by Anthology
Her hands drifted lower, to the fly of his jeans. “I want to see you,” she murmured. “All of you. The real you.”
He dropped his head, his hard breathing driving his belly into the back of her fingers. “Unbutton me and I’ll show you.”
She popped the button on his jeans and eased down the zipper.
The first dark curls appeared below his navel, but before she could unwrap the goods, longer black hair sprouted there. There and everywhere.
For a heartbeat, she was staring at Blaze as if through deep-flowing water.
Then the wolf stepped out of his jeans and straddled her.
Her breath caught hard in her chest, and her pulse echoed hollowly. Annie just gazed, rapt.
He was…oh man, he was a wolf.
A werewolf. It’s not that she hadn’t believed the whispers—sometimes whispers had a way of being more honest than shouts. But she hadn’t truly believed that she might possibly find a way out of her troubles.
Exhilaration rippled along her nerves, humming through her body, as if she was already changing, just like he had.
She buried her fingers in the thick ruff of fur around his neck. Heat poured off him, like the mirage of summer sun off a distant road. The hair was stiff and soft both. Dark at the roots, it spread in waves of ash and amber and purest white over his powerful body.
Across the side of the wolf’s face where the birthmark would have been was more plush fur with a cinnamon hue, and his eyes were the same blue-green but ringed in gold.
He was wild and gorgeous, and she wanted him—wanted to be him—so badly she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to let him go.
Gripping his ruff, she pulled herself half upright to bury her nose in the fur. She drew in a deep breath. In this shape, there was a musk to him, like a low-burning campfire. If only she could sit here all night, staring into him.
But she knew that wasn’t possible.
As if he heard the thought, he shifted again. She found herself holding tight to the shorter hair at his nape.
And he was naked.
Well, that did make things simpler.
She let go of his hair and, since she was already partly sitting up, she stripped her shirt over her head and flung it aside. Between the heat from his change and the fireplace, and her own excitement, she wasn’t going to be needing that anytime soon. And it was her good shirt.
“I don’t want to get blood on it,” she told him as she eased back to the cushions.
He was still crouched over her as he had been in his wolf shape, but now the gold ring around his eyes was thicker, eclipsing some of the blue-green, like a falling desert sun setting the pale evening sky aflame.
She sensed the wolf was still riding him hard. But now it was her turn. She skimmed one hand down his body to caress his heavy sac. She flicked her fingers forward to lightly stroke the ridge of his crown and the delicate, weeping slit. Glancing down at the thick, stiff erection jutting toward her, she let out a soft curse. The breath drifted between their bodies to tingle on her damp fingertips, and his cock bucked in her hand.
“Annie,” he said, his voice edged in a growl. “This is a no-take-backs kind of thing.”
Kicking off her sneakers, she said, “I’m counting on that.”
His hips pumped into her hand, and he closed his eyes. “God, I want…”
“So do I,” she whispered. “Do it.”
He dipped his head to breathe gustily against the side of her throat. When he set his teeth there, she stiffened, but he only scored her skin lightly over her raging pulse then sucked hard, hard enough she knew he’d leave a mark.
She wanted more than that.
She arched her back, offering him all she had. And she had a lot. He trailed hot kisses and a cool line of spit from the throb in her neck to the pounding beat over her heart. Her breasts felt swollen and tender, and when he thumbed open the front clasp of her bra, the twin mounds burst from their confines. The lacey edges scratched at her tight nipples.
She gasped at the sensation. Like the wolf he said wanted to be free, she didn’t want to hold anything back.
Squirming underneath him, she unfastened her jeans.
He growled, as if she might be trying to flee. Not a chance.
Her hips bumped upward against his bare cock, and they both froze.
“I’m clean,” he gasped, at the same moment, she blurted, “I have an IUD.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“I’m trying to turn into a movie monster so I can threaten my fuckhead ex with death by werewolf if he ever comes near me again,” she said. “You wouldn’t think I’d have to worry about the other stuff.”
“I’m a werewolf about to turn a reckless, pretty girl into a badder monster than her boyfriend,” he replied. “But I think there’s always other stuff to worry about.”
She twined one arm up around his neck. He thought she was pretty… He didn’t have to say that, considering she was already mostly naked. And if she was going to be reckless, she was going all the way. “Will you kiss me again?”
“All night.” He lowered himself until they were skin to skin except for her panties.
Mouth to mouth, they swapped breaths until they were both panting and her cleft was as wet and tingling as her lips. He skimmed her panties down and slicked his thumb over her clit, then found a rhythm of teasing circles that had her hips pumping in time.
He slipped a finger inside her at the same time he licked her nipple. She mewled and squirmed, but he didn’t let up, only switched his rasping tongue to her other breast until both nipples were engorged with blood and shiny red as holly berries.
If only he would bite her there…
“You’re so tight,” he murmured against her skin.
“I’m not a virgin, I promise.”
He huffed a laugh. “Me either. So why am I about to burst?”
“Not until you’re inside me.” She spread her legs and wrapped her heels behind his ass. “And then bite me.”
