by Anne Marsh
Hell. Rafer bit back a growl. Any sharing he did would be on his terms. “She wants to pick her own course, make her own decisions.”
“And that’s goin’ to get her killed. She know what a skin hunter is?” Dag’s gaze met his in silent challenge. “You tell her about them, make her understand the risks. She’ll rethink stayin’ fast. And if she doesn’t? She’s your mate. You do what you need to do to keep her safe.”
“She won’t like it.”
“She doesn’t have to like it,” Luc countered. “She just needs to stay alive.”
So he could breed her like a bitch in heat and rebuild his Pack. That had been the plan, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted more, even though he wasn’t sure what that more was.
All he knew was he was flat out of time. Lark Andrews might be his mate, the woman the blue moon had led him to, but she was a mate in name only. She hadn’t accepted him, not in her heart and her mind, not in the ways that mattered. Sex would never be enough to hold a woman like her.
She would want the words from him. Words and promises he couldn’t give her. She’d want him to be human, when he wasn’t. Not entirely.
“These skin hunters are goin’ to be on her like white on rice. They’re not goin’ to quit. Not when they’ve got themselves a blue-moon bride sittin’ right out there in the open for the takin’. We need to take her somewhere we can defend.”
“We could defend the farm,” he said slowly. More he thought it over, the more he liked the idea.
“That’s shit, and you know it.”
“Why?” He’d surveyed the land. It wasn’t impossible. “Why not make a stand right here? The farm actually isn’t in a bad position at all.”
“You want to sit tight and paint a target on your ass?” Dag grinned at him. “That sounds like an excellent plan. You go right ahead.”
Luc shook his head. “Once those skin hunters know where we’ve hunkered down, they’ll lay siege. You stay put, you make it easy for them. They’ll keep on coming, and there’s a limit to the number we can hold off.”
“So we take them out. Let these scouts follow us and make damn sure none of them get to report back.”
Luc wanted to take her and go. Dominate her. Assert their will. And they could, Rafer knew. It would be so goddamn easy. She was human and had no real idea what she was up against.
He, on the other hand, was a fool, because forcing her was the last thing he wanted to do. Sure, he might be able to coax her body in his bed, but he’d lose something else. He’d lose Lark herself. Fuck. He didn’t need to think too long to know this was the truth.
~~~~
Lark’s breathing slowed, and she was seconds from slipping away from Rafer into sleep. The bed creaked as he lay down because it was almost as old as the damned farmhouse. The mattress gave beneath his weight, rolling her into his larger body.
His wolf craved touch, needed to be skin to skin with her. Hell, the man also wanted to hold her, to spoon himself around her. She was still lonely and so was he. She’d fought her attraction to him. That was her choice and he’d respect it, even if he’d been hard since she’d run from him in the bayou. But he wouldn’t let her sleep alone, not when they both needed that closeness.
He’d take every inch she’d give him.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Her voice was sleepy, but she curled up on her side, face away from him. She didn’t tell him to leave, so fuck being a gentleman.
He got the covers up and slipped underneath. “You’re my mate,” he whispered roughly. The sheets were old cotton, baby soft, and the fabric held her scent. God, he could have laid there all night, breathing her in. Instead, he eased closer. Got himself right up behind her and pulled her in gently. He didn’t want to fight and didn’t want to scare her. He’d told himself he wouldn’t ask for what she didn’t want to give, but he gave into desperate temptation. “Let me sleep next to you?”
“Hmmm.” Her voice was a drowsy hum. She’d worked hard, and he could sense her slipping away, losing herself to the dreams.
“I just want to hold you,” he whispered roughly. She’d gone to bed wearing a cotton chemise, the scoop neck trimmed with lace. That lace hugged the curve of her breasts, and she was relaxed and feminine in his arms. “I’m Pack. We touch.”
For a long minute, he heard only the easy rhythm of her breath going in and out.
Then she turned over and her hand found his chest like she was making sure he was really there and she wasn’t dreaming. He wanted to lean down into her, press her back into her mattress and show her exactly who and what he was, but he didn’t want her to take her hand away.
