by Cara Morgan
He took a step toward her, raising his hand like he meant to touch her, but then he let it drop to his side. “What pack were you born to?”
“I don’t have a pack,” she admitted. “My parents died when I was twelve. Their truck hit a patch of ice driving down this mountain and went right through the guardrail. My aunt raised me but she wasn’t…she was different from us.”
“Gone human.”
She nodded. That was as good a description as any. “She died last year. There’s no one else.”
“You’re not sick.” He looked away from her, at the rumpled blankets on the bed and at the window above it, already beginning to frost over. When his gaze returned to her, he studied her face intently. “Do you truly not understand what’s happening?”
“I’m sick.”
He shook his head, his expression softening. “Not sick. You’re in heat.”
She stared at him in horror for a long moment, her cheeks blazing with humiliation.
“Heat,” she said. “Like a dog.”
He frowned fiercely. “Like a fertile female shifter.”
Fertile. God. “You’re saying that this is just—what? Hormones gone awry? That this feeling will pass?”
“It will pass.”
She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. She’d never been with a man, and she wasn’t exactly sure how to even begin seducing one. She didn’t even know if she wanted to seduce this stranger. Okay, that was a lie. She wanted to rip his clothes off and use them to tie him to the bed. But that didn’t mean it was the right thing to do. It didn’t mean that he would want the same thing. And as much as she wanted to ride him into tomorrow, she wanted to talk to him too. To ask him about other shifters and all the things her parents would have told her if they’d survived. She didn’t want to scare him off.
“Will you tell me more? The weather is bad and you’re welcome here. I would be glad if you stayed. Glad of anything you can tell me about our kind. I’ve never talked to anyone who understood what it’s like. You don’t have to…” God, this was embarrassing. She crossed her arms over her chest, but that only made things worse, dragging the fabric against her nipples and making them ache. She forced herself to continue. “You don’t have to have sex with me.”
“I don’t know if you understand what you’re asking.” He inhaled, scenting the air. “If I’m not mistaken, this just started.”
She blushed. “Today.”
“Heat lasts about a week, sometimes longer. Your instinct to mate will only grow stronger and, frankly, walking through a raging blizzard sounds more appealing than having a quiet conversation with a shifter in heat.”
Her heart sank. “I understand if you’re not interested.”
“Interested?” A flicker of amusement crossed his hard face. “I’ll stay long enough to tell you what you need to know about the heat, and then… Well, then you can make a decision on whether you really want me to stay.”
He unzipped his coat and set it on the hearth. His gear was good quality, but well-used like he spent a lot of time outside. She watched him move about the small space, taking up every inch of it. His flannel shirt clung to his broad back and he had the nicest ass she thought she’d ever had the opportunity to ogle. She wanted to touch him. To peel off the rest of his clothes and press her mouth to his skin. She wanted to know the weight of his body as he held her down and— She jerked her thoughts away from that fantasy when he sat down to take off his boots and their gazes briefly locked. The corners of his mouth curled up at the edges and his eyes crinkled. There was a shadow of wolflight in their depths, but that might have been an effect of the firelight. He couldn’t possibly know what she’d been thinking.
Turning away, she sat down in her nest of blankets on the bed, curling her legs under her. The movement made her hyper-aware of how aroused she was. Having him here seemed to make everything worse. Her clothes felt too tight. Her nipples ached and her clit throbbed every time she looked at him. She fidgeted, trying to get comfortable, but it was a lost cause.
Her guest didn’t seem to have the same problem. He sat very still, watching her get settled, his body tense as a coiled spring but completely under his control.
She cleared her throat. “Do you want coffee? I can make you something to eat.”
“It’s probably best if I don’t linger.”
“Right. With the storm, I imagine you want to get home.”
“Right,” he agreed, the corner of his mouth turning up again. “Because of the storm. You can shift?”
“Normally I can,” she said. “But not right now. Is that a side effect of the heat?”
“You could say that. There aren’t many women who can shift. There always were more men than women born among our kind. This is your first heat.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’re not mated, and you still smell like a shifter. A female only comes into heat when she’s ready to mate. When her body is ready to bear a shifter child. She has a choice then, like you have a choice now. Your heat will pass whether you have sex or not.”
Her initial reaction was relief, but something in his expression told her there was more to it. “But…”
“But there are consequences to whatever decision you make. In the past, when a woman reached her first heat, she would mate with as many men as she wanted to claim and then leave with them to form her own pack. If she wished to remain in the pack of her birth, she would let her heat pass and become sterile. She could still have sex. She could even bear a human child if she wished, but she would never carry a shifter baby. And she would never again be able to shift into her wolf form. Sometimes, when the older alpha female dies, it triggers the sterile females of the pack to go into heat again, but that won’t happen with you.”
Because she didn’t have a pack. She understood that part, but the rest of what he’d said… She couldn’t have understood him correctly. “When you say mate, you mean she has sex with the whole pack?”
