Savage Transformation

by Lexxie Couper

  Delanie flung herself onto her hands and knees. Scrambled for traction. She lunged away from him, bursting into a limping sprint, her heart slamming against her breastbone. No. No, oh God, no. No.

  The hunter appeared before her again. Just like that, there. “This is becoming tedious, Ms McKenzie.”

  “No!” she screamed, staggering backward. She caught herself before she hit the ground, stumbling over her own feet, dead wood, jagged rocks. Turning, she ran away. Straight into Einar’s chest.

  “And now,” he snarled, “it’s becoming boring.”

  Icy pain lashed her arms and, with a horrified gasp, Delanie watched a thick length of rope—the very rope stained by her very blood—snake around her wrists in blurring speed and smash them together. Rope untouched or guided by any hand.

  Her breath punched from her lungs and she collapsed to the ground, gaping at her bound wrists.

  “I really wish you hadn’t done that, Delanie,” the hunter chided and she jerked her stare up to his face.

  “What are you?”

  He gave her a wide smile, his right hand slowly withdrawing from behind his back, the long blade he held glinting in the new moon’s weak light. “I’ve already told you that, Ms McKenzie.” He cast the knife a casual look before returning his gaze to her face. “Remember? I have my own power, one much more in-tune with the earth and her magick. Were you not paying attention?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” She glared up at him. She twisted her wrists but they didn’t budge. The rope wrapped around them only pulled tighter.

  The man chuckled. With blurring speed, he hooked his left hand between her bound wrists and jerked her to her feet. “It means you can’t ever outrun me.” He lowered his face to hers, his eyes catching the thin moon’s glow. “And neither can Jacqueline Huddart.”

  And with one quick stroke, he plunged his blade into her side.

  Jackie’s heart smashed against her breastbone. She kissed Marshall back, the velvet heat of his lips on hers making her head spin. Of their own accord, her arms slid up around his shoulders, and she tangled her hands in his hair, holding his head as she rolled her hips forward.

  His shaft was still buried in her sex and she felt it spasm, grow thick and long. It was a connection she could no more deny than ignore, but it was not the connection making her blood tingle in her veins. Making her pulse slam in her throat.

  Not the connection making her surrender to the wild heat igniting in her core again.

  Mated.

  Marshall’s existence called to hers. She could not think of it any other way. Every molecule in her body felt him on every level imaginable. And then some.

  Felt him and hungered for him.

  She growled, rolling her hips forward again, taking his stiffening cock deeper into her centre as she plunged her tongue into his mouth. God, she wanted all of him. Lunacy. The whole thing was lunacy, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Mated.

  The very notion made her already spinning head light. She tore her mouth from Marshall’s, desperate for air. He moaned in protest, scoring a hot path along her jaw, down her throat to her shoulder, his fingers curling over her butt, squeezing each cheek with fierce pressure.

  Oh, God, Jackie. Stop. You don’t have time…time…Delanie…you should be finding… Oh, God, that feels so…yes…

  Her thylacine muted the disconnected thought with a low gnarr, consumed with pleasure and elemental need.

  Mate, fuck, mate.

  “Damn it, Jackie,” Marshall groaned against her collarbone. “I know I should stop…” He nipped at her neck, raking his hands up her back as he thrust harder into her pussy. “I should stop…”

  She closed her eyes, rolling her head to the side to grant his mouth greater access to her throat.

  Fuck, mate, fuck.

  A noise slipped past her lips. A whimper? A protest? An agreement? She didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  She rolled her hips. Took him deeper. Her flesh on fire, her blood roaring in her ears.

  “Christ, you feel so right.” Marshall’s lips tasted her shoulder, her jaw. His heels rammed into her arse cheeks as he pumped into her, filling her completely. “So fucking right I can hardly think.”

  “Then don’t.” Jackie panted, her pulse a sledgehammer beneath her ear. “Just make me yours.”

