Wild Hearts 2: Wild by Night

by Jodi Lynn Copeland

  “Holy shit!” Her hips pumped against his mouth, pistoning her pussy against his tongue, making him take her harder and deeper yet. “That is so…so deep. I can feel you… Oh, God, it’s like you’re in my throat. I can feel you in my throat!”

  A laugh bubbled up at both the awe and artlessness of her words. He pushed it back. There would be plenty of opportunities for laughter through the years, right now her pleasure was tantamount.

  Stop thinking and let go, Candy. Just feel. Don’t question.

  “I don’t know if I ca…aan.” Her words died on a moan as he pulled back and drilled his tongue into her again.

  Duane glanced up at her face through the vee of her legs. Her cheeks were crimson and her eyes pinched shut, her tongue rimming her lips. If she needed speed and silent demand to make her stop thinking, then speed and silent demand he would provide. Gladly.

  He retracted his tongue and let loose her hips to part her sex with his fingers. He pulled back the hood covering her clit and rubbed his goatee along it in a slow, sensual caress and then fitted his mouth over the nub and suckled. She arched up again, her fingers diving back into his hair, her short nails scraping his scalp. He rasped the edge of a fang along the sensitized bundle of nerves and her pussy trembled as she screamed out, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Once more laughter bubbled up. One more he fought it back.

  You like it.

  “Yes, but what is it?”

  What it was wasn’t important, that she admitted to liking it was, because if she liked the feel of his fangs on her clit, then she would love it when it came time to make her his mate, his werewolf. His family. His cells tingled with the thought, his cock pulsated with the need to do so now.

  Soon. Very soon, he assured himself.

  For now there were other matters to see to. Matters he planned to enjoy to the utmost. Sliding his tongue past his teeth, Duane moved his fang back over her clit and this time when she arched, when she screamed, he drove his tongue deep inside the warm, wet walls of her cunt. He fucked her with his tongue while his fangs rubbed again and again over the distended nubbin of her pleasure.

  Candace thrashed beneath him, the bite of her nails letting up on his scalp as the tremors of her pussy grew. He applied more pressure, slamming his thick tongue into her the same way he would soon be doing with his cock and, with a shudder that shook her entire frame and a scream that had to be heard by the entire neighborhood, she came around him. Her muscles contracted, pulled at his tongue, struggling to take it deeper, to bury it inside her permanently. He drew back from that commanding grip and lapped at her cream for several lazy seconds, then he pounced up and over her, his hands on either side of her head, and drove his cock hard into her still-spasming cunt.

  Her eyes went wide, turned brilliant gold as they connected with his, and a breathy gasp escaped her swollen lips to be cut off when he filled her mouth with his tongue. She sucked at his tongue, licked at her cum that still lined it and lifted her hips to meet him, thrust for needy thrust. Feeding from her mouth, he pumped into her until the tremors returned, telling him just how close she was to falling over that edge again, and as the first cries of her orgasm mumbled against his lips, he gave into his own climax.

  This first time Duane had allowed it to happen fast, because he knew that was what she’d wanted, and also because his body ached to get to the next time. To that time when he would first make her his mate in body and then in form. To that time he’d dreamed of for years. To that time that was now upon them.

  Candace’s breathing began to return to normal and she pushed at his chest, as if she thought they were done, that he should roll off and away from her. They weren’t done. Not even close. He reared back and thrust into her again to prove it.

  Her eyes went wide. “No way. You’re still… But I felt you—”

  “And I felt you.” He grinned. “I will again. Soon. We both will.” Only this time it would be the way she’d wanted before. The way he craved.

  He kissed her softly, slowly and then moved down to expose her breasts. He pushed her T-shirt up and the pale, heavy globes sprang forth. The scars from the first time they’d been together, when he’d been drugged by her taste, her scent, her blood, and had bitten her too hard and in far too many places, caused him a moment of hesitation. Then he remembered those scars would soon be nothing more than a memory and that it was Candace herself who had asked for this, for him to cut loose and let the wolf emerge. To make her his mate in every way.

