by DD Prince
It’ll take time to make the den warm. Not the den. I must alter my thinking… think as man instead of wolf. The house above the den. I haven’t been in it for a long time. It’s inadequate, but I’ll make it warm for tonight, for shelter for us, then tomorrow work to make it better.
She kicks, struggling against the intrusion of my hand under her skirt. I’m craving all of her, but I’ll have to be satisfied with just a closer whiff of scent and a small taste of her skin for now. A flick of my tongue along her throat will have to hold me over until I get her to warmth. The sooner we’re there the better.
I growl with need at that delicious taste and she startles, looking at me with sheer fear.
Energy crackles in my veins. Need. I need…
“I need to mount you, be inside you. You’ll feel better when I’ve marked you,” I assure her.
She stills and this makes me ponder whether I should wait or not. “I want inside you so badly.” I take a whiff of her cool skin.
She lets out a cry of distress, her body trembling wildly, I know she’ll settle once I’ve claimed her, but her skin is too chilled.
I’m her mate. It’s my job to take care of her. And she’ll be mine for always. I’ve waited this long…
It’s decided.
She needs warmth from proper shelter, so for her, I’ll wait. Difficult as it’ll be, I’ll make myself wait.
My cock has not ever ached like this, never been this hard. I groan as I lick her throat and grind against her chilled body. I force myself away from her after putting my lips to her jaw.
I’ll take her there, build a fire, then I’ll undress and claim her in the warmth. Cover her with my body. Fill her with my fire. Kiss every inch of her until she’s keening for me, spread wide. Willing. She’ll be warm and claimed soon. And that’ll take care of everything.
Pain stretches through my groin at the notion of waiting. I need to get her there, now. Right now.
“We’ll go home,” I say, taking a deep breath filled with her scent before stepping back and gesturing for her to come with me. I feel the chill of the ground as the wet earth squishes between my toes. “I’ll claim you there.”
Her eyes dart down to my erect cock and then meet my eyes again. She’s afraid to be mounted. She’s afraid to come home with me. She doesn’t know I’ll be a good mate. I will be. I’ll always put her first.
She makes a squeak sound as her eyes dart around wildly, calculating, looking for a way to escape. I don’t like that she feels this way; it creates sensations in my gut that are foreign and feel terrible.
There’s a leather satchel with two looped handles and a longer strap as well as her smaller woman’s leather bag with a long loop strap on the floor in the back of the car. I pry the zipper halfway and peer inside the larger one. Clothing and electrical gadgets and cords as well as woman stuff: bottles, jars, tools for her hair, I think. She may want these. I lift things from the seat and floor that fell out of her smaller bag and stuff it in, then zip it up. I throw the straps over my neck and scoop her up as I duck out of the car, immediately breaking into a run.
“No. No! Please!” she protests, trying to squirm out of my arms.
“Behave, Ivy Adeline Brennan.”
She doesn’t listen, she squirms harder, so I warn, “If you make yourself fall and you get hurt, I’ll be angry. I’m already angry enough.”
She needs warmth. Her body is far too cool. I won’t take the chance of making her ill. I will my body temperature to rise for her, but she’s only over my shoulder so it won’t do enough.
“Tyson? Right? Tyson, please. Listen... If we can just get to where I can make a call, I can have my car towed out of there and I won’t… won’t tell anyone about you. You can just go. You can just le-let me go and I won’t say a word. Please don’t be angry. You haven’t done anything that wrong yet, only broke my window and stuff and I – I don’t care about that. I have insurance. I just… please put me down and we can forget this ever happened.”
I pick up my pace. I can cover a lot of ground quickly even if I don’t run as fast as a man as I do as wolf, but as I can’t carry her and her things as a wolf, this has got to be the way home. I was weary, and then angry at myself because she’s cold and frightened, but now I’ve got renewed strength at the notion that I’m bringing Ivy with me. I’ve found the person to be mine, fill my bed, to give me sons and daughters. Uncle Cornelius said that not all hybrid shift, but some can, can become nearly as strong as their pure shifter fathers or mothers. It’s not unheard of for humans and shifters to mate at all. When they’re destined, he said their offspring are strong. I know by her scent and how it makes me feel that she’s my destined one.
