Authors: Christine Warren
Giving up the last of her restraint, she ducked her head forward and sank her teeth into Logan’s shoulder, directly over the spot where she’d bitten last night in the kitchen. Holding on, she released her grip on his cock only long enough to unzip her own jeans. The rasping sound seemed to echo around them, then her jeans fell away under his hands and her legs were winding back around his waist. She reached again for his cock, but he was there before her, guiding himself to her liquid entrance. He paused briefly, his hot gaze capturing hers, before he tightened his hands on her hips and plunged deep.
Her cry, all hoarse triumph and blatant challenge, rang through the clear air around them. Logan grunted and leaned into her more heavily, pinning her to the rough tree trunk as he began thrusting inside her.
Honor squirmed to get closer, ignoring the scrapes and patches of raw skin the rough tree bark left on her back. Her awareness encompassed no more than him. Logan. The man against her, around her, inside her. The man who felt like home, whose body had been made to fill hers.
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She thrust back at him, frantic to take him, all of him. His cock stretched her wide, filled her to the heart, and still she wanted more. She braced her hands against his shoulders and pushed, trying to get the leverage to increase the force of his thrusts. He growled a warning and pushed her hard against the tree. She snarled in his ear, but before she could bite, he shifted. His hands snaked down between them and spread her thighs even wider. He hooked his elbows behind her knees and pressed her legs up and back, and she felt his next thrust in the back of her throat.
God, he felt incredible inside her. Hot and thick and hard and so perfect her head spun with it. She felt the truth pounding at her in time with his movements, but she shoved it back in fear. She did not need or want this right now. Sure, her life sucked these days, but it sucked on her terms. If she gave in and accepted the truth she could feel haunting her, her terms would cease to exist. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. The only terms Logan Hunter intended to play by were his own, and Honor knew that giving in would cost her more than she was willing to pay.
She could feel his muscles tensing beneath her clutching hands. She felt the slickness of sweat and of blood where her nails had bitten deep and carved furrows in his broad back. He began to thrust harder, if that were possible, to quicken his motions until he moved with blurring speed and force and Honor had to abandon her efforts to keep up. She simply held on for dear life. Higher he drove them, and faster, until Honor could feel the tension twist in her belly like a tightened rubber band, ready to snap.
She forced her eyes open and met his gaze. His eyes looked hot and wild, glowing a feral gold with hunger and instinct. She knew what he was about to do, and she couldn’t let it happen. Her body tensed, the first wave of orgasm gathering inside her, preparing to break. Logan growled in response to her body’s instinctive tightening and his hands bit deeply into her hips, leaving 52
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bruises where tanned fingers gripped creamy flesh. He shifted abruptly and forced her hips to tilt upward until the base of his cock rubbed against her clit as he thrust, and Honor broke.
The climax seized her by the scruff of her neck and shook her like a disobedient cub. Her pussy clenched around him, milking his cock in hot, slick motions, dragging him into ecstasy behind her.
She felt the moment of his explosion and twisted her torso to the side, raising one arm to deflect his bite, catching it on the muscular flesh of her bicep, rather than on the shoulder where he’d been aiming. She heard his muffled roar, but his jaw had already clenched shut around her arm and he couldn’t pull away. He mouthed the skin as his body emptied itself inside her, a growl rumbling low in his throat. Honor hung there, pinned between the tree and his shuddering body for endless minutes until his tension eased.
He raised his head to glare at her, brown eyes still glowing an amber gold with the aftermath of his climax. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You shouldn’t have tried to mark me.” She shivered, suddenly aware that they were all but naked outside in the stoneyard in the middle of winter. Never mind that steam billowed off them in a hazy fog; she wanted her clothes.
“You are mine.” Logan shook her, staring into her eyes as if he could will her to agree with him.
“I don’t belong to anyone. Least of all you. I bear no man’s mark, and I intend to keep it that way.”
He snorted. “What are you? The Virgin Alpha? I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but your name isn’t Elizabeth.”
