Chapter 7
ESCAPE
He seems so certain, it would be cruel to set him straight. Especially since I need to make it through the next day and a half before I can leave Blackmoor and, as I meet his stare, I had to admit that I’m looking at my best chance of survival.
Still, I can’t stop myself from saying, “Shit. You really don’t understand the concept of choice, do you?”
He considers that for a moment. “Wolf understands. Red chooses.” He pauses for a moment, coming to an obvious decision. “Red will choose Wolf.”
Uh-oh. The way he seems so sure about that shouldn’t send a shiver down my spine the way it does...
I stand up again before he can notice. Fat chance since Wolf notices everything, but it’s worth a shot. “Just saying, but that sounds suspiciously like not understanding, Wolf.”
He rises too, towering over me in that way that somehow feels less frightening now than it did the first time I saw him. Which is probably a terrible sign that I’m actually getting used to the giant wolf-man.
“Red stays,” he grates out. “Wolf goes.”
What? “What do you mean?” I ask him. That doesn’t make sense… “Goes where?”
He sets his jaw, fangs overhanging his lower lip before he rumbles, “Wolf needs to reinforce his territory. To make sure that no one else comes after his Red.”
Okay. Never mind. That does make sense. Territorial markings… that seems like something a wolf would do, whether he’s standing on two legs or four.
“Why? Do you think someone will?”
Wolf shrugs, though that makes me wonder if he caught something on the wind when he went outside to empty the chamber pot and fill the water basin for me.
He steps close enough to brush his knuckles down my arm. “Red stays here.”
I make a soft, vague sound that means absolutely nothing because, yeah… there’s no way I’m promising that.
Wolf holds my gaze for a long second, like he knows exactly what I’m not agreeing to. Torn between wanting to keep me safe inside and making sure there aren’t any threats out there, he bends slightly, pressing his nose briefly to my temple in an obviously affection gesture, then turns for the door.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Despite every nerve in my body telling me to go, I’m not about to give Wolf the chance to catch me in the act.
I force myself to count to one hundred before I tiptoe for the front door.
I peek out of the window first, searching for Wolf.
When I don’t see him, I ease open the door and stick my head out into the cool night air.
Still no sign of him.
I strain my ears, wondering if I’ll hear him before remembering how easily he stalked me last night. I didn’t know he was there until he wanted me to know, and I’m sure it’ll be the same now… but that doesn’t stop me.
If I stay like he wants me to, he’ll never let me go. I know that all the way down to my bones, and though I feel terrible cutting out on him like this, I don’t think I have a choice.
Outside, as late as it is, the air is cool enough to sting my cheeks. It doesn’t help that I’m basically half-naked without my cloak. My teeth begin to chatter almost right away, but I clamp my jaw closed before I lose the tip of my tongue, and I run.
Do I know where I’m going? Haha. Yeah, right.
Considering I was still lost in a faint when Wolf brought me here, I have no idea where I am or how far the cottage is from the place he found me.
Not like I have any idea how to get there, either.
I’m woefully lost, but all I need to do is put some distance between me and Wolf.
I do.
It’s not enough.
I want to think I was braced for it when I hear the howl blasting through the night, but I’d be lying. I stumble as soon as Wolf makes himself known, trying to gauge the distance between us.
That’s not enough, either. I know it isn’t, but I push myself faster, legs burning as I duck between two thick trunks and swing right, then left, trying to use the forest against him.
Last night he chased me as a wolf. I would’ve guess that he was doing the same now—
—until his rough voice finds me in the darkness.
““Run if you want to. Wolf will always find you.”
My head swivels on my neck and there he is about thirty feet behind me.
Still in his man-shape. Still huge, still half-furred and clawed and impossibly attractive, but running upright through the trees with an easy, ground-eating stride that makes my stomach drop.
He didn’t even need to change to his wolf to chase after me. He managed it as the wolf-man, and there’s a touch of amusement to his shout that has my pulse thudding wildly.
And I know without knowing how exactly that Wolf… he let me escape. He let me get as far away as I did. Sure, maybe he hoped I wouldn’t take the chance to go, but I did, and he let me run anyway because… fuck… because he enjoys it.
What is this? Foreplay for one of the beasts of Blackmoor? My stomach goes tight at the thought and, damn it, I think it is. He’s not chasing me down because I escaped. Oh, no. Wolf wants to catch me to prove that he can.
I’ll say one thing. I give it a good try. Bolting through a narrow path, I veer sharply downhill, branches slapping at my arms in a way that should be able to give Wolf’s big body some pause. Thinking I beat him, I get a little giddy when I finally reach the bottom of the slope and turn—
God fucking damn it! Wolf is right in front of me.
I skid to a stop so fast that my boots slide out from under me, but before I can go down to the forest floor, one huge hand catches me at the waist.
“Found,” he says happily.
I’m breathing too hard to manage a proper reply; I’d give him my middle finger if I thought he’d have any idea what it meant, or if he didn’t take it as a proposition.
Instead, I struggle to get my breath while my body buzzes, way too intimately aware of the possessive hand on my waist and the fact that he isn’t the least bit out of breath while I can’t catch mine at all.
“That,” I gasp, “was unfair.”
