The Wolf Moon (an erotic paranormal romance) (The Wolf Ring) (3 page)

“Don’t try to be
quiet, Graeme,” she said softly, stroking up and down, just as he’d done
earlier. “No one will hear you.
No one except me.
And
I very much want to hear you cry out.”

She moved her
hand slowly, and he shuddered.

“Last time,” she
said, stroking methodically, “you came in my mouth. That bound us together.
This time, you’re going to come all over the forest floor. That will bind you
and the forest. This will all help ease the transformation, when it finally
comes.”

He had no idea
what she was talking about, but he did grasp that she wanted him to spill his
come on the leaves and the soil. For some reason, the thought of his come
shooting out of him in long white ribbons, all over the leaves, all over
her
, made him hotter than before.

“Faster,” he
said in a whisper, aware that he was begging and not caring much. “
Please
.”

“You aren’t
ready. Not yet. You aren’t howling for me, the way you did last night.”

He hadn’t
howled.
Not exactly.
The noises he’d made had been
more along the lines of crying out, or possibly screaming.
Human
noises, not animal ones.
But he didn’t argue the terminology.

“I’m ready,” he
ground out instead. “Ready… so ready… oh…
yes
…”

As she stroked
him, the heat in his cock built to an incredible level. He was so hot…
so hot
…

But just as he
thought his orgasm was imminent, she slowed down again. Deprived of the release
he needed so desperately, he whimpered.

She released
him, and began to caress up and down his cock with a single finger, so lightly
that it almost tickled. He squirmed and groaned. “
Fuck
.”

“Not yet,” she
said, and he heard the humor in her voice. She kept tickling him, all the way
from the swollen balls to the tender head, and he writhed and sobbed and barely
managed to keep on his feet.

“Oh, fuck, let
me come, let me
come
…”

In some dark
corner of his mind, it occurred to him that she was terribly trusting,
considering they didn’t know each other at all. Another man, pushed to this
level of arousal, driven almost to madness by her caressing fingers, might just
grab her and force himself on her. He was, after all, a complete stranger to
her, and for all she knew, he might be a psychopath. But she seemed to have
faith in his self-restraint.

She didn’t know
him, and yet she trusted him.

“Soon,” she said
softly. He dragged his eyes open, and saw that her dark gaze was focused on his
erection, watching every pulse, every drip of precome. The look in her eyes was
almost enough to make him come. Her expression was sensual, avid… and
possessive. The look in her eyes said,
This
is mine
.

And he was hers.
He
was
. He didn’t know her, and yet
he was willingly giving himself to her.

She found his
most sensitive spots, the thick ridge along the underside and the area beneath
his balls and the little slit that was weeping precome, and stimulated them
each in turn, stroking gently with a single fingertip until he was ready to
scream with frustration.
 
It felt so good,
and yet it wasn’t quite enough…

At last, at long
last, she stepped behind him, wrapping an arm around him and pressing up
against him, her breasts against his back, her warm breath against his
shoulder. And then she took his cock in her hand, and began to pump him hard.

He came in an
instant, in violent, soul-searing spasms that all but ripped him apart. This
time he knew he was screaming, but he didn’t give a damn. All he cared about
was the pleasure, the wondrous sensation of her hand stroking him through a
long, incredible climax. His come spurted onto the leaves in gush after gush,
each spasm more intense than the one before, and he screamed with the rapture
and the fulfillment of it.
 

This time, when
it was over, he collapsed into blackness.

Chapter Three

Graeme managed
to resist the lure of the forest for the next two days. As the moon waxed in
the sky, his itching grew worse, till it was almost maddening. He checked again
with his friend John, who suggested a cortisone cream. It helped a little, but
nothing could soothe the wild urges inside him. The need to run, to roam
through the forest, to have wild, soul-searing sex…

But he wasn’t
doing that again, damn it. He just wasn’t. He wasn’t the kind of guy who hung
out in bars in the hopes of picking up strange women. He never had been. He’d
never needed to be. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to go into the forest
looking for a very strange woman.

The need for sex
clawed at him, and he thought about calling up one of the many women he knew,
and who’d had sex with him over the years. He knew plenty of women who wouldn’t
mind helping him out.

And yet he
couldn’t bring himself to call.
Because he didn’t want just
any woman.
He wanted one particular woman—a woman with moonlight hair
and midnight eyes, a woman who smelled like flowers and darkness and sex.

Rhea
, he remembered.
Her name is Rhea Silverthorn
.
A lovely and
poetical name, a name that perfectly suited a very lovely woman.
Rhea.

He wanted Rhea.

He
needed
Rhea.

By the third evening,
he was so jittery that he couldn’t sit still. Annoyed, he headed for the garage
and climbed into his Jeep. He’d cook himself a nice gourmet dinner on the
grill, he decided. A nice thick steak, rare,
still dripping
with blood. His mouth watered just thinking about it.

In the store, he
went to the meat counter and picked out a big juicy London broil. He stood
there staring at it, salivating, strangely tempted to just rip the wrapper off
and eat it raw.

Ugh
. He pushed the thought away, and dropped
it into the cart. He was full of weird desires lately.

He forced
himself to look away from the steak, and meandered around the grocery store,
buying marinade and other things he needed, but really just putting off going
back to the house. He knew that the forest would be calling for him—that
she
would be calling for him—and he
wasn’t sure he had the strength to resist another night.

