“I think you do,” he purred, and a wickedness that had my stomach fluttering radiated from those eyes.
“You intend to devour me?” My voice croaked. He would feast on my flesh, slurp up my blood, gnaw on my bones.
Why had I not heeded his warning? Why had I come out alone into the night? I had seen this monster the night before. I knew what lurked in the darkness.
“I do. But not in the way I suspect you imagine.” With a growl, he scooped me up into his brawny arms. He pressed me against his muscular chest so firmly I could feel the beat of his heart beneath his ribs, violent and possessing. And then he sped with me through the night, racing at unnatural speed through the gardens and over the windswept parkland to the darkness of the woods where the trees stood like spindly spectres.
Once under the canopy, his pace slowed as he weaved in and out of the tree trunks, carrying me deeper and deeper into the wood. The darkness grew more and more impenetrable, the moon lost behind the branches that tangled above our heads.
I struggled in his arms, twisting and yanking against his grip. He only held me tighter, growling as I struggled.
“Lay still, little one,” he told me.
I turned my face away from his monstrous countenance. I did not want to look at those sharp teeth and think about the pain I’d endure when he sunk them into my flesh.
But there was another reason I kept my gaze locked away. I did not want to see the resemblance to the man in the monster’s face. I did not want to be entranced by those eyes, eyes that seemed to possess a power I could not fully comprehend.
Finally, we reached what looked like the mouth of a cave and he dropped me to my feet, panting as he stood before me.
I flinched away, but he followed, crooking a claw beneath my chin, the tip pinching my skin. He lifted my face, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“What are you?” I whispered, my curiosity untamable even before what was surely my inevitable death.
“I think you know.”
“A… a… werewolf?” I could hardly bring myself to say the word. It seemed like madness. Would I wake any moment to find myself in my bed, drenched in sweat, the bedclothes tangled?
But, no, this was no dream. The cold of the night stung my skin, the wind tickled my face and his scent drowned my senses.
“I am.” He held my chin in place, stroking the soft skin beneath my jaw with the pad of his thumb.
“How?”
“I have travelled to the strangest of places, Miss Samuels,” he said. “Prerogative of a younger son who must make his own fortune in this world.” My eyes were now locked with his and I noticed that richness in the colour of his irises again, the specks of gold. “I was bitten.”
He drew back the ripped remains of his shirt to reveal a deep scar on the side of his ribbed abdomen, the gnash of teeth marks clear in its curving shape. A strange desire to reach out and touch it overtook me. I could not resist.
He flinched as my cold fingertips brushed the fine fur of his stomach and, as I traced the damaged tissue, I felt the muscles beneath his skin ripple. He purred softly and his arm curled around my waist, dragging me against his body.
I braced myself. I closed my eyes.
“Do not be afraid, Miss Samuels,” he whispered, his mouth close to my ear, his warm breath tickling my skin in a way that had an unexpected sigh issue from my lips.
“I am not. I will meet my maker with my head held high.”
“Your maker?” He chuckled, leaning away from me, and at once, something sinful in me wished for that pressure of his hard body to return. “I intend to take you to heaven tonight, Miss Samuels, but not in that manner.”
“What can you mean?” He was toying with me. I had never liked to feel stupid, to be the one who did not understand the joke. And he was joking with me, I was sure.
“I am going to ruin you, Miss Samuels, utterly and thoroughly. I am going to make you mine.”
And then his hungry lips met my neck, sucking on my pulse as his hand slid up my body, over the curve of my hip and my waist and up to my breast. He squeezed, the thin material of my nightdress providing little obstruction. To my shame, my nipple stiffened and the pad of his thumb discovered the tight nub with obvious delight.
“Please, sir,” I begged, my body betraying me as shivers of desire danced up and down my spine. I had never been touched like this, never held, never kissed. In my dreams, the faceless men that stole away my innocence had always been the quiet, scholarly sort. Nothing like the creature that now took what he wanted with little care. And yet he did so with dizzying and irresistible passion.
I was not a silly girl, I reminded myself as those sharp fangs of his scraped down my neck to the cleavage of my nightgown. If he took me here in the woods, if anyone was to learn of this, it would ruin me, and snatch the few choices I had in life cruelly away. I would be cast out onto the street with no hope of any honourable family hiring me, not even to empty their chamber pots.
“Sir!” I pleaded again, as he tugged at the ribbon securing the neckline of my gown. “They will throw me out.”