by Sam Crescent
Raphael closed his eyes, took a deep breath in to draw her sweet scent into his lungs, and to appease his wolf. Even so, he knew his voice came out distorted when he spoke to her again.
“You can, and you will, little doe, but not here and not now. Where do you live? Let me take you home.”
His mate jerked in his arms, and she frantically shook her head.
“No, you … mph.”
Kissing her seemed the most expedient way to shut up her protests, if not the wisest to help his control.
Her gasp of surprise granted him access, and Raphael took full advantage of that fact. He took charge of the kiss, letting his animal take over and do the talking for him. His wolf’s low growls filled the night air when she kissed him back. Tentatively at first, as though she was afraid of his response, and then bolder. Her hands wrapped around his neck, fisted in his long hair, and the sweet scent of aroused woman hit him in the gut.
It would have been so easy to pin her against a tree, bury himself balls-deep inside her sweet body, and fuck her brains out. In the past, that was exactly what Raphael would have done, but this woman setting his blood alight with lust was not just any woman. She was his mate, and she deserved better than an animalistic fuck against a tree. As he breathed in her scent, imprinting the feel and taste of her onto his brain, he also pulled back.
All flushed and warm now, she clung to him, and when she tried to pull his head back down to kiss him, he smiled and shook his head.
“Your address, my sweet. Let’s get you home and then we can finish this.”
She blinked again in that sweet confused way she had, but she did whisper her response.
“The teacher’s cottage in the village, but…” She stopped speaking and her terrified deer briefly appeared in her eyes.
He sensed the reason for her flight response before he heard them. Furious growls vibrated through the air.
Southern wolves on the opposite bank. Fuck it all to hell and back. They were exposed and he was on his own with his fragile mate to protect.
Pushing her away from him, he shifted and put his large bulk between his mate and the other wolves.
****
Aubrey gasped as she landed butt first in the snow. Seeing him morph into his big black wolf had to be the most awesome sight ever. As a man, he towered over her, his strength apparent in the effortless way he carried her. Aubrey was no lightweight, yet he hadn’t seemed fazed at all, manhandling her with an assured ease, which should have pissed her off, yet had the opposite effect on her. His amber eyes seemed to look directly into her soul when she’d struggled to shrug off the last membranes of fog claiming her brain after that fall. Her deer had screeched just one word over and over.
Mate.
It couldn’t be, however. He was a wolf, an Alpha at that. He would never take a mere deer shifter as his mate. Even if by some miracle he did, his pack wouldn’t let him, and an Alpha was ruled by the best interests of his pack. Everyone knew that, and Raphael Taylor was one of the best Alphas there was. She would be a hindrance to him at best, a liability at worst, just like she was now.
Terror held her firmly in its grip, as she watched the growling exchange between him and the other wolves. She couldn’t understand a word they were saying to each other, of course, but she got the meaning loud and clear.
If ever she’d seen a declaration of war, this was it. Her deer at long last erupted, and not wishing to hang around, she took off as fast as she could. Following the stream, she eventually found her bearings and sprinted for home, all too aware of the wolves running alongside on the other side of the stream, taunting her.
Of Raphael, there was no sight, and she’d never been so grateful to leap over her back fence than she was at that moment. Safety, at last. The familiar scents of home surrounded her. Taking a furtive look around to make sure the old dear in the cottage next to her hadn’t woken up and was taking a stroll like she was wont to do, Aubrey shifted back into her human form and pulled the tattered old bathrobe she’d left on the deck over her naked form.
Everything hurt back in her human form, and she gingerly put one step in front of the other. What she needed was some painkillers and a good long soak in the bath. She might even finish that bottle of wine. Aubrey typically didn’t drink on a school night, but these were hardly ordinary circumstances. Not every night she was hunted by wolves, met her mate and then run out on him.
The bite on her nape throbbed as she thought of Raphael. He must have bitten her there when he pulled her out of the water. Fear gripped her anew as she lifted her back door key out from under the flowerpot and unlocked her little place.
He had bitten her. Not the usual place a wolf marked his mate, but did it count anyway? Were they in fact now mated? That didn’t bear thinking about.
Aubrey only had her parents and sisters, and the rest of the mated deer she had encountered to hold up as a yardstick, but there was no way in hell she was ready for that.
Being mated meant subjugating herself to your mate and hell would freeze over before Aubrey would ever do that.
She purposely ignored the little devil on her shoulder calling her a liar. Would submitting to Raphael be that terrible? After all, her body had come alive in his arms. His warmth, his strength, his sheer overwhelming masculine presence had made her forget where they were and she’d simply acted on instinct. His kiss—boy, could that man kiss—had been a brand, a claim on her very soul, and she had responded.
Aubrey pulled the chilled wine bottle out of the fridge and held it to her overheated cheeks. Just remembering that kiss made her body react. Her nipples did their best to poke their way through the terry of her robe, her clit tingled, and she grew wet between her legs. If he burst through that door right now, then…
Oh my God, the door, the wolves.
