The Midnight Hunt

by L. L. Raand

  He nodded. “I’ve been aware of your call all day, but you’re broadcasting much more powerfully right now.”

  Drake dropped her gaze down his body. His awareness was evident. “Sorry.”

  Roger grinned. “I’m mated, so it’s no hardship for me.”

  “I’ve already been told this is normal, more or less,” Drake said.

  “Your situation is unique.”

  Drake glowered, changing positions in an effort to relieve some of the pressure on her swollen, aching groin. “I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

  Roger looked sympathetic. “With adolescents, the urge builds gradually around the time their wolf ascends. Their wolf wants freedom but the adolescent can’t shift voluntarily, despite the pressure to do so. The result is a great deal of physiological tension that is dispelled most effectively through sexual release.”

  “So if I could shift, the pressure to have sex would ease?” Drake asked.

  “Perhaps, at least temporarily. For a very dominant Were, which you seem to be, there is no substitute for release.”

  “When will I know if I can shift?”

  “You already have,” Roger said with surprise. “The Alpha forced your first shift and probably saved your life.”

  Drake’s heart raced at the thought of Sylvan protecting her, and the already searing pressure in her loins built higher. She leaned her head back against the tree, closed her eyes, and tried to steady her breathing.

  “The first lesson,” Roger said gently, “is to accept what you’re feeling and act on it.”

  “With anyone who offers?” Drake asked, her eyes still closed, her breath catching painfully with each exhalation.

  “No. You have a choice, just as do those who answer your call.”

  She regarded him through narrowed eyes, her vision wavering as pain lanced through her stomach. “What if I don’t want anyone?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know. If your body is prevented from releasing naturally, the hormonal fluxes might force a breakdown.”

  “Make me feral?”

  “Eventually your instincts will prevail, and if you can’t bring yourself to overcome your resistance to finding a release, you could lose control completely,” Roger said softly.

  “But I might be able to fight the urge and maintain my sanity?”

  “Perhaps, but why would you want to? Why not just tangle with a willing Packmate?”

  “I don’t know.” The pain in Drake’s stomach intensified and she struggled not to double over. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think my wolf would let me tangle with just any Were who offers.”

  Roger’s brows drew down. “You can feel her? Tell what she wants?”

  “She’s making it pretty damn clear.”

  “Then who does she want?”

  Drake shook her head, knowing instinctively she shouldn’t answer. Sweat matted her hair and her skin flamed. She pulled off her shirt. Her abdomen was rigid, hard-packed muscles vibrating beneath sex-sheened skin. Her canines and claws erupted. A fine thin line of midnight pelt scored the center of her lower abdomen.

  “Roger,” she said, her voice deep and rough. “Get out of here.”

  “No, I can’t leave you alone,” Roger protested, but he shot to his feet and backed up.

  “I don’t know if I can stop whatever’s happening,” Drake gasped.

  “You need to go. Go.”

  Roger shivered, unable to disobey her command. “I’ll get Elena.”

  Roger raced toward the forest. “Hold on, Drake. Just hold on.”

  Drake curled up, clutching her midsection, writhing as pain ripped and slashed through her. She was on the verge of losing the battle, and terrified of what she might become.

  ———

  Sylvan lunged forward from the rear of the Rover and crowded between the front seats. The Compound was just ahead. “Hurry!”

  Andrew shot her a worried look. “Alpha?”

  From behind her, Niki said, “What is it?”

  “Just hurry,” Sylvan said, clenching her jaws as the throbbing in the bite on her chest intensified. Andrew slowed and Sylvan jumped out.

  Elena ran across the courtyard toward the Rover, a frantic Roger at her side.

  “It’s Drake,” Elena exclaimed. “She’s in frenzy.”

  “I know.” Sylvan ran toward the forest, toward Drake.

  “Alpha,” Niki shouted, following her.

  “Stay back,” Sylvan ordered as she burst into the clearing.

  Drake lay on the ground, moaning weakly. Sylvan tore off her shirt and dropped down beside her. Pulling Drake into her arms, she cradled Drake’s face against her bare shoulder, feeding her strength through the touch of flesh on flesh. Drake’s eyes were feverish, her hair soaked with sweat.

  “Drake,” Sylvan murmured. “I’m here.”

