by R. E. Butler
“It’s the full moon tonight, my love.” Her voice was doing that sultry growl that he’d realized quickly meant she was not going to take no for an answer. Not for any reason. Not that he’d ever turn her down.
He pulled off his shirt and dropped it as she moved with liquid grace towards him, as if she had bones where she shouldn’t have them. She leaned her back against the wall and slid her hands down the front of her body. Hmmm. His body responded immediately to the sight.
Dropping his pants, he’d taken her rule of no underwear in the house until they moved seriously, and found it a relief to not have to fool with them on either of them. Of course he found it wildly nice that she’d spent the last couple of days almost entirely naked, except for when their family came over.
He drew her body up his and she hooked her legs around the small of his back and dug her nails into his shoulders. “Hard, baby, please.” She moaned, dropping her head back to the wall. That was her signal to say she didn’t need any foreplay, either because she was still rolling from orgasms with Eryx or because she was just that turned on.
She sank down on him, pulling with her legs and driving herself down until she was seated fully and then her head lifted and he caught a bit of amber flickering in her eyes, and knew that she was dealing with full moon cravings. He was more than happy to oblige.
“Fuck you’re hot, baby,” he growled before starting a hard rhythm. He angled slightly, rolling his hips until he heard her breath catch in the middle of her panting moans and knew he’s found her sweet spot, and that was it. She wanted hard, and he gave it to her, driving himself up into her hot flesh and forgetting everything else around them. She gave herself over to his onslaught, and buried her face in his neck. He expected the bite, he had a feeling she couldn’t really help herself, and it just did it for him. He loved that she marked him so that anyone that saw the bites and scratches would know he was well loved.
She came the first time and her ragged moan cut through the quiet in the basement and he pushed himself to give her everything she needed. His fingers cut into her shoulders as he held back at least until she came once more, ignoring the pleasure building inside his own body until he’d taken care of her.
A wave of heavy scent drifted between them, the combination of her arousal and his mixing together, and it triggered something in him, a primal need to mark her. He turned his head into her neck and bit down and she screamed as she came hard. Her climax drew out his, and it seemed like forever that his body came inside hers, a cycle of pleasure that made him shudder from head to foot and his knees go weak.
Groaning, he managed to lower them both to the floor without dropping her, and he rolled to his back and she settled on his chest, draped over him like a blanket, the robe covering both of them. Within minutes she was asleep. He wasn’t as comfortable as he could have been if he’d been in bed with her, but he’d lay on broken glass to see to her pleasure, that was for sure.
With some gentle maneuvering, he kicked his legs free of his jeans and rolled to his knees with her in his arms and took her upstairs.
Eryx was crashed out on the couch so he carried her into the bedroom and laid her down, covering her and giving her cheek a caress.
He didn't bother to cover up. He and Eryx had been eye-fulling each other ever since they’d made love to her the first time and he didn’t have a shred of modesty left in his body. He tapped his brother on the arm as he sat down with a groan on the coffee table.
Eryx gave him a one-eyed stare and smiled as it slid shut, “She take you to town, too?”
“Yeah.” He yawned and ran his hand through his hair. “I marked her. At the end. I felt like I had to.”
Eryx’s eyes popped open. “No shit? I did, too. I don’t think I could have stopped if I’d had any blood in my brain to think, it was like she smelled better than normal. You think it’s because of the full moon for her?”
“Don’t know. Something’s going on with us because of her, though, don’t you think? It’s like yesterday when you beat up Alek because he saw her naked.”
Eryx grimaced at the memory. They’d all been surprised and it had been totally innocent on Alek’s part. He was bringing in packing material from the garage and Callie didn’t know that anyone was in the house except for them, and she hadn’t bothered to dress. She’d grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped up, but Eryx had come out at just the wrong time and lit into Alek as if he’d planned to hurt her. Poor guy was still nursing a pretty serious busted lip and black eye.
Scrubbing his jaw with his knuckle Ethan said, “Well, if we both did it then it’s either a lion mating thing or a wolf full moon thing, or a combination of the two. Since none of us have been in this situation before, it’s not like we have a book to refer to. I’m going to crash with her in the bedroom. You coming?”
“Yeah.”
Another yawn worked through him and his eyes shuttered as soon as he had his arm around her and Eryx had stopped making the bed shake as he got comfortable on her other side. He figured that since they’d first made love to Callie, they’d been having sex about two or three times a day each, not counting his fantastic night alone with her. And more than just quantity, it was that he flat out loved being with her. He loved making love to her, slow and tender so it took hours, and he loved fucking her hard and fast until she screamed his name. And it was even enough to just hold her while she dozed off after a go-around or at night while they slept. He’d worried in the beginning that they wouldn’t be able to share her, but things were going well so far. Not that he’d jinx it.
She wasn’t much in the mood to eat dinner when she woke up, and she said it was just full moon jitters. They’d already agreed to both shift and go with her while she hunted, but promised to stay back as long as it wasn’t something huge like that elk.
He was looking forward to watching her shift. On the back porch, she dropped the robe she’d taken over and draped it across a dry spot on the rail and tossed them a small smile before crouching down. She shivered and then made a strange sound like something hurt.
