by Alison Paige
The crowd cheered around the group of us who were naked and ready for the hunt. More than three hundred wolves running through the woods after a lone deer just isn’t practical. So each pack chose their best five, which typically equated with the top five ranking members.
There were only four of us from my pack: me, Mom, and my cousins, Glenna and Oliver. Glenna was my blood cousin; Oliver was her mate. A fluke of members being injured, pregnant or underage coincided to make us short one. We weren’t the only pack participating in the hunt with fewer hunters though.
Plus, we were good. Real good.
“You still pissed at me?”
I turned from Councilman Lynwood’s speech about how an alpha member of each pack had scented the deer that morning before they’d set it loose and said, “Anthony.”
“Wanted to stop by and wish you luck tonight,” he said, hands stuffed aw-shucks style in the front pockets of his jeans. His gaze traveled down my body and left a trail of heat in its wake. My breath shuddered but I covered with a deeper breath, waiting for his eyes to come back to mine. Nudity wasn’t normally an issue with werewolves, unless you wanted to have sex with the person and then we’re men and women like everyone else.
“Thanks. Putting my name on the Gathering cup this year’s gonna be sweet,” I said, skillfully hiding the quiver in my voice.
Damn, those jeans hugged his muscled legs like indigo skin. Then again the tight T-shirt didn’t leave much to the imagination either. And I had an excellent imagination. My belly fluttered, thoughts of shredding the black fabric off those hard pecs flashing through my brain.
“Oh, right. The alpha of the pack to take down the deer gets the honor. You’d be the first woman.” His smile dimpled his cheeks. If I didn’t know better I’d think he actually looked…proud.
“That’s the plan.” I swallowed, tasting his sweet-hay-and-all-male scent on the back of my tongue. The flavor sparked so many memories: my lips on his skin, his arms around me, his body deep inside mine. “You going out with your dad’s pack?”
He shook his head then looked away, brows tight. “No. I, uh, I won’t hunt with a pack I can’t respect. I’m not a Purist and my dad can’t accept it. So…”
Hope clogged my throat, made my stomach churn and flooded my sex with liquid heat. “That right?” I kept it cool.
He looked me in the eye, his voice smooth, sincere. “I told you that already. I’m not a Purist. Never have been. Last night, Mattie, that was me being crazy-out-of-my-mind in love with you. Nothing else. I didn’t mean to hurt you and I sure as hell wouldn’t have forced you. I swear it.”
It was my turn to look away, to hide the blush I felt warm my face. “So you really cut bounds with your dad and his pack? You’re a loner now?”
I glanced back and caught his nod. “Yep. Not all it’s cracked up to be, though.”
My smile flashed on reflex. “That right?”
“Yeah.” He hiked his shoulders, hands still in his pockets. “Think I could hook up with you guys tonight?”
Muscles across my back tensed. “Why not just take my pack, if that’s what you want? You could force me. If you’re not a Purist you’ve got nothing to loose.” Except my respect.
“Yeah, I could force your pack to follow me. I could force you to be my mate.” He closed the distance between us, cupped my face. “But I’m asking. The decision is yours. Can I join your pack, Mattie? Will you have me?”
My stomach flopped and fluttered. It felt like I was riding a roller coaster. “You can’t just join another pack. You—you have to be born in or mate in.”
His hands slipped to the tops of my arms, fingers squeezing, pulling me close so my naked breasts brushed his chest. “Think you could help me out with that?”
Tingles raced over my skin, from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet, anticipation, hope, and blind lust making me light-headed. God, it was such a risk. What if he was lying? If I just had some kind of proof, some way to know for sure.
“You can run with us, but I’m lead. If you take down the deer it’s yours. I—I mean—the pack won’t want the credit.”
His gaze stayed fixed on my mouth, watching me speak, his lids low, making those sultry violet eyes all the more sexy. Damn. “Got it. So I’ll follow. Act as your fifth.”
“You’d follow me in a hunt? A woman?”
