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Jax

W asn’t every day a mage walked into Howl.

They were welcome. Hell, Howl accepted any supernatural being who wanted to consort with werewolves. It just so happened that mages rarely counted in that number.

After all, they controlled magic. They didn’t lower themselves to socialize with anyone controlled by it.

But there Dakota was, a little miracle in skinny jeans. He’d turned every head in the place, but that night, he was mine. Being alpha had its perks, and if I couldn’t leverage the responsibility to get first taste of this treat’s tight ass, what was the fucking point?

A drink in, and Dakota slipped off the stool. He reached out, his fingers tangling with my own, and I wasn’t too proud to say I followed him like a pet.

The others made space for us, the music a low thrum that had Dakota’s hips swaying. When I pressed into him, the curves of his ass grazed my thigh. He spun, and I caught him.

For a second, everything was still, the bass turning to background noise that thudded through my chest, and I just held his eyes.

Then, I bent to kiss him. The sound he let out was the cry of relief a man in the desert might give at his first drink of water in days. His hand fisted in my shirt, and he pushed up on the balls of his feet.

We danced like that, hip to hip, kissing as often as we weren’t. Each time his body moved against mine, I lost a little more of my senses to the pleasure the night promised—his lithe body, the round of his bare shoulder where I could drag my lips and taste his sweat?—

Why were we here? I needed him alone, naked, sobbing for my cock.

“Should I call my driver?” I mumbled against his neck.

Dakota’s brow wrinkled. “You have... a driver?”

Laughing, I shrugged. “Parking’s a hassle. Do you want to come home with me?”

The way his cheeks flooded with color was the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen, at odds with the tight clinging of his tank top, the sinful dip of his collar and that little divot between his pectorals that I wanted to kiss.

“Yeah.”

I shot Charles a message and within minutes, I was holding Dakota’s hand so we didn’t lose each other as I dragged him away. It wouldn’t have mattered—the wolves in the club backed off when I moved through the crowd, making way for us to get out, but I liked the feel of his soft hand in mine.

On the sidewalk, Charles was ready to open the car door for us. I let Dakota climb in first, and caught Charles’s smirk from the corner of my eye.

“Home, sir?”

I scowled at him. Charles had been my friend longer than he’d been my driver, despite being older than my father—hell, maybe older than my grandfather. Or his grandfather. It was hard to tell with fae.

He’d simply needed a job, and I needed someone to cart my ass around while I did conference calls in the back seat.

He knew Jillian had sent me out to blow off some steam, but usually, going to Howl meant getting a drink, maybe slipping into one of the back rooms if I was feeling relaxed enough to let someone close.

That wasn’t an option here. I wasn’t parading a well-fucked mage through a club full of wolves when I was done with him. He wouldn’t make it to the door before someone else was pawing at him.

I didn’t bring men home.

Except tonight.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Charles shut the door after me. By the time he got into the front, I’d put up the privacy screen. Us wolves weren’t exactly wilting and demure, but I thought Dakota might appreciate the privacy, given what I wanted from him.

Before the car even rumbled, I slipped my arm behind him and dragged him in. His lips were just as sweet as they’d been in the club, and the way he responded, wiggling closer to me, was just fucking perfect.

Dakota caught his breath, and I pressed my advantage, losing myself in the taste of him.

The denim squeezing his legs was rough, but his leg beneath was firm. I slid my hand up from his knee, inside his thigh, grinning into our kiss when I cupped his groin to find his dick already hard and straining.

“Can’t wait to get you home and taste this,” I said with a squeeze.

Dakota moaned, coming off the seat. I caught him, slid my arm behind his arched back, and pulled him into my lap. As we kissed, he rocked against me, and I wondered if I could strip him bare and get him off before the journey ended.

I didn’t realize we’d arrived home until Charles was opening the car door for us. Cool spring air filled the car, and if it weren’t for the promise of spreading Dakota out over my glorious bed upstairs, I’d have jerked the door shut and filled the back of the car with the scent of his overheated skin.

One brief walk to the door and upstairs was all that remained between me and peeling those skin-tight black jeans from Dakota’s lithe legs. I could hold it together a few more minutes.

And sure, part of me wanted to show off my house to the little mage. We weren’t all beasts who lived in the woods murdering innocent bunnies with a snap of our fangs and swallowing them raw.

