Witches Get Stitches by Juliette Cross

Chapter 20

~NICO~

I’d spentthe entire afternoon helping Mateo install one of his new sculptures in the lobby of a downtown corporation. I hadn’t seen Violet since she left my place after breakfast and I was starting to get fidgety. I was already going through withdrawal, needing a hit of my vicious addiction: Violet Savoie.

I wasn’t kidding. My wolf paced my inner walls, wondering why the fuck we weren’t glued to her all day long. Why we weren’t buried deep inside her, night and day.

“You okay?” Mateo asked as we climbed into his vintage truck parked right off of Canal Street.

“Mmhm.”

He started the engine, gaze darting to my lap. I glanced down, noticing I was doing that guitar-strumming-on-my-pants-leg thing that I tended to do as a nervous habit. Right now, I was playing one of Eddie Van Halen’s solos in my head, my fingers moving a hundred miles a minute.

Mateo pulled away from the curb and headed toward Magazine Street. Unable to help it any longer, I shot her a quick text to ask her what she was doing. Within ten seconds, I saw the dots moving as she answered.

Violet: Drinking whiskey.

Me: Jealous. Can I join you?

Violet: If you can stand being around my obnoxiously drunk sister and two other lovebirds.

What?I smiled at her odd, but very Violet, response.

Me: Where are you?

Violet: The Cauldron.

“What is that goofy look about?” Mateo grinned as he glanced over before turning onto Magazine.

“Violet. You mind dropping me off at the Cauldron?”

“I’ll come with you. Evie’s working the afternoon shift. Should be off soon.”

I let her know I was on my way and stared out at the neighborhood as the bars and restaurants’ lights started popping on.

I loved this city at night, particularly where we lived. It had an energy that was both electric and intimate. Not that everyone knew each other, because it wasn’t that small a neighborhood, but intimate in the way that we all belonged. And now that I finally had convinced Violet to date me, I never wanted to leave this place.

“Damn.” Mateo huffed. “It took you two long enough.”

He’d seen the signs a long time ago that I’d targeted Violet. “It took her long enough. But don’t go talking out of your ass around her.”

“What does that mean?” his voice came out a little growly. His wolf, Alpha, seemed to be tormenting him more than usual lately.

“That means she doesn’t know how badly I want her.” How badly I need her. “And I need to keep it that way for now.”

Mateo regarded me with a flick of his eyes before turning to the road and nodding. “Good call. Might want to keep that under wraps for now. Violet doesn’t seem to be the kind who’d like to be cornered.”

“Well”—my mouth quirked up into a smile—“sometimes she does.”

He laughed. He would be the only one I could joke with about that. Mateo was the brother I never had. We’d shared more than one secret over the years. When I struggled to leave the Blood Moon pack, he literally knocked some sense into me. We’d gotten into a brawl when I wasn’t willing to leave.

Before that, I’d noticed that some of the pack lost control of their tempers and their beasts more and more often. It was infuriating. Both because I understood their pain but also because I wanted to turn wolf and tear into whichever asshole had lost his shit that day. Then I’d done just that—to a sixteen-year-old boy.

That’s when I’d started to pull away from them slowly, realizing that it was safer for everyone if I lived alone.

I’d still spent time with Shane. He’d been my first friend in Austin and had introduced me on the music scene. I’d counted him as my best friend for a long while. But he’d started to notice how I was finding more excuses not to run with the pack, not to hang with them and stir up shit in bars.

Their idea of fun was to go looking for motorcycle gangs to pick a fight with and beat each other bloody. I was tired of giving in to my violent side. It was bad enough that the beast took over once a month, but their ways only amplified our natural aggression. Then that day with Ty.

He and his other teenage buddies, all werewolves, were horsing around in the clubhouse, an old mechanic shop turned into a hangout. Ty had spilled a beer on one of the newest members, who then immediately shifted. I jumped in, half-shifting, and pushed him away from the boys.

But then someone grabbed my arm. On pure, wild instinct, I turned and swiped a claw right across Ty’s face and neck. The sight of that boy falling to the floor, his blood pooling on the concrete, had nearly broken me.

