by Selena Scott
Vengeance sparked, replacing any softness in her expression. Milla leapt on Alec with surprising strength, and dunked him under the water. He was fast and strong and wasn’t under for long, but fuck if he was gonna get to her again. She slid out of his grasp, half swimming, half running toward shore. She felt his hands at her waist and shoved him back with a pissed off, fun-loving grin on her face. She was two more steps and only knee deep in the smooth river water when he caught up again, tumbling them both forward. He took the brunt of the fall on the heel of one of his hands and his knees, but she ended up on all fours beneath him. Six inches of water raced over their hands, placed next to each other on the riverbed.
They froze like that. The fury of their racing play pumping through their veins at the same time the slick of the other’s skin registered. He slid his knee in between hers and kicked her legs apart just a bit further. And then he waited.
Milla held herself still for just a moment before she relented and pushed her ass backwards. Alec groaned and reared back so he loomed over her, slicking a hand over her perfect back. He lined up his cock, already straining for her again, and shoved his way inside. She was wet for him again, and already slick from their earlier passion, but he was still a big man and she stiffened against the intrusion.
He fell forward over her, resuming his original position with her back against his chest, and nudged forward into her. “I’ve never wanted someone the way I want you.”
She twisted her head and their mouths met as he pumped into her. His strokes were shallow but forceful. Milla felt them deep inside of her in an overwhelming, inescapable building of pressure. She tore her lips from his but his hand, cold from the river water, came up and twisted her mouth back to his. He held her there as he fucked her from behind.
He was gasping, grunting the way he had been before and the noise was rattling something loose inside Milla. It was a noise of vulnerability, of surrender, and she knew somehow, deep in her bones, that he’d never made that noise with a partner before. She couldn’t have said how she knew it. But she did.
The thought had her pressing back on her hands and knees, jamming her hips into his and fucking him as much as he was fucking her.
Alec reared back then and Milla, not to be stopped, reared with him. He sat back on his haunches and she in his lap, his hands banded across her chest, her nipples peeking through his fingers. They rose and fell against one another almost viciously, desperately, as the river raced beneath them.
When they found their releases this time, it was together, and not a moment too soon; neither could have held on a second longer.
There were no words this time when they fell away from one another, washed in the river. No more banter or flirting. They were silent as they dressed. As Alec grimaced at the blanket he’d forgotten to use. They were silent as they trudged quietly up the mountain back to camp.
They were silent as they stepped back into the camp and paused, waiting to hear Ansel and Ruby’s uninterrupted breaths.
And they were silent as Milla went back to her bedroll. She stretched herself out on it and looked at the stars instead of Alec.
She stiffened in surprise when he lay down next to her, shoving her a few inches to one side to make room for himself on her one-man sleeping bag. They lay on their backs, with a few inches of her body slatted up onto his. He tossed his blanket over top of them, linked his arm under her neck and then up across her chest.
“Sleep now, little queen,” he whispered in her ear. And she did. They both did.
***
“What the fuck.”
The voice coming from above them had both Alec and Milla grabbing for the knives they had kept next to them. They bolted upright in tandem, both of them blinking sleep out of their eyes and assessing their surroundings in vague confusion.
Ansel stood in front of them, Ruby right behind him, and he had a very strange expression on his face. His eyes were screwed onto the part of Alec’s body that had shoved itself in front of Milla in the split second after he’d woken up.
“Jesus,” Milla groaned, running a hand through her short cap of hair and tossing her knife to the side. “You coulda been stabbed.”
“We didn’t mean to disturb your slumber.” Ansel spoke slowly, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Alec and Milla.
Alec rose and reached behind him to help Milla stand. He straightened and turned back to Ansel. “I slept with your sister. And if I have the chance, I’m gonna do it again.”
Ruby’s mouth fell flat open as she glanced up at Ansel. Milla had the grace to hide her smile as she watched the two men face one another. She had to admit, John Alec the Warrior had a certain style. About as subtle as a bag of rocks to the temple, but still, a certain style.
Ansel held Alec’s eye for about one more second before he turned to Milla. Her brother’s eyes searched hers. “And that was alright with you, Mill?”
Dang, she loved her dang brother. Always protective while still completely believing in her to fight her own battles. He wouldn’t give a shit what Alec had to say, as long as Milla was doing fine about it.
“Yup,” she shrugged, sparing him any of the juicier details. “All kosher.”
Ansel held her eyes for another beat before he nodded his head and stepped back to throw an arm around Ruby’s shoulders. “We want to get on the road. We missed almost an entire day of travel yesterday.”
“Alright,” Alec nodded and bent to start gathering his things.
Ansel paused and Alec looked back.
“Just so you know,” Ansel said, nothing but raw truth in his voice. “I could be in bear form and literally eating your heart in less than three seconds.”
Alec straightened up and resisted the urge to bring his hand down to the dagger at his hip. He had, after all, fucked the man’s sister only the night before. “Noted.”
Milla had the grace not to laugh until Ansel and Ruby were twenty feet away, packing up the tent.
