Scent Of Passion (Rutledge Werewolves, Book One)

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An Excerpt From:
Rutledge Werewolves 1: Scent of Passion

? Copyright Elizabeth Lapthorne, 2004.

All Rights Reserved,
Ellora's Cave, Inc.

Sophie looked down at the innocuous
blue line and for the first time in her twenty-seven years of life felt
frozen with shock. After staring numbly at the line for a moment, she
snapped back to reality and reached for the box. Checking that the strip in
her hand really did match the picture on the back of the box, she swallowed
and tried not to panic.

Damn, blue really does mean positive.

Fearing the whole situation was some
sort of cosmic joke, with shaking hands, Sophie hastily used the second
test from the box.

If these damn things didn?t make
mistakes there?s no way they?d give out two in a packet,
right? Must be something faulty with that test, she
silently assured herself, as she calmed down.

Blue again. Well, hell. Twice in a
row. I wonder if I need another box? There?s just gotta be a chance this box was screwed up in the
factory.

Sophie wondered at the odds of this
pregnancy. Almost six weeks ago, on the winter solstice, she had thrown
caution to the wind. Leaving all the papers and files she had brought home
to read and review, she left her work behind in her little one-bedroom
apartment. She had dressed herself up and, determined to give herself a
much needed break, had gone down to the local bar and partied all night.

After a few glasses of wine, followed
by a vodka?or two?she could feel the beat and
pulse of the music sing through her veins. There was a live band playing
and the drum seemed to call to her, beckon her almost. The deep, steady
beat pulsed through her like another heartbeat calling out to her own.
Silently admitting to being slightly tipsy, she had leapt up onto the stage
and started dancing around the band of edible looking men.

Not being a consummate partier, she
wasn?t surprised she didn?t recognize the band. After being so wrapped up
in her work for the last few years, she had lost touch with the local
bands, trying to make it big. The more she drank and danced, the more she
mourned the lost wild woman that dwelled, deeply hidden, somewhere inside
her.

The Howlers
were four drop-dead gorgeous men, all buffed up with varying lengths of
dark brown hair and sexy bedroom blue eyes. Even in her slightly tipsy?or
more-than-slightly-tipsy?mood Sophie had felt an electric and instant
attraction for the drummer?

But there just seemed to be something
about the drummer that caught and held her attention.

Usually she felt attracted to the
powerful business-man-in-a-suit style; but this drummer was every woman?s
secret fantasy. The dark and dangerous bad boy.

The drummer had the shortest hair of
the lot, being cropped fairly close to his head, but something about the
way he held himself back; his almost, but not quite under control demeanor,
told her he was the one in charge of the small and surprisingly good
band.

Dressed in a suit he could have walked
into any boardroom and easily commanded the attention of every person
present from the top manager to the lowliest secretary.

He had a presence. Power appeared to
simply cling to his large frame and ooze out of his pores.

Sophie had danced until the very early
hours of the morning when the band had finally finished up. When the
drummer offered to buy her a drink, then led her off to a dark corner of
the now packed bar, she hadn?t resisted in the slightest. It had been a
short jump from there to following the sexy man home.

Sophie knew her inner wild woman was
awakening. The sexy voice and intense way this man made her feel was more
than enough reason for her to follow him back to his apartment. Promising
herself this one night of passion and indescribable sex, Sophie felt no
reservations at all.

Even though she hadn?t been drunk by
the time they had arrived at his small apartment?within walking distance
from the busy bar?she had still been on a buzz from the alcohol, adrenaline
from all the dancing, and pure excitement. It had been ages since a man had
made her feel so excited. Her last lover had left her more than four months
ago, stating he simply couldn?t be with someone who could only organize her
social life around work and what currently resided in the ?today? section,
under Personal Appointment Calendar on her PDA

Sophie had tried to explain that her
diary and calendar helped her organize everything simply so that she
wouldn?t forget an important event, but Steven hadn?t been listening or
interested by then. Sophie knew her greatest fault was that she tended to
forget anything not written into her schedule or tattooed on her forehead.

Yet she doubted she would ever forget
the drummer.

Artemais?

Spending the next six hours having
mind-blowing sex with Artemais had Sophie nearly
incoherent with lust and satisfaction. All thoughts of work and her lonely
state of life had abated in the sheer force of their lusts and sheer volume
of mutual orgasms.

Sophie performed acts she had only
fantasized about previously, truly letting out her inner wild woman in
every sense and wallowing in the pleasure and gratification that came from
their acts.

Grateful she had woken up first the
following morning, Sophie mentally debated for five minutes what to do.

Morning-afters
and relationship questions were not her forte. Yet she felt kind of sneaky
simply dressing and casually leaving?

Now here she was, with only one sexual
encounter in nearly six months, two positive pregnancy tests and one
skipped period. She was probably six weeks pregnant to a man she had only
met once, and had dreamed about almost nightly since.

You dreamed of the sex, she
reminded herself, not the man.

Sophie felt her legs wobble when she
thought of the erotic, almost pornographic dreams she entertained in her
mind nightly since her time with Artemais. It
felt as if her dream body sought him out and seduced him over and over?or
maybe his dream self sought her out for seduction.

Either way, every single night over
the last six weeks she had entertained fantasies so explicit, so erotic, she
became wet merely thinking of them. She couldn?t even tell if half the
positions they used were physically possible, so intricate and complex they
were.

More worrying still were the tender
aftermaths of these encounters. Artemais would
hold her, cuddle her, stroke her short curly locks and murmur sweet
nothings into her ear, telling her she was the only one for him. Worse, was
the way she would tenderly stroke his chest, his shoulders, cup his face
and respond to these soft words of love, giving him her love in return.

Soon enough their small caresses and
soothing, soft love words would turn steamy again, and their lusts would
take over, but Sophie had come to crave her dreams for the soft,
post-coital words of affection as much as the mind-blowing good sex.

Sophie tried not to think guiltily
about the fact she now avoided the district of the small bar like the
plague, even driving out of her way to avoid it. She didn?t want to come
across Artemais again and humiliate herself by
drooling?or worse?casting herself at his feet and
begging for another night of the better-than-fantastic sex they shared. She
had finally managed to convince herself he didn?t think of her at all, even
if she dreamt of him nightly.

Just thinking about the dreams, even
now, worried as she was, made her wet. Artemais?his
dark blue eyes gleaming in the soft moonlight, his tanned chest beckoning
to her hands and her mouth.

Her dreams had filled some secretly
yearning spot inside her that she had never known lay empty. And now there
appeared to be a baby.

Sophie felt her legs weaken again, and
she sat on the rim of her tub.

It wasn?t that she didn?t want a baby.
She hadn?t planned on having one, and certainly not from a one-night stand,
but now that she was pregnant there was no question about keeping it, and
raising it happily and healthily. Her problems centered on her lack of
relationship with the father.

What is the protocol here? she wondered. Did she contact Artemais? Would he expect it from her? Surely he
deserved to be informed of her situation? She didn?t need, nor want money
from him, yet it seemed incredibly unfair not to inform him he would soon
be a daddy. She didn?t care if he didn?t want anything to do with their
baby, yet neither did she really want to raise a baby by herself.

Deciding to shelve her problems until
the following morning, Sophie showered and got herself ready for bed.
Making a mental note to book a doctor?s appointment for a blood test the
following morning, she quickly fell asleep.