Page 85 of Black Willow Witch
‘I’ll do it, Emberlyn. Don’t fucking doubt it.’ He took her harder, sliding his shaft over her clit; feeling her pussy spasm and tighten.
‘Ripper,’ she rasped. Then her release hit her, dazed her, dragged a scream from her throat as her pussy strangled him.
He hammered into her once, twice, and then erupted inside her – his release amplified by the knowledge that he wasn’t filling a condom this time, he was fillingher.
Shaking with aftershocks, Ripper lowered her legs and settled his body over hers. He nuzzled her neck, breathing her in. She still smelled of him. He wondered if she’d noticed that his scent took longer to fade now – an indication that it had become embedded deeper into her skin. A thought he liked.
Her fingers sifted through his hair. ‘I have to say something,’ she said, her voice languid but also . . . cautious. ‘It may or may not spoil the mood, depending on if your personal views line up with mine.’
He lifted his head to meet her gaze, struggling to read it. ‘Okay.’
‘By scent-marking each other, we silently agreed to exclusivity, right?’
‘Right.’ If she was considering changing that, he wouldn’t be fucking pleased.
‘You mentioned the next full moon, and . . . Look, I know what they do to your kind. I know they make you seriously hypersexual and it isn’t easy to maintain control. Some werewolves have the attitude that what happens on full moons doesn’t count; that if they sleep with someone other than their partners or mates, it should be understood and forgiven. I disagree. If that’s an issue for you, if you want the freedom to go with the flow on full moons, okay. But if that’s the case—’
‘It isn’t. There are wolves who use full moons as an excuse to fuck around.’ And itwasan excuse. ‘I’m not one of them.’
She drew in a subtle breath. ‘Okay.’
As a thought entered his mind, he felt his eyes narrow. ‘Did Michael consider it an excuse?’
Emberlyn tensed, surprised his mind had gone there. Everybody liked Michael; considered him a ‘good man’. One so good he’d never do anything as awful as cheat on his mate. The prospect wouldn’t even occur to them. It hadn’t occurred to her, either.
So she’d gotten the shock of her life when it happened.
He’d come home one morning with his tail tucked between his legs, struggling to meet her eyes and – after a lot of prodding and pushing from her – finally admitted he’d slept with another woman the previous night. But that wasn’t something Emberlyn talked about.
‘No,’ she replied, her voice coming out unintentionally flat.
Every line in Ripper’s trademark stony expression smoothed out as his face softened. ‘He did, didn’t he?’ Not a question, a sure statement.
She looked away, swallowing hard.
‘At some point, he had sex with another werewolf and pled that the full moon made him do it,’ Ripper surmised.
She snapped her gaze back to his. ‘Do you really want to talk about my ex-mate while your cock is still inside me?’
Ignoring that, Ripper stared at her, pensive. ‘You’re not the kind of woman who’d overlook your mate betraying you, no matter what excuse he came up with. You broke it off. The mating.’ It was a guess. And it was correct.
She cursed low and harsh, rubbing at her scalp.
He touched his forehead to hers in a gesture that, for a werewolf, was as intimate as any kiss. ‘Talk to me, baby.’
Baby.The soft, possessive endearment wriggled its way past her defenses, and she heard herself admit, ‘I broke it off. I’m not forgiving enough to look past something like that. It’s justnot in me. It’s not like heaskedfor forgiveness. He didn’t even apologize. He got defensive and played the whole thing down; made out like I was being dramatic.’
Anger flickered in the depths of Ripper’s eyes. ‘So you two argued?’
‘Big time. It got ugly. When he realized there’d be no changing my mind, that I was seriously done, he lost it.’ She licked her lips. ‘He was still riding the high of the full moon, so I guess that contributed to why he morphed into his In-between form.’
Ripper’s gaze went slitted. ‘He attack you?’
‘Yes. I scared him off with magick.’
‘You said you were hurt by a Rabid before,’ he remembered. ‘You meant Michael.’
She swallowed. ‘Yes. He didn’t simply morph, he turned Rabid.’
