Page 79 of Moonlighting with the Werewolf

He flung back the comforter, slid his arm beneath my waist, and maneuvered my boneless body onto the feather-soft sheets. His chest brushed mine as he leaned over me to snag a foil square from his bedside table. Riveted, I watched, mesmerized by the rolling of latex, the twitch of his muscles, and extra definition of his veins. The smattering of hair on his chest and thighs, and the general massiveness of a man who’d been beyond tender with me. Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale...

Eagerly awaiting the moment he and I would be teetering together on the brink of mutual bliss.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Never in mylife had I seen anything as glorious and gorgeous as Kerrigan Ryan sprawled out beneath me for the taking. Her skin was flushed from her orgasm, and her half-lidded eyes contained a covetous gleam.

Watching her come undone, all that unbridled passion flickering across her features, had taken me from hard to rock hard. My dick strained toward the slice of heaven between her thighs, as if I needed a compass to show me the way.

I crawled over her, bracing my forearms on either side of her head and caging her in.

Not that I thought she’d try to get away. I notched myself at her entrance, not plunging inside, but coating myself in her slick heat. Her moan spurred me on, and I groaned, allowing desire to build between us until it crested and crashed over us in a tantalizing wave. I kissed her deeply, my tongue mimicking the plunge my hips would soon be making, playing sadist and masochist until my cock wept with need.

Then I drove into Kerrigan and began pistoning my hips. Sweat beaded our bodies, and our breaths sawed in and out ofour mouths. I thrust deeper and deeper, basking in the slap of flesh.

With every withdrawal, her walls clamped onto me as if they were begging me to stay, increasing and intensifying a multitude of intoxicating sensations. As I continued to pump in and out of her, I reached between us and pressed the pad of my thumb to her clit. Her keening noise told me I’d found the right spot, and I pounded into her, all the way to the hilt.

“Holy shit, I’m already close,” Kerrigan murmured, bracing a hand on the headboard behind her and sinking her teeth into her lower lip.

“That’s good, sweetheart. You go ahead and tumble over the edge. I’ll catch you.”

Using the headboard for leverage, she pushed against me. We circled higher and higher together. She arched her hips to meet mine, and her head lolled back on the pillow.

With a growl, I rammed into her again and again, until black spots danced across my vision. She cried my name as she tumbled over the edge, sheathing me so tightly I had to muster all my self-control to ride out her orgasm.

I gritted my teeth, giving her everything I had and more. The instant she went pliant underneath me, I let go, emptying every last drop.

Totally spent, I fell to the bed at her side. Then I curled her into my arms and kissed the nape of her neck as we both worked to catch our breath.

As the haze around us faded, it invited in too many real-world thoughts. Throughout the endless blur of meetings and planning for the upcoming nuptials—myupcoming nuptials—I’d fixated on the safety of Kerrigan, my pack, and werewolves across America instead of everything I was losing.

The blade sharpened now, slicing as I clung to my last hours with my mate. If I had my way, she’d be in my bed every night.Naked next to me like this or wearing sweatpants and fuzzy socks. A tank top and panties or sexy lingerie. Messy hair, curls, ponytails, makeup or fresh- faced—I didn’t care. I wanted all her nights, all her days, and all her tomorrows.

If I closed my eyes, I could envision a future with Kerrigan. Living together and having children and sneaking into the bedroom late at night so we could be alone. My heart expanded with more happiness than I thought myself capable of.

Quickly, I slammed the door on the notion, but not before it shredded my heart and left a bloody mess in the spot where the organ used to reside.

Kerrigan’s fingertips skated across the line in my forearm. “You’re quiet.”

I pressed my lips to her shoulder. “You’ve always been the chatty one.”

“Yeah, if I left the conversation up to you, it’d be ninety percent grunting,” she teased, rolling to face me so that her breasts smooshed up against my chest. I kissed the tip of her nose, and she traced her fingertips along my jaw, so I snagged her hand and kissed the center of the palm, too.

A pained noise sounded in her throat, and her chin quivered. “There’s got to be some way we can fight this. I’ve been waiting my entire life to feel like this about someone—to experience this kind of fierce and profound love—only to have it snatched away?” Her voice took on a desperation that made my skin feel too tight. “I don’t care if it makes me sound like a little kid,it’s not fair.What if we could find someone to undo the spell? Are there, like, anti-witches or something?”

I closed my eyes and exhaled. “I’m probably the closest thing to an anti-witch there is. You know how much I despise them. But I saw that spell in action, babe. One minute I was interrogating a guy, and the next, his neck snapped.” I placed a hand on the side of her neck and brushed my thumb overthe life-giving artery pounding away under the surface. “I’m not willing to let you die. I won’t risk it.”

“What if...?” The wheels in her brain spun, the same way mine had been doing the last several days, and still I hadn’t found a way out that wouldn’t lead to too many people I cared getting hurt—or worse. I’d never felt like such a failure in my life. “If Andromeda dies, would that undo the spell?”

Kerrigan propped herself up on her elbow and swept her hair aside, exposing more of her soft creamy skin. “Turn me in to a werewolf. Bite deep into the vein and inject me with the toxin stuff so I can shift and heal and be strong enough to fight.”

As implausible as it was, the idea of transforming her beckoned. Not because it’d get us out of our current situation, but because it would make it harder for anyone to ever hurt or abduct her ever again. “The fact that you’d be willing to go through that means the world to me, but I can’t ask that of you. More than that, it’s not as simple as I made it out to be when we first discussed it.”

She blinked at me, so ready to go all in on changing her DNA, along with the rest of her life.

For me.

“There’s a lot that can go wrong. If the bite is too shallow or too deep, or if your body’s unable to fight off the toxin in time, you might”—my gulp echoed through the quiet—“die.”

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