  “Sylvan,” Drake gasped. “Oh, God, Sylvan, I hurt.”

  “I know, I know. I’ll fix it,” Sylvan soothed, caressing Drake’s chest and belly. Drake’s nipples were swollen and tight, her stomach rippling with need. Sylvan’s own nipples were hard as stone, her clitoris a throbbing ridge under the fly of her jeans. Drake arched in her arms, rubbing against her, coating Sylvan’s skin with pheromones. Sylvan instantly absorbed the chemicals and her canines shot out. Her glands pumped out hormones and kinins with brutal force. Her system flooded with sex stimulants and her clitoris jerked fully erect. Her control crumbled. She needed to calm Drake before she lost all restraint and took her, roughly, relentlessly. She unbuttoned Drake’s pants.

  “You smell so good,” Drake moaned, licking Sylvan’s neck. She kissed her way down the tight column of Sylvan’s throat to Sylvan’s chest and sucked the bruise that glowed purple beneath Sylvan’s shimmering silver skin.

  Sylvan’s hips bucked and she growled a warning. Drake ignored her, raking her short claws down the center of Sylvan’s abdomen before pulling a taut nipple into her mouth. Sylvan snarled and rolled Drake under her. She ripped Drake’s pants open and cupped her sex, pressing the heel of her hand down on the glands that pulsed beneath Drake’s protruding clitoris. She slipped her fingers into Drake’s tight, hot depths and massaged her, inside and out.

  Gasping, Drake moaned against Sylvan’s breast. “Oh God, what are you doing to me?”

  “You need to release.” Sylvan skated her mouth over Drake’s and thrust her tongue inside, tasting, drinking, claiming. She thrust harder into her sex, stimulating the internal extension of Drake’s clitoris with her fingertips. Potent neurotransmitters poured into Sylvan’s palm and set off a chain reaction in her own body. Her clitoris twitched and her glands pumped. She readied to erupt.

  Drake clutched Sylvan’s shoulders, driving herself up and down on Sylvan’s hand, faster and faster. She dragged her canines over Sylvan’s neck and licked the shallow scratches. “I want to come. I want to come for you.”

  Sylvan growled and pulled Drake’s head back with a hand fisted in her hair. She stared into Drake’s gold-shot black eyes. “You will come for me.”

  “Yes, God yes.” Drake’s legs and stomach were rigid. She gripped Sylvan’s arm, her claws drawing blood, and forced Sylvan deeper inside her. She threw back her head. “Now. Please now. Make me come for you.”

  “Touch me,” Sylvan demanded, bracing herself over Drake’s body on one arm while she drove inside her.

  Drake tore open Sylvan’s jeans and slid her fingers around Sylvan’s clitoris. Instinctively she massaged the glands underneath on every rapid downstroke. Sylvan roared as Drake forced her to empty. Her pheromones gushed, merging with Drake’s, enclosing them in a sensual mist of sex hormones. The bite on her chest throbbed, kinins seeping from the puncture wounds that had reopened when Drake stimulated her.

  “I have to come,” Drake pleaded, licking and sucking Sylvan’s chest. She scored Sylvan’s back, her hips a blur on Sylvan’s hand.

  “Please. Please. Sylvan…”

  “Yes. Yes,” Sylvan groaned, inflamed by the heat of
Drake’s mouth, drowning in her essence. “Yes.”

  Sylvan buried her canines in the soft triangle at the juncture of Drake’s neck and shoulder. Mine. Mine.

  Drake jerked at the bite and exploded over Sylvan’s arm. Sylvan’s hips pumped and Drake’s fingers were flooded with Sylvan’s hot, thick essence. But Drake knew there was more. She wanted more. She wanted something she didn’t know how to name. Instinct urged her to sink her canines into the bite on Sylvan’s chest, but Sylvan held her face away.

  “Easy, easy,” Sylvan whispered, cradling Drake against her chest until Drake’s release ebbed.

  Sylvan curled protectively around Drake even though Niki and Andrew would be standing guard in the forest nearby. Their clothes lay in scattered shreds on the ground. A swath of brilliant stars and a bright three-quarter moon lit the clearing. Content just to watch the silver shadows play across Drake’s face, Sylvan traced the angle of Drake’s jaw with her thumb and let her fingers run over the mark she’d made on Drake’s neck. Her mark. Hers.

