Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed

by Madelaine Montague

  Why hadn’t he shot her with Randal’s gun when he’d seen her dive into her car and grab her phone? He must have known she would call the police!

  Had he dropped the gun as soon as he’d shot Randal with his own gun? Had it jammed?

  She wasn’t going to get the answers from her memories, she realized after a while, because they weren’t there. She went over them bit by bit like someone collecting specks of gold, but it was useless. She couldn’t remember because she hadn’t seen any of it happen, none of the things she needed to know. She didn’t know why the agent had been there. She didn’t know who the man was that had targeted her or why he’d done so. She’d never seen Smith before in her life. She was absolutely positive of that.

  She might get the answers in court, but she’d finally accepted that that might not be anything that was going to be resolved anytime soon.

  * * * *

  There wasn’t a lot to do while standing watch besides think. Ordinarily, Damien did his best not to think. It was too easy to get so wrapped up in one’s thoughts that you failed to notice things you were supposed to be watching for. Thinking about anything too much was like sleeping on guard duty.

  But it had crossed his mind to consider whether he actually wanted to go home and he hadn’t really been able to push it out of his mind for very long since.

  He didn’t think any of them had considered it—thought about what they wanted. They’d simply fallen back on their training and they hadn’t been designed or trained to consider that they had a choice in any matter.

  The only thing any of them had thought, he was pretty sure, since they’d figured out that they weren’t on their own world anymore was that they needed to find a way back. They knew they didn’t belong here—not in any sense of the word. They’d considered that they might not be able to go back.

  But they hadn’t considered whether going back was what they wanted.

  Frankly, they didn’t have a fucking thing to go back to.

  Even he hadn’t considered that until he’d thought about the possibility of having Laurie—or going back. Or getting Laurie and going back with her.

  It was pretty unavoidable that he wanted Laurie and, since he did, it had made him consider the situation in a way he wasn’t certain he would have otherwise.

  What he wanted.

  It was a novel concept for him—for any of them.

  They were used to thinking of themselves as enhanced human beings, as citizens and protectors of the rights of the people of the confederation. He didn’t think any of them had stopped to consider that they were protecting everyone else’s freedoms and that they had none.

  He hadn’t considered it.

  He had a choice, though, now.

  He thought he had a choice. He might not. None of them really knew or understood what had happened to them and because they didn’t they also didn’t know what would happen down the road. Considering what had already happened, anything could happen. They might simply be walking along minding their own business one day, satisfied with the new life they had, and then ‘bam!’ the vortex opens up right in front of them and sucks them back.

  He wanted something by the gods before that happened, though! He wasn’t willing to give up an opportunity that had dropped in his lap for maybes.

  Laurie was here and now and he wanted her and he did not want to go home and he was going to go for it!

  Lucien and the others could chase their tails if they wanted to. If they were determined to go back, he couldn’t stop them, but he didn’t want to and he wasn’t going to!

  He felt better when he’d arrived at that decision—briefly. As soon as he started thinking about the others heading home and leaving him behind he felt an emptiness open up that even thoughts of Laurie couldn’t fill.

  And it wasn’t merely because he didn’t have Laurie and had no clue if she’d have him even if he could keep her from knowing what he was.

  The truth was, he couldn’t imagine a life without his brothers. He couldn’t imagine a life outside of the military for that matter—small wonder when that was what he’d been designed for, but he didn’t figure he actually had to give that up and if he did, he thought he could figure it out.

  Living without his brothers wasn’t something that he could contemplate without a great deal of grief. They were far more than ‘brothers in arms’. They’d been developed in the same facility, ‘born’ there, taught and trained there. He shared DNA with Lucien, but Basil and Kane were as much his brothers in every other sense of the word. They functioned together as a team. He wasn’t sure any of them were actually capable of functioning normally without having each other to fall back on.

  Well, he decided, Laurie first and then he would convince the others that they had to stay, that there was no reason to go back and every reason to stay!