I hadn’t always had wealth like this, but now that I did, yes, I wanted to flaunt it to the kind of person who would doubt it most.

When I got out of the car, I held out a hand to help Dakota up. Even as he took it, he was blinking dazedly at my house. “You live here?”

A slow smile spread across my face. “Want to come inside?”

For a second, he caught his lips between his teeth. They disappeared in a thin line, but when I swiped my thumb over the back of his hand, he pulled himself out of it.

“Yeah.”

“Will you need anything else, sir?” Charles asked.

“No, thank you.”

As we approached the house, Luna, my virtual assistant, automatically turned on the lights. The interior lit up before I opened the door, inviting Dakota inside.

Truth told, the house was too big for me alone. When I’d first bought it, Jillian lived here full time too, but as the company had taken off, she’d gotten a place of her own. Balancing the business with pack dynamics meant a lot of us valued our alone time more than the packs we’d grown up with. Nothing about listening to a man drone on in a business meeting made anyone want to cuddle up with him in a giant puppy pile.

“This is... nice,” Dakota said, his voice a little strained as he looked around the open living area.

“Thanks. Can’t really take credit for it myself, but I think it’s comfortable.” The interior designer had gone for something between clean modern lines and an old hunting lodge. Exposed wooden beams crisscrossed the high ceilings and framed the full-wall windows. Turned out, no wolf could really escape a love for fur pelts, even on two legs.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“That’d be great,” Dakota said.

I turned into the open kitchen, but by the time I turned back around, he was gone.

“Dakota?”

Nothing.

I found him in my bedroom, standing just inside the door, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed in.

“One-track mind, huh?”

Dakota started and looked at me, eyes wide enough that I could see the whites all around for a split second before his gaze softened and he accepted the glass of water.

He took a tiny sip. “You don’t want me looking around?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Please, look all you’d like.” I tugged open the buttons of my shirt one by one, letting my shirt spread wide over my chest as I followed the trail down and down.

Dakota’s gaze dropped with the motion of my hand, and a satisfied smile crept onto my face.

“I’m just happy to find you in such convenient proximity to my bed.”

He made a tight sound in his throat. One step closed the gap between us. I took his glass, set it on the dresser, and kissed him hungrily, gratified when he rushed to slip his hands beneath my shirt and feel my chest.

Werewolves ran hot, so his hands were almost cool against my overheated skin. I growled, wrapping an arm around the small of his back and drawing him up on his toes. When I tilted him back, he opened for me, going slack in my grip, but for those questing hands that shoved my shirt and jacket onto the floor.

When I straightened and pulled him up, Dakota took the chance to hop up, and I caught his firm ass in one hand while he wrapped his legs around my hips. Goddamn those jeans had to have some kind of stretch to let him do this, but I felt good with him in my arms, his full weight in my care already.

I carried him over to the bed—made up by the wolf I’d hired to clean during the day when I was gone—and tipped him back onto the cashmere throw draped oh-so carefully across the end.

Though I held myself above him, I slipped an arm behind his head and leaned in to press down on him, his chest to mine, his tank not enough to keep me from feeling his body. His soft black hair tickled my forearm, and I grinned against his lips. Maybe Jillian had been right—I needed this before the harried bullshit of the next few weeks. For the first time in days, I felt relaxed. Happy, even.

“What?” he asked, blinking up at me, flushed and beautiful.

“Nothing.” I kissed him again and drew myself back. “I need you naked.”

Dakota’s breath caught, but he nodded, already squirming and pulling up the hem of his shirt.

That left me with his pants, his boots, and—well, the wolf got distracted.

I’d unbuckled his jeans and spread them wide, and the scent of his skin and the wet spot on his silky briefs sent me spinning. With a moan, I leaned down and pressed a kiss beneath his bellybutton, breathing in deep.

Had anyone ever smelled so good? It didn’t seem possible.

He was all ginger from his earlier drink, and the vanillin of old books, and the undeniable scent of man. Combined, it was intoxicating.

Nuzzling his stomach and the dip just inside his hip bone made pulling off his boots clumsier than I’d intended, but it wasn’t long before I had them off and could tug his jeans and briefs down all at once.

A gorgeous expanse of golden skin lay before me, his cock standing out of a thatch of short-trimmed black curls. I groaned as I took him in. “I want to fucking devour you.”