She’s destined to be mine, my finding her happened with a hand from fate and perhaps even a witch, I suspect with the way the sky looks and the way the roads behaved tonight, but no matter… all that matters is that I’ve got her and we’re heading home. I feel like someplace can be home.
This. This is what I’m missing. This is what it means to be a man. Having a woman that is all yours. And that she’s not wolf means she won’t feel that usual urge Uncle told me of, to join a pack like a typical female wolf shifter would. This is right. She’ll accept my solo lifestyle. This is how it’s supposed to be for me.
I tell myself I must focus as man, find comfort in this form as this is who I’m going to be most of the time. I need to get home in case my body shifts against my will again and gives her an opportunity to run from me. It’s because of her fear. Once I claim her, she’ll know she’s where she’s meant to be, and I’ll gain more clarity and more control over my form.
She’s bouncing in my arms, grunting out with distress as I run, zigzagging down through the woods that will take me back to where I first scented her. From there, it won’t take long for me to be home. I smell home and I always know how to get there. Now that I’ve scented her, I know I’ll always know how to find her, too.
I catch the filthy scent of men, one who was with her at the service station where I first noticed her scent. As it comes into focus. I slow, spying a fire burning from near a house. I take a whiff of the night air. The boyfriend?
“Were they who distressed you earlier?” I jerk my chin in that direction as we pass the house with the three cars in front. She whimpers and reaches toward the house as if she wants to go there.
Music plays loudly with voices carrying. Their fire is too large. It’s reckless. I smell the whisky my uncle used to drink on some of them, too.
Memories claw their way forward in my mind.
At the busy bar, women offered me their cunts, so I kept taking them, feeling pleasure for a moment and then dissatisfaction. I asked him, if I were in my village, the village he’d taken me from, would it feel different? Better? None of the women in that bar were shifters and none of them smelled like mine. None of them smelled like this little sprite. One smelled familiar, though not like she was mine, and I had no idea why until I smelled her on my uncle one day after one of his errands.
“You smell like you fucked someone familiar. A shifter. I know no shifters but you, why is she familiar?”
“She was supposed to be mine. She was taken from me.”
“Did you go back and mount her? Why not bring her here to live with us? Take her from them and make her eat the grass. If she’s yours, she should be with you.”
“She doesn’t want me.”
“Who is she?”
He acted angry then that I kept trying to convince him to take what was his and mount her until she knew she was his. He gorged himself on that disgusting scent-masking grass then, encouraging me to eat more than my usual amount and I knew he was angry at the scent I’d picked up and I suspected he was also hiding something.
He ate it until he spewed it everywhere and got so ill I had to carry him back to his bed over my shoulder as he wept like a child.
The next day, he ordered me to shift early and put his finger in my face telling me to never disc
uss it or ask about that female again.
Months before my uncle died, he reminded me to eat the grass, to never let them know who I was, and to wait until I found my own mate and then keep her safe from them.
Just before he died, he told me that he knew he didn’t have long and said after he was gone I should go there to the forbidden village and rip them all apart. Every last one.
The day after he died, right before we were to shift to men again, I shifted early. I went to the house and took the truck to the bar in the village and ordered a beer. That night I took two women who approached me together to a hotel and fucked them both.
One slept while the other talked in sweet voices to me, asking to come home with me. She said she’d give me children. Take care of my house. She wasn’t mine and I felt loneliness I knew would ache without having anyone, not even my uncle who was never a good companion but who was all I had.
She wasn’t mine and I told her I didn’t want her. She screamed in my face and called me bad names, waking the other one, while I dressed to leave.
