Moon Awakening (19 page)

He made a feral sound. "Emily…"

"What?" She met his eyes then, searching for she knew not what. Certainly she would not find love there, or even unconditional acceptance, but perhaps passion. "Do you not want even that much with me?"

Heat flared in his dark gaze. "Yes. Damn it. I do."

So, at least there was the passion. She was glad because she intended to use it to hide from the pain tearing apart her insides. She had never allowed herself to hide from truth, but right now she planned to do just that. She planned to pretend, for just a little while, that his passion was love.

He would never know and it could not hurt him, but she needed to feel loved just this once. She would live the rest of her life on these memories as she had clung to memories of her father's kindness before her mother's death all through her growing-up years.

Every touch would be motivated by love and a desire that matched her own, every sound would be one of acceptance for her as his
lover
, every response he evoked that of the beloved. She chanted the litany over and over in her head while she waited for him to kiss her.

But he did not.

He reached out and ran his fingers through her hair, his touch so gentle she could barely feel it. "It's so soft, so beautiful. My wolf wanted to bury his muzzle in it last night."

She swallowed, storing the
loving
words in her heart as a treasure no one else could tear from her, not even Lachlan. "He can do it now if he likes."

"You don't mind?"

She shook her head, then watched in fascination as he slowly divested himself of his plaid, revealing himself to her with breathtaking sensuality. He stood before her in all his naked glory. His manhood was engorged and she felt a sense of relief that they were not going to make love completely.

No matter what he thought, they would never fit together, she was sure of it.

"Do you like what you see?" he asked.

She nodded, mute.

"But you still want to see my wolf?" Inexplicable vulnerability to her rejection shimmered in his gold-rimmed eyes.

"Yes."

Then, so fast, she had no idea how it happened, Lachlan the man became Lachlan the wolf.

She'd never seen anything so wondrous, even in her imagination. Not to pass such an ability on to his children would be a tragedy. She remembered her wonder the first time she had seen a shooting star, but this was even more glorious. How incredible that God had made a people capable of such a feat.

She felt privileged to have witnessed the secret miracle. Lachlan had given her another unique gift and she would remember it forever.

As a man, he was everything any woman could desire. As a wolf, he was utterly beautiful. His pelt was glossy black. She'd thought so last night, but moonlight wasn't reliable for revealing color. He was also huge, standing almost as tall as her, but on all fours. His eyes were the same brown with gold around the irises, but they looked sharper.

His head was big, like the rest of him, and he held himself with a regal bearing that reminded her of Lachlan the man. Just as he always had seemed more than a man, he now seemed more than a beast. Human intelligence glowed in his wolf's eyes.

He watched her intently with those eyes, as if waiting for something.

She could not think what at first, but then it occurred to her that he might be waiting for her to show she was not afraid. Was he waiting for her invitation to touch? Deciding that must be it, she dropped to her knees and put her hand out, welcoming him to come to her.

He padded across the floor, the strange noise he'd made the night before rumbling in his chest. He stopped mere inches away. She tilted her head back and he lowered his so their eyes met.

His spoke secret messages to her heart that she labeled love and a tiny curl of joy pushed some of the pain out of her heart. He licked her cheek delicately and only then did she realize she had allowed a stray tear to escape.

The same sense of connection as the night before shimmered between them and she labeled it love, pushing another chunk of pain deep into the recesses of her heart.

He butted her shoulder gently as if asking for something. She smoothed her hand over his muzzle and the top of his head. He stood still, letting her pet him until, with a small smile, she rested her hand against the side of his neck.

"You like to be touched."

He nodded his big wolf's head and then sat back on his haunches in a single graceful movement.

"I do, too," she admitted. "When you are the one doing the touching."

Did wolves smile? She thought he did because when he bared his teeth, she felt no menace from him. Then he did what he said he'd wanted to, burying his snout in her hair and inhaling deeply. The rumbling in his chest grew louder. She dug her fingers into his fur and massaged down his back. He gave a short bark of approval that made her smile.

