by J. L. Wilder
“You did it,” he murmured, his lips pressed against her ear. “I knew you could do it.”
“I didn’t do it,” she whispered. “It was you. Ryker...”
What’s happening? That was what she wanted to ask him. What is this?
Whatever it was, whatever she was feeling, she had never felt anything like it before. It was strange and terrifying, and Sophie honestly didn’t know whether she was afraid of what would happen next or of the possibility that it might stop.
His big hands, his thick fingers, so much thicker than her own, left their position on her hands and traced their way gently up her arms. She wouldn’t have believed that such big hands could be so gentle.
He curled the fingers of one hand into a fist and trailed his thumb slowly down her torso, between her breasts. He didn’t touch her breasts at all, and she found to her surprise that she desperately wanted him to.
He pressed his palm flat against her stomach. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Did you know that?”
She hadn’t known that. She had known that Josh wanted her, of course. But beauty had never had anything to do with that. It had been about possession, about ownership. She had belonged to him.
As she thought those words now, though, they sounded different than they ever had before.
What would be so awful about belonging to someone?
Not Josh. Not him.
But...someone.
Sophie leaned back against Ryker’s broad shoulder, unable to believe that this was happening, but powerless to stop it. It seemed obvious, even now, where this encounter was leading. There was only one way this could end. The only way out would be if one of them were to walk away, and God, she wasn’t going to get up and walk away.
She wanted those hands on her. She wanted his touch in places she hadn’t felt it yet.
His hands were creeping up her sides, lifting her shirt out of the way. “Is this okay?” he breathed. “Can I keep going?”
“Yes,” she breathed back.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop,” he said, his voice trailing away into a groan. “If you want me to stop, tell me now.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” How was she so sure? She had never done this before. How could she be so certain that she wanted a stranger’s hands on her?
Because nothing else has ever felt so good in my life.
Josh’s touch, the way it had felt like poison, the way it had made her want to peel her own skin off—that was a distant memory now. Ryker’s hands made her feel new.
He lifted her shirt off, leaving her bare to the waist. He traced her collarbone, then rested his fingertips gently on top of her breasts. “Perfect,” he breathed.
No one had ever touched her like this before. The men in her old pack had grabbed her breasts in passing as if she was a joke. Not as if she was something to be admired. She closed her eyes and reveled in the new feeling.
When he began to pet her nipples, her body went limp with pleasure. She could no longer hold herself upright. She felt his strong arms supporting her, but it was more than she could take. She heard herself crying out helplessly.
His mouth was at her ear. “Are you going to come?” he asked, and he sounded as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. “Can you come from just this? Really?”
She might have been sobbing. She didn’t know. Her arms and legs were shaking, and she felt as if something had burst free inside her.
He turned her in his arms, lifted her—rather roughly—and pulled her into his lap. The moment he sank his cock into her was like the first breath of oxygen after being held underwater.
God, but he was big. She didn’t know whether his size was normal—it couldn’t possibly be—she felt so stretched, so full. She leaned forward, exhausted from what she had already been through, and rested her head on his shoulder, letting him guide her hips through a steady roll. Letting him fuck her slowly, then harder and harder as she grew accustomed to having him inside her.
His facial hair began to burn her cheek.
She liked it. She wanted it.
His hand was between her legs now, working gently, expertly. His other hand was on her breast, alternately squeezing and stroking her nipple. He held her lips in a kiss, his tongue gently exploring the inside of her mouth.
Sophie felt as if her body was an orchestra. As if, somehow, he had figured out how to play all the different parts in perfect harmony.
She came for a second time, and it felt as if he had written it.
She slumped in his arms as he thrust into her twice more, roaring with satisfaction as his own orgasm took hold of him.
Sophie wasn’t aware of lying down on her side on the floor of the cave. She wasn’t aware of Ryker pulling her back into his arms so that she lay cradled against his broad chest. The next thing she knew for certain was that she was staring into the thick, black nest of facial hair that comprised his beard, watching it rise and fall as he breathed.
His fingers were trailing up and down her bare spine, moving slowly, and she got the sense he was waiting for something. She moved in his arms, struggling to look up at him.
“There you are,” he murmured, smiling down at her.
“There I am?”
“You’ve been out of it for a while,” he said. “It happens. I’ve heard, anyway. Some omegas get a little loopy after sex. Has that ever happened to you before?”
“No,” Sophie said, burying her face in his chest. She felt shy, for reasons she couldn’t quite put into words. They had just been so intimate, after all. There was no reason to get shy now. “But I’ve never done that before.”
“That was your first time?” he asked.
She nodded.
His lips—how could a man’s lips be so soft?—pressed against her forehead. “I think I just imprinted on you, Sophie,” he said quietly.
She looked up at him. “Can that happen? I thought imprints took more time.”
“They definitely don’t take time,” Ryker said. “When it happens, it happens in a moment. Who told you it took time?”
