He nibbled at the top lip and then the bottom, sucking each into his mouth, one at a time until she opened for him. Then he slipped his tongue inside and his tangled with hers until her breaths shortened to pants and her entire body tingled with anticipation.
As quickly as he’d started, Owen stopped. “I can’t stay. There’s only room for one wolf on this ledge. And we can’t get through that small opening after we shift.”
“Owen.” Renewed fear shredded what little bravery she’d mustered for him. “I can’t stay here alone. It’s dark and…” She grabbed at his retreating form, but her fingers slipped across his wet skin.
“This is the only way to keep you safe.”
“Owen! Owen!” No. No. No. “I’m not staying here by myself.” She clawed at the air, but he’d disappeared. Her hand slapped the surface of the water and she snarled, her wolf hovering just below her skin. She splashed into the water and swam against the current. A few seconds later she’d made it out of the shallow cave. Gulping a quick breath, she scanned the banks, spotting Owen just to her right.
He crouched on the sandy bank behind some rocks, but his focus was on the hills above them to the left.
Clara was almost to Owen’s side before he turned and saw her. Their eyes met and the disappointment was mixed with surprise. Had he really thought she’d just stay there by herself? She was terrified of small dark places and he’d just left her there. He knew she hated the dark. Hated feeling trapped.
“Clara, I—”
“How dare you leave me there?” She reached up to slap his face, but he caught her wrist. “You know—”
“I can’t lose you.” The pain in his voice made all the fight in her melt away. He was terrified too, just not of the dark. “I’ve spent two years alone with that angry brother of yours, and more random wolves your father decided to dispose of than I’d care to admit. Gabriel and I always survived. But now…” He paused, his gaze falling away form her.
She lifted her other hand to his face and cupped his bearded cheek. “Now we survive together. But you can’t leave me alone. I won’t be separated from you. After lying next to you in those cages with a fence between us, all I want is to be in your arms. Right. Now. I want your hands on me. Your mouth on me. Everything, we’ve wanted to do. Waited to do. I love you more than life. If this is our last day together, let’s not waste it.”
Her words made Owen’s pulse sprint like a damn Olympian. Every inch of his body was alive with blood and desire.
She moved her head toward him and he focused in on her lips. Finally free of the wires, and the fence no longer between them.
Clara’s mouth was soft, but insistent, and she had a raw, earthy sweetness to her that reminded him of hot, careless summer nights at home.
Home.
He angled his head and delved deeper into her kiss, tasting all that memory in each swipe of his tongue against hers. The world was green again, behind his eyes, and he was seventeen and in love with his first girl, and about to lay her down in the straw above his granddad’s barn, and plunge…
Owen’s eyes snapped open at a crack in the undergrowth. He pulled Clara’s distracting lips away and narrowed his eyes, covering every inch of the lush, thick world around them.
This wasn’t home, and he wasn’t about to make love to his woman. This was the island, and they were about to be hunted. He yanked her hand, pulling her back toward the cave.
“Owen,” she panted. “Where… no… you know—”
“I know,” he said, steeling his insides to receive her fear. He didn’t want her to be afraid any more than he wanted her to be in pain. But he sure as hell didn’t want her to be dead.
He dragged her into the water and through the narrow rocks, into the cave where he helped her to her feet. She spluttered and coughed as her head came out of the water, and she pounded at him.
“No! I’m not going to… No!” Her fists landed on his naked chest. Over, and over. But he flexed into her anger.
“Just let me put you up here.” He hooked his hands under her shoulders and one of her fists connected with his face so hard, his head snapped back with a crack and hit one of the rocks at the end of the ledge.
He’d seen the layout in daytime, when he first found the place, and in the subsequent hunt when he’d stowed the young red-haired boy in this very place. But they hadn’t gone past the ledge. He wasn’t sure if he could stand there, or where it went after it cut through the hill. The stream burbled up on the other side, almost straight out of the ground, but there was no entrance on that side, where the water hadn’t had hundreds of years to wear away the outer opening. He didn’t know if there were pockets down that way where a person wouldn’t be able to breathe. He couldn’t risk losing his footing. Or Clara losing hers.
“Stop it!” he yelled, and she continued to pound on him. He put his arms around her body and gripped hard. “Do you hear me, Clara? Stop!”
She sobbed against him, but stopped flailing. Her head lay against his shoulder and her body shuddered with each breath. “I can’t stay here alone. I can’t see anything. I don’t know what’s here.”
“This is the only place I know you’ll be safe. Don’t you understand that?” Fear gripped at his air and cut him off. He struggled to breathe through memories of the dreams that had plagued him ever since he’d recognized how much he cared for her… the hunter’s bullets tearing through Clara’s delicate skin. She hadn’t seen people die like he had. She didn’t know what could happen.
“This place… I can’t… it’s too dark.” Her sobs began to subside and he stroked her back, his hand moving in and out of the water with little splashes against the slow burble of the current around them.
