Chapter Six

Ben was stunned that trick worked, and he was going to reap the reward for as long as she let him.

He calmed her tongue with his, assertively chasing back whatever silly objection she’d been about to spout over something he hadn’t even said.

She was like putty in his arms. Legs wobbling, balance shifting, fingers trying to dig into his jacket and hang on, but not managing to.

He was happy to hold her up. The animal part of him liked to believe he was doing something productive, and in his mind, there was nothing more productive than holding up a swooning lady—especially when he was the reason for the swooning.

“Surprised that worked,” he confessed, pulling back some and watching her blink rapidly.

“Huh?” Alex’s pupils were unmatched in size, her body veering off its axis.

The animal part of Ben relished her dazed state and that his magic finally had an effect on someone. And that’s what it was—magic. The same stuff that gave Wolves instinctive familiarity to the others in their packs. The same stuff that guided their intuition on which Wolves were more dominant and had to be obeyed, and which Wolves weren’t worth their time.

Ben wasn’t trying to disarm her with magic. He wouldn’t have known how. The magic couldn’t be wielded or guided.

It did whatever was in a Wolf’s best interest, and apparently, at that moment, Alex was Ben’s best interest.

“Nothin’.” He leaned in again, and the bit of straightness in her spine she’d acquired melted away once more.

He’d said “Bullshit,” when Calvin had told him that the easiest way to settle his hysterical mate was to kiss her. Ben had done plenty of kissing in his life. No woman had ever responded that way before.

Alex had managed to get her fingers to work and clutched his plackets to balance herself on her toes. She was leaning up and into the kiss, leaving no doubt she wanted it. Her enthusiasm was a hell of a turn-on, not that he’d needed much help there. Just watching the woman talk made him hard. Most ladies didn’t bother having conversations with him. They sighed at him a lot and rolled their eyes at him a lot, except for when they were shoving their hands down his pants. Apparently, Wolves were tolerable enough then. Their cocks were worth the trouble, if not the things they had to say.

He looped his arm beneath her ass and pulled her up and against him, wrapping her legs around his waist.

Her fingers threaded through the back of his hair, tightening, tugging, as he carried her into the living room. Never once did she break the kiss for as long as he moved.

“Maybe I should buy you dinner first,” he said with a laugh.

“Hmm?” He nipped at her jaw, her neck, urged to consume her in every way he could. Eyes. Touch. Taste. The animal part of him didn’t want her to get away. Perhaps his inner wolf had been making that clear all day with his quiet consent.

She was fun and down-to-earth. Had a bit of sass to her, but that was all right. She’d need a little spunk to put up with a character like him.

She don’t gotta put up with me, though.

He needed to dash that thought from his mind. He couldn’t keep her. He couldn’t stay.

The two of them were a happy accident at best, and they’d be going their separate ways by the twenty-fourth. Wouldn’t do to get attached, even if the damn dog in him was howling for him to pay attention to what he’d be leaving.

Ben was paying attention, but he was trying not to make himself miserable with second-guessing himself. He’d decided months ago what was important, and he refused to go back to that station where “interchangeable hillbilly Wolf” was all he was.

He’d aimed for the sofa, but they somehow ended up sliding to the floor in front of it. Her hands had started roaming, but he didn’t care so much. If she’d been anyone else, he would have given them a maximum of three seconds to fill their touch quota, and then they’d have to find some other Wolf to paw.

He wanted Alex to paw him, though. She touched him like she needed to, and being needed for something so tender was a hell of a mind fuck.

“Take off your coat,” she said.

They were both wearing a lot of clothes.

He ripped his jacket off fast enough to help her with her coat, too, and the cardigan beneath. The buttons dangled from loose threads with his clumsy touch, but he could fix them later if she let him. He could thread a needle as well as he could do an oil change.

Her lips seared down the column of his neck, her fingers scrambling against his shirt, balling the fabric into her fists. Her energy and enthusiasm excited the wolf in him. She was into him, murmuring candid instructions like, “Take this off” while tugging at his belt buckle, and “Harder” as she showed him how she liked her breasts squeezed.

“You like it a little rough, huh?” He yanked his belt buckle open and ripped open the fastenings of his pants.

“I don’t know.” She stopped kissing his neck long enough to ponder if she did. “Maybe I do?”

She tugged her shirt off, mindless of the disruption to her bra that left one breast half dangling from the top of a black lace cup.

