Betrothed to the Moon Read online

  Nope. Of course not. They were wide open, locked on hers like a tractor beam.

  Oh my gosh, she worried, did he see me checking him out?

  Probably.

  He can also probably tell I’m a virgin, that I’ve just escaped a cult--

  Serena gasped again, a third and final time, louder than the other two combined. The man in the bathtub instantly sat upright and his hands protectively wrapped around her shoulders as his brown eyes peered deeply into hers.

  “Are you alright?” Serena leaned away from him, and he seemed to shake himself and let go, leaving wet handprints on her shoulders; she couldn’t read his expression. Was he upset by something? Did he hurt himself?

  “I’m fine,” she gushed, worried that he had overexerted his exhausted body. “I just… I’m thinking about a lot of things these days, and sometimes they sneak up on me. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He blinked up at her. “I wasn’t expecting company, here at the cottage,” she finished, and he tried to shrug an apology, then gave up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick with pain. “I… Didn’t mean to disturb.”

  “I know you didn’t,” she said, and without thinking about it her hand flattened on his cheek. The texture was so different from her own; it was mesmerizing, the different planes and densities of his very male body. Serena made herself stop touching him and leaned even further away, careful to angle her torso so she wasn’t looking towards the lower end of his. The last thing she needed was to blush right now. “It’s alright. I just hope you’re not in any pain.”

  “Not now,” he said, and managed a small smile. It lit his entire face, nearly taking her breath away again. “I’d be lying though…” He gritted his teeth, wincing as he tried to sit up straight and eventually gave up. “Yeah. It’s more like a dull roar, if I just lay here. Instead of hellfire.”

  She laughed uneasily, her smooth forehead wrinkling with worry. “I’m guessing that you don’t want me to go get help? I mean, since you seemed to be… Hiding.” She bit her lip.

  “Yep,” he said, closing his eyes again. “I was hiding, rather cleverly, I thought, until you showed me how wrong I was.” His brow furrowed. “I can’t believe that bastard finally rented the place out…”

  “Do you live here?” She watched him closely, and settled on the edge of the bathtub. “I’m sorry, I thought it was empty… Well, it looked empty—“

  He laughed abruptly, and immediately stopped when a ripple of pain clearly interrupted his mirth. “No,” he finally said, his eyes once again open and locked on hers. “No, I live in Denton Towers… Well, I lived in Denton Towers.” He raised an eyebrow at her in a jaunty way, and she realized she was supposed to be impressed. “You’ve never heard of it?”

  “No,” Serena said, and she knew a blush was creeping over her cheeks. “I haven’t paid a lot of attention to anything outside of… School.” A lie. How pathetic.

  “Did you just graduate?” His face had lost all semblance of arrogance, and Serena liked it even more that way. When he dropped the posturing he seemed very sweet.

  “Last year,” she said, her fingers absently trailing in the water of his bath. He was probably going to get cold soon; it was lukewarm. She moved to run the hot water again, then stopped in her tracks when his next words struck her like a blow.

  “Why are you lying?” She whipped her head around to look at him so fast her hair slapped his cheek. They were face to face, inches away from one another; he was sitting straight up, gritting his teeth with pain, but so focused on her that he refused to lean back. “I’m sorry if that’s rude,” he said, his rich eyes dancing over her features as if he were drinking them in. “But I… I can tell. Your pulse was faster, and your… Your smell changed. You smell a little… Anxious.” He blinked, still searching her face for something he couldn’t seem to express; Serena broke the spell and moved away from him. “I’m so sorry,” he said, collapsing back against the tub. “I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

  “You can smell the way I feel?” Serena shook her head. That sounded far too weird. Even for a wolf-man.

