Wolf Born. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

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 of taking or claiming her now, but offering himself to her in a union that was tantamount to the binding of their souls.

      “Rosalind.”

      The rumble started in his back, spread to his torso and careened between his legs. A similar rumble, like an approaching earthquake, tore through Rosalind, hitting and then overtaking them at the same time.

      The room exploded with a light that seemed to carry in it all the emotion of the life Colton had lived so far. With their moist bodies pressed together in a rigid few seconds of suspended stillness, and their mouths locked together so that no sensation could go unresolved, the suddenness of the intensity of their mingled ecstasy ripped through them.

      But so did something else.

      One last peripheral sensation slid through Colton unexpectedly as he reached his peak.

      In that moment of heightened awareness, as his body convulsed with pleasure, he was sure that Rosalind tasted not only like wulf, but of metal.

      In her feverish mouth, and at her heated core, lay a hint of what he imagined silver to taste like. Silver, a concoction that was the bane of all Weres, purebred or otherwise.

      Absurd.

      He let the notion go as he rode the crest of a wave of ecstasy prolonged by each tremor that shook her.

      And when the storm finally subsided and some time had passed without sound or motion, Colton was afraid to move. Afraid to believe. Opening his eyes, he again found Rosalind’s eyes waiting.

      Problem was those eyes were no longer green.

      Liquid darkness swam in Rosalind’s irises, drowning the color, turning them black. It was like watching a curtain drop over a verdant landscape. Like a dark veil descending suddenly to cloak something fine.

      The sudden strangeness made Colton draw back. The skin on his neck prickled. His jaw tensed.

      “What the—”

      What had happened to Rosalind? Hell, had he just linked himself to a Were who might be something more than wulf?

      He heard the word special in his mind, and knew it came from her thoughts. He didn’t like the questions turning up.

      Was the key to Rosalind’s well-guarded seclusion the fact that she might not be just any She after all, but something else? Something far more dangerous?

      Was that why she wasn’t allowed out, when Lycan females were so scarce, and why she felt she was different?

      Perhaps also sensing this, or seeing the concern in his expression, Rosalind opened her mouth to protest the look on his face. After a brief hesitation, she uttered a strangled cry.

      Between her beautiful lips, so swollen and lush and pink, lay a pair of tiny needle-sharp incisors reminiscent of no wulf canines that Colton had ever seen. On her lower lip lay a fine sheen of pooled red droplets where she had bitten herself during their moments of shared passion.

      Blood. On her mouth.

      Dark blood, red as roses.

      Before Colton caught a startled breath, his lover, his she-wulf, the female he had sealed himself to forever, moved from under him with an astonishing speed that was little more than a time-slip of barely disturbed air.

      She leaped gracefully onto the sill of the tall, open window, where she paused in a crouch to draw her fingers across her mouth. Glancing at the smear of blood on them, her body visibly shook.

      For a moment more she remained there, outlined by the night beyond, her silk shirt shining, her long, loose hair billowing in the breeze.

      She looked at Colton with a shocked, pleading glint in her wild black gaze as she held up her hand to show him the red stain on her fingers. Then, uttering one more sound, a sob, Rosalind turned from him and jumped out.