Animal Attraction (8 page)

Not all
, I thought, remembering David’s words. He’d said he didn’t want to be the new wolf king, and I believed him. He had the lone-wolf vibe. A wife would cramp his style. So would taking on responsibility for the whole pack. “You sounded jealous earlier,” I pointed out.

“I’m not perfect.” Zach rubbed my back in slow up-and-down strokes that relaxed me despite the topic of conversation. “But it wasn’t you kissing David that got me. It was the way you pulled away from me. And that wasn’t about him at all, was it?”

“It’s not a foregone conclusion that I’ll pick you,” I muttered. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about something like that.”

“As long as you keep an open mind, that’s all any of us ask.”

How fair that sounded. How unfair it felt.

I HUDDLED IN ZACH’S LAP, WONDERING WHY I COULDN’T JUST LET GO and enjoy the moment.

What’s not to enjoy? You have your own harem
, I told myself. It didn’t cheer me. For some reason I felt less like they were mine to play with and more like I was theirs to pass around.

I heaved an unhappy sigh. “Some girls would love this,” I told Zach.

“You might love it, too, if you’d stop being afraid of it.” Zach shifted me more sideways on his lap, tilting me back on the couch’s armrest.

The change in position arched my upper torso, making a display of my breasts. He seemed to enjoy the effect, content to study the picture I made without touching for a long pause. Which of course began a rising heat of anticipation that grew as the moment dragged out, until my skin felt tight and flushed and my nipples budded into aching points, as if begging for attention. “Maybe you love it a little,” Zach added, giving me a knowing look.

“This part doesn’t suck,” I mumbled. And then the word vibrated in my head, making me flash onto a fantasy of Zach’s mouth closed over my nipple, licking and sucking. Desire curled low in my belly. Bad choice of words. Or good, depending on how I wanted to look at it.

I shook my head to clear the haze of lust that was forming there and covered myself with my hands. “Can we take a time-out? I’m losing track of the conversation.”

“Time-out implies you want the clock to pick up again later.” Zach gave me a very slow, sexy grin that made its way to his eyes and made them gleam with amber light.

“You like that idea?” I didn’t have to ask, but I did anyway. Although flirting with a werewolf I didn’t intend to sleep with yet probably meant the heat flaring between us had fried a few of my mental circuits.

“Yes. I’m not done with those. I’ve barely seen them.” He stared pointedly at my hands doing an inadequate job of hiding my breasts.

“We just met,” I pointed out. “You shouldn’t have seen them at all.”

“And yet, I’ve seen and touched.” He placed his hands over mine, touching my breasts again by proxy. “If that bothered you, I wonder why you were squirming under me and making those little moaning noises. None of which sounded like ‘no.’”

I blushed dark red, all the way down the way redheads do. I started searching around in vain for my shirt to hide both my breasts and the scarlet wave of embarrassment engulfing my skin. “Fine, I have no self-control. What happened to my shirt?”

“I took it off.” Zach’s lazy good humor irritated me, especially since it made him sound sexier.

I scrambled out of his lap and turned my back to him while I found my fleece pullover and slid into it. My nipples felt tight and puckered against the fabric, my breasts loose and accessible without my bra.

I turned back around and folded my arms over my chest. My eyes fixed on Zach, specifically the very attractive picture he made sitting with his legs slightly apart and his silk shirt open so it made a frame for his mouthwatering chest and abs. “Could you button up, please?”

“Am I distracting you?” He quirked a brow at me, clearly already sure of the answer. Fine, he could make me say it out loud, I didn’t care, but I needed him to cover up or my mouth was going to be too busy to talk and I doubted I’d hear anything he said over the hot blood roaring in my ears.

“Yes.”
 
It came out a lot more emphatic than I meant it to. Zach started to refasten the buttons, but he didn’t rush. I gritted my teeth and waited until he was finished. “Thank you.”

He patted his lap in silent invitation. I shook my head and took the chair. Safer. He frowned, and his obvious displeasure bothered me a lot more than I expected.

“Sit with me. I won’t attack you.”

