Practiced at the art of concealing his emotions, Kieran gave an internal snort at his arrogant fancy. Lily wanted him, of that he was sure. Her arousal was being broadcast loud and clear to any wolf within a few miles. But he highly doubted she was already playing every move in her head. He knew she hadn’t touched a man in two years. With this one, he would have to go very, very slowly. He already knew she was more than worth it.
Lily parted her lips as if to speak, then wet them with her tongue instead. Kieran’s hand tightened on the glass and almost broke it. Holy... He internally shook himself back to a semblance of respectability. Well, hell. She was going to test his control indeed.
“You’ve been looking at me.” Her voice came out pitched low but clearly audible to his heightened hearing in the loud bar. She paused as if to gauge his reaction—or censor herself—then plunged on. “And you like what you see.”
She tilted up her chin and gave him a bold stare with her green eyes. This close, he could see the purity of their color. He imagined them smoky with desire, and finally let a grin tug up his lip again. Let her see a bit of his very male appreciation.
“I do. Have a seat. Please,” he added with soft insistence when she still regarded him with just a touch of that wariness she wore like a cape.
Never once looking away, she slid onto the barstool beside him. Obvious from her naturally confident bearing, as a one-time Pack Guardian she simply oozed alpha female. Despite her tight self-control and refusal to be a formal part of Pack hierarchy since that night, she couldn’t conceal her true nature. And Lily was meant to be a leader. She was meant to mate with an alpha male for life and help guide the Pack, keep it strong. Whether she knew it or not, her innate talents were recognized by other wolves. Even ones not in her Pack.
Especially
ones not in her Pack. The wolves outside the Black Mesa Pack stood the most to gain by winning Lily as a mate. Her status as the only daughter of Alpha of the most powerful pack in the region just about guaranteed another strong offshoot pack one day. And those outside wolves had been sniffing around recently, which was why Kieran decided it was time to make his move. He would never let this woman—this wolf—belong to another. She was far too precious in many ways. His only goal now was to convince her of that truth.
“Can I get the lady a drink?”
Lily still looked directly at him. It was a light challenge, one she was unaware she made, and it was hot as hell. Kieran’s balls tightened in response, and he curbed his wolf as it practically sat up and salivated. Not yet. Slowly.
“Only if it tastes as good as you look,” she said. Her saucy words were matched by her tone and stance. One hip cocked, head tilted, those eyes arrowing right through him.
Kieran almost swallowed his own tongue. He instantly felt his wolf leap into his eyes, smelled his own pheromones charging off of him as if they were warriors vaulting into battle. Maybe slow wasn’t what she wanted?
Lily suddenly laughed, an infectious and even more hormone-inducing sound. The smile that cracked wide across her features was genuine, and all for him.
“I can’t believe I just said that.” She glanced away and shook her head, sending red waves of hair undulating across her cheeks. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight.” She raised her eyes to Kieran’s again, her expression slightly self-deprecating. “My friend had to practically push me over here, and then I just said to hell with it. That sexy cowboy’s been looking at me, he’s Pack, and I deserve to say hello to him.”
With each honest word, Lily’s voice deepened with instinctual need. Kieran’s entire body stiffened from the effort to keep from grabbing her, leading her out of the bar and across the lobby to the attached hotel, into his room. He could still go slowly.
Sure.
“But I’m being rude. My name is Lily. I’m from the Black Mesa Pack.” She reached a hand out to him.
Kieran steeled himself for the electric snap he knew would happen when he let her touch him. Even so, when their palms met in an oddly formal yet insanely intimate handshake, the shock of it ran up his arm and exploded into every nerve ending. Lily felt it too, judging from her sharp inhale and widening of those amazingly clear eyes.
“Kieran. Silver Mountain Pack Guardian. It’s very nice to meet you, Lily.” He was ridiculously proud of his steady voice despite the hungry wolf clamoring to growl through it.
He let his fingers slide against her palm as he slowly pulled back his hand. Adding the barest of swirls with one fingertip against the very sensitive center of her palm, he was rewarded by a distinct gasp. Keeping his gaze on hers, he studied her expression closely for fear, annoyance, or any other sign that he was being too aggressive.
