Wedding the Wolf: A wolf shifter paranormal romance

by Steffanie Holmes

  “I don’t care,” I growled. I flicked open the buttons on her shirt, tugging it off her shoulders to reveal the milky softness of her skin. My cock throbbed against my thigh as I yanked her shirt fully away tossed it across the room. Her breasts bounced free. I kissed her ferociously, running my hands over every inch of her, wanting to commit every gorgeous curve of her body to memory.

  I hoped Willow liked it hard and fast, because I wasn’t going to be able to control myself around her this time.

  From the way she was kissing me back, making soft mewling sounds as she clawed at my shoulders, she liked it just fine. We staggered backward until we hit the edge of the bed. Willow leaned back into the covers as I crawled on top of her. We tore at each others clothes, tossing aside the fabric that separated us.

  “Hold on,” Willow breathed. She reached down and yanked off her prosthesis, dropping it to the floor with a loud bang. I tried to push her shoulders back, but she grabbed my cock, stroking me hard, her fingers hot.

  “Careful, Willow Summers,” I growled against her ear, enjoying the way she shivered with delight. “You might end up with a handful of wolf juice if you keep that up.”

  “Mmmm, I think I’ll take my chances.” She grinned as her grip on my cock tightened.

  I moaned as she pumped me harder, her hand sliding over my entire length. With her other hand, she ran her fingers over my balls, scratching the area between my scrotum and asshole and sending a flush of heat through my body.

  Oh sweet Jesus Mary and Joseph did she learn that trick from an internet search too? I’m not gonnae last, I’m gonnae …

  I grabbed her wrist, stopping her mid-stroke. Is this really the same Willow, who was so timid and afraid just last month? “Sex is making you sassy, Willow Summers.”

  She grinned. “Maybe I’ve got ten years worth of scenes from trashy romance novels burning a hole in my head that I want to live out.”

  “I ken how to wipe that smirk off your face.” I shoved Willow back and buried my head between her legs. She moaned as I thrust my tongue against her clit. Her hand dropped from my cock and she tossed her head back, letting out an even louder moan. I loved hearing her lose control like that, and give into her desire.

  I attacked her clit with my tongue, pounding it again and again, lapping up the sweet taste of her. Her fingers dug into my shoulder as she drew closer to release.

  Willow’s thighs clamped around my head, and her body shuddered as her first orgasm tore through her. I planned for it to be her first of many. I didn’t even let her finish before I lifted her left leg onto my shoulder, and thrust myself inside her.

  Willow arched her back, her eyes wide as I filled her deep. Her walls tightened around me, surrounding my entire length in her delicious warmth. I rode her hard, watching every contortion of her face, every sigh and moan and clench. Her fingers clawed at my arms as I pounded her with all the heat and passion I possessed. Even with her leg resting on my shoulder, she dragged me down and thrust her tongue in my mouth.

  Her right leg snaked behind me, and without her other foot in the way, I had even more space for manoeuvring. My body rocked against hers as we moved in perfect unison, rising up to meet each other with each thrust.

  My whole body tightened as heat flooded my veins. I howled as I came, the force of my orgasm tearing through me like an earthquake. Willow shuddered against the bed, crying and mewling as her own pleasure enveloped her. Utterly spent, I collapsed beside Willow, withdrawing from her and dragging her into my arms.

  A burning smell from the kitchen alerted my nostrils. Damn. I dragged myself upright. I’ll have to redo the sauce now—

  Outside the window, a branch snapped.

  “What the hell was that?” I whipped around so fast, I dragged the blankets with my foot, tossing Willow off the bed. She yelped as she hit the floor.

  “What was that for—” she started, but I held my finger to my lips. I stared into the trees, focusing my gaze on the area directly opposite the window. The moon had just begun to rise, casting eerie shadows through the trees and making it nearly impossible to discern shapes. But I’d seen it. I ken I had.