Dakota was breathing hard, even before I kicked off my Oxfords, shed my trousers and left them in a heap on the floor. Between one moment and the next, I bore myself to him and pressed my knee onto the mattress between his legs.

He wiggled farther up the bed, but he wasn’t trying to get away. He reached for me desperately, and I was all too eager to follow. The way up gave me the chance to drag my lips across his skin. I kissed across his ribcage, sucked one pert brown nipple into my mouth, and teased his neck before I found his mouth again.

I could spend all night tasting every inch of him.

But the longer we kissed, the more obvious it became that something was the matter.

Dakota’s hitched breaths turned desperate. He wouldn’t look directly at me. His scent was aroused, sure, but there was more to it—a wrongness.

A sour, heavy stone dropped in my stomach as I leaned back. Was he regretting coming home with me already? I’d thought things were going... well, they were certainly going in the direction I wanted them to.

Leave it to a mage to get cold feet.

“You’re nervous.”

He gulped. “I’m not nervous.”

If I rolled my eyes at him, this was going to end before we got to the good part, but damn it, it took every ounce of self-control I had. What was the goddamn point in pretending a werewolf couldn’t tell you were nervous? Even if they weren’t acting like it, a person’s scent turned slightly acrid. We could hear when their pulse began to race.

Even a mage would know that, especially one bold enough to march into Howl.

“You are .” I knew what they said about us—we were beasts, untrustworthy and ungovernable, wild and dangerous. I... would have to try not to take it personally, if he’d heard those things, but already, my armor was creeping up. “Dakota, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know that.”

But the spike in his anxiety was coming from somewhere. If he wasn’t sure, we couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t.

“You say the word, and I’ll stop, no questions.”

Another rush of panic from him, this one stronger than the last.

“Don’t stop!” He gripped my shoulders hard and pulled me down. He... wanted me?

I frowned, bracing to hold my weight off him even as he tried to drag me into another kiss. Obviously, I was missing something. He’d clearly come to Howl with one thing on his mind.

“Okay.” I set my palm against his cheek, felt his smooth skin beneath my fingers, and held there. After a shaky breath, he pressed into my hand, and I felt a little better. If nothing else, my touch seemed to comfort him. I wanted that. Being an alpha meant being a source of safety for the people around you. Dakota might be a mage, but I wanted to make him comfortable. “Can you just... tell me what’s going on? I want to understand.”

More importantly, my wolf didn’t like the thought of forcing anybody, mistreating pack.

No, he wasn’t actually pack, but while Dakota was in my bed, he was still under my care. The same rules applied.

The tip of his tongue ran across his teeth. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Had sex with someone like me?” That wasn’t all that surprising. I’d never been with a mage either. It wasn’t something commonly done, and not as brazenly as Dakota had been, walking into Howl that night.

Disappointment still twisted in my gut. He’d wanted one of us, and while it wasn’t that surprising that he’d hesitate at the finish line, I would’ve hoped to win him over enough that my species factor.

An edgy laugh escaped him. “More like... had sex.”

That—

What ?

He was a virgin, sure, but that didn’t matter to me. We’d all been virgins once, and I wasn’t about to judge someone on how much experience they had or didn’t have.

It was just...

Fuck, mages were weird about this kind of thing. For a human of magical descent, coming of age, their first sexual encounter, constituted an awakening.

That was literally what they called it—their Awakening.

From what I’d heard, a young mage’s Awakening was usually negotiated by their families—akin to an arranged marriage, if only on a temporary basis. It bound allegiances, agreements, gave families a sense of debt to one another.

It was stiff, bordering on cruel from where I sat, but in the old families, the goal was to negotiate the strongest possible mage to take their progeny’s virginities. Perhaps the idea was to Awaken the strongest magic.

Allowing a werewolf to serve as the catalyst to a mage’s Awakening? It wasn’t done.

I drew back. “Why me?”

Had his family arranged something terrible for him? Offered him up to someone he didn’t want? Maybe this was his way of getting back at them, and I’d be hard pressed not to stick it to a bunch of uppity mages.

Dakota laughed again, still thready and nervous. “Why not you? You’re gorgeous. Hot as fuck. I can honestly say I can’t think of anybody I want more than I want you right now.”