  The gasped command seemed to ignite a fire in Marshall’s desire. His lust for her became wild. With a growl deeper and more menacing than any she’d heard, he pushed her onto her back. Grabbing at the undersides of her knees, he yanked them up beside his hips, slamming his cock into her sex with fierce force. The dirt and grit on the deserted shack’s floor pressed into Jackie’s flesh, but it didn’t matter. This was how animals claimed each other. Raw and savage and feral. This was how an alpha male took his mate—aggressive dominance and base need. He pumped into her, harder, harder, each stroke marking her more and more his. She scratched at his back, tore at his shoulders with her blunt nails, thrusting into each penetration.

  “Look at me, Jackie.” Marshall’s thunderous whisper snapped her stare to his face, and her pussy constricted at the fierce intensity in his eyes. His need to possess her, own her, burned in their piercing blue depths, so blazing it stole her breath.

  A whimper vibrated up her throat, the sound caught by Marshall’s mouth as he crushed her lips with his. He assaulted her mouth. No, he fucked her mouth with his, his tongue claiming her just as surely as his cock claimed her sex. She met his ferocity and returned it, sinking her nails into the back of his neck as she bit his bottom lip, sucked it, tasted it.

  There was nothing gentle about the way they took each other. Nothing tender or sweet.

  “Fuck!” Jackie arched her back, slamming her heels to the floor, her arms spread wide. She bucked her hips forward, ramming her sodden, throbbing sex to his groin. He slammed into her. Again and again. Liquid electricity shot through her and she cried out, bucking once more. Christ, he wasn’t just mating with her, he was taking full and utter possession.

  Her thylacine howled, reveling in the unadulterated pleasure flooding through her. Surrendering to the animalistic nature of their copulation. Jackie cried out again, on the very brink of orgasm, her flesh tingling, her breath shallow. One more thrust and she would explode.

  He drove his cock deeper into her. Hard.

  “Yes!” The brutal penetration detonated Jackie’s climax. She came, hard, fast. Shudders wracked her body. She clung on to Marshall, the constricting pulses pushing her beyond even the instinctual primitiveness of her animal. Turning her into a creature of pure pleasure. Jackie McKenzie no longer existed. The cop, the human, the Tasmanian tiger, the shape-shifting thylacine, all incinerated by the pleasure consuming her. “Yes!”

  Marshall thrust into her still, his hands pinning hers to the ground. He loomed over her, staring into her face with iridescent silver eyes, his nostrils flaring, his skin slicked with sweat. “Mine,” he growled. “Say it. Mine.”

  “Yours,” Jackie cried, voice hoarse and choked. “Oh, fuck, yours now and forever.”

  His growl became a roar and he sank his teeth into her neck again, biting her with such force pain ripped through her shoulder. She snatched at his hair, fisted her hands in its length.

  Mine, mine.

  She heard the words in her head. Felt them in her soul.

  Mine.

  Marshall thrust into her, and just as she felt her own animal surge for release, just as she felt her climax reach its mounting peak, he threw back his head and howled, his rhythm lost to his rapture as he pumped her full of his seed.

  Mine.

  Marked.

  Mated.

  He collapsed, pressing her to the floor, his body wracked by fading shudders, his flesh slicked with sweat, his breath ragged, his muscles lax.

  Jackie skimmed her fingertips up and down his back, forcing her breath to steady, willing her heart to slow down. She closed her eyes, all too aware how much she lo
ved the feel of the Texan pressed against her, how quickly she’d become addicted to it.

  Think, woman. Think. You’ve just mated for life with a complete stranger. He knows your most intimate of secrets and you still only know what he’s told you. Which is sweet bugger-all.

  A cold pressure wrapped around her chest and she opened her eyes, staring at the shack’s corrugated iron roof and the black sky visible through the gaping cracks and holes. Not only mated, but marked. There was no other way to describe their second savage copulating. It wasn’t love making. It was rutting.

  Swallowing a thick lump in her throat, she lifted one hand to her neck. Her fingers brushed over wet flesh, tiny slivers of pain radiating through her from the light contact. Marshall’s bite had not just emotionally marked her; it had physically marked her as well—punctured her skin and drawn blood. She could feel the moisture on her fingertips, could smell her blood and his saliva on the still night air.

