by Kathy Love
“You can turn here,” she said, her voice almost startling him. She pointed to a narrow dirt road that he wouldn’t have even noticed if she hadn’t gestured toward it.
Slowing, he made the sharp turn, and the truck was quickly encompassed by gray, nearly bare maples and oaks and thick evergreens.
“You can stop here,” she said after they had driven only a few hundred feet.
“Here?” He glanced around, seeing no sign of lights in the thick woods, no sign of a house. But he braked as she asked. He put the truck into Park, then turned to look at her. As seemed to be her way, she regarded him with those spookily pale eyes, saying nothing.
“Where is your house?”
“Close,” she answered. Then she reached out her hand and brushed her fingertips over his lips, a gentle, whispering touch. His breath caught, his muscles contracting into painful alertness.
“You have a beautiful mouth. I can’t take my eyes off it.”
He pulled in a shallow breath. Shocks of violent need burned through him as her finger continued to trace the sensitive skin of his lips.
“You saw me watching you.” Her words were a statement, but he felt the need to respond.
“Yes.”
“You liked it.” Her fingers grazed his cheek, his jaw, the side of his neck.
He thought to deny it, to put a stop to this right now. But the words wouldn’t come.
“I wanted you from the moment I saw you,” she murmured, her voice low, husky. And so sexy.
He’d wanted her, too-he couldn’t refute it. He looked into her pale eyes, a blue so light they were the color of the moonstones. Her dark hair swirled around her face, adding to the feminine beauty of her features. High cheekbones, a pointed chin. And her lips. So pink and wide that they should have overpowered her delicate features. Instead they looked unbearably sexy, utterly kissable.
Before he realized what he intended to do, his mouth was on hers, tasting her with a greed he couldn’t restrain. She responded in kind, her mouth opening to let him in, their tongues tangling. The kiss grew into a frenzy. He wanted to devour her, each brush of their lips, each sweep of their tongues firing his need more, until he couldn’t remember wanting anything more than this woman.
Catching her under the arms, he pulled her closer. She sank willingly against him, her hands stroking his face, his chest. Wildly, they consumed each other.
She moaned, her lips leaving his to move hungrily over his throat, across his collarbone. Her fingers moved deftly on the buttons of his shirt until the fabric was undone and parted. Then she pressed open-mouthed kisses over his chest, her tongue flicking over his ignited skin, her teeth nipping.
He sucked in a sharp breath as she caught his nipple, worrying it gently. Desire needled through him, the sensation bordering on pain, like blood returning to a sleeping limb. Not an inaccurate analogy, really.
She pulled back, her eyes hooded but just as intense as earlier. “I want to fuck you.”
He wouldn’t have thought he could be any more turned on, but he was wrong. Her raw demand, said in that soft, almost purring voice, was the most erotic thing he could remember ever hearing. His cock pulsed and hardened further.
As he watched her, she sat back and slipped her leather jacket off to reveal the black camisole underneath. He could see, even in the faint light, she wore no bra under the tiny shirt. She didn’t need one-her small breasts were perfectly rounded, tipped with hard little nipples.
Then her fingers moved to the button of her leather pants. She undid them. A few wiggles of her hips and they were down, exposing tiny black panties. She kicked them off along with her boots. Then she was watching him again with those peculiar eyes.
His fingers itched to touch her, but instead he said, “This is crazy.”
She reached out and caressed him again, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw. Soothing him, encouraging him. He caught her hand and pulled her back against him, kissing her. She caught the back of his head, tasting him with greedy demand.
“Do you want to be inside me?” she murmured against his lips.
God, yes. He wanted that so badly that his whole body ached with it. Shards of biting need scored through him.
But instead of saying so, he stared into her eyes. “What do you want?”
She stilled, for the briefest moment something like uncertainty filling the pale depths. For the first time since seeing her, she broke their gaze before he did. She hesitated, and again he thought he should stop this. It was too fast, too out of control.