Lily simply radiated her lust even more. Holding still so as not to betray his own nearly overpowering lust, Kieran marveled that she was so ready, so soon. When this wolf Guardian made up her mind, she made it up fast and certain. Which shouldn’t have surprised him, given how quickly and decisively she’d ended the life of the human she’d turned. It was another sign of an excellent alpha to be. She was a perfect mate for him.
Now, he just had to convince her.
***
Lily wasn’t sure who was more shocked at their contact—she or her suppressed wolf. The human and wolf parts were both her, one being, yet somehow separate too, in ways that sometimes defied description. At the moment, both were in tandem in their surprise at her sudden boldness and the biting desire that gripped every sense she had.
Interesting. This was the Lily she used to be. Strong, certain, unafraid. Maybe that part of her hadn’t completely turned tail and run that night. So it was true about sex being the jump start she needed to return completely to her Guardian role. There was something to be said about merely recognizing a concept on an intellectual level, and actually understanding its truth down to her marrow. This was the trigger that would launch her natural instincts, help her call upon what some termed “wolf magic.” Sex with this gorgeous alpha, a pure mating frenzy, was the answer to unleashing her wolf magic and stepping back into her full lupine power. One night with him was just what she needed.
With tremendous reluctance, she freed her fingers from Kieran’s sizzling grasp. Not that he was holding her hard. In fact, he’d barely skimmed his finger over her skin. But she couldn’t think right even with that minor contact. What the darkly sexy wolf would be able to do to her when he touched her everywhere, skin to skin, body to body, every nerve ending quivering as though drenched in mindless, hungering fire—
Lily thought maybe the stool would melt beneath her overheated body. It was clear her brain was already fried.
Kieran regarded her with that cool stare. It wasn’t cool, of course. She could sense his animal sensuality simmering just beneath the civilized human who remained in control. He was good at masking himself, no doubt about it. But Lily’s own senses were so acute at the moment that it was almost as if she could read his mind. She’d never felt this sort of intense connection before. Not even with the man she’d changed, the one she’d thought she might love.
It had to be the long-repressed hormones. Pure and simple. She’d shoved aside her wolf’s sexual needs for so long that now she’d opened the floodgates. Everything in her was coming alive tonight.
This was an achingly good feeling, actually. Something like power sizzled along her skin and nerves. Her wolf rolled over, reveling in the sheer sensuality of it.
“Actually,” Lily began. Was she really going to say this? Yes. “Actually, I think I’ll skip the drink. What I’d really like is to drink you. I’ve been parched too long, and you’re what I need right now.”
This time, there was no mistaking Kieran’s purely male reaction. His wolf had nudged into his eyes earlier, his scent curled possessively around her. Now, though, his pupils widened. His skin darkened even more as blood rushed into it. She heard glass begin to splinter in his other hand, and she flicked her gaze to it. The amber liquid he’d been sipping from the short glass seeped through the spiderweb cracks the abrupt spasm of his grip had created.
Lily shivered with a wild leaping of desire. This wolf was strong. Stronger than most wolves she knew.
The black Stetson shadowed Kieran’s face as he briefly tipped his head. Then he looked back up at her, dropping his hand to her thigh. Through a roaring in her ears, she wondered if it were possible for a palm to actually scorch with its heat.
“And here I thought I’d have to go slow with you, Lily.” Kieran’s voice was suddenly so dangerously soft, so deep, that Lily leaned forward to catch his words. “I thought I’d have to coax out your wolf to play, convince the woman to dance with me. Well, hell, darlin’.” He drawled the word like a true cowboy. This Pack Guardian was the real deal. “Clearly, I underestimated you. And I’ve got to admit, I’ve never been so glad to have done that in my life.”
Lily felt her smile reach down to her toes and up to the top of her head. Being desired was such a heady feeling—
ah
. That was it. That was the source of the power she’d sensed. He was making her feel like a woman again. Her wolf nuzzled and rubbed up in her mind, confirming Lily’s revelation.
“I’ve never been this bold before. Maybe it’s because it’s been a while since I’ve been—social.”
Even as she said it, Lily could have kicked herself. Apparently, sexual power also made her brain even less effective. She might as well have told him she was deprived and therefore insanely horny. An easy wolf.