  “I dreamed of this,” Drake murmured, smoothing her palm down Sylvan’s abdomen.

  “What did you dream?” Sylvan caught her breath when Drake stroked her clitoris. She should tell her to stop, but she didn’t want her to. She hadn’t emptied completely. She wouldn’t without the bite, and she couldn’t risk another bite. Still, she was more satisfied than she’d ever been with another Were. Even when Francesca drained her to the point of weakness, she’d never had such pleasure. So she didn’t protest when Drake fondled her into readiness again.

  “I dreamed we hunted together.” Drake kissed Sylvan’s throat, and her mouth. She rolled the hard, satiny head of Sylvan’s clitoris between her fingers and teased her tongue inside Sylvan’s mouth. When Sylvan groaned, Drake pushed her tongue deeper. Sylvan was still hard and swollen, and Drake wanted more. She kept teasing her as she talked.

  “We ran together, hunted in the forest together, slept curled around one another in a clearing like this one.”

  Sylvan was breathing hard, her legs tight, her pelvis lifting into Drake’s hand. She gritted her teeth, needing to release.

  “This isn’t a dream, is it?” Drake whispered, scraping her canines down Sylvan’s throat.

  Sylvan clasped the back of Drake’s neck, preventing her from moving lower, from biting her again. Silver coated her belly. She whispered, “No. This isn’t a dream.”

  “I want to feel you come. You want to, don’t you?” Drake licked Sylvan’s neck. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Harder. Press harder.”

  Drake pushed herself up on her elbow and massaged the base of Sylvan’s clitoris. “Like this?”

  Sylvan’s face shifted, grew more angular, her eyes shimmered with gold. Her words came out on a growl. “Yes.”

  “Maybe like this?” Drake rolled the deep glands, squeezing gently.

  “Yes.” Sylvan shuddered and her canines gleamed against her full lower lip. Her clitoris twitched against Drake’s palm. She was so close. Her wolf surged, furious at being dominated and denied. Sylvan snarled and reared up, trying to force Drake onto her back. To take her, come on her. Claim her.

  “No,” Drake murmured gently, pressing her mouth to Sylvan’s ear, holding her down with just her hand on Sylvan’s sex. “Let me please you.” She remembered the dream and the weight of Sylvan against her back, pinning her to the earth. She licked along the edge of Sylvan’s jaw and kissed her again, circling Sylvan faster and harder. “Let me please you. Alpha.”

  Sylvan bucked, her claws digging into Drake’s shoulder. “Yes.”

  “That’s it.” Drake squeezed Sylvan’s pulsing sex tightly. “Come all over me.”

  “Yes,” Sylvan shouted, spending into Drake’s hand.

  Drake pulled Sylvan into her arms and leaned back against the fallen log, stroking Sylvan’s back until Sylvan’s labored breathing quieted. She caressed Sylvan’s stomach and gently fingered her clitoris.

  Sylvan grumbled lazily. “You’re still hard. What do you need?”

  “Nothing,” Sylvan sighed, more content than she’d ever expected to be.

  Drake didn’t believe her, but she couldn’t demand more. She had no idea of her eventual place in the Pack or if she’d even live long enough to discover it. Sylvan was the heart of the Pack, and Drake could make no claim on her. She held her, committing every detail to memory—the heat of her body, her scent, the sound of her breathing—and cherished the connection she might never have again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sometime after midnight, Becca finally gave up on waiting and headed for Club Nocturne. Jody was still inside and might be for the rest of the night. Following her had seemed like a good idea earlier in the evening, but at this rate, she might be sitting out in the dark until sunrise with nothing to show for it.

  When nothing was happening, it was time to make something happen.

  As Becca threaded her way between the cars and joined the steady stream of Weres, humans, and Vampires entering the club, her excitement grew. She could have pretended the humming in the pit of her stomach was due to her natural love of the unknown and her insatiable curiosity. Partly true. But she took pride in not lying to herself, so she admitted she was aroused by the idea of watching the Vampires feed. Their sexual hunger, so inseparably linked to their primitive need for sustenance, was raw and sensual and uncivilized. The razor’s edge separating the elegant, cool exteriors Vampires projected in public from their private carnal bloodlust drew her like a potent aphrodisiac. By the time she reached the door, she was wet.

