luscious pad of her lower lip so
slowly, so carefully, but so hungrily between his teeth. He snarled but didn’t
bite; he held her still and sucked while she trembled against him. The wolf
inside him thrilled at her reaction, at the musk of lust mixed with fear. He
scraped her lower lip gently with the edge of his teeth and sucked again, then
lapped upward with the tip of his tongue to taste her upper lip, sweet with
wine, coppery with the blood coursing beneath her skin. Holly’s eyes sank
closed, millimeter by millimeter, and she held her breath one full heartbeat,
two, three. He distinctly heard each one, felt them in the most minute pulsing
of her blood. Dustin lost track of the beats when his own throbbing pulse began
pounding in his head, as she sighed into his mouth and went pliant and
submissive against him.
It was the worst thing
Holly could have done, like she’d rolled over and offered her belly—or her sweet,
vulnerable pussy. Their very first kiss was Dustin forcing her submission,
biting his little lupa, and she didn’t even understand what was happening, so
he couldn’t…. Fuck, he couldn’t do what his body wanted to do and strip her
bare and put her on all fours, couldn’t work himself wildly, brutally into her
tight core from behind while she bucked and bounced against him and whined at
the burn and the stretch and the need between her legs. If she submitted to him
fully, like that, she had to know what she was doing and what it meant.
A split second before
he reached his limit, before he’d gone so far he could only give in to the urge
to drive his tongue into her mouth and his cock into her sex, Dustin stepped
back from Holly. He steadied them both with one hand on her shoulder, holding
himself back from her by pushing her away, the other hand wiping his mouth. She
probably thought he was wiping away the wetness of her lips from his, but it
was really to hide the fact that he was outright salivating at the idea of
taking her.
“Holly, I’m sorry.”
Behind his hand, Dustin was slurring his words, canines elongating just enough
for him to feel them and know the wolf was coming if he didn’t get the hell out
of there. “I just—.”
“No, no, it’s okay,”
Holly said in a breathy rush, not looking at him. “Stuff happens. It doesn’t
mean anything.” Then she started around Dustin on her way back into her
townhouse, her steps hurried, gestures stiff and tight. “I mean, you probably
have a girlfriend who wouldn’t be happy about that. Enough said. We can just
forget it happened.”
She didn’t even look
back. Goddamnit . He could guess all the things she
was thinking, and he couldn’t stop her to explain, not unless he wanted to have
a lot more to be sorry for.
Dustin turned his face
toward a renewed gust of wind, up toward the nearly whole disk of the glowing
moon. He gulped air and let the chill on his skin and in his lungs beat back
the prickle of fur and the pain of shifting tissue and bone. With the wilding progression
so far advanced, Dustin could have turned in seconds, but it took two full
minutes and a forced march across the complex parking lot to calm himself
enough to say he was even mostly human again.
And all the while,
every single second, the wolf in him gnawed at his insides. It demanded he
turn, feed, mate with a ravening hunger and savagery. It demanded he mate, but surely it meant fuck, not mate. Not mate .
It occurred to Dustin
only then that he’d never stopped to wonder what the difference would feel
like, between finding a woman who hardened his cock and one that called to his
wolf in a way no other did. He had always just assumed he would never actually
mate, as female Odin’s Wolves were rare, but hadn’t he heard Ron talk awhile
back about a Fenris Wolf who’d paired with a wolfkin who had never even turned
and another shifter who had somehow bonded with a full on human?
Dustin did remember one
particular pack teaching quite clearly: one of the