Marked by the Moon

7

Alex had to be dreaming. She’d never slept with a man in her life.

Certainly she’d had sex. But that was always a quick one-hour stand; then either she would leave or he would. Alex had never trusted anyone enough to fall asleep with him.

Therefore, this had to be a dream.

But what a nice dream. She’d been so cold, in so much pain; then the pain went away, replaced by a soothing warmth that spread throughout her aching body. With the heat surrounding her, she slept better than she had since childhood.

She was safe. No one, nothing would hurt her. Not here. With him.

Warm breath, soft lips, his taste both fire and ice. Her hands fluttered over a flat stomach, tight pecs, hard biceps as callused fingertips sculpted her rib cage, the swell of her breasts, the taut, tingling peak of her nipples.

“Mmm,” she murmured, the sound vibrating against those lips, creating another kind of tingle.

She was cocooned in warmth; a chill hovered all around but it could not reach her. The dangerous, deadly world was gone. She lived in a magical place where all that existed were tantalizing sensations.

A strong, slightly scruffy leg wrapped around hers. Hands cupped her from behind and pulled her ever closer. The smooth, round head of a penis slid along her belly, and she gasped as every last inch of her flamed.

She reached for him in the darkness, and he was there. A mystery, a man, his touch making her forget… something. Everything. Until she remembered only this.

One tug on those biceps and he was above her, an instant later within her. Firm and fast, he gave; she took. Again and again and again.

“Come with me,” he growled.

“Yes,” she answered. “Yes.” The word a surrender she’d never given anyone else.

Her palms ran over his back, relishing the ripple of muscle, the sleek slide of skin. He smelled like the earth beneath the moon, the trees tipped with silver, a sky full of rain. She pressed her face into his neck, took a deep long whiff, then drew his flesh into her mouth and tasted. His flavor was salt and surf. She wanted to gobble him up, make him a part of her forever, and she knew just how.

Grasping his hips, she urged him on, until he swelled and stretched and—

“Now,” she whispered.

“What?” he answered.

Alex opened her eyes, just as Barlow opened his.

He’d been dreaming, and while he should have been disturbed that he’d been dreaming of her, the sex had been so incredible he’d ignored the warning whisper.

What could he say? He was a guy.

Most of the time.

But her teeth, while arousing, had also roused him and that one word had rumbled along his skin, tickling and taunting him. He’d half awakened, realizing he was on the verge of coming like a teenager in his bed, only to discover he wasn’t at home alone but on top of someone, penis surrounded by a slick, tight heat.

His eyes widened; so did hers. Her hands at his hips, clenched; he figured she’d shove him away, and he tensed, prepared to resist, until he remembered who she was and that he’d rather fuck a tiger than Alexandra Trevalyn.

Unfortunately, his body had other ideas.

She arched—most likely to buck him off—instead he slid in farther, the friction of skin along skin making him clench his jaw before he groaned aloud. It had been so long, and she was so damn tight. He felt like his cock was in a vise—a soft, damp, really great vise, one that could both caress him until he was mindless and squeeze him until he was dry.

Instead of shoving him away, her grip on his hips tightened. Her breath, fast and sharp, rubbed her peaked nipples against his chest in a tantalizing rhythm.

Julian stared into her flushed face, her dazed eyes, and understood. She was coming, too.

Oh, what the hell, he thought. Too late now to pretend this was a dream. Might as well make her scream. He wanted to.

He slowed his hips as he lengthened his thrusts. All the way out until she strained forward, all the way in until her breath caught at the back of her throat. Again and again, slowly increasing his speed, plunging ever deeper until neither of them could stop the inevitable.

She cried out. He took her mouth, drinking the sound, and at last she closed her eyes, releasing him to do the same.

He hoped he could now imagine she was someone else, anyone else, even no one, hell his hand was better than her—but just because he wasn’t seeing her didn’t mean she wasn’t there. The scent of her, the taste of her, the feel of her was all around him. And the orgasm…it went on and on and on.

He was still enjoying the final tremors—her, him, he didn’t know and he didn’t care—when her body, so warm and soft, turned cool and stiff. Before she could shove him off, he rolled away, staring at the roof of the cave as she sat up and rested her head upon her knees, curling into herself as if he’d just violated her.

Her thin back, the bones of her ribs standing out in sharp relief, that faint shadow of the bruise still upon them made her seem fragile, vulnerable, womanly. He didn’t even realize what he was doing until he saw his hand reaching out to touch—

“Don’t,” she said. “Just…don’t.”

Her voice was full of disgust and because of that, when she muttered, “Fuck me,” he dropped his hand and said, “I did.”

She punched him. He couldn’t say that he blamed her.

Alex didn’t realize she’d rounded on Barlow until her fist connected with his face.

