Moonlight: The Big Bad Wolf (Black Swan 4) (33 page)

"You mean I have a choice?"

"Well. No. Not really."

She nodded. "It was nice of you to ask though."

He nodded in return. "We'll dress you up so warm. You'll have a good time."

They turned their heads in unison when they heard a timid knock. Grey opened the door for Cloud, who was laden with shopping bags and holding his credit card between her teeth. He took the card out of her mouth.

"Looks like you were thorough." He eyed the packages while wiping the card on his jeans leg.

"No need to thank me. I was happy to do it." She looked at Grey pointedly. "As a favor. For family."

Okay. Message received.

Cloud looked at Luna and grinned as she held up the bags. "Stuff for you."

Luna practically squeed in that semi-irritating way that women do, as she accompanied Cloud to the bedroom and closed the door. Stalkson realized it was not nearly as irritating when it was
your
woman doing the squeeing.

He drew up short when he realized that was the first time he'd dared to use a possessive pronoun when thinking about the lovely alien from Throenark dimension.
My woman
. He tested the feel of that, saying it again in his mind. With each silent repetition he was more convinced that he'd do anything to keep her. Anything.

***

CHAPTER_16

After Luna drank a cup of mulled wine, Grey entertained himself watching her eyelids grow heavier and heavier.
Who needs TV?
When she was drowsy enough to nod, he picked her up to take her to bed. She didn't resist. On the contrary, she nestled her nose into his neck and breathed him in. When he laid her down on the bed, she sat up.

"I want to change into one of my new nightshirts."

Grey didn't know she had new nightshirts, but was eager for her to have any pleasurable distraction that would keep her from thinking about the life she had left and missing it. He took a step back.

"Can I have some privacy so I can change?"

"Why? You've seen me without clothes."

"It's for your own good, werewolf. I don't want you to lie awake all night feverishly fretting over what you can't have."

He briefly considered teasing her about the phrase 'feverishly fretting', but concluded that it was only funny if not true.

"Very well, healer. Two minutes."

When he closed the door she sprang into action, grabbing the red satin nightshirt from the hanger where Cloud had put it. She ripped her clothes away as fast as she could, but she was still a novice at fasteners and she was still pushing the jeans down her legs when he came back in.

"Here. Let me help you with that." He helped her sit on the edge of the bed without falling over and began unlacing her boots. "You look beautiful in red, Luna."

She'd been watching him unlace the boots, but her eyes flew up to meet his when she heard the compliment. "Thank you," she whispered.

He cocked his head. "I'll bet you're tired of hearing how beautiful you are." She shook her head vigorously. "No? Well, I will make a note to remind you until you do grow tired of hearing it."

He saw her throat move when she swallowed and had to remind himself that he was supposed to be untying laces. He pulled the boots from her feet.

"Do you want to sleep in your socks?"

She smiled and said no, but made no move to take them off. He took that to mean that she was enjoying having him undress her. He hid a smile, rose, and pulled back the covers.

"Do you usually sleep alone?"

"Always. You're the first person I've ever slept with."

That simple and innocent-sounding admission made his heart swell in his chest. He removed his clothes, switched off the lamp, and got under the covers to find that she'd turned on her side facing him. Her face was bathed in the light of the nearly full moon coming through the window.

"Luna. Would you show me how you like to be kissed?"

Her eyes dropped to his mouth and stayed there for a couple of heartbeats before returning to his eyes.

"No. I'm mad at you for taking me without asking."

He reached over and traced the line at the ridge of her bottom lip with his thumb, making the sensitive area tingle in response.

"But I got you fruit."

"That's true."

"And nuts."

"Also true."

"And breads."

"Yes," she breathed.

He scooted an inch closer. "And a red hat."

"And hot chocolate. You're a good provider." Her eyes returned to his lips. "And I've always thought your mouth is... kissable."

His responding slow smile gave her shivers from stem to stern.

"All the better to kiss you with."

"A goodnight kiss then. Just one. No more."

He took her hand and placed it on his bare chest, over his heart. She allowed it and didn't pull back. "I want you to feel the way my heart speeds up when you come closer to me."

She surprised him by rising above him and urging him to his back. He'd never been in a submissive position before, except once, and that time was neither pleasant nor by choice. He thought he wouldn't be able to tolerate submitting, but found that he wasn't bothered at all. The only thing he cared about was the agony of waiting for her touch. The anticipation made him groan as she slowly lowered her mouth to his. It was as if she wanted to prolong the moment and savor it for herself.

Luna's lips brushed his. She smiled when he jerked slightly as his nerve endings came alive, readying for a proper plundering. Her soft mouth descended taking his sweetly at first, inviting his tongue to push between her lips and join them together in a delicious imitation of copulation. The pressure she applied gradually became more insistent, as did the throbbing in his engorged cock which was trapped between their bodies. The nightshirt had ridden up just enough to give him the heavenly sensation of skin on skin where her bare thigh pressed against him.

She whispered against his mouth. "Your heart is beating faster."

"Stay with me."

"Are you giving me a choice?"

"If I say yes, what will you do?"

"Go home." The fact that she didn't hesitate at all broke his heart.

"Why?"

"My work. With herbs. Knowing that I make medicines that heal... It's important."

