Red Snow Bride (Wolf Brides Book 2) (14 page)

Jeremiah

Very few times had anyone managed to shock me through the years, but Lorelei had just done it in a big way. I’d mostly invited her along to draw a wide-eyed look right out of her. Through the days we’d spent together, I’d latched onto that doe-eyed look she graced me with when I surprised her. Admittedly, I’d been saying and doing little things so I could watch her pretty face transform from reserved and passive to animated. Her eyes were the color of fine whiskey and surrounded by all those dark eyelashes—well, she nearly knocked me over with a look sometimes. Add that to the staggering fact that my wolf hadn’t tried to eat her last night, and I’d been floating on a cloud of downright jubilation since the early morning hours.

My wolf had gone straight for her. He could hear her breathing and smell her fear and still, he’d sniffed around the tent and when he was satisfied she was safe, he left. I remembered because I’d been present. He’d let me share his head space for the first time since Anna had passed.

Now, I wasn’t a reckless man. I had Luke sittin’ in the tree above the tent to make sure she was safe from me, but even he’d relaxed and eventually left for the barn when I’d let her be. There wasn’t a better test for my psychotic wolf other than to put her out there in plain sight and see what he did.

I was as close to flying as a man could get.

And then after the best day I’d had in years, Lorelei just said she’d go skinny dippin’ with me? I must have fallen into a patch of four leaf clovers without knowing it somewhere along the way.

Listening to her stumble through the dark behind me was a lesson in patience. I wanted to help her, to hold her hand and make sure she didn’t fall, but there was a very real risk she’d balk at my touch and change her mind. She’d done it time and time again. I didn’t have a guess what her last husband had done to cause her so much fear of affection, but he’d sure done a number on her confidence. I’d gift it back to her if it was the last thing I did, but going would be slow. Damage like that wouldn’t be undone in a week, or a few months, or a year even. She’d have to be reconditioned to accept that she was worthy of a love. I didn’t know her entire story, but no small piece of me wanted to kill that rat bastard Delaney for giving her one to tell.

The creek was across the clearing and through the woods. As soon as the house was finished, I’d build her a soaking tub so she didn’t have to bathe like a mountain man. She deserved better and I was going to give it to her.

The night was much colder without the sun to warm the land, and the chilly breeze rocked the bare tree branches that creaked and groaned in a lullaby only the forest knew the cadence to. An old hoot owl asked who was trespassing in his woods, and the sound of scurrying field mice traveled from the dry leaf blanket of the wilderness floor to my oversensitive ears. Though the night woods likely seemed quiet and unsettling to Lorelei, for me it was vibrant and humming with life. The sound of the babbling brook was soothing and as we approached, I hung my towel on a nearby low-hanging branch.

Her brows were knitted in fierce stubbornness as she passed and without a word, she slowly began to unpin her hair in what was the most seductive dance I’d ever seen. Tendril after tendril of raven-dark hair fell and tickled her hips. She never looked back but she had to have known I was watching. I shed my clothes as she unlaced her dress and by the time it billowed in a pile around her ankles, I was ready to race into that half frozen creek. The sight of her stopped me in my tracks.

I’d seen her body last night, but this was different. The moonlight caressed her skin and made it glow as she dipped her toe into a lapping wave. The wind kicked up and gooseflesh rippled across her back.

“I can’t swim in there,” she mumbled.

“Oh, no you don’t.” I catapulted at her before she could step back, and in one fluid motion I scooped her up and jumped into the deepest part of the creek I knew would submerge us.

“Jeremiah!” she gasped as we broke the surface. The cold and shock leeched away any anger from her tone, and the rasping of my name against her lips brought me a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

The freezing water was needles against every square inch of skin but I’d been prepared for it. Lorelei, on the other hand, panted with the pain and shock of it.

“Not quite as romantic as you’d imagined, huh?” I said.

Her teeth chattered away. “Give me the soap so I can get this over with.”

