Over and over he drew his hands along her skin, setting patches of it on fire with need. Spreading her flesh with fingers that were assured and deft, Emerson caught her breath, holding it and waiting for the ecstasy she knew his tongue would bring.
Lassiter didn’t dive into her the way most men had in her experience. He savored her, tasting her with light licks, stroking her with both tongue and lips. Dragging his finger along her slit to stop at her passage, he inserted a finger with a slow glide.
Her cunt wept and Lassiter groaned, licking the cream of her with a flat tongue, circling her clit, sucking it until she lifted herself on her heels to grind against him.
The sharp swirl of orgasm fluttered in her pussy and the last thrust of his finger had Emerson releasing Lassiter’s head and shoving a fist in her mouth to keep from screaming out. It rocked her, shaking her entire body, left her trembling as it assaulted her again and again. Her gut was in a knot, her nipples tight and hard against the now chilled breeze.
Lassiter stayed between her thighs, letting her relax, kissing her with a gentle mouth. Moving back up to her lips, he kissed her. His tongue driving into her mouth, spicy and tingled her own. Cupping his jaw with both hands, Emerson opened her mouth wide, absorbing the heat of his lips.
Reaching between them, Lassiter pushed at his jeans and Emerson’s hands followed right behind them to slip into his underwear and touch his cock.
He groaned into her mouth, a low, husky, growl when she rubbed the smooth tip of his shaft, playing over the head of it before grasping it and stroking its length.
He shoved his jeans down, kicking his sneakers off with them and straddled her narrow hips. Rising on her elbows, Emerson met his gaze, intense, dark and shadowed with lust. Still clad in his T-shirt, it fell over Lassiter’s lean hips carelessly. The sharp definition of his hips, cut and hard, made Emerson’s mouth water. She ran a hand over them, burrowing into the crisp hair just above his cock. Her fingers explored the ridges in his abdomen, kneading the flesh. Clutching his ass, she pulled him to her and lay back on the cold ground to let his cock hover over her mouth.
He ran a hand down the side of her cheek, caressing her jaw, cupping it, directing her to take him between her lips.
Scooting further down, Emerson rested her lips against his hard shaft, licking the flesh with tentative strokes. He was long, thick and so hot it seared her skin. His scent was musky, male. It smelled of sinful thoughts and carnal desires.
Swiping her tongue over the cap of smooth flesh made Lassiter buck. Cupping his balls, she licked him from stem to crown, at first with a flat, slow tongue, relishing the taste and texture of his skin, salty and hard. Her pace quickened, until she enveloped him between her lips, arching her neck to take all of him, letting his cock rest in her mouth before swirling her lips back up his length.
His hiss of satisfaction carried to her ears on the sharp wind, cool and thick with the smell of sex, desire, need.
Lassiter’s hands found her head and with hips pumping, he thrust into her mouth furiously. She let her saliva moisten the passes she took, tightening her lips around his cock to form an O. His balls drew closer to his body, full and heavy, and Emerson cupped them, rolling them between her fingers, skating over the sacs with light touches.
Lassiter growled, “Stop. Stop now, Em.” His demand was husky, ripping from his heaving chest and ending on a grunt.
Threading his hands into her hair, he pulled her close to his belly, obviously fighting for control. Palming her head, he dug his fingers into her scalp and took deep breaths.
Letting her go, he moved down her body, slipping between her legs and hauling her to him, enveloping her in arms that were like bands of steel.
Wrapping her legs around his waist, Emerson lifted her hips, allowing his thick cock to drag between her folds. Her heart raced with anticipation. It had been so long since they’d been together, and she found all of her reasoning crashing around her.
The swollen tip of his cock pressed against her. Lassiter was thickly girthed, not outrageously so but enough to make Emerson apprehensively expectant. It had been a long time since she’d mated with anyone and Lassiter sensed it.
“I’ll take it slow, Em,” he murmured, hot against her ear. “I want you enough to drive into you without reason, but I’d never hurt you. Relax against me, baby. Relax,” he coaxed.