4
Blaze throttled a groan. If her touch didn’t kill him with pleasure, her words would. She was everything the wolf adored: bold and sensual. She went for what she wanted with all her curvy body and untamed soul.
And—how had he gotten so lucky?—what she wanted was him.
Was the wolf.
The thought crept up on him out of nowhere.
She’d come to Angels Rest looking for a werewolf—any werewolf. The fact she’d be coming under him was just dumb luck.
So which was he—lucky or dumb?
“Blaze?” she murmured.
It was the first time she’d said his name, and the sound seemed to reverberate in his bones. She must’ve heard it in the bar, but to know she’d been listening…
Maybe her choosing him wasn’t as random as it felt.
Maybe it was more like…like fate.
But that was impossible. This wasn’t the mating season. There was no chance of a true bond between them now, not in the depths of winter when the earth itself was all but dead.
His bite, his blood, his cum might do more than make her a werewolf.
It could make her his mate.
The wolf leaped for joy inside him. The rest of him suggested he should run screaming. He knew how this story ended, and it wasn’t happily.
But his cock was at the junction of her legs, and there was no force in the universe that would keep him from her.
His hips plunged down to bury himself at the same moment she reared up to kiss him. Their bodies and mouths came together in a brutal clash, and he tasted blood: hers, his, mixing.
She rocked her pelvis, taking him deeper, her knees splayed as wide as the big, old couch would allow. He pumped, slow and hard, grinding on her clit with each stroke, until she was writhing and panting.
“Oh please,” she moaned. “Please…”
Whether she was begging for him or for the chance of turning shifter, he wasn’t sure. Didn’t care a
t the moment because his balls were snugged tight to his body, his thigh muscles trembling with the urge to shoot his load.
But he gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t end till she did.
She bucked up under him with wordless little cries that he realized he was singing back to her, a desperate panting of aah and whining eee. Her name in his feral tongue.
“You took my kiss, my blood,” he growled. “You want my cum?”
“Yes, oh yes,” she keened. Her nails scratched down his back, and he slammed into her spread legs, the flesh of her thighs quaking like the aspens up in the mountains.
“I know you want it,” he gritted out. “I feel you squeezing me. I smell your juices. So, so sweet…”
Her inner muscles seized around him, and she bowed off the couch hard enough to boost him into the air. For a heartbeat he was flying, then his own orgasm surged through him.
He gushed into her body, the tremors within her milking him just as each slick pulse of his cock stroked her into another shiver of pleasure.
The aftershocks seemed to go on forever, and he didn’t even realize he’d collapsed on top of her, only barely not crushing her because the angle of the couch gave her a little room to breathe.
She was laughing, as much as she could with only a few inches of air.
He rolled one open eye down at her. “What?”
“I thought you were about to tell me to forget it, but then…” She clenched her pussy on him.
He groaned. “I’ll never forget this.”
Maybe literally never if she was his mate.
But she wasn’t a werewolf yet.
She tucked herself against him, seeming not to care that he was heavy. “How will I know if…”
For a second he wanted to pretend that he didn’t know what she was asking, that it wasn’t why they’d done this. But that wasn’t fair to her. “It’s different for everyone,” he said. “You might feel feverish at first.”
“I feel…” She rubbed her cheek against the wolf on his chest. “Grrrreat.” Then she looked up at him and smiled. She cupped her hand against his jaw. “Thank you for the perfect Christmas gift.”
“We don’t know for sure if…if it worked.”
“No takebacks, you said, remember?” She grinned. “No gift return receipts.”
He remembered. And that should make him feel better.
But it didn’t, even though his cock was still swollen tight inside her.
The port wine stain under her fingertips throbbed a sinister counterpoint.
The pack had been in trouble lately. The Kingdom Guard—a clandestine paramilitary organization of humans who hunted shapeshifters—had tried repeatedly to take out the Villalobos cousins who guided the pack. All the shifters in the Four Corners region knew they needed to close ranks, keep up a strong, united, and circumspect front.
And Blaze knew better than most how a shifter initiation could go very wrong. But despite that, he’d just taken a human girl with vengeance on her mind.
Not on her mind at this very moment, though, apparently, because her smile turned wicked.
“If you’re not sure I’m going to become a werewolf, maybe we’d better try again. Just to be on the safe side.”
There was no safe side for a werewolf. But when she crooked her finger, his wolf was only too ready to follow wherever she led. Even into danger.
* * *
Annie wasn’t sure what time they fell asleep, but she didn’t think she’d ever had a pillow as comfortable as Blaze’s shoulder.
When she woke up, though, she had a crick in her neck and he was gone.
They’d moved to the bedroom before their second round, and the blankets were in a terrible twist. Her cheeks burned with the memory of how they’d gotten that way.
Had she really made him bite her nipple hard enough to bleed? She touched herself through the wrinkled sheet and winced.
Yup. She had.