  Duane tweaked a hard nipple, enjoying her answering squeak, and then bent his head to lavish her breasts with hot, wet kisses. She stiffened beneath him when his teeth scraped over a nipple, then relaxed again when he moved on without so much as a teasing nip. Returning to plying her breast with damp kisses, he rubbed his thumb over her other nipple until he could feel its sensitivity and then moved that hand to the place where they were connected. Her pussy still dripped with wetness and he coated his fingers in her cream and slid one into the seam of her ass.

  On a gasp, Candace wrenched forward. Her eyes flared wide. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Duane slipped a second finger inside her buttocks, readying her, testing her for when he would fill her with his cock. He fondled the interior walls of her ass and she reared against his fingers, her wetness growing, this time from her own anticipation. “What you wanted,” he said thickly. “What you asked me to do.”

  She shook her head even as she reared back again, her dampness continuing to grow. “I never asked for this.”

  Maybe not in precise terms, but she still wanted it and he wouldn’t stop until he gave her all that she desired.

  He pulled his fingers and shaft free and, gripping her around the waist, turned her over and placed her onto her belly. The air rushed from her mouth on a squeak. Aware that squeak would soon be turning to a sigh of pure rapture, he rimmed the seam of her buttocks with his cock, then slipped the lubricated head inside.

  Candace tensed beneath him, pushed up with her hands against the mattress and shook her head. “I don’t want this, Duane. I don’t.”

  Yes, she did. He knew it. She knew it as well. She’d even said so. Said she wanted the wolf to come out, to take her, to finally make her his and this is how that happened. “Yes, you do, Candy. Just relax, sweetie. Relax and let it happen.”

  Splaying a hand at her belly, Duane eased inside her buttocks. Her sphincter muscles tightened around his shaft and he paused, reached a hand down and captured her clit between his thumb and forefinger, pulled at the aroused bundle.

  She bucked against him on a moan that quickly turned to a broken shout. “Stop it! Goddammit, stop…please… I don’t want this.”

  “You said you did,” Duane snarled, hating the sound of her fear, the way it twisted his gut, and hating even more that she could claim to be strong, to trust him not to hurt her, only to prove she wasn’t strong and she didn’t trust him at all. It made him want to push into her all the way, to take her hard and deep, to sink his fangs into her neck and not care if she screamed in pain the entire time.

  That last thought was too much. It wasn’t him that wanted those things, to punish her for not believing in him; it was the beast within. Before that beast threatened to overtake him and hurt Candy in the process, he moved off her, to the side of the bed, and stood. She rolled onto her side and faced away from him.

  The twisting in Duane’s gut turned to a bitter knot. She feared him so much she couldn’t even look at him now. But no, she didn’t fear him. She couldn’t, not having experienced what he just had, having tasted the passion and longing in her kiss. And most of all because he didn’t sense it. She was giving off something, possibly even something close to fear, but not the real emotion.

  Whatever it was that she felt, he didn’t want to make it worse and yet he couldn’t stop himself from biting out, “Damn it, Candace, you told me you wanted the wolf to emerge. You fucking asked me to succumb!”

  “I didn
’t mean like that.”

  The words were spoken low, shakily, so much unlike his Candace. His Candace was all attitude, stubbornness, spoke her mind loudly and frankly. She would never cower in a moment like this.

  What would it take to get his Candace to come out? More questions, more pressing her for action? “That is how it has to happen, Candy. That is how you become mine.”

  Her shoulders shook and a sniff reached him. “Then I don’t want to be yours. I don’t even care about you.”

  He almost laughed. Others had tried to do this to him too, treat him so tenderly, so lovingly, to go so far as to actually admit they cared about him, only to change their minds. Those others he might have believed when they said they didn’t care any longer, but he would never believe Candy. Not when she’d spent the night seeing to his welfare and foregoing sleep in the meanwhile. Sure as hell not when she’d cried over him, let alone given in to him for sex of any kind. “You do care, Candy. That is one thing you can’t lie to me about.”

