His partner started, snapping the cell shut and shoving it into her hip pocket. She spun about, staring up at him. “My landscape gardener.” Without giving him any time to respond, she crossed the foyer in long strides, disappearing through the archway.
Gritting his teeth, Peter descended the stairs and followed her into an expansive, sparsely furnished room, the urge to strangle her almost as powerful as the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
“He fucked her here.”
Yolanda’s blunt statement froze his blood and he stared at her. “Who?”
“The man who has your sister.” She pointed to the cushion-covered chaise she stood beside. “He fucked her here.”
Peter studied the piece of furniture, noting numerous, tiny slashes in the tumbled cushions, frenzied gashes in the material that looked made by a small, wildly-wielded blade. Cold fury roared through him and an image of Reggie struggling to be free exploded into his head. “How do you know?”
“Can’t you smell it?”
He pulled a deep breath, but all he detected on the air was Yolanda.
“Their sex stinks the place. His sweat…” She leant forward, plucking something almost invisible from one of the torn cushions. Holding it up, she studied him over her pinched fingers, eyebrows raised. “Your sister’s?”
He focused on what she held, a single strand of long, chocolate-brown hair. At some stage, Reggie’s head had been pressed to the chaise.
Why?
Rape?
His gut twisted at the word. His heartbeat tripled.
Yolanda watched him, the closed expression she sometimes wore back on her face. “We will find her, Peter.” She placed her free hand on his shoulder, stepped forward so her thighs brushed his. A soft, almost sad smile curved her lips. “Trust me.”
Peter looked at her. Felt the warmth of her hand radiate through the icy rage consuming him.
Indeterminate.
Trust me.
Not hurt.
Do your job.
Fuck. What the hell was going on?
“Detective Thomas?”
Jackie Huddart’s voice sounded above him and he blinked, turning from Yolanda’s hypnotic blue gaze. “Yes?”
Huddart looked down at him from the top stair, conspicuously ignoring Yolanda’s less than professional contact. “Command has located the stolen Jag, Detective. A unit’s on its way.”
* * * *
Something scratchy pricked at Declan’s neck. He opened his eyes—slowly—staring up into the dim shadows of a barn roof. Dusty cobwebs laced the beams, crisscrossed the framework in such plenitude the scattered gardening equipment hanging from the rafters almost seemed choked by the silken threads. He frowned. Where was he?
He moved slightly, waiting for an onslaught of agony in his side. Nothing. Just the scratchy prickling on the back of his neck and a strange, not entirely unpleasant numbness in his limbs. He rolled his head to the side. Hay. Lots of hay.
Why didn’t you smell it, Dec?
His frown deepened. He should have smelt it.
You should also be in pain, but you’re not.
The last thing he recalled was looking into Regan’s beautiful, stubborn face as they were driving north. Then…
He sat up, cold dread smashing into him like a wrecking ball. Regan. Christ, if she was hurt…
“How are you feeling?”
The wind burst from Declan’s lungs in a relieved whoosh. He twisted on the hay and looked up into Regan’s smiling green eyes. “Jesus, love. Thank God, you’re okay.”
She smiled, leaning back against the stack of hay bales behind her, crossing her slim ankles, her legs looking longer than ever from his low position. “No thanks to your driving. You know you pretty much totaled a two-hundred thousand dollar car?”
“Bugger. I liked that car.” He moved slightly, waiting for burning pain to stab into his gut. It never came. In fact, he felt good. Better than good. His senses were a little numbed, but apart from the soft fuzziness…Suspicion stirred in his chest. “What did you do to me?”
A cheeky grin played over her lips, making his heart skip a beat. “The farmer here has quite a supply of Rimadyl in his cupboard.”
“Which is?”
“A mild painkiller. Vets use it often on injured animals.”
Declan cocked an eyebrow at her, choosing to ignore the mention of vets. “And he just gave it to you?”