Emerson took his gentle, husky cue and gathered a breath, focusing on the heaven that was his body, flush with hers. She let each plane of his body sink into hers, every ridge and silken muscle join with hers, and then Lassiter took his first stroke.
The thrust, a wet, sensual glide of flaming heat, took the breath from her and she clung to Lassiter’s shoulders, adjusting to the bulk of him.
His muscles were bunched with tension, but he held back until she shifted her hips and moaned, no longer able to contain the need. Holding her up to shield her from the cold ground, he took another deep plunge. Emerson moaned when her clit scraped against the crisp pubic hair at his belly. His thrusts brought their hips in sync, sealing them together. Sweat glued their hips, fusing them. Lassiter buried his face in her neck, his lips attaching to the smooth skin while he rolled against her, rocking them in a slow dance.
The weight of him, the sheer delicious pleasure of his skin against hers, was heady. Her nose flared with the scent of his sweat mingled with hers. Her cunt swallowed the length of him, inch by inch as he slid into her, convulsing around him until she thought she might cry out from the delirious pleasure.
Curling under him, she tightened her legs around his waist, mumbling incoherently when the fierce onslaught of orgasm touched the first nerve and set her on a path there was no turning back from. Emerson drove against him, pumping her hips upward, undulating with wild abandon, reaching to find the release that would end this burning climb to relief.
She felt the muscles in his back cord and bunch with tension, flexing against her own. Lassiter’s neck arched back, the strong column of it tense.
As a myriad of sensations flooded her, Lassiter clenched his teeth, threw his head back and howled, long, eerily, sharp and resonant. It sang in her ears, leaving behind the vibration so familiar when she ran with her pack mates.
Yet her focus was lost when she came too, digging her fingers into his back and gritting her teeth when the undeniable pleasure he created exploded. Her juices ran, mingling with the hot spasms of come his cock ejected, jerking within her.
She couldn’t hold onto him anymore, her arms ached and were weak from her release. Letting her arms fall away, she hung from his grip, trying to process what had just happened.
Lassiter panted for breath against her chest, keeping a tight hold on her.
When reality set in, Emerson realized her ass was numb from the hard ground beneath her and the cold was seeping into her bones.
She also realized they’d just boffed in the middle of a clearing, in the dead of night, buck, fricken’ naked for all to see.
Howling like two dogs in heat.
Jesus Christ in a mini skirt.
Wait, her brow furrowed. Howling… Lassiter had howled. That high pitched keening only werewolves were capable of.
She lifted her head, grabbing the top of his by the hair and yanking it upward, looking directly into his eyes. “Wanna explain?”
His eyebrow crooked upward. “Explain what?”
She narrowed her eyes. “How can I put this delicately? When you were gettin’ your rocks off, you howled. Stop right there,” she said to his open mouth. “I know you want to protest, but save it. I know a howl when I hear one.”
“It was good. I said so in the way of a moan. If you want to call it a howl, okay. I howled.”
Emerson let go of his head with a quick hand and pushed at his chest, scrambling out from under him and pulling down her shirt. She dragged her jeans on and shook her head. “I work with animals all the time, Lassiter. You howled, like a —like a —”
Sitting up he asked, “Lik
e a what, Em?”
Well, fuck. Now here was a dilemma if there ever was one. She was outright accusing him of being exactly what she was. A werewolf. But if she did that, if she spoke the words and he wasn’t a shifter, how the hell would she relate his howling to something that wasn’t supposed to even exist?
Or something like that.
For fuck’s sake. If he was a shifter, how did she miss that all those years ago? And how did she find out what he was without exposing the Adams too? How would she know the first thing about shifting if she wasn’t a shifter herself? How retarded would she seem if she came out, guns blazing, accusing him of being a werewolf? Humans didn’t like that sort of thing. They mostly didn’t believe in that sort of thing. But she damned well knew a howl during mating when she heard one and if she didn’t learn to stuff it, she’d out herself and the Adams pack.
Oh, the web of deceit she’d been ready to weave. Her big mouth, impulsive and always at the ready, would be the death of her.