Then her hands moved to his jeans and worked the button open. Slowly she pulled down the zipper. She slid her fingers inside the worn material, cupping the granite hardness there.
He groaned, fighting the need to thrust himself against her palm. She smiled, a pleased, naughty smile as if she sensed his struggle. He groaned again. God, she was sexy.
“Lift your hips,” she whispered, that husky voice of hers a low vibration throughout the dashboard-lit vehicle.
He did as she asked, and she worked his jeans and boxers down until his erection bobbed free.
She smiled up at him, a wide, wolfish grin. “Very, very nice.”
Then she leaned forward and lapped him, her tongue a hot, velvety rasp up the length of his penis.
Shit! He was going to explode right here. Damn, he wanted this woman.
In one move, he lifted her slender body, sliding so he was on her side of the vehicle with her knees on either side of his hips.
She gasped at the sudden shift, but he didn’t give her time for further response. His lips caught hers, licking their softness, nipping at her velvet skin. As he continued to assault her mouth, his fingers slipped into her panties, finding the steamy moisture there. She was so wet, so hot, for a moment, his control nearly fractured. But he focused, finding her tiny clitoris, stroking her.
Her lips left his, her head falling back. Soft, growling moans escaped her, the sound spurring on his own desire. She ground against his hand, her sex growing slicker, hotter.
“Come for me,” he growled, loving the feeling of holding her ecstasy in the palm of his hand, loving the noises she made.
She raised her head, her face mostly in shadow, her eyes somehow bright, twin moons, hypnotic, breathtaking. “Not without you.”
She leaned forward, catching his lips. He took her shuddering whimpers into his mouth as she moved his hand from between her thighs and rubbed her soaked sex against his erection. At the first slide, all control dashed away.
He ripped the fragile lace from between her thighs, and braced his hands on her hips and positioned her over his throbbing erection.
In one thrust, he was deep inside her, filling her to the hilt. Her wet heat gloved him, searing hot and incredibly tight. He groaned, his head falling back against the seat. He didn’t move, letting her get used to him buried inside her, letting himself gain a little restraint.
But she didn’t allow him that respite. She tilted her pelvis, moving up and down in full strokes. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she pumped, picking up speed, her movements becoming a little awkward with her need.
He caught her hips, guiding her, bringing her down onto him hard and tight, then lifting her until the head of his penis was just at her threshold. Small moans escaped her lips each time he pulled her down his length. The sound excited him, encouraging him to jerk her down harder, filling her deeper. She cried out, bucking her hips, taking him as deeply as she could.
Their movements grew wilder, more frantic. He rammed into her, his hips rising off the seat. She arched back, grinding her pelvis against him. Her hand left his shoulder, slapping onto the glass of the steamed windows, while the other moved behind her to use the dashboard as leverage. She impaled herself over and over, until he thought his whole body would implode.
Just when he was certain he couldn’t hold off any longer, she cried out her violent release, the sound somewhere between a growl and a whimper. Her muscles clamped around him
in hundreds of shuddering spasms, milking him.
Unable to stop it, his muscles tensed and his climax joined hers, fierce, body-shaking as her heat still held him, stroking him with tiny contractions.
Utterly dazed and drained, his head fell back against the seat, his hands still holding her hips loosely. After a few moments, he noticed she still remained upright, their bodies not touching except for where she sat on him.
He managed to crack an eye, fully expecting her to be watching him again. She wasn’t. She leaned back against the dash, apparently as spent as he was. The angle jutted her chest forward, her narrow back twisted at an odd angle, cold plastic grinding into her spine.
He reached forward, looping his arms around her, pulling her toward him. She started at the touch. She opened her eyes, regarding him with those intense eyes, her thoughts unreadable.
“You don’t look comfortable. Rest against me,” he murmured, tugging her again.
