Wild (28 page)

Her nipples tightened beneath her light sweater, and she was beyond damp between her legs. Drew turned on a low light in the kitchen and left the rest of the room in darkness. Manny went into the kitchen area, opened the little refrigerator, and pulled out a bottle of white wine. The cupboard overhead yielded three wineglasses. He carried everything to the bedside table.

Filling the glasses, he handed one to Drew, another to Jules, and took one for himself. “To a night of adventure, Ms. Bennett. To you.” He tapped the rim of his glass to hers and then to Drew's.

Drew took a swallow, kicked off his shoes, and stretched his long legs out on the bed, leaned against the headboard, and held his glass of wine against his chest. He was a little over six feet tall, long and lean, with shadowed blue eyes and the face of an angel. He patted the bedspread beside him. “C'mon, Jules. Sharing a glass of wine in bed with two men has to be a good way to start.”

Manny slipped his hands around her waist from behind. “Not when she's wearing so many clothes.”

She turned her head and gave him a narrow-eyed glance, but she honestly couldn't believe what came out of her mouth. “Not nearly as many as you and Drew.”

Manny raised an expressive eyebrow. “She has a point, Drew. Strip.”

Drew made a show of it, setting his glass of wine aside and doing a sensual striptease that might have been almost comical under any other circumstances. Instead, Jules felt as if he was unwrapping a gift just for her. He got down to his silky-looking boxers that did nothing to hide the impressive package behind the dark blue fabric.

Nor did they hide the fact he was magnificently aroused.

Her breath had shortened to the point where she felt light-headed, but she turned to Manny and folded her arms over her chest. This, of course, raised two of her feminine assets and caught his attention immediately. He licked his lips, and her heart stuttered in her chest. When he grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and hauled it up and over his head, her mouth went dry. Manny was a big man, tall and muscular with a light dusting of dark hair across his pecs and a darker line arrowing down and disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans.

He kicked off his shoes—she'd noticed that most of the guys wore moccasins and she wondered if they made them themselves—and then his hands paused at the snap to his faded denim jeans. When she raised an eyebrow, he laughed.

“Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.” His lazy grin actually sent shivers across her very warm arms. “I don't do this for just anybody, you know. Not like Drew. He'll drop 'em for just about anyone.”

She heard Drew snort, and she glanced over her shoulder in time to see him with his middle finger raised in Manny's direction. She rolled her eyes, and he laughed.

When she focused again on Manny, he was slipping those soft denims down his very long legs. Drew was pretty-boy handsome, but Manny was flat-out spectacular. Long, muscular legs with a dusting of dark hair, broad shoulders, muscled chest, and long, strong arms. Everything about him was oversized. She glanced at his black knit boxers that managed to hide very little, and she blinked. Definitely everything.

“Your turn.”

She nodded, mouth suddenly dry, best of intentions trapped in a maelstrom of self-doubt. She was a big girl, would never be slim and svelte like Dar, but she'd never had issues about her weight, either. She was athletic in high school and college, still ran and did yoga, worked out at the gym when she had time, but she had hips and boobs and a solid build, and she'd never once in her life felt as much on display as she did right now.

But she slipped her sweater over her head and reached behind herself to unhook her bra. Drew was already there. “Let me,” he said, and his breath was a warm kiss against her throat. Shivering when his hands stroked her shoulders, she was visibly trembling when his lips caressed the side of her neck as he carefully flipped the hooks and slipped the bra over her arms.

Her breasts were large, and the straps always left red marks on her shoulders, but he gently rubbed those with his thumbs before sliding his hands around to her front and cupping both breasts in his warm palms. She moaned, leaning her head back against his chest as Manny stepped closer. He slipped his fingers inside the elastic waistband on her skirt and tugged it down over her hips, leaving her in a pair of black bikini panties that matched her bra.

Drew's hands continued gently massaging her breasts, but he was plucking at her nipples now, and her desire for more rose incrementally. She didn't realize Manny had gone to his knees until she felt his warm breath against her.