“Forget it,” she dismissed her accusation, hoping he’d let it go. “I have to go. It’s cold and I need to get up early to finish this damned bunny hut.” She turned to leave, but Lassiter grabbed her arm and spun her around.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Em.”
“It doesn’t? You keep saying that, Lassiter, but I disagree. What else could it be like? Just because we rutted like pigs doesn’t change the fact that we’re still on opposite sides of the fence.” So there.
“But the fence dynamics change when we get in the same corral.”
“This isn’t going to happen again. No more sex, Lassiter. Not until we talk like adults.”
He pulled her up against him and smiled cockily. “You sure about that?”
“As sure as I am that your motives for being here aren’t what you’d like everyone to believe, and I intend to find out what they are. There was a time when I would have already known all of this because you would have told me, damn it,” she yelled in regret.
Kissing the top of her head, he let her go by dropping his hands to his sides.
“Knock yourself out, Em.”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“No, you’re right. You’ll rush headlong into something before thinking it through. Much like that mouth of yours, you’re impulsive. You always were.” His sardonic response was laced with a chuckle.
Yeah, yeah. Whatevah. “Look, meat murderer. This —” she pointed to the space between them, “— isn’t going to happen again. Got that?”
He winked at her, his face splitting into a grin that enhanced his dimples and made her knees weak. “Yeah, I gotcha.”
Placing her hands on her hips, she sneered. “Good. Now go away. Better yet, I’ll go away,” she yelled at him, sticking her neck out like a three-year-old and whirling around to stomp off toward the Adams house.
“Niiiiiight, Em,” he called from behind her.
Arghhhhhh! He was so smug, so self assured.
Crashing her way back to the Adams house, she pushed the door open and tiptoed into her bedroom, resolving to never get close enough to Lassiter again that they’d find themselves wound around each other like tangled yarn.
Nosexnosexnosexnosex.
Her hormones protested. But why? It was good. It was so good one might call it spectacular. How silly is it to deny yourself the small pleasures in life?
Lassiter was anything but small.
Emerson blushed. No more Lassiter and no more sex and no more thinking about his damned enticingly gift wrapped package.
No matter how lip lickingly hot he was.
And he had howled.
Yes indeed.
Emerson intended to find out just what that meant.
Chapter Six
“Em! Em, get up!”
Emerson popped an eye open to get a blurry glimpse of Hector standing over her, stroking his favorite bunny, Pinky. “What’s up, Hector?” she mumbled, pulling the covers around her and holding on to the cocoon of warmth she was in.
“You have to get dressed and come see! I can’t believe you did it, but you did. Thank you, Em. Pinky thanks you too.” Hector smiled and lifted Pinky’s paw to wave at her.
“How about you gimme a sec and let me brush my teeth and get dressed, and then I’ll come see. How’s that?”
“Okay, but hurry!” Hector scurried out of her room, his broad back a stark contrast to his child-like behavior. Hector was sweet and innocent and nearing thirty years old. Sometimes, even Emerson couldn’t believe he was a fully grown man. He was certainly as smart as one, but the maturity level he displayed was anything but manly.
Nonetheless, Emerson had found him irresistible when he’d come to ask for help from her animal rights group. His genuine concern, his knowledge about wildlife, coupled with his simple joy in living had given her all the reason she needed to support his cause.
And now, she needed to find out what had Hector so excited he’d come and woken her up. Dressed and washed up, she headed outside to find him waiting for her with a wide smile on his face.
He tugged her hand, enveloping her smaller one in his very large one. “Come with me. Oh, Em, you so rock!”
Oh, indeed, she had rocked. Or had rocks, stuck in her spine, that is. Her back was a bit tender from her overt display of uncontrollable lust in the middle of the wilds of Adams land, and as Hector dragged her back to the scene of the crime, she couldn’t help but flush with guilt.
She was feeling very ’ho-like this morning.
No more encounters of the sexual kind, Miss I Want A Piece of That, she reminded herself.
Her resolve this morning was stronger than ever.
And the view that assaulted her eyes as Hector pulled her toward the clearing where she and Lassiter had banged each other senseless made that resolve weaken.