  “Irvine, what is it?” Willow asked from behind me. I didn’t take my eyes from the trees, waiting for the landscape to reveal itself to me. I pushed open the window a crack, and a gust of cool air hit my chest. Yes, there it was – a faint scent on the breeze. Human, and not someone I recognised.

  So what? That could be any one of the other cabin residents, out for a ramble in the moonlight.

  I kept searching the trees. Finally, the tall shape – dressed in green fatigues and nearly invisible amongst the thick foliage – came into focus. A man. He would’ve been invisible to anyone who didn’t have the heightened senses of a werewolf. But he wasn’t invisible to me.

  “Irvine, please.” Willow sounded terrified. She clambered up beside me and thrust her head into the square of the window. “What’s wrong?”

  As soon as her head appeared, the man disappeared into the bush. Every nerve in my body stood on end. He’d been watching us. That wasn’t another resident. That was a deliberate stake-out.

  “What’s wrong is there’s someone out there watching us,” I said.

  23

  Willow

  There’s someone out there watching us.

  The stalker put an end to the sexy mood inside Irvine’s cabin. “Do you think he’s still out there?” I asked, hugging my arms to my chest. A clammy cold shook my whole body, as though my skin crawled with cold, dripping mud. How much had he seen? Was he taking photographs?

  “I cannae smell him anymore.” Irvine pulled his head back in the window. He slid off the bed, and moved to the kitchen, where he started assembling ingredients on the bench to make another pot of sauce. The tension in his shoulders was the only clue that he was even thinking about what happened.

  “Why is he here? Did you see his face? Is it something to do with the project you’re working on?” I imagined Irvine working as a spy for MI6, and an enemy agent had come to track him down. Werewolves would make great spies. They could squeeze into tight spaces and bring down assailants with a claws and teeth instead of bullets …

  My leg throbbed with phantom pain. No. I don’t want to think about claws and teeth right now.

  “I dinnae ken.” Irvine whisked a handful of flour into a bubbling pot of butter. “It’s unlikely. The scent is a man, not a shifter.”

  “It could be some pervert, trying to get footage of me and you doing … stuff. That’s a thing, you know. Amputee smut. I recently discovered that the internet’s full of it.” It’s just my luck that just when I start having sex, I end up on some kinky website. Talk about out of the frying pan, into the fire.

  Irvine dumped a handful of parmesan into the sauce, then tipped the drained pasta into the cheesy mixture. “It could be,” he said, as he poured a layer of cheesy pasta into the bottom of an oven dish.

  Or it could be someone trying to get to my mother. They’ll go to her with photographs of her beloved daughter, the star of all her anti-werewolf campaigns, fornicating with the very beast she was trying to destroy. They’ll threaten to release the photos to the press unless she agrees to …

  What? Unless she agrees to what? I couldn’t think of what someone would want my mother to do. I opened my mouth to mention it to Irvine, but then remembered that I hadn’t told him who my mother was. And I never would.

  When I left Irvine, I’d call Mum and ask her if anything was going on first, see if I had anything to worry about.

  God, I hope it’s not about Mum. I hope it’s just some garden-variety pervert. Never in my life would I have expected to hope that a pervert was outside the window, but it would honestly be the best of all possible outcomes.

  “You seem remarkably calm about this whole thing,” I said to Irvine. A bubble of panic rose through my chest, turning my whole body to ice. I grabbed my shirt with shaking hands and pulled it on, wrapping the blanket around my shoulder
s so any other smut photographers wouldn’t be able to see a single inch of skin.

  “There’s nae much point getting in a tizz until we ken what’s going on.” Irvine added a layer of meatballs in a thick tomato sauce, then topped it with the rest of the pasta. He then grated a thick layer of parmesan over top, and shoved the dish into the tiny convection oven on the bench to melt the cheese. He grabbed a bowl of salad from the fridge and set that on the table. “After we eat this delicious meal I’ve prepared and you’ve calmed down a bit, I’ll call Caleb and Ryan. You can go stay at Raynard Hall with Alex while we investigate outside. This intruder, whoever he is, will have left a scent trail. We may be able to hunt him out and—”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “What?”

