My world narrows to the slick slide of our bodies, the slap of skin against skin, the guttural sounds he makes with each powerful thrust.I meet him, arching my hips, my nails digging into the sweat-slicked muscles of his back, urging him on, harder, faster, more.This isn't making love; it's a war, a desperate, beautiful battle for dominance, for release, for a single, stolen moment of peace.
The tension within me coils, a tight, hot spring winding tighter and tighter with each deep, penetrating stroke.His name becomes a ragged chant on my lips.
He shifts, changing the angle, and the head of his cock scrapes against a place deep inside me that sends a blinding flash of white-hot pleasure through my entire system.My control shatters.The spring inside me snaps, and wave after wave of exquisite, convulsing pleasure washes over me, pulling me under in a tidal wave of sensation.My body clenches around him, milking him, and with a hoarse shout that is half my name, half a wolf's howl, he finds his own release.He drives into me one last, shuddering time, his body going rigid as he pours himself into me, a hot, intimate flood that is the final, irrevocable seal on our pact.
We collapse onto the moss, a tangled, sweat-soaked heap of limbs and ragged breaths.The forest is silent around us, the moonlight now a gentle caress.
Minutes drift lazily by.Our breathing slows.
“Well,” I murmur.“Uh, that was…”
“So terrible that we never need to do it again?”he murmurs into my shoulder.
“I was going to be nice, and say it was so awesome we never need to do it again, but since you went there…” I shift my weight and bite his shoulder.
“Harder,” he grins.
“Oh, screw you.Now I probably need a rabies shot.”
He starts laughing.His shoulders shake.
I poke him in the chest.“Shut up.We’re not here to have fun.So, what’s next on the hate-your-mate agenda?”
“How about a really, really bad dinner date tomorrow night?”
I turn the idea over in my head.“That’s not the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.Let’s do it.Let’s have a really terrible evening together and then we can just call it quits.”
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I hear the strangest sound.It’s almost like what my wolf would sound like if she were laughing her furry ass off.
Chapter Nine
Andrew
I pull up to the Shadowpine property at six, to find Henrietta standing outside with her clan-mates Danny and Coral.Apparently we need chaperones.
Henrietta is wearing faded jeans and a green scoop-neck blouse that brings out the intense emerald in her eyes, and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail.My fingers were tangled in that hair last night, and they’re itching to do it again.
I shake myself.
I’m here to have a bad time, not fantasize about impossible things.
Danny and Coral climb into the back of the truck.Henrietta gets in front.
She leans over slightly and says, low enough that only I can hear, "Just so we're not tempted to do anything stupid."
"Right," I say."It would be stupid for us to do anything together."So stupid.
Why, exactly, would it be stupid?I’m trying to remember.
Her clan would never fit in here.I know what people in town are saying about them already.And I know more about what her father did then I can ever tell her.
I start driving.
"Where are we going?"she asks.
"It's going to be a surprise."
A bad surprise.No woman going on a first date is going to be happy about going to a dive bar.This is going to be a disaster, and that's exactly what we need.
