by Odessa Lynne
He almost wanted to be afraid again, so he wouldn’t feel so much, but how would that help? So he focused on the hot, dark pleasure of having someone fucking his ass. Blood pooled hot and heavy in his cock, and his balls tightened with the building pressure.
The edge of a claw scraped the side of Salvadore’s neck, sparking off a gasping shudder and a memory of the scrape of leaves and the smell of pine and oak and the rich sharp scent of earth.
He should have been terrified. One wrong move and Wolf’s claws would jab right into his throat… and yet…
Wolf hadn’t changed in that day, day and a half; Salvadore had. He didn’t believe Wolf would hurt him, not as long as he wasn’t fighting. Yesterday, he would’ve believed it—expected it, even. Today, he couldn’t even imagine it.
Another fantasy, maybe. He didn’t care. Better a fantasy for a few days, a week, or a month than the misery that had dogged him for the better part of the last year and a half.
He’d wanted to be a realist. Well, maybe he was. Maybe this was the kind of realism he needed. He liked Wolf. He could imagine how easy it might be to actually love him someday. Maybe even sooner than later. What could be more real than that?
Forever, Wolf had said. What exactly did forever mean to the wolves?
Would Wolf be willing to help him rescue Chen and El? If so, there wasn’t another damn thing Salvadore wanted or needed from anyone. He would be free to do what he wanted. If he wanted to keep living in a fantasy, well, that was his own damn business. And if he wanted to walk away after heat season, after the wolves had recovered their sense where humans were concerned, maybe Wolf would let him. Maybe.
Or maybe it didn’t matter what the answer to that unspoken question was. Fantasy had never been so tempting. Why leave? What did he really have waiting for him elsewhere?
Life was about to become a lot more dangerous for Salvadore in the next few years unless he figured out how to get someone to fix the device embedded inside him. He had a feeling Wolf could arrange that for him and would probably be willing to do it.
Wolf rutted into him, growling as he came again and Salvadore felt he spurt of hot semen deep inside him.
God, he was so close to coming. All he needed was a push in the right direction. Or a hand in the right spot.
Like—
He reached under him. Before he could get his hand on his dick, Wolf’s hand moved quickly from Salvadore’s ribs to his wrist and pushed Salvadore’s arm up above his head.
“What? No—”
Wolf’s weight shifted. He had Salvadore trapped against the bed. “Submit.”
Salvadore couldn’t move anything but one arm, and that one only a little because of the way Wolf held him by the back of his neck. He had no room against the bed to rotate his shoulder. “Come on. Let me. Please.”
God, he sounded like he was begging. Maybe he was.
A floorboard creaked. Had the door opened?
Salvadore tried to turn his head, his action nothing but instinct.
“Submit,” Wolf said again, his claws a bright, sharp pain in Salvadore’s neck and his cock buried deep in Salvadore’s ass.
“I submit,” Salvadore gasped out on a shallow exhale.
He was suffocating, his lungs barely expanding with each shallow breath—but he didn’t care. Reed would have to go through Wolf to get to him if anything happened and that thought was a comfort Salvadore hadn’t known he needed until that moment. Wolf’s body lay between Salvadore and Reed and Wolf wouldn’t let Reed near him.
He concentrated on his breathing, on the feel of Wolf inside him, on the faded blue fabric clenched in his fingers, soft and worn and smelling faintly of dust, and he deliberately ignored the knowledge that they weren’t alone. Wolf’s rutting had slowed and he released Salvadore’s wrist to draw his hand down Salvadore’s arm and over his shoulder, the pads of his fingertips a tickle that made Salvadore writhe under him with a whimpered, “No, don’t.”
But Wolf kept going, across Salvadore’s shoulders and down his back beside his spine, over one cheek of his ass, down the back of his thigh, and if it was meant to distract, it worked, because Salvadore couldn’t think of anything but the tingle left behind and the anticipation of where those fingers were going next. By the time the door shut with an audible thunk, Salvadore was panting, his hands fisted in the quilt and his lungs starving for oxygen, whimpering with the need to rub away the tickle left behind, and he jerked a little against the bed. The claws pricking the skin at the back of his neck disappeared along with Wolf’s weight.
