The Wolf Moon (an erotic paranormal romance) (The Wolf Ring)

©
copyright
2012, Meg Harris
Cover design by LFD Designs for Authors, © copyright 2012

All
rights reserved.
This is a work of
fiction.
Names, character, places and incidents either are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter One

Whenever the
moon rose, he
itched
.

Graeme Fenrir
scratched irritably at his chest and glared up at the moon as if it were a
personal foe. It wasn’t even half full, but he knew from experience that the
itching would get progressively worse as the moon waxed. By the time the moon
was full, two weeks from now, it would be almost unbearable.

He’d been
suffering with this problem for three months now, and yesterday he’d finally
gotten annoyed enough about it to ask his friend John Braden, who happened to
be a family practitioner, if there was such a thing as a moonlight allergy.
John had just laughed at the idea.

But John wasn’t
the one who was being driven slowly crazy by the itching. Maybe Graeme wasn’t
allergic to moonlight—but he was damn well allergic to
something
.

He sighed, and
lowered his gaze from the moon to the dark woods behind his house. He was
standing on his deck in his house, in the small town of Lupine Rapids, and just
beyond the back boundary of his yard, the woods stretched out, shadowy and
inviting.

He shook his
head wryly at the thought. There was nothing particularly inviting about dark,
dense woods. If he left the house and walked into them, he’d probably break a
leg falling over a log.

And yet,
somehow… the forest called to him.

The restlessness
that had been growing inside him lately swelled, until he couldn’t fight the
impulse any longer. Slowly, he paced down the steps of his deck and walked
across his large backyard. As he reached the boundary of the woods, he
hesitated for just a moment, and then plunged into the trees.

It really wasn’t
that dark, he thought as his eyes adjusted. He could see with surprising
clarity. For that, he supposed he could thank the moon. He walked through the
woods, finding paths through the old-growth trees and the thick underbrush
easily, as if he were walking by instinct.

Far away, he
heard a long, eerie howl. A prickle ran down his spine, and the hairs on the
back of his neck rose.
Wolf
, he
thought, even though he knew there hadn’t been wolves in this region for
decades. It had to be a coyote, or maybe just someone’s dog.

But the howl
rose again, long and quavering, and the hair on his arms rose, too.

It occurred to
him that he was going to get lost in the woods, but he couldn’t seem to stop
walking. Somehow walking helped with the itchiness, as well as with the
restlessness that had plagued him lately.

He suspected
part of what was bothering him was grief. His grandfather, his namesake, had
moved in with him a year ago, after suffering a stroke, and Graeme had devoted
much of his time to caring for him. But his granddad had passed away a few
months before, and Graeme found himself missing the frail old man a great deal.

Which
explained the restlessness, but not the itching.

He went on, and
before long he’d walked a half mile or more.

He sensed her
before he saw her. He came to a halt, and sniffed the air.
Which
was ridiculous, because he wasn’t a dog.
And yet… he could smell
someone, and what was more, he knew
the
someone
was a female.

“Who’s there?”
he demanded.

She seemed to
melt out of the underbrush, materializing right in front of him like a magical
forest creature. She was lovely, moon-pale hair falling halfway down her back,
midnight-dark eyes gazing at him. Her body was clad in nothing but moonlight
and shadows.

He gaped at her,
wondering if he’d stumbled into a Wiccan ritual, or a nudist campground.

“Um…” he said,
less than intelligently.

Her voice was
soft. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

He couldn’t seem
to stop gaping.
“I… uh, hello.
I’m sorry if I…
intruded…”

“Not
at all.”
She took a step toward him. He thought he should probably back away, but he
couldn’t seem to move. “I told you, I’ve been waiting. I knew you would come to
me eventually.”

She took another
step toward him, and her hands lifted, pressing against his chest. He noticed
something gleaming on one of her fingers—a silvery ring inset with a small dark
stone. But he was less interested in her jewelry than in the touch of her
hands. Even through his dark green t-shirt, it felt like she’d scorched him.
His skin began to itch fiercely.

“You feel it,
don’t you?” Her hands trailed down his chest.
“The burning of
the moon.”

“I don’t know
what you mean.” His voice sounded gravelly and hoarse to his own ears. He could
feel the blood rushing through his veins, pooling in his groin. Well, that
wasn’t surprising. She was naked, after all, and there was no denying that she
was beautiful. But she was a complete and utter stranger, and there was
absolutely no way that he was going to…

“Let me see it.”
She lifted her hand to his throat, tugging on the necklace he wore. It had
belonged to the elder Graeme Fenrir, and since the old man had died, he’d taken
to wearing it all the time, as a sort of tribute. It was a simple enough piece
of jewelry, a silver pendant hammered into the shape of a dagger, or perhaps a fang,
inset with a tiny chip of sapphire, the same shade his grandfather’s eyes had
been—and the same color as his own eyes, for that matter. It hung around his
neck, suspended from a black satin cord. He wasn’t sure how she’d known it was
there, though, hidden as it had been beneath his t-shirt.