Her trembling increased. No one had ever kissed her there. She had no idea what to expect, but whatever it was, she was certainly anxious to find out.

*   *   *

Manny knelt before Jules, his hands cupping her buttocks, his nose practically twitching from the sweet scent of her arousal. Her body was ripe and ready for him, her naturally full figure tempting in every way. Full breasts, wide hips, rounded thighs, the slight curve of her belly—his mind filled with visuals of burying himself in her sweet warmth, of sharing this bounty with Drew.

He glanced up, caught Jules watching him intently, her hands covering the backs of Drew's as he kneaded her breasts like a cat, pinching her nipples, all while tracing the line of her shoulder with his lips.

From the look on her face, it was working.

Smiling at Jules, he dipped his head and ran his tongue between her damp folds, tasting her for the first time. She was ambrosia, a feast for a starving man. Her body trembled, and he held her firmly, curling his tongue between her lips, around the slight protrusion of her clitoris.

She jerked when he found it, cried out, and arched her hips closer to his mouth. He dug his fingers gently into the cleft between her cheeks, holding her carefully so that he could tease and taste without Jules having to worry about such a simple thing as balance.

He concentrated on her clit, swirling his tongue around the tiny bud and then sucking it gently between his lips. Her trembling increased, the rate of her breathing, the thundering of her heart so noticeable to his wolf hearing.

Aroused like this, his wolf was closer to the surface, his senses so much more acute. His hearing, sense of touch, sense of smell. He inhaled, slipped his right hand between Jules's legs, and thrust two fingers deep inside her slick passage, curled them forward as he sucked even harder on her clit.

Her body jerked. She arched her back and cried out, a short, sharp scream of release. When the tension went out of her and she collapsed, it was into his waiting arms. Laughing with Drew, kissing Jules's sweet mouth, he rose to his feet with this lovely lady held tightly against his chest and carried her to the bed.

 

CHAPTER 9

Early Tuesday morning

It was after three in the morning when Zach gave up trying to sleep and made his decision. Meggie might never forgive him, but he hadn't realized how awful it would be with her gone. He was certain she'd changed her mind, that she didn't want to marry him.

He had to know.

He threw some clothes in an old backpack and was on the road before four. He turned off his phone because he knew if Meggie called she'd be totally pissed off to find out he was heading for Feral Passions.

There was always the chance she'd be glad to see him—at least, that's what he was banking on, but he missed her so much he'd be happy even to have her yelling at him.

Except Meggie didn't yell. All she'd ever done was love him with the kind of love he'd never known in his life. Certainly not from his parents. No, he loved his work, he was successful, and unlike his father, he hadn't had to act like a bastard to get here, but he could trace his growing success to the day he hired Meggie. She'd taken one look at his cluttered office and laughed. Damn, he missed her laugh, and it was only Tuesday. She'd left Sunday morning.

The woman was going to think he was certifiable. Maybe he was.

The hours passed quickly, but the closer he got, the more nervous he was about showing up unannounced in the middle of Meggie's bachelorette getaway. What if he pissed her off enough to cancel the wedding?

He really didn't want to think about that. Not at all.

He was going to have to … he was almost to Weaverville. The resort was close, and … a flash of brown, big and lumbering and
fast
raced across the road in front of him.

Bear! He hit the brakes, turned the wheel into the spin, missed the bear, but overcorrected, skidding in loose gravel on the side of the road. Brakes screeched, and his arms locked up as he struggled to hold the car under control. One tire went off the edge of the road, he hit the berm, and his BMW went airborne, flipping end over end before rolling and then sliding on the passenger side through brush and boulders until one much larger than the trusty old Beemer stopped him.

Stopped the car, and stopped Zach. He had a moment of abject clarity, knew the airbags—more than one—had deployed.

After that, nothing more.

