by Elsa Jade
He stepped even closer to her and nudged her thighs apart with his hips. She slid her hands behind his bare back, blindly finding another knot of scars.
She gazed up at him. “Did you find it?”
The moon was behind him, casting his face into shadow. “What?”
“Whatever you were looking for?”
Despite the shadows, his eyes still gleamed. “No. It wasn’t out there.”
The strange lights in his gaze should have freaked her out. They were too far from the neon to be reflections. But there was a note in his voice—a yearning—that called to something deep inside her.
She anchored her heels behind his knees and dragged him flush to the fly of her denim skirt. “Then come on in here.”
His mouth descended and she lifted her face to receive his kiss. He skimmed his hands up inside her hoodie and the T-shirt underneath, letting in the night air. But she felt the chill for only a heartbeat before he cupped her breasts.
She tilted her head back and gave an eager little whine as his thumbs circled her throbbing nipples.
He chuckled against her ear. “Still so sensitive.”
“No, way tough,” she said with a gasp.
“That too.” He stripped the hoodie and shirt over her head. He bent her back precariously to tug down the stretchy fabric of her bra, exposing her to his avid gaze.
The bra straps slithered down, trapping her arms, and for a second, she panicked. Her skin was clearer than in high school, but her decision to give up yo-yo dieting (right about the time he’d ditched her) meant her weight had stabilized a few pounds higher than the last time she’d been partly naked under him. The curves had largely gone to good places, but still…
Before she could struggle upright, Kane let out a groan. “You’re killing me, Mad girl.”
The old nickname sent a pang through places he hadn’t yet touched. She’d been Mad, and Darling had been Dare, even though the words hadn’t fit at all. Maybe she was finally growing into it. But dammit, he didn’t get to give her that; she’d take it for herself.
When he bent his head to her breast, she arched her back, showing him what she wanted. His warm, soft tongue traced a tightening circle around her aching nipple, and she wished the pleasure could be forever, like one of his spiral tattoos. He finally reached the center and licked hard. She whimpered at the bolt of desire piercing her core.
She twisted her upper body as his lips trailed to her other breast and then down the valley between to her navel. Only her legs locked behind him and his hand on her ass kept her from squirming right off the gazebo railing.
She twisted the other way. As if he’d read her thoughts, his grip tightened on the back pocket of her jeans. “You’re not getting away from me this time.”
“Ain’t going anywhere,” she said. At least, not right now. She leaned further back, groping under the rail where the warped boards had left gaps. “I’m looking for—Ha. I knew nothing here had changed.”
Leaning back against the steady support of his hand, she flourished a small, foil square between her fingers with a grin.
He stared at her, eyes narrowed. “How did you know that was there?”
“There’s always a condom in the gazebo.”
“Since when?”
“Since forever. Everybody knows: take one, leave one.” She smirked. “You were such a good boy in high school. You probably never even snuck into Gypsy’s, did you?”
“You were a virgin,” he reminded her, aggrieved. “And underage.”
She fluttered her lashes. “We can play it that way again, if you want. I’ll blush and say, ‘Oh, you’re too biiiig’ and you’ll tell me it only hurts the first time, and then we’ll—”
With another growl, he yanked her up against him. “No fooling around.”
She’d made a fool of herself for him before. That realization, after he’d left, had stung more than her pussy had. At least this time she knew what she was getting herself into. And it would feel so good.
Working her fingers into the tight space between them, she popped the button on his jeans and snaked the zipper down. He was commando underneath. His erection—bigger than she remembered—surged into her palm, already hot, engorged, and slick with desire. She scooted toward him, letting the rough plank of the wide railing snag on her skirt and drag it up her thighs. Night air swirled over her bared skin and eddied up into the crux of her legs, deliciously cool against her dampened panties.
He grunted as she closed her fingers lightly around the satin length of him.
“I never tried to fool you,” she reminded him. “You always knew exactly what you were getting”—me—“and you knew exactly what I wanted”—you. She didn’t say the obvious parts aloud. Instead, she pumped his flesh once, a distraction.
Because there was honest, and then there was just pitiful.
“I knew.” He tilted his head back, and his beautiful voice cracked with sensual strain as his cock bucked in her hand. “That’s what I loved most about you.”
If she hadn’t had her legs fastened around him, she would’ve fallen over backward off the rail. Love? What a thing to say when she was planning to fuck him and leave him, just as he’d done to her.
Closure, that was obviously why the fates had brought her back to Angels Rest.
Even if her legs were wide open.
Keeping one hand on him—not like he was trying to get away—she ripped the foil with her teeth, listening for the small suction noise that told her the packaging was in good condition. Nothing real or lasting could come of one night. She’d learned that after their dance. There was only now.
“Now,” she murmured as she unfurled the condom down his erection. Thankfully, the latex was big enough; country boys were always well-endowed, or at least liked to think of themselves as such. She rocked onto one hip, glad for the extra padding on her butt against the rough rail, as she shimmied her panties down.
He sank his fingers into her hips, his dark eyes flaring. “Mad…”
They both were, but that didn’t stop her.