  Ok, there was the monster thing, but they didn’t know that going back through the vortex would undo it.

  They could control the change—mostly. At least here they weren’t considered monsters even when they looked as human as anyone else! At home they were.

  It wasn’t as if the bastards had designed mates for them—women that would accept them for what they were because they were the same!

  They hadn’t wanted them to breed. He realized that now, although he hadn’t before.

  It infuriated him. They’d been bred to die, pure and simple!

  “If I’d been an assassin, I’d be handing your head to you right about now,” Lucien growled.

  Damien looked up at him, his anger instantly switching directions even though he knew it wasn’t reasonable. “I heard you coming.”

  “And you knew it was me.”

  “I know your scent as well as I know my own,” Damien responded sardonically, coming away from the tree he’d been using as a prop. “I don’t need a lecture on doing my job.”

  “You were distracted,” Lucien said grimly.

  “I was thinking,” Damien retorted. “No law against that, is there? I was completely aware of everything around me.”

  Lucien studied him for a long moment and finally relaxed fractionally. “Dare I ask what had you so pissed off?”

  “Long story,” Damien muttered. “I doubt you’d be interested in hearing it.”

  “Try me.”

  Damien considered it but he’d been thinking in terms of trying to talk the others into dropping the effort to find a way home. Lucien was the man to talk to. Whatever he decided, Basil and Kane would agree to. “I was thinking they didn’t breed mates for us. It made me realize we’d never been intended to have lives of our own, regardless of that bullshit they fed us about serving our government and then retiring on one of the colony worlds. We were just bred to die.”

  Lucien’s response surprised him. He merely shrugged. “You just figuring that out?”

  Damien’s lips tightened. “It doesn’t piss you off?”

  “I try not to waste time beating my chest over things I can’t change.”

  “And you still want to go back … to that?”

  Lucien frowned. “We belong there. We don’t belong here. Who’s to say we have a choice?”

  “We might not. It might just happen like it did the first time. But we do have the choice of whether to try to go back or to try to make a life for ourselves here.”

  Lucien studied him a long moment. “Go get some rest. We’ll discuss it later—when we aren’t supposed to be on watch.”

  Damien hadn’t been gone five minutes when Lucien was wishing he hadn’t dismissed the subject so readily.

  Because he couldn’t think of but one reason to explain Damien’s sudden interest in settling down.

  Laurie!

  He was going to kill the bastard with his bare hands if he touched Laurie before he had a chance to mate with her! He was the alpha! He had breeding rights! It was his right to decide whether to share her with the rest of the pack or not! And he damned well wouldn’t be doing that before he’d had the chance to
breed her!

  * * * *

  Lucien was still seething when his watch was up and he could return to the cabin. Fully expecting to discover that Damien had returned hours earlier and gone immediately to Laurie, he was surprised to discover that wasn’t the case at all. There wasn’t a hint of the scent of sex.

  He was mollified—somewhat—the discovery at least deflated the rage that had dogged him every step of the way back to the cabin.

  He wasn’t completely satisfied. Damien had all but stated his intentions toward Laurie as far as Lucien was concerned and he had no intention of standing by and waiting for it to happen.

  He was the alpha.

  Laurie was his.

  Regardless, he hadn’t completely lost his mind or his first objective—which was simply to guard Laurie from harm. If she’d stayed in her bedroom until he’d had time to gather his wits better and tamp his raging need to mate she would have been safe—from him—at least until she was released from protective custody.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Roused by the changing of the guard, Laurie decided it must be close to morning and got up. Still drugged with fatigue since it was actually only 3:00 AM, she didn’t smell the coffee she’d grown accustomed to smelling and decided to head into the kitchen to put it on herself before she got dressed.

