Werewulf Journals: Weddings, Bells, and a Brownie Read online

  Melody felt his thigh muscles clenching under her, felt his hands gripping her ass as she began rocking her hips, riding his trapped hard-on, using the massive bar to massage her swollen labia and throbbing clit through her clothes. It felt so good, so right -- he felt so good and right to her ... for her!

  Swallowing down rising lust, Melody pulled back and disengaged her lips from the sweet haven of her mate’s working mouth. She captured his face between her palms and forced him to look into her eyes.

  “Hunter McCallum, I love only you.” She wrinkled her nose before rubbing it against his. “Chase is a pale, blond imitation of you, but I want the real thing,” she insisted. “Why drink Pepsi when I can have Coke?”

  Still holding his gaze, she dropped one hand to his waistband and undid the button there, grabbed the zipper tab and slid it down. Reaching into his jeans, she carefully freed his cock.

  “Mmm! Just look at this baby,” she hummed, licking her lips and sliding her fisted hand up and down the chunky organ. She swiped her thumb across the seeping glans, spreading the drop of pearly moisture over the empurpled head. “I can’t see settling for that mangy Chase when I already have the best wulf -- and the best cock -- in the world.”

  Hunter tipped the chair back, shifting her on his thighs so she dipped closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head. “I love you, too, Melody McCallum, enough to go through this human ceremony you want so badly.” A deep sigh lifted his chest under her cheek. “Only for you would I wear a tux.”

  Melody hid her smile against the thick muscles of his chest. “Sure, you’ll wear a tux, now that I have your cock in my hand, but will you act out a scene with me?” She looked up at him, letting him see the playful lust burning inside her.

  Hunter held her at arms’ length and searched her open face. His eyes twinkled at her hopeful expression. “Why do I get the impression you want to play Little Red Riding Hood to my wulf again?”

  She squirmed on his knees, feeling her pulse jump. “I don’t know ... maybe because lately, that’s all I seem to think about? God, Hunter, that first time was so hot, but you’ve never played that scene with me again, you rat! I get sopping wet whenever I think about you chasing me down and --” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “-- having your beastly way with me. Do me again, Hunter! Pretty please with sugar on top ...?”

  His sexy, growled laugh stroked things low in her belly.

  “I’ll make you a bargain, sweetness. I’ll play wulf if you’ll play slave girl. And no stopping in the middle, giving me the neck thing and refusing to do what I command, either.”

  She pouted. “I only did that once, and you know it.”

  “Doesn’t matter, sweet bitch,” he pointed out. “I demand total obedience.”

  Melody screwed up her mouth and held her nose with the hand not occupied with her man’s body. “Eww, Hunt, licking your boots ...? No way, I ain’t gonna do it. Now, if you wanted me to lick your toes, or anything else on your luscious body ...” Her hand tightened on his cock as she eyed him up and down, visually catalogued all the parts she wanted to get her mouth on.

  “They were clean!” He sounded like a little boy protesting bath time.

  She grimaced, shaking her head. “You could never get those boots clean enough. They don’t call them shit-kickers for nothing!”

  Hunter scowled. “Hey, let’s just call off the whole thing.” He eased her off his lap and tucked his cock back inside his jeans, zipping up before scooting his chair back to the table. With jerky motions, he gathered and stacked the scattered papers into loose piles before him. “I have important work to do, anyway.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure you do ... like ignoring that huge hard-on bulging behind the zipper of your jeans,” Melody sneered.

  Hunter did a good job pretending to ignore her comments, head bent low over the table as he faked studying the paperwork he’d collected.

  She stared at him, suspicious of his abrupt actions. Giving up this easily wasn’t Hunter’s style and she knew it. Leaning over his back, she glanced past his shoulder and recognized the receipts and paperwork from the troll job. Bittersweet nostalgia swept over her as she recalled the night she and Rosa had transformed a desperately lonely troll into a confident kick-ass female.

  Melody bit back a chuckle. Tracy -- Oscar, as she’d requested they call her -- had already kicked Hunter’s ass, but that was another story.