The raging heat of his body chased away the last nip of night air as she guided him to her core. His breath ragged, he nudged slowly between her folds. The exquisite sensation of his power held in check, just for her, shivered along every nerve. As if he really didn’t want to hurt her. As if he thought he was making up for them making out—and more—all those years ago when he’d known nothing would come of it. Nothing except the two of them, of course.
Fuck that. She’d gotten over his abandonment, and she didn’t need his gentleness or consideration now. She leaned back, forcing him to move closer or risk dropping her over the edge.
“What are you waiting for?” she taunted. “An engraved invitation? You may never get this chance again.”
With a rumbling groan, almost a growl, he thrust all the way inside her. Or almost all the way. His heavy cock filled her, stretched her to panting, and she felt the throb all the way to her tailbone and halfway up her spine, but when she reached down to pet her clit, her fingertips brushed over the gorgeous vee cut of his lower abs hovering just beyond her wet pussy.
As if he was already a half a step away.
No, really. Fuck. That. She grabbed his tight-clenched testicles and shoved him right where he belonged.
*
Oh hell. Kane froze despite the pleasure exploding through him. She was too tight, too small, too innocent. Even with her knowledge of hidden condoms. He couldn’t take her, not like this, not with the wolf struggling against his constraint, fighting to let out a howl of triumph.
Earlier, he’d heard his cousins calling to each other in the night, and he’d been pissed not to join them in their hunt, to reacquaint himself with their vast territory.
But no way had they found such luscious prey as this.
He tried to ease back, to set her free before he broke her, but the grip of her legs behind his ass was even stronger than the hot, slick clasp of her pussy around his
cock. He hissed out a harsh breath, leg muscles trembling with his tension. He should run…
Unable to restrain himself, he plunged into her again.
She arched her back. Her naked breasts, plumped by the bra he’d tugged down, thrust upward into the barred light of the moon shining through the missing gazebo tiles. Hard and shiny as pebbles in a stream, her tawny nipples gleamed wetly from his tongue. He contorted himself to lick her again, feasting at her flesh. She writhed against him, and the heat and slick friction threatened to steamroll right over his disintegrating control.
Bracing himself, he dragged her upright and held her aloft as he pulsed into her soft, yielding folds.
That was the only yielding part of her. The rest of her was taut with the oncoming rush of her orgasm. He felt the tremors building, fierce and irresistible as when the change came over him. His wolf gloried in the ecstatic melding of man and beast, and his cock swelled to bind Maddie to him, for this moment and forever.
She whined his name, an eager song, and he swooped down to plunder her mouth. His tongue swept in to find the hidden edges of her teeth. Balanced on the rail, the gazebo floorboards bending under his boots, he felt himself coming apart…
And then she bit him.
Chapter Four
‡
The shock of her daring, not the tiny sting of pain in his lower lip, sent Kane reeling upright. The motion slammed his cock into her, spreading her thighs wide as he ground into her clit. She threw back her head and climaxed with a hollow scream.
The sound and the trace scent of his blood on her breath forced him to follow her over the edge.
His hips pumped helplessly, his whole body seized with a powerful pleasure that narrowed his vision to just Maddie: her eyes half-closed in rapture, her inner muscles clenching him tight, the moonlight turning her body to a mysterious landscape he wanted to roam at will.
But she had bitten him, hard enough to draw blood.
The wolf’s roar of satisfaction matched hers.
Long after the echo faded, he struggled to catch his breath and his innate caution even though his wolf was still reveling in the lush delights of his prey. Kane swallowed hard and tasted the sharp tang from his little wound.
Blood. Even one droplet, as small and vibrant as her garnet, coursed with the restless genetic mutation that made him a shapeshifter and that, under the right circumstances, could infect others. With the spring mating season, his viral load was higher than usual but the moon hadn’t yet hit its zenith. The condom would have kept his semen in check, and since he hadn’t been in wolf form for several days while he drove the Mustang to Angels Rest, his saliva was mostly harmless. Blood, bites and booty calls were the most common vectors to pass the shifter virus.
But she had bitten him.
His cock pulsed with the beat of his heart. Like the wolf, it was unfazed by this daunting turn of events.
His alarm was probably for nothing. It had been just a nip. He’d been hurt worse by mouse claws when he’d been learning to hunt as a pup. The mineral flavor was already fading in his own mouth, so surely she couldn’t have gotten more than the most fleeting taste.
When her eyes fluttered open in dazed satiation, he searched her gaze for wolf lights. He knew it was too soon, even if the virus had passed in his blood. Just as he knew the mate bond needed more than one bite on either side to take hold. And a true mate bond needed more than that: it needed a connection beyond blood.
But still he looked.
Maybe he shouldn’t have looked so intently. The blissful glaze over her hazel eyes turned guarded. “That’s enough,” she said softly.
The wolf let out a low whine of dismay. It wasn’t nearly enough. “Mad…”
“Get out.”
“Just… Gimme a second.” His swollen cock was even less under his control than the wolf.
She jerked her bra into place and whisked her top over her head, her hoodie falling like a mask between them. She shoved at his shoulders. “Out.”
