Page 11 of Primal

Before I made it to the car, an arm banded around me. I shrieked. My feet lifted off the ground as I was pulled back against Cody’s hard body. His head came down to my neck, and I swore he sniffed.

“No! Don’t rip my throat out!” I struggled in his snug hold, and I threw my head back, whacking his face.

“Fuck!” Cody muttered. His grasp didn’t loosen.His arm banded about my bare torso where my t-shirt rode up. He might’ve put clothes on me but not a bra.

“Don’t squirm. Don’t fight. For fuck’s sake, don’trun,” he growled.

“Why?” I cried. “You’re going to eat me!”

He went completely still. Completely rigid, and I felt every hard inch of him.Everyinch. And he didn’t growl with words this time. He literallygrowled.

“If you don’t hold still, I will throw you down in the grass, and Iwilleat you. I can smell how turned on you are right now. I know that pussy of yours is wet and ripe for licking.”

His words–filthy and obscenely hot–had me going slack. He wanted to eat my pussy?Mr. McIntire?

We were both breathing hard and perhaps now for a different reason than a mad dash.

“Yes, your pussy,” he repeated, as if he wanted to make sure I understood. “The only danger you’re in with me is passing out from the orgasmsIgive you.”

I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. Guys I’d dated never talked that way. Sure, I’d made out with a few of them, and I knew all of them wanted sex–what guy didn’t?–but they didn’t speak so boldly. So… plainly.

“A word of warning,” he continued, his arm givingme a little squeeze. “Don’t run from a wolf. My wolflovesa chase, and you, sugar, just gave him one.”

5

CODY

“I won’t run again.”Riley looked up at me with wide eyes.

I kept my gaze focused on my task–tying her to the headboard. Holy fuck. She was mine. There was zero question now. Not with how she’d run and my wolf sensing it as her leaving but also as a more primal need to be chased and claimed. To be bitten and fucked. The fact that she’d done it without a bra, her perky tits bouncing beneath the thin t-shirt as she went, made it even more potent. Running and teasing my wolf to go after her.

I carried her into the house–tossed over my shoulder with one arm over her thighs–and grabbed a length of rope from the mud room on the way back to the bedroom.

Dropping her onto the bed–where my wolf practically howled with satisfaction–she bounced once before I began to secure her one wrist. There was plenty of slack; she could move around, even stand beside the bed, but she wasn’t running off again.

She was right where I wanted her.

“I know,” I said, once I calmed my wolf.

“Then don’t tie me up.”

I heard the tinge of fear in her voice, and I stilled my hands as I finished the knot. Met her dark gaze. In the past, I knew her as a friend of Tyler’s. Saw her at school events, around town with a gang of friends. Never this close. I’d never once thought the color of her eyes was like the finest whiskey. Or that her pulse was thrumming in her neck where I wanted to lick. That her tits were a perfect handful and begging to be played with.

She was young. I don’tdoyoung. She had a life ahead of her I’d already done. Dreams solidified. If I made her mine, I’d be taking all that away from her. Locking her into a life with a fucking forty-year-old.

“I did this wrong,” I admitted, my fingers stilling on the rope.

“You think?” she snapped, dark eyes filled with fire.

“Tyler told me about your time by the river,” I explained.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“Heard about the kiss.”

Her cheeks turned bright red, and she glanced away.

“That you both found it… lacking. Yes?”