Spirit of the Wolf (24 page)

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Authors: Vonna Harper

Tags: #Man-Woman Relationships, #Ranchers, #Paranormal, #General, #Romance, #Erotic Fiction, #Erotica, #Fiction, #Love Stories

BOOK: Spirit of the Wolf
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Epilogue
 
T
he long and emotionally draining day nibbled at Cat’s muscles. Every time she tried to replay the conversation that had taken place at Grizzly’s Home, all she got was fragments. Hopefully by morning she’d be able to recall the details. One thing she did know, she’d soon be getting in touch with Helaku.
She’d thrown together a couple of sandwiches and a salad while Matt tended to the horses. They’d eaten with their heads down, stuffing their empty bellies. Then Matt had lifted her in his arms and carried her into her bedroom. Prompted by his strong, weathered body and her own humming one, she all but parked her mind at the door.
“Wait a minute,” she protested when Matt plunked her onto the side of the bed and, kneeling, started pulling off her boots. “You’re acting pretty darn sure of yourself.”
“I’m acting like a man who survived a storm and is celebrating.”
She waited until her boots and socks were off and her jeans unzipped before fisting her hands in his hair and forcing him to look up at her. He tried to pull free, but she was having none of that.
“The way I look at it,” she said, “you’ve been more than happy to let Matichu and your dad mess with your libido lately.”
“That’s news to me.”
“Yeah, right.” No longer interested in exerting control over him, she released his hair and started in on her braid. “I’ve been jumping your bones long enough to know your standard operating procedure. You’ve always been quick on the trigger—no complaints there—but until a short while ago, you didn’t pull that Me-Tarzan business.”
Still kneeling, Matt placed his hands on her thighs. Holding on to her train of thought would be easier if his fingers weren’t heading for her crotch.
“I’m not Tarzan. Never been near a jungle.”
“You know what I’m talking about—the semi-bondage thing, exerting your rights.” Done with her hair, she shook her head so the strands fluttered over her shoulders. Oh, to be rid of her top. “That was predator behavior. The wolf or spirit or whatever trying to take over.”
Matt’s fingers stilled, and his features sobered. “If I’d known what was responsible for—”
“Would that have changed things?” Groaning, she pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “My brain’s used up. I don’t think I can hold up my end of a conversation about the weather.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Planting his hands on her inner thighs, he spread her legs and nuzzled her jeans’ covered crotch with his chin. “In fact, I’d like to declare a moratorium on thinking and talking.”
It was dark out and getting cold. She should have closed her window. She would, later.
“You’re forgetting one thing. This is my place.”
Still holding her legs apart, he cocked his head. “Your point is?”
This was the Matt she’d initially lusted after. That man loved to make a game of sex, to take things light and hard.
Folding her arms across her breasts, she gave him her best glare. “I’ve put up with a lot of Tarzan behavior lately. You know what they say about variety being the spice of . . . well, however it goes. Tonight’s about turning things on end, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.”
A shadow briefly stole Matt’s amused expression. Instead of telling him she didn’t mean it, she stood and unceremoniously shucked out of her jeans.
“If you want to see the rest of the merchandise”—she ran her hands under her top and cupped her breasts—“I suggest you match my level of undress.”
“What if I don’t?”
Good. There was the teasing tone she hadn’t heard for too long. “Then I’ll have no choice but to tackle that chore myself. However, if you want to reap the full benefits of tonight’s menu, I suggest you get with the getting.”
A few minutes later, nothing remained of their clothes.
“That was fast,” Matt observed, and reached for her.
Wagging her finger at him, she dodged away. Her breasts with their erect nipples rolled with the movement, capturing Matt’s attention. Just yesterday he would have thrown her onto the bed and climbed on top of her, but tonight was about reminding him that they were equals.
Or not.
“Hands by your sides, mister.” She again folded her arms, but this time she anchored them below her breasts so the mounds stood out. “No touching the merchandise until you’re given permission.”
