“What?”
“I don’t feel out of control anymore. How long will that last?” Her head wanted him to say the fire that had almost burned her to a crisp from the inside out was gone for good. But her body hadn’t come down off its orgasmic high yet, and a small part of her wanted more. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a
small
part of her.
“I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve actually helped a human through a changing heat.” His breath was as strangled as hers. “Maybe fifteen minutes. Or up to thirty.”
“Thirty would be nice. I want to lie down.” She tried to get off him.
“No. If you stand up, my cum will leak out, and the heat will return. Takes a few minutes for your body to absorb it all.”
“I don’t want to get pregnant.” She was going to say it had nothing to do with him, but that wasn’t true. He was a werewolf, or something close to it. Her life was hanging by a thread.
“Only mated pairs can conceive.” He didn’t look up at her. Seeing the disgust on her face at the thought of having his child just might break him.
“It’s not you. I just don’t know what’s going to happen to me. It would be unfair to add an innocent to the mix.”
It made sense, but he didn’t know if he believed it. None of the many women of his pack would want to have kids with a father who was stuck in a chair for the rest of his life. He couldn’t teach them to hunt or run. As a wolf, he was useless.
“Can I move now? My legs are cramping.”
“Give me a sec.” He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he grasped the wheels and rolled them out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and to his bedroom. The only difference between her and the women of his pack was that she needed him and didn’t know he wasn’t the best choice. For her, he was the only choice. And seeing as how she was most likely his last chance, he had no intentions of letting her go. He had less than a week to get her to start falling for him. And damn it, for the first time in his life, he was going to be selfish and tie her to him as best he could.
“Go through that door, and you can take a quick shower. There isn’t enough time to soak in the tub. After the first time, the wolf won’t wait long for more. She’s going to get ugly,” Jason told her. Which wasn’t exactly true. She probably had twenty-five to thirty minutes, then it would slowly begin to build again. So she had almost an hour or more before it got bad.
He helped her stand and smiled as her legs shook slightly. It was good to know he hadn’t lost his touch during his sexual hiatus. When she closed the door, he hurried out of the room and into the guest bathroom. The blood was pounding through his head as the cool water of the shower hit his hot skin. His wolf didn’t want to leave her. The wolf wanted to devour her. And if he were truthful, he’d admit the man did too.
* * *
Gio turned the lock and slumped on the hard wood of the floor. Why did the most intense sexual experience of her life have to be with a stranger? She should run. She should get the hell out of here as soon as possible, no matter what the consequences were. She should walk back out there and beg for more.
No! Where the hell did that come from
? True, he was a sexual god, but sex wasn’t everything. He was a freaking werewolf. He’d threatened to kill her. Images of him slapping her ass assaulted her mind as memories tingled down her skin. She swore she could feel the heat of his hands on her.
Don’t forget he wanted to kill you.
To be fair, that wasn’t exactly true. He’d said if he didn’t bite her and she didn’t turn, then he’d have to kill her. The way he’d said it was like he didn’t have an option. That was crazy. There was always an option. Wasn’t there?
Desire pooled in her stomach. She pushed herself up. She had already spent too much time on the floor. In this case, there was only one option. Take what he was offering until she could figure a way out of this screwup.
Gio slowly got up and walked over to the shower. That she stumbled only once was something she was proud of. With unsteady fingers, she turned the water on scalding hot and got in. As she washed the sweat and sex from her skin, she noticed the water didn’t burn like it should.
Come the freak on
! She loved hot showers; they helped her clear her mind and think outside the box.
“Are you okay in there?” The voice startled her. Was he sitting out there waiting on her?
“Yeah.” Why did this remind her of the awkward morning after? It hadn’t even been fifteen minutes. Would he want a repeat performance? She didn’t know anything about having sex with someone in a wheelchair. He’d seemed to enjoy it, but then again, it wasn’t like he would come out and say that was the worst sex of his life.
Gio lifted her face to the water and smacked her cheeks.
Snap out of it
. She wasn’t some pathetic creature to wonder how good she was. If he hadn’t liked it, then that was his problem. She’d enjoyed herself, and she refused to be sorry for that fact. She refused.
A tiny cramp tightened her gut. She quickly finished the shower and wrapped up in a towel. She opened the door and found him moving from the chair to the bed. He was naked. Gloriously, deliciously naked. Every defensive thought washed from her mind as images of tasting him like he’d tasted her drowned her reasoning.
“Did Donovan bring in my bag?” She swallowed hard and moved to the other side of the room.
“Why?” His eyes crinkled at the sides. He was trying not to smile at her and was failing miserably. She could see his amusement, and it pissed her off.
“Because my underwear is in it,” she said through gritted teeth. He could go commando all he wanted, but she knew she needed some type of barrier between them. Not that it would make a difference, but if neither of them were wearing anything, she knew what would happen. And that would make what had happened earlier look like an appetizer.
“Why? It’s not like you’re going to need them.” He turned on his side and looked at her.
She tried not to notice how sexy he looked just lying there. It would be so easy to slip under those covers and pretend she was the type of woman who could sleep with a man without second thoughts. But she wasn’t. She was having second, third, and fourth thoughts.
“Stop thinking so much and come to bed.” He patted the bedcovers.
