chapter Eleven
Some things never changed, and that included the four of them.
Jay dodged a playful lunge and a nip from Shane and wanted to laugh when Kaley took the other wolf down with a triumphant shove. It came out as a barking yip, a reminder that he’d gone far too long without shedding his skin like this.
He’d changed every month, of course, as most wolves did, but running alone was nothing compared to running with a pack. They’d chased each other as the sun dipped below the horizon, as the sky faded from bright blue to purple and then to an inky darkness that spread out over the woods like a blanket.
Now, Jay had a different chase in mind. The others headed back toward the house, but he urged Eden to the barn instead. His blood pulsed with heat, the kind that would carry over to his human form.
They needed to be alone.
Eden nipped at his flank and charged past him, challenge singing along their bond. She’d found her place in the pack, but her wolf still wanted to be wooed by her mate. Stalked and claimed, won by right of strength.
She ran into the shadows deeper inside the barn, but Jay stopped and knelt. The change flowed through him, harder than before because of the call of the moon…and easier because of what awaited him.
Awaited them.
He rasped her name as he rose. He shut the wide door, latched it and turned.
Labored breathing. A whimper. Moonlight spilled through the barn as her magic rose, and she emerged from the shadows as a human, skin and hair equally pale in the silver light.
Not her eyes, though. Her eyes glowed, molten gold and hot enough to set the barn on fire. “Jay.”
He took a single step toward her. “Do you want to wait?”
“I don’t care if the whole pack lines up to peer through the windows.” Her fingers flexed as she took a step toward him, graceful and predatory. “We’re not mated. Not truly.”
But they would be. The pounding in his blood demanded it, so Jay reached for her, tangling his fingers in her hair. “You won’t submit.”
“I know,” she agreed, dragging her nails down his chest. “And you forgot your handcuffs.”
“Another time.” He’d have her, he just had to fight for the right to call her his. The possibilities made him even hotter, and he licked a slow path over her jaw.
Her hand reached his hip. She dug in, scratching his skin, and her chest rose and fell with each sharp breath. “I don’t know the rules. I don’t know how hard I can fight without you giving up. I don’t know if it’s f*cked up that I have to wonder that.”
“I won’t give up.” He murmured the words against her mouth. “Not now, Eden. Not ever.”
“Good.” Her tongue flicked against his mouth before she bit him, sinking her teeth into his lower lip with a satisfied snarl.
His body reacted with lightning speed, hardening before he could take another breath. He wrenched her head back and hummed against her throat. “You said you wanted to play.”
“Is this how we play?” She twisted before he could answer, testing his grip on her hair by trying to lunge away.
He let her go, his hands falling by his sides. “Play. Stalk. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Stalk.” Her glazed gaze seemed to judge the distance to the opposite side of the barn. Her breasts lifted and fell with her unsteady breaths. “You promised you’d chase me,” she whispered, the challenge covering fragile vulnerability. Then she bolted.
Finally.
He caught her by a hay bale piled high with extra items she’d brought from her house, including a stack of threadbare quilts. He locked one arm around her waist and lifted her high, nuzzled the back of her neck through her hair. “Say yes.”
“Yes.” It came out breathless. Hungry. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Jay pulled the top quilt from the bale and unfurled it with a snap of his wrist. It landed askew, lumped up on two corners, but he dragged Eden down to it anyway. “I’ll do this in a bed too. Wherever you want.”
“Your truck?” She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth to her arched neck. “I always wanted to make out with you in your truck.”
On a summer night, slick with sweat under their clothes. Jay groaned. “You like that?”
“Mmm.” She shivered when he touched her, her entire body seemingly hypersensitive. “Groping. Panting until the windows are all foggy.”
“Like teenagers?” He licked her skin, then hovered over the spot where her pulse beat at the base of her throat. “You want me to mark you.”
She clenched her hands, tugging at his hair. Pulling him closer. “Like you did the first night.”
He’d done it then to satisfy instinct. Now, his hands shook as he pressed his lips to her pulse. “Not exactly like that. More.”
“Tell me.” She rocked her hips, ground up against him already slick and ready. “Show me.”
He caught her wrists, pinned them above her head and bit her—hard. She cried out, back arching, and for one dizzying moment the bond between them slammed open. Eden rushed through it, alive and wild, open to him. Utterly unprotected, utterly vulnerable.
One moment of blind trust. Of sweet, willing submission.
Instinct and blind need demanded that he take her, claim her for his own. Instead, he rubbed his cock against her once, twice. “Again. Let me feel that, all of it.”
She moaned. “Maybe I will, if you bite me other places.”
“You really want to wait that long right now?” He flexed his hips.
Eden froze, her breath rasping through the darkness. “Condoms. I’m not—do we need condoms? Can werewolves get pregnant?”
The question flustered him. He told himself it was because he should have already thought of it. “Not you. Not yet, I mean—because you’re new.”
Eden had already moved on. She squirmed beneath him, lifting her hips in impatient demand. “Then take me. Take me.”
