by Jessie Lane
That was all he needed from Kinks—one and done.
Chapter Five
The next day …
Chrissy never imagined in a million years that she would find her mate at the Dark Moon bar. Probably because she hadn’t wanted a mate to begin with. Not that she had recognized the wolf for what he was right away, but somewhere around the fourth time she had woken the man up for another round of purr-inducing sex, it had clicked.
As she had climbed on top of him, taking him inside of her, staring down at his sleepy but sex hungry gaze, the cat inside of her had screamed. Not roared, not purred—screamed.
It was a trait she had inherited from her cougar father. The thing was, her cat had never felt the urge to scream before. Chrissy had thought growing up that perhaps she wouldn’t inherit the cougar scream. Now she knew. And her cat wanted to scream, all right. All night long while she rode her mate like a rodeo queen.
It was sort of weird to want this man as much as she did, but Mother Nature was crazy like that. Once you found your mate, it was supposed to click into place. She guessed in her case, it sort of screwed her in place. Oh, well. Chrissy wasn’t exactly going to complain about it. Instead, her cat wanted to wake her mate up for round five. Less emotional mating and more physical mating sounded like the best idea she’d ever had.
Rolling over, she slid her hand up the wolf’s naked chest, tracing her finger over the ink of his tattoos. He didn’t startle awake but turned his head to look at her with a blank stare.
Her cat was a bit affronted by the expression. That look wouldn’t do! It was time she put a grin back on his face.
Sliding her hand down, she didn’t stop until she’d wrapped it around his dick, which was already gloriously hard for her.
Seeing that he was ready to go again, she climbed on top of her stud of a wolf, centering her entrance over his straining erection. Then she slowly sat herself down on his length.
The feel of him now, as he stretched her walls, filling her in a way she had never been filled before, drove both the woman and the cat crazy. She wanted to feel this way forever. Maybe that made her sound like a sex starved nymphomaniac, but who cared? The man could screw her upside down, on the kitchen table, or sideways, and as long as he kept on taking her, she wouldn’t care one bit.
His nails bit into the skin at her hips as he set the pace for how fast he wanted her to ride him. Not orgasm-inducing fast, but a slow slide that teased her with the rush of pleasure he didn’t want her to have yet. Torturous bastard.
There was this hard gleam in his blue eyes that said I will keep you on edge all night long just because I can. Maybe Chrissy was turning into a masochist, because as she slid up and down his length, the instinct to submit to her mate drove her to give him what he wanted. Not just because it felt good, but because it would make him happy.
Dear Lord, he was going to kill her with orgasm withdrawal.
“Please.” The word slipped out of her lips before she knew what she was saying, or begging for, really. For the first time in her life, she begged a man to give her what she needed. It was scary yet beautiful.
The wolf tightened his grip on her hip with one hand and moved his other to brace on the soft part of her lower abdomen, allowing him to circle her clit with his thumb.
Chrissy’s entire body jerked at the contact as if she had been electrocuted by a live wire. This man lit up her senses like nobody had or anyone else ever could.
As her orgasm built until it was to the point of almost bursting, she writhed on top of her mate in sheer ecstasy, a euphoria so fine it bordered on pain.
The cat inside of her was frantic for her to bite the male and claim him as theirs forever, but Chrissy wasn’t willing to do that until after she had a long talk with her lone wolf. A mating was not the sort of thing you just sprung on a poor, possibly unsuspecting man. Instead of biting him as the rush of the best orgasm Chrissy had ever experienced crashed over her, she dug her claws into his chest and let her cat release its satisfaction with another rare scream, one so loud Chrissy was pretty sure her whole damn family had heard it.
As she collapsed on top of the big, burly wolf, she couldn’t bring herself to care about the possible mortification that might come the next time she saw her family. In its place, the last thought she had before completely passing out in the warmth of her wolf’s arms was that they really needed to have a talk when they both woke up next.
~~~
Drained.
That was the only word Ezrah could think of right now. As in, Kinks had drained all of his energy and possibly his balls, too. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure he could make his dick hard again if he wanted to. They had been fucking non-stop for a day and a half, barely stopping to eat and only collapsing into exhaustion for sleep. There was a good chance his dick had been rubbed raw. In fact, he might never be able to have sex without thinking of the incomparable cat again.
What freaked him out more was the fact that his wolf didn’t want to leave the feisty, little feline. As in, at all. For the first time in his life, his beast was ready to curl up around someone and stay. He didn’t have the urge to climb on his motorcycle to roam the roads. Nor did his wolf want to be alone as it usually preferred. No, his wolf wanted to go mark his territory, bury the proverbial bone in the cat’s backyard, and stay.
Ezrah didn’t know how to handle the emotions he was suddenly feeling. After living in a dispassionate world, how did one deal with being bombarded by unwanted emotions? Probably by doing what his great-grandfather Cherokee Bill, his grandfather, and his father had done before him.
Bail out.