He could have stopped her. That he didn’t confused her, and when she was confused, she lashed out. A lot of people did.

“What did you do to me?”

He rubbed his jaw as he looked her up and down. “Isn’t that obvious?”

She’d been shaking her hand, trying to make the numbness fade. He had a hard head, no shock there. But his words made her fingers curl inward once again.

He noticed and lifted a brow. “I gave you a shot,” he said. “I deserved it. But one’s all you get.”

She rolled her eyes. If she wanted to punch him again, she would. Alex let her fingers go limp. Right now she didn’t want to.

Just to be pissy, Alex yanked the blanket off Barlow and around her. Unfortunately that left him naked when he sat up, resting a wrist on his knee, open to her gaze.

She yanked her eyes from what lay below his waist and focused on an area just below his face. She’d left a mark on his neck.

“God,” she muttered, and ran a hand through her tangled hair. What the hell had happened?

Suddenly everything came back—the bear, the fight, then…everything went fuzzy.

Alex glanced down. The only remnants of the attack were some dried blood, a few bruises, and several scabbed-over claw marks. “What the—?” She ran her fingers over the wounds, wincing. They might be nearly healed but they still hurt.

Alex glanced up, but he was staring out the opening of the cave and not at her. “How?” she murmured.

He lifted one shoulder, lowered it. Alex had a flash of those muscles bunching beneath her palm as he thrust into her so deeply—

“Magic.”

She blinked, and the memory went away. “Magic,” she repeated. “Like shifting in the daytime.” He nodded. “Putting an invisibility cloak around us in LA.”

“A what?” he asked.

“Harry Potter.” She’d done a lot of reading in those hotel rooms. Alex waved her hand. “Never mind. You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Like that.”

“You healed me by magic,” she said slowly. “Then you made me do you.”

“You think I used magic to make you—” His cool blue eyes blazed hot with fury. “I don’t need sex that bad.”

“Could have fooled me,” she muttered.

Was she imagining things or did his cheeks flush just a little?

“Glass houses,” he said.

“Huh?”

“From the way you were writhing and moaning and coming, you needed it, too.”

She had. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

“What kind of man climbs into bed with an injured woman—”

“According to you, I’m not a man,” he snapped. “And because of me, you weren’t exactly injured. You were, however, blue with cold.”

Alex glanced at the still-swirling snowstorm outside the cave. “You were just keeping me warm?”

“Someone had to.”

Alex narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t have to seduce me.”

“Are you so sure it was me who seduced you?”

Alex opened her mouth, then shut it again. He was right. She wasn’t sure.

“How about we just forget it ever happened?” Alex asked.

“If you can, I can.” He lay down and yanked the quilt off her and onto him with one sharp tug.

“Hey!” She yanked it back.

He shrugged and let her, placing his arms behind his head and crossing his ankles. Unfortunately the sight of him—long and bronzed, legs and arms thick with muscle—made Alex consider throwing the quilt back over him again. Because for every inch of his skin she appeared to have a memory of touching, tasting—

“Stop it,” she muttered.

He opened one eye. “Stop what?”

“Your hoodoo, voodoo, witchy crap.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You made me want you.”

His lips quirked. “You wanted me?”

“As much as you wanted me.”

“Who said I did?”

Alex lowered her eyes to his now limp member; it twitched beneath her gaze. Alex smirked.

Barlow sat up, flicking the corner of the quilt over his lap. “I did not use magic on you.”

“You said—”

“I healed you,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “I did not have the anger for anything more.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“My magic is based in anger.”

“What are you, some kind of witch?”

“Do I look like an old woman with a cauldron and a cat?”

She tilted her head, peered at him for several seconds. “If you put on a hat, scowled just like that— maybe.”

He sighed, unamused. “I’m not a witch.”

“Sorcerer? Wizard? Warlock?”

“I don’t know what I am. I only know that when I get angry, what I want to happen, does.”

“Seriously?”

He lifted one finger. “Invisibility cloak.” A second finger. “Shifting in the sunlight.” A third. “Healing you.”

Alex lifted her thumb. “Doing me.”

“That I didn’t want.”

“Felt like it.”

He made an impatient sound. “I thought we were going to pretend that didn’t happen.”

“Right.” She flashed her hand in front of her face. “Forgotten.” If only it were that easy. “Tell me more about your anger magic.”

“I guess we aren’t going to sleep anymore.”

“You’re tired?”

“Guys usually fall asleep…after.”

“After what?” Alex asked sweetly, and batted her eyelashes.

She could have sworn she heard him laugh, but when she stopped batting and peered into his face all she saw was the same sour expression he wore whenever she was near.

“I have no idea how I became magic,” he said. “I only know that the first time I changed, I did so because of my fury.”

