The Wolf

by Jean Johnson

  He grinned. “And how would you know what that looks like, since you spent more time under my bed than looking around my room? Unless you plan to crawl under my bed again?”

  “Into it, not under it,” she asserted firmly. “When we’re finally in there . . .” And she felt his heart actually skip a beat. He cradled her closer and strode into the bedroom, kicking that door shut as well. She jumped a little in his arms when the door banged sharply. The windows were open to any stray breeze that might take the summer heat from the room.

  “Shh,” Wolfer soothed her. “You can say no at any time.” He didn’t want to think of what she might have endured in the “almost molested” category and closed his eyes for a moment. Jinga, give me strength to keep my next few words . . . “No matter at what point we reach, if you say ‘no,’ I will stop. Whatever we are doing at that time. I promise you that.”

  He was so sweet. Even if she hadn’t been biased already by loving him, Alys decided he was definitely what the wench Cari would have called “one of the good ones.” Then again, just thinking about what they had been doing in this very room earlier that morning made her flush with embarrassment, longing, and pleasure. “Aren’t you going to put me down now?”

  “I like holding you,” Wolfer confessed roughly, meeting her soft gray eyes with his golden ones.

  Her heart skipped a beat, then pounded. When he crossed to the bed and sat down on its edge, shifting her onto his lap, she squirmed close. Making him draw a quick breath.

  “Easy!” This time it was an admonition, not a reassurance. Her hip had half-rubbed, half-dug into his groin. But it wasn’t easy to caution her when she seemed to want to abandon caution, with that same mix of hesitancy and bravery that had driven him crazy in his youth . . . and that still fascinated him every bit as much now as it had back then.

  Her mouth peppered him with kisses, from his jaw to his brow and back again. She squirmed even closer, and her lips caught his ear. Wolfer shivered at the pleasure arcing between ear and groin at her unpracticed but powerful touch. His breath caught in his throat with another shiver; her tongue traced the soft curve of his lobe, then up around the edge—and he quickly pulled her back by her shoulders when she started to graze her teeth against his flesh.

  “Whoa! Maybe I should be the one having you promise to stop, should I say ‘no,’ ” Wolfer teased.

  Alys instantly doubted herself, her bravery deserting her once more. “You didn’t . . . like it?”

  Wolfer quickly cupped her cheeks. “I liked it too much—I’m trying to go slowly, remember?”

  Her gray eyes searched his gold, inexperienced and maybe a little uncertain, but unafraid.

  Groaning, Wolfer leaned in close and kissed her. He enjoyed the way she instantly kissed him back, no timidity, no hesitancy. This is how to do it, he thought hazily, letting his hands roam in gentle sweeps over her body, from arms to shoulders to back. Keep her kissing, keep her mind—Jinga! . . .

  Her hands had started doing the same with him, touching his arms, bared thanks to the sleeveless edges of his tunic. Only hers slid inside the larger armholes of his tunic, where his hands couldn’t go in her clothes. The feel of her palms smoothing the skin of his back was heady and thrilling. They hadn’t even done more than kiss, yet, and she had wrapped herself around his senses.

  Wolfer eased back out of their kiss, easing her back as well with his hands on her shoulders, then down her arms to get those hands—those hands!—off of his flesh. He mustered a smile as she gave him a questioning, uncertain look, and managed a coherent question. “Would you like me to take off my tunic?”

  Alys blinked. Her lips parted, shut, parted again, and those gray eyes stared at his gray, cotton-covered chest as if trapped there by a spell. Wolfer decided the intensity and desire of her gaze would qualify as a “yes,” even if she couldn’t quite verbalize it.

  Leaning back just a little to put some room between them, he unfastened his belt. Dropping it to the floor by the bed, he eyed her for signs of fear. When she didn’t show any, but instead glanced between his face and his chest, he reached down and eased the hem of the tunic up. Which wasn’t easy, because he was sitting on the thigh-length material. It finally came free, and he quickly lifted it up over his head, then tossed it beyond her back somewhere. The way those soft gray eyes widened and flicked everywhere over his bared flesh was gratifying. His Alys looked as if she couldn’t stop gawking at him, couldn’t help but be fascinated by him.

