The First Temptation

(This Chapter Contains Mature Content And Is Not For Readers Below The Age Of 18)

Sleep was not happening.

Leander had known it the second he sat in that chair with the bracelet burning a hole in his palm and his wolf clawing at the inside of his ribs.

At two in the morning he stopped pretending.

He left the bracelet on the bedside table, stripped, and walked out onto the private terrace. The Summit estate backed onto dense, maintained forest. Dark enough. Private enough.

He needed to run until his cock stopped throbbing and his wolf stopped screaming her name.

He shifted. The massive black wolf tore through the trees, lungs burning, trying to outrun the memory of amber eyes and the scent that had been under his skin since the entrance hall. It didn’t work. Her scent only got stronger.

He slowed at the edge of the trees where the river widened into a still, moonlit pool.

And there she was.

Elowen.

Completely naked, waist-deep in the water, back half-turned. Long dark hair clung to her spine in wet ropes. Water ran in shining rivulets over the full, heavy curves of her tits, dripping from tight, peaked nipples. The moonlight made every inch of her look wet and edible.

Leander shifted back to human form before he could stop himself. He stayed hidden in the shadows, cock already thick and leaking against his thigh, balls drawn tight.

She didn’t look at the trees.

She cupped her own tits, thumbs circling her nipples in slow, deliberate strokes, pinching just hard enough to make them flush darker. She arched her back, pushing them out into the moonlight like she was offering them up. One hand slid lower, over the soft plane of her stomach, then between her spread thighs. Two fingers parted her pussy lips, showing him the slick, swollen pink of her cunt before they rubbed slow circles over her clit.

A soft, wet sound carried across the water.

Leander’s fist clenched around the base of his cock so hard it hurt. He didn’t stroke. Not yet. If he started he wasn’t sure he’d stop at just his hand.

She kept going, unhurried, filthy in the most controlled way. She turned slowly, giving him the full view—the round curve of her ass, the way her tits swayed heavily when she moved, the glistening slit of her pussy as she pushed two fingers inside herself with a quiet, filthy squelch. Her hips rolled. She fucked herself on her own hand in lazy, deep strokes, head tipped back, lips parted on soft, breathy little moans that sounded almost innocent.

She knew he was watching.

Every slow circle of her thumb on her clit, every deliberate pump of her fingers, every tiny arch of her back was for him. She was putting on a private show and pretending she wasn’t.

His wolf lost its fucking mind.

It slammed against his control, snarling, drooling, claws shredding at his insides. Mine. Get in the water. Bend her over. Fuck that dripping cunt until she screams. Bite her. Knot her. Breed her.

Leander’s cock jerked hard in his fist as she added a third finger, stretching herself open, fucking herself deeper. A thicker wet sound. Her free hand came back up to twist one nipple while she worked her cunt, hips rocking against her own hand like she was already imagining a cock.

“Fuck,” he breathed, almost soundless.

She moaned a little louder—soft, broken, filthy—and he knew she was doing it for him. She was getting herself off on the knowledge that the most powerful Alpha in the realm was hidden in the trees with his cock in his hand, watching her finger-fuck herself under the moon.

He couldn’t take another second.

With a low, vicious growl he ripped himself away from the treeline and ran. Barefoot, naked, cock bouncing heavy and wet against his stomach, he sprinted back through the forest like something was chasing him.

The suite door slammed so hard the frame shook.

He didn’t make it to the bed cleanly. He dropped onto it, legs spread wide, and wrapped a rough fist around his aching cock. He stroked hard and fast from the first second, precum slicking the way, the wet sound of his own hand almost as filthy as the memory of her fingers in her cunt.

“Fuck… Elowen—”

The images wouldn’t stop. Her heavy tits in the moonlight, nipples tight and shiny. The way her fingers disappeared into that tight, greedy little pussy. The soft, slutty sounds she made while she let him watch her ruin herself.

He pumped faster, twisting his fist over the swollen head, smearing thick precum down the shaft. “Look at you… standing there in the water like a fucking offering. Playing with that pretty cunt like a little whore who knows exactly who’s watching.”

His wolf was howling, furious, desperate.

Leander’s hips snapped up into his fist as the fantasy took over completely. He imagined stepping out of the trees, grabbing her by the hair, bending her over the wet rocks and slamming his cock into that soaked, finger-stretched pussy in one brutal thrust. Fucking her so hard the water splashed around them. Biting down on the side of her throat while he pumped her full.

“Should’ve walked right into that river and taken what’s mine,” he snarled at the ceiling, fist flying over his cock. “Should’ve bent you over and fucked that tight little hole until you came on my cock screaming. Should’ve locked my knot in you and filled you so deep you’d still be leaking me tomorrow.”

The thought of knotting her—of swelling inside that hot, gripping cunt and pumping rope after rope of cum into her while she shook—shoved him over the edge with a guttural roar.

He came hard. Thick, heavy ropes of cum shot across his abs, his chest, one stripe landing near his collarbone. His cock kept pulsing, spilling more with every vicious stroke, balls drawn up tight as he milked himself dry to the memory of her wet, open pussy under the moon.

When it finally stopped he lay there panting, filthy, covered in his own release, cock still half-hard and twitching against his stomach.

His wolf was not satisfied.

Watching her had only made the hunger meaner.

She’s ours, it said, flat and final.

“She’s a girl I spoke to for ten minutes on a terrace,” Leander muttered to the empty room, voice rough.

She is ours. The wolf didn’t even bother arguing the point. It simply repeated the truth like it was already decided.

Three floors below, in the narrow staff quarters, Elowen Mosswood sat on the edge of her bed with a towel around her wet hair and allowed herself one small, sharp smile.

He had followed the scent exactly as she’d planned.

She had chosen the river because it sat perfectly downwind of the path any restless Alpha would take. She had timed the bath for the dead hour when the grounds were empty. She had felt the exact second he arrived—the pull behind her sternum sharpening into something hot and directional and hungry. She had known without turning that the black wolf had become a naked, hard man in the shadows, cock in hand, watching her.

So she had given him a show.

Every slow circle on her clit, every wet push of her fingers, every soft little moan had been deliberate. She had fucked herself open under the moon and let him listen to how wet she was, knowing exactly what it would do to him.

The small, broken sound that had escaped him from the treeline had been better than any orgasm.

His control had cracked.

She looked down at her bare left wrist, the empty place where her mother’s bracelet used to sit, and felt the residual ache between her thighs, the slickness that hadn’t come only from the river water.

One down.

Two to go.

She turned off the lamp.

In the dark she pressed her thighs together and let herself feel the pull, the heat, the dangerous, complicated thing her dormant wolf kept doing every time Leander Thorncrest looked at her like he wanted to ruin her.

He’s already falling apart, she told herself coldly.

Stay focused.

Use it.

Tomorrow the first rumor would start moving through the right mouths. Tomorrow Celestine would feel the first real crack in the foundation.

And if Leander Thorncrest spent the rest of the night with his cock in his hand thinking about her cunt, that was simply another tool.

She closed her eyes and smiled into the dark.