“It belonged to
my granddad,” he told her, trying to ignore the light brush of her fingers
against his throat.

“Yes,” she said
softly, fingering the pendant. “It’s been… altered. Some of the magic has been
lost. That’s why you can’t effect the transformation.”

He had
absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Nor did he care very much. He
was entirely focused on her. Her skin looked soft and satiny in the dappled
moonlight, her silvery hair seemed to glow with a light of its own, and up
close she smelled more female than ever. A fragrance clung to her, a scent of
musk and flowers and…

Well, sex.

He became aware
that he had a hard-on.
A pretty fierce one, actually.
He could feel his cock throbbing, straining against his jeans.

She dropped the
pendant, and let her hands slide downward. She pushed up his t-shirt and let
her palms caress his chest, and an involuntary groan escaped him. Where she
touched him directly, he discovered, his skin no longer itched. Instead, his
nerves flared with heat beneath her questing fingers.

“Yes,” she said
softly. “The moonlight burns you, and only this can soothe the pain.”

“I… I don’t…”

He meant to say,
I don’t even know you
. Or perhaps,
I don’t have sex with strange naked women I
meet in the woods.
Or simply,
I don’t
know what the hell you’re talking about.
But none of those words made it
out of his mouth, because she bent forward and pressed her lips to his chest.

Pleasure shot through
every nerve in his body, powerful, irresistible. The itch was forgotten in the
rush of heat that flooded him.

“This will help
ease the burning,” she whispered, brushing kisses over his chest. “But you
cannot achieve the transformation. Not yet. Not until the moon is full. The
magic in your pendant is not strong enough.”

He had no idea
what she was talking about. Magic and transformations sounded like so much
nonsense to him. But he didn’t say so. He didn’t say anything, because he
couldn’t speak. Her mouth felt wonderful against his skin, the gentle touch of
her lips offering him glorious relief, and he leaned his head back and moaned
at the moon as her mouth moved lower, across his abdomen.

“I know how you
feel,” she whispered against his skin. “I lost my mate a year ago, and I burn,
too. But I haven’t been able to find a suitable man. At least, I hadn’t… until
I saw you.”

Her lips were
beneath his navel now, brushing over the thin strip of dark hair there, and his
cock throbbed with a terrible need. She was a nameless stranger to him, and yet
the touch of her mouth and hands felt so right, as if he’d been waiting for it
for months.
Waiting for
her
for months.

Her hands
unfastened his jeans, and his erection sprang free, so hard and eager that he
flushed with embarrassment. But she didn’t seem at all surprised or taken aback
by his clear physical hunger. She went to her knees in front of him, pulled his
cock down a bit, and—

He yelled.

He couldn’t help
himself. He didn’t do this kind of thing with strangers, particularly not very
strange women wandering around naked in the woods. And yet he couldn’t hold
back his helpless cry of pleasure. The sensation of her hot mouth as it took
the swollen, wet head of his cock inside was almost too much to bear. It was so
intense it was nearly painful, and yet he craved more.

She gave it to
him. Her mouth slid down the thick shaft of his cock, taking more of him inside
easily, her tongue caressing him from beneath, and his hips started to move
with no guidance from him. She felt like satin, smooth and hot—so very, very
hot— and he couldn’t stop himself from fucking her mouth.

A corner of his
mind knew that this was very strange behavior for him. In fact, he’d been
acting rather strangely all night, ever since he’d given in to his restlessness
and headed off into the forest. His senses had seemed clearer—he’d been able to
see in the dark, he’d been able to scent her—and now his body felt her touch
more intensely than he’d ever felt anything before.

He was vaguely
aware that he was still crying out, sobbing wordlessly, and that his hands had
captured her head. He’d dug his fingers into her luxuriant silver hair, and
that wasn’t the way he usually treated women when they did this for him, but he
just couldn’t bear for her to stop. The pleasure was so intense, the craving
for more stimulation so powerful, and the aching tension in his balls demanded
release.

Heat built in
him, swelling until he thought he might burst into flames, and then it rushed
out of him with shocking suddenness, in a long, scalding explosion of rapture.
He was far beyond shock, too far gone to care about the strangeness of this
encounter. He was coming, coming down a beautiful stranger’s throat, in long
spasms of incredible rapture. He thought he might be screaming again, but
didn’t really give a damn. The sensation was glorious, an ecstasy far beyond
anything he’d ever experienced, and he had no control over his own reactions.

When the last
spasms had faded, she released him, and he fell to the litter of leaves on the
forest floor, gasping for breath. The world was dark for long moments. But when
he could focus again, he looked around for her.

She was gone.

Chapter Two

She’d been
looking for him for months.

The next night,
Rhea Silverthorn stood in her back yard, gazing up at the moon. She’d been
exiled from the Ring for a year now, ever since Bryce had died.
All because of Arthur.

At the thought
of Arthur, the little hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she uttered an
involuntary growl deep in her throat. There were nights—oh, so many nights—
when she longed to go into the woods and hunt him down like the animal he was.
He’d killed Bryce, and then…