They stayed like that a long time, him nuzzling her hair and neck and she petting him and reveling in the incredible miracle of his wolf's body. She told him how beautiful she thought he was and how amazing. The rumbling in his chest got louder until it vibrated through her body as if he was sharing his pleasure with her.

She was not a wolf, but she felt as if she were inside him and he were inside her.

Without warning, he changed again and he was on his knees facing her, his arms around her and his lips trailing a path of burning kisses from her temple to her mouth.

When he reached it, he kissed her with such sweetness, tears pricked her eyes. "Thank you for accepting my beast, Emily."

"How could I not?" she asked in genuine bewilderment. "He's a special and very wonderful part of you."

He kissed her again, his mouth harder and more insistent until she was melting against him. He pulled his mouth away from hers, but she could still feel his breath on her lips. "I think you are the wonderful one."

"But not special enough to bear your children."

They both went still. She hadn't meant to say that. It was a reality that threatened to crack the fragile shell of fantasy she had surrounded herself with. She could not allow that. She didn't want to give up this taste of joy and pleasure for a reality that could not be changed… for a reality she had known only too well for far too long.

"Please forget I said that."

"I'm sorry."

She knew he meant it; she also knew he hadn't changed his mind. "It's all right. Kiss me again. I want to feel your lips on mine." She wanted to forget the truth of their relationship and she knew, as she had the night before, that he could give her that forgetfulness.

"Gladly." And he did, the kiss going from tender to carnal in the space of heartbeats.

Whatever he did not feel for her, he wanted her as much as she wanted him and she reveled in that knowledge, feeding it to her heart in the game she played with herself until the pain was almost completely eclipsed by the pleasure.

He pulled back, breathing hard. "I want you naked, Emily."

She had no thought of demurring. They stood together in one accord and then stepped back from each other. She wasted no time taking off her tunic and then her shift, exposing her body to his scorching gaze.

In one of those lightning quick movements that still startled her, he crossed the distance between them, picked her up and carried her to the bed. He pulled the plaid away and laid her back on the furs. The softness felt incredibly good against her skin and she moaned.

He smiled wickedly and started kissing her again. He used his tongue this time and she loved it. His big body rubbed against her, increasing her ardor to a fever pitch and he had not even touched her as he had on the previous occasions.

When she was moaning over and over again and thrashing below him, he began to kiss his way down her face, stopping at the pulse beating frantically in her neck and sucking there.

Liquid heat pooled between her legs. "
Lachlan
."

"I am marking you," he said in guttural voice. "When others see this love bite, they will know you are mine."

She was so far into her game of make-believe that she was not sure if he actually said those words or if she had made them up in her mind, but she didn't care. He
had
marked her and he was rubbing his body all over hers in a way that seemed strange, but excited her, too.

His mouth traveled to her chest and he licked her where his wolf had kissed her the night before. The feelings his touch elicited were not the same though. This time all she felt was pure sexual pleasure and she whimpered with need.

He kneaded her breasts with knowing movements until her nipples were turgid and aching. His hot mouth closed over one and he began sucking, flicking the tip with his tongue. She cried out and arched toward him. He pinched her other nipple and then began rolling it between his thumb and forefinger with torturous slowness. It felt so good that tears of joy seeped out of her tightly closed eyelids.

Her legs spread of their own volition and she tilted her pelvis up to rub herself against him, but she could not find the relief she sought. She needed his touch
there
, like the night before. Mindless with her pleasure, she demanded it in a voice raw with desire.

He pulled his mouth from her nipple with a pop and laughed, the sound diabolical. But she felt no frisson of fear at the implied threat, only anticipation of what he would do next.

His hand slid down her body until his fingertip was right above where she most needed it to be. "I will touch you
down there
, my sweet mate, but not like I did last night."

His mouth forged a scorching trail down her body until his face was between her thighs. She was beyond embarrassment and could do no more than express her need with guttural cries. He gently separated her tender, swollen flesh with his fingers and then pressed his mouth against her sweetest spot in a kiss of homage before licking her with one long swipe.

