Gwen knew a human being when she saw one. She had lived in a city filled with humans all of her life. What she didn’t know was how hard he worked to avoid letting her in on the specifics of the situation they were in and that staying here longer would not only put Gwen in jeopardy, but drag Tess toward peril as well.
Wants were nothing when it came to maintaining everyone’s safety. Possibly things would be different someday. Once Gwen was out of trouble, he might come back for Tess. With his sister safe, he could tell Tess everything and it wouldn’t matter.
The sound of the Jeep’s engine turning over was the green light for his departure, and Jonas was as reluctant to leave as his sister was. Gwen whined again when he stood, and growled when he bent to pick her up.
“She’s not like us,” he repeated. “And she never will be.”
Lifting his sister had to hurt her tremendously, and yet she made no more sounds. He really hoped she wouldn’t change shape in the time it took for them to reach their cabin, giving Tess the surprise of her life. As talented as Tess was at discerning man from werewolf, it was clear she didn’t have the slightest notion about Gwen.
With Gwen in his arms, he walked toward Tess’s Jeep. He climbed onto the seat, holding Gwen tight.
Tess didn’t look at him as she drove, but the things left unsaid were piling up. The air in the Jeep crackled with tension. Jonas counted the inches between them and watched Tess from the corner of his eye.
Tess drove the route in the dark like she knew it well. When she pulled up in front of the cabin, she waited without speaking while he slammed the Jeep’s door with a light kick of his foot. She waited until he had mounted the steps before breaking the silence.
“Catch,” she said, tossing a small bottle to him that he caught even with his hands full of white wolf. It was the medicine for Gwen’s wounds. A parting gift.
Then, in a whirl of kicked up dirt and dried grass, the woman he craved in so many impossible ways was gone. Leaving her and South Dakota was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Chapter 22
Turn around, Tess’s inner self urged as she drove. Go back. Talk this out. But really, what was to be gained by doing any of those things? Jonas was going to leave the area and she would get on with her life, be back on track, do her job the way she was supposed to.
He would leave and she’d start over.
“Yes. That’s the plan,” Tess muttered, slapping the wheel with both hands. “It’s a good plan.”
The only problem was how much she didn’t actually believe that. Her life had radically changed. The wolf hunter had crossed a line drawn by a werewolf whose magnificent presence had sucked her into his orbit, only to leave her spinning out of control.
Her speed on the road rivaled the speed of her heart rate at the moment. She felt every damn beat and took the web of tight turns like a race car driver, needing to get home so there’d be no option for turning around. Her mentors hadn’t stressed the finer points about the kind of physical voodoo Lycans wielded and how effective it might be. Any self-respecting wolf hunter in her position should have felt ashamed for having succumbed to that sort of power.
If she turned around, she’d tell this Lycan a thing or two. “Go to hell” would have been a good way to start.
Tess kept up her inner monologue until her home came into view. By then, it really was too late to switch gears. She pulled up and parked in the driveway, noting that the front door was open. Jonas had left it that way. His hands had been full.
Tess sat in silence, staring at the house. After a while, she went inside and straight to her room, tired, bone-weary, mentally fatigued and in need of a few moments of peaceful oblivion. She stripped off the leather that carried Jonas’s musky male scent and climbed onto the bed without thinking about anything other than how to stop the ceaseless chatter going on in her mind. She almost succeeded.
“Tess?”
“Oh, hell, no,” she sputtered, covering her ears. “There’s no point, wolf.”
“I’m sorry, Tess.”
Flipping onto her back, Tess stared up at the ceiling.
“You asked if that dark thing was after me, and I lied when I told you I didn’t know. It’s a truly dark being, Tess, and I came here hoping to stall the inevitability of meeting with it. If Gwen and I leave, that thing will also leave. You won’t have to worry about what it is and what it can do. Trust me when I say that you wouldn’t want to know anything more.”
His thoughts came in waves of remembered warmth. Tess heard those thoughts as clearly as if he was here in her room, sitting on the side of her bed.
“I’ve never been good at guessing games,” she sent back to Jonas, since it was either talk back to him or go mad.
“I can’t leave Gwen alone now,” he said. “If it was any other way, I’d be with you.”
“Your white wolf will be all right. Use the salve. Let her heal.”
“If only she could heal.”
“It’s good medicine.”
“Can it work on the inside, Tess? Do you have a salve for that?”
They were no longer speaking about Jonas’s pet. The point of Jonas’s comments had shifted as quickly as he had shape-shifted in the moonlight.
“Tess?”
“What is it you want, Jonas? To make an even bigger fool of me?”
“I want to hold you.”
Tess’s insides were churning. She blinked slowly to get a grip, touched by the sentiment Jonas had just offered. How long had it been since anyone had held her and offered comfort? It had been over a year since her parents’ death, but her parents had never coddled their grown-up offspring.
Hold her? Jonas’s simple statement and the emotion it represented brought tears to her eyes. Either he had her number and knew about her loneliness, or holding her was something they both truly wanted. Closeness. Comfort. Understanding. Truce.
