Wolf Queen (Wolves of New York #3) Page 13

  I come with a guttural cry of pleasure and possession, ecstasy flooding every cell as my balls tighten and my cock jerks deep inside her. Wave after wave of sweetness washes over me as I fill her with my release, the animal part of me savagely pleased that she’s taking my seed and covered with my scent.

  This is how I want to keep her—bedded and sated and filled with my come and hopefully, soon, heavy with our child.

  “My wolf is a neanderthal when it comes to you,” I confess against her damp, sweat-slick neck after, as we lie catching our breath.

  She hums against the sheets. “How’s that?”

  “He wants you under him and filled with come at all times.”

  She laughs softly. “And how about you?”

  I consider that for a beat, then confess, “Also pretty on board with you under me and filled with come. Sorry, not sorry,” I say, smiling as she glances over her shoulder, her glittering green eyes filled with pleasure that makes me so damned happy it’s probably sinful.

  My pack and people are still in so much danger and my little sister is being held captive by two very dangerous people and their equally insane allies. But when Willow looks at me like that—like I’ve made her dreams come true—I can’t help feeling hopeful. Grateful.

  “How about pressed up against the wall in the shower and filled with come?” she asks. “Because a shower, followed by a hard sleep, sounds like heaven right now.”

  “I think I can make that fantasy come true.” I pull out, only for my wounded leg to remind me it’s not in the best shape as I sit back on my heels. “Though you might have to keep at least one foot on the ground. I’m still not one hundred percent and I don’t want to drop you.”

  She rolls over, concern tightening her features. “Is your leg hurting?”

  “Some,” I confess.

  “I grabbed pain reliever at the gas station, too,” she says, sliding off the bed and padding over to the table naked.

  I lie on my side, enjoying the view. “I like the way your ass jiggles when you walk.”

  She shoots me a narrow look over her shoulder. “Is that a nice way of saying you don’t mind that I’m a little overweight?”

  “You’re not. You’re perfect,” I say. “And that’s my way of saying I like your ass. Especially when it jiggles. Especially when I’m making it jiggle because I’m fucking you from behind.”

  She turns, a hand propped on her hip. “You’re not talking like a man who needs pain pills.” She glances pointedly to my crotch and then back to my face. “And are you hard again? Already?”

  “My cock just wants you to know I mean what I say. And that I’m not all talk.” I roll onto my back, linking my hands together behind my head. “In fact, why don’t you come hop on my dick and we can worry about those pain pills later.”

  She huffs. “Hop on your dick? What am I? A sex bunny?”

  “No, you’re a sex goddess,” I say, urging her closer with a nod of my head. “Now get on my dick, little wolf. I need to be balls deep in you again.”

  “Bossy, bossy,” she chides, but I can tell by the flush spreading from her cheeks to her neck that the dirty talk is turning her on.

  “But you like it when we’re naked. If I told you to get on all fours on the floor and get ready to get fucked hard by your Alpha, you’d be on your hands and knees in a hot second.”

  She stalks toward the bed. “And if I told you to eat my pussy until your tongue goes numb, you’d obey without question.”

  I smile. “I will eat your pussy until the seas run dry and every creature on this planet turns to dust.” She laughs and I add, “But first you’re going to straddle my hips and put my dick where it belongs. Right now, little wolf. Don’t make me ask again.”

  “Impossible, that’s what you are,” she says, but she’s already climbing on top of me and fitting the tip of my cock against his favorite place in the world.

  We make love twice more in the bed, then again in the shower before collapsing naked into the other bed and falling into such a deep, hard sleep that I don’t hear the car pull up in the middle of night.

  I am dead to the world, completely oblivious until Willow awakens me with a shake of my shoulder and terrified whisper, “It’s Bane, Maxim. Outside. I can smell him.”

  Instantly, I can, too.

  “Get to the car, get away, I’ll find you later,” I say.

  I’m already shifting as I roll off the bed, but I’m not quite fast enough.

  By the time my paws land on the thinning carpet, my brother’s large brown wolf is already crashing through the window, sending shattered glass exploding into the room.

  Willow and Maxim’s story concludes in

  WOLF MATE

  Available Here.

  (The Wolves of New York series

  is complete and ready to binge!)

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  Sneak Peek

  Please enjoy this excerpt from

  UNLEASHED

  by Bella Jacobs!

  (Complete series available now.)

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  One woman on the run. Four dangerously sexy bodyguards. And a war brewing that will change the shifter world forever…

  I’m living on borrowed time, fighting for survival against a deadly new virus that has no cure and a cult doing its best to brainwash me. But when a mysterious note shows up on my windowsill one night, its chilling message--Run, Wren--launches me out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  Within hours, everything I thought I knew about my life, my family, and my origins is obliterated, and I'm racking up enemies at an alarming rate. Between the cult I've just escaped, a violent shifter faction out for my blood, and an ancient evil who eats "chosen ones" like me for breakfast, my last hope is to join forces with four dangerous-looking men who claim they were sent to guard my life.

