Child of the Moon Read online

  No Carrie.

  But when he entered the kitchen again, he saw her standing in front of the open refrigerator, selecting a beer.

  “Carrie,” he said.

  She turned. When she saw him, her face lit up. “Holden! I was starting to wonder if you were coming or not.”

  He walked over to her, smiling. “I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been looking everywhere.”

  “I’m glad you found me.” She stopped next to the counter, setting down her beer.

  He stepped close, so that there were only inches between their bodies. “I was afraid I wasn’t going to find you.”

  She peered up at him. “Well, you did.”

  “You don’t understand. The only reason I’m here is to see you.” Jesus, had he just said that out loud? What was she going to think of him?

  She smiled. “The only reason?”

  He swallowed. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  She shut her eyes, as if savoring the moment. “I never thought you’d say that about me.”

  So, she liked that? Good, because he wasn’t sure if she even liked him at all. Sometimes, he really thought she did, but then other times, she seemed so aloof, he wasn’t sure.

  God, he wanted to touch her. He wanted to reach out and run his fingers over her creamy skin, touch her soft cheek. But Mel had said not to push, so he just looked at her. He kept his hands to himself.

  “I want to get to know you, Carrie Beckett,” he said.

  She giggled. “You know me, Holden Rane.”

  “No, I don’t know—”

  She put her finger against his lips, silencing him.

  He was stunned at the sensation of her finger against his lip. He hadn’t expected to feel it as intensely as he did. It was only a finger, only his mouth. But it seemed to go all the way through him. He sucked in breath through his nose.

  She dragged her finger down over his chin. She seized it. And then she tugged him down to kiss her.

  Meeting her lips was an avalanche of sweetness. He gathered her into his arms, pulling her against his body. Her mouth opened beneath his, and their tongues touched. It was dizzyingly good. He clung to her, feeling as if he’d been swept away to paradise, never wanting to let her go.

  Well, he thought. So much for talking.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carrie grabbed Holden’s hand and dragged him after her, out of the kitchen and up the steps. She couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Holden had shown up at this party, and he was all about her, not anything else. He liked her.

  She’d been crushing on him for so long, but she’d never expected that her crush would ever come to anything. And she knew, as she tugged him along, that the wolf had brought this to her. If she hadn’t found her wolf, she wouldn’t have found her confidence either, and then Holden would never have seen her true self.

  She almost pulled him into her bedroom, but suddenly, it seemed like a juvenile place for them to go. Mick was in the guest bedroom. So, she took Holden to her parents’ bedroom. It gave her a twinge—guilt and sadness—but she shoved it away. She was having this moment with Holden, and she wasn’t letting anything get in the way of it.

  “Whoa,” said Holden, looking around the room. “I thought we’d just… you know, talk.”

  She nodded. “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

  He looked down at his shoes. He didn’t say anything.

  She waited. If he wanted to talk, she was okay with that. She’d be happy to talk about anything he liked. She realized that she simply liked being close to him.

  But he didn’t say anything.

  And she was staring at him—at his long, curly eyelashes and the cleft in his chin—and she couldn’t help it. She had to kiss him again.

  The minute she did, he let out a soft groan, a release or surrender, and he wrapped his arms tight around her.

  She had never kissed anyone for so long before. Her kissing experience was actually fairly limited. She’d kissed a few boys in middle school—before it had become so obvious that she was incredibly weird—but nothing in years. Except Mick, of course.

  But thinking about Mick right now made her feel a little queasy, so she put him out of her mind too.

  She concentrated on nothing but the endless kiss she was sharing with Holden. His tongue was dancing with hers, and his lips were moving with hers, and he was slowly massaging a circle at the small of her back, and she felt like she’d been transported to another world where everything was puffy and frothy and perfect. She clutched at his shoulders, then moved her hands lower over his biceps, over his waist.

  He wasn’t quite as tightly muscled as Mick, but he was still—

  Damn it. Why did she keep thinking about Mick?

  Holden’s mouth left hers and began to travel over her jaw, then down over the sensitive flesh of her neck.

  She gasped.

  He nipped her earlobe.

  She shivered. It felt amazing. She held onto him.

  Together, they fell onto her parents’ bed.

  Holden was on top of her now. His mouth was working at her neck and ear. Every lick, every caress, sent shudders of pleasure through her body. She was so worked up now. She’d never felt anything quite so good, and she wanted to drown in it. She surrendered to him, giving herself over to the sensation.

  But somehow, surrendering her physical body was similar to the way she’d surrendered to the shift.

  And before she could stop it, she realized the wolf was waking up. It was stirring inside her body.

  But no. It wasn’t a full moon. She couldn’t shift. At least, she didn’t think she could.

  But the wolf stretched inside her body. Its claws dragged themselves against the base of her neck.

  She fought the wolf, somehow forced it down.

  But not entirely, because she still felt wild and unchecked.

  Suddenly, she had pushed Holden over onto his back. Now she was on top of him, and she was running her hands over his chest, touching him anywhere she pleased. She thrust her fingers under his shirt, touched the smooth skin of his stomach.

  He gasped.

  She kissed him.

