Claiming His Mate (7 page)

Jace’s body shook as he tried to get a handle on himself. His cock pushed painfully against her damp entrance, demanding he take her. Shit, he’d almost come when she’d answered him. His chest rose and fell as need pounded through him. He couldn’t wait any longer.

He pushed up to his knees and stared down at the smile across her beautiful face. “Turn over for me, sweetheart.” His voice sounded rough to his own ears. The wolf rose close to the surface, eager to satisfy the bond with its mate.

Michelle took her own sweet time rolling over and lifting onto her hands and knees. She glanced over her shoulder at him and wiggled that perfect ass he loved so much. His little mate played with fire.

He cracked a firm hand on one cheek, and she gasped in outrage. Oh, but he knew she secretly enjoyed it. He ran his fingers down to the damp slit of her pussy and felt the evidence of her arousal. Fuck yeah, she was wet and ready for him.

Jace grabbed his cock and lined the tip with her slick entrance. He gripped her hips and thrust deep, burying himself in her delicious heat. The sounds of their groans filled her quiet bedroom. Damn, the feel of her hot center wrapped around him was nothing short of pure heaven.

He closed his eyes and tried to grab onto a shred of his self-control, but she rocked her hips, her tight pussy squeezing his cock.

Fuck, the wolf was ready to claim his mate. Hell, so was the man.

Jace lowered his body and planted his hands alongside hers on the bed, bearing the brunt of his weight. He linked their hands together and dropped his head to her shoulder. His tongue slid along the tender flesh between her shoulder and neck, the area he planned to mark.

“Fuck me, Jace.” The sexy rasp of her voice nearly shattered his remaining restraint.

He drove into her, his hips snapping back and forth. The bed shook from the force of his thrusts. With each hard stroke, the walls of her sex fluttered over his cock, signaling she was close to the edge. A heightened pressure built at the base of his spine that curled his fucking toes.

Disentangling one of his hands, he reached around to her clit and rubbed the pad of his finger over the swollen bud. She bucked beneath him, and he rode her harder.

“That’s it, baby.” He growled against her ear.

He clamped his teeth over the soft flesh of her shoulder and bit down, the hot tang of her blood exploding in his mouth. Immediately, she arched her back and screamed his name as she tumbled toward her release.

Jace slammed his eyes shut as the bond intensified every sensation whipping through him. Her arms gave out and she dropped onto the bed. Following her down, he released his hold on her shoulder. With one last powerful thrust, he held himself deep, his seed spending inside his mate, completing the mate bond between them. Wolf and man howled in satisfaction.

Still joined together, Jace rolled them onto their sides with her wrapped tight in his arms. They both panted to catch their breaths.

He kissed the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Did I hurt you, sweetheart?”

“No.” She twined their fingers together. “That was fucking
incredible
.”

He chuckled and nuzzled the back of her shoulder. His heart was damn near bursting with love for the woman in his arms. “I love you, sweetheart. Forever.”

Michelle craned her neck to look at him, her innocent eyes searing him. She graced him with one of her sunny smiles he claimed as his own, then placed a tender kiss on his lips. “I love you, too, Jace. I’m looking forward to our forever.”

Melissa Limoges lives along the Gulf Coast with her OCD cat, Mr. Tibbs. Tax assessor by day, romance writer by night, she enjoys anything coffee related, traveling, and reading happily ever afters.

Visit M. Limoges at:

http://chitsuen.blogspot.com

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When Hell Freezes by Rebecca Royce

Chapter One

Everything was exactly the same. Beer and pork still wafted through the air of Gee’s bar. The woods leading up to Los Lobos held clean, fresh scents he remembered from childhood. Hell, even the birds chirped and sang eerily familiar tunes.

And yet everything had changed. At least for him.

“Drew Tao.” Colt Hannigan projected the words, keeping his voice clear and his words precise. The statement he intended to make needed to be heard and understood by all within earshot.

