She did as she was asked, her clit spasming, her muscles tightening and clenching rhythmically around his thick length, her head dropping back against his shoulder when he pressed himself flush to her, continuing to pull her hair back to prevent her head from slumping forward. She felt the moment when his knot popped into place within her, gasping again as her cunt clenched around his cock once more, felt his deep groan rumble against her back when he began to come, filling her up until she was practically bulging with him.
She cried out when his teeth sunk into the side of her neck, marking her as he filled her womb, his knot ensuring she’d not be going anywhere.
They should have known better, his father and his pack.
The entire month stretched before them, after all. Twenty eight days in which they could’ve arranged this meeting. Twenty eight days in which cooler heads might have prevailed, when details would have been discussed, and they could’ve gotten to know each other, instead of exchanging pleasantries and then promptly throwing good sense out the window. It was almost the full moon and they were both horny, a terrible time to expect them to act rationally and think through their actions; a terrible time to think that they would want to do anything other than fuck.
They should have known it was a bad idea, when she was in heat and his cock was hard, when his wolf was writhing beneath the skin, eager to mate. When all they would want to do was fuck and fuck some more. Should have known better than to strike a deal with a degenerate gambler like her father, should have dug a little deeper into his story, should have waited until after the full moon.
He played with her clit while they were tied, leaving her whimpering, and by the time his knot had decreased enough for him to pull out, his cock was hard again, and so they fucked onemore time — his fingers rubbing and rolling until she squeezed rhythmically around his girth one final time, his knot popping into place as he erupted within her, coating her insides in his seed.
By the time they went back down to the dining room, it was all over. He’d fucked her, knotted her, marked her as his mate. It didn’t matter what ceremony his mother or her mother might’ve wanted, what pomp-filled display they wanted to put on for the pack. It was already done — a puddle of his semen left on the roof where it had gushed out of her, the way her cunt gaped from width of his knot, and the bloody crescent on her neck — it was done, and they’d said hello for the first time barely an hour ago.
She’d been moved in the very next day.
“We own a hundred acres of undeveloped land,” he’d boasted, the first time he brought her home to the enclave, to one of the identical little rambling ranches that was now hers. “Just a mile or two up the road, nice and convenient. It’s zoned for housing, that’s how we bought it, but we’re keeping it wooded.”
Her tour of the house had ended in the bedroom, and for the next day and a half she scarcely left it. She learned every detail of the room from the vantage point of the bed. The way the molding met in the corners and the pattern of the carpeting from on her hands and knees as mounted her from behind, humping away endlessly. The swirls of the stucco on the ceiling and the subtle patterns they made, like finding shapes in the clouds as she stared up over his shoulder, his body covering hers. The full moon thrummed in his blood and his blood pooled in his cock, keeping it engorged for hours on end. Jude wondered if he would be this ravenous every month, or if it was the novelty of her newness.
She was there to be used for his pleasure, that was made clear. The first time she was woken by her legs being nudged open, his body settling over her a breath before his cockhead pushedits way inside made that clear. Jude didn’t know if it was merely the effect of the moon she felt humming in her own veins, but she didn’t mind the treatment. She’d only come off her heat suppressant a few weeks earlier, the first time the lunar estrus had gripped her in years, and she couldn’t deny that the heft of his cock was sating her wolf’s hunger.
She pushed back against him with every thrust of his hips, moaning wantonly as he rubbed her clit in big, sloppy circles, keened and fisted the bed sheets every time his big knot swelled within her, his balls emptying inside of her over and over again. It was too early for her to get pregnant, but if this was the way he intended to fuck her every month, this unending swelling of his knot, using her to come more times than she could count, it would likely not take long.
It all came crashing down a few days later, of course, when Jude realized her father had been less-than-forthcoming. By then, the damage was done.
“I can’t wait to fuck you as a wolf,” he growled in her ear, his hips not slowing. She was on her knees once more, watching the shadow across the corner shiver and dance as the curtain shifted in the breeze. “Is she gonna like that, baby? She gonna bite and fight me? Or is she gonna lay down and take it like the good little bitch you are?”
