“Yes.”

“You’re so small, I don’t want to—”

“Yes.” She wriggled beneath him and licked her lower lip. “I’m small and you’re big, and it’s going to hurt just right. Now stop talking and…fuck…me.”

He obliged, parting her and surging forward, filling her up, forcing her to open for him, and still he came forward, pushing, thrusting, until she thought she would soon feel him in the back of her throat.

He withdrew, and in the waning light of the moon she could see the sweat on his brow, the way his eyes were shining, almost glinting, and then he surged forward, shoved forward, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and shrieked into the night air.

They rocked together in the grass, and when she put her hands on his taut butt, she could feel the muscles flexing as he worked over her, as he thrust and withdrew and pushed and surged. She opened her mouth for another yell—it

was too sweetly divine to keep quiet—when his hand clamped over her mouth. She writhed in silence beneath him and, several seconds later, heard the couple walk by on the sidewalk a bare ten yards away.

“They’ll hear you,” he murmured in her ear, his voice so thick it was nearly unrecognizable. “They’ll come over her and see me fucking you in my side yard.”

The thought was so blatantly exciting she came at once, actually felt herself get wetter. He groaned in her ear, then bit her earlobe.

It went on like that for some time—she would never be able to guess how long they went at each other in the lilac bushes. Every once in a while his phenomenal hearing would pick up something and he’d cover her mouth again, without missing a stroke. But when he finally came, his shout was a roar that made her ears ring.

“Oh, Christ,” he gasped, collapsing over her.

“If anybody heard that, you’ll have some explaining to do, Doctor.” She tried to sound saucy, but mostly, she just wheezed.

“Umm.” He was kissing the side of her neck, wet snuffly kisses that made her shiver and press closer to him. “Don’t leave in the middle of the night anymore.”

“All right, then. Think we can make it inside without showing the neighbors our bare butts?”

“We’re about to find out.”

CHAPTER NINE

“I think I got something caught on your bellybutton ring,” he said later, simply because it was much too soon to ask her to be his mate, and he had to say something.

“What can I say? Life with me is a constant adventure.” She yawned and flopped over on her back. “And, may I add, not bad for an old guy. Seriously. You must take, like, super Geritol, because…”

“Thank you so much,” he said wryly. They were in his bed, watching the stars through the skylight. “I was just about to compliment you on being adequate in bed despite an obvious lack of experience.”

She smacked him on the bicep. “Hey! And…ow…that was like slapping a rock. FYI, dude, I’ve got gobs of experience. There was that time in the movie theater…um…and once during a snowball fight a boy fell down on top of me…”

“Stop it, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Drake, what is it with you?” she asked abruptly. Her scent shift warned him—from playful soap bubbles to fresh green leaves—even if her tone hadn’t. “Seriously. I mean, you swoop down on me all Knight in Shining Armani, which is nice, if weird, and you don’t ask for anything at all, and you’re super nice, but

you must want something.”

“Well,” he said, sliding his hand up her thigh.

“Oh, spare me. Like you were going to kick me out for not putting

out…don’t think so. I mean, here we are, and frankly, most men—”

“Spare me your knowledge of most men.”

“Okay, okay. But seriously. What’s your deal?”

“It’s a double deal,” he said after a long pause. “And either one will, as you might say, freak you out in the extreme.”

“Oh, dude, I’d never say anything so lame…well, why don’t you try one, see how that goes.”

“Uh…”

“Come on, come on! Then I’ll tell you something about me. Something

nobody else knows.”

“You mean besides the fact that you have smelly feet?”

“Draaaaaaaaaaaake!”

“All right, don’t yowl. Okay. Well. Here it is, then.”

She propped her chin up on her fist and waited.

He coughed.

She kept waiting.

“Well. Ah. You see, it’s difficult to just—you know—blurt it out like this—”

“Are you hoping I’ll die of old age so you won’t have to say it?”

“Fine, fine,” he practically snapped. “I’m a werewolf.”

Silence.