The wine bottle slipped through her fingers and smashed on the stone tiles which made up the floor of her kitchen. She jumped over the shards of glass, her only aim to secure all the doors and windows. By the time she checked the last one, she had trouble pulling breaths into her lungs, and then she saw him.
One lone, big massive wolf on the edge of the forest her cottage backed up to. Blood marred his fur, and he limped. The deer inside of her wanted to leap through the window and help him, but her rational side urged caution. Sure enough, more wolves appeared and surrounded him. One almost as tall as him nudged his side and then looked straight at her.
Aubrey quickly let the nets fall and stepped back. That had to be his pack, and if she had to guess, that wolf had been his beta. He, too, had been covered in blood, and the look he’d thrown her way had been almost menacing.
No, they would never approve of her.
One by one, the wolves retreated until only Raphael remained. Their gazes connected and even across the distance separating them she could feel the connection between them. Tears streamed down her face as she pulled the nets away and rested her hand on the windowpane.
Raphael raised his head and his long, mournful howl echoed through the night air. Aubrey blinked and he was gone, as though he’d never existed.
Chapter Three
“Miss, Miss, that strange man is here again.” Timmy jumped up and down, and taking her hand, pulled Aubrey to the window.
The five-year-old was prone to flights of fancy, so Aubrey didn’t expect to see anyone. Not like the first time he’d said that a week ago when she’d rushed out of the classroom only to find no one there.
After all, it had been almost a month since that fateful night, and Raphael hadn’t sought her out like she might have thought.
That seemed to be reserved for her dreams. Every night, without fail, she would wake up, hot, sticky, and on the edge of release, gasping his name after yet another erotic dream which left her reaching for her little battery-operated friend. Lately, she hadn’t even bothered to do that. The weak orgasms she achieved that way barely took the edge off. What she wanted, and needed, was to seek out Raphael, and that she couldn�
��t do.
Despite the intense moments they’d shared in the forest, he clearly didn’t feel the same way, which left her horny and frustrated, and liable to snap at her pupils like she was wont to do to Timmy now.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. This is pointless. Pull yourself together.
“Look, Timmy, we’ve talked about this, there’s no one there, oh…”
The rest of whatever she was going to say fled her brain in a puff of smoke, because the man dressed all in black was none other than Raphael, and he looked good enough to eat. He’d left his long hair loose to fall around his head. He ran a hand through his beard as she watched. The action made his long coat gape open and she swallowed hard when his top rode up, exposing a thin strip of his hairy muscled abdomen. Not an ounce of fat on that man, for sure.
Black jeans hugged his muscular thighs, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the bulge they so perfectly outlined. Heat flooded her panties and she was beyond grateful the windows were shut, otherwise, Raphael would have no doubt smelled her instantly. How mortifying that would have been. As it was, he raised his nose in the air, and then looked straight at her. A somewhat uncertain smile kicked up the corners of his mouth, even as his eyes bled to the golden yellow of his wolf’s and back again. Belatedly, she noticed the beautiful bunch of flowers in his other hand.
“Miss, who is that?”
Timmy’s tug on her arm broke the spell, and she focused her attention on the little boy, who regarded her through eyes the color of the deepest ocean, his little brows drawn together in a frown.
“A friend, Timmy, that’s all.” The lie stuck in her throat, but she could hardly tell the boy the truth, even if she knew what, exactly, she was to Raphael.
“If he’s your friend, Miss, why is he not coming in?” Timmy asked. “He keeps going away again.”
Aubrey’s heart gave a very suspicious lurch in her chest at that innocent question.
“He’s the man you’ve been seeing, Timmy?”
“Yep, and look, I think he’s coming in this time.”
Sure enough, Raphael unlatched the little gate and strolled up the path in the long loose-limbed stride so typical of a male, predatory shifter. She sure felt like his prey, as she somehow got her limbs to move to intercept him.
“Right, let me just...” Flustered, she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. As usual, it was escaping the bun she tried to contain the bane of her existence in. She really ought to just cut it, but somehow she always chickened out at the last moment.
She flicked on the smart board on the wall—the school’s newest and high-tech teaching tool—and selected an educational video for the class to watch.
“I just have to pop out. Watch this in the meantime.”
A chorus of happy whoops greeted that announcement, and taking a deep breath in for courage, Aubrey reached the front door just as his heavy knock heralded his arrival.
The part-time secretary the educational board employed stuck her head out of the tiny office at the same time.
“I’ve got this, Brenda,” Aubrey said. “I won’t be a minute,”
“Sure thing, my dear.”
Brenda smiled at her and shut the door to her office behind her. Before she could lose her courage and change her mind, she yanked the door open. Raphael must have been in the process of bashing on it because his fist missed her nose by inches, and he fell forward only to catch himself at the last minute.
“Jesus, don’t do that. I almost hit you.”
His deep gravelly voice did strange things to her insides, as did the way he now shuffled from foot to foot and then thrust the bouquet of flowers at her.
“Here, I didn’t know what you liked, so there’s one of everything in there. I’m sure the local florist thought I’d lost the plot. Anyway—” He stopped speaking, inhaled sharply, and grinned. “Will you please take this and let me in? I fear we’re attracting an audience.”