“I don’t care if it’s pitch fucking black and you’re scared out of your mind. You are going to stay in here until someone else dies.” His voice caught with emotion on the last words. He hadn’t said that out loud, even to himself.
But that is what you want, isn’t it?
For someone else to die instead of Clara. He’d been hoping for it, without acknowledging it. Something heavy and dark sank inside him. That was what would happen if they hid, or if Clara hid. Someone else would die.
Her hands came out of the water to grab for his face. Her fingers tangled up in his hair and threaded into his beard, and with the faint light from the moon now filtering in under the cave entrance, he could almost make out the shape of her head in front of him.
“No one is going to die for me.”
“Stop talking.” He gripped her head and slammed his mouth into hers. His teeth snapped against hers and he found the angle he wanted, the punishing kiss he desired. He needed her to understand just how deep she was under his skin, just how essential she was to his life. Maybe then she would stay.
Her body bobbed against his and he realized she’d come up off her feet when her legs settled around his hips. Her pelvis grazed against his erection and Owen groaned, spreading his legs to keep his balance against her and the moving water. Even the lazy pace of the stream was enough to push him just enough off-balance that he had to fight to hold himself in place.
He backed her against the rocks where he would at least have some leverage, and tilted his head to one side, trying to gain deeper access to her mouth. Her tongue moved against his and his blood was on the hundred meter dash again, waking every part of him.
Owen was so hard, and her pussy was so close, and she was so willing…
There was no more waiting.
With a quick hand, he pulled at the knot on his loincloth and slapped the wet fabric on the ledge. He pushed Clara’s body hard against the rock and reached for his erection, to guide himself inside her.
She tilted her hips and hitched up her dress, and he pressed into her opening. The farther he pressed inside, tightness gripped him like a hand. A tiny cry escaped her lips, like a sigh and a wince at once, and he stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he panted, trying to angle his hips for an easier sli
de, but his foot slipped and he plunged forward, his chest smashing into hers, and his cock breaching her and filling her.
Her cry echoed against the close cave walls and he curled his toes on the rocks, trying to hold himself still. His breath came in great heaves, as the friction almost sent him over the edge.
“I’m sorry, Clara,” he whispered, between breaths. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Please.” Air feathered against his ear and sent a prickle of desire straight to his abdomen. “Don’t stop.” She wiggled against him and he groaned, deep and animalistic.
He couldn’t see, he couldn’t think. He could only thrust his hips and press deeper inside her. Clara clung to him, her teeth on his shoulder, and her fingernails digging into his back. Each time their bodies were flush together, she made the most unnerving little moan in the back of her throat. He just wanted to drive into her, over and over, until she was his forever.
Owen reached between them and sank his fingers into her folds until she squealed in pleasure.
She rode his fingers and his cock, and bit his skin until he was sure she drew blood. Good girl that she was, she tried to keep as quiet as she could manage, but when her orgasm took her, her head launched back and smacked against the rocks, and she kept groaning. He continued to stroke her until her moans subsided, and the squeeze of her sex made his orgasm follow.
With frantic thrusts, he kept pushing his cock into her until he felt every last vestige of his pleasure fade away. He just wanted to be deeper, to be inside her farther, to make no mistake as to whose scent was in her and on her.
He held her while they both breathed in the moment. They had been waiting so many days to be this close, and it had been so frantic, so frightening, it almost didn’t seem real.
“I want to see your face,” he said, stroking her shoulder. “I hate that it’s so dark.”
“You know my face.” Her words were hot, urging him to hold her tighter.
“I didn’t mean for that to be so…quick.” Owen laced his fingers into her wet hair and kissed the side of her face. “But I’ve been dreaming about this since I first saw you.”
“It wasn’t too quick.” She leaned against him. “It was perfect.”
Owen’s laugh scratched out of his throat. “Now you’re just stroking my ego.”
“No.” Clara put her lips next to his ear and her breath feathered against his skin, sending sparks through his body. “I always tell the truth.”
“I promise, I can do better. I will do better. But the collars…I have to go.”
Clara’s hands scrabbled at his back and he settled her against the rocks, sliding out of her so she could stand on the stream bed with him. He was going to put her back on that ledge, and he needed her to feel how safe she was, how protected she was, in this place.
“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“You’re safe here, Clara.” Owen stroked her tangled hair. “I promise, you’re safe. Nothing can get to you in here.”
“But the dark…”
“The dark can’t hurt you. Just close your eyes and lay here, and think of me.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Once you shift, you won’t know to be afraid of the dark, and you’ll be able to see better.”
“Owen—”
He stopped her words with his kiss and pushed her up onto the ledge. “I promise. It won’t be long until you shift, and then you won’t be afraid.”
Leaving her the first time had been so much easier. Before he’d been inside her. Before Owen knew how deeply he belonged to her, and she to him. He wanted to stay. To hold her forever. To be inside her again. But it was unsafe for him, and for her. If the collars activated, they’d both be trapped, and one of them might drown. No. He had to leave while he was still human.
“Just close your eyes.” He felt for the side of her face and stroked it. “You won’t even know you’re in the dark if your eyes are closed.”