I drove back to the cabin, locked the garage, and checked the house to ensure I did what we usually did after our month as men before shifting. Although it’d only been a few days as man that year, I was done with it. I shifted and began with a long run, one that took me away for months. Far away, in case I needed to go farther to find my one. I came back and I approached the forbidden village. I smelled no one that was mine.
I got close, something calling to me, an unnamed need. The need for blood like he suggested? Curiosity about that familiar female? I might have wanted revenge. And I realized I hadn’t eaten the grass to mask my scent. And I didn’t care. In fact, I wanted them to smell me.
When I approached, their smells confused me. They made my head dizzy and I again wanted to mark the entire village with my scent. So I began to do that.
I saw several men step outside a large barn and they froze when they saw me marking. My uncle’s voice rang in my wolf’s head, his warnings about them. I growled at them, bared my teeth, showed my disdain and strangely, they all shifted and moved to poses of partial submission.
Why would they submit? More importantly, why would it be only a partial submission? Uncle told me my inferiors would submit if they recognized me as their alpha. He told me other alphas would only partly submit to show deference.
Confusion swam through me and I left before I finished marking. With no one to go back to, I didn’t go back to the house until winter when I denned underneath it. And the following winter. And the winter after that. I’ve forgotten how many.
Until today, I haven’t even felt the urge to shift back to man form. I’ve nearly forgotten about this other form I can be. It feels strange, like I need time to adjust after so long. Like my memories are sliding back slowly. Uncle once said if a wolf didn’t shift for a long enough period, he’d forget everything he knew as man, forget how to shift. And if he didn’t shift from man to wolf, his wolf would become a danger to all. He told me there was a balance to maintain. And when he died, I didn’t follow his words. I did what I wanted instead.
I was tired of his words. Of his warnings. Of the times when he made no sense, especially when he smelled like whisky.
Her panic levels are giving me an ache I can’t stand.
“Settle down, Ivy.” I scoop her against my chest and my temperature rises to provide warmth for her.
Her eyes are wild with fear and the predator in me wants to take her to the ground and devour her body, though with mouth, tongue, fingers, and cock instead of tearing at her with my teeth. The stronger part of me wants to calm and settle her.
“The boyfriend?” I smelled five different males. “Is that who you’re calling for?”
I want to rip his throat out. I want to rip all their throats out. I can tell by their scents that they’re weak. None are worthy opponents. None are worthy of her. I also smell the female that was with her earlier. Three of the five have the scent of that female on them. One that was with my Ivy. The other woman reeks of all that seed. There’s nothing appetizing about her scent underneath it.
Ivy doesn’t answer me.
“Forget him,” I say.
The fire and those filthy scents shrink off into the distance as we keep moving.
She slumps in defeat in my arms with a whimper.
Will she miss the boyfriend? Does she love him? This makes a funny sensation poke in my chest cavity. I shake it off. It doesn’t matter; I’m keeping her. He can find another female. I know I’d win her in a fight if some male was stupid enough to challenge me. I don’t smell another male on her, only knew that one was near her when I caught her scent. She hasn’t been touched in a while. I smell no male’s seed on her at all. This pleases me and tells me even more that the boyfriend doesn’t matter. Now that she’s mine, she will always smell like she’s just been fucked.
5
Ivy
I’m in the arms of a naked man who’s running with me, taking me to his home.
I squirm harder and manage to slide halfway out of his arms.
“Ivy Brennan,” he admonishes and secures me better.
And now I’m back over his shoulder like a flour sack while he runs faster. I’m flopping and seeing nothing but the blurry ground. I scream over and over until I’m hoarse, praying someone will come to my aid and it seems to make him run faster. I grab for his waist, and there are no clothes, so my hands just grasp at wet, hot skin and because it’s also naked skin, I let go the minute I touch him.
Blurry ground and bare butt.
God… how does he run this fast in the cold rain like this? Carrying me and my stuff, and… we’re running downhill now and he’s running even faster. Barefoot! I feel like I’m about to barf at the motion.