Sure enough, a peek past his huge shoulders showed several of the mothers arriving to pick up their kids, staring at them both, open-mouthed. No doubt wondering why such a hunk was delivering flowers to the spinster teacher.
“You can’t come in. I work here, and it’s almost pick-up time. What are you thinking?” She tried for her best schoolteacher tone, but just a husky imitation of her usual voice came out. What the hell was that about? To add insult to injury, her nape started tingling the more his spicy scent enveloped her, and her hand went up to that mark without any conscious thought. Raphael’s low growl at her action made her gasp. She hastily dropped her hand, but the damage was done because she looked into the softly glowing eyes of his wolf.
“Little doe.”
Two little words, delivered in that deep, dark delicious growl, made her want to forget everything and jump him like a wanton woman.
“Don’t call me that. Please, just leave. I can’t do this now.” She put her hand out to push him back, but the minute her palm touched his chest, his heat scorched her skin. Tingles of awareness traveled up from that point of contact, raced each other over her skin until they settled in her pussy. There was nothing at all she could do about the way her body reacted to being this close to her mate. Instead of pushing him away, her fingers curled in the fabric of his t-shirt to pull him closer.
Not that she could move him either way.
“I know. I just came to give you these.” Raphael uncurled her fingers and pushed the bouquet of flowers into her hand. It served as a wonderful distraction to bury her flaming face inside them, as his free hand briefly caressed his mark.
“Go, work, I’ll see you later. We’re sorting this tonight.”
With those ominous words, he shut the front door for her and Aubrey blinked as she slowly came to her senses.
Oh Lordy, was that a promise or a threat?
****
Raphael forced his feet to keep on moving, one step in front of the other, away from his mate. He hadn’t dared hope for this, had half-expected her to throw his flowers back in his face, which was why he’d chosen to come to her place of work instead of her home. He’d counted on the fact that she wouldn’t want to make a scene in front of her pupils.
What he hadn’t counted on was his wolf’s reaction to seeing her in person. The sensible blouse and long pencil skirt shouldn’t have looked sexy, yet all he could think about was what she might be hiding under there. From the barely-there makeup, to the strawberry-blonde hair, which she’d tried and failed to contain in a bun at her nape, to the sensible flat court shoes on her feet, she’d dressed to convey the image of the quintessential schoolteacher.
Yet her reaction to him had been anything but.
Raphael nodded toward the bundle of human mothers who didn’t even attempt to hide their ogling of him. They couldn’t really help themselves, reacting to the pheromones his wolf sent out without even trying. In his younger years, Raphael had taken full advantage of this phenomenon. Newly mated, however, the attention simply made him uncomfortable.
There was only ever going to be one woman for him, and that was the curvy little deer he’d left behind in the school house.
Aubrey Verene. Her name rolled off the tongue. Not that she would be Verene for much longer if he had anything to do with it. For starters, that deer-shifting clan were a pain in the hoofs, lost in outdated ideas of what a mating ought to be.
Raphael didn’t want or need a blindly obedient mate. No wolf shifter had ever favored one of those. She-wolves simply weren’t docile like does were, which was why his pack had been outraged when they found out he’d mated with a deer.
They might have united with him in the attack of the southern wolves. That had been an attack on their territory, after all, and a threat to one of them was a threat to them all, but they sure as fuck hadn’t appreciated the reason for it.
Serena, the highest-ranking female of their pack, and mother of the young she-wolf, who’d been trying to push her daughter onto him for weeks now, had been the most vocal of them all.
“This is preposterous. No wolf can be mated to a deer. You need a strong female by your side.”
Raphael had challenged her, hackles drawn, teeth bared, and, eventually she had grudgingly bowed her head in submission.
Collins, as ever the peacemaker, had stepped in.
“Our Alpha has chosen.”
While Collins had sided with Raphael in public, he’d had plenty to say to him in private.
“She is right. You need a strong female by your side. Deer are not known for their strengths and she’s a Verene.”
Collins had spat that name out as though it was an insult. His wolf had wanted to tear the other man’s throat out for disrespecting their mate. His animal didn’t care about any of that. Aubrey was his, and that was all there was to it. The man knew better, of course.
“She also left the community and has chosen to live in the village.”
“Among humans. What does that tell you, boss? And she hasn’t been back, has she? A she-wolf would have fought by your side, not hidden away in the one place we can’t enter in our wolf forms. Are you sure about this?”
Raphael sighed, remembering that conversation, just as he had done then, and glared at the neat little cottage his mate called home.
She had green fingers, as one might have expected of her. Neatly trimmed flower beds lined the path up to her front door. With the snow having melted and spring in the air, the first shoots of whatever bulbs she’d planted were pushing through the earth. An equally impressive vegetable garden slumbered away by the side of the cottage. Her scent was everywhere, calming his agitated wolf. One sniff was all it took to locate her spare key inside the fake rock by the porch steps, and having scanned the area to make sure no one was watching him, he let himself in.
His wolf whined low in his throat because being surrounded by all the things she touched on a daily basis was bliss and hell all rolled into one. It also made him doubt what in the hell he was doing here.