“Baby?” He asked.
She blinked those pretty eyes up at him and they were even lovelier, amber and wide. “I’m okay, I just felt weird for a second there.”
Before he could ask her to elaborate, she shifted and went from a beautiful woman to a pretty wolf in a few seconds. Motioning for her to come over, they both crouched and ran their hands through her fur. Thick and warm, she smelled like her honey scent plus something like the woods in the fall, a nice combination.
She licked both of their palms and then bounded off the deck and turned, sitting in the snow on her haunches and waiting for them to join her. Dropping their jeans to the rail, they both shifted and moved to her, circling and sniffing and she sat passively and let them scent-mark her by rubbing their cheeks against her body.
She made a humming noise that was a lot like a purr and he thought she was probably smiling. With a growling nip on both of their shoulders, she darted off into the tree line. They could easily catch her because their stride was so much longer than hers but she was going at a fast clip to get ahead of them. They definitely didn’t want to really play at her being out of their sight, so they beat paws to catch up quick.
He had always thought that mountain lions, hell any big cat, were the most graceful creatures, but watching his mate as she darted between the trees and over brush as if she instinctively knew where everything was, gave him such a sense of pride and love for her. She was incredible. Sleek and lean, a perfect color for woods in the wintertime, and just beautiful, woman and wolf.
She found a nest of rabbits and gave chase to one of the larger ones, and they sat back and watched her as she stalked and caught it, shaking the dark brown body in her jaws until the neck snapped before dropping it between her paws and tearing it apart. He darted a glance at Eryx who had a look of sheer pride and love in his eyes, and he wondered if she’d picked up that neck snapping bit from
them.
Finished in a short time, she bounded off again, more leisurely this time as if now that she’d hunted she could just run and enjoy herself and they joined her. At the top of one of the larger hills, she sat down on her haunches and lifted her muzzle to the sky and let loose a loud howl that gave him shivers. It was both happy and sad, joyful and mourning. As the howl echoed around the hillside, it was joined by natural wolves and they sat in stunned silence as they listened to the song of the natural wolves to their mate. It was almost like they were saying goodbye to her.
As the last of the howls slid into the darkness, Callie made a groaning, sighing noise and turned, darting a look to both of them before bolting between them. Silly girl, as if they couldn’t catch her. Pounding through the woods, the snow kicked up from them as they moved to catch up to her while still giving her the sense that she was calling all the shots with the game.
As they drew close to the house, he glanced ahead of them all as they ran and he saw something odd glinting in the snow in her path. He had just a heartbeat before he realized that it was a trap. Without a second thought, he tackled Callie to stop her from getting to the trap, tumbling with her in the opposite direction. She snarled and growled furiously and he wished to hell he could talk and tell her what was going on. A loud crack sounded through the forest and Eryx was standing in his human form with a thick tree branch sticking out of the jaws of the tripped trap. Callie froze.
“Callie, you were heading right for this.” Eryx's voice was filled with wrath. He gestured to the trap and she blinked her amber eyes a few times and then shook her head with a whine and padded over to him, rubbing the top of her head against his knee. “It’s okay, love, it was your beast. Let’s get home. I’m going to freeze off a part of myself I like a great deal.” Eryx was smiling, but his eyes were dangerously dark.
Callie padded back to him and nuzzled under his neck with a gentle growl and then they headed back, and she stayed right by his side as Eryx jogged ahead. Fortunately they were close to the house. But unfortunately, that meant that the trap had definitely been meant for her. Because of the dense population of were-lions, no one hunted in the area with traps, and no one would put a trap so close to a were-lion’s home unless they were purposely looking to trap one of them. Or a sweet little wolf.
Eryx stalked right into the house and put the trap inside the door. He was most likely going to call their dad. Ethan shifted and grabbed for his jeans keeping one eye on Callie and one ear on his brother. She shifted and reached for the robe and hit the ground with a soft whimper. “Callie?” He grabbed her off the ground and moved into the house quickly.
Her head dropped back like she fainted, and then she shook out of it. Blinking several times, she said, “I felt dizzy there for a second.”
He wrapped her in the blanket from the couch and sat her on his lap. “Has that happened before?”
“No. Maybe it was just a little case of nerves, thinking about the trap that could have taken my leg off.” She lifted her head from his shoulder. “I didn’t bite you, did I? When you pushed me away my instincts just went nuts.”
“No, you didn’t get me. I wish I could talk in my shift sometimes. It would be damn handy.”
“I love you, Ethan, thank you.” She burrowed into his arms and drifted off to sleep nearly immediately, even before he could reply.
After settling her on the couch and finding his jeans too ice cold to put on, he grabbed a pair of track pants from the bedroom and found Eryx in the kitchen, staring at the phone.
“Eryx?”
“Hm? Oh, dad said in the morning he and the others will come and do a grid search of our property to check for more traps. Even if we’re leaving, the cubs play out there. I would hope there was only the one, although that seems unlikely.”
“Agreed.”
Eryx put his hand on his shoulder. “It was good luck that you saw the trap because I didn’t. She could have died from blood loss if the trap had closed up high enough on her leg, caught an artery.”