  Hand drifting to her growing belly where her baby lay, Melody wondered how Oscar and her new mate were doing and if they had started on their own tam -- baby troll -- yet.

  “What do you think about the name Tamara if we have a girl or Tamlin if it’s a boy?”

  Hunter glanced up and met her eyes. “You’re thinking about your troll, aren’t you?” he asked, a soft smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “You two really became friends that night.”

  Melody nodded, too choked up to speak. She’d been highly emotional while pregnant with Blair and this time was proving to be no different.

  “The bitch always has the last word in the naming of pups, but I don’t have any objection to those names. Either way, the nickname is going to end up being Tam or baby. You realize you’re naming your child Baby McCallum.”

  She thought about that. “Uhm, maybe we’ll use those as second names.”

  “Good thinking,” Hunter murmured, turning his attention back to the papers. “Now, back to my important work ...”

  “Important, my butt,” she scoffed. “That’s only billing.”

  “Billing is important, woman.” He looked up, turning on his puppy-dog-eyes expression. “If you had any compassion, you’d take this job off my hands.”

  “Humph! Forget it, Hunter. I didn’t join the NHP team to be stuck with your paperwork.”

  He flashed his best boyish grin. “Think about it this way: You’re supposed to be my helpmeet. Why don’t you help me meet my deadline by doing this damned financial stuff for me?”

  “Helpmeet is a human phrase and we’re not humanly married, yet. Besides, I happen to know you’re a whiz at this ‘financial stuff,’ as you put it. You’re just lazy.”

  “Whatever you say, Little Red,” Hunter murmured, head bent low over the spreadsheets.

  Knowing he was manipulating her, Melody still found herself rifling through the thick sheaf of papers. “If I do them, you know what I’ll want in payment.”

  Hunter leaned back in his chair and widened his legs. “So, we’re back to negotiating the chase scene?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “It doesn’t sound like you ever left off.”

  He said nothing. Glancing at her from under thick eyelashes, he not so subtly rubbed his thumb along the thick outline of his hard cock.

  Feeling hungry, Melody couldn’t resist visually following the track of his thumb down that long, long length of rigid, jean-covered penis. Her mouth watered as she envisioned it pumping in and out of her mouth before surging into “Vanessa’s” hot, clasping grip.

  She licked her lips. “You are so not playing fair!”

  His dark chuckle made her nipples sit up and beg for attention. With another knowing laugh, his gaze dipped from her prominent tips down to her pelvis. His nostrils widened as he drank in the aroma of her arousal. “All’s fair in wulves and slave girls, sweetness.” He tipped his chin in Vanessa’s direction. “I can smell your interest in ol’ Buford.”

  “Okay, I’ll lick your damned boots, but just the tops, you damned Simon Legree.” Melody capitulated, her face twisted into a disgusted scowl. “I swear I’ll heave if you make me lick the bottoms. That can’t be good for our baby.”

  Grinning like a loon, Hunter straightened on his chair. Hands busy at the button of his jeans, he gave her a triumphant look. “We’ll play my scene first, to make sure you don’t wimp out on me like you did the last time.”

  He eased his zipper down along his rigid cock “I’ll forget about you licking my boots this time. Something’s come
up that needs your tongue’s attention more urgently! If you hurry, you can take care of it before we leave to go shopping.”

  Going to her knees between his spread knees, Melody licked her lips in greedy anticipation. Hunter’s cocksicle was her favorite treat. Smiling up at him, she tugged his jeans further out of the way. Gripping the base of his cock in one hand, she dipped her head and licked over the tip of the velvety smooth glans. She pulled back and glanced up, hand smoothing up and down his rearing length. “I am your humble slave, Master. Allow me the honor of performing whatever task my Lord desires ...”

  Chapter Two

  “You do realize you can’t get away with this?”

  Aricles stared down at Gregori Vlasavic from his perch next to the gigantic bell, his ice-blue pupils sheeting over with frost. He raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and lifted his chiseled chin -- which had been sculpted by enraptured artists many times over the centuries, as the watching vampire well knew.

  “I am a god. I can get away with anything.”

