Wild Hearts 2: Wild by Night

by Jodi Lynn Copeland

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Nate said too somberly for Duane’s liking.

  Nate had known about Duane’s desire for Candace since they were hormone-driven teenagers but what he didn’t seem to understand is that Duane cared for her as much as he wanted her. He knew her too well, her fears, her childhood secrets. Her most forbidden thoughts. He would never get her into bed by coercion. Smooth words, even dirty ones, possibly. Hypnotic suggestions and whispered thoughts, for sure. But never would he take her until she was good and ready to submit to both him and her own carefully concealed feelings about the two of them.

  “So what if he did?” Candy bit out, her glare once more focused on Nate. “I’m twenty-seven—in other words, a grown woman. As I’ve told both you and Joe a million times, I don’t need any overprotective brothers watching over me, getting in the way just when things are starting to get good.”

  “And you’re saying they’re starting to get good with us?” Duane asked, latching onto the unexpected words as hope cruised through his body as restless longing. Had his instincts been on before? Was she ready to talk, to own up to things?

  “I didn’t say that,” she retorted. Only, her thoughts weren’t falling in line.

  Telepathy was an ability he rarely used, hadn’t even fully gotten a handle on yet, but with Candace it was like second nature. Whenever she was worked up, the way she was quickly becoming now, her thoughts bulldozed straight into his head. Now they were making it clear just how much she’d believed things had been about to get good before Nate had interrupted them.

  “Maybe not, but are they?” he pressed.

  She looked at him for a long moment, her mind racing almost too fast for him to follow, then turned her attention on her brother. “Are you sure you don’t need any help? Anything? Anything at all?”

  “If you’re that desperate, there is something you can do,” Nate said. “I was going to have Dad help me with it later but there’s no reason it can’t be done now, when we’re waiting for everyone else to get here. I want to add another row of chairs behind the pews just in case we end up with a bigger turnout than what we’re expecting. They’re in the storage room down the hall on the left. The wiring’s messed up, so you won’t have much in the way of light but, so long as you leave the door open, it should be okay. Actually, the door sticks, so you’ll want to be sure to brace—”

  “I’ll be fine,” Candace cut him off in a rush then, before either of the men could say another word, headed for the hallway that adjoined the rear of the church.

  “I’m sure you will,” Nate uttered to her retreating back. He turned to Duane. “Do me a favor and go with her. There are at least three dozen chairs there and, knowing her, unless someone steps in, she’ll try to get them all at once.”

  Yeah, that sounded like Candy all right. Headstrong. Stubborn. Always thought she had to be outdoing herself. This also sounded like the Nate he used to know. The one who trusted him alone with his younger sister. True, their solitude would only stretch about twenty yards but that was more than enough distance to cause the kind of trouble Nate should fear. Not that Duane would, but it didn’t change the facts.

  He nodded. “You got it, man.”

  Duane moved out of the chapel’s main room and down the hall. Blistering curses singed the air as he approached the storage room. He grinned. Candy might have attended this church with her parents as a child but she wouldn’t make it here very long as an adult, that was for damned sure.

  Tucking back his smirk, because he knew if she saw it she’d throw a fit that was nowhere close to holy, he rounded the half-open door. His shoulder brushed against it as he passed and it closed behind him, flooding the area with darkness. His eyes adjusted quickly, night lenses extending to cover human lenses. He could see perfectly. Candy bent over, jerking at a chair that was stuck in a pile. The short denim skirt hitching up on her shapely thighs. The very edge of her pink panties peeking out from beneath. The pale flesh of her butt cheeks exposed on either side.

  She jerked upright suddenly and rounded on him. Her eyes glowed a golden yellow as if they were lit by the sun. “What the fuck did you just do?”

  “Your brother thought you might need a hand.”

  “The door, idiot. You closed the door!”

  “So.”

