Page 30 of Big Bad Wolf

I tear right past my first orgasm, threading my fingers through his shaggy hair as I do my best impersonation of a howl when it slams into me. But Wolf isn’t done, and there’s no escaping him, so he takes me through a second one before his lower body jerks wildly and he begins to fill me up with his come.

At the same time, I experience that strange mix of pleasure and pain as his knot begins to inflate. However, as he begins to lock us together, Wolf cuts his own howl in half as he… he…

He bites me. Right on my upper back, over my shoulder, the closest place he could reach while the two of us are twisted together like a sweaty, sexy pretzel.

Without the endorphins that followed my two orgasms, it might've hurt more than it did. As it is, I barely notice that that’s what he did at first until he lifts his head and I see a trace of blood on his fangs.

My breath catches in the next one, my body going still for half a second before the sensation rushes through me in a wave that is equal parts shock and something far more dangerous because I… I don’t really mind that my wolf-man felt the need to bite down on me as he came apart in my arms.

Especially since he licks the tip of his canines before gazing down at me with utter devotion and rumbling, “Mine.”

I don’t pull away from him. Apart from the fact that we’re stuck like this until his knot goes down, what did I really expect? You get in bed with a possessive wolf in human skin and you don’t get something gentle. I’m beginning to understand that you don’t get anything casual, either.

You get this. Frantic sex full of grunts and growls and blood.

I exhale slowly, my fingers curling slightly against his chest.

“Yeah,” I murmur, my voice a raw raspy thing after what just happened. “That tracks.”

He licks my cheek, then tucks me into his chest so that he can do the same to the bite mark on my back.

Ah, well. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t scar or I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do when I get back home.

As though my consciousness knows that I’m not looking forward to this time with Wolf being over, I’m up at the crack of dawn on my fourth day in Blackmoor.

This is it. I’ve made it. I’ve given three full days of my life over to the magic of the forest, and now that I have, I finally understand the price I had to pay in order to earn my wish. It wasn’t being caught by a wolf and playing out his Red Riding Hood fantasies, courtesy of the cloak that the village council gave me. Oh, no. It was spending three days with Wolf and realizing that those three days are all I’m ever going to get.

He calls me his. He says I’m his mate. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a connection with him. It’s not just a physical thing, either. Sure, I initially decided to go ahead with sex because I felt like it was the only way to tame the wild wolf-man, but it’s more than that.

It’s in how he tucks me into his nest, curling his big body around me to share his heat. It’s in how he feeds me, in how he somehow provided me with boots two days ago when he saw me rub my arches—and then he took my foot in his hand and, careful of his claws, he massaged it for me. It’s how he treats me like I’m something special, like he’s waited forever for me… but I don’t get forever with him.

We get three days, and they’re over with. I promised three days to Blackmoor—to Wolf—and now it’s time for me to go home.

Do I think that he’s going to understand? That he’ll open the door for me, nuzzle my hair as a sort of goodbye, and watch me walk away from him? Yeah, right. I remember his promise.

Run if you want. Wolf will always chase you…

I one hundred percent believe that he will. With our time so limited, I didn’t want to spend it arguing once he realized that I would have to leave him. He might even figure out a way to keep me in the cabin after how easily I got away from him on my second night with him. He’ll chase, but if I can’t escape, he has no reason to follow after me.

That’s why I know I have to be careful today. Wolf is a creature of habit. When he has to take a piss, he’ll go outside. When he wants meat that he’ll cook over the fire until it’s not bloody? He’ll go hunting. And when he wants to reinforce his territorial markings and prove that no one has breached his borders, he’ll—you guessed it—go outside.

That’s what I’ll have to wait for. I need to get enough of a head start that I can figure out how to find my way back to the beginning of the forest without Wolf being able to come after me. I’m betting on how he won’t leave his immediate territory to pursue me. If he does, I’ll need to put as much space between us that I can lose him, whether that means crossing streams and rolling in whatever shit I can find to trick his nose.

And I hate it. I hate that I have to do this. I’d much prefer to spend the morning together and let him know I’ll never forget him, but he’s Wolf. Not only will he be unable to understand why I have to go, he’ll be able to look right through me and see that I don’t want to.

But what else can I do? I was orphaned before I was five, left to be raised by at least nine different families before the system booted my ass out the door. The only person who’s ever stuck by my side was Goldie, and once I moved to Massachusetts and she stayed in New Jersey, commuting to New York to her job as a hotshot editor at a publishing house, we became texting buddies, more or less. It’s like she forgot about me, too, and if that’s my old insecurities rearing their ugly head, it’s true.

Damn it. When I said I wanted true love… my very own happy-ever-after… I never thought I’d get a taste of what it would be like to live out a fairytale before I’d have to return to the real world. But I do. Have to go, I mean. I spent too many years researching, too much money for this chance to give up now. My wish is within my grasp. All I have to do is get out of Blackmoor and it’s mine.

For now, I stay in the nest, telling myself that I have hours before the window of opportunity closes. I promised Blackmoor three days, but if I stay past the fourth, I forfeit everything. I leave with nothing. If I’m going to break Wolf’s heart, I’m at least going to make it worthwhile, as cruel as that sounds.

And if it makes my chest ache a little to think of leaving him behind, well… this is what I signed up for.

Just a little longer. I’ll enjoy his musk and his heat and the way the fur on his legs tickles my calves as he wraps his big body around me just a little longer. And if he wants to kiss me awake on my pussy like he did yesterday morning, well… there’s still time.

At least, that was my plan. Wolf, it seems, has something else in mind.

Carefully, as though he doesn’t want to disturb me, he shifts away from me. Last night, as we climbed into the pile of blankets on the floor for the final time, I’d waited for Wolf to ease the cloak off of my shoulders again and most likely put it away in the dresser where he keeps it when he isn’t pulling magic boots or another replacement pair of linen pants out of it. Every time I’ve peeked in it, it’s been empty, but not when Wolf uses it. I figured he would disappear my cloak again, only he didn’t.