Of course, his mouth went straight for it. He wanted that touch, that taste.

Her breath shuddered as she pushed forward into his mouth. Each gasp and whimper instructed him in whether he should flick that hard bud faster with the tip of his tongue or give her more teeth in the tender flesh of her breast or less. He yanked down the other cup as he sucked and drove his thumb into the nipple as he kneaded.

“Keep . . . Keep doing that.” Her breathy plea came on the tail end of her hand snaking into his pants, her fingers slipping around the shaft of him.

He stopped sucking on her long enough to pull in a sharp breath and help her get his pants down. They were in the way. Too much fabric. Too much covering, and he wanted to be seen.

When he’d finished tugging his shirt over his head, her kiss-swollen mouth fell open and her gaze raked down between his legs.

“I . . . ” Alex’s eyebrows retreated upward and mouth opened and closed without speech. “Uh. Hi.”

“Are we in a good place to make introductions now? We kinda bungled them earlier.” He cupped his sac and hooked his thumb around his shaft to stand it up, smirking all the while. “Benjamin Swain. Trust me when I say we’re pleased to meet you.”

“The feeling is mutual.” She pushed slowly onto her knees, gaze locked on his down-below, tongue making a slow path over her lips. “Alexis Cavanaugh. Welcome to Maria.”

He didn’t expect her to lean in and take the head of him into her hot mouth or to enthusiastically work her tongue where the essence of him lived.

“Gods.” He collapsed onto his back and closed his eyes, because with the sight of her leaning over him, breasts hanging free from her bra and with the twinkle of tree lights caressing her skin, he was on sensory overload.

“Wanted to taste you,” she said around him as she worked wetness down his shaft with her fist. “That’s okay, right?”

“Hell yeah, it is. Who said it isn’t?”

She broke her latch around him, and he decided he actually didn’t want to know. He kept her sucking by gently rocking his hips forward and caressing the underside of her chin.

Wolves weren’t renowned for keeping their tempers in check. They simply chose to keep their heads in the sand, because ignorance was bliss. He didn’t need to know specifics.

What Alex lacked in experience, she made up for in enthusiasm. The little moans and slurps made a salacious accompaniment to the picture in his head. Her velvety lips sliding up and down his wet shaft, pale fingers tight around him, breasts swaying as her head bobbed up and down.

“Damn. Just like that, sugar.” He rocked his hips, trying to be gentle at the same time he conveyed his urgency. He needed to come like he needed air. It didn’t make sense, but it seemed imperative that he do that under her direction—that he sacrifice his body to her desires, any way she wanted.

She added her other hand and wrung him as she sucked the head. She was picking up speed, so he opened his eyes. He needed to be more present. He needed to be sure she didn’t think she was obligated to finish if she didn’t want to.

But her gaze was trained on his face, daringly, and the corners of her mouth briefly hitched upward.

“Shit, woman.” He wrapped his hands around hers and made her really squeeze him. “Grab me tight. You’re not gonna hurt me. Everything you do to me feels good.”

“Sounds like a challenge.”

He was going to make some sort of argument, but the words caught in his throat as the threat of fire ripped through his midsection. Bending his knees and digging his toes into the floor, he thrust between her lips, once, twice, and let out a feral-sounding growl as he pulled himself out of her mouth. Wet heat splashed against his belly, and he was seeing stars as his pulse pounded in his ears.

Shit.

He kept repeating it in his head.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

He’d never put up such a shameful performance before, at least not in his adult life. He could have held on a bit longer. Teased a bit. Put her on the edge of pleasure and kept her there until she and the animal inside him were both begging for relief.

But that hadn’t been right—the unusual urgency he’d felt had left no room for negotiation. He didn’t understand anything. Maybe he was further gone than he’d realized.

Alex crawled over him, palms pressed to the floor at the sides of his head, and stared curiously at him. Ben had never been the best at making sense of women’s moods, but she didn’t look dissatisfied. A long draw of breath through his nose informed him that she didn’t smell too put out, either.

Her arousal still hung heavy in the air. It was a Come get me scent, and that was a dangerous scent to a Wolf. It signaled permanence, and he couldn’t give her that.

The animal inside him didn’t like that thought. It didn’t want to think about her being a temporary fix or that he should wait a little while to make any moves. Ben needed to keep his life the way it was. Liked his standing in the pack and being respected by people that mattered.

Alex . . . was a complication he hadn’t expected.

