Chapter Four Jean-Emilien
“Wow. That… that’s… quite an offer.” Ah, how breathless she sounds, this sweet prey my wolf and my lover have trapped between us.
Me, I don’t dare to touch her. Not yet. Not until I am certain my loup-garou is contained.
He is wickedness incarnate, the werewolf, this accursed beast who shares my skin. And the innocent scent of spring rain and honeysuckle floating from Mallory’s copper curls and milky skin…
That scent. Intoxicating.
She is driving my wolf to madness.
Then there is the moon. Tomorrow, she is full. This time for me, and for all these frail mortal souls around me, is most dangerous.
So I lurk behind sweet Mallory and I stare at the alluring angel’s wings tattooed in black and silver, spread across her delicate shoulders, as though she will take flight.
If I am not careful, this angel will fly away.
My werewolf snarls and lunges in vicious protest at the very thought. Fighting for control of my beast, my mortal will weakened by the waxing moon, I clench my fists until they burn. The joints of my fingers extend until the bones crack. Evil claws sprout from my fingertips and slice into my palms. Ribbons of my own hot blood trickle through my grip to splatter my bare feet.
While behind her I strain to contain my monster, Mallory gazes up at Draco’s scowling face and says cautiously, “Are you joking?”
Draco’s ferocious scowl deepens. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
“ Chere , he never jokes,” I murmur, while my werewolf flexes his claws with hunger. “Believe me.”
“Well.” Mallory sucks in a sharp breath, then announces with firmness, “Thanks for the offer. I, uh, appreciate it. But it’s really not necessary.”
We are necessary! My wolf gnashes his terrible teeth and howls.
Draco glares down at this innocent creature and growls like a bear. “Don’t bother denying it. You’ve been making moon eyes at that fucking Pendragon since we were freshmen.”
“Moon eyes?” she repeats.
Draco jerks his chin in a curt nod. “He chose someone else. He and that mannfjandi dragon are not for you.”
“You mean Maxim?” she blurts.
“Like I said,” my Draco repeats, with stubbornness.
“Gosh, I never even thought about Maxim that way.” Poor Mallory, she sounds bemused. “Have you seen that dragon when he’s shifted? He scares the heck out of m—”
“But you thought about Pendragon, didn’t you.” Now Draco looks even more forbidding. “ Helvitis. I knew it. He’s totally fucking wrong for your harem.”
“My harem ?” Now Mallory sounds like she is choking. She hugs her elbows and her shoulders rise. It’s a defensive posture, this, which I find most intriguing.
“Yeah, but I’m… not a queen?” Her voice climbs an octave and her words spill out in a rush. “So I don’t have a harem.”
“Yet.” His big hands tighten on her little waist. Now, transfixed by his forbidding glare, she freezes in his grasp. “But you’re obviously looking.”
“Oh my gosh, I am not. I’m not shopping for a harem. I’m not a queen, okay?” Mallory sounds much more defensive, anxious, even fearful than this conversation warrants. My hunting instincts stir and my hackles rise. I swear, there is something she is hiding.
Still, she is fixated on the wrong thing.
Ah, Draco. Clearly, my amou is going about this entire hunt the wrong way. Discreetly I wipe my bleeding palms on my jeans (not for the first time, oui ? My beast, he is hard on my clothes.) With care, I curl my clawed hands over Draco’s, so we are both holding our prey. My wolf flexes his talons in her ribs until she gasps.
While my beast rages and snarls in the cage of my skin, I lean forward to breathe my words in her ear.
“Our Draco, you make him jealous, chere. He wishes to be Ronin.”
“Uh… you mean he wants to be with Zara ?” Her head jerks toward the heaving tangle of bodies on the dance floor, where the Gemini queen and her two lovers are writhing half-naked against the wall, and clearly preparing to fuck. “No offense or anything, Draco. But I don’t think you’re top of mind for her.”
Ah, poor bébé. Her feelings are betrayed in her tone.
Our sweet Mallory, she misunderstood what I meant to say. She loves her friend, the Gemini girl, yet she fears no lover will ever see her—Mallory—where she hides in the shadows. She believes Draco, like all these other blind and witless fools, has overlooked her shy bookish beauty, eclipsed by the flamboyant Gemini queen.
Now she is hurt. But she pretends not to show it.
Me, I’m part telepath, so she cannot hide from me.
Or the monster who shares my skin.
My gaze lifts to Draco’s. This sort of candor, it is hard for him. So I nod to encourage him. He grimaces at my expectant face, then locks his arctic stare on the waiting Mallory.
“Fokk,” Draco grumbles. “I don’t give a single shit about Zara. We wanna be with you tonight, Mallory. Jean-Emilien and me both.”
Her delicate frame arcs with an electric sizzle of awareness. Trapped between us, held captive in our hands, Mallory trembles like a deer in a snare. Then her psychic channels flood with a sudden heady rush of anticipation and arousal. She drenches the air with the sweet scent of honeysuckle.