“Oh, fuck,” Salvadore said as oxygen poured into his lungs, “Oh fuck.”
Wolf stuck his nose right up under Salvadore’s arm. Salvadore yelped and twisted, reaching over his shoulder to smack at Wolf’s head, but of course, the only thing he accomplished was to fluff Wolf’s hair.
Wolf reared back and roared at him.
Salvadore dropped his face to the bed and laughed—he couldn’t help himself. It shouldn’t have been funny. Wolf’s roar should have scared the shit out of him.
Wolf huffed and dropped forward onto his hands, caging Salvadore against the bed again. “What about submission is funny to you?”
“Oh, uh, not that,” Salvadore said, trying to catch his breath. “It’s, uh.” He managed to hold in his next laugh, but his lungs burned with the effort.
Wolf growled against the back of Salvadore’s neck and a shiver chased down Salvadore’s spine. “Yes?”
Salvadore snorted, another laugh escaping. “Your hair. Oh my God, it was your hair.” And he started laughing again.
“Your laugh calms me,” Wolf said softly, his breath puffing against Salvadore’s spine. “It gives me back my control when it should be beyond recovering.”
Salvadore gasped a few more times, and then managed to say, “So can I jerk off now?”
Wolf didn’t let him. Instead, Wolf sought out every sensitive spot on Salvadore’s body until Salvadore hurt so bad from laughing that he couldn’t even lift his head off the bed when Wolf finally took Salvadore’s cock into his hot mouth and sucked Salvadore off.
Sometime afterwards, Salvadore couldn’t say for sure when since time started to get away from him—he was tired and he’d stayed up all night a few too many times over the last few days and weeks, but sometime afterwards, Wolf went from playful to desperate and his fucking turned single-minded in that same way it had been when they’d first arrived in the den.
When Wolf had come more times than Salvadore could remember, Wolf rolled to the side of the bed, trying to drag Salvadore in tight to his chest. Salvadore pushed him away with a muttered, “Gotta pee,” meaning anything but what he’d actually said, and then stumbled his way off the bed and into the room’s private bathroom.
He did all the necessary stuff, trying to be quiet because even as tired as he was, he didn’t really want Wolf to hear every private thing he did, and then he washed his face with water that was so cold it had to be coming straight from the well instead of the recycler. It made sense, because the place had obviously been empty for a while and the recycler wouldn’t have been needed while uninhabited. When he raised his head, he caught a glimpse of himself in the floor to ceiling mirror that covered the backside of the shower enclosure.
He reached up and touched the spot on the back of his neck where teeth had pierced his skin just days ago. He twisted his head trying to get a better look and ran his fingers across his spine. There’d been blood, and plenty of it. Not enough to make him weak, he remembered that well enough, but the bite had to have been deep enough to leave a scar. Those teeth…
He shook off that thought before it took him somewhere he didn’t want to go and just stared into the mirror. Several of the scabs had fallen away. There was no scar. Not even a hint of one.
He looked at his arm where he’d scratched away another scab but he couldn’t find the exact spot because nothing remained to remind him where it had been.
He stared harder at his reflec
tion, trying to remember. He reached for his mouth, dragging his thumb across his lip and then rubbed at his cheek. Paul had punched Salvadore when he had tackled Paul to the ground. Salvadore vividly remembered the taste of blood on his tongue afterward when he’d been staring in shocked silence as Gage questioned Paul and then ordered Tim to keep Salvadore out of the way while the others beat Paul nearly to death.
A busted lip could heal quickly enough, but his lip should have still been tender to the touch.
He pinched his lip, but it wasn’t sore in the least.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Was he trapped in some kind of dream where he healed all his injuries and Wolf was here just to… to… He narrowed his eyes at his reflection.
That was stupid. Of course he wasn’t dreaming.
But what the hell was wrong with him? He looked down, feeling for the device deep under his skin, pushing until he could make out the edge of it, his heart thundering in his chest. Was it already failing—doing too good a job as it entered the last phase of its useful life? Even if that was true, he didn’t see how it could—
“What’s wrong?”
