Trial by Moon Read online

  “You went to a bus station and came in contact with polyester,” he assesses. “Listening is not your forte.” His palm goes over the hives on my arms.

  “I’m done with this shit,” I tell him. “I’ve been a werewolf. I get it. Now turn me back.”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart,” he says with a low laugh. “That’s not how this works.”

  I push away, frustrated and fighting my senses, and glare up at him. It’s a mistake. The moment I see his features and feel the predatory intensity of his gaze, my breath catches, and a very different set of feelings surges inside me. My inner wolf is begging me for more, to move closer, to lick him again.

  “I’m done.” I ground out the words between clenched teeth. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You didn’t show up at work,” he points out.

  “You don’t get to order me around!”

  “It’s called common courtesy. All you had to say was, hey, Ben, I’m going by my house. Be in later,” he growls.

  “I hate you,” I murmur but clutch him closer.

  He cups my cheek in one hand, and the whole world falls away. One simple touch, and I forget everything. “Really?” he whispers.

  “Yeah,” I reply breathlessly.

  “So I guess you aren’t interested in fucking me.”

  I’ve already undressed him twice mentally in the span of the two minutes he’s been here, and I know he can smell how aroused I am every fucking time he touches me. It’s magic – but it’s strong magic. My emotions are whirling deep inside me, the grief I can’t shed or block for long, no matter what I do.

  Except … when I was running last night. And … when I woke up in his arms. His magic is better than N-Thrall and vodka combined.

  I shift in his arms to my knees and lean forward, letting my lips brush his. Fire and need fly through me, and the primal part of me, the wolf, is stoked to life so fast, I’m not able to control my reaction.

  I bite his lip. Hard enough to draw blood.

  “Oh, shit.” Leaning back, I stare at him, startled. “I’m so sorry. I’ve never done that before.” I can’t look away from his lip either. His blood doesn’t smell like what I sensed in the forest. It’s bitter, and I wonder if this is what keeps wolves from eating one another.

  “I like it rough,” he says in a husky voice. “If I get too rough, tell me.”

  My eyes lift to his. I can’t speak – not with that promise ricocheting around my brain. My inner wolf is swooning while I’m trying to rein in lust stronger than any single emotion I’ve ever felt.

  Benjamin kisses me, hard and deep, possessive and powerful, and his arms tighten around me. His taste is crippling, more so than his smell, and I take his face in my hands to deepen the kiss. I need more of him and try to devour every part of the hot, velvety depths of his mouth.

  Whether it’s the wolf or my grief or my succubus blood, something snaps within me, and I straddle him, not caring about ripping my dress in my desperation to feel his erection against the part of me aching for him. His hands shove my dress to my hips, and he slips one finger inside me.

  Him fingering me is twenty times better than any other sexual experience I’ve had to date. I’m so aware of every inch of my body, so sensitive to the faintest whisper of air conditioning, to his hot lips branding my jaw and neck, to him tickling my g-spot.

  I’m ready to come already, and we haven’t even started. At the back of my mind, I’m aware we’re fooling around in the most sacred place in my house, but no part of this thought can stick when the animal side of me is in control.

  His dick bulges beneath the material of his jeans, and I rub myself against him, loving the scent of our combined arousal.

  “You ready?” he whispers and slides his finger free of my pussy.

  “God yes!”

  He shifts me back to my knees and stands long enough to strip out of his jeans and unleash that full, thick, bulging cock of his. I stare at it, almost dazed by lust, before realizing I need to strip as well. I do so with fumbling hands and the almost painful ache of not being in contact with him.

  He kneels when he’s done and takes me into his arms again. I straddle him, groaning at the feel of his cock parting my pussy.

  “First time I choose how,” he warns me.

  “I don’t care!” I gasp and try to angle my body so I can pierce the part of me that aches with his dick. He grips my hips, preventing me from soothing my burn and instead, twists me around, forcing me to face away from him.

  His dick is at my lower back, his arms wrapping around me to draw me into him once more. I can’t sit still. The primal wolf in me is leaping for more, and I wriggle in response.

