Animal

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An Excerpt From: ANIMAL

Copyright © NATHALIE GRAY, 2009

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

Behind her, a small sound allowed a split-second warning.

Something hit her in the back. She yelped, hit the fence, tried to brace the impact with her arms as she was pinned facing it. Rain made the metal slippery and cold. A lean and strong body pressed all along the back of her, from knees to shoulders. A hard lump was crushed in her lower back. To have felt that magnificent body before, she recognized it well.

Haruto.

Long fingers tipped in black claws glossy with rain curled into the chain links by her face. Like anchors. "There you are," he murmured through the wet hair covering her face.

"You´re safe!" she panted, swallowed the lump in her throat. She could´ve wept in relief. "I thought-"

"Shhh," he breathed.

Adrenaline shifted gears. She quivered as he put his mouth against her ear.

Brioni swallowed. "Are you...are you all right?"

"Now I am."

"W-what are you doing?"

She´d never seen him this way. The lycan was clearly in control. Although he wasn´t like the others, didn´t change that much in physical appearance when the lycan took over. Only became more. More menacing, more the lean and mean hunter skirting the shadows. Like a hungry wolf without a pack.

"I´ve been thinking about you," he breathed, stopped for a deep but delicate sniff. A frisson shot up her spine. "I´ve been hungry for you."

She tried twisting her head to look over her shoulder but he pressed himself harder. Metal links dug in her breasts and belly. Created a thrill she never would´ve expected from the situation. "Are we safe? Are they...? Did you get rid of them?"

"Gone back to their masters," he replied in singsong. She smelled a faint hint of alcohol on his breath. "With their tails between their legs." She felt him tense. "Did they hurt you?"

She´d escaped an inferno by the seat of her pants, had fought two men while flying ten feet off the ground at forty miles an hour, crashed on an airbike, had received a punch right in the forehead. "No, I´m all right. I-"

He pressed his mouth against the back of her hand, which glistened with rain as she gripped the fence. His breath warmed her skin. He slowly licked the droplets from her knuckles. "Did you miss me?"

"I was worried. I thought..." She tried to go on but no sound came out when he raked his bottom teeth very, very lightly up the back of her hand. His metallic fangs dangerously tracing veins and tendons. She could feel the reined-in power, the suppressed violence. The hunter resting a delicate claw on the prey´s tail.

But she was no one´s prey.

"I was worried," she repeated with more aplomb. "You should´ve said something. At least to me."

"Why?"

"Because I´m your friend."

"Mmm. My friend." He seemed to taste the word, test it, roll it around in his mouth.

His licking her knuckles again closed her eyes. She shivered. The hard feel of him crushed against her was starting to affect her mental processes. Despite his state. Because of it. She couldn´t think. Torn between remnants of fear and a budding arousal. Between her relief he was all right and her worry about where he was taking this. Yet hoping he would. What a mess.

A long lick from wrist bone to curled fingers. "I love your taste."

With the angle, rain still reached them, rendered his skin the richest shade of wet sand. He yanked on both hands, which were still attached to the fence with curled-in fingers, while pushing his pelvis against her lower back. The clink of the fence was like music. A ribbon of breath rose in the air when she opened her mouth. Haruto did it again, this time rolled his pelvis in an upward thrust that crushed his erection up against her butt. She bit her bottom lip to keep her focus sharp.

She gasped when he fisted the side of her coat and tugged it up so he could slip his hand underneath. Stitching ripped. Contact. Skin against skin. The heat of his palm triggered frissons up her side. Haruto followed her waist, squeezed into the drawstring of her loose-fitting pants. Brioni didn´t try to stop him when he curled fingers over her mons, parted her. Liquid heat gathered in her folds. The smell reached even her.

"You missed me too," he whispered, chuckled. She´d never heard him do that. Haruto? Chuckling?

When he crouched behind her, one hand still curled into the chain-link fence while he pulled her pants down with the other, she let him. When he denuded her butt and thighs and yanked her pants down around her ankles then off altogether, she hung on to the fence and didn´t make a single move he could´ve construed as unwillingness. And when he straightened, plastered himself against her back, hand around her front and still pressed against her pussy, Brioni remained immobile. Waiting to fall over the edge. That one last gust of wind that would topple her off the cliff. Relinquishment was a powerful thing. As were the animal instincts keeping her put while he readied her. Because that was what he did-readied her. She knew what he wanted.