by J. L. Wilder
They walked until the house was out of sight, lost in the trees. Then Fiona turned and looked at Owen.
“In the front yard of my house,” she said, her voice tight. “Where anyone could see us.”
“Nobody saw anything,” Owen said.
Fiona inhaled deeply. Owen got the feeling, suddenly, that she was bringing herself under control.
“Take off your clothes,” she said quietly.
Chapter Ten
FIONA
Owen stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me.” She fought to keep the tremor out of her voice. Even setting aside the fact that he was much bigger than she was, there was also the fact that she definitely shouldn’t be doing what she was about to do, for any number of reasons.
She had gone off alone in the woods with a bear. If any of the rest of her pack had hinted that they might try such a thing, she would have issued a blanket order against it immediately. Why can’t I seem to stay away from him?
She knew why. It was because of the way he talked to her, as if she was his to command. A part of her was determined to show him how wrong he was, while another part of her had never been so turned on in her life. She felt as if she were losing her mind.
“I’m not going to take off my clothes in the middle of the woods,” Owen said.
“No, you’re just going to feel me up in full view of both our packs, is that it?” she asked. “You know, it’s bad for you too if they find out what’s going on between us. Maybe even worse for you than it is for me.”
“Nothing’s going on between us.”
“No?”
“Why is it bad for me?” he said. “It’s not bad for me. Embarrassing for me, maybe.”
“Because it’s going to make you look like the only reason you brought your pack here was so you could keep getting laid,” she said. “It’s going to look like you were willing to put them at risk just so you could get some action.”
“Nobody would believe that.”
“I definitely wouldn’t discourage the rumor, if it got started.”
“That wouldn’t make you look good either,” he pointed out. “You’d look like you couldn’t persuade me to come with logic and reason, so you got me here with sex.”
“I don’t care,” she said, heart pounding. “Just so I got you here, it doesn’t really matter how I did it. Especially if you help us run off the Feral Fangs. Once that’s over, nobody’s going to care how I made it happen. Nobody on my side of the line, anyway. They might even respect me for it.”
“I don’t think so,” Owen said.
“I don’t care what you think,” Fiona said. “Strip.”
He scoffed. “I’m not getting naked for you.”
“Yes you will.” She stepped in close, knowing that she was gambling, knowing that she was at risk of humiliating herself. But she couldn’t allow him to think that whatever was happening between them was going to be all on his terms. She couldn’t let him think he could just start something up in front of her pack like that.
There would have to be consequences.
She couldn’t give him an order. She didn’t have that power over him. But she thought she just might have another power.
He inhaled sharply as she entered his space. She didn’t touch him at all, but her hands went to the button on his jeans. With two fingers, as easily as if she’d snapped, she flicked it lose.
His hips bucked toward her involuntarily. Fiona felt a surge of satisfaction. This was going to be easier than she’d imagined.
“Strip,” she said quietly.
He hesitated only a moment before finding the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head.
“All of it,” she said, indicating the pants he still wore.
He shoved them down and stepped out of them.
Fiona stood back, taking in the view. He was naked before her, his chest heaving with exertion, as if he had just run a marathon. His pupils were dilated. He looked drunk, dazed. She felt a bit drunk herself, high on the power she so clearly had over him. He thought he was in charge, she thought to herself, feeling deeply satisfied, but he isn’t. I am.
“You’re overdressed,” he said, his voice husky with desire.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He growled in frustration.
“Turn around,” Fiona said. “I want to see all of you.”
“No.”
“Turn around, I said.”
“Take your shirt off,” he countered.
“You turn around, and then I will.”
He turned on the spot, making rather a meal of it, flexing his muscles as he went. By the time he faced her again, Fiona had shed her shirt and unhooked her bra. She stood topless, facing him, feeling the balance of power begin to shift back in his direction.
“Let me touch you,” he begged.
She should say no. She should hang onto what little control over the situation she still had. She should put her shirt back on and walk away, leave him out here to deal with the fact that he had knuckled under at her command. Let him process who was really in charge.
He licked his lips, seemingly involuntarily, and she couldn’t help thinking of that wide, rough tongue on her body.
She nodded slowly.
He closed the distance between them, pulled her close, and lowered his mouth to her breast. He kissed around the nipple reverently, then drew it into his mouth.
She stifled a cry, arching her back. A moment later, a big, meaty palm came up to cover her mouth.
She snaked her hand downward to find his cock. He throbbed as she took hold of him, stroking gently, rhythmically. It wasn’t about power anymore. It was about need. She could feel the desperation coming off of him in waves, heightening her own wanting.
We’re not going to be able to stop doing this, she thought helplessly. As long as we’re living in proximity to each other, we’re not going to be able to keep our hands off of each other. We drive each other too crazy. We’re going to have to keep sneaking away together just to keep from losing our minds.
