CHAPTER

Mary had fallen asleep. Granted, she’d needed the rest. She rarely got a good night’s sleep because she spent so much of her nighttime hours overthinking every little thing in her life. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the settee, though. Darkness had arrived.

Andreas’s breath against her neck was measured and slow, and his hold on her sure. He’d behaved, as promised, but he apparently wasn’t going to let her flee, either. Oddly, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to. Having spent the day with him, and learned a little something about what made him tick, she’d earned an investment in him. More than that, the man fascinated her. That didn’t happen anymore. No one else ever sparred with her the way her father had, not even at the office.

She turned her head and tried to spot her tote bag. She’d left it nearby, and she wanted to see if Adam or his wolves had sent her messages. She had no way of knowing what the time was, except that it was after six-fifteen. That was approximately when the sun went down.

“Ah.” The bag was just within reach, though she’d have to dislodge Andreas a bit to grab hold. She squirmed under his weight, extending her left arm to toward the strap.

“Mmm,” he groaned.

“I’m just trying to get my bag.”

“Be still. I was enjoying my dream. I hope to get back to it.”

“Oh? What was happening in your dream?”

He didn’t answer.

She wondered if he had gone back to sleep, but he disabused her of that notion when she reached for her tote again.

He pulled her against him, her back to his very protruding front, and her breath hitched.

“Does that give you some idea?” he whispered.

Gods, yes.

The man was shameless, and she didn’t really mind so much anymore. In fact, she liked the idea that she drew the attention of the town kook. She liked that he was different and that he had his own ideas. He wasn’t a man who moved with currents.

In fact, he was moving against her, and she’d never before wanted to be fucked so much.

“Um.” Tote all but forgotten, she dragged her tongue across her dry lips and tried to control her breathing. “You said you’d behave.”

“I am. I can’t control biology. I can’t help what you do to me.”

“Me?”

“Of course, you. Are you not laying here against me, all curves and soft skin? Your hair…” He drew in a ragged breath as his fingertips skated down her forearm. “Your hair smells like a tropical cocktail.”

“So, I’m to blame?” She’d wanted to scold, but there was no heat in her voice. It’d been a long time since she’d been pressed so intimately against a gorgeous male, and though Andreas may have been a wolf, he was no monster.

She was done with monsters.

“I dreamed of raising your skirt in the back,” he whispered huskily. “The hose…they’re not really all that durable, are they? In my dream, I tore a hole in them. I nudged your panties to the side and entered you. You were so wet.”

She was so wet.

She rubbed her thighs together and peered again toward her tote. Responsibilities called.

But why do I always have to be responsible?

Approval wasn’t something she sought anymore in manners of love and lust. Opinions of her peers and so-called friends didn’t matter. Even if she hadn’t been planning to hightail it out of Fallon at her earliest convenience, she would have taken what she needed from Andreas. She had to start living life and letting herself have things again.

“I like your panties,” he said low, working that hole into her hose. She didn’t stop him.

“Why?” she asked in a rasp.

His fingers were on her hip, working lower. “Because I like lavender.”

“That’s a color that looks good on me.”

“So you want to keep them? Your panties?” As his fingers danced down her thigh, they also inched up the fabric of her skirt.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“I’ll do my best to preserve them.” He leaned, then, and his soft, full lips were at her ear, her cheek, her jaw. “In my home, I have quite a large bed. I could imagine you sprawling in the middle, like some conquered princess waiting to accept her fate.”

“I tend to do a little more than just accept. I tackle every task with the enthusiasm it deserves.”

“Hmm.”

Although the blanket was still pulled over them, the basement was quite cool, and she could feel the draft enter, chilling her ass and her wet thighs.

But he was warm. So warm.

“You’re hot,” she whispered, easing her thighs apart to allow his roaming hand access.

“You warmed me.”

“I should see what time it is.”

“Perhaps you should.”

More kisses. He nudged down the collar of her blouse and sweater and tickled her shoulder with his stubble.

“Will you let me?” she asked.

“I believe I’m quite busy right now. Perhaps you should try later.”

“Of course.”

“Hmm.” He hooked his thumb beneath the strip of her thong and nudged the fabric aside, working his fingers into her wet core.

Oh my. The whimpering sound she made would have embarrassed her more if it weren’t for Andreas’s own eager growls.

“If you were in my home—in my bed—I might keep you waiting,” he said quietly.

