Suddenly, Michaela found herself alone with Brody. He stood fifteen feet away, his broad, muscled chest expanding with his breaths, and she had the strangest feeling that he was drawing in slow, deep pulls of her scent, the sensation as evocative as an explicit touch against her skin. He was so beautiful, it was a physical ache within her body not to rush to him, running her hands over that smooth, bare chest and powerful arms, his skin slick and hot and manly beneath her palms. But she held her ground, aware that she needed to bide her time…tread carefully.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered when she moved toward him and the rugged lines of his face tightened with apprehension, making his scars more prominent, his eyes narrowed to piercing, cautious green slits. “I won’t bother you tonight, Brody. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“Not bother me?” he snorted, shaking his head as she stepped closer to him, the hazy streams of moonlight and slowly dying flames in the fire pits setting the deep auburn silk of his hair afire, as if it were hot to the touch, like his skin. And he was hot. Shifting even closer, she could feel the erotic shock of his heat as it poured off him in waves. “Christ, woman, you bother me just by breathing.”
Wanting to make him smile, if only for a moment, she playfully took in a deep breath, holding it with her cheeks dramatically puffed out. He narrowed his eyes on her, looking as if he thought she was crazy, before the sensual curve of his mouth twisted in a crooked smile and he let out a low rumble of laughter. “Come on,” he murmured, jerking his chin toward his cabin. “Let’s get out of here.”
Releasing her held breath, she moved into step beside him. “What did you find?” she asked.
“Just Dustin and some of his gang.”
Tension twisted in her stomach like a thousand piercing knives at the thought of Brody in danger. “Did you fight them?”
“Naw,” he rumbled, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.
“Though I would have liked to take that little shit apart. But he was too chicken to make a move against us. Ended up slinking away with his buddies.”
The forest-scented wind blew harder, surging as a thunderstorm crackled far in the distance, and she shivered, suddenly hit by an unsettling sensation, not unlike being touched by a stranger. The rustling of the trees filled the air, but there was a strange current of static buzzing in her head, just for a split second, and then it was gone. Had it been the same as she’d experienced before, or was she simply psyching herself out?
“What’s wrong?” Brody asked, and she realized that although he was trying to give the impression of cool nonchalance, he was actually as focused on her as she was on him. So much so that he’d picked up on her telling shiver.
She gave a small, self-conscious laugh. “Nothing. I just…I had the strangest feeling that someone was watching me just now.”
“Not surprising. Guys have been watching you all damn night.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” she sighed, shaking her head.
He stopped for a moment, tilting back his head, nostrils flaring as he breathed deeply. She waited beside him, silent but for the pounding of her heart roaring in her ears, until he lowered his head and resumed walking toward his cabin. “I can’t pick up anything. It’s probably just Cian peeking out his friggin’ front window.” Slanting her a dark look, he grunted, “It’s not like you weren’t all over the guy tonight.”
“What?” She breathed out on a soft burst of air, unable to believe what he’d just said. “I hope you’re joking, Brody, because that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve given you no reason to think I’m interested in any man other than you.”
His shoulders stiffened, the bunched muscles in his chest and arms hard with tension. “And facts are facts, Doucet.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she snapped, following him up his porch steps, careful not to twist her ankle in her heels.
“You don’t sleep to dream?” he snorted, rolling his shoulder as he hid the side of his face beneath the auburn fall of his hair. “Well, neither do I. I saw how good you and Hennessey looked together tonight, and I’m not the only one.”
“God, Brody, he’s your friend.” Her words were sharp with frustration, the blistering emotion searing through her veins until she wanted to pound her fists against his chest. “And for your information, we were talking about you the entire time we were dancing! You don’t need to be jealous!”
“No?” he snarled, turning away from the front door he’d just opened to face her down. The interior of the cabin was shadowed behind him, the only light a muted glow from the kitchen light that had been left on. “God knows you deserve him. You’re both too goddamn beau—”
“He’s not the one,” she gasped, cutting him off, her voice nothing more than a breathless, fleeting wisp of sound.
