by Kym Dillon
The pain spiraled through her, turning to pleasure and awaking the primal nature that her life had buried. It was too easy to forget the heart of passion and the heat of it, too easy by far to hide how bare and raw this could be.
Jax's weight on her was delicious, and she could feel the weight of his erection between them. She thought that he would press inside her then, but to her surprise, he turned her over on her belly, lifting her hips up.
"Oh god, Jax," she moaned, burying her face in her hands. It struck her what she was doing, making love to this wild dangerously beautiful man outdoors, bent over and exposed. It wasn't shame she felt, however, but a fierce passion, as if she was reaching something that her mind had forgotten but her body hadn't.
"Such a beautiful and perfect woman," he growled. "All mine, perfectly mine..."
She groaned when she felt his hand stroke her most intimate parts from behind. It occurred to her that he could see all of her in this exposed pose, and then he was stroking her clit with one rough finger. She arched in surprise and pleasure, and then as her eyes fluttered closed, she realized she didn't care how she looked or if anyone could see. The only thing that mattered was the pleasure he was giving her, how wet and hot she was growing for him. When he pressed one finger inside her warmth and then another, she blushed to realize that he was testing her. Jax would never hurt her, and so he was examining her readiness and her need for him.
What he found must have pleased him because he pulled his hand away. Before Marnie could do little else beyond whine with need, he was on his knees behind her. She was not sure that she had ever felt smaller than she had right then, crouched on the ground with the tip of Jax's cock pressed to her entrance. She braced herself, holding her breath, but then she sighed as he pushed inside her.
"Oh please, please," Marnie mumbled incoherently, but Jax was not going to be rushed. His slide inside her was smooth and slow, and as he entered her, he was murmuring soft sweet words. Not all of them were in English, not all of them made sense, but somehow Marnie understood him. She was his, he belonged to her, and the sensations between them pulled them together.
Marnie groaned when she realized that he was intent on keeping to that torturous pace. Then she realized that no matter what position she was in, she was far from helpless. If the last few days had taught her anything, there were ways to get what she needed. Experimentally, she rolled her hips back against him, and she was rewarded with a startled gasp.
"Marnie..."
"I don't want to be careful," she moaned, repeating the motion. "Don't you understand, Jax? You're the one I want. Always. Forever..."
She might have been worried that she had revealed too much of herself, but then he took a tighter grip on her hips. She thought for a moment it had all been for nothing, but then his control snapped. His fingers bit into her hips, and he started thrusting into her, his voice reduced to growls of need. There was something vicious about the way he was pushing inside her, but it was exactly what she needed with him in that moment. She need the way he pressed into her and the way his growls seemed to vibrate right through her. She needed the way each thrust seemed to drive her higher and higher, she simply needed him, and what the hell would she do when their time was over?
For some reason, the mixture of grief and the unknown layered together with her need and her pleasure, and that pushed her over the edge. Her climax exploded through her with an intense amount of force, making her cry echo through the calm night air. He followed just a few thrusts later, spilling his seed inside her with a groan. She was as still as she could be while the fire coursed through her, and then they both toppled to their sides, still connected in the most intimate way possible. If she could have, she would have clung to him tightly, trying to make the beauty of the moment last as long as it could. As it was, she simply lay curled on her side, breathing and trying not to cry.
"Sunshine? Are you all right?"
For some reason, that endearment found its way past all her defenses and the tears flowed freely. With a soft sound, Jax freed himself from her so that he could turn her around and gaze into her face.
"Sunshine, what's the matter?" he asked. "Please, tell me what's wrong?"
As much as she wanted to respond to him, it took Marnie several moments before she could calm herself enough to speak without hiccuping. She lay in his arms, simply letting his strength flow through her. It felt as if she might be breaking a spell by speaking, but she knew that she would have to do so at one point or another.
"What's going to happen to us, Jax?" she asked, and she felt him go still.
"What do you mean?"
"Not tonight, or even tomorrow or the next week when we're going to be helping at that village. But what happens after that?"
"I don't know the future, Marnie," Jax said softly. "My line of work... it's dangerous sometimes. You've seen that. But what I want to say is that after I've delivered that damned chalice, and after you have done what you need to do at the next village...Will you come to Naples with me?"
Marnie blinked, unable to understand what it was he just said.
"To... Naples...?" she asked."
He nodded, brushing her hair from her face. In the dim light, his eyes looked nearly black, but there was such a deep intensity to them.
"It's where I'm bound after my time in Africa, but it's more than that. It's where the Shifter Council is headquartered, many of my kind live there permanently. It's a beautiful place, and once you see it, I'm sure you'll love it. The city itself is hundreds of years old, and there's a beauty there... it's like a poem made into a place where people can live."
"It sounds amazing," she said, but still she hesitated.
"How am I going there?" she asked him quietly. "I don't know where we stand, what we are to each other...'