Right now though, somehow, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Right now, Fiona thought she could have spent hours, maybe even days, alone in the woods with Owen, learning the ways he liked to be touched, reveling in the feel of his mouth on her body.
She barely noticed the moment when her pants came off. All she knew was that suddenly she had been turned around in his arms so that her back was to him. Her cheek was up against the rough bark of a tree, just as it had been in the yard when they had been fighting. But this time, when she rocked her hips backward against him, she felt him slip inside her.
She gasped.
His hands made their way to her breasts, thumbs circling and flicking against her nipples as he fucked her. She forced herself not to make a sound, but it took every ounce of concentration and willpower she had within her to remember why that was so important. The pack. The pack could hear us. We can’t let them know. We can’t—
There was a reason for that. She knew there was a reason. It was right at the edge of her understanding. But she couldn’t grasp it. Not with his hands on her like that. Not with his thighs against the meat of her ass. She could hardly remember her own name.
Was he in control right now, or was she?
I’m the one who brought him into the woods. I initiated this. I got him to strip down, even though he was resisting me.
But he was the one who had started things, back in the yard. Back when they were fighting.
She gave up trying to figure it out as he pinched her nipples, sinking back against him and fucking herself ever harder. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, as long as he doesn’t stop, fuck, please don’t stop—
Her orgasm hit her unexpectedly and she bit her lip hard to keep from crying out. Behind her, Owen was less successful, letting loose with a groan as he collapsed over her.
Fiona held both of them up with her hands braced against the tree as they recovered th
eir breath. After several moments, Owen staggered backward. She turned to face him, one hand still on the tree for support.
“Someone could have heard you,” she said.
“You think?”
She was so impressed that he was listening to her instead of arguing with her that she decided to let the matter drop. “Probably not.”
He nodded. “That was...that was really something.
“You’re not kidding. Where are my pants?”
He reached up—higher than Fiona could have reached on her own—and pulled them down from the branch of a tree. She shook her head, half admiring, half irritated, and snatched them out of his hand.
They dressed in silence, side by side. What is he thinking? Fiona wondered. There was no sense in trying to guess. She hardly even knew what she was thinking. It had all been so quick, so intense...
She hadn’t even intended to have sex with him when she’d brought him out here. Oh, she’d planned on doing something. She had wanted to show him that she could make him beg, just as he had made her beg the other day. But when they’d gotten right down to it, she had found herself incapable of resisting him.
It was maddening.
She had never felt like this before. Not with any man. The men she had met at bars and taken home with her for one night stands had always felt like amateurs to her, barely able to keep pace with her superior strength and intellect. But now, for the first time, someone was on her level.
It scared her, but it was also the sexiest thing she had ever seen in her life.
But he was a bear. Not just a fellow alpha, but a bear. Someone who was in every way designed to pose a threat to her position within her pack. If they ever knew, she thought, not for the first time, they would never be able to respect me again.
God, if only she and Percy were still friends, the way they had been as children. If only she could have confided in him about what was going on. If only she could have sought advice.
Because she was beginning to realize that the one thing she wasn’t going to be able to do was to stay away from Owen. No matter how obvious it was that that was the right course of action, she couldn’t seem to be around him without wanting to rip his clothes off.
We’re in trouble, she thought, watching his muscles flex as he pulled his shirt back over his head. Both of us. We’re in big trouble. And with the Feral Fangs in the area, trouble is the very last thing we need right now.
Fully dressed now, Owen stood quietly, regarding her. She looked back at him, forcing herself not to avert her eyes. She had to show him she wasn’t intimidated, even if eye contact was the only way she could think of to do it.
“We’re going to do this again,” Owen said.
It wasn’t an order, but it wasn’t a question either. It was a statement of fact. He might have been telling her that rivers flowed north to south. He was resigned to it.
And he was right.
There was some satisfaction, at least, in knowing that he was no more capable of staying away from her than she was of staying away from him. At least the attraction wasn’t one sided. It was dangerous, ill-advised, and might be the end of everything. But at least it was mutual.
Fiona nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “We definitely will.”
Chapter Eleven
OWEN
He was determined to put some distance between himself and Fiona, even though it felt inevitable that they would eventually find their way back to each other.
But he had expected to last more than twelve hours.
Which was why it came as a surprise, late that evening to find himself holding her in his arms, her back braced against a tree as he fucked into her slowly and deliberately.
“Do you feel like we shouldn’t be doing this?” she asked.
“God, yeah.” He ran his hands along the tight curves of her hips. Her body was fucking flawless. “Does that mean you want to stop.”
“No. Fuck. No.” She exhaled, and he felt relief pour through him. “Could you even stop?”
