He wasted about half a millisecond wondering about it before his instincts kicked him in the ass. He didn’t care if this woman was from another planet. He still wanted inside her. Bad.
Shooting Logan a sharp glare, he caught the door before it could swing closed behind Miss No-Time-to-Chat. “That was only the first pitch,” he said. “Next one goes over the fence.”
Ignoring his friend’s snort, he disappeared through the doors and into the night, intent on pursuit and capture.
* * * * *
Hello,
Twilight Zone,
it looks like I’ve come to visit
, Missy thought even as she pulled herself out of Graham’s arms and darted outside. She wondered if she had conjured the encounter just by fantasizing about him earlier. That was the sort of storyline the Zoners really went for, right? And since she’d just finished reminding herself how entirely uninterested Graham had been in her before fifteen seconds ago, an alternate reality made the most sense of any explanation she managed to conjure. Either that, or she’d dreamed up the whole thing. Now that explanation had logic and all sorts of sensible possibilities.
Jogging across the living room with lights blazing and civilized, carpet-covered hardwood had been tough enough in her heels, but Missy quickly found jogging across the pitch-black patio to be impossible. Reggie and Dmitri must have assumed no one would want to go outside in the unseasonably cold spring night, because they hadn’t left a single outside light burning. That might be fine for the other guests, but for Missy it threatened to break her ankles.
She stumbled to a halt on the uneven brick and debated kicking off her shoes and running barefoot. Then she noticed the cold of the masonry seeping up through her soles and discarded the idea. All her friends wore heels as well. The going wouldn’t be any faster for them, so if luck stayed with her, she might still be able to out-walk them.
She peered into the darkness around her and blinked, trying to force her eyes to adjust to the dim light. The high, garden walls blocked most of the streetlights, and since the moon was barely a new crescent in the sky, she didn’t even have that light to illuminate her path. The day anyone could see stars in the night sky in New York City would be the day after it sank into the mouth of the Hudson.
Christine Warren
Fur Factor
15
Wishing for the enormous purse she usually carried, complete with the flashlight she stocked for just this sort of emergency, Missy cursed the tiny clutch her friends had provided to go with the slinky, black dress and began to pick her way slowly toward the gate to the street beyond. If she could just get a cab before her friends caught up with her, she could be back in her apartment and her flannel PJs inside twenty minutes.
Add a cup of cocoa laced with Bailey’s, and she might once again be a happy camper.
The hand that clamped around her upper arm and dragged her to a halt dashed her hopes of happiness, and startled her so badly, she squealed. Not screamed, not shrieked. Squealed, like one of her girlish students confronted with an inquisitive gerbil. Embarrassed, she spun around to face her pursuer and found herself looking up into Graham Winter’s too-handsome face.
Oh, Lordy,
she thought, swallowing hard past the knot in her throat.
I
have
just
entered the
Twilight Zone.
Why else would he keep looking at me like that? Unless I died of
embarrassment from wearing that dress and this is my eternal reward…
Now that would be a heaven worth dying for, she decided, even while her logical mind told her to get a grip and find out what he really wanted, because as much time as she had spent noticing the mouthwatering werewolf over the past six weeks, she felt positive he’d never even realized she existed. When he paid any attention to Reggie’s friends at all, it usually consisted of circumspectly ogling Ava or casually bantering with Danice. He’d never bothered to give Missy a first, let alone a second, glance, so why was he now looking at her like a particularly juicy soup bone?
“Um, hi,” she ventured when he failed to say a word. “Did you want something?” She saw a flash in his sexy, green eyes and realized she shouldn’t have been able to see much of anything in the dark. Were his eyes
glowing
?
She tried to back up a step, but he held her firmly. She cleared her throat. “It’s very nice to see you again, Graham, but I was just leaving. Maybe I’ll see you around some other time. Buh-bye.”
She twisted halfway toward freedom before his hand on her arm stopped her.
Looking back at him, she saw his mouth turn down in a scowl.
“When have I seen you before?” he demanded, his tone of voice less than happy.