“Hmm?” She clenched tightly around his fingers and he swore. He had wonderfully agile fingers, and he knew how to work them. Spreading. Thrusting. Sweeping.

“I’m not going to last long inside you…if I can even last getting into you in the first place. You might end up being my first spontaneous ejaculation since puberty. Gods, your body—”

“What about my body?”

“I think you know.” He grabbed the elastic of her panties and tugged it down over her hipbone.

She leaned up a bit so he could work them down on the other side as well.

Pressing his hand firmly against her backside, he put his lips to her ear. “Full and round and lovely.”

“Goes with the hips.”

“I like those, too. You’re built like a goddamned Valkyrie.”

“I don’t know about that.” She rolled her shoulders back. “I’m missing the wings.”

“You don’t need them.” He nudged his cock between her legs, sweeping the head along her exposed slit, just to acquaint it with her warmth, her wetness. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Are you…taking anything? I don’t have condoms. I don’t generally fuck Fallonites.”

“Neither do I,” she muttered. Apparently, she’d found a kindred spirit in Andreas. “And yes.”

“Thank the gods.” He gripped her hip and pressed his face into her tropically-scented hair, stroking in and out of the grip of her thighs for a few moments. “I’m clean. I had a physical last month.”

“Even if you hadn’t, you’re a werewolf.”

He stilled.

“What?” she asked, and felt him shake his head.

“I suppose I’d allowed myself to forget just that quickly, but you hadn’t.” He tried to roll away, but she slung her top leg over his and opened up for him. She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. She wanted his sex, wanted to be owned by that male thing between his legs.

Wanted to, quite simply, be fucked.

“Werewolves don’t carry STDs,” she said. “Their immune systems are too aggressive. I read that in a couple of those books I sent to the Afótama.”

“I…”

Whatever he thought to say didn’t get voiced.

“What?” she asked.

He growled in response. “I was about to tell you that you sound preposterous, but perhaps you are correct. I haven’t had a single day of illness since this ‘gift’ arrived, and there’ve been at least two aggressive strains of flu in town.”

He may not have been the most social of citizens, but he did have to interact with people regularly. He should have caught something, if only a common cold.

“Hmm.” She was fairly confident he was clean and, besides, the psychic thrum she read off him indicated that he was being honest about his health status. He may have been hard to read due to what he was, but when she could read him, she read him like a book with large print.

“Are you just going to tease me?” she asked quietly. “Did you change your mind about being inside me?”

“Hell no.” He rolled his hips and found her entrance with the help of her hand.

She guided him in, already spasming around him—and that was just the head.

Gods!

She began massaging the entrance of her sex as he pushed farther in.

“Sweet Mary…” He sucked air in through his teeth and, when he’d seated himself as far as he could go, he snaked her hand up the front of her shirt. “I want all of you, but not in this decrepit place.” His rough palm over her engorged nipple sent electric fissions down her spine and made her pussy clench.

“Fuck.” He pulled in another breath and worked his cock backward—not far enough to completely unsheathe himself, but enough that she moaned from the loss.

Mary wanted more than just his head inside her. She wanted everything. She wanted to feel his heavy balls slapping against the backs of her thighs—wanted to be grabbed by the hips and put on her hands and knees almost as much as she wanted to sit him up and grind on his lap.

She could blow his mind, and she wouldn’t stop writhing atop him until he couldn’t come anymore.

“Maybe you should take me home,” she said.

“No.” He pushed forcefully into her while pulling her head back by the hair. “I’m not taking you to your home, or to mine. We’re not leaving this building…”

Thrust.

“Until we’re satisfied.”

“Fuck.”

She was certainly getting close. What Andreas lacked in grace, he made up for in girth.

“You could ruin me,” she said in a whimper.

“Why do you sound so wistful about such a thing?”

Mary didn’t have a good answer for that. She tilted her hips into him, trying to take more of him within her, as if such a thing were possible—as if such a thing were wise—but she was feeling so crazed, so needy.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, grazing his fingertips up the inside of her thigh and pausing at the crease between thigh and sex.

“Am I?”

“You are, and I think you know it. I think you look in the mirror each day and decide what to don based on how many men you want to humble.”

She laughed and then sighed as she bore down on him.

So good.

“Are you humbled, Andreas?”

“What do you think?” he whispered. He snaked a hand up her shirt and palmed her breast, flicking at the nipple.

“Oh. Don’t stop doing that.”

“You like that?”

“I like to feel everything at once.”

“I want to give you that. But not here.”

