by Elsa Jade
“You have no idea, Joy. No idea of the way you own me.” In three strides, he stood close enough to grasp her chin. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes as he tilted her face up and brushed a kiss across her lips. “I’m going to take care of you tonight.”
“Screw care,” she cried. “Just take me.”
The bed dipped as he settled one knee at the edge and leaned in to nip at her bottom lip before dragging his hot kisses down her throat.
Despite the urgency of only a few minutes earlier, he took his time. His lips lingered between her breasts, mapping a path back and forth between the swollen tips. Joy rubbed her thighs together restlessly but Gabriel seemed determined to begin his seduction all over again. As he traced his thumbs along her hipbones and explored the vulnerable flesh beneath her breasts, she panted and tugged ineffectively at his hair.
Gabriel’s steady, deliberate caresses faltered. Sliding one arm around her waist, he pulled her down to the bed and rose up to straddle her legs. “Let me do it my way, Joy. Then next time, it’ll be exactly the way you want.”
Her brow furrowed at his strained tone and the white lines bracketing his eyes. Before she could put her question into words, he slid his hand between her legs and found her entrance with his fingertips. Every thought in her head splintered as he drew circles around her virgin gate.
Throwing her head back, she rolled her hips and moaned, “More.”
“More when you’re ready.” Gabriel breathed the words in her ear.
“I’m ready now.” Digging her heels into the mattress, she bucked up hard. He cursed, but didn’t pull back fast enough to keep her from impaling herself on his teasing finger. A short jab of pain made her cry out.
“Joy.” Pulling his hand from between her thighs, Gabriel caught a fistful of her hair and tilted her face to his. A gentle, comforting kiss, then, “Joy. You don’t just—Ah, to hell with it. Let me.”
Rearing up, he caught her knees and raised them high. Joy flushed as he pressed her thighs wide, utterly exposing her folds. Gabriel studied her with hooded eyes for several breaths, then leaned down and opened his mouth over her.
The first swipe of his tongue brought back-bowing pleasure. Clawing at the comforter, she moaned and twisted her hips, rubbing up into the carnal kiss. He held her still, helpless under his exploring mouth. She whimpered through the building pressure, eager for release but afraid of losing control. When he slid his finger into her passage, the slow, sure invasion felt worlds different from the penetration she’d forced. As her inner walls flexed, parting for him and clinging at the same time, he wrapped his lips around her nub and sucked.
Fast, unexpected pleasure ripped a shriek from her throat. As she shook on the peak of it, Gabriel surged over her.
The wild light in his eyes was unmistakable. Joy didn’t hesitate. She opened her arms as he came down on top of her.
“I’m ready,” she promised, gazing up into his eyes.
His lips peeled back to reveal the sharp, gleaming points of his incisors. “I’m not.”
Denial whipped her head back and forth. Grasping at his arms, she tried to hold him on top of her but he was stronger. Her nails left long red lines on his flesh as he broke free of her grasp.
“Gabriel, don’t do this to me. Don’t—”
“Shhh.” He covered her mouth with one hand, while the other—she rolled her eyes, trying to see what he was doing, but an instant later seeing didn’t matter. The heavy, hard length of his cock grazed her inner thigh.
“I thought I could turn you without being inside you, but I can’t. There’s this thing in me, connected to you, and I’ve denied it too long. You’ll know once you’ve turned. You’ll understand once you’ve felt it too.”
Wrapping her fingers around his wrist, she pulled his hand from her mouth. “I already know.”
His Adam’s apple rose and fell once. “I’m going to pull out, but there’s still a chance—”
“Oh, don’t, please. I want the chance. Let me be yours in all the ways I can.”
“Joy.” Her name broke on a groan. Gabriel ran his thumb down the side of her neck, then slid his hands beneath her bottom and lifted her to accept his first powerful thrust.
Pleasure burned on the heels of pain as he stretched and filled her. Giving herself over to instinct, she wound her arms around his back and arched up to meet the rhythm he set for them.
As her body changed to accommodate his, her doubts and fears fell away.
“So sweet,” Gabriel breathed in her ear. “My Joy, you were made for me.”
The bottoms of her feet had begun to tingle. Pressing her soles against his calves, she turned her head and bared her neck to him. “God, Gabriel, I love you. Please do it now while I’m still holding on.”
“Joy…” As he swept her hair from her neck, his pace slowed and deepened. Their joined bodies connected in ways she hadn’t thought possible.
On the verge of losing control, she started to cry.
“No, beautiful. No.” Lowering his head, he licked the tears from the corner of her eye, then opened his mouth on her neck.
Joy stiffened in anticipation, pain and release stacked high and crushing her at once as Gabriel’s fangs pierced her flesh. He muffled her scream with his hand and caught the echo in a kiss that tasted like blood.
Her blood, she realized as she opened wide and tangled her tongue with his. Even though he’d told her the bite didn’t go both ways, she found herself nipping at his lips, hard, hungry to know his flavor the way he now knew hers.