As Ezrah gently rolled his bedmate so she now lay on her side of the bed, pulling her sheet up and over her so she would stay warm, he told himself he wouldn’t regret his decision. He wasn’t built to have these sort of emotions. He wasn’t normal by any means. That was why he had never been accepted into his father’s pack. It was also why he wouldn’t stay here, get the feline’s hopes up that these abrupt, unusual feelings of his were a show of commitment, and take the chance of hurting her.
Moving slowly out of the bed so as to not wake her, Ezrah grabbed his clothes off the floor then walked into the living room. It took him less than a minute to pull his jeans, socks, and boots on. It took less than two minutes to walk out of the cat’s cabin, shut the door without making a sound, pull his vest on, and walk to his bike.
Before three minutes had passed, he was heading down the dirt road, back toward the highway. The entire disappearance from Kink’s life had been made quickly and easily. No tears or questions from her. No awkward moments from him because he couldn’t give her something more or an explanation as to why. Just a quiet desertion to escape the unavoidable reality of how he was and how he would always be.
Then why was Ezrah’s wolf telling him that he had just made the biggest mistake of his life?
Chapter Six
Chrissy slowly came to consciousness, aching in all of the best places.
Her thighs were sore from riding her wolf as if her life depended on it. Her hips were slightly bruised from the firm grip of his hands. Her breasts burned and nipples were almost raw from his love bites. And her intimate folds were tender from the non-stop sex-a-thon she’d had with the man she now knew was her mate.
The combined sensations caused her mouth to slowly slip into a pleased grin. At least, she was smiling up until the moment she took her first conscious deep breath in. Chrissy didn’t need to open her eyes to see what her nose was telling her. The wolf was long gone.
His scent was still on her sheets but fading with every second that passed.
Tears pricked the back of her eyes as reality set in. Apparently, this had only been a booty call for the wolf. At least she was at her own damn cabin so she wouldn’t have to do a walk of shame. Why in the hell had her cat gone and gotten all starry-eyed and attached in little over a day? God, she was such an idiot.
Not to mention, how much of a l
oser was she that she didn’t even know the man’s name? The two of them had screwed like bunnies on a cocaine binge for over twenty-four hours, and not once had she gotten him to tell her his name. Not once had she asked a personal question. No, the only things she knew about her now missing mate were that he liked to pin her to the bed underneath him as he took her from behind, eat her out on the dining room table, and he loved it when she’d introduced him to the reverse cowgirl. But she certainly didn’t know his name or how to find him, and now that she was thinking about it, he hadn’t asked for hers. Instead, he had chosen to call her by her nickname Kinks or some other generic nickname while they had been going at it.
As the reality of what she had thought was an unexpected dream come true slapped her in the face, Chrissy sort of wished she could do just that to him. Not slap him, per se, but take a frying pan to his head over and over again as she vented her frustration and distress. That lone wolf had blown into her life like a tumbleweed and left pieces of her behind as if he had been a wrecking ball. Damn it all to hell!
Her heart was hurting, and even though she knew why, she didn’t like it one bit.
Putting her tough girl façade back on, she did her makeup and consoled herself with one thought.
Her mate didn’t want her? Fine. Fuck it. She hadn’t wanted a mate, any-damn-way.
At least, that was what she was going to tell herself every minute of every day until she believed the lie.
~~~
The North Carolina state line was just ahead of him, coming up quickly. Ezrah’s wolf snarled and snapped inside his head, demanding that he turn around and go back to the feline they had left sated and sleeping in the cabin.
His wolf could go fuck off for all he cared. He wasn’t turning his motorcycle around for anything. The cat brought out too many emotions he didn’t understand, including the confusing emotion of wanting to stay with Kinks. It was too much for him to handle.
There must have been a reason his great-grandfather Cherokee Bill had abandoned his great-grandmother Pearl. Probably the same reason his grandfather had deserted his grandmother and the same with his father and mother. The Goldsby wolves were meant to be lone wolves.
That was why he was passing the state line now with no intention of stopping.
It was also why Kinks was better off without him.
Chapter Seven
One month later …
Pulling into the parking lot of a little shifter-friendly diner Ezrah, parked his motorcycle under the hot August sun.
After leaving North Carolina, he had taken the slow, scenic route down the coast to Florida, hit the beach for one day in Miami, and then headed north then west toward Louisiana. He didn’t have a particular destination in mind; he was just traveling the roads, trying to find some semblance of inner peace again.
Ezrah hadn’t quite felt like his normal self since he had snuck out of Kink’s cabin, which bothered him.
Why was he still thinking of the cat a month later?
It wasn’t as if she was a passing thought. No, she was the main one. If he passed a nice view, his mind automatically wondered what Kinks would think of it. When he saw a sexy pair of women’s leather pants that laced up the side, he envisioned them on her hot, curvy body. It seemed wherever he went, the feisty brunette wasn’t far from his mind.
Walking into the diner, he decided to sit at the bar instead of waiting for a table. The place might be a little mom and pop operation, but it was jam-packed with customers. He would get faster service if he sat at the counter and ordered his food there.
While he was looking over the menu, a small child’s voice off to the right caught his attention.
“Daddy, Sonya told me on the playground today that cats rule and dogs drool. Is that true?”
An unexpected laugh popped out of his mouth. He didn’t know who was surprised more: him or the waitress who had just stopped in front of him on the other side of the counter.