“It doesn’t need to be.” She shoved hard at his shoulders, and he grunted, but didn’t release her. “Let me go and get the hell off my property. We’ve said everything we need to say, and I need to go take a frickin’ shower.” 53
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His jaw snapped shut loud enough for Honor to hear the click. When he spoke from between clenched teeth, it sounded as if it came from a wolven larynx, not a human one. “Not yet. I’m not done. You
will
be my mate, Honor.
No matter what I have to do to convince you.” He carried her to the floor of the clearing and went ahead with the convincing. All Honor could do was moan.
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“This doesn’t change anything, you know.”
Logan sighed and stretched, shifting his weight partially of Honor’s limp body and onto the rough ground. “I never thought it had.” He might have hoped, but he hadn’t really let himself believe any different.
In the twelve hours or so that he’d known Honor Tate, he’d come to realize she could teach stubborn to Missy Winters.
Logan winced at the reminder of his own pack and why he’d come to Connecticut in the first place. It unfortunately hadn’t been to roll around the forest with the mouth-watering alpha of the White Paw Clan, but to decide if she had what it took to lead her pack. Something about which he hadn’t yet made up his mind.
“Just so we’re clear.” She pushed him off of her, forcing him to roll onto his back so she could sit up and brush the bits of leaves and dirt from her skin.
“Now when are you leaving?”
He groaned and covered his eyes with his forearm. “Look, I think we’ve come to a Mexican standoff.” He shifted to look at her and tried desperately not to get distracted by the sight of her bare breasts and the marks he’d made on them, most of which were already fading. “You’re not going to change your mind about having me here, and I’m not going to change my mind about staying. So I have a proposal for you.”
“Does it involve you catching the next train back to the city?”
“No. And that’s not just because I drove here, either.” He saw her looking around for the remains of her T-shirt and felt a ping of conscience. He handed 55
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her his mostly intact, if buttonless, shirt and watched her shrug into it. “I intend to stay until I find out what I came here to find out.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say. No one here will cooperate with you no matter what you think your job is.” She tied the ends of the shirt into a knot below her breasts and reached for her jeans. “You’re wasting your time.” All of a sudden he realized she’d never been wearing a bra and his body responded in a pretty predictable fashion. He drew one knee up to his chest and rested his forearm across it. “It’s my time to waste, but I don’t think that’s what I’ll be doing, anyway. But here’s what I’m thinking.” He waited until she fastened her jeans and turned to him with an impatient expression. “The full moon is in three days.” Along with the peak of her heat, but he wasn’t thinking about that. “And it will be the first howl since your father’s death. It would be a perfect opportunity for me to see the dynamics of the pack and to get the answers to the Silverback alpha’s questions. If you can put up with me for another seventy-two hours, I’ll leave after that without a fuss.”
“Why? Give me a good reason. I have every right to order a non-pack member out of pack territory. I don’t have to let you stay.”
“You do if you want to avoid a clan war.”
He saw her pause, saw his words sink in and make her think. He kept his gaze level, but unthreatening. He needed her to know he meant what he said, but he didn’t want to come across as any more hard-nosed or unyielding than he had to. He walked a delicate tightrope, but his balance had always been good.
“Winters would really take it that far? That’s insane. It shouldn’t matter to him who leads this pack, so long as they aren’t intending to lead it into his business. And trust me, I’m not. So why does he care?”
“The White Paw pay fealty to the Silverback. It’s his job to care.” Honor rolled her eyes. “I so don’t need this shit. Not now. Not here. Not a fucking chance.”
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Logan shrugged. “You’ve got it anyway. Now what are you going to do about it?”
She slammed her feet into battered hiking boots with a snarled curse. “Right now, I’m going back to the house to change, and then I’m going back to work.
Some of us have real jobs where we have to be constructive and accomplish things.”
He suppressed a smile at that dig. She was cute when she was mad. And she’d probably rip his intestines out through his nostrils if he mentioned that fact. “Gotcha. I think I’m going to go get a shirt at least, and then maybe take a look around. See if I can meet some of the pack. You know, basically stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong. See you at dinner?” Logan watched her stalk off back toward the house, grinning a wolfish grin.