  Alys indeed stared at him; he was so different from anyone else she had seen. There was a fine dusting of brown hairs, barely noticeable but for the way they clustered around his flat, small, male nipples, and the way they collected in a thin line down by his navel, at the waistline of his pants. Alys was grateful he didn’t touch her yet, letting her grow used to the sight of him shirtless, so different from the days when he had been shirtless as a child, and then as a youth. His full size had only developed at around twenty or so; by then, she had already been under the repressive thumb of her uncle for about a year and wasn’t allowed near men who took their shirts off so casually. She certainly hadn’t been allowed to spend more than a few minutes here and there in his and his brothers’ company.

  Hesitantly, she raised her hand. Laid her palm flat against his sternum. The muscles to either side of it instantly flexed, mounds of strength to match the beat of his heart against her fingertips. His hand shifted up over hers, holding her flesh to his. A moment later, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm, just as he had when he asked her to marry him. Warmth ran through her, spreading from her palm and her heart; oddly, it made her shiver. So did the intense look in his gold eyes as he lifted them to her gray ones. And when he returned her hand to his chest, she felt her skin growing goosebumps with pure awareness of him. Wolfer. Male. His hand slid down her arm, leaving her palm against his heart. Leaving the next move up to her.

  Her mouth curved up a little on one side, then on the other. She blushed as she recalled something Cari had said. Easing her hand back until just her fingertips brushed his chest, she glided them to the right. His chest hairs tickled her fingertips as she gently touched the soft-satin flesh of his nipple.

  Gold blazed at her as his breath hitched, his body tensed. Resting her fingertips where they were, she lifted her other hand. Alys touched his other breast, tracing the contours of the muscle . . . the faint ring of hairs, and the tiny, soft-hardening peak they guarded. A sound rumbled in his chest that wasn’t quite a growl, and wasn’t quite a groan. It resolved into her name as she touched him with both hands now, learning and experimenting shyly with the texture of his male flesh.

  “Alys,” Wolfer half-warned, half-encouraged her. His hands lifted to her wrists, because being touched that way was torturously exciting. She removed her hands of her own volition, slipping them free of his light grip, and he wanted to bring them back. Where they went next made him do nothing at all.

  They went to her own belt. Unfastening it, she dropped it on the floor with a soft clank of the buckle. A hesitation, then she quickly pulled off her own tunic, baring her corset. His hands instantly went to her cotton-covered ribs, steadying her on his lap. His fingertips dug in a little as she shifted her hands next to the laces of the corset.

  “Alys,” Wolfer rumbled again, this time in something closer to a full warning.

  Her boldness came back. Albeit with a shy little smile. “I’m going to let you do to me . . . whatever I do to you. So you have to pay attention . . . okay?”

  One of his brown brows arched. Something came out of his throat. It might have been a “yes,” if he had been capable of forming any words. She was doing it again, driving him crazy with her mixture of boldness and reserve. Not that he minded.

  He shifted his hands down to her hips as she pulled the laces apart, then pulled the corset over her head instead of bothering to unlace it all the way. Her full breasts bobbed free; rather than see them bounce uncomfortably without support, he quickly s
hifted his hands up to cup their falling curves. They were full, warm, soft, and heavy. The way his body immediately agreed a woman’s breasts should feel. A sigh rumbled out of him as he gently cupped them and even more gently squeezed.

  “Mmm . . .” Her own matching sound of pleasure was lighter, higher than his deep voice, but it blended well with his as she arched her throat and closed her eyes, her hands coming up to cover and encourage his own.

  “Anything you do . . . I get to do to you?” Wolfer asked, looking from her breasts to her eyes. They fastened on his muscles, and she nodded, shifting her hands to touch his chest. Touching his male nipples with exploring little caresses.