  “Fine. I care but not enough to let you do that to me.”

  “Do that? That is nothing. I told you that you would enjoy it if you relaxed, if you trusted me enough to give me a chance to show you. If you won’t even relax for that, then what will you do when I change you?”

  The shaking of her shoulders came to a halt. She rolled onto her back and looked at him through murky eyes. “What do you mean, change me?”

  “When I make you my mate forever. My wolf.”

  “Your wolf…”

  Candace sat and shook her head. No. No way could he mean that. She hadn’t even been prepared to have him take her from behind, she could never accept becoming a werewolf. The former had taken her aback, left her disturbed, distressed. The latter had rage born of fear shooting to life deep within her soul.

  She narrowed her eyes, flared her nostrils. “There is no way in hell I’m becoming a werewolf. It’s bad enough that you are, that I can feel something for you knowing that you are. I can’t become one myself. I won’t!”

  Duane’s eyes glowed, fangs showed just past his curled upper lip. “You will do it. You will become my mate and you will enjoy it. You will because you know we belong together, that we’re family. You must submit to me.”

  Never. Not at the price he demanded of her. She cared for him, had wanted to be with him for years, but it was just too much. “The only thing I must do is kick your ass out of this house.”

  “I’m not going any goddam—”

  “Candace?”

  They both turned toward the partially opened bedroom windows, to the shout that drifted past the billowing curtains, followed by loud knocking. It was Andy’s voice and, if his agitated tone were to be believed, then he’d been out there for a while. A glance at the alarm clock told her why. They had a date tonight. A date that should have begun ten minutes ago.

  “Shit.” Candace moved off the bed and jerked her robe from its hanger near the door. Andy’s shout came again and she growled in the back of her throat.

  Why hadn’t Carrie answered the door? Come to think of it, why hadn’t her sister checked on her even once today? Candace never left her door closed during the day and she certainly never spent it sleeping unless she was deathly ill. Then there was the matter of the shouting, not to mention the elated screams and squeaking bed. Carrie had to have heard it all. Unless she wasn’t home. Had she even been home last night when Andy had dropped off Candace? Carrie’s bedroom door had been closed but she’d never actually heard her sister inside the room.

  “Maybe she decided at least one of you deserves to be happy and ran off to be with her lover.”

  And maybe he should just stay the hell out of her head, Candace thought with a cutting glance at Duane. “Right, Carrie with a lover. I don’t think so.”

  “You sure as hell thought so last night when it was me she was with.”

  “I don’t want to think about last night.” Or this morning, or any time in the last twenty-four hours. God, how was it possible for things to go from perfect to perfectly miserable in such a short amount of time?

  She had to get rid of Andy, then somehow convince Duane to leave as well. She needed distance. Time to think, to sort out all the thoughts and feelings jumbled together in her head. She reached for the doorknob, twisted.

  “What’s the matter, Prince Andy turn out to be a toad?”

  Candace closed her eyes and blew out a hard breath at the resentfulness clear in Duane’s words. She felt guilty over it, like she owed him an explanation. Like she should tell him the truth, that Andy hadn’t done anything for her one way or the other. Only she couldn’t tell him the truth, because he would think she wanted him around. And she didn’t. At least, not right now.

  Andy’s pounding came once more and Candy knew what she had to do. Use the man’s presence as her ticket out of this house and away from Duane. “Andy was wonderful. Too much so to keep him waiting another second.”

  Before Duane could respond, she stepped out the door and closed it tightly behind her. Praying he wouldn’t follow, she went to the living room and opened the door far enough so that Andy could see her face and little more. Candace had been prepared to voice an apology, to explain she wasn’t quite ready and would meet him at the restaurant in twenty minutes. The sight of him stilled the words in her throat.

