Zach, already knowing it was him, wondering how I looked to him with my face flushed and my lips swollen from kissing another man.
Zach’s brown eyes were darker than I remembered as they met mine, and unreadable. I met his gaze in silence, wondering if he found this little preview of things to come as uncomfortable as I did. He’d see me doing a lot more than kissing other men tomorrow night. And he’d be among them. My stomach tightened at the thought, even while my curiosity stirred. Before all the revelations, kissing Zach again would’ve been high on my list. Now everything had gotten complicated.
“Practicing for tomorrow?” Zach asked.
I shook my head. “Kind of the opposite. I just wanted something . . . human.” A small thing. A kiss, a touch, not driven by a biological state or a profound physiological transformation or desire for gain. Just a human yearning for contact.
“You wanted him to make you feel human.” Zach held my gaze and I felt something stir in the air, like an undercurrent. “Maybe I should show you what it feels like to embrace your beast.”
My heart thumped painfully in my chest. I remembered that frustrated urge to do something while David transformed. “What if I can’t?” I didn’t know how to be a wolf, how to shift, how to live with their rules.
“You can.” David sounded sure as he gathered me up and planted me in Zach’s lap. Talk about passing the buck. “Don’t fight it, or you’ll make it harder on yourself than it needs to be.”
Then he left, and I had to bite my lip to keep from asking him to stay. He has things to do besides babysit you, I told myself. And what kind of wimp did it make me if I wanted him to stay as a buffer between me and the pack alpha? So Zach wanted to demonstrate something. Was I really afraid to face the beast inside myself?
“You look like you’re bracing yourself for a dose of nasty medicine,” Zach murmured. He sounded amused rather than offended. He ignored the tension in my body as I held myself stiff and still while he wound his arms around me in a loose embrace. “You’ve kissed me before.”
“That was before.” Before I knew what he was. Before I knew what I was, and why he was interested in me. Before he told me what was in store for me. At the thought of finding myself helpless at the center of lusty male attention, every remnant of the warm, sensual response David had drawn from me evaporated.
“Before David.” There was a hard note in Zach’s voice that made me angry.
“No, you ass. Before you told me you planned to put me at the center of an orgy to determine who gets the honor of knotting me on a regular basis while running the pack.” To my horror my voice cracked and tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. I brushed them away and went on, “I don’t want a mate. I don’t want to be the door prize at your sex party. I don’t want to give up everybody I care about for fear I’ll do something to hurt them myself, or just manage to make them targets for pissed-off werepanthers and rogue werewolves. I don’t want—”
The litany of things I didn’t want got cut off when Zach laid a finger against my lips. “Shh.”
I fell silent, shaking with the rush of emotion I’d unbottled and had nowhere to put. Then his lips replaced his finger, and I had an outlet, after all.
At first, the angry mix of frustration and fear and feeling trapped boiled up, finding expression in the crush of flesh to flesh. Then slowly, subtly, it transformed into something no less fierce but tinted with the realization that there was at least one thing I did want, after all. And that curious want became a key Zach knew how to turn.
Desire. For something hot and wild and unknown. For something pent up and feral burning in my blood. For something unnamed and unknown just under the skin, hungry for contact and unassauged by the kiss that had grown openmouthed and deep. With every thrust of his tongue, Zach fed the awakening creature inside me. I felt the animal buried within come closer to the surface, straining to get closer to him.
I ran my hands over his chest, needing more. His shirt felt like silk, and the texture delighted my fingers while the warmth that was Zach lured me to discover the expanse of skin and muscle underneath. I fumbled with buttons, dimly aware that his hands were moving under my fleece, up the sides of my waist, and that was good but not enough.
A primal hunger rose from some deep inner reservoir. I poured it into the kiss as I pulled his shirt open, my fingers moving over the skin I’d bared in a plea and a demand.
Zach shifted to spill me from his lap onto the couch and moved over me, pressing me down into the cushions, his body a welcome weight. Still, I burned to be closer. Frustrated need thundered inside me. Too many barriers between us, too many clothes, and he was at the wrong damn angle. . . .
I froze, realizing where I’d gone and how quickly I’d gone there. I wanted him naked and inside me, and I didn’t even know him.
“What’s the matter? Afraid of the big, bad wolf?” Zach teased my lips with his, soft kisses that brushed and clung and ended only to start all over again.
“I’m not afraid of you.” I moved my mouth with his in a vain attempt to keep the addictive pressure of his lips on mine, and he laughed softly.
“No? It must be something else, then.” His hands tugged at my fleece shirt, sliding it up. I held my breath for a minute, wondering if he’d raise it until my breasts were exposed, and cursed myself for wearing a sports bra that morning instead of something lacy and sheer that would make his mouth water. “Maybe you’re afraid I’ll be lousy in bed.”
The teasing note in his voice made me want to kick him in his masculine self-confidence, except that would be self-defeating. I didn’t want to hinder his performance. Did I? “Who says I’ll ever want to find out if you’re good or not?”
