The fifth and final book in the Broken Ladder Wolf-Shifters series, LOVED BY THE PACK, is finally almost here! Read the first scene to get a sneak preview. Warning: it’s a scorcher!
LOVED BY THE PACK – Chapter 1
A girl could get used to this…
I let out a low moan, fluttering my eyes open and spreading my legs wider. Pale morning light seeps in through the gaps between the curtains. I glance at the time. Twenty minutes before my alarm is set to go off.
Perfect.
The brush of lips against my inner thighs sends heat spreading through my center, and I arch upward. There’s a quiet chuckle, sexy and indulgent all at once.
“Shush,” I murmur, threading my hands through thick hair, steering that clever mouth exactly where I want it to go.
It finds its target quickly enough. There’s nothing low about the moan that escapes me this time. A hot tongue laps at me, sending sparks of pleasure shooting up my spine that wake me the rest of the way up.
Rising onto my elbows, I suck in a rough breath at the sight before me.
The male currently making expert love to me with his mouth is Arno, a giant mountain of a man with gleaming muscles and golden skin and hair. His shoulders are so broad, he scarcely fits between my thighs–and that’s not the only part of him that stretches me.
His impressive size is fitting to his station, of course. He’s the alpha of a pack of males who have been sent to my lands as a favor to my family. He and his packmates, Henry and Luther, have protected us and helped us to rebuild after we nearly lost everything. For the better part of a year now, they have been our guests.
For the better part of a year now, Arno has been warming my bed.
That’s not all he’s been warming, either. I groan his name as he sucks my clit between his teeth. He’s done this so many times, he knows exactly where to lick and where to use his teeth. He knows the hitch in my breath that means I’m getting close, the flutter of my inner muscles when I’m desperate for more.
He knows enough to wait until I beg.
I hate to give him the satisfaction, but before long I’m panting, every inch of my body covered in sweat and my insides begging for release.
Finally, I break. “Please–“
He parts from my slick flesh with a grin that would make my panties drop if I were wearing them. In a flash, he climbs my body until we’re nose to nose. His fat alpha cock rubs against my center, and I growl, tilting my hips and folding my legs around him. Unwilling to be rushed, he grazes his nose against mine, our lips a hair’s breadth away.
I hesitate. I always do.
He tries not to let his face fall.
Our mouths meet, and it’s hot and wet and tinged with a friction we’ve been fighting this entire time. I try not to let it bother me, but the thing is that a girl could get used to this. If I allowed myself to, I could get used to it.
So I won’t. I won’t permit myself to get attached, or to read more into a kiss than there can be.
Closing my eyes, I scrape my teeth against his tongue and dig my heels into his ass. He growls, agitated, but it doesn’t stop him from sliding that enormous cock all up and down my gash, and then he’s there. I’m so wet and open and ready, my pussy slick from his mouth and from the desire I can’t hold back. Hell, I’m probably still slick from the way he fucked me into the mattress last night.
Slow and steady, he pushes his way in. A feral sound rips its way out of my lungs. That first, rough slide of his body into mine always turns me inside out.
“Nikki,” he groans, pressing in deep.
My pussy throbs, achingly full, and yet I still can’t get enough. Thank God I’m on birth control. Thank God that as a shifter I can’t get pregnant outside of my season. The sheer carnal pleasure of his bare cock buried inside me has me on the cusp already.
“Come on,” I urge him, turning my head to scrape my teeth against his jaw. “Come on, I need you, fuck me, please–“
With a growl, he does just that. He pulls his hips back. Darkness flashes in the depths of his eyes, a hint of his wolf coming close to the surface, and we’re always playing with fire, aren’t we? I feel like an animal, too, entwined with him like this as he thrusts back in. Our bodies fall into a fast, hard rhythm. With every stroke, he hits that perfect place inside of me. He slips a hand between us and presses his thumb to my clit, and–
My entire body arches with the power of my climax. “Alpha,” I pant, my vision flashing white. “Arno.”
“Fuck,” he curses. He speeds up, fucking me through my orgasm, and then he’s right there with me. I shudder with another shock of pleasure at the first hot jet of seed he pours into me. His jaw drops, every muscle in his body straining, and it’s too good, too perfect—
Too brief.
As he slumps over me, spent, I have exactly three seconds to fight for breath.
My alarm goes off.
