Making his mind up, he left his room and walked down the hallway. He stood at the head of the stairs and looked down, seeing Cade in the kitchen whistling and cutting up vegetables, the tray of uncooked meat marinating on the counter.
He went to the door to the guestroom and tapped quietly. If she were sleeping she wouldn’t hear him anyway.
She opened and they stood, silently staring at each other for a few moments.
“Nina...”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside the room, shutting and locking the door behind herself, leaning on it for strength as she took him in.
He pulled off his shirt and she greedily drank in the details of his upper body. Strong, thickly muscled, not an ounce wasted. Not too much muscle—what was there wasn’t for show. It was the body of a man who worked out. Not just a body but a tool. Danger poured off him in waves—he was a big, bad man and she wanted an extra helping of it. She wanted to eat him up in great gobbling bites until she was positively stuffed with him. Oh he made her weak in the knees!
She took one step, then another until she was standing very close, then reached out a hand to stroke over his chest. She leaned in and closed her eyes as she took a deep breath and had to reach out to hold on as she nearly fell over with the intensity of her reaction.
Her body tightened up, nipples stabbing the front of her shirt, skin flushed and heated. Her pussy bloomed with desire, her honey making her slick. The world became a pinpoint of focus. Suddenly it was just the two of them, nothing else existed that mattered but having him inside of her body.
Lex gripped her forearm to keep her standing. “I know. It’ll pass in a moment.”
She looked up at him with widened eyes. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”
“I feel it too. The first time is the hardest, but each time I get a deep whiff of you, it nearly knocks me to the ground. I get so frenzied with lust that I have to grind my teeth to not drag you to the nearest horizontal surface and plunge inside of you.”
“What is it?”
He pulled her shirt off and unhooked her bra and they both hissed out when bare skin met bare skin. The feel of those diamond-hard nipples—so pretty and delicious—pressing into his body made him delirious with want.
“Pheromones.”
“What?” This was slurred as she became drunk with him. Her eyes slowly slid closed as his hands moved up to cup her breasts, pinching her nipples between clever fingers.
“Chemicals, personal chemicals. Yours call to me, mine call to you.” He leaned down and kissed the spot just below her ear and she moaned.
“I know what pheromones are! But that’s mumbo jumbo. You’re just horny, I’m just horny. It’s not science.” Even as she said it she didn’t believe it. The totality of what she felt for him—the way her body responded when he touched her—it was more than mere horniness.
He made a tsk sound with his lips against her skin. “Liar. You know what I’m talking about and you know it’s the truth.”
“So if we fuck this...intensity will lessen?” She was breathless as she asked.
“It will always be intense, Nina. You’re my woman. Once we’re bound the intensity of our connection will deepen.” He said this in between pressing kisses down the long line of her neck.
She ignored that and arched into the questing hand that reached into her panties. She turned off her brain and just felt. Opened herself up to sensation. It was time that rational, by-the-book Nina went away for a while so Nina who hadn’t been fucked in years could get some.
Her hands slid down his chest and found the waist of his jeans and she yanked them open, satisfied as she heard each pop of the long row of buttons releasing. Suddenly he was there in her hands. Hard, velvety smooth and so hot. She encircled him with her fingers and looked down, smoothing a thumb over the head where a bead of semen pearled. He moaned and watched as she brought her thumb to her mouth.
He was salty, musky, masculine.
She squeaked in surprise as he picked her up and stalked to the bed, tossing her onto the mattress as he shucked his jeans and climbed up, halting on all fours above her, looking down into her face.
“Do you give yourself willingly to me?” he said, his voice low and laced with desire.
She writhed beneath him. The heat from his body blanketed her. She could smell him, the clean salt of his skin, the woodsy scent of his cologne, beneath it, the elemental Lex that she’d come to...oh god. She shoved that thought away quickly with rational Nina.
She nodded. “Yes. Oh god, Lex, please. I need you inside me right now.” She didn’t even recognize her own voice, it was sultry, smoky.
“All in due time. I need to taste you. All of you.” He started by taking her lips again in a kiss that was designed to melt her, to make her bones jelly, and it was a good thing she was lying down because she didn’t think her legs would have supported her—he was quite successful.
He kissed down the line of her neck and she ran her fingers though his hair like she’d wanted to since she saw him that first night. It was so soft and she could smell his shampoo.
He stopped at her breasts, rolling his eyes up at her and she watched, entranced, as his teeth scraped over her nipple and his tongue swirled around. Over and over until she was nearly panting. Each draw of his mouth shot straight to her clit until her pussy was clenching and unclenching in time with his mouth on her nipple. Oh how she wanted him inside of her!
Stopping and pulling his mouth back, he gave her a grin so sexy and devastatingly naughty that she gasped. She watched down the line of her body as he kissed over her stomach and breathed hotly against her neatly trimmed mound. His big hands slid up from her calves to her inner thighs. His broad shoulders held her thighs apart. With another one of those grins, he moved down a bit and settled between them.