She understood. What they were doing wasn’t about lovemaking, but rather satiating urgent needs. She may have been less wild about hers, but they both had them. His needs were animal. Hers were witch. Passion should have been a given.

His thrusts faltered as his breath went uneven and ragged. “Sweet Mary, you’re so wet for me. Gods, your pussy is…”

He swallowed loudly and whatever adjective he was going to use was lost in his stream of swears. He didn’t need to be explicit. She was touching him, so she understood. She was wet, and she liked that he appreciated her responsiveness, because not every man was so lucky. Few turned her on the way he did. Fewer still got access to what he was receiving.

His arm draped over her waist possessively, and he whispered, “Help me. Help me make you come. Show me what you want.”

Done.

She put his hand at the top of her mound and got him rubbing, and then worked her hand into her shirt, plucking and pinching her nipples, all the while rolling her hips and squeezing him with all the power she could muster from her lower muscles.

“Just…just like that.” Her voice was an unattractive whine in a pitch she normally couldn’t reach, but she could hardly draw enough air to push sound through her throat. Her spine bowed from his enthusiastic fondling of her clit. Prickles of pleasure made her sheath clench, her belly spasm. Added to the extra sensation from her nipples, the nerves of which seemed to be on a direct line to her cunt, she could hardly tell if she were awake or dreaming.

Like him.

He’d been dreaming of her body. “Gods.” She gripped his wrist and stopped his fingers from working her, and then writhed violently against his body. He didn’t stop thrusting, though, not even when she hiccupped from a shortage of oxygen. Not even when her eyes watered from the overload of sensations.

“Thank you,” he said softly, and he thrust once more, and then voiced a primal-sounding howl toward the ceiling.

She should have been afraid. She should have slid off of his amazing cock, fixed her panties, grabbed her bag, and ran.

But she didn’t. He wasn’t the monster she needed to fear.

She pulled her arm more tightly around her and closed her eyes to the sound of Andreas’s breathing gentling and to the feel of his body going languid behind hers.

He slipped out of her, and swallowed audibly. “Thank you,” he repeated. The words sounded like a chant or a prayer, and she didn’t understand why. She hadn’t earned them.

“What are you thanking me for?”

“I don’t know. I think the wolf…” He drew in a breath and let it out. “The part of me that is wolf needed me to say the words.”

“Why do you think that is?”

He skimmed his fingertips over her belly and twined his legs with hers. “I think wolves have some peculiar mating practices. My urges aren’t so easy to qualify right now.”

She opened her eyes, only to furrow her brow and stare unseeing at the pile of junk in front of them.

Wolves…

She’d read every book from her father’s stash. She may have known more about werewolf lore than Andreas did, but she’d never tried to put any of the information in context. Like the Afótama, and their distant cousins in Fallon, Wolves were peculiar about their mates. Wolves, especially, tended to form quick and lasting attachments to their partners if they were the right ones.

Werewolves mated for life if the mate was right.

He kissed the top of her head and moaned pleasurably as he fit his warm body against hers.

“Andreas?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I’m your mate?”

His fingers stilled against her belly, and she felt the beating of his heart against her back ratchet up in speed.

“Andreas?”

He swallowed loudly again. “I—yes, I do believe you are. I’d like very much to keep you, sweet Mary. Will you let me?”

She didn’t respond, and not just because she’d been in the man’s acquaintance for less than a day and shouldn’t have been able to tell him yes.

She didn’t respond because she wanted to tell him yes and that she’d take care of him, but she couldn’t be so certain that she was interpreting the magic accurately. Couples in Fallon didn’t stick anymore—the magic that steered people toward partners who’d be loving and faithful had diminished rapidly in the past generation. Not even her parents had been in a pairing that was meant to last. Her father hadn’t been enough for her mother. Mary hadn’t been enough for her mother. Her mother had left, and her father didn’t talk about what he’d felt or hadn’t felt with her. He’d only ever said, “I got you from the ordeal,” as if that were the entire point of bothering.

She wanted Andreas—that was a certainty—but she didn’t understand if that tightness in her chest was from the excitement that she’d found The One or if the feeling was a warning sign that things were moving too fast. She had no mentors to ask. No one to guide her in matters of fated loves. Her father wouldn’t even have known.

Taking a deep breath, she took his hand and squeezed. “We’ll play things by ear, okay? I’m leaving Fallon soon. There’s no way of knowing what’ll happen.”

He didn’t respond, and she was glad. She didn’t know what else to tell him.