Now that was proof positive about how little attention Graham had ever paid to her. She’d been Reggie’s maid of honor, and he’d been Dmitri’s best man. They’d walked down the stinking aisle together, and he didn’t remember who she was?
Miffed, and more than a little hurt, she tugged at her arm and scowled back at him.
“Around. I’m a friend of Reggie’s.”
“Where are you going?”
She gave up trying to yank her arm away and began trying to pry up his fingers one by one. They stayed stubbornly attached to her flesh. “I was going home,” she grumped, “until you decided to go all Conan the Barbarian on me.”
“Why were you in such a hurry? You ran right past me.” Christine Warren
Fur Factor
16
“Actually, I ran right into you, but that’s neither here nor there,” she said, looking around as if she could wish a crowbar into appearing close by. Nothing else seemed likely to break his grip. “Like I said, I need to get home. There are some people here I’d rather not see, if you must know.”
Impossible as it seemed, his scowl deepened. “A man people?” She started to shake her head then caught herself. “What business is it of yours?” He responded to her defiance by jerking her body closer and breathing in like he was trying to inhale her or something. He planted his other hand on her ass, pressing her hips against him until she could feel the thick length of his erection prodding her through their clothes. “I’d like to make it my business,” he growled, and oh my God, was his hand
kneading her ass
? “I’d like to make everything about you my business, from the taste of the juices that drip down your thighs when you’re hot for me, to the sounds you make when you come. That means I want to know if I have to get rid of some moron before I stretch you out on my bed and fuck you.” Missy reeled at his answer. Of all the things he might have said to her, she couldn’t imagine one that would shock her more. The man who had been so unimpressed with her for six weeks that he couldn’t remember who she was, now wanted to do things to her she’d only imagined in her sexiest fantasies? Okay, where was Rod Serling?
She stiffened, because for a split second, it occurred to her that maybe Graham was supposed to be her Fix. She’d certainly fantasized about him enough lately, but the fantasy her friends had drawn for her third round had been about an intellectual type and playing doctor. Missy could no more picture Graham playing a detached medical professional than she could picture herself playing a whip-wielding dominatrix. Some things just exceeded the limits of her imagination.
There was no way Graham could be her Fix, so why had he suddenly decided he wanted the woman he’d never bothered to notice? Maybe this wasn’t the
Twilight Zone
; maybe she was on
Candid Camera
. She was about to look for a TV audience when she heard the door from the living room open and the sound of a woman’s high-heeled shoes tapping against the brick. Suddenly it didn’t matter why Graham wanted to take her away from the party, so long as he did it soon. Like now.
She stopped struggling to get away and instead let him press her up against his groin until she swore she could vouch for the fact that he’d been circumcised. “No moron,” she reassured him, struggling valiantly not to melt and run all over him like warm hollandaise sauce. If she could just get him to smuggle her away from the house before Ava found her, she could explain later about where they’d met before. “No man at all. You know, it is too bad that we’ve never gotten a chance to get to know each other, isn’t it? Since you brought it up, why don’t we get out of here and really take the opportunity to get acquainted?” Knowing she only had one chance to get him to rescue her before her friends reached them, she bit the bullet, took a deep breath and slid her hand down his chest, over his taut abs and down over the bulge beneath his fly until he went absolutely still and tense before her. “What do you say?” Christine Warren
Fur Factor
17
He didn’t say anything. He scooped her up in his brawny arms, tossed her over his shoulder and sprinted for the patio gate. Two minutes later they were three blocks away and still flying, and Missy was trying to figure out how to explain to the werewolf she’d just teased that she really didn’t intend to sleep with him.
Miracle, anyone?
* * * * *
He didn’t set her down until he reached his second floor bedroom. His house sat adjacent to Vircolac, the club he owned and operated for the Other population of New York, and on a Friday night like tonight, the club was loud and boisterous, but his bedroom was quiet, private and secluded. So secluded that Missy knew for certain no one would hear her if she screamed.
She didn’t particularly want to think about why she might decide to scream.
The minute her feet touched the floor, she scrambled backward, trying to put some distance between them. The difference between fantasizing about something and actually doing it had just hit home for her. With a vengeance.
