The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf (Naked Werewolf 2)
Page 111
“I’m still packing!” he called from his room. “There’s sodas and sandwich stuff in the fridge. Help yourself.”
“OK!” On my way past his kitchen table, my elbow caught on a stack of books and knocked them onto Nick’s open laptop. I chuckled at his screensaver, a picture of evil bearded Kirk and Spock, smirking at each other. I bumped the keyboard as I was gathering them up, and a Word document popped up on the screen.
It was a title page for something called “The Werewolves of Crescent Valley.” I arched an eyebrow and sat at the table with a thump. The document was more than a hundred pages long, and it wasn’t just notes. Nick was writing a freaking book about us! There were pages and pages about our origins, our social structure, how the pack broke tradition by installing me as alpha.
Hurt, hot and acidic, burned through my chest. He’d promised. He’d promised me that he understood, that he couldn’t tell anyone about us. And here he was writing a frigging book? Who had he shown this to? Did he plan to publish it? The whole damn thing was dedicated to me, by the way. “To Maggie, without whom this wouldn’t be possible.”
Unfortunately for Nick, I read that just as he came through the kitchen door. And he was met by a very large book thrown at his head. “What the hell is this?” I yelled.
“What the?”
He ducked and, with impressive speed, dodged several flying objects as he crossed the room and grabbed my arms.
“I trusted you!” I yelled, fighting my way out of his grasp and slapping his chest. “What the hell were you planning on doing with this?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Your book, you asshole! The freaking book that meant more to you than keeping your word to me.”
“What—the only thing I’m writing now is a history of your pack.”
“Are we not having the same conversation?” I growled. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’m writing that for your grandfather.”
“What?”
“I’m putting a book together for Pops. I was going to bind it myself, so no one would even see it. I was hoping it would, you know, soften Pops toward me. And if he hated me a little less, you might stop fighting me so hard on the ‘being crazy in love with you’ thing.”
“What?” I huffed out a breath.
Nick’s cheeks flushed. “I haven’t told anyone about you. I’ve barely been in contact with the outside world since I got up here. If you don’t believe me, you can check my e-mail accounts, my phone records, anything you want. Your family, they were exactly what I was hoping for, Maggie. Yeah, you’re the academic find of a lifetime. You could make my career, after I proved to the world that I wasn’t nuts. But your family, for the most part, has been kinder to me than the people who raised me. I can’t expose them. I can’t put them in harm’s way. You don’t do that to people who have been good to you.”
“Then why do this?”
“I don’t have a lot of measurable skills, as far as your grandfather’s concerned. I figured this would be the one thing I could do for him that no one else could. I wanted to show him that I’m serious about you. I wanted to show you how much I love you. And I do love you,” he said. “Even if you don’t know whether you love me yet. I don’t care whether you’re human or a werewolf or a yeti, I love you.”
The overwhelming rush of warmth and love through my chest nearly knocked me to my knees. That was it. I had this strange moment of crystal clarity in which I knew I loved him right back. Everything outside our circle of two was sort of blurry and inconsequential. I’d never be happy without him. I’d never want anyone else. My hands slipped up to his chest to steady myself as I spluttered, “W-well, that’s just—”
I grabbed his lapels and crushed my mouth to his. He hummed against my lips, slipping his hands into my hair and pulling me closer. I pushed him toward the bedroom door. He turned his head, seeing where I was heading, and raised his eyebrows.
I pushed the jacket back from his shoulders and untucked his shirt while he struggled with my buttons. I shrugged out of the shirt and tossed his belt over my shoulder, slipping my hand under his waistband. Nick lifted me and carried me to the bedroom, to his bed.
“Are you sure?” he asked, cupping his hand around my jaw as he settled his weight over me. I quirked my eyebrows, peering down at the grip I had on his manly bits. He laughed. “OK, then.”
I didn’t have time to be nervous. I didn’t know how this would feel, but it couldn’t be bad. Werewolves had very healthy attitudes toward sex. Hell, sex was one of the primary winter activities in the valley. Which was why we had so many babies every spring.
Babies.
I arched off of him long enough to dangle off the bed and grab for his nightstand. Nick nibbled along the curve of my spine, biting at my hip as I rooted around for the long string of condoms I found there. I turned back to him, giving him a speculative look. He smiled sheepishly. “I had high hopes.”
I laughed and helped him ease out of his pants. He guided my hands as we slipped on the condom. I expected him to, well, get right to it. But he pushed me back onto the mattress, kissing down my bottom, hitting all of the places I loved best, the valley between my breasts, the hollow of my belly button. His fingers were already deep inside me, stretching and teasing me, while his thumb worked little circles around my clit. His lips closed around my nipple, flicking and teasing it with his tongue.
He rolled onto his back, pulling me with him. “This might hurt a little,” he said, smiling up at me, concern reflecting back at me in those blue eyes. “It might be better if you were running things.”
He helped me position him near my entrance, and I sank down over him, hissing as I stretched. It was more pressure than pain, a strange alien sensation that disturbed more than it hurt. I stayed still for a second, waiting for my body to adjust around him. I tried not to overthink, but damn, it was a lot of stuff to process. The stretching and pulling sensations deep inside. The way his hands wrapped around my waist. Nick looking up at me, his expression so happy, so adoring, that I couldn’t help but smile at him. I moved just a little bit and gasped at the friction it produced.
“Slow,” he whispered, kissing my neck. “Go slow.”