It had been so very long for her. Four years since her last date and five since she’d had sex. And even then it was a brief affair—he had been horrible in bed. She began to feel self-conscious. She knew for sure that the man between her thighs was experienced in bed. She had only slept with three men in her life and none of them provided her with any noteworthy moments. She was extremely limited in her sexual experience.
Embarrassed, she tried to close her legs against him, but he pressed his palms against her inner thighs and pushed, holding her open fully to his gaze. “No, beautiful. I want to see you. All of you.”
“I, uh, well, ohmigod...” She broke off incoherently as he put his mouth against her pussy, taking a long lick from anus to clit.
“You taste so good, Nina. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get enough,” he murmured, looking up at her with those deep green eyes.
“Uh,” she managed. Her head fell back against the bed and he chuckled and went back to work.
He lapped at her with long, slick strokes of his tongue, tasting the landscape of her pussy, learning her body as she herself learned. Not that she’d ever admit it to him but she’d never been given oral sex before and man oh man had she been missing out!
Over and over he licked. He nibbled and laved and lapped at her. While his fingers slowly pressed into her pussy, he flicked the tip of his tongue over her clit. He ate at her like she was the best thing he’d ever tasted and it made her feel like a goddess. She’d never felt anything quite so intense in her whole life.
It was so incredibly intimate, his mouth there on her. The way he was so big and feral and yet utterly gentle with her moved her deeply, despite the fact that she did not want to be moved.
She focused instead on the sensation of his mouth—his tongue, wet and soft as it stroked over her, his lips moving against her labia, over the hood of her clit—it made her delirious with pleasure. Her orgasm began to settle into her body. She could taste the metallic presence of it on the back of her tongue. She could feel it
filling the empty spaces in her body, expanding, building until it burst over her in what felt like a shower of sparks. Back arched, hands fisted in the sheets, his name burst from her lips as she exploded into a climax so powerful it felt like it was filling up and then wringing out each and every cell in her body.
Before she could drag her eyes open she felt him move up her body and begin to press his cock into her still spasming pussy.
Lex was drunk with the taste of her body. With the way she responded to him. She was so wet and she tasted like something he’d never even imagined. So good and so right that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. Each moan and gasp and sigh she gave him shot straight from his cock to his heart. Her desire for him was a powerful thing, it wove a spell over Lex and he felt bound to her already.
He moved up and positioned the head of his cock at her gate. Her eyes slowly came open and she smiled up into his face. It was an utterly unguarded moment and he had the feeling that was a rare thing with her.
“Hi. Don’t you need a condom before you do that?” she said in a purr as an elegant brow slid up.
Oh hell no! In the first place, werewolves didn’t carry human STDs. In the second place, he could scent that she wasn’t in the fertile part of her cycle. But lastly and most importantly, he needed to come inside of her to mark her, to claim her. He wanted that, no, he needed that.
“We don’t carry STDs and you aren’t at your proper time for pregnancy,” he said as he began to push deeper. She was creamy and soft and swollen but really, really tight.
“Ah,” she said with a wince. He was pretty impressive size-wise and it had been a very long time since that territory had seen a penis.
“Damn it, Nina,” he said through clenched teeth, “you’re so tight. It’s so good I might come before I get halfway inside.” A horrified look broke over his face. “You aren’t a virgin are you?”
She laughed. “No. But it’s been a while. Why, you have a policy against virgins?” And she broke into a moan of pleasure as he began to stretch her more fully.
“No. I just don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll let you know if that gets to be a problem. Now shut up and fuck me.”
He looked down into her face with surprise and then threw back his head and laughed. This woman was pretty damned amazing.
Inexorably, he pushed into her, the superheated, tight walls of her pussy clutching at him, parting for him like a molten curtain of flesh. He gritted his teeth, concentrating on keeping it slow. He wanted to slam into her to his balls, wanted to feel her embrace fully and right then, but he could feel the truth of her statement that it had been a while. He’d never been with a woman so tight before and he was afraid he would hurt her.
Pulling her legs up high, she brought them under his arms, opening herself to him more fully. Rolling her hips, she pulled him in farther. “More. I’m going to die if you don’t get deeper.”
He watched as a bead of sweat from his neck fell onto her chest, and that suspended moment burned itself into his memory. He locked eyes with her and slid completely in to the root, gently bumping her cervix, and they both responded with a sigh of pleasure.
“God, you feel so good, Nina. Your body was made for me,” he whispered in her ear.
She laughed and realized that she hadn’t felt this good, this relaxed, in a very, very long time. Safe. “It certainly feels that way, doesn’t it?”
“I think we need more testing,” he growled and began to drag himself out of her and thrust deeply again. Over and over, her body received his. Her hands were at his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscles there. He could feel the blunt edge of her neatly trimmed nails against his flesh. He could smell the lilac of her soap and shampoo, the clean scent of her sweat, the tang of her sex.
