Stretching one muscled arm across the bar, he cupped my jaw, the rough pad of his thumb tracing my cheekbone. “Don’t give up on that glass slipper just yet, sweetheart. One of these days, you may still find your prince.”
I closed my eyes and curled my fingers around his wrist, inhaling the smell of black pepper and woodsmoke, soap and male. He was wrong. I was too old to believe in fairytales. Love was about as permanent as sand trickling between your outstretched fingers. The tighter you tried to hang on, the faster it slipped away.
But against my will, that warm, fluttery feeling I’d been fighting for the past two days curled like warm, gooey chocolate in my belly as the rough pad of his thumb grazed my cheek. Which was all kinds of wrong. Dallas and I weren’t two starry-eyed high school kids tiptoeing around the idea of a first kiss. It was ten years too late for that. And I knew all too well some mistakes could never be unmade.
I bit my lip. Dallas released a low growl. From a deep, primitive place within me, I felt something stir. A shiver travelled across my skin. Moonlight whispered in through the open windows over the patio, washing over me in a dizzying burst. For the first time since I’d awoken, I felt the wolf respond. Hungry. Wanting. Which made sense, in a way. There was nothing more deeply rooted in our feral sides than the base desire to hunt and be claimed. When I opened my eyes, Dallas’s irises had darkened to a deep, predatory gold.
“Lacey.” He growled, hand sliding around to clasp the back of my neck. “If you don’t want this, tell me now.”
My pulse slammed in my veins. Raw, animalistic need surged, causing my breathing to quicken. Hooking up was a bad idea on so many levels, and right now, I didn’t care.
“Ground rules,” I breathed when he knocked my barstool aside, caging me up against the cool granite counter.
“Listening.”
“One night. No promises. I want you to fuck me. Nothing more.” I held his gaze, tracing the rough-cut lines of his jaw. “You on board with that?”
“It’s the full moon.” He closed his eyes at my touch, ash-blond lashes fluttering against his cheeks. “I could—"
“Stop.” I pressed fingertips to his lips, stopping the thought before it could form. “We both know you’re not going to hurt me. You would never hurt me. We’ll go slow. If this is just for one night, I want to taste every inch of you.”
He growled, moving into my space. Licking my lips, I let my fingertips map the width of his shoulders, soaking in the heat coming off his cut chest, drinking in his scent like a drug.
I rose up on my toes, pressing my lips to the exposed edge of his collarbone. Dallas gripped the back of my neck, holding my mouth to his skin. I kissed my way up his throat, torn by the dual desires to ravish and savor, tasting hot, trembling skin until I reached the point where his pulse thrummed with every brush of my tongue. His breathing roughened. The air between us felt charged, everything about this moment heated and yet incredibly fragile. Dallas remained motionless, muscles straining from the effort to hold himself back, careful, so careful to let me make the first move.
Lifting the hem of his shirt, I drew it slowly up his torso. The scent of his skin swirled through the room, dark and dominant, and I felt the wolf rise in my blood. I let my eyes drift from his impossibly thick shoulders to the hard muscles of his chest, settling on abs that looked as if they’d been cut from stone. He let me look my fill, thumb grazing lazily back and forth along the length of my neck.
I lifted my eyes, heart thrumming so hard I thought I might burst from my skin. Our gazes locked, Dallas unzipped my hoodie, then slid his hands up the sides of my torso, taking my tank with it as he went. I bit my lip, shivering as the warm flat of his palms were replaced by the cold air in the room. Moonlight filled the kitchen, soaking into my skin, swirling through my blood like a drug until I was trembling with need, empty and aching to be filled.
“You don’t know what you do to me.” He dragged the backs of his knuckles across my shoulders, down the length of my arms. I shuddered as his eyes drank in the swollen pink tips of my breasts. Like he needed his hands on me everywhere but didn’t dare grant himself permission. “What you’ve done to me since the day we met.”
I rose up on my toes, capturing his lips. A second later he was forcing me back against the counter, our mouths colliding in a kiss I felt low in my hips, where a hot, desperate heat was building. Dallas growled against my throat, pulling down the straps of my bra. While his tongue flicked one nipple, he tugged roughly at the other. Shivering, I twisted fingers into his hair, needing him to never stop. Needing more.
Suddenly he was kneeling before me, ten years of unanswered questions crashing down around us as he held my gaze and slowly removed the rest of our clothes. Without breaking eye contact, he pressed a kiss to my navel. I was standing before him, completely and utterly bare, the lazy circle of his thumbs at my hipbones causing me to see stars. His erection rose to just beneath his navel, thick and ready.
“You’re beautiful, Lacey.” Eyes hooded, he kissed the crease of my hip. “I’m going to bite you and then I’m going to fuck you. Last chance to say no.”
His eyes blazed gold. Capturing my knee, he hooked it over his shoulder. My pulse jackknifed, the sight of Dallas’s huge muscled body kneeling before me in a position that was undeniably submissive causing a low pulse to start between my legs. Dallas worked out, lifted and trained with his brothers at the gym, took care of his body, and had a physique to show for it. And seeing him like this, so naked, so raw, I wanted to feel that strength as he pushed me to the floor, feel his chest hard and solid over me while he showed me with his lips and hands and body every desire he’d held back the past ten years. In this one stolen moment we might never be able to keep, I wanted all of Dallas Caldwell’s secrets, the words we’d left unsaid, the version of us we could have been if things hadn’t gone so, so wrong. For one, impossible moment, I wanted him to make me believe.
Mine.
“Yes,” I breathed.
With a possessive growl, Dallas bit the crease of my hip.
I gasped, arching over him like a freshly strung bow. The bond roared open between us, consuming me in a rush of flame. My body came alive, every air current whispering through the room tickling over my skin like the caress of a thousand feathers. The night air scattered gooseflesh across my naked skin. Dallas’s body was an inferno, searing mine in every place we touched. Raw moonlust burned through his blood to mine, every sensation he felt assaulting me through the bond. His naked hunger for me. Raw loneliness so stark that tears sprang to my eyes, the hurt he’d been suppressing for decades cresting over me in a tidal wave. There was no hiding. No holding back. And, god, I needed to run, to hunt, to come, to scream—
Gasping, I let my head fall back. Dallas’s tongue stroked my sex, driving quick and rough where I needed it most while his thumb laved the fresh scar at my hip that claimed me as his.
His.
I shattered. Stars burst on the back of my eyelids. Keening, I raked my nails down the thick muscles of his bare shoulders, the wolf close to the surface, base instinct shivering across my skin.
Mine.
I swayed under the addictive link of the bond, feeling Dallas’s body responding in time with mine. The scent of his release filled the room. He growled, eyes blazing a heated gold. My breathing instantly slaved to his, our hearts thrumming as one through the link of the bond. I threw my head back, shivering as another wave of dark pleasure rolled through my hips.