North Wolf

by M. A. Everaux

  He watched her through it, his tongue fucking her gently through the convulsions. When she was done, he only said, “Again,” and continued eating her up.

  It seemed to go on forever. Gwen tried to hold back each orgasm, knowing it wasn’t right that she benefited from his ministrations alone, but he dragged them from her. Through each one, her body shuddered more, breaking out in a light sheen of sweat as she tried to recover enough to take control. But it didn’t happen.

  She was so out of it, she didn’t even notice when he pushed himself to his hands and knees, staring up the line of her body like she was his last meal. He gave her pussy one more lick, and crawled back up her body, his cock swinging heavily with need.

  She lay there, panting and trying to figure out when her body had stopped obeying her.

  “I’m going to fuck you.” His eyes dared her to refuse him.

  Gwen let her head loll and her eyes close. Thank God. “Eben…” she panted. It was the only thing she could manage to say.

  He positioned the head of his cock at her entrance, rubbing it against her slightly to get more of her moisture. “Wrap your legs around my waist, love.”

  She did as he ordered and held her breath as the first inch of him slid inside her. It was tight, and pinched a lot more as he pushed forward. He clenched his jaw and pulled out slightly, his eyes rolling to meet hers. Then, in a forceful push, he slid fully inside.

  Gwen’s back arched as she screamed from the invasion. All the breath suddenly was pushed from her body as a wave of pain washed every bit of the pleasure he’d given away.

  He halted with his cock buried deep inside her. His eyes were far gone, so much the animal she had a hard time seeing the man inside. “You haven’t done this before,” he bit out, breathing heavily.

  “No,” she whispered, breathing hard as he moved inside her.

  He closed his eyes and surged into her again, smoothly, and there was less pain. She gave a little yelp of surprise, but didn’t object.

  “Good?”

  She nodded and closed her eyes, absorbing the feeling of him inside her, so large and deep, hitting nerves and caressing muscles that had never been touched before. This, she thought, is going to be good.

  His rhythm began as a simple one-two motion, but after a few minutes, it changed. It turned into something Gwen couldn’t figure out, but it was good. Really, really good. His hips pumped forward faster, harder. Sweat gleamed on his brow as he clasped her hips and tilted her pelvis higher, getting deeper penetration. It felt as if he was inside so deep he could touch her heart. He could steal it, if he was so inclined. Take it away and never give it back. She wasn’t even sure she cared.

  The tension built deep inside, ten times stronger than before. Panicked, she opened her eyes to see claws clutching her tightly, the nails rasping against her skin. Sharp teeth glittered in the dark, no longer human as he flung his head back and howled into the night, the sound so loud Gwen screamed as the tidal wave took her, too.

  It seemed like it took forever, but it still wasn’t long enough. He shuddered over her for a minute, his head back and his mouth open. Through a cloud of satisfaction, she saw his claws slip back and his teeth recede, leaving only his human face and hands. He pulled out slowly, and immediately Gwen felt a little river of liquid leave her body. Embarrassed, she turned on her side and clasped her legs together. “I need to get up.”

  He stared down at her. “You didn’t tell me this was your first time.”

  She rolled off the bed and hobbled to the bathroom as quickly as possible. She closed the door firmly behind her.

  She cleaned up as quickly as she could, blushing furiously at the seed and blood she found on the insides of her legs. What a mess. No one ever spoke of how messy sex was. Certainly not in any of the outdated magazines the institute had received as donations. All that had ever been in those were articles about achieving orgasm. And that definitely wasn’t a problem. At least not with Eben.

  When she came out again, he was lying on his stomach at the foot of the bed, obviously waiting for her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  She rummaged around on the floor until she found her pajamas. She pulled them on, her fingers shaking slightly as she buttoned the top.

  “Gwen,” he said warningly.

  “I thought you knew,” she answered finally.

  “How? You went to school. People have sex in school, especially in America.”