“Josh,” she admitted. “My old alpha. He said the imprint between the two of us was in the process of developing. That it would be mature when I came of age, and—and then he could claim me.”
“God,” Ryker said, shaking his head. “That isn’t how it works at all. He was manipulating you.” He sat up, bringing Sophie with him, keeping her carefully cradled in his arms. “An imprint isn’t something you can control or choose,” he said. “It isn’t something you have to nurture. And it isn’t something you can mistake. When it happens, you feel it. You know. Didn’t you feel it between us?”
Sophie thought of the way it had felt to have his hands on her body for the first time. It had been like no other experience she had ever had in her life. Men had touched her hundreds of times, and it had always been something she’d hated, something to shy away from.
Until today.
“Yes,” she said, knowing that he was right. “I felt it.”
She rested against his chest and closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift, letting her worries float away.
“I’m your alpha now,” he said quietly. “I’ll take care of you. I promise you that. You’ll stay here with me, and you won’t have to worry about fending for yourself, because you and I are going to be a team. We’ll look out for each other.”
It had the weight of a command, but unlike Josh’s commands, this was one Sophie was eager to obey. She wanted to please him. She wanted to do as she was told.
“Yes,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’ll stay.”
Chapter Eight
MARCO
He had been on the run for days.
At least, he thought it had been days.
How long ago had he fled the pack of bears? Had he slept? He thought he had, but it was difficult to be sure. Even now, even as he ran, his co
nsciousness was fuzzy. He couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that he was awake even right now.
Marco knew that part of his uncertainty came from the fact that he had been in wolf form for so long. He was accustomed to running and hunting during the day in his animal form, then shifting back at night and sleeping as a human. He had always been more comfortable that way.
But the bears might catch up with him at any moment.
His strong wolf body, the speed it gave him that the shambling bears didn’t have—that was the only thing that had allowed him to get away with his life. If they came upon him in human form, he would be killed. He would have no chance at all.
He was bleeding. He knew that. His body ached, and he longed to lie down and rest. But what if the bears were pursuing him? What if he stopped and that was what allowed them to catch up?
Where was he, anyway?
How long had it been since he had eaten?
He had had that pheasant. He remembered that. It had been the best catch he’d made in weeks. He’d made a fire, determined to cook it up and enjoy the meat while human, to savor it rather than just wolfing it down.
The fire had been his mistake. That had been what had alerted the bears to his location. That was how they had been drawn in.
He remembered the rustling in the trees and the cold stab of fear as he’d realized that he was about to be attacked.
He remembered there had been no time to run.
He remembered the wrongness of claws raking against his body, opening gashes along his torso. It hadn’t even hurt, not immediately. And he had begun shifting so fast that his body hadn’t even had time to register the pain. Then he had been running, running as fast as he could, his pheasant forgotten behind him, the thundering sounds of the bears’ footsteps in hot pursuit.
They were bigger than he was. They were stronger.
But Marco was faster.
He had been faster in the beginning, that was. But he was slowing down now. He could feel the pain in his body catching up with him. He could feel the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him.
He needed to lie down. Just for a little while. He needed to recover his strength. Then he would get up and start running again. But first—rest.
At first, he didn’t realize that he was hearing voices. They were part of the ambient noise that faded in and out around him. But suddenly it occurred to him that human voices were not a natural part of the forest environment—that they shouldn’t be there.
The bears!
He tried to struggle to his feet, but his legs gave out beneath him. He had finally run out of energy. He had given all that he could give.
They came into the clearing. A man—Marco couldn’t be sure, but he doubted whether there would be an inch of difference between his own human height and that of the man before him. He was big and muscular, and before Marco even thought bear, he thought alpha.
The woman with him was smaller and slighter. In fact, she was downright skinny. She walked close to the man—the alpha—and Marco could see that she was depending on him for protection.
Because her build was so much smaller, nothing was disguised about her. She didn’t have the broad shoulders or the thick jaw that was so common among bears. She looked as though, even as she started to gain weight, she would remain lean.
That’s not a bear. That’s a wolf.
These are wolves.
As the thought occurred to him, the woman’s gaze landed on him. She gasped and drew back in fear. “Ryker!” she said, pointing.
The man—Ryker, Marco supposed—reacted swiftly, pushing the woman behind him. “You’d better go back to the cave, Sophie,” he said.
She hesitated. “He’s hurt,” she said. “He needs help.”
“It could be a trap.”
“How?”
“There could be more of them,” Ryker said. “Or they could be using him as bait.”
Marco’s eyes drifted closed. He didn’t have the energy to try to convince them of anything.
“We have to try to help him,” Sophie insisted. “You helped me.”
“That was different, though.”
“I don’t see how,” she said.
Ryker groaned. “You’re not going to go back to the cave, are you?”
“Not unless you make me, no.”
A heavy sigh. “Fine. You’re going to have to help me with him, though. I don’t think I can carry him by myself.”