“You weren’t bitten?” she asked.

“Not all werewolves are bitten.”

“True,” she agreed. “There were the genetically engineered ones.”

“Mengele.”

Alex cast him a quick glance. “You know about that?”

“I’ve been around a very long time. I know about everything.”

Not everything. He didn’t know Alex had been engineered to spy. And he’d better not ever find out or she might end up magically dead.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I was born in the year 836 in what is now called Norway.”

Alex let her gaze wander over him from his big feet, to his big hands, to all the big parts in between. “You were a Viking?”

“To be correct, Viking was a verb. To go a Viking.”

“The act of conquering wherever, whatever, and whomever you wished.”

“Technically, yes.”

“How did you become furry?”

“Have you ever heard the Norse legend of the berserker?”

“No,” she lied. She wanted to hear his version.

Barlow lifted his brows, surprised. “Aren’t all Jäger- Suchers supposed to learn as much as they can about as many different types of shape-shifters as possible?”

“Where did you hear that?” He appeared to know more about the Jäger-Suchers than they knew about him.

“I have my sources.”

Edward had said every agent he’d sent after Barlow had never returned, so Alex could surmise just who those sources had been. She wondered how long they’d lasted under Barlow’s torture before they’d told him everything.

She didn’t plan to.

“A berserker,” Barlow continued, “is a Norse warrior who, in the heat of battle, becomes an animal.”

“Poof, he’s a zebra?”

Barlow’s lips twisted as if he wanted to laugh but would never allow it. At least not around her. “Legend said that there were Norse warriors who wore the skin of a wolf; then they became one.”

“How?” she asked.

“No idea.”

“Yet you’re one of those who became?”

“As far as I know, I’m the only one.”

“Say what?”

“I’m the only one who actually became a wolf. Others wore the skin, fought with trance-like fury, became known as berserkers—”

“Hold on,” she interrupted. “You’re telling me you were the legend?”

“Could be.”

“Did you ever hear the legend before you shape-shifted?”

“No. But it wasn’t as if we had cell phones back then. We barely had books.”

“Did you ever hear it on your travels? Before your story spread to the masses?”

He peered at the ceiling, considering, before he said, “No.”

“Fantastic,” she muttered. “You can’t just be a regular werewolf, you have to be a magical legend with anger management issues.”

“Go figure,” he said.

Alex squinted at him through the gloomy glow cast by the lantern. “You’re awfully hip”—she snapped her fingers—“for a Viking.”

“I learned to fit in.”

She laughed. “Believe me. You do not fit in.”

He stiffened. “Of course I do.”

“Just because you talk like a human and sometimes walk like a human, that doesn’t make you human.”

His jaw tightened. “I am more human than many humans I’ve met.”

“Sure you are.”

He frowned and Alex stifled a smile. Good. She’d gotten to him. He was far too confident. Most werewolves were. They had reason to be. And Julian had more reason than most.

“Getting back to how you became furry,” she said. “Explain.”

“I just did.”

“You don’t think ‘I got pissed and became a wolf’ requires a tad more clarification?”

“There is no clarification,” he said. “We were in battle—”

“Where?”

He said a word that sounded like guttural gibberish to Alex. Then his lips tightened and he spat out, “Scotland now. They are nasty fighters, the Scottish.”

“So Braveheart wasn’t all Hollywood hype?” He appeared confused again, and she rolled her eyes. “You may talk like you’re from this century, but you need to watch a few movies if you ever want to fit in for real.”

“I don’t,” he said sharply. “I plan to stay in my village from now until the day that I—”

“Die?” she murmured. “Right. What was different about the battle in Scotland that made you—” She waved her hand. “You know.”

“Furry?” he supplied.

She shrugged. The quilt slipped, and his gaze went to her bare shoulder, heating before he tugged it away.

“I saw my brother fall.” His face filled with such anguish Alex got a chill and pulled the blanket closer. “I howled to the night sky. Called upon Odin to give me strength and fought my way toward him, but…” He shook his head. “In the fury that followed, the skin of the wolf that I carried upon me became my skin, and I ran beneath the fullness of the moon as a beast.”

“And then?” Alex prompted when his silence stretched too long.

He looked up, blinking as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Ever after I became a wolf when the moon was round. Or my anger made me so.”

He’d begun to speak with the formal cadence of those who spoke English as a second language, his memories more real, it seemed, than her.

“I discovered as time went by that fury brought forth my magic.”

“Magic in the blood,” she murmured. “Perhaps in your past.”

“Perhaps.”

“But you can make other wolves,” she said. “That’s strange.”

“Why?”

“Lycanthropy is a virus, passed through the saliva. If you became a wolf by magic, then how is it you can spread the virus through a bite?”

He turned his palms up. “All I know is that I can.”