The Werewolf Cowboy (Moonbound Book 1) (4 page)

A
llan was having
the best dream in the history of dreams. Reyna’s wet mouth on him, sucking, bobbing. He was hard as a diamond and ready to cut whatever sweet, hot, wet place inside her that would bring him release.

Then he heard a horse whinny and his eyes shot open. But the wetness and the exquisite friction of a tongue on his dick did not go away. The barn was too dark to make out much, but he didn’t need to see. He could feel.

His hips bucked against her mouth and her lips tensed around the base of his shaft. The pressure on the head of his cock set off sparklers behind his eyes when he pressed them closed again.

No matter whether his eyes were open or closed, he couldn’t see anything but shadow, and he made to grab her head. He wasn’t sure if he was going to tear her off him or force her down harder, but… he couldn’t grab anything.

The rough roll of rope bit his wrists as he fought against it. As shadows developed more definition, he could see the steps of Adam’s tractor hovering above his head. The rope had been wound around the lowest step, then tied to each of his wrists in cinched knots.

Allan wriggled his arms first one way, then the opposite, then back, then forth. He couldn’t get even a touch of looseness that he could use to slip the knots.

Damn, this girl was good.

And her mouth on him was… heaven and hell. The wetness slicked the way for her to pitch easily up and down, then the pressure of her hand and her lips, stroking smoothly the whole length of him. But it was Reyna, and he could feel that cord of the magick drawing him up and into her, and he fought it.

“That’s right, baby,” she groaned over his cock. “Just let me show you… I know you’ll feel Fate pushing us toward each other. You have to feel it.”

He tensed his arms, and tried to draw himself up, away from her, but she lay over his legs, pinning him to the scratchy blanket.

His eyes had adjusted a little better and he hauled himself up, so he could get a good look at her. She’d pulled her hair into a messy bun that bounced every time she went down to take him all the way into her mouth.

“I… fucking… feel… it…” he managed to croak as he tried everything he could think to deflate his erection. But grandmas didn’t work, because each time he just about had himself convinced he wanted to draw himself out of the moment, she would suck at the head of his cock and glare up at him.

Plus, he could feel the squeezing tension gathering low in his abdomen, and then in his balls, and he would just about feel like he was going to come, and he would pull himself back from the edge.

He wasn’t going to fucking come in her…

Oh fuck. Yes, he was.

Nope. No, he wasn’t going to come.

Allan wrenched at the ropes. He had to get loose.

She pulled her mouth off his dick with a pop and smiled up at him, her teeth baring themselves with wicked precision. “You don’t feel it, yet.” She licked the underside of his shaft. “But you will.”

He shook his head. “Please, Reyna.” More desperation edged into his voice than he’d anticipated, but he had to make her stop. He couldn’t come with her. Sex was part of bonding. Mating.

“Yes, Allan?” She cocked her head. “Do you really want me to stop?” She gave his dick one long, tight stroke, and his balls tightened. “Do you really not want to come?”

Allan let out a roar and pulled at his bonds. “Fuck. I need to come.”

Reyna took her hand off his dick completely and came to stand over him. He could see for the first time that they were both completely clothed. But he could smell her. And himself. And fuck it all, he wanted to come.

That wicked smile was back, and she knelt, her eyes and lips just inches from his, dripping with his scent.

“Ask nicely.”

H
eavenly
. No other word summed up the taste of him on her lips. As much as she didn’t want to stop, she needed him to ask. She may have tied him up and sexually aroused him to the point of pain, but if he wanted her mouth or any other part of her on him again, he’d damn well better beg for it.

“Please. Fuck, yes.”

That’s better.

She moved to kneel between his legs and smiled up at him before taking his cock in her hands and the head into her mouth. Salt and tang cascaded over her tongue and she swirled it around the head before taking him deeper.

He groaned and thrust his hips up to meet her mouth. “More,” he growled.

She hummed around his thick dick and obliged, taking him all the way to the back of her throat. Sliding her hands up his abdomen, she raked her nails along the lines of his stomach, loving the tension and desire that oozed from every inch of him.

