I knew a moment of sheer unadulterated panic—fearing I’d awakened his angry inner beast rather than the man within. But his grip was careful as he pulled me down toward him, his upper body rising off the bed to meet me halfway as his mouth crashed into mine.

My lips parted for him, desperate for air, and his tongue slipped inside. Gentle. Exploring. Sweet.

Then consuming.

Oxygen was overrated.

My fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders and back, clawing him nearer as I let myself get lost in the taste and smell and feel of him.

When he withdrew long enough to allow us both a breath, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Bethy.”

The stress of the past twenty-four hours caught up with me then, and my eyes burned. Maybe it was the disturbingly overwhelming need I felt for him in that postcoital moment that prompted it. Or perhaps it was the sad sincerity I saw in his golden irises at his softly spoken apology that made me realize just how disappointed I was that he wasn’t the person I’d wanted him to be.

“You drugged me.” The first tears brimmed over.

“I know,” he acknowledged with a remorseful sigh. “I’m sorry. I never wanted for things to happen this way. Never wanted to hurt you or disrupt your life.” His lips brushed mine. His fingers tangled in my hair. “It’s just that I’ve wanted you for so long.” His tongue flicked out, licking the wobble in my lip. “Fantasized about you so damn much …”

He sucked my abused lower lip into his mouth, healing the bite I’d made.

God knows I loved the idea of being Raul’s fantasy. But this whole situation had quickly become too dark of a fantasy for me.

“You kidnapped me,” I stated the obvious as I pulled away—a reminder to myself as much as it was an indictment of him. “I trusted you. I used to play at your house all summer long when we were kids.”

“Baby, I know this feels like a kidnapping right now, but it’s really a rescue mission,” he had the gall to say. And in spite of everything, I couldn’t help but giggle at the absurdity as he brushed my tears away with the pads of his thumbs.

“Rescue mission?” I sniffed.

He nodded, the tip of his nose rubbing alongside mine. “You never wanted Gregg. You’ve been settling, honey. Playing it safe. You grew up so scared of ending up as the one fulfilling your dad’s role in your own marriage one day that you settled for someone you weren’t in love with.”

My vision flooded with tears and I began crying anew. My therapist had said nearly the exact same thing.

“How can you know that?”

“Because you belong to me.” He cupped my face in his hands, giving me a wistful smile. “You’re my better half.”

I’d always relished the idea of being someone’s other half. But that was the stuff of Disney movies and fairy tales. The stark reality was I’d been kidnapped and was being held hostage by an aircraft full of horror-flick creatures.

I shook my head at him.

“I swear it’s the truth,” he professed, his eyes now brown and beseeching. “I stayed away from you for as long as I could. I’ve spent the past ten years worried that I would put you in danger if I ever allowed myself to be with you.” He rubbed his cheek—slightly rough and scratchy with stubble—against my own, before kissing me again. “But I can’t keep away anymore.”

His words made no sense. Yet he sounded so earnest.

He’s a con artist, Bethany. A criminal.

“I won’t stay away anymore,” he amended. “I need you too much.”

He needed me. The crazy thing was I totally believed that part. Because he did need me—he was a fucking mess.

“And you need me, too. Yes, you do,” he insisted when I started to shake my head in denial again. “Even if you’re too angry right now to admit it. You know we’re good for each other. Deep down, you know I’ll make you happier than anyone else can—that what we feel when we’re together is right. It’s real.”

I would’ve gone with “crazy.” Or “scary.”

Scary like the truth was scary.

Like vulnerability was scary …

He rolled me onto my back, stealing my breath when the full weight of his pelvis sank between my thighs, his rigid phallus bumping up against my cervix.

“I marked you, Bethy.” A fact. Spoken with tenderness. And authority.

His arm hooked under my left thigh, drawing my knee up to his shoulder, deepening the angle of his penetration as he withdrew slightly, then pushed into me again. My eyes fluttered and rolled back at the sensation, even as more tears gathered on my lashes. “We’re connected now.”

God, we sure were.

He felt impossibly large inside me—our fit so tight as I took him at this angle, despite all my slick arousal fluid to ease his entry.

“For all eternity.” He pulled out slowly, then shunted forward.

“You never”—gasp—“asked. Human mates are supposed to have a choice,” I managed to get out between panted breaths.

His lips brushed my forehead. “I tried to give you a choice by staying away. I kept tabs on you from afar for a decade.”

He had? What was he talking about?

“When I saw your engagement announcement online seven months ago, you can’t imagine how sick with jealousy I was.”

My foolish heart soared at his words.

He picked up the pace, rocking steadily in and out.

“And still I stayed away—because you looked so damn happy in your announcement photos. I left you alone because I thought your life was better off without me in it.”

I felt the hurt in his words, saw the desolation in his soft brown gaze as slowly he fucked me, and it took my breath away.

“When I saw you last night on the dance floor … saw how sad and lonely you were behind the front you’d been putting on for the world … I lost control of my wolf. And myself.”

