Moonbound: The Alpha's Chosen

Emily's apartment was shrouded in darkness, the only illumination coming from the nearly full moon streaming through her window. She couldn't sleep, her mind replaying the auction and Alexander's cryptic comments about her mother. The dagger he'd given her rested on her nightstand, its silver surface occasionally catching moonlight and sending ghostly reflections across her ceiling.

The sudden pounding on her door made her bolt upright. It was past midnight—no reasonable visitor would arrive at this hour.

"Emily!" Lucas's voice carried through the door, urgent and commanding. "Open up. I know you're awake."

Heart racing, she pulled on a robe over her thin nightgown and approached cautiously. "How did you know where I live?"

"That's your first question?" His voice held a mixture of frustration and something else—concern, perhaps. "Not why I'm here at midnight?"

Emily hesitated, then unlatched the door. Lucas stood in her hallway, rain-dampened and imposing. His hair was disheveled, as though he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly, and his eyes held an intensity that made her breath catch.

"You were at the auction," he said, pushing past her into the apartment. Not a question, but an accusation.

"How did you—"

"Alexander made sure everyone knew." Lucas paced her small living room like a caged animal. "Do you have any idea what game you're playing? What he's trying to do?"

Emily crossed her arms defensively. "I was researching a story. That's my job."

Lucas stopped abruptly, turning to face her with a gaze that seemed to pierce through pretense. "This isn't about your story anymore. It's about you. What did he give you?"

The question startled her. She glanced involuntarily toward the bedroom where the dagger lay.

Lucas followed her gaze, striding purposefully toward her bedroom before she could protest. He stopped at the nightstand, staring at the silver dagger with an expression of barely contained fury.

"You accepted this?" His voice had dropped to a dangerous register that sent shivers down Emily's spine.

"It belonged to my mother," she replied, chin lifting defiantly. "Apparently."

Lucas turned to her, the moonlight casting half his face in shadow. "Your mother," he repeated slowly. "Did Alexander tell you about her?"

"Only that she abandoned some 'significant heritage.' That I have the same heritage." Emily moved closer, frustration building. "Everyone seems to know more about my mother than I do. Alexander, that woman at the auction, and now you? What aren't you telling me, Lucas?"

He studied her for a long moment, something calculating in his gaze. "You're wearing the pendant," he observed. "Has it... affected you at all?"

"Affected me?" Emily's hand rose to the wolf-head instinctively. "What do you mean?"

Instead of answering, Lucas stepped closer, closing the distance between them until she could feel the heat radiating from his body. His eyes traveled down to the pendant, then back to her face with unsettling intensity.

"Your eyes," he murmured, one hand rising to brush her cheek with unexpected gentleness. "Still completely human."

The touch sent electricity racing through Emily's body, awakening sensations she'd been fighting since their first encounter. "Lucas," she whispered, the word half warning, half invitation.

Whether he moved first or she did, Emily couldn't tell, but suddenly his mouth was on hers, hungry and demanding. She responded with equal fervor, all the tension between them transmuting into a different kind of heat. His hands tangled in her hair, drawing her head back to deepen the kiss, while hers clutched at his shoulders, feeling corded muscle beneath damp fabric.

Lucas backed her against the wall, his body pressing against hers in a way that made coherent thought impossible. Emily gasped as his mouth left hers to trail fire down her neck, each kiss stoking the blaze building within her. Her robe fell open, the thin nightgown beneath doing little to mask her body's response to his touch.

"I've wanted this since college," Lucas confessed against her skin, his voice roughened with desire. "Even when I shouldn't have. Even when I tried to stay away."

His admission inflamed her further. Emily tugged at his shirt, desperate to feel skin against skin. Lucas obliged, stepping back just long enough to pull it over his head, revealing a torso sculpted with muscle and marked with several scars she longed to trace.

When they came together again, the contact of bare skin drew matching groans from them both. Lucas lifted her, her legs wrapping instinctively around his waist as he carried her to the bed. The wolf pendant hung between them, warm against her flushed skin.

His hands were everywhere at once, exploring, claiming, memorizing. Emily arched into his touch as he slid the nightgown up her thighs, his callused palms creating delicious friction against her sensitive skin. When his thumb traced the edge of her underwear, she whimpered, hips rising in silent plea.

"I need to see all of you," Lucas growled, tugging the nightgown over her head and tossing it aside. His eyes darkened as they roamed her exposed body, hunger and something more primitive in his gaze. "Perfect," he murmured, lowering his head to taste the sensitive skin below her collarbone.

