Fox, Morgan - Ravished by the Moon [Moonlight Shifters 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

Moonlight Shifters 4

MORGAN FOX

Copyright © 2011

Chapter One

Dominic Mercer sat slouched and brooding at the nearest bar he could find to Dr. Megan Shaw’s apartment. Megan Shaw was the pain-in-the-ass doctor who had his mind and guts so gnarled and twisted he wanted to hammer holes in the wall with his bare fists to help ease the ache. She tortured him. Frustrated him. He’d gladly ram steel spikes under his fingernails rather than spend another second looking at her, smelling her scent, or listening to her melodious voice.

He shouldn’t desire her, want her just as he had so long ago, but he couldn’t help himself. The instinct was too powerful to ignore. Every emotion he once felt for her rushed back inside him like fire chasing down a trail of gasoline.

Some habits are impossible to break, no matter how hard I try to change them.

He’d traded off watchdog duty with his partner and fellow lycan, Reyes Rodale, for a night of peace without the tainted ravishment the good doctor provided. For the umpteenth time, the sexy redhead had pissed him off with her smart mouth, leaving him saturated with such fury he could hardly see straight, blinded by lust and uncapped bewilderment. Truthfully, being forced to babysit her was not on his list of favorite activities.

Yep, loads of fun…Like cutting off my own dick.

Maintaining a clear and composed head with Megan Shaw was a full-time job and took every ounce of strength he possessed, not to mention lots and lots of alcohol, which he gladly chugged back, numbing his senses and his overactive cock.

Damn it, why did the bitch have to pop back into my life after all these years? Why do I keep allowing her to affect me so much?

He growled as more thoughts knocked against his skull, reminding him of what he’d done. He considered this his only option at the time and the best thing he could offer her. Surely, keeping her away from him had made her life all the better. However, if that were true, then why did he feel like it was the biggest mistake of his life?

Why was I such a coward all those years ago?
He hated admitting his failings, loathed thinking that a man like him could actually make them.

The loud bang of the empty glass as he slammed it down was barely noticeable above the thunder of classic rock music and the roaring of voices, laughing and conversing without a care or worry in the world. What he wouldn’t give to be one of those ignorant bastards and be able to enjoy the effects of alcohol, to have the power to drown away the primal urges that caused his cock to flex and pulse with a vengeance. Everything had been turned upside down in his life because of a certain green-eyed doctor with amazingly perky tits.

He snarled. His lip curled like that of a ferocious wolf. It seemed he wasn’t going to find any mercy or a small reprieve from his thoughts, even staring down in the depth of several empty bottles.

Motherfucker, why the fuck can’t I get her out of my goddamn head?

He ground his teeth together, and the compression he used would have easily turned any normal human’s teeth into powder.

Grabbing the bottle of bourbon off of the bar, he refilled the glass all the way to the top, nearly spilling the savory whiskey. The liquid fire burned deliciously as he tossed it back, sliding past his lips and tongue, swirling down his throat, igniting into an explosion of senses that did little more than tickle his wits.

At the rate he was able to metabolize alcohol, he would need to drink a few more bottles of strong whiskey to even feel the sting of a real buzz. Forget getting drunk, that would take some time. However, he was beyond determined to make that happen. After all, the fun part was the act of getting drunk, and once he reached that happy pinnacle, he’d find someone, maybe a supple-breasted, strawberry blonde to sink his cock into without fear of actually remembering how awful a drunken fuck really was.

Finishing off the fifth bottle, he flagged the bartender, and like magic, another bottle was delivered to him without question. He got lucky finding this bar. Not only was it full of gorgeous and lusty women, it was owned and operated by werewolves. A group of lycans who just happened to belong to the same pack.

Lucky fucking me…

Dominic couldn’t stand spending any more quality time trapped in the vexatious doctor’s apartment. A woman who just happened to be vitally important to his alpha, Sebastian McCarthy, for reasons he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about. Breathing the same confined air as Megan was enough to rot his gut into buckets of acid. Being forced to remain so close to her was a pain worse than death. Just knowing she slumbered in the room next to his was enough to set his body on fire. To tease him, she probably slept naked, all five foot ten of her writhing in the silken sheets of her bed, touching herself in ways he often dreamed of doing himself.

It was a fact that his best friend and pack mate, Jonah McCarthy, could never ravish her the way he could. Jonah might have been first to claim her long ago, but it was temporary and his own damn fault. Deep down in his soul, he knew that no man could ever show her the rapture and ecstasy he knew her body craved, desired, and begged for. She should’ve been his, not Jonah’s.

He closed his eyes, groaning as pressure filled his cock. Anger surged through his veins once more. Shit, she had a way of infuriating him, a gift that he would gladly return.

The sudden image of her naked body sent boiling heat blazing from his mind straight into his dick and engorged his shaft to the point where pain and pleasure blurred. His balls tingled and tightened.

Why did the woman infecting my brain and poisoning my soul have to be her? Why couldn’t I have been wrong about her all this time?

Years had gone by since he’d last seen Dr. Megan fuck-my-best-friend-Jonah-Shaw, and as much as he wanted to ignore the feelings she reenergized inside his heart and mind, seeing her again did things to him, strange, primal things. He abhorred the feelings rolling around inside him, hated that he still felt something deeper for a woman who didn’t deserve a damn thing from him.

