Jessa Slade - Mated by Moonlight

“What do you want?” she murmured, one word for each stroke.

“You.”

He always made it sound so simple. Alarmingly so.

This once, she wanted it to be that. “Then have me.”

When he rolled her, somehow he managed to center her perfectly—terrifyingly perfectly—right on the T-shirt to protect her from the prickling grass. He loomed above her, silhouetted against the bright moon for a moment before he dipped his head to kiss her.

“You make this so hard,” he said.

“I make you hard.”

“That too.”

“Now.” She raised her hips toward his.

“No.” He kissed his way down her throat, as leisurely as the moon tracking across the sky to the swell of her breast. She clutched at him impatiently and he chuckled. “You’re not in the city anymore. You’re on country time now. We do things the old-fashioned way.”

“Damn the old ways,” she muttered.

He chuckled again, his breath gusting over the nipple he’d toyed with earlier. He tilted his head and flicked his tongue across the swell. With a moan of frustration, she used her hands to plump her breasts and flicked her own fingers over the aching tips. Deep in her belly, she felt the answering pull and an echoing well of moisture at her core.

His growl was lower this time as he finally sucked her hard, pulling her flesh into his wide mouth, tonguing her nipple against the roof of his mouth. Later she’d want to be eaten by the big bad wolf, but for now...

She abandoned her teasing self-play and squared herself under him. “I’m only going to ask once.”

He drove into her.

Big as he was, all over, she took him, thrusting up to meet him with another moan, this time of delight.

He slicked himself deep into her and withdrew and thrust again before her cry faded. He set the pace like a midnight run, relentless and unfaltering. She knew he could go forever.

No, she didn’t want to think of forever, just of right now.

She clutched at his wide shoulders, digging her fingers into the hard mounds of pure muscle. She’d seen him sling full kegs of beer like they were nothing more than empty aluminum cans. He slung unruly drunks—and uppity wolf-kind—with the same power. But of course, that’s how an Alpha handled everything: easily.

Even her.

The thought was infuriating, and she met his thrusts with her own. His eyes widened and he anchored one hand under her hips to control the moment.

She’d have none of that. She slipped her hand past his to cup his sac and pull down hard, to pleasure him, to warn him. He bucked once, breaking the stride, and she laughed.

He tilted her hips just a little deeper to touch her core, and then she wasn’t laughing anymore.

With every stroke, he pushed her higher, making her muscles clench throughout her body, even her heart pounding, pounding. Her skin tingled like the coming of the verita luna , but it wasn’t that—she was just coming. The moon seemed to shatter, but that was just the stars behind her closed eyelids as she climaxed in a rush.

He threw back his head and roared, the triumph of an apex predator that silenced the night, and then he too came.

She clenched around his pulsing shaft as he spent himself. Of course he would roar before he came; just announcing to the world that he’d made her come first. She drummed her fingers on his biceps as he held himself above her, stiffly trembling in the aftermath.

She realized her impatient drumming had turned to petting, her fingertips playing over the tight ridges of musculature. He had very nice, strong arms.

The better to hold her with...

She wriggled up, and he grunted as his cock popped free with a wet sound. When she scooted out from under him, he collapsed. His arms—his very nice, strong arms—splayed out to either side.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he muttered into the grass.

She stood and gave herself a little shake. “You’ve always been an old soul.”

He angled his face to stare at her, so she tilted one hip toward him and reached up to fluff her hair, knowing it would do nice things for her figure.

He grunted again and turned his face the other way. “You don’t mean that kindly.”

She scowled at him, thinking she should shift just so she could bite him on his moon-white ass. He had a very nice, strong ass...

Of course, she could bite him there with her current teeth, but somehow that seemed a little too forward.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she reminded him.

“Babe, once I’m inside you, nothing could stop me.”

Heat touched her cheeks, and she was glad of the bleaching moonlight. “I meant, you didn’t have to come running with me if you really didn’t want to.” She cursed the note of wistfulness—not quite a whine—that crept into her voice.

“Of course I had to. That lone wolf is still out here somewhere.”

She let her hand drift down from her hair. “That’s why you followed me? Because you thought I couldn’t take care of myself?”

He turned his head to face her again, his golden eyes shadowed and wary. “That wasn’t the only reason, obviously.” He pushed himself upright, one leg bent under him as if ready to ward off an attack.

He was arrogant, but he wasn’t stupid.

She forced herself to exhale slowly, as if she could force out the scent of him lingering in her chest. If the stock tank had been nearby, she might have voluntarily jumped in to wash herself clean.

She shifted, letting the verita luna cover her bare skin. When her momentary blindness cleared, Beck was standing, watching her, the wariness still in his eyes. He did not shift, wisely, since in her present state she might have struck.

Instead, she ran.

Beck watched her flee. Although she would no doubt object to the word flee. Her tail was flagged high with fury. But he’d only spoken the truth.

He just couldn’t seem to keep his mouth closed—not any more than he could keep his jeans buttoned—around Merrilee Delemont.

Trudging back down the mountain with his damp T-shirt in his hand, he listened for the soft thud of paws in the forest around him. But he heard nothing beyond the usual night rustlings. She had probably continued up the mountain. Her pack’s small village of log cabins, A-frame cottages, and a tiny restaurant with incongruously fine dining was clustered near a picturesque high lake that was a popular destination for hikers, anglers, photographers and horseback riders up for a daytrip from town. There were no formal guest accommodations, of course; Merrilee didn’t encourage sleepovers.

He made a low noise in the back of his throat, his indignation keeping him warm despite the cool night breeze.

At the line of trees behind the bar, he paused in the shadows to make sure no one was hanging around—he was still naked since he had no interest in donning the muddy, spit-slimed shirt—and he finally heard an out-of-place noise back near the Dumpster and his Harley where he’d shifted.

If Merrilee was messing with his favorite pair of comfortable, old, button-fly jeans...

He raced toward the disturbance, thinking only as he rounded the corner that Merrilee on the prowl never made noise unless she wanted to be heard.

And he came face to—face to eyeball?—with a keg-sized, three-legged spider thing perched on the Dumpster. Like no shifting creature he’d ever seen before, its body was roughly oblong and dotted with long, stiff hairs. One of its skinny, barbed legs was thrust through a limp cabbage he’d thrown out.

The impaled cabbage looked far too much like a head. Creepy.

Almost as creepy as the single palm-width eyeball atop its body. The sclera glistened white as a broken bone in the moonlight.