Winter Howl (Sanctuary) Read online

  And as for Grant, Renee was not convinced that he’d ever used his thinking mind very much. He was rough and thorough, shaking the bed with every thrust. Although he was clearly ripping his own pleasure from her, he kept up an angle that must have been difficult for him, the one that rubbed against that place inside that made her tighten around him in a swirl of wetness. He clenched one hand around her waist and pressed the other into the bed as his mouth roamed greedily over her until she drank in every groan, every growl. He was being quiet for her. She wondered how demonstrative he would be when he did not have to be quiet. She dropped the knife again so that she could cling to him, bracing against every time he thrust in, imagining him taking her in the middle of the living room without any restraint at all.

  Her orgasm began climbing before she even recognised its presence. But she latched her teeth on to his shoulder again, rocking her hips to help him help her reach its peak.

  There, she thought. There, right there. God… Grant, there…

  She whimpered through the climax, and he drew it out as long as he could, his cock still rock hard within her. She could not believe that he’d lasted longer than she had when he had been aroused longer. But his eyes were wild and glowing as she came down from the orgasm, and he began to fuck her even harder through her oversensitivity. She grasped for the knife and brought it between them, effectively stilling him in his actions, but she could tell she was not going to hold him back for long. Every one of his muscles shook from the effort of not taking her, using her.

  With her eyes fixed on his, she pushed him to the side until she was the one who was over him. He was still buried within her, and she adjusted herself so that she was comfortable again. His hips bucked, but she put the flat of the knife back against his stomach.

  “If you’re going to kill me after fucking me, bitch, you’d better do it now,” he snarled, fingers digging into the flesh of her hips.

  “I’m ready to play,” Renee said. “Sit up.” She lifted herself off him a little so that he could pull himself sitting. His expression was twisted with need and anger and frustration, but he did as he was told, a glitter of renewed interest in his eyes.

  “There,” she murmured, and she began to rock, her arms around his neck and the knife glinting behind him. Slowly at first, drawing herself past the oversensitivity stage and into her own renewed interest. She rubbed her clit tantalisingly against his pubic hair and bone, squeezing herself around him in a deliberate attempt to make him look that way—his eyes rolling back, jaw tight, everything about him needing to take her but unable to do so. If he had really wanted to, he could have broken her wrist, held her down, and taken what he wanted. But he was not doing any of those things. He permitted her the power that she had over him when she could easily take his life with the smallest of incisions.

  “Tease me any more,” he growled, “and I will not be responsible for anything I do, any noise I make to alert the others that you are riding me under threat of death, taunting me when I’ve brought you off twice today for nothing in return. And…I’m going to…have you in front of that…bitch…so that she… Fuck.”

  All her inner muscles were tight as she began to lift herself up and bring herself down hard, truly riding him now with her breasts bouncing in front of him until he took one nipple into his mouth and sucked, raking short nails with the beginnings of claws down her stomach. She held his head closer as she took him faster and faster, not as violently as he had, but he was thrusting up into her and tasting her and groaning as his balls drew up. His orgasm almost unseated her, and they rolled over as he slammed once, twice, three, four times quickly into her cunt, coming in spurts of heat inside her.

  He held himself above her after he’d finished, not slumping over her or crushing her, just staring down at her, all the hunger driven from his expression but the fire still there.

  “If I had wanted to kill you, I would have done it before now,” he murmured. “And if I had hurt you more than you wanted, you would have killed me. I don’t think you need that knife anymore.” He took her wrist lightly. He wanted to squeeze the bones of her wrist, she knew, but all he did was bring her arm down to the bed. “Give me the knife, Renee.”

  “No,” she answered. She pushed herself to a sitting position, and he pulled out of her when she moved away. She crawled over and put the knife in the drawer of the night table. “If you take it from me, I’ll have Jake blow your brains out with his rifle. And he’s an excellent shot.”

  “You don’t need to protect yourself from me,” he said, pulling her back beneath him. He rubbed his shoulder lightly, and his hand came away bloody from where her teeth had broken skin. He sucked his fingers into his mouth and cleaned them in the dirtiest way. Grant might have come, but Renee was worked up again. She wanted to taste his fingers as they came back out of his mouth without a trace of his blood. She could not believe that she had bitten him so hard.

  “But you’re a dangerous man,” Renee said. “You told me yourself.”

  “I am.” He lowered himself so that he covered her like a blanket, returning his attention to her neck, slowly working his way down. “But you don’t need to protect yourself from me.” His mouth made its way down her stomach, circling her navel before hovering above her clit. She bit her lip as he began to lick her again, drinking her arousal mixed with his ejaculate, until she was almost begging for him to take the knife from her possession and take her again, whenever and however he wanted. Since she did not have his shoulder to help muffle her cries, she had to resort to her hand again, and as he brought her to orgasm for the second time that night, she could not help the high moan that escaped.

  He licked his way back up her body. When he reached her mouth, she muttered against his lips, “I’ll still have him shoot you.”