Thankfully, we had a warlock, a Conduit, who we paid to patch up our guys after brawls. Witches didn’t normally help us. The stigma ran deep, and for good reason if you’d seen Ty’s throat opened and bleeding. But we paid the warlock well, so he came and saved Ty. The scars remained. After that, I fell into a foul mood. For months. Then Mateo punched the fuck out of me a couple times and told me to wake up and get the hell away from that toxic pack.

I’d been looking for my moment to leave when we were invited to that New Year’s Eve party. And the second I laid eyes on Violet Savoie, I knew when I was leaving, where I was going, and why. The pack became instant history, and she became my present and future.

I’d been patient for so long that I could hardly refrain from blurting out to her how I felt now that she’d opened herself up to me, to the idea of us. But no, the current course of action was the best one. Continue to seduce her body, then steal her heart when she wasn’t looking.

Mateo turned onto the side street where the Savoie house was. It would be easier to park in their driveway and walk around the block to the Cauldron. One thing that was always limited in New Orleans was parking.

People buzzed from one pub or restaurant to the next. I waved to Clara as we passed Mystic Maybelle’s. She was locking the front glass door, closing up shop. She gave us a friendly wave and sweet smile from the other side.

We strode quickly to the Cauldron next door and entered, hearing the trilling laughter from the bar the second we stepped inside. There weren’t many customers but the music was turned up a tad louder than usual. Right now, “The Promise” by When In Rome was playing, which told me that Livvy had taken over the playlist. It was her laughter that echoed across the pub.

At the bar, my gaze zeroed in on Violet sitting next to Charlie with Livvy on the other side. I sidled toward them. Evie wove through the tables to deliver three beers to a four-top before stepping over to give Mateo a kiss hello. I moved quickly to Violet’s side.

“Hey.” I wrapped a hand around her waist and brushed a kiss against her cheek.

She twisted sideways on her stool, facing Charlie, and looked up at me. No, beaming up at me.

“Hey, yourself.” She didn’t have the glassy, tipsy look Livvy had. Or even Charlie propped on his stool, his blond hair disheveled as though he’d run his hand through it one too many times.

“Nicooooo!” Livvy literally screamed. “You have to play with us! Come on, come on.”

“What are we playing?”

Violet grinned, staring at her gregarious sister. “One of Livvy’s drinking games.”

“It’s called Straight Face,” declared Livvy, her s’s slurring a bit.

Thank goodness she only had to walk home around the block from here.

“How do you play?” I asked, just then noticing a bunch of scraps of paper on the bar top.

Violet reached for a piece of paper and a pencil, but Livvy lunged across Charlie to grab one herself.

“No, no, no! I’m going to do Nico.” Then she burst out laughing. “I mean, not do him, do him. Because that’s Violet’s job.”

Violet’s jaw dropped as she stared at Livvy. I simply basked in the open admission.

Charlie turned toward me finally, giving me a sexy wink. “You devil. Finally got it in, eh?”

Violet punched him on the arm.

“Ow!” He grimaced and rubbed the spot. “Be gentle, you barbarian.”

“Everybody shut your drunken pieholes. What Nico and I do is none of the whole bar’s business.”

She glanced beyond my shoulder, but no one was paying attention to us.

I squeezed her hip where I hadn’t let it go since the second I made it to her side. “So how do I play?”

“Easy peasy,” said Livvy, scribbling something on her scrap of paper. “JJ!” she yelled down the bar where JJ was serving another customer. “We need a drink!” She pointed to me. Livvy was one of those fun-and-loud drunks. She turned to me and handed over the slip of paper. “All you have to do is read the slip of paper without laughing or smiling or reacting in any way.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” she confirmed, grinning like a she-devil.

Just as I was opening the scrap of paper, JJ set a glass of whiskey over ice in front of me. I read the message Livvy had scribbled: Violet said you made her come like a rocket at least five times.

I’d been determined to keep a straight face, but there was no way in hell I could keep from grinning at that one.

“Drink!” yelled Livvy, shoving my whiskey closer to me.

“Like a rocket?” asked Charlie, peering sideways at the paper. “Not sure about that metaphor, Livvy. Maybe he came like a rocket.”

I crumpled the paper and slipped it into my back pocket.

“Pfft.” Livvy made a highly undignified noise through her lips with a drunken wave of her hand.

“What was it?” asked Violet, reaching around to my back pocket.

I let her slide her fingers along my ass to retrieve the message, ready to drag her out of here and back to my place three minutes ago.