  Deep within, her thylacine stirred from sated bliss and Jackie bit back a moan, realization dawning on her. She could smell Marshall’s saliva. She could smell his sweat. She could smell his very pheromones.

  Her sex contracted with eager need at the thought, and she squeezed her eyes shut. There was no going back now. She could smell and taste him on the very air. She could feel his breath disturbing the very fabric of existence. She could hear his heart beat and his blood flow through his veins.

  Mated.

  She gnawed on her bottom lip, staring at the rusty, rotten roof.

  “Your fingers are wriggling.”

  Marshall’s low murmur made Jackie start and, cheeks heating, she snapped the hand on his back into a fist. Damn it. That he said something meant he’d noticed it before. Bloody hell, Jackie. Aren’t you meant to be an expert at hiding your emotions?

  He lifted his head, studying her with unreadable eyes. “Why do you do that?”

  She clenched her jaw and looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hmm.” The ambiguous sound vibrated through his chest a split second before he rose to his feet and moved away from her. “We have to go.”

  She looked at him, doing everything in her power to keep her stare from caressing the lean perfection of his naked body. A heavy pulse thumped in her neck. His back and butt was the stuff of female fantasies—fantasies she’d never harbored until he’d thrust himself into her life. A life of which he was now so inextricably a part. So why was she feeling so…edgy?

  “I have spare clothes in the car.” He threw her a quick look over his shoulder, but even in the shack’s almost non-existent light she could see his gaze did not fall on her. Her pulse quickened and her stomach knotted.

  She straightened from the floor, brushing the grit and dirt from her arse as she glared at the back of his head. “You do this often? Destroy your clothes while out and about?”

  “Not for over six decades.”

  His voice was flat. She frowned, the knot in her stomach growing tighter.

  “I have a set for you too.”

  Jackie’s eyebrows shot up. “You expected me to transform while dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  A hot worm of anger wriggled into Jackie’s tight stomach. She frowned, glaring at Marshall’s back. “So glad one of us knows everything about the other.”

  He tensed, and for a moment she thought he was going to turn and look at her. Her heart quickened and she bit back a groan. God, she wanted him to look at her. She wanted to see his face, to know what he was thinking. To see how he was feeling. She wanted him to see her—standing before him, naked, exposed.

  Fair dinkum, Jackie, you need to get a grip. For Del’s sake if not your own.

  He didn’t turn, however. His muscles coiled, as if responding to some stimuli she could not see or feel. He crossed to the shack’s only doorway, the pale moonlight painting his bare skin in a faint silver wash. “I will see you at the car.”

  Before she could respond—in what way, Huddart?—he shifted into his wolf form, a wolf larger and more thickly muscled than any she’d seen, and loped off into the blackness of the night.

  Jackie stood still, glaring at the spot in the doorway the wolf—Marshall—had just vacated. Her inner animal howled and growled for release, scraping at the tenuous threads of her control. Hungering for freedom.

  Hungering for Marshall.

  She curled her hands into fists, driving her nails into her palms as she squeezed her eyes tight. She couldn’t shift. If she did, she was lost.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the empty doorway again. “God, I wish I had my gun.”

  Her mutter shattered the silence of the shack, like the first rumble of thunder from a distant storm and she let out a sharp breath. “Fuck it.”

  She crossed the shack, snatching up Delanie’s watch as she did so, the coppery scent of her best friend’s blood chilling the squirming ardor in the centre of her being.

  “Fuck it,” she muttered again, gripping the delicate piece of jewelry hard. She stood on the shack’s threshold, studying the night before her, tasting the massive wolf that was Marshall on the air, and then began to run.

  Naked.

  Human.

  Confused and pissed-off.

  Wishing she had her gun.

  Rocks and stones and dead twigs jabbed into his paws as he ran. The cool night air rippled through his fur, a seductive caress that normally would have made his tongue loll out with joy. The sweet potent scents of small animals scurrying away from him, leaching fear and shock, some emptying their bladders as they did so, would normally make him yip with happiness.

