by Caine
Animals can recognize a future mate within minutes of their first examination of each other.
Wild animals, though. Not thinking, rational animals. Human animals had to consider things like the logistics of dating and the problems associated with family and career when they collided and humans had to consider such pertinent issues as race and religion when choosing mates.
The researcher and the preservationist in Chloe both cringed as she thought about how much harder the task of reinstating the wolves would be for her and every other researcher and biologist were the wolves they worked with discriminating about the color of a mate’s coat.
Poor, dumb animals.
Chloe pitied such ignorant animals. But the only thing ignorant about the animals Chloe worked with was the fact that they sometimes were helpless to let their innocence to man’s ability to be stupid and unthinking destroy them. A situation she could only suspect Barklee had fallen into.
She put her groceries away and made her way into the bedroom to change and try to gather a little more courage to confront Caine about that particular matter. And to try and make her body do as she needed it to and not get quite so worked up over the possibility of seeing him again.
Neither happened right away. Chloe instead began to pick up around the room. Hanging up clothes, making the bed. Piddling, Maw had always called it. Chloe always did it when she was trying to avoid doing or thinking about something else.
The bloody footprints just outside the glass doors forced her to stop her piddling.
Wolf tracks. Big ones.
The alpha’s?
She hadn’t noticed him limping or acting as though he was injured. Chloe jerked the covers back on the bed and examined the spot where he had lain the night before.
It was clean.
She stared down at the crisp, white sheet for a moment before going back to the glass doors and pushing one of them open. The way in which the door easily swung open answered the question as to how the wolf had gotten back into the house the night before.
But the footprints were another matter. Chloe followed them across the deck and down the steps. They disappeared in the grass.
She stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed the yard for signs of anything else that could tell her what the hell was going on. A dead animal. Another wolf the alpha had killed the night before. Possibly he thought this was his territory now and he was protecting it. She looked for something that would tell her why the wolf who had visited her had clean feet, despite the tracks she suspected were his.
Scar?
She hadn’t seen him the night before. Nor had she seen Barklee after she’d returned home. Only the alpha when she’d awakened to find him in her bed again. And he hadn’t tracked any blood into the house.
She didn’t know. And it would seem that she might never know.
But the moment she spotted the torn and bloodied piece of white fabric at the edge of the woods, she did know that she was less worried about a wolf or any make believe man now. And despite all of the things that humans had to consider when they chose mates, Chloe realized that her expertise in the realm of human animal biology wasn’t quite as thorough as she’d once thought.
Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four years. What the hell did it matter how long it had been?
Wolves couldn’t tell time.
And her heart had known which one of them was her mate the minute she had met him.
* * * * *
“Caine!”
Chloe peered into the windows of the farmhouse and yelled his name again. No one had answered and she couldn’t find anything moving in the house after several minutes. Chloe’s heart was racing.
He was hurt.
She didn’t want to think that, but it was possible. The shirt was identical to the one Caine had been wearing the night before and Chloe could only assume that something terrible had happened. Luke’s own face was proof that wolves were wild animals, regardless of how tame a person thinks they are. And with Barklee being sick, Chloe had no idea of how he might still be reacting after having been exposed to the drug in his system.
Suddenly, she wasn’t quite as angry with Caine about the pot as she had been.
And she didn’t want to think that it would serve him right if the animal he had allowed to get the drug was the very thing that had bitten him. Or killed him. Not that that was something that happened very often. Wolves didn’t just attack people without being provoked or injured themselves somehow. They were, for the most part, elusive and quiet around humans. People rarely even knew the animals were in their midst. That was how peaceful she knew these animals to be.
But Chloe had never seen a wolf after it had been backstage at a Grateful Dead concert either, so…
Jerry Garcia’s face flashed through her mind.
“Caine!”
She pounded on the front door and then reached for the knob. It was unlocked.
Chloe loved living in the sticks.
She looked around the living room and carefully peeked around the corner into the kitchen.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
“Caine?” She swallowed hard and took a breath. And called less enthusiastically this time.
“Luke?”
He didn’t come to her either. Whew.
Dammit?
Chloe slapped her mind’s dirty little paws and made her way up the stairs carefully and peered into each open room. At the end of the hall, she found one closed door. She knocked carefully. And then a bit harder when she heard movement from the room.
“Hello?”
