“Why,” I gasped as his tongue did a dance against my body. “Why do you think I’m so great, Damon?”
His answer was a smile and then a kiss and a long caress of my body with the fingers that weren’t pleasing my sex. Lingering at each button for a half second, he let my shirt be carried open by the breeze, and kissed from my bellybutton to between my breasts before he undid the clasp and opened my bra.
The instant the cool air hit, a chill crept through me, but a second after that, he warmed me with another slow, patient lap all the way down the middle line of my body. I ached for him, yearned for him to be inside me, but at the same time I didn’t want his slow path up the mountain to end.
“Unzip me,” he whispered. “I need you.”
I reached down and slid the teeth of his zipper open one at a time. I reached in to hold him, and curled my fingers around his member, squeezing him, releasing him, in time with my pounding heart.
Gently he undid my shorts, slid them down, kissing down my leg to my knee as he went.
“Is this... all there is?” I asked as he came back up, lingering on my folds and then back to my lips where he sucked, swirling his tongue against mine. I guided him inside, and felt him slide deep. My breath shuddered in my chest.
“Do you need more?” He moved against me, sucked a kiss on my lips, then my neck. He pulled back until his tip almost left my delicate folds, then he thrust back in, forcing air from my lungs in a howling groan of pleasure. “Tell me what you need and I’ll give you everything you want Lily, my love.”
As our bodies moved together, he breathed into me, and I exhaled for the two of us. I clutched my hands hard on his smooth, muscular back, and dug in with my nails that got him to hiss. “So... so good,” I moaned. “You make me feel... perfect.”
Faster, faster, to match the beating of our hearts, he moved in me, out and back in. Sucking hard on my neck, milking the pleasure from my lips, and then kissing it away when I reached for him, Damon made my whole being ache.
“Deeper, beautiful, push it deeper,” I moaned, whispering barely louder than the wind. “Fill me up.”
I tilted my hips to allow him as far as he could go, but he stopped cold.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
He smiled. “Absolutely nothing,” he said. “I just want to... well...” He pulled away from me, leaving a void where he’d been. “Come here.”
On my hands and knees, I looked back and grinned. “Is this what you want?”
“Beautiful,” he moaned, pushing all the way into me with one slow, teasing, gentle motion. He shuddered as his heat tickled my sex, and then pulled away, groaning as he did.
“Faster,” I moaned, “I can’t... I can’t hold on, you’re so deep. Take me, Damon, make me yours right here, under this big, wonderful moon.”
His muscles went taut at exactly the moment mine did. I felt his heartbeat inside me as he filled me further with every motion he made. Every tiny movement made me shake, every breath brought me closer to the edge.
Damon’s powerful arm cradled my belly, his fingers danced across my clit. “I can’t... I can’t... Damon, you’re making me... mmm... I...”
“Let go,” he whispered, sucking my ear and massaging my aching nipple. “Let go... with me. Together,” he said. “Always together.”
As he drove deep, my world went white and waves radiated from the deepest part of my center, spreading goosebumps as they went.
He stiffened, and I felt him release as my whole body went rigid, holding him, clenching him. Damon swelled in me, locking us together as the both of us held our breath, and let our ecstasy melt us together.
In that moment, with our bodies locked, inseparable, I was not afraid of the future, or of Devin, or of anything else. It was all as it was supposed to be.
Damon fell to one side, breathing hard, with sweat running down his neck.
“All that matters is that we’re together,” I whispered, completing my own thought out loud.
He kissed my neck, and turned me to face him. “No matter what,” he said. “No matter what comes next. All that matters is that it’s you and me, here... now.”
I stared straight into his eyes, intertwining my fingers with his. “Promise?”
“I promise,” he said.
I curled up, with my head on his chest, and closed my eyes, feeling the thump-thump of his heart calm.
“That’s...” I kissed him again, and closed my eyes, safe against my Damon’s chest. “All I needed to hear.”
*
“Who’s that?” Damon slid my phone across the table. “Some number from New York?”
I grabbed the phone. “Hush! My story came out yesterday. I figured Jolie was going to call, but I didn’t think it’d be this quick.” I stood up and moved to the door, looking at Grandpa Joe rooting around with a cactus as I stepped outside.
“Hello?”
“There she is!” Jolie was practically bubbling. “Did you see it?”
I grinned. “Yeah, it looks great,” I just don’t know how people are going to take it. I mean, it is a pretty wild story.”
“Well, Miss Kyle, that’s one thing you don’t need to worry about. Weirdest thing happened.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “It was a pretty normal sales day. But then, the letters started up... emails, tweets, are you sitting down?”
“No,” I said, “should I be?”
“I think you might. And, Lily, if you could put me on speaker or something... is Damon around? He is real, right?”
I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, of course. I’m not inventive enough to make all that up. He’s inside, just a sec. Let me go in there.”
From where he sat, Damon looked up, charming me with those impossibly gorgeous eyes. “What’s up?”
I shrugged, sat down and put the phone on the table, putting it to speaker. “All right, we’re here.”
“Damon?” Jolie said.
