Brick stacked the cord of green firewood on a pallet in a corner of the porch, keeping the logs uncovered to let them season. The sharp scent of pine melded with the sweeter smell of maple he’d already cut. He did the U-Haul thing with another armload, toting the split white fir into the cabin, filling the rack next to the stone hearth. Screw Glade Plug-ins. Nothing finer than the natural tang of fresh-cut wood.
He’d left his flannel shirt outside next to the chopping block. But his recent exertions had left him sweaty and—sniff—a little ripe. His flesh called out for some wet-and-soapy, but the pristine chrome-and-tile Kohler in his bathroom didn’t make the short list when the other candidate glittered fresh and natural beneath the late afternoon sun out back of the cabin.
The wolf wanted the lake. Paced inside him with restless insistence until Brick sidled closer to the front door. The sharp, crisp scent of spring socked him through the open window; the rich mineral regeneration of damp ground, new grass, wild flowers fighting to burst free. And something else. Something he couldn’t place curled around him like a fist. Got the juices flowing, his hormones bubbling. A muted growl burbled out of him. Trying to wrest control back from his other half on the pressing issue of where to dunk his fragrant carcass seemed futile.
“What’s the deal, bro?” he murmured. No answer, of course. But his skin prickled as if two paws-worth of claws did a funky Harlem Shuffle beneath the surface. “No moon tonight, Dog. But you’re edgy enough to shave my whiskers.” And so was he now. Responding to the call from outdoors, the howl within.
While his shower might be all soap sludgeless sparkle owing to an under-the-sink Home Depot of cleaning supplies and a touch of, yeah, let’s face it, a little OCD action…no amount of Tilex and Kaboom! impressed Brother Wolf. And he sure as hell didn’t want to get hung up all day counting and recounting the mold-free ceramic squares lining the walls above the tub. Not that his beast seemed inclined to let him.
So slinging a towel around his neck, he grabbed a clean shirt and hightailed his way due west.
Fuck.
Halfway there, a powerful charge of electricity pulsed through him, as if he’d gotten a wet finger stuck in a socket. Stiffening his limbs. Not to mention points south. Heat engulfed him, out of all proportion to the balmy spring day and the sun beating down on the surface of the glistening blue lake. Tendrils of spicy, intoxicating scent coiled around him. A flood of testosterone boiled his blood.
Someone had beaten him there.
A woman, her supple back turned toward him, stood completely bare, a tumble of wet, raven-colored hair streaming over her shoulders. Water licked gently at all the curved and rounded, at the tiny waist and flaring hips, the undulating ripples intermittently exposing twin dimples at the base of her spine. Her pheromones drenched him. He leaned forward, nearly coming out of his sneaks and planting his face in the soft earth, eyes bugging out as he strained to see more. Yeah. There it was. A hint of firm, curvaceous ass. Primo ass. A dimpled, heart-shaped ass that would feature in his lonely guy dreams. Leaving him to sketch in the unseen glory of her tits, the shape of her face.
And Jesus. Her scent.
The pepper of pink berries and musk of new moss, an edge of cedar, the sweetness of honey. Finished with blackberries, strawberries, a hint of early rose. Complex and many layered like fine wine, expensive perfume. He sniffed, then drew great draughts of the intoxicating fragrance into his lungs. His head reeled, his heart thudded, his breathing stuttered erratic and uneven.
Holy freakin’—he didn’t give a shit what the fuck she looked like. All he could think about was rubbing his snout over her skin, inhaling her until he drowned in her scent, and had wrapped her in his. Of licking her, tasting her, basking in the promise of that juicy flesh just beneath the surface of the lake. Of slinging his arm around her trim waist, positioning her on all fours in the mud of the shallows, burying his cock deep inside her, his balls smacking that ripe ass as he banged her, the water slurping her sleek flanks, his mouth roving over her. Sinking his teeth into the soft skin of her neck. Marking her. Mating her.
He statued again. Mating her? He’d never considered the idea before, never expected he’d ever take a mate. He was a lone wolf. Banished from his pack while still very young. Untutored. Unclear on what it even really meant to mate another for life. Unable to stand more than a few minutes in company before the clamoring voices in his head drove him to violence. He lived contented, alone in the mountain cabin he’d fixed up over the years, turning it into a comfortable den. He could never ask any female to live that way.