Reclaiming Angelica (3 page)

“I do.” Angelica endued her voice with confidence she didn’t
feel. She swiped the touch screen to end the call and tossed the phone on the
couch. Agitated, she gathered her long, curly hair and plaited it, then twisted
it into a knot at her nape. Raul would be here soon. It wouldn’t take him long
to find her since she’d made no effort to hide her whereabouts.

Angelica walked to the window and stared out over the
backyard at the yellow-tinged moon. Not a full one, but a three-quarter. Raul’s
wolf would still be strong in him but not in complete control.

“Oh God, what have I done?” She wiped sweaty palms on her
skirt as she continued pacing. When she began panting on the verge of
hyperventilating, Angelica stopped and closed her eyes, counted to ten, then
twenty, then thirty while taking deep, slow breaths.

Please, God let this
work. I don’t want to live without him.

It had to work. They were running out of time. If they
didn’t settle this now, there wouldn’t be a later. Her blood ran cold as she
considered the consequences if her plan failed.

As she stood there, eyes closed, praying and bargaining with
her maker, Angelica felt a change in the atmosphere. Raul. He was here. A
sudden calm descended over her. Raul—her lover, her life, her very
soul
—was here. Now everything would be
okay. She would make it be okay. There was no other option.

Her locked door slowly swung open with an ominous creak
worthy of any horror movie. Then Raul’s shadowed form stood framed in the
doorway. Her lover was tall—a few inches over six feet. A big man with broad
shoulders, a huge chest, meaty arms and legs. Right now his angular, ruggedly
handsome face wore a forbidding scowl.

“You. Left. Me.” His voice was a deep, rumbling growl.

His rage blasted across her senses, muddied with the
underlining tang of pain and…confusion? Angelica nodded her agreement and then
voiced it. “I left you.”

“YOU. LEFT. ME.” His voice was louder, the tone sharper.
Raul stepped inside, tucked his lock-picking tools into his back pocket, then
slammed the door so hard it closed with a bang that had Angelica jumping.

Watching him warily, she took a single step backward. One
should always be cautious with a wounded animal, especially one that was part
human.

His golden-eyed gaze dropped to the offending foot before
returning to her face. “
Don’t. Run
.”

Of course she was going to run, silly man. If she didn’t
run, he wouldn’t chase her. Tonight was all about making Raul lose that
ironclad control of his. Angelica eased her left foot back behind the right and
shifted her weight onto it.

Raul went predator still.

She placed her right foot behind her.

His eyes narrowed, and a small snarl filled the air.
“Don’t.” A plea. A command.

Because she loved him, Angelica did the only thing she
could—turned and ran. Angelica was quick, but in her current form she was no
match for a shifter. Unfortunately Raul was still pretending to be human.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Raul
vaulted smoothly over the couch and lunged out to grab her by the waist. He
missed her by inches. She’d already dropped into the skid of a professional
major league baseball player, bounced up before he realized she’d eluded him,
and sprinted toward the dining room.

He was on her heels in moments, still using human speed,
human moves.

Angelica opened her senses, all of them, and the game was
on. Except she was the only one who knew the rules. For every move Raul made,
she was seconds ahead of him. She could feel his frustration at being
outmaneuvered growing. More, she could feel that primal part of him straining
at the leash.

Come on, big boy. Show
me what you’re made of. Show me what you’ve been hiding for the last eighteen
months. Show me the real you, so I can finally let down my guard and show you
me.

Time to up the ante.

Angelica sprinted for the stairs, shoving chairs, lamps, and
any kind of obstacle she could put in his path to slow him down. There was a
thud and a curse. Raul let out a bellow. She paused and chanced a quick glance
over her shoulder. He’d tangled with the legs of a chair and gone down hard. A
chair he’d have easily avoided had he let out the wolf.

On the floor, propped up by both hands, he slowly raised his
head. The eyes that stared back at her were no longer human. She smiled and
knew it was taunting.

Oh yeah, now we’re
playing.

Raul put up a ferocious fight, but strong emotion fueled the
beast. His wolf found it ridiculously easy to blast through the rigid barriers
Raul maintained to keep Angel from sensing its presence. Even his fear-tinged
desperation was no match for the animal’s strength, the man being sabotaged as
it was by his own anger.

