It’s got a big front porch and the cabin is covered in a combination of cedar shake tiles and stone. I’m set on my feet while he climbs under the front step and returns a beat later with a key.
It’s again raining, though not as hard, and he is turning the key on the door of the single-story cabin that looks like it comes right out of a storybook. Like Hansel and Gretel would’ve stumbled upon it during their walk in the woods. It doesn’t look like it’s made of candy, really, but with the stonework, the old-fashioned shape, the high-peaked tiled roof bordered with gingerbread trim, it’s almost romantic-looking.
What a strange thought to flit through my head as I stand there on the wide porch behind the naked guy that kidnapped me. The naked werewolf!
He opens the door and catches my hand with his before I get a chance to do anything else… like run.
Duh. Why on earth did I just stand here?
The place is dark. Pitch dark. And then there’s light. He’s leaning over an oil lamp and my eyes take in the shadows around me. A fireplace. Furniture covered with sheets. He moves toward me with intent, pulling me to his body. His huge, wet, naked body. I look anywhere but his crotch because I already saw it, and it’s in proportion to his massive frame, in other words, big. God, he’s tall and big. I come to his mid chest. I look up. He caresses my face with callused fingers and leans down like he’s about to kiss me. I jerk back.
“Sit and rest. I’ll get you warm,” he tells me and hauls the sheet off a sofa as he steps back, immediately hunching over the wood stove, stacking it with wood that he lifts from beside it.
I’m shivering, feeling like the cold and damp has run straight through to my bones. It’s also dusty in the place and my nose tickles. Beyond physically shivering from the cold, I’m also overcome with not a small amount of apprehension.
I’m inside a building with him and the door is closed. I back up toward it, slowly.
In Hansel and Gretel, the witch wanted to eat them. He’s got a different sort of appetite based on what he said to me in my car, based on the erection. And here I am, like Little Red Riding Hood, about to be devoured by the Big Bad Wolf.
He looks over his shoulder at me. And the look in his eyes? Something in my belly twirls and heat floods my face. I don’t get a chance to dissect the feeling because my lower back hits the doorknob and my hand slides back to grab it.
“Come. Sit,” he commands as he stacks wood and fills it with some bits of paper from a rack beside the wood stove. He strikes a match. “Get warm.”
He lights the fire, rises, and stares a moment. I watch that massive cock rise up and my head jerks away. I squeeze my eyes shut tight.
Oh shit. This is it. What’s about to happen to me?
“Ivy?”
I open my eyes and see flames flicker as they catch, bouncing off the shadows cast from the oil lamp and my eyes land on him again. I can’t help but take note of what an absolutely perfect male specimen he is. Massive in height and wide, though not remotely husky. His body is muscular. His bulk comes entirely from muscles.
His stomach is a series of boxes and ridges. His dark hair curls down past his shoulders… broad shoulders with defined biceps and well-veined forearms that extend to large hands. My eyes travel back up that naked body that he’s completely unbashful about having on display to his scruffy razor-cut jawline. His chest rises and falls under my obvious appraisal and then he lets out a sound… a low growling sound that seems to make the room vibrate at the same time as goosebumps erupt on my flesh. My eyes wander over the very prominent length and girth of his –
“Let’s get you warm first. It’s been hard to wait but you need warmth first.”
“First?” I inquire in a whisper.
“First.” He nods.
I jolt and then I get into a mini scuffle with the doorknob before I win, managing to get the door open and then I’m running. I’m sprinting off that porch into wet mud that makes a thwacking sound as my poor suede boots pound into it.
I get no more than half a dozen strides before I’m scooped up into the air. I cry out in frustration.
“Ivy Brennan,” he says huskily into my ear as he carries me back toward the cabin. “Do you not realize that running will only excite me further? Do you want me more excited? Do you want me to hunt you down and take you in the cold, wet dirt or would you rather it be in front of a warm fire?”
Oh God.
“Help!” I scream.
He stalks back through the door and I’m carried through the main room, past the kitchen area to the left, into a short hall with a door ahead, a door to the left, and a door to the right. He goes right and sets me on something soft. Light glows from a lantern he turns on and I see I’m on a double bed that’s against the wall, also covered by a sheet. This rustic-looking room has a small fireplace. He begins stacking wood into it.
I shiver.
From cold. From fear. From deep fear.
6
Tyson
I’m aware of an escalating warming in my blood that began the moment I caught her scent. It went from warm to warmer, and then to hot when I finally laid eyes on her and her scent got even stronger when it was directly under my nose with no barriers between us.
And now that I’ve made the journey here and brought her into the house, it’s so fiery it’s bordering on painful as it shunts through my veins.
I need to take her, mark her, mate her. Ahead of that is the need to shelter her well, to make the space warm for her. These nurture urges are holding my appetite at bay. But just barely.
I’m not familiar with these urges to nurture, especially because the urge to mount has never been stronger for me.
Need gnaws, my wolf wanting to chew through everything to sate the hunger.
My body warmed to tell me. My body warmed further to provide warmth for her. As soon as this house is warm, I’ll mount her and then while she sleeps, my scent seeping from her pores and my essence leaking from her body, I’ll get more wood to the bedroom and the main room so that she’s comfortable. And tomorrow, I’ll get the dust, webs, and insects out and get food in for her. I think there are things here from when I was last here, and I’ll check to see if there’s anything usable. There’s money to get what I need, all that money Cornelius and I put into the floorboards of the garage, and there’s the truck. I’ll charge the battery and see if I can make it start.
Uncle said the day would come. One day I would catch scent of the one who was meant to be mine and then I would never want another. I’d want to cover her, sink my teeth into her flesh where her neck meets her shoulder and leave my mark while I take some of her essence into my body, to be there for always. I’d want to take her into my sleeping space, mark her, knot her, and fill her with my seed when she goes into heat. My scent on her would linger, let any male shifter know, know she’s mine. When he told me this, his eyes got shimmery and then he left and returned the next day smelling like he’d been inside a female. A familiar female, though I couldn’t place the scent. And it made me angry that he wouldn’t answer my questions about it. He told me we would shift early that year and go deeper into the forest. He didn’t want my questions. He hated questions.
Feeling her eyes on me makes me tingle with awareness even as I try to keep it from clouding my judgement, which wants to simply halt and fuck her raw. Having her run away? It made me harder. It made the wolf in me want to howl, to warn anyone to stay away while I chased her down and took her in the dirt, showed her who I am. That I am hers as much as she is mine.