She could feel the moonlight coursing over and through her, its power, its energy. Never had it been so strong within her as it was now, here in the forest, with these beings.
All three males waited for her, their chests heaving, lupine smiles curving across their muzzles as they stared at her.
Heart pounding, Jessica dismounted. The horse ambled away, yet, despite the presence of the werewolves, it didn’t seem especially frightened, and stayed close. Clearly, the animal was trained to be near the highwaymen when they were in their wolf forms.
When her feet touched the grassy earth, she fought for balance. Energy and power surged through her, igniting through her limbs, making her breath come in quick gulps. Through all her assignments, she’d experienced the swell of excitement that followed danger. She’d faced down armed men when defending a duchess’s diamonds. She’d crossed blades with ruffians attempting to relieve a visiting Russian princess of her ruby diadem.
Yet nothing, nothing felt like this. As though, for the first time in her life, she was fully alive.
“You saved my life,” she said breathlessly.
“You saved ours,” Ezra growled, “beasts that we are.”
“I wouldn’t call you beasts,” she protested.
“But we are,” Tej rumbled.
“Then,” she murmured, taking a step closer, “you are beautiful beasts. The most beautiful things I have ever beheld.”
Tension sparked in the glade like fireflies dancing between her and the three wolves. All of the males regarded her with eyes literally aglow with hunger. Fur covered their powerfully muscled bodies. Their pointed ears twitched with awareness. Each of them sniffed at the air—they caught the scent of her body’s response to them.
She’d come close to death, and the whole world had changed irreparably within the span of a few minutes. She ought to be curled into a ball, weeping for what was lost, or, at the least, stunned by what she’d seen and done.
Heat coursed through Jessica, her skin growing tight and sensitive.
Not fear—arousal.
Ezra strode across the glade, seething with potency and unbridled vitality. He stopped only a few feet away. His silver gaze raked over her, and his tongue stroked over his pointed teeth. He reached out and gently, very gently, stroked one claw along her jaw and down her throat, where her pulse fluttered.
“Why would you save us?” he rasped in his half man, half wolf voice. “We, who mean nothing to you?”
“Because…” She dared to brush her fingers across the fur covering his chest. “Everyone and everything deserves to be free. And,” she added, narrowing the distance between them even more, so that heat seeped from his body into hers, “you are not nothing to me.”
“Because we fucked.”
“Because…I recognize myself in you.”
He ran his claw across her chest, summoning shivers. “Deep in your heart, you’re as wild as we. The world that men have created is no place for you.”
“I don’t know where I belong.”
“Tonight,” he growled, “you belong right here. With us.”
Carefully, mindful of his claws, his long wolf fingers caressed the swell of her breasts above her gown’s neckline. She moaned, skin alight with sensation.
A gasp left her as his claw raked down the middle of her bodice. There was a rending sound as the fabric tore, parting to reveal her front-lacing stays. They were pragmatic stays, plain and unadorned, the kind of undergarment a woman without funds and with no lover might wear.
Hands shaking, she fumbled with the laces. Her fingers were clumsy, but when he moved to cut the laces apart, she let out a shaky chuckle.
“I have but two pairs of stays,” she confessed. “These must stay intact.”
“Hurry, then,” he commanded.
“Can hardly believe this.” She continued to work at the laces, pulling on them until the front of the stays opened. “Undressing for a werewolf.”
“For three werewolves.” His gaze flicked over to where Rhys and Tej stood, both of them watching avidly.
A gasp left her. No, she wasn’t mistaken. Both werewolves had jutting erections. Their cocks were massive, heavy and long and veined and deeply red, with heads the size of plums.