His mouth curls, just enough that the edge of one fang shows. “Wolf said he would find Red and he did.”
“That wasn’t a challenge.”
“Yes, mate. It was.”
The sheer confidence in his answer should be insufferable. Instead, it lights something in me that I very much do not want lit.
Turning into him, I brace both hands against Wolf’s chest. I’m intending to shove him back, intending to make some kind of point, but all I do is press my palms into warm skin and soft fur while staring up into those impossible golden eyes of his.
I grit my teeth. “Look… you can’t keep chasing me every time I run from you.”
His eyes flash. “Can.”
“Wolf—”
Something happens. At first, I have no idea what, but it’s enough of a distraction that when Wolf growls, “Mine,” again, I don’t bother arguing with him. Not when—
I dig my nails into his chest. “What are you… what are you doing to me?”
The strange sensation is there and gone again, so quickly I shake my head before he can answer me.
Instead, I relax my fingers, patting him between his pecs. “I still can’t believe you stayed like this.”
He cocks his head slightly. “Wolf is Wolf.”
“No.” I shake my head again. “You could’ve chased me like you did last night. When I heard the howl, that’s what I thought… that I would see the wolf again. Not… not Wolf.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then, “Four legs scare Red.”
I gulped. “You noticed that?”
“Wolf notices everything.”
That’s what I thought.
I swallow. “So you… changed for me. Is that it?”
“Red needs two legs,” he says simply.
I run my fingers down his hot skin. “That doesn’t mean I’m just going to—” My words stop short as that same sensation from before hits me.
Only, this time, I know what it is. Something bristly yet soft brushes against my inner leg before swishing a little higher, dipping under my skirt, and swiping against my curls.
I gasp, falling forward, unwittingly giving him the chance to slide between my legs and touching my folds.
But Wolf isn’t touching me with his hands. Not his fingers, either.
Nope.
That’s his tail.
He’s tailing me. Not quite fingering me since his hands are holding tightly to my upper arms, keeping me against him, Wolf is teasing my pussy by rubbing the length of his tail over it.
And, fuck me, but does that feel fantastic.
“Wolf—” My voice falters as he uses the tip to prod at my entrance, as though he instinctively is trying to fuck me with his tail.
I yip, eyes shoot up to him.
He’s watching me. Of course he is.
Watching to see how I react. To see if I like what he’s doing to me.
No. I told him I would let him know that I was ready. That it would be my choice. He obviously is ready to bend me over and fuck me whenever I give him the ‘go’ sign, but I haven’t yet.
“Stop.”
He does. His tail immediately droops, curling around the back of my knee.
I’m panting. My libido is shouting at me to tell him that put that sucker back where he had it, but if I do that, I’ll… I’ll…
I’ll have something to remember when I leave Blackmoor with a wish.
Fuck it. If I believe that JOSIE521 can bang Krampus in front of Santa Claus, and Sandy made it pretty fucking clear that there were plenty of monsters in the woods who might hunger for human women and not because the thought of them as food, I might as well engage in a little monster sex myself.
What’s the harm? It’s not like a wolf-man and a human woman can pop out a litter. Even if we could, Sandy loaded me up with a shit ton of vitamins the morning I was allowed to enter Blackmoor. One of them, she admitted, served as a month’s supply of birth control.
At the time, I thought they were taking the idea of banging the beasts a little too far, but since I highly doubt Wolf has a condom inside those linen trousers, I’m about to let him fuck me bare—and I’m looking forward to it way more than I should.
“Wolf?”
“Yes?”
“I changed my mind. Don’t stop.”
Wolf is a lot smarter than I’ve given him credit for. I said ‘don’t stop’ and instead of asking questions or double-checking that I said what he thought I said, he uses his knee to widen my thighs before sticking his nose in that direction and inhaling sharply.
The gold in his eye flares to a brilliant orange color as he picks up the scent of my obvious arousal. Shoving his knee in between them so that I don’t cut off his access to the sweet spot, he curves his arm around me, pressing his palm to my lower back.
Then, once I’m left open for him, he swishes his tail behind him and moves it in front of him, the fur rubbing the entire length of my exposed pussy.
Goddamn it, the sensation of the bristly tail against my sensitive and slick skin is even more delicious the second time.
I let out a soft moan, just in case he’s not sure that I like what he’s doing.
Picking up on my heavy-handed clue, he drops his hand, squeezing my ass cheek through the flimsy fabric of the nightdress.
A second later, he places his hand beneath it, forcing me to go to my tiptoes so that he can do a little something to close the impressive gap in our heights.
“Red chooses.”
I’ll probably regret this come morning, but—
“I choose you, Wolf. If only for this moment… if only for tonight… I choose this.”
That’s good enough for him. Probably because, to the half-wolf creature, he doesn’t understand that there could be any reason why I won’t be able to choose him again tomorrow. I chose him now and, since the moment we woke up in that nest together only this morning, that’s all he’s been waiting for.
“Wolf has waited lifetimes for his mate,” he rumbles, almost as though he knows what I’m thinking—or because he wants to point out that it wasn’t just a day to him. It was… it was… lifetimes.
Blackmoor is magic.
Magic is real.
Werewolves are real.
And I’m about to fuck one.