  Benjamin’s hands slide down my arms, and he takes my wrists, kissing my neck as he does so. He’s growling softly, low in his chest, and I close my eyes, in utter ecstasy at being encased in his scent and touch.

  Gripping my wrists, he lowers me to the floor and holds me on my belly, hands pinned near my head, his strong body covering mine. One arm lifts my hips, so he can penetrate me, and I brace myself, vaguely alarmed he’s holding me down yet too turned on to care.

  He bites the back of my neck – hard. I give a strangled cry, but he keeps me in place – and plunges his dick into me.

  I feel myself sliding again, out of my human world and into the one of sensuality, of primal, animalistic need, of awareness so intense, I soon understand why he has a sound-proof bedroom.

  He fucks me hard and swift from behind, his thick cock filling me, tearing me from the inside out, showing me why sex with a human boy never really cut it. My body comes alive. I feel every inch of him, every stroke against my g-spot, every sigh my body gives when he pierces me anew.

  I claw at the floor, crying his name with complete abandon, climaxing multiple times before he gets there once. He holds me down and grips the back of my neck with his teeth, keeping me in place when I want nothing more than to cover myself in him.

  Shifting his arm around my torso, he moves back into a sit, his thick dick still deep inside me, and pulls me against his chest.

  “Still with me?” he whispers.

  My body is shaking from the intensity of being fucked and his skin against mine, from the three orgasms he’s wrung from me. I’m raw already and he’s not even breathing hard. “Yeah,” I breathe.

  His hands go down my body, and I rest back against him. He fills my pussy like nothing I ever imagined. When his fingers begin to stroke my clit, I moan, start to slide, and then just let go.

  We fuck like animals, over and over, with reckless desire and mindless need. From behind, with him on top, with me pressed against the wall … there’s nothing he tells me to do I won’t, and I even get used to him holding me down, to him commanding my body and thrusting deep and fast until I’m begging him to put an end to my torture and let me come.

  He’s rough and pushes me to extremes. Pulling my hair, slapping my ass, shoving his cock deep into my throat then fucking me so hard, it’s all I can do to hang on to his perfect body. From the second he enters me the first time until the moment I beg him to stop, he’s aggressive, thorough, intense, as if he wants to claim every part of me. When I come, I climax hard enough that I almost black out.

  When I collapse on top of him, completely spent and shaking, he laughs softly and rolls us onto our sides before scooping me up in his arms and pulling me into his body. It takes a while for me to stop panting and quivering, for my mind to venture returning after sensory overload of a much more pleasurable kind.

  My eyes are closed, and I’m content floating in the afterglow of intense sex. He kisses my face and slings one leg over my thighs to keep our bodies as close together as possible. His smooth, warm skin presses to mine. I breathe him in then lick him with a growl of satisfaction.

  “I think I want to fuck as a werewolf and live as a human,” I murmur.

  “For a week you can. You can stay with me.”

  Desire stirs within me. “You want a Kingmaker
in your house?”

  “I want to fuck you every chance I get.”

  It sounds perfect to me. My eyelids flutter open, and I look past his chest to the bookshelves. It’s then, when the wolf inside me is sated, that I realize where we are.

  “Oh, shit,” I say with some dismay and struggle to sit. “It’s like having sex in front of my dad.”

  Benjamin props himself up on one elbow, intent eyes on me. “Now this place won’t make you sad.”

  My eyebrows furrow, and I meet his gaze. I have the urge to kiss him again, to sink into him and relax once more. Sensing it, he cups the back of my neck in one large palm and pulls me in for a kiss. It’s hungry, like every other kiss, and commanding. But instead of bending me over and fucking me again, he releases me.

  “You come here to cry don’t you?” he asks.

  I flush and look away. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Emotions have scents. I smell your sorrow here. Your tears.”

  Is a werewolf capable of compassion? My father would say no, but it almost seems like Benjamin is sympathetic. I gaze at him warily. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Now when you come here, you’ll smell us and remember the one time you didn’t cry.”

