than the breeze and almost as hot as the slumbering sun, he swept the hair from the back of her neck. He leaned down to bite her nape as his free hand came around her to cup her breast. He rolled the peak between his thumb and finger, drawing a moan from her trapped halfway between a sigh and a howl.
“Ah, hell, babe, you run and I can’t stop myself from chasing.” His murmur against her skin was cool on her dampened flesh as he kissed a line across her carotid, raising a shiver from her.
“Chase?” Ignoring the endearment—she wasn’t that much younger than he was—she tilted her head to give him more access to her throat. “I had to practically drag you out here by the scruff of your neck.”
“By the neck of my shirt.”
“Your scruffy shirt.”
“It’s a classic.”
She groaned again, not in pleasure this time. “We should’ve stayed in the verita luna so I wouldn’t have to hear this again.”
“Let’s,” he quickly agreed.
But she turned in his arms, deliberately brushing her belly across his rampant cock. They’d never come together under the moon in wereling form. It was...too animalistic.
Too true, a voice in her head accused.
She ignored the voice by taking Beck in her hand. He bucked, golden eyes widening at her aggression.
It always shocked him when she took the initiative so quickly. Which was why they could never be truly together.
She was Alpha. He was Alpha. Worse than fire and water, they were fire and fire, which was great for the sex, but would burn their respective worlds to the ground.
She pulled herself up to her tiptoes and still had to drag him down to her kiss with one hand fisted in his unruly curls. What was a thick ruff in his wereling form was almost as wild now and a perfect hand hold. Their tongues tangled, and the flames in her imagination licked higher with each kiss deep as the night sky.
He growled into her mouth. “You taste like my brew. Like me.”
She growled back, wordlessly, a caution at his presumption. Then she stroked him, a deft circling of his cock and a delicate caress of his tight sac that brought him to his knees.
For a moment, she admired him there, with his shaggy head at her navel. He tongued her, dipping his fingers into his mouth before brushing over her slit. With a gasp, she followed him down. Dominance was all well and good, but it had been a long week in New York.
He tried to spread the T-shirt behind her, but she rolled him so that he was underneath her and sat up straddling his thighs. Okay, so maybe dominance was good.
His cock surged between them, a pearl of fluid glinting in the moonlight. She took him in her hand and gave him another stroke. He bowed his hips up, lifting her easily, the long muscles of his thighs flexing under her. To stop herself from falling, she flattened her other hand across his broad chest, sifting her fingers through the patch of fur that was only a reminder of his wereling self. Under the scars, his abs tightened as his breath caught, and he stared up at her with darkening eyes.
“What do you want?” she murmured, one word for each stroke.
“You.”
He always made it sound so simple. Alarmingly so.
This once, she wanted it to be that. “Then have me.”
When he rolled her, somehow he managed to center her perfectly—terrifyingly perfectly—right on the T-shirt to protect her from the prickling grass. He loomed above her, silhouetted against the bright moon for a moment before he dipped his head to kiss her.
“You make this so hard,” he said.
“I make you hard.”
“That too.”
“Now.” She raised her hips toward his.
“No.” He kissed his way down her throat, as leisurely as the moon tracking across the sky to the swell of her breast. She clutched at him impatiently and he chuckled. “You’re not in the city anymore. You’re on country time now. We do things the old-fashioned way.”
“Damn the old ways,” she muttered.
He chuckled again, his breath gusting over the nipple he’d toyed with earlier. He tilted his head and flicked his tongue across the swell. With a moan of frustration, she used her hands to plump her breasts and flicked her own fingers over the aching tips. Deep in her belly, she felt the answering pull and an echoing well of moisture at her core.
His growl was lower this time as he finally sucked her hard, pulling her flesh into his wide mouth, tonguing her nipple against the roof of his mouth. Later she’d want to be eaten by the big bad wolf, but for now...
She abandoned her teasing self-play and squared herself under him. “I’m only going to ask once.”
He drove into her.
Big as he was, all over, she took him, thrusting up to meet him with another moan, this time of delight.
He slicked himself deep into her and withdrew and thrust again before her cry faded. He set the pace like a midnight run, relentless and unfaltering. She knew he could go forever.
No, she didn’t want to think of forever, just of right now.
She clutched at his wide shoulders, digging her fingers into the hard mounds of pure muscle. She’d seen him sling full kegs of beer like they were nothing more than empty aluminum cans. He slung unruly drunks—and uppity wolf-kind—with the same power. But of course, that’s how an Alpha handled everything: easily.
Even her.
The thought was infuriating, and she met his thrusts with her own. His eyes widened and he anchored one hand under her hips to control the moment.
She’d have none of that. She slipped her hand past his to cup his sac and pull down hard, to pleasure him, to warn him. He bucked once, breaking the stride, and she laughed.
He tilted her hips just a little deeper to touch her core, and then she wasn’t laughing anymore.
With every stroke, he pushed her higher, making her muscles clench throughout her body, even her heart pounding, pounding. Her skin tingled like the coming of the verita luna, but it wasn’t that—she was just coming. The moon seemed to shatter, but that was just the stars behind her closed eyelids as she climaxed in a rush.
He threw back his head and roared, the triumph of an apex predator that silenced the night, and then he too came.
She clenched around his pulsing shaft as he spent himself. Of course he would roar before he came; just announcing to the world that he’d made her come first. She drummed her fingers on his biceps as he held himself above her, stiffly trembling in the aftermath.
She realized her impatient drumming had turned to petting, her fingertips playing over the tight ridges of musculature. He had very nice, strong arms.
The better to hold her with...
She wriggled up, and he grunted as his cock popped free with a wet sound. When she scooted out from under him, he collapsed. His arms—his very nice, strong arms—splayed out to either side.
“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he muttered into the grass.
She stood and gave herself a little shake. “You’ve always been an old soul.”
He angled his face to stare at her, so she tilted one hip toward him and reached up to fluff her hair, knowing it would do nice things for her figure.
He grunted again and turned his face the other way. “You don’t mean that kindly.”
She scowled at him, thinking she should shift just so she could bite him on his moon-white ass. He had a very nice, strong ass...
Of course, she could bite him there