Impulse sa-5

by Moira Rogers

  Sera ran with them, her blood pulsing in a primal, familiar beat that matched the fall of her paws against the ground. A little quicker than Julio’s—she had to fight to keep up with his larger stride. She was smaller than all of the adults and most of the adolescent wolves, but pride made her push herself until the pack began to splinter, veering off in private chases or circling back for games of tag.

  She nipped at Julio’s tail and took off toward the denser part of the woods, slowing her pace to give her tired legs a chance to recover. He followed her, growling at another wolf who broke apart with them. The stranger tucked his ears and backed off, hunkering close to the ground, his tail between his legs.

  Sera kept running without guilt. They’d done their duty. Talked to wolves all through dinner and into the evening, and men approached Julio with growing surety, and women talked to Sera with a heartbreaking mix of caution and envy. It was hard to blame even the ones who looked on Julio with covetous eyes—he represented safety and security in a world that had taken too much from them.

  But he was hers. And now, after sharing him all evening, she wanted him to herself.

  Julio slowed to a walk, his gaze focused on her. She could feel its weight, its careful assessment.

  So serious. So carefully protective. She circled back and nipped at his tail, trying to tease him into playing with her, but he was having none of it.

  Too many strangers, then. She huffed and nipped at him again, then took off into the woods, heading away from the pack and into the darker, stiller parts of the forest.

  He ran her down after half a mile, his panting breaths moving closer and closer until he’d drawn even with her shoulder—running beside her instead of chasing.

  This was peace. This was life as she was meant to live it, as comfortable in her fur as she was in her skin, strength at her side but not overwhelming her. The forest lay quiet around them, but still they ran. Sydney owned endless acres around his house, enough to give the pack a taste of solitude whenever they needed it.

  She’d had no idea how very much she needed it.

  Julio stopped and wandered in a wide circle around the edge of a shadowed clearing, then threw his head back in a wild howl.

  The sound thundered through her. Not a call, but a warning. A proud statement of ownership, if only for a while. No wolf would trespass on his territory. No wolf would dispute that it was his territory.

  He was strong and beautiful, and Sera crept to him with her head bent low, savoring the whisper of instinct that urged caution and respect, because for the first time she had no fear of rejection or danger. He met her with a soft rumble, rubbed his nose against hers.

  The clearing was thick grass covered in leaves. Comfortable enough to stretch out upon, even when she let magic shimmer through her on a wave of giddy heat that left her human and tingling, naked beneath the endless sky. “I love the woods at night.”

  Another pulse of magic behind her. “So do I.”

  Shifting brought arousal, a high no drug could match. Awareness left her limbs liquid as she rolled to her stomach. “I love running with the big bad wolf too.”

  Julio huffed out a laugh a split second before his mouth descended on the back of her neck.

  Teeth dug into her skin, and she gasped, fingers closing helplessly on the grass as the sweetly edged pain brought her body from lazily interested to starving in the space between heartbeats. Her hips lifted without her permission, driven by the urge to submit. To offer herself, to beg to be taken.

  He covered her body with his and continued to nibble on her skin. “How much do you love it out here?”

  “I could live in a cabin in the woods.” She curled her toes as his teeth scraped across her shoulder, and had to fight the urge to squirm. If he dragged her to her knees and drove into her, she wouldn’t complain. Not when she was this hungry, this ready. Thinking enough to talk was a struggle, and her words came out breathless. “As long as I got cable and a modern kitchen.”

  “Here, or anywhere?”

  “Anywhere.” She shivered as his breath ghosted across her skin. “But I like it here too. I like Patty. She knows about hard living.”

  He brushed her hair away from her shoulder and covered the newly bared skin with kisses.

  “They like you more than me, that’s for sure.”

  “Because they don’t know you.” His lips found every spot that made her breathing hitch, but he kept kissing her, slow and easy. She was starting to wonder if he knew how to go fast.

