Authors: Christine Warren
She slapped a plastic container down on the island and peeled off the lid, reaching inside for a bite-sized piece of pork. “So what time are you leaving in the morning?”
The pointed question made him smile. He had to give her points for effort.
“About a week from next Tuesday, I figure. If everything goes smoothly.”
“Perhaps I’m not making myself clear, but you really aren’t welcome here. I want you gone. Now.”
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“No, I actually think that’s pretty clear. The problem is that what you want really isn’t the issue. For the past three hundred years, the White Paw Clan has been swearing fealty to the Silverback alpha. That makes your clan
his
responsibility, and from where Graham Winters stands, there are two things that could happen here.” He ignored her glare and stole a piece of her pork, more to keep his hands occupied with something other than her breasts than because he was still hungry. “Either way, the White Paw alpha will need to renew that vow of fealty at the next Silverback howl. The only remaining question is whether the White Paw alpha will be you, or someone else.” He watched her while he spoke, so he saw the muscles in her jaw clench and her eyes narrow when he made that statement. He tried to ignore the way the spark in her gaze made his jeans fit a little too tightly.
“
I
am the White Paw alpha. And I will remain the White Paw alpha for a very long time to come.”
“That’s what I’m here to determine. Maybe you will hold the title, maybe you won’t. The Silverback is not so much concerned with who keeps your pack as with the knowledge that the pack is well kept.” He could almost see her hackles rise. “I. Will. Hold. My. Pack. Did you get that? Or do I need to use smaller words?”
Logan clenched his teeth to hold back the growl he could feel reverberating in his chest. “You need to watch your mouth.”
“Make me.”
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Christine Warren
She knew almost before the words formed on her tongue that saying them would be a mistake, but they launched themselves into the quiet room before she could stop them. They hung between her and the sexy stranger like the ripe scent of heat and she couldn’t take them back. She felt the words pulse between them for all of three rapid heartbeats before she made her fateful mistake.
She blinked.
He was on her before her eyelids completed their upswing, launching himself over the island in a leap at least four feet high from a standing start. She had the vague impression of muscles tensing and shifting under tight denim, the image of tanned skin and dark hair moving toward her, and as fast of her reflexes were, she couldn’t outrun him. He caught her just as she turned her back on him in an instinctual flight response. Even her subconscious mind knew she had pushed him as far as his limits would allow, but her subconscious wasn’t fast enough.
He carried her to the tile floor, one hand outstretched to catch their weight as they tumbled to the cold, hard surface. She tried to flip them, but he had surprise and brute male strength on his side. He pinned her almost immediately, both hands above her head, legs parted around his granite-hard thighs. She felt helpless and decided she didn’t much like the unfamiliar feeling.
She repeated that thought to herself like a mantra while she tried to ignore the way her body softened instinctively beneath him. She didn’t need to be thinking about the rapid pulse beating in her chest or the restless heat pooling between her legs. She knew perfectly well that he was aware of both, and she didn’t have a chance of controlling him if she let them control her.
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The air stirred around them as he lowered his head to her throat and sniffed.
He drew breath like a starving man drew sustenance, as if he could take in her essence as it floated in the air around her. The act made her shiver, and he growled, low and rough, above her.
“I’d be happy to watch it for you,” he rumbled, pressing his body down over hers, not enough to crush her, but enough to remind her who had the upper hand. “I can keep very,” he paused to nip her lips. “Close.” Lick. “Track.” Then his mouth closed over hers, and he feasted.
She wanted to hate it; waited for the rough surge of rage that had consumed her the last time any Lupine had dared to touch her uninvited. She braced herself for disgust and outrage and fury to come to her aid, but all she got was melting and hunger and greed. She wanted to devour him as surely as he devoured her.
She cursed her body for its betrayal, her hands that clenched into fists instead of sprouting claws to tear him to shreds. The thighs that spread and knees that lifted to cradle him closer. The lips that softened and parted under his, clinging and encouraging. God damn it, but her life would have been so much easier if this man had repulsed her. Even just a little. A mild sort of nausea whenever she got too close to him. Was that too much to ask?