  “Carrie,” he panted, “we don’t have to move so fast.”

  But he was wrong. They did have to move this fast. Because she knew the wolf wanted out, and she knew that the only thing that would pacify the wolf was blood. So, she had to give in to some other primal desire, some substitution, because otherwise, she was going to lose control.

  She ripped open his shirt.

  He looked down, startled. “Whoa.”

  “Don’t you want me?” she whispered.

  He gazed up at her in longing. “More than anything… but… we don’t have to be in a rush.”

  “Why wait?” she murmured.

  “Because…” He seemed so confused. “Are you sure you want this?”

  She reached down to unbutton his jeans.

  His breath quickened, but he didn’t try to stop her.

  When she freed him, he was stiff, standing straight up. She ran her fingers over him, unsure of what to do with him now. She knew the basics, of course, but apart from the time with Mick, she’d never really—

  God damn it. Not Mick again. She resolved to wipe him from her mind for the rest of the experience.

  She wrapped her hand around Holden’s shaft.

  He grunted. He touched her face. His hands wandered lower, down her chest to fondle her breasts through her clothes.

  The wolf surged in her at his touch, at the pleasure he gave her. She was frightened for a moment, worried that the animal would rip through her and take over everything. She saw Holden’s throat, pale and vulnerable, and she had an urge, a taste for blood.

  So, she tore her shirt over her head, yanking off her bra at the same time.

  Holden sighed as he saw her bare breasts. He pulled her down, put his mouth on her nipples.

  That was very good. She shut her eyes. She bit her lip. Sh
e let the pleasure wash through her.

  Holden was busy with her pants, unbuttoning and unzipping. His hand was between her legs. He was clumsy and confused—brushing her in the right spot and then fumbling away to some other place.

  She thought about showing him, moving his hand. But then she was embarrassed. And she didn’t think it mattered.

  The wolf was prancing inside her, and the wolf needed some kind of release.

  Carrie shrugged completely out of her pants and straddled Holden. The wolf prodded her on, and she knew she had to do it.

  She seized his thick shaft, and she pressed it against her opening.

  He thrust into her right away.

  And it hurt.

  Carrie winced. She’d never done this before. She guessed she remembered now, vaguely, like in a distant dream, that this was supposed to hurt her the first time. She froze, not moving against him. She was on top of him, so they were stuck together, neither of them doing anything.

  Holden made a few shallow thrusts into her. His eyes were closed.

  Was the pain worse or better? Carrie couldn’t tell.

  Holden rolled them both over, trapping her beneath him. And now he was laboring over her, driving himself in and out of her body again and again.

  It sort of hurt. It sort of didn’t. And it… sort of felt good. But not in the good way that everything had felt before. She was too shocked, like she’d lost the thread of before, like she’d been yanked out of her transported other world. Now she was back in the real world, and everything was so blunt and obvious. She and Holden were naked. He was inside her. She was…

  Oh, God. She was having sex.

  She let out a little whimper.

  Holden opened his eyes and peered down at her. His voice was low and soft. “Hey, you okay?”

  She gasped a little. Looking into his eyes was shockingly intimate now that their bodies were connected. She reached up to trace the outline of his lip.

  He kissed her fingers. “Carrie, you feel…” He let out a sigh.

  And there was the thread again. The pleasure thread. She grasped it, and suddenly his thrusts within her felt much nicer. She gasped.

  He kissed her.

  She ran her fingers over his back. She pressed him closer. She began to move her hips with his, and she had a sudden sensation that they were truly connected. That the physical merging had affected them on some deeper level. They were part of each other now.

  The wolf stretched out in her body, and it howled silently, but Carrie could feel it. Something was happening to her.

  She clutched Holden, her nails digging into his back. She threw her head back, and she let out a long, low moan.

  * * *

  Holden was half-aware of the fact that they weren’t using a condom, and that was a bad thing. He kept telling himself to pull out and put one on, but he couldn’t convince himself to do it. He’d never felt anything like this before.

  He was so confused. He’d tried to do what Mel said, to get to know her, not to pressure her. But Carrie had really taken the lead on this. He’d hadn’t pushed at all. She’d ripped off his clothes. She’d put him inside her.

  And being inside her…

  Oh, Jesus.

  Maybe it was just because he wasn’t wearing a condom. He’d never done that before. So maybe that was why this was so awesome. But he wasn’t sure about that. It seemed like something else was going on.

  He was looking into her eyes, and she was looking back at him. Her eyes were so dark and wild, and he always felt lost in them, but now he felt like he was anchored to something in her. He felt like pieces of himself were leaving his body and taking up permanent residence in hers. But he… well, he kind of liked it.

  Not kind of, in fact. Really.

  He wanted to give her everything. He’d never felt so good in his entire life, and he’d never felt like this about any girl, ever.

  And then she was kissing him again, and that was good.

  Her fingers eased down his back, cupping the cheeks of his ass, urging him deeper into her.

  He groaned.

  She was so warm and wet and tight and amazing, and he didn’t know how much longer he’d last before he came. He wanted to wait. He wanted her to like this. He wanted to make sure that he got her off too. But he had to admit that he had no idea how to do that. It hadn’t even been important to him before, not when he was with the other girls. He’d always figured they must have enjoyed themselves if they came back for more.