Every movement stroked his cock, wet and even more inviting than her words. Jay let go of her wrists and slipped one hand down under her hips. “Look at me.”
Her unfocused gaze slid to his face. “Now, Jay. God, now.”
He kept his eyes locked on hers as he pushed against her, then closed his eyes with a groan as he thrust inside. Her body clasped his, warm and tight, and his arm trembled as he held himself above her.
Eden lifted her hips to meet him, her pleasure sparking bright across their bond. “I can feel you feeling me. It’s…it’s…”
“So f*cking hot.” Obscene, but nothing else described the way they fit together, the arousal already melting into bliss.
She scratched his back, panting as she urged him to rock. “If we come too fast can we do it again?”
All night long, over and over, until the hunger burning inside them both had been sated. Jay held her tight as he pulled away, buried his face in the hollow of her throat and drove into her.
Pleasure. Need. Her fingernails broke the skin on his back. “Harder.”
“Not yet. Just like…this.” He punctuated the words with another thrust.
She moaned and seized his mouth, licking past his lips to find his tongue as her body trembled beneath him. One more rock of his hips against hers, but it wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t enough.
Jay pulled away, back on his knees, and dragged Eden up against him for a short, blistering kiss. Then he turned her over so she was kneeling on the blanket and leaned over her.
“Yes,” she hissed, sliding her hands across the blanket until her back formed a sloping arch. She rested her cheek against her forearm and lifted her hips.
Her skin was soft under his mouth, sweet under his tongue. “Say it.”
She bit off a curse and rocked back with an embarrassed noise. “F*ck. F*ck me.”
She whispered the words as if she’d never said anything that filthy in her whole life. Jay pushed into her slowly and slipped one hand under her to tease her *. “Not so shy, honey.”
Growling, Eden rolled her hips, grinding against him. “I’ve thought a lot of dirty words. Saying them out loud is different.”
“Saying them is sexy as hell.” He stayed still but circled his fingertips over her p-ssy, not just her * but the slick inner lips as well.
“Jay.” She reared up, twisting around to bare her teeth in a snarling challenge. “Are you going to f*ck me or not?”
He gripped her hips and drove into her. She flung her head back, mouth wide and eyes squeezed shut. The bond stripped away all her secrets, feeding him the jolt she got from a deep thrust at a sharp angle.
He pushed her upper body closer to the quilt with one hand between her shoulder blades and plunged into her again. Another jolt, even sharper this time, and Jay groaned her name.
“Again.” Her body tensed, her fingers gripping the edge of the quilt. “Right there, again, harder—”
She’d called it f*cking, but the need strung out between them was deeper, unavoidable and undeniable. Mating, pure and simple, the closest either of them could ever be to another.
He rode her harder but no faster, dipping his mouth to the line of her spine. “You’re beautiful. You’re mine.”
No response but a broken cry, and the warmth that flooded him as her body clasped him tighter. “Almost, almos—oh my God.”
Her pleasure flowed through him, burning and so far beyond the physical that he barely felt his own body, only hers. He yanked her to his chest and bit her shoulder. “Not done.”
Eden twisted her head and caught him on the chin, her teeth scraping possessively over his skin. “Mine.”
He shuddered and held her mouth to his jaw. “Harder.”
She licked him instead, tongue hot and teasing. “You’re hot when you’re bossy.”
“Bite me again, Eden.” He put steel behind the words this time, a command he knew would get a response. “See what it feels like, making me come.”
Eden slid her fingers up his arm to where his hand cupped her jaw, holding her in place. Her fingers ghosted over his, then tugged, urging him to curl his hand around the front of her throat. “Not bossy enough,” she whispered against his chin before biting him hard enough to bruise.
She wanted to walk the edge. Jay tightened his fingers, just a little, and resumed a grinding rock that had her gasping as she squirmed in his grasp. Her wriggling struggles sharpened her excitement, and a light, teasing graze over her * was all it took to send her spinning straight off that edge again.
Every pulse of her pleasure echoed through him, setting off shivering heat at the base of his spine. His orgasm built, tense and swift, and exploded with two final hard thrusts.
Eden’s head thumped back against his shoulder. She moaned, her throat vibrating against his palm. “Hottest sex ever.”
“Shh.” He wrapped both arms around her and hid a smile against the back of her shoulder. “I’m enjoying the moment.”
“Good moment.” She sounded giddy, though she seemed perfectly content to relax back against him.
An old quilt in an even older barn—one hell of a first time. “I probably did this all wrong, but I don’t give a damn.”
“If this is you doing it wrong, I’m not sure I can handle you doing it right.”
“Even if you couldn’t…I’ve got handcuffs, remember?”
She moaned softly as her head fell forward. “Our rooms had better be soundproofed after tonight. I want you to do bad, bad things to me.”
Jay rolled to the quilt and pulled her into his arms. “Soon, maybe, we won’t have to stay here every night. After this mess with Memphis is sorted out.”
