Wolf Born. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

too close to the sun. Pure, radiant fire.

      He groaned when her hands touched the nape of his neck, and he repeated the sound when her fingers moved upward into his hair. She grabbed hold of a handful of strands and tugged, trying to pull him closer. But the only way they could have been closer was for him to be inside her. And there was no way to describe how much he wanted that.

      His body responded to hers as if he hadn’t been hurt. His erection was proof that a Were’s ability to heal was indeed nothing short of magical.

      Rosalind’s touch made illness seem distant and irrelevant. The swift return of his libido told him that if his body wasn’t fully recovered, he was well enough to oblige the desire to claim her, and to enter the blistering heat he knew would be waiting for him if he did.

      “Ties that bind. You and I, Rosalind,” he whispered to her, allowing her only a very small breath.

      It seemed to him that the female whose tongue now swept boldly across his had somehow created an energy flux that encompassed them both. Maybe it was only a male-female attraction that had made him get up from that bed, because hell, he didn’t know how he could be standing up when he had only opened his eyes a short time ago. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to him out there in the dark.

      Nevertheless, there was healing in her fingertips. Her breath rammed a steady stream of energy into him as she willed him to take her, and urged him to hurry.

      She was a fast learner, an apt pupil. Already she kissed him back with enough fervor to melt away the doubts.

      Oh, yes. One of his dreams lay within his grasp. All he had to do was what came naturally to them both.

      But, his mind nagged, they are going to take her away. Away from him. This seemed a ridiculous impossibility, now that he had found her.

      Dampness broke out on his forehead. Rationality warned that they were guests in someone else’s house, and that the door might open any minute. Rosalind had mentioned the name Landau.

      Still, Rosalind’s fingers moved like little bolts of lightning across his upper back, scorching his tender skin, making him wince from the sheer intensity of the pleasure. She was exploring him, as well as the other way around, and she liked what she found.

      He seemed to hear her whispering to him, though his mouth on hers left her no ability to do so. “Now,” she was thinking. “Seal our fate.”

       Chapter 6

      Reluctantly, Colton pulled his lips from hers to gaze at her flushed face. How far would she go? How far would she let him go? The she-wulf was looking back at him. Their gazes met, held.

      He had a sensation of falling, though he was on his feet. His body imploded with the desire to have all of her; every last bit. Wrapped in her heat, he could almost forget the vampires and what they had done. He stood a chance of sidelining his need for vengeance.

      When he tore at her jeans, neither of them spoke or moved apart to make access easier. Rosalind’s palms were like burning coals when she placed them on his chest.

      With ease, he lifted her from the ground, turned and threw her on the bed where he’d been tended. Rosalind was, he noticed, barefoot, her feet delicate, her toenails unpainted.

      Her jeans were discarded in seconds. The blue underwear beneath them was destroyed in less time than that. She lay half-naked on the bed, her hair and her silk shirt glistening in the light from the bedside lamp. Her eyes told him that she anticipated what might come next.

      Colton crawled up to arch over her on his hands and knees, so that the only thing between them, below the hem of her shirt, was his thrumming cock—the dusty, unused body part of a werewolf who had been too long without.

      “Mate,” she said huskily through pink, swollen lips, her eyes wide and as brilliant as emeralds.

      “Yes,” he growled.

      Her hips rose to meet him when he slid both hands beneath her slick, bare buttocks, buttocks that were as sleek as her shirt. Her legs were endlessly long, and stretched out beneath him. Her thighs were shaped with lengths of strong, lean muscle.

      “Some other time and place,” he told her, “this would take much longer and move much slower. Hours. Days. Weeks.”

      “Find me. Promise,” was all she said in return.

      Somehow, Colton knew there was no time for foreplay and that the needs driving them ruled out any effort at further restraint. With trembling fingers, he explored the spot he needed for entering her body. Although she might have been kept from this in the past, Rosalind was more than willing. Between her thighs, behind a wedge of dark fur, she had dampened. With his fingers pressed against her, she growled low in her throat.

      When her legs opened for him, he forgot everything else. Time, and all that had gone on before, seemed to slip away.

      Easing the tip of his cock inside her, Colton closed his eyes. He didn’t want to move, wanted to linger and soak up this wicked heat, but he had to continue. His body demanded satisfaction.

      With an agonizing slowness, he began to make tender stroking motions, moving his hips, dipping in and out of her meagerly at first, amazed that he could exert this much will over himself when what he longed for was a singular thrust hard enough to fill her completely.

      He shook with the intensity of that desire.

      He and this stranger had imprinted. And this sealed the deal. That’s the way this went: eyes, thoughts, body, then soul. They had bonded, and all he knew about her was her name, and that she had pulled him up from unconsciousness, and how extremely hot she was.

      Inside, she was tight and beautifully lush. He stroked her gently until that tightness began to relax and a rush of cream surrounded his erection. Even in man form, he nearly howled.

      As he pressed himself farther inside her, Rosalind made more encouraging noises in her throat. When he stopped moving, she seemed to stop breathing altogether.

      “I will find you,” he said with a pledge that seemed to have been dragged from his heart.

      Though she gasped, Rosalind didn’t open her eyes.

      “You understand what this means?” he asked gruffly, because her body, and what she was allowing him to do with it, had stolen his own breath away.

      Her eyelids fluttered, the long, midnight-hued lashes dark against her flawless ivory skin. As he studied her face, her chin moved up and down once. She understood perfectly.

      “All right,” he whispered to her. “God. Okay.”

      His plunge into her rich depths brought another, louder, sound from her throat. It was a purr of encouragement. A nod to pleasure.

      Colton withdrew, then sank his length into her again and again, building a rhythm that took him deeper and deeper, trying not to burst with the pleasure this gave him. He hung on to his sanity by a thread.

      When waiting was no longer an option, he lowered himself to her body and drove himself into her with a force that rocked his body and hers.

      Unparalleled gratification careened through him that was as violent as live wires crossing. And when Rosalind bent her knees, grabbed his buttocks with her hands and invited him to partake of the last remaining barrier, he felt the rise of an oncoming orgasm that would truly weld them together for life.

      With his scent on her, and imbedded in her, no other Were could hope to gain her interest. That’s also the way this worked. She would be his. Forever. Until death do us part.

      And when she drove her hips against his, he tumbled over the rim of an abyss. One more move of his own hips, and he executed just one more powerful thrust; the exact one he had longed to make.

      He reached the molten center of the female beneath him, not thinking