That would have sounded more convincing if I wasn’t panting and shuddering under him, fighting the urge to claw his pants off.
“I plan to tempt you until you can’t resist finding out for yourself,” Zach said. He drew my shirt higher and teased the lower edge of my bra with a fingertip. “But right now I have a different objective.”
That did it. I was going to kick him. Then his finger slid under my bra and sent a wave of hot delight over my breast and I changed my mind. “Objective?” I managed to get the word out before I lost the power of speech.
“Mmm.” He slid his hands around behind me, lifted me up enough to undo the catch, and lowered me back down with my bra a defeated barrier. “I want to show you what you are, and that it’s nothing to be afraid of.”
If he had an objective, I decided, it was driving me over the edge of sanity. Why didn’t he strip my shirt off, tear my bra away, fill his hands with the flesh that ached to be touched?
But Zach seemed determined to move slow. One part of my brain acknowledged that as a good thing, given how uncharacteristically fast I wanted to go. And that sent a chill of trepidation down my spine. Was this what I wanted to be? A mindless creature of need, heedless of consequences?
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes.” Zach kissed me again, light, s
oft, slow, as if he had all the time in the world and was content to spend it doing nothing more. “You can trust the wolf in you, Chandra. You have sound instincts.”
“Then why didn’t my Spidey sense warn me about you?” I grumbled against his mouth.
“It did. You knew I was something to watch when I came into your store.” He kissed me again, harder this time. “You were planning ways to take me down if I tried anything.”
That surprised a rueful half laugh, half sigh from me. “No, I wasn’t. I figured you could take me, so I was planning my escape.”
“What does your Spidey sense say now?” Zach licked at the corner of my lip while he slid a hand up my rib cage, teasing me, tempting me.
“It says you won’t mean to hurt me,” I said, the unaccustomed mix of fear and desire making me more blunt than I intended. “But I think you will, anyway.”
“Harsh.” Zach drew back, sat up, and pulled my shirt over my head. He left the bra just covering me, but it was loose and open and we both knew how easily he could push that aside when he wanted what was underneath.
“I don’t think so.” I stared up at him, confused by the swirl of emotions he stirred. “I think your intentions are good, just not necessarily good for me.”
“You are what you are, Chandra.” Zach held my eyes while his hands moved up, under my bra, cupping and shaping my breasts with his palms. “I didn’t make you this way, but I plan to make you accept it. You can’t fight yourself, not when the change comes.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.” I narrowed my eyes at him, pissed that he was touching me so intimately, caressing my breasts and brushing his thumbs over my nipples as if he had the right to make me squirm and respond, when he had his own agenda and his own vision of where I fit in it.
“You think I want to talk about this now?” His eyes darkened almost to black and his hands on me turned hard, demanding. “You think I don’t just want to peel you out of your pants and get your naked body under mine?”
“Uh . . .” I wet my lower lip, suddenly afraid I was going to get what I’d asked for, and his gaze zeroed in on that little movement. Then his mouth was on mine again, devouring, ravaging, his tongue driving inside, hot and sweet with an edge of dark, sexual threat. He could take me if he wanted to, right here, right now, and I wouldn’t fight him.
But I wasn’t ready even if my body thought I was, and he knew it, and he eased back by degrees, gentling his hands and lips until he was just holding me intimately. I lay still except for the tremors of desire and alarm that ran through me, my breath coming in pants, my heartbeat so loud I thought it echoed in the room.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said finally into the silence. “I would have let you inside me, even though I don’t know you and don’t want a mate and don’t know if I could accept the consequences.”
“You know me better than you think.” Zach teased my nipples, a light, sure touch, pleasurable, undemanding. “You knew I wouldn’t take this further than you wanted me to.”
I shrugged, and the movement made his hands do distracting things to me. “Maybe not, but you’re still on top of me.”
“We can change that if it makes you uncomfortable.” He slid his hands away, a disappointment and a relief, levered himself up, and then pulled me back into his lap. I noticed he didn’t offer to put my shirt back on. Instead, he stripped my dangling bra all the way off, baring my breasts to his sight. And he took a good, long look while his hands explored my torso, stroking, touching.
I missed the weight of his body crushing into mine, and that alone meant we’d done the right thing by changing position. If he’d slid his hand into my pants instead of into my bra, he’d know exactly how much he affected me. Of course, he could probably tell anyway. I squirmed in discomfort at the thought. How did you hide anything from a werewolf? Heightened senses, acute observation, he could probably see the flush of arousal on my skin and smell it in the air.
“Stop that,” Zach murmured. “If you keep wiggling around on my lap, you may have to deal with the consequences. My control only goes so far.”
“Ah. Sorry.” I stilled, more concerned about causing him pain than causing him to lose control. “Nervous,” I added, by way of explanation.
“Nobody will interrupt.” Zach kissed my temple and nestled me closer, so that my skin touched his, his open shirt allowing the soft curves of my naked breasts to meet the hard, hot wall of his chest.