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, her eyes locking with his again, still unreadable. But then she did, settling against his chest, her head nestled against his shoulder. He pulled her closer, amazed at how delicate she felt in his arms. He let his head fall back again, his eyes drifting shut, his body boneless. And this woman’s warmth surrounding him.
He wasn’t sure how long he dozed, but when he woke, the woman sat on the driver’s side, one of her boots held loosely in her hand. As usual, her pale eyes were studying him, but something in addition to intensity burned in them, an emotion he hadn’t seen there before. Something like melancholy, but when she realized he was awake, she smiled and whatever he thought he saw vanished.
She returned to pulling on her boot.
Glancing down at himself, he became aware that he still lounged against the seat, his jeans undone, his shirt hanging off his shoulders. As he sat up to straighten his clothing, she leaned over and pressed a kiss to his jaw.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice oddly airy, given the strangeness of this situation. Then she opened the car door and hopped out into the darkness.
“Hey,” Jensen called, hurrying to zip his pants. He pushed open his door, peering out into the pitch-black woods. “Hey… ” He didn’t even know her name.
He paused, listening, trying to figure out which direction she’d headed in. No sound met his ears but the patter of soft rain on the underbrush.
He stood there for several minutes. He’d have to hear her eventually, but he didn’t. She had simply disappeared.
He shouted to her a few more times, but received no answer. He listened again. In the distance, a mournful howl echoed eerily though the damp air. A dog, he suspected. Or a coyote.
He peered into the darkness a moment longer, then reluctantly slid back into his truck.
To his relief, the engine roared to life with the first twist of his key. He had no idea his truck had been running on battery. He glanced at the digital clock on the dash. The numbers glowed that it was twenty-two minutes after one in the morning. Not that that meant much to him. He had no idea when they’d arrived here. His first thought once they’d parked had not been the time.
He glanced around once more, searching as far as his headlights would allow in the nearly black woods. Then he shifted the truck into reverse and back out the dirt road.
By the time he reached the main road and turned onto the highway that led back to West Pines, he was starting to feel like the encounter had been nothing more than a figment of his imagination. A hallucination brought on by being back in his hometown, and all the memories the homecoming had evoked.
Hell, the idea made as much sense as anything else that had happened. The only flaw in his theory was the fact that if he was going to have sex with a figment of his imagination, wouldn’t he have conjured Katie?
Katie.
Suddenly a wave of nausea flipped his stomach, but he managed to swallow back the sensation. He focused on the road rolling out in front of him.
The woman, figment or not, was the first woman he’d had sex with since Katie died. For three years, he’d had no interest in anyone. Hell, he’d gone into this evening knowing that his body was as dead as Katie’s. It wasn’t as if women hadn’t approached him in the years since Katie passed. He just hadn’t been interested, not in the least. He didn’t believe he ever would. Then, there she was-the strange woman with the eerie eyes.
And he’d ended up on a deserted country road, banging her in the front seat of his truck like a crazed teen.
More nausea rose, twisting his stomach. He gritted his teeth. Somehow, this, tonight, that woman and what they’d done, felt like another betrayal to Katie. The final horrible injustice to her and her memory. His first sexual encounter since he’d lost her. With a nameless stranger.
As he pulled up to his grandfather’s home, his childhood home, he still clung to the idea that the encounter was some kind of dream, the created fantasy of an overstressed mind. Then, when he opened the door, he spotted the tiny, lace panties. Panties he’d torn from the woman’s body.
Disgust leapt through him again, pooling in his stomach. He had thought he’d felt all the disgust with himself that he possibly could when Katie died. He was wrong.
CHAPTER 5
As soon as he’d found her, he’d known something was different. Brody Devlin could sense these things. Of course, after what he’d just witnessed, there was no doubt she’d changed. In fact, he hadn’t been prepared for just how different Lizzie was.
He’d been watching her for a while, running the perimeter of her house, watching, trying to decide what had changed. That was why he hadn’t approached her yet. He liked to know what he was up against, and exactly who he was getting back once he took her. He wanted no surprises in front of the pack. None. He was counting on her.
