More Wicked Alphas, Wilder Nights: Sizzling Collection of Paranormal Romance (Wicked Alphas, Wild Nights Book 5) (3 page)

He couldn’t hold back a snort. “You should hear wolves.”

Her half-lidded eyes snapped open. “There are wolves in Arizona?”

“A few,” he said in a carefully neutral voice.

She tilted her head at him. “Good wolves or bad wolves?”

Smart woman. He considered how to answer that one. “I reckon we’ve got some of each.”

It was true. Good wolves were the members of his pack. Bad wolves… Well, there were always rogues to contend with, though none strong enough to pose a serious threat. Not at the moment, anyway. Lana, the newest member of his pack, had fought alongside his brother Ty a few years earlier and wiped out the most recent rogue incursion.

No, bad wolves weren’t the issue these days. It was vampires, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Heather
that
.

She listened to a few more lines of coyote communication—full of the usual nonsense about who got to start the hunt this time versus who started it last time and all the arguing that ensued.

When she spoke again, her voice was hushed. “Don’t you wish you could be free like them?”

Hell, yeah, he did. As the son of his pack’s ruling alpha, his life was tightly bound by expectations. So much that he’d tried escaping responsibility for a long, long time. It was only recently that he’d tried something new: creating his own role instead of fighting an imposed one. But that was a long, rough trail to blaze, and sometimes he wondered if he had what it took.

We can do it
, his wolf swore vehemently.
We can do it for her.

His squeezed his lips together. Heather was the first woman his wolf had ever wanted to prove anything to or for. Maybe she really was his destined mate.

Maybe?
 his wolf huffed.

“What would you do if you were free?” he asked, looking deep into her eyes. God, her soul looked caged in this light.

Her fingers twitched against his skin. Her eyes fell to the floor. A few seconds ticked by, and then she lifted her chin and shot him a weak smile. “I’d howl to the moon.”

His heart skipped a beat. Did he dare tell her? Could he? Should he? Where would he even start?

He tried picturing how it would go.

Heather, there’s something I have to tell you.

Her forest-green eyes would smile and wait, as if he had something nice or funny to say rather than the unfathomable truth.

It’s not just me who loves you. My wolf does, too.

Would she blink in confusion? Or would she giggle, thinking he was joking again?

Maybe he should come straight out with it.
Heather, I’m not quite human. I’m a shifter, and my inner wolf wants you bad.

The beast nodded inside.
 Real bad.

Real stupid, because that would just frighten her away.

She’s already frightened,
 the wolf pointed out.
We’re the ones keeping her safe.

Sure. All he had to do was flash his fangs and she’d be all over him, right?

Cody shook his head. Tonight was not the night to try to explain. He could never express himself properly with all the crap occupying his mind. First things first: he needed to hunt down the vampires leaving a bloody trail across the Southwest. Only once he’d killed them—easier said than done—could he concentrate on winning over his mate. For now, all he could do was relish the few quiet hours they had together.

He buried his nose in her hair and took a deep breath. “You’d make a beautiful wolf.”

He could feel her head pop up. “Wolf?”

Oops. He covered up quickly. “You’re way too classy for a coyote. I think you’d make a better wolf.”

She smiled sweetly, and a little fissure spread in his heart. “And what about you?”

“I’d be a wolf, too,” he whispered. “I’d be your mate.”

Her eyes shone as she tried the word out. “Mate.”

His soul sang just hearing her say it.

“We’d run and run and run…” she went on, dragging him into dangerous territory. His fingers tightened around her back.

“Heather…” He meant it as a warning, but she went on.

“Just the two of us…”

His wolf rumbled frighteningly close to the surface and paced the walls of his inner cage.

She’s mine. Ours. Take her!

He gritted his teeth, fighting his aching canines back.

No mating bite. Not tonight, got it?

“We could run through the desert…”

His wolf grumbled on, scratching at the walls of his mind.
She’s ours. She’s our destined mate.

That part, even the human side of his mind was starting to believe. But he had to be sure, for one thing, and she had to accept his true nature, for another. And all that was meaningless if pack law forbade it. God, what could he do?

Take her!
the wolf growled.

He covered her mouth with a bruising kiss he couldn’t hold back and willed his roiling emotions in a different direction. He couldn’t claim her as his mate yet, but he’d give her a night to remember.

Give,
 he made his wolf promise.
Not take.

His wolf licked his lips, already sidetracked by the idea.

Give,
 it hummed greedily.
We’ll give her something, all right.

***

Heather barely got out a surprised peep before Cody crushed her into a gargantuan kiss. Apparently, her Arizona cowboy got turned on by flirty wolf talk.

Apparently, she did, too, because her gasp turned into a lusty whimper within the space of three hammering heart beats. Her right foot wound behind his ankle and her tongue swiped over his teeth.

God, where did this desperate need come from? Sex always had a way of letting hormones overrule the mind, but this was different. Wildly different. The sound of a low, thrumming bass drum seemed to rise out of the night. An urgent hunger that demanded immediate satisfaction. Right now.

Cody’s skin seemed to have heated ten degrees in the last minute, and her clothes suddenly felt too tight for her skin. But she was all mixed up and ended up yanking at his shirt instead of her own.

