The Wolf's Joy

by Holley Trent

  No more nervous weight shifting. No more unfocused attention. Evidently, whatever dysfunction he’d been acting out earlier had passed. When he was as still as he was, and his attention so thoroughly fixed on her, she couldn’t help but to feel small. Human, but not in a bad way. She felt the same whenever Belle’s brothers were near her. They were normal-sized men, but they seemed to take up a lot of space. In her mind, she equated them to safety. She would never be hurt when they were around. She was starting to feel the same way about Ben.

  Ben pushed away from the counter and strode to her, thumbs hooked in his belt loops. “So, what? Hmm? You go get a college degree and a job behind a desk or something?”

  “That was what I was supposed to do.” She scoffed and wriggled a tiny twig out of her jacket’s zipper pull. It must have gotten lodged there when she’d been gathering seeds. “I was supposed to do what my mother did.” She counted off on her fingers. “Leave here. Go to a school far away. Become white collar. Forget where I started.” She shrugged. “Some nights, I stay up late thinking about the arguments she makes. Maybe she’s right and I’m wrong. Maybe I’m a masochist and am making my life harder than it needs to be.”

  “Or maybe you found something you care about and that makes you happy to do. Don’t matter what color your collar is.”

  Alex expelled a dry laugh, already hearing in her head the things her mother might say in response to that. She was a class climber, and that was fine for her, but Alex wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to follow. Maybe she wasn’t ambitious enough.

  Or courageous enough.

  “You’re nervous,” Ben said, pressing a hand to the back of his neck and rubbing as he shifted his weight like earlier. “I don’t . . . like when you get nervous like that. Keys up the wolf in me.”

  “Sorry.” She broke the fragile twig between her fingers. “I should probably prescribe myself a few slices of that boozy cake.”

  “Quit fretting. You’ve got plenty of time to get your life in order. You’re young.”

  The words triggered a convulsive scoff from her.

  You’re young.

  Those words . . . she couldn’t stand those words. Too many times, Kyle had said them to dismiss her truths. As though at twenty-three, she were a child. As though she hadn’t been paying her own way since she’d picked up her first summer job at sixteen.

  “I . . . ” Alex’s tongue was tied, brain worse off. Shaking her head, she walked away from the table, first toward the living room, then changing her mind and deciding that her bedroom was better because it had a door.

  But Ben pulled her back by the hand and walked around to face her.

  “I know precisely how old I am,” she said. “That was the very first thing Scott asked me, right? If you’re going to insult me over something I have no control over, I’d prefer that you leave. I’m not going to—”

  Something.

  Alex had planned to tell Ben off, and good, but he was distracting. His warm, rough palms on her cheeks distracting. His lips on hers, pinching off her words—those were distracting, too.

  As he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her tight against faded clothes and hard muscle, she decided that distracting was exactly what she needed.

  Chapter Six

  Ben was stunned that trick worked, and he was going to reap the reward for as long as she let him.

  He calmed her tongue with his, assertively chasing back whatever silly objection she’d been about to spout over something he hadn’t even said.

  She was like putty in his arms. Legs wobbling, balance shifting, fingers trying to dig into his jacket and hang on, but not managing to.

  He was happy to hold her up. The animal part of him liked to believe he was doing something productive, and in his mind, there was nothing more productive than holding up a swooning lady—especially when he was the reason for the swooning.

  “Surprised that worked,” he confessed, pulling back some and watching her blink rapidly.

  “Huh?” Alex’s pupils were unmatched in size, her body veering off its axis.

  The animal part of Ben relished her dazed state and that his magic finally had an effect on someone. And that’s what it was—magic. The same stuff that gave Wolves instinctive familiarity to the others in their packs. The same stuff that guided their intuition on which Wolves were more dominant and had to be obeyed, and which Wolves weren’t worth their time.

  Ben wasn’t trying to disarm her with magic. He wouldn’t have known how. The magic couldn’t be wielded or guided.