He’d been fighting her so hard, he’d ignored his wolf and what his nature truly longed after.

A mate.

She was his. Totally. If he’d just reach for her.

His body tightened and he shouted her name as he found his release.

Reyna took everything he gave her and continued to stroke the underside of his dick with her tongue, eliciting several more moans before the tension flowing through his body fell away.

She slipped her mouth off him with a teasing pop and crawled up his body, so that her thighs were squeezing either side of his hard chest. She could feel his body heat burning through the denim of her pants. When her mouth hovered just above his she smiled.

He’d accepted her. He wanted the bond.

Finally.

“Untie me.” His gravelly voice made her insides turn to mush. She lavished a kiss on his mouth, but he didn’t kiss her back.

Hurt sapped her joy, as he remained still and unresponsive beneath her mouth. She pulled away and held his gaze. The haze of his lust had faded and now anger and frustration glowed in its place.

“I said. Untie. Me,” he growled.

A shiver of fear skittered down her spine. What was he doing? He had to feel the pull between them. How could he not? Each time she’d gotten close to him, it’d shortened a little more. They were Fated mates. He was meant to be hers, and she was meant for him. He was the one who would pull her out of the lonely pit she existed in. The one that made her go to bars every night. Search the face of every male she encountered. She’d been looking for him and now that she’d found the answer to her every prayer…he didn’t want her.

“Can’t you feel this is right?” She climbed off his chest and backed away, leaving him tied to the tractor.

“Fuck
right
. You manipulated me. I told you I didn’t want this.”

Each sentence stripped away another piece of her heart. It crushed her wolf’s hope and pissed her off at the same time. The bastard wasn’t just rejecting her, he was rejecting
his
wolf. He was denying her a chance to be truly happy.

But he liked her.

He was attracted to her.

He wanted her.

She could smell it all over him.

“You said yes. I told you to ask nicely if you wanted this. You did.”

“Well, what did you expect when you sucked my dick down your throat? I couldn’t think about anything else.”

Fucking redneck asshole!

She crossed her arms and heaved a sigh, determined not to let the tears she felt pooling in her eyes show.

His face shadowed, regret showing instantly in those gorgeous brown eyes.

“I didn’t mean that. I’m… damn. I just… I tell you I don’t want this, that I’m meeting a human woman this morning, Reyna, a
human
. I’m sorry, but what did you think would happen? I’d have the best orgasm of my life and suddenly want to be mated? Typical wolf bullshit.”

She shook her head. “Fuck you, Allan VonBrandt.” Turning on her boot heel, she strode away, leaving him tied up with his dick hanging out.
Serves him right.

“Reyna.”

His voice followed her out of the barn.

“Reyna! Untie me. Reyna!”

Not in a million years.
She’d tried everything to make him understand, but he was against her. Against being happy.

Finding a mate should be the most natural, amazing experience in a werewolf’s life. She’d seen it happen to her friends, one after the other. They embraced it. They fucked like bunnies, and most importantly, they weren’t alone. Wolves shared a soul when they mated. She wanted that connection more than anything else in the world. She loved her father, but he’d changed after the accident and it left a hole in her heart that ached for the fulfillment only a mate could bring.

Was it too much to ask for the happiness Fate had dangled in front of her? From the second he’d walked her out of that honky-tonk bar, Reyna had known he was going to be the best thing that ever happened to her.

Well, fuck that idea.

She walked up the stairs onto the porch of the house across the field from the barn and rapped on the door.

It opened a few moments later, and she found herself staring up at Allan’s brother, Adam. They looked so similar, but she didn’t find herself drawn to Adam in the least.

“Your brother is stuck in the barn.” She thumbed to the right.

His eyebrows rose and he turned his face toward the field.

Allan’s voice cut through the quiet of dawn every few seconds—still yelling her name.

“Did you stick him there?”

She shrugged and clomped down the porch steps, leaving him staring. “Maybe,” she answered over her shoulder.

A
llan counted
to ten and breathed and all that shit. Nothing worked. Reyna didn’t come back, either. What the fuck was she thinking?