“You’re nuts.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. All right, here are the rules, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll abide by them.”
Assuming an almost military stance with his arms ramrod straight and his cock at a right angle to the rest of him, he glared.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll spend the night mucking out the barn instead of getting any.”
His expression softening, he fixed his gaze on her pubic hair. The longer he looked at that part of her anatomy, the more aroused she became, not that she wasn’t already. He might be going along with her game. That didn’t mean he didn’t have a few moves of his own.
“All right.” She licked her lips. “Time for you to get on the bed.”
He grunted. “Those are my choices? I get in position or it’s out to the barn?”
“You got it, cowboy.” Giving him a stern look, she jerked her head at the bed. “Assume the position.”
He didn’t ask what she had in mind, not that he needed to. After all, nothing was going to happen if she couldn’t get her hands or other parts of her anatomy around his cock. Watching him plant a knee on the mattress in preparation for hauling the rest of his body after it, she admired his lack of self-consciousness in presenting his ass to her. She again licked her lips.
Matt crawled onto the bed on his hands and knees, then looked over his shoulder at her.
“A question, cowgirl. It’s obvious I’m ready to service and be serviced.” Reaching down and back, he gave his cock a shake. “I have a right to know if you’re ready to reciprocate.”
If he couldn’t see her body vibrating, he needed to get his eyes checked. About to hold up a trembling hand, she caught on.
“I suppose you have a point. All right, let’s see if I can give you a sample.”
Feeling foolish and excited, she slipped a hand between her legs. Two fingers went straight to her opening. Wet heat immediately coated them. She took a moment to collect as much sticky moisture as she could, then reached out and wiped her offering on Matt’s lips.
He licked. “Yes, indeed, a prime sample. Comes from a healthy diet.”
“And from lusting after a prime example of the male sex.”
Matt continued to look sideways at her while she wracked her so-called mind for what she should do next. She was trying to decide between jumping on the bed or giving him another taste when he dropped to his belly and onto his back. He planted one hand behind his head. The other pointed his cock at her.
“Your call, cowgirl.”
Yes, indeed it was. With her nipples tied in knots and her pussy leaking, she didn’t need to do any more thinking. Stepping around to the foot of the bed, she climbed onto it, kneeing his legs apart as she did. Her shaking stopped. Lifting her head, she turned so the air from the open window cooled her cheeks. She spotted a pair of eyes buried in a predator’s body looking in.
I can’t think about you,
she told Matichu / Kaga.
Tomorrow, yes. Tonight, no.
Lowering her upper body, she drew Matt’s cock into her mouth. Saliva flooded her cheeks.
“Ah, shit.” Fisting her hair, Matt held her in place. “Now I know why I want your hair loose, so I can—Oh, God!”
Controlling Matt was so easy. So incredible. Her lips sealed themselves around his shaft, and she tasted sweet promise. Her head pulsed as she ran her tongue down his cock’s underside. Was she floating over him?
Then his hold on her hair let up and she lifted her head, losing him as she did. She lapped at his cock until it glistened.
Another look out the window—a quick glance that gave her eyes no time to register what was there—and she straddled Matt.
Hungry for sex, she straightened, thinking to improve the alignment of cock to cunt. She reached down, thinking to guide him in, only to brush his hand, which was already around himself.
“Let me,” he whispered. “Please.”
Planting her hands on Matt’s chest, she arched her back. His cock touched her opening. Slipped in. Hissing, she slowly lowered herself onto him. Became part of him.
Matt bucked upward, prompting her to grip him with all her inner strength. Wet slipped over wet, and his swollen length abraded her hot, soft channel. Her hiss became a scream.
Her body gathered, knotting in anticipation of meltdown. Mindless, she raked Matt’s chest with her nails, then bent low to kiss him there.
She fell apart.
Hours later, she stirred to find her head on her man’s chest and his arm around her. Listening to his light snore, she fell back asleep.
Outside, the great wolf looked up at the moon but didn’t howl.
Turn the page
for a sizzling preview of
ROUGH PLAY,
by Christina Crooks!
 
