“Oh?” Angela glanced over at him with renewed interest. “I thought Constance said he was a good guy.”
“Yeah, well, she always wants to see the best in people. The truth is, he’s left behind a string of broken hearts. He’s kind of a bad-boy type. Some say he’s reformed these days, but I don’t see it. I just don’t think there’s a woman out there who can tame him.” Jarrod shook his head dolefully. “I discussed it with Mary, and we both agree that I should fix you up with someone more reliable.”
“Hey. You are not the Alpha of me,” Angela said indignantly.
“So you won’t be dating Craig, I’m afraid,” Jarrod continued with a sigh.
“Watch me!” Angela stomped down the stairs and hurried across the field, towards where Craig was now doing pushups. Jarrod tried hard to smother his laughter behind his hand.
“Wow,” Mary said, shaking her head in reluctant admiration. “Well played, sir, well played indeed.”
“You can’t be Alpha without learning some finesse,” Jarrod said.
“I thought it was all brute force and making sure that people are afraid of you so they always follow your orders without question.”
“Nah. That’s my uncle’s style. It wasn’t how my parents did things, and it’s not how we will.”
Mary started. He’d just said we. As if she’d be ruling the pack by his side.
“Force is a last resort. I prefer to consider what motivates people and approach each situation individually.” He smiled at her smugly. “For instance, you’re motivated by concern for others, which is why I was able to win this dinner bet tonight.”
The grove he led her to was a ten minute walk from the house. In the center of a grassy clearing was a stone table, already set for two. There was a bottle of Chardonnay, two wine glasses, and platters of prime rib and mashed potatoes and a tray of desserts.
Mary described the events at the hospital as they ate.
“I’m very concerned,” she told him. “Something’s really wrong there. What was that whole deal with her saying they were being treated like criminals?”
He sighed. “Well, there have been a couple of incidents. One of them was a couple of months ago. In both cases, a woman claimed they’d returned a different baby to her. She insisted the baby wasn’t hers. We had the babies DNA tested – and the babies were definitely theirs.”
“Still. That combined with the way Petra was acting…”
He nodded. “I know. It’s just hard for me to tell if she’s trying to hide something or if she’s afraid of displeasing Earvin. She’s always been under his thumb. Earvin’s bullied a lot of people, and he expects every single order he gives to be obeyed immediately and without question. “
“How did the meeting go?”
He shrugged. “Earvin bitched and whined about me not bridenapping Regina and about what happened at the hospital. The council is split almost fifty-fifty, with slightly more in my favor. Ever since my uncle took over as Gamesmaster, we’ve won a lot of games and it’s brought an enormous amount of prestige to the pack. So that’s influenced some members to stand behind him no matter what he does. On the other hand, he’s a grade-A asshole, so a lot of people can’t wait until I’m Alpha and he’s off on the sidelines just handling the games. This evening, Earvin tried to pass an emergency motion to have you disqualified as my bride because of what happened at the hospital, claiming that you were a danger to the pack, but it failed sixty-forty.”
Jarrod had a slight frown as he poured himself another glass of wine.
“What is it?” Mary asked.
“In the past, my uncle has lobbied for the rule about disabilities to be changed so he’d have the option of challenging me for the position of Alpha. He was turned down. However, with our continued success in the Pack Games, he’s built up a lot of alliances in the Alpha Congress. He might almost have enough votes.”
When Jarrod saw the stricken look on her face, he shook his head. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. I could kick his ass in a fight. I’d rather talk about the wedding planning.”
She shrugged, chewing and swallowing a delicious, salty piece of prime rib.
“And why you actually believe I’d carry out a fake bridenapping,” he continued.
She set down her fork, tension tightening in her stomach. Might as well get this over with. “All right. When we dated, you’d never be seen with me in public. All my friends said they saw you dating other women. When you finally agreed to meet me for an actual dinner, you not only completely stood me up, I arrived to find all the jocks and cheerleaders sitting there waiting for me. Laughing at me.” Tears burned in her eyes.
“I… I’m sorry.” He looked shaken, and she could have sworn he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.
“That, coupled with the fact that you keep dating women right up until the point when people expect you to propose to them and backing out of it, makes me doubt that you can ever commit.”
“You’re the one I bridenapped,” he pointed out, his expression serious. “Those other women…there was enormous pressure on me to make a political alliance. You had moved away for school, and I tried to put you out of my mind. But I couldn’t. You were the only one for me. Always.”
If that were true, she thought impatiently, why wasn’t he offering her any explanation for his actions years ago?
She glanced at her watch.
“I should go,” she said, pushing her chair back.
He flashed her a winning smile. “But you haven’t sampled the mousse yet.” He plucked a goblet from a bucket of crushed ice and slid it across the table to her.
She looked down at the silver cup, beaded with little dew drops from the ice. The delicious chocolate mousse, mounded up in there like a heavenly cloud of sweetness… Bastard. Mousse was her kryptonite. How had he known that? He couldn’t know that about her. It must just be coincidence that every single dish he’d served her was her favorite.