She shook her head, green eyes twinkling. “You’re not the only one capable of breaking and entering, Paddy. Remember?” She pushed herself from the haystack, dropping into a graceful crouch before him, her running shorts riding higher on firm butt cheeks he seriously wanted to squeeze. Tender fingers touched his temple, worry replacing the mirth in her eyes. “You know, I wanted to kill you earlier,” she murmured, looking at something above his right eye. A dull throb was the only clue as to what she studied, but there was no pain. Just that fuzzy numbness. “As I was dragging your ass from the car and across the field getting here. Do you know how many cow-pats I stepped in?”
Her fingers trailed down his jaw, her thumbs tracing the swell of his bottom lip, making his body stir and his groin twitch.
“But now you’re conscious, now you’re looking at me with those storm-cloud eyes…Killing you seems such a waste. There are other things I want to do to you.” She leant forward, coming closer—as if to place her lips on the very spot her thumbs caressed. But then she stopped, a very small frown creasing her forehead. “But I can’t,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
She shifted away from him and everything in the way she moved told Declan she was about to rise to her feet. About to walk away from him.
No, he thought. Not without explaining that “not yet”. Not without that kiss.
He reached for her hands, his own a blur of preternatural speed… until they jolted to a sudden halt. What the—
He looked down. And discovered thick, metal manacles locked around his wrists, two heavy steel chains attached to each.
Lifting his stare to Regan, he gave his arms a sharp jerk. The chains snapped taut, kicking straws of hay up into the air. Each length disappeared beneath the pile of hay he sat on, and something about the unforgiving way they stayed tight told him they were fixed to something solid.
“The Rimadyl is only a stop-gap, Declan,” Regan said, inching away from him, cheeks red, eyes apologetic—but determined. “You need antibiotics. Quite possibly surgery. I’m going to find the closest doctor.”
Declan shook his head, anger simmering in his blood. “No, you’re not.” Fists clenched, he jerked his arms upward, readying for the jolt as each chain shattered. They didn’t. Not even close. He leveled a stare at Regan, surprise and, unexpectedly, admiration threading through his anger.
“They’re high tensile steel,” she said. “Australian farmers have to deal with some pretty feral pigs. Even this close to Sydney. By the look of this farmer’s set-up, hunting pigs is more than just a hobby.” A small, wry smile stretched her lips. “Which is lucky for me.”
He tilted his head to the side, giving her a dark scowl and the chains another—futile—tug. “Pigs? You comparing me to Babe, love?”
Regan laughed, the sound rich and warm and so wonderful he almost forgave her for chaining him. “Babe is a cute, lovable character, Declan O’Connell. There’s nothing cute about you.”
“What about lovable, Regan?” he asked, mouth suddenly drier than dust. He paused, chest heavy. “Am I lovable?”
She stared back at him, a tiny pulse leaping to life below her ear. “Unfortunately,” she said on a whisper, leaning toward him once more. “You are.”
Her lips brushed his. Soft. Gentle. Her tongue flicked out and touched his, the tentative caress making his blood roar. He grabbed her ass, the chains clinking as he yanked her hips to his. She gasped, the sound captured by his mouth, and she plunged her tongue deeper past his lips, rubbing her crotch against his rapidly growing erection in small up-and-d
own strokes. Her hands slid up the back of his skull, tangled in his hair. She fisted them, little jolts of pleasure spurring across his scalp as she tugged on the strands she held.
He groaned into her mouth, sank his nails into her ass-cheeks. The soft cotton of her shorts did nothing to hide the divine firmness of her butt and he groaned again, wanting to tear the material from her body so he could feel her flesh. He shoved his cock harder to the warm junction of her thighs, knowing—even if he couldn’t smell it—she was wet there. Her sex called to his. He ravished her lips, drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked, a part of his passion-fogged brain wishing it were her nipples. Oh, to scoop both of her full, heavy breasts up, to push them together for his mouth to claim both dusky nipples at once. To have each perfect point between his lips, to have them sliding under his tongue at the same time…
His pulse thumped. Hard. Primitive. He felt his wolf flex. Dragging his lips from hers, he scored a line of savage kisses over her bowed neck, flicking at the frantic pulse below her ear before sinking his teeth into the sublime curve above her collarbone. She cried out, tugging on his hair again, ramming her sex harder to his throbbing cock. “You scare me so much, Declan,” she rasped. Her heart hammered, pounding against his chest in a rapid tattoo. “The way I react to you, the way you react to me.”