  She paused in her buttoning to glare at him. “I wasn’t allowed to date in school, and I was committed just after I turned eighteen. There wasn’t time for me to fool around on the side. And I really wasn’t in the mood at the hospital.”

  He watched as she finished up the rest of the buttons. “I’ve never been with a virgin before.”

  “Congratulations. Now you have.” She finished up and slid onto the bed. He was lying on the covers so she didn’t try pulling them up.

  He turned his body toward her, curling around her feet like some giant cat as she lay stiffly. “Did I hurt you terribly?”

  She tried to glare at the ceiling, but she just couldn’t do it. Her body still hummed with afterglow, and she simply felt too good to glare at anything. And then her mother’s accusations entered her mind, repeating over and over again. Slut. Whore. Tramp. With little effort, she managed to glare. “No.”

  His hand slid up her ankle, ducking into the leg of her PJs and caressing her skin. “What’s wrong, Gwen love?”

  She stayed silent, her abdomen still twitching from the aftermath.

  “Gwen?”

  She bit her lip. “I’m a slut.”

  He stopped his petting and leaned forward. “I beg your pardon?”

  She smiled through the tears that were forming, hearing Connor’s years of proper etiquette in the phrase. “I said,” she repeated slightly louder, “I’m a slut, whore, wanton. Pick your phrase. That’s me because toward the end there, I was pretty much begging for you. And if I wasn’t, I would have.”

  He crawled to the pillows and pulled her stiff body toward him. “I don’t like those words,” he said bitingly. “I’ve known whores, and you aren’t one. Do you understand?”

  “Not according to my mother,” she said, deliberately trying to make her voice lighter than she felt.

  “Your mother,” he over-enunciated, “should shut the fuck up. Sex isn’t wrong, Gwen. With two consenting adults, it’s fun and good, and everything it’s supposed to be. I want you to take pleasure from fucking me, baby. I want you to scream with it every time you come. I get off from it. It makes me hot. If you don’t get wet when I lick your body, I’ll stop. I won’t ever touch you if you don’t want it.”

  “How do you really know?” she asked, studying him carefully. His face was filled with determination of another kind, the knowing kind people get when they’ve seen too much, or experienced things they shouldn’t have. “About force, I mean? The way that you talk about it, well…”

  “I’ve seen women forced.” His eyes darkened slightly, but enough to warn her away from the topic. “Now, go to sleep,” he bit out.

  Gwen studied his face for a minute before rolling to her side. “Good night.”

  He was silent, then she felt his hands on her body, tugging and pulling at her pajamas. “Get these off,” he ordered, his hands getting rough enough to tear the material. Buttons flew in every direction as he wrenched the two sides of her top apart.

  “Hey,” she argued, trying to hold her top together. “Your father gave these to me. I love them.”

  “I want them off. Next time I rip them from your body.”

  He tugged the bottoms off next and finally relaxed against her back, content with her nude body. Gwen tried to pout. If he was so determined to rip pajamas, he should tear apart his own, not her very special flannel pair. But then his hand drifted across her stomach in small circles, occasionally cupping her breast and rasping her nipples on the rounds, and she couldn’t keep it up. It was nice. Comforting
, but still intimate.

  “You know,” she said into the silence, snuggling closer to him, “I expected to feel different afterward.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. Just different. But sex doesn’t really change you, does it? I mean, yes it’s lovely and everything, but the end result is I’m still me and you’re still you. I guess I still had that teenage view of it, as if I’m supposed to feel changed. But I don’t.” She turned her head just enough so she could look into his eyes. “Did you feel different the first time?”

  “I was relieved.” He smiled slightly. “After wanking off so much, it was a relief to simply have someone to help me with the whole mess.”

  “Busy in your teen years, were you?” With his body, and his sex drive, she didn’t doubt it.

  “You have no idea.”

  Later, when she was on the verge of sleep, she muttered, “Well, I guess old age is good for something because you definitely knew what you were doing.”

