How to Flirt with A Naked Werewolf (19 page)

“Wouldn’t it be kind of dangerous? What with the attacks and all . . .”

“I’ll protect you. I can be your own personal wilderness bodyguard.”

I chuckled. He slipped his hand ever so subtly down the small of my back to curve around my left butt cheek. I stiffened, inadvertently pressing my breasts against his chest. He took this as a green light and clutched me even tighter against his waist. The rational part of my brain screamed at me to relax and see where this might go, that Alan was an attractive, uncomplicated specimen and possibly my only chance this winter at halfway decent sex that didn’t involve batteries. The more primal part of my brain had me arching back from him, wriggling my hips away from where he had me pinned against his body.

What the hell was wrong with me? This was what I wanted. Why did I feel so off center? Why did it feel so wrong? I willed myself to relax, to move closer, but some magnetic repulsion kept me at a respectable distance.

“Sorry,” he said, loosening his grip when he saw my distress. “I just don’t want you to slip away.”

Before I could cobble together some response, someone tapped on Alan’s shoulder. We turned to find Cooper standing behind us. “Mind if I cut in?”

My stupid, traitorous heart fluttered against my rib cage. I’d only seen people “cut in” on dancers in old movies. Alan didn’t seem too pleased by the interruption. His grip on my waist grew just a fraction tighter before Cooper blithely peeled Alan’s arms away and twirled me to a corner across the room, leaving Alan scowling in the middle of the dance floor. Lynette sidled up to him and offered him another beer.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I murmured as Cooper’s hands slid against the fabric over my back. My breath caught, and a warm, liquid wave of sensation spread from my chest to my belly.
Gah! Stupid sexy werewolves!
This was why I couldn’t take Alan home. Because as much as I cared for him, he had never made me,
could
never make me, feel the way Cooper did. I would know it. And considering my responses so far, if I went to bed with Alan, he would know it. And the last thing I wanted was to hurt him.

Fine. Alan wasn’t the right choice, but that didn’t mean sleeping with Cooper made any more sense. I had to think of nonsexy things. Baseball. Bill O’Reilly naked. The dead, fetid smell of Delta mud on an August day. Leonard Tremblay’s hot tub. Wet socks. Muddy, wet, naked Cooper in a hot tub.
Dang it!

“Well, you are waving the red flag in front of an awful lot of bulls,” he said, glancing down at my crimson dress. He smirked, not bothering to hide the fact that he was looking straight into my cleavage. “And you know me, always coming to your rescue.”

I gave him a sweetly acidic smile. “Oh, really? Well, maybe if you’d spend less time lurking, you wouldn’t feel the need to come to my rescue all the time.”

“Lurking?”

“You heard me.”

Irritation crept into Cooper’s voice. “Well, maybe if
you
had the sense not to walk into dark alleyways alone or go wandering blind into the wilderness, I wouldn’t feel the need to stay so close.” He lowered his voice so our dance-floor companions wouldn’t hear us.

“You know, I know where to get more bear traps. I’ll bet if I told Alan I was having a problem with a wolf wandering outside my house at night, he would set up a minefield of them,” I hissed back.

“Well, hell, I’ll bet you he’d move right in.” Cooper scowled back. “Now that you two are—”

“What I may or may not be doing with Alan is none of your business,” I said, my cheeks flushing. “And why would you even care?”

He admitted, “I don’t like seeing you dancing with him.”

“So it’s a dog-in-the-manger thing?” I snorted, lowering my voice. “I’m sorry, is that culturally offensive to werewolves?”

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared as he demanded, “What do you mean, dog in the manger?”

“You don’t want me, but you don’t want anybody else to have me.”

“I never said I didn’t want you,” he said, his husky voice so soft I was absolutely sure I was the only person in the room who heard it. He was looking down, his thick black lashes resting on his cheekbones. His hands pulled me closer, pressing me against his chest. My heart thudded erratically. Every face and every voice in the room faded away as I focused on Cooper’s mouth, the generous peach-soft curve of his lips. I surrendered to the gravitational pull that had me leaning closer, mingling my breath with the spicy warmth of his.

