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Which was still more recent than the decade Beck occupied in his head.
She had sensed his irritation when she talked about her job. In his 1950s mind, he probably believed she should stay home. Probably thought she should turn over her pack lands to him. With a belly roll while she was at it.
Although sometimes it might be nice to share the burden...
No. Her pack expected more from her.
A hundred years ago, her ancestress had defied wolf-kind patriarchy to kill the abusive Alpha who had battered the pack and founded a place for werelings with their own unique ways. But championing such a sanctuary required a leader tough enough to hold hidebound traditions at bay while still holding the pack together, a precarious balance upon which rested their independence. To each female Alpha since came the same warning: Be strong always.
She thrashed the T-shirt again as if it had questioned her vow.
From behind her, a low, deep roll like thunder vibrated in her bones. For half a heartbeat, she wondered if Beck’s inner beast still had the upper hand. Or paw, as it were. But it was rare that the verita luna, the Second Truth, completely eclipsed the more human aspect. Werelings spent most of their childhoods in their upright forms, learning the intricacies of the human world and human control, before puberty made the shift—and the passions of the beast—inevitable.
Of all werelings to succumb to the il-luna, it would not be Beck Villanova. From his strictly traditional upbringing, right down to a stint in the army, he was the perfectly controlled Alpha. She’d had to practically bite him to get him to shift. She shook her head at her own flight of nerves. Beck would never let his beastly side rule unopposed.
Although sometimes she fantasized about the possibility.
The whiff of his manly sweat was ripe in her nostrils from the T-shirt he’d worked in all night. The bite of whiskey and the smoky scent of bacon were heady enough, but the hints of leather, musk and books also made her senses whirl.
Books? Had he been out running even once in the time she’d been in New York? No wonder he was so slow—
With a roar, a large shape dropped to the path in front of her. She tried to dodge, but he clamped his teeth on the T-shirt. Since she refused to let go, her momentum whipped her around. Her paws left the ground and she was airborne. Which reminded her, she owed him for dunk-tanking her.
When she opened her jaws, she went flying. She landed in a poof of pine needles and lay still. Wait for it...
Beck’s presence loomed in her awareness, though her eyes were closed. Wait for it...
He whined softly, even more softly than the whisper of worn cotton as he dropped the T-shirt.
Instantly, she scrabbled up, seized the T-shirt and fled.
Through the trees—weaving, dodging, their twinned shadows dark as ravens skimming across the earth, silvery under the moon—up to the ridgeline, higher yet to where the trees thinned and the moonlight thickened and the town was just an old campfire of cool, yellowing embers below them.
In a small clearing, lush with early-summer grasses, she slowed. She expected him to pounce, but instead he kept pace just behind.
She trotted in a circle to face him, finally letting the prize fall between them.
Beck was magnificent, even for wolf-kind. He sacrificed none of his immense size to the change. If anything, his heavy ruff and luxurious tail tipped with silver made him seem even larger in the verita luna.
His eyes were the same molten gold though. Not exactly the same, of course. A wereling’s eyes always seemed brighter, as if some tarnish of the human flesh was scoured away in the Second Truth. Despite the flattening effects of the moonlight, the gold gleamed at her with a purity that made her shuffle her paws uncomfortably in the long grass.
She didn’t want to stare into his eyes. She hadn’t lured him all the way out here to deal in truths—first, second or any other number.
She tilted back her head to stare up at the moon and breathed out a long sigh as she shifted. Her bones ached and her skin felt seared by terrible sunburn as she made the change. She reared up onto her back legs—no, her only pair of legs now as she shifted back to her human flesh—so she could stand over him.
But when her vision cleared, Beck was standing too, big and naked.
Shocked, she took a faltering step back. Not because he was naked—she’d stolen his T-shirt, after all—but that he had shifted so close to her. The verita luna was a dangerous moment: when a wereling was vulnerable and exposed, the beast might attack, unconstrained by any even vaguely human command.
Again, she fleetingly wondered about his discipline. She swept him with a glance, wincing as she always did at the sight of the brutal swirl of scars and burns that wrapped the lower half of his torso. If he hadn’t had a wereling’s vigor, the IED would have meant his death, not merely his discharge. But except for that reminder of his time in the army, he seemed to be in satisfactory—okay, exemplary—shape. Certainly he would not have been able to achieve his present upright...um, very upright...state if he’d passed into il-luna.
He stood balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, as if he thought she might run again and he’d have to keep chasing her in this form.
His other balls were hard and tight, she could see from here. They knew she was done running.
She took a step toward him, the grass caressing her bare ankles, and he eased back to his heels.
“So you’re ready to be caught.” His tone was calm enough she wasn’t sure if he meant it as a question or an idle comment.
Or a warning.
She paused. “Consider it payment for the beer.”
“I said I was done playing.”
She lifted her chin, letting the night breeze finger the locks of hair around her face and tighten her nipples into almost painful peaks. Showing him what he was missing. “Since when do you give up so easily?”
“Since I realized you’re never going to let me farther in.”
Skimming her hands down her hips, she framed the tidy triangle of dark hair, resting her thumbs on the points of her hips. She bit back a triumphant smile as his gold eyes brightened, following the gesture. “This has always been far enough for you, hasn’t it?”
Slowly, as if with great difficulty, he lifted his gaze. “When I first got back from overseas, yes. Not anymore.”
A draught of doubt, colder than the night wind, iced her skin. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted from him anyway: some good beer, an itch scratched, a few insights into how a powerful male Alpha handled his pack.
“Fine.” She spun on her heel.
And finally he pounced.
With one hand, much stronger 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 with her current teeth, but somehow that seemed a little too forward.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she reminded him.
“Babe, once I’m inside you, nothing could stop me.”
Heat touched her cheeks, and she was glad of the bleaching moonlight. “I meant, you didn’t have to come running with me if you really didn’t want to.” She cursed the note of wistfulness—not quite a whine—that crept into her voice.
“Of course I had to. That lone wolf is still out here somewhere.”
She let her hand drift down from her hair. “That’s why you followed me? Because you thought I couldn’t take care of myself?”
He turned his head to face her again, his golden eyes shadowed and wary. “That wasn’t the only reason, obviously.” He pushed himself upright, one leg bent under him as if ready to ward off an attack.
