Chapter One

ARIZONA COLLEGE (SEVEN YEARS AGO)

GRACE

In silence we studied each other on a bed, evaluating, doubting, and considering by turns, because it was so sudden, so unexpected. 

We were merely strangers turned drink buddies few hours ago. We didn’t even know our names yet. He only jokingly called me Ms. Budweiser because I said I loved beer more, while I laughed hard and loud, calling him Mr. Chardonnay because he said he only drank wine.

But I and my friends made him take beer. It was a way to apologize for bumping into him and ruining his white T-shirt. 

I was going to get another round of drink while he was heading to the rest room as I could remember it. However due to my crazy hurrying, and the excitement of our finals, I had bumped into him and caused him to spill his drink on himself and at the same time holding me from tripping over.

He snaked his firm hand around my waist to keep me steady and our eyes locked. 

At that instant, the world suddenly went silent, the deafening music from blaring speakers around us became a distant sound to me

His steel-grey heart-stopping eyes drew me in and drowned me. My head swooned, my heart beat took an unnatural speed, jamming itself against my ribcage. Thousands of angry butterflies sprang up in my stomach, fluttering like they were being chased by a predator.

All that happened at once. 

If I was reading my experience in a romance novel, I’d sneer and scowl at the writer for being unnecessarily corny and cheeky. I’d call the book a cliché but still go ahead to read it.

However, this particular cliché wasn’t happening to some lucky female protagonist.

It was happening to me, Grace, the nerdy, boring twenty three year old virgin who was about graduating college without a boyfriend or a mate. 

Not that I had one before and broke up with them for some reasons. At all. I never had any.

I would have called what just happened ‘a love at first sight’ and I was sure he would have too, owing to the way he kept his eyes on mine for the thousands of seconds our eyes locked.

Or have I finally found my mate? I wondered vaguely. Finding one’s mate was one of the most difficult thing now in the twenty-first century werewolf kingdom. People just get themselves partners and call them boyfriends or girlfriend or wives or husbands and humans did since we were sharing almost the same fate.

After our bump, we had muttered repeated sorrys to each other with effusive awkward gestures. I couldn’t let him go like that after all that chemistry between us, so I had come out from my shell of shyness and awkwardness and asked him to join me and my friends on our drinking table.

Now here we are, in my dimly lit tiny college room, inhaling each other’s breathe, with our eyes locked and our breathing accelerated, standing so close our noses could meet. We were both drunk but knew this feeling wasn’t instigated from alcohol. 

I wanted him and wasn’t ashamed for the first time in my life to admit it. I had vowed never to do it till I found the one that made my heart flutter in my chest. Or if I found my mate.

I wasn’t sure about the former, but it my heart was a living testimony of the effect of this young beautiful man standing in front of me.

I took two steps backward, to get a fuller and more concise view of the first man I was going to share my bed with. 

He was many inches taller than I was, literally towering over me with his firmly squared broad shoulders. Strands of his dark brown hair which fell across his temples accentuated his sexiness. His oblong angular face was never the type I could forget in a hurry. 

Should I go on about his full lips and how it interrupts my breathing whenever I stare at them? 

As we stood few inches apart, I yearned to press my lips against that bare skin that ran from his throat to his chest and my breast against that white stained shirt.

With a sigh that was really surrender, I ignored my racing heart and took a step further.

We looked at each other and then our lips met and lingered. I felt myself sinking into the bliss of the sweetest sensations and my hands came up on their own to touch his face. I knew I was desired but, just for the moment, I felt loved and it was what I needed. 

We both knew it would have been okay to wait, get to know each other and talk more, however, we both also knew we couldn’t wait. This felt too right. I didn’t feel a single pang of guilt or the need to be cautious. 

He didn’t give me a chance to change my mind.  

He crushed my body to his, one hand on my back, the other on my hips, pressing me against his hard body. I gasped with sheer pleasure and then to my horror, I began to tremble. This was the first time and I wasn’t familiar with the moves and I felt awkward, unable to respond as I wanted to.

“Hey…” he murmured against my hair and his arms loosened, as though he understood, as though he was well aware of the fact that he was my very first. He began to stroke my hair gently, persuasively, so that my eyes closed and I began to relax. 