Alan’s voice boomed over my shoulder. “I think you’ve monopolized Mo’s time for long enough, Coop.”

We both jumped. The moment, the spell, whatever it was, melted away. I looked back to find Alan giving Cooper a pointed glare. And did Cooper just growl?

Fortunately, Abner Golightly chose this opportunity to pull me into a lively dance he called the “Tennessee Tornado,” which was a cross between the jitterbug and the watusi.

“I used to do this one with the girls at the USO,” Abner told me with a wink as he spun me under his arm. For a withered little man, he had surprising upper-body strength. Still, I don’t know who I was more afraid for when he dipped me.

I managed to catch glimpses of Cooper and Alan while Abner spun me back and forth. Alan had joined Buzz at the bar and was sulkily nursing a beer. Cooper had retreated to a table in the corner. His eyes tracked me back and forth, back and forth, as if he was planning the best course of attack on particularly irritating prey. His focus made me edgy, nervous, so I threw myself into staying as busy as possible. I tried to hide in the kitchen, washing dishes, warming up food, but Evie kept chasing me out. I danced with anyone who asked me, leaving me with extremely tired feet and the added problem of renewed hope on the part of Leonard Tremblay. Alan pulled me over to a secluded table, where our conversation was frequently interrupted by Walt. He was desperate to escape dancing and to discuss sports. As I had no stake in this conversation whatsoever, my only real entertainment was watching Cooper dodge increasingly aggressive overtures from Lynette, including her spilling an ice-cold beer in his lap and then “frantically” trying to mop up his crotch.

I pleaded exhaustion at around eleven. Alan offered to see me home, but he was sidelined by a debate over the Maple Leafs’ offensive line. I tried to use his distraction as an opportunity to make a polite escape, go home, and slap my indecisive id silly.

Evie seemed unhappy that I was leaving early, but short of holding on to my leg and dragging me, there wasn’t much she could do to stop me. I slid into my parka, said some quiet good-byes, and ducked out to Lucille. As I was opening the driver’s-side door, I felt someone behind me. I turned, knowing it would be Cooper standing there.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He glared at me. “I don’t like to repeat myself.”

“So you want me?” I stated, my lips twitching smugly. “
You
want
me
? Sorry, I just think it bears repeating.”

Cooper stayed silent.

“Well, it’s nice to know,” I told him. I stepped closer. His arms tensed at his sides. I peered up at him, enjoying the way his blue eyes grew dark around the irises as I moved closer. His lips parted as I stopped just short of brushing my mouth against his. “Good night.”

I leaned back, a barely concealed smirk lifting my cheeks. Cooper did not have on a happy face. I snickered a little as I climbed into my truck and gunned the engine. That was oddly satisfying, considering I’d barely touched him.

As I drove home, little white tufts of snow started to swirl against my windshield. I’d only seen snow on TV. It was mesmerizing to watch the flakes dance across the dark horizon. I parked my truck in my driveway and climbed out carefully. I didn’t want to slip and fall on my first snow-walking experience. I paused, tipping my face up to the sky, enjoying the feather-light kisses of snowflakes falling against my cheeks. I hoped I would still feel this sense of wonder months from now, after seeing a metric ton of this stuff fall from the sky. Sighing, I put my key in the door.

And that’s when I heard the howl.

12
 
 

Crying Wolf (Screaming Wolf,
Yelling Wolf, Moaning Wolf . . .)

B
EHIND ME, SOMETHING WAS
tearing through the woods. Thinking of the bear, I turned the key and popped the door open. I heard it break through the tree line and immediately recognized Cooper’s wolf form.

He phased to human while running, his bare feet slapping at the cold ground as he leaped onto my porch and slammed into me. He latched his mouth onto mine, a hot contrast against the bitter cold. He pushed us through the door, shutting it behind us in one swift motion.