Apparently.
Instead of feeling her stomach roll, she felt her body shiver when his tongue tangled with hers. She tugged at it, let her teeth scrape the surface, and struggled in vain to suppress the moan building in her throat. It boiled out of her, a muted sound swallowed in the fever of their kiss. Still, even muffled it seemed to excite him. He answered with a growl of his own and shifted his grip on her wrists until he pinned both of her hands with one of his own. She could have broken the hold if she’d tried, but she was too busy trying to remember how to breathe when his newly freed palm closed over her breast and squeezed.
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When she gasped in reaction, she breathed in the air he expelled on a satisfied grunt. It carried the taste of him even deeper inside her; the rich, warm taste of heat and spice and passion. She wanted more of it, wanted it filling her up and making her blind to everything else in the world. The luxury of the thought went to her head almost as fast as he did.
Then he went for her skin even faster and she forgot such a thing as the world even existed. He caught the center of her tank top in his fist and yanked, and the garment shredded in his grasp. He threw away the tatters in an impatient motion, then paused for a breathless moment to stare down at her. His gaze fixed on her breasts, nipples already tight and beaded in arousal and she could almost see his mouth watering. His scent intensified, drowning her in the heady fragrance, and she knew hers must be doing the same to him. Not only was she at least as aroused as he was, but her heat was now only forty-eight hours away.
If he knew, though, he was already too far gone to process the information rationally. All he seemed to know now was hunger and urgency. He pulled her hands, forcing her to straighten her arms more, the action lifting her breasts higher until he could lean down and set his mouth to one tightly beaded peak.
Honor screamed.
She didn’t mean to. In fact, she’d have given her left incisor if she could have caught the sound before it emerged, but no such luck. It tore from her throat, low and raw and hoarse, like an animal’s cry. He heard and answered, not with a matching sound, but by taking her nipple between his teeth and tugging. Then his mouth closed over the entire peak and began to draw on her. The hot, wet suction sent her body bowing beneath him, bending in a taut arch in response to the unbearable pleasure of the sensation.
He growled a low, tense response and she felt his hand shift from her breast where it toyed with her other nipple down over the smooth expanse of skin of 38
Fixed: Fur Play
her belly. She felt a nail catch in the soft fabric of her pajama pants before it slid beneath. His palm glided over the softness of her stomach to tangle in the damp curls at the apex of her thighs. One long finger dipped, parting her slick folds and finding the center of her pleasure.
Again she screamed. This time the sound of her frustration shook the cabin, but she couldn’t have cared less. She began to fight him in earnest, not to escape his touch but in her fever to do some touching of her own. She ached for the feel of his slick skin under her fingers, and she intended to have it. Rearing up, she turned her head and sank her teeth deep into his bicep, the nearest bit of his flesh she could reach. He yanked his mouth from her breast and snarled down at her.
She met his gaze fiercely.
“Want. More.”
His eyes narrowed at her hoarsely panted demand, but his expression only turned more predatory. He didn’t seem to object. Instead, he slowly pulled his hand from between her legs, letting it stroke every individual nerve ending it could reach along the way. The entire length glided along her clit, making her buck and shudder and curse him. Then his nail caught it in a wicked flick and she yelped.
He flashed her a feral grin, raising his glistening fingers to his mouth before he growled, “So do I.”
Honor watched as he licked her moisture from his hand. She saw the way his eyes narrowed as he tasted her, then saw the knowledge light them and she swore.
“Heat.”
She had rolled out of his grasp before the word cleared his lips. Damn it, she should have known all the bath salts in the world couldn’t disguise the flavor of her heat from a mature male Lupine. He’d known the minute he lifted his fingers to his lips that the new White Paw alpha was just hours from the start of her heat 39
Christine Warren
cycle. It was irresistible to any male Lupine, but to one with as much dominant tendencies as her Silverback visitor, it was like the proverbial red flag in front of the bull. She might as well have tattooed, “Come and get me, big boy” across her forehead.