The sound of Wolf’s voice behind him made Salvadore jump and he grabbed at the edge of the sink beside him, covering his heart with the heel of his other hand. If he’d still been looking into the mirror he would’ve seen Wolf enter. “You’re too quiet when you walk. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Something’s wrong.”
Salvadore reached down and put his hand over the device. “My blood doesn’t clot on its own, not like it should, and the thing inside me that fixes that is getting old. I’m supposed to have it replaced soon. If I don’t, one good injury and I’m dead. Or, maybe not even that. Sometimes you just bleed, inside, and—”
“Then we’ll have it replaced.”
Salvadore watched Wolf. “Just like that.”
“If I ever fail to notice you need medical care, all you need to do is ask for it. I’ll do everything in my power to be sure you receive what you need.”
“I need help,” Salvadore said slowly. “More help than that.”
“You’ve been trying to tell me for a while.”
Wolf’s comment startled a frown out of Salvadore.
“Tell me,” Wolf said and Salvadore’s stomach clenched tight.
But it was past time for him to confess to his secrets, so he opened his mouth, ready to speak up about Chen and El and the tracker, only to be interrupted by a low shudder that traveled through the house and up through tiled floor into the soles of his bare feet.
Wolf’s head turned toward the open door behind him. “Alpha’s here.” When he turned back to Salvadore, his eyes held regret. “You need to dress. Quickly.”
“Oh. Okay.” Salvadore crossed the cool tile and went back into the bedroom where the thick carpets spread across the wood floor cushioned his steps. He pointed at the dresser. “Those?”
“I want to help you but I need to—”
“Go,” Salvadore said, grabbing up the socks laid out on top. He glanced up to see Wolf already pulling on a pair of trousers. “Do I wait here or—”
“Stay,” Wolf said. He didn’t bother with anything else. He left quickly, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Chapter 21
Salvadore had just yanked a soft gray t-shirt down over his head when the door opened. Adrenaline rushed but when he spun around, he was surprised to see a man standing there, closing the door behind him.
“I’m Ian,” the man said, giving Salvadore a careful smile. His eyes flickered over Salvadore. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be.”
Salvadore stared at him, wondering if this was the human mate of the alpha that Wolf and Reed had been talking about. “Salvadore,” Salvadore said.
Salvadore wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but Ian wasn’t it. The man had brown hair that curled up at his ears, a little too long, and bright, intelligent eyes. He was lean and not too tall, with an old fashioned metal belt buckle at his waist holding up a worn pair of jeans, and he wore sturdy boots and a t-shirt of an identical cut to the one Salvadore had just dragged on, the v-neck revealing just enough chest to show he wasn’t the kind of man who shaved much besides his face.
Salvadore could appreciate that. He’d gone through a phase himself when he was younger, shaving as much of his body hair off as he could reach, just like the men he’d seen on the veo. When he’d realized how much work it was to keep the hair gone, he’d given up. The men on the veo had had access to the salons. Salvadore hadn’t visited a salon since before his father died.
“What’s going on?” Salvadore asked.
“Craig told me to keep an eye on you.”
A sudden roar and a crash from somewhere below made Salvadore jump. Ian looked toward the door, a frown on his face.
Salvadore started moving toward the door. “Maybe he just wanted you out of the way.”
Ian put his back to the door and crossed his arms. “Doesn’t matter. Craig’ll take care of whatever’s wrong.”
Salvadore stopped, considering his options.
Another crash echoed from below, this time causing a faint vibration to carry through the wood floor at Salvadore’s feet. Ian winced.
“What the fuck is going on?” Salvadore asked, real worry starting to take hold. “Are they fighting?”
“You’re not leaving the room. Craig wants me to keep you here, so you’re staying here.”
“The fuck I am.”
Ian’s back stiffened—Salvadore could see it in the way he held his shoulders, in how his biceps bulged beneath the edges of his shirt-sleeves. “You’ll have to go through me, and I’m warning you now, I’ll knock you on your ass before I let you touch this door.”