With a groan, he tore away from the increasingly violent kiss and threw his head back. His spine bowed, and he looked so wild…
As his body jerked, emptying deep inside her, she caught a taste of the wolf locked inside him. For an instant, pleasure seized control of everything and held her suspended. She could feel every hot pulse of his essence, every twitch of his cock, and when she held her hand over his heart, she could hear it as strongly as she felt it.
He was so alive, and the connection arcing between them filled her with bright, vibrant bursts of wildness. Wrapping her arms around him, she surrounded to the bond they’d forged and let it carry her away.
Chapter Five
‡
Gabriel brought her back before she was ready for it. Gathering her close, he rolled until she lay sprawled on him. His breath came quick and hot in her ear.
“Don’t sleep.” He nuzzled the bruised, tender place he’d bitten. “As soon as you can, we have to go.”
“No,” she moaned. “Can’t we just be like this?”
“Not this time, love.” He ran his hand down her back and squeezed her hip. Regret haunted his eyes.
As she reluctantly slid off him, he rose and grabbed a shirt from a basket of clean laundry. “Wear this for now. Your clothes aren’t really clothes anymore.”
Joy eyed her shredded shirt as she scooted to the edge of the bed. It was hard to be annoyed as she cuddled the soft cotton in her hands.
Slipping into one of Gabriel’s t-shirts ranked high on her top five list of Best Things Ever.
“Why are we in such a hurry?” She watched him cram clothes into a worn duffel bag, not sharing in his urgency.
“I’ve never bitten anyone before. I don’t know how long we have before you change for the first time. I don’t want you confined by four walls when you do it.” He dropped the duffel and crossed to stroke the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I’ve only ever wanted you to have the world to choose from. Now I want you to have a world full of wide-open paths to explore from the very first time you run.”
“Gabriel,” she whispered, and kissed his knuckles. Happiness and contentment spread out to fill all her deep spaces. Holding his gaze, she asked, “Why did we wait so long for this?”
“Most werewolves don’t find their mates so early, and you were so young. You’d barely lived at all. Life isn’t the same when the blood of a wolf beats in your heart. It can be so much better, but it�
��s not the same.”
“I wish you’d told me sooner. I could have waited. Wanting you, not knowing if I’d ever have you, has been so hard.” She bit her lip as pain flashed in his eyes. Squeezing his hand, she kissed his knuckles again. “I’m sorry. That doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters to you, so it matters to me.” Crouching down to her level, he caught her gaze with a promise. “I can’t change anything that’s come before, but I will never again keep anything of myself away from you.”
Her breath hitched at the sincerity in his voice. His vow snaked around her in ways not even his bite had done. As her eyes went hot and prickly, she sniffed and blinked and wiped at the tears before they could well up.
“Joy.” Gabriel cupped her elbows and stood, pulling her with him. He kissed each of her eyelids. “Your eyes are fucking amazing with your wolf glowing in them.”
“With my…oh. Oh. It’s time, isn’t it?”
He nodded and helped her into a loose pair of sweatpants before slinging the duffel across his chest. “I don’t have shoes for you.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Wolves have built-in shoes.”
“No, it doesn’t matter.” Laughing, Gabriel kissed her hard before leading her through the house.
As they stepped outside, she looked up at the snow-capped peak of his mini mountain. “Did you build that so you could be closer to the moon? You know. Greet it with a good howl?”
“You have a lot to learn, my Joy.” He tugged her through the brush, out toward the lake. “I’ll teach you.”
“I hope you’re going to teach me about a lot more than howling at moons. I want many, many more repeats of tonight. Maybe from different angles, too.”
The blowing wind tossed his groan back to her. It was still humming in her ears as they broke through the tree line and her wolf rose up to claim its mate.
The End
Obsession
For most of the ride to Calla Beach’s only motel, which was connected to the town’s only bar, Zev stared out the window in silence. The whump whump of the windshield wiper blades and the shush of the snow under the truck’s tires were a pretty fitting soundtrack for his thoughts.
After he and Forrest dealt with the unlucky bastard Joy had brought home with her, they would…
Fuck, he didn’t know what they would do.
Forrest broke the silence. “Are you going to move on now?”
Zev shrugged and restlessly drummed his fingers on his knee. “Six years here, and she hasn’t come to me. Either I go after her, or I follow the wolf packs.”
Unlike Gabriel, Zev hadn’t just tripped over his True Mate by accident. The Grey Wolves Rising began as a pack with a pact to travel, keep their feet moving until they’d each found their mates, True or otherwise. Gabriel’s chance encounter with Joy, and their drawn-out drama, had put Zev and Forrest on ice for too long.
At first, the stasis had been tolerable. They’d found wolf packs in the wilds around the lakes and companionship wasn’t hard to come by. But the wolves had moved on.
“I think it’s time to go,” Forrest said. “Gabriel will be occupied with Joy until she’s grown into her new fur. If we’re still looking when the two of them come back into the world, we’ll revisit our ties.”