  Luke, a werewolf with a rap sheet. Creedence, a lynx shifter who never met a mark he couldn’t con. Kite, a bear kin with a mean right hook and heart of gold. And Dust, my childhood best friend and dude voted least likely to be a secret shape-shifting griffin.

  But are these men really what they seem?

  Or are my alpha guardians hiding a secret agenda of their own?

  I’m not sure, but one thing is for certain—choosing the right allies will mean the difference between life and death. For me, and everyone I love…

  WREN

  I’m about to retreat to my room to find my center, but before I can make it out of the kitchen, the door bursts open and my mom calls, “Wren, baby! There you are! Oh honey, I’m so glad you’re home!”

  A moment later, her arms are around me from behind, hugging me tight before turning me gently around and lifting her shaking hands to my face. She’s barely five feet and a smidge tall, a good seven inches shorter than my five eight, but Abby Frame has a presence that fills a room.

  I’m immediately enveloped in her warm energy and the glow of her smile as she says, “It’s happening, sweetheart, the day we’ve been praying for.”

  “What’s happening?” I glance up at Pops, who’s still standing by the door, his muddy boots on the mat.

  He smiles tentatively in response, hope and caution warring in his brown eyes as he waves Mom’s way. “Let Abby tell it. She’s the one who found the doctor. She should get to share the good news.”

  I shift my focus back to Mom, forehead furrowing. “Another doctor? Mom, you know I’m happy to go see anyone you want me to see, but I’ve already been to—”

  “Not just a doctor,” Mom breaks in, practically prancing in place as she grips both of my hands tightly in hers. “A research scientist and doctor on the cutting edge of Meltdown virus research, who’s just put four children into permanent remission with his new procedure. Six months out, and there are no signs of the virus returning. And we got word this afternoon that the doctor has room for you on his schedule! You’re next on the list
!”

  “Seriously?” My pulse picks up even as my brain fights to keep my blood pressure steady. The brain realized hope is dangerous a long time ago, but the heart never learns. “When? How? What are the success rates? The risks?” The questions spill out of me, but I don’t really care about those things. I’m ready for anything, no matter what the risk vs. reward ratio. If there’s even the ghost of a chance that I can get better, I want that.

  I want to live, to dream big instead of editing every ambition. I want to look into my future and see endless possibilities and love and maybe those children Mom was wishing for.

  My head spins with excitement, making it hard to concentrate on her words as she begins to lay out the details of the procedure.

  But by the time she gets to the risks, I’ve regained my focus.

  “There have been some fatalities. About two percent for children, closer to thirty percent for teens.” Worry creeps into her pale-blue eyes, such a close match to my own that people have always assumed she’s my birth mom, even though that’s where the resemblance between us ends. “You’ll be Dr. Highborn’s oldest patient so far, and that likely means an even higher risk of complications. But when I explained your situation, how…” She swallows. “How hard things have been lately, well…”

  How hard…

  When she explained that I’m dying. That’s what she means. We’ve all been dancing around it for months, looking the other way, “Tra-la-la nothing to see here, folks,” while my organs slowly began to fail.

  But here it is, laid out in the cool, mint-and-earth scented air.

  Pops must have been working in the herb garden, one part of me observes as another solemnly acknowledges, There goes any doubt about that. You really are dying. You haven’t been being a big melodramatic baby, after all.

  “I’m dying.” A sinkhole opens in my chest that widens to encompass the kitchen and then the house and then the entire neighborhood. I feel like I’m in free fall—panicked and helpless as I tumble through an endless black void—but strangely peaceful at the same time.

  There’s a power in labeling things.

  In facing them.

  In looking a monster right in the eye and calling it by its name.

  Death, I see you there. I know you’re watching, but I’ve got my eye on you, too, motherfuckah…

  “No, you’re not,” Mom says, the words as fierce as she is, my tough little mama who has always refused to give up on me, no matter what. “You’re going to be Dr. Highborn’s first adult success story. You’ve got a good chance, Wren. You’re not that far out of adolescence. I mean, as far as I can see, you look the same as you did the day you turned eighteen.”

  “Never could put any meat on your bones.” Pops comes to stand behind Mom, leaving muddy footprints on the tile. His tone is calm and easy, but those footprints make it clear how upset he is.

  Pops doesn’t track in dirt. He lives to get dirt under his fingernails, but he’s too proud of our home to muck it up. He doesn’t own the bungalow, not even after thirty years of on-time disbursements to pay off the second mortgage, but he loves it.

  It’s hard to pay off a house when you’re shelling out thousands of dollars a month for experimental medicine our insurance won’t cover. Even with the help of the Church of Humanity Compassion House scholarship fund, my sickness has brought our family to the brink of financial ruin more than once.

  “How much is it going to cost?” I ask, my voice small, guilt pressing down on my shoulders again.

  I want to live, God knows I do, but I don’t want to ruin my parents in the process. Especially since it sounds like this is a long shot for me, as the first adult guinea pig of this new procedure.

  Mom’s eyes fill, but I know immediately it’s her angry cry, not her sad one. Her gaze is on fire behind the shimmer, and I half expect her to send me to my room for a time out until I learn to control my temper, the way she did when I first came to live with her as a feral four-year-old determined to tear off my clothes and run wild through the neighborhood every chance I got.