He groans and pulls out. His come leaks down my thighs, and I close my legs, wishing I could keep it there, but gravity is as much of a bitch as I am. As he rolls off of me, I bat at his solid, muscular chest. “Thanks.”
“Any time,” he says, his smile solidly back in place. I’d be a little insulted if he didn’t smile after sex like that.
But even I know that our time together is bittersweet.
Forcing myself to keep things light, I reach over him to grab my phone off the charger and silence the alarm. Setting it back down, I press a quick, firm kiss to his lips. “See you tonight?”
“Of course. Right after patrols.” He holds me close for a minute, prolonging the kiss. A part of me wants nothing more than to let him keep me here forever–but that’s just the problem, isn’t it?
With a hand on his chest, I pull away.
It takes entirely too much of my willpower to leave that gorgeous pile of muscle and man there, naked in my bed, but I manage it. I slip on a robe and pad down the hall to the bathroom. I wait until the door is closed firmly behind me before letting out a rough sigh.
I start the water for the shower. As it heats, I take off my robe. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and it makes me pause.
I look good. Well, if by good, you mean freshly fucked. My tan skin glows, my cheeks positively rosy, my lips swollen from kisses. My bare breasts are dotted with marks from the way Arno ravished me last night, and my curly hair is a riot, tousled from both sleep and sex. Even though I just had a mind-bending orgasm, my pussy throbs with desire, sending more of Arno’s come dripping down my thigh. My flush deepens, and I have to turn away.
I step under the spray, and any remaining tightness in my muscles fades. The hot water pours down on me, and I hate that it washes away Arno’s scent, but it’s all for the best. I reach for my shampoo, but before I can get very far, the door opens.
The scent of raw, horny male hits my senses.
So much for getting clean.
The shower curtain draws back, revealing none other than Henry, Arno’s packmate. He’s naked, and regarding me with a hunger that brings my own desire rising right back to the surface.
“Need someone to wash your back?”
My insides flutter. “Always.”
Did I forget to mention? Arno isn’t the only male who’s been sharing my bed.
It seems insane, I know. Even as I move aside, and he climbs in, the sheer absurdity of it strikes me like it’s new.
Arno, Henry and Luther are a pack like no other I’ve ever encountered.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
Almost two years ago now, my cousin Jessica was exiled from our family by her father’s new mate. Katarina had a strangle-hold on my uncle Ray. Vicious, cruel, and intent on taking our lands, she bewitched him and forced me, my sister Claire, and my brother Tommy into servitude. With nowhere to go, and dangerously poised on the cusp of her mating season, Jessica fled blindly. We had no idea what had happened to her.
Until she arrived on our doorstep months later, pregnant and mated to not one, not two, but three shifters. The males who had claimed her as their own were a pack from Broken Ladder Falls, a once strong shifter territory that was laid to waste over two decades ago. A rival pack lured all the males of the area to a peace summit, then snuck in under cover of darkness and slaughtered all the female mates and pups left behind.
Fueled by grief and rage, the males retaliated, of course. Their revenge was swift and merciless, but with their enemies destroyed, the remaining, once-proud warriors were left adrift. Those who had lost mates withered away. Many died–unable to carry on without the other half of their soul.
Just thinking about it makes a bitter taste form in the back of my throat.
But life carries on, even after tragedy. The survivors banded into small, tightly knit groups, passing time and half-heartedly caring for the male children they had taken with them to the summit. When they came of age, their orphaned offspring formed packs of their own.
Jessica’s new mates, Grady, Colt and Landen, were one such bonded pack. When Jessica stumbled into their midst, they took her in. With Jessica edging into her mating season–those terrifying handful of days when a female shifter’s body is desperate to be bred–it was a dicey proposition. But they didn’t pressure her. They merely offered to help.
The bond between them all was too strong to be ignored, though. They emerged a mated quad. It was an unheard-of arrangement in my part of the world, but it worked for them.
It ended up working for my sister, Claire, too. After Jessica and her mates vanquished Katarina, Claire returned to Broken Ladder Falls with them to help Jessica with her newborn triplets. Life under Katarina’s rein wasn’t easy for anyone, but it was hardest of all for Claire. She’d been sheltered and innocent, and the unruly, unmated males Katarina brought in to be her foot soldiers took pleasure in tormenting her. She was never violated, but she could never feel safe here again. And so she left.