A satisfied, buzzing feeling played at the back of my skull, like the wolf inside was proud to hear it.

“So, yeah,” he went on, “I’m kind of nervous. I just... expected to get laid? Not, like, go home with a guy in a freaking mansion who looks like somebody peeled him off the cover of GQ or something.”

“This isn’t a mansion.”

I didn’t know what I would call it, given that it was over four thousand square feet and more space than I’d ever needed on my own. But it was, like, on the line between a big house and something that over the top, right?

Disbelieving, Dakota arched a brow at me. “Okay, well, given the cost of a crappy apartment in San Francisco, I think you can understand why this might look kind of mansion-y.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t like I’d picked out the biggest, nicest house I could afford and arranged it to show off. Genuinely, I needed enough space for the pack. That meant extra bedrooms and enormous sofas and—well, it didn’t matter. “Fair enough, but it’s not the size of my house that’s got you on edge.”

Dakota bit his lip. His deep, dark eyes searched my own, and I stared back. I wasn’t afraid to fall into them, not when he looked at me like that.

After a few breaths of silent staring, he flinched. “I don’t want to, I don’t know, seem ... like a virgin? Or make this a chore.”

I hummed. His cringe softened something in my chest, and I bent over him for another kiss, this one soft and lingering.

“Don’t worry about that.” I dragged the tip of my tongue across his jaw toward the very corner. Dakota gasped when I sucked his earlobe into my mouth. “You’re so sexy,” I growled in his ear. Burying my nose in his hair and breathing deep was an indulgence I was all too happy to give myself. “And you smell fucking incredible. You could’ve slept with zero men or a hundred, and it wouldn’t change how much I want to bury my cock in that sweet ass and make you mine.”

Dakota whimpered, throwing his head back into the pillows, exposing the smooth, golden-brown column of his neck to me.

The sight of it went straight to my cock. My teeth felt sharp and overlarge in my mouth.

Bite him. Mark him. Ours.

My wolf was a demanding little fucker, and I wasn’t a perfect man. I was just a good enough one not to take more than what was offered to me.

Still, my balls drew tight when I grazed my teeth harmlessly across his flawless skin. I thrust against his cock hard, desperate to get inside him already.

Under me, he shivered.

“Are you sure you want this?”

Dakota bit his bottom lip. It was a dusky rose color and so goddamn plush that all I could think about was sucking it into my mouth. I’d treat him like my own personal chew toy, bite every inch of his soft, smooth body.

“Yes,” he rasped. “A lot.”

He squirmed. An unbidden growl rumbled low in my throat, even before he shifted his legs apart. The warm inside of his thigh pressed against my hip, and I hitched my leg to spread him wider.

“Fuck me.”

His words shot through me like an alpha’s command, leaving me no choice but to obey him.

I dove into his parted lips, thrusting my tongue into his mouth as he opened beneath me. His whine was trapped between our mouths, his hands flying to claw at my shoulder blades.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” I promised against the corner of his mouth. My nose nudged his cheek, the scent of his pulse point just beneath his ear so goddamn sweet my mouth watered. “Make you feel so fucking good.”

Dakota let out a needy sob and rolled his hips, pressing his dick against my skin, chasing friction I wasn’t ready to give him yet.

When he came with a man for the first time, I wanted him to feel my cock buried in his ass, dragging against his prostate, stretching him to his limit. I wanted him to come apart, knowing he belonged to me.

Maybe it was only for a night, but for that long, I could make him mine.

Ignoring his squirming protests, I held his hip down with one hand, pressed his chest with the other, pinning him to the bed, and kissed my way down his stomach to his tempting cock.

The head was flushed and swollen, slick from precome that tasted bitter against the flat of my tongue. One lave of it, and Dakota arched off the bed. I pressed him down harder, a quiet growl in the back of my throat.

“Be a good boy,” I rumbled, “and let me prepare you.”

I sucked my middle finger in my mouth to wet it, then turned back to his pretty dick, laying straight on his lower stomach. With just my lips, I teased it into my mouth. With my fingers, I explored the shape of his ass, slipped between his cheeks, and traced around his puckered rim.

His whimper turned into a whine when I pressed the tip of my finger inside him. Moon above, he was so responsive already. This was going to be fun.

If I had my way, I was going to awaken more than magic in the man pinned under me.