Coming soon from Aphrodisia!
1
 
T
he noise sounded a little like a mouse scratching behind a wall. The strangeness of it pulled Charlotte’s gaze from her budget calculations. Daytime was when the apartment’s mice should have the sense to sleep instead of scratching loudly enough to draw a predator’s attention.
Charlotte looked back at her white plastic laptop. She frowned at the clicking-whirling noise it made. Maybe the computer had made the scratching noise? She hoped it wasn’t about to break. She relied on the old laptop for her struggling matchmaking business.
The sound again. A metallic scratching.
The fish tank? She looked at it with a frown. No, the noise wasn’t coming from her cloudy freshwater aquarium or its quiet motor. She needed to clean the water again, she noticed.
Her door rattled slightly.
The front door.
Someone was messing with the lock. Not the landlord. He had a key. Besides, he’d knock.
Charlotte’s hearing zeroed in on the tiny scrapes, the metallic jiggling. Picking the lock? Breaking in to her second-floor home.
Her heart sped into a staccato beat and she leapt silently to her feet. She paced the tiny living room in a tight circle, trying to prevent adrenaline from fogging her thinking. What to do? “Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Okay. Yell for a neighbor, call a friend, a boyfriend, anyone. No. There’s nobody.”
Nobody.
The realization stopped her steps. Half a year after her divorce finalized, and she was still solitary. She knew she should’ve forced herself to get out more, to meet people. To date. The solitude now impaired her options. She didn’t know her neighbors, and aside from the ex himself, there was no one to call.
“Okay, okay, okay. No, it’s not okay. Shit.”
She started pacing again, and her mind started working again. “Gotta do something. Call the police, of course.”
Following her own advice, she dove for the small flip phone next to her notebook. Its rounded edges squirted from her sweat-slicked grasp, falling to the hardwood floor. The crack of plastic, then the clatter of the battery projecting out across the room sounded calamitous.
The scratching sounds stopped.
Charlotte held her breath until small black dots swam before her vision.
She strained to hear. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she tiptoed to the door. She brushed it ever so lightly with the pads of her fingertips, leaned toward the peephole.
The door shuddered under a blow, jerking a scream from her. Charlotte stumbled back without having seen the pounder. The fist-slam against the door told her he was strong. She hoped her door held under that level of assault.
What if it didn’t hold?
She curved into the same pacing circle, passing the broken phone. She braced herself against the next loud noise, but it didn’t come. She whispered to herself in the ominous silence, “Okay. Okay. Dead phone. Lunatic outside door. Go out the back sliding doors, jump. Crap. Go.” Obedient to her own instructions, she’d half climbed over the balcony’s wrought-iron railing when she heard the sound of knocking on the front door.
Polite knocking, not pounding.
She paused.
Was it a trick? As if she’d be stupid enough to just open the door.
Still she paused, with a reluctant glance down. It was a long way to a hard landing.
Another polite knock.
It wouldn’t hurt to look.
This time she didn’t tiptoe to the door, but stomped. “I own a gun! And my boyfriend’ll be back any minute! And I have a vicious attack dog!”
She peered through the peephole.
“Dogs aren’t allowed,” her landlord said. He waited, lanky and familiar, his lean body propped against the iron railing on the concrete balcony. It was the exact same type of railing she’d just been climbing over in the back.
The guy couldn’t be more than thirty, but his frown made him look old and mean. She hoped he wasn’t feeling mean. She didn’t have the full month’s rent.
She also didn’t have a boyfriend, gun, or an attack dog. Hoagie, her little brown and yellow mutt, wouldn’t dream of biting anything but his toys and bones. He lived at Cory’s anyway.
Her ex got the sweet little dog. She got the goldfish.
“Oh, man. Okay.” Charlotte calmed her breathing, smoothed the front of her shirt. It clung to her sweaty skin and revealed more than she wanted to show her landlord, so she peeled it away and fanned the material to cool herself down. Her hands stopped for a moment. “Can I ask you something? Were you pounding on the door a couple of minutes ago?”
“No.” He sounded impatient. His impatience convinced her he wasn’t the same guy.
“Okay, just a sec.” She walked toward her desk, stepping over the phone pieces, and quickly wrote out a check.
She opened the door with caution, looking past the landlord. “Did you by any chance see anyone? A man running away?”
“No,” he repeated. He stared pointedly at the check.
“Because someone was trying to pick my lock,” she continued, not to be deterred. “Whoever it was tried to break down my door.” She held her check folded in one hand. “Could you please look at the lock?”
He sighed. He examined the lock. “Scratches. Could be from keys.” He gave a cursory glance at the door. “The lock’s intact. The door’s undamaged. Seems fine now. Did you call the police?”
She bit back a number of replies. The police weren’t high on her list of good guys lately. They hadn’t managed to find her stolen car in the past months, and their swaggering presence while writing traffic tickets or sprawled in uniformed groups inside that donut shop down the road didn’t do much to deter the brisk local drug trade. She often heard gunshots at night.
She frowned unhappily. Other than Cory, cops were the only lifeline she had. She really needed to get out more. It was past time.
At the moment, she shifted from one foot to another, wondering how to manage the landlord situation. “Yeah, I was about to call the police. But then, you showed up.” She smiled brightly.
“Uh-huh.” He held out his hand. His left hand. She noticed he wore no ring.
A man of few words. She could work with that. “The check is short. I’m sorry. The thing is, I have a small business I’m growing, and I can make it up to you in service. It’s a matchmaking business. To help people locate dates and true love. I have many happy clients.” A slight exaggeration. She’d
had
many happy clients. Now they were happily paired-off former clients.