  It did whatever was in a Wolf’s best interest, and apparently, at that moment, Alex was Ben’s best interest.

  “Nothin’.” He leaned in again, and the bit of straightness in her spine she’d acquired melted away once more.

  He’d said “Bullshit,” when Calvin had told him that the easiest way to settle his hysterical mate was to kiss her. Ben had done plenty of kissing in his life. No woman had ever responded that way before.

  Alex had managed to get her fingers to work and clutched his plackets to balance herself on her toes. She was leaning up and into the kiss, leaving no doubt she wanted it. Her enthusiasm was a hell of a turn-on, not that he’d needed much help there. Just watching the woman talk made him hard. Most ladies didn’t bother having conversations with him. They sighed at him a lot and rolled their eyes at him a lot, except for when they were shoving their hands down his pants. Apparently, Wolves were tolerable enough then. Their cocks were worth the trouble, if not the things they had to say.

  He looped his arm beneath her ass and pulled her up and against him, wrapping her legs around his waist.

  Her fingers threaded through the back of his hair, tightening, tugging, as he carried her into the living room. Never once did she break the kiss for as long as he moved.

  “Maybe I should buy you dinner first,” he said with a laugh.

  “Hmm?” He nipped at her jaw, her neck, urged to consume her in every way he could. Eyes. Touch. Taste. The animal part of him didn’t want her to get away. Perhaps his inner wolf had been making that clear all day with his quiet consent.

  She was fun and down-to-earth. Had a bit of sass to her, but that was all right. She’d need a little spunk to put up with a character like him.

  She don’t gotta put up with me, though.

  He needed to dash that thought from his mind. He couldn’t keep her. He couldn’t stay.

  The two of them were a happy accident at best, and they’d be going their separate ways by the twenty-fourth. Wouldn’t do to get attached, even if the damn dog in him was howling for him to pay attention to what he’d be leaving.

  Ben was paying attention, but he was trying not to make himself miserable with second-guessing himself. He’d decided months ago what was important, and he refused to go back to that station where “interchangeable hillbilly Wolf” was all he was.

  He’d aimed for the sofa, but they somehow ended up sliding to the floor in front of it. Her hands had started roaming, but he didn’t care so much. If she’d been anyone else, he would have given them a maximum of three seconds to fill their touch quota, and then they’d have to find some other Wolf to paw.

  He wanted Alex to paw him, though. She touched him like she needed to, and being needed for something so tender was a hell of a mind fuck.

  “Take off your coat,” she said.

  They were both wearing a lot of clothes.

  He ripped his jacket off fast enough to help her with her coat, too, and the cardigan beneath. The buttons dangled from loose threads with his clumsy touch, but he could fix them later if she let him. He could thread a needle as well as he could do an oil change.

  Her lips seared down the column of his neck, her fingers scrambling against his shirt, balling the fabric into her fists. Her energy and enthusiasm excited the wolf in him. She was into him, murmuring candid instructions like, “Take this off” while tugging at his belt buckle, and “Harder” as she showed him how she liked her brea
sts squeezed.

  “You like it a little rough, huh?” He yanked his belt buckle open and ripped open the fastenings of his pants.

  “I don’t know.” She stopped kissing his neck long enough to ponder if she did. “Maybe I do?”

  She tugged her shirt off, mindless of the disruption to her bra that left one breast half dangling from the top of a black lace cup.

  Of course, his mouth went straight for it. He wanted that touch, that taste.

  Her breath shuddered as she pushed forward into his mouth. Each gasp and whimper instructed him in whether he should flick that hard bud faster with the tip of his tongue or give her more teeth in the tender flesh of her breast or less. He yanked down the other cup as he sucked and drove his thumb into the nipple as he kneaded.

  “Keep . . . Keep doing that.” Her breathy plea came on the tail end of her hand snaking into his pants, her fingers slipping around the shaft of him.