  “You’re a Mendoza, baby. They’re always going to assume you’re one of the elite. And I’m a coyote. They’ll always know I’m not.”

  “You’re better than elite.” His fingers trailed down her spine to her hip. “You’re Sera.”

  She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. Darkly handsome and so serious, even now.

  “I’m your girl. And you’re my wolf. You’d better keep that in mind. I may be a submissive, but I’m still damn territorial.”

  He smiled, slow and dark, and jerked her hips up, pulling her to her knees. “I know better than to forget.”

  Oh yeah. The less-human parts of her thrilled as she bowed her back, stretching her arms out above her head and pressing her forehead to the grass. “I don’t know what to beg for. Your fingers, your tongue or a fast, hard fucking.”

  He slapped her ass, driving a startled moan from her lips. “Then let me decide.”

  Her skin burned where his hand had fallen. A good burn, the kind that fuzzed the edges of the world and let her focus on nothing beyond her body. She dug her fingers into the grass and wiggled, teasing him with a throaty laugh. “Can’t keep your hands off my ass, can you?”

  “You don’t mind.” He leaned down, his chest against her back, and nudged his erection between her thighs.

  She whimpered and arched, entirely unselfconscious for once in her life. “Again? Please?”

  He rubbed his hand over her tingling skin, then rewarded her with another slap.

  Heaven. Not tied up in games and guilt, just something that afforded them both pleasure. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to sensation as her lips formed another plea. Mindless, begging words, tangled up with his name.

  Julio pushed forward, the head of his cock slicking close to her entrance. “Sera.”

  She edged her knees apart. “I want you inside me. So bad. So deep.”

  “If we weren’t rolling in the dirt, I’d make you wait.” Then he thrust into her, only a few inches, but hard enough to claim.

  She bit her own arm to muffle her cry, a helpless noise that squeaked out regardless. One knee slipped on damp leaves, and it was so much hotter like this. Outdoors, on the ground.

  Messy and a little uncomfortable, with a twig digging into one arm and the sharp smell of crushed grass twisting with the forest and Julio and the unmistakable scent of sex.

  It was raw and real, and she pushed back against his grip, ready to take every stretching inch of him. Ready to be fucked inside out, to scream her release to the sky and not care that every wolf in the pack heard her.

  Julio twisted a hand in her hair and pulled her head back. “You want to be loud, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” A rasped confession. A groan, because the fist in her hair was the right kind of dirty.

  “I don’t care if they all know. I want them to know that you’re mine.”

  “You think they can’t tell?” His skin slid over hers, and he breathed his next words in her ear.

  “They saw the way I look at you. How much I want you.”

  She twisted against his grip and pressed her lips to his jaw. “How much? Tell me.”

  He buried his nose in the hollow of her throat and inhaled deeply. “I didn’t even want them breathing in your perfume. You belong to me.”

  Oh, that touched off a shiver—one of fear as much as longing. Those were words she’d heard before. Words that she’d craved, words that had turned claustrophobic and cruel.

 
She rubbed her back against his chest and closed her eyes. “I’m your girl.”

  “No,” he whispered, his muscles tense. “Because it’s not okay. It’s too much, too far.”

  “It’s us.” Reaching back, she gripped his hip, dug her nails into his skin and tried to pull him deeper. “It doesn’t have to be okay to be true.”

  “Yes, it does.” He didn’t move. “I won’t be that asshole, Sera. I’m enough of one already without adding ‘stupidly possessive bastard’ to the list.”

  Frustration raked her, and she snarled and dropped her hand to claw at the grass. He was right, and there should have been relief in it. To know that Julio wouldn’t trap her, wouldn’t crush her.

  Human relief, maybe, but this wasn’t a night for human things. She twisted to bite his jaw.

  “Mine. Tonight, you’re all mine.”

  He pulled her hair again. “I’m what?”

  “Mine.” She panted the word as she squirmed, needing him deeper as much as she needed to be claimed. He was hot and hard, but he was still holding back.

