Wolves' Bane (The Order of the Wolf, #3)(94)
She’s in heat.
The thought was salvation, an explanation he could latch on to. Hormones, instinct, animalism. They were all reasonable excuses for this drive to chase her down and make her submit to him in the most basic way. It wasn’t insanity; it was instinct. Chemistry. A purely natural compulsion.
He reached out, catching a lock of hair that had gotten loose and bobbed next to her ear. Her breath caught and she went still, her eyes, dark stars in the night, widening just a millimeter.
“How close are you to the peak of your heat?” he asked, hearing the gravel roughness of arousal in his own voice.
Her lips parted. It was invitation enough.
Bad idea. Worst idea ever. Epically atrocious idea.
She shouldn’t be here with him. Roman. Lila’s Roman. She should have run back to the Den at top speed. She should have stopped walking the second she realized he was following her. It should never have gotten to this point. The two of them. Alone. In the dark. With his strong, callused hand raised almost as if to cup her face, one lock of her hair caught around his finger. With his body so close to hers she could just lean a little and fall against all that delicious, rock hard strength. With his gaze locked on hers—Holy Hades, his eyes. No man should look at a woman like that unless she was beneath him and moaning. Which didn’t sound like a half bad place to be.
“Roman.” She was going to tell him no. Tell him to leave her alone. To walk away. Hell, she was going to walk away herself. She was. But then he lowered his head and her hands were suddenly, of their own volition, splayed on the glorious firmness of his chest, and she was kissing him.
Or she thought she was. It was so soft, so fleeting, so indescribably inadequate that it was hard to know for sure that she’d been properly kissed before he lifted his lips away from hers, and cool air washed away the fleeting sensation of warmth.
No. If this was it, if this was what she’d been waiting for and dreaming about for the last decade it was not going to end like that. A peck. A brush. A tease. Hell no.
A growl ripped out of Patch’s throat as she lurched up into his arms, nails raking into his hair, grasping his skull to hold him steady as she yanked his mouth to hers, their bodies colliding hard as she devoured his mouth. An answering growl rumbled against her body from Roman’s chest and the kiss caught fire—teeth and tongues and lips tangling wantonly. The iron bands of his arms pressed hard into her back, pulling her in closer than close, until she lost track of where she ended and he began. It was all heat and friction and a symphony of hungry growls.
Her feet left the ground and she barely noticed. Who needed the ground when she had this?
One of his hands plunged into her hair, angling her head for better access, as the other gripped her hip and ground her harder against the long, delicious length of his erection. Oh my. Her thighs clenched involuntarily. Yes, please.
His teeth found her lower lip, the bite just shy of too hard, and she heard herself making noises she’d never heard before—high, breathy and feminine pants of need. Then his teeth were skimming the side of her throat and she tipped her face back to stare up at the lattice of black branches above, exposing her neck to him in perfect submission. She who had never submitted to anyone but the Alpha. His teeth scored deeper at the junction of her neck and shoulder and a rough gasp wrenched between her lips. Holy Hades, that spot. It was like a one-way ticket to her G-spot. If she hadn’t already been wet and aching, that bite alone would have done it. She was ready, so unbelievably ready…
Then he was spinning them, pinning her back to the coarse bark of a nearby tree, the scent of crushed pine bark rising up to mix with the tangled scents of lust, Roman’s shaved-cedar-sunshine musk…
…and beneath it all the faintest echo of scent on his clothes, barely-there traces of a cloying, medicinal sweet-and-sour tang…
A tang that triggered something violent and terrified deep inside her. No.
She threw out her hands, struggling with more panic than skill or finesse, but as soon as Roman sensed her resistance, he backed away, probably scenting the sudden surge of fear on her, his hands over his head in a gesture of innocence that was five minutes too late to be believable.
As soon as she wasn’t drowning in his scent, the panic fled—replaced by a heavy weight of realization.
Holy Hades. She’d kissed Roman. They’d almost done a lot more. If she hadn’t come to her senses, God only knew what they’d be doing now. What part of her he’d be nibbling on, caressing…
Not a helpful line of thinking, Patch.
She didn’t know what had triggered her freak-out—that scent, the horrible wrongness of it—but she was damn glad something had woken her up to what she was doing. Sure, she’d wanted to kiss Roman since she’d discovered boys, but he was Lila’s. She would never betray her best friend like that.
Except for the fact that she just had. Crap.
“Patch…” From the expression on Roman’s face, he was just as horrified by what they’d done as she was.
“The heat,” she blurted, insanely grateful for the excuse. It couldn’t have just been her wanting him like she wanted to keep breathing. Not if she ever wanted to be able to look her best friend’s husband in the eye. “It was just the heat. My bad. No hard feelings.”
He lowered his hands from his stick-em-up stance, shifting uncomfortably, and she realized he probably had some very hard feelings left over from their little bout of insanity.