  “Not exactly… It’s hard to explain.” His eyes were closed again; clearly, his momentary fascination with her had taken its toll on his body. “You smelled different. Maybe it was the chemicals in your blood, or your sweat—“ His eyes fluttered open and the dark orbs latched on to her again. “That’s it. Your sweat. I could hear your pulse quicken, and your sweat smelled… Adrenaline. There must have been a change in the chemistry.” Disgust touched every inch of his handsome face. “I am so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Serena said, watching him with deepening interest. “It’s fascinating.” She sighed and turned to run the hot water again. “And besides, you were right. I was lying.”

  He blinked. “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I did graduate a year ago. But I haven’t been thinking about school since then, and I barely thought about it while I was there, for the last five semesters anyway.” She let the water run through her fingers, feeling the delicious heat and moving away so he could be warmed by it. “I was involved with a group that took up a lot of my time.”

  He frowned. “Like a sorority, or something?”

  In spite of her nerves, she laughed. “No, not at all.”

  “What then?” He cocked his head in a very wolf-like manner, his eyes once again scorching into her. Was he really that interested? Maybe the chemicals flooding her system as she remembered the House of Victory were just overwhelming him.

  “A cult,” she whispered, and clutched the sides of the tub. Serena didn’t want to talk about it, but she knew it was good for her. Her therapist had been adamant that she at least to try to speak the dreaded word aloud. “I didn’t think of it that way until very recently,” she said, staring out of the window to the dark wooded landscape. They were in a small, carved out cubby back behind the rustic kitchen, an alcove almost entirely taken up by the giant bathtub the stranger now sat in. She had been grateful the water worked. Now, all she could think about—even more than his beauty, or the fear that kissed her spine whenever his mannerisms reminded her that he was, somewhere inside, a predator—was the shame and sense of loss that haunted her whenever she remembered her life with the House of Victory.

  With Shaun.

  “Sounds tough,” he said softly, his voice a rough rasp. “Well,” he coughed, “it smells rough. If that makes any sense.”

  She couldn’t help it; Serena glanced at him, and when she saw his smiling face she smiled back. “It doesn’t.”

  He chuckled, the effort clearly taking a toll. “I can tell you don’t like talking about it.”

  She nodded, biting her lip in an effort not to reach out and touch him, tell him to stop trying to make her feel better with his bone-rattling laughter. “I don’t. But it’s better if I do.” She sighed again, watching him recover. “There’s nothing good about secrets,” she said, wishing she could help him somehow.

  “I don’t know if I agree with that,” he said, and winced. “I’m not going to take out any radio ads explaining my… Condition. Or whatever this is.”

  “You don’t know?” She adjusted in her perch.

  “Unfortunately, no…” His beautiful eyes drifted as he thought something over. “This happened right after my birthday. Worst birthday, ever, by the way. And it was supposed to be one of the best—my father’s share of the company was finally going to yield to my control, so I would have a handle on the board.” He whistled. “I couldn’t wait to tell that bunch of bastards where to go.” Her eyes widened. “But then, my dad died… And this happened,” he said, waving his hands over his chest. “I woke up in a different body. An animal body.” When he suddenly stopped speaking she didn’t know whether or not to ask him to continue; clearly the memory was unpleasant. After a moment he continued. “I was staying here, in the estate. My usual room—I grew up here, before my parents divorced. My mom lived here afterwards, with
that bastard, my step-father. Now both of my parents are dead, but I would still come here and stay sometimes, just to remind him that this was really mine… And after my father died I wanted to be here. Just wanted to. And then this happened….” He’d gotten lost in the reverie, but came back to the moment and met Serena’s eyes before looking down in shame. “Well, to be honest I kind of lost my shit. I mean—who wouldn’t? You saw it,” his fierce eyes latched onto hers. “I’m a fucking monster. And I went a little crazy.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “So my step-father, thinking there was a crazy wolf loose in the house, set a hunting party after me.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Serena breathed, terrified for him.

  “That’s one way to put it,” Jared said, chuckling up at her. “I tried to say ‘oh shit’ but it just came out as a howl.” In spite of the tension in the room they both laughed at that. “Fortunately the dogs were confused—I still smell like myself, I think, so they didn’t really understand what they were supposed to do. And of course my scent is everywhere—all over the whole property. So while they were leading my step-father on a goose-chase, I ran here. It was the only place I could think of that might be safe.”