“Yes ma’am? Hello?”
“I’ve got some pretty incredible news for you two. I hope you’re ready.”
He shot me a glance and cocked an eyebrow. “Uh, sure, of course. What is it?”
“Go ahead, we’re listening,” I chimed in. I shrugged at Damon, who continued to stare at me with a giant question mark on his face.
“What would you say if I told you that you were going to get two letters in the mail?”
“Uh,” I paused. “Paycheck?”
“I knew I liked you,” she said. “But no, two besides that. One from Atlantic Quarterly, who wants you to expand this thing to ten-thousand words, and one from my friend Greg. He’s an agent and wants to sell this thing as a book.”
My jaw hit the floor. Two thousand words. A nothing story, just me telling the truth. They wanted a book?
“I can tell you are having the reaction I thought you would. Enjoy it you two. Just maybe send me an idea every now and then? I’d love to have you on staff permanently if possible. You could even work from Arizona if you wanted, but we can hash out the details later.”
Standing up, I pushed the chair back across the floor and let out a silent scream. Damon stood up, grinning from ear to ear, and wrapped his arms around me.
“Hello?” Jolie said. “You there?”
“Yes I’m sorry,” I said all at once. “That’s incredible! Thank you so much! So, so, so much!”
“It was nothing. After all, you did all the work. Enjoy it. I’ll talk to you soon?”
I nodded like she could see. “Of... of course, yeah, of course. Talk to you soon.”
The line went dead, and a kiss warmed me from the lips to the tips of my fingers.
“I knew you could do it,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”
“You're proud of me? It seems like kind of a minor thing, recording a story and sending it off, after what you went through. It was your story.”
He kissed my head along the part of my hair. “I wasn’t alone,” he said softly. “You told our story. And now you’
re going to tell more of it.”
“Are you sure?” I looked up into his eyes. “Is it okay for me to write this? Won’t it put you in danger?”
“Lily,” he took a deep breath, smiling. “I thought these were just crazy stories your grandpa told you. Who would ever believe old grandpa stories?”
Relaxing my head on his chest, I breathed him in, letting his scent fill me. “What if I screw it up? What if it... I don’t even know, I’m just rambling.”
“No more fear,” he said. “I’ve got you and you have me. You’re gonna do great.”
“Okay, you’re right,” I smiled up at him. “What then? What do we do after that?”
He pursed his lips and moved his head from side to side. “We’ll figure it out. But right now, I think we should do exactly what your friend said there. Come on.”
Grabbing my hand, Damon led me outside, past Grandpa Joe and to the new motorcycle he finished building about a week before. With a sly grin, he tossed me a helmet. “Hop on,” he said.
“Where are we going? Not many celebration sorts of places in Fort Branch.”
“I know one.”
“Yeah?” I threw my leg over the back of the seat, hugging close behind him.
“One of those absolutely disgusting garlic, corned beef, horseradish and rye sandwiches sound good?”
I laughed maybe harder than I ever had. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Take me to heaven.”
“Funny way to put it.” He kicked the throttle.
As we sped along Fort Branch’s one major thoroughfare, I stared at the beginning of a setting sun through my helmet’s dark shade. There was so much to do, so much to prepare for what Poko called a ‘reunion of the clan’ to anoint the new alpha. And now, I had a book to write, and another article to write, neither of which existed ten minutes before.
But right then, the most important thing was right in front of me.
I hugged Damon tight, glad I found him, glad he found me, again.
For someone who craves routines, it sure didn’t take me long to adjust to this change.
Maybe that’s how you know when something finally goes right.
The End
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Special Bonus Excerpt – SHIFT INTO ME
For years, budding journalist and recent high school graduate Lily Kyle wanted to spread her wings. Lily’s corner of the world, small desert town Fort Branch, feels more like a prison than a home. For all its faults, Fort Branch is all she’s really known, and leaving stopped mattering so much once she was claimed by a werewolf alpha.
When Damon King – her lupine soulmate and newly-inducted alpha – is called to the werewolf-run town of Scagg’s Valley to investigate a pair of murders, Lily gets a hunch. Something isn’t right, and while she can’t put her finger on exactly what, she’s not about to let Damon head out west without her.
Danger rears its ugly head a thousand miles from everything Lily has ever known, and she finds out the hard way that sometimes, she can’t rely on Damon to save her. Lily has to do the saving.
Will ancient magic, a rogue wolf warlock, and a string of terrible murders tear Lily and Damon apart? Or will the alpha and his mate learn to rely on each other, themselves, and their love to find a path through the darkness?
Chapter One
Nothing ever stays the same for very long, does it?
Things just have to change, have to move.
Shake off the cobwebs, crack those knuckles and stretch those shoulders.
Gotta stretch those wings, even when the last thing in the world you want is to curl up and stay right where you are.
Everything changes, sometimes in a heartbeat.
With the desert speeding by on either side of us, I gripped the seat of Damon’s bike with my thighs and wrapped my arms around his stomach as tight as I could. He didn’t want me with him on this trip, but I didn’t let him leave without me. Somehow, I got the feeling that he’d be happy I was along for the ride, even if it took two days to convince him.