She plunged the spoon into the mousse and brought the chocolate to her mouth. Heaven. Ever so faintly bitter, sweet, delicious, sliding over her tongue… She let out a moan of pleasure.
She looked at him. He was watching her intently.
“What?” she said.
“I never thought I’d be jealous of a dessert before. Right now I want to grab that mousse away from you and challenge it to a Death Challenge for making you moan like that.”
She clutched the mousse closer. “I’ll stab you with my dessert knife.”
“Well, I can promise you I’m going to make you moan louder than that mousse.”
She snorted with contempt. “I highly doubt it.” She dove back in, eating a little faster than she would have liked to.
She kept glancing at her watch. Two minutes. She shoved another bite in her mouth and savored it. As long as she could get about two hundred feet away from him in time, she would be fine.
“Christopher Marlowe,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“The author of one of your favorite poems.”
She was sitting under a moonlit sky, eating delicious chocolate with a duplicitous bastard of a werewolf who somehow knew who her favorite poets were. Why was doing the wrong thing always so tempting?
“How could you know that?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because you and I took the same English class in high school, and I paid attention.” It was true – she’d taken AP English, which had put her in the same class as him even though he was two years older than her.
Wait. She was under a moonlit sky. Moonrise.
Oh, crud.
And then it hit her.
Chapter Fourteen
The warm breeze seemed to rise and swirl around them, carrying with it the scent of flowers and the musky, manly smell she’d associated with Jarrod since her high school days – the days when he’d hurt and humiliated her so badly, she reminded herself.
But even as she tried to hold on to some scrap of self-preservation, her hea
rt kicked in her chest and a sweet thrill of lust ran down her spine, making her shudder and part her lips on a soft moan.
Her nipples furled into tight buds and pressed against the lace of her bra as Jarrod gave a low, feral growl. Moonlight gleamed on the honey-gold highlights in his hair and his eyes were dark pools of pupil that glowed silver under the mellow lunar light. He looked utterly wild as he crawled slowly towards her, slinking across the grass in smooth, powerful movements that made the muscles of his back bunch and flex beneath the cotton of his shirt. Mary had a sudden sense of how purely animal he was beneath the controlled, amiable veneer most people got to see, and she shivered with a combination of fear and lust that made her feel weak.
Instinct made her scramble backwards even as her core clenched and something deep inside yearned to throw herself into his arms and surrender to his animal magnetism. It’s the moonrise pheromones, she told herself desperately. You don’t really want him – you’re under a kind of a spell. But she didn’t really believe that. She wanted him desperately. She always had.
Her gaze dropped to the plump pink curves of his lips and she found herself hypnotized; held in place by the memory of their firm, sweet pressure against her mouth and the clever flicker of his tongue against her own.
As he moved towards her, Jarrod purred as if he were some great cat and not the big bad wolf she knew him to be.
Big bad wolf. He’s bad for you, Mary. He hurt you. But all thought was swept away as Jarrod pounced and tumbled her back into the grass, his big body pressing down on top of her and stealing her breath away with his nearness and the intoxicating swirl of his scent.
His mouth came down on hers in a crushing possessive kiss that was just as hot and addictive as she remembered. He tasted like the chocolate mousse – sweet and bitter and utterly moreish. He parted her thighs, none too gently, and settled himself between them, and as he licked and nipped her lower lip, she squirmed beneath him. She was conscious of the pressure of his erection against her core – long, thick and hot – and to her embarrassment she found herself whimpering with need as her pussy clenched, hard, and wetness flooded her panties.
Jarrod drew back, bracing himself above her on strong, muscular arms, and she found herself chasing his lips with her own before falling back in the grass, panting. Her face burned with a combination of embarrassment and heady excitement and she was grateful for the twilight that cloaked them. Even in the moonlight she could see the exotic high planes of Jarrod’s cheekbones and the locks of hair that fell rakishly into his eyes, but it was difficult to concentrate on how delicious he
looked when all her other senses were singing.
Her heart thudded in a thick, insistent rhythm she could feel in her full breasts and the slick flesh between her thighs. Jarrod’s unique, intoxicating scent surrounded her, and she knew it was not just the moonrise pheromones making her toes curl but the familiar, masculine musk of him that had never left her over the years, no matter how she’d tried to put him out of her mind and move on.
It was like a slap, or a dash of cold water, when Jarrod reached out and tore open her shirt, sending buttons flying and shredding the fragile fabric.
Mary gasped and crossed her arms over her body, conscious of the pale expanses of flesh so different from the figures favored by fashion-conscious socialites and the Alphas who pursued them for political alliances. Her arousal was replaced by the slow burn of self-conscious shame, and when Jarrod scowled, she tensed as though struck.
But when he took her wrists in his large, capable hands, his touch was gentle – almost tender.
He peeled her arms away from her body and looked down at her with heated, worshipful eyes.
“Never hide your beautiful body from me, Mary,” he commanded, his voice so husky with desire it was barely more than a growl. “You’re perfect. You’re mine.”
He reclaimed her mouth, running his hands over the soft flesh of her belly and up to cup the generous swells of her breasts, teasing her nipples with his thumbs, and Mary was lost.
