Haunted Sanctuary (Green Pines Sanctuary) (18 page)

She tugged at the top button on his shirt, easing it undone. “First I have to be naked.”

A hint of a smile curved the corners of his lips. “Then why are you undressing me?”

Growling, Eden closed her teeth on his lower lip and ripped her own shirt open. Buttons popped off, disappearing beneath the pine needles and fallen leaves, and she let the rent fabric drift to the ground to join them.

Jay cupped her ribcage and brushed his thumb over the lace of her bra. “I like this. It’s very pretty, but I’m about to rip it.”

“If you don’t, I will.”

“On second thought…” He slipped his fingers under the strap and tugged it off her shoulder. “That won’t help you control your transformation.”

The adrenaline boiling through her veins made that clear, but she still felt a stab of disappointment. “Later,” she rasped, tugging her jeans open. “The houses will be soundproofed when we get back.”

“If Stella’s half as good as she says she is.” He grasped the tab of her zipper and jerked it down.

Every move was a tease. Foreplay, even with sex as a far distant goal. He was playing with her, stroking desire and taunting her wolf, bringing both to the surface as fear and nerves drifted away. Eden fumbled with her bra and groaned as he knelt and took off her shoes.

He stayed at her feet, staring up at her, as he slid her jeans and panties down her legs at the same time. “You feel it, now get control of it. Wrap around it, Eden, and make it yours.”

Her skin tingled. Constricted. Or maybe it hadn’t changed, but she was growing. Either way, her body didn’t fit anymore. She swayed and caught her balance on Jay’s shoulders, and his breath spilled across her bare abdomen.

Hers. The power had to be hers. Clenching her eyes shut, she tried to gain control of the rising power. Her wolf snarled, and the pressure turned to pain. “I can’t,” she growled, her hands spasming. Her fingers twisted painfully, and she whimpered. “She’s stronger than me. She’s going to rip me apart.”

He rose and pressed his forehead to hers. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t fight, honey. This is just another part of
you
.”

Control her power without fighting the wolf. As if it was that easy, like flexing a muscle she’d never used before. “Can you let me feel it through the bond?”

“I can.” Jay released her and stepped back, already unbuttoning his shirt.

If Jay undressing her had been foreplay, Jay undressing himself was out-and-out pornography. Grinding her way to an embarrassingly public orgasm against his thigh suddenly seemed tame. Innocent.

This was dirty promise. Jay bared his body in stages, his hot gaze never leaving her. Broad shoulders. Strong chest with dark hair that her fingers itched to touch. Flexing muscles. Lean waist. And lower…

Human shyness screamed for her to avert her gaze. But Jay kicked his pants away and stood before her, naked and smugly self-assured. Eden had never fully appreciated the seductive lure of a shamelessly aroused man.

She did now.

Jay bent low, the smooth arch of his spine rippling as the bone and muscle beneath began to stretch and reform. He closed his eyes and whispered her name. “Feel it, Eden. The most natural thing in the world.”

He began to shift, but instead of pain his features remained relaxed, almost beatific. He was at peace, and that peace flowed through their connection and into her. When he finally stood before her on four paws, that peace melted into sheer exultation.

He tipped back his head and howled.

Eden sank to her knees and reached for him, sliding her shaking fingers through the fur at his neck. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, awed.

Somewhere in the woods nearby echoed an answering howl, and Jay butted his head against her side.

Closing her eyes, Eden followed the whispers of peace, searching inside herself for a place that resonated with the same tangle of human and beast. The place where they were joined, where her wolf waited with growing impatience.

She brushed
something
, and heat flooded her limbs. Fire, burning painful enough to drive a cry from her lips. Pain enveloped her, froze the air in her lungs so that she couldn’t even whimper, couldn’t beg Jay for help because this
hurt
, hurt like she was breaking, broken, splitting out of her skin—

Panic gripped her, and she huffed in oxygen and used it to unleash her terror in a wild scream that echoed off the trees as a howl instead of another human cry.

When she lowered her head, Jay was there, his shoulder against hers. He nudged the side of her muzzle with his nose and backed away, his tail held high.

Muzzle.

She took a tentative step. Her paws slipped on the pine needles, and she thumped to the forest floor in an awkward sprawl of legs. For one disorienting moment, she was trapped, she was Eden in a wolf’s body, her senses a jumble of unfamiliar input and mounting panic.

Then she inhaled, dragging in the scent of the woods and the smell of her partner—her mate—and the wolf surged. Pain snapped through her chest, followed by a flood of relief, like a badly set bone had been jerked into alignment. She was no longer human or wolf.

She was human
and
wolf.

Surging to her feet, Eden bounded toward Jay, crashing into his side with a giddy lack of concern. She nipped at his flank and danced away, daring him to follow her, to play with her.

He lunged after her with a soft growl, his jaws closing lightly on her tail. Then he raced past her as a short yap blended with a lower howl to rise in the night—an invitation, one Eden felt in her bones.

She followed him. She couldn’t do anything else.

A large, reddish-brown wolf broke free of the trees ahead of them. Power rushed before him, whipping through the trees, a wary, restrained strength that could only belong to Fletcher.

Jay eased between them, his ears straight and his gaze steady. He seemed to be both welcoming and warning Fletcher at the same time, a notion confirmed when he growled with a slight baring of teeth.

Mine. This one is mine.

Yes, that was how it should be.

Fletcher didn’t back down, but he did back off, giving Jay and Eden space as more wolves appeared. Their forms were unfamiliar, but Eden felt them with that same newly awakened sense that told her when Lorelei was uneasy or Mae frightened. A taste in the air, an aura she couldn’t quite see.