  He drove forward, pushing into her with a grunt as his teeth closed on her neck. The force pushed her back to her elbows, body bent low to the ground with his chest burning possession against her back as he covered her.

  Over her and surrounding her. Inside her. Everything about his touch was proprietary and possessive, and she found she didn’t need the words when his body spoke a language her coyote understood.

  Except he wasn’t fucking her. Just pinning her to the earth, every nerve aflame, her entire being focused on how good it would be when he moved…

  She whimpered and arched her back. “Julio. For the love of—are you waiting for me to spontaneously combust?”

  He flexed his hips against hers. “Shh. Can you feel it?”

  “What, your dick?” She rasped out a laugh and clenched around him. Maybe words would get him moving. “Your perfect fucking cock, which feels really good and will feel better when you’re riding the hell out of me?”

  “Dirty bitch.” His own laugh tickled her ears as he slipped one hand down and stroked her clit. “Not my cock. Us. When we’re close like this.”

  Her hips jerked, a helpless reaction beyond her control, and her knees slipped on the ground as she spread them wider, anything to grind down against his fingers. Release was seconds from claiming her, and nothing would stop it.

  But his question hung between them, and she answered with the last bit of air in her lungs, the words escaping as she tipped backwards off the cliff toward glorious free fall. “Always feel it, ’cause I’m yours.”

  He answered with a pleased growl, then pulled back and began to thrust, starting with one firm snap that brought bliss in a drowning wave. Only the first, because he kept going, hard and fast, power and lust tangled up together, and the combination undid her.

  It wasn’t choreographed and elegant. It was dirty and crude, her eyes squeezed shut against pounding pleasure and her ears filled with her hoarse cries and his grunts and the slick, wet sound of him sliding home, and the damn orgasm had bled into a second without respite because he kept rubbing his fingers over her clit like he was going for a world record.

  His teeth grazed her earlobe. “One more, baby. Just one—” A lie, because nothing was just about another orgasm, not with her whole body shaking. Not when she was coming so hard you couldn’t count, couldn’t distinguish. She gasped for breath in the valleys and moaned through the peaks, moaned and begged until Julio dropped his forehead to the back of her shoulder and came with a rough groan.

  She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, Julio’s body covering hers, her face hidden against her folded arms. The wind played with the leaves on the trees, a quiet rustling underscoring the pounding of his heart against her back.

  As her own pulse slowed, a giggle bubbled up. “Dirty bitch, huh? Your sister would wash your mouth out with soap.”

  He nipped at her skin. “Are you really talking about my sister right now?”

  “That’s what you get when you fuck a girl cross-eyed.” Sera stretched her arms above her head and laughed at the streaks of dirt. “I am dirty. Gonna-need-a-bath dirty.”

  “That should get us some fun looks when we meet back up at Syd’s place tonight.”

  “Like I’ll be the only one. Shifting gets everyone riled up.”

  “Mmm.” Julio pulled away, wrapped his arms around her and rolled to the ground with her on top of him.

  It took some maneuvering to turn around without kneeing him in an uncomfortable spot, but in a few moments she draped herself across his chest, her cheek resting over his heart.

  With her body exhausted and her head still swimming, talking was easy. “I know you don’t want to own me. And I know you need to.”

  “I—” He bit off the words and sighed. “I do. I can’t help that part.”

  She traced her fingernail over his skin in a looping circle. “The part that scares me is that I need it too. I’ll never be happy if I don’t have it, but I can’t fake it if I don’t feel it. I tried.”

  His voice dropped. “The real question is whether it makes you feel trapped.”

  A serious question that deserved a serious answer. “Right now? Naked in the woods? No.

  The shapeshifter part of me needs to belong to someone strong.”

  “What about all the other times? Every day?”

  Panic tried to rise. Her breathing sped, and she concentrated on slow, even exhalations. “It’s not as easy as that. Maybe it’s irrational. Some things I’d like. Some would make me feel smothered.”