“Maddie. Hold on—”
“Now.”
When she’d said that word before, it had sounded like a prayer. This time it was nothing less than a demand.
Gritting his teeth, he willed his erection to subside. He forced himself to think of the horrors overseas and his failure to find any hope of a free existence for shifters. He thought of what his cousins would say when they discovered he’d returned for the mating season to claim his place as pack alpha—and instead been fucking his high school crush. He thought of what his father had said.
Let her go, or see her die.
His father was gone but the vicious truth remained. He was a werewolf and she was a human and, worse, a seer, although she probably didn’t believe in that anymore than she could believe in shapeshifters. He would never have Maddie Joplin.
That should’ve done the trick. His wolf recoiled from the cold reality. But his cock was as thick-headed as ever.
Maddie, however, was done waiting for him. She wrenched herself off his stubbornly engorged dick. They both yelped, she in pain, his wolf at the knowledge he had—despite all his words to the contrary—hurt her again.
She gave him a glare as she stepped away from him at the same time she kicked up her heel and snagged her panties off her half boot. The dance should have looked awkward, but she managed to look like she was contemplating putting that boot up his ass. She stuffed the white cotton into her hoodie pocket. A peace flag rescinded.
“Well, that was…” She tugged down the hem of her skirt so the denim cupped her gorgeous ass. The musky fragrance of her orgasm sweetened by her natural perfume of firewheel flower wafted toward him, arousing as hell, which left him unable to do up his own zipper. He stifled a sigh as her gaze raked his stiff flesh still pointing straight at her. “Just like old times.”
“You have no idea,” he muttered. “Maddie—”
She held up one hand, fingers spread in a perpendicular block to his yearning prick. “Nope. We had our high school reunion. Now it’s back to our old lives.”
Not for him. He’d come back to take a mate, and his life would never be the same.
His throat tightened with the wolf’s defiance.
At his continued silence, her gaze drifted away. “See you around, Kane.”
Though he was almost strangled by the wolf’s mourning cry and the bleak knowledge of his fate, he heard himself ask, “Can I?”
She was already in the opening of the gazebo, one boot poised to escape. “Can you what?”
“See you again.” It was wrong to ask. He could offer her nothing but secrets and violence and likely death. He’d never believed he was a hero, but he’d not known he was such a bastard.
Maddie lifted her chin, wayward umber curls lifting on the breeze as she stepped out of the gazebo. “The first time was yours. This was mine. Let’s just call it even, shall we?”
He followed her to the doorway arch, though he knew she was right.
She glanced back at him, her gaze raking him. “You should put that thing away before it goes off again.”
No doubt she meant to shame him, but his body reacted as if she’d stroked him all the way down. Every muscle tensed to attention, ready for the next round.
She turned and nearly ran to escape him. Retreating up the lawn to the road, her footsteps traced in silver dew on the spiky grass. She crested the rise and disappeared.
He turned too—into a wolf—and followed her home.
He kept to the shadows of the sage and rabbitbrush, but she never looked around. She fled up the metal stairs at the back of the gas station and fiddled with the second-floor door. This time she did pause to glance back.
He’d been silent, of course, and in the darkness invisible to human eyes. But she was a seer, and he wondered if she sensed something was hunting her. She looked out at the night, her head lifted. Then she slipped inside and he heard the click of the lock as she closed out the darkness. A light came on behind the industrial windows, too
grimy even for his sharp predator gaze to make out more than a hazy image.
The wolf sneezed at the prickling scent of gasoline and old tires. The beast in him wanted nothing more than to snatch her from this stinking place and run with her to the mesa where the clean desert winds smelled of life and death and moonlight.
But a pack alpha needed to be more than his animal instincts.
Kane forced the wolf back and loped to Gypsy’s where he’d left his clothes and boots. At least the aching pleasure of the change had taken the lingering edge off his lust.
For now, the wolf warned him in its wordless way.
But the beast always felt that way.
Just beyond the pergola, he paused, muzzle raised to the breeze. Between one stride and the next, he shifted. It was a bravura performance. Most werewolves needed a moment or two to adapt between shapes, but Kane figured he needed to assert his power in front of the two who awaited him.
Bastian and Rafael were lounging against the railing. Thankfully not the one where Maddie had bent to take his cock.
Not that the exact location mattered much. The rich scent of her pleasure seemed to infuse the wood. Still, he didn’t want his cousins putting their hands anywhere near Maddie’s fine ass, or even where her ass had been. The wolf growled in agreement.
His cousins were dressed in their country and western best, including a beer in hand. Although being a shapeshifter left little room for modesty, in human shape being naked while others were clothed was a psychological disadvantage. Of course the bastards knew that and weren’t above testing him, but a third bottle of beer, unopened, perched on the pergola step.
“Wondered how long we’d have to wait,” Bas said by way of greeting. “Rafe said all night. I said no way.”
Kane swept the bottle off the step as he joined them. Though the moon still shone through the open portion of the roof, they’d all sought the dark spaces out of the light.
For a heartbeat, he thought of the glow on Maddie’s skin.