  He stopped sucking on her long enough to pull in a sharp breath and help her get his pants down. They were in the way. Too much fabric. Too much covering, and he wanted to be seen.

  When he’d finished tugging his shirt over his head, her kiss-swollen mouth fell open and her gaze raked down between his legs.

  “I . . . ” Alex’s eyebrows retreated upward and mouth opened and closed without speech. “Uh. Hi.”

  “Are we in a good place to make introductions now? We kinda bungled them earlier.” He cupped his sac and hooked his thumb around his shaft to stand it up, smirking all the while. “Benjamin Swain. Trust me when I say we’re pleased to meet you.”

  “The feeling is mutual.” She pushed slowly onto her knees, gaze locked on his down-below, tongue making a slow path over her lips. “Alexis Cavanaugh. Welcome to Maria.”

  He didn’t expect her to lean in and take the head of him into her hot mouth or to enthusiastically work her tongue where the essence of him lived.

  “Gods.” He collapsed onto his back and closed his eyes, because with the sight of her leaning over him, breasts hanging free from her bra and with the twinkle of tree lights caressing her skin, he was on sensory overload.

  “Wanted to taste you,” she said around him as she worked wetness down his shaft with her fist. “That’s okay, right?”

  “Hell yeah, it is. Who said it isn’t?”

  She broke her latch around him, and he decided he actually didn’t want to know. He kept her sucking by gently rocking his hips forward and caressing the underside of her chin.

  Wolves weren’t renowned for keeping their tempers in check. They simply chose to keep their heads in the sand, because ignorance was bliss. He didn’t need to know specifics.

  What Alex lacked in experience, she made up for in enthusiasm. The little moans and slurps made a salacious accompaniment to the picture in his head. Her velvety lips sliding up and down his wet shaft, pale fingers tight around him, breasts swaying as her head bobbed up and down.

  “Damn. Just like that, sugar.” He rocked his hips, trying to be gentle at the same time he conveyed his urgency. He needed to come like he needed air. It didn’t make sense, but it seemed imperative that he do that under her direction—that he sacrifice his body to her desires, any way she wanted.

  She added her other hand and wrung him as she sucked the head. She was picking up speed, so he opened his eyes. He needed to be more present. He needed to be sure she didn’t think she was obligated to finish if she didn’t want to.

  But her gaze was trained on his face, daringly, and the corners of her mouth briefly hitched upward.

  “Shit, woman.” He wrapped his hands around hers and made her really squeeze him. “Grab me tight. You’re not gonna hurt me. Everything you do to me feels good.”

  “Sounds like a challenge.”

  He was going to make some sort of argument, but the words caught in his throat as the threat of fire ripped through his midsection. Bending his knees and digging his toes into the floor, he thrust between her lips, once, twice, and let out a feral-sounding growl as he pulled himself out of her mouth. Wet heat splashed against his belly, and he was seeing stars as his pulse pounded in his ears.

  Shit.

  He kept repeating it in his head.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He’d never put up such a shameful performance before, at least not in his adult life. He could have held on a bit longer. Teased a bit. Put her on the edge of pleasure and kept her there until she and the animal inside him were both begging for relief.

  But that hadn’t been right—the unusual urgency he’d felt had left no room for negotiation. He didn’t understand anything. Maybe he was further gone than he’d realized.

  Alex crawled over him, palms pressed to the floor at the sides of his head, and stared curiously at him. Ben had never been the best at making sense of women’s moods, but she didn’t look dissatisfied. A long draw of breath through his nose informed him that she didn’t smell too put out, either.

  Her arousal still hung heavy in the air. It was a Come get me scent, and that was a dangerous scent to a Wolf. It signaled permanence, and he couldn’t give her that.

  The animal inside him didn’t like that thought. It didn’t want to think about her being a temporary fix or that he should wait a little while to make any moves. Ben needed to keep his life the way it was. Liked his standing in the pack and being respected by people that mattered.

  Alex . . . was a complication he hadn’t expected.