When Violet read it, she gasped. “Livvy!” Then she grabbed another piece of paper and started scribbling something down. “My turn.”

I moved up behind her, sliding both hands around her waist and leaning over to read her message for Livvy. I was confused at the message: I bet that grim makes you cream in your panties every time you see him.

She slid the piece of paper over with a superior look. I leaned down and whispered, “What grim?”

She waved me off as Livvy took the scrap of paper and opened it. Her stoic face turned mutinous before she let out a growl/scream of frustration. She snapped her fiery gaze to Violet.

“He in no way affects me in no possible way!”

“You said no way twice,” chimed in Charlie, his gaze on JJ walking back toward us. “Is that a double negative?” He had that drunken confused look on his face that made him look quite young.

“Drink!” ordered Violet.

“Why? That wasn’t funny. I didn’t laugh at all.”

“You said we couldn’t react in any possible way. You definitely did not keep a straight face.”

“Fine.” She glared at Violet, tilting her drink back. Slamming the glass tumbler on the bar, she narrowed her gaze, looking off into space. “Did y’all know that grims are telepathic?”

We all swiveled our attention to Livvy.

“I don’t know anything about grims,” I admitted. No one did. They were as silent as the grave when it came to their abilities. Or anything at all about them, quite frankly.

“No one does,” said Violet before excitedly asking, “How do you know they’re telepathic?”

Livvy held up her empty glass for JJ to see down the bar, shaking it so that the glass clinked. “Because he telepathed something to me.”

“He who?” asked Charlie, frowning in confusion.

Violet grinned. “That guy in the contest with her. Gareth Blackwater. What did he say to you?”

“He didn’t say anything.” Her brows rose haughtily, but her face flushed with pink.

“He sent an image?” I asked.

“Yes!” she snapped. “It was an accident, actually.” She giggled and then she suddenly yell-whispered, framing her mouth with one hand as if to keep her voice from carrying, “And it wasn’t appropriate.”

“What was it?” asked Violet.

When Livvy’s gaze whipped to Violet, my girl suddenly gasped then burst out laughing. The sound filled me with a sweet emotion.

I squeezed her hip. “What?”

Violet craned her neck toward me so I leaned down. “Livvy is telepathic, too. She sent me the image. Or ten-second video rather.” Violet waggled her eyebrows. “He’s a naughty grim.”

Livvy shook her glass in the air again for JJ, who finally headed our way. “Don’t worry. I’m going to get him back.” She gave me her Cruella smile, and I knew that poor man was in trouble.

JJ braced both hands wide on the bar in front of Charlie and Livvy. “Not sure you should drink anymore, Liv.”

“One more! You and Charlie can walk me home.”

“It would be my honor,” said Charlie, placing a hand over his heart, his eyes as bleary as hers.

“So”—I leaned in close to Violet’s ear—“what lovebirds were you talking about in your text?”

She pointed to Charlie and JJ.

“What? No way.” I eyed the two men who I’d become friends with over the past year or so. “But you told me they’re just friends. Best friends.”

“Yeah, well, friends can apparently turn into something else sometimes.”

“They can.” I squeezed my hands around her waist, hearing the insinuation in her expressive voice. “But are you sure?”

She snorted and nodded her head as JJ leaned forward to hear something Charlie was telling him. Then out of the blue, while Charlie was still talking, JJ grasped the back of Charlie’s neck then dragged him closer and planted a kiss on his lips. And it wasn’t just a peck.

When Charlie made a little whimpering sound, JJ released him and turned back to the bar, but not before he gave Charlie a heated look that promised more later.

“Whoa,” I whispered against her temple.

“Yeah,” she said, grinning. “About fucking time.” She said the last part louder, which got Charlie’s attention.

“I could say the same about you,” he snapped back, but his haughtiness was washed away by the significant pink blush high on his cheekbones.

Mateo finally ambled up next to us and raised a hand to JJ, who then pulled a longneck from the stand-up freezer and popped the top before handing it over.

“I missed something fun,” he said, taking a swig of his beer.

“You so did,” chimed in Livvy, still at that too-loud decibel. “FYI, Nico is banging Violet. And JJ is banging Charlie. Or Charlie is banging JJ. Well, both. Can Violet bang Nico?” Now she wore the drunk-and-confused expression. “Unsure if this term allows the girl to do the banging, since it seems to refer to penetration rather than just fucking.”

