Dark Moon Gathering. Alison Paige

throughout my body, tensing, wanting more. I sank my hand into his thick wealth of hair, fisted, letting the beast in me rise, rough and ready. A gentle tug and my breast fell from his lips, the night air tingling an erotic chill over the tight, moistened flesh. His gaze slid up to mine and I pulled harder on his hair, not to hurt—much—but to bend his neck back so his lips rose to mine.

      What he’d done to my breast he now did to my mouth, suckling my tongue, my lips, exploring my mouth with his. My body lowered, and somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I knew my brain must’ve given permission, though I couldn’t think past the feel of him. The taut skin of his chest smoothed along the folds of my pussy, warm and hard. His hands wrapped around the back of my thighs, cupping my ass and guiding my body onto his.

      Fat and round, velvet flesh over marble, his cock pressed into me, stretching me so I had to close my eyes, relax, to take him in. He was too big and just right all at once. The muscles inside me cleaved to him, fluttered as he pressed in, deeper and deeper. Pressure built as he filled me, tingling, electric sensation dancing through my body, humming over my skin. I had to hold my breath to withstand the barrage on my senses. I opened my legs wider, lowered my body, sent him deeper—and there was still more of him to come.

      Even before my thighs pressed flat against his and his cock seemed to fill me up through to my chest, I knew he’d ruined me for lesser men. I didn’t care; my flesh hugged around him, milking his cock, coaxing it to harden and swell further. This wasn’t our first time, but his size made each encounter a delicious mix of pain and pleasure.

      “You good?” he asked, breathless.

      I swallowed and gave a weak nod. Then he lifted me, using my body to stroke his shaft and his shaft to send pleasure rippling through my body. Muscles snapped tight, tensing my legs, wanting more, wanting speed, needing friction. My fingers clenched on his shoulders, skin catching under my nails. I raised myself to the very tip of his cock then slammed down, impaling myself to his hilt.

      Air whooshed out of me and I gasped for more, raising up to do it all again, and again. A fast rhythm set in, my hips rocking, his fingers gripping tight on the back of my thighs. Sensation swirled through me like a glittering river behind my eyes, tingling through my veins, sizzling over every nerve ending. Faster, deeper, harder—the pressure swelled, pushing up from my belly, squeezing through my chest, thick and tempting in my throat. Right there. Almost. A promise of ecstasy I couldn’t resist a moment longer.

      Like a swollen river overflowing its banks, sensation crested then gushed, liquid hot, from my head, down my neck and chest, shuddering through my belly and legs and out my toes. My release quaked through every muscle, my sex pulsating around his cock until the stimulation grew too much for him to deny.

      “Fuck…Mattie…yessss…” A burst of frantic thrusts sent my body cascading over into another release with Anthony trailing close behind.

      I collapsed boneless against him, satiated. My breathing slowed, found a natural rhythm with the galloping beat of my heart. I rested my cheek on his shoulder and sighed. “Ready to go again?”

      I wasn’t; I just liked freakin’ him out. Imagine my surprise when he tensed beneath me and his cock stirred between my walls.

      “Gimme a minute,” he said low and breathy.

      When I lifted my head to look at him, a set of bright, blinding lights glared in my eyes then traveled the edge of the pavilion and stopped. Headlights.

      Public nudity. Lewd and lascivious behavior. Trespassing. And those were just the charges I could think of off the top of my head.

      “Park security.” I didn’t bother to wait to see if I was right about the car idling in the parking lot above the pavilion. Adrenaline surged through my tired, aching limbs and I jumped to my feet. Two strides had me across the picnic table. I jumped, shifting before my feet hit concrete.

      “Hey! Hold it! What is that?” Flashlights swept over me before I swerved and they lost me to the shadows.

      “All’s I’m sayin’ is, if you don’t choose a mate by the end of the Gathering this weekend, they’ll choose one for you,” my mom said while she screwed the metal lid back on the sugar dispenser. I could see her slide it across the counter to the herd of filled jars from the corner of my eye. She reached for one of the empty containers and started the process all over again.

      Two-thirty at the Banebridge Pop & Pup Diner was always slow. I loved the place, but after my dad was shot and killed three years ago by a farmer for poaching his sheep—he wasn’t—so much about the diner had changed. Nothing you could see though.

      “They can choose all they want. Doesn’t mean I’ll take some wolf I hardly know as my mate. No matter what those animals think, we’re not living in the dark ages.” I shoved a stack of paper napkins into the spring-loaded dispenser and got my finger pinched in it—again.

      “Mattie, honey, you’re in for a rude awakening. Most werewolf males aren’t like your father.” She loaded the filled sugar dispensers onto a plastic tray and walked around the counter to grab it from the other side. “Sometimes I think it was a mistake raising you the way we did, treating you the same as we did Donny.”

      My brother Donny, the pup in “Pop & Pup,” first born and only male, apple of my parents’ eyes and dead at twenty-seven. T-boned by a driver who tried to make a yellow light. Stupid.

      “Too late now,” I said. “I love ya, Mom, but I am who I am. I won’t be some cocky alpha’s subservient female. I can’t. I don’t care what they think. That’s why I stopped going to the Gatherings. It’s also why I’m not going this year.”

      Mom’s whole body froze mid-stretch across a table, sugar dispenser in hand. “What do you mean you’re not going?” She straightened with a leashed hellfire look. “The Gathering’s the only time of year we’re all together. Packs are coming from all over. There’ll be food and games. You’ll be able to visit with friends and family you haven’t seen in years.”

      “It’s a meat market, Mom.” I scooped the metal napkin holders into my arms and walked through the tables depositing them. “And this year will be worse than ever since I’m the meat du jour. Everyone knows I have to choose a mate or risk the pack being split by lesser males.”

      She smiled, all caring and mom-like. “Well, honey, you’re a beautiful girl. Any man would feel lucky to have you. And you’re the highest-ranking member of a fairly large pack. A pack, thanks to Daddy, that’s financially secure.”

      “Rich, you mean.”

      “Yes. The point is we’ve got no males old enough or strong enough to take over as alpha and none of the females outrank you.”

      “They’ve never tried.” Being the daughter of the strongest male and female made challenges for my position rare. But like any healthy wolf I was always up for a good fight.

      “That’s beside the point. Since Donny passed away the pack falls to you and, as much as you might like to wish otherwise, a woman cannot hold a pack on her own. You must take a mate or one will take you, and the rest of us with you. Heaven help us if a Purist sets his sights on you.”

      My stomach knotted at the thought. My dad was a modern werewolf, believing in women’s rights, partnership with his mate and a kind of democracy within the pack. Purists believed wolves like my dad would destroy our species by allowing women too free a hand and slowing down birthrates by giving them a choice in the matter. To call them chauvinists would be an insult to chauvinists.

      “I won’t let that happen, Mom,” I said, looking her in the eye. “Promise.”

      She smiled, but her lips trembled trying to hold it. She was scared and that scared me. I turned away, pretending that placing napkin dispensers required my full attention.

      Mom had good reason to be scared. Wolves mate for life. But Purists chose to forgo the pesky limitations of a life mate and enforced pack polygamy. One of the first things a Purist would do, after fucking me,