  It’s quite possibly the sweetest thing anyone has said to me since my father’s death. Coming from Benjamin, it’s not an example of someone who cares for me doing something nice. It’s more like … the way he is. I can’t explain the instinct except he didn’t come here with the premeditated plan of making me feel better. He saw me hurting and reacted, because it’s what he does. According to my were-bitch, anyway.

  “I don’t want you doing nice things for me,” I say, thoroughly confused by him. “Fucking is one thing. I can do one night stands and no-strings-attached. But don’t … don’t be nice.”

  “You’ve got some serious issues,” he observes.

  “I’m a Kingmaker. I’m not supposed to get involved with your kind.”

  “It’s not being a Kingmaker that stands between you and the rest of us.”

  I’m not sure what to say. I’m uncomfortable again, but I don’t know why. “Do you always fuck that hard?” I ask instead.

  “Always.” His eyes glimmer with promise. “I can go rougher tonight, if you’re up for it.”

  “You assume I’ll fuck you tonight.”

  “Yeah.” He smiles and draws against him. “Rougher?”

  God help me, I want him again. I start to laugh. I’m already raw and sore – and completely aroused. I sink onto my back and tug him with me. “Show me what you got, werewolf,” I tease. My knees part, and I lift my hips to feel his cock against my pussy.

  He takes my wrists and pins them above my head. “Brave,” he says, scouring my face with his predatory gaze. “Not afraid to be eaten?”

  “I look forward to it,” I say playfully. I’m somersaulting internally, wanting to stamp out how deeply his simple explanation for fucking me here in my father’s library shook me. These predators are fucking with me, have been since I first met them.

  “Ask me to fuck you. To make you mine.”

  Unease flickers inside me. I’m not like him or any other supernatural. I won’t ever be his. At least, not really, because I’m a Kingmaker. My breath catches at the low, barely human growl. “Fuck me, Benjamin. Make me yours,” I whisper what he wants me to anyway.

  The tip of his dick nudges my pussy, and I shift restlessly against him and tug at the grip he has around my wrists. He’s watching me in a way that both thrills and scares me, as if he really is considering eating me. Or … he’s doing something worse and trying to figure me out. There’s nothing I want less in the world than intimacy or friendship with a supernatural. Fucking is one thing.

  “Please,” I beg mockingly, aware of how seriously he takes his alpha role. “Please fuck me. Please make me yours.” And don’t kill me. I wrap my legs around his slim hips in anticipation of another rough, rocky fuck.

  “As much as I want to feel your tight, hot pussy around my dick right now, I’m going to decline,” he says. “I have a feeling you’re not used to someone calling you out when you’re being a manipulative bitch. But I will.”

  Releasing me, he sits back.

  Dazed, I stare at the ceiling for a moment.

  He stands and gets dressed.

  “Wait, what?” I ask and roll onto my side. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah.”

  I watch, not exactly sure what happened or how to rein in my emotions.

  “And dump the drugs,” he directs me.

  Warmth fills me. “Fuck you, Benjamin. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

  “There’s the Kingmaker in you.” He frowns. “You wanna fuck me, you dump the drugs,” he says calmly. “I can smell them on you and taste them in you. Choose your high: fucking me or taking drugs. You can’t have both but you will come back for seconds. If I smell them on you, I won’t lay a finger on you.”

  And he leaves. Just like that.

  Chapter Five

  Hours later, after hiding out in my room the rest of the day, I’m still pissed and not entirely certain I understand what his problem is. He’s sent me two messages, the first with the address of his corporate headquarters, and the second an open invitation to run with him at the lake.

  I delete both and sit after dark in my room with two of my father’s books: the latest record on werewolves my father wrote and the Book of Secrets. Moonlight slips through the cracks in my blinds. I’m drawn to it, tormented by it. Tonight, the sounds and smells of my world are so much louder, and the urge to run makes my pulse pound. I’m reading in the dark, because, well, werewolves can. Sitting on my nightstand is the baggie with my remaining N-Thralls. I’ve been meaning to take them all day but haven’t yet.