“Right,” said Mateo, taking another swig of his beer. “Be right back.” Then he headed down the short hallway to the bathrooms.

Charlie started debating with Livvy over the semantics of the term banging, basically explaining that it’s simply a synonym of fucking so there was no need for any discrimination on whether the person is the banger or bangee. It was nonsense, but I didn’t care.

All I cared about was the insane smile and sporadic laughter of Violet as she sipped her Old Fashioned and watched the other two arguing.

I was so entranced by Violet, sweeping my hand up under her fall of silky hair to wrap around her neck, that I didn’t catch the scent or shift in electrical currents in the air right away. It was actually Violet who stiffened first, her gaze moving from the bar to a booth in the back, a line creasing between her brows.

I followed her gaze, tensing immediately at the sight of Shane and two new guys to the pack who I hadn’t liked before I left. Kyle and Rick, I think. Evie wound her way to the booth and started chatting, taking their order like any other customers.

“What the hell are they doing here?” asked Violet.

Then Mateo sauntered out from the area of the bathrooms and froze.

“Oh, fuck.” Before I could do anything, his head had snapped to the booth, already zoning in on the enemy. “Shit. Stay here.” I tore away and started to cross the bar, but he was too fast.

Mateo was there in a millisecond, pulling Evie away from them and jabbing a finger in Shane’s face, his voice guttural as he threw some nasty warnings their way.

Shane held his hands up in surrender, but the smirk on his face not doing him any favors. Evie seemed to be trying to calm Mateo with a hand on his chest, but suddenly he turned, tossed her over his shoulder like a caveman, and stormed off toward the kitchen, one hand possessively on her ass.

As we passed, I caught the fire-gold of his eyes. He didn’t say a word, just bared his teeth and growled as Evie said rather calmly, her ponytail swinging, “Alpha, just put me down. I won’t go near them. Promise.”

I made my way to them, much calmer than Mateo, but that was probably because Violet had stayed next to the bar like I’d asked. If she moved any closer to them, I likely wouldn’t be able to think clearly anymore, reverting to neanderthal status like Mateo, solely because of who she was to me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Shane.

“Just having a beer.” He glanced beyond me. “If I can get some service, that is.”

“There are lots of bars in New Orleans, Shane. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” he said innocently. “From you, anyway.” He’d zoned in on Violet at the bar, and I distinctly felt my blood pressure rise, a flame of rage percolating just beneath the surface.

“Look, I’m not sure what you think the spelled tattoos will do, but it doesn’t work like a regular spell. So if you’re trying to bulk up with magic or something to make your pack stronger”—and more violent—“then Violet can’t help you.”

“You don’t know a fucking thing about what we want.” He gave me a condescending huff. “Or maybe you do since you fucked Ty up then abandoned the pack.”

I ground my teeth together, forcing my anger back, reasoning through his words. Frowning, I said, “If you’re looking for help to control the wolf, Violet is working on it. When she has the spell, I’ll let you know. Just go back to Austin. I know how to reach you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll be reaching out with open arms, won’t you, brother?”

Fuck, he was raging under the surface.

He sneered. “Witches are always so eager to help werewolves, aren’t they?”

A shared memory of me and Shane popped into my mind. When one of the pack members had a nasty curse put on him that had made him violently sick, we’d gone to a Hex-breaker in Austin. One look at us, and she’d hissed, Like I’d help a goddamned werewolf. If he’s cursed, then he deserves it. Then she slammed the door in our faces. It wasn’t the first or the last time we’d been subjected to that kind of treatment, merely because we were born as werewolves.

“I can see that you and Mateo are the golden boys. The special snowflakes around here. But I’m well aware of how all these witches see us.” He gestured to the guys in the booth. “Why else would you be trying so fucking hard to get us out of your city? It’s a free fucking country, Nico. We aren’t hurting anyone. We don’t have to leave.”

He was right. They hadn’t hurt anyone. But I was very sure he was in a volatile state, his wolf making more of the decisions for the pack than the man. That made him dangerous.