  That was mistake number two because the moment she staggered out of her room in her panties and transparent t-shirt, Lucien shifted into mating overdrive, unable from that point of preventing his instincts from taking over. He strode purposefully across the room toward her and the closer he got the more his control slipped and the closer his beast edged toward the surface. By the time he reached her he was running completely on instinct—mating instincts. Grasping her upper arms, he bore her back against the wall behind her and plastered himself full length against her, nestling his engorged cock at the juncture of her thighs.

  Still thoroughly sleep disoriented, Laurie’s first impression of the situation was that there must be some sort of threat she wasn’t aware of. She tipped her head back to stare up at him in confusion. “Lucien?”

  “Damn right!” he growled, spearing his fingers through her hair as he cupped the back of her head and lowered his own head to match his lips to hers. His last grasp on reason vanished like mist before the sun when he did. She was soft and pliant with confusion his mating mind interpreted as surrender. That tamed his more aggressive urges, but the sense of triumph he felt at what he saw as her acknowledgement of his right to her further enflamed him. He forced her lips to part, plunging his tongue inside the warm, wet cavern and raking it across hers possessively, absorbing in that one act much of what he hungered for—her heat and essence surrounding him.

  The surrogate mating briefly satisfied his need for immediate and complete possession, but it only made his cock throb harder, more painfully with demand and, almost as soon as he began the assault, he began to think of his need for total possession. His satisfaction ebbed with the realization that his cock was merely nestled against the V at the top of her thighs, not embedded within her as he needed it. He could feel the heat and dampness of her nether lips each time he curled his hips into hers, but that only frustrated him more.

  He needed more of her, but his mind was so overheated by that time that it was sluggish in presenting him with a solution to his dilemma.

  It occurred to him finally that the bed was a better place for what he had in mind and he pulled her away from the wall, broke the kiss long enough to determine the direction of the bedroom door, and waltzed the two of them towards it while he sampled the tender skin along her neck and ear with light, sucking kisses.

  They bumped into the doorframe instead of ringing the hole and Lucien’s patience vanished altogether. Reaching down, he swung her up into his arms and crossed the room in a handful of long, impatient strides. Dropping her to the bed when he reached it, he followed her down, sprawling across her.

  Lucien’s mouth was hot as it settled over hers, hungry, demanding. His touch was completely debilitating. Laurie’s disorientation and confusion deepened. ‘What the fuck?’ flickered through her mind, but it was gone again before she felt any sort of alarm, suffocated by a wall of heat that rose up and engulfed her as his taste and scent invaded her system with his first kiss.

  She decided it wasn’t important—whatever she’d forgotten.

  What was important was that she was still dressed and he was dressed in far more clothing than she was. She wanted to see what he looked like under his clothes, feel his skin gliding across her own. He was probably the most beautiful man she was ever going to get the chance to see firsthand and touch. She didn’t want to miss anything.

  Apparently Lucien was of a similar train of thought. He broke the kiss he’d initiated as soon as he’d dropped her on the bed and leaned away long enough to pull her t-shirt off. A touch of dismay flickered through Laurie when she heard a series of ominous pops, but Lucien dove over her again the moment he’d removed the offending garment and began stroking her with his hands and she lost track of everything else. The faintly abrasive skin of his palms sent tingles along her flesh in a wave that moved beyond the actual contact. The downy hairs on the surface rose like tiny antennas, funneling the sensation to the network of nerve endings that covered her and her body responded by flushing the tiny capillaries with blood. It warmed her skin, awakened it to receiving more stimulus, made her dizzier, more disoriented—delighted her, made her hungry, impatient.

  She lost awareness of everything beyond the touch of Lucien’s hands as they skated lightly over her in a restless, endless caress, settling on first one breast and then the other for a few moments, squeezing and molding them to fit his palms. Her nipples rose and tightened at the attention, flooding with blood that made them ache with fullness. Conflicting desires arose, vied for dominance. She wanted to feel his mouth on her breasts, explore him, and feel him inside of her all at one time.

  She was in a rush.