  “That’s my girl,” he replied, rewarding her with a thorough kiss. “Now, I remember I said something about playing all night…”

  Chapter Seven

  She was not sure when she’d finally fallen asleep. Neither of them had lost energy after sex like Jake did. Grant had been amazingly voracious, intent upon enjoying every inch of her until he’d simply been unable to continue. And she’d seemed unable to stop herself now that she’d had a taste. It hadn’t been that Grant was better than Britt, but sex—sex like this—had been so new, and feeling normal had been new, and she had not wanted it to stop. It had been exhaustion that did her in, not boredom.

  She had been so lost in the present that night that everything crashed down on her in the morning.

  At first she burrowed closer to the furnace that was Grant’s body. They had barely made it under the covers, but they weren’t really needed when he was the best kind of heater. Once Renee realised that the heat came from Grant, she opened her eyes. And once she realised what she had done the night before, she jerked out of his enveloping arms and sat straight up. Grant did not move, but when she looked back, he was watching her.

  Sunlight was coming through the window above her bed, enough for her to see that she would not be able to sneak out of the room without the others seeing her. Or smelling him on her.

  She began frantically trying to create an alibi, but her mind came up blank. There was not one single excuse she could come up with that would explain her being out all night, smelling less like herself and smelling like sex, to boot.

  But excuses could be made later. Since no one had burst through the door looking for her, Renee assumed that her friends were not too worried about where she was. They probably assumed that she had decided on a whim to sleep with the dogs, or had fallen asleep at her computer. Leslie would know better, but he probably would not be asking the questions.

  Right now, she needed to clean up. There was the tiny en suite bathroom that she had used as a kid. She found cheap but unopened shower gel under the sink. As she turned the water on hot, she knew that she could wash and wash and still be unable to get rid of his scent from her clothes. Then again, she had not had them on for very l
ong. She would deal with that if it became a problem.

  “So keen to leave me, love?” Grant asked. He leaned against the door frame as she whirled around. The closest towel was pink and flowery, and for some reason, that was the only reason she did not reach for it to cover her. He might have seen her naked—he was largely responsible for that state—but it was another thing entirely for him to see her naked like this. The magic spell had ended, and she wanted layers between his eyes and her skin.

  “I need to get you off of me,” she said. She tested the water with her hand before pulling back the curtain and stepping into the spray.

  He leaned into the shower, and Renee was conscious of the fact there was nowhere to go in that little stall.

  “Even if you were able to wash me from you, you do realise that you are all over me,” Grant murmured. He pushed her wet hair from her face and held it in his hand like a rope. “And I am not so quick to shed that scent from my skin.”

  “And what would you say?” Renee asked. She wanted to back into the corner, but he would follow her into it, and she would be more trapped than she already was. Even now, though the impulsiveness of the night was gone, she saw his mouth and wanted it on her. They both had morning breath and they both smelt of their cum, but she felt her cunt twitch at the thought of rolling over the bed sheets wet as she was, clinging to his body with the water slicking his way over her, into her.

  She did not know whether she would be able to stop.

  “I’ll tell them the truth.” He stepped under the spray with her, bringing in a rough washcloth for her to use. “I’ll tell them that we rolled around like dogs and that we did it with your knife to my neck. And balls.”

  “They won’t believe you,” Renee replied.

  “No, they won’t. But you’ll tell them that it’s true.”

  “I will?”

  “If they’re going to rip me to pieces, it better be because of something I really did,” Grant said, as he poured the gel onto the washcloth and rubbed it into lather. “Your conscience will keep you from lying to them. You’d sacrifice yourself for me before you would lie.”

  He moved the washcloth from her shoulder blades to her waist to the curve of her buttocks. Then between, stroking her and washing away the scent from where she was sure it was most concentrated. He pressed her against him to get a better angle.

  “This isn’t helping,” she muttered. But even though she knew she should push away, she kissed along the line of his shoulder. She found the place where she had bitten him—the skin was raised and slightly bruised. There was a scab where she had bitten through the skin. She traced the raises and ridges with her tongue. The knowledge that she had hurt him in some way, and that he had let her, made her squeeze her thighs around his hand.

  “If your little bitch were here, too, we could really get things…clean,” Grant whispered. He circled one erect nipple with his short fingernail, and bent it back and forth before flicking it. She was sensitive enough there that the action was a little uncomfortable, but she somehow still enjoyed the sensation. Like the way her thighs ached from the night’s activities, but every time she used the muscles, she was reminded of why they ached. Like there were bite marks on her breasts and bruises on her hips and arms. But she had marked him as much as she had been marked by him. And she had held the poisonous knife too close to his skin.

  An image of Britt had surfaced in her mind when he’d mentioned her, and though Renee knew that she would never come near Grant, she imagined for a second that Britt was behind her, that she was the one with the washcloth.

  She thought sex would be just as good with Britt, and she let Grant kiss her as she imagined it. It helped that she had some practical experience to draw from—she had not known how much of a difference that made.

