Wolf Home: Paranormal Werewolf Romance (4 page)

She wondered how he'd been bitten. She'd assumed it was an intentional making, but described as an attack, and with no one coming forward to support him, it must not have been. Who had been wandering, lost and alone and out of control, in Yellowstone? The thought made her shiver -- and the thought of Adam by himself for years was worse. Wolves were meant to live with family. At least she'd always known hers was
there
when she was by herself, only a few hours' drive if she ever needed them in person, and always in touch by phone and email.

“It wasn't so bad, I was okay,” he murmured in her ear. “You look sad.”

“It
is
sad.” She turned to face him in his lap, straddling him loosely, and rested her forehead against him. “But it's okay now because you're here.”

“Yeah.” He smiled a little. “I have you now, don't I?”

“They're totally besotted,” Mary said beside them. “Aunt Tara, maybe you should just grill them
after
they've fucked each other's brains out, I bet they'll be able to focus for
five seconds
then.”

“Okay, that is it.” Nicole slid out of Adam's lap, whacked her cousin over the head, and grabbed her purse to stalk towards the door. “Adam, c'mon. We're going to go talk somewhere without the peanut gallery.”

Chapter Three

Adam's laughter came, low and growling, behind her. “Yes, ma'am.”

“Go ahead and take the car back to the house,” her mother said. Nicole heard the keys jingle and shot a hand back to catch them without looking, her hearing allowing her to triangulate their location even in human form. Half of it was just processing, not the ears themselves, after all. “I'll ride back with your father.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Nicole paused at the door to throw her a grateful smile, and most of the rest of the room one last bark, before leaving. She was at risk of losing it and hitting someone; she really wanted to be alone, or at least with someone sane. Hopefully Adam qualified.

Adam waited until they were in the car and pulling out of the restaurant driveway to comment, “Can I just say that that was incredibly fucking hot?”

Nicole realized she was grinning stupidly at the compliment, but why the hell not? No one was here to complain. “I think I can appreciate it from
you
.”

“Then that was incredibly fucking hot. Especially the growling. I kind of wanted to pin you down and ravish you in the parking lot, but I was afraid your -- is she your sister? -- would come out and start a running commentary.”

“She's my cousin. And yes, she
would
have.” Nicole groaned aloud and concentrated on breaking carefully on the steep roads. “I've been away so long I'm not used to it anymore, but wolves have basically no concept of modesty. And it's not like there are nice, private locking bedrooms in the woods.”

“You don't really live in the woods like canines, do you?” Adam asked, a tinge of uncertainty in his voice. “I mean, I've never seen anyone sleep outside for more than a couple nights on hunts, like camping, but I've only lived with the Fannons.”

“Not really, no. We tend to hit the rural side of human living arrangements. But our legends say that wasn't always the case. We're supposed to be the offspring of human shapeshifters and real wolves. I have no clue if that's true and it kind of creeps me out to think about, but it's not hard to see canine in our culture.” She shrugged. “You'd be better off asking one of the people who know more, though, honestly. I'm a geoscience person. We have some people who know a ton about the old ways, the Abbey pack has a family who are our -- you might call them priests, I guess, and Katherine MacCrae went to school for anthropology and is writing a book about werewolf traditions, so one of them, maybe.”

“A book? Seriously? Isn't this supposed to be secret?”

“I mean, she wouldn't sell it
openly
, but there are a lot of werewolves around who'd be interested in the information. I think they were going to go with self publishing print copies and, like, a download code or something.”

“Right.” Adam shook his head. “Every time I think I'm used to this I hear something new and it hits me that there's this whole world I never knew about, all over again.”

“Is it a nice world so far?” Nicole's lips quirked up. “I mean, once you weren't alone and confused.” She wondered what he thought, having been raised away from her world.

“Getting nicer every minute,” he said. She didn't have to check the mirror to know he was staring at her as he said it.

It was a nice compliment, but it gave her no real information. Maybe she shouldn't have smiled when she said it?

The drive home took entirely too long, and if it hadn't been for the ruined vegetation reminding her of the possibility of disaster, Nicole might have been tempted to risk speeding it up. She was emotionally exhausted, and pinned against the sharp joy of the wolf at finding her mate, it made her almost feel sick. She wanted to drown herself in the strength of the wolf, in something physical that led her stop worrying.

She parked the car, left the keys in -- no one in their right mind would steal from werewolves -- and darted out. “Catch me if she can!” she yelled over her shoulder, slamming the front door open and reveling in the sound of Adam's answering bark behind her.

She kicked her shoes off in the front entry and started up the stairs, callused feet slapping against the scarred hardwood floors. Everyone in the family would be at the meeting, but they'd be home eventually. Nicole would really prefer to be caught in her bedroom, in relative privacy.

She heard the front door open and smiled to herself, waiting on the landing until Adam had started to ascend the stairs before backing down the hall towards her room. He darted after her, expression wary, like he expected it to be a trap.

She'd hate to disappoint him. She darted into her room, slammed the door shut to give her some spare time, and got the window open and one let through it in one movement. The other leg, and she dropped outside again just as the door opened, Adam cursing behind her.

She hit the dirt on her feet and dropped forward onto her hands, then started off at a run through the yard for the woods.

She heard an impact behind her fifteen feet from the edge -- he must have gotten over his hesitation and jumped after her. His footsteps behind her were heavy and gained too damn fast -- he was long legged.

Then he was on her, limbs tangling with her and they went down sprawling in the long grass of the backyard. Nicole managed to flip them over, much smaller but more experienced, and tried to rise, but he grabbed onto the hem of her skirt and she tumbled back down to her knees by him.