“I could,” he said. “If you really, really wanted me to. I could.”
“Maybe you are more powerful than I am, then.” She tightened her legs around his waist. “I don’t know if I could stop. I don’t know if I can resist this, Owen.”
He hummed with pleasure, pulling her closer, lowering his mouth to her neck to suckle at the soft skin there. She leaned back against the tree and led out a groan that went straight to his cock, and suddenly, without warning, he was coming.
This time when they had finished, when they had stepped away from each other and began to dress, the mood around them didn’t seem to dissipate quite as quickly. Owen didn’t speak. He was afraid that if he did, things between them might turn sour and unpleasant again. He didn’t feel like fighting with her right now.
And that alone was strange. From the moment he’d met Fiona, he had been determined to show her who was boss. He had resented her for her strength as an alpha, a strength he suspected might even exceed his own. And he had resented her for dragging his pack into a wolf fight. It was a fight they needed to be in, he knew, a fight they probably couldn’t have avoided for long. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
But as he looked at her now, her face flushed with exertion and her hair in disarray, he felt none of the unpleasant things that he usually associated with her. In fact, he almost felt tender toward her.
She’s doing everything she can to protect her pack, he thought. She’s fighting against the prejudice that comes with being a she-alpha. She’s fighting against the resentment that exists between wolves and bears. She’s the one who brought our packs together, and if we do manage to win this battle we’re facing, it’s going to be because of her.
Also, he could see the place on her neck where his lips had been locked until recently, and the memory of her taste made his head spin.
“It’ll be a miracle if nobody figures out what we’re up to,” she murmured.
“I don’t know,” Owen said. “I don’t think they’re that bright.”
She shook her head. “I’m telling you, Owen, one of these days I’m going to rip your clothes off in the middle of the damn kitchen.”
He laughed. “And you yelled at me for feeling you up at battle practice!”
“Yeah, because you made it that much harder for me to resist you,” she said. “When you pressed me up against that tree, I thought I was going to come right there on the spot.”
“Me too,” he admitted, remembering the forbidden thrill of that moment, the feel of her body in his arms when they’d been at such risk of getting caught.
She stepped back. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “We can’t go again right now. We have to get back before someone notices we’re missing.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But I could go again right now, just so you know. I could bend you over that log right there and fuck you until you forgot your own name.”
She groaned. “Don’t tempt me,” she said.
“What if I want to tempt you?”
“You’re not the only alpha in these woods,” she pointed out. “I could do things to you too.”
“Things like what?”
She grinned wickedly. “I could strip you naked,” she suggested. “I could run my hands all over you until you didn’t know which way was up. I could take you in my mouth and get you all warm and wet and suck you so hard—”
Owen grabbed a tree branch to keep himself steady.
“And then I could gather up your clothes and run back home and leave you here,” she said.
“You wouldn’t,” he gasped.
“No, I wouldn’t,” she agreed. “That would definitely get us caught.”
“By the time you got that far, you wouldn’t be able to walk away from me anyway.”
She sighed. “No,” she agreed. “I probably wouldn’t.”
“We should get out of here,” Owen said. “Before we lose control.”
Fiona nodded. “That’s
what I’m saying.”
“You want to go first?”
“No, you go,” she said. “I’m going to stay here and think for a while.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “Nothing to worry about.”
Owen nodded and set off at a jog back toward the house.
By the time he reached the yard, his head was clear. The sun was setting. He would check in with the other members of his pack, he decided, and make sure everyone had gotten enough to eat for dinner. Then he would sack out early. Between the day’s training and two sessions with Fiona, he was utterly exhausted.
But as he approached the house, he came up short.
Joel was standing in the shadows on the porch, watching Owen as he approached.
Owen felt his heart skip a beat. But, he reminded himself, there was nothing to fear. Joel didn’t have any reason to be suspicious. All he had seen was his alpha returning from a run in the woods. “Hey, Joel,” he said.
“Hey,” Joel said quietly, not moving from his position against the porch railing. “Where have you been?”
Owen felt suddenly chilled, as though by a gust of wind. I’m being ridiculous, he told himself. There’s no way Joel could know anything. There was no way.
Was there?
Then, in the shadows, something moved.
Damon stepped into the circle of light cast by the bulb that hung above the porch. “Owen,” he said.
“Damon.”
“You’ve been in the woods a long time.”
“I was just getting some exercise.”
“You don’t get enough of that during our sparring matches?”
“Honestly, nobody there is really up to my standard,” Owen said weakly. He was scrambling for excuses, desperately trying to find a way to divert Joel and Damon from their current line of questioning, and the only thing he could think to do was to offend them. Maybe if he made Damon angry, Damon would forget he was curious.