Impulse

Running with a wolf pack was a new experience for Sera.

She’d run with wolves. Miguel and Anna took her running as often as she wanted, and there was always a camaraderie between them. It was fun to test herself against Anna’s strength and speed, or to tumble across the grass in a fake battle with Miguel, who had enough nervous power to exhaust even Anna.

Running with a pack was different. They were a pack. They flowed together under the moonlit sky, the communication between them so subtle Sera could only wonder at it. They ran as a group and played as a group, the youngsters testing themselves in teasing challenges that Sydney always broke apart before they could turn too real.

Sera ran with them, her blood pulsing in a primal, familiar beat that matched the fall of her paws against the ground. A little quicker than Julio’s—she had to fight to keep up with his larger stride. She was smaller than all of the adults and most of the adolescent wolves, but pride made her push herself until the pack began to splinter, veering off in private chases or circling back for games of tag.

She nipped at Julio’s tail and took off toward the denser part of the woods, slowing her pace to give her tired legs a chance to recover. He followed her, growling at another wolf who broke apart with them. The stranger tucked his ears and backed off, hunkering close to the ground, his tail between his legs.

Sera kept running without guilt. They’d done their duty. Talked to wolves all through dinner and into the evening, and men approached Julio with growing surety, and women talked to Sera with a heartbreaking mix of caution and envy. It was hard to blame even the ones who looked on Julio with covetous eyes—he represented safety and security in a world that had taken too much from them.

But he was hers. And now, after sharing him all evening, she wanted him to herself.

Julio slowed to a walk, his gaze focused on her. She could feel its weight, its careful assessment.

So serious. So carefully protective. She circled back and nipped at his tail, trying to tease him into playing with her, but he was having none of it.

Too many strangers, then. She huffed and nipped at him again, then took off into the woods, heading away from the pack and into the darker, stiller parts of the forest.

He ran her down after half a mile, his panting breaths moving closer and closer until he’d drawn even with her shoulder—running beside her instead of chasing.

This was peace. This was life as she was meant to live it, as comfortable in her fur as she was in her skin, strength at her side but not overwhelming her. The forest lay quiet around them, but still they ran. Sydney owned endless acres around his house, enough to give the pack a taste of solitude whenever they needed it.

She’d had no idea how very much she needed it.

Julio stopped and wandered in a wide circle around the edge of a shadowed clearing, then threw his head back in a wild howl.

The sound thundered through her. Not a call, but a warning. A proud statement of ownership, if only for a while. No wolf would trespass on his territory. No wolf would dispute that it was his territory.

He was strong and beautiful, and Sera crept to him with her head bent low, savoring the whisper of instinct that urged caution and respect, because for the first time she had no fear of rejection or danger. He met her with a soft rumble, rubbed his nose against hers.

The clearing was thick grass covered in leaves. Comfortable enough to stretch out upon, even when she let magic shimmer through her on a wave of giddy heat that left her human and tingling, naked beneath the endless sky. “I love the woods at night.”

Another pulse of magic behind her. “So do I.”

Shifting brought arousal, a high no drug could match. Awareness left her limbs liquid as she rolled to her stomach. “I love running with the big bad wolf too.”

Julio huffed out a laugh a split second before his mouth descended on the back of her neck.

Teeth dug into her skin, and she gasped, fingers closing helplessly on the grass as the sweetly edged pain brought her body from lazily interested to starving in the space between heartbeats. Her hips lifted without her permission, driven by the urge to submit. To offer herself, to beg to be taken.

He covered her body with his and continued to nibble on her skin. “How much do you love it out here?”

“I could live in a cabin in the woods.” She curled her toes as his teeth scraped across her shoulder, and had to fight the urge to squirm. If he dragged her to her knees and drove into her, she wouldn’t complain. Not when she was this hungry, this ready. Thinking enough to talk was a struggle, and her words came out breathless. “As long as I got cable and a modern kitchen.”

“Here, or anywhere?”

“Anywhere.” She shivered as his breath ghosted across her skin. “But I like it here too. I like Patty. She knows about hard living.”

He brushed her hair away from her shoulder and covered the newly bared skin with kisses.

“They like you more than me, that’s for sure.”

“Because they don’t know you.” His lips found every spot that made her breathing hitch, but he kept kissing her, slow and easy. She was starting to wonder if he knew how to go fast.

“You’re a Mendoza, baby. They’re always going to assume you’re one of the elite. And I’m a coyote. They’ll always know I’m not.”

“You’re better than elite.” His fingers trailed down her spine to her hip. “You’re Sera.”

She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. Darkly handsome and so serious, even now.

“I’m your girl. And you’re my wolf. You’d better keep that in mind. I may be a submissive, but I’m still damn territorial.”

He smiled, slow and dark, and jerked her hips up, pulling her to her knees. “I know better than to forget.”

Oh yeah. The less-human parts of her thrilled as she bowed her back, stretching her arms out above her head and pressing her forehead to the grass. “I don’t know what to beg for. Your fingers, your tongue or a fast, hard fucking.”

He slapped her ass, driving a startled moan from her lips. “Then let me decide.”

Her skin burned where his hand had fallen. A good burn, the kind that fuzzed the edges of the world and let her focus on nothing beyond her body. She dug her fingers into the grass and wiggled, teasing him with a throaty laugh. “Can’t keep your hands off my ass, can you?”

“You don’t mind.” He leaned down, his chest against her back, and nudged his erection between her thighs.

She whimpered and arched, entirely unselfconscious for once in her life. “Again? Please?”

He rubbed his hand over her tingling skin, then rewarded her with another slap.

Heaven. Not tied up in games and guilt, just something that afforded them both pleasure. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to sensation as her lips formed another plea. Mindless, begging words, tangled up with his name.

Julio pushed forward, the head of his cock slicking close to her entrance. “Sera.”

She edged her knees apart. “I want you inside me. So bad. So deep.”

“If we weren’t rolling in the dirt, I’d make you wait.” Then he thrust into her, only a few inches, but hard enough to claim.

She bit her own arm to muffle her cry, a helpless noise that squeaked out regardless. One knee slipped on damp leaves, and it was so much hotter like this. Outdoors, on the ground.

Messy and a little uncomfortable, with a twig digging into one arm and the sharp smell of crushed grass twisting with the forest and Julio and the unmistakable scent of sex.

It was raw and real, and she pushed back against his grip, ready to take every stretching inch of him. Ready to be fucked inside out, to scream her release to the sky and not care that every wolf in the pack heard her.

Julio twisted a hand in her hair and pulled her head back. “You want to be loud, don’t you?”

“Yes.” A rasped confession. A groan, because the fist in her hair was the right kind of dirty.

“I don’t care if they all know. I want them to know that you’re mine.”

“You think they can’t tell?” His skin slid over hers, and he breathed his next words in her ear.

“They saw the way I look at you. How much I want you.”