“I know,” he continued, emboldened when she didn’t run screaming from the room. He patted her thigh tentatively. “It’s startling, but you don’t have to be afraid, because I’d never hurt you or eat you—ah, that is to say, outside the bedroom I would never eat you, and—”

“Oh, Christ! That!” She batted his hand away. “I knew about that! You were supposed to tell me something I didn’t know.”

He actually shook his head to check his hearing. No, there was her heartbeat, lub-dub, lub-dub, and her breaths, and the hum of electricity, and the cool clink of the freezer making an ice cube…everything was working fine. “What?”

She lunged upward, hopped off the bed, and started pacing back and forth. Moonlight splashed her as she stomped; an enraged goddess etched in cream. “Well, what else would it be? You’re super-strong, super-fast, you’re blind but you get around better than I do…plus, you’re a doctor, for God’s sake. How could you be such a good doctor without, I dunno, super everything else? It was either that or I figured you were an alien. But after just now—the bushes, you know—I figured you probably weren’t an alien. Besides, this wolf stops me from throwing myself off the roof, and then you just happen to show up a few hours later?”

He blinked at her. “Oh. I must say this is very anticlimactic.”

“Serves you right for assuming I was a dumb-ass.”

“I did not! No one’s ever guessed before. And I’ve had…ah…lady friends who have hung around quite a bit longer than you have.”

“Oh, that.” She waved ‘lady friends who have hung around’ away. “Well, that’s the thing about me—the secret thing—I was gonna tell you. I can tell things about people. That’s why I came home with you. I didn’t just think you wouldn’t hurt me, I knew you wouldn’t. It’s like I can get into a person’s head and tell exactly what they’re feeling.”

“Empathic, hmm? That’s interesting. Well, Crescent, for heaven’s sakes, why do you keep giving that gang of yours a second chance?”

“I think they might be a little crazy,” she replied matter-of-factly. “When we meet up, they never feel like they’re going to hurt me. Then they get mad, and…anyway, obviously my radar isn’t 100% right all the time. Close enough for jazz, though.”

“And this fixation with flying?”

“Dude, I totally can! I know it! You just have to stop getting in the way when I jump off of things.”

Empathy…flight fixation…and her build, small and speedy…but surprisingly heavy for her height…could it be? He had assumed they were legend. Rather like werewolves.

“Crescent,” he said abruptly, “have you ever had an X-ray?”

Startled by the abrupt subject change, she blinked at him like a blonde doe. “Uh…not in the last few hours.”

“And you never knew your family?”

“Nope.”

“Hmmm.”

“Have I mentioned you’re sexy when you go all ‘pondering physicianesque’?”

“No,” he said, pouncing on her and bearing her back on the bed like a cat with a new toy. “You haven’t. Please elaborate.”

“Nah…I’ve had enough of talking.” She grabbed his ears and pulled him down for a kiss. He could feel her tongue dancing in his mouth and suddenly everything was much louder, much clearer. It was amazing to make love with a woman and be able to see her, really see her. He couldn’t get enough.

He broke the kiss, having forgotten about her origins and regained new interest in her breasts, which were small, like winter apples. He sucked a nipple into his mouth and tongued it gently. She squirmed beside him and wriggled closer. He slipped his hand between her thighs and slid his fingers through her curls, still damp from their lovemaking. In fact, she was deliciously hot and sticky down there.

He slid his fingers through her slick folds, found her clit, pressed lightly, then rubbed the tender area around it, and dipped a finger inside her. He licked her cleavage, tasting her sweat and trying to resist the urge to give her a good nip, a mark that would last for days. His mark.

“Oh, Christ,” she gasped. “How do you do that? I thought we were done, but I could fuck you to death right now.”

“There are worse ways to go,” he teased, but his tongue felt too thick in his mouth, and now there were two fingers inside her.

Quick as a fish, she slid away from him, shoved him over on his back, and straddled him. “Stop me if you’ve heard this, like, a hundred times before, but you’re really good—”

“I’ve heard it be—ouch!” She’d reached back to cup his testicles, and her grip had tightened. “Never mind.”

“Good dog.” She giggled.

“I really don’t think you should mock my origins,” he said, but talking was getting much harder, as she had wrapped her fingers around his cock and was squeezing, then releasing, then squeezing. “After all, you—uh—what were we talking about?”