Sensation swelled within her, dancing over her nerve endings and making her core clutch greedily, aching for the feeling of his hot, hard length thrusting inside her.
She kissed him back ravenously, moaning into his mouth as he massaged her breasts and rolled his hips, pressing his erection against her needy pussy through the fabric of her pants.
He pulled back, and she was bereft at the loss of his heat, the weight of his body pressing her down into the earth. She was aware of the scent of crushed grass beneath and around them, then all other thoughts fled her mind as Jarrod tore her clothes from her body, the fabric of her pants abrading her thighs as he pulled them down, her bra and panties ripped and discarded in the grass. As he flung away his shirt, she was left naked to the cool night air, a breeze blowing over the moist flesh of her exposed pussy and sending gooseflesh rippling over her skin.
Jarrod unbuttoned his fly and pushed his waistband down over his hips, allowing his cock to spring free from its confinement. He was huge – thick and rigid – with a pearly bead of precum glistening at the head as it caught the moonlight.
Mary thought she could smell the salty-sweet essence of his seed, and wondered if it was an effect of the moonlight pheromones or whether her senses were simply heightened by the unbearably sensual experience of being ravished by an Alpha werewolf who seemed as lust-drunk on her body as she was on his.
She caught her breath as he descended to nestle between her thighs once again, using one hand to work the slick tip of his cock against the moist petals of her pussy. Her clit throbbed and fluttered and she moaned as he pressed his head against her tight opening, thrusting gently but inexorably forward until he was barely inside her.
She moaned and arched up against him, wanting him farther inside her, but her grasped her hips, holding her firmly in place and teasing her with shallow, rapid strokes that soon had her climbing towards climax and thrashing her head against the grass.
Just as she thought she couldn’t bear it any longer, he thrust inside her in one sure stroke that had her crying out wildly, almost weeping with the force of her climax as he pounded into her and her pussy clutched greedily around his pistoning length.
His fingers on her hips were bruising, his hot length stretching her as he groaned and uttered guttural curses, beads of sweat dewing his back where her fingernails dug convulsively into his skin.
Too immediately, too intensely, she was soaring towards orgasm again, tremors running down the tendons of her thighs and pressure pooling in her abdomen like liquid silver.
Above her, his face painted in lines of pleasure-pain in the silvery moonlight, Jarrod trembled and shook as his own crisis overtook him, spilling his seed into her warmth and shouting hoarsely as they reached completion together.
It took long, languorous minutes for their breathing to slow and their heartrates to return to normal. Jarrod, so wild and possessive in his lovemaking, rolled onto his back and pulled her tenderly against his chest so she wouldn’t be lying in the fragrant but damp grass. He gently stroked her hair, murmuring sweet nothings and snatches of favorite verse to her, and she found herself drifting away into sleep, safe in his arms, spent and utterly content.
Chapter Fifteen
“You tricked me,” Mary groused as they walked towards the back door of the house.
“Only because you wanted to be tricked,” Jarrod said, looking way too pleased with himself. “So, about our moonlight dinner tonight…”
“Not a chance. I’m trying to salvage what little is left of my dignity here.” And her heart – although she suspected it might already be too late for that.
Jarrod had been every bit as much an amazing lover as she’d suspected all along. By turns he had been tender, forceful, hungry, passionate...and he’d made her feel amazing and beautiful. And he’d taken the time to find out what her favorite flowers were and plant them all around the house.
But she couldn’t forget how cruelly he’d
betrayed her the last time she’d trusted him – and the fact that he had no explanation for it and immediately changed the subject when she brought it up. And the fact that he’d gone through a string of other women and dumped them too. She hesitated at the back door, clutching the tattered remnants of her shirt around her.
“What if someone sees us?” she said nervously as they reached the back door. “My shirt’s all ripped.”
“We’re werewolves,” he pointed out. “We’re used to nudity.”
“I’m not used to nudity.”
He laughed as he held the door open, and she walked in quickly. There were servants sweeping the floors and dusting, but all they did was bow their heads politely as she and Jarrod walked through the room, heading for their suites.
“By the way, I was planning on lobster for dinner tonight, unless you object. 7 p.m.,” Jarrod said to Mary. Moonrise was at 7:50.
Lobster…dipped in butter sauce… Mary stifled a moan. Be strong, she told herself sternly. “I will be eating dinner alone tonight, or with Angela and Regina.. Until and unless you want to talk to me about what happened with us back in high school – and don’t try to change the subject again.”
“If you have dinner with me tonight, I’ll make Hilda forgive you for the bridenapping fiasco.”
“That’ll never happen,” Mary scoffed.
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you?” He bared big, white teeth in a huge smile.
“You won’t get me twice,” she said, at which he just laughed.
“You could shower with me before breakfast,” he suggested.
Before Mary could answer, she heard a voice calling out to her – a voice that made her cringe.
“Mary? Are you doing the walk of shame too? Respect!” Angela hurried towards them with Craig by her side. She was wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt with the Magister Pack insignia, which barely covered the essential bits. Her feet were bare and covered with grass clippings. Craig was wearing jeans but no shirt, and a sheepish but pleased expression.
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