*   *   *

Dar rolled over in the big, comfortable bed, expecting to find the wolf beside her. Instead, it was Lawz lying there, propped up on one elbow, smiling at her in the darkness. They'd made love for hours, slow, lazy love after the first rush of need was soothed, and then they'd talked. He was an engineer—she hadn't expected that for whatever reason—and he told her about building bridges and various structures around the North Coast.

He didn't live here all the time, but a job had been delayed, so he'd come home to help out at Feral Passions. He said he was glad he had or he'd never have met her. She'd laughed and said what a flatterer he was, but then she'd told him about her job as a television weather reporter for a cable news show, how she'd grown tired of the infighting among the employees, the petty politics that kept things so stirred up. They'd talked about what kind of job she could do if she lived here in Northern California, but it was all dreams and fantasies woven of moonbeams.

As insubstantial as the moonlight filtering through the window blinds, reflecting off the corner of his eye, his white teeth, giving him a ghostly but totally sexy look.

Everything about Lawz was sexy. Never, not since she'd first given it up—and that was most definitely not consensually—to her older brother's best friend when she was fifteen years old had she ever experienced true lovemaking the way she had with Lawz.

That meant that ten years of bad to mediocre sex with various and sundry males had been wiped away in just a couple of nights with the man she was lying here lusting after. Again. How many times last night? She'd lost count.

Didn't matter. She wanted to add to the number. She reached for him. He gently trapped her hands over her head in one of his. “It's the middle of the night,” he said. He tapped the end of her nose with his finger. “Why are you awake?”

“Because you're here.” She tried to kiss him. Teasing, he pulled just out of reach. “I was sleeping with a wolf.” She tugged her hands. He held on. “When did you change?”

“You keep saying that. I'm not a wolf.” He leaned close and kissed her.

She actually tasted the lie. “I'm not going to argue with you, Lawz. Didn't I tell you that no one can lie to me? I've got like an inner lie detector that tells me when someone's not telling the truth.” He raised his eyebrows, and she shook her head. “I know you're not being truthful, but it's okay. I can understand the need to keep something like that private, and I would never dream of telling, but I don't want you to think I don't know. I do. Actually, I find that it's really and truly…” She gave a low, sexy hum. “Provocative, tantalizing, and extremely sexy.” She leaned close and kissed him, loved the way he groaned into her mouth and wrapped his arms around her. Now that her hands were free, she cupped his head in her hands.

He rolled her to her back and covered her like a warm blanket. Neither of them had gotten around to putting clothes on. He rolled his hips, nestled between her thighs. Studied her.

“I wish…” He shook his head and shrugged. “There are some things I can't change.”

She smiled at him, loving the weight of his legs covering hers, the way the rough hair on his thighs softly abraded the sensitive skin on hers. She reveled in the warm press of his belly against her middle and the jut of his cock between her thighs. “Sort of a werewolf code of honor?”

He stared at her so intently, she wondered if she'd gone too far.

Finally, he glanced to one side, exhaled noisily, and then focused on her face again. “Yeah,” he said. “Sort of.”

“That's all I need to know.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself close enough to kiss him. He nipped at her breasts, the line of her ribs, the taut skin at the juncture between neck and shoulder, each tiny bite a sharp pain he soothed with his tongue.

When he entered her, the hard length of him filled her so exquisitely she felt tears prickling her eyes and trickling from their corners into her hair. She seriously wondered how she would ever let him go. They made such a flawless rhythm together, yet she knew this was nothing more than a vacation fling. That's all it could ever be with a man who wasn't really a man, but she'd never forget him, never get over him, and she was positive she'd never find another man nearly as wonderful as Lawson Jakes.

The tempo of his thrusts changed, short and fast, deep and hard, until she was gasping for air, whispering his name, so close and yet not close enough with that tiny tickle of arousal slowly growing and expanding, curling her toes and sending hot chills across her skin. He changed the angle of his hips, sliding across her clit on every stroke until the shivers all ran together and her muscles tightened, inside and out.

She flew, crying out, weeping with the frightening power of her climax, her fingers digging into the taut muscles of his shoulders, her legs clamped tightly around his waist.