“Why?” she asked. Her fingers fanned out against his skin.
“Touch feels good.” He couldn’t keep the pleasure from leaking into his voice. “But it’s more than that. The wolvenkind, we need touch. We need that contact with our Pack, with our mates.”
She eyed him skeptically like her bullshit meter was going off.
He didn’t know why her opinion mattered so much to him, but it did. He didn’t want her thinking the worst of him. “I touch you and I feel calmer. More centered. I don’t have to fight the wolf for control.”
Her tiny snort of laughter warmed him up. “You realize this is a standard high school dating ploy, right?”
Laughing with her filled him with more of that unfamiliar inner peace, sated that deep longing he hadn’t known he had. “Yeah,” he admitted, “but it’s still true.”
“All right,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about the shifters. He understood her reluctance, but she couldn’t hide from that truth forever. He couldn’t change who he was—loup garou and Pack.
Her fingers moved against his skin again, and his heart gave a hopeful leap before he could shoot it down. “Is that what you want?”
“Please,” he groaned. His cock was erect, but this was about more than sex. “Touch me, chère.”
~~~~
Rafer’s chest was rock hard, as solid as the male himself. Rafer had made it clear he was staying, and Lark found that strangely seductive—which worried her. She had a life already, she reminded herself. Do not want this. She wasn’t going to be some wolf’s mate and give up everything she’d worked for here. But she was also lonely, and some things were easier to cop to in the dark. She was tired. She didn’t want to say no to Rafer. Not really.
Instead, she didn’t say anything. Just laid there, breathing him in. The comforting solidness of him was an erotic seduction. One breath in. Another out, the rhythm of their bodies slowly synchronizing.
He wasn’t handsome or good-looking, not in a GQ way. His face was too harsh, the lines of his jaw too strong for pretty. He made it impossible to forget that he was a fighter. A brutal warrior nature had designed as the ultimate predator. And yet, when she sensed rather than saw his head dip down towards her, she made a sound of welcome.
She didn’t want to deny him.
His hands slid up her arms, cupping her shoulders and pulling her into his warmth. “Your scent drives me crazy, chère.” His husky voice drove her crazy.
“Rafer—” She wasn’t sure what she needed to tell him, but his thumb pressed against her lips, demanding her attention.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Maybe we need to talk less.”
And do what? This was good, though, this being alone with a man who’d intrigued her from the moment he landed on her boat dock. Just him and her, the bed a luscious promise at her back. When his mouth covered hers, she wanted to keep that contact forever, freeze these seconds in time. How could such a hard man, a fighter and a predator, kiss that gently? Full of warmth and so damned alive, his lips moved over hers with exquisite pressure. She was tired, but she had the energy for this, these drowsy, undemanding caresses.
Kissing this good should be illegal.
His mouth took hers, slow and deep, the wet sound of skin on skin uncompromisingly erotic in her darkened bedroom. His tongue stroked along the closed seam of her lips and in.
Sure. Taking and giving pleasure. Licking along the edge, coaxing her to come out and play with his wolf.
“We talk like this, chère.” His teeth nipped at her bottom lip. “This is me tellin’ you how very pretty this part of you is. How good you taste.”
Oh, God. She wasn’t putting words together now. No, she was thinking about the feel of his mouth on hers and about how very close he was. When she inhaled, her breasts rubbed gently against his bare chest, only the cotton chemise between them. With each sensual rub of his tongue, she relaxed into the mattress, into him. Getting comfortable.
Her mouth opened on a sigh and his tongue slid in, playing a lazy game of chase-me-catch-me with hers. He tasted wild and sweet, and kissing him was too good.
When his mouth moved away, his lips leaving hers, she heard her own sleepy protest before she could bite back the sound.
“Shhh,” he whispered. He turned her around in his arms, wrapping himself around her. Draping one leg over hers and tucking his face into her neck. For the first time in years, she felt safe. Protected. Loved. Sleep beckoned, rising up to meet her.