Luckily there was a connecting door from the bedroom to the bathroom and they’d dragged their clothes with them last night. She whisked into the shower, got cleaned up and dressed, and headed into the living room without seeing if anyone was there.
She needn’t have worried though. The trailer was empty.
She pursed her lips to stop herself from scowling. She’d asked for a werewolf, not a boyfriend. After Tomas, she might never want another boyfriend. Besides, werewolves probably didn’t leave notes; they’d, like, pee on the bedpost or something.
Thinking of what he’d said about smelling her made her blush again. If other werewolves used this place…
She used up her nervous energy on spray bleach and fabric softener. When the laundered sheets were back on the bed—tight enough to bounce a quarter, just as she’d been taught—she went to the bathroom again to stare at herself in the mirror.
The fog from her shower had cleared, but the glass still seemed a little hazy. Just old, she supposed.
Or maybe she couldn’t quite see what came next.
Once she’d heard about werewolves, getting turned had been her focus. But now she was bitten—and fucked—so…
She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, wondering if she’d feel the fever. But she seemed much the same as always.
She’d noticed the old-fashioned rotary dial phone on the divider between the living room and kitchen so she went to check it out. To her surprise, there was a tone when she picked up the handset.
The dial felt heavy and strange under her fingertip.
“Hello? Who’s this?” The query wavered anxiously.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Annie Belle! Where are you?”
“Away for a bit,” Annie said evasively. “Is everything okay there?” It was never okay-okay, but they had their own version of okay.
“It’s fine.” Meaning no one was in the hospital, no one needed bonded out. Her mother’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But he came by tonight, asking if I seen you.”
No need to ask who. “Tell him…I’m staying with friends.”
“He gonna say you got no friends but his.”
For a woman who knew men so well, her mother had always chosen poorly. Annie wished she hadn’t inherited that particular trait along with the flyaway blond hair.
“If Tomas or his boys come round again, don’t you open the door,” she said sternly. “But tell him I’ll come see him soon as I’m back in town.”
Her ex didn’t need to know that was a threat. Not that he’d believe it even if she spat it in his face. He wouldn’t even accept that he was her ex, even though her statement—signed in blood and her broken bones—had put him away. But not for long enough.
Once in, always in, Tomas had told her.
Which was sort of like what Blaze had said about werewolves…
The similarity made her gut clench.
But it was too late, she reminded herself. What was done was done. Maybe. Unless the bite and sex hadn’t taken, in which case…
Well, she’d just have to find Blaze for another round.
In the meantime, she’d take care of her churning belly with some breakfast. Then she’d go over to the roadhouse and earn her keep. With tips, she could make enough to tide her over until she was sure she was a werewolf. She’d hold back some for bus fare.
Although once she was a werewolf, she wouldn’t worry so much about hitchhiking. She wouldn’t worry so much about anything. Anticipation made her skin itch. She couldn’t wait.
She definitely needed to see Blaze later.
If anything could make her feverish, it was him.
5
Blaze couldn’t take the shortcut up to Mesa Diablo. That route required four legs and zero fear of heights. But he needed to face his alpha with his spine upright and his pants on to plead his guilt.
Though he was guilty mostly of taking his pants off.
So he borrowed Sanchez’s muscle car in return for topping off the gas tank and drove the highway through Angels Rest out to the swit
chback gravel road leading up the mesa. Where the gravel stopped, he parked. In better weather, hikers and hunters left their vehicles here, but there were never very many of them. In the thin light of December with shredded shrouds of cloud obscuring the low sun, the mesa seemed even more forsaken.
Or maybe that was just his mood.
Instead of walking out to the basalt spires etched with ancient petroglyphs that told the story of shape-changing devils in the mountains, Blaze followed a scent trail that only a werewolf would find and dove into the ponderosa forest.
Where the trees ended, a stately lodge appeared. The Villalobos house was the spiritual center of the pack even though most of the wolves ranged through the canyons and plateaus for a hundred miles in any direction.
Blaze had been there only twice. The first he didn’t remember: his father had brought him when he was a newborn pup to mark his place in the pack. The second was when he’d hit puberty; that time, proving mastery of his wolf had earned him the sigil inked over his heart.
His father had already been gone at that point, and he’d be lucky if Kane Villalobos didn’t carve out the tattoo with a spoon as punishment for letting the wolf’s instinct trump common sense.
Deep inside, the wolf sneezed at him in mockery.
Yeah well, the wolf wasn’t standing here now, was it?
Blaze walked up to the double doors. In the keystone position at the top of the masonry arch was a rock etched with a secret petroglyph.
The wolf sigil carved in the stone would shine only in the light of the full moon of the spring mating season. But as he stared up, he almost swore he saw a glimmer in the rock.
When he let out a whispered curse, his breath fogged the cold air. Was it just an icy patch on the stone that caught his eye? He strode through the cloud of his own making, swatting at the infinitesimal floating crystals.
Before he could take a second look, the front doors opened.
The overwhelming stink of cinnamon cloves poured out, almost thick enough to materialize as his breath had done. Both he and the wolf sneezed.