  His cock was half-hard against her hip, and she took it in hand as she kissed him. The wildness was coming back. She thought she could drain him dry and still want more. She canted her hips with the movement of his hand, rubbing her clit against his slick thigh. She was too sensitive, and the orgasm came with more pain than pleasure, but it was release nonetheless. She clenched her fingers around his cock as the orgasm wrenched from her. He gave a muffled shout when she squeezed too tightly, but he reached down and covered her hand with his, pumping himself over her fingers with the same too-tight grip. His breathing was harsh in her ear, and he came onto her stomach. A few small spurts hit her breasts. He looked at her as if she were breakfast, bent down to taste himself on her, his teeth drawing blood to the surface and his moans humming through her body.

  When she turned around to let the water wash the cum off her breasts, another dose of morning-after reality hit her like a fist in the stomach—perhaps a little lower.

  “Shit,” she whispered. She went rigid when Grant ran a hand gently down her spine.

  “It’s going to get awfully old if you regret what you do with me every time,” Grant said. She could practically hear his grin. “For you. Do you really think you’ll be able to stay away?”

  “That’s not it,” she said. Although she thought she could manage regret after every encounter, no matter how tiring it would be, because she was supposed to feel guilty about this. She was supposed to feel guilty about not being able to say no to him, about going behind Britt’s back to have sex with someone she hated. “It’s just that I didn’t think…”

  “That was the point,” Grant murmured, his growl trembling over her skin.

  “About protection.”

  She felt his mocking smile against her shoulder. “There are many things you need to fear from me, Red, but that ain’t one of them. The only way we reproduce, the only—let’s call it ‘disease’, like the bitch said, though I hardly think so—the only disease I spread is lycanthropy.”

  He curled his arm around her, pulling her to him and spreading his fingers over her stomach possessively. He flicked his tongue against her ear. “No regrets,” he whispered before taking the lobe of her ear between his teeth. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Renee finally pushed him away. So she had one regret she could cross off her list, but there were still a slew of others left twisting inside her, and his touch wasn’t doing anything to make them disappear. Nor were either of them doing anything to make her clean.

  “You need to go,” Renee said. “Run in the woods through the snow.”

  “Put my energies into something other than making you scream, then?” Grant asked.

  “Get my scent off in the air,” Renee replied.

  Grant hesitated, looking almost angry. But he smoothed his expression out, removed traces of annoyance or attraction. “Sounds practical,” he said. “But I won’t be your dirty little secret for long, love. Can’t keep secrets in a place like this.”

  Renee held her shoulders, crossing her arms over her breasts. Shielding herself from him, creating a barrier.

  “Fine.” He reached for a towel and stepped out of the shower, drying off as he went.

  * * * *

  She did not know whether he did what she had told him to do. She only knew that he was not there when she finally got out, after scrubbing herself hard. Her skin was an angry pink in the places to which Grant had paid the most attention. She wrapped a towel around herself and considered her clothes on the floor. She could just walk out in the towel—the odds were that none of her shapeshifters would be in the house at this hour. But they could be, and a towel would be suspicious, to say the least. The clothes, though, might give them a clue as to where she had been, which they were probably wondering about anyway.

  In the end, she chose to get dressed and hurry out and up into the loft.

  Britt came in after her a few minutes after she got in, catching her changing between her old clothes and new, clean clothes.

  “Where were you last night?”

  The question was innocuous, Britt’s face innocent. She was not even thinking of anything near what Renee had actually been doing. Maybe she did not smell Grant o
n her because she wasn’t trying to smell him.

  “In my room,” Renee said, caught in the headlights of a direct question.

  Britt nodded. “Needed a little alone time? I can understand that. Things have been a little stressful for you lately.”

  And, like that, Renee’s indiscretion was buried under Britt’s trust.

  * * * *

  The snow storms came in, blustered and calmed down. Getting to and from any of the buildings became a chore in itself, but the shapeshifters who gave their time and effort to keep the sanctuary running provided their invaluable services by shovelling paths. Fortunately, the house was the farthest building—once you reached the barns, it was easier to manoeuvre between them all.

  Another full moon passed—the dogs were somewhat agitated, and Renee and Jake made sure to keep everyone locked in tight. She stayed all night with them without complaint, calming the dogs and sleeping intermittently on one of the couches. Jake was with her in his golden retriever skin, his alpha presence as calm as possible to help soothe the rest of them.

  In general, Grant kept away from her these days, and Renee thought that was that. He’d had his taste and now he was finished with her, despite him talking about more. She was not too disappointed, although it would be a lie to say that she wasn’t at all—if anything, though, she was relieved. It meant no more sneaking around, no more pushing herself outside what she knew, no more impulsiveness she knew could not last.

  But the morning after the full moon, when the circles were deep under her eyes, he came to her outside the dog barn in a tattered pair of corduroy pants that he must not have been able to remove in time before he’d turned. Before she could even close the door behind her, he crushed her against it, slamming it shut with their bodies. The snow pressed in from all sides, except the partially obscured walkway that had been dug the day before. She thought she would be cold until she again felt the heat of his skin under her fingertips.