He lifted his head, gazed down into her eyes, their smoldering, desire-clouded depths almost destroying his control there and then. “I don’t mean to scare you. I don’t want to.” He raked his hands up the curve of her hips, under her top, over her ribs. Her flesh burnt his palms and his balls throbbed, spiking currents of pure pleasure into his groin. “God help me, Regan, you’ve got into my head and nothing matters but keeping you safe. Keeping you in my arms.” He dropped his head and nuzzled on her neck, needing to taste her. “Keeping you on the verge of sexual rapture until time ends and we become creatures of pleasure.”
She moaned and rolled her hips, grinding the heat of her sex over his straining cock. Hands curling tighter in his hair, she arched her back, directing his head to her breasts.
Suck them.
The order sounded in his head, a demand he neither wanted to ignore, nor could. He took the rock-hard nub of her left nipple in his mouth through the material of her shirt.
“Jesus, that feels so fucking good.”
The raw words sent surge after surge of hot blood into his cock. His head swam but he didn’t stop, torturing her nipple beneath its sodden cotton covering.
“Move it.” She pushed her breast forcefully against his mouth and he knew exactly what she wanted, as if she’d placed the very desire directly into his mind.
Chains rattling, he lifted his hands to the neckline of her tank top and, with barely a pause, tore the already tattered garment open. Her breasts spilled free, creamy curves of swollen flesh. He stared at them for a frozen second before, breath shallow, nostrils flaring, he shoved them both together and captured the nipple of each with his mouth.
Regan bucked, her fists tugging brutally on his hair. “Oh, my fucking God!”
He closed his teeth down on each imprisoned tip of flesh, wondrous hunger consuming him at Regan’s wild cries of pleasure. She wanted this as much as he. There was no doubt. No confusion. Everything else boiled in uncertainty—whether he would he survive the upcoming battle with Epoc, whether Epoc would finally have the test subject he always craved—but the way Regan felt about him, the way he felt about her, was as undeniable as the moon and the sun and the planets.
She raked her nails through his hair, over his shoulders. Her sex rubbed at his cock. “Oh, Declan, that feels…that feels…”
Her words dissolved into gasps and whimpers. He suckled harder on her nipples, his hands mauling the soft heaviness of her breasts together, the chains slapping at his arms in stinging bites with every move he made.
His cock throbbed, pushing against the denim of his stolen jeans and the hot curve of Regan’s mons with urgent insistence. He lifted his head from her breasts, blew on the two red peaks glistening with his saliva. She arched, the tips pinching even tighter before his eyes as the cool stream of his breath fell on their tortured surface. “How do you know what I want…?”
Her breathless question made him pause. How did he? She was human, not werewolf. Yet he seemed to sense her every thought, her every desire. Like their souls were inextricably entwined. As though she were his lifemate…
A shiver rippled through her body and she moaned, the low sound raising his gaze to her face. “Lifemate.” The word fell from her lips as her eyelids fluttered closed.
Lifemate.
Blood roaring, head swimming, he stared at her. The need to claim her, to bury his manhood into the folds of her sex had never been so powerful. So commanding. He slid his hands from her breasts, the chink-chink of steel links slicing at the humid air. He watched the passion play over her face as he moved his palms down her ribs, watched her lips part as he removed his hands from her body…please don’t stop touching me, Declan…watched those same lips curve into a sultry smile as he took her hands from his shoulders and place them on the burning bulge of his erection…oh, yes, yes…the chains clinking a rhythmic reminder of their presence as he did so.
“Release me, Regan,” he murmured, dropping his head to brush a feather-light kiss on her lips. “Release me.”
Her fingers cupped his swollen cock, his throbbing balls, through the painfully tight denim. She opened her eyes, gazed up at him, her hand moving over his shaft in slow strokes.
“Release me, Regan,” he repeated. His whole body was numb. Numb and gloriously aware. She was his lifemate. And he was going to claim her.