The tone of command in his voice resonated as if triggering a hardwired response. I got back up and sat beside him. I kept a little space between us, but the fact that I’d obeyed him shook me. It showed in my face and my voice.

“So alpha isn’t just a title.”

“No. And you already knew that.”

I nodded. “You could make me choose you,” I said, putting one fear into words.

“That wouldn’t be much of a choice, would it?” Zach scowled at me and leaned over to cup the side of my face with one hand. “I could’ve persuaded you to let me take you on this couch, even though we both knew you weren’t ready, but coaxing you out of your pants wouldn’t make me your mate.”

I blinked, thinking I was missing something. Zach caught it and explained, “It’s a choice of your heart, not your hormones. The act of mating doesn’t make you mated. Not that it isn’t a nice start, but sex doesn’t determine your choice. You could sleep with all of us and choose none of us.”

I blinked again and gave him a look of open disbelief. “All of you? How much stamina do you think I have?”

A grin twisted his face. “I didn’t say you would, but you could.”

I cleared my throat. “Moving on. So sex doesn’t force my choice. If I can’t say no to you, or a few of you, it doesn’t mean I have to live with the results for the rest of my life.”

“Well, you’d have to live with the memories.” Zach’s fingers threaded into my hair and gave a playful tug. “I’d do my best to make sure you didn’t forget it.”

“Fine, okay, memories are results, and hopefully they’d be happy ones.” A thought hit me. “What about other consequences? I’m on the pill, but does that work for werewolves?”

Zach stilled. “It hasn’t come up in previous generations. And other shifters haven’t exactly shared information. I can tell you condoms are ineffective because of the way we’re built. Not usually a problem since we’re immune to human disease.”

No condoms. My face registered my reaction to that bit of news. Zach stroked his hand through my hair as he asked, “Is it really so awful to consider?”

I blew out a breath. “I stick to dating one guy at a time, and I don’t sleep around.”

Or at all, really. One less than satisfying experiment in college had cured me of the belief that I was missing out by saying no all through high school. I hadn’t been waiting for marriage, just something. 
Something with teeth
, I speculated, looking at Zach.

“It isn’t cheating when you haven’t made a choice or a commitment, and it’s not like we won’t all know. You wouldn’t be doing anything behind anybody’s back.”

I groaned and buried my face in his shirt. “I’m not a performance artist. I hate the thought of you all watching while I’m doing intimate things with each of you.”

“Do you really?” His voice softened as his hands stroked along my spine in reassurance. “It doesn’t turn you on, even a little bit, to picture yourself as the center of attention? To imagine me kissing and touching you while David goes down on you?”

My whole body clutched and I think my heart stopped as I flashed on that scenario. Zach’s wicked mouth claiming mine while David staked an oral claim. Zach’s skillful tongue sliding between my lips in tandem with David’s sliding into the slick folds of my sex. I might’ve whimpered.

“Maybe a little bit.” My voice sounded ragged.

“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying what you need.” He spoke quietly, but the firm acceptance came through loud and clear. “And you will need us.”

I bit my lip. “Will I? Or will it just be about my body?”

Zach shifted us, moving until we lay facing each other on our sides. He put my back to the couch so that he closed me in with his body. It felt safe, secure, like he was protecting me and not trapping me.

“You aren’t separate from your body.” His brown eyes had a troubled light as they searched mine. “Either of your bodies. Are you planning to try to split your mind and emotions from what your body does? Because that’s not healthy. Sex isn’t supposed to be something traumatic you have to protect your inner self from.”

That surprised me. “You’re not just a pretty face.”

He touched my mouth with his, once, light and soft before repeating what was probably the pack motto. “Alpha isn’t just a title.”

I moved against him a little, inviting more pressure, more closeness. Zach slid his knee between mine, and I relaxed into the intimate press of his thigh parting mine. Maybe I could trust myself, trust my body. Both of my bodies, the one I knew and the one I was about to discover. “I get that.”

I snuggled into him and admitted to myself that I liked the way it felt to press our bodies together, and it wasn’t about sex. Well, maybe a little about sex. But mostly it was about warmth and closeness and safety and feeling good. Feeling as if I belonged. As if I’d come home. That took me by surprise, and Zach felt the change in my body.