My nostrils flare wide to drink in her sweetness. My werewolf bares his horrible teeth and slavers. He yearns to hunt and chase and fuck. Her scent is ambrosia. Her cunt is dripping.
Beneath her pretty dress, she is soaked.
She is soaked for both of us.
She is so wet I can nearly taste her.
Then, for some reason I can’t grasp, her head droops and her shoulders slump.
“Look.” Under our hands, her ribs deflate in a dejected sigh. “If this is about what I saw on the stairs, you honestly don’t need to worry. I won’t tell a soul, okay? You don’t have to, you know, pretend you’re into me—”
“Ah, but who is pretending?” I lower my head to nuzzle the soft skin stretched over her fragile shoulder. At the first brush of contact, she shivers and gasps—a broken, vulnerable sound that makes my loup-garou ’s vicious fangs plunge from my palate in a rush.
I am startled, me, that already he is so well prepared to give her his mating bite. Oui , the moon is nearly full. But it’s more than the moon that drives him. His ceaseless feral mutter fills my mind.
Ours she is ours claim our mate—
Now I’m wary. Even alarmed. I know he wishes to give Draco our mating bite, but our accursed venom is far too potent. If I should ever weaken and give my beast full sway, even a warlock as powerful as Draco would be doomed.
As I am doomed.
Cursed to share body and soul with the wolf.
Yet there is no other woman my loup-garou has ever wished to claim in this way.
I must be careful, so careful, never to lose control.
For her sake.
Carefully I burrow into Mallory’s fiery hair and nuzzle the velvety skin of her neck. She tastes like strawberries and cream and innocence. She smells like rain and honey. Her silky curls tickle my closed lids. Her pulse leaps and skips against my lips.
“W-wait a minute,” she whispers. Ah, her voice, how it trembles. “Are you saying… do you actually want… me ?”
“ Chere ,” I say gruffly against her skin, through the envenomed menace of my fangs, “my wolf, he is feral with wanting you. This is why I told you to run, oui ? But now, it is too late.”
“No, wait, do you mean…?” She does not seem able to finish.
In response, I suck a vicious love bite into the tender crook where her neck meets her shoulder.
“Jae—” Around the sound of my name on her innocent lips, her desperate whisper splinters and breaks.
“Mallory,” my loup-garou snarls, rabid with need. “My sweet. I am saying you are mine. Ours. I am saying you should have fled. By staying, you sealed your fate. Now I am saying—you belong to us.”
My clawed hands curl around her hips and spread, hard and claiming, over her soft belly and fertile womb. My cock swells against my zipper. I arch my swelling heat into the tender curve of her derrière . Her soft trapped whimper slips out.
She is trembling desperately—how else?—under the threat of my claws and the press of my fangs and especially the jut of my hungry cock, shoved crudely against her luscious bottom.
But of course, she is trembling.
I am a monster lurking at her back.
I am shirtless and barefoot and sweating and all but mindless with rut. Surely I will ruin her pretty dress and her fresh unspoiled innocence with my need and my violence.
I will ruin her.
But the moon, she is nearly full, the frantic music shrieks in my ears like a damned soul, and the air is thick with Mogadon pheromones. Ah, that Gemini queen and her mates, they are fucking against the wall. Ronin is bucking savagely into Zara, with her legs locked around his waist and his pants loose around his hips, the queen’s ripe breasts are spilling from her latex, and that Russian dragon is lurking and angling for his turn.
The witching queen’s heat is sending this whole house spiraling into a mating rut.
Trapped between my amou and me, Mallory’s pale body squirms against my raging shaft in a way that makes my dick weep. I bite harder into the tender curve of her neck, not hard enough to break the skin and administer my wicked venom… not quite. I growl, deep and savage, in my chest.
Softly, so softly, her hands close over mine.
Over my wicked four-jointed fingers and disemboweling claws that are flexing into her helpless belly and shredding her sparkly dress.
With gentle wonder, her fingers trace over mine. Her careful touch follows every gnarl and knot of my twisted hands without fear or disgust or flinching. Where another woman would weep and beg and even scream for mercy, she is silent.
She does not protest.
“Draco, she is willing,” my beast slavers with my voice, harsh and guttural. “Take her with me, amou . Take her now.”
My lover tears his fascinated gaze from her face where she lists, half-swooning against my shoulder, to give me one of his fierce Viking glares. I grin up at him through my fangs.
Finally, Draco gives Mallory what I have sensed all along she is craving. Roughly he says, “ Hjartfólgin .”
In his northern tongue, he is calling her… his secret heart. This is the same endearment he uses (sometimes, in private) for me.
Then, with a suddenness that makes her gasp, he drags her roughly up on tiptoe against his big body and swoops down to claim her in a brutal kiss.