As he approached
the checkout line, he saw a headful of silver-blonde hair, and froze in shocked
disbelief.

It was
her
.

She was wearing
a t-shirt and jeans, and the clothing made her seem almost ordinary despite the
unusual hair coloring. She didn’t look like a wood nymph, but like a typical
human woman doing her shopping. But he stared hungrily anyway, drinking in the
curves of her body. Even in clothing, her figure was spectacularly gorgeous.

As if she felt
the heat of his gaze, she turned her head, very slightly, and offered him a
smile.

There was
something predatory in that smile.
Dangerous.

All at once, his
native caution tried to reassert itself, despite the inexplicable lust pounding
through his veins. Lupine Rapids wasn’t a big town, but it wasn’t tiny, either,
and it was highly unlikely that he’d just run into her here by coincidence.

She was stalking
him. She had to be.

He ought to be
creeped out. He
was
creeped out.

And yet the need
in his body burned more fiercely than ever.

He was at the
back of the line, and three people stood between them. But he could smell her
clearly, could smell her feminine scent, her sexual musk. The fragrance of her
skin called to him. He stood there with a fierce hard-on, staring at her, and
she only looked back, and smiled.

He assumed—or
perhaps hoped— that she’d wait for him outside the store. But when he paid for
his groceries and strode eagerly into the parking lot, he didn’t see her
anywhere.

He growled,
opened his Jeep, and threw the bags in. Then he stood there in the darkness,
feeling the moon beating down on him with an almost physical power, feeling his
skin sizzle and his blood boil.

God help him. He
needed relief from this terrible heat.

He needed
her
.

He drew in a
long breath, and turned slowly in a circle, his nostrils quivering as he
scented the air. And just like that, he knew where she was. He could smell her
as clearly as he could smell the summer honeysuckle on the breeze. There was a
little stand of trees at the edge of the parking lot. She’d gone there.

He paced toward
her, deliberately, aware that he was the stalker now. He was the predator, and
she was his prey. After two nights of deprivation, he needed her—needed her
more than food, more than water, more than air. He needed her more than he’d
ever needed anything.

She stood just
inside the trees, gazing at him. Her eyes were dark and fathomless pools of
night. She still wore all her clothing, and he was swept by the urge to rip it
off her. She didn’t need clothing. Her beauty should never, ever be covered.
She was meant to be naked—what was the word Wiccans used?
Skyclad,
that
was it.

Rhea Silverthorn
was meant to be starclad.
Moonclad.

“You’ve been
resisting the transformation,” she said softly. Her voice rippled and flowed
like music, stroking over him like a physical caress.
“Hiding
from the moon.
You may as well give into it. Otherwise, you won’t be
able to transform even when the moon is full, and that will mean another month
of suffering.”

His mind was
entirely focused on her, the scent of her skin and the curves of her body and
the way her hair cascaded down her back, but he tried to make some sense of her
words. “You keep talking about a transformation,” he said. His voice sounded
low and gravelly even to his own ears. “What do you mean?”

“You will know
when it occurs.”

“That isn’t
enough.” He took a step toward her. “Something is happening to me, damn it. Am
I ill? Am I having an allergic reaction? Tell me what you know.”

“You are not
ill.” She put a reassuring hand on his arm. Where her skin touched his, the
itching was replaced by the sheerest pleasure. He had to struggle not to moan.
“You are simply… changing.”

Changing
.
He recalled the
movie he’d been watching a few nights ago,
X-Men
,
and wondered briefly what it would be like to be a mutant. But of course he
wasn’t a mutant. People didn’t change that way outside of comic books and
movies.

“What if I don’t
want to change?” He forced the words out despite the light caress of her
fingers on his arm. “I’m pretty happy with the guy I am now. I might not be the
most exciting person in the world, but I’m a freelance writer, with a nice
house, and good friends. I’m okay with who I am.”

“The change will
occur whether you want it to or not,” she said. “But you will not object when
it happens.”

He sighed,
annoyed by the note of mystery in her voice, and shifted the course of the conversation.
“You’ve been following me.”

“Not
consciously,” she answered. “We are simply drawn together. More likely, you
were following
me
, though you didn’t
realize it.”

He remembered
the way he’d caught her scent across the parking lot, and wondered if that
could be true. He couldn’t possibly have scented her from his house, could he?

Could there be
something else that drew them together?
Something less
tangible than scent?

He decided that
was a ridiculous notion. Sure, he liked watching science fiction movies and TV
shows, but he didn’t believe telepathic or psychic abilities existed in real
life, and so he refused to believe the two of them had some sort of mysterious
mental or emotional connection.

It was, he
decided, far more likely that the obvious answer was the correct one. She’d
been stalking him.

The problem was
that he wanted her so badly that he didn’t much care.

And that was
bad.
Very bad.
He shouldn’t want a complete stranger
like this, aching for her, craving her touch with every fiber of his being. He
shouldn’t burn for the touch of her hands and the caress of her mouth and the
sound of her voice this way. It was wrong.

But
even knowing that, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for her.

“No,” she said,
taking a step back. “This time, I want to see you naked.”

He blinked at
her. “The parking lot…”

“No one can see
us, not in the trees and the darkness. Take off your clothes.”

He wanted to
object, but his hands were already obeying, stripping off his own t-shirt and
jeans. He toed off his shoes, pulled off his socks, and kicked his jeans aside.
In a moment he stood before her, clad only in boxers.