His words rang with sincerity.

So did the possessive thrust of his hips.

And the casually demanding way he’d begun rolling and pinching my nipples.

He wasn’t even hitting my clit at this angle, and I was ready to come again. Because I was mesmerized by him.

By us.

By the words pouring forth from his mouth that fulfilled every silly girlhood fantasy I’d ever secretly harbored.

“Now that I’ve had you, you’re like a drug in my system. I want to taste every inch of you. Fill every part of you.”

He was like the tide lapping over me—drawing me in. Pulling me under.

And in that moment, I wanted to drown.

“Do it,” I heard myself pant. “Fill me.” I wanted him to come with me this time. To feel him coming inside me. “I’m so close …”

“Can’t baby,” he said on a groan. I felt his smile, then his kiss of apology against my ear. “Not yet, okay? One day soon.”

One day soon? What the everloving—?

Oh. I realized I’d just asked him to come inside me. Again. That’s what he was saying no to. I’d gotten him to do it once already—partially—in the Hummer. And now I wanted the whole thing.

I wasn’t sure why it was important to me. Probably because he was resisting it for reasons I failed to comprehend. What guy who possessed the magical power to prevent pregnancy and STDs would avoid coming inside a woman? A woman he claimed was his better half. It made zero sense.

“Please … want to feel your release.” I was intent on pressing the issue as I raised and circled my hips to meet his pelvis.

It struck me that his thrusts were too controlled—not nearly urgent enough considering the frenzied haze of lust that had enveloped me.

“How badly do you want it?”

His fingers swirled against my scalp and his mouth dipped to the hollow of my neck, finding his bite mark. He sucked on it, and my inner muscles began convulsing around his heated shaft in time with the pull of his lips and tongue—as if somehow his mark and my sex were connected now.

“Oh … oh … omigod …” My eyes rolled back in my head. “Wha—what have you done?” I was instantly suspicious.

He hum-chuckled against my neck, then scraped his teeth over the mark. My core pulsed and seized around him again.

“Raul?” I gasped.

“It’s only association, baby. Told you, we’re connected now. I’ll stop if you don’t like it.”

I didn’t exactly hate it.

And I felt conflicted when he did stop—missing the sensation while at the same time reassured that he was being respectful of my boundaries.

Well … some of them at least. I was still being held against my will.

Except it really didn’t feel that way right now. Not at all, in fact. It felt like there was no place else I’d rather be.

He raised my left leg higher, hooking my knee all the way over his shoulder so that my ass cheek came fully off the mattress—further opening me up and changing the angle of his penetration. His big hand slid down the back of my thigh.

“Let me come in your ass, Bethy.” His fingertips trailed along my cleft as he said it.

I didn’t say no.

He hadn’t actually asked. It was somewhere between telling and requesting.

He began lubricating my smaller hole with the slickness flowing freely between us as he churned in and out of my sex.

And I could do nothing but give him a glassy-eyed stare as he worked two fingers inside my ass, my mouth falling open to form a small “o” as my nails dug into his shoulder.

“That’s it … stay relaxed. Feel good?”

I think I nodded.

“Good.” The smile he gave me was so sweet, so … Raul, as he gazed down at me. It was hard to believe he’d changed at all. That he was a werelock now, and the Alpha of a pack of supernatural beasts.

His eyes remained intent on my face, cataloguing my every response as oh, so very slowly, he fucked me with his cock and fingers.

For better or worse, in this, I trusted Raul completely.

There were men who made women feel comfortable, confident, and proud exploring their sexuality, and there were those who didn’t. Whatever his other flaws, Raul would always be the former.

“Breathe. Push out against my fingers,” he instructed as he began to work a third one in.

“Oh … oh … fuck …” I winced and tightened up around him before his fingers were even halfway.

“Shh—it’s okay.” He held still and waited while I panted it out and tried to relax.

Two fingers had felt naughty—darkly erotic and arousing. Three fingers was a reality check at my back gate. The reality that a huge cock would be breaching it next.

When Raul shifted his hips, my abdominal muscles spasmed and cramped. I groaned. “I don’t know if I can …”

I left that statement of doubt open-ended. I was not ready to give up. It had felt so good up until a moment ago when I’d started to panic.

“You haven’t answered my question.” Holding his fingers still inside my ass, he resumed the slow, gentle thrust of his hips, sliding his heavy cock in and out of me. “How badly do you want me to come inside you, Bethy?” His mouth dipped to the hollow of my neck to lick his double bite mark. Once.

Twice.

My clit pulsated in reaction, and kept going after he’d stopped. A rush of wetness seeped from me, and I arched up to meet his next thrust—inadvertently pushing his fingers in deeper.

“Oh … oh, God …”

The stretch felt uncomfortable for a moment, the unfamiliar pressure an awkward sensation to reconcile, making me feel lightheaded.

Then it began to change.