Raul retained just enough control not to shift, but it was
the animal that was clearly in charge. The wolf—its senses sharper, keener—knew
something the man didn’t. Their mate wanted
him
,
the animal. She was daring him to hunt her, mate her,
claim
her. The honeyed scent of her arousal lingered in the air—a
siren call he was impatient to answer. For far too long he’d allowed the man to
hold him away from their mate, and make no mistake, she was
theirs.

He dropped to all fours—still in his man form—and bounded up
the stairs in leaps, catching his prey as she cleared the landing. One pounce
and he was on her, brought her down like a wounded antelope. As they fell, Raul
wrestled control from his beast, twisted so he landed on bottom, taking the
brunt of the impact.

Angel lashed out with her feet, struggling to gain leverage
and get away.

“Baby, don’t fight me,” he desperately gritted out of a
throat gone wolf.

This close to a full moon, his beast was strong, leaving him
fighting on two fronts. All of Angel’s wriggling and squirming was bringing out
the wolf in him whose sole purpose at that moment was to subdue and fuck. His
human mate couldn’t handle its savage need of her, so Raul fought to control
his animal and his mate—a battle he was rapidly losing.

Back off
, he
ordered his wolf.

Mate wants me
, it
argued, still trying to surge to the forefront.

She can’t handle you.
You’ll hurt her
, Raul said.

“Let go!” she demanded, slamming down an elbow. Only his
heightened reflexes kept it from nailing him in the face.

Mate, no hurt
, his
wolf denied savagely.

“Quit. Fighting. Me.” A growl commanded, aimed at the wolf
and his mate. Neither party listened.

Angel continued to twist and turn, worming in his embrace as
he struggled not to hurt her by gripping her too tight. It was like wrestling
an octopus. She was suddenly all arms, legs, and lush, womanly curves. His cock
went from semihard to rock-hard so fast he saw spots.

“Omph!” Her knee found ground in his stomach, and taking advantage
of his slack grip, she pushed off, launching herself forward so that her crotch
landed in his face. Raul got a lungful of her enticing arousal before she
vaulted forward another foot, scrambling on her hands and knees to flee.

His brain shifted into gear, coming out of the fog it had
been in since he’d discovered her gone. He didn’t know what the hell was going
on, but Angel wanted him as much as she always had. Now that he was thinking
straight, he realized that though she struggled, she hadn’t really put up that
much of a fight. His woman knew some lethal moves and had she really wanted
free of him, he’d be bloody and bruised right now.

Weeks of abstinence reared up to kick him in the balls. It
had been too long since he’d had his mate beneath him. The moment of mental
clarity allowed him to gain control of his emotions. As the desire of man and
wolf combined, the wolf faltered in its struggle, allowing Raul to temporarily
subdue it and focus entirely on his mate.

Raul rolled over, lunged out, and caught Angel by the left
foot, then reeled her in steadily until he could hook an arm around her waist.
He shoved his pelvis into intimate contact with her still-wriggling ass,
letting her feel his erection and understand what was coming.

A mini-shudder worked its way through her body, and the
autumn-spice scent of her arousal magnified.

“You’re mine,” he told her, voice guttural. “This is mine.”
Raul cupped her swollen sex through the damp satiny material of her panties,
visible under the black miniskirt hiked high around her thighs.

“
Raul
!” Not a
protest, but a demand for more.

He plunged two thick digits into her passage. Wet, but not
wet enough. When aroused, even in human form, he was massive and didn’t want to
hurt her. It had been almost three weeks since they’d last made love. Two weeks
due to him being on the road and the week before because of the full moon when
he hadn’t dared touch her lest his wolf take control.

But for now he, the man, was dominating. It was a tenuous
restraint at best. He could feel his wolf, lurking under his skin, watching and
waiting for any hint of distraction or weakness on the man’s part. It didn’t
understand why Raul wouldn’t share with it the woman who was their life.