***
I continue to wrack my brain thinking about how I’ll get away from this guy and make it back to the cabin of ill-repute (can’t even believe that seems like a safe haven right now), but we’ve gone through dense bush and changed directions several times, not to mention I’ve stared at moving ground most of the journey so there’s no way I’ll remember my way back. Finally, he slows and pulls me off his shoulder back into an embrace and I’m dizzy but make out that we’re approaching a darkened building. The way the moon shines over it makes it seem like it’s spotlighting the place, showing it to me. I’m cold. And I’m shivering at the eeriness of all of this. I also shiver at strange sensations inside me as I look around.
It’s got a big front porch and the cabin is covered in a combination of cedar shake tiles and stone. I’m set on my feet while he climbs under the front step and returns a beat later with a key.
It’s again raining, though not as hard, and he is turning the key on the door of the single-story cabin that looks like it comes right out of a storybook. Like Hansel and Gretel would’ve stumbled upon it during their walk in the woods. It doesn’t look like it’s made of candy, really, but with the stonework, the old-fashioned shape, the high-peaked tiled roof bordered with gingerbread trim, it’s almost romantic-looking.
What a strange thought to flit through my head as I stand there on the wide porch behind the naked guy that kidnapped me. The naked werewolf!
He opens the door and catches my hand with his before I get a chance to do anything else… like run.
Duh. Why on earth did I just stand here?
The place is dark. Pitch dark. And then there’s light. He’s leaning over an oil lamp and my eyes take in the shadows around me. A fireplace. Furniture covered with sheets. He moves toward me with intent, pulling me to his body. His huge, wet, naked body. I look anywhere but his crotch because I already saw it, and it’s in proportion to his massive frame, in other words, big. God, he’s tall and big. I come to his mid chest. I look up. He caresses my face with callused fingers and leans down like he’s about to kiss me. I jerk back.
“Sit and rest. I’ll get you warm,” he tells me and hauls the sheet off a sofa as he steps back, immediately hunching o
ver the wood stove, stacking it with wood that he lifts from beside it.
I’m shivering, feeling like the cold and damp has run straight through to my bones. It’s also dusty in the place and my nose tickles. Beyond physically shivering from the cold, I’m also overcome with not a small amount of apprehension.
I’m inside a building with him and the door is closed. I back up toward it, slowly.
In Hansel and Gretel, the witch wanted to eat them. He’s got a different sort of appetite based on what he said to me in my car, based on the erection. And here I am, like Little Red Riding Hood, about to be devoured by the Big Bad Wolf.
He looks over his shoulder at me. And the look in his eyes? Something in my belly twirls and heat floods my face. I don’t get a chance to dissect the feeling because my lower back hits the doorknob and my hand slides back to grab it.
“Come. Sit,” he commands as he stacks wood and fills it with some bits of paper from a rack beside the wood stove. He strikes a match. “Get warm.”
He lights the fire, rises, and stares a moment. I watch that massive cock rise up and my head jerks away. I squeeze my eyes shut tight.
Oh shit. This is it. What’s about to happen to me?
“Ivy?”
I open my eyes and see flames flicker as they catch, bouncing off the shadows cast from the oil lamp and my eyes land on him again. I can’t help but take note of what an absolutely perfect male specimen he is. Massive in height and wide, though not remotely husky. His body is muscular. His bulk comes entirely from muscles.
His stomach is a series of boxes and ridges. His dark hair curls down past his shoulders… broad shoulders with defined biceps and well-veined forearms that extend to large hands. My eyes travel back up that naked body that he’s completely unbashful about having on display to his scruffy razor-cut jawline. His chest rises and falls under my obvious appraisal and then he lets out a sound… a low growling sound that seems to make the room vibrate at the same time as goosebumps erupt on my flesh. My eyes wander over the very prominent length and girth of his –