When her feet touched the rocky bottom, I scrambled for the leather pouch I’d dropped on the shore line. As I turned with the lumpy bar of lye soap in my hand, Lorelei sank into water up to her nostrils. Her fixed eyes were as big as fine porcelain tea plates as she raked her gaze over my bare skin. I could no more stop the satisfied grin that commandeered my face than I could the tiny water droplets from freezing in my hair. She could give a man the hungriest looks I’d ever seen on a woman.

We scrambled to scrub our numbing bodies in what had to be the fastest bath in the history of the world. She made little squeaking sounds as she rushed to lather her hair, and stumbling over a slick river rock, I rushed to help. In the springtime, I’d take my time and enjoy her wet hair in my hands, but right now, my instincts were screaming to get her out of the water and warm again. When her hair was rinsed thoroughly, she stumbled for shore.

Lorelei fell on the craggy rocks before she could reach the warmth of the towel, and the little gasp she emitted as her knees hit earth was too much.

To hell with not touching her.

Even a patient hunter had his limits.

****

Lorelei

Jeremiah was there almost before my knees had even scraped the rocks. It should’ve hurt but I couldn’t feel anything but the pricking of cold numbness from my neck down. Then, fast as a lightning strike, he was there lifting me away from the jagged stones that cried for a taste of my tender skin.

“I can’t feel my legs very well,” I whispered like talking in a normal voice would wake up the forest. Like it would chase away the magic somehow.

“I’ve got you.” He whipped the towel from the tree and dried me off with a rough hand and before I even had a chance to reach for my dress, he’d thrown one of the furs he’d snatched from our bed around my body. “Shhhh,” he told my chattering teeth as he rubbed life back into my arms through the blanket.

Maybe it was the enchantment of the woods playing tricks on my eyes or maybe Jeremiah really did just run as hot as a steam engine because under the light of the moon, a thin veil of steam wafted from his bare, moist skin. He wasn’t even shivering. Before I could chicken out, I threw my arms, and the fur, around him and hugged him close. He wasn’t exactly a campfire, but he was certainly warmer than me and selfishly, I absorbed as much as I could.

A contented sound rumbled from his chest as he pressed my back against a tree. He was the noisiest man I’d ever met. He had a sound for every emotion and though it was strange and new, my body unceasingly reacted to it. This soft noise ran a delicious shiver down my spine. His back was firm and strong under my hands and slowly, I ran my nails down the length of him, raising gooseflesh with my touch.

He pressed his hips against me, and his thick erection pressed into my belly while he looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on. I wasn’t repulsive or unsavory to him like I had been to Daniel. On the contrary, my touch sped up Jeremiah’s breathing until he finally rested his face against my neck and kissed it gently.

How could a man make me feel so much? Every single fiber in my body reached for him, like I could never get close enough to be completely satiated.

“Lorelei,” he rumbled against my sensitive ear.

I could hear the question in it, and I lifted my chin. I wanted him to see the truth in my eyes as I told him, “I want you, Jeremiah. I’m ready.”

The thick cords of muscle in his throat moved as he swallowed. I thought he’d take me right away, but he didn’t. Instead, he lowered his lips to mine and cupped my sex with his warm palm. A soft sound came from my throat unbidden as he ran his finger along my wet seam. This was scandalous. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was doing, only that it felt good for him to touch me.

My knees grew weak as he slowly slid his long finger inside of me, and his other arm held me tight so I wouldn’t go down to the gravelly ground at our feet. His lips trailed down my neck and I lifted my chin and stared at the moon through the tree branches above. He eased out of me, and pressed upward again, and pleasure burst through me as his knuckle rasped against a sensitive spot. The man was going to bring me to my knees.

If I’d had any doubt that what Daniel had done with me was wrong, those were laid to rest under Jeremiah’s tender caresses. This was how making love should be.

My new husband wasn’t stalling.