Clara was about to argue, but he pressed his thumb against her lips.
“If you follow me again, I’ll bring you back here.” He pushed hard against the softness of her mouth. “Please. Stay.”
Before emotion took him completely off-guard, he grabbed his loincloth and slipped down into the water. He gulped air when he saw the moon filtering down, and climbed onto the bank.
He pounded at the ground.
Damn Adrian Rossi, and damn his hunt and his fucking island. Without even being present, Rossi was still controlling their every movement.
Someday, Owen was going to find a way out of this damn cage and find Rossi and kill the bastard with his bare hands. That day couldn’t come soon enough.
Once he had the loincloth secured again, he turned back to the low-hanging rocks of the cave-mouth, but this time, there was no Clara. She’d stayed.
He went upstream for several minutes before he came back to the place where he should cross and find a path up to high ground so he could see the rest of the island and plot his strategy for the hunt.
It was strange to be so far in to the forest, toward the cliffs, and not be able to see. The moon provided barely any light, at a quarter of its fullness, and the lights were still out.
Undoubtedly, they’d be back on soon. Or the hunter had night vision. Either way, the only thing left was to wait for the shift, and get ready for the hunt.
He heard the voices before he saw or smelled them. The couple from the cage. They were talking loud enough that human ears would be able to hear them, and Owen was suddenly worried about the noise he and Clara had made in the cave. Would the hunter have heard them? Was there a way he could get into the cave and find her?
“You’re going to have to shift,” the woman was saying. “It’ll help the healing along if you can let your wolf take over.” She had a lazy southern accent, and seemed to be intentionally trying to sound calming. But the man’s voice didn’t sound calm in return.
“I don’t want to shift. This isn’t second-nature for me yet.”
Owen walked toward their voices, hurrying his steps. For Clara’s sake, he’d warn them to keep their voices down, then he was off to search for Gabe, who would be much harder to find.
“We have to make more progress if we’re going to find them again,” Andrea said from behind a bush.
His feet stopped moving as her words stopped. Find them?
“Why don’t you go find them? You’ll be able to get back to me,” Vadik said in Russian-accented English. Light accent, but accent nonetheless.
Made sense, with the Russian-sounding name, that he’d be Russian. It was much harder to tell when they were all speaking Spanish, but he was definitely Russian.
“I don’t want to split up,” she said.
“I’m doing much better,” the Russian croaked. “Just don’t touch my back.”
“It would really be much faster if you—”
Owen broke through the trees, as their voices continued to rise. “Will you two shut the hell up?”
The woman’s black hair whipped around and her eyes went wide and white, but she relaxed when she saw him. Her hand was gripping at her black-clothed chest, a stark white contrast. Too easy to see.
Owen pointed at the ground. “First, you should cover every inch of your skin in dirt if you’re going to stay out in the open like this, so you can’t be seen.”
She put her hand in the air to stop him and he saw a flash of dark tattoo around her wrist. “Wait. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand fine. I’ve survived seventy-two hunts on this island. Between you and me, I know more about how not to get killed in this place.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “And second, you need to lower your voices. We may not be hunted by wolves, but our voices carry in the night.”
Her head whipped around at a barrage of pop-pop-pop. The man didn’t appear to respond, but Owen pointed. “There’s gunfire back that way, somewhere. Not in the hunting arena. Probably the beach.”
“That’s what I’m tryi
ng to tell you.” The woman touched his hand, gripping his wrist with insistence. “There isn’t going to be a hunt. That explosion—”
“They opened the cages. There’s a hunter out there.” Owen shook off her hand. “Let me tell you, they never open the cages unless there’s a hunter out there.”
“But the collars won’t work.” She shook her head. “We destroyed the power grid for the entire island.”
Owen’s breath caught. “You, what?”
“We took out power for the whole island. Whatever command they were using on these, and whatever was broadcasting to keep the wolves here… it’s gone.” Andrea stood and took his shoulders in her hands. “We’re here to rescue you.”
“Well, you’re doing a shit job of it.” He raised his arms to indicate the breadth of the forest. “You’re trapped in here with the rest of us.”
“We’re not trapped anywhere.” She looked over his shoulder, as though she’d realized for the first time that Clara wasn’t with him. “We brought the Black Wolf Rangers with us. We are here to rescue you.”
Owen turned back, thinking immediately of Clara, trapped in that cave. He gestured for them to follow. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” The Russian reached for his woman, almost like an instinct, and he had strange tattoos on his wrists as well. What, were they in some kind of cult or something? Shit. I don’t have time for this.
“I can’t leave with out her.” Owen took off through the brush. Someone was coming for them. He was going to get her off the island.
There may have been a hunter out there, or there may not, but he didn’t care. He would chance it, if there was no electricity and no guard, and someone coming to save them.
He’d have to chance it.
Chapter Five
In through the nose, out through mouth. Keep your eyes closed. For now it was working. She’d kept her heart rate down below panic level and focused on breathing.
Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven Page 16