Getting mad at him for not cowtowing to her manipulative blow job was one thing. He’d seen that flash, like he’d slapped her. But holy fuck. He was the sheriff. He was a public figure in the human world. She had left him tied to a tractor with his pants open and his wet dick lying naked against the cold air.

This was the kind of stuff tabloid covers were made of. Allan could see it now.

Small Town Pervert Sheriff Arrested For Exposure…
or
Somewhere’s Sheriff: How Nasty Is He Really?
Or some shit like that.

He kept tugging at the ropes. Eventually, he should be to be able to get them loose enough so he could escape. He couldn’t just wait for someone to come along. Who knew how long it would be? And he couldn’t reach his phone, so he couldn’t even call someone sympathetic. Although, who would be sympathetic to something like this?

He should’ve been able to will himself out of his desire for Reyna. If there had ever been a wolf who kept his shit together, sexually, it was Allan VonBrandt, and he was damn proud of it. This whole mate thing, it had spun him.

“Allan?” a familiar deep voice called from outside the barn.

Every hair on his body stood on end, prey-to-predator adrenaline rushing through him. His fucking brother. Allan shifted his hips to hide his flaccid dick and Adam came waltzing through the big barn doors.

He froze in front of the tractor and his jaw almost hit the hay. “Well, I thought she was kidding. But there’s no way you tied
yourself
to the tractor.”

“Stop.” Allan’s face heated and he ground his teeth together trying to hold back anything that could be used against him later. “Just untie me.”

“I’ll do you one better.” Adam pulled a pocketknife to full gleaming glory and smiled with just as much glee as a sparkle. “This’ll be quick and painless.”

Allan shut his eyes and turned his body so his hips were almost in the hay. His brother flicked the knife twice and he felt the tension release. He immediately turned all the way over and slipped his hands under himself. Allan tucked himself in, pulled up his boxers, zipped his pants, and stood. He’d worry about the itchy hay and the cleaning up later.

His brother clucked a disapproving tongue as he stood to recover himself. “That girl did a number on you.”

“Whatever.” Allan rolled up the blanket and grabbed his coat. “Thanks for the help.”

“She came and talked to me, y’know.” Adam’s voice had lost all its sarcasm.

“Obviously, or you wouldn’t have known I was here.”

“I mean, last night.” Adam rested on the big tractor tire. “She interrupted my alone time and everything.”

“Well, good for you. You’ve now had the pleasure of meeting my mate, so you can all rub it in my face later.” He glanced back at his brother, and saw the sun peeking over the horizon behind Adam’s house, across the yard.

“We don’t want to rub it in your face, dude.”

“I’m not going to mate her.” He rounded on his brother. “She keeps pushing, but it’s not in the cards.”

“Fine.” Adam shrugged. “I’m not worried about her. She’s pretty on-the-ball.”

“Well, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

“You’re still planning to go through with this thing with Laurel?”

Allan shifted the blanket under his arm. “Why not? I’m the sheriff now. I need a wife. A
human
wife who can anchor me to that world so I can help. Why shouldn’t I go through with it?”

The look in Adam’s eyes flashed
wolf
for just a moment and Allan didn’t need his brother to answer in order to know what was coming next.

One of the horses neighed uneasily and Adam cooed at them, calling them by name, calming himself. He shifted his eyes back to Allan. “Oh, I don’t know… maybe because you
found your mate
? That doesn’t give you even a little pause?”

Allan turned and sagged against the other tire, giving in to the conversation that was inevitable. “So it was always theoretical before, that I might not have one, and now that I have one, I’m supposed to, what? Just throw aside all my plans.”

Adam pushed off the tire and stepped forward, leaning in, in case he’d missed the flash of anger before. “We. Are. Not. Human.”

“I’m not trying to be a human.”

“You sure as hell are. You live in town, you take human jobs—the
most
public profile human job you could take, by the way, outside of actually going to Hollywood and being on television. It was one thing when it was just you and yourself.” Adam pressed his lips together and shook his head. “You don’t mess with Fate.”