  “But I was here.”

  “I didn’t even realize you were in the building until I woke up,” he said, his beautiful gaze searching her face. “I promise. If I thought you were in any danger…” He let the sentence trail away and wiped his hand over his face again, his expression dejected.

  “Do you have any control over it?” Serena stirred the water with her fingers and wondered if he would like more warm water. “Or does it just kind of… Sneak up on you?”

  “So far, it’s very sneaky.”

  “There has to be a way, though,” Serena said thoughtfully. “I guess the old stories about the moon aren’t true.”

  “From what I can tell, the wolf has a mind of his own.” Jared sighed. “And the moon has fuck-all to do with it.”

  “Wow,” Serena said, unable to help herself.

  “What?” He looked up at her, clearly unaware of the effect his words had.

  “I just…” She bit her lip, feeling silly. “I’m not used to that kind of language.”

  “Oh!” He sat up a little bit, winced again, and lay back, his face apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Bad habit.”

  “It’s okay. But I’ve been kind of… Separated from the secular world,” Serena said, unsure how to continue. “There’s a lot I don’t understand.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” He studied her face for a long moment. “No one has lived here in years. This was my grandmother’s cottage, and it was the first thing built on the estate. Long before the mansion, even before the power lines, as crazy as that might sound. Water comes from a well, septic’s local… I don’t really understand why you would want to come here.” He was thoughtful. “Unless, like you said, it was to escape the world.”

  “I’m not trying to escape,” Serena said, then mulled it over. “Well, I definitely needed to escape the House of Victory. But leaving them is also entering the world. It’s the opposite of an escape.”

  “Which begs the question,” he said carefully. “Why are you here, on the edge of the world, if you’re trying to re-enter it?”

  She sighed. “I guess I needed to start with myself, first. Figure out some things.”

  “That makes sense, actually,” he said, nodding. “This is definitely the perfect place to get comfortable with yourself, without interference.”

  “Do you think they’ll come looking for you here?” Serena realized both of them might be in danger, no matter how far off the grid her cottage was. It was still a part of the estate.

  “Probably, but not for another day or so,” Jared said. The exhaustion in his voice was obvious. “They’ve got about seven hundred other acres to go through first, so let’s hope.”

  “If they do come, what do you want me to tell them?”

  “Well, I can give you a short course on renter’s rights, but I have a feeling none of that is going to matter very much to my step-father.” Jared’s handsome face darkened. “He has a lot of money, and an excellent motive for wanting me dead. Maybe he’ll be satisfied that I’ve just disappeared. He might not look for me at all.”

  “But the wolf?”

  He sighed again. “No idea. Is it really worth it to scare off the only person who’s wanted to rent this property in five years?” He raised an eyebrow at her craftily. “Not to a good business man, it isn’t.”

  “Is that legal?” Serena frowned at him.

  He didn’t try to shrug, but she could tell he wanted to. Instead he gave her a sly smile that sent a wave of heat rushing over her; Jared was definitely a bit devious. “It isn’t illegal.”

  She bit her lip and turned away; was it normal for a man’s penis to be so incredibly long? She couldn’t be sure. When she brought him the towel, she carefully held it to hide his body from her curious eyes.

  In spite of his words about being a monster, Serena couldn’t help but notice the twinkle in his own eyes whenever she blushed.

  Chapter Eight

  Jared had his own ideas about how to spend the evening; he’d been overwrought with shame and worry that he would hurt the beautiful, fragile woman named Serena, but he found, as time went by, he wanted not only to protect her—a new instinct, for sure, but one explained away easily by the wolf—but to possess her. In ways he’d never entertained before, Jared wanted to fuck Serena into oblivion—into submission.

