Page 10 of Loan Wolf (Green Valley Shifters: Generations #1)

10

CLARA

C lara hadn’t lied about being a virgin, but she had also never been held down in the back of an open pickup and pounded quite so thoroughly. She hadn’t realized that her body was even capable of the things that Gabe did to it.

After she had come a glorious second time and he had finished in her with wild abandon, he collapsed on top of her and they cuddled together in a dangerously intimate way, stroking each other and waiting for their heartbeats to slow. Stars sparkled overhead.

Sweat chilled on Clara’s skin and she shivered despite herself. Gabe unfolded another of the scratchy bike blankets and pulled it over them.

The sex hadn’t been dangerous, but this certainly was. Clara had never felt so whole and happy. She told herself that it was endorphins and dopamine, not love. This was an interlude, not an end game. The darkness made it safer, at least. She couldn’t see where Gabe’s tattoos ended, and she wasn’t quite comfortable enough to sleep.

“Clara,” Gabe said at last, his voice a regretful rumble through his chest under her ear. “I should get you back to your hotel.”

Clara clutched him tighter. This was so perfect and unpredictable, and she didn’t want to go back to being pliable, pretty Clara who did everything right.

Then she let go, because this wasn’t what she’d signed up for, snuggling in the back of a truck looking up at stars, rewriting her life into totally different poetry.

She sat up, and searched around for her pants. Gabe was dressed in his while she was still settling her seams in the right place and pulling on her shoes. Her bra and shirt required a short trip back to the shore of the pond, and noisy frogs protested their intrusion.

Gabe’s shirt required a flashlight to find—apparently Clara had flung it some distance away.

They didn’t speak, putting themselves back together, and Clara told herself that was exactly what she wanted, even while she mourned the easy companionship they’d had earlier.

Gabe put Daisy in the back of the truck on the blankets they’d just made love on, and strapped her down with bungee cords.

“I can come by and pay the rest of the week tomorrow,” Clara said.

Gabe only grunted and opened the passenger door for her. He didn’t wait around to close it for her so she had to lean out and pull it in.

He turned on the radio as they pulled out onto the unmaintained track. “What kind of music do you want?”

“Anything but classical,” Clara said, buckling the seatbelt and fixing a button on her shirt. She didn’t want to be reminded of dancing .

She wondered if Gabe was trolling her when he found a station of punk rock and turned it up, but it kept her from having to come up with conversation.

He turned it down courteously when they got to the fringes of town and pulled into the back parking lot of the hotel. Without a word, he got out, hefted Daisy effortlessly out of the bed, and locked her into a rack by the back door. Clara watched him, still wondering about his tattoos, and accepted the key to the lock.

“A gentleman would walk me to the door of my room,” she said lightly.

“I’m really not a gentleman,” Gabe said dryly.

“Then maybe you’d follow me all the way in,” Clara said boldly. She gave him a slow smile and then turned away without waiting for him to reply.

She heard him swear under his breath behind her and wasn’t surprised when he caught her at the back door and grabbed her by the waist to kiss her neck. Her key card opened the door and they fell into the hallway, laughing and hushing each other, to climb the stairs to her room.

It was a double queen room and neither of them paused to turn on the lights before kissing and carousing their way to the nearest bed. “I don’t have another condom,” Gabe said with a colorful curse, when Clara got his shirt off again and was trying to make out the marks on his skin in the dim room.

“Think they have any at the check-in desk?” Clara asked. That made Gabe freeze. In a town this size, he probably knew the clerk, and that would inevitably stain her reputation. “Never mind…” She couldn’t stop stroking him though. “There are…other things we could do?”

Gabe grinned, his teeth bright in the darkness, and he laid her back on the bed and yanked her pants down off her hips. Once again, her underwear went with them, and to Clara’s shock, Gabe put his mouth directly where they had been.

Clara clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from shrieking. It was unexpected and delightful and deliciously dirty. His tongue probed her and he sucked gently at her clit, making her wriggle and whine. After only a moment, a finger entered her, and then another, until he was thrusting three of them at once. Clara clawed with her free hand at his hair, holding him where she wanted him as she chased an orgasm down and drowned in it on his lips.

He crawled up and held her while she lay in a sated stupor, kissing her neck and cuddling her up against him. His cock was hard along her leg, but undemanding, and when she reached back to stroke him, he shuddered and said, “You don’t have to…”

But Clara wanted to, and she rolled over so that she could reach him more freely, teasing and taunting him as he squirmed in her grasp. It was amazing to have so much power over him with just a touch, and when he came to a shuddering climax, she kissed him and tenderly calmed him.

They showered together, and Clara finally saw that his tattoos swarmed up over the shoulder and trailed down to the small of his back. It was beautifully done, with swirling vines and pawprints, and she kept finding little details she missed the first time. There were autumn-colored leaves and spring flowers, snowflakes and stylized suns, plus a mountain bike.

“Did it hurt?” she asked, tracing it.

“Sure,” Gabe said.

“I’ve always sort of wanted one,” Clara confessed. “I can’t, of course.”

“Why not?” Gabe turned, lifting his face to the water. “Who’s stopping you?”

“ Everyone ,” Clara said. “People would disapprove.”

“Oh, people ,” Gabe scoffed. “You wouldn’t want people disapproving.”

“I might get kicked out of my dance company,” Clara protested, feeling stung. It wasn’t unreasonable.

“What would you get?” Gabe asked shrewdly, drawing a finger along her collarbone. “Where would you put it? Something pretty? Discreet?”

Because that was Clara in a nutshell. Pretty. Discreet.