  His face was cut in several places and a dark purplish-black bruise ringed his left eye. She should have felt sympathy for him and whatever had happened since he’d last seen her. Instead, Candace thought of Duane, of the way he’d looked when he’d come to her last night. How afraid she’d been of losing him. She’d thought he would die. That she’d never get to admit that she cared. That she’d never get to tell him she wasn’t half as afraid of him as what she let on, that most of her anxiety was due to her own overactive imagination and too-damned-lifelike dreams.

  Was it that same anxiety that ate at her now? She certainly wasn’t afraid of Duane and the things he wanted of her because she’d experienced them in the past. She had no idea what it would be like to have him take her from behind any more than she did to be a werewolf. Maybe she would even like it, them. Maybe even if she didn’t like them, it would be worth enduring to be with him, to be his lover, his family.

  “She’s busy.”

  Candace’s thoughts evaporated at the sound of Duane’s sharp tone coming from just behind her. His arm wrapped possessively around her middle, pulling her back into the house and against his hard and very naked chest, while he opened the door the rest of the way with his other hand. Andy looked from her to Duane and back again and his gaze turned shrewd and knowing.

  So much for using him as an excuse to get out of here. She pried Duane’s arm from her waist and swiveled to glare at him. “I don’t need your help.”

  His lips curved in a predatory smile. “In that case maybe I should just go back to bed and wait for you.” Before she could get out so much as a gasp in response, Duane nodded at Andy’s face. “Rough morning?”

  “Late night walk gone wrong.”

  Duane’s smile slipped away and his gaze narrowed on the other man. “Shouldn’t go up in the mountains at night. Dangerous place.”

  Candy frowned at the odd remark. “What makes you think he was up in the mountains last night?”

  “Those marks on his face are from an animal, a canine one, so unless he got into it with a damned big dog, I’m guessing he came across a wolf. The only place I’ve ever seen wolves in this area is up in the mountains.”

  Her stomach rumbled with the words, with the accusation that seemed to fill them. The guilty look that flashed through Andy’s eyes made the rumbling all the worse.

  The look passed and Andy said, “Part right, anyway; it was a canine, a damned big one. I stopped to pet an Akita only to figure out she wasn’t feeling any too friendly.”

  Duane chuckled, the sound low and mocking. “Bullshit, you did.”

  Andy’s gaze narrowed. Temper flared in his eyes and turned t
heir blue-green shade stormy. There was something happening between the two men, something Candy couldn’t name and yet she could feel it, stifling the air around them.

  Not about to let it happen, whatever “it” was, she snarled at Duane, “Leave.”

  “I was just about to,” Andy said.

  Candace looked back at Andy. “I was talking about him, not you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You two obviously have things to work out. I’m not sticking around to hear them.”

  Andy turned and headed for his truck. Candy closed the door and swiveled around. She fisted her hands at her hips and glared but it was Duane who spoke first. “You don’t want him, Candy.”

  “You don’t know what the hell I want.” And frankly neither did she, outside of time away from him. She strode toward her bedroom, intent on slamming the door in his face and locking herself safely inside.

  “Yes, I do. I know you don’t want Andy, because he’s just like me, but worse.”

  The sobriety of Duane’s proclamation stopped her mad stride. She spun back to find his eyes held the same serious note his voice had. “What is that supposed to mean? He’s ‘like you’?”

  “He’s a panther and, if the idea of mating with and becoming a wolf scares you, you don’t even want to think about what it would mean to be with him.”

  He’s…a…panther…

  Candace huffed out a breath and closed her eyes, not wanting to believe it. The flash of fangs in candlelight sprang to mind, followed by the guilty look in Andy’s eyes both last night at dinner and this evening at her door. Shit. The man was a panther. And, like the idiot she was, she’d all but thrown herself into his lap in the hopes of forgetting another just like him or close enough to it for her piece of mind.

  The accusation in Duane’s words when he called Andy a liar returned to her and she realized what he’d meant. “You think he’s the one who attacked you?”

  Duane nodded. “I don’t think, I know. I followed him last night after he left your place. He went up into the mountains and his truck disappeared. Next thing I knew, a panther was on me. Those marks on Andy’s face aren’t from any dog, they’re from me.”