She stared at him, the heat from her body folding around him, her hands pressed to his sex and said, “I can’t.”
Declan’s throat clamped shut.
Regan shook her head, and before he could stop her, she was on her feet, moving away from him in backward steps, reknotting the torn front of her top, her eyes never leaving his. “Not yet. Not until I know you’re better.” She reached the barn door and pressed her palms to its rough wooden surface without turning around. Her eyes beseeched him to understand. His body roared for her to come back.
“Regan.”
“I’ll be back soon, Declan. I promise.”
She pushed at the door, a sliver of brilliant sunlight pouring through the thin crack she made.
And the stench hit him. Hard. Powerful. Malevolent.
Wolf.
Loup garou.
He leapt to his feet and the chains snapped tight, jerking him back to his knees with brutal force. “Regan!” he screamed. “Behind you!”
She turned. Just as the door swung wide and McCoy filled the glaringly bright opening, towering over her like the harbinger of Death, cold, red-gold eyes triumphant.
“Told you I was gonna fuck her,” he smirked before, with frightening speed, he reached out, grabbed Regan by the arms and yanked her to his massive body.
Chapter 10
She couldn’t move. The man gripped her arms so cruelly tight, she couldn’t move. Nails sank into her flesh like claws, right below her armpits. She felt them puncture her skin and muscle. She stared up into his face, into eyes of molten lava. Dread crashed through her like a wall of crushing ice.
“Leave her alone, you fucking bastard!” She heard Declan scream behind her.
McCoy laughed, his hideous burning gaze razing her flesh. “I’m going to have so much fun with this bitch, O’Connell.” He pulled her harder into his body and she felt—oh, God help her—a long, thick and solid erection grind against her belly. “For every minute of trouble you’ve caused me, I’m going to stick my dick in her cunt and make her scream and curse your name.”
Fear exploded in Regan’s chest. She bucked against McCoy’s brutal grip, lashing out with her feet. “Let me go, you fuck!”
He laughed again, and without effort, hauled her off her feet, snatching her in a crushing bear hug tight enough to send splintering p
ain through her ribs. His stare bored into hers and he bared his teeth in a terrifying smile. “Not for a while, lass. Not until I’m finished with you.”
“Leave her alone, McCoy, or so help me—”
McCoy’s laugh boomed through the barn, his hulky chest vibrating against Regan’s body like an earthquake. “No one’s going to help you, O’Connell. No one at all.”
A movement in the corner of Regan’s eye caught her attention. She swung her head around and her heart stopped at the sight of two men stepping out beside McCoy, each radiating menace and hate. “Declan!”
She thrashed in McCoy’s hold, and he chuckled at her efforts. “Thanks for chaining him up for me, lass.”
Regan spat in his face. “You fucking bastard! Let me go!”
“I like her spirit, O’Connell,” McCoy commented, dropping her to the floor and snatching her flailing wrists in one large fist. He fixed her with a smoldering stare, wiping her spittle from his cheek with a casual swipe. He looked at the two men beside him. “Deal with the Irish mongrel. Remember, Epoc needs him alive.” He turned his gaze back to Regan, fist crushing her wrist bones together. “I’m going to get acquainted with this little lassie here.”
Regan’s stomach rolled at the promise in his eyes. She yanked against his hold, her blood chilling her veins, her pulse pounding in her ears. Burning friction tore at the skin on her wrists and she cried out, McCoy closing his fist tighter as he began to walk, dragging her away from the barn.
Toward a familiar van parked under an ancient eucalypt.
Regan stared at the gaping back doors, at the darkness within. Every fiber in her being knew what was going to happen next. Oh, God! Help me!
Behind her, a wolf howled. Long. Wild.
McCoy leered at her over his shoulder, and her flesh crawled at the depraved hunger she saw glowing in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted to fuck an Australian.” He grinned at her struggles, nodding in appreciation. “I really need to thank O’Connell for giving me the opportunity.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“When I have such a delectable piece of ass right here?” With a savage jerk on her wrists, he threw her through the van’s back doors.
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