“I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would.” She settled her cheek on his arm with a sigh. “It’s been surreal. I took the vacation from work and I’ve been out here every day, living this new life with these new people. And in two days I have to go back to the library and be…human.”
At least, with his job, he had a reasonable excuse to hustle out to the farm if the need arose. “Do you feel steady enough for that?”
“I think so. Besides, I don’t have a choice. They weren’t happy about my emergency personal vacation.”
But they’d be even less happy if she lost her temper in another meeting. “Eden, this is something that happens to new wolves sometimes. They have to change jobs—change lives, even—because nothing fits right anymore. I’m not saying that’s you. I’m just saying be careful.”
Silence. She traced her fingertips along his palm in an absent caress, but her shoulders tightened. “I don’t feel as unsteady anymore. It builds up, but it doesn’t hurt like it used to. The bond, I guess, or maybe I really am stronger than I thought.”
He dropped a kiss to her temple. “It only gets better from here, I promise.”
“Good.” She snuggled back against him, and her body fit against his, soft and warm. “Do you think they’ll be okay here during the day once we go back to work? Would the wolves from Memphis risk attacking in broad daylight?”
He remembered the look on the de facto leader’s face, the desperation to hold that place no matter what it took. “They’d do damn near anything. But there are other strong wolves here, wolves who can fight, and Shane will find a way to send out a distress call. They won’t be helpless.”
“Good,” she repeated. Her fingers continued up his arm, and she turned her head and licked the inside of his forearm. “Tell me about werewolf stamina. Is it impressive?”
That quickly, his body stirred. “Want me to show you?”
He felt her smile against his biceps. “In loving, excruciating detail.”
The smooth flare of her hip beckoned. Jay slid his hand slowly down her side to her thigh. “Now that we’ve taken the edge off?”
She chuckled and stretched, arching her back languidly. “In our defense, we had days of foreplay.”
“Anticipation,” he declared, “is not the same as foreplay.”
“Are you sure?” She moved fast, lunging over him to straddle his stomach. Without looking away from his eyes, she reached behind her back and circled his cock with her fingers. “You made me come on the kitchen table, you know.”
Direct, powerful. She was a woman comfortable in her own skin, and it made him even harder. “I remember.”
She smiled and stroked him lazily. “You want to know a secret?”
He touched her hips lightly. “Tell me.”
“I wasn’t really that embarrassed when Lorelei walked in.” Her thumb worked slowly up and down his shaft. “Something broke in me tonight when the wolf took over. Something that needed to break a long time ago.”
“You are who you are, honey.” He arched up into her touch. “I like it.”
She tightened her fingers, turning a light tease into intense friction. “I’m going to learn how to be who I am. I still have to hide from the world, but not from myself anymore. And not you.”
“Not me,” he agreed. “Eden?”
“Mmm?”
“Don’t hold back,” he rasped. “Show me who you are.”
Bracing her hands on his chest, she lifted her hips and positioned herself over him, her body brushing his cock. “I’m a work in progress.”
No, she was perfect, whether she realized it or not. “Practice makes perfect?”
“Does it?” She licked her lips and hovered over him, poised teasingly on the edge. “F*ck me, Jay.”
“I did.” He splayed a hand across the small of her back and sat up straight. “Your turn.”
“No turns.” She slid down, taking him deep with a roll of her hips. “Just both f*cking. Maybe all the time.”
“All the time?” He bent his head and flicked his tongue over her nipple. “I can do that.”
Her moan bled into a hungry growl, as if the touch had broken some chain on her self-control. She sank her fingers into his hair and dragged his head back, arched his neck until his pulse beat fast and strong under her mouth. Her breath tickled his skin. Her tongue flicked out. Teased.
“Mine,” she whispered, and marked him.
It blazed heat through him, a combination of pain and a warmth that tightened his chest until it ached. Mine. A word and more—a promise. A vow.
He gripped her hips again, letting his fingertips bite into her skin. “Yes.”
She shuddered and whispered another word, one laced with an edge of the wolf. “Mate.”
The second time should have been slower, but the moon was high and hot in their blood. Jay urged her to move, and arched back his head when she circled her hips over his. “Faster.”
“Yes,” she groaned, and then she was f*cking him. Fast and wild, skin slicking over his as she rode him, wallowed in him, claimed him and got off on it. She flung her head back and closed her eyes, as lost in him as he’d always wanted to be in her.
Her hair tangled around his fingers as he cupped her shoulders, and he licked the hollow of her throat before sucking the delicate skin between his teeth.
She cried out, and her tempo changed. She rocked her hips, ground down hard, and came with his name on her lips. Jay tightened his teeth, turning the bruise into a bite as her orgasm melted into his, everything shared across their bond—and doubled because of it.
He cradled her, panting against her damp skin. Finally, she sighed softly and dropped her head to his shoulder. “Good stamina,” she mumbled, sounding sleepily dazed.
Too fast to burn all the way through her first full moon. Once she’d slept a bit, she’d wake up restless again, ready to run.
And Jay was ready to run beside her.