"You could do that here." She lay back on the pillow and looked at him, but said nothing more. "Stay, Luna. Heal me."

Those two words ripped the last remnant of her resolve away. When she had met the werewolf in the forest on Tuesdays and Saturdays, she must have known - on some level - that it could only end one of two ways. Either they would part and not see each other again or she would leave with him and begin a new life. She never could have imagined that new life would be another world or that the beautiful stranger was a man who could turn into a wolf, but, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps those details were minor.

Long after her breathing had evened out into heavy sleep, he lay watching the moon on its path across the window until it was almost out of sight. That was when flakes began to fall, the kind that were so big and fluffy you could almost see the unique kaleidoscope pattern in each one. There was no wind so they fell straight down, so fast and heavy that everything would soon be covered in white. There was still enough moonlight coming through the window to illuminate the beauty of it.

He rolled over and gently shook her shoulder. "Luna."

"Hmmm?" She sounded sleepy, but opened her eyes.

"Look."

She followed his line of sight to the window.

"What is it?" she whispered.

He smiled to himself. Just as he had thought. He knew she came from a place where the only footwear she'd ever worn was sandals, which gave him cause for suspicion that she might never have seen snow.

"Snow."

"I've never seen snow." She scrambled out of bed, complained about how cold the floor was, grabbed her discarded socks, put them back on her feet, and went to stand in front of the window wrapping her arms around herself. Even so, she was shivering.

He chuckled at her unsuccessful effort to be warm. Throwing the covers back he came to stand behind her, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his big, warm body. She sank back against him like she belonged there.

"Beautiful." She said it in such a reverent tone that he tried to view it through her eyes.

He'd lived through thousands of snowfalls, but seeing her respond to it like it was a miracle made it seem like one.

"Let's go out in it." She sounded as excited as a child.

"Tomorrow. Definitely."

Just then his acute nakedness began to demand attention. It was evident that he wasn't cold at all.

"How can you manage to stand here in this cold without clothes?"

He bent and nuzzled her ear, laughing softly. "You make me warm."

She couldn't be sure if it was the deep rasp of his voice, or the sexiness of his laugh, or the warm breath at her ear, or the feel of lips nibbling her earlobe, but one of those things made her lower body clench with desire. She understood why Cloud insisted that she needed panties. Because werewolf males made feminine juices flow like a river.

"Luna," he growled. "I smell your need. It's overpowering."

She turned in his arms to face him. He slipped his hands under her red nightshirt so that he could cup her ass with his big hands and lift her up. Her legs wrapped around his waist like they had a mind of their own, then she closed the distance between her mouth and his. Grey was far too exciting a lover to kiss sweetly, so she gave in to the passion she'd held at bay and kissed him with a demand that surprised as much as delighted him.

"Show me what to do, Luna," he breathed her name in a way that made her want to hear it again and again. "Show me what you want."

"You're doing fine, werewolf. Just don't stop."

He backed toward the bed until the backs of his knees touched the mattress then sat down with her straddling his lap. She released his mouth and alternated trailing kisses and licks along his neck from one ear to the other before coming back to lose herself in another kiss so deep it felt like she was trying to possess him. With one arm around her waist to hold her to him, he allowed the other hand to wander freely underneath her nightshirt, tracing her curves up the small of her back and around her side. When his warm hand cupped her breast she moaned. When his thumb ran slowly over her sensitized nipple and began circling, she pulled her mouth from his and gasped. The sound of her panting and the feel of her hands in his hair and on his bare shoulders was ratcheting his need higher. He had never had an erection that size, ever, and he was sure he couldn't get bigger.

That certainty lasted only until she reached between them and encircled the velvety flesh with her hand. She eased herself back far enough so that she could look down and watch her hand stroke his cock. While she was fascinated with watching the movement she created, he undid the nightshirt buttons and pushed it off her shoulders. He hissed in a big shuddering breath as he triumphed in the fact that the woman was with him, skin to skin, willingly asking for a coupling that he would never get over if he lived to be three hundred.

He pulled her with him as he lay back on the bed and then rolled them both so that she was on her back. She protested the deprivation of no longer having his cock in her hand until he dragged his tongue slowly and leisurely over her nipple and repeatedly circled her areola before nibbling with his lips and sucking deep enough that she felt the response all the way to her womb. While he gave the other breast equal attention, she pulled the thong from his hair and let it loose. When he rose to look down on her, his hair fell around them like a curtain. She ran her hands through it marveling at the sensual juxtaposition of the soft silkiness with the hard-as-a-rock body.

When he slowly ran his fingertips in a line from her throat, between her breasts, past her belly button, not stopping until he brushed the lips of her entrance, she cried out wantonly.

"Like this?" he asked.

She'd made him doubt himself by talking about sex with the demon. She flushed with shame knowing that it had been a lie and, worse, a taunt. Of course she preferred him in every way. That was why she'd been walking and talking with him on Tuesdays and Saturdays instead of waiting her turn with Deliverance.

"Yes. Like that. It's you I want, Grey. No one else. Only you."

Her words stung his eyes and sent a flood of emotion through his system. He stilled long enough to allow the power of it to subside so that he could breathe normally again. The woman made him feel things in places he hadn't known existed before.