  He shifted against her back and leaned over her shoulder. His teeth were white against the dark as he smiled. “Go to bed.”

  She smirked as she fell asleep.

  Chapter Ten

  She headed downstairs at mid-morning after waking up late. She took extra long in the shower, letting the water work out the kinks and soreness from her body. It was shocking to go to bed a virgin, and wake up…not. Like going to bed a brunette and waking up a blonde, although the process for losing one’s virginity was a whole lot more enjoyable than getting a good dye job.

  “What are your plans today?” Connor asked, as she came into the kitchen. He lowered the Toronto paper an inch and stared at her over the top.

  “I don’t know. Maybe clean the barn.” Rather than pull down the cereal right away, she climbed onto a stool and leaned against the counter. The reach for the cereal scared her a little bit. Her legs weren’t quite feeling right after her night of sin.

  “I could use your help with something.” He raised his brows. “Would you mind?”

  “Of course not. What do you need?”

  He smiled pleasantly. “It can wait until you’ve finished breakfast. Now, what would you like this morning?”

  An hour later, she stood in the studio and stared at Connor, hoping she hadn’t heard him correctly. “You want what?”

  He walked around the room, pulling out a large canvas and propping it on the easel, arranging paints, and moving lights so they fell just right. “I can hardly paint you in that,” he said, pointing to her Orgasm please! T-shirt. Very appropriate, considering her activities of the night before. “Don’t be such a prude. Strip.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “I’m sorry, no. I’m not the nude type. Are you insane?”

  He sighed like a martyr and glared up at the ceiling as if to ask Why me? “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He loped out of the room, muttering under his breath.

  Seeing no other choice, she waited, and was right where he’d left her when he returned carrying an elegant white dress shirt. He handed it to her and turned his back. “Put that on, please.”

  Gwen held the shirt like it was a used tissue. “I don’t think this—”

  “Gwen,” he begged, “I’m an artist, it’s what I do. It’s either the shirt or nudity. Either way, I’m painting you.”

  Feeling particularly sacrificial, she shed her clothes, trying to give herself a little pep talk. After all, he was an artist. And they were known to be crotchety and egotistical about their work.

  “Okay,” she announced once she had the buttons done up. “You can turn around.”

  Connor stood back and studied her, his hand tapping against his chin lightly. The shirt was one of Eben’s, and on Gwen, it hit her just above the knee. “Unbutton the top three buttons, child.”

  She glanced down at the buttons, and with shaking hands unbuttoned the top three, revealing the slight swelling of her breasts and the start of cleavage. “Okay?”

  “Now,” He dragged the brown chair to the light and positioned it, leaving it slightly skewed. “Sit here and get comfortable because this is going to take days and days.”

  At first, she slumped into the chair, with her legs held tightly together and her hands anchoring the shirt down.

  “Gwen…”

  In the end, she curled her legs behind her and laid her head on her arms, which rested on the thick arm of the chair. It was a large chair, and she fit in it easily all curled up and content. Connor pushed her hair so it fell in a long sheet, then stood back, a slow smile growing on his face. “I think this is perfect for you.”

  Satisfied, he retrieved his sketchbook and started on the preliminary sketches. “So tell me how you feel,” he ordered, as his hand moved furiously across the page.

  She wriggled a little. “Comfy. I’ll be fine.”

  They let the silence reign for the next hour as Connor transferred the image he wanted to the sketchpad. Gwen was content with the silence, and actually closed her eyes and napped lightly for part of the time.

  After an hour, he insisted she get up and stretch. When she was ready to continue, he carefully resettled her in the chair, making sure her arms were just so, and then went to the canvas and started to delicately add guide lines. “Tell me about your father. Tell me about the night he died.”

  Gwen lifted her head slightly. “Why?”

  He rubbed a line gently with his thumb, smudging it, and scowled at the canvas. “I’m interested in you, and I want to hear what happened that night.”