“Hmm.” Alex peeled off her shirt and swiped the fabric across the mess on his belly. Then she sat on his chest and looked behind her and down.

His half-erect cock gave a twitch as if to acknowledge her.

Shit.

“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t help sometimes doing things wild animals do.”

“Hmm,” she repeated and casually plucked his wallet out of his pile of clothes. Singing a wordless song, she thumbed through the billfold.

“I can afford to buy you dinner, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Nope.” Her mouth made that funny popping sound again, but no sooner did he smile than his expression tightened into one of incredulity. She’d fished a condom out and tossed his wallet back where it’d been. “You can buy me a mango empanada later, though, if Tiny’s willing to brave the snow and wind to take the taco truck out tonight.”

“Sugar, I’ll buy you whatever you want.” She could take the wallet and keep everything inside if she needed to. Maybe he’d feel less like a shitheel.

“Empanada’s good enough. Well, maybe a hot chocolate, too.”

“Of course.” She’d probably send him on his way, then, after they’d both gotten a little bit of what they’d wanted.

That would have been fine a day ago, but that’d been before he’d known what he could have.

He didn’t know if he was going to be “fine.” At the very least, he was going to wonder, and maybe wonder and regret were different flavors of the same damn thing.

___

Alex was never the aggressor in matters of intimacy. Although she considered herself to be more outgoing than most, she generally waited for signals that it was her turn to take what she wanted. Rarely did she get to.

But Ben was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. He was clear about what he wanted and had no room to complain if it wasn’t given a certain way. That made her bolder. She was going to get what she wanted, for once.

“Put that on.” She put the condom into his hand and eased off of him to get rid of her pants, her socks, her underwear.

His dark gaze never left her as she moved, even as his hands ripped open the little packet and rolled the contents down his revived erection. With his focus on her, she felt primal and sexy. Desired, and not just tolerated. A heady feeling she hoped to have again someday.

He put his back against the front of the sofa as she returned to him. She straddled his thighs and, with no hesitation, slid down onto him, taking him in inch by inch, his fingers notching into her ass as hers dug into his shoulders.

“Biting off more than you can chew, sugar.” His laugh was laced with sin and gentle mockery.

“I can handle you,” she quipped as she pulled a bracing breath in through her teeth.

Maybe.

Ben was like a piece of complicated gym equipment she hadn’t used before and didn’t know how to program.

“Gods, you’re trouble.” His fist wrapped loosely around her ponytail as she seated herself on him as far down as she could go.

She held still there with her knees aching from the press of the area rug’s edge, her thighs quivering, hips throbbing from her legs being spread so wide.

“Not . . . a position I’m used to,” she murmured to herself. She found her balance and began to slide slowly up and down his shaft as he glided his free hand down her back. The calluses on it both tickled and aroused, confusing her senses, more so when he put his lips against hers and held her head firmly in place.

It was a demanding kiss—a distracting dance of lips and tongues that had her heart racing, belly quivering in expectation, and sex clenching tightly around him.

She needed him to dull the ache inside her and chase away the chronic neediness that built from affection being too infrequent or not thorough enough.

“Why couldn’t you live back east, hmm? Why you gotta be all the way over here?” He went back to kissing her, but he let go of her hair to grab onto the bottom of her thighs.

“Maybe I’ll . . . tie you up with some leftover tree garland and keep you here.”

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Having a tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome Wolf at home who was willing to wade into thorny weeds to fetch her seeds and give her bees and who’d buy her empanadas sounded like her ideal man right about then. She didn’t even mind the fact that he was part animal. One of her best friends was. Alex could handle a bit of snarling.

Ben helped her find a rhythm a little faster than she would have tried on her own, but he was incredibly strong and had energy for days. The frenetic ride had her core thrumming with prickles of pleasure that rapidly turned into desperate aches.

So close.

So full of him, so much delicious pressure and tension at the tipping point of resolution.

“That’s what you want? Hmm?” Ben thrust up into her, shocking her breath out of her body and mashing the call button for the release she’d thought she’d wanted, but she wasn’t ready.

She didn’t want him to stop. Didn’t want to roll off of him, catch her breath, and then wonder, Now what? She wanted to keep connecting.

“No.” He probably didn’t hear her.

His mouth covered hers again, and he kissed her so hungrily that she wondered if everything he was doing was part of a well-rehearsed act designed to soothe and placate women like her.