“Hasn’t anyone ever warned you not to cry wolf unless you mean it?” he growled, nipping my bottom lip lightly as he pushed my coat from my shoulders and hiked my legs over his hips. He carried me to my living room, to the floor.

My dress disintegrated somewhere between the couch and the fireplace. He dropped to his knees, stretching our bodies across the worn, soft cotton of the rug. His skin was warmer and his scent stronger than I remembered. His hair brushed over my throat as his lips traced the lines of my collarbone, down the curve of my breast.

Tonight’s lingerie selection was one of my favorite sets, lavender silk with lace insets in the shape of tulips. The bra consisted of two tulip-shaped silk cups held together with wisps of silk and a prayer. I didn’t have any past encounters associated with this set . . . which was good, because Cooper ripped it to shreds in about five seconds.

As the scraps of my panties floated to the floor, the wide pad of Cooper’s tongue lapped at me. He nibbled and kissed in teasing little circles that had me arching my hips off the floor to meet his mouth. I yelped his name as the very tip of his tongue tweaked that sensitive little pearl of flesh, sending me over the edge into a screaming, writhing orgasm. I might have been embarrassed by my hair-trigger response, but I just didn’t have the required cognitive ability. The most profound thought my brain could cobble together was
YAY!

Cooper chuckled against my stomach and rolled me to the floor with a playful growl, pressing me against the rug as he nipped and kissed along the curve of my spine. A little flare of panic shot through my belly. I was about to have sex with a werewolf. I’d never had sex with a supernatural creature before. What if he lost control? What if I ended up getting hurt? What if he could only handle that one position that canines are so well known for?

Determined not to become a horror-movie bad-sex statistic, I rolled, hooking my foot under Cooper’s calf and pinning him under me. Cooper grinned wildly, pulling me down to him and claiming my mouth with his own. Just as he was poised under me, his hard length just brushing over my warm, slick skin, my eyes flew open.

Condoms.
We were going to need condoms. Lots of them. I scrambled over to where he’d dropped my purse, searching for my “contingency kit”—tampons, backup contact case, and a
long
strip of condoms. I whipped them out of the little cosmetics bag with a grunt of triumph and crawled back to Cooper with my hands full of protection. His eyes were wide now as he took in the wealth of little foil packets.

“What?” I asked, hoping that after all this, he wouldn’t balk at safe sex.

“I don’t know whether to be intimidated or just really, really happy.”

Grinning, I ripped open the first little envelope on the chain. “Let’s go for happy.” I pushed him to the rug and settled over him. My voice was muffled against his lips as I rolled the condom on. “Really, really happy.”

Without further preamble, I straddled Cooper’s hips and wrapped my fingers around his warm, smooth length. My breath left my lungs in an exultant
whoosh
as I guided him inside me. The slight discomfort of stretching to fit him gave way to newer, far more pleasant sensations. I froze, eyes closed, reveling in that full, heavy feeling. When I opened them, Cooper was watching me, staying absolutely still.

I growled, a low, aggressive sound that started in my chest, surprising even me. Cooper’s eyes widened when I combined it with a deep, quick thrust of my hips. I chuckled. “You’re in so much trouble.”

Cooper seemed both thrilled and slightly alarmed as I brought my hips down to his again. I arched my back, forming a bridge as I circled my hips over him. Balancing my weight on my knees allowed me to take as much of him as possible, while keeping those low, smooth motions going. Any pretense of control on Cooper’s part evaporated. The man whimpered, a sharp, begging note, through parted lips as we rode together.

Cooper sat up suddenly, his fingers twined with one of my hands while the other held me precariously balanced on my knees. He kissed me deeply, matching each of our thrusts with sweeping rasps of his tongue. I braced my hands on my calves. The sensation of him cupping my bare ass in his hands made me gasp. I ground down just as he arched up. I threw my head back, howling as he hit the spot that I could rarely find myself.