But Kieran still looked at her as if she were the whipped cream and he was the lucky strawberry about to be dipped into it. She saw in his eyes the triumph of a man who knows he is going to make a woman very, very happy.
“Lean a little closer, Lily. I’d like to see how bold your kiss is.”
Her last brain cell promptly fell to the floor. She felt her wolf take over that most primal center they shared. If her wolf were a cat, it would be purring about now.
Kieran reached over, grasped her hips with those strong hands, and slid her a few inches across her barstool toward him. His legs were open and pushed straight down against the old wooden floor, and he slid her right between them. Her thighs pressed against his. His face was centimeters from hers. She knew he could hear her spiked heartbeat because she could hear it herself.
More excitingly, she could hear his, too.
“May I, Lily?” The words were breathed against her mouth, and she smelled the richness of bourbon mingled with male spiciness. Her head actually spun from the intoxicating mixture.
“Mm-hmm,” she breathed back, and let her lips settle against his.
It was simultaneously like coming home to sweet comfort and being shot off into the spiraling black velvet of the night sky. Kieran’s warm lips were talented and confident over hers. They played against her mouth with a curiosity and wonder that robbed her of even more breath. Awareness of her every cell sped through her being. She felt her wolf rumble in unequivocal approval as Kieran staked a sexual claim upon her body like she’d never had before.
Never allowed, that is.
Lily forgot everything she knew except this moment, this kiss, this man. This dark wolf. He was claiming her, every willing inch. Fire roared up from her center and flickered across her skin. Kieran’s tongue pushed against her lips and she let him in to taste her mouth, to stroke it with an intimacy that promised more to come in other places.
She thought she heard him groan against her. His hands slipped up her back, fingers playing with the waist of her jeans. He was kissing her so thoroughly she wasn’t sure she was still sitting on the barstool. She wasn’t sure of anything except the frenzied yearning swallowing her up. Her wolf writhed in ecstatic anticipation.
Kieran pulled back just enough to whisper, “Upstairs. I have a room. It’s nice. Big bed.”
“Uh-huh,” she panted back. His black eyes—really black, like a starless night—looked deep into hers.
“Oh, Lily.” His breath traced her lips and sent more shivers down her spine. “If only you knew how amazed I am right now.”
“Not as much as I am,” she managed. His thumbs were still on her waist, playing with the belt loops, tugging down as if to strip her right there. “I thought I couldn’t—” She stopped. Could she be more gauche? There was no need to make it clear to the man how deprived she’d been.
“Shit!”
The angry and scared curse, hissed right by their ears, startled them both into jumping. Yet even with her heart somersaulting in her chest, Lily noted with pleasure that Kieran didn’t release her entirely.
Sara stood beside them. Tension and wary vigilence laced through her and reached out to them, alerting both their snarling, interrupted wolves.
“I’m so, so sorry, Lils. You too, cowboy,” Sara added, shooting Kieran an apologetic glance.
Lily’s wolf cocked a curious ear at Sara’s crisp, professional tone, slightly less aggrieved at being thwarted in her mating ardor. Something was wrong.
“But we have trouble. You’re from a northern pack, aren’t you?” She addressed Kieran directly. “Under Alpha Weston Rendall.”
“Sara, how did you know—” Lily began, but Kieran answered across her protest.
“Yes. Silver Mountain.” His tone was flat yet concerned. “Weston is my sire.”
“Good,” Sara said. “I’ll need your help. Lily—she’s, ah, she’s been on leave from her Pack Guardian duties for a while.” She didn’t look at Lily when she said that, but a suspicious red outlined the tips of her ears. “And we have a situation.”
“What—” Lily started again, but both wolves shushed her. Sara held up her palm as Kieran slide a calming hand across Lily’s lower back.
Sara tensed again, and her nostrils flared slightly. Immediately, both Lily and Kieran inhaled deeply. Lily caught the old creaky wood scent of the bar’s floor, which smelled like a tired tree. Sweat, exotic flowery perfume, foamy beer, slightly stale peanuts.
And hugging the edges of it all, the wild, acrid scent of unknown wolves.
Lily would have stood up except that Kieran still had her effectively—and, she acknowledged, utterly willingly—trapped between his iron-hard legs.