He was laughing and she was, too, for the sheer joy of it -- messing around outside, like she was a pup again herself. She'd been away in the city for
so long
. Adam pulled her down by the arm to land on top of him and she fell onto his chest willingly, feeling the stress of the day drop away. Wolves weren't meant to live alone, but she wasn't alone, she had her mate and her pack.

“Mm, you
do
have me,” Adam rumbled into her neck. “And I have you.”

“Yes,” she mumbled, tilting her head back to let him access her throat. He licked long strokes across it, across and down into the hollow. She shivered, aware of the proximity of his teeth, and felt the skin on the back of her neck tighten with imagined fur standing on end. Other, lower things were definitely tightening, too.

Adam turned them back over, pinning her to the dirt, and she groaned, head still back. “I'm going to hold you down and fuck you,” he murmured into her ear. “Unless you object.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She rolled her eyes forward to watch him and smiled a submissive grimace.

He hesitated. “That's a good look, right? I've never really had sex with another wolf, so I don't want to just assume.”

“Yes. Definitely good,” she assured him. “Just pull my dress up already, before they get home.”

“You're hilarious.” He did it, though, bunching the skirts around her waist and pulling her panties off completely, and ducked his head to kiss her stomach, licking around her navel. She thought of his teeth again, unnervingly seeking out her soft, vulnerable flesh, and shivered.

He reacted once more as if to her thoughts, sinking his teeth into her hips, and she yelped. Can he really read my mind? she wondered. Mate bonds varied. But the thought was driven from her mind by his lips brushing against the hollow of her hip and biting again, higher. This time he drove his teeth in hard and sucked, and she whined, high pitched and desperate, and scrabbled her fingers into his hair. It was too short to get a good grip on, and his shoulders were too low to grab without sitting up, and she whined again in aggravation.

He snickered into her skin. “You're an impatient one, aren't you?”

“Shut up and fuck me.” She tried to pin him in place with her knees, but he pushed himself up and got his hand into one, forcing her back to the ground.

“I will. When we're both nice and ready.” He squeezed her thigh with that hand.

“If they get back?”

“Then we'll have to stop to go inside,” he said placidly, nibbling at her inner thigh, just above the artery there. Nicole moaned into the spring air.

He licked, kissed and nibbled his way up and finally buried his face in between her legs, breath tickling her public hair. She shivered and whined and closed her eyes, a mass of tender nerves and sensation and almost no thought.

There were his hands holding her legs open and flat to the ground. There was his tongue against her inner lips and clit and entrance, darting and flicking, and the very occasional brush of teeth making her whine and buck. Her dress bunching around her torso, the knot digging into the back of her neck, and strands of her sweat-soaked hair clinging to her face. More distantly, she was aware in flashes of their surroundings -- the singing of birds, wildlife near the house undisturbed by the slide. The tickle of grass near them and the sweet smell of the broken strands they were lying on top of, and the musty, wet smell of the earth under them.

The air smelled like spring, and sweat, and sex, and
life
. Nicole felt as though she were floating in it, connected to her body by the electric pulses of sensation coming from between her legs.

Adam's lips closed around her clit and she was pushed over the edge, back into her body with a crash. Her hips bucked, keening sounds escaping from her lips, and her nails raked the dirt at their sides, scratching long furrows into it.

He lapped at her through the orgasm, relaxed face and gentle tongue, like he was scooping up water with it to drink. When she was done shivering, he lifted his head and crawled up to sit next to her, then began to run his fingers through her hair.

She felt like she could lie there forever, on a cushion of exhaustion and guarded by her mate's presence, but of course she couldn't. The spring air felt cold on her now that she was half naked and the sex was done for now, and she felt herself beginning to shiver in a less pleasant way. Still, she lingered in the grass until she heard a more urgent disturbance -- a car engine down the drive.

Nicole reluctantly sat up. “I hear them in the drive. We need to go in.”

“Damn.” Adam fastened his pants and righted his shirt.

Back in the room, Nicole shut and locked her door and closed the curtains in the window, then turned to smirk at Adam.

“Yeah?” he said, watching her. In response, feeling a little daring, Nicole brought her hands up and pulled loose the knot on the back of her neck. The dress dropped to the floor instantly, leaving her naked except for the strapless bra she'd borrowed, which she unfastened quickly and let drop as well. She remembered with a mental groan that her panties were still outside, but put it out of her mind before she could become crushingly embarrassed.

Adam's face went blank in surprise, then filled with stunned pleasure. Nicole ducked her face to hide behind her hair, startled by the sudden shyness that came over. She felt like someone else entirely, maybe not a wolf at all.

“You're nervous?” Adam's hand cupped her shoulder.

“Well, do you like what you see?” she asked, aiming for the bluntness usually ascribed to sex by wolves but knowing her voice was quavering with nerves.

“Yes. God, yes.” He tilted her head up to kiss her hard, lips and tongue and a little bit of teeth assuring her of his words. “Can I ask something, though?”

“Fire away,” she said.

“The jewelry.” He touched one of the arm rings. “All that metal. Most of the wolves I know don't really wear it, except a few who seem to wear as much as they can pile on. I know it's hard to shift with, so what's with all of it?”

“Oh.
That
.” Nicole blushed. “It's hard to shift with metal, like you said. People who are good at it wear as much as they can to show off that they are. It's like displaying, I'm powerful, I'm naturally talented at shifting, you should fear me or want to mate with me or be careful before you pick a fight with me. I know it looks kind of tacky.”