As powerful as Jonas was, the wolf wasn’t crude, arrogant or pushy. He hadn’t mentioned taking her to bed or offered up pornographic innuendos. She would have given a lot to have been able to feel his arms wrapping around her. To breathe easily, rest her head against his chest, and feel like she belonged to someone, even if the feeling was to be short-lived.
All of the loneliness she had filed away as being unimportant came rushing back. But the simple truth here was that the male of her fantasies was not someone. He was a werewolf. Allowing any sort of closeness with a werewolf would demean the work her family had done. In loving a werewolf, desiring a werewolf, her life would be over.
“Come back, Tess,” he sent to her. Possibly he sensed her turmoil. “Get in the car and come back here. Come now. Let’s finish this.”
“Too late,” Tess argued. “It’s already finished.”
“You’re wrong. What’s between us won’t be over no matter what happens or how far away from you I go.”
Tess exhaled a long breath before addressing that remark, wishing for a second wind to help her deal with this situation.
“We’ll see about that, won’t we, when you leave tomorrow?” she said.
“Come here, Tess. Come now.”
This was the time to say the words she had rehearsed in the car. Go to hell, Jonas. The command sat on her tongue, begging to be spoken. The words filled her mouth. But Jonas spoke first.
“Please, Tess,” he sent over the channels that inexplicably connected them. “Please get here.”
And damn it, that polite little phrase trumped any argument she could have made.
It was time to end this. Past time. Jonas had to stop talking to her the way Weres talked among themselves. He had to be made to leave her alone if he wouldn’t do so willingly.
She had to demand this in person.
Forgoing the leather, pulling on her jeans and an old sweatshirt, Tess grabbed her key, closed the front
door and got into the Jeep, thinking that morning couldn’t be more than a couple of hours away and that when that sun appeared, Jonas would be gone. That was a good thing. The only way out of this dilemma.
Right?
* * *
With Gwen curled up by the fire, Jonas again stood in the open doorway, waiting. Tess was coming. She had accepted his invitation and before she got here, he had to decide how much to tell her.
Speaking to her had been a bad call that he hadn’t been able to avoid. As a wolf hunter, Tess had access to other hunters around the globe. If Were secrets were to be disclosed because of one Lycan’s need to appease one of those hunters, he’d be responsible for the trouble all Weres might be in if any of those disclosures got out.
Asking Tess to keep those secrets wasn’t any more of a viable option than making love to her would have been. Although Tess wore her loneliness openly and had possibly been ripe for a connection of any kind, he might have unwittingly taken advantage of that.
He really was sorry, kind of. On the other hand, waiting for Tess to arrive made Jonas question his one motive for asking her here. A motive she might not like. An idea that had presented itself when he had kissed her and had hounded him ever since.
It read like this: Tess Owens wasn’t one hundred percent human, after all. She couldn’t be.
The sound of the Jeep’s engine brought him up from the inward search for a way to tell Tess about his theory. Maybe she would simply head back home, glad to be rid of him, kicking herself for having agreed to this meeting when he explained. Why should she even consider what he’d have to say?
She was here and turning down the dirt driveway. When she reached the cabin, there was no hesitation on her part or playing coy in the car. After slamming the door, she walked toward him with a dark expression on her beautiful face. Swear to God, it was the most beautiful face Jonas had ever seen.
He was off the steps before she had reached them. She stopped to face him when she was no more than three feet away, without speaking. Jonas found his own tongue tied.
Her eyes were bright spots in her pale face. She looked much softer in a gray sweatshirt and jeans, and much more human than Jonas would have liked. Her hair was loose and hung over her shoulders, slightly tangled. Her scars were hidden by the messy golden strands. Tess was tense, but there were no weapons in her hands. He didn’t smell the presence of weapons in her car. Tess was trusting him and he was about to break that trust.
When their eyes met, she sighed.
And then she was in his arms.
His hunger for Tess took over, guiding his actions without leaving room for regret. With his lips on hers and their bodies pressed tight, she was the focus, the need, the way to satisfy his cravings.
He kissed her as if there would be no tomorrow, because there wasn’t going to be one. Jonas devoured her, using sight, sense, taste and touch. Without hesitation or protest, Tess responded in kind. She kissed him back with fury, offering herself to him, asking for more, with him all the way.
The meeting of their mouths was excruciatingly divine. Tess’s breath was hot. Her mouth was like fire. Hell, he wanted to climb inside her and find a way to access her soul. You need me. Need this, he would say as he wrapped his claws around that soul. Because you are more like me than you think.
Her arms were around his neck. Her hips were against his, and he had to have more. He slid his hands under her sweatshirt, ran his greedy palms slowly upward and over her spine to discover each lean, graceful curve.
Growling with pleasure, Jonas gripped her shirt, broke the contact with her mouth and swung Tess around so that they would be out of view from the open doorway. He pressed her against the only available thing he could find, the solid concrete base of the porch railing above their heads.
She made a sound as her back met with the concrete. And then she looked up at him with wide blue eyes that expressed the hint of wildness that Jonas not only had seen before but that had led him to the recent conclusion of Tess’s true nature.