He was preparing me.

I should’ve been embarrassed at how wet I was becoming with each stroke he pressed his finger into me, but as his erection grew impossibly hard and thick against my belly, it was difficult to hate what excited the man I was falling in love with. He liked me like this. The frantic way he nipped my bottom lip, and the helpless sound that came from his throat as I found the confidence to wrap my hand around his shaft and pull upward said he needed me just like I needed him.

His teeth grazed my sensitive earlobe, and he cupped my neck with his hand as he pressed into me up to his knuckle. “I’m going to find every sensitive place on you, woman,” he rumbled softly. “I’m going to make you feel how much I care about you, and when I’m through, you won’t be afraid of my affection anymore. You hear me?”

The chill was banished with his words. Between the confidence in his promise, the blanket wrapped around us and his warm body pressed against mine, there was no room for winter. There was no room for doubt.

Something was happening to me. Something amazing and terrifying all at once. I rocked my hips against his hand in order to get closer to…something. Tingling pressure was building and I wanted more. I wanted everything.

“Jeremiah, please…” What was I even begging him for?

He pulled his touch away from me so quickly, it made me gasp at the disappointment. I’d been so close to the edge of something big. Something that I knew in my heart would change me from the bones out.

With a feral sounding growl, he lifted the back of my knee and pressed the head of his cock inside of me. Slow, shallow thrusts had me clawing at his back and stretching up to kiss him.

“Tell me what you like,” he said low.

“This,” I breathed, “but deeper.”

He pressed into me until I was filled and stretched around him. Heavens and stars, he felt so good as he pressed against that sensitive place he’d found earlier. His breath shook now, and his thrusts became slightly faster with each stroke. The muscles in his arms bunched and flexed as he held me tighter. And the pressure…oh, that beautiful, tingling, stomach warming pressure was back and building with the friction of him burrowing deeply inside of me.

I wanted to feel every powerful thrust of his hips against mine, so I dropped my hands to the smooth, hot skin of his lower back. My eyes rolled back in my head as I arched against him time and time again, meeting every stroke he had to give me.

“No, Lorelei. Open your eyes. I want you to see what you do to me.”

Jeremiah eased back just enough for me to see his eyes. They were lighter than I remembered, more the color of good scotch, but perhaps it was a trick of the moonlight. His jaws clenched and he wouldn’t release my gaze as he took me harder, and faster.

“You’re so…damned…” He gritted his teeth as I dug my nails into his back.

I was going to explode.

“You’re beautiful,” he rasped.

My body clamped around him and I closed my eyes against the rampant pulsing pleasure that took me. His shaft swelled inside, and warm wetness shot into me as he tensed and snarled out something in a language I couldn’t understand. Over and over, he bucked into me. The blanket slipped down, exposing my back to the rough tree bark behind me, but I didn’t care about that right now. I didn’t care about anything other than how stunning my husband was in full rut. He gritted out my name and buried his face against my neck as he filled me one last time.

I was warm and safe here, cradled in my lover’s arms. Something opened up inside of me, like flower petals reaching for the sunlight.

Jeremiah was my husband, but in this moment, he was more somehow.

My knees finally gave, and with my arms wrapped around his neck, Jeremiah carried me back through the woods to our temporary home. His footing was sure as if he’d walked this trail a hundred times in the dark and in much less time than it took us to stumble to the creek, we were back in the warmth of our tent and under a pile of furs.

He played distractedly with a curling tendril of hair that always tried to stay in my face. Here, with my husband propped up on one elbow, looking more relaxed and happy than I’d ever seen a man before, I counted my lucky stars. They’d been many since I decided to answer his advertisement those months ago. He’d picked me. This man who was a more beautifully constructed and masculine creature than any person had a right to be had chosen me for his wife. His help-keep. His equal. This man who was a tender lover, gentleman, and loyal brother had chosen me to bring under his fierce protection.