Chapter 2

J o was in deep. Like deep doo doo. Up shits creek without a paddle, waders or anything that could help her get out of the muck.The man who’d cornered her in the elevator was a force unto himself. She’d ducked under his arm and damn near sprinted to her room. Part of her, okay most, expected and possibly a bit of hope in there, that he would have followed behind her.

She didn’t want to begin to explore why the disappointment he hadn’t sat so heavily within her chest. He wasn’t the one for her. Namely, he was too young. Or she was too old for him and didn’t care to be seen as a cougar.

Then there was that their friends were coupled. If something happened…when…it would make get-togethers stressful and uncomfortable. Nothing she wanted to do because she loved her friends completely and wouldn’t care to miss being around them.

Suitcase on the bed, she sat beside it and put her hand over her heart. Sleeping with guys wasn’t something she was a prude about. She had no apologies for loving sex.

There were some lines however and Kenan was on the wrong side of one. She didn’t mess around with friends. Not like him.

She’d watched him the few times they had been around each other. He was smooth and charming, winning over women and babies like he was the best fucking thing since sliced bread. Such a ladies man and yet more.

The man has forever written all over him.

It wasn’t like she didn’t want a man, children, house, that kind of thing but she also knew how rare it was to find that. Her parents put forth a great showing but she knew the truth. She’d seen it and heard it. That horrible side of the marriage coin.

That wasn’t what she wanted. The constant bickering, yelling, fights, and tears. Perfect on the outside looking in. Anything but that from the inside out. Scaring the children who were raised in that household.

No thanks.

Better to get the itch scratched and carry on.

Squeezing her legs together she thought about the man who shared the hotel with her. Not that she needed to be thinking about him at all.

Because now I’m horny. Not that it matters he is too young for me. He’s got to be not even twenty-five. I’m not about to be that creepy woman lusting after a younger man. I am not a cougar.

Then again, for a taste of him…

Hissing a long, sexually frustrated breath, she skimmed a hand down over her breasts, her belly and on to the junction of her thighs. Hand paused, she could feel the heat she emanated and fought the urge to rub.

Suddenly, her lack of bringing a vibrator along for this trip was a glaring mistake. She needed something to get the edge off. Other than her fingers. She needed something longer. Thicker.

The press of a hard male body to hers. The scent of his skin, sweaty and masculine. To be caged in by his weight. The rough rasp of his facial hair along her skin, marking her. Branding her.

Her breath huffed out as she arched into her nearly nonexistent touch. She flopped back and tapped her fingers over her clit, needing the pressure to increase. To have something hard there she could ride and take pleasure from.

Skin flushed, heartrate up, she lay there struggling with her own need. It wouldn’t take much, just a few flicks below her clothing with practiced fingers and she would find that precipice she desperately craved. Inching her fingers back up, she pushed them below the waistband of her pants and bit her lower lip as she slid down.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

She jolted to a seated position, frustration and craving at war within her. What the actual fuck? Why was someone at her door?

“Jo.”

Shit. Kenan stood on the other side of the door. Rolling her tongue back into her mouth at the unappreciated thought of what that man could do and the pleasure he could bring her, she stared and tried to get her breathing to slow.

The struggle was real, ignoring her body’s demand. Pushing up, she walked to the door, steps heavier than normal and yanked it open.

“What?”

He stilled, his eyes shifting to animal then back. Shit, I’d forgotten his sense of smell. His lips quirked up at the corners. Only briefly but enough she knew he scented her arousal.

“Busy?” He rested an arm on her doorjamb, his sharp brown gaze locked on her.

Taunting her. Tempting her.

Unwilling to back down from the unmitigated challenge in his eyes she lifted a plucked brow. “Not now.”

His gaze moved over her and she felt it, touching every exposed and the bit not exposed, inch. Her nipples hardened further, if there was something harder than diamonds, they were it although she wasn’t sure what it would be. But they ached, actually ached, for his touch.

Somehow I don’t think he’d be a slow tender lover.

Kenan licked his lips and somehow she didn’t jump on him and use her own tongue to follow that path. “Need help?”

God, she longed to grab him by the shirt collar and yank him in her room then have her nasty dirty way with him. Having heard the local women along with those attending the wedding party talk about him, she didn’t have any doubt he knew how to treat a woman in bed.

“Would that you could.” Locking down her sexual desires best she could, she flexed her fingers on the door. “What’s up?”

Damn her eyes for flicking down to his impressive crotch and the hardness pressed against his pants. Long. Thick. The man could and did fill out a pair of jeans in a way that impressed the hell out of her. Her mouth watered and her palms itched, both longing to touch. To experience the heavy weight of his shaft, taste him, pump him.

“Trust me, Jo. I can. And if you don’t stop looking at me like that, you’re going to learn it firsthand.” His voice was low and did all sorts of things, inappropriate ones, to her nether regions.

“I don’t sleep with babies.”

His thick brows slashed down and she wondered if this was what his prey felt like when he locked onto it. She sure as hell felt that way.

“Babies?” He was just closer to her, taking up space she wasn’t aware had been between them.

His heavy scent filled her pores and made her knees weak with longing. Wildness, freedom, masculinity.

“You think I’m a baby?” The words were growled, low and dangerous.

Yep, I’m definitely questioning my sanity at this moment. Selena told me repeatedly that shifters were a different breed of man and I laughed it off. Not laughing now. Lifting her chin ever so slightly she blinked as if he didn’t know about the inner turmoil going on inside her. like he couldn’t scent the liquid on her thighs.

“You’re younger than me.”