“Heather,” he murmured in a voice that had dropped an octave.

His fingers flew over the buttons of his shirt. He worked the bottom ones while she fumbled with the upper few until they met at the last button which popped off completely in hasty escape.

“Cody—”

She cut off whatever she was going to say the moment her hands smoothed over his bare skin. His hot, bare skin. They’d spent three nights together already, but each time set off the same blood-thumping thrill.

“Off,” he growled. A real growl? “This has to come off.” He worked her shirt up over her torso, then her bra.

Their first night together had started with a slow dance. Their second, an exploration of unmapped territory. Their third had seemed fast, but this was going to be a new record for hot and hard. And God, did she want it bad.
Needed
 it bad.

“Cody,” she panted. His hard length pressed into her belly, and she snaked a hand down the front of his jeans.

He hissed at the contact and let his head thump against the wall. “Heather…”

She gripped tight—almost too tight—and slid her hand up and down his shaft.

“Just like that…” he murmured, eyes sliding shut.

When she pictured every throbbing inch of him pumping inside her instead of against her palm, she just about yowled. Sped up a little, then slowed all the way to the tip and reversed, tugging his skin as she went.

“Stop.” Out of nowhere, he grabbed her hand. Locked eyes with her for a split second, flashing a glimpse of his serious side. The side he rarely showed—the real man beneath. The edges of his blue eyes didn’t just flicker with gold, they seemed aflame. Passionate, determined, and willing to fight for what was his.

And there were those words again, whispering through her mind.

Mine. Mate.

“I’m not coming anywhere but inside you,” he croaked.

“Then come to me.” She pushed his jeans down, then hers, and took a first step toward the bedroom while Cody fished a condom out of his jeans and unrolled it in one quick move.

A step was as far as she got before Cody pulled her back and pinned her against the wall. An almost-but-not-quite-too-hard kind of being pinned. The delicious kind of being pinned by a good man at the limits of his self-control.

“You okay with this?” he asked through clenched teeth.

She was absolutely, positively okay with this. They’d been through half a dozen positions that had been unfamiliar to her before, and every one had been great.

Still, a tiny, reserved part of her mind spoke up. “What if I said no?” she heard herself squeak.

His eyes flickered and darkened, and the muscles of his face seemed to turn to stone.

“Then I’ll stop.” His normally smooth voice was positively raspy now. “Just say the word, and I swear I’ll stop.”

Even if it kills me,
 his eyes added.

“Don’t stop,” she said, clamping her arms around his shoulders. “I want this. I want you. Here. Now.”

The right side of his mouth curved up and his hips pressed closer. “You want this?”

“This.” She nodded, wrapping her legs around him. He held her up with ease.

For a second, he didn’t move. Just watched her sweat and squirm and beg with every part of her body except her mouth.

Cody.
 Her lips formed his name.
Please…

It was exhilarating, like standing at a cliff’s edge. Knowing that the man who pushed her over the precipice would be the same one who snatched her out of thin air half a second before he plummeted to the ground. There was a dangerous side of Cody, but it was layered over the caring one, so she knew she could let go.

His eyes darkened and he pressed closer to her slick heat. “You want this?” A coarse thumb swiped over her nipple, and she cried out.

“Yes!”

“You want this?” He hitched her up, spreading her wider with his cock poised right at her entrance.

“Yes. Yes—”

He plunged in, and a howl jumped out of her throat. “Yes!”

He pulled back, then thrust in, and she cried out again. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back as he set into a pounding rhythm, trying not to scream her pleasure to the whole neighborhood. The wall behind her vibrated with every swift slide, just as his back muscles twitched under the clawing of her nails.

“Look at me,” he whispered—the only part of his body language that was asking, not telling. Begging, almost. “Look at me.”

She cracked her eyes open and held his gaze. A fiercely determined gaze that suggested he was being subjected to some great test.

Mine. Mate.

She’d really need to get her ears checked sometime. But for now, all she could do was moan and hang on and marvel at a passion she’d never seen in any man’s eyes. A passion she never imagined she’d see, not even in her dreams.

“Cody…” she cried, two breaths away from total meltdown.

“Not yet.” He gritted his teeth. “Not yet…”

She hung on and fought off the urge to let every tense muscle go until his rhythm broke on a raspy groan. “Yes…”

She gathered every thin strand of control and clenched her inner muscles, squeezed them over the length of his cock, then unraveled completely as he shuddered inside her.

She cried out again and again, letting everything go. The tension of the last crazy weeks. The uncertainty. The constant fear. For the next blinding instant, her whole world was warm and safe and dreamy. Nothing was impossible.

He leaned heavily against her as she went limp, and she wondered what was holding them up. Could it be love?

“Cody,” she murmured over and over as his thumb tapped her skin. Three times.

I. Love. You.

She focused on that instead of the truth gnawing at a distant corner of her mind. She was a woman on the run. She had to give Cody up before the beast that hunted her finally chased her down. Or worse—before Cody got caught in the cross hairs.

But for the moment—that single, impossible moment—Cody was hers.

Mine,
 she wanted to cry out loud.
Mate.

Read Cody and Heather's full story in
Desert Blood
and find out more about the hottest wolves in the West at these links.

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Desert Blood
here
.

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