  Gregori’s crack of derisive laughter echoed eerily in the vast chamber. “You’re only a demi-god ... a halfling. And alone, you won’t get away with this asinine project.”

  “Then why are you helping me?” Aricles took another careful measurement and jotted it down on his PDA.

  Gregori sighed dramatically, just as carefully hiding his teasing grin. “Because I am good enough at subterfuge that with my assistance, your escaping notice just might be possible. Besides, I like Melody and wish her wedding day to be perfect. If she weren’t so firmly attached to Hunter, I’d have made a play for that luscious woman ages ago.”

  This time it was Aricles who laughed -- a laugh as perfect as the rest of him. “McCallum would rip your symbiote out of your chest and strangle it in its own blood.”

  Gregori pretended a shiver. “Your words paint a graphic picture ... and alas, a true one, which is why the delectable soon-to-be Mrs. McCallum is safe from my amorous advances.” He cocked his head and eyed the trim man standing confidently on a one-inch board stretched between space and two wooden girders.

  Six feet, seven inches tall, Kyrios Aricles was the epitome of manly beauty. Inky black curls tumbled across a broad, high forehead. Slashing brows shaded crystalline blue eyes that could range from bright interest to arctic anger. A faultless, classic nose separated defined cheekbones, giving his face a long, patrician cast.

  Aricles’ features were so beautiful they chilled the observer. One knew, looking at him, that no human ever bore such a countenance; flawlessness distilled and pressed down, compacted into features that reflected a glory too bright to gaze upon. His lush mouth, perhaps, was the one thing that saved his face from inhumanity. Curved and full, his lips were pure sexual perfection. And that top lip ... Cupid never carried such a bow.

  Gregori, bi-sexually oriented and unashamed of it, appreciated the masculine beauty of the Hellenic demi-god. In his day, he’d cavorted with the best and the worst of them. Dionysius, for one, put on a hell of a romp when he was feeling his grapes ...

  He smiled, deciding to yank Ari’s chain a bit.

  “Melody may be lost to me, but you, Ari, are available and pretty enough to spark even my symbiote’s jaded interest.”

  Without looking down, Aricles tightened that lush, decadent mouth and shook his head. “Forget it, Vlasavic. I don’t do men. And don’t call me Ari.”

  Gregori, who’d already known that about him, raised mocking eyebrows. “What? A Greek demi-god not party to the ‘Greek Persuasion?’ Surely you jest!”

  Aricles turned from measuring the bell and looked down at Gregori, the celestial blue of his irises swirling with disturbing clouds of turbulence. “When I was young and too powerless to stop them, some of the elder gods, and others, helped themselves to my body whenever it pleased them. It pleased them a lot.”

  He turned back to his PDA and his calculations. “I don’t do men, and I no longer have to allow them to do me.” His words, precise and clipped, chilled with their forbidding coating of ice.

  The effect bounced off the ancient vampire like so much dust. He gave a dismissing shrug.

  “Sounds like you had the wrong partners, Kyrios Aricles. You don’t know what you’re missing.” Gregori shook off a guilty feeling about his playful suggestion. Though Aricles was a stuck-up prick most of the time, standoffish and always insisting people address him formally, he was a member of the NHP and, as such, a brother of sorts. Gregori actually liked the prickly Greek.

  “I bet there’s quite a story behind that vehement refusal. You must tell it to me some day. In the meantime, let’s move on to the next bell ...”

  Chapter Three

  “Stop crying. It’s not as if I’m going to die.”

  The little, brown, rotund woman patted her weeping friend. “At least, not the way ye mean and certainly not now. Not for a long time, in fact.”

  “Bu-but there’s al-always been a b-brownie in our family,” the woman choked out between sobs, “ever since Great-Gramps c-came from the old country.”

  “Sure and yer right, me colleen. I recall that journey well -- cold it was, and wearisome.” A sigh lifted the petite, but rounded chest. “I’ve been gone a long time, and lately I’ve been feeling a great hankering to set foot on the old sod once more before I fade.”