The smile he gave her flashed white in the darkness, and she lifted her face slightly as he rubbed the ball of his thumb over her cheek.
"You're my mate," he said tenderly. “My love, my heart, my only. Come with me. Please...”
A shadow flickered across his face.
“If you wish to say no, for any reason, I will, of course, bow to your wishes.”
Whatever else he was going to say was lost because she threw her arms around him hard.
“Yes,” she swore. “Yes. I love you. I can feel that straight down to my soul. I love you, and wherever one of us goes from now on, the other will follow.”
Jax rolled over on top of her, his green eyes intent.
“Say it again. Tell me you love me again.”
She laughed joyfully, because it was a wonderful thing to say when it was true.
“I love you, I love you, I am your mate,” she said, and he kissed her.
She knew that it was the beginning of something wild and wonderful, something perfect and free. In the arms of this man, she had discovered peace and passion, and there was no turning back now.
THE END
Mauled
Were-Soldier Warriors Book 3
1
"We lost Mrs. Mbeze."
Dr. Stephanie Carter felt something in her wither and shrivel at the words. She didn't let any of it show on her face, however, as she looked up from the microscope that she was using.
"When?" she asked, her voice placid.
"Just half an hour ago," said Jessica.
The new doctor looked painfully young to Stephanie, even though she knew that the difference in their ages wasn't all that dramatic. Sometimes, Stephanie felt as if she were a million years old, far older than everyone around her. Some days she felt as if she was older than the continent on which they stood.
"And was it the same as the others?"
Jessica nodded.
"Exact same symptoms, exact same boils. So, that makes four all together."
I ate dinner with Mrs. Mbeze and her family last week, Stephanie thought numbly. I got to pet her pretty honey-colored dog, and I sat with her grandson in my lap. She smiled and told me how I was
cooking yams wrong, and that I should come back so she could teach me how to do it the right way, the Tanzanian way...
Stephanie refused to let any of that show in her face. She was as still as a glacial pond, cold and remote. From the slightly apprehensive look on Jessica's face, she could tell that the younger doctor was at least a little intimidated by her. Good. A little bit of healthy fear kept everyone in line, especially in an outfit as small and remote as this one.
"All right, that's that, then," said Stephanie. "As of this point on, we are under quarantine conditions. We're going to need to spend some time examining all the other villagers. We want to establish treatment protocols for the ones who are sick, as well as preventative education for those who aren’t. Let’s keep those who aren’t symptomatic as healthy as we can for as long as possible."
A part of Stephanie, the part that had worked for the WHO for a decade, knew that this was uncommon procedure. She had been at the forefront of enough forays against disease that this one was just one more. However, there was another part of her, one that had just started making itself known a short time ago, one that she thought might have been shut up tightly in a box all her life, that was protesting.
This will be so much agony, that insistent voice argued. There is going to be so much pain and fear and misery, and at the end of it, you will be just a little more broken than you were before.
Stephanie shrugged that voice away, but she couldn't help the feeling that it was becoming more persistent over time.
Jessica was looking at her with something strange in her eyes, and Stephanie frowned.
"Well, what is it?" she snapped, and she saw the younger doctor flinch.
"This... this is going to be serious, isn't it?" she asked. "Those tests that I brought... they just confirmed it, didn't they?"
Stephanie hesitated for a moment. There was something about the younger doctor that Stephanie rather liked, but she was new to camp, unlike some of the other staff who had been working with Stephanie for years.
No one who knew her would have called Stephanie a gambling woman, but the truth was that she was a risk-taker by nature. You couldn't spend years going to hotspots all over the world that had been designated high risk without being so. She took chances.
"Can I trust you?" she asked, and when Jessica automatically nodded, Stephanie snorted and seized her by the arm. Jessica bit off a gasp and looked up at Stephanie, startled. God, she looked so young.
"I mean it," she said. "What I tell you, you can't repeat to anyone beyond our staff. Not even that man that you keep sneaking off to meet."
The look of pure shock on Jessica's face nearly made Stephanie laugh.
"Look, I don't care if he's a local man, or a bush pilot or a smuggler or what. What I need from you is your word that you are not going to reveal to anyone else what I am about to disclose. Is that clear?"
"Crystal," Jessica said, and Stephanie relaxed her grip.
The truth was that she didn't care to say it aloud, not really. She wanted to put it off, deny that it was happening. She hadn't gotten as far as she had in her career by denying reality however, and Stephanie took a deep breath.
"We're looking at something that's entirely unfamiliar to modern medicine," she said quietly. "Especially to modern medicine as we know it. It looks like nothing I've ever encountered before, and we are going to have to pray like hell that this condition responds to something we've got in our tool kit. Otherwise, at the rate at which people are falling ill and dying..."
"It might be unstoppable," Jessica said with wide eyes, and Stephanie nodded grimly.
'That is correct. Now, is there anything else before I continue with my work?"
