are.”
“But I’m more than that. I’m not something that can be thrown away or pushed out. I’m as much man as I am beast. I’m not going to be treated like an unwanted stray in my own house.”
Her jaw flapped, and her mouth opened and closed few times, but no words came out. Her gaze was curious and focused, but soft. Finally, she pressed her lips together and nodded before nudging him down to the bed again.
“Yes, you do have a name. Or names. Many, huh? I have four, because I added Mary at confirmation.” She laughed softly. “Have you ever heard of a Catholic werewolf? It’s tricky managing the spiritual stuff nowadays. How many names do you have?”
It took a moment for all the words to reorder in his mind and make sense. She hadn’t argued. He’d expected an argument—some defensiveness, liked he’d get from any other alpha—but it didn’t come.
His coiled muscles relaxed one by one and his lungs expended all the air he’d been holding. “Just three,” he said, his voice groggy. “Unless you count Junior as a name.”
“I won’t call you Junior. I knew a guy in my old pack we called that. He had about as much common sense as a goldfish, and was always getting himself into the kind of trouble no one wants to admit to have witnessed. I’ll call you Colt.” She leaned forward, pressed her hands to his shoulders, and squeezed all the tension out of them. Her nipples danced over his skin as she leaned and straightened, leaned and straightened. He kept his eyes closed and imagined what the view must have been like, her riding him like a…
“It’s short for Colton,” he said. “Not like a horse, though I’ve had certain parts of me compared to one.”
She gave the back of his head a little pluck and laughed. “I figured the lechery would come back eventually.”
“I am what I am. I guess you’re stuck with it and me—unless you leave.”
He hoped she wouldn’t. He didn’t want to do this again. The woman scared the hell out of him in a way Alpha couldn’t even come close to, and in entirely different ways. He found himself changing, for better or for worse. At first, he wasn’t sure he liked it. He was working and working some more, just so he could distract himself and stay out of her orbit, but then he’d come to relish the results.
Maybe before he hadn’t thought he had much of a future—every day was the same. He had nothing to aspire to. He still didn’t know what he was aspiring to, but he looked forward to that idea at the back of his brain to finish congealing—the image of what he could have and what he was working toward.
Lisa didn’t respond to his unasked question, but skimmed her fingertips along his jaw and across his lips. Both gentle and rough, she always seemed to have a knack for picking the perfect pressure for what he needed.
She lay atop him and gave his earlobe a nip before whispering, “All work and no play makes Colton a dull boy.”
He chuckled. “I’m definitely not dull. If that’s what you heard, you’ve been hanging around with the wrong folks.”
“You haven’t played with me , though. Don’t you want to?”
He opened his eyes to find her dark gaze very near his face and her lips pulled up into a sexy grin that both made his nuts draw up and also struck fear into his heart. “You look like you want to hurt me.”
“You’re a big boy. I think you can take it.”
He nodded slowly and swallowed. “Do I want to take it?”
“Only if you trust me.”
“I—I do.”
“Can I touch you wherever I’d like?”
“Hell yeah.” He didn’t even have time to slam his verbal filter down over the words. He wouldn’t take them back, though.
“Hmm.” She pushed up and kneaded his back some more, then straightened up to gave his ass a smack hard enough to make him gasp.
“Fuck,” he whispered as his muscles relaxed from the startling impact. His cock throbbed painfully beneath him, and his skin tingled with anticipation.
She
Sharon Kleve, Jennifer Conner, Danica Winters, Casey Dawes