“Why won’t they just accept that we’re leaving and be done with this bullshit?”
Eryx shrugged. “Retaliation, I’m sure. Every time she’s met with the females she’s managed to keep them at bay. Did she say what was wrong when she shifted? It looked like she fainted.”
Shaking his head, he went to the refrigerator to make them some sandwiches. “No.” The package of deli roast beef sat heavily in his hand. “Can you believe that symphony of wolves for her? I’ve never heard anything quite like it.”
Eryx smiled. “Me neither. She is one special woman. And all ours.”
“Most definitely.”
**Eryx**
Four more traps were found on their property. It boggled the mind. This went beyond trying to scare her; it was like they were trying to kill her outright. And that made no sense, because they were leaving soon. He didn’t know how long the traps had been out there, but it appeared it hadn’t been very long.
The females all clammed up tight about the traps. Even under the intense anger of all the males, they appeared as aloof and uncaring as usual. As if they were asking why they’d left roses lying around and not something designed to maim and kill.
What had amazed him about the whole thing was that when he’d gotten back from the meeting, having been so furious and out of sorts, that Callie had just taken care of him. She left Ethan on the couch and came into the kitchen where he’d been slamming cabinets and drawers in an effort to find something to take the edge off the rage he’d been feeling. Once again, he felt like he could have lost her and been helpless to do anything about it, and she’d just taken his hand and pulled him back into the bedroom.
She undressed him slowly, without a word, before stripping out of her own clothes. She kissed him teasingly slow and thoroughly, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, before taking him with her mouth. She knew just how to work him with her mouth, bringing him right to the edge and then backing off until he calmed, before ramping up again. When he came down from orbit and his vision cleared of stars, he rolled her over onto her back, splayed his hands over her spread thighs and dove down on her core. Fuck but he loved to eat her pussy. Sweet and hot and oh-so wet, and she made the best sounds when he did it. Throaty growls and pleading moans, and she used his hair like handlebars, directing him where she needed him.
He drew her through a few orgasms until she couldn’t really react anymore because she didn’t have anything left to give. Then he slid inside her with a cock that always seemed ready to hit the end of her, and by the time he was ready to come the second time, she was ready, too, and they came together, and that was such a sweet relief. To feel her clutch him as she came, the ripples that descended his cock like waves of pleasure, and then to feel his cock spill inside her.
He moved her around the bed like a rag doll, because she was already in that close-to-sleep place that he loved putting her in, when she was so exhausted she couldn’t possibly keep her eyes open another second. Curled into his chest, his sweetheart sighed deeply and drifted off to sleep. In a few days they were leaving the only home that he and Ethan had ever known. Callie worried that they would resent her for the fact that they couldn’t stay, but it spoke to the deepest part of their kind when it came to taking care of their mate. Certainly they were sad to leave their brother and father and the rest of their family here, but it was such a relief to be able to take care of her by leaving that it eclipsed everything else. She didn’t really understand because wolves didn’t have anything like this among their own kind. Their males and females mated at will with humans and wolves alike, and it seemed that as long as the humans understood that sometimes things with the pack took precedence over all else, then there were no problems.
Twirling a lock of her pretty hair, he thought about getting married. They wanted to marry her in truth, to give her their last name, but so far, they hadn’t decided which she should marry on paper and which she should just commit to in the s
ame ceremony. A multiple marriage wasn’t legal of course, so only one name would be on the marriage certificate. A part of him wanted it to be his name, but in all truth, it didn’t really matter. There was no mistaking that she was theirs, both of theirs, and every day another facet of her love for them opened, like a flower blooming.
“You look thoughtful.” Ethan said quietly from the doorway.
“I was just thinking about getting married and having cubs.”
“I think about that, too.” He smiled fondly at Callie and then met his eyes. “Dad’s out in the family room and wants to chat.”
“I’ll be right out.”
Pulling on a pair of track pants after he extracted himself from under her embrace, he kissed her forehead and made sure she was tucked in before shutting the door and meeting his dad. Seated around the family room was their entire family minus the cubs who were in school right now. Alek gave him a wary look, still nursing the shiner and busted lip. He’d apologized several times for losing control, but a trust had been broken between them and he mourned the loss of it. Granted, maybe what bothered Alek wasn’t that he’d been out of control but that he hadn’t apologized for the actual pounding, and he never would. He’d totally lost it when he saw that his brother had seen his mate naked, mistake or not. Alek was lucky that Eryx had heard Callie’s frightened voice over the roar in his head, otherwise they might be saying goodbye in a hospital room. He’d had a desire to protect her, protect what was his, and Alek didn’t understand and probably wouldn’t ever if he stayed with the pride.
Their dad wanted to talk about the house. He and Ethan had considered selling it at first, using the money to fund the reconstruction that would be needed in the apple barn, but the house had been built by their grandfather and they didn’t want someone outside of the pride to own it.
The house was worth about $80,000 in this economy, but none of the pride could afford a second mortgage for that much, so they’d had Alek get a personal loan for $25,000, which was as much as he could afford. Although right now he looked like he wanted to call the whole thing a wash.