Her body was made for his. Cunt to cock, they were something more than two people and something less. They were, for want of a fancy phrase, one and more than the sum of their parts. The silken walls of her pussy gripped him, embraced him, the soft skin of her inner thighs slid against his ribs as the sweat of their endeavor slicked the way. Her hair was spread about her face and head on the pillow and he noticed the flecks of amber in her eyes.
He leaned down and dipped the tip of his tongue in the small dimple to the left of her mouth and he felt it get deeper as she smiled in response.
“Come into me, Lex. Come inside of me,” she said softly, almost shyly. It was the last straw after the tightness of her pussy, the sinuous drag of her sweat-slicked body beneath his own, the soft moans and sighs of pleasure she made each time he pressed back into her body. He was going to complete the claiming, make her his own by marking her.
The primal nature of this pulled his wolf closer to the surface and he arched back and gave a silent roar of her name as he came hard and deep within her. Within his woman. Over and over, his cock pulsed as he poured his life into her.
Long moments later he collapsed to the side, careful not to fall on her. He reached out and pulled her to his body and she sighed happily and snuggled into his side.
Seconds later though, she opened her eyes, pushed back and sat up, looking down into his face. “What the hell did you just do?”
Chapter Three
She said this as she fell back to the mattress and gut-wrenching shudders broke over her. Her teeth began to chatter.
He sat up, concerned, and leaned over her. “Nina? Baby, are you all right?”
“Does it look like I’m all right to you?” she demanded through a clenched jaw to keep the chattering to a minimum. “What is going on?”
“I, uh, I think it’s the claiming,” he said as he got up and went into the adjoining bathroom, coming back quickly with a wet washcloth that he put on her face, mopping up the sweat that had gathered there. “It shouldn’t be like this. Only, well, I’ve only known wolves who did it to other wolves. But I know there are humans who mate with wolves and they seem fine...”
Before he could continue to babble she whacked him upside the head with the pillow to shut him up. “What the fuck are you talking about? Claiming? Mates?”
“I’ve told you before, you’re my mate! I’m your mate! I just completed the claiming. It’s my seed inside of you that does it. If you were just some random woman, it wouldn’t be a big deal but because you’re my mate, the woman who is my biological match, my DNA is now twining with yours in a sense.”
Despite his fear for her, he smiled softly and his voice gentled. “I can feel it too. Only it doesn’t hurt, really. I just feel incredibly connected to you. And wow, you’re not happy with me at all are you?”
“You’re altering my DNA?” Despite her shivering, which was lessening, she sat up. “Oh my god! Without asking me? You’ve done something to alter my fucking humanity without asking me?”
He put out a hand and touched that luxuriant brown hair and despite herself she leaned into his hand. She didn’t just want that touch, she realized with a start—she needed it.
“No way! Nina, I told you up front about the bond, about you being my woman. I asked if you gave yourself willingly to me and you said yes.”
“You didn’t say you were changing my DNA! I thought you were trying to get into my pants.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “If all I wanted was a quick fuck, I’d have had it weeks ago. This is more than that and you know it. This is forever. You and me, Nina. We belong together. I didn’t trick you into this. I told you up front and you agreed. Furthermore, you know I’m telling you the truth.” He was not going to allow her to get him mad. No, he felt great, damn it, she was his woman and she was bound to him and he to her.
Grrr! She hated it when he was right. He had asked her, but how could she have known his semen was some kind of wonder-jelly-magic-DNA-changing stuff? She was silent as she thought it through. She examined her feelings, and
beneath her anger she realized she felt connected to him in a really deep way. She felt a part of something, of someone, in a way she’d never allowed herself to imagine. Did she want to have some mystical hoodoo with this man? Ack! With this werewolf? “Well, it’s too late now. What’s happening? What does this mean?”
“Baby,” he said and gently tipped her chin so that she was looking up into his face where she couldn’t ignore the truth of the situation.
He saw the panic in her eyes and his heart ached. “Do you really think I’d do anything to hurt you?”
She shook her head, afraid if she tried to speak she’d cry. Now that the shaking was over she was drowning in emotion. She’d never felt anything like what she was feeling at that moment. It was as if the warmth of him was seeping into every pore. She felt his presence, his confidence and courage, his strength, his desire, his lust and his fear. His love. God, he loved her. How in the hell could he love her? Worse, she felt the same. Oh god, she was doomed, she was in love with the giant tool. She actually liked this feeling of connection. Gah!
“What is this?” she managed to croak out. “What’s happening?”
“I feel it too. It’s the bond forming. We don’t have detailed explanations for it. All we know is that when a male releases his seed into his mate, the bond forms. An emotional and physical connection is made.”
He leaned down and kissed her gently and his own fear ebbed when she responded.
“Great. Magical cum, lucky me.” She sighed and quirked up a smile at him. “So am I a werewolf now?”
He chuckled. “No. You’d have to have the virus put into your bloodstream through a bite. We can talk about that later but we have a lot to deal with right now just figuring out who killed Tommie and Rey. I want to focus on keeping you alive through this ridiculous plan of yours. Then we can talk about whether or not you want to be a wolf.”