Page 61 of A Malicious Menagerie
Chase is waiting for me by the door like he usually is, gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. He’s looking out the opposite way, his back turned to me, until he cocks his head at the sound of my arrival and glances over his shoulder at me. When he sees my costume, a slow, heated grin spreads across his face. “Well, hello, Little Red Riding Hood.”
I flutter my eyelashes at him. “Hello, Mr. Wolf. Happy Halloween.”
“Guess I forgot my costume,” Chase muses, spreading his arms to indicate his half-naked state.
I snort. “Well, lucky that you have a built-in costume, then.”
This time, his grin is dominated by his savage fangs. “Good point.”
“Why, Grandmother, what big teeth you have,” I tease.
“The better to eat you with, my dear,” he rumbles, and all my humor promptly turns to lust at the hot look in his eyes. He crooks a finger at me. “Come closer, Little Red.”
“I don’t know,” I muse, tapping my lower lip thoughtfully and feeling ariot of butterflies in my stomach when his sharp gaze immediately tracks the movement. “You look like you want to lead me astray.”
“Only if youwantto be led astray,” he promises darkly.
A little shiver of anticipation raises goosebumps over my bare arms as I tap my card to the sensor to let myself into his enclosure. He immediately prowls toward me, but I quickly sidestep him. “Anna,” he grumbles, his voice more wolf than man. “Come here.”
Ignoring his command, I take another step away, watching as he tracks my movements like a hawk sighting a rabbit. My heart kicks at my sternum in warning. “When we met—reallymet—you told me you’d chase me, if I like.”
Chase freezes, and I can see his thoughts whirling as he desperately tries to figure out if I’m serious. “Anna,” he growls, his voice low and eyes glinting sharp and metallic in the low light, “if you run, I will catch you. And I willdevouryou.”
“Promise?” I ask breathlessly. And, before he can respond, I spin on my heel and take off into the trees.
I hear his curse transform into a snarl before the solid tree trunks and brush fold me into their embrace and muffle the sound. Instead, I’m left with the crackle of leaves and twigs under my feet and the rasp of my breath in and out of my lungs. My heart is beating so strongly that I feel the throb of my pulse everywhere, from my pumping arms to my scurrying legs to the frantic ache between my thighs. I know Chase will catch me. He has the hometown advantage, and besides, he’s a wolf.
The question is how long I can evade him.
My boots skitter and slide over the slick leaf litter as I dodge between trees and vault over low boulders. I’ve never considered myself particularly athletic, but adrenaline is lending me strength and speed I could otherwise never claim. I have a vague map in my head of Chase’s domain, and I zigzag my way around any big clearings that might give him a better opportunity of seeing me.
I’m just starting to change my mind and think that I might have a chance of winning this game when there’s a sudden burst of movement behind me. A massive figure darts between the trees to my rear, the breeze stirring myred cape as the wolf just narrowly misses bowling me over.
I emit an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak and redouble my efforts, my breath burning in my chest and muscles threatening to give out as I up my pace. There’s the brief sound of paws thudding on dirt before the figure slips to one side and disappears. An unnerving silence is left in his wake.
This is about the point when I realize that Chase missed me on purpose. He’s toying with me, showing me he can win at any time but giving me tastes of victory that I can’t resist diving for, like a cat batting a mouse between its paws.
More determined than ever, I turn sharply to the left. There are some low brambles that I might be small enough to crawl under but that Chase definitely won’t be able to navigate, even as a human man. Unfortunately, he must intuit my plan because he bursts out of the brush in front of me to block my path.
Not quite a wolf but not quite a man, Chase has turned himself into some unholy hybrid of the two. He stands crouched on two powerful hind legs, his weight balanced on his clawed toes with his hocks raised like a wolf’s. Short, glistening blue-black fur covers his skin but does nothing to hide his bulging biceps or the taut delineations between his abdominals. His muzzle is blunted, though still lined with viciously jagged teeth, and the triumphant grin he gives me makes his amber gaze glint like the edge of a dagger.
Shaking off my shock—I didn’t even know that he coulddothat, halt the transition midway—I do an about-face and take off in the other direction, cursing my stymied plan.
My brain is still churning, trying to come up with another strategy instead of mindless flight, when the steel bars marking the wall of the cage come into view.
I’m careening through the woods too fast to stop. I collide with the unforgiving metal with anoomph, what little breath I have wheezing out of me. Before I can pull myself together enough to push off the bars and keep going, a hot, heavy weight comes up against my back, trapping me between steel and furred muscle.
Fueled by some innate instinct tofight, I wrap my fingers around the barsuntil my knuckles blanch and shove backwards with all my might, trying to buck him off me. I might as well be swatting at an elephant for all the good the maneuver does me. His thick arms come up on either side of me, caging me in, and his clawed fingers curl around mine to seal my palms to the metal poles. Fear and arousal play tug of war with my heart like wolves with their kill until I have no idea which is winning.
Completely at his mercy, there isn’t much I can do except take quick, gasping breaths, trying to fill my overwrought lungs. With every desperate inhale, the scent of pine and spice and warm fur floods my senses. The werewolf—Chase, I remind myself, which eases my galloping heartbeat only a little—leans his head down, his whiskered muzzle brushing my cheek as he tips my head to one side with his nose and sniffs at my exposed throat. Growling with satisfaction, he laves his tongue down my fluttering pulse and along the neckline of my modest black blouse, leaving a trail of damp heat in his wake. The cape came with a low-cut velvet corset, but I wasn’t about to wearthatto work and give creepy John a show.
“Chase,” I whimper, my voice high and breathy. He huffs a hot breath against my skin that coasts down under my bra to tighten my nipples.
A moment later, there’s the sound of bones snapping and tendons creaking. I gasp as the black claws caging my hands transform into blunt fingers with rounded nails. When Chase’s cheek brushes mine again, all I can feel this time is the rasp of his stubble. “Told you I’d catch you,” he murmurs in my ear, prompting a shiver to crackle down my spine. “And I also told you what would happen next.” Before I can respond, he spins me around by my hips until my back is to the bars and makes good on his promise.
He starts at my mouth, slamming his lips down on mine as he tunnels his fingers through my hair. I gasp as he coaxes my lips to part so he can stroke his tongue along mine before drawing back to prick my sensitive lower lip with his fangs. The coppery taste of my own blood and the sharp sting should scare me off, but as my heart speeds in response, I remember how it felt to flee through the woods with him on my heels: terrifying, exhilarating, and freeing. As he leans back to lick the cherry-red smear from his bottom lip, I twine my fingers in his dark hair and pull him back down for more. Thecombination of adrenaline and desire is heady. I’ve never been high before, but I can’t imagine it feels better than this.
Once I have his lips back where I want them, my hands get bolder, my thumbs tracing the blade-sharp line of his jaw under the rasp of his stubble before I slip my palms down his neck to his broad shoulders. His skin is smooth and scalding under my fingertips, and my greedy hands can’t help but seek out more, first pressing to his firm pecs to feel the steady quake of his growl before dropping to his taut belly. I trace the grooves between each abdominal muscle with one featherlight fingertip, his skin twitching and core tightening in my wake until he feels like a marble statue carved by one of the masters. How many times have I fantasized about touching him like this? And, if I’m being honest with myself, how many times alone in my bed have I done a little more than justfantasize?