“The one what?” he grunted, his scent coming stronger…filling her head…making her dizzy with lust and love and this urgent, desperate craving that scorched the inside of her body, her surface so hypersensitive she trembled from nothing more than the sensual warmth of his breath against her skin.
Her face went hot, mouth quivering with emotion. “He’s not the one I want. The one I lo—”
Lunging forward, he grabbed her by her upper arms and jerked her off the ground, bringing her face-to-face, eye-to-eye with him. “Do. Not. Say. It,” he growled, the guttural words vicious and hoarse, his expression etched with tormented fury, as if he’d been pushed beyond endurance.
“Not. Another. God. Damn. Word.”
Chapter 13
“Please,” Michaela whispered, unable to give him the silence he’d so desperately demanded. “I need you.”
He closed his eyes, body tremoring, the roped muscles and lean sinew straining beneath the burnished surface of his skin. She held her breath as she watched his eyes slowly open, the green shining golden and bright, glittering with predatory awareness. He pulled her fully against him, then, and she hovered over the ground, her breasts crushed against the solid heat of his chest, her dress a silken caress between their bodies. When he spoke, his words were guttural and raw, his breath sweet as it pelted her mouth, salty and warm, like his scent. “You win, goddamn it,” he seethed, his lips pulling back over his teeth. “You want me at the edge, Doucet? Want to break me down? I’m there, sweetheart. You. Win.”
“I don’t want to win,” she whispered, trying to tell him everything that she felt with her eyes, knowing the words would scare him away. “I just…I just want to be alone with you.”
He was all action and quick, violent bursts of movement then, rushing them through the open doorway, inside the cabin. The heavy wooden door slammed behind them, and the shadowed room spun as he took her to the floor right there in the middle of the living room, trapping her beneath his body as he caged her in on his hands and knees. With his auburn hair hanging around the rugged angles of his face, he stared down at her as if she were some rare, breathtaking discovery made in the midst of an Amazonian rain forest, something coveted for aeons, until finally unearthed. He looked as if he were afraid to believe she was real, afraid to believe that the moment was actually happening. “Why are you here, Doucet?” he whispered.
“Because I want you.” She reached up to cup the hot side of his face, desperately needing to touch him, but he stopped her. Just before her fingertips made contact, he shifted his weight to one arm and snatched her wrist with his left hand, suddenly trapping it in his hold.
“Please, Brody. Let me touch you,” she said huskily, needing to put her hands on him. She wanted to cradle his jaw and stroke her thumb across the ridge of his scars. Wanted to press her palm against his throat and feel the sensual movement as he swallowed, the pulse of his heartbeat, the ragged intake of his breath. Wanted to run her hands over his gorgeous body and experience the shift of all of that hard, mouthwatering muscle rippling with power beneath the sleek heat of his skin.
His eyes narrowed with anger and doubt and something d
eeper…darker. “Why, Doucet? Out of pity? Charity? Am I so pathetic that you think you can make my life better by lying down for me?”
Her temper flared as he threw the ugly accusation in her face, and a violent surge of frustration had her freeing her wrist and rolling over beneath him, her hands scrambling for purchase on the gleaming hardwood floor as she struggled to crawl away, her legs tangled in the skirts of her dress. Flipping her onto her back again, Brody took hold of both wrists this time, pinning them to the floor as he leaned close, growling, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m so tired of you being ugly to me,” she shouted up at him, her words broken with emotion. “Every time I’m honest with you, you throw it back in my face. I’m tired of getting slammed for wanting you!”
* * *
Brody’s pulse roared through his brain, as heavy and violent as the surf in the height of a savage storm, while her angry words echoed through the room, before settling silently into the shadowed corners. “Why?” he groaned, feeling as though the question was being torn out of him. He knew the smart thing to do was get up and run, as far and fast as he could—and yet, he couldn’t do it. “Why can’t I stay the hell away from you?”