His scowl deepened, but he withdrew his hand.
“So, what do you think of that kind of service?” she prompted. She offered him the check, a gesture of goodwill.
He glanced at it without taking it, then transferred his gaze to her. His scowl faded to a look of speculation. His thin hair hung in limp, unwashed straggles over his broad forehead. Nice eyes, though. And he had the body of a man who did some physical labor.
He suddenly closed his calloused fingers over the insufficient rent check as if afraid she might attempt to snatch it back.
He looked at her in a way she didn’t like.
She spoke quickly. “Or, if you prefer, I’ll just get the rest of the money to you in two weeks. That’s when Burger Town pays me. Things have been tight, hours have been cut. And you know my car was stolen. Right out of the parking lot down there.”
He didn’t even look. Were thoughts of eviction crossing his mind? “Think about what I’m offering. Just consider it. I mean, you’re not wearing a wedding ring. You’re single, right?”
She noticed his slow smile and tried to ignore the glances at her body. “I’m a fabulous dating coach. Dating coach,” she repeated when she saw the gleam in his eyes. “I help people meet people. I’m good at it. I charge a reasonable fee. Very reasonable.”
“You’re good at it, eh?” His nice smile turned into a leer. “In exchange for the rest of rent?” He eyed her apartment’s door again, and she knew he wasn’t thinking about her intruder. “Sounds like fun.”
“Dating coach,” she said again. “Nothing more. I don’t do sex stuff. You seem like the kind of guy who could use a good woman.” As his scowl returned, apprehension fluttered in her belly. “Okay, a not-so-good woman? An easygoing and fun one. Hmm.”
“What, I look desperate?”
“Of course not! I just want to help—”
“I never need help when it comes to women.” He pocketed her check. “I ain’t interested. Besides, if you were any good at your business, what’re you doing living here and working in fast food?” He gave her a pointed look, then turned his back. “Two weeks, then I get the rest of it. No excuses.”
She felt her lips tighten into a grimace. He was definitely feeling mean. Too bad for him.
Too bad for her. Flipping burgers, even part-time, bummed her out. Though it was only until her business caught on. She had a gift for matchmaking. A real, honest-to-God gift.
She spent every spare penny on advertising her matchmaking business. But people didn’t believe her when she claimed a 99 percent success rate of making matches that resulted in permanent relationships. They surely wouldn’t believe her if she told them how she did it.
Nothing excited her as much as using her special skill. Nothing felt as satisfying as trusting her instincts and her prescient visions. Nothing thrilled her like consulting her X-rated imagination to hook up her clients. Well, almost nothing.
Her dangerous personal fantasies with always-faceless ravishers didn’t count, she told herself. They didn’t count at all. Those were strictly and permanently for fantasyland only.
She gave a brief shake of her head, dismissing the thoughts.
She watched the landlord’s departure with a professional’s assessing stare. He descended the worn steps of the fourplex with a furtive but muscular grace. Lower blue-collar. Very single. Probably frequented Riverport’s numerous strip clubs. But he had a nice gruff voice, broad shoulders, tapered hips, and the smudged jeans and easy gait of a man who spent a bit of time outdoors. Not bad. Not her thing, but not bad. Who’d be into him?
Like images on a jackpot’s spinning wheel, faces of women she’d known and counseled turned over in her mind. Jill, Vickie, Tina. All taken now, thanks to her. Tamara had moved to Southern California. But she could’ve totally seen Tamara being into him.
She asked the question of her special intuition, then watched the answer: Tamara getting it on with the landlord.
Charlotte stared into the stairway’s handrail, its metal imperfections coalescing into the magic visions.
In her mind, Tamara rubbed against the landlord’s strong body, clawing his jeans off with only a little less desperation than his own feral dive for her nipples as he shoved her shirt up over her breasts, jammed her bra up, too, and took first one breast then the other into his mouth. No finesse. But Tamara liked it. Rough and straightforward, a little dirty but nothing too kinky.
Charlotte leaned against the rough stucco of her building with a sigh and made the movie in her head stop.
Tamara was gone and the landlord didn’t want to pay Charlotte for her matchmaking services. That was a problem. No one was currently paying her. She’d hooked up all the clients.
Well, all but the last woman. The difficult woman who represented Charlotte’s only failure.
Charlotte pushed herself from the apartment building’s rough stucco wall, ducked inside to grab her mailbox keys and outgoing mail. Maybe a check or a client referral would be waiting in the box.
Her maiden name listed on her mailbox still had the power to bemuse her. She should never have married Cory. His face had never appeared in any of her visions.
Nobody’s had, for her.
A breeze gusted, propelling a chill that lifted the hairs on her arms. Sweat cooled under her shirt. The wind probably heralded another of Riverport’s frequent fall rainstorms, though the sun still beat down with noontime vigor.
Who’d dared to attempt to break into her apartment in broad daylight?
Would they have succeeded if she hadn’t switched shifts at the last moment with a coworker? What if she hadn’t been home? She supposed she’d have returned to find her few remaining belongings stolen. The divorce hadn’t left her with much—she hadn’t wanted much, just the dog, her exotic fish, and a little money to start her business.
Cory gave her the money and fish but convinced her to let him keep Hoagie at the house. Said the little dog they’d both raised from a puppy would be happier with his own backyard. He offered visiting privileges on weekends.
To her surprise, he’d honored her wish to stop by for a brief visit every weekend. Even more to her surprise, they got along better as friends than spouses. They’d never be close, though. Not after what he’d done to her.
Today she could’ve used Hoagie in her home. The little pup’s barking might’ve scared off the lock picker.

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