He stroked in and out—once, twice, three times. Angel mewled
like a sexy kitten and rocked, forcing his fingers deeper. After the third
thrust, Raul withdrew his hand and licked his fingers, ignoring Angel’s
groaning protest. He ripped her panties off, startling a soft shriek out of her
and then lifting her by the hips, buried his face between her legs. Using his
teeth, tongue, and lips, he pleasured her into a screaming orgasm.

Only when his face was shiny with her juices did he relent,
lowering her body until her knees once more touched the floor. His gaze flowed
from the shiny pink folds of her sex, followed the elegant curve of her spine
to her slender nape, and focused on the flushed features of her profile.

His cock throbbed in tune with the blood pounding through
his veins. Raul wrestled with his belt and zipper, loosening both so he could
shove his jeans down his thighs enough for his penis to spring free. How he
wanted her. Both wolf and man wanted to mount Angel, cover her body with his as
he hammered into her long and deep and sank his canines into the muscle between
her shoulder and neck.

While he considered Angel his, he’d never fully mated with
her in the shifter way by locking his teeth in her flesh and feeling her blood
gush in his mouth. Instead he’d pacified his wolf by covering her with his scent
and scraping his canines along the tender sweet spot where her shoulder met her
neck. Next month on Angel’s birthday he planned to replace the engagement ring
on her finger with a wedding ring—a tangible mark for humans to see exactly to
whom she belonged.

The temptation to complete the bond by fully mating with her
was so strong, once again Raul felt himself fighting with his beast. For
whatever reason, she’d actually left them. A reckoning was coming, but not now.
Allowing the wolf out would be detrimental to what he was trying to accomplish
at the moment—reclaiming his mate. To avoid that particular temptation, he
gently rolled her onto her back.

Angel lay arms spread, eyes closed, breathing hard. Raul
lifted her left foot, brought it to his mouth and kissed the arch, then
satisfied the urging of his wolf by biting down with his teeth, smiling when
she gasped. He pressed his lips to her anklebone, and while scooting forward on
his knees, worked his mouth down her calf in nibbling bites.

Moving slow to give her muscles plenty of time to stretch,
he straddled her left leg while pressing back on her right until her legs
formed an L.

She rose up on her elbows. “Raul, you have me pinned. I
can’t move.”

“I don’t want you to. Let me love you, baby,” he cajoled.

“B-but…”

Raul stopped her complaining by stroking her clit with the
pad of his thumb. Her eyes glazed, and her toes curled. He did it again, and
she moaned. By the fourth stroke, she’d surrendered and once more lay flat on
the carpet, fingers digging into the fibers.

In this position, neither one of them had a wide range of
movement. Angel couldn’t use any of her
Cosmo
tricks to incite his lust, and he couldn’t rut on her the way his beast
demanded. More importantly, with him on his knees with his thighs spread wide
and Angel flat on her back, Raul couldn’t get at her throat, not without
causing one or both of them serious discomfort.

He strummed her sensitive bundle of nerves, his gaze fixed
on her passion-reddened face. Black eyes heavy-lidded, rosy mouth slightly
gaped, she panted soft little breaths of air. He loved seeing her like this.

“Raul…”

“Yes?”

“Come to me,” she pleaded. She ran the tip of her tongue
around her lips—those full, moist lips he wanted to feel wrapped around his
cock. “Come into me. It’s been so long. I feel so empty.”

This time it was he who shuddered. “God, yes,” he agreed,
his voice reverent.

He angled his cock toward her opening. When the head of his
penis was lodged between her dewy nether lips, he slowly penetrated her sheath,
inch by delectable inch until he was fully embedded.

“
Ooooh
, you feel
so
goooood
,” she groaned.

Raul paused and took a deep, calming breath. Slow, he had to
go slow, he reminded himself. Then he made the mistake of glancing down to
where Angel surrounded him. His balls tightened dangerously, warning him this
all might be over before it had a chance to fully begin.

He threw back his head and gritted his teeth, calling on
every ounce of his flagging control. Angel’s cunt tightened around him, and his
hips jerked. “
Shit
!”

“You like?” she asked in an angelic voice, but the
expression on her face was pure demon—of the succubus variety. She did it
again.