  Inside, the scene was much the same as it had been the night before. Muted lights, low, pounding bass notes thudding from hidden speakers, teeming bodies in various stages of undress. Tonight, though, she took her time making her way to the bar. Already many of the Vampires were feeding, and the sound and smell of sexual gratification enveloped her in an erotic haze. A growl, deep throated and dangerous, caught her attention and she slowed next to a long, low-slung leather sofa. Two Vampires, a blond female in a skintight black sheath and a svelte, shirtless redheaded male in tight riding breeches and thigh-high leather boots, crouched over the massive body of a naked male Were.

  The female, her hips writhing, fed from his neck while her nails raked scarlet trails across his chest. Even in the dim light, Becca could see the shine of arousal coursing down her thighs. The male Vampire, his incisors flashing, licked an enormous erection that pumped a steady stream over the Were’s darkly furred chest and belly. The Were, his features contorted into a rictus of pleasure, thrashed and roared with each violent pulsation.

  Becca had a sudden, sharp image of herself reclining in Jody’s arms, Jody’s mouth on her neck, drinking her, while another Vampire crouched between her legs, sucking and licking her until she orgasmed.

  The fantasy was so potent she was instantly on the verge of coming.

  The female Vampire looked up from the Were’s neck, her mouth a crimson promise, and smiled at Becca. Her eyes were the deep maroon of long-banked coals, and when she held out her hand, Becca stumbled toward her.

  You are so beautiful. Will you let me taste you?

  “Oh yes,” Becca whispered, aching for the sharp, sweet bite and the ecstasy to follow. Her arousal blossomed, expanded, just a breath away from unleashing. If only she could feel that stunning mouth on her throat.

  An arm snaked around Becca’s waist and yanked her backward, away from the mesmerizing scene. Warm breath caressed her ear.

  “I thought we had an agreement,” Jody murmured.

  Becca whimpered, straining toward the blonde, so ready for her.

  “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  Jody’s voice was so cool, her body so hot against Becca’s back. Or maybe Becca was the one on fire. She gripped the arm around her waist and pulled Jody’s hand up to her breast, arching in pleasure as long, slender fingers trailed across her nipple. She writhed against Jody and Jody’s hand on her breast tightened
. When she angled her head, offering her neck, she felt two sharp points of pressure against her throat.

  “Yes,” Becca moaned, squeezing her hand around Jody’s on her breast. “Do it. God, I’m going to come.”

  Jody trembled, her throat working convulsively. She wanted her.

  She wanted to drink her. She wanted to come with the hot flood of Becca’s essence filling every dark, frozen place within her. She ground against Becca’s ass, working herself toward the peak that could only be crested with the taste of Becca in her mouth. She had to have her.

  The hunger was vast, endless, agonizing. She sighed languorously and stroked Becca’s breasts and stomach, enjoying the last sane moments of pleasure before she surrendered to the mindless bloodlust.

  “Now.” Becca gripped Jody’s hair and forced Jody’s mouth harder against her neck. “Please.”

  Dimly, Jody heard the broken plea, but what registered were Becca’s angry words of the night before. Don’t ever do that to me again.

  I decide who I sleep with.

  “God damn it.” Jody grabbed Becca’s arm and yanked her through the crowd toward the door, ignoring Becca’s sharp protesting cries.

  Once outside, she dragged her across the parking lot to where she’d left her car. When she reached the car, she pushed Becca against the hood and backed away from her. Becca’s expression ricocheted from hurt to perplexity, and finally, to anger.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Becca shouted.

  “What am I doing?” Jody raked a hand through her hair. “I told you to stay away from this club. Do you know how close you came to hosting Meredith and Philip just now? Is that what you want? Strangers fucking you when you don’t have the power to say no?”

  “Who are Meredith—” Becca shivered and wrapped her arms around her midsection, remembering the blond Vampire holding out her hand, beckoning her. She remembered, too, the fantasy of Jody at her neck while she orgasmed in a stranger’s mouth. She sagged against the car. “My God. I don’t understand. One second I was watching, and the next I was…” She looked away, humiliated, praying Jody didn’t know what she’d been fantasizing.