Page 22 of Caught By the Wolf

A little heat climbed her cheeks. “A little. In the best way.”

“Good.” That made her laugh. Him being proud that he had taken her so thoroughly. He dropped to his knees in front of her, his big hands sliding down the backs of her thighs to widen her stance. “Then I’ll be careful. At first.”

Her fingers dug into his scalp. “Who said I wanted careful with my big, bad wolf?”

That made him laugh. A wickedly seductive laugh.

He hitched one of her legs over his shoulder before she could brace, and then his mouth was on her.

No rush. Just the slow, long drag of his tongue through her folds, licking up every bit of her arousal. He groaned against her like he’d been starving for her, even after what they had shared last night. When he sealed his mouth over her clit and sucked, her head fell back against the tile as she gave herself over to his touch.

“Roman—”

“I know.” The words vibrated against her. He slid two fingers inside her, gentle because she’d said she was sore, curling them exactly where she needed while his tongue kept working that swollen little bud. “Let me take care of you. Come on my tongue, baby. Nice and easy.”

She was close. Right there. Her whole body drawn tight as a bowstring—

Roman went still beneath her hands.

Not slow-still. Wrong-still, every muscle in his shoulders locking a full second before she heard it herself—the first gunshot, cracking across the clearing.

He rose in one fluid motion, cupping her face with wet hands. “Get dressed and stay in the bedroom. Don’t come out unless it’s me or my brothers.”

She barely managed to nod before he was out of the shower. She could hear him getting dressed and turned off the water so she could do the same. As she hurried into her clothes from yesterday, she heard a second shot. Then a third, closer. Shouting—male, angry, not Roman or his brothers.

Ella finished dressing with shaking hands, found her sneakers, and tried to make herself as small as possible as she watched out the window.

Four trucks came up the road leading to Roman’s house. More than the day she’d stumbled into all this. Naturally, there were more men. The older one they’d called Pruitt was easy to spot even at a distance. Same gray hair. Same gray stubble. Same cold calculation. Two of his people carried tranquilizer rifles loaded for something a lot bigger than deer. The rest carried the real kind.

She knew they had come for the wolf. And for the woman who could identify them.

A black shape exploded out of the trees to the left of the lead truck. Roman in wolf form. He was massive and wasted no time defending what was his. Cage came from the opposite side in human form, shotgun up, dropping two of the men before they could raise their weapons. A third got a shot off and Cage went down hard behind the truck bed and didn’t immediately get back up.

Ella’s stomach dropped straight through the floor. Before she could do something stupid and leave the safety of the house, Declan appeared. Also, in human form. Also carrying a rifle.

Pruitt’s forces started dropping like flies.

Cage was back on his feet. The three brothers worked in unison. Roman took down man after man, swiftly and without mercy in wolf form, while the other two dealt with the rest. It was brutal and efficient.

The last of Pruitt’s men went down under Declan’s hands. Pruitt himself broke for the tree line the second the numbers turned against him, and Roman shifted mid-stride—black wolf to naked, blood-smeared man—and caught him by the throat, slamming him back against the nearest truck hard enough to leave a dent.

Ella was out of the house before she thought better of it.

The clearing smelled of gunpowder, blood, and wet earth. Cage was sitting against a tire, blood running down his arm from his wound, already needling Declan about his aim. Roman didn’t look away from the man he held, but she felt his attention snap to her the second her sneakers hit the dirt, but he didn’t say anything, his attention held by the man he was currently holding on his tiptoes.

The man’s eyes flicked between them, still calculating, still sure he could talk his way into another day. “You can’t just kill me. There are laws—”

“I can do whatever I want with you, Pruitt.”

The man’s face froze. “You know who I am.”

“Yes. I know everything about you. But the most important thing is you tried to kill my mate.”

The man shook his head vigorously—or as vigorously as he could considering Roman’s hand was around his throat. “No, I didn’t. I just wanted to scare her away. The same way I came here today. Just to scare off the black wolf we saw. I didn’t know it was you. That it—you—were a shifter.”

Declan stood just beyond Roman’s side, his rifle pointed to the ground. “You came for her with enough sedative to drop a grizzly.”

“Your real mistake was coming back for my mate,” Roman said. “And shifter law means I can do anything I want to you.”