She had thought that her acid tone would have driven the girl off, but Jessica seemed to be made of a sterner stuff than some of the newbie docs Stephanie usually got sent in the jungle. Instead of scuttling off, chastened, Jessica looked at her speculatively.
"I have a colleague... she's a friend too... but she's a specialist in blood and blood borne pathogens. She's working at the CDC in Atlanta right now. If she could get WHO clearance..."
Stephanie nodded.
"If she could, she might be invaluable here. In all fairness, though, I wouldn't expect too much. Researchers don't spend a lot of time on the ground; they're usually a little too arrogant to mix it up with the people who are actually using the blood that they’re studying.
Jessica grinned, an unexpected gesture that took her from merely cute to beautiful. With her short black hair and slender frame, it was hard to remember that Jessica had not only survived a plane crash, but then traversed miles and miles of hostile terrain with a bush pilot.
"This one might surprise you," she promised, and then she was gone.
After she was alone in the medical tent, Stephanie stopped for a moment. Stillness was a state that was more than a little foreign to her. When she was working, she had to be on top of things, always alert for the next disaster. Right now, her hands stilled, and it was almost as though her body robotically came to a gentle rest.
I am so tired, she thought, and then she forced herself to get back to work.
Stephanie thought that at night, no matter what was going on, medical camps like this one found a different sort of life. During the day, it was all about a hustle for survival. After all, no one called in the World Health Organization when everything was hunky-dory, as a colleague had wryly commented once, and Stephanie knew that was true enough. She and those like her often felt more than a little bit hopeless, carrying the banner of survival just a few feet in front of what felt like terrible suffering and torment nipping at their heels.
At night, most camps felt soothing, if exhausted. No matter how frenetic things had been during the day, twilight brought something restful about the camp.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the camp buzzed with a low-level of terror. She could see people frowning more nervously about what the morning might bring. Enough of them had seen the ravaged bodies of the newly dead to be very concerned.
Stephanie had to say that she herself had never seen anything like it. First there was a fever and a sense of being crushed. Then, boils appeared all over the body, dark and almost obscenely shiny. After that, there was a period of everything being paused and in suspense that usually lasted for no more than twenty-four hours, and then massive organ failure set in.
Stephanie had seen it happen first hand three times now. Mrs. Mbeze would be number four, and that meant that the first duty that she shared with the other medical professionals in the field was to alleviate suffering and to work towards finding a cure. The WHO had been briefed on everything that was going on in the remote area of Tanzania, but she knew that their help might be sporadic. For the foreseeable future, they were on their own.
Stephanie received her food, and suddenly found that she couldn't stand camp for one moment longer. It was too much tonight. There was a camaraderie that the camp shared that she could not, simply by virtue of being the woman in charge. She did her job and she did it well, but there was a part of her that resented it. Right now, with the controlled panic thrumming through the air and all looks being thrown her way, Stephanie knew that she had to get out of the camp for her own sanity.
She dumped off her plate with a clatter, and without a single look back, stalked off into the trees.
The village and the camp were situated on the tree line between the jungle and the grasslands. On one side, there was a dark jungle, one where animals stalked under the canopy of thick leaves and lush vegetation. On the other side was the open grassland, rolling underneath an enormous dark blue sky. This far from the cities, the blackness of the night sky was absolute, but the moon was already rising. It was almost full that night, would likely be full by the next night.
If she waited another half hour or so, she knew that the moon would light the land up nearly as bright as day, but she didn't know if she could take the light right then. It would have sounded silly if s
he’d said it out loud, but the thought occurred to her that she simply didn't want to be seen at all. She wanted to hide out, no, to disappear.
There were a number of trails leading into the jungle that the locals used, slender paths that resembled deer trails more than anything else. She found one soon enough, and even though she knew how dangerous a solo walk could be, Stephanie stepped onto the trail without a moment’s hesitation.
I'm not running away, she told herself, even if she, herself, was not necessarily convinced.
When she stepped under the dark canopy of the jungle, it felt to Stephanie a little bit like she was being swallowed. Right then, however, that felt just fine.
2
Stephanie figured that other people at times like this likely felt homesick. They longed for a place where they were loved without reservation or lived without fear. They wanted to crawl back to a place that they thought was safe. Stephanie never felt like that.
She had been born and raised in a small town in Texas, a place that could barely be found on a map. The population hovered somewhere around five thousand, and her family was one just like any other. Her parents were perhaps less kind than she might have wished them to be, but they were distant rather than abusive. They didn't care much what she did as long as she was quiet and out of sight while she did it.
Stephanie had found comfort in books and studying. She worked hard in school, mostly because she enjoyed the challenge, and she eventually found herself with a full scholarship to a state school. After graduating in an accelerated course, she went right on to medical school. She had been interested in helping others since she was a child, and medical school seemed like the best path in which to realize that objective. She had found her place at the WHO almost immediately after her residency and considered it to be the perfect avenue in which to put her skills to use.
Still...
