skin beneath his fingers. He couldn’t fall in love, but he needed a woman.
Needed a mate.
Ariel quivered beneath his touch, her skin flushing to a delicate rose. Arousal pumped hot and heavy into his loins as he scented her sweet, faintly spicy feminine fragrance.
“My people are vanishing. One by one. Something or someone is abducting them at night. Thirty are gone now.” Ariel pulled away, her breathing hitched. “No blood trail, no signs of a struggle. Just empty beds in the morning and a dark scent pervading the space.”
He studied his would-be lover. She’d never lied before. Then again, years ago she’d sworn she wanted him as much as he’d wanted her, leaving him hungry and panting. Teased him to the point of going mad.
And walked away.
Even with the dirt and ugly scratches marring her heart-shaped face, she looked tempting as a fresh peach dangling from a tree. Jarrett’s mouth watered as he remembered running his tongue over her bare skin. Before she’d left. Now she was back.
“I need access to that cavern, Jarrett.” Ariel’s mouth wobbled. “Something is taking my people at night. Cael, our leader, asked me to track down the source. I’m the strongest wolf shifter in the colony. We need your help, Jarrett. I have to see what’s inside the cave.”
“I’m no Boy Scout. I stopped assisting little old Fae cross the street years ago.” He flashed a grin, feeling his canines lengthen. “Now I just eat them.”
“Cael needs your help.”
“Cael never helped me when I came looking for you, worried what the hell had happened to you.” The Fae leader had been hard as the granite mountains. He talked only of the balance necessary in nature, saying Ariel being with him would upset the balance.
She tilted up her round chin. “Then forget him. Help me, Jarrett. What do you want me to do?”
He brought his face close and said softly, “Beg.”
Long, dark lashes feathered her cheeks as she closed her eyes. He inhaled deeply, drawing her delicious scent into his body. He could almost taste her beneath his tongue, warm and wet. The smell of sex. A throbbing began in his loins, reminding him of how he’d reacted in the past.
“If that’s what you want, then I’ll beg. Want me to lose my pride?” Ariel spread her palms wide, revealing her pale breasts tipped with raspberry nipples. “I’ll lose it. I’ll do anything to save my people.”
He watched her nipples grow hard as pearls. He had to touch her. Couldn’t help himself.
“And I’ll do anything to save mine.” He slid a palm over her cheek, feeling warmth beneath his fingertips. “They’re going to die out. Unless…”
He took a new mate and fathered an heir.
For the first time since Chloe had died, hope filled him. Ariel still turned him on. It wasn’t her body, lush and lovely as it was. It was her spirit and life burning bright as the hot sun in the sharp blue sky. He was the moon, sultry and filled with secrets. Ariel was light and warmth. He needed her heat to counter the coldness inside him.
Balance, he thought. Life’s about balance, just as Cael had once said.
Ariel never surrendered. No, she’d go down fighting, tooth and claw. A hint of the passion she’d display in bed.
“I’ll help you on one condition. But you won’t like it.”
“Anything,” she insisted. “Anything you want.”
Jarrett fingered a strand of her silky hair. “Mate with me.”
Chapter Three
Stunned disbelief shot through Ariel. Was she really listening to Jarrett telling her he needed to father a child? How he would instruct his pack to assist her only if… She closed her eyes as naughty fantasies she’d abandoned resurfaced. She was naked, lying beneath him in that big bed. Sweat glistened on his brow, his chocolate-brown eyes darkened in fierce concentration as he pushed into her body, his flesh slapping against hers as they made love to conceive his longed-for heir.
It was sex. Just sex.
And dangerous. If his men were around…
“You want me as a mate to give you a child. But nothing more.”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have feelings for me, Jarrett?” She had to know. “Or is it just the sex?”
His mouth thinned to a tight slash. “I have no more feelings left to give, Ariel.”
The Fae inside her cried out to draw him closer and offer comfort. She had to leave. Now, before she capitulated. Because with Jarrett, it wouldn’t be comfort. It would be mind-bending, wild sex that could send them both spiraling out of control.
She pushed to her feet, and a violent trembling seized her muscles. Ariel grabbed onto a nearby bedpost, missed and began to fall.
Jarrett stood and caught her, hefted her into his arms. A lock of blond hair spilled into his face. So handsome, the face of an angel with devilish dark eyes. A beast looked out of those eyes, the wolf held at bay.
“You’re freezing. Let’s get you warmed up.”
For a wild moment she thought he would toss her onto the big bed. Instead, with the toe of one boot, Jarrett pushed open the bathroom door. He elbowed aside the glass doors and stepped inside a shower the size of a walk-in closet. Very gently, he set her down on the seat. Closing her eyes, Ariel sagged against the wall. She felt so damned exposed and vulnerable. She wanted to collapse in a shivering heap on the floor and curl up in the fetal position.
Sheer will prevented her from doing so.
The slow rasp of a zipper caught her attention. Jarrett shrugged out of his jeans, tugged his mulberry sweater over his head. His chest was broad, dusted with dark blond hair. A scar slashed across the thick muscles of his right shoulder. It looked like a claw mark.
Black boxers fit snug against his lean hips. He was leanly muscled, six feet of lethal wolf in a man’s strong body. Ariel’s breath hitched as she remembered the passion between them that had once threatened to consume them.
And then she’d slipped out of his bed before things got too dicey. Went too far.
Jarrett stepped into the shower, helped her to stand. One arm locked around her middle as he stood behind her and twisted the knobs. Warm water cascaded over her battered body. Ariel flinched, sagging against him as he murmured assurances. He pushed a hand through her hair, his touch oddly soothing. Her life was literally in this wolf’s hands.
He could snap her neck for intruding on his territory.
Jarrett reached for the soap and began washing her. His touch was gentle as he slid the bar over the scrapes and bruises on her arms, washed the lacerations on her face. Delicious warmth stole over her body. Ariel closed her eyes.
“I can’t give you what you want, Jarrett.”