“That’s another thing.” I kissed the curve of his shoulder since it was within reach. “Are they all going to watch? Am I going to be a complete slut with all of you, spreading my legs for anybody who wants a turn? Maybe in the throes of heat I won’t care, but how am I going to live with myself the day after? How will any of you live with each other, knowing every other male has carnal knowledge of his mate?”
Zach cupped my chin and tilted it up until he could look into my face. “How can we make you understand? I want you. David wants you, too. We all do. We’re all pack, Chandra, all one. And you’re ours. We’re drawn to you because you belong to us, drawn to protect you and care for you, and yes, to pleasure you however you’ll allow it.”
“I’m betting I’m going to allow plenty,” I sighed. “Look at me already. You come in and I’m trading tonsils with David. Now I’m half-naked on your lap, and I wasn’t thinking about hurting David’s feelings when I was under you.”
He gave me a little squeeze. “Are you worried about jealousy? What you do when your wolf emerges for the first time isn’t a matter for judgment. The heat makes the transition easier. I won’t hold what you do with the others against you if you choose me afterward. It’s what you need and it’s only fair. We all want a chance to be the one you choose.”
Not all, I thought, remembering David’s words. He’d said he didn’t want to be the new wolf king, and I believed him. He had the lone-wolf vibe. A wife would cramp his style. So would taking on responsibility for the whole pack. “You sounded jealous earlier,” I pointed out.
“I’m not perfect.” Zach rubbed my back in slow up-and-down strokes that relaxed me despite the topic of conversation. “But it wasn’t you kissing David that got me. It was the way you pulled away from me. And that wasn’t about him at all, was it?”
“It’s not a foregone conclusion that I’ll pick you,” I muttered. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about something like that.”
“As long as you keep an open mind, that’s all any of us ask.”
How fair that sounded. How unfair it felt.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I HUDDLED IN ZACH’S LAP, WONDERING WHY I COULDN’T JUST LET GO and enjoy the moment.
What’s not to enjoy? You have your own harem, I told myself. It didn’t cheer me. For some reason I felt less like they were mine to play with and more like I was theirs to pass around.
I heaved an unhappy sigh. “Some girls would love this,” I told Zach.
“You might love it, too, if you’d stop being afraid of it.” Zach shifted me more sideways on his lap, tilting me back on the couch’s armrest.
The change in position arched my upper torso, making a display of my breasts. He seemed to enjoy the effect, content to study the picture I made without touching for a long pause. Which of course began a rising heat of anticipation that grew as the moment dragged out, until my skin felt tight and flushed and my nipples budded into aching points, as if begging for attention. “Maybe you love it a little,” Zach added, giving me a knowing look.
“This part doesn’t suck,” I mumbled. And then the word vibrated in my head, making me flash onto a fantasy of Zach’s mouth closed over my nipple, licking and sucking. Desire curled low in my belly. Bad choice of words. Or good, depending on how I wanted to look at it.
I shook my head to clear the haze of lust that was forming there and covered myself with my hands. “Can we take a time-out? I’m losing track of the conversation.”
“Time-out implies you want the clock to pick up agai
n later.” Zach gave me a very slow, sexy grin that made its way to his eyes and made them gleam with amber light.
“You like that idea?” I didn’t have to ask, but I did anyway. Although flirting with a werewolf I didn’t intend to sleep with yet probably meant the heat flaring between us had fried a few of my mental circuits.
“Yes. I’m not done with those. I’ve barely seen them.” He stared pointedly at my hands doing an inadequate job of hiding my breasts.
“We just met,” I pointed out. “You shouldn’t have seen them at all.”
“And yet, I’ve seen and touched.” He placed his hands over mine, touching my breasts again by proxy. “If that bothered you, I wonder why you were squirming under me and making those little moaning noises. None of which sounded like ‘no.’”
I blushed dark red, all the way down the way redheads do. I started searching around in vain for my shirt to hide both my breasts and the scarlet wave of embarrassment engulfing my skin. “Fine, I have no self-control. What happened to my shirt?”
“I took it off.” Zach’s lazy good humor irritated me, especially since it made him sound sexier.
I scrambled out of his lap and turned my back to him while I found my fleece pullover and slid into it. My nipples felt tight and puckered against the fabric, my breasts loose and accessible without my bra.
I turned back around and folded my arms over my chest. My eyes fixed on Zach, specifically the very attractive picture he made sitting with his legs slightly apart and his silk shirt open so it made a frame for his mouthwatering chest and abs. “Could you button up, please?”
“Am I distracting you?” He quirked a brow at me, clearly already sure of the answer. Fine, he could make me say it out loud, I didn’t care, but I needed him to cover up or my mouth was going to be too busy to talk and I doubted I’d hear anything he said over the hot blood roaring in my ears.
“Yes.” It came out a lot more emphatic than I meant it to. Zach started to refasten the buttons, but he didn’t rush. I gritted my teeth and waited until he was finished. “Thank you.”
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