Wiping the smile off his face, Ezrah ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a large vanilla milkshake.
Once the waitress took his order down and walked away, he turned his head to look for the child who had made him laugh.
Over in a booth behind him and to the right was a couple sitting with their daughter. Taking a deep breath, Ezrah could scent that they were shifters of the wolf variety, and the scent of utter contentment poured off all three of them.
The little girl was drawing on her piece of paper with a red crayon while her mother laughed silently at the father’s perplexed expression.
Speaking so quietly a human wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation, the father asked the little girl, “Is Sonya a feline shifter, pumpkin?”
The little girl with pigtails nodded. “Yep. I don’t understand why she said dogs drool, Daddy. You don’t drool when you’re a dog.”
This time, the man’s wife didn’t bother to hold in her laughter as the man tried to hush the little girl’s loud words. She let it ring loudly, and the man ran his hand over his face in bewilderment.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ezrah watched the scene a little longer, interested in how the man was going to reprimand his young daughter on speaking about shifters in public. He doubted the father would be too severe since she was so young.
Leaning forward, the father grabbed his little girl’s hand to get her attention. “Remember what I said about keeping secrets, pumpkin? How you can’t talk about Mommy and Daddy or you being a wolf out in public?”
The little girl’s eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
Her father chucked her under the chin. “No worries. Just remember it next time, okay?”
A plate clanked down on the counter in front of him, and Ezrah turned his attention to the waitress again. Mumbling a thank you he stared at the burger, but couldn’t bring himself to eat the tasty looking beef. His mind was on a different woman back in North Carolina, wondering what she would have said to a child of her own if asked the same question out in public.
A vision of her smug grin as she laughed came back to haunt him. Something told him Kinks would have told the girl that Sonya was right.
A cell phone vibrating in his pocket broke his train of thought. Ezrah pulled the phone out and immediately answered because there was only one person who had his number.
“Boy, what have you done?”
The caller ID on his screen said it was his great-grandmother Pearl calling him. The voice through the line sort of sounded like Satan.
“Pearl? Is that you?”
“No, it’s the gosh darn Easter Bunny!” the croaky voice snapped back.
There was no doubt now for Ezrah. This was certainly his grumpy great-grandmother.
“What’s wrong with your voice, Pearl? Are you sick?”
The idea of the last relative he had left possibly dying on him twisted his stomach into knots. She might not be the sweetest little old lady in the world, but she was Ezrah’s family, and he would do anything for her.
“Don’t you go sassing me with all your questions, boy! If you want to see what’s wrong with me, then you bring your butt back to Oklahoma to find out. It’s all your fault, anyway.”
Click.
He stared at the cell phone in confusion. How was it his fault that Pearl sounded like she had been smoking three packs of cigarettes every day for the past one hundred years?
Appetite suddenly lost, Ezrah dropped more than enough money on the counter, including a healthy tip, then stood up, grabbing the milkshake. Before he walked out the door, he headed to the wolf family’s table and put the vanilla milkshake on the edge closest to the little girl. He felt her father tense up, as if ready to protect his family, but Ezrah wasn’t there to cause problems.
Giving the little girl a wink, he whispered conspiratorially toward her, “Tell Sonya dogs rule because cats cough up hairballs.”
With the little girl’s giggles ringing in his ears, Ezrah walked out of the diner, climbed back on his motorcycle, and roare
d out of the parking lot. It was Oklahoma or bust, because he needed to find out why Pearl was blaming him for whatever was wrong with her.
Chapter Eight
“Who shit in your kitty litter, Kinks?”
Chrissy lifted her eyes from the polished bar top to give Bhric the stink eye. “Your mother.”
The male sighed as he braced his hands on the bar and leaned a little closer to her. “Do I need to call your sisters to come cheer your cranky-ass up?”
This time, she hissed at him. “Call those crazy hussies, and I will ruin your pretty, refinished bar top with claw marks all the way down it.”
Bhric stared at her with a look only an alpha could give. It was a look that told her, if she so much as whipped one tiny claw out, he would not only boot her ass from his bar, but remind her why he was the leader of the neutral zone.
Damn the man for being sexy and scary at the same time!
Unable to hold the glare, Chrissy dropped her gaze in submission, feeling a twinge of guilt for acting like such an ass. Bhric was a good leader. He treated all of the neutral zone inhabitants fairly, and he didn’t deserve to have her lash out at him just because she was in a bad mood. That didn’t mean she wanted to talk about her problems, either. Not with him, not with anyone.
Chrissy kept her eyes glued to the wooden surface as Bhric spoke in a low voice. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Kinks. To be honest, I’m not sure I want to know. That being said, whatever it is that’s got you down, brush it off, have a beer, wash it away, and move on. You’re a fun girl, and I hate to see you like this.”
His words were weirdly both a balm and a sting to her pride. On one hand, it was nice to hear him say he thought she was a fun girl. On the other, her cat curled up to cry because obviously she hadn’t been fun enough to keep her mate around. A month after the wolf had left her, she was still in a funk. She hated it. Hated the damn wolf, too.