  “So, Nate said it sticks.” She pushed past him to the door and jerked on the handle. The door remained firmly shut and she swiveled back on him. He’d never told her he had night vision and obviously she hadn’t spent the last months reading up on werewolves to learn it for herself, so she did the one thing she never allowed herself to do around him. She let the panic she was feeling show on her face.

  Damn, he’d known he worried her but he’d never realized how badly. It should have been a given. He would have been scared shitless in the same situation, not this one but the one he’d put her in the last time they’d been alone in the dark together. That night things had gotten seriously out of control. It hadn’t been his fault. It had been mere weeks after the change and he’d had no idea the limits of his strength, of how rough and demanding he would become when he coupled with his intended mate.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her, hadn’t even known he had it in him to do so. He’d honest to god believed her cries toward the end of their lovemaking had been the same throaty moans from the beginning. He thought he’d been giving her the same pleasure she gave him. The blood and tears visible when he’d reached his climax and moved off from her, then tried to pull her back into his arms, made it clear she hadn’t been experiencing ecstasy at all. The way she scurried off the bed and shrank back in the corner of his room, sobs jerking her body as she hugged her knees to her chest, had made him feel like the worst kind of monster.

  That had been then and this was now. He had control of himself and he would never harm her again. He cared about her too much, the amazing woman she’d become and the headstrong little girl she’d once been. Somehow he had to convince her of that. To soothe her and make her understand what was to be.

  Duane reached to her face and idly stroked a thumb over the rise of her cheek. “Don’t be scared, Candy, sweetie. They know we’re in here. They’ll come for us soon.”

  She shuddered beneath his touch, her pupils dilating, and he cursed under his breath. He could control himself now but that didn’t mean he wanted to. Just the gentle heat of her breath and the feel of her soft, smooth flesh beneath his fingertips made him ache to move his hands lower, along the tender column of her throat, down to cup her lush breasts, then further still to fill with the sweetly rounded globes of her ass.

  His cock throbbed in response to the thought, the idea of tearing the pink panties away and plunging into her from behind. Of taking her the way every wolf before him had taken his mate. Of hearing her answering howls as he brought her to orgasm and filled her buttocks with his hot seed.

  Candace jerked from his touch and backed up against the door. “I’m not scared!”

  Loathing filled her eyes where before there had been fear. The fear he could abide by, the hatred he could deal with, the lying he couldn’t tolerate for an instant. Having spent the first fourteen years of his life shuffled from one set of foster parents to another, all of whom swore they would keep him around and yet never did, made him despise dishonesty above all else. Her lies now called up a temper he never used to possess.

  He advanced on her in a flash, pinning her tightly between the door and his body as he took her face in his hands. “Like hell you aren’t. You don’t have to be brave for me, Candy. You can give in, submit to your fears.” Submit to me.

  He didn’t voice those last words but conveyed them in thought as he allowed his hands to journey the course they itched to follow. His fingers chafed along her neck where her pulse thrummed chaotically and then moved down her shoulders to the insides of her arms. She sucked in a hard breath when his palms met with the outer swell of her breasts. Slowly, he worked his way inward, until his hands covered her brea
sts through her sweater.

  Her nipples beaded against his palms and the breath rushed from her mouth on a heated wave. “I want out of here, now!”

  “No, you don’t.” Moments ago, Duane had thought she was afraid and, in some ways, he recognized she still was. He also recognized her thoughts, how they conveyed her excitement and the equally appealing way her scent did the same. She was hot for him. Hot and wet. She needed him every bit as much as he needed her. In mind, heart. Body. “You want my mouth on you, my hands cupping your breasts, buried under your skirt, dipping into your soaked pussy. And it is soaked. I can smell your arousal, Candy. Sticky sweet. You want me, just as I want you. It won’t be rough like last time. It was all too new to me then; I had no idea what would happen. I couldn’t control it. I can now. I will. Let me show you. Let me make you mine, the way you’re supposed to be. You are mine, Candy. You have to know that. We’ve always belonged together.”