She had a chance to choose me, and she didn’t. End of story.
Sadly, some wounds just never seemed to heal.

He slammed back the rest of the whiskey, and another bottle was brought to him.

“You might as well bring a few more. I’m here to get good and loaded,” Dominic told the scrawny, dark-haired bartender.

Reaching for another bottle, the bartender grinned with an arched brow. “Don’t tell me…a woman?”

Groaning at the unwanted reminder of Megan, he chewed on his words, and they came out of his mouth as harshly as he intended them to. “Not just a woman, mate, but a fucking redheaded vixen who could suck the blood right out of your veins and laugh at you while she slices open your heart and shits all over it.”

The bartender’s brow arched, and his grin faded away at Dominic’s vivid description. “Wow, she sounds like a real peach.”

“Yes, a real bitch of a peach,” Dominic muttered through gritted teeth, twisting off the cap and chugging back the entire bottle.

Finally feeling something of a buzz, he grabbed the next bottle and did the exact same thing. Drinking a lot fast was the key to getting drunk, and he was doing a damn good job of it. At last, he felt numb, mindless enough to not care about the strange whirling emotions fucking with his heart and mind, sentiments he wished he wasn’t having and confused the ever-living hell out of him.

* * * *

Megan couldn’t believe her shitty luck. For weeks she’d spent time in the same house as her ex-lover, Jonah McCarthy, watching him fall and dote all over his now pregnant fiancée and mate, Brie Ferguson. All Megan got out of the deal was instruction to investigate the lycan mutating virus and the hating, watchful gaze of Dominic Mercer.

Asshole, she inwardly hissed.

Reyes Rodale was another issue. He seemed to act as strange as possible whenever she was in the same room with him. The primal urges firing inside her whenever Reyes was near made her well aware of what was igniting between them. The lycan bonding was overwhelmingly recognizable. She did her best to ignore the sensations because admitting them was something she was unable to do. She didn’t want to be like the rest of the pack, guided by instinctive hormones, matched with a mate because biology deemed that it was going to be that way with no questions asked.
Fuck that!
She couldn’t stand being told what to do, which was most likely one of the reasons she never liked being around Dominic.

Bossy ass son of a bitch.

Closing her eyes momentarily, she whispered his name, unable to stop herself, “Dominic.”

The power he held over her had grown over the years and was harder to resist. Worse yet, her thoughts seemed to maneuver to him every time she breathed. He was consuming her mind and soul like a plague, infecting her with sour poison. Lust-filled thoughts betrayed her need to hate him.

Damn it, what’s wrong with me? He’s a mean jerk, for crying out loud, and he hates me.

Frustrated beyond reason, she’d snuck out of her apartment using the maintenance elevator and wandered her happy little ass over to Xander’s Pub and Grub for a nice little nightcap. Xander’s was her favorite lycan hangout, close to home and served by her own kind. It didn’t get much better than that.

She’d found a table near the back of the bar and began her night slamming back a few bottles of rum and then moved onto anything the waitress brought to her. Megan wasn’t picky, but if she had to go back to her apartment sober, she was going to be seriously pissed. Dealing with Reyes was one thing, but having to look at Dominic, knowing just how much her body revealed her need for him, was enough to fry her brain. Getting drunk just seemed like the only thing that would make this night easier to manage.

Filling her glass, she raised it and gave a silent toast to herself and the cosmic luck she couldn’t escape, at least not until she figured out the mutating virus crap. Swallowing back the liquid, she gagged at the stinging of fire swirling down her throat and into her gut. Whatever the waitress brought for her to drink was like drinking Listerine, a minty concoction that would surely get her drunk in record time.

The waitress dropped off another bottle, placing it on the table. Smiling like a bubble-headed bimbo, she popped her pink bubblegum and chewed it offensively as if her jaw were dislodging from her face. Over the loud music, she shouted to Megan, “Having a bad day?”

Megan glanced up to meet the waitress’s curious stare head-on. “Excuse me?”

“You’re tossing drinks back like water. I figured it might be because you had a bad day.”

Bad day? No, try a six-foot-six walking barbarian annoyance.
“Right.” Megan managed a ghost of a smile. “You could say that.”

“Well, there must be something in the air tonight then. It sure does seem to be the night for lycans to get sloppy drunk,” the waitress teased, blowing another large bubble with her gum.

Megan’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

Inclining her head in the direction behind her, she said, “There’s a guy at the bar, seems to have the same idea you do. He’s alone, too, and seriously hot. You should head over there and see if you can turn your bad day into a happy night—if you know what I mean.” She smiled wide as her eyebrows danced up and down provocatively.

Megan leaned to the side, past the slim hips of the waitress. Her vision quickly cut a trail past the mingling of people straight to the side profile of Dominic Mercer.

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is unbelievable. I can’t even escape my apartment without somehow ending up face-to-face with the big brute. Now what am I going to do?

Sitting straight in her chair, her heart lodged in her throat, she swallowed back the dryness, and asked, “Do you know how long he’s been here?”