Riding Red (Fairytale Shifter 1)

I can’t stand the thought of another male looking at her, so I put the word out among all the locals to keep away until the mating moon. I say that I ‘put the word out’, but really I went door to door, threatening death to anyone who so much as looked at my mate. I may have gone overboard seeing as not only all men but all women have steered clear of the bakery. Soon, I tell myself, soon.

I step out of the shadows and walk across the street. I enter the bakery, hearing the bell ring above the door. I see Gwen smiling brightly at me out of the corner of my eye, but my eyes are on Ruby. The moon is almost full, and the painful need to mate with her is running through my body. But how do you tell someone who isn’t a shifter and who isn’t aware of our world what’s going to happen to them?

She scowls at me, and my wolf rises in my chest, loving the challenge. I want to dominate her, take her to the ground and hold her with my teeth until she submits. My beastly urges are pressing forward, but I have to rein them in. I can’t do this out in the open.

“Coffee,” I manage to get out, watching as Ruby comes up to the counter. The little red apron she has on doesn’t cover up the curves behind it. She’s got on a knit dress that molds to her shape, and it makes me lick my lips. I wonder if she’s wearing underwear under her dress.

“Sheriff Wolfe.” She says my name as if she’s mad at me, and maybe she is, but her body isn’t. I can tell by the way she leans towards me, trying to reduce the distance between us. She probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, but her body knows she belongs to my wolf and me. The subconscious desire probably pisses her off too. She wants me but doesn’t understand why.

She turns to grab a to-go coffee cup and fills it up. When she passes it to me across the counter, I’m careful not to touch her. If I touch her, I’m not sure what will happen. I wouldn’t be able to fuck her because it could trigger her heat, but my wolf would love to bite her and mark her. Now. Maybe just a taste wouldn’t hurt. I could lick her pussy. My wolf growls at the idea of finally finding out what pussy tastes like. I bet hers would be as sweet as she smells.

The shifter males have it the worst. Your dick can’t get hard until it finds its mate, so until then your body has all these urges and wants, but you can’t do a goddamn thing about it. It’s why male shifters are always looking for their mates. When you find her, your cock finally gets hard for the first time. But then it’s even worse because you can’t cum. No matter how many times I stroked my hard cock nothing would come out.

Until you take your mate for the first time and find release inside of her, you can stroke it until it’s raw and nothing happens. When you find your mate, you can claim them right away, the heat taking both of you after you give her your semen. Once that happens the mating heat pounds down on you until the next full moon. After that, the heat finally pass.

After the mating moon passes and you’ve claimed her, you can fuck her as much as you want. But until then, it’s cold showers and ice packs. The women can fuck whenever they want, but from what I hear they can’t orgasm, so maybe it’s just as bad. But I doubt it.

“You mind telling me why you’re scaring all my customers away?”

Ruby’s words snap my attention back to her, but I don’t have an answer. I want to tell her it’s because she’s mine, but I can’t. I try to think of something to say, but my wolf is too close to the surface again, and all I can think about is putting her into heat. I can’t think straight.

“I don’t mess with the tourists.” It’s a half-truth, I don’t mess with all of them, and it’s the only thing I can think to say. She glares at me, and I swear to God, my cock gets harder. The fucking thing hasn’t gone down since she walked into the bakery three weeks ago. Why her attitude turns me on so much, I don’t know. Normally I’m a really laid-back guy, but something about her makes all my base animal urges come to the surface.

“Gwen tells me at some point you’re going to stop it. Mind telling me when that is?” She puts her hand on her round hip, accentuating the dip between her waist and her thick thighs. My mouth waters, and I feel my teeth aching again. I want to bite her on the inside of her thighs. No one would ever see the marks, but I would. I would know they were there every time I looked at her.

Ruby clears her throat, and I shift my focus from her body to her face. She raises an eyebrow like she caught me, but I don’t give a fuck. She’s mine, she just doesn’t know it yet. It’s then I realize she’s still waiting on an answer.

“Sunday,” I growl, knowing the mating moon is happening Saturday night.

She looks at me like I’m crazy. “So on Sunday, you’re magically going to stop keeping the locals out of my bakery, and everyone will come in here?”

“Yes.” She makes it sound like I’m nuts, but that’s literally how it works. Once she’s marked as mine, she won’t ever want to be far from me. She won’t like the touch of other males, and all shifters will know she belongs to me after taking one whiff of her.