  The scent of her arousal heightened even as she attempted to move away from him. Clearly aware her efforts were futile, she stilled and narrowed her eyes. “I am not a goddamned possession. Yours or any man’s.”

  The words were spoken low, acidic, in a pitch that called to every fiber of his soul. She pushed at him, at his composure; she always had, and it made him want to push back. Made him want to lock his mouth on hers, thrust his tongue deep inside and demand she respond in kind. Instead, he kept his hold on her breasts firm and said calmly, “I’ll be yours too, just tell me the truth. Tell me you want me. That you always have. A single ‘yes’ is all it takes.”

  Her gaze narrowed further still, but it was her body’s response that mattered. The way she shifted against him, moved her legs just enough to have them straddling his thigh and brushing inches from his swollen shaft. She was trying to rub against him, to ease the need that burned deep in her womb and, even if the action was only instinctual, it was the opening Duane had been looking for.

  Rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her erect nipples through her sweater, he bent his knees slightly and leaned into her, rocked his groin against her mound. The subtle bite of his zipper against his cock registered but then was forgotten as he watched rapture take over Candace’s face and turn her cheeks pink and her eyes the same brilliant gold shade as her sweater.

  He moved one hand to her back, providing support as he rocked harder, pressing his cock against her cunt, silently demanding she give in. “Tell me you want me, Candy,” he ordered. “Say the words.”

  She bit down on her lower lip and shook her head. He waited for denial to follow that shake, to enter her thoughts and tumble from her lips but all that filled her mind was hunger and all that came out of her mouth was a desperate sounding, “Please…”

  It was a please he couldn’t resist even when he knew now wasn’t the time or place to give in to it. He pulled her flush to him, trapping her breasts between their bodies, and crushed his mouth against hers. He swept his tongue inside, brushed over the flat tops of her teeth, then dipped into her heat. She was still for an instant then her hands were on his shoulders, her nails digging into his flesh through his thin shirt, her tongue crashing against his with violent need. The blood surged to his cock and his need to possess, despite time and place, stole over him in pounding waves.

  He’d waited so long for this. Months. Years. Decades. And he couldn’t accept it. Because, regardless of the way she might be acting now, she wasn’t ready to take the next step, to submit to him and become all that he’d craved for so long. And even if she were, he would never take her here, in the storage room of a church with her family just down the hall. That didn’t mean he couldn’t give her pleasure.

  Duane relaxed his hold on her just enough to ease her back from his chest. He moved his hand between them and fisted the material of her skirt in his hand, then pushed past that barrier in search of her panties. She squeezed her legs together, halting his progress and making the first real sign of resistance.

  Still, it wasn’t real resistance. Not when her nails continued to bite into his flesh and her tongue to lap at his with urgent demand. She needed reassurance. A reminder of what it was she would get once she gave in to him. Of what they would both get.

  Moving his hand up the underside of her skirt, he met with the softness of her panties. His fingers slipped beneath the top edge of the cotton and dipped down to the treasure of heated curls below. He coaxed the stimulated flesh beneath the wet, wispy hair and she released a throaty cry that had one of his own tunneling up inside him.

  Duane pulled free of her mouth and pressed a wet kiss to her throat as his fingers continued to pet her damp curls. “You can feel it, can’t you? Feel the way we belong together. Feel that you are the only one for me, that we are meant to be. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it, Candy. Open your body to me, your mind!”

  “I don’t…want to…feel…this way,” she admitted on a jagged breath but then let the tension leak from her thighs. She parted her legs and opened to him and he moved his fingers lower to rim the lips of her pussy.

  He could smell her heat before, knew she was aroused but he hadn’t been able to tell the extent of how wet she was. She was dripping for him and that knowledge pulled at the wolf within him, made him ache to give in and satiate it, to take her hard and fast and completely until she was his in every way, shape and form. “You test me, Candy,” he growled, sliding his fingers along her drenched slit, slipping them in just far enough to fondle her inflamed clitoris. “You make me want to lose control.”