“I’d follow you anywhere, Mattie. Because you’re a woman, the woman I love.”
Someone sighed. “Aww….” It was my mom.
I led my pack to win the hunt, but not alone. In wolf form, under the strange power of a dark full moon, instinct took over and everything snapped into place. Like the teeth on a gear, Anthony and I, the members of my pack, all meshed together, worked as one. Like it was meant to be.
But the evening wasn’t over. I had a decision to make. After all, no matter how much I wished it, a woman couldn’t hold a pack on her own. Funny thing. I didn’t really want to hold it on my own anymore.
We weren’t the only ones to take a dip in the lake after the hunt. Anthony and I had swum out near a small island for privacy. He pulled me to him, coaxing my legs around his waist under the water, kissing my neck. His hot breath sent a shiver down my spine, a delicious contrast to the cool water hugging my body, lapping at my breasts.
His muscles tensed, his cock a hard line pressing against my ass, he rocked his hips to stroke himself against me. “I’m going out of my head here, Mattie. The Gathering’s almost over. I want you. I want you now, and forever. Tell me I’m the one or put me out of my misery.”
I turned my lips to his ear. “I want you…inside me.”
Anthony’s whole body shuddered around me as though my words had touch and weight. A blast of his exhaled breath bathed my neck and back. His arms tightened and he shifted, lifting me so his cock pressed against the sensitive lips of my sex. I floated down, my pussy opening over him, taking the thick round head of his cock inside my body.
My chest tightened, trapping my breath. Sex muscles fluttered, pulsed, tried to pull him deeper. I caught my bottom lip between my teeth to muffle a moan.
“I can’t refuse you,” he said, his hands slipping down to my ass, squeezing. “But is this all you want from me?”
His hands pressed as he rocked into me, driving his thick shaft through the tightness of my pussy. I cried out from the suddenness of it, from the thrust of sensation that exploded through me.
Yes. I wanted this, him, his body, his soul. I wanted Anthony as my mate. I knew it then; I’d known it since he’d asked to join us on the hunt. But I’d worried for so long, I’d allowed my fear to wall up my heart, to become a solid obstacle inside me. It weighed down on me, trapped the words in my throat like debris in a stream. I couldn’t break through. I couldn’t let go.
“Just…just fuck me.” My voice came soft, breathy. I clung to him, my arms wrapped around his neck, my heart racing, need screaming through me to move, to ride him, to feel him slipping in and out of me.
“Damn it, Mattie, you’re pushing me to the ragged edge,” he said, his jaw clenching as he pulled out then rammed his cock deep.
The force of his thrust shook through my body, electric sparks flashing behind my eyes. Water splashed around us wetting my shoulders, my face, sending waves rippling out in a fast growing circle. Again and again his body stroked inside me, fit me perfectly, filled me up. Sweet friction sizzled along my skin, hummed through my veins, coiled low and tight in my belly. My sex muscles squeezed, milking his cock, begging for more. I held my breath, felt the climax rise, closer, closer.
And then he stopped.
“Is this all you want?” he asked again, his lips brushing my ear, his cock pulsing inside me.
“I’m so—I’m so close. Please…”
“First tell me. Is this all you want from me? A fuck? Or do you want more? Do you want what I want?” He nipped my ear and sent a quick jolt through my system that nearly undid me.
I gasped, my senses teetering at th
e edge of bliss. His sweet scent filled my nose, my lungs, his warm breath and hot body drowning me, penetrating deep inside me. My mind scrambled to understand.
I couldn’t think. I could only feel. “I want…I want… Anthony!”
Suddenly I didn’t have to think. The dam broke. Nature roared inside me, reached out from my soul like an invisible hand stretching to him. An offering. He took it, and with it went my body, tumbling over the edge. Sweet, sweet release.
I knew the moment, the instant, his soul linked with mine and our union was sealed. Life mates. One for the other, together as one. Forever and always.
By the light of the Dark Moon Gathering.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-1209-5
Dark Moon Gathering
Copyright © 2008 by Paige Cuccaro
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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