  “No, that’s not happening.” No way are we getting the rest of the pack involved when this night be related to my mother. If there’s any risk at all that it can be traced back to her—

  “Why not?” Irvine dropped into the chair opposite mine, regarding me with those steel grey eyes.

  Good question. “You know what Caleb’s like. He’ll dive into uber protective mode to save the pack, and it could just be some pervy hiker or one of the other cabin occupants. I don’t want to jump to conclusions before we know more.”

  “Willow, this could be really important. I cannae just keep it secret from the pack.”

  “Not forever, just for the moment.” Just until I can figure out if this has anything to do with me and my old life. If it does, then … I guess I’ll have to come clean, or run away.

  Just the thought of that choice turned my stomach.

  Irvine sighed, then jabbed his finger toward my plate. “Hurry up and get that down you. We need to head out.”

  I took a big bite. It was delicious, but I didn’t feel much like eating. “Why are we going outside?”

  Irvine’s fingers tightened around mine. “If you want this to be a secret, Willow Summers, you’re gonnae have to help me investigate.”

  A shiver ran through my body at the thought of going out there. “Can’t you just go by yourself?”

  “Until we know who that guy is and what he wants, I’m nae letting you out of my sight. I wonnae let anything happen to you.”

  “You mean, you’re going to sit at the end of my bed every night to make sure the bogeyman doesn’t jump out and say boo?”

  “Aye, you’ve got it.” Irvine nodded, chewing the last bite of his dinner.

  “I’m not sure what I think about this.”

  “Think, ‘I’ll be seeing a lot more of Irvine,’ because that’s what’s happening until we get to the bottom of this.”

  “You mean, ‘a lot more’ than the every waking hour and many of the sleeping ones we spend together now?”

  “Aye.” He tapped the table impatiently. “Now, finish up, pop your leg on and let’s go.”

  I chewed another mouthful of pasta, and pointed at my ballet flats stacked beside the door. “Those things barely survive on the path to the parking lot. I can’t go clumping around the forest in them, especially not with …” I pointed at my prosthetic. “I’m no good at sneaking. There’s a reason private detectives are never amputees.”

  “Nonsense. I bet you’d make a great private detective.”

  “Irvine, this is serious!”

  “I am being serious. You can do anything you want to do. You should stop telling yourself otherwise. And stop stalling, lassie. I’m nae leaving your side, but I need to see where that man was hiding. That means you’re coming with me.”

  Irvine waited impatiently while I scarfed some more food down and re-attached on my leg. He handed me a pair of his boots. They were enormous, but at least they had good traction.

  I followed Irvine outside. On the steps, he bent down on one knee. “Climb on,” he said, he gesturing to his back. I bit back a protest. I didn’t want him to carry me around like a cripple. I could walk just fine. But … it would be easier. And I kind of wanted to be close to him again.

  I climbed on Irvine’s back. He hoisted me up, wrapping his powerful arms around my thighs. My feet in his heavy boots dangled free. I gripped him around the neck and pressed my head against his, relishing the smell of him. Irvine stood upright, and dashed toward the forest.

  Even though the ground was uneven and I must’ve been ungainly luggage, Irvine raced forward with incredible speed. We crashed through the trees, moving so fast I couldn’t see what was going on in front of us. Instead, I glanced back at the cabin, where only a faint light glowed. Fear stabbed at my chest. It would be so easy to become lost in this forest. Branches scraped my face and arms, and I buried my face in Irvine’s shoulders to protect myself from the worst of it.

  Irvine pushed on, his strides confident, his gait surprisingly smooth. Beneath me, his muscles rippled, and a layer of sweat slicked down his neck. He didn’t slow.

  After several minutes, Irvine drew to a stop. He knelt down so I could slide off, and held out his hand to steady me on the uneven ground. I glanced around, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  We’d come a small clearing, the trees bending away, providing a small hole in the canopy through which the cold moon shone through. Irvine sniffed the air, then pointed to a spot at the edge of the clearing. I noticed some of the undergrowth had been trampled flat.