  I tell myself it’s because I don’t need them but in truth … I don’t know. Something about how Benjamin left bothers me. It’s not rejection or being dumped. It’s his ultimatum. It makes me sad, and I don’t understand why. The animal side of me mourns him, as if he’s as dead as my father.

  I also crave him more than the drugs, and not all of that is my newfound wolf. Some of it is me, and I’m not sure what to do with that.

  The sex is incredible, and being with him is better than four baggies of N-Thralls. There’s no question about which I’d rather have in my life, even if temporarily. I’d rather have his cock inside me and his scent ingrained into my skin than a free, lifetime supply of N-Thralls.

  Whatever transformation began last night is still occurring. I don’t feel like me, and there’s a tiny, tiny part of me that wants to ask him about the changes new werewolves go through.

  I’m not about to, though. It’s more of a pride thing holding me back. What right does a supernatural have to treat a Kingmaker like he did? Shouldn’t he be groveling and trying to please me so I make him the overall leader of the clans? Now that I know there’s a thirty three percent chance I exile him, I start to think he should definitely be sucking up to me.

  Whenever I get angry at him, I recall what else he said in the study. He unexpectedly understood my grief, too, and I don’t know which one bothers me more. My father told me all the time supernaturals weren’t capable of real emotion, but Ben clearly is. It takes empathy to do something nice for someone who’s hurting.

  My father was strict about the no-friends, no-ties to anyone policy, and I find myself wishing I’d thought to rebel against this restriction during the many years I was growing up. If I’d had a werewolf friend as a kid, would I understand them better?

  I’ve always been in a position where I have to hide who I am: a supernatural among humans. A Kingmaker among supernaturals. There’s no real fit for me in either world. I’m not even sure I know who I am. My father lectured me from the time I was four or five until shortly before his death about the inherent dangers of trusting supernaturals and humans. Being alone became my comfort zone long ago.

  It was always just us, and now h
e’s gone. I’m feeling a little more lost tonight than usual and ... craving Benjamin despite his cold exit.

  Whenever moonlight grazes my skin, I want to smash things and run naked down the street screaming at the top of my lungs. I’m resisting the wild side of me, caging my inner wolf howling to be free in the forest, and it’s torture.

  With a frustrated sigh, I try for the umpteenth time to focus on the book. I’ve read all twenty wordy pages of the Book of Secrets and have been trying to pay attention to the history of Benjamin and his father, the previous werewolf clan leader.

  “Born Benjamin Washington Smith in eighteen twelve, the first and primary son of Adam Washington Smith, fourteenth pack leader, blah blah blah,” I mutter. I kind of want to know more about Ben but am also a little leery of learning too much about someone I’m not supposed to like or trust. “In the tradition of supernatural clan leaders, Benjamin will become known as Kingmaker’s killer number seventeen.”

  I frown and open the Book of Secrets to find the seventeenth name in my family line.

  “Tory Kingmaker, death by werewolf.” I return to the passage, suddenly interested. “’As is tradition, a clan leader who kills one Kingmaker will likely not kill another.’”

  I reread the passage. My father just told me who probably didn’t kill him, but since this was written before his death, how can he be so sure? Why does it feel like I’m missing part of this story? How do the supernaturals seem to know about the rituals I’m just figuring out? And how did my father become such an expert and write books when I barely know more than what supernatural clans exist?

  My phone pings, indicating a text. I glare at it before reluctantly picking it up. When I see Benjamin’s name across the screen, I want to simultaneously throw the phone and sigh with teenage giddiness. I’ve begun to feel possessed, and my wolf side and I aren’t on the same sheet of music at all.

  “Down, bitch,” I tell her aloud then laugh at my pun.

  What’s your favorite color?

  I stare at his message, set my phone down, and then pick it up. He’s already fucked me and knows my body inside and out. Why does he want to know my favorite color?