Raul’s warm breath came faster against my ear as he spoke softly to me. “As life-altering as it would feel to sink balls deep in your beautiful tight ass and let you milk the cum out of me … I don’t want to do it unless it’s what you really want, okay?”

Dear Lord, he was good. “Let” my ass milk the cum out of him. He really had earned every bit of his reputation.

And it seemed that the praise lavished upon his sexual prowess was well deserved, too, because despite my mind wanting to snicker and cry bullshit, my sex throbbed with renewed need. My smaller ring of muscles tightened, then relaxed, pulsing in a way that sucked Raul’s fingers in deeper.

It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation either.

My unattended clit was quivering so frantically that if he were to merely brush against it, I’d probably shoot off the bed in orgasm.

We groaned in unison as Raul’s cock thickened and twitched within me. I squirmed and circled my hips, angling my pelvis up, trying to take in more of him.

His fingers sank a little farther, causing the uncomfortable stretching sensation to return. But this time, the burn made my belly flutter with excitement, my engorged pearl ache.

“There you go, sweetheart,” he coaxed. “Push out and take it. As much as you want.”

I wanted it all. But I was afraid of pushing against his fingers and taking it. Scared of the initial sear of pain and discomfort, while at the same time eager for it. Like last night when he’d bitten me, it was as if the pain and pleasure receptors within me were blurring—crossing and blending—one sensation heightening the other.

I licked my lips. “Need you to do it.”

My fingers combed through his soft hair, gently tugging him downward as I strained my neck to grant him better access.

His mouth found the bite mark again. As he latched on and sucked, my inner walls contracted, and he pressed his fingers as far as they would go inside my ass, setting off my orgasm as involuntary convulsions pulsed through both my holes. It felt like one giant, incredibly erotic muscle spasm originating in my pelvis and radiating throughout my entire body.

“Oh, fuck … holy shit …”

He growled and jerked his hips, pulled partway out, and rammed his cock hard and deep several times in controlled succession, changing the angle so that his groin connected with my clitoris at long last, thrusting my orgasm into violent Category 5 peel-me-off-the-ceiling territory.

I think I pulled most of his hair out as I wailed and babbled discordant pleas and expletives. It felt like it went on forever. My whole body was trembling from the tsunami that was still tearing through it when Raul growled and withdrew his fingers from me.

Then he pulled out, spurting on my stomach and breasts as he arose to his knees and quickly crawled over me, shooting more cum across my neck and chin as he straddled my face, pulled me up by my hair, and pushed inside my mouth, thrusting to the back of my throat as he unloaded everything he had left in me.

And it was a lot.

I couldn’t swallow it fast enough and choked a few times before I managed to get it down, the heel of my palm pressing feverishly between my thighs all the while as I rode out the final tremors of my own release.

He muttered apologies as he withdrew from my mouth, and something along the lines of “That wasn’t supposed to go like that,” which caused me to giggle until my eyes watered with purely feminine glee.

I wasn’t the only one who’d lost control.

He grabbed a warm, damp washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned me off.

“What happened to coming in my ass?” I teased when he was done.

He gave me a lopsided grin as he bent over me. “Next time, okay?” He kissed the tip of my nose. “I decided you weren’t ready yet.”

“Ha!” I snorted. “You decided you couldn’t hold out.”

He laughed. “Maybe.” His cheeks flushed a little, making him look utterly adorable, and so nonthreateningly human, as he tossed the towel aside and stretched out next to me on his side.

But then his expression grew pensive and somber, killing the happy butterflies in my belly as reality crashed our sexy party.

“Look, I know I’m not the best guy in the world.” His fingertips traced the lines of my ribs. “I know you deserve way better than me. But I promise I’m going to do whatever it takes to fix this. To make things right between us.”

“Except turn this plane around and take me back to San Francisco?” I deadpanned.

He sighed. “Won’t you please give me a chance? Give us a chance? Just spend some time in Bariloche with me. Try thinking of it as a vacation.”

Pshh. I rolled my eyes. “Oh, well hey, why not? Someone already put me on a plane and packed half my possessions for me.” I batted my eyes at him in my best imitation of an airhead. “As long as there’s cable and access to reality TV where we’re headed on this vacay, I’m in.”

“Stop that.” Smiling, he reached for my face, cupping the right side of my cheek in his hand and placing his thumb over my right eyelid to halt its fluttering. “You’re gonna pull something.”

Soon we were both giggling as he climbed over me and tried to do the same with my other eye, while I pretended to be an airhead fighting him off, protesting that he was going to mess my eye makeup.

Before long, we’d gone from laughing to kissing and rubbing up on one another again. But when I felt his erection digging into my thigh, I pushed against his chest.

“No. We can’t keep connecting through sex, Raul. We need to talk.”

“Okay, okay.” He groaned and rolled off of me onto his back. “You’re right.” He wrapped his hand around the base of his enormous erection and muttered, “I guess this can wait.”