Dark brows slashed down. “Doesn’t mean I don’t know what, or who , I want. And I’m not that much younger than you, Jo.” Closer still, his heat wrapping around her like a lover’s caress. A dangerous, deadly lover. A ripple moved through him, as if the entire thing offended him and he shifted back a tiny bit. “Is that why you’re throwing up all these blocks? Because you have an issue with my age?”

She licked her lips and froze with the tip of her tongue peeking out as his sharp gaze snapped to her movement.

“It’s not an issue, it’s a fact.” Jo took a shallow breath, breathing in through her mouth, trying to control how much of his scent she got. It failed, miserably. “You should be with a woman closer to your age.”

“Valid point.”

And there went the spear of pain in her chest. One she chose to ignore. Sort of.

“However,” he continued. “The woman I’m after and the one I will have , is standing right here, in front of me, smelling like sin and sex.” Kenan dragged his tongue along his plump lower lip.

“She smells like my rainforest and honeyed spice from her arousal. A scent I know will transfer over to taste when I have my face between her legs, lapping at her pussy. When her knees are on my shoulders as I keep her spread wide. Fingers spearing into my hair, yanking, tugging, all the while grinding those full hips against my face, smearing your essence all over me. Demanding I fuck you, cursing me as I keep feasting even as you keep coming.”

Jo whimpered. She had to lock her knees to keep upright. This man didn’t play fair. Not even remotely.

“I’m not giving up on us, Jo. Give me a chance.”

Kenan almost held his breath while he waited for her answer to his statement. Nervous? Fuck yes. But he took another lung filling breath of her scent. His animal knew it was his mate, his cock couldn’t get much harder.

He’d moved her back so they were in her room, the door closed on any prying eyes from the hallway. One hand on either side of her head, he kept her boxed in, knowing she wanted him. He would use any means necessary to get her beyond this age thing that had hung her up on giving him a chance to prove they were fated.

Was he a flirt? Definitely. A playboy? Again, yes, but all that stopped the day he’d met Jo. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her and pulled in her incredible scent to him, he’d known.

“It wouldn’t work. You’d eventually get tired of me and want someone younger. Plus you flirt with anything that moves, Kenan. And I know it’s an act, but you have forever written all over you. You’re like the quintessential white picket fence, two point five children kind of guy.”

Her words froze him for a moment. Her issue went beyond the age factor. It was like she didn’t believe in forever.

“I’m whatever guy you need me to be. White picket fence. Done. Home deep in the Brazilian or Belizean jungle? Done.”

She huffed in frustration and perhaps he detected a tiny pinch of hope.

“Find a young thing and fuck her until neither of you can see straight. Marry her and give her babies. That’s what you need.”

Fuck this.

He kissed her.

Her taste spilled onto his tongue and he groaned in raw pleasure. Jo didn’t react for the barest of seconds. But when she did, holy fucking hell.

It was volcano going off.

He thought he’d been ready for her. Thought he was prepared for her responding to him in a sexual way and not the way she always had. Polite flirting with a younger man. One who worked with her best friends’ husbands.

He’d been cocky. Confident. And sure of himself. Oh yeah, he’d also been one more thing.

Wrong.

So fucking wrong.

And all it took for him to suddenly get schooled in this was one, single, low, mind shattering, cock hardening, sac lifting, moan.

It vibrated from her throat and pushed up through him like a tidal wave slamming the shoreline. One single moan, pulled everything from him then smashed it back into his chest without thought or care to any and all damage it was doing in its wake.

His animal screeched with pain and pleasure as the mating bond flared to life and sought its other half. He surged forward, unwilling to let her retreat now that she’d opened and let him in.

Kenan shoved back into her room, their mouths a heated tangle, tongues twining, teeth gnashing. He had already kicked the door shut behind him and now lifted her against the wall, settling close, wedging his hard cock between her legs as she latched them around his waist.

He followed animal instinct now and everything about it told him to claim her. Not to give her another chance to push him away.

Kenan listened.

Kissing his way down her throat, he nipped her there, needing to leave his mark so others saw it. He sucked, hard. Pulling that blood up to make sure it happened. At the same time, he cupped her and swore as her heat singed him.

She undulated against his palm, fingers digging into his scalp. Asking for more without words.

He wasn’t going to make her ask more than once. Careful not to allow any injury to come to Jo, he used a razor sharp talon to remove her panty material that blocked his way. Seconds later, he pushed two thick fingers deep inside the hottest, tightest pussy he’d ever had.

“Shit,” he muttered, legs wobbling for a second as her sheath flexed around his fingers. “You’re about to make me cum and I’m not even inside you yet, Jo.”

Pumping his wrist, he fucked her with his hand, driving in as deep as he could, curving his fingers to hit that one spot. Her cries grew in volume as she continued to buck against him, drawing him in deeper and begging for more.

Jo splinted around him, her sharp gasp held far more than a tiny bit of need in it. He made out his name as if fell from her lips.

There was no more thinking. No more anything but pushing inside her, replacing fingers with hard cock as her contracting muscles tried to keep his hand there. Her tight core dragged along the shaft as he thrust inside her.

Kenan stared at the woman he was fucking against the wall. Head back, lips swollen and parted as she panted his name like a goddamn religious prayer. Her smooth skin had lingering red marks from his attentions and he wanted more of them on her.

Her eyes were closed as she dug her nails into his shoulders, riding out her orgasm. Dick inside her as far as it would go, he held still. Partly because he needed her looking at him once more but more so because he would embarrass himself if he didn’t allow a few seconds to regroup.

He nipped her chin and got those incredible eyes back on him. “Eyes on me, baby. Watch me as I fuck you. Don’t let your gaze drop from mine because I’m about to claim what’s mine.”

Kenan withdrew until the head of his dick remained in her pussy and paused, eyes locked on hers. Waiting to see if she listened. When she didn’t so much as blink, he slammed forward with a hip thrust.