It took everything in him not to tear his pants from his body, grip his cock, and jerk his dick in time with her every movement. He wouldn’t claim her—wouldn’t violate her trust—but fuck his body ached. But there was no time to do anything. Lucy hovered on the brink, her body trembling as she approached release.
Mason curled his fingers, teasing that spot inside her sheath, while he gave her clit one long lick and then sucked hard on the sensitive button. Lucy screamed long and loud, his name on her lips while she slammed her hands against the bed. She whimpered as her walls shuddered and quaked around his fingers, so hard and fast he thought she might break them.
“That’s it, baby.” He slowed his attentions, easing her back to earth until the final shudders attacking her subsided. He eased his fingers free of her tight embrace and lifted his gaze to find her smiling at the ceiling. Eyes closed, skin glowing, her breaths came in long, slow pants.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Mason grinned, loving that look on her face, and chuckled.
“Oh shit.” Her breath escaped in a long huff. “That was…” She lifted her head, one eye opening slightly. “Give me a minute and I’m all about returning the favor.”
He chuckled. “Not tonight, baby. This was all about you. Now it’s time to get some rest.”
“But…”
Aw, fuck. She pouted with her plump lower lip pushed out, and he damn near caved. His wolf wanted him to give in—to take the pleasure she offered and get closer to their mate. His dick… it was all on board with feeling her small hand wrapped around his shaft.
Except he hadn’t been lying. Now wasn’t the time. His sweet mate needed rest. And, as she continued to tempt him with that sweet pout, he crawled up beside her and snuggled her close.
Chapter Eighteen
Lucy woke with a jolt. Her dreams of running through the forest as a wolf, Mason at her side, lingering. Their presence left her confused, wondering where she was. She blinked hard and recognized her childhood bedroom. She was home. Relief set in, but it evaporated on her next breath.
Smoke.
Squinting toward the open bedroom door—hadn’t they closed it?—she spied clouds of smoke billowing up the stairwell and filling the landing. She coughed and reached for Mason. They needed to get out of there immediately.
But his side of the bed was empty. Warm, but empty.
“Mason?”
A hulking shadow shifted in the far corner of her room. She barely caught the movement, but she instantly knew it wasn’t a human.
“Mason?” she asked again, her voice shaking as hard as the rest of her body.
Something was wrong. Mason would have answered her by now. In fact, he would have woken her at the first whiff of smoke. He certainly wouldn’t have let her call out for him without somehow comforting her. Even in his wolf form. She knew that deep in her heart.
The landing glowed from the fire downstairs. The shadow moved closer, amber eyes catching the light. Her heart thudded. Those weren’t Mason’s eyes. She’d only seen him in his wolf form once, but his eyes had remained green.
Not amber.
A deep growl reverberated through the room, setting every hair on her body on end. Something raged and whimpered inside her. Her mysterious wolf, possibly? Was she finally getting ready to become a full-fledged werewolf? Just as some mad creature was about to have her for a juicy midnight snack? The shadow took another menacing step.
Lucy froze, petrified.
Then the room exploded in a frenzy of fur and snarls. Lucy curled up into a ball, waiting for the fangs to sink deep into her flesh and tear her apart, just as they had her parents. Mason had abandoned her to the depraved torture of this lunatic, rogue wolf—whoever he was.
Glass shattered. Then the sound of bodies hitting the ground reached her disbelieving ears. Bodies. Plural. Somehow her new wolfy-senses allowed her to know without a doubt that two bodies had just hit the ground a full story down.
Lucy scrambled across the bed and peered out the demolished window. Two wolves lay on the ground below, stunned from the fall. But both stirred. One was light brown, the other was as black as the night. Mason. She’d recognize him anywhere.
He was first on his feet, but not by much. Just as he was about to clamp impossibly long canines into the other wolf’s throat, it jerked sideways and clamped down on Mason’s shoulder. From her vantage point, Lucy didn’t hear Mason make a noise, but somewhere inside she felt his pain. It was intense and burning and primal.
Before she understood what was happening, her own canines grew a good two inches, protruding from her lips. She explored the sharp tips with her fingers, marveling at the change for a brief flash, before she was overcome by the need to rip out the throat of the asshole who had just hurt her mate.
Lucy sprinted from the room, naked as the day she was born, and took the stairs two at a time, never coming remotely close to losing her footing. As a full human, she could never have managed the feat, but more of her inner wolf was revealing itself, and she liked it. At the base of the stairs, she paused, trying to locate the source of the fire. She relaxed, letting the essence of her wolf take over and sniff it out.
Kitchen.
Good, that meant the back door would hopefully be safe. Sprinting for the back of the house, she discovered that whoever that asshole was, he’d set fires in multiple locations around the house. The back door was fully engulfed.
Lucy darted into her father’s den, which had sat dusty and unused for a decade but was now filled with acrid smoke that choked her. No flames…yet. Throwing open a window, she crawled through the space and tumbled to the ground, her feet getting tangled up in a hoe the gardener must have left behind. Where was her inner wolf when she needed it?
Mason and the arsonist were locked in battle in her backyard. Gnashing teeth, slashing claws, guttural snarls. They writhed around on the ground, their bodies twisting and changing position so quickly she could barely keep track of who was who.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she spotted two wolves who looked familiar. Mason’s guards. They stood at attention, the fur along their spines standing on end, but neither moved. Lucy looked between them, disbelieving.
“Do something!” she screamed at them.
They glanced in her direction and then a quiet voice reached out to her through the smoky air.
“When one alpha challenges another, it’s forbidden for anyone else to join the fray.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she screeched at them, but they kept their focus on the fight.
Mason yelped and limped away from the strange wolf, putting distance between them. The other wolf howled in triumph. Prematurely, as it turned out, when Mason tackled him. Hard.
Lucy snarled with approval. Her wolf side was growing stronger, more assertive, but something tickled the back of her human brain. Something familiar. The wolf. That howl. Then his eyes latched on to her and her world spun on its axis.
She was transported back to the forest, back to that terrible night ten years earlier. The moonlight shimmering through the trees, the unmistakable sound of claws digging at the earth, the grunts, the yelps, the growls. The blood, the pain, the anguish.
“He was there,” she whispered.
She knew it down to her very cells. That wolf had been there the night her parents died. He wasn’t the one to do the killing—that wolf had been a darker brown, with deep brown, very bloodshot eyes—but he hadn’t stopped it. He’d howled at some point. That’s all Lucy knew. And it was exactly the same. Not just any howl, but one of achievement, of pride.
That night, Lucy’s entire life had changed. She’d lost everything she cared about. And now the same dickwad was back, trying to ruin her life again!
“Not on my watch,” she growled, ignoring the heat against her back as her house burned.