His thrusts became more frenzied, or perhaps her dips and rises did. She was lightheaded from her blood rushing away from her head, gaze unfocused, confused as to what part of him her hands were touching.

She was swaying as the waves ripped through her, reflexive laughter spilling from her mouth as she spasmed around him, and him within her.

There was his tongue, lapping around an aching spot on her neck, hot and angry.

“You bit me?” She pushed away from him a bit, but her gaze was unfocused. She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Took a deep breath. “You bit me?”

“Didn’t mean to. Instinct, when the wolf part of me’s so close to the edge like it is, is to bite.”

“Am I going to turn into a werewolf?” Her voice had taken on that high, chirpy quality again. Frantic.

Chill.

“No, sugar.”

She forgave him for the deep chuckle that followed because the sound warmed her up in a way she didn’t get, but didn’t want to refuse.

She opened her eyes so she could see that he saw that she was being serious. “Hannah Foye got turned into a Cougar after she got clawed up.”

“Yep.” Ben slipped out of her and settled her onto his lap, leaving his hands beneath her bottom and a little grin on his face.

She sighed. “I’m trying to have an important discussion with you.”

“Can’t help it. I’m in a good mood.”

“I can make your mood go south again if you don’t get serious.”

“I am serious. I’ve got a pretty lady on my lap, and the beast part of me is soothed.”

“Lucky you, but what I’m worried about is whether or not I’m going to become a beast.”

“You’re not. I promise. That doesn’t happen unless I bite you when I’m furry.” His lips parted to reveal adorably crowded teeth, four of which were extending up and down from his gums.

Of course she jerked back and away—that was her fight-or-flight instinct kicking in—but he held her tight and so she had to watch.

“Even when I have these out like this,” he said through his bared, clenched teeth, “can’t infect you.”

“Are . . . you sure?” she asked haltingly.

He put the teeth away. “Been a Wolf all my life. Trust me. Calvin would have made Julia a Wolf a long time ago if infecting was a simple matter of biting. He’s not the kinda guy who’d hold back, if you catch my drift.”

“I don’t want to catch your drift. I don’t want to imagine the things your dissolute alpha does behind closed doors.” Especially not with a lady as sweet as Julia.

Ben shrugged. “Sorry, though. I should have asked first.”

“Oh, well I don’t mind that.” She put her hand over the mark. The bite had stung, yes, but the pain had come at the exact right moment. A perfect counterbalance to the pleasure. “I guess I’m thrilled you’d be swept away enough that you’d want to.”

“Swept away is a good way to put it. Hard to explain where a Wolf’s head is at when he’s making love to a lady the beast would accept as a mate. Not really thinking so much as chasing the pleasure, wherever it goes.”

Mate?

She was pretty sure that was what he’d said, but maybe that word didn’t mean the same thing to Wolves as it did to Cougars. Maybe with Wolves, any lover was a mate.

He was staring at her in that intimate way again. Before, the intensity had aroused her. At that moment, it unnerved her because she was confused and maybe falling a little too hard and fast for a man who had no plans for a relationship.

Clearing her throat, she pinned her gaze on the ceiling and made her hands busy by tightening her ponytail.

She wasn’t the kind of woman who believed that every tryst should lead to a commitment. She’d certainly had a few, both before and after Kyle, but the thought of Ben moving on to some other “fix,” and that Alex was little more than a benchwarmer, unsettled her.

That little notebook Scott carried around would tell Ben everything he needed to find another woman just like her, but better, probably. She wanted to rip it to shreds.

“So, empanada?” Ben asked.

She looked down at him in time to watch him raise one dark eyebrow.

“Could use a little sugar.” His tongue edged provocatively around her lips, and then he grinned against them. “Different kind of sugar.”

Stop talking like that if you’re just going to leave.

She took her breath and closed her eyes. Couldn’t bear to look at him. “I don’t want to go out. I changed my mind.”

Just go, if you’re going to.

“Maybe we can slice that fruitcake up, then. Got milk?”

“You’re staying to eat it?”

She felt his shrug. “It’s early. Rather be here than listening to Scott run his damn mouth all night. We could watch TV or something.”

“Okay,” Alex said, probably too quickly, too desperately.

It really didn’t matter if she acted desperate. He was going back to North Carolina and probably wouldn’t think about her again once he did.

Shame was pointless, and there was nothing wrong with experiencing the thrill of a single night if it meant she could move forward from events of the past.

She could worry about the future later. After all, she was young. She had plenty of time.