Moonspun

* * *

“I have to run out tonight.”

Creed sat up in bed, stretching out his neck with a smart twist. Usually Blu stuck around after sex, unless… “You going to let your wolf out for a run?”

“Yes, it hasn’t been out in a few weeks, and I’m prickling for some laps in the field.” She leaned in and kissed him, sliding her hand down to squeeze his cock. “Don’t wait up for me. I want to feel the sun rise on my fur.”

“All right. I might head out myself. To uh…you know.”

She kissed him again. “I know.”

If he couldn’t bite her once a week, then he had to get his sustenance somehow. They’d come to terms he would bite men more often than women, because it bothered Blu that the bite was a sexual thing, and though she knew it wasn’t cheating on her husband’s part to take a woman in his arms and bite her, she preferred he keep the intimate embraces with the females to a minimum.

“See you in the morning, lover.”

Blu grabbed a strappy sundress fashioned from blue-spangled sari material and pulled it on. She padded out of the bedroom, giving her hair a fluff. She wore her natural, midnight-black hair uncovered more frequently now because she had nothing to hide from Creed. Once she’d been all about the brightly-colored wigs, because she’d thought they kept men at a distance, something she’d needed after growing up with the aggressive males in the Northern pack. Her father had actually given her to the males as a sexual gift, and there had been nothing she could do about it.

Until she’d been forced to marry Creed. And her world had changed for the better. Creed made her feel protected and loved. Always. Nothing to hide.

“Except this one small thing,” she thought about tonight’s planned foray.

* * *

Blu shifted from four-legged wolf to human shape in the center of the forest near the mossy dais. She didn’t feel at all self-conscious to wander the forest naked. Wasn’t like wolves returned to were form clothed. And Creed owned a couple dozen acres, so she was confident her moonlit peepshow would never be discovered by, say, a hunter or hiker. Not on private Saint-Pierre property. Old man Schmidt’s land was a dash away, and she was ever leery of that gun-toting, tobacco-chewing artifact, but didn’t plan to go near his property tonight.

In a few nights the moon would be full and her werewolf would demand release. The werewolf was her half human, half wolf form, and she only let it out during the full moon—and when Creed was in the mood for some real vigorous sex. Sometimes her werewolf wanted sex, and it didn’t matter if it was with a vampire. She needed that bond, that joining. She loved him for that, because heaven only knew any non-werewolf having sex with a werewolf did face challenges, such as talons and a big, toothy maw. She tended to go beyond rough when in werewolf form, but the vamp could handle her talons, and he did like her aggression, and matched her every move.

But fore? Her animal nature felt the urge to procreate under the full moon. The only way a werewolf could conceive was while in full wolfed-out shape.

Smirking at their active and delicious sex life, she tiptoed over a thick padding of moss, setting a fragrant crush of oleander perfume into the air. A red fox darted across her path as if hell were on its tail. It sensed her animal nature, surely. A pale moth fluttered before her, and she reached out, allowing it to land on her forefinger like a living ring. Everything was magical this time of night.

“Can I wish upon you?” she wondered, then blew gently to set it on its way.

Bree had video-conferenced her with the instructions needed for this night. And Blu had muttered the ritual all day, making sure she knew it by heart.

Taking a deep breath, she whispered the sidhe words. “Sheimme, shuom, galimmour. Hear me through the veil and know I come with open heart and clear soul.”

The air immediately shifted about her, not like wind, but as if it were moving through her skin and swirling in her veins. Suddenly as giddy as bubbles in champagne, she clasped her hands to her chest in expectation and searched the night.

Shimmers danced before her like tiny lightning bugs, and they followed a swaying pattern that twisted into a lush swirl much like the faery lights that hovered above her and Creed when they made love out here, their favorite spot in the forest. Scents of loamy earth, leaves and animals increased until Blu’s senses grew mad with desire to pinpoint them all. It was like being overwhelmed in a noisy nightclub by sound, movement and light. Random life pulses fluttered across her senses, tripping up her heartbeats and then shimmering away.

And then it stopped, and the shimmers formed into a faery with violet wings threaded with gleaming dark veins that resembled blackened chrome. Coal hair was streaked with white, but Blu realized it was painted or dusted with pollen. Three blue dashes crossed diagonally from above her left eye, over her nose, and down her right cheek. She stood as tall as Blu—who, admittedly, was short without her spike heels—and her bright violet eyes narrowed. A thin white sheath danced over her narrow frame, exposing remarkable muscles for such a petite figure. At her hip gleamed a crystal scimitar.

Warrior, Blu decided. She’d called a sidhe champion to her. Such luck!

Blu bowed. “Well met.”

“Well met, wolf,” the faery said in a gruff voice that chastised for disturbing her, while also piqued a question. She slammed a palm to her hip near the scimitar. “For what have you called me?”

As Bree had instructed, she must get right to the point. “I want to conceive my husband’s child.”

The warrior sidhe walked before her in a wide arc, casting a discerning gaze over her. Blu felt lesser standing before her—she caught herself and lifted her shoulders. She never considered herself lesser, or greater, than anyone. And she would best show her confidence before this woman.

“If a child is your desire,” the faery said, “why marry the one man who could not give you that child?” She scoffed. “A vampire?”

“It was an arranged marriage set up by the Council.” She’d thought the marriage stupid until Creed had kissed her after they’d recited their vows. That kiss had changed her attitude toward vampires forever. At least toward the one sexy, loving vampire who only had eyes for her. “But I love him more than anything in this world.”

The faery’s laughter sounded like bells the size of flower heads. Eerily out of place when measured against her warrior stance. “Did Creed Saint-Pierre not murder your father?”

“No, that was one of my father’s men,” Blu protested.

Ridge Addison, her father’s right-hand man, had taken off Amandus Masterson’s head with one swipe of his talons. Blu could never be angry at Ridge, because he’d been protecting her and Creed at the time.

“Creed was…tortured by my father.” Her father had ordered the punishment of one thousand talons against her husband. Her heart pulsed as she recalled finding Creed bloodied and near death in a ditch following that awful torture.

“He suffered for me.” She let out a breath. Clutching the air with needy fingers, she shifted from foot to foot, jittery with need. “Please. It is all I want, to give my husband a child. To answer my breed’s innate call to surround myself with family.”

Those were the desires that twanged daily at her very soul. It wasn’t right she should be denied merely because her breed was not compatible with Creed’s.

“One child is all you ask?”

“Well…” It would be greedy to ask for many. Yet a pack, or even a tribe, required more than a few. “The ability to carry my husband’s children is what I ask, no matter it be one or more than one. Is that all right?” She winced. Be firm, positive. “I want my womb to be receptive to his sperm, to get technical.”

With a tilt of her head, the faery’s eyes glowed, deep amethyst caught in surrounding stone. “And what do you offer in return for so great a boon?”