She lost all sense of who she was or what he was doing at that moment. It all became sensation upon sensation. The feelings inside her spiraled tighter and tighter as he did things with his lips, teeth and tongue that made her body jerk and shudder. She cried out her love for him as the storm of passion howled inside her, lifting her body into a bow.

All at once, everything inside her clenched in a crystalline moment of excruciating pleasure. Then her body clenched again and again in a series of increasingly strong convulsions until she could not bear it. Yet she could not stop moving against his mouth either.

It was too much. Too wonderful. Too amazing. Too intense. As the indescribable pleasure spiraled to a peak of sheer perfection, she lost the final thread connecting her to this new reality of being a Chrechte warrior's lover.

When the waves of pleasure receded and she became aware of her surroundings once more, Lachlan was leaning over her, his eyes glowing almost pure gold. He looked very satisfied with himself. "Good?"

"Unbelievable," she croaked and realized her throat was raw from screaming.

"Sleep and then I will show you how to pleasure me."

"I don't want to sleep. I want to pleasure you now." She needed to see him go wild for her in order for her fantasy to be complete.

"I need time to regain my control."

"I don't want you in control."

"Do you hope to tease me into taking you, Emily?" he asked quietly. "It would probably work. I have never been as out of control with a woman as I am with you."

The admission touched her deep inside, but the accusation stung, threatening to bring back the pain. "I don't want to trick you into anything. I want to pleasure you. Please believe me, Lachlan."

He sighed. "I know."

"If you say we must wait, then we will wait."

He closed his glowing eyes, his face twisting in a kind of agony she now understood. Sexual need had his body in its grip. "Put your hand on me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. You pleasuring me will be enough." He said it like he was telling himself as well as her.

She was determined to make the words true. She would satisfy him, for nothing else would satisfy her. "Lie on your back first."

His eyes snapped open. "Why?"

She wasn't sure. It just seemed right. "I want you at my mercy like I was at yours," she said and realized that sounded right, too.

"Unless you tie me to the bed, I will never be at your mercy."

"I'll consider that for sometime in the future." Though how much of a future they had she refused to speculate on at the moment.

He laughed out loud and then rolled onto his back. His erection strained upward, almost parallel to his muscular stomach. She curled her fingers around it. They did not quite touch, but he didn't seem to mind. He sighed in bliss, laid his hand over hers and proceeded to show her how to pleasure him.

He was thrusting up into the tunnel created by both of her hands when she had the idea of kissing him the way he had kissed her. Bending over, she brushed her hair against his thighs. This drove him crazy and he started thrusting against her hand so fast she could barely see the movement. "Stop," she commanded.

He ignored her.

She released him and demanded again, "Stop, Lachlan."

He glared at her, his body rigid with tension.

She curled one hand around him again and caressed him from tip to root. "I want to kiss you."

She'd succeeded in shocking him. "You don't have to," he strangled out.

"I want to. Is there anything special I should do?"

He shook his head. "Whatever you want."

"And will you like it as much as I did?"

"More."

She liked hearing that and smiled. Then she leaned down and kissed the slit at the tip of his shaft. He growled. She licked him, a single swipe that caught his taste… a salty sweetness that gave her tremendous pleasure. She took the broad tip into her mouth and swirled her tongue around. His hips moved in short, jerky movements, but he did not start thrusting again and she explored him with her tongue and lips as thoroughly as he had explored her.

He shuddered. "Suck it, please Emily, suck me."

She sucked as much of him as she could into her mouth and wrapped both hands around his hardness below her lips. He pulsed against her fingers, his skin so hot it almost burned her.

Suddenly he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back from him. "Enough."

Her grip on him tightened convulsively and he thrust upward with an earsplitting shout, then thick white fluid erupted from his male member as it jerked in her hands. She didn't know what to do to prolong the pleasure like he had done with her, so she just held him as his hips thrust up and down and he spurted several more times, but none of them lasting as long as the first one.