“Go to sleep, chère.” His satisfaction rumbled through her, penetrating her defenses. “See, this I got right. This is good.”
The words slipped out of her mouth right before she tumbled into sleep. “Thank you.”
“Whatever you need, chère.” His promise followed her into her dreams. “I give you that.”
Chapter Nine
Disaster struck the next night. The shit storm wasn’t unexpected—not unexpected at all—but Rafer had still hoped. Wanted to believe that, this time, the Pack wasn’t facing yet another skin-hunter attack. But no, that eternal war was banging on his front door, yelling loud and clear that time was up, motherfucker. Before Fate had yippee-ki-yayed the last grains of sand in its hourglass, he’d thought the choice was his mate or his Pack. The reality storming the farmyard made the choice far more basic. Living or dying. That’s what it all came down to tonight.
Rafer knew the skin hunters were out there waiting for the sun to go down. The Pack could have made a run for the bayou and their base, but they had an hour tops before the natural light went. There wasn’t enough time to make it to a city big enough that the vamps couldn’t shut down the power grid. He bet they’d already killed the power to half the parish and that Lark’s farm wasn’t the only blackout.
Lark had a generator, which was an unexpected bonus. Luc had ordered two dozen, but it would be another week before the truck brought them up here to Lark’s farm. He’d had to keep the order on the down low, because the Pack had learned years ago that local enforcement tended to believe there was a big-ass marijuana grow happening when there was an order of that size. Lark’s generator lit up the growing dark. Problem was, the generator couldn’t cover the entire farm in light. The damn vamps would slip right through the dark spots where the light didn’t reach—and it would only take one vamp to find and kill the generator.
The skin hunters were vamps, six-foot-plus males with trademark pale skin, white hair and the black eyes. Preternaturally fast, the hunters could clear a twelve-foot jump without breaking a sweat, but photosensitivity would fry their asses almost as soon as the sun crept over the horizon. The vamps couldn’t tolerate any light, artificial or natural.
Rafer kept one eye on the yard while he unloaded an arsenal of flashlights and knives on Lark’s kitchen table.
She watched him carefully. “The generator kicked on. You know why we’ve lost power?”
She sensed something, all right.
Talking quickly, because time was up for them, he gave her the 4-1-1 on the skin hunters and their photosensitivity. When he figured she understood exactly who had killed her power and why, he wrapped her fingers around a flashlight. “You do what I tell you. Whatever the Pack says, you do it.”
She didn’t like orders, he got that, but this was her life on the line, so he’d make damned sure she did what she needed to. He wasn’t losing her tonight.
She looked at him. Nodded. “Got it. You want to tell me why?”
He’d tried, but she hadn’t wanted to believe him. Not the first time.
So he said it again, because she was still human and his world was new to her. “We’re surrounded by vamps. As soon as that sun is down, they’re goin’ to storm the place.”
She shook her head. “I’ll hold on to my farm as long as I can. I’m sure as hell not letting a bunch of vamps take it from me.”
His wolf approved wholeheartedly of her protective attitude. This was her den, her lair. The vamps had no business dragging her into one of their hunts.
“Are they…” she waved a hand, “…bloodsuckers? Like in the movies?”
Human imaginations never failed to amaze him. “Sure.” Although more like predatory carnivores. When a vamp got his hands and teeth on fresh meat, he tore said meat to shreds. Nothing left but a bleeding pulp, but his mate didn’t need that visual. “You don’t let them close. They move fast, faster than you’re used to, and they can jump. Vamp will clear the yard in one, maybe two leaps, and then he’ll be up here on your front porch and there won’t be anythin’ between the two of you.” He wasn’t letting that happen, none of the Pack would, but it wouldn’t hurt her to be prepared.
“Why do they want the skins?” Her fingers wrapped around the flashlight he’d armed her with. With her other hand she palmed a gun and set it close beside her on the table. Unfortunately, the only way to kill the bastards was the old-fashioned way. Stake them right through the heart. Bullets were no more than a tickle.
