Jessa Slade - Mated by Moonlight

She levered one knee up onto the felt so her thigh pressed hard against his flank. He gripped the curve of her ass in those tight leggings, feeling the flex of muscle and lush padding. The fringe of her sweater tickled his wrist.

She wrapped her other leg around him, both hands anchored in his hair while she kissed him, hard and desperate, as if she were drowning...

He pulled her snug against him, dry humping like a randy kid. God, he could have held her aloft with the might of his throbbing cock alone if he let that beast out.

No longer needing to hold herself, she let her freed hands skim inside of his T-shirt. Her fingers tripped up his abs, and he flexed for her, every muscle tightening. She rubbed his nipples, and he jerked against her, which made her rub him again, harder. Then she pinched, and he gasped, pulling the air from her lungs.

If he wasn’t careful, she was going to make him come in his jeans.

He hitched her higher on his belly, taking the strain off his denim-bound erection. Down through the opening between their bodies, she wedged one hand into his waistband. His cock, already surging upward, rose to meet her questing fingers as she popped the first button of his fly.

She slicked her thumb over the first bead of cum at the same time she pinched his nipple again, sending an electric jolt through his groin.

She palmed him, sliding the ring of her thumb and forefinger over the blunted head of his shaft. He threw back his head in anticipation of that first delicious stroke...

That didn’t come.

He opened his eyes to find her all but crouched over him, eyes glittering, both her knees on the pool table, him bent over nearly backward.

“I don’t run,” she repeated.

“You better not.” The threat sounded a little breathless in his own ears. “Not now.”

Still she lingered, holding him—literally—on the edge.

Footsteps scraped in the gravel outside, and a quartet of voices rose. In another second, the door would swing open.

And here he was, almost flat on his back, Beta in his own bar.

He heaved upright, dumping Merrilee off his lap while he hastened to stuff his stiffy back behind the buttons.

She landed easily, the long hem of her sweater settling around her as if nothing had happened.

But she gave him a triumphant look. “So having people know about us...”

He growled low in his throat. The sound was a little ragged and lost in the thump of the door swinging wide to admit Orson and his cronies.

“I’m telling you,” Orson was saying. “Imps are only the first sign.”

“Unless it’s the only sign,” argued the quartet baritone, a black bear wereling who conveniently went by the name Barry. The other two black bears nodded.

Orson threw up his hands with a grizzly-sized grunt which clearly did not impress the others. He fixed Beck and Merrilee with a stare. “What are you two doing?”

Beck tried to choke out an answer, but Merrilee slipped in front of him gracefully. “We gathered some iron antiques for weapons.” She grinned at Orson. “Babette said you can come pick them up whenever.”

A flush colored the old man’s cheeks. “Ain’t got a truck.”

“Borrow Beck’s.” While the grizzly grumbled, she went behind the bar and served up a round of plain waters. “So tell us, what did you boys smell?”

“That imp was creeping around for a couple days at least,” Barry said while the quartet clambered onto stools in front of her.

Orson drank deep before rubbing his nose. “It was a subtle thing, which I suppose makes sense for a spy. Wouldn’t have known what I was smelling if it hadn’t died in my backyard.”

“Any pattern?” Beck didn’t take the fifth water, and Merrilee arched a brow at him.

Orson pulled a small, tattered notebook from his pocket. Flipping past pages of musical notations, he paused on a sketched map of the town. “Caught the oldest scent here.” He pointed at the mouth of the valley. “Anything earlier was lost in the comings and goings. Lot of traffic there. Anyway, it skipped up the valley, back and forth.” He zigzagged his finger along the map, stopping when he got to the Sun-Down at the end of the road.

“Searching,” Merrilee said.

“For what?” Beck scowled at the map. “It was digging through my garbage.”

She deliberately did not look at him. “Maybe we should have held it for questioning.”

“Next time a three-legged spider thing tries to stab you, you can hold it for questioning.” But even as he said it, the thought of her wrestling the imp with its stabbing claws made what was left of his erection wither.

She gave him a glance that would have cooled any lingering ardor. “I’ll do that.”

“Maybe they won’t come back,” Barry said.

Orson snorted. “The phae don’t back down.”

“Neither do we,” Merrilee said.

Beck looked at the pattern on the paper. The imp had stopped at the bar only because he had stumbled upon it. But the zigzag had been headed in one direction: toward the mountains.

Toward the lake village. Toward Merrilee.

Why did she feel such a need to poke him?

Merrilee watched while Beck outlined a sentry schedule for the quartet and a few others they trusted to keep quiet. No sense worrying the town’s wereling population into an uproar about creatures that were mostly a legend to them, much as they themselves were a fantasy to the unsuspecting humans.

She waited while he tossed Orson the keys to his truck and ushered the quartet out. Only then did she shakily settle on a bar stool, flattening one hand over her aching breasts.

She poked him because she wanted him to poke her with that long, thick, hard—

He slammed the door open, reentering the bar, and she jumped off the stool.

She just couldn’t back down. If she did, she might never want to get back up again.

And worse? She might like it.

“That imp was heading my way,” she said.

He nodded, his face impassive. “Now you know what to watch for. Or what to smell for, anyway.”

She wavered. Her smaller pack didn’t have the resources Beck’s did. If she tried to set up a watch, she’d quickly have a group of worn-out werelings who could be as much a danger to themselves as any phae.

She bit her lip, and the little pain reminded her she could take greater pain and so could her people. They had before and they would again to preserve the place they’d won with blood and kept now with a fierce allegiance that a one-time soldier would surely understand.

Beck rubbed the back of his neck. “Merrilee—”

Grandmère would be disappointed she’d even for a moment weakened. “I’ll keep you updated. I assume you’ll do the same.”

“Of course. Let me give you a lift home.”

She spun on her heel. “I’ll hitch a ride with Orson.”

“Babe...”

She didn’t pause this time, but she kept her footsteps even so it didn’t look like she was running.

But even though she was going slow, he didn’t chase after her.

By the time she retrieved the iron scraps with Orson—who loaded Beck’s pickup with a notable lack of bear deliberateness while Babette chatted at him—and they swung by her cottage to unload half the iron, the sun was heading for the backsides of the mountains.

She paused to wipe her forehead. Despite her wereling strength, wrestling the length of decorative fencing without getting impaled was a trick. Even Orson was huffing as he leaned against the pickup’s bumper.

He resettled the straps of his overalls. “Got everything?”

She nodded. “Half of it, anyway.”

“He’d give it all, if you just asked.”

She frowned at him, bemused. “I wouldn’t leave the town undefended.”