Allan let his breath slow and held himself still. He’d always had such a confidence that this was his path—he was made for this.
Wolves
were made for this. It was why they were cursed. Reyna and Adam were ganging up on his certainty with all their
don’t mess with Fate
bullshit.

The horses started to move again and Adam backed off. He smacked his hand on top of the tire and scuffed his boot at the ground. “It’s dangerous, man. It would be one thing if it were just your future, but it’s not anymore. It’s Reyna, too.”

Allan fisted one hand under the blanket and rocked against the tire. A pressure spread across his chest on an inheld breath. “Reyna’s a big girl. She’ll survive.”

His brother grunted. “Of course, you’re not going to listen.” He threw the knife with his off-hand and it stuck in the hay in front of Allan’s feet, not far from the steel toe of his boot. “Cut yourself out of your own sex swing next time, jackass.”

T
hree hours
, two showers, and a change and a half of clothes later, Allan was sparkly clean—white Stetson cocked precisely to one side of his head—and sitting in one of the low-backed wire chairs outside of the Wild Crumb Bakery. Of course Laurel would want to meet right across the street from the fucking Wolf Den, where his sister Andrea would soon be opening her bar for the business day.

He tried to focus, instead, on the green rise of the town square that was caddy-corner to him, and the giant statue of The Alamo Bagpiper himself, James McAdams. The statue hadn’t even attempted a nod at realism, making the big Highlander twelve feet tall with shoulders like a truck and a set of pipes the size of a cow.

A woman with a toddler walked past him and twinkled out a smile. She hurried away and went across the street halfway before looking back at him, turning around, and hustling for the crosswalk.

There was very little about this town Allan didn’t like, but one of the unfortunate perks of being the Sheriff was being recognized. He would no more have arrested that woman for jaywalking than he would have shifted into a wolf and eaten her throat. He was off-duty, and he took that seriously.

“Sheriff VonBrandt?” came the silky voice of Laurel Lane. Allan tipped his hat against the sun and looked up. The woman was certainly a beauty. A good choice of career for her, matchmaking.

Allan stepped around the table and helped her into her seat. Like a lady, she accepted his hand on her arm, even though he could tell she wasn’t particularly happy with the touch of a stranger. He’d honed his heart-beat listening and scent-smelling skills so finely over years in law enforcement, he could practically read someone’s mind as they sat in front of him.

Well. Human minds. Wolves were…harder.

Laurel gave her order to the white-aproned waitress, and slid a file folder across the table. “I hope you don’t mind. I took the liberty of pulling a few clients for you.”

Allan put his hand on top of the thick, yellow folder. “Whatever you think is best.”

“I can tell you about them, or you can read their files, if you would prefer. I’m happy to sit and drink my coffee in peace if you want some time with the girls.” Laurel gave a wide smile to the waitress when she came back with a deep, blue cup full of some kind of liquid.

“How about you give me your read on them.” He tried to raise his eyebrows and do the things humans did to put each other at ease. He would’ve smiled, except the way he felt in that moment, he couldn’t have been genuine, and given what Laurel did for a living, she might pick up on that, and feel uneasy.

He was already big and imposing, and he couldn’t help that. Plus, his natural wolf instincts made him always half-predatory. It was best not to attempt smiling.

“Well, there are several I think you should try dating.” Laurel reached for the folder and flipped it open. On top was a picture of a blonde-haired, red-lipped young woman who looked like she was just out of college.

“Too young,” Allan said, flipping over the sheet and finding more information about the smiling co-ed. He glanced up at Laurel and saw a tightening of the corners of her mouth to accompany the intake of breath.

She was unhappy with him.

“Perhaps just a bit, for my tastes,” he recovered.

Her smile was automatic. “Of course, she’s only twenty-eight, so there’s only a few years’ difference.”

“Twenty-eight? Really?” Allan looked back at the picture. “She seems so much younger.”

Laurel’s head cocked to one side. “Great skin care, Mr. VonBrandt. It can do wonders.” She flipped over the pages until they came to another picture. “But I only chose women from the parameters you requested.”