  “Hmm.” Alex peeled off her shirt and swiped the fabric across the mess on his belly. Then she sat on his chest and looked behind her and down.

  His half-erect cock gave a twitch as if to acknowledge her.

  Shit.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t help sometimes doing things wild animals do.”

  “Hmm,” she repeated and casually plucked his wallet out of his pile of clothes. Singing a wordless song, she thumbed through the billfold.

  “I can afford to buy you dinner, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Nope.” Her mouth made that funny popping sound again, but no sooner did he smile than his expression tightened into one of incredulity. She’d fished a condom out and tossed his wallet back where it’d been. “You can buy me a mango empanada later, though, if Tiny’s willing to brave the snow and wind to take the taco truck out tonight.”

  “Sugar, I’ll buy you whatever you want.” She could take the wallet and keep everything inside if she needed to. Maybe he’d feel less like a shitheel.

  “Empanada’s good enough. Well, maybe a hot chocolate, too.”

  “Of course.” She’d probably send him on his way, then, after they’d both gotten a little bit of what they’d wanted.

  That would have been fine a day ago, but that’d been before he’d known what he could have.

  He didn’t know if he was going to be “fine.” At the very least, he was going to wonder, and maybe wonder and regret were different flavors of the same damn thing.

  ___

  Alex was never the aggressor in matters of intimacy. Although she considered herself to be more outgoing than most, she generally waited for signals that it was her turn to take what she wanted. Rarely did she get to.

  But Ben was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. He was clear about what he wanted and had no room to complain if it wasn’t given a certain way. That made her bolder. She was going to get what she wanted, for once.

  “Put that on.” She put the condom into his hand and eased off of him to get rid of her pants, her socks, her underwear.

  His dark gaze never left her as she moved, even as his hands ripped open the little packet and rolled the contents down his revived erection. With his focus on her, she felt primal and sexy. Desired, and not just tolerated. A heady feeling she hoped to have again someday.

  He put his back against the front of the sofa as she returned to him. She straddled his thighs and, with no hesitation, slid down onto him, taking him in inch by inch, his fingers notching into her ass as hers dug in
to his shoulders.

  “Biting off more than you can chew, sugar.” His laugh was laced with sin and gentle mockery.

  “I can handle you,” she quipped as she pulled a bracing breath in through her teeth.

  Maybe.

  Ben was like a piece of complicated gym equipment she hadn’t used before and didn’t know how to program.

  “Gods, you’re trouble.” His fist wrapped loosely around her ponytail as she seated herself on him as far down as she could go.

  She held still there with her knees aching from the press of the area rug’s edge, her thighs quivering, hips throbbing from her legs being spread so wide.

  “Not . . . a position I’m used to,” she murmured to herself. She found her balance and began to slide slowly up and down his shaft as he glided his free hand down her back. The calluses on it both tickled and aroused, confusing her senses, more so when he put his lips against hers and held her head firmly in place.

  It was a demanding kiss—a distracting dance of lips and tongues that had her heart racing, belly quivering in expectation, and sex clenching tightly around him.

  She needed him to dull the ache inside her and chase away the chronic neediness that built from affection being too infrequent or not thorough enough.

  “Why couldn’t you live back east, hmm? Why you gotta be all the way over here?” He went back to kissing her, but he let go of her hair to grab onto the bottom of her thighs.

  “Maybe I’ll . . . tie you up with some leftover tree garland and keep you here.”

  Wouldn’t that be nice?

  Having a tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome Wolf at home who was willing to wade into thorny weeds to fetch her seeds and give her bees and who’d buy her empanadas sounded like her ideal man right about then. She didn’t even mind the fact that he was part animal. One of her best friends was. Alex could handle a bit of snarling.

  Ben helped her find a rhythm a little faster than she would have tried on her own, but he was incredibly strong and had energy for days. The frenetic ride had her core thrumming with prickles of pleasure that rapidly turned into desperate aches.

  So close.