Finally, he fell back against the bed, his eyes closed, his face for once devoid of any harsh lines and his body completely slack. She forced herself to climb from the bed on unsteady legs.

"Where are you going?" he asked with his eyes shut.

"My hands are messy… I want to wash them."

He said nothing to that and she did as she'd said she wanted to, then searched through a trunk against the wall for a cloth and thankfully found one. She stumbled back to the bed and he allowed her to clean away the evidence of his pleasure without so much as a murmur. Something about his passive acceptance touched her deeply. Perhaps because her ministrations now felt every bit as intimate as what they had just done.

When she was finished, she dropped the cloth on the floor, grabbed the plaid and pulled it over them both as she settled against his side, her head on his chest. "I liked that."

"I did, too, sweeting." His words slurred together and were barely discernible. He said something else, but she didn't understand and finally she wondered if that language was Chrechte.

She asked and he said yes, but didn't volunteer a translation. He sounded far too tired to give one and she did not mind. She'd satisfied him to the point of exhaustion and she was very, very proud of that. Realizing she was a bit tired herself, she let her eyes close.

Lachlan smiled as Emily's body relaxed into sleep. She felt so right next to him with her small hand over his heart. He had never known such a sense of peace as he did in that moment.

He trailed the silken strands of her hair back from her face. She was so lovely, so perfect for him in every way but one. She was not Chrechte, but she was as courageous as a femwolf and she accepted his beast completely. He had never changed in front of a human woman, not even his own mother, but he had felt no inhibition about changing in front of Emily.

She'd touched his wolf's body with obvious delight and affection. Even his prolonged werewolf orgasm had not disgusted her as he had heard it did some human women. In fact, her passion was as uninhibited as any femwolf's.

Their fit had been so perfect that he had even called her his mate in the heat of the moment. She had not seemed to notice, or mayhap she was unaware of the significance of such a claim. But just as he had not been able to hold back from marking her body with his scent and her throat with his love bite, he had made the verbal claiming as well.

If she had been a femwolf, she would expect marriage. By rights, since he had made the claim, he should offer anyway.

Which duty dictated his honor more strongly? That to his clan to wed within the Chrechte or that to his integrity to follow through on the verbal promise he had made? Telling himself that since she did not know it had been a declaration of intention, he was not held to it, did not diminish his sense of obligation.
He
had known what it would mean and he had said the words anyway.

She had not trapped him with her body; he had trapped himself with a need he had been unable to suppress.

Was that how his father had come to be married to a human woman? It was something Lachlan had only asked his father about once and the tough warrior had said that when destiny slapped you upside the head, you listened, or you paid the price for your arrogance. Lachlan had not understood his father's words at the time, but later he thought his father meant that he'd had sex with a woman and found himself true-mated. Lachlan had been determined never to make that mistake.

But he wondered if he had merely been running from his destiny.

He was past the age when he should have taken a wife, and Emily was the first woman he had even considered spending the rest of his life with. He had made excuses for that reality, but the truth was… he knew the femwolves of his clan and although he liked and admired many of them, none of them appealed to him as a future mate.

He had considered Susannah, but merely because she was sister to his first-in-command and Lachlan liked her. He had never felt the consuming passion in her presence he did when he was with Emily. He had known Susannah was in heat at the last full moon and had assumed they would end up mated when she ran with the pack. His wolf's nature would dictate that he fight for her and no other wolf could hope to beat him.

However, one of the reasons Ulf's suggestions for vengeance had been so repugnant to him was that Lachlan had been
relieved
to discover she had mated another. He could hardly go to war over a situation from which he benefited, even if he did not want to admit such a thing to his pack, or even to himself.

He could go to another clan and look for a wife. He had considered that plan many times, but he had never followed through on the intention. Now, he could not imagine finding a woman as perfect for him as the one sleeping so securely in his arms. Even if she had no beast inside to match his own.

And she loved him.

Perhaps it was time he stopped running from his destiny and accepted that God alone could determine the future of the Chrechte. Making love to Emily completely would determine if she was his true mate. If she was, who was he, a mere mortal, to thwart providence?