“We know how it is,” Kyle butted in. “Your witch won’t do what we want. But she might help you because you’re fucking that pretty pussy. Maybe if—”

Red rage hazed my vision a split second before I reached across the table, claws out, gripped him by the leather jacket, and dragged him over the table and out of the booth. Dropping him on his back, I put a knee on his chest, my hand around his throat. He didn’t resist because he knew I’d slice through his jugular if he did. This was the way of werewolves in the midst of aggressive contact. If he wanted to keep his blood inside his body where it belonged, he needed to submit and deal with my fury right now.

I leaned close, not wanting to terrify the few customers gawking and looking on. I warned him in a low but lethal whisper, “Listen, motherfucker. If you touch a hair on her head, I’ll eviscerate you. They’ll never find the body.”

Kyle didn’t seem prone to fear, a young, cocky douchebag who didn’t know when to keep his fucking mouth shut, but he glanced over at Shane for help.

“Nico,” said Shane behind me. “We’ll leave. No need for violence.” He laughed as if it was a joke. He seemed to rather enjoy violence when we ran together. But he stood slowly from the booth, Rick with him.

I released Kyle but not before I swiped a claw under his chin, just enough to break the skin and draw blood. A small warning. I stood and glared at Shane, knowing good and well my beast shone through my eyes. “You need to get the fuck out of town,” I told him.

Shane’s reaction wasn’t one of fear, but wary. Especially when Mateo strode back across the bar alongside JJ. Evie was nowhere to be seen. Violet still sat at the bar with the others, watching.

He didn’t agree or disagree. Instead, he said something altogether worse. “Your new girl is pretty, Nico. Better watch her close.”

When I took a step toward him, Mateo caught me with a fist in my shirt. Yeah, they were baiting us, but Shane knew right where to hit to send my wolf into a maddening spiral.

With that, he chuckled and sauntered slowly for the door, his lackeys right behind him. Once they were gone, I strode back to the bar and took Violet’s hand. “Let’s go.”

Rather than argue, she nodded.

“Should we close early?” asked JJ.

“Nah. They won’t be back.”

Mateo was in front of me before I could haul Violet through the kitchen door toward the back exit, my chest heaving.

“Are they leaving town?” he asked.

“I hope so,” was all I could manage as I practically dragged Violet toward. “But that fucker was right.”

“About what?” Mateo scowled.

“They haven’t broken any law. If we’re running them out of town for no reason, then we’re no better than the other supernaturals who hate werewolves just for breathing the same air.”

Mateo stared at me, considering. “That may be. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep an eye out. Packs are dangerous by nature, and he well fucking knows that.”

“I’ll report it to Jules and Ruben, but legally we can’t do anything. Or we shouldn’t do anything. I’m not going to discriminate against my own kind, but I sure as fuck will keep an eye on them.”

Mateo nodded, then I hauled Violet behind me through the kitchen, needing to get her somewhere private. Immediately. Jules glanced up from a pot on one stove, frowning.

Evie was leaning against a counter, her arms crossed. “Can I come out now?”

I nodded, then kept marching out the back door. “Your place or mine?” I asked.

“Mine.”

Their house was only half a block around the corner. By the time we made it to the stairs of the carriage house where she shared the loft with her sister, my labored breathing had escalated to near hyperventilation. I scooped her in my arms and charged up the stairs. As soon as I entered, I glanced around the small apartment.

“Where’s your room?”

“That way,” she pointed down a short hall past the kitchen, arms linked at my neck, staring intently. “What’s going on?”

“I need you.” A terse, gruff reply and nowhere close to matching the driving force propelling me toward her bed.

I slammed the door shut with my foot and spread her out on the white comforter, my mouth on hers with ferocity. Something about that encounter in the pub sparked a raging need for me to kiss and claim.

She moaned into my mouth before pulling back and stripping her shirt over her head. I paused, staring down at her red bra against milk-pale skin. My vision hazed for a second before sharpening to wicked clarity. My wolf was trying to come right out of my skin. Literally.

“Fuck, Violet,” I murmured, mounding one breast with my hand before curling my fingers over the top of the cup and giving it a good yank. “So fucking beautiful.”

She gasped when I leaned down and sucked her tight nipple into my mouth.

“God.” She sunk her nails into my biceps. “Clothes. Get your fucking clothes off.”

We tore and jerked and stripped till we were naked. I climbed on top of her, bracing my weight on one forearm. Holding her green-eyed gaze, I slid my fingers down her flat stomach then between her legs. She spread her thighs on a breathy sound, arching her neck a little, eyes half closed in pleasure.