  As he watched her gingerly hand him the towel and back away in order to give him room to exit the tub, his mind was overwhelmed by the scent of her skin, the aroma drifting from her body full of pheromones and tasting, for lack of a better word, like innocence, curiosity, and radiant possibility. He thought of taking her hand and sucking her fingers, he imagined her face full of ecstatic surprise, then wonder; he imagined her expression once he stopped sucking her fingers and moved on to her clit. He felt himself growing painfully erect beneath the water once more and the flutter of desire in his belly surged—he thought about what her pussy would taste like, how she would squirm under the weight of his body, how tight and full of nectar her unopened spring would be… Jared snapped to attention.

  “Are you okay?” Serena looked concerned, and he realized she’d probably asked him that at least once already.

  “Kind of,” he said slowly, unable to shake off the lust currently dominating his mind as he looked at her wide brown eyes. God, if he could just… “Sorry, sorry Serena, I—“ He shook his head. “I’m just not much in control of myself lately.”

  “It’s alright,” she said softly. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  He felt himself staring at her again, and grabbed the towel. “Give me a minute, and I’ll get out of here, okay? Thank you for being so nice about me being a monster in your basement and all.”

  “Oh! Oh. You don’t have to—well—I mean,” she stammered, her cheeks blushing with a maddening rush of color. Jared literally licked his chops. She would look like that when she came. He knew it. Knock it off, he sternly reprimanded himself. “If you don’t want to go yet, I’m okay with the company,” she softly said, reddening further. He wondered if his thoughts were that obvious.

  His hard-on certainly was.

  Jared waited until her back was turned and slowly climbed out of the big tub, trying to slow his breathing and taking as long as he needed to cool down; the bruises riddling his body certainly helped squelch his ardor. When he was ready, standing up on his own without certain—ahem—parts also standing, he gently touched her shoulder.

  Big mistake. Serena turned and looked at him with her wide brown eyes and her rosebud mouth in the shape of a perfect ‘o,’ her hands instinctually in prayer position between generous breasts.

  Jared was slammed with the need to fill her mouth with his cock. It hit him like a punch between the eyes.

  “Jared!” Serena reached out to steady him as he swayed on his feet,
her hands wrapping around his torso to help. “You’re hurt—you’ve got to sit down—“

  “—You have no idea what you’re doing to me, do you?” He had never felt such an elemental pull towards a woman before. He was completely at a loss to control his lust. Jared’s voice came out in a low, throaty growl.

  Serena’s beautiful face was inches below his own. She’d startled into stillness, and now here they were, staring at each other, mingling breath.

  He kissed her.

  It was beyond his control—he leaned in, his lips finding hers immediately, and dropped the towel so he could hold her body in his hands. His fingers crept across her skin as she let him—thank you, he thought, the words rising in his mind just long enough to sink back into the crush of sensation—explore her tongue with his. He was right; she tasted like caramel. His fingers teased along her waistline; he was more gentle than he thought he could be, and yet… Jared pulled Serena down onto his lap, her legs wrapping naturally around his waist. His cock pressed against her jeans and he groaned into her mouth, his hands sliding down to squeeze the perfect ass beneath the fabric…. Serena gasped into his kiss and started to pull back…. He tried to let her, but it was so hard to let her go….

  And then all hell broke loose.

  ∞∞∞

  When Jared woke up, images once again flashed in his mind’s eye. This time, though, they were filled with violence instead of Serena’s beautiful face.

  Visions of phosphorescence, blindingly bright as his fists connected… And then his fangs. Blood—at least, he thought it was blood—thick as honey and dripping down his chest, a crust forming in his fur. But it wasn’t his blood… He remembered the room exploding in battle, tiny creatures pelting him while someone stout and dark reached out with fists like clubs… He’d held them off but then someone grabbed Serena--Serena’s screams. Serena!

  Jared abruptly came to, his mouth foaming as he thrashed against the chain that held him tightly against the wall. He was raging, snarling… And he liked it, the power he could feel in his body. The strength he had now was so intense the heavy iron chain linked from his neck to each paw barely held him back, and he could hear the whine of the metal as it stretched to keep from breaking.