He looked like he could do it too. He had the kind of competent look on his face that reminded Salvadore a lot of Chen, and Chen wouldn’t have said something like that unless he was confident he could do it.
Then Wolf yelled and the sound fired Salvadore’s blood.
“Fuck you,” Salvadore said. He turned and ran for the door that led to the balcony.
“Son of a—” Ian chased after him.
Salvadore whipped the doors open and stumbled out into the pre-dawn air. A chill raced down his spine, the fall wind cutting right through the fabric of his shirt, the wood decking cold and damp under his bare feet.
Ian was cursing behind him, and Salvadore was just fast enough to stay out of his reach.
Dawn was on the horizon but that still left very little natural light and Salvadore was grateful. If he’d looked down and actually been able to see how far up from the ground they were, he might have had to get down on his knees and crawl across the long balcony toward the stairs that led down to the lower level where he knew he would find the doors that led into the large dining room and living room.
Light glowed through the windows below and Salvadore caught a glimpse of the slanting rock face that stretched below them. His stomach flipped and his knees went weak. He pushed for the stairs anyway.
“Get back here, you idiot! If you barge in while they’re—”
The rest of Ian’s words got lost in a startled exclamation. Salvadore stopped and looked back. No way he could move on this balcony without watching where he was going, not at these heights. Ian was squatting on the decking, rubbing his wrist and glaring at Salvadore, the light spilling through the windows starkly highlighting the angles of his face.
“Craig’s going to be pissed about this,” Ian said, pushing upright, his tone almost conversational. “If you come back now, I won’t tell him what an asshole you’ve been making me chase you out here and almost breaking my neck.”
“Fuck you.”
“God, you’re such a—” Ian bit off whatever he’d been going to say and laughed, short and sharp. “You’re such a kid. I forget sometimes what it was like to be—what? Seventeen, eighteen?”
“I fucking knew it. I’m not a fucking teenager. I’m twe
nty years old.” Salvadore eyed Ian. “You’re not that much older.”
“You’d be surprised. But age isn’t just a factor of years.” Ian laughed again. “Devon might like you. Then again, he might hate your guts so I guess it’s a good thing that watcher’s part of Rick’s pack instead of Craig’s.”
It was on the tip of Salvadore’s tongue to ask who Rick was when he realized Ian was using his distraction to ease forward. Salvadore turned and plowed toward the stairs again. As soon as he hit the top step, his bare feet skidded on the wood tread. Luckily he had hold of the railing and he grabbed on with his whole arm, breathing hard. “Holy shit,” he said, his heart thudding a thousand miles an hour and his stomach in his throat.
Ian yanked at the back of Salvadore’s t-shirt.
Salvadore surged forward, the movement jerking his shirt free of Ian’s hand, and he pounded down the stairs. He rounded the stair rail on the lower level just as the breeze picked up and the cool wind whipped up the bottom edge of Salvadore’s t-shirt. Ian’s footsteps thudded behind him. Salvadore slapped his palm flat to the glass door and gripped the knob tightly, twisting as quickly as the thought came to him: what the hell was he doing?
He glanced up, the lit room giving him a clear view of Wolf on his knees, the alpha standing over him, arm raised high and claws coming down in a deadly arc toward Wolf’s throat.
Salvadore slammed through the door, his good sense so far behind him he might as well give it up as a lost cause. His good sense had deserted him the moment he’d stopped himself from going over the edge of that hospital window and let himself hang with wolves instead of suffer the fate that had waited for him at the bottom of that drop.
“No!”
The alpha’s claws didn’t make contact with Wolf, even though Salvadore watched wide-eyed as Wolf didn’t try to avoid them.
Salvadore ran at the alpha, much like he’d run at Wolf in the woods when they’d first met, his anger hot and fresh and completely obliterating every ounce of fear he should have been feeling.
Wolf twisted toward Salvadore on his knees. “Stop, Salvadore!” The command rang out with so much authority that Salvadore stumbled to a halt, and that was long enough for something hard and heavy to slam into his back and knock him to the floor.