When she returned, it was with another trio of males, hot on her heels and madly in love with her.
She’s mated to them, too, now, and blissfully happy. She’s expecting her first pup any day.
Leaving me. Here.
Fucking yet another set of three pack-bonded males.
My situation is different, though, I remind myself, allowing Henry to crowd me in against the wall. My breathing speeds as the hot spray pours over us both. He claims my mouth, his hard, chiseled chest pressing into my aching breasts. His huge cock slides against my hip as he lifts me up.
“Someone’s eager,” I joke, panting and wet.
“Heard you and Arno,” he tells me, lining himself up.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he growls, arousal flashing in the darkness of his eyes.
And I’ll never understand it. Most male shifters would be like to rip each other apart if one of them dared to lay a hand on another’s female.
The males of Broken Ladder Falls are a unique breed, though. They’ve lost everything. They understand grief, and the value of a female’s presence.
It doesn’t bother them to share.
In fact, based on the edge in Henry’s voice as he fits the crown of his cock to my messy, come-soaked entrance, I’d go so far as to say it turns them on.
Pinning my back to the shower wall, he thrusts inside without preamble. I bang my head against the tile, overwhelmed by the sudden thrust, but my body is stretched out already from taking Arno’s cock moments before. Henry isn’t quite as long, but he’s thick. He fills me perfectly, and I scrape my fingernails across his spine.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, low and gruff. “Heard him having you and it got me so hard. Couldn’t wait. Wanted to break down the door and fuck your mouth while he bred your cunt.”
I gasp. Henry is the filthiest of the three by far. I should find his dirty talk degrading, but it only spins my need for him higher.
I’ve never taken more than one of them at a time, but I’ve entertained the odd fantasy.
“You like that idea?” he pants, withdrawing only to slam himself back in. “You’re so fucking wet.”
I fight to stay flippant and detached, but he’s got me on the verge of coming again. My eyes roll back in my head. “With you guys filling me up with your come three times a day, how could I not be?”
He curses and crushes his mouth to mine. I don’t have time to second-guess the kiss the way I did with Arno, and really, with how savagely Henry’s fucking me, it’s not exactly a romantic moment. That makes things easier. I bite at his lips, and he mauls my breasts. Grabs my ass and quickens his pace. My battered pussy protests, but my shifter healing will take care of that. I arch into his thrusts, rubbing myself against him shamelessly. Irresistible pressure builds within me.
“Henry–“
“Yeah, that’s right–come all over my cock, Nikki, fuck–“
He drives into me harder, and I’m done. With a howl, I give in to his onslaught, my entire body erupting in ecstasy. He keeps pounding into me, though, fucking me fast and rough. I cling to him, utterly spent but unwilling to cede an inch until I feel him unleash himself inside of me.
“Come on,” I urge him, “fuck me, fuck me–“
“Nikki–” His voice trails off into a strangled growl. He sinks his teeth into my shoulder, and for the faintest fraction of a second, panic overwhelms me.
A few inches to the right, and he’d be biting down on my bonding gland.
It wouldn’t do anything–not without my consent. Not without my own, reciprocating, accepting mark. These males have been utterly respectful, never daring to come close to violating my boundaries like that.
But it’s a sobering reminder.
I try not to dwell on my own fear of the mating bond as his thick cock pulses into me. Another hot load of come jets into my depths, and it feels good. Great, even.
As soon as he’s done, I nudge him away.
He sets me down, and I hide my face by turning into the spray. I don’t want him to think there’s anything wrong–or at least nothing that isn’t always wrong with me. So I reach back for him. He enfolds his arms around me from behind.
“Hope you don’t mind me coming in all caveman,” he says into my neck.
“Not at all.” I shiver. I love the caveman act.
Just like I love…
Well.
“I have to get ready for work,” I remind him.
Work being a nice, steady job, teaching middle school to humans in the next town over. It isn’t glamorous, but it helps me feel like I’m doing some good in the world.
It was a lifeline, back when Katarina and her goons were here.
He reaches past me for my soap, and I shoot him a curious look over my shoulder.
He smirks. “Told you I would wash your back.”
His hands, now slick with lather, return to my skin. I shiver and let out a soft moan.
Well, I suppose I can be a little bit late for work…
Pre-order your copy of LOVED BY THE PACK – it hits e-readers June 16!