I don’t move until she takes off again, giving her a moment’s head start before I fully put my paws to the ground and chase after her. I run until my muscles burn, the slight sting oddly enjoyable. I watch her lithe body wind between the trees as if she were born in these woods, making sure that catching her is no easy feat. It doesn’t deter me in the slightest; in fact, the difficulty of it all only makes me want to catch her more. Only makes this game we’re playing more pleasurable.
I let my human thoughts slip away to give way to the more basic part of me, letting my alpha move my body as if I am hunting Mackenzie. As if she is prey that I want to taste—and in a sense, I suppose she is. Because even shifted I can scent how every moment pushes her deeper into her heat, and out here among the snow she smells positively ripe for the taking. I know when I get her back to the lodge she will be warm and wet and wanting, and just thinking about the way she will feel on my knot makes me actually howl with anticipation.
The sound makes Mackenzie pause further up, and I skid in the snow only a dozen or so paces from her as I catch my breath. I can see in her eyes a glimpse of that need they held earlier, see a spark of the human part of her practically begging me to come take her. I hear a rustling behind us that makes me turn with a growl, tearing my eyes from Mackenzie to warn whatever intruder might be stalking us, only to find a bird taking flight up into the trees. I snort in irritation as I turn back, noticing Mackenzie is nowhere to be found as a flicker of panic pulses inside me.
My alpha has me pacing as I turn this way and that trying to catch sight of her, feeling a growing dread at having lost her, even though logically I know she must be somewhere close. I turn in place and yip worriedly, still able to scent her but unable to see her.
Where the fuck did she go?
It might be because I am so panicked that I don’t hear her approach; maybe it’s the blood rushing in my ears that hides her steps as she nears from behind, meaning that I don’t know she’s on me until she’s actually on me. Her body collides with mine as we roll, the force of it so much so that it knocks us both back into human form, leaving our naked bodies tangled in the snow.
Her skin is flushed pink, no doubt still too warm from being in her other form, and her soft blond hair is wild around her face, just as wild as the look in her eyes as she gazes down at me. Her thighs straddle my waist to keep me pinned to the ground, and I can immediately tell that I was right, that she’s dripping wet for me, if the slick against my navel is any indication.
“Got you,” she practically purrs, her breasts heaving in the chilled air.
I run my hands over her thighs, watching her shiver with my touch. She’s burning up now, no longer close but surely fully in heat, but I know the air will still make her sick if left unchecked. “You’ll get cold like this.”
“Mm.” She leans, her nipples brushing my chest as my breath catches, her lips hovering against mine as they curve with a smile. “Then you should probably keep me warm.”
I’m half-ready to take her right here in the snow, but given that she flings herself from me only to shift again—I don’t get the chance. I follow suit moments later, and I notice now that when she runs, she is running the way we came, back toward the lodge. She pauses only for a moment at the top of the hill, tossing her head the way we came in a silent invitation, as if challenging me to come get her.
And that’s exactly what I intend to do.
* * *
?In all of my adult life, I have never felt desperation like this.
Even when I have her safely tucked away in the bedroom we’ve chosen, I feel urges to tie her down so that she can’t escape. Every cell in my body begs for her, dizzied by her scent and drunk on her taste as my tongue tangles with hers. Her body is hot against me, my hips rutting unconsciously against her as the head of my cock slides across her stomach to leave a sticky trail. Strangely, I have a distant desire to mark all of her like this, so that no one else would ever dare touch her.
She moves backward until her legs hit the bed, and it’s so easy to lift her small frame, to throw her up to the middle of the mattress so that I can crawl over her. My mouth never leaves her body, not for a second, my tongue and teeth tasting every inch of her I can reach as she squirms beneath me.
“Burns,” she hisses as my tongue laves at the swell of her breast. “Hurts, Noah.”
“Shh,” I soothe, swirling my tongue around her nipple as my fingers brush a line down her stomach. “I’m going to make it better.”
It’s a mess between her legs, her slick streaming from her to coat her thighs and the blankets and my hand as I tease my fingers through the wet crease of her. She groans when I push two inside, and they slip in easily, making a lewd sound that rings in my ears with every slow in and out.
She rolls her hips against my hand as her fingers tangle in my hair, and I moan against her nipple when she tugs, her nails scratching my scalp in a silent urging that I hurry. If I felt unlike myself in the times that I’ve touched her before this—right now I feel like another person altogether. Gone is my rationality and my worries about what might come after this, and in their place there is just the raw need for her, to give her everything she’s asking me for.
I wrap my hands around her waist, flipping her to her stomach without warning, and she makes some surprised sound when she goes, wriggling in my grip.
“Noah, what are you—”
“Lift your hips,” I urge, tugging at her waist. “I want to see you.”
Her legs are trembling, so much so that I have to help her lift her ass in the air to bare the hottest part of her, my blood thrumming at the sight of her slick trickling down her thighs as if taunting me to lap it up.
I think it catches her by surprise when I do just that, pressing my tongue to the back of her thigh and cleaning the thin, clear line of her slick with my tongue until I can nuzzle between her legs. She makes some garbled sound against the mattress as I lick through her folds, dipping my tongue inside her only to draw it out and pat at the swollen bundle of her clit, which is practically throbbing now.
I can taste it on her, her heat; like honey and liquid sex and all of it enough to ensure that I am out of my mind for her. I eat at her hungrily, my lips and tongue working through the soft flesh of her as my hand curls under her belly to find her clit and roll it under my fingertips. She pushes back against my face in surprise when I begin to tease her clit, and I hold her there, lapping at her like a starving animal as I work her sensitive bud with my fingers.
“N-Noah,” she gasps, her lower half shaking. “Noah, I—ah. I—”
“Alpha,” I practically growl against her, applying more pressure against her clit with my fingers. “I want you to call me Alpha.”
I don’t sound like me, I don’t feel like me—but the normally calm, composed Noah seems to have taken a back seat, unable to even fight the raw instincts that are driving me now. That Noah stands no chance against the warm, pliant omega who’s begging for his touch.
I let my tongue slip inside her again, enjoying the sharp cry it draws from her.