“Do you think this is normal?” he asked her, his voice hoarse with longing.
“No.” She was breathless.
“Why do you suppose you can hear me in your mind?”
She shook her head.
Now wasn’t the time to talk about this. The truth would ruin the only moment like this he was likely to have.
Her lips parted as though she had more to say, but the truth he had formulated about the strength of their bond kept him from letting her speak.
Kissing Tess produced a feeling similar to the kiss of the moon. The silver in her system had no lingering taste but made his lips tingle. He was hard, aroused and aching. For her.
This second kiss was lighter than the first. Possibly he had left the way open for Tess to consider what he had said to her. In fact, there had to be so much more to this attraction than two kinds of beings colliding in a small space.
His fingers found the waistband of her jeans. Tess laid her hand on his as if she’d stop him from moving but instead, began to guide his fingers beneath the fitted denim.
Jonas withheld a groan. The naked skin his fingers glided over was smooth, warm, taut, ultrafeminine, and made him question how he could possibly have gotten this far.
He breathed in the essence of Tess Owens, feeling through touch the rise of that wildness she kept hidden inside. As if his fingers had beckoned it to come forth, the wildness she housed roared toward the surface, causing Tess to shake.
He popped the button on her jeans. The sound of the zipper sliding on metallic tracks was unconscionably loud in an otherwise quiet night. Tess held her breath as his fingers moved over the lower portion of her abdomen and as he briefly detoured to note the sharpness of her hip bones before continuing to drop downward.
All of this had taken seconds...
She drew back when he found the place he had been seeking in the deep V between her thighs, but she had nowhere to go. Her breath came in soft, irregular hisses that Jonas breathed in. His heart was racing.
The place he found with his fingertips was soft and moist. Jonas thought he might go crazy if he didn’t find out more of what Tess’s body had to offer, but the tight fit of her jeans limited his access.
He ran a fingertip over her sensitive folds, then applied more pressure there. Tess gasped. Her arms fell away from his neck. Jonas’s mouth demanded the same kind of pressure from the lush lips he was kissing. Tess made little sounds that might have been protests, without backing them up.
He was searching for her soul and had made headway. If he could just find that soul, he would know if he was right about Tess. Tess had to be open to this.
She squirmed when he paused at the gateway to her womanhood. The beat of her pulse met Jonas there as he waited for her to calm down. Suddenly, she stilled as if she feared what the next step between them might be.
Tess Owens was no damsel and couldn’t be treated like one again after his last attempt to carry her. Nevertheless, Jonas’s hunger for her demanded that he tear away anything barring him from the soul he wanted so desperately.
The rapidly escalating level of his need to possess her dictated what his next move had to be. Withdrawing his fingers, leaving her mouth, Jonas took hold of Tess’s hand. He led her toward the Jeep and sat her on top of the hood. He pulled off her boots, too riled up to explore the option of taking his time to get her undressed.
Slowly, he ran both of his hands up the outside of her long legs until he again found her waistband. One good tug of his arms, and her jeans slipped off. It all seemed too good to be true.
His hunger raged as Tess’s fires called to his. And suddenly, riotously, he was the one being led down the path toward carnal closeness, with Tess directing the show.
She was sleek and silky, her skin ivory in the darkness. Tess was everything a she-wolf should have been and didn’t ev
en know it. Jonas couldn’t hold on, couldn’t stave off the degree of his hunger for her much longer. The urge to have her, mind, body and soul was almost more than he could take. The fact that she wore nothing under those jeans was not only a surprise, it was a turn-on.
It was also his way in.
Jonas pressed his cock to her soft folds and held there without breathing for the right second to finalize this. In another minute, he’d start to sweat. His body was quaking with need.
The buzz of Tess’s tense muscles against his was an added turn-on. The way he was hesitating made her shake more. They’d have to breathe sometime.
When she exhaled a long, slow stream of warm air, relaxing slightly, he was inside her with a stroke that made her seize. But he was unable to move after that. Tess didn’t just have fire at her beck and call, she was fire. And that fire was going to burn him alive.
Chapter 23
Tess refused to give in to the need to be taken by this Were without giving back. Time stopped when he entered her with a thrust that made her insides burst with white-hot explosions of sensation. Pain came and went in a flash. Heat rushed in. She gasped as too many new feelings struck simultaneously.
There was no feeling anywhere else, beyond the point of the intersection of their bodies. Jonas’s move seemed to have had a similar effect on him. He stood with his feet on the ground and his weight balanced on the hands he had placed on either side of her. Shudders ripped through him before he acted again.
He backed off and out of her, his body rigid with pent-up tension. She would have killed him if he had changed his mind and stopped this now, after coming this far.
His second thrust came with a shockwave that tore through Tess with the force of a hurricane and threatened to tear her apart. For the first time in years, she was feeling gloriously alive, and because of this sudden awakening, she wanted more. She wanted it all.
Taking hold of Jonas’s shoulders, she leaned back on the Jeep’s warm hood. Tall enough to accommodate this position, her Were lover growled deep in his throat with pleasure before he moved again and again, entering her as if he was already in possession of her body and would prove that to her.
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