Allan nodded and let the second girl’s features settle on him. Another blonde. Not quite as pink-cheeked-smiley as the last one. Pretty. Kind eyes. She was wearing a blue shirt that complemented her eyes.

“Is that a jean shirt?” Allan found himself saying aloud.

Her response was tight, controlled. “Yes. Faith is a country girl, like you asked for. Very much a cowgirl.”

He flipped to the next page without making another comment. Obviously, he was bad at this. What would his sister-in-law have said if she could have been sitting there? Tonya would probably have told him to relax, so he took a breath.

“She’s pretty,” he said first. It was the truth. She had soft brown eyes and a not-Farrah hairstyle, so that was already a step in the right direction. He couldn’t say any of this aloud, or Laurel might run for the hills.

Instead, he sipped his coffee. “It says she was married before.”

“Yes, is that a problem?” Laurel rounded one eyebrow.

“No. Just noticing.” Allan turned the page to find the rest of her details. If only Laurel understood that he read paperwork for a living. He was used to noticing everything and picking out only the pertinent things. Being divorced wasn’t a deal-breaker, but he’d need to know more about her ex.

“I just… I have a very public job. There’s a lot of scrutiny on me, and there will be a lot of scrutiny on my wife. I need to know about any skeletons before someone else digs around in her closet and finds them.”

He couldn’t say the rest. The fact that exes complicated relationships and made demands, and there would be whole nights that Allan would have to be gone and wouldn’t be able to protect her. Or that he needed her humanness to protect him, to make a presence in his home when he had to be running in the woods.

His wife needed to be reliable, safe, and human. There was no getting around it.

She nodded and turned another piece of paper. “Let’s put her on the back-burner, then. I’m not familiar enough with the situation to know for sure.”

The next girl had black hair and creamy skin and for a moment, Allan flashed to Reyna.
Her hair across his lap…her eyes glazed over and looking up at him with his dick in her mouth
…it had been mesmerizing.

But she was his mate. Of course he’d be mesmerized by her.

“Ah, you like this one?” Laurel’s voice was buoyant and she scooted her chair just enough to be able to look at the girl in front of him.

“Sure.” He made himself nod. Truth was, he hadn’t really noticed anything about her, other than her resemblance to Reyna. For just the slightest moment, he smelled her scent, and he rubbed his hands on his thighs. It was possible he hadn’t gotten all of her washed away. It had taken more showers than he thought before he stopped smelling her. And there was still some of her scent somewhere.

Laurel was talking about the girl, pointing out how she fit right into what Allan wanted, but he’d lost track of her words. He kept nodding.

“So I should set up a date with the two of you?”

“Definitely.” He raised his brows and gave half a smile.

“There’s just one more.” Laurel turned a few pages and the final suggested human client smiled up at him from her picture. Another dark-haired beauty. She had a pie in one hand and was blowing a kiss at the camera.

It felt like an ad for some kind of fifties throw-back sitcom. The shoulders of her dress were split by a ruffled white apron, and she had on colorful lipstick.

“She’s holding a pie,” Allan noted, not sure Laurel would want to hear the rest of his thoughts.

She stifled a laugh. “Yes. Chesa. She loves to bake.”

“Yeah. That’s a pie.”

The tilt of the girl’s head made him see Reyna again, dipping over his open pants, her eyes iced over with desire. He was seeing Reyna, smelling Reyna. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had half a hard-on, thinking about all that head.

Fuck. It’d been great head.
She’d
been great.

Secretly, a part of him had even liked begging for it. The edge of that orgasm had almost been painful, but damn. That had been good pain.

“Ooooh,” Laurel squealed. “You like her, too. I can tell.”

“Uh. Sure.” He put his hands in his lap, tearing his napkin off the table and covering his crotch in case he was getting a hard-on. He didn’t even want to think about it.

Grandma. Babies. Puppies.

Fuck.

Reyna
.

He shook his head and took his eyes off the picture, forcing them to the matchmaker’s smiling face. He had to stop seeing Reyna every time he looked at a picture of a girl. Especially one with a pie.

Maybe he was just hungry. For pie.

He needed to get hungry for something that lined up with his goals more