by J. L. Wilder
But with the woman from the bar, he felt none of that.
It’s so strange. I don’t even know her name.
But he didn’t want to ask. There was something perfect about the chemistry of tonight, and he was afraid to unbalance it with questions about who she was. Perhaps it was for the best that they never really knew each other, that they were ships passing in the night.
When I remember her, I’ll think of her blond hair and her big eyes. I’ll think of the way she touched my arm at the bar. The entire memory would be sight and sound and touch.
She followed him across the hotel lobby and to the elevator, and he felt acutely aware of her body the entire time. She was walking so close to him. People didn’t ordinarily stand so close, did they?
But it had been a long time since he had been with anybody outside the shifter community. Perhaps this was what pure humans did.
He suppressed a smile at the thought of what Steve would have to say if he knew that Brady had been with a human woman. He would be appalled. Disgusted. It was a feeling that Brady didn’t share.
They made it to the elevators. As soon as they were inside, Brady hit the close door button to prevent anybody else from joining them.
The doors slid closed.
The woman looked up at him.
And then, without warning or preamble, they were in each other’s arms. Almost as if it was natural.
Brady had no idea which of them had moved first. It didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was that they were pressed together, kissing and tasting, his hands slipping down over the slim lines of her waist to the swell of her hips, his thigh moving between her legs as he felt himself start to grow hard.
She broke free of his embrace, gasping. “The button,” she said.
“What?” He felt drugged with desire, slow.
“You didn’t press the button. For your floor.”
“Oh.” He reached over, pressed it, and pulled her close again as the elevator started to rise. He felt like a parched man in the middle of a desert, and she was a crystalline lake in which he wanted to submerge himself.
The elevator doors slid open. It took Brady a moment to register that they had arrived and to break away from her once again. Not letting go of her hand, he left the elevator and hurried down the hall toward his room, his pace so brisk that she had to run along next to him to keep up.
He fumbled with his key card in the door. How long had it been since he had felt desire like this? He honestly couldn’t remember the last time. It must have been when he was a teenager. He was hard-pressed to stop himself from giving up on getting the door open altogether, just grabbing her and taking her in the hallway.
She was panting behind him. She sounded almost animalistic, and Brady knew she wanted it just as badly as he did.
At last, he got the door open. He pulled her inside, and she pushed it closed behind her. Her expression was ravenous.
Somewhere between the bar and the bedroom, in the five minutes it had taken to make the journey, they had been reduced to their basest instincts. The entire room felt like sex.
Brady needed his hands on her body immediately.
She was already pulling her dress over her head, tossing it onto the floor behind her, kicking her shoes away. She stood before him in her bra and panties, her chest heaving with desire as she watched him shed his shirt and pants.
Then she was in his arms again. Her skin was hot against his, almost as if he could feel the very rush of her blood. He lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist so that he could carry her to the bed and lay her down.
He took his time removing the rest of her clothes, allowing his gaze to skate over her body and drinking her in slowly. Just looking at her, not acting, was exquisite torture. He could feel himself throbbing with want when, at last, she lay exposed before him.
He spread her legs and knelt between them, tracing his fingers slowly up the smooth skin of her torso until he reached her breasts. She let out a soft cry as he cupped them and stroked her nipples gently. Her hips hitched toward him.
Brady swallowed hard.
I need to be inside her. Fuck.
He wanted to take his time, to make this last. It had been such a long time since he had been with a woman. But her body was too appealing, and he couldn’t resist.
He thrust into her as slowly as he could bear, making sure that she wasn’t uncomfortable. Her hands slid down his back to his ass and pulled him in deeper, and he groaned. No woman had ever done that to him before.
He stilled inside her for a moment, his lips finding hers. He kissed her profoundly, filling himself with her scent and taste, enjoying the fact that they were skin on skin.
He didn’t even notice, at first, when his hips began to rock into her. When instinct took over and seized control of his body.
It was like being in his bear form. It was like the way his body seemed to react to things when he was in an animal state, without his mind having to weigh in and tell him what to do. He fucked her instinctively, intuitively. Desperately. Wantonly.
And she gave back as good as she got, locking her ankles behind his back to give herself the leverage to rock up against him, arching her back and filling the room with her moans of pleasure.
He could have gone all night and never gotten tired of her. He would have never stopped wanting more of this. But it had been such a long time that his orgasm came quickly. He could feel her tightening around him and knew that she was coming too, and he gripped her hips and fucked her frantically through it, groaning in ecstasy. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt something so purely, organically good as this.
He collapsed, feeling boneless after his orgasm, still half on top of her. They caught their breath in unison. He could feel her heart racing, slowing gradually as her body settled.
“Was that...all right?” she asked at last.
“All right?” he asked incredulously. “That was amazing.”
“Okay.” She sounded relieved. “Good.”