  But with Carrie…

  Carrie seemed like a delicate, sacred, sweet flower to him. He wanted to worship her. He felt honored to be allowed to even be inside her body like this. That she would allow him to do this to her was unthinkably amazing.

  He caressed one of her breasts. They were small and teacup-shaped, topped with the tiniest of pink nipples. She was so beautiful.

  She was panting under him, gasping when he was gasping, and he felt like they were connected somehow, but he couldn’t tell if she was liking this. He couldn’t tell if she was going to come or not.

  He didn’t think he could wait much longer.

  And he also knew that he shouldn’t come inside her, as positively amazing as that sounded. There was no condom, and they weren’t being safe, but it would be twice as bad if he didn’t pull out.

  He kissed her again, kissed her as thoroughly as he could manage. And then he stroked deep into her a few more times before he disengaged.

  She let out a little mew of surprise.

  He dragged his cock against her soft belly. Once. Twice. And then…

  He let go, everything exploding out of him, and the world was wiped out with white-hot pleasure. For several seconds, all he could feel was the waves of it pumping out of him. So good. So very, very fucking good.

  He opened his eyes, gasping for breath.

  Carrie looked down at her stomach. She probed his semen with one finger. “Oh,” she whispered.

  He struggled to slow his breathing. “Sorry.”

  * * *

  Mick moved away from the doorway at that moment. He’d been standing there, looking through the door, which was only open a crack. He’d been watching it all.

  He hadn’t meant to watch. He hadn’t meant to see it at all. He’d been prowling the upstairs, fuming over this party, wondering why he’d agreed to it. His feelings about Carrie were complicated, and he couldn’t quite make sense of them.

  When Mick had agreed to become Carrie’s alpha, he’d only done it because he felt it would benefit him. He was an odd choice—too young, and not already an established alpha. Deedee, the woman who coordinated the adopted werewolves, had trouble finding anyone to alpha little Carrie. There was a large number of children Carrie’s age at the time. Each of these children needed an alpha, and there were so many of them. Resources were stretched thin.

  Generally, Deedee picked wolves who were already alphas. She thought that experienced alphas would be better to take on the child wolves that she’d placed with human adoptive families. But in Carrie’s case, Deedee had no choice. Mick was the only person who was willing to do it, and so she agreed, even though he had no experience.

  Mick had been eighteen at the time. Young and reckless. He was up for anything. If he became an alpha himself, he’d be free of his own pack bonds, and he wanted that desperately.

  He remembered that he’d laughed off the responsibilities. What did he have to do anyway? Keep her from shifting at the full moon? That was easy enough. He could do it from far away, because the bond he had with her allowed him to control her even over long distances.

  He laughed off the warnings as well. His uncle and his aunt had both lectured him on the dangers of unnatural pairings—that an alpha who wasn’t blood related to a beta occasionally took to it quite badly. They told him the story of Oliver, a wolf who’d gone around alpha-ing young wolves to him, creating an enormous pack of twenty wolves. Oliver and his pack traveled together, going from town to town, creating carnage
. He would force all his betas to shift and they’d attack and kill the people in a house. Then they’d steal their food and valuables and money. It was the way they lived. At least, until Oliver went nuts and massacred all of his own beta wolves one night.

  Mick was certain he was nothing like Oliver. He didn’t have nineteen betas, for one thing, and he wasn’t leading a bloodthirsty lifestyle. There were werewolves who didn’t value human life. Mick wasn’t one of them. He didn’t enjoy killing.

  Then he thought about burying Carrie’s parents in the woods, and he felt a strange twinge. Why had he done that?

  Oh, it was ridiculous. He wasn’t Oliver. And even if there were other alphas who’d gone a little crazy after being tied to a beta they weren’t related to, there were lots of others who’d handled the bond just fine.

  The bond.

  It was the bond he hadn’t counted on. He hadn’t expected it to be so strong. He hadn’t expected it to affect him so deeply. From the moment that he became Carrie’s alpha, he was conscious of her at all times. She was always with him, a tiny thread that connected the two of them no matter how far apart they were. He thought of her constantly. Worried over her. Wished that he could be near her.

  Of course, he knew that wasn’t part of the deal. He wasn’t meant to be part of her life. He was only meant to stay in the shadows until she was old enough to form her own pack and become an alpha in her own right.

  But he simply hadn’t been able to stay away. He’d checked on her often. He didn’t let her see him, but he watched her from the shadows. She’d been a little girl when it started, and he’d watched her grow up, every year more a beautiful young woman. That had been a slow surprise. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of her growth, why he’d somehow assumed that she’d be that little girl forever. But she wasn’t. She was lovely now, and when he looked at her, he felt things stir within him. Things that the wolf part of him shied away from in horror. Things that the human part of him couldn’t squelch.

  All he knew was that he couldn’t keep away anymore. He wasn’t sure what had made him do it, but at some point, he’d known that he had to be with her. He needed to know her. He needed her to know him. He wanted to be part of her life.