He smelled of pine and frost, like the little carved wolf she slept with under her pillow. He tasted sharp and crisp as juniper berries and made her drunker than a bottle of gin. She plunged her fingers into his thick hair, so baby soft fine on his nape, another counterpoint to how hard he appeared everywhere else. And he was hard. And huge. Her arms barely circled his broad, muscular chest as he gathered her to him.
Locking onto him, she dancing on the edge, as he brought her close to the brink with his sinful, decadent kisses alone. Waves of his spicy mating scent sloshed over her, made her drunk, made her drown in him.
She opened her mouth to give him greater access, welcoming the toe-curling penetration of his tongue. Stabbing past her lips, her teeth, a driving, insane force she met with her own needy hunger. He pulled her in so tight against his body she could barely breathe. And yet, not close enough. Not nearly close enough. She was ready to be devoured.
As if he guessed, he broke off the kiss, working his way along her jaw, taking a shallow little nip from her neck as he kissed and licked across her collarbone, then lower, to latch onto her breast. God. Sucking, circling, teasing. His tongue flicked over her nipple. Then the other. He had her panting, dragging in great draughts of oxygen that further intoxicated her with his essence and brought her chest rising to his mouth.
Her hair still wet from the cooling dip in the lake, her body naked in the fresh spring air…and yet, she burned. She absolutely burned. For him. And him alone.
Brick Northridge. Her wolf. Her big, bad, devastating, and gorgeous lone wolf. The male she’d so long loved from afar, his coffee-colored hair and his brandy-bright eyes, the grizzled stubble shading his firm jaw. The elusive mischief of his too-rare smile. An explosive tower of warmth and large, powerful muscle. In her arms at last. Kissing her like a totally sexed-up, sex-crazed male possessed. Like a huge, hunky male wolf in his prime. Like her man.
He rubbed his body against hers, letting her feel the heat, the demand, the urgency of the hard cock trapped between their bodies.
“Is this really happening?” she murmured, the fire of him all but consuming her question.
“Oh, hell yeah. It’s happening.” His whisper was husky and deep, hungry against her mouth. “Unless….” He pulled back, gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes, reining in. “You don’t want it to?”
“You’d be okay with that?”
His eyes popped open again, staring into hers with deceptive calm. All those long hours of t’ai chi training at dawn, she thought, that now let him call upon some deep well of stillness and emotional repose.
“No, it might kill me,” he said. “But yeah, I’ll back off.”
She ignored all the something deadly lurking beneath his reasonable words and tranquil surface and slid a hand down his broad chest, over his taut belly, following the dark sin trail as if it were a neon treasure map to X-marks-the-spot. She palmed him, her fingers barely able to close around the thick girth of his sex. The groan she wrested from him set her ablaze.
Arching up on tiptoes, she grazed her lips against his. “How fast can you get me to your bed?”
He offered her a wink and one of those rare wicked smiles she craved. “I’m a wolf, sweetheart. I’ve got game. Not to mention speed.”
In two seconds flat, he flung her over one brawny shoulder. In two more, he carried her through the cabin door. Up the rustic log stairs to his loft. He tossed her flat on her back in the middle of a king-sized bed and kicked off his jeans, lunging for her. Beside her. On top of her. His long legs tangled with hers, his heavy weight pinning her to the sheets, his cock jabbing the soft part of her thigh.
“Jesus, you smell good,” he said.
“You do, too. I could bathe in the scent of you.”
She wriggled beneath him, trying to unpretzel their legs to give him greater access to even softer parts, trying to spread her legs.
“Condom,” she squeaked.
He had his hand on his sex, guiding it unerringly toward her entry like a heat-seeking missile. The word turned him to stone, made him go all deer in the headlights on her.
“I don’t have any.” His voice sounded strangled. “Fuck. Motherfucking fuck.”
“Probably not then.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Silently echoed his dark curses, adding a few of her own.
For a couple of seconds she contemplated unprotected sex. They were shifters. Paranormal creatures. Did it really matter? She’d love to mother his young.