  A huge wave of melancholy swept up and took her over. It was painful looking back at that memory. The Were creature was always in her mind, threatening, but the despair of losing her father was almost too much.

  “We were a lot alike, my dad and me. Best pals even.” She smiled at the memory. “Mom didn’t like it. I was the daughter she’d always wanted, but it was Dad I adored. He always said I looked like my grandma. His mum. I saw a picture once. I guess we look a lot a like. Mom didn’t like that either.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Grandma apparently didn’t like my mom. Said she was a city lady and that she’d drive dad nuts on the farm. And she was right. Mom hated the farm. Why they ever married I’ll never know.”

  He smiled sadly. “Sometimes people marry for the wrong reasons. They don’t realize it at the time, but it happens. My own parents were one such case. They were miserable together.”

  “They divorced when I was thirteen,” she told him. “But you know what? It was kind of a relief. They fought so much. I remember listening to them late at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, but couldn’t because of all the yelling. When they finally split, I didn’t say a word.”

  He nodded in understanding. “And that night? When you were eighteen? What happened then?”

  “We were driving,” she said finally. “Dad liked to take the back roads when we were going to Mom’s house. Sometimes we’d see deer or raccoons, you know, the usual stuff.”

  “It sounds nice.”

  She nodded. “It was. But that night, we didn’t see any animals. We were talking, and the next thing we knew, a huge creature was there, sitting on the side of the road.” She shivered in memory, wanting the image to dissipate, but it stayed strong in her head, as always. “I couldn’t tell what it was. But I saw the woman. He was dragging her by one leg. She was dead already, bloody and broken so it wasn’t hard to tell. After the truck hit the tree, he ate her in front of me.”

  Connor stopped drawing as he listened to her voice, soft and far away, filled with memories and sadness. “What did he look like?”

  She lifted her head and blinked, wiping hurriedly at the few tears that escaped to trail down her smooth skin. “It was dark. I think his coat was reddish brown. I know it was a guy because…well…” She shrugged and smiled nervously.

  “Because everything hangs out after we shift,” Connor supplied, going back to the canvas.

  “Yeah.”

  He kept his
tone as soothing as he could manage. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. Most of us don’t prey on people, although I admit there are a few. But with every human brought down, the risk of our discovery goes up. It’s a dangerous pastime to pursue if you’re Were.”

  “Is that what we are to you?” she asked curiously. “Prey?”

  He tilted his head in thought. “Well, there is certainly that aspect.” He set his pencil aside and frowned. “But I don’t think it’s because you’re human. I think it’s more in the way you react when faced with a threat. Prey runs—rabbits, deer, elk. They all run from us. When humans do the same thing, our instinct is to chase. When we chase, we want to take something down.” He raised his brows and pursed his lips. “It’s how we’re programmed.”

  “So I shouldn’t ever run from someone if they’re in their Were form.” She nodded smartly, trying to make light of it. Christian had said exactly the same thing. “Okay. Got it.”

  Connor pulled over the paints and began digging, only stopping after he held the tubes he wanted. “You shouldn’t have to worry about it. None of us would ever hurt you, in either form, and the rest of the pack wouldn’t consider approaching you without one of us at your side. Besides, the urge isn’t only there in Were form. We still have it when we’re bipeds.”

  She smiled at his terminology and laid her head down again, feeling lethargic in the peaceful room. The wind howled outside, but it made the warmth and security in the house that much more relaxing and lavish. “I worry about it, sometimes.”

  He looked up. “About what?”

  She shrugged. “About the Were I saw that night, if he’s going to find me and kill me. Sometimes I was even sure I saw him at night, pacing around the hospital. I know it’s silly because I was on so many meds, but it’s there, in the back of my head.”

  “You know you’re safe here, Gwen. There’s no one in this house who wouldn’t die to protect you.” His eyes were silvery in the pale light of the room, and suddenly so powerful and aggressive she had to fight not to cringe.