There was something about her tone that worried him. “It was okay for you, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was great for me,” she assured him, and she did sound genuine.
He rolled off of her. “I’m going to get a glass of water,” he said. “Do you want anything?”
“Water sounds great.”
“Ice?”
She smiled up at him, adjusting the blankets for modesty, which Brady found sort of charming after what they had just done. “You’re being really sweet,” she observed.
He shrugged, not sure what was so special about offering to get ice. But if it meant something to her, all the better. “I’ll be right back,” he said, grabbing the ice bucket. He pulled on a pair of shorts and an undershirt, tucked his room key into his waistband, and went out into the hall.
As he turned the corner toward the ice and vending machines, he froze.
Brick was standing there, dollar bill in hand, surveying the snack options.
Brady took a breath. I’m not doing anything wrong, he reminded himself. I’m at perfect liberty to get a bucket of ice.
Of course, if they knew he had hooked up with a pure human woman, Steve and the other members of the pack would never let him live it down. They would call him a traitor to the pack, and he would be disqualified from ever becoming alpha. An alpha had to focus on procreating with prime shifter females.
But there was no way Brick could know about the woman in Brady’s room. There was nothing suspicious about visiting the vending machines. What was suspicious was standing in the hallway looking like he had something to feel ashamed of.
So he moved forward. “Hey, Brick,” he said.
Brick glanced up. “There you are,” he said, his voice full of false sincerity. “Everyone was wondering why you didn’t come down to the bar. We hoped we would see you.”
“I’m sure you did,” Brady said wryly.
Brick faced him. “What’s that supposed to mean?
”
“It’s not supposed to mean anything.” He knew how badly Steve wanted to see him disgrace himself further than he already had with the pack, but he wasn’t about to let Brick bait him into a fight. Not now, when he had a sexy woman waiting for him back in his bedroom. She may not be a shifter, but she’s a hell of a lot more worthy of my time than Brick is.
“Decided to go to bed early?” Brick asked, taking in Brady’s pajamas.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Brady agreed. He went to the ice machine, set his bucket on the ledge, and held down the ice button. The mechanism within the machine gave a clatter, and the ice began to dispense.
“What are you drinking?” Brick asked, watching the ice fall.
Brady couldn’t keep himself from letting out a laugh. “You’re really grasping at straws, Brick. I’m just having ice water.”
“I hope so,” Brick said. “You didn’t impress Steve today, you know. I know how much that meant to you. But he actually thought you were kind of a joke. He was laughing about it at the bar earlier.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“Hey, I feel bad for you,” Brick said. “I know you’re trying really hard. It must suck to have been tapped for the alpha spot since you were born, only to completely blow it in the eleventh hour. I mean, it must be really humiliating to know that everyone sees you as a failure.”
“Yup,” Brady said. Brick’s jabs weren’t getting to him the way they would have ordinarily. He doubted Brick was getting laid tonight. “I sure am humiliated.”
Brick frowned. “What’s up with you? You’re acting weird.”
I’m acting weird because I’m not getting offended when you try to harass me? But he had to concede that Brick did have a point. Ordinarily, these taunts would have gotten under his skin.
For some reason, he just felt a lot more resilient tonight than he would have ordinarily.
“You have a good evening, Brick,” he said. He grabbed his ice bucket and left the vending machines without looking back to see whether Brick was watching him.
When he got back to his hotel room and let himself in, he saw that the woman from the bar had fallen asleep in his absence. The sex must have worn her out. Her hair was fanned out around her head, and her breathing was deep and even.
Brady smiled. He had hoped she would decide to stay the night.
He got into bed beside her, careful not to disturb her, and wrapped an arm around her waist. As he closed his eyes, he forgot all about Brick, Steve, and the stress of trying to impress his pack.
This was more than enough for now.
Chapter Five
EVELYN
In the middle of the night, Evelyn snapped awake, full of fear.
It took her several long, difficult minutes to figure out exactly where she was. The room was dark around her, and the shadows were unfamiliar. As her mind returned to full wakefulness, she processed the unfamiliar breathing of the man lying behind her.
Not Marty.
Was it strange that her first feeling, on realizing she was with someone other than her ex-husband, was relief? Was it strange that the relief set in even before she had fully remembered the man she’d met at the bar last night?
What was his name?
She couldn’t remember.
And now, here came the anxiety. She was in bed with a strange man. She had been married for twenty years—technically, she was seperated—and she was in a strange room with a strange man.
Which wasn’t to say that she hadn’t enjoyed herself. Evelyn couldn’t honestly say that she regretted the night. The sex had been amazing. She’d forgotten that sex could be like that—a joy, rather than the currency of a marriage. With Marty, she had always felt as if sex was a payment she was making toward his future benevolent moods. But last night, she had simply been enjoying herself.