“How sore are you?” I murmured, finding her so wet and slick, my cock jerked.

She shook her head. “I saw Isadora today. Asked her to feed me a little healing energy.”

Grinning, I swept my lips against hers, gliding gently over her folds and slipping one finger inside her then back out. “Did you tell her why?”

She had her nails on the rounded part of my shoulders, clenching and releasing as I stroked with little to no pressure, teasing.

“I told her we fucked each other’s brains out, and I needed to heal fast so we could do it again.”

I belted out a laugh, still sliding two fingers up and down her slit. When she rocked up to try and get more friction, I lifted away.

“Damn you, Nico. No more gentle.”

“No?”

She must’ve seen a flash of wolf in my eyes because her eyes widened with excitement.

I bit her bottom lip. “You like him, don’t you?”

“What’s not to like?”

I flipped her over and shoved the pillows off the bed so that she was flat on the mattress. “Reach up and hold onto the headboard.”

There were slats in her antique frame.

“That headboard is perfect for fucking your brains out.”

She laughed, turning her head to the side, breathing quicker. “Then get to it.” She lifted her ass tauntingly.

“So pushy.” I smacked her ass with a resounding thwack.

She laughed and moaned at the same time, then I bit and licked a trail down her spine. She wasn’t laughing anymore. She whimpered when I reached her ass and licked the crease between thigh and cheeks.

“Mmm. Nico,” she breathed on a slow exhale. “What are you doing to me?”

I spread her with my thumbs and licked her slit on a groan. Her scent was so necessary to life now, I wasn’t sure how I was going to leave her alone for one second of the day.

I whispered against her cunt. “Can I just stay right here forever?”

She laughed but then stopped suddenly, sucking in a breath when I entered her with my tongue, mimicking what I’d be doing with my dick in short order.

“Be my guest,” she mumbled into the mattress.

I gripped her thighs and opened her legs wider, continuing to fuck her with my tongue. When I slid one hand underneath her and rubbed her clit with insistent pressure, she came with a sharp cry. I lapped up her intoxicating juices before I opened and strapped on the condom I’d thought to toss on the bed before my jeans flew across the room earlier.

I crawled up her body, biting as I went. She shivered, still panting when I settled on top of her and used my knees to spread her legs wide for me.

Rather than pushing right in, I slid my dick along her slick folds then along the crease of her ass, back and forth, while sucking on her neck. When she kept trying to push back with her ass to get me in, I chuckled.

“You’re a total pussy-tease,” she gritted out.

“You’re so impatient.”

“Fine then. I’ll go find someone else who—”

I clamped down hard on her body, biting into her shoulder, and slammed into her with one hard thrust, jolting her body beneath me.

“Ah!” she cried out as I held myself deep, unmoving.

“You were saying?”

“Nothing. I wasn’t saying anything.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She laughed, knowing good and well she was just pushing my buttons till she got what she wanted.

I started to stroke, pulling almost all the way out, then pounding back in with a steady, slower tempo.

“Tell me you want no one else,” I demanded in a silken whisper.

“No one else,” she groaned as I pounded deep again.

“Tell me I’m the only one who can touch your body. Fuck this pussy.”

She was getting lost in the sensations, gasping and moaning, her sex sucking me in deeper each time. I combed my fingers into her hair and tightened my grip to get her attention.

“Tell me, Violet.” A primal demand I couldn’t keep myself from making.

If I’d been able to think straight, I never would’ve said it. It was overly possessive and could’ve pushed her away. We might be monogamous, but she also wasn’t the kind of woman to let herself be owned by anyone. Not yet anyway.

Still, the wolf needed it, choking on his desire to claim her as his own. My only hope was that Violet would think this all dirty talk and bed play because the next thing that came out of my mouth as I pounded her harder wasn’t me at all. Pure wolf. My voice had gone Lycan-dark.

“This body. This mouth. This pussy is mine. Only mine. Fucking say it.”

Yield to me, the wolf growled in my subconscious.

“Only yours,” she whispered through panting breaths.

“Fucking right,” I groaned.

I opened her thighs even wider with my knees and angled to go deeper, pounding with relentless force, flesh slapping and wet sex combined with the erotic sounds coming out of her mouth.