  Renewed sobs from her former charge had her quickly adding, “Now stop that, Myra! Ye ken I’ll not fade as long as ye live and remember me.”

  “I’ll never forget you, Nanna! I love you!”

  “Ach, and I love ye, too, colleen, but I still hafta go. Yer crying ain’t changing the truth of it.”

  Myra sniffled and swiped at her nose with a soggy Kleenex. “But who will be here for the future generations? Who will watch the children’s cradles during the night?”

  The pudgy little woman’s brown eyes twinkled. “Now, colleen, ye ken yer son is jolly.”

  Myra stiffened. “You mean gay.”

  “Aye. He’s gay and jolly with it, even though ye and yer man dinna like it. Wishful thinking aside, there’ll be no bairns from his loins, and we both ken that fact.” She doled out another commiserating pat on the arm. “There’s nothing left for me here and I’d best be going afore I lose me glimmer.”

  “But Nanna, where will you go?”

  “Dinna fash yerself, colleen. The whole wide world is me oyster and I’ll see a bit of it afore I return to the homeland.” Her brows furrowed as she gazed into the middle distance. “There’s something tugging at me heart, some trouble I ken out in the dark alleyways of this fearsome city ...”

  Myra gasped. “Nanna, what on earth are you thinking of? The alleys and slums are no place for a proper house brownie!”

  “It’s no place for hapless bairns, either,” the brownie snapped.

  That dried Myra’s tears. “There’s a baby involved?”

  “More than one of the precious babes is hurting, dearie. Be glad ye canna feel the anguish of the little ones; hear the cries of the abandoned. I hear their cries every day, every night ...”

  “Oh, Nanna!” Myra clasped her hands at her chest. “That’s terrible. I want to help!”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. Please let me help you. It’ll give me something to do now that Darryl has moved in with his ... er ... significant other and Patrick is gone on his business trip.”

  The silver eyes of the brownie glinted in the dark. “Yer wanting to help puts a different face on things, darling. Come to the guestroom. I have something to show ye. There be bairns here, again after all, me colleen.”

  Chapter Four

  “Here, try this one on and stop all that whining.” Melody handed Hunter a silver tux in the Oriental style. He shook his head no, face screwed up in a fierce grimace.

  “No way am I putting that on. I’d look like a Bruce Lee wanna-be on steroids!” A plaintive note crept into his voice. “When are we going home? We’ve been at this all afternoon.”

  “You exaggerate. We�
�ve only been at this for a little over an hour. It took Rosa and me two weeks to find our wedding dresses!”

  Hunter shuddered. “Gracious Moon! Don’t tell me about it. The very thought makes me break out in hives.”

  Melody laughed and held up a severely cut, black-on-black satin tuxedo in the classic line, spreading it across Hunter’s broad chest. “This one looks nice. Try it on. Fort said much the same thing. At least you didn’t scream about the cost like he did.”

  Mumbling something that sounded like, “I’m not that dumb!” under his breath, Hunter obediently slipped his arms into the jacket.

  Mel narrowed her eyes and glared at Hunter. “Look at it this way ... you got two weddings for the price of one. That first ceremony didn’t cost you anything. Pops paid all the expenses for that one.”

  Hunter looked up from settling the tux about him. “Babe, I never say a word about what you spend because I want you to have whatever you need. The money’s there. It’s yours to use as you want. Draw it all out of the bank and throw it to the poor if you choose. It would take you a long time to deplete what we have.”

  Melody melted. She didn’t love Hunter for his money, but there was just something special about a man who opened his wallet so freely. Yet what she loved most about her man was that he opened his heart just as readily ... and only to her. For her sake, he had accepted her son and now loved him as his own.

  Her vision blurred as tears welled in her eyes. “If I were to tell you how much I love you right this moment, you’d think it’s because of what you said about the money. So I’ll just wait until we get home to show you how much you moved me just now.”

  “No way, sweetness!” Hunter stepped into her personal space and wrapped her up in a bear hug. “I’m a show-and-tell kind of guy ... and immature as hell. I’m still into instant gratification. I want to hear about this love, and see how moved you are, this instant. Are you wet?”