So easy. So damn easy. Too easy
. Gio bit her bottom lip and swallowed hard.
“Your wolf is all about sensations, and if you deny her, she will take over, and neither of us wants that.” His voice stroked up one side of her and down the other.
She didn’t know if she believed him. But his constant talk about her wolf taking over was starting to make her a little paranoid. Why was he so adamant that she didn’t want her wolf to take over? “And why don’t we want that to happen?”
He sat up, making the sheets fall to his waist. “You don’t understand. When our women go into heat, they need to be satisfied, or they’ll go into a wild lust that will take on a destructive edge. One female could fuck and turn many men before she could be put down.”
“You make it sound like putting down a rabid dog or something.” Gio rubbed one arm. So essentially her choices were jump into bed with him and maybe live, or jump into bed with countless men before someone shot her dead. Some choice.
“In essence, it’s the same thing. Except they would cause an epidemic. Our men don’t go into heat like the women, so we would add even more unmated men to the pack, which would make it harder for everyone to find mates. Men would start turning humans, and the cycle would become a spiral, until the entire pack had to be wiped out.”
She was sorry she’d asked. So which was it to be? Gio closed her eyes and gave up the fight. Better the wolf she knew. With that one little choice, everything suddenly seemed so easy and impossible at the same time. All she had to do was walk about six steps to the bed. But then again, she had to walk those six steps to a man who knew what they were about to do.
Taking a deep breath, she dropped her towel and took a step. Her hands itched to cover her slightly protruding stomach or her breasts, which felt like double Es. But she wouldn’t. If he wanted her, he needed to want all of her, not just the warm and toasty parts. She put her left foot in front of her right and took a step, then another. If she were really brave, she would look him directly in the eyes instead of just past him.
“Beautiful.” He whispered the word so low she initially thought she’d imagined it.
She dropped her gaze slightly to the right and was caught in his stare. She didn’t detect a hint of disgust, dislike, or disdain in him. No, he looked like a man about to die of thirst, and she was a tall glass of water.
When her legs bumped against the side of the bed, she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. He reached out and snagged her just above the hips. She didn’t struggle as he pulled her to him. When she was securely beside him on the bed, he rolled on top of her.
The hard length of him pressed into her right thigh. If she twitched to her right a little, it would poke her in just the right place. She bit her bottom lip to hold back the moan crawling up her throat.
He rose on his elbows, then used one hand to smooth her damp hair away from her face. Then he bent his head and kissed her. No tongue, no teeth. Just lip to lip. It was a small act. Probably the most tame thing he’d done to her since they’d met, but it was also the sweetest, most endearing, and most dangerous. When he pulled away, she turned her head. It wasn’t that she didn’t like it. If only that were the problem.
He moved his lower body, and she felt the slight shift of his erection. She turned her head in time to catch the pleasure wash over his face as he surged inside her with one thrust. Her cunt was still swollen from their earlier encounter, making him feel bigger. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes as pleasure washed over her. It was like gunning an engine and going from zero to sixty in five seconds.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, and each time he pulled out, she pushed her ass into the bed, and each time he surged forward, she lifted. Every movement sent her body into overload. She didn’t know if she was going to be able to last as long as him. Each time he slammed down, it was harder, deeper, and more intense than before. A bolt of pleasure zinged up her chest, jawline, and straight to her brain.
If she was going to hit the point of no return, she was determined that he would hit it with her. She clenched on his next downward stroke. The sensation of being so filled pushed her over the edge. Her orgasm rushed over her, tightening every muscle. He kept moving, prolonging that soul-wrenching pleasure.
Gio let the pleasure surround her, flow through her. Then he stiffened above her and in her, and she fell apart again. She sucked in breath after breath but still felt like she couldn’t pull in enough air.
“Oh my God.” She’d never come so hard, so fast, or so much in one day. Her ears rang as her heart rate return to normal.
“That good?” he asked as he rolled to the side of her, then propped up on one elbow. He was smiling—the kind of smile that reached his eyes and transformed his face making him so gorgeous she could have swallowed her own tongue.
“I should be good now for like twenty-four hours. I don’t think I’ll be able to move for a long, long time.” Then she felt it. Like something crawling under her skin. She threw the covers off and hit her arms and legs. There was nothing there. But she could have sworn something was rippling through her. It chased away all her euphoria.
“Stop. Stop.” Jason grabbed her hands and pulled them away from her body. “That’s just your wolf. The more sex we have, the closer she gets to the surface. You won’t be able to change until after the solstice ceremony.”
Gio snatched her hands away. “What did you just say?” She had to have imagined that.
“What? New wolves all experience their first change at either the summer or winter solstice. The call of the wolf is at its strongest then. After—”
“Not that.” She scooted away from him and rubbed her left arm. “The part about us having sex bringing her closer to the surface. You never said anything about that. You said if I didn’t have sex, I would lose control and turn into a fucking nymphomaniac. Now you’re saying when we have sex, the wolf gets stronger?” The need to hit him burned through her. She stopped rubbing her arm and started scratching her palm.
Dumbass. Dumbass. Dumbass
. Why had he said that? The wolf had to get stronger. It was a natural progression. The wolf was like an infant. The more times she came to the surface, the tougher she got. And to emerge at the solstice ceremony, she would need to be capable.