When her moans came closer together, and I knew she was going to come, I was suddenly desperate to see her face. I pulled out, almost smiling at her harsh protest, then flipped her over and slid back home with hardly a breath between.

“Yes,” she crooned against my lips. “You even make vanilla sex feel good.”

Grinning, I pinned her hands above her head, lacing our fingers together then pumped in a steady rhythm, circling my pelvis at the end of each drive to give her clit some attention. She skated her heels up the backs of my thighs till she dug them into my ass and started rocking up to meet my thrusts.

When her mouth fell open, signaling her spiraling climax, and her sex clenched around my cock, the sight and sensation catapulted me toward my own release. There was something soft and tender in her eyes this time. An emotion I had caught only a glimpse of last time.

“Yes, baby,” I murmured, feeling that intimate connection, too, that intangible emotion tying our hearts together with invisible, barely there thread.

My head fell forward, my mouth against her neck as I came hard, groaning deep and pumping through it with desperate strokes for more of her. Always more.

When my breathing started to even out, I finally lifted up onto my forearms to look at her beautiful, post-sex expression.

She was always beautiful, but something about her sated smile and the dreamy glimmer and wistful emotion in her eyes, knowing I was the one who put it there, made the wolf very happy. And the man.

She tilted her head to the side, tracing a finger across one of my eyebrows then over my cheek, down my jaw, an over my lips. There was a quiet, knowing expression on her face that made my pulse skip a beat. I was sure she was going to say something about what had just happened in that final climactic moment. Because it wasn’t just an orgasm that put that tender expression on her face.

She opened her mouth but closed it. I waited. Then she finally said lightly, “You’re super dominant in bed.”

No, she wasn’t brave enough yet to say it. But, hell, neither was I, so I shrugged a shoulder and said, “It’s the same for a lot of men.”

And honestly, I’d been staid today compared to our first couple of rounds.

“True. But there’s something more there. Is it because of those other werewolves? Or is it just your wolf?”

I stiffened, glancing down to her kiss-swollen lips. “A little of both.” Then I met her dark-eyed gaze again. “Does it bother you?”

She had no idea that she could cut me in two with the wrong response right now. She may not know what the wolf wanted. But I did. And her denial, in any way, would crush me. Break me.

She simply shrugged a shoulder, mimicking my movement a minute ago and nonchalantly replied, “Your wolf likes me.”

My wolf more than liked her. There were probably no words for what he felt. There were definite words for what I felt, but I couldn’t say them yet. I had barely glimpsed the look in Violet’s eyes that told me this was mutual, but I needed to be sure.

I was in so deep. My chest ached with all the words I wanted to say and couldn’t. She must’ve seen some flicker of it across my face because her smile melted away.

“What is it?”

Rather than answer, I leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss to her lips, sliding my tongue inside for a gentle taste of her sweetness, but more to distract her. When I was able to withdraw my emotions and keep them off my face, I pulled back and gave her a smile.

“Be right back. Gotta take care of the condom.”

I pulled out quickly. She hissed, and I felt her watching me walk into her bathroom.

“You say the most romantic things,” she teased.

“I do my best,” I shot back, tossing the condom then washing my hands.

“Have you eaten?”

I braced one arm in the bathroom doorway. “Other than your pussy? No.”

She threw a pillow at me, laughing. I caught it, watching her crawl on all fours, gloriously naked, toward the edge of her bed. “Definitely putting you up for most romantic werewolf award.”

I shook my head, roving her gorgeous body, while my cock rose to semi-hardness again. “You are the hottest fucking woman I’ve ever seen.”

She slid off the bed with feline grace and walked toward me, the look in her eyes nearly bringing me to my knees. When she reached me, she slid her hands up my chest, brushing both her thumbs over my nipples, then watched as I became fully hard.

“Wow.” She shook her head on a sigh, staring down at my dick. “I think I’ve finally met my match.” She linked her arms around my neck and looked up, pressing her sweet body to mine.

I closed my eyes on a groan as I glided my palms down to cup her full ass. More than a handful. So perfect. I got even harder.

“What do you say,” she whispered, “that we go tick shower sex off my list then order some pizza?”

I smoothed my hands over her ass, squeezing and molding, pulling her against my erection. “You’re a woman after my own heart.”

She laughed with delight, sliding away to go turn on the shower.

I wonder what she’d say if she knew that I wasn’t joking. She already owned it.