TurningWildBlankEditionHTML by Erika Masten Page B

simple. It hardly
mattered that Holly didn’t really understand the trial or what was expected of
her.
    Starting to feel
lightheaded, she turned her face so
slowly to regard the shifter, her protector. Dustin wouldn’t look at her,
like he’d taken on the guilt and responsibility for her accidental shift, like
he’d somehow done this to her. She wasn’t being fair, and she knew it. It was
just her stubbornness coming out, her defensiveness, that fear of rejection
that had haunted her for half her life and made her run away from people as
often as they’d pushed her away, truth be told. Strange that was so clear to
her with such a foggy head.
    “Because I want it,”
Holly confessed abruptly. “I’m doing this because I want what I felt that night
I shifted. The energy and the freedom.” Dustin finally turned those deep
chocolate brown eyes up at her, and she couldn’t help lifting one hand to
thread her fingers into the silky ruffles of hair at his crown. Like she’d
fantasized about doing so many times. His hair was just as soft and thick as
she had imagined.   “I want a place where
I belong, like you do. The pack won’t let you run away from them. And the way they
look at you, Dustin…. Like your brothers, really like your brothers. No one since my mom has looked at me that way. Except you.”
    The were straightened up on his knee and pressed his warm forehead to Holly’s, hot
skin to hot skin. “Are you sure?”
    “No, I’m not,” she
admitted. “I can’t be sure about something so different from anything I’ve ever
known. But that’s what’s good about it. That’s why I have hope. It’s nothing
like what I’ve always known.”
    Then, before Dustin
could say anything else, something encouraging or reassuring, she asked,
“What’s the wilding? Why is everyone so concerned about it? Why are you?”
    With his face still
pressed to hers, after taking a moment to gather a deep breath, he said, “It’s
a shifter losing his humanity, little by little, every time he turns. Less
human, more wolf with each shift. Until one time, he or she takes on the wolf,
and that’s all they have left. They don’t come back from it.”
    “And you?”
    “I won’t lie to you,
Holly. I’m feeling it.”
    “But why? Why you and
not Ron or Eric if they’ve been shifting longer?”
    Dustin pulled away
enough to shake his head wearily. “It’s different for each wolf. No one knows
why. Genetics? Strength of will? Maybe the amount of time the were holds his wolf form each time he turns? I am young for it, as shifters go.
But I’m not gone yet, lupa. I’m still fighting—.”
    And Holly kissed
Dustin. She kissed him with a sudden urgency she’d never let herself express
before. The mug rolled out of her lap and thudded against the rug at the foot
of the bed as she slid from the mattress and into the shifter’s arms,
straddling his hips. She settled over his groin, her rounded thighs circling
his waist perfectly, like her body had been made to fit his despite the
contrast in their frames. His hands slid under her, gripping and kneading her
ass with obvious appreciation, fingertips digging into her voluptuous flesh. He
hardened, god, so quickly, so thick and straining through his jeans against the
inseam of Holly’s track pants. Feeling the lips of her flushed sex part for him
even through their clothing, feeling the walls of her pussy throb to embrace
him, Holly devoured Dustin’s lips and mouth with mounting insistence. It took
all her concentration to realize the growl she heard rumbling between them was
in her chest, her throat.
    She tore her lips from
the kiss just long enough to demand, “Fuck me. Mate with me.” And for once…for
once she was not ashamed of her size, not intimidated by his looks. Holly dug
her nails into Dustin’s shoulders, pulling him toward her, clutching him tight.
    “Baby, we can’t,” he
groaned. “It’s happening. It’s starting. This is the frenzy coming over