“Here,” he snarled, even as she sprang to her feet and looked for a clear path to the door. “Come. Here.”
She growled in response, bearing her teeth at him, body coiling in preparation for flight. If she could make it around him and out of the kitchen, she might have a chance of outrunning him. If not, then she could definitely lose him in the woods. He wasn’t familiar with them like she was, and there were ways she could mask her scent at least well enough to confuse him.
“Now.”
She shook her head and crouched. She wished she still had her tank top on, or that she dared to take the seconds it would cost her to shift to her wolf form.
Running bare breasted through the woods at three-thirty in the morning hadn’t made her top ten list this year, but it looked just about inevitable.
“Yes. Here.”
She opened her mouth to defy him again, but she never got the chance.
Before she could speak, Joey stepped into the room, wide-eyed with concern.
“Honor? What’s going on here? Is everything all right?” Honor nearly burst out laughing. She might have, if the tension weren’t thick enough to choke the sound out of her and she weren’t keeping her gaze glued to Logan’s face in anticipation of his next move.
“Get out.”
Logan barked the order as if he had every right, but what pissed Honor off was that Joey actually started to obey.
“I didn’t say leave, Joey. And you still take your orders from me. Don’t you.” 40
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It wasn’t a question, and Honor didn’t bother to look in Joey’s direction to gauge her answer. She refused to so much as blink. She didn’t trust the Silverback visitor not to use the slip to his advantage.
Logan snarled. “You’ll take them from me.”
“I’ll take them from
no one
.” All the days of tension and struggle and uncertainty suddenly overwhelmed Honor, and she struck out where she could.
At Logan. “
I
am the White Paw alpha. Not you. Not Winters. No one but me.
And the alpha does. Not. Answer.”
They stared at each other, teeth bared, eyes narrowed. Honor could feel the skin between her shoulder blades shift and tighten, raising the hackles she didn’t actually have in her human form. She bet Logan could feel the same subtle crawling beneath his skin. She almost said a prayer of gratitude for it, since if they’d been in their were or wolf forms, they’d likely have already been locked together, either ripping out each other’s throats, or mating furiously on the kitchen tile. Which one it would have been counted as a toss up.
“Can I get anyone anything? A cup of tea? Or I could make cocoa…” Honor snorted. If the tension had been any less thick, she might have laughed. Instead, she straightened her spine and reached out a hand to her cousin, never taking her eyes off Logan’s. “No. We’re done. Give me your robe.” Joey didn’t hesitate, but untied the thick, terry cloth robe she wore and shrugged out of it, laying it over Honor’s outstretched arm. She shivered a little in the thin, cotton nightgown she wore, but she didn’t say a word.
Honor pulled the robe on and belted it closed, concealing her bare breasts from the two people in the room she felt really didn’t need to be seeing them right now. “I’m going to bed. Because the White Paw Clan is an honorable one, I won’t ask you to leave tonight, Mr. Hunter, but I expect your bags to be packed in the morning.”
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Then she did what she never would have done if Joey hadn’t been there. She turned her back on Logan Hunter and walked out of the room.
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Like he needed this to get any more complicated.
Logan rounded the corner into the kitchen still brooding over the incident the previous night. Developing a severe case of the hots for the alpha he had come here to evaluate did not sit well on his stomach. Doing the evaluation promised to be complex enough as it was. He didn’t need the added complication of a constant erection. Nor did it help much to find out that the alpha he had the hots for, the one he was here to evaluate, tasted like she’d be hitting her heat on the night of the next full moon.
Could you say, “shit hitting the fan,” maybe?
“Good morning, Mr. Hunter. Can I get you some breakfast before you leave?”
Logan glanced in the direction of the question and saw Honor’s cousin, the small, quiet one who had interrupted them last night, backed up into a corner where two sides of counter converged. She held a pair of tongs before her like a weapon and shifted nervously when his gaze fixed on her.