“Yes, Cousin?” Older than Colt remembered him, Drew raised an eyebrow, looking up from where he sat at the other end of the bar. Surrounded by four dominant males, including Ryker—who had been pack enforcer in Magnum Tao’s day and appeared to still hold the role with his new ‘Alpha’—Drew leaned against the bar as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Colt clenched his jaw. Drew appeared so calm, so at ease, when he and every other Wolf shifter in the room had to be able to smell Colt’s intent, and that only made Colt want to hit him harder. The fact that his cousin pretended to be unalarmed by his presence pissed him off further. How dare he act as if he couldn’t be beaten?

Colt meant to kill Drew, and every living soul for miles needed to be aware.

“Drew, I swore I would never follow another Tao. Your father, my uncle, was evil. But no one should have been surprised by his sickness. The Taos have long been the bane of the Black Hills Wolves.”

Whatever Drew would have said faded out when his mate, Betty, jumped to her feet and snarled, “How dare you speak to Drew that way? He is the Alpha of this pack. You might not be a part of us anymore, but as long as you stand on pack land, you will respect him, or one of us will take off your head.”

In other circumstances, Colt would have been impressed. Betty had been broken ten years earlier, a shell of the former Wolf she had been after Drew had abandoned them all to the not-so-tender mercies of Magnum Tao.

“I might remind you, Cousin”—Drew walked to Betty and placed a hand on her arm—“that you are related to the Taos. Your mother called my father brother. For a while, she too used my last name.”

Colt snarled. “The day she mated my father was the day fate smiled.” Even if he still had too much Tao blood in his veins for his own liking.

The son of a bitch had the gall to grin at him. What did Drew find amusing about this? He was about to be challenged, called out, and killed. Colt would do what he hadn’t been strong enough to do when Magnum had been in charge—take over the pack and finally lead them out of the Tao darkness.

“Drew Tao,” Colt had to speak the words correctly so Ryker and the others couldn’t interfere.

His cousin shook his head, looking over the bar to Gee who had stayed quiet the whole time. Colt had never been able to get a real read on the Were-bear, who played his cards close to his chest.

“Don’t kill him. I think he has guts. I want him around. At least for now.”

“What?” Colt shook his head. This wasn’t how things were done. He’d come to make a challenge. Drew needed to listen. “Drew Tao, I….”

Gee stepped out from behind the bar. If the Bear thought to throw him out again as he’d done ten years earlier, he could go ahead and try. If he landed on the street, Colt would shout his challenge from there. One way or the other, he would fight Drew for control of the pack. Hell would freeze over before he’d follow his cousin’s lead.

Drew walked toward him, but when he would have faced him, he headed for the exit instead. Was he cowardly? Is that why he left?

Colt had thought his cousin would be many things, but afraid hadn’t been one of them. Anger warred with frustration, and he growled, feeling his teeth elongate in his mouth. Colt had been waiting for this fight since the day Drew had taken off for who knew where and left them all to suffer at the hands of Magnum.

“Drew—

A whack to his head brought him up short.
What the hell?
Several seconds passed before he realized Gee stood behind him, holding a baseball bat. Stars passed in front of his eyes while Gee moved in front of him.

“Pup. Pass out. I don’t want to hit you again.”

“I’m not a pup anymore.” Why was it so hard to talk? The whole world went black.

***

Eleven years earlier
….

“Where is he?” Colt needed to pound out his anger. Magnum Tao had gone too far. Alpha or no Alpha, he didn’t get to haul the unmated, young females in front of him like a sexual cattle call to determine who he and his disgusting followers would eventually mate.

If they waited to claim them at all….

“Colt,” Tasha Moore’s voice called behind him, and he turned to see her rushing up behind him.

He smiled at her approach, some of his temper cooling with her presence. She was fourteen years old and sweet. A lot of the young juveniles developed tempers as their dominant tendencies warred with the human rules the pack self-imposed on themselves so they could exist in the world without discovery. But not Tasha. At least not yet. He suspected she would end up a true non-dominant Wolf, the kind that made all the strong shifters want to take care of her; the reason wolves like him had been given such protective instincts.

“Tasha?” He stared at her pale face and the dark circles under her eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t.” She placed a hand on his arm, and he smiled. In addition to being calming, she had the true and rare quality of being one of the kindest shifters he knew.