Colin felt strong and a little wild, his danger tempered by the way he fell into place at Jay’s side with clear deference. Shane hung back, keeping a bit of distance between them as Lorelei—it
had
to be Lorelei—moved closer to Eden’s side, her head held low.

Submissive, but not so much as Mae. Kaley danced around her, encouraging her to play, but Mae crept forward, her ears flat against her head, tail tucked low. She stopped a few feet short of Eden and Jay and rolled to her back, baring her neck and belly.

One by one, they circled and sniffed, stepped into the places they’d spoken of as humans—dominant, subordinate—but speaking had been different. Words compared to these actions, to the way Fletcher and even Kaley moved more carefully than the others. Wary.

Watching.

As humans, they could choose their paths. As wolves, it would always come down to this. Instinct, the gut knowledge of what was right and proper…and what was undeniably wrong.

Eden barely knew them. She barely knew herself. But she knew what she was, here and now. Leader. Protector.

Alpha.

Tilting her head back, she let joy carry her voice, let it lift through the trees and into the bright afternoon sky. A second howl joined hers, lower and rougher, a familiar sound from her childhood. Zack welcomed her to his world with a howl that held everything—affection and gratitude, loss and regret.

And—for one terrifying second—farewell.

The moment slipped away as a third wolf joined, and a fourth. It was beautiful, an eerie harmony that swelled in her heart. A song that promised she’d found the place she belonged. When she launched herself into the trees, carried forward by the lingering music, she didn’t worry that she’d find herself running alone.

She’d never be alone again.

Chapter Eleven

Some things never changed, and that included the four of them.

Jay dodged a playful lunge and a nip from Shane and wanted to laugh when Kaley took the other wolf down with a triumphant shove. It came out as a barking yip, a reminder that he’d gone far too long without shedding his skin like this.

He’d changed every month, of course, as most wolves did, but running alone was nothing compared to running with a pack. They’d chased each other as the sun dipped below the horizon, as the sky faded from bright blue to purple and then to an inky darkness that spread out over the woods like a blanket.

Now, Jay had a different chase in mind. The others headed back toward the house, but he urged Eden to the barn instead. His blood pulsed with heat, the kind that would carry over to his human form.

They needed to be alone.

Eden nipped at his flank and charged past him, challenge singing along their bond. She’d found her place in the pack, but her wolf still wanted to be wooed by her mate. Stalked and claimed, won by right of strength.

She ran into the shadows deeper inside the barn, but Jay stopped and knelt. The change flowed through him, harder than before because of the call of the moon…and easier because of what awaited him.

Awaited
them
.

He rasped her name as he rose. He shut the wide door, latched it and turned.

Labored breathing. A whimper. Moonlight spilled through the barn as her magic rose, and she emerged from the shadows as a human, skin and hair equally pale in the silver light.

Not her eyes, though. Her eyes glowed, molten gold and hot enough to set the barn on fire. “Jay.”

He took a single step toward her. “Do you want to wait?”

“I don’t care if the whole pack lines up to peer through the windows.” Her fingers flexed as she took a step toward him, graceful and predatory. “We’re not mated. Not truly.”

But they would be. The pounding in his blood demanded it, so Jay reached for her, tangling his fingers in her hair. “You won’t submit.”

“I know,” she agreed, dragging her nails down his chest. “And you forgot your handcuffs.”

“Another time.” He’d have her, he just had to fight for the right to call her his. The possibilities made him even hotter, and he licked a slow path over her jaw.

Her hand reached his hip. She dug in, scratching his skin, and her chest rose and fell with each sharp breath. “I don’t know the rules. I don’t know how hard I can fight without you giving up. I don’t know if it’s fucked up that I have to wonder that.”

“I won’t give up.” He murmured the words against her mouth. “Not now, Eden. Not ever.”

“Good.” Her tongue flicked against his mouth before she bit him, sinking her teeth into his lower lip with a satisfied snarl.

His body reacted with lightning speed, hardening before he could take another breath. He wrenched her head back and hummed against her throat. “You said you wanted to play.”

“Is this how we play?” She twisted before he could answer, testing his grip on her hair by trying to lunge away.

He let her go, his hands falling by his sides. “Play. Stalk. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Stalk.” Her glazed gaze seemed to judge the distance to the opposite side of the barn. Her breasts lifted and fell with her unsteady breaths. “You promised you’d chase me,” she whispered, the challenge covering fragile vulnerability. Then she bolted.

Finally.

He caught her by a hay bale piled high with extra items she’d brought from her house, including a stack of threadbare quilts. He locked one arm around her waist and lifted her high, nuzzled the back of her neck through her hair. “Say yes.”

“Yes.” It came out breathless. Hungry. “Yes, yes,
yes
.”

Jay pulled the top quilt from the bale and unfurled it with a snap of his wrist. It landed askew, lumped up on two corners, but he dragged Eden down to it anyway. “I’ll do this in a bed too. Wherever you want.”

“Your truck?” She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth to her arched neck. “I always wanted to make out with you in your truck.”

On a summer night, slick with sweat under their clothes. Jay groaned. “You like that?”

“Mmm.” She shivered when he touched her, her entire body seemingly hypersensitive. “Groping. Panting until the windows are all foggy.”

“Like teenagers?” He licked her skin, then hovered over the spot where her pulse beat at the base of her throat. “You want me to mark you.”

She clenched her hands, tugging at his hair. Pulling him closer. “Like you did the first night.”

He’d done it then to satisfy instinct. Now, his hands shook as he pressed his lips to her pulse. “Not exactly like that. More.”

“Tell me.” She rocked her hips, ground up against him already slick and ready. “Show me.”

He caught her wrists, pinned them above her head and bit her—hard. She cried out, back arching, and for one dizzying moment the bond between them slammed open. Eden rushed through it, alive and wild, open to him. Utterly unprotected, utterly vulnerable.