She definitely wasn’t the girl who’d left the pack in the dead of night all those years ago. Not even close.
He paced, his movements silent on the wet leaves. He had to admit he’d sort of liked watching her with that guy. Damn, that had been hot. Not that he wanted another male-especially a human male-screwing his woman. Or maybe he did. As long as he got to screw Lizzie, too.
He had missed that sexy body, which hadn’t changed except to get more exciting. He’d always lusted after her, even though she was a cold fish. Or had been a cold fish. That woman in the truck had been on fire.
The Lizzie he knew had been as frozen as a witch’s tit. She was far too high-and-mighty to allow herself to react to him. She didn’t seem to let anything touch her. She lived in a self-contained fortress, nothing affecting her.
Of course, that had been why he’d wanted her. She’d been so aristocratic, so well-bred, so damned beautiful. A lost little thing who had been tossed out of her pampered life and straight into a world she’d never known existed. She’d been his stolen bit of a world that he’d never been a part of, that had always been way beyond his reach.
Until he had her. Having Lizzie as his mate had elevated him. Made him someone. And he wasn’t letting that go. She was coming back to the pack. She was fixing what she’d ruined when she’d left him. Humiliated him.
He knew she wasn’t going to come back easily. He never had expected it to be willingly. But now, he could see he might have a spitfire on his hands. He’d enjoy that, too. He liked a good fight.
Again, he pictured her bobbing up and down on top of that mortal. Her lips parted, her heavy breathing. He liked a good screw, too. And combining the two-now, he’d really enjoy that. He growled low and hungry in his throat. Who knew she even had that in her?
Oh no, that woman was not the Lizzie he knew. But he planned to know her-well. After all, she was his mate. Of course, she’d never reacted to him like that. Irritation rose up in his chest. She rarely reacted to him, period.
He’d tried. He’d done things just to get her to respond. At first, kind things. But she didn’t care for his kindness. So then he’d done hurtful things. Hateful things. He’d learned long ago that any attention wa
s good attention, because her remoteness pissed him off. Her control, her tight rein on herself, drove him goddamned nuts.
He hated it.
His train of thought was interrupted as he caught sight of Lizzie. She remained stock-still behind a large oak, watching the mortal. She didn’t react, didn’t even twitch as the human called out to her. But she didn’t leave, either; she just stayed silent, studying the human until he got back in his truck. As soon as the vehicle began to back slowly away, Lizzie fled, zigzagging easily through the trees and thick underbrush.
He glanced once more at the fading headlights. What a chump. Lizzie was obviously done with the loser. The fact it was just a hookup made Brody calmer. Watching had been fun. But he didn’t share.
He’d overlook this, as long as the pack didn’t find out. As long as she came back with him-and saved his hide. And since she didn’t have a choice on that count, well, like he’d said, he’d overlook.
He started to follow Lizzie, his paws noiseless on the wet leaves. Then he paused. A scent wafted through the damp air, mingling with the smells of the woods. A sweet scent. An alluring scent. A scent that made his gut clench and his skin crawl.
He turned back to where the truck had been parked. The smell definitely came from that direction, although he hadn’t noticed if it had been on Lizzie, too.
But if it was the scent of what he thought it was… Then he needed to stick around for just a little longer before heading back to the pack with his mate. This could be a situation that would ruin him. And he couldn’t overlook that.
Elizabeth opened her eyes, blinking a few times as she tried to focus and get her bearings. Finally, recognition filled her sleep-fuzzed brain. She was in her bed nestled under the eaves, her thick pink-green-and-cream-checked quilt pulled up to her chin. Watery sunlight flickered and toyed with the idea of brightening the room. But so far, the room stayed dim.
She yawned and stretched her arms over her head, letting them drop heavily to the pillows. She didn’t know what time it was, but she felt as if she’d slept for a long time. And she’d slept like a rock, a feat she hadn’t managed in weeks.