  Instead, Marshall ran through the Tasmanian bush with his teeth bared and his muzzle creased.

  What had he done?

  He pushed himself harder, ignoring the evocative call of his beast. It had taken him many, many decades to be able to keep his dire wolf’s id in check when transformed. The primitive wolf was powerful in every way, and more than once Marshall had lost time to the animal. Lost time and control. There was nothing comforting about waking up naked and covered in blood, with only flashes of incomprehensible memories to fill in the missing hours. The last time Marshall let his wolf’s id control him, he went on a killing spree. True, those torn to shreds had deserved to be—a nest of vampires who’d prayed solely on children—but the loss of control still haunted him to this day.

  His inner beast needed to be kept firmly in check at all times, most especially when he ran in wolf form.

  He’d never, never needed to keep it in check during sex.

  And then along came Detective Jackie Huddart.

  A harsh growl rumbled up his chest and he pushed himself faster. If he didn’t, he’d turn, run back to the shack and take her again.

  As wolf or man?

  The thought unnerved him. Over two hundred years of being in control of every molecule in his duel existence and he couldn’t answer that one question.

  He increased his gait, welcoming the discomfort in his paws and muscles. If he focused on the pain, Jackie’s presence behind him faded.

  Yeah, sure.

  His ears pricked and he growled again. He could hear her running behind him. On two legs.

  An image of Jackie running naked and human filled his head—her long limbs hard with smooth muscles, her skin pale and almost luminescent in the darkness, her breasts free and—

  His paws stumbled and he scrambled for balance.

  Focus.

  The dark command cracked through his mind like a shot and he flattened his ears to his head. He shut her out of his senses, concentrating on the earth under his paws instead, the repetitive thump of his heart.

  Stop thinking about her. Focus on Einar. Remember why you’re here.

  Cold disgust twisted into his chest. He was here to catch a cold-blooded killer, not mate with the woman he was using as bait.

  Again his paws stumbled beneath him. Fuck. He’d mated with her. What had he been thinking?

 
; No thinking involved, Rourke. You wanted her. You took her.

  He curled his muzzle and growled again, the sound vibrating in his chest less animal, more monster.

  He could still taste her blood and sweat in his mouth. It fueled a heat simmering in his loins he knew would never be extinguished. Once dire wolves mated, the bonds connecting the two together could never be severed. No matter the distance.

  His ancestors—long long extinct—had not been subtle when it came to mating. The males took who they wanted, when they wanted them. No discussion, no arguments. The word rape did not exist when his kind first transformed, but it existed now. He may be the last dire wolf shifter alive, but that didn’t excuse what he’d done to Jackie. She may have been a willing sexual partner, she was a willing sexual partner—of that he had no doubts—but to mark her as his. To mate with her…

  And what of her thylacine mating rituals? There was scant intel on the Tasmanian tiger as an animal, let alone as a shape-shifter. Before he’d left the US he’d learnt all he could about her kind—tenacious predators, the top of the food chain in Australia until man’s arrival on the continent, ferocious defenders of their young, solitary. Nothing in his intel told him if thylacines mated for life. He’d marked Jackie as his own, tied his body and spirit to her, but what did that mean to Jackie?

  What did she think of him now?

  Christ, you’re fucked up, Rourke.

  He was. His thoughts smashed through his head like the debris from an explosion. Pummeling him, tormenting him. How was he to use Jackie now that she was irrevocably a part of him? He couldn’t use her as bait anymore. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. So how did he find Einar now? How did he lure his ex-partner out of hiding without the very prize the bastard hunted? What was his purpose if not to stop the very monster he’d set free on the world?

  How did he tell Jackie he couldn’t live without her?

  Fuck.

  The acrid smell of tar and gravel seeped into his breath and he ran harder, shoving the tumultuous confusion away. Weaving through the thinning trees, he leapt out of the bush, his paws thumping onto gravel-laced bitumen. The road.

  Tail flicking, he sprinted up the empty stretch, stare locked on the distant shadow of his hired car. He’d change into his spare clothes, holster his gun and when Jackie arrived he’d explain everything.