“Skins let them walk in the daylight.” When she looked at him in a silent demand for more words, he gave her what he could. The vamps were a perversion that defied description. “They can’t take the light otherwise.”
“So, they wear the skins like a jacket?”
“Literally.” His hands smoothed the air, miming a body. “They cover themselves, every inch they can, in wolven skin. Jacket, pants, shirt—whatever. The more skin a vamp wears, the better he hunts in the daylight.”
“They want to make a coat out of you?” She gaped at him.
“Yeah, but it’s not happening,” he promised her, palming a pair of blades. “All I need is for you to keep safe inside, okay? You let me and mine do our thing outside, and you stay put here.”
She leaned into him, rubbing his shoulder with her cheek. “I can do that.”
He left her inside and went out where the Pack was moving into position. This drill was too familiar. They were foot soldiers in an age-old war against the skin hunters, and this was one more installment in the same-old-same-old.
Sunset on the bayou was pure magic. The birds roosting in the moss-hung cypress greeted the new dark with a raucous shout out, a sharp explosion of sound as the sun finished its slow crawl towards the horizon. As usual, sunset wasn’t romantic.
No, the setting sun was the opening salvo in tonight’s installment of a centuries-old battle.
The fear, though—that was a new emotion. In the handful of seconds before the sun finished its dip and slide beneath the ocean’s edge and made the bayou all lights-out for the night, he wondered how Luc handled not knowing where his mate was or what kind of danger was blowing up around her. He wanted to keep Lark safe and instead she had a ringside seat for tonight’s dinner show. The Pack’s fighters knew their shit, but that didn’t guarantee the outcome he wanted. Only made it more likely.
She could die.
Hell, he could die, but that possibility didn’t engender the nauseating, gut-churning fear he got imagining Lark in the hands of the skin hunters.
He wouldn’t leave Lark alone and unprotected.
She probably wouldn’t see things that way. She might blame him—and not that bitch destiny—for the shit storm knocking on the farm’s front door. It didn’t matter.
He’d fight.
And he’d win.
He wasn’t losing her. Not now that he’d finally found her.
The sun winked out, blanketing the bayou in sleepy darkness, and the skin hunter attack came fast and hard, like always. The vamps pushed fast towards the yard and house. Maybe they’d left Beauville alone. Lark’s neighbors were likely fine for the moment, because fresh meat wasn’t the priority. There was plenty of that anywhere the skin hunters went. No, what the bastards wanted were Pack skins, which meant they targeted the farm first. Anything after that was all bonus. In the early years after he’d been born, he’d seen whole towns emptied out after the vamps had torn through. Slaughterhouse didn’t begin to cover it.
He counted heads as the vamps swarmed the yard and the Pack engaged. A dozen vamps were visible, which meant there were at least twice as many hanging back and coming up on him from behind. The scent, thick and oily, hit him first. The vamps stank of rotting meat and fur. Hunters didn’t bother cleaning up their prizes any, simply slapped them right on. Mismatched fur covered the arms and legs of the first vamp out of the shadows and into the pool of artificial light, the too-white flesh an obscene gleam against the jagged edges of the pelts. Blackened blood had dried on the stiffened edges. Rafer didn’t recognize the faint trace of the skin’s former owner, which was a small blessing.
Behind him, the screen door snapped open.
“Go inside.” He gave the order without turning around.
“Oh, my God,” Lark whispered. More prayer than curse, so yeah, she got the big picture here.
“Go. Now.” He wanted to plant a kiss on her forehead, but his feet were already hitting the steps. Inside was better, but at least on the porch he could keep an eye on her and she had the wall to her back, so no one could sneak up behind her. Later, he’d explain the importance of a mate’s orders in battle. For now, he headed into the yard to take care of business.
“Rafer—”
He didn’t know what she was going to say, but there wasn’t enough time for a heart-to-heart, so he kept on going. Still, he didn’t want to die without telling her the truth this once.
