He didn’t think of that when she touched him, though. His head swam with sensation from just that featherlight touch and then, like the strike of a match to dry kindling, an inferno ignited.
Magic popped in his blood, desperate for an outlet, as his fingertips shifted into claws and his canines extended.Bite,the animal roared.Bite her!
Visions of whirling around, wrapping his arms around her, and rucking up her skirt to thrust his cock into her hot, wet cunt nearly unwound every fine thread of his control. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he wrestled with instincts blunted into a hammer over the course of forty years.
Once, he might have been able to feel the burn of the fever without such vicious urgency, but after fighting for so long, his animal was half feral. It did not abide restraint, nor hesitation.
It saw their mate was near and would not risk losing her. It wanted him to rear around and sink his teeth into the soft flesh of her throat without regard for how it might affect her, because it firmly believed that claiming her was the surest way to protect her.No onewould touch his mate. One look at his shifted form and only those with a deathwish would even try it.
But Otto refused to claim her without her consent. He’d known her for a day and already he understood that Josephine had never been allowed to choose when to give,whatto give. In this, it was imperative that she steer things.
Submissives must have the power,he’d once heard an elder say to a young wolf shifter caught harassing a submissive.They can’t fight back. They can’t say no without fear. If you take advantage of that, you’re worth less than scum. You let them come to you or you walk away.
So he endured her fluttering touches. He bent his neck and tried to breathe when she pressed the pad of a finger against the divot of a vertebrae or the curve of a muscle. He didn’t rush her. He scarcely twitched.
Josephine’s breathing was choppy. “Your skin is— Are you feverish? You’re so hot.”
Feverish?Yes.Sick?No. He was merely struck dumb by the mating rush, that legendary heating of the blood that marked a shifter as having found their mate. It would not abate until he’d sunk his fangs into her throat and bonded with her.
“Shifters have hotter blood than most,” he managed to answer, not quite lying.
“Oh.”
This time, when she pressed the tips of her fingers against the muscle bracketing his spine, she didn’t immediately lift them again. They pressed hesitantly before they slid down a few inches in a slow, teasing drag.
Otto couldn’t help it — he arched his spine, eyes closing, and let loose a deep, appreciative purr. His kind made a unique, rhythmic thrumming sound that was quite loud in the little cell, but he couldn’t find the will to quell it.
“Goodness!” Then, with open wonder, she said, “I can feel that coming from your chest.”
“Do you like the sound? Stroke me more and I’ll keep purring for you,kone,”he rasped.
“I do like it.” Josephine spoke as if she could not understandwhythat was so, but she didn’t hesitate to run her fingers down his spine again, firmer this time.
It was a chaste touch, the exploration of a woman who’d never even known gentleness, let alone the carnality of sex, but to Otto, it might as well have been a full body massage.
“Your hands feel like paradise,” he breathed. “Like silk, just as I thought.”
Another hand joined the first, and then her palms were flattening against his skin. He could feel her trembling, but he could also sense the way her fingers spread, how they pressed more insistently into his skin. “Do you still fear me,kone?Or is it better now?”
She hesitated, but eventually answered, “I think it is hard to fear a man who arches his back like a cat when one rubs him.”
A cat!The greatest of insults.
Oh, he wanted to turn around and nip her ear for that. Since they were not at that stage yet, Otto settled for a deeply disgruntledharrumphand quietly savored the tiny bite of sass.“I am no cat.”
Soft hands smoothed up and down his spine, over his shoulders, and down to the waistband of his trousers with growing confidence. It felt like she was mapping him,learninghim. When those curious fingers slid over the slopes of his hip bones, edging perilously close to his front, Otto felt his stomach tighten. His balls drew up tight against his body and a damp spot appeared on the thin material covering his thigh.
Great gods, it feels like she’s stroking my cock.
If she kept it up, he was absolutely certain his overwrought nerves would see him spilling his seed in his damn trousers like a boy again.
“Will you tell me what you are, then?”
His reply came through clenched teeth. “Do you still not want my name?”
Her fingertips tickled the feathery edges of his knotted hair, almost as if she was tempted to touch it but did not know if she had permission. Otto huffed and tilted his head back, giving her free rein over the unruly mass.
“No name,” she answered, sounding somewhat distracted as those quick, gentle fingers began to comb through his hair, untangling the snarls. She had no way of knowing that it was a purely submissive behavior. They were notorious for their love of grooming.