Now, though—
It was just disorienting. How could she have gotten to this point this quickly, when just a few days ago she had been her husband’s wife? How could everything have changed so completely?
She rolled over slowly, looking at the man beside her.
His face was relaxed in sleep. A part of her felt strangely tender toward him, as if she had known him for much longer than just a few hours. She wanted to reach out and brush her fingers across that scar on his cheek, his most clearly defining feature. She wondered how he had gotten it.
But she hadn’t come to this hotel to make friends. And even though last night had been nice, there was no room in her life right now for a man of any kind, and certainly not one who wasn’t even a shifter.
She was going to have to face her parents later today. Bad enough that she was home for the first time in years after a marriage to a man they did not approve of. She would do herself no favors by getting involved with someone outside the shifter community.
She got to her feet slowly, her body moving to avoid detection out of habit. This was how she would have gotten out of Marty’s bed. She wouldn’t have wanted him to register that she was leaving at all.
This man isn’t Marty, she told herself.
But she couldn’t help feeling anxious. No, he wasn’t Marty, but who was he? She didn’t know him. She didn’t know that he wasn’t like Marty, that he wouldn’t have expectations that she couldn’t possibly predict. Perhaps it would be best to just get out without attracting any more of his attention.
Her clothes were scattered around the floor. She picked them up and pulled her dress back on quickly. Everything else she held in a bundle in her hands. She crept to the door.
Once there, she looked back one last time, knowing she wouldn’t see him again.
Should I leave a note?
No. A note could be seen as encouraging further contact in the future, and she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to leave this room and never see him again.
Already, she was itching for the safety and privacy of her own hotel room, her own door that she could lock behind her and keep this stranger out.
But as she took in his face one last time, so vulnerable in sleep, she couldn’t help feeling that she was overreacting.
He’s only pure human. He’s not like Marty. He could never hurt me.
Well, she would never give him the chance. She eased the door open, slipped outside, and bolted down the hall and around the corner to her own hotel room, not stopping or relaxing until she had let herself in and locked the door behind her.
She turned on all the lights, feeling embarrassed and foolish. There had been no need to run from the guy. But Evelyn couldn’t deny that she felt safer now that she was in her own room.
She tossed her shoes, underclothes, and purse on the bed and glanced at the clock—five a.m. The sun would be rising soon, which was just as well because Evelyn didn’t think she would be able to get back to sleep. She stripped off her dress and went to the shower to clean herself up.
Standing under the warm spray, the feeling of foolishness that had come over her when she had arrived back in her room took root and began to grow.
They had had such a good time together, first talking at the bar and then up in his room. She had felt more alive last night than she had in years, and it had given her the courage she needed to face her parents. When she’d checked into this hotel, she had felt like a failure, like a woman who hadn’t been able to make her marriage work and had sacrificed her entire life to the effort. She had been dreading going home with her tail between her legs, admitting to her parents how wrong she had been.
Now things felt different. One night with an interesting man had made her see herself—and the world—in a different light. Her life was not over. Clearly, she was still someone men could find attractive. There was a future for her.
And though it would be difficult to admit to her parents that she had left her marriage, and that she had been wrong to get into it in the first place, she was happy to be out. She was glad that she wouldn’t have to worry about Marty anymore. She would never even have to think a
bout him again.
She got out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and dried herself off.
Back in the bedroom, she eyed yesterday’s dress with misgivings. She wished she had had time to pack a suitcase when she was leaving Marty. But everything had escalated so quickly, and there simply hadn’t been time.
Could she really go back to her parents’ house with absolutely nothing to her name?
She went to her purse and pulled out the roll of cash she’d managed to bring along with her. The purchase of a last-minute plane ticket had depleted her reserves fairly significantly, but she could afford to stop at a discount department store and pick up something new to wear so that she would look presentable when she showed up on her parents’ doorstep.
Though I must have looked at least somewhat presentable in this dress. She remembered the feeling that had rushed through her when she had realized that the man at the bar had been flirting with her, that he hadn’t just been acting polite.
It wasn’t as if men never flirted with her. They did it all the time—or they had, at least, at the restaurant. But that was different. Those men were never interested in Evelyn herself. They liked the way she looked in her work uniform—excessively tight and revealing clothes that she would never have chosen for herself—and they liked the fact that she was being paid to wait on them. It made them feel powerful.
But the man she had met at the bar last night hadn’t been like that. He had seemed genuinely interested in a conversation with Evelyn, even before it had been clear that things were leading to sex.
A part of her felt a pang of regret that it wouldn’t ever become something more. When she was ready to start dating again, she might like to meet somebody like him.
She gathered up the few things she had and left her hotel room. She wanted to get away before the man awoke and came looking for her. She was embarrassed, now, about the fact that she’d ditched him, and she didn’t want to run into him in the lobby and be confronted with awkward questions about why she had done it.