“Problem?”

“No. Just surprised.” I slid my arms around his waist and hugged him, feeling like I was taking a daring step. “This feels right.”

“Good,” Zach said in a voice thick with masculine satisfaction.

“No, I mean really right.” I searched for the words to explain. “It never felt right before. Being close. It felt right with David, too.”

“We’re pack.” Zach nuzzled me. “It 
is
 
right. You belong with us. Your senses recognize us, even if your human mind doesn’t understand the message.”

Pack,
 
I mused. 
Another word for home?

“Trust yourself,” he whispered, kissing me just below my ear in a sensitive spot that made me shiver. “Trust yourself to know what’s right, to have good instincts. Go with your gut and do what makes you feel good. Your gut will never lie to you.”

“Next you’ll tell me to trust you,” I muttered.

Zach shook his head. “Words won’t help. This will.” He sat up and stripped off his shirt. Then he undressed me. I let him, my heart racing and my mouth dry, feeling his intent in every movement he made. When he started to tug my panties down, I panicked and grabbed at the fabric to keep them in place.

“I can make you come with them on,” Zach said, his hands on the thin material that was all that stood between me and total nudity.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I searched out his lips with mine, and then neither of us said anything for a while. He crushed me into the sofa cushions. His bare chest covered my breasts and the weight and heat of him thrilled me. He worked his leg between mine, then slid his hand into my panties. I gasped at that intimate contact. He swallowed the sound and searched out the tight bud of my clit. The sensation of his fingertip gliding over that point would have stolen my breath if his kiss weren’t already accomplishing that.

Zach’s tongue twined with mine. His body rocked into the cradle I made for him as his finger moved lower, parted me, found my flesh slick and welcoming as he pushed inside.

It was a clear prelude of what was to come. Tomorrow I’d have him on me again with no clothing between us. When his hand came between my legs, it would be guiding his cock. The knowledge made my breath come in pants. He pushed a second finger into me, then a third, and rubbed my clit with his thumb.

The pressure applied to that point combined with the sensation of his fingers filling me, working in and out of me, felt indescribable. My hips moved, urging him on. His chest rubbed against my breasts, stimulating my nipples as he moved over me.

I felt my spine bow as tension coiled and shot free. I peaked in a frenzied rush while his mouth devoured mine and his hand inside my panties proved how easily he could make me come with them on.

I didn’t resist when he stripped them off and moved down, pushing my thighs apart to lap at my bared sex with his tongue. He tasted me, suckled my clit until my hips bucked in a silent plea for more, then buried his tongue inside me, thrusting it in and out. My flesh felt sensitized rather than satisfied from orgasm, and the oral stimulation pushed me toward a second peak.

“Zach.” I dug my fingers into his hair and strained to spread wider for him. He cupped one hand over my breast and placed the other just above my mound so his thumb could press against my clit. He ravished my sex with his mouth and tongue, played my body with his hands, and didn’t stop until he’d wrung every last ounce of response from me I could give.

Afterward we rested on our sides, facing each other, legs tangled together. I entwined my fingers with his and focused on slowing my racing heart.

“I like that,” Zach murmured, tightening his hand on mine.

Me, too
, I thought, bemused. Holding hands. Next I’d be drawing hearts next to his name.

“Zach.”

“Mmm.”

“I have questions.”

He rocked his body into mine. “I don’t suppose one of them has to do with how fast I can cover the distance from this couch to your bed.”

I resisted the urge to laugh. “No.”

He tugged our joined hands up and kissed my knuckles. I tried not to get giddy and weak-kneed over that, but it melted me. “Ask me anything.”

“How did you become alpha?” I held my breath, hoping I wasn’t opening a painful topic, but I had something of a personal stake in the answer. I wanted to know just how dangerous it was to be the wolf king.

“My dad didn’t think it was right to tie somebody half his age to him for life. He thought a new queen needed a new king. He held the pack together until I was old enough to take over. Then he formally stepped down and went to enjoy his retirement.”

So the role of wolf king didn’t necessarily come with a death sentence. Good to know. “I have friends and family outside the pack. How am I going to make that work?”