He said he wouldn’t touch me.
I wanted to believe that, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was lying.
A few of the most intense seconds of my life crawled by on hands and knees as this strange man sliced through my shirt. Dropping his hand from my mouth, he tugged off the ruined fabric and tossed it away.
He leaned back, sucking in a breath as he took in my naked breasts. I didn’t bother covering up. As shifters, we didn’t have the same kind of embarrassment as humans when we were in the mood. When we shifted into our animal forms, our clothes would fall away, and when we turned back, we’d be naked.
The male drifted closer. His brutal heat swept over me like a caress, and his scent clotted in my lungs like a chloroform-soaked rag, making my head swim.
I bared my teeth when he took the knife and flicked the metal loop adorning one nipple, then the other, as he continued counting my piercings.
“Eight, nine…” He trailed it down my torso, applying just enough pressure to leave an angry welt. Then he tapped the blade to my belly ring. “Ten.”
With a flick of his wrist, he popped the button of my pants off. Slotting the flat of the blade between my jeans and my panties, he pulled back to pin me with a heated look. “Should I keep going? I have a feeling there’s more.”
My skin heated beneath the chill of the blade against my apex. Our eyes locked.
Something shifted behind his gaze. His muscles visibly tightened, his shoulders stiffening. His aura shifted, turning primal and violent. One minute, he’d been wickedly playful. Now, he was dominance incarnate.
His control over his wolf was slipping.
SIX
CARVER
This female was trouble. She invaded my system like a fucking drug. I wanted to keep her safe from my pack only so I could devour her myself.
“We’re not going to eat her. We’re going to fuck her. Mate her. Breed her.”
Every cell in my body froze. That voice. I’d never heard it before, but I knew who it belonged to. It had lived inside me all my life.
For the first time, my wolf finally spoke to me. Just my luck. It was telling me to do something that would get me exiled from my pack.
Fucking hell.
“No,” I responded out loud. “Keeping her isn’t an option.”
Ruth blinked like she was trying to make sense of what I was saying. To her, it would appear that I was talking to myself. Realization seemed to creep in as if she was recalling that werewolves weren’t like rabbit shifters. We had inner beasts that demanded we feed and fuck and breed—an instinct more monster than animal.
“Mate her.”
No, this couldn’t be happening. This had to be some sick joke my subconscious was making. My wolf was supposed to be my greatest strength, my identity. How could I live with this voice while it was telling me to commit something as unforgivable as mating a rabbit shifter? It wasn’t done.
I shook my head. “Wolves don’t make mating bonds with rabbits.”
Ruth’s breath audibly caught in her throat. That alluring scent flooded my nostrils, stronger than before.
Her kind had two major instincts.
Breed—Just like werewolves.
And survive. Run. Seek shelter.Live.
Which one she went with in this particular situation should have been a no-brainer. But something about me seemed to appeal to that first instinct, which only made my wolf more ravenous.
I tapped the blade against her pussy, grinning darkly. “You better run, Little Bunny before I do something to you we’ll both regret.”
“No! Don’t let her go!”