“The alpha female has sex with all of the male members of her pack. Any child born to her is born to the whole pack, not to an individual male. We’re pack and that means we share our bodies and our skills, all of our resources and all of our gain.”
“And all packs work like that?”
“It used to be that adolescent males would be kicked out of the pack of their birth so they could go in search of a mate. In recent years, male shifters have started to form packs of their own. They’re not true packs, but they serve some of the same purpose. It’s hard living on your own in the human world.”
That, she understood. Probably better than he did. “How many people are in your pack?”
“Five men. No women. We never expected to find a mate. Female shifters have been going human for generations now. There aren’t many male shifters left and females are even rarer.”
She looked at the fire as she considered that. Going human. It must have been what Aunt Tildy’s ancestress had decided to do. That explained the mystery of why Tildy’s branch of the family was human while hers was furry.
“My parents didn’t belong to a pack.”
“Your parents were a pack,” he said. “A very small one.”
And then there was her. She wasn’t a pack. She was just alone.
She looked up as she remembered something he’d said earlier. “You said I could make a decision after I heard what you had to say. What exactly did you mean by that?”
“I’m here.” He leaned forward, the chair creaking beneath his weight. “Which means you still have a choice. You don’t have to go human if you don’t want to.”
Oh, shit. She went very still as his meaning sunk in. Her wolf rose to the surface with a triumphant howl, and it took every ounce of willpower Maggie had not to leap to her feet and lunge at the man who’d just offered up his body to her. Moisture gathered between her legs and it felt like she could actually feel the blood pulsing through her clit. Trembling, she fisted her hands in the bla
nkets to keep herself from reaching for him. She had to be sure she understood him correctly. She had to think. She licked her lips and shivered when his gaze dropped to her mouth. “This mate thing is for life?”
He nodded.
“And you would really be willing to take me as your mate?”
The stranger looked calm, but that wasn’t what his scent told her. His scent said aroused male. And his wolf was very near the surface. There was a golden gleam to his eye that had nothing to do with the firelight.
“Technically, you would be taking me as a mate,” he said. “But I want you. On many levels, I want you. Tonight you make a choice—embrace the wolf and become the alpha female you were born to be or let her go to live as a normal human woman. I don’t have that choice. I’ll always be a shifter no matter what I do. I never thought to be given the choice on whether to claim a mate, but if you’re asking, I want to claim you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you’re one of us, and that you’re alone without a pack. I know that I might never get the chance to mate again.”
She breathed a laugh. “So it’s a last shifter on earth thing?”
“Maybe,” he admitted, and she flinched at his honesty. He waited until she met his gaze again. “But I couldn’t have imagined a more desirable mate than the one fate provided.”
She blushed. “You don’t have to flatter me.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? It’s not flattery. It’s just the plain truth. I want to bury my face between those gorgeous breasts of yours and between your thighs. I want to lick the cream I smell on you and see if you taste as good as I think. I want to fuck you, claim you, mark your skin with my teeth, my scent and my come, and then bring you back to my pack brothers so they can do the same. I want to plant my seed in your womb and watch you grow with my child. Whatever decision you make, that’s where I stand.”
Fuck. It took her a few moments to remember how to breathe. Focus on the problem, Maggie. She wanted everything he’d just offered, but this was forever they were talking about. And children… She’d never thought she would have children of her own.
“Couldn’t we just use a condom?” She might have one hopeful condom stashed away in her backpack. Or a man who looked as virile as this one probably bought them in bulk. He likely had women throwing themselves at him all the time, even if they were human and couldn’t join his pack.
“We could, and while it might ease your discomfort, it won’t bind us together as mates. And the effect on you would be the same as if you hadn’t had sex. You would still go sterile and your wolf would go dormant.”
The more she thought about that idea, the less she liked it. As much of a pain in the ass as her wolfy self had been over the years, she’d never once truly wished for it to be gone. She wanted acceptance, not to permanently cut off the part of herself that made her unique. She didn’t want to lose her only connection to the parents who had loved her so deeply and unconditionally. The instinct to mate was fierce and pressing, but she needed to think this through. It was an enormous decision to be forced to make without warning. Give up the wolf and become human forever or mate with this stranger and become part of his pack. Every instinct drove her to mate. Every rational thought urged caution.
She ran her gaze down the big body seated across from her. Everything about him was desirable. From the breadth of his shoulders to the smooth expanse of his abdomen. His cock was hard. It pressed against the front of his jeans in a thick, bold line. Her mouth went dry at the sight.
“You think I will conceive? Now. Tonight?”
“Or during the next several days before your heat is finished. It’s likely, not guaranteed.”
“Tell me about the others.”
“There are five of us.” His voice, which had grown deeper as they spoke, now had a rough edge that was nearly a growl. The ache in her womb responded to the sound as a caress. “We run a wilderness adventure company. Case is the CEO. He’s also the oldest and can be a pain in the ass. I’m his second.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I do all of the work.” But there was a note of amusement in his tone that said he didn’t really mind. “Carson and Jack are the youngest, twenty-two and twenty-three. Carson’s the newest member of the pack. He’s only been with us a few months. Jack is a pilot. Declan is…Dec is something of a loner. His parents were survivalists and he’s the most comfortable of us all with living off the land. He’s closest to his wolf, but still human enough to need a pack.”