CHAPTER SIX
The next days were grueling, filled with bad weather and dozens of miles hiked every day. Alec was used to the gnawing hunger that came from so much exercise and so little food, but he could see it wearing on his companions.
Especially Ruby, whom he’d grown to like a great deal. She was small and sweet and was truly determined to rescue her brother.
Alec understood that. If Valentina was captured and tortured somewhere, he would have burned the country down to get to her. He rested much easier knowing that Valentina was manning the northern border of the shifter trade, where barely anything ever happened. She was never one for rest and relaxation, and normally would have hated that post. But she’d been severely injured only a year ago and was still healing. Alec’s next stop was to check in on her, make sure she was resting the way she should be.
Alec glanced back at the group in single file behind him, Ansel at the back, and he thanked God that night was falling soon. The days seemed never-ending and almost cruel in their intensity. But the nights? Well, he liked the nights.
Not a night passed that he and Milla didn’t sneak off from the camp and lose themselves in one another. Last night he’d found an ancient, mossy pine, planted her hands against it and taken her savagely. The night before that she’d basically torn his world apart by humping him into oblivion against an outcropping of crumbling rock. And so on. Every night for the last eight nights.
He wondered when they would notice that he hadn’t left them after seven days.
He felt a tug to go and check on his sister. But a man would have to be insane to voluntarily leave a woman like Milla behind. She was intriguing, funny, a hellion in the sack, and she smelled good. Really good. They’d reached the point where he should have turned off three days ago.
And he’d said nothing. Just kept on going toward the main city.
It was more than just not wanting to leave good sex behind. He’d realized, the farther that he’d led them into Herta, how little they knew about what they were g
etting into. And how little they knew about Herta at all. Letting them trounce into the main city, looking for the most sought after shifter in history and then just hoping they could find a gate to escape through? It was like leading lambs to slaughter. And as he scented Milla on the air behind him, he found he simply didn’t have it in him to do it.
Even if it meant returning to the most dangerous place on Herta.
When they made camp that night, it was cold enough that they’d needed a small campfire. They weren’t secluded in the mountains as much as they’d been in the past. There were small dwellings in most directions. A little campfire wouldn’t single them out as suspicious travelers.
Milla held those gorgeous, delicate, strong hands up to the firelight and Alec found himself staring at them, thinking about how those hands had looked against his scarred chest just last night. Like birds against a stormy, torn sky.
“We need to talk about the gates.”
All three of his companions turned to him. Milla had something guarded in her eyes and she crossed her arms over her chest as he spoke. He wondered what that was all about.
“They’re not two-way doors. You can’t get back through the one you came from. And the ones that will let you through to earth won’t call you the way the other gates do. They repel you.”
“So how do we find them?” Ansel asked.
“You pretty much have to know where they are. There’s one right near the gate that you three said you came through. It’s dark and looks like the mouth of a cave.”
Ruby furrowed her pretty little brow and nestled into Ansel’s shoulder. “I saw that.”
“Where?” Ansel asked. “I missed it.”
“Shifters can’t see the gates back to earth.”
“Jesus Christ.” Milla slicked a hand through her blonde cap of hair and rose up, unable to stop herself from pacing. “They sure know how to fuck shifters around here, don’t they?” The more she’d heard of how Herta treated shifters, all the short ends of the stick, the more frustrated and agitated and downright furious she got. If Inka were here, she’d know immediately that the real fuel behind Milla’s raw, wrecked anger was that they were making plans for when John Alec left them. And that just scraped her the wrong way. But Inka wasn’t here and Milla had no intentions of excavating her rage. All she knew was that she felt mad, she was mad, and she was gonna go ahead and act mad.
“Yes,” Alec nodded. “It’s horribly unfair. Every part of the system is designed to degrade. Enslave.”
For some reason his agreement, his understanding, only served to enflame her anger even more. “And yet, you’re just somehow fine with this eighteen-year-old shifter boy captured and tortured as some kind of message to any shifter who might resist?”
“Milla!” Ansel’s voice was sharp as he pulled a wincing Ruby into his side. Neither of them liked Milla talking about Griff that way.
“Of course I’m not okay with that.” Alec was calm, but it was a deadly calm. Calm as a weapon, a tactic against a raging storm of passion.
“Fine,” she lifted her hands and was a golden orange in the firelight. “You’re not okay with it, but you’re choosing to ignore it?”
Alec held her eyes across the fire and Milla saw something there that she couldn’t discern. Something that both warmed her and troubled her in equal force.
“In what way am I ignoring it?”
You’re leaving us! she wanted to shout. You’re making us face all of this alone! But pride had her knitting her lips together. She’d be damned before she begged him to stay. Not her style. He could leave them tomorrow for all she cared.
A thought struck her as she paced away from him and stared out into the dark between each tree in the forest.
He hadn’t left.
The days blurred in her mind. She attempted to count them, to whittle out which mountain pass had been on which day. Was it day four or day five when it had sleeted for an hour? When had they found that emerald green mountain reservoir? The days blurred and became indistinguishable, but she knew suddenly, blazingly, that he’d overstayed what he’d said he would.