  Wolfer slid his fingers up just enough to touch her areolas in unison with the movements of her own hands on his flesh. He traced their softness, spiraling in to the larger pebbles of her own female nipples. In symmetry, they fondled and explored; in gentle rhythm they touched and rubbed, nipped and rolled . . . until it wasn’t nearly enough for Alys. It wasn’t a matter of gathered bravery, but of heated desire that ducked her head, that brushed her nose against his chest for an inhale of his heady scent. Pleased with her impending lover, Alys pressed her lips to his tensing muscles. Then darted her tongue out for a lick at the contrast of small, soft male areola, and even smaller, hard male nipple.

  Wolfer tipped his head back with a grimace of control as she licked, then nipped softly, experimentally with her lips. He couldn’t take much more of this sweet torture! When she took the tiny bud in her teeth, he couldn’t help himself—

  “Oh-hooooooooohhh!!”

  Alys jerked upright, shocked by the sudden burst of sound. “Wolfer!”

  He broke off the howl and looked at her, golden eyes gleaming ferally. Another sound came from deep inside his chest, a deep, rich growl of desire. He grinned and licked his lips, holding her gaze.

  Amazed, flustered, and yet encouraged, Alys slipped off his lap, because the angle she wanted was too uncomfortable to reach, seated sideways on his thighs as she had been. He tried to stop her, but she pushed his hands aside, half-knelt by the bed . . . and tasted his other nipple. A low keen rose up toward another howl. Wolfer choked it back and jerked her up, hauling her onto his lap. This time, she was perched straddling his thighs, not seated sideways as before, her knees folded onto the bed to either side of his hips.

  Again, he lowered his head and gave her a hot, golden look that should have given him the nickname of “Flame,” and not his second-youngest brother. The blush in her cheeks let him know she definitely felt his heat. It pleased him deeply to know that he could affect her with just a look.

  “Why . . . why are you howling?” Alys demanded, when she could catch a breath, when he blinked in the middle of that intense stare.

  He grinned. A wolf-tasting-lamb kind of grin; he even licked his lips. His voice was rough with desire, and very, very low, vibrating straight to her body through every point his body touched hers and places deep inside as well. “Let me show you . . .”

  One arm caught her low around the back, tugging on the ends of her waist-length, loosely braided curls, making her head drop and her back arch. That bared her throat. The other hand plumped up one of her full breasts for his mouth. He lowered his head when she leaned back, exposed by the position yet still trusting him to keep her from falling off his lap, and parted his lips just above that proffered nipple. Anticipation built in his prey . . . and the predator descended that last distance for his first, loving, potentially lethal taste.

  It was a full, deep suckle that swirled his tongue around her turgid, rosy tip. Fire shot from breast to groin and back again within her, filling her lungs with a gasp and a deeper arch of her back. Giving him more of what he was already taking. He growled, vibrating the sound against her flesh, and hauled her abruptly closer with the arm around her lower back. Snuggling her core against his groin, he rubbed the lump of his arousal against the throbbing of her desire, teasing where both of them desperately needed to be.

  Alys knew exactly why he had howled! Sound and feeling ripped through her in a shuddering spasm of unbelievable pleasure. She was riding her stallion all over again, half naked on his lap, and by Kata, it was great! “Wolferrrrrr!”

  Wolfer buried his face against her breasts and tried, tried very hard, not to climax right with her as she cried out his name. Tried not to rip the lower barrier of their remaining garments out of the way and bury himself in her in the very position they held at that moment. But it was no good. Even as he reached for the waistband to give in and tear off her trousers, to get inside of her before he embarrassed himself like an untried youth, she writhed in just the wrong—or rather, the right—way against him.

  Something made Wolfer jerk and thrust against her with a groan that rose into a shout of her name. The friction retriggered her pleasure, and she groaned with him, shuddering a second, longer time. Alys clutched at his shoulders as he used both of his hands to pull her in hard and rotate her against him. It eased, resurged a little, slowed down, came back some more, then eventually ebbed, much in the same way a tide came and went.

  Alys’ arms didn’t want to hold on much longer; she felt so limp and sated from what had just happened. So it was with relief that Wolfer drew in a breath against her chest, let it out on a groan, and slumped backward with her still in his arms, sprawling onto the bed. Burying her face in the curve of his throat and shoulder, she nuzzled him, inhaled his sweaty, musky, wonderful scent, and enjoyed the feeling of her bare breasts mashed against his equally bare chest. Enjoyed the way her thighs straddled his waist, too.