  “Don’t you dare, Wren Frame.” She sniffs, and her lips pucker into a crooked bow at the center of her face. “Don’t you dare talk money at a time like this. Your life doesn’t have a price. We’ve already talked to the bank about a third mortgage, and the lender promised we’d be approved.”

  “But then you’ll never pay off the house,” I say, some twisted part of me driven to make the argument for letting me die, for avoiding the risk when there’s a very real chance there will be no reward.

  “Wren, I swear—”

  “Screw the house.” Pops’s uncharacteristic curse is so firm and loud that Mom and I both turn his way, our eyes going wide. “I don’t care if we lose the house. It’s worth it. Even if there are no guarantees…” He trails off, his throat working as he swallows. “Even a chance is worth it to me. Anything to help my baby girl.”

  And that does it. Those two sweet words from the sweetest man I know break me. My face crumples as I lean into my parents, tears making my voice thick as they wrap me up in their arms. “I love you, Pops. Mom. I love you both so much.”

  “And we love you, miracle girl.” Mom uses the old nickname, the one she and Pops stopped using months ago when my health started to fail like all the others.

  Most people with my condition don’t make it out of their teens, and only a precious few see thirty. If I’m the luckiest of the lucky, I could have six more years.

  I literally have nothing to lose.

  Nothing, except the chance to know what it would be like to be more than friends with the man who, just this afternoon, splashed color all over my black-and-white world, showing me brilliant new things I wasn’t sure existed before.

  But if I don’t have the procedure and I don’t go into remission soon, it’s all over. At this rate, I could have three months, maybe six if my doctors can find a better drug cocktail before one of my major organs fails.

  But if I risk the procedure, I could have even less time than that.

  Almost nothing at all.

  A 30 percent chance of fatal complications is nothing to take lightly, and as an adult my risk is probably higher, Mom said. If I put myself in this doctor’s care, I’m flipping a coin for my life. No matter how much I want that permanent remission, I don’t know if I’m ready to make that call.

  “How long do I have to decide?” I sniff as I pull back from my parents’ embrace, swiping tears from my cheeks with the backs of my hands.

  Mom’s forehead furrows. “I told you, sweetie. We have to go in the morning. First thing. They’re holding the seven a.m. surgery slot for you.”

  “Oh,” I say, blinking fast. “I’m sorry. I must have been zoning out during that part. Tomorrow. Wow.” I exhale sharply. “That’s so fast.”

  “I know.” Mom shakes her head. “But if we miss it, we might not get another chance. People from all over the world are fighting for a place on Dr. Highborn’s schedule. But he’s based right outside Seattle, so we’re one of the few families who can take advantage of this last-minute cancelation.”

  I pace a few steps away, one hand propped on my hip as my free fingers tug on my earlobe, fighting to see my way through to a clear decision. But my thoughts are racing too fast to be corralled. My mind is a swarm of sounds and smells and faces—Carrie and Kite and the kids at the shelter and Mom and Dad.

  What if I go to sleep on the operating table tomorrow and never get to tell them all goodbye?

  What if you say no and miss your one shot at a real life?

  “I have to go call Carrie,” I say softly, decision made. It lands hard inside me, making my stomach knot and my blood pressure drop with a suddenness that makes me dizzy, but I know it’s the right choice. “Tell her how much she means to me. Just in case.”

  Mom and Dad let out a breath in unison, and Mom reaches first for Dad’s hand and then mine. Glancing between the two of us, she says, “But there won’t be any ‘just in case.’ We’v
e got this. We’re leaving here as a family tomorrow morning and coming back as a family.”

  After promising them I’ll get packed for the surgery trip while I’m calling Carrie, I slip down the hall to my room. It used to be Scarlett’s room, this dark, cool space shaded by the cherry tree outside the window, but I moved in a few years ago, freeing up my childhood bedroom for Mom’s crafting and sewing supplies. By then, we were finally ready to take down Scarlett’s band posters and paintings, to tuck away her vibrant sheet set and the brightly colored tapestries she hung in front of the windows.

  But I kept one of my sister’s pieces, one she painted when she was just nine years old, of a fox at the edge of a field. The fox appears to be dancing, its luxurious tail rippling in the sunset light as it lifts paws to the faint moon visible in the sky above.

  It’s one of my favorite works of art—ever.

  I know it’s kid art and far from museum quality, but it speaks to me. Something about the fox, the field, the certain slant of light makes me breathless with longing. If I stare at the painting long enough, I can imagine that I’ve been to this place, danced with that magical creature, lifted my hands to the moon, and known that I was loved.

  Loved by the moon and the stars, loved by the earth and the trees, loved by the wind whispering through the tall grass and the light warming my skin, all of them assuring me that I am part of an endless dance.

  I walk to the painting now, but when I bring my fingers to hover above the fox’s tail a sharp flash of pain ignites behind my eyes.

  I wince, squeezing them closed as my vision goes white and then blue, and then a pudgy hand swims into focus over my head, fingers spread wide as if to reach up and touch the tree limbs waving above.