Just a feeling I had.
“Look over there,” Damon’s voice was soft and almost placid in the helmet’s speaker. He cut into the last verse of Life is a Highway. He’d been playing that every four or five songs because if nothing else, Damon King, my werewolf Alpha boyfriend, is a big, giant, cheese-ball. “See that?”
He tilted his head as we blasted past bluffs standing sentinel off to the north. Huge, red spires sticking defiantly out of the desert, they seemed to be out of place, like someone put them there after the rest of the scene was finished.
“Yeah? They’re kinda weird.”
No reply.
I stuck my finger in the side of my helmet and pushed the microphone down again. “What are they?”
“They’re weird,” he said.
“Well yes, thank you.” I shook my head, grinning. “Anything special about them?”
Taking a hand off the handlebars, Damon rubbed my leg. He squeezed gently just below my knee. Just his doing that was enough to send a surge through me.
“Ten and two,” I said with a little giggle. “Or whatever the motorcycle safety equivalent is.”
Damon let out a soft laugh. “Yeah, yeah. I got this thing under control. Anyway, they’re supposed to be some kind of mystical place. I remember my parents talking about them.”
I nodded, only half-aware that he couldn’t see me, and let my thoughts drift as we passed the spires.
Parents.
My thoughts drifted back to the first time I saw Damon when he moved to Arizona. We were both sophomores, and I was a little... different, I guess is a nice way to put it. My parents died about eight years before that, and I lived with my Grandpa Joe. Our little hometown – Fort Branch – was more a place people ran away from instead of toward.
Damon and I hit it off right away. We did all the high-school-like things, and over the year or so we were together, I fell so hard for him that it almost broke my neck. Damon listened to me talk about everything.
Talk and talk and talk, it didn’t matter what I said, he always gave me We had our ups and downs, mostly because I expected him to be as open-lipped as I am, and he helped me through a lot of hard times. For some reason, my parents’ death didn’t really hit me until I was with Damon. I’ll never forget how long he sat with me, how patiently he coaxed me out of the shell I built up around myself.
Then it all fell apart.
I thought he was pushing me away, so I pushed back way too hard. I wanted him to be someone he wasn’t, I guess. It took a couple of years, and a whole lot of searching, but eventually we ended up right where we were supposed to be – with me behind him on a motorcycle heading west.
“My Skarachee,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “They seem really nervous about this.”
Oh that’s the other thing – Damon is the fledgling Alpha of a pack of werewolves. I guess that’s an important point.
My whole life changed so much over the course of the previous few weeks, what with learning I was the fated mate of the Skarachee alpha, being pursued by the alpha of the rival Carak clan, who turns out to be Damon’s brother, and then somehow writing a prize-winning story for the New York Times... it’s one of those situations where living in complete unreality made my head spin just enough that the whole world being a little askew became my new normal.
“How are you doing with it?” I asked. “Seems like a pretty intense thing to have to deal with your first week on the job.”
He hadn’t been Alpha for two days when his elder, Poko, told him about the murders. Two middle-aged Skarachee, found in very... concerning... circumstances. He wanted Damon to investigate, to figure out who was behind it. Somehow, that seemed like a fitting initiation duty.
Damon shrugged. “This is
my new life. Our new life I guess, since you don’t seem willing to let me do anything on my own.” There was a grin that tilted the tone in his voice.
“As much as you hate to admit it,” I said, “you’re glad I didn’t let you go alone. While we’re at it, uh, I don’t know how to ask this without being a little morbid, but I am a working journalist and all...”
“Let me guess, you want to know how two dead werewolves haven’t been found by the police?”
“Yeah,” I said, “or started acting like, you know, bodies.”
“When we die, we don’t do the same things that normal people do with all the stiffening and the—”
“Blech, right, so you don’t do things like normal people. Got it.”
“Anyway, our spirits just kind of leave, and our bodies dry up.”
Widening my eyes, I stared at him for a second. “You turn into mummies.”
“Yeah, more or less. Ancient elder alphas, like Poko, they sorta mummify while they’re alive. It’s creepy, but anyway, that’s why. The pack left them just like they were found. Apparently, the town shaman, a guy named Wilton, is the one who happened upon the bodies.”
“Wow, okay, well that’s good,” I said with a wincing smile. “Shaman, they’re used to handling mummies. I, uh, guess.”
Damon laughed softly into his microphone and tilted his head to the sky.
Overhead, the afternoon was getting a little long in the tooth. I reached for the wolf fang that hung around my throat. Damon gave it to me after I nursed him back to health following his first nasty clash with his brother Devin as kind of a promise.
That night was the first time we made love. That’s when he marked me. ‘Marked’ being werewolf-language for ‘claimed me as his forever.’
Ever since, we’d been inseparable, even with a few bumps in the road. When I was with him, I felt safe, secure. And I gave him the same feeling.
“Listen, Lily,” he said. “This could be bad.”
Bad Boys and Billionaires (The Naughty List Bundles) Page 23