“Because you’re watching me,” she answered in a soft, husky rasp. He didn’t know what she saw in his expression as she stared up at him, but he watched her anger bleed back into desire, the thick weight of her lashes darkening her gaze. Her chest lifted with each of her shallow breaths, the shadowy swell of her cleavage drawing his gaze, begging for the touch of his mouth, the primitive scrape of his teeth.
I’ll be the last wolf watching you, Doucet. Brody growled the possessive words within the safety of his mind, painfully aware that he’d never be able to say them out loud. That he’d grow old with them, replaying them in his mind as he lived off this memory, clutching at it year after year, while his life slowly passed him by.
But he was going to have her. At least for tonight, damn it. He was going to offer her one last out…and if she didn’t run, he was going to slake himself on her, feasting on the rich, sensual bounty that was Michaela, layer upon layer of intoxicating, womanly perfection. It required a painstaking physical effort, but Brody managed to release his hold on her, placing his hands on either side of her head, his knees bracketing her thighs. “If you don’t want this, you need to run. Right now. Because once it starts, I don’t trust myself to be able to stop. I have no control with you.”
She blinked up at him, the color in her face burning darker, lips moist and parted and soft. “I don’t need you in control. I just need you, Brody. I’m not afraid of you.”
Ironically, before she’d even finished her hushed confession, the tips of his fingers began bleeding, the razor-sharp claws of his wolf slicing through the callused flesh. His breath hissed through his teeth from the keen sensation, his body feeling everything more intensely with her so close to him…under him, her mouthwatering scent filling his head.
She turned her face, staring at the lethal claws that could so easily hurt her, and he waited, breath held, for the look of horror to fall over her face…for the cry of fear to break from that beautiful, passion-red mouth. But as always with this woman, she took what he knew as reality and turned it on its head. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, her gaze shifting back to his face, her eyes liquid and soft as she visually traced the slashing lines of the scars. “Every part of you. You don’t scare me, Brody.”
His fingers flexed in reaction, claws digging deeply into the wooden floor, creating a sharp, screeching hiss of sound that cut across the sensual canvas of their breaths like nails down a chalkboard. “I should scare you,” he growled. “You stay, you’re going to be under me all night, and it isn’t going to be easy or sweet or nice.”
* * *
I don’t want easy, Michaela thought, so turned on, she felt as if she were going to melt into a puddle of boneless, lust-thick need beneath him. “I wouldn’t expect it to be any of those things,” she murmured, while the corner of her mouth curled with a slow, sensual smile. “All I want is for it to be real, Brody. For you to let go and take me in whatever way that you want.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he warned in a gritty rasp, but she could see his excitement, the hope that he was so afraid to feel. The vulnerable look in his eyes tore at her, making her want to wrap him up in tenderness as much as she wanted to hear him cry out in passion.
“I know what you are, what you’re capable of,” she whispered. “I may not be able to read you, but I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know jack, Doucet,” he muttered, shaking his head. “But this is your last chance. Are you running? Or staying?”
Reaching up to curl her hand around the side of his strong, tanned throat, she said, “I’m not running, Brody. I’d like to see you just try and get rid of me.”
A ghost of a smile twisted the corner of his mouth at her words, and she could feel his pulse hammering against her palm, the heat of his skin so intense, she should have felt blistered from the contact. He leaned closer, his breath warm against her mouth. Just before their lips touched, she heard herself ask, “You’re not worried about my power?”
His eyes burned, the green brilliant and bright within the heavy fringe of his dark lashes, his auburn hair falling around his face like a blood-red veil of silk, beautiful and thick. “No, I’m not worried about your power,” he told her in a deep, velvet-rough voice graveled by need. “This time, when you break, Doucet, you’ll be feeling too much—coming too hard—to have time to go messing around in my head.”
* * *
“Mon dieu,” she whispered in response, pulse beating wildly in the pale base of her throat, mesmerizing him.