A pack. That’s what she needed too. What she’d always dreamed about having. People like her, who understood what it was like to be a shifter living in a human world. For the first time in a very long time, hope unfurled in her chest, along with a reckless surge of excitement. Aunt Tildy would severely disapprove, but then, Aunt Tildy had disapproved of a lot of things. “And you?”
“What else do you want to know about me?”
“A name would be nice.”
He laughed. “Eli Campbell. It’s a pleasure to meet you…”
“Maggie. Maggie Lewis.” She swallowed hard. “I think I want you to stay, Eli. If you’re sure you don’t mind.”
Chapter Three
Eli crossed the room faster than she could blink, erasing any doubts she had about whether he was sincere in his desire to mate with her. Mate. God, she could hardly believe this was really happening. His big body loomed over her as he took both her hands and pulled her to her feet. His jaw was set hard, and his eyes burned so yellow with his wolf that they seemed to glow. He cupped her face with both hands and then pressed his lips to her forehead so gently it felt like a benediction. When he pulled back, the expression on his face was both tender and fiercely triumphant.
“I claim you, Maggie Lewis, as my mate. Man to woman and wolf to wolf, you are mine as I am yours. My body I give to your protection and pleasure. My life to your service. My seed to our future. We are pack.”
Unexpectedly, tears came to her eyes, and she blinked them back. There was nothing about love in his promise, but she wouldn’t have believed vows of love from him right now anyway. Not when she’d met him less than an hour ago. For now, his vow was enough. More than enough.
“I don’t know the words…”
His gaze softened and he stroked his thumbs over the crest of her cheeks. “Just say you claim me.”
“I do. I claim you.”
His mouth descended on hers, hungry and possessive. When his tongue pushed between her lips to lick inside her mouth, she nearly came right then. Her fingers dug into his hard shoulders, and she pressed closer, lifting onto her toes to bring her hips into alignment with his. She was a tall woman, but he was taller by nearly a foot. His hands drifted down her back to close on the swell of her hips. His fingers flexed, squeezing her flesh in a rhythm that pulled a growl form her throat.
After a moment, he broke off their kiss. “If you want to save your clothes, you need to take them off.”
“Save them?” She asked, dazed.
“Take them off or I tear them off.”
Her hands shook as she obeyed, pulling her shirt over her head without any thought of seduction. As soon as he stopped touching her, the restless, needy sensation that had plagued her all day returned sharper than ever. She needed his hands on her body. Her nipples tightened to hard points as soon as the cold air hit her skin. She dropped the shirt and rubbed her nipples with her fingers, trying to soothe the ache.
“Let me,” Eli said, his voice rough. He cupped her breasts in his big hands and lifted them. He licked at one nipple and then pulled it into his mouth, caught the aching tip between his teeth and circled it with his tongue. When she slid her fingers into his hair, he moved to her other breast. She’d never thought her breasts were particularly sensitive, but Eli was proving her wrong. It was only his mouth, his tongue licking at her, his teeth pressing into her flesh, and it was so overwhelming she couldn’t imagine how she would survive actually
having him inside her.
He lifted his head to look her in the eyes. “Your pants, too. All of it. I want to taste every last inch of your body.”
Right. Pants. She shoved them down her trembling legs along with her panties, and then pulled off her socks off too. When she was done, completely nude as she hadn’t been before anyone since she was a child, Eli sat down on the edge of the bed to look at her. His heated gaze swept down her body. She shifted, uncomfortable with his scrutiny and the loss of contact. Her hands rose to cover herself, but he leaned forward. Fast and sure as a wolf snatching up a rabbit, he caught her wrists and forced them down.
“No, Maggie,” he said softly. “Don’t hide from me. Please.” She looked up to see the wolflight in his eyes and something within her settled. “I just want to see you. You’re beautiful.”
“I’m—”
“Beautiful,” he repeated, drawing her closer. Turning his head, he lay his cheek to her belly. “Soft and perfect. Everything I ever dreamed of in a mate.”
She threaded her fingers through the soft strands of his dark hair. “This doesn’t seem fair. You’re still fully dressed.”
He laughed, his hot breath a caress against her skin. “If I take my clothes off, I’ll be inside you before my pants hit the floor.”
“I want to see you, too.”
He lifted his head. “Oh, you will.” He curled his big hands around the backs of her thighs and urged her forward until she was straddling his lap. “First, tell me what you like.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” His brow furrowed. “You’re not… Have you done this before?”
She bit her lip, trying to ignore the feel of his hard thighs beneath her and the warmth of his hands on her hips. She shifted restlessly, trying to force his hands closer to where she really wanted them. He tightened his grip, his calloused fingertips pressing into her flesh to hold her steady.
“In a minute, sweetheart. I’ll take you there. This is important.”