She turned back to him, her sly green eyes narrowed and cautious. He sighed as he recognized the expression. Such a difficult woman.
“Have we been going slower than you thought we would?” she asked carefully.
He cocked his head at her. An interesting angle to approach this from. “No. Faster even, over the last two days.”
She turned back away from him, not wanting him to see her face as hope rose within her. She was calm and collected, perfectly reserved when she turned back to face Alec and the rest of the group. “You haven’t left yet.”
Alec tossed a leaf into the fire before him. He watched it curl as it died. “That’s right.”
Ansel and Ruby looked between the two of them, putting it all together.
“Does that mean you aren’t leaving?” Ruby asked with such hope in her voice that Alec had to crack a smile. It was impossible not to like Ruby.
He sighed. “It means I’m not leaving you.”
Ruby launched herself into Alec’s arms, laughing with desperate relief. She kissed his brow and let herself be dragged back onto Ansel’s lap. Ansel, for his part, leaned over to clap a huge hand on Alec’s back.
“Hell of a relief,” Ansel muttered.
“Yeah,” Alec brushed through his short hair. “We still have a hell of a lot of planning to do.”
It was then he brought his eyes back up to Milla. She still eyed him from across the fire. Her expression was frozen, but not blocked off. She looked… thoughtful. But not happy. Definitely not happy.
So, what? She was ready to bite his head off when she thought he was leaving and now she wasn’t sure she wanted him to stay? Well, that was her problem, through and through. She was a difficult woman who was impossible to deal with. She had too many tempers, all of them liable to be tripped at any given moment. She was impossible to make happy. Not that he was trying. But it would be a fool’s errand if he had been.
She strode around the fire and held a hand out to him. Alec blinked at the slim, beautiful hand in front of his face. Apparently he stared at it a moment too long because she waved it impatiently until he reached up and accepted her help to haul him to his feet.
“Come on then,” she muttered, dragging him away from the campfire and into the woods.
Ansel whistled behind them and Ruby giggled, but Alec ignored them, mystified by her behavior. Her steps were hurried and choppy, as if she were so angry she couldn’t barely speak. They walked for ten minutes and he was just pissed enough to start telling her exactly all the ways she could shove her attitude right up her ass when she abruptly stopped walking.
She’d led him under the low hanging branches of an immature pine. She lifted his hand to one branch at eye level. Her hands smoothed over the one she attached with his palm to the tree.
“You’re gonna want to hold on for this,” she murmured, her eyes slowly hooding as she dropped to her knees in front of him.
“Ah,” Alec started and then abruptly cut off as she tugged his pants around his ankles and his cock bobbed free.
There were no pleasantries, no flirtations, no getting acclimated. Milla merely took him by the hips, leaned forward and swallowed down nearly his entire enormous length. He felt the head of his dick bump at the back of her throat, and then amazingly, he felt her swallow him down even further.
She came up off him, gasped for air, and did it again. That was right around the time Alec’s knees buckled. She was right. He did need to hold on. Luckily, the branch held a good amount of his weight. One of her hands came off his hip and grabbed for his fingers. She guided his hand to the back of her head where his fingers automatically tangled in her silky, golden hair.
She came off him again, gasping and staring up at him with those green eyes that just wrecked him. God, how had he ever gotten this lucky to have found this woman? This little queen who just glimmered like a gem in the nig
ht.
She opened her mouth and licked him head to base with the flat of her tongue. Keeping his eyes, she suctioned over the tip and swirled her tongue in a move that had a guttural “guh” slipping out of Alec’s mouth.
She smiled then as she looked up at him, her hand working where her mouth had just been. She slid her other hand over his fingers at the back of her head. “I can take more if you push me down on it.”
Alec opened his mouth to reply but no words came out. What she-magic was this? Who was this creature before him? Obviously, she’d been sent to completely disarm and incapacitate him. He was a lifetime warrior. A man who’d trained for more than three decades to be as competently dangerous as he was. And she’d just wasted him with a single sentence. He was ready to bow down for pretty much the rest of his life.
This time when she took him in, Alex experimentally pushed her head down on his cock. She hummed her appreciation for the move and his legs literally shook. She nudged back against his hand and he instantly let her up. She breathed hard and then took him down again. He pushed with his hand and let her up. They fell into a rhythm.
It wasn’t long before Alec’s breaths were coming out in rough pants and he couldn’t concentrate enough to keep his hand on her head. Instead, he anchored two hands on the branch above him and let her do whatever the hell it was she was gonna do.
The woman did not disappoint. She swirled and sucked and swallowed him down until she drew the mother of all orgasms from him. Alec’s vision tunneled as every muscle in his body tightened. His blood was electric as it zinged through his body. He was exploding into her mouth and he felt like he had been for hours.
When finally it was over, and he stood dazedly above her, Milla gently licked him clean. She couldn’t resist leaning forward and pushing her forehead into his belly the way he was always doing with her.