“Don’t do what, sweetheart?” He was only five years older than she, but in their world, that meant a monumental difference.

She narrowed her gaze. “Don’t go there and make Magnum mad. Since Drew left, there’s no stopping or controlling him. Look what happened to Brick. No one has seen him since. Please. We need you. If you die or he throws you out, what will happen? All of the dominant males can’t disappear. What will happen to us?”

The frantic tone of her voice made his skin crawl, and the acrid smell of her fear burned his nose. “Honey, I’m not going to die. I’ll tell Magnum to leave you all alone, and then if he won’t, I’ll do what every capable male here should be doing. I’ll stop him one way or another, but not from an Alpha challenge. No one wants that.”

He would find a way. His uncle couldn’t continue to be allowed to torment the young females as if they were toys to use and discard. The fact that he wanted to in the first place meant their Alpha had transitioned from menacing to disturbed. Magnum had once possessed a mate. He’d been a father and a competent, if not kind, leader. Now? The abhorrent man had dragged all of them into his pit of misery.

Worse, he was Colt’s uncle, and Colt wouldn’t allow him to continue to disparage their family the way he’d been doing. Colt Hannigan would never be that cowardly.

“No.” Tasha shook her head. “He’s the strongest. I don’t know how to make you understand this. I don’t think I can. But I have the ability to feel all of you differently than most Wolves. Because I’m not dominant, I can tell when I’m around you what your strengths are I can also feel who can take care of me, who is strongest, who is able to fight. I know. He can beat you in a fight, Colt. He’ll rip you apart.”

He patted her on the shoulder. “I think you’re confused because you don’t really understand your instincts yet. They’re only starting to come through. Beta Wolves can’t tell who the strongest dominant in the room is. That’s not possible.”

She put her hands on her hips, an unusual show of temper from such a passive juvenile. He grinned at how irritated she appeared. “Or maybe the Beta Wolves simply don’t tell you everything. Maybe there are some things we generally keep to ourselves.”

“Tasha, you can’t even tell if you’re a Beta yet. You have years before you’ll be fully in control of your Wolf side.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Did you ever not know you were dominant?”

Tasha made a good point, but he didn’t want to stand around and debate semantics. Not when Magnum could be bothering more of the young females while they argued.

“I appreciate your concern. I really do. But I got this.”

She huffed. “No, you
don’t
.”

With her final proclamation, she took off running in the opposite direction. He watched her long brown ringlets sway as she disappeared into the distance. Someday, she’d grow up to be quite a beauty.

He shook his head. Sentimentality couldn’t have a place in his heart today, and Tasha made him too calm. Colt needed his anger to face his uncle. The man was old, but not so ancient he couldn’t still put up a good fight.

Colt picked up his pace as he got closer to the barn Magnum and his cronies had turned into their personal lair. Once upon a time, the place had actually been a functioning building, filled with horses, hay, and other tools they’d used to help keep their town self-sufficient.

Red with white shutters and a giant door that had to be yanked open before he could go inside, the barn no longer housed anything but greed and corruption. Anything that happened within its walls spread out into the pack, mimicking an infection Colt wanted to kill.

He pulled open the door and stepped inside without knocking. The sounds of the rowdy party that never seemed to cease were not present. Instead, he immediately scented his uncle and the pack enforcer, Ryker, inside.

Magnum looked up from his reading when Colt entered, but Ryker didn’t turn around. The enforcer stared out the window, and Colt wondered, not for the first time in his life, what the scariest member of the Black Hills Wolf pack thought about during his perpetual silence.

“Do you think you can come in here without knocking because you’re my sister’s boy? Because I’ll kick your ass from here to the other side of tomorrow for barging through my door as if you own the place.”

Magnum’s scorn struck like a million bee stings assaulting Colt’s body all at once. He gritted his teeth against the pain. No matter what happened, he couldn’t back down from what had to be done. Too many people depended on him and, as Tasha had pointed out, with so many dominant males being shoved out every day, there would soon be no one left who could make things right.