“See, Em? I can’t believe you did it. After last night, when you were throwing stuff around and hacking up wood, I didn’t think you could do it. But you did! It’s really great, Em. Thank you. All of my bunnies thank you.”
Oh, my.
Well, there it was in all its glory.
A bunny hut to rival Trump Towers.
It really was quite a sight with its multi-level tiers and chicken wire sides. Lassiter. He’d done this and Emerson was baffled. What kind of a man, a man who willingly killed wildlife on a regular basis, built a bunny freakin’ hut?
Hector scooped her up in a hug. “Thank you, Em. I love it.”
Emerson rubbed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It — it wasn’t me, Hector. I sucked at trying to make the bunny hut. I mean, I cut things wrong and in general made a big mess of things. I didn’t do this.” I did, however, have an orgasm of cosmic proportions because of it.
His head cocked in confusion. “Then who did?”
Rolling her eyes, she had to give kudos where they were due. “I think it was Lassiter…”
“Woooow. He really digs you, Em,” Hector fairly squealed his delight.
“No, no he doesn’t. I think he digs you, Hector. Or at least, he was trying to help you. Definitely not me.” It was so much like the Lassiter of old to do something like this. She had no other explanation unless he’d done it for Hector.
Unless…
Unless he was going to take some ghoulish pleasure out of knocking the hut down when he trampled all over the rest of Adams land…
The fuck.
“Emmmmm.” Hector’s tone held a warning. “I see your wheels turning. Don’t do it, Em. It always gets you in trouble!”
Hector’s voice became a muffled haze, rather like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Her anger soared and her mouth began before she was even at his trailer door. “Lassiter! Get out here, you animal murderer! Destructor of all things sacred! I know what you’re up to and it isn’t going to wor —”
Hector slapped a hand over Emerson’s mouth with a clap. “Emerson Palmer, shut up!”
Her eyes opened wide with surprise while Hecto
r dragged her backwards, his arms like steel bands around her, leaving her immobile. “Mmmmm,” she protested against his big hand.
“I said shut up, Emerson. Sometimes a gift is just that. A gift. It doesn’t have to have any ulterior motive behind it. If Lassiter did this, and I can’t think of whom else might have, then fine. I’ll say thank you myself. You keep your big, out of control mouth shut. It might work when you’re fighting bad guys who kill little animals for profit, but it isn’t always necessary. You’re so ‘rage against the machine’ all the time, Em. Like everything is a big conspiracy or something. Chill out.” Hector let her go with a slight shove and put his finger to his lips. “Now, shhhhhhhhhh.”
Rage against the machine? The world had gone mad and forgotten to send her the memo. Who was this Hector, all reasonable and forgiving of a man who wanted to trash his home? “He’s trying to tear up the very land this hut is built on, Hector,” she protested yet again, albeit weakly — quietly.
“You know what, Em? I don’t know that I’m so sure of that anymore. I know you think he built this so he could take some sort of sick pleasure in tearing it down when he builds his condos, but I just don’t believe that anymore. I think he built it to impress you. I think it’s his olive branch to you.”
Yeah, and Emerson would bet he hoped the branch had thorns on it so he could stick it up her ass. “I doubt that, Hector.”
“You doubt everything, Emerson. You’re a real downer sometimes. I’m telling you, let this go for now and let’s see what happens. Keep your mouth shut and let me thank Lassiter. You can go think up new ways to convince yourself he’s evil.”
Emerson was speechless. Stunned. Rooted to the spot, watching Hector’s retreating back go off to thank the almighty Lassiter.
Her eyes narrowed. Lassiter was up to something and there was no time like the present to find out what it was. She wasn’t falling for this Lassiter has a heart crap. He might have had one once, but not anymore.
* * *
Emerson stood by the large maple tree, just beyond Lassiter’s trailer. Under the cover of night and the howl of the wind, Emerson was feeling safe. The position gave her a bird’s eye view of his back door. The sliding glass door where she watched him talk to his pet parakeet.
Wolfmates: Ruff & Ready Page 4