Her mouth had gone dry, the breath in her lungs vanishing. He thought they would run together, together on four legs. He thought she was like him, like the rest of their kind. He didn’t know, she realized, her eyes rolling back as he knotted her again, probably none of them knew.They don’t know you’re a broken freak.His groan as he came was one she knew well by then, after three days of rutting into her continually, his arms tightening around her waist as he emptied.
When he’d finally slipped free, staggering to the bathroom, she’d scrambled for her cell phone, hitting her parents numberwhile her eyes filled with tears, her heart stopping when it came back disconnected. Twice, three times more she dialed, three more times hearing the automated message in her ear. They’d lied, sold her away, and had apparently disappeared. It was no more than she ought to have expected from her father, she thought bitterly as the wolf she was now bound to re-entered the room, knowing she had to tell the truth.
“What do you mean, you’ve never turned?”
The hand that had latched around her upper arm was tight, tight enough to hurt, dragging her close to his face — his handsome face, marred by the ugly scowl it wore. His dark eyebrows drew together, his shining eyes narrowed in fury, a vein popping out of the side of his temple, and Jude remembered that she’d only met this man seventy-two hours ago, and she had no idea what he was like. She had no notion of the heat of his temper or the gentleness of his hands. She’d let him knot her and mark her an hour after saying hello, and for better or worse, she was tethered to him now.
That had been weeks ago now, a full cycle since that very first moon a few days after her arrival, and now she was finally free to walk and think.
This pack wasn’t much different than the one from which her family had been expelled, she thought. The homes were newer, the yards slightly better kept, but there was still an undercurrent of unsavoriness, one that was evident in the frequent police visits, sirens she heard coming and going with a shocking frequency.
A strong alpha took control of his pack, and didn’t allow them to run roughshod over the law and each other. Petty crimes and domestic issues were the basis of the police visits, so she’d gleaned from the other side of a succession of locked doors. It wasn’t that surprising, when one considered how easily the alpha, Vin’s father, had fallen for her father’s lies. They weregreedy. Greedy and impetuous, and it made them blind. His father was a poor alpha, and he was raising Vin to be the same.
“Where were you?” he demanded on the second night of her temporary freedom, when she’d slipped back into the house after another evening of wandering the enclave’s streets. It was dusk, that magical hour when the sun receded, leaving behind a wash of pink and indigo, the stars just beginning to peak out. She’d been on one of the inner streets when the cars had returned, wolves returning to their human skins and neighborhood after the change, cursing under her breath as the unknown neighbors slowed to stare out their windows at her unfamiliar face.
“I wasn’t anywhere! I was just walking around the block!”
“How many times do I need to tell you that you’re not to leave this house alone? What do I need to do to get through that thick skull of yours?”
Jude felt her hackles raise. She didn’t know what it was to run on four legs; didn’t know what it was to run wild through the forest with the wind in her ears, but sheknewthe shiver of anger she felt at that moment, a quiver in her spine as something growled within her.
“So what, am I just a prisoner then? I’m not allowed to go shopping alone. I’m not allowed to take a fucking walk and get some fresh air. What the fuck am I allowed to do then, Vin? Get down on my hands and knees for you once a month, that’s it? What am I supposed to do the rest of the time?”
She was still a wolf, Jude reminded herself as his eyes flashed in anger, advancing on her furiously. She was a wolf and her temper ran just as hot as his, and sometimes good sense abandoned her. She didn’t actually know what he would’ve done, had his phone not rung at that moment, distracting him.
“Yeah . . .yeah, she’s here. Said she was just taking a walk. Yeah, I know. Fine, give me five minutes. The front door’s unlocked.”
Her stomach tightened at the hard look he’d given her, but she didn’t flinch away when he slammed the bedroom door behind him a few minutes later. She didn’t change, but she was still a wolf, and he’d do well to remember it.
Chapter 2