  She wanted to enjoy everything as long as she could.

  She contented herself with the feel of Lucien filling her senses with his warmth, scent, and touch for many moments, but her palms itched to explore him as he was exploring her. She began pulling at his clothing, too far gone to figure out how to remove it but determined to feel his bare skin against her own.

  He seemed to get the message. Rolling away, he stripped, tossed his clothing aside and then rolled back over her. Laurie hummed her appreciation as he settled over her once more, yielding to the urge she’d felt to explore him with her hands, eyes closed, focusing her exploration on the sense of touch.

  His skin was smooth and warm. She followed the contours of his flesh like a blind woman, exploring the texture of his skin, the bumps and hollows formed by hard, ropey muscles beneath the silken sheathe of skin. The feel of him thrilled her even more than his caresses and those were beyond lovely, bringing warmth and then turning the heat up until she felt parched with thirst, feverish, scalded.

  “Laurie, baby, you feel so good,” he murmured against her throat, having taken a quick detour to suck open mouthed kisses along her throat that had her gasping for breath. Heat spiraled between them like steam rising off hot pavement as he stroked one hand down her back to cup her buttocks, pulling her almost bruisingly against his erection.

  He sought her mouth again, settling his lips firmly over her mouth and plunging his tongue inside to taste her, to give her a taste of himself. The stroke of his tongue along hers, the heat of his mouth, was intoxicating. She found herself gripping his shoulders frantically, surging with him in a rhythmic dance to bring their bodies closer, to brush, meld with the heated current that passed back and forth between them.

  They seemed to arrive at the limit of their endurance of pleasurable torture at about the same moment. Laurie had just begun trying to figure out how to get him to enter her without breaking the spell by vocalizing her demand when Lucien lifted away from her far enough to push her thighs apart and s
ettled between them, probing her with the head of his cock.

  Oh for a smooth penetration when she was desperate for it!

  But no! The moisture she’d generated seemed to have glued the lips of her sex together. Lucien was too far gone to figure out why the entrance seemed to be blocked. All he managed to do in the first couple of surges was to stuff the lips of her sex into her vaginal channel. She bucked a few times, trying to dislodge him or wiggle the flesh out of the way to accommodate him. Neither worked and she struggled to get a hand between them. That also seemed doomed to failure for several moments, but she finally managed to get one hand down between them and part the flesh that was giving both of them hell. As soon as she parted the flesh, he plugged the hole. She snatched her hand from between them and grabbed a handful of his ass cheek, pulling, planting one heel under his buttocks and shoving at the same time.

  He might have found that a lit-tle distracting. He dismounted, shoved her hand and her heel out of his ass and then re-engaged his flesh with hers. Before she could grab his ass again, he caught both her hands and manacled her wrists to the bed on either side of her head.

  She was barely aware of it. His first thrust nearly buckled her spine. The pleasure of being penetrated gave way to a burning sensation as he stretched her flesh almost beyond its limits with his girth.

  Maybe it hadn’t been a matter of the lips of her sex getting in the way, she thought dimly, wondering if she was about to feel a tearing sensation to accompany the burning?

  “Jesus, baby, you’re tight,” Lucien muttered breathlessly, dizzy with the way his heart was hammering frantically against his chest wall. “And so hot. My god you’re hot.”

  Laurie’s skin prickled and tightened at his words, heat and a fresh tidal wave of moisture flooding her sex. Thankfully! Her flesh adjusted. The burning sensation eased and was replaced by a wondrous sense of fullness as he plowed balls deep inside of her. Lord! He didn’t miss a single nerve ending along her channel! He scrubbed every one of them thoroughly with the loveliest friction she’d ever experienced. She felt herself building toward climax almost immediately. Clinging tightly to him, she squeezed her eyes and focused on the rising tide of tension until it reached critical mass. The explosive release tore little cries of delight from her that reached a crescendo when she did and then slowly faded into the night.