His hands moved to my back, beginning an unhurried exploration that made me shiver again, but this time in the most delicious manner.

I began to respond, my hands sliding up his back and across his shoulders in a thrilling exploration of my own. I opened my eyes, saw his throat where the collar was open and pressed my lips against it. I felt a deep shudder run through him that might have been my own, so deeply did it thrill her. I reached up to thread my fingers through his hair and used it to pull his face down to mine.

Our lips met and fused with an ecstasy that seared me to the depth of my being. We broke apart and gazed at each other, and then he was pressing kisses all over my face and I held my head back to expose my throat for more. I was awash with sensation, but it only built up the urgency for our lips to meet again… and again. 

His hands were on the zip at the back of my dress and I began to unbutton his shirt. He shrugged out of it as I stepped out of my dress and kicked it away in a frenzy, and he pressed me against his chest again with only the fragile silk of my slip between us.

He kissed his way down my neck, to my shoulders and slid the straps from them. The slip caught at my hips, but none of us noticed because now, my bare breasts were pressed against his naked chest and we both gasped. 

He turned me slightly from him, lifting her face to kiss and then his hands moved down to my breast, grasping, massaging it and then playing with my nipple. My groan of pleasure was lost against his lips and, as I felt my legs go weak, he picked me up and carried me unto my bed.

He kicked back his shoes, threw back the quilt, put me on the bed and stood looking down at me while he took off the rest of his clothes. 

The curtains hadn’t been closed and a surprisingly bright moon bathed us both in a silvery glow. 

“Do you know how lovely you are?” he asked as he lay beside me. 

He didn’t expect an answer, and I was quite incapable of giving one because his mouth had fastened on to my breast and his tongue was flicking my nipples into a frenzy of desire. He moved to the other breast and the delicious torment began anew. 

“Chardonnay…” I breathed, but he took no notice, sliding the petticoat from my hips, and then my stockings and suspenders, and kissing his way over the warm flesh he exposed.

“Chardonnay…” I breathed again, writhing with the most exquisitely unendurable ecstasy I had ever known, but now his own passion overwhelmed him as he entered me, going in real slow and when my core gave passage to his huge member, he began thrusting hard and desperately in the need to quench his own fires. 

I held fiercely, pressing his hips against mine as we sought and found the final explosion of passion.  

Mr. Chardonnay kissed me with hot, spent and grateful lips and then he collapsed against me, moving down to rest his face between my breasts. I pulled the quilt over us and cuddled him to myself while out breathing turned to normal.

It was a long time before he stirred, then he rolled off my body and propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at me. 

“I’m crazy about you, Ms. Budweiser,” he said huskily. “How do you feel about me?” 

I couldn’t answer. The whole thing was feeling so surreal to me.  “I’m here, and I’m not a one-night stander.” was my response. 

“We don’t even know each other’s real names yet. I’m-”

“Tomorrow,” I cut him short with a sleepy tone. “Let’s tell each other our names tomorrow and other things we should know about us.” I said with finality in my voice.

He sighed.

But he wouldn’t understand. Seeing him on my bed by morning when I wake up was going to convince me that this wonderful moments weren’t a dream. And that I had found the love of my life.

I had gone through college as a nerdy boring girl without a mate or a boyfriend and a werewolf with zero rank. If not for my two best friends, my life would have been more than the hell it had been here in Stratford College.

But here I was on the last day of my final year making love with the most beautiful man I had ever met, who could possibly be my mate or boyfriend after today.

I felt giddy with happiness and relief. It was all too fast and going too well, I was dreading disappointments. 

“Let’s know each other wolf’s name at least.” he murmured, dragging me from my train of thoughts. 

I pushed him over on his back, then propped myself over him, my breast brushing against his chest. “I don’t want to talk tonight. Tomorrow will do. Go to sleep.” I kissed his eyes shut and then studied, and it almost hurt me how handsome he looked with his face relaxed and the moon turning the sun-bleached ends of his brown hair to silver.

I kissed his forehead, clasped my eyes shut and let myself drown into dream land.