She was flushed with desire, her eyes heavy, bluer than he’d ever seen them. Wanting her with a primitive violence that shook him, Brody finally touched his mouth to hers, tasting the sweetness of her lower lip with the tip of his tongue. She arched beneath him, her low moan vibrating through him, and with a hard growl, he opened his mouth over hers. Then he took, he possessed, he claimed. There was no other word for it. It was too carnal to be kissing, too urgent to be passion. It was need in its most primitive form, hungry and violent and consuming.
Desperate to touch her, he retracted his claws and curled his fingers over the bodice of her dress, then wrenched, ripping the fabric until the top half split down the middle. The creamy perfection of her breasts spilled out, skin as smooth and pale as a pearl, topped with berry-red nipples that beckoned for his touch. Her back arched violently at the first stroke of his tongue against one tight, hardened tip, the sensual flavor of her skin too good to resist, until he had to take her deeper into his mouth. And with every hungry, desperate pull, every slow, tasting lick, he pulled the ecstasy up from deep inside her, following the cues of her body, soaking up her responses, feeling as if he’d been made for this—for the heady, breathtaking purpose of giving her pleasure.
With his wolf seething in hunger, prowling beneath his skin, Brody moved from breast to breast, nuzzling and suckling and lapping with a hungry avidity that he couldn’t control, couldn’t temper, until her nails were embedded in his biceps, body writhing against the floor, long midnight curls spread out around the flushed perfection of her face. She was all luminous silk and rosy softness, the provocative, intoxicating scent of need growing hotter on her skin, stronger, until he couldn’t hold back.
He wanted to savor her, to saturate his starved senses for hours on end, but his need, his craving, for this one beautiful, fiery woman was too great.
Ripping his mouth from the sensual bounty of her breasts, Brody shifted back on his knees and clutched slippery handfuls of her gown, wrenching it up and out of his way. Staring down at her, there was a heart-stopping moment where her beauty actually frightened him—her body so pale and radiant in the soft light, lush breasts bared to his smoldering gaze, nothing more than a tiny midnight-blue patch of silk covering her mound,
legs deliciously long, tipped by sexy heels that strapped around her delicate ankles. The vision was so devastatingly erotic, he felt as if something important were going to snap inside his brain from the sexual overload, like a circuit breaking.
Shaking with hunger and the most sharp-edged excitement he’d ever known, he pressed his knees between her legs, forcing her to open for him. Unable to wait a moment longer, he took hold of the thin strips of silk that held the panties on her hips, and ripped, tossing the ruined lingerie to the side. Then he curled his hands behind her knees and pushed them high and wide, completely exposing that most exquisite, intimate part of her, the tender folds wet with desire, glistening and candy pink, so beautiful he wanted to throw back his head and howl. The only thing that kept him from doing just that was the fact he wanted to taste her even more. Wanted to bury his face against her sweet, delectable flesh and make love to her with his mouth. With his lips and tongue and the gentle edge of his teeth.
Before she could shy away from him or tell him no, he settled his broad shoulders between her thighs, shoving them deliciously wide, and touched his tongue to her. She was unbelievably sweet, warm…wet. Good enough to eat, which was exactly what he’d planned for.
“You’re beautiful, Doucet,” he whispered, the low words lust-thick and gritty. Then he lapped his way through the tender, silken folds, curling around the thrumming heat of her swollen little clit, feeling her heartbeat pulse against his tongue. She cried out, and he did it again…and again…learning her, taking as much pleasure from the explicitly carnal act as he gave. Cursing hotly under his breath, he growled, “Tastes too damn good,” and then he closed his mouth over her, slipping his tongue deep inside, and hungrily thrust it into the lush, clutching depths of her body, unable to get enough. He turned his face one way, then another, thumbs holding her wide, so that he could get to all of her. Like water rushing up from a well, he could feel it building, the growing climax pulling her body tighter…and tighter, until she finally crashed into that star-studded, infinite stretch of keening, thrashing pleasure, her husky, choppy cries filling the air while her body arched, the heels of her shoes gouging into the floor as she grabbed his hair and pushed herself against him.
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