Graham stalked after her, his head lowered, his powerful body moving lithely and inexorably toward her. He looked tight and coiled, like a cat ready to pounce, or a wolf ready to leap to the kill. The expression in his glowing, green eyes made Missy feel a lot like lunch.
“Um, Graham, I think we need to talk about this.” She kept her eyes on him, afraid to blink when he had that look of intent etched across his angular features.
“No talking,” he growled. His voice had lowered, becoming even rougher and deeper than she remembered, like honey-coated gravel. “Too late for talking. Time to fuck.”
She almost tripped over her own feet when she stepped off the edge of the carpet and met the bare, wood floor where it disappeared beneath the door. She backed steadily toward the hall. If she could just make it that far…
She did, thumping back against the door with an awkward “Oomf!” She’d been closer than she realized, but she hoped it had been close enough. Her trembling fingers closed over the cool, metal doorknob and began to turn. Before her nerves finished processing the signal from her brain, he surged forward and pinned her against the unyielding wooden surface.
Missy yelped. Her purse flew into a dark corner. She tried to pull back, but caught between Graham’s stony muscles and the closed door, she discovered a new appreciation for an old cliché.
Graham leaned forward, his late-night stubble rasping against her skin as he buried his face in her neck. His hot breath scalded her, and the feel of his mouth against her flesh made her shiver. When his lips parted and his teeth closed delicately over the Christine Warren
Fur Factor
18
tendon that ran from neck to shoulder, her shiver turned into a shudder, and her panting turned into a whimper. His rough tongue rasped her skin, and he groaned.
“The way you taste,” he growled, his hands gripping her hips, pulling her tight against his erection, kneading her hips with restless fingers. “So sweet. So hot. Want more.”
Oh, God!
Missy’s head dipped back without her permission, baring her throat to his hungry mouth. Her brain was telling her to scream, to run, to turn the damned doorknob and get the hell out of there. But her hormones were telling her to stay, to beg, to wrap her legs around his waist and hold on for the ride she might never be invited on again. Instead of doing either, she stood back against the door and trembled and panted and felt her juices soaking through the thin cotton of her panties.
“Smell so good,” he grunted, nuzzling around her neck to lap at the hollow at the base of her throat. He ran his tongue up the soft, white curve, and her throat spasmed beneath it in a convulsive swallow. “Wet, thick, creamy. Want it.” With every word, his voice became more guttural until she could barely understand what he was saying. But she understood the feel of his hands and his cock and his hot, hungry mouth.
He pinned her lower body to the door with his hips, freeing his hands to explore her. She felt one glide over her ribs and close around her breast, roughly squeezing the soft mound. The other reached up to tangle in her hair, angling her head into place as he swooped down and claimed her mouth in a kiss.
He ate at her, nibbling and tugging and sucking on her lips until they parted, then licking and teasing and taunting until they opened wider. His tongue plunged deep and took her. Missy moaned, and he stole the sound and swallowed it, taking it into himself as he forced himself inside. She didn’t require much force, though. All he had to do was flick his tongue against the roof of her mouth, and she opened wide and begged his tongue to enter her. He thrust it deep, over and over, in and out in the primal rhythms of sex.
It drove her crazy, the way he seemed determined to taste every inch of her mouth without allowing her to do the same. She’d dreamed of this so many times, and in all of those dreams, her favorite part had been when she’d gotten to savor the feel and the taste of him. Whimpering her displeasure, she waited until he thrust deep, then tangled her tongue with his and sucked. His flavor amazed her, as rich and dark as Turkish coffee, as addictive as caffeine and twice as stimulating. Abandoning her grip on the doorknob, she wrapped both arms around his shoulders and pulled herself up against him.
Growling, his sounds both a threat and a promise, he wedged his foot between hers and forced her legs apart. His knee came up high between them until it forced the hem of her clinging skirt to rise along the surface of her thighs. Already stressed beyond its design, the dress abandoned all pretense and rolled up like a window shade to settle in a narrow band around her waist.