The voices faded in and out for a while. Marco was aware of his body being rolled to one side, an operation he didn’t have the strength to resist. It doesn’t matter, he thought hazily. These are wolves, not bears.
He was almost certain.
He was moving now. He was being dragged. Not flat over the ground, though—they had rigged up something and put him on it. He managed to glance up and saw that the woman was helping the man to pull him along.
He should run. He should definitely get up and run away.
And yet, without knowing why or how, he trusted them. Perhaps it was foolish—it was definitely foolish—but he trusted them.
He allowed his eyes to drift closed again.
The next thing he was aware of was the relative warmth and darkness of the inside of a cave. He knew immediately what had happened—he had been taken back to their lair.
For the first time, a flare of fear made itself known within him. He had allowed this to happen! Why hadn’t he run away when he had the chance?
A hand landed on his shoulder, pressing him down firmly. “Easy,” a gruff voice said. “Look, this will be easier if you shift back to your human form. Sophie’s not here, so you don’t have to be shy.”
Shy? It was as if the speaker was using a foreign language. Who could possibly have focused on shyness at a time like this? What Marco was feeling was a lot closer to frightened for his life.
“You’ve healed quite a bit since we brought you inside,” the man said. “But we have to clean your wounds, or you’ll risk infection. And we can’t do that as well while you’re in animal form.”
Marco had nothing but questions. Why do you want to protect me from infection? Who are you? How do I know that you won’t kill me as soon as I shift?
He couldn’t ask, of course—not in his current form—but Ryker seemed to pick up on what he was thinking. “Listen, if I meant you harm, I would have just left you out there,” he said. “You were probably hours from death when we found you. If that doesn’t let you know you can trust me not to kill you, I don’t think there’s anything I can say that will.”
That was probably fair. Mustering his courage, Marco shifted back into his human form.
It was awful. He hadn’t been human since the attack, and now he lay naked and shuddering on the floor of the cave. He looked up at Ryker, trying to think of what to say, trying to think of what would explain everything that had happened.
“Here,” Ryker said, tossing him a pair of shorts. “You can put these on. We’ve only got a few, so don’t go shifting back without undressing, okay?”
Marco nodded. He squirmed his way into the shorts and found that the act wasn’t as painful as he had believed it would be. He looked down at his side.
“Yeah, you’re almost healed,” Ryker confirmed. He was investigating the gashes in Marco’s torso himself now. “It doesn’t look like these are infected, but we’ll want to give them a good cleaning just to make sure. What happened to you, anyway?”
“Bears.” Marco sat up, feeling less dizzy than he had expected to, and leaned back against the wall of the cave.
Ryker raised his eyebrows. “Bears?” he asked. “Near here?”
“I’m not sure,” Marco said. “I don’t know how long I ran after they attacked me. They were chasing me for a while, but then they peeled off, so I think I made it out of their territory.”
Ryker looked nervous. “We should still do a perimeter check,” he said. “I’m going to go run around.” He sized Marco up. “You don’t look like you can move
yet.”
“I don’t think I can,” Marco admitted. It hurt to confess how helpless he felt.
“Good,” Ryker said bluntly. “Sophie might get back while I’m gone, but she knows to be cautious of you, and she can outrun you while you’re like this. But if you even think about trying anything, I’ll murder you. Understood?”
It was clear from Ryker’s tone that he meant what he said. Marco swallowed hard. “I’m not going to do anything,” he said. “There’s no way I could even stand up right now.”
“You prove yourself trustworthy, you’ll get something to eat when I get back,” Ryker said. “This shouldn’t take me more than a couple of minutes.” He frowned. “I really don’t like leaving you alone here.”
“You have to check for the bears,” Marco pointed out. “I’m not going to hurt the girl, I promise. I don’t have any reason to do that. I heard what the two of you were saying before I passed out. She was the one who wanted to save me, right? I owe her one if anything.”
Ryker nodded slowly. “As long as you remember that,” he said. “I would have left you out in the woods. Sophie’s the kind one. Not me.”
He turned on his heel and jogged away, out of sight.
Marco lay back. His wounds were healing quickly, it was true, but they still throbbed. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the way noises echoed through the cave in order to distract himself from his pain.
“Are you sleeping?” a quiet voice asked.
He opened his eyes.
The moment he looked at her, he felt as if a rope had been tied around his heart, as if someone had given it a mighty yank. He felt tangibly compelled to approach her, to touch her, to make her his own in some way.
He heard himself inhale sharply. She must have heard it too, because she stepped back, her eyes narrowing.
“It’s all right,” he managed. “I’m not going to do anything. I can’t get up.”
She didn’t move. “What would you do if you could get up?”
The true answer was that he didn’t know. He thought he might actually grab her and kiss her. He wanted to peel away her clothes. He wanted to see what her body looked like. He wanted to taste her and touch her everywhere. He wanted to fuck her hard.