Emily woke to the sensation of her naked body being caressed by the sun.

Her eyes fluttered open.

Lachlan was watching her with his wolf's eyes, his hands the sun against her sensitive skin. "Good afternoon, sweeting."

She yawned delicately, arching into the delicious sensations he evoked. "I fell asleep."

"I did, too." He sounded bemused by that fact.

She felt his hardness surge against her thigh. "You're not asleep now."

"Far from it."

She smiled, his obvious desire for her and the beautiful dreams she'd woken from putting her in a very good mood.

She'd dreamt of being in the water, of all things, but there had been no terror. Lachlan had finished teaching her to swim and then they had made love. Parts of the dream were vague and unfocused as if even her sleeping mind could not conjure up how to accomplish such a feat in the water, but the remembered pleasure of his caresses still pulsed through her body.

It was easy to slip back into the fantasy that his touch and affection were born of deeper feelings than lust. She had no regrets for allowing him such liberties with her body or taking equally ardent ones with his. If that made her more wanton than a lady, so be it. She was at least happy for this brief moment in time.

She smoothed her hand down his naked flank, loving the feel of hair-roughened skin over muscles as ungiving as a rock. "You are so hard."

"Aye." He thrust against her hip. "Very hard."

Giggling, she pinched his backside, which was as solid as the rest of him. "I meant your body, you wicked man."

"I did, too, but mayhap we each meant a different part of my body."

"You know we did." She moved her hand to his manhood, caressing its length. "Though this is probably the hardest bit of all and that is saying something."

"At the moment it is."

She laughed and he kissed her, his mouth swallowing her expression of joy.

Unlike before her nap when everything had been overwhelming passion and harsh carnal delight, they caressed each other languidly, learning the secrets of one another's bodies while the tension between them built. He touched her everywhere and in doing so gave her permission to do likewise. Her own arousal at a fever pitch, she made him roll onto his stomach, so she could explore his back.

Pushing his long black hair away from his neck and shoulders with one hand, she brushed her fingertips down his nape with the other. He shivered beneath her.

"You like that?" she asked, her voice impossibly husky.

"Yes."

She did it again, but she wanted to touch all of him. She started kneading the bulging muscles of his back. It was a good thing she was used to working bread and had strong fingers because he was so hard everywhere. When she got to his backside, she pushed his thighs apart so she could trail her fingertip down the center of his cheeks to the soft spot just before his scrotum.

He made a harsh sound and then that pleasure growl that made his chest rumble. She bit her lip wondering how she could increase the sensation. She pressed lightly against the tender skin, reaching under him with her other hand to gently cup his stones.

"Yes!" he shouted into the furs on the bed.

She pressed deeper into that small area of flesh between his bottom and his scrotum and he bucked, his entire body jerking. She bent down and kissed him there, reaching with her tongue to tickle his stones.

He erupted from the bed, yanking her onto her back and under his heaving body. He stared down at her, his eyes almost wholly gold and so serious she caught her breath.

He reached down between her legs and caressed her wet heat, gliding his thumb along her sweetest spot. "You offered me your virginity. I ask formal permission to enter your body now."

She moaned and his words took several seconds to penetrate the haze of passion surrounding her. When they did, the sweet fantasy she had created shattered around her. She could not breathe. He did not love her and the last thing he really wanted was to make love to her completely. She did not understand how this time he had lost control so much when their touching had been so much more tender and slow, but he must be nearly out of his head to suggest such a thing.

She should not have touched him like she had, but she had not foreseen the consequences.

She shook her head wildly.

He stared down at her, his brows drawn together in a scowl. "You're denying me?"

She forced words from her suddenly tight throat. "I'm denying you. You don't really want it."

One blunt, man-sized fingertip penetrated her opening. "But I do, Emily. I want to bury myself in your body very much."

It felt so good, but she could not hide behind the physical ecstasy when he threatened his own future. With strength born of desperation and gut-wrenching pain, she shoved him off of her and rolled from the bed, landing on the hard floor with a bruising thump.