Zev nodded but held his silence. Could be, he didn’t have anyone out there waiting for him. The few dreams and half-visions he’d had of his mate were cloaked in an aura of decay. In his darkest moments, he told himself he wouldn’t find her until he started looking six feet under.
Forrest didn’t try to revive the subject again, and fifteen minutes later, the two of them were in the motel’s cramped bar stomping snow from their boots.
As his eyes adjusted to the bar’s dim artificial lights, Zev felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
Unaffected, Forrest pointed at two people occupying stools on the bar.
“That’s our guy,” Forrest said. “Looks like he’s already moving on from Joy. This should be easy.”
Zev didn’t answer. Death had settled like a mantle around his shoulders, growing heavier and heavier as he stared at the woman sitting in the shadows at the far end of the bar.
Click to continue with Zev’s story in Obsession, available now!
Dear Reader,
TEMPTATION is the first story in my Grey Wolves Rising, a series of stand-alone romances that feature a new couple in each book.
Zev’s story, OBSESSION, and Forrest’s story, SALVATION, are available now. To be notified of future releases, sign up to receive my newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
~Emma
Also available
Obsession – Grey Wolves Rising #2
Salvation – Grey Wolves Rising #3
Forbidden – Grey Wolves Rising #4
About the Author
Emma Storm grew up watching soap operas and reading sexy stories whenever she could sneak them, so it was no wonder she turned to romance when she opened her first blank word document and started to write. She started and deleted all kinds of stuff before finding inspiration in beautiful, curvy women and the strong, virile men (who become werewolves when the situation demands) who love them.
Emma and her own little wolf pack run wild along the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, but thanks to the miracles of modern communications technology, readers the world over can stay connected by signing up for Emma’s newsletter.
Iron
Blue Collar Wolves #1
Mating Season Collection
Ronin Winters
Romantic Geek Publishing
IRON (BLUE COLLAR WOLVES #1) (MATING SEASON COLLECTION)
Romantic Geek Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Ronin Winters
Publication Date: June 2015
Editor: Sara Lunsford
Copy Editor: Eilis Flynn
Cover Design: Croco Designs
To know when the next Ronin Winters book is released, please sign-up for her MAILING LIST.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons – living or dead – is purely coincidental.
Books by Ronin Winters
The Mating Season
The mating moon is rising…
Blue Collar Wolves
Iron
Brick House
Steel
The Pleasure Chronicles
Sexy Sci-Fi about Warrior women and the Alpha Males who love them
Pleasure Satellite – To the Strongest goes Everything…
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Want to join fellow Shifter Romance Fans?
FACEBOOK FAN GROUP FOR THE MATING SEASON
What is The Mating Season Collection?
The Mating Season began when six friends who also happen to be Paranormal Romance Writers got together and started talking about how it was funny that authors could take the same premise but make such different stories around it.
A little more talk (and perhaps a little more wine – no telling) and they began to brainstorm about a shifter world revolving around The Mating Season, a special time of year that would be the only time a shifter could take a mate. One author suggested she would take a story this way while another laughed and cut her off and said, nope, she’d tell a story like this.
And then they all stopped and thought, Hey, why don’t we write these different stories and release them all together in one collection? So they did.
Six Authors. Six Different Packs. And all of it revolving around One Premise – The Mating Season.
We are proud and excited to have worked on this project together. I hope you enjoy my take and my pack as they navigate The Mating Season, and please check o
ut my friends’ packs and their takes on it as well.
–Ronin
Chapter One
‡
Fucking hell, those curves.
Those curves that left him hard and aching, palming his dick with just the thought of them, that he fucking came in his sleep over, that he fucking salivated over like a dog in heat, and they were right there, those hips and that ass in skin-tight blue jeans, swinging in beat to the classic rock pouring out of the jukebox.
And Isabella Santiago knew what she was doing to him, like fuck she didn’t. She had glanced at him over her shoulder before stopping right in his line of sight with her back to him, one hand tucked into her back pocket as if to direct his eyes where to go. Then she started dancing in place, and that ass hadn’t stopped moving since.
“Iron, man, quit drooling over the bitch and nut up enough to say hi without pissing your pants.”
From behind the bar, Iron flipped off his alpha, then went back to wiping the pint glass. “Why don’t you go fucking say hi, Steel? I already said hi when she came in with her friends.”
Steel leaned back, his bright gold eyes sharp and focused. “Friends, huh? Take it you didn’t see how rich boy’s eyes are glued to her ass?”
Iron’s hand flexed, the glass cracking under the sudden pressure. Iron swore while Steel gave a small laugh as the glass was tossed in the trash. Hell yeah he’d noticed the scrawny little glasses-wearing bastard, and he was due some type of reward for not tossing the guy out on the ass of his too-expensive jeans. “Not my place to say anything.”
Steel’s snort could be heard over the low roar of the crowd, the sound carrying a mocking edge. “She’s your true mate. It’s been your place to speak since we were kids, but you’ve been too dumbass to man up and claim what’s yours. Are you going to change that this mating season, or do I have to go through this for another year?”