  Embarrassment flooded through him as Wolfer came back to his senses. He had not meant for that to happen—was there nothing under Jinga’s sun that was more embarrassing for a full-grown man than that? It was even more embarrassing in its own way than admitting openly that he was afraid of heights!

  And yet, Wolfer couldn’t regret it. Who knew my little Alys could be so hot, and make me do . . . that? He was still grinning like a sated idiot when she finally lifted her head from his shoulder, wisps of curls tumbled around her still somewhat flushed face.

  “Wow.” Alys blinked down at him. She felt a little shy, now that the rush of desire was over, and didn’t dare lift her chest from his, lest she bare her breasts. “You, ah . . .”

  “Yes, I did,” he confessed uncomfortably. He was about to reassure her that he would still be able to do more in a few minutes, when she frowned down at him in confusion.

  “You did . . . what?”

  She doesn’t know? Wolfer closed his eyes. Thank you, Jinga!

  “Wolfer? What did you do? I was going to say I, uh—that is, you . . . Wow—I think Cari would call you one of the ‘really good ones’ . . .”

  He opened his eyes to golden slits, curious. “Who is Cari?”

  “She’s a whore I met in Orovalis,” Alys admitted candidly. Then widened her eyes, blushed, and sat up, clapping her hands over her mouth.

  His groin stirred as she sat on it, rousing more quickly than the bone-deep lethargy of his half-clothed, incredible, involuntary sating would have led him to believe. Her admission, however, made him ignore it in favor of sitting up. Thankfully, that dislodged her somewhat more onto his lap than his groin. “. . . A whore? When and why did you talk to a whore?”

  Alys fluttered her hands down over her bare breasts, then gave up and crossed her arms, half-defensively, half-protectively over her chest. Blushing as she confessed. “I Gated to Orovalis with the money I earned from selling my jewels—not that I had many, but I got a discount, because someone was going through the Gate to Orovalis at the very moment I showed up to register for it, so they slipped me through. Then I was hungry, so I looked for a place to eat. Only I saw my uncle coming down the street, and the only place to duck into was . . . well, a wenching inn.”

  “A wenching inn. You went into a wenching inn?” he growled.

  She whacked him in the chest with the back of her hand. “You’ve been in wenching inns!”


  “No, I haven’t!” Wolfer shot back. “I seduced the castle staff!”

  “Really?” Alys asked, breaking off with a sidetracked blink. She ran the list of wench-like servants she knew through her mind and frowned at him. “Who?”

  He was not walking into that particular trap. “It was over and done with years ago—and don’t change the subject! What happened when you went into this . . . this . . . ?”

  “The Trenching Wench,” she supplied, with a little lift of her chin. “Uncle Donnock came in and grabbed a wench, while I hid behind the back hall door—only I already knew he was supposed to be on the west coast barely a month ago, so he must have taken a mirror-Gate eastward, too. When he headed for the door, I ran upstairs, because I couldn’t escape through the back without raising a fuss from the cook, and I hid in one of the rooms.

  “Only a man and a woman came in—not my uncle, but another pair—and they . . . right there,” she hedged, blushing, “while I was hiding in the wardrobe cupboard. And then Cari found me after the man left, and I asked a few questions, and she ended up offering to teach me several things so that I could eventually teach you, if you weren’t any good. But you are, and I probably will only have to teach you the, um . . . unusual stuff. If I can ever get up my courage to try it, that is—and I will!”

  Wolfer stared at her as she finished, flipping her hand at him before folding it across her bare breasts protectively once more. He tried to absorb the implication. Alys—who was still a virgin—had learned sexual secrets from a tavern whore? Enough to teach him things? Only one thing about her confession worried him. “Does this mean you’re not a virgin anymore?”

  She blushed and whacked him with the back of her hand. “Yes, I still am! You don’t have to rub it in—I can be very inventive, once I get past my timidity, so don’t look so stricken about it. It only takes one time, and then I’m not a virgin for the rest of my life, so you can just suffer!”