  “You will not lose control!” Candace’s nails left Duane’s shoulders and tension returned to her thighs. Once more she tried to clamp them together.

  He pushed into her sheath with two fingers and silenced her urge. She was right, he wouldn’t lose control but he also wouldn’t stop now that he’d begun, not until she found her satisfaction. “I won’t, but you will.”

  He added a third finger and circled her clit with his thumb, coaxing the nubbin until her breathing grew sporadic and she wriggled in his arms. She squeaked out a curse even as her eyes widened in a sensual haze. He worked his fingers in and out, in and out of her slick sex. Her breathing came faster, raggedly, and her hands returned to his shoulders, her nails nipping with painful pleasure into his skin.

  Her feminine muscles shuddered around his fingers, pulling at them, trying to bury them further inside. He quickened his pace, pressing harder against her cunt, fingering her clit with more insistent strokes. The contractions of her pussy pulsed forth and trembles sliced through her, shudders that had his own body standing on end with the need to unleash, to let go. The trembles grew and she swayed toward him, leaning against him as her legs went weak and her body began to give itself over to pleasure.

  “I won’t come for you!” she ground out.

  Chuckling, Duane took her mouth and teased her lips with nipping kisses as her sex contracted one last time and then leaked her juices onto his fingers in wet, hot, streaming waves. “You already are, sweetie. And you’ll do it again, many times.”

  While he hadn’t planned on those many times happening tonight, in this storage closet, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling his fingers from her still-spasming pussy and going down on his knees. He wouldn’t lose control, wouldn’t take her the way he yearned to do but he needed to taste her, to savor her hot essence on his tongue.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Candace rasped out.

  Gripping her thighs, he buried his nose in the sodden crotch of her panties and inhaled her sultry sweet scent. “Smelling you. Tasting you.” He pulled his nose back and gathered the wet material in his hand, gave it once fierce tug that had it falling to the ground unheeded. He brushed his coarse chin hair against her swollen pussy lips once, twice, and then buried his tongue deep into her dripping center.

  Candace bucked against his mouth and a low cry tore from her lips. A cry that was followed by a strangled gasp. She jerked from his touch too quickly for him to stop her and hurried the short distance t
o the other side of the closet, feeling her way around brooms, buckets and other obstacles as she went. Her back pressed against a stack of chairs, she stared at him wide-eyed, her face suffused with passion and yet something more. Something that looked like the fear she’d shown when they’d first been trapped in here. He followed the direction of her frantic look to his hands, to the claws that protruded from his fingertips. She couldn’t see them in the dark but that didn’t change the fact she had obviously felt them. It also didn’t change the fact he hadn’t been able to maintain control the way he’d all but promised he would do.

  Son of a bitch, he’d wanted to bring her closer to him, to show her he could be gentle, not scare her more than what she’d already been.

  “I want out,” she said in a quiet, uneven voice, then, when he didn’t immediately respond, added much more loudly and forcefully, “Now!”

  He couldn’t blame her for her alarm or her fury. And he also knew he wouldn’t get any farther with her tonight by keeping her here. She needed distance and he needed the same, before more of him shifted than just his nails.

  Duane stood and moved to the door and, calling on superhuman strength, forced it open. He stepped back into the darkness, giving her a wide berth and, at the same time, shielding himself from anyone who might be nearby. She moved past him in a flash, only looking back when he said, “We aren’t done here, Candy. Not by a long shot.”

  She narrowed her gaze and flared her nostrils. His cock throbbed with the action and his cells tingled with heat and need, signaling how close he was to shifting further. “Yes, we are,” she spat, “We’ve been done for a long time. A very long time,” and then turned back and hurried down the hall without a single chair in her possession.

  Chapter Two

  “Something the matter?”

  Was that Nate’s idea of a joke? Candace wondered as she came to a stop near the back row of church pews where her brother stood. She noted the rest of their family and Nate’s fiancée, Kelsey, and her friend Jan had arrived during her absence and were gathered near the front of the church. She then shot Nate a disgruntled look.