I leap again.
We tumble together, and for several long moments, we roll and flail, biting and growling. His teeth pierce my shoulder, and I take a chunk out of his neck. The taste of his blood in my mouth is incredible—hot, tangy, laced with whiskey. I feel his essence in every nerve ending. For a split second, I hold there, completely consumed by the feeling.
He uses my moment of weakness against me.
Kian rolls, pinning me beneath his bulk. I’m wedged on my back between the branches of a fallen tree, and I can’t buck him off. I can’t even reach him with my teeth, and my claws don’t do shit against his thick muzzle.
He bares his teeth, his jaw hinging open.
Jesus, he’s going to kill me.
I glance around for anything to get me out of this situation, and I notice that the dead tree where he’s pinned me against has multiple thick branches that have broken away from the trunk. Many of them lay scattered well within reach. I can’t pick them up with my paws.
But I have hands too.
The magic that prompts my transformation washes over me like a cool mountain breeze. My limbs lengthen and thicken, and my torso stretches out beneath Kian’s bulk. I toss out my arm and latch onto the nearest branch, then swing it around with all my strength.
It slams into Kian’s head with a painful crack.
He yelps and ducks, his paws skittering on the ground around my torso.
I hit him again, then again, slowly backing him away from my body. Crawling to my knees, I continue the beat down, even as my heart aches and my wolf screams at me to stop hurting her mate.
I’ll beat him to a bloody death if it means I can save the world.
Kian ducks a fourth blow, then leaps at me. He shifts in mid-jump, and my god, it’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen. His dark fur recedes like rain falling backward, and his body lengthens, grows, morphs like a work of art. Then his bare skin slams into mine.
I slam into the underbrush on my back with Kian’s heavy weight on top of me. He rips the branch from my hand and throws it into the woods with an inhuman snarl, before turning his gold-ringed gaze on me.
Suddenly, it’s not two wolves fighting in the trees.
It’s me and Kian.
It’s Kian’s body pressed to mine. His knee between my legs, his left arm slanted over my neck to pin me to the dirt, the heat of his cock against my hip.
I know his body. I only had him for one night, but I know his body. I kn
ow the way it feels against mine. I know the rhythm of his hips, the bruising force of his fingers, the way he filled me when he sank between my legs.
Heat flares between us and desire swirls through my core. The last time we were in this position, he was buried inside me.
Something flickers in Kian’s eyes. Heat. Desire. Longing. I swear I feel his cock hardening against me.
Then his forearm presses harder into my throat, cutting off my air supply.
“You’ll never be able to stop me,” he grinds out. “It’s a mistake to even try.”
Then his weight vanishes, and in the next instant, he’s a wolf again. Racing away from me.
I scramble to my feet and struggle to get a breath. My throat’s taken a damn beating, and I feel like I can’t get enough oxygen in my body. I shift and fall into a sprint after him, where I leap to latch on to his fluffy tail. I drag him back, as he whips around and snaps at my snout.
What I don’t count on is Kian’s head being a lot fucking harder than mine.
As he lunges his upper body back at me to get me to release his tail, his head slams into mine. The blow is devastating—like he hauled a cinder block right at my skull. I yelp involuntarily and pitch to the ground, my vision fading out on a spray of sparks and black edges. Pain sends spasms into my body so that I can’t feel my legs, and I kick uselessly, trying to find my footing.
For a few seconds, everything goes fuzzy and indistinct except the wind in my fur. Then my senses return in pieces—my vision fading back in, blurry but serviceable. My hearing returns to the chorus of nighttime crickets around me. And I manage to stumble to my legs, even though they’re still tingling from the knock out.
I shake my head and almost fall over, barely catching myself on a numb paw. Then I glance around for Kian.