Page 59 of The Sacred Wolf

My stomach bounced between anxiety and lust in a nauseating calisthenic routine as I grappled with my wolf for control of my mind.

When he crouches? OMG, please stop! This is serious. I’m on a mission.

Mission-shmission. Let’s just take advantage of all these lovely bushes and crouch together, shall we?

“I’m starting to have more sympathy for your situation than I had in the past,” I murmured to Sebastian.

“I think if we enter the pond there,” he pointed, ignoring me, “the swim across will be shorter and lead us there.”

I considered the path he’d indicated and was impressed. It was a very tactical choice. The exit point he’d chosen on the other side of the pond had easy footholds in the rocks leading up to the back stairs of the castle. It would give us the element of quiet surprise we sought.

See. I chided my wolf. He’s focused on saving the world.

Who cares?

And his mother, your horny bitch.

She’s fine! You saw her! She’s waited this long!

Exactly! A new even gruffer voice entered the chat. Come on, dude. These bushes are lit. Or they will be with enough friction…

Sebastian and I stopped dead in our tracks at the same time. His eyes widened.

“Did you…?” I stopped, my eyes joining his. Had my wolf just spoken to…?

“Did you?” The color drained from his face.

Why are they so surprised? Sebastian’s wolf chuffed at mine.

Why aren’t they naked? Mine barked back.

Naked, naked, naked! Sebastian’s wolf chanted, and mine howled in return, and then his started howling, and suddenly we were just standing there in the middle of the most important mission of our lives with two sexually rabid animals demanding we strip down and fulfill our procreative destiny.

Hey! My wolf yapped. Do you have any names picked out?

“Oh my Gods,” I mouthed, reddening from toe tips to scalp.

Indiana? Obi-Wan? Iron Man? Sebastian’s wolf offered up, and Sebastian looked like he was going to throw up. He shook his head. “No. That’s not…”

We stared at each other, first in absolute horror, and then… then something shifted. Luckily, not us, not on the outside anyway, but inside… I could feel her taking over, and he was all that she could see in the entire cosmos. He was everything I was headed toward, and the reason for everywhere I’d already been. He was the crux.

“Sebastian,” I mewled pitifully. “I feel it.”

He crossed the distance in a millisecond, the south pole to my north, our charged particles locking tight as he grabbed me and crushed his lips to mine.

Fire burned my skin to peeling from the inside out.

His hands snaked around my waist, pressing me to his chest as I grabbed fistfuls of his hair, my mouth seeking more, my cells insisting that they become one with his. Electricity tingled with every press of his lips as they wound their way down my neck, leaving a physical afterimage.

I may have moaned.

“Death to the shifters!”

“Burn them all!”

Furious shouts drifted through the brambles, yanking us back to the now.

I stopped, panting. “I think we should…”

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