  “This is where he was hiding,” Irvine said. “From the looks of this, he was watching for a while. Can you have a look in the grass for any other clues? I’m going to sniff around a bit.”

  “Sure, but remember – I’m no private detective.” I sat down on the soft ground, stretching out my leg beside me as I hunted around in the leaves. My fingers scraped against something cold and hard. I grabbed the object and raised it to my eyes, squinting in the cold moonlight as I rubbed away the dirt.

  It was a small medallion, one side depicting a majestic stag, and the other side showing three small lines of latin text. A tiny hole had been drilled in the top, through which a thin leather cord was threaded. It looked a little like the coin Irvine wore around his neck.

  The stalker must have dropped this. But what does it mean?

  24

  Irvine

  Willow showed me the medallion. “Could it be some sort of pack insignia?” she asked, pointing to the Baird and Lowe crests tattooed on my bicep.

  “Maybe.” I studied the stag. I doubted it had anything to do with a shifter pack, but anything was possible. Those who shifted into stags tended to be loners – I’d never heard of them organising into a pack before. Two stags couldn’t usually stand to share the same territory, let alone work together to manage the complex social hierarchy of a pack. But, then again, a mixed pack like the Lowes was hardly normal, and it had happened.

  And it still didn’t explain why the man bore no scent of a shifter. There were spells and charms that could disguise a shifter’s scent, but they involved a very advanced magic that only a few people would have access to. Our peeper could be a human in the employ of a stag – sometimes packs worked with humans who knew their secrets to run errands or perform other tasks they couldn’t – but if that was true, it still didn’t explain why he was following us. Why were they watching us? Why not watch Caleb? I was an ally, sure, but not nearly as powerful as Rolf, and I didn’t make any decisions. Willow was even less involved than I was.

  The more I thought about it, the more I believed this had nothing to do with shifters and the plan and everything to do with Willow and the reason she left London. And I think she ken it, too, which was why she didn’t want Caleb involved.

  It could be her mother, as we’d originally thought, but if Willow’s Ma wanted to find her, then why hadn’t she shown up here already? Why was she still calling Willow every few days to beg her to come home?

  An ex-lover scorned … no, that didn’t make sense, not given what I ken about Curtis. But what then …

  Willow wasn’t telling the whole truth about her past, of that I was certain.

 
You’re one to talk, or did you forget that you haven’t told her about what you’re planning for shifters, or that you’re capable of the very monstrous things that she’s so terrified of?

  Shaking away the unsettling thoughts, I glanced up at Willow, studying her face of any sign of recognition as her fingers traced the stag on the medallion. She looked as stumped as I felt.

  “Is there anything else here?” Willow asked, tucking the medallion into her shirt pocket.

  “Just his scent.” I ran my fingers over the bent grass and broken branches, thick with the man’s distinct scent. There was no clue at all in the odour, apart from the fact the guy laid on thick with the aftershave. If I transformed into my wolf, I’d be able to pick up much more subtle clues with my superior sense, but I’d promised Willow that I wouldn’t shift. “I’d like to follow it a little further.”

  A sliver of fear flickered across her face, but she nodded.

  I helped Willow back onto my shoulders. As soon as her arms were wrapped tight around my neck, I took off, following the scent as it weaved through the trees. It emerged a few miles later on the edge of the gravel road leading deeper into the forest. Tire tracks in the soft earth at the edge of the road showed me how our stalker had arrived. We looked around where the car had been parked, but found no other clues.

  “Well, we cannae do anything else tonight,” I said, dusting dirt off my jeans. I knelt down and patted my back. “Up ye go.”

  “Drop me back at the parking lot,” Willow said, as she clambered onto my shoulders, her warmth burning through my skin. “I’ll head back to my flat and—”

  I shook my head. “You’ll nae be going back to your place alone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This guy is human, which makes me think he’s after you, not me. He could be that same guy who was hanging around your flat the night Resurrection got trashed.”

  Willow’s face paled. “You mean … he was a stalker, after all?”