  His hand smoothed circles over the small of her back. “I guess it’d be easy if you could tell someone, make a list of what was okay and what wasn’t.”

  “It’s not fair to be scared of you.” She closed her eyes and whispered her words against warm skin. “You’ve never tried to trap me. You’ve never done anything but try to make me feel strong.”

  “Fair’s right up there with easy, sweetheart. Last I heard, life wasn’t either.”

  No, it hadn’t been. Not for either of them. She kissed his chest and changed the subject. Not to an easier one, but to something equally important. “Your family’s not going to be excited about you wanting to keep a coyote.”

  Julio lifted her gaze to his with one finger under her chin. “The only family I have left that matters won’t give a damn. You know that.”

  “Carmen and Miguel?”

  “And Veronica, and my Aunt Teresa.” His jaw tightened. “My uncle and father sure the hell don’t count.”

  She planted a soothing kiss on his palm. “I wasn’t there at the challenge, you know. Alec fought your uncle, didn’t he?”

  “He wouldn’t let me do it,” Julio confirmed. “For Carmen’s sake—just in case the worst happened.”

  In case their uncle put power over family and tore his nephew apart on the challenge field, even if it meant the end of his brother’s wolf-born bloodline.

  Babies. It always came back to-Oh, damn.

  Reaching between them was stupid, but she did it anyway. Brushed her fingers across that tired but still perfect dick and groaned, as if discovering soft skin instead of latex was a surprise.

  She rolled off his chest and hit the ground next to him, familiar panic so much stronger this time. Give her another second and she’d be hyperventilating, three generations’ worth of senseless fear rising up to choke the life out of her. “No condom. Fuck. ”

  He sat up and held out his hand. “You’re on the pill, right? I saw them in your toiletry bag at the hotel.”

  “That’s not foolproof, even if you take them every day at the same time.” Every slip-up was the same. Frantic math. Counting the days while the failure rate throbbed through her head with the rhythm of her pounding heart, and the grand finale—the memory of her mother’s crazed eyes as she shoved her under the bathroom sink. Hide, hide, hide.

  She grasped at Julio’s hand and waited for the irrational fear.
Waited for the worry in her gut to break open into terror.

  It didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I realize this is scary for you. I should have been more careful.”

  She wet her lips, mostly to give her time to be sure her voice wouldn’t shake. “It’s on me too.

  I wasn’t thinking. But hell, it’s stupid. I don’t even know what would happen if we had babies.

  They could be human. They could be anything.”

  Julio studied her for a moment, then touched her hand. “Hey. I would be there if you got pregnant. I mean, how depends on a lot of things, but if we had a kid… I wouldn’t let anything bad happen.”

  Her eyes burned, and she had to squeeze them shut and look away. “I know. If I didn’t, I’d be having a panic attack.” Knowing was a relief. Wanting…oh, Christ. That was an urge she thought she’d stomped out. She had plans and college classes and glorious dreams of independence, and babies seemed mutually exclusive to all three.

  He pulled her closer. “Just…remember that, okay?”

  “I will.” She relaxed back against him, soaking in the heat of his body. “You know it’s not about you, right? You’re not like your father.”

  He tensed. “No, I’m not.”

  Stroking her fingers along his arm, she concentrated on finding her own quiet calm. The soft, comfortable place where her power could whisper over him, accepting and loving. “We don’t have to talk about him, if you don’t want. Miguel doesn’t really like to.”

  It took a moment for him to speak. “I don’t hate him for the way he kept pulling at me all those years, but I do hate him for what he did to my mother. And to Carmen and Miguel, even before he risked their lives with those stupid fucking spells.”

  The spells meant to wake the inner wolf had failed spectacularly with Carmen. But their father had tried to force the magic on her. With Miguel they’d coaxed, and Julio’s younger brother had made the decision.

  But not blindly. After the time she’d spent with Miguel and Kat, Sera knew that. “He could never lie to Miguel, because Miguel could always hear his real thoughts. I don’t know if that made it harder or easier. Maybe harder.”