Emily's hands weren't idle, exploring the hard planes of his chest, the ripple of muscle along his back, the intriguing trail of dark hair disappearing beneath his waistband. When she reached for his belt, Lucas caught her hands, pinning them above her head.

"Not yet," he commanded, his free hand tracing patterns down her stomach, circling her navel before dipping lower. "I need to know how you respond. How you feel. What makes you burn."

His touch was both reverent and possessive, alternating between teasing gentleness and demanding pressure until Emily writhed beneath him, coherent speech abandoned for breathless pleas. When his fingers finally slipped beneath the last barrier of fabric to find her slick heat, she cried out, her body arching off the bed.

"So responsive," Lucas murmured approvingly, his skilled fingers finding a rhythm that had her trembling on the edge within moments. "Let go, Emily. Show me."

Her release crashed through her with unexpected intensity, waves of pleasure leaving her gasping his name. Lucas watched her face with burning concentration, as though memorizing every flutter of her eyelids, every change in her expression.

When she descended from the heights, Emily reached for him with newfound urgency. "I need you," she whispered, fingers working at his belt with clumsy determination.

Lucas helped her, shedding the remainder of his clothing before covering her body with his. The full contact of skin on skin was electric, his hard length pressing insistently against her inner thigh.

"Are you sure?" he asked, the question at odds with the barely restrained hunger in his eyes.

Emily answered by wrapping her legs around his waist, drawing him closer to where she needed him most. "Yes," she breathed. "Please, Lucas."

He entered her slowly, giving her time to adjust to the exquisite fullness. When he was fully seated, he paused, forearms braced on either side of her head, eyes locked on hers with an intensity that transcended physical desire.

"Your eyes," he whispered, searching her face. "They should change. Why aren't they changing?"

Before Emily could question this strange statement, Lucas began to move, setting a rhythm that drove coherent thought from her mind. Each thrust built upon the pleasure of the last, driving her higher, her nails digging into his shoulders as she held on against the rising tide of sensation.

Lucas's control was impressive but not infinite. As Emily's second climax approached, his movements became more urgent, less measured. He watched her face with almost scientific attention even as his own pleasure clearly mounted.

Emily shattered around him, crying out as waves of ecstasy washed through her body. At the peak of her pleasure, Lucas studied her with such focus it was almost clinical, even as his own control visibly frayed.

"Why?" he murmured, voice strained as his rhythm faltered. "Why are you still human? My instincts can't be wrong."

The strange question barely registered through Emily's haze of pleasure. Lucas surrendered to his own release moments later, her name a rough prayer on his lips, his powerful body tensing above hers before collapsing beside her on the mattress.

As they lay tangled in sweat-dampened sheets, Emily turned toward him, ready to continue their intimate exploration. She placed a gentle kiss on his shoulder, her hand sliding down his chest.

Lucas stiffened, catching her wrist. The tenderness of moments before had vanished, replaced by a cold detachment that left Emily reeling.

"This was a mistake," he said flatly, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

"What?" Emily clutched the sheet to her chest, sudden vulnerability replacing the warmth that had enveloped her. "Lucas, what's wrong?"

He didn't answer immediately, gathering his clothes with mechanical efficiency. When he finally spoke, his voice was devoid of the passion that had colored it minutes before.

"I shouldn't have come here. I was testing a theory."

"A theory?" Emily repeated, disbelief coloring her voice. "About what?"

Lucas pulled his shirt over his head, not meeting her eyes. "About what you are. What I thought you might be." His jaw tightened. "I was wrong."

The clinical assessment of what had just been the most intense intimate experience of her life left Emily speechless with hurt. She watched as Lucas finished dressing, his movements precise and controlled.

At the bedroom door, he paused, finally glancing back. Something flashed in his eyes—regret, perhaps, or frustration—before the cold mask returned.

"Stay away from Alexander," he said. "And from me. This won't happen again."

The finality in his voice drove the air from Emily's lungs. "Lucas—"

But he was already gone. The front door closed with quiet finality, leaving her alone in the suddenly cold bedroom.

Emily hugged her knees to her chest, the wolf pendant still warm against her skin—the only evidence that the heat between them had been real. Silent tears tracked down her cheeks as confusion and rejection washed over her in equal measure.

What had he been looking for? What "theory" had their passionate encounter been meant to test? And why did his disappointment in the results hurt more than the cold dismissal that followed?

Outside, the nearly full moon continued its silent journey across the sky, indifferent to the human drama playing out beneath its silver light.