He hadn’t come here expecting to find his mate, but damned if it didn’t appear that was exactly what he’d done. He wondered what she’d say when he informed her they’d be getting married and having cubs together. If he knew her at all, he guessed what she’d say didn’t bear repeating. But what the hell? Logan Hunter loved a challenge. And this one looked to be a doozy.
* * * * *
By the time Logan gathered and donned what was left of his clothes—
namely his blue jeans, his boots and one sock—and made his way back to the main house, Honor was long gone. He hadn’t really expected anything different, but some days, he just couldn’t quell that involuntary burst of optimism.
He jogged up to his room, which he’d learned was across the hall and down three doors from Honor’s, and grabbed a change of clothes. It took a second to brush himself free of the debris he’d picked up from the ground in the stoneyard, 57
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but he figured better to take a moment now than spend half the day fighting with a twig in his trousers.
He was still buttoning up a new shirt as he made his way downstairs and into the kitchen. All his exercise from this morning had made him hungry, even if it was still technically an hour or so ‘til lunch. He didn’t find Joey in the kitchen as he’d expected, but he did find a brief note on the counter explaining the timing of meals, the contents of the refrigerator and that he was free to help himself to anything that wasn’t on the neatly printed menu beside the note. He took Honor’s cousin at her word and foraged in the fridge, emerging with a half a rabbit and a full duck breast, cooked beautifully rare.
Sitting at the small kitchen table, he made short work of his snack before he wiped the grease off his hands with a dishtowel and pulled out his cell phone.
He noted gratefully that he still got a pretty good signal out here in the woods and dialed Graham’s direct line at Vircolac.
“Vircolac,” a perky feminine voice announced. “We bring good things back to life.”
Logan snorted out a laugh. “What, is that a new ad slogan?”
“It’s still in testing. The first focus group yielded mixed results. How are you, Logan? Arrived safely in the wild, untamed north?”
“Missy, I’m only a hundred and thirty-six miles north of Manhattan, and the last yeti from these parts became a stockbroker back in eighty-seven. But I’m fine.
Thanks.”
“Spoilsport.” She sounded remarkably unfazed by the correction. “How are things going so far? Did the new alpha make a good first impression?” Logan’s mind instantly conjured up the sight of Honor silhouetted in the bathroom doorway the instant before she had noticed him. The light and steam behind her had outlined her in lush detail, emphasizing the soft curves of her 58
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breasts, those long legs, and the luscious flare of her hips. He felt his body stirring at the memory and cleared his throat. “I’m reserving judgment.” Missy snorted. “Just like a man. I assume you called to talk to my mate, not to me, right?”
The question caught Logan unaware. Not because the answer wasn’t yes, but because he realized that for the first time since he’d originally met Missy Roper Winters, he really would rather talk to her husband than to her. The epiphany almost knocked him over. Missy hadn’t caused the erection he could feel straining against his jeans—zip front, this time—as they talked; Honor had. He’d been fine until his mind had conjured up that image of the lithe brunette poised in the bathroom door wearing nothing more than a towel. And when he let his mind wander along its favorite path, he imagined Honor’s pale, creamy skin and dark, curling hair, not Missy’s blond, curvy figure. It amazed him.
“Logan?”
The quiet question shook him out of his meditation. “Right. Sorry, Miss.
Yeah, I do need to talk to Graham. Is he around?”
“Sure. He was just showing Ava the door. She stopped over to see Roarke, and Graham never rests easy until he’s seen her taxi pull away. I imagine he’ll be back any second.”
Logan could hardly blame Graham. Of all Missy’s close friends, Ava Markham inspired the greatest sense of fear and awe. An unrepentant matchmaker, she’d tried her hand at setting up just about everyone she knew at one time or another. Now, her erstwhile victims spent most of their time praying for the day when someone would turn the tables on her. “Right. Should I call back?”
“No, don’t worry about it. Here he is now.” 59