Nothing but the movement met her ears.
Maybe Barklee was in there, she considered. Maybe he was sleeping in there until he felt better and of course he couldn’t answer the door. He didn’t have thumbs. Chloe looked both ways down the hall, as any good driver would, and then pushed the door open a bit.
He was cute. Very. Young. Also very. But legal.
Barely.
The headphones had obviously kept him from hearing her knock. The naked women on his bed were buxom, implanted, and airbrushed to fairy tale perfection.
And they’d encouraged him to close his eyes and block out all other inferior stimuli so that he might take care of…how shall we put this?
The matter at hand?
Chloe bit her lip to keep from laughing and then let out a breath as the bedroom window allowed her the very quick sight of Caine stepping out of one of the smaller houses. Carefully, silently, she closed the door and waited until she reached the stairs to let out a breath of relief over Caine being all right. It was also then that she let herself crack up over cutie pie and his hands-on approach to love.
She took the steps two at a time as she went down them to find Caine. She was still laughing at the young man she could only assume was another Caine brother and at the fact that her own Caine brother wasn’t hurt when she reached for the front door.
Her laughter was cut short by a mouth that felt as though it could destroy her from the inside out.
Chapter Fifteen
How goddamned long had it been since he’d truly tasted this?
Warm blood was his favorite flavor. Fresh kill. That was the most satisfying to his needs.
But only because he wasn’t allowed to satisfy his other needs properly.
He hated what he was.
Luke gripped the soft mass of red hair with one hand and the warm, firm ass of this female with the other.
And feasted.
She resisted for only a moment. But then something seemed to take over inside her and she was forced to feel the throbbing between her legs and the wet, dewy arousal that Luke had known he could provoke from her with his mouth and hands and warmth and the talent that he’d long ago perfected for this. But rarely practiced.
Sometimes he loved being who he was.
But it wasn’t very often. And without the pleasures that normal men were allowed, Luke wondered why he ever felt that way.
/> Meagan had made him remember.
And Chloe was going to refresh his memory.
And Caine could go to hell. Luke knew full well that Caine was the alpha, but as he stood holding the flesh of this woman between his fingers and as he listened to her moan a little when he merely threatened to pull his mouth away from hers, Luke realized that Caine was enforcing the rules so vehemently for one simple reason.
Luke wouldn’t have shared this woman with anyone either. Even his twin.
He and Caine were genetically identical and so it only made sense to Luke that they were once again attracted to the same scents and tastes and sounds of a woman.
Chloe spoke to every sense Luke possessed.
And it didn’t matter that Caine had smelled her first.
But it did matter to Luke that although Caine was intent upon having her as a mate, he wasn’t going to breed with her yet. It simply wasn’t going to happen that way again. Had Luke listened to his instincts when he’d met Meagan, it would be he who was the grieving widower and not his brother.
As it was, Luke was merely grieving.
He didn’t even try to pull his mouth away again as he lifted her up and spread her legs as he sat her on the table in the entryway of his parents’ house. He worked his body between her thighs before opening his eyes and looking at her face for a moment. Her eyes were still closed and the wonderful look of woman in the midst of sexual delight made Luke smile and begin to kiss her face and neck and the tops of her breasts.
Her face fit easily inside his palms as he held her head back to allow his teeth access to the tenderest flesh of her throat. He felt the vibrating tickle of some low, purring sound against his lips when he dragged a gentle bite down the smooth, warm skin of her neck.
She allowed her head to stay back when he released it in order to use his hands elsewhere. Luke felt her shift her bottom just a little as he unzipped and unfastened her jeans and her motion allowed him to slip his fingers inside the cotton panties that covered her sex.
She was wet. Luke had already known this as the smell of her arousal had found his nose the minute she had entered what was rightfully his territory. But only as he slid a finger farther down and then into her to test and ripen that wetness, did the full impact of her arousal hit him.
This was what made him want to be a man. A full blood man as opposed to what he was. Luke knew that his cross breeding made him a superior lover and stronger than most men and it gave him a sexual stamina that most porn stars would kill for.
But what goddamned good was it?
His options were limited to fucking whomever his brother approved of and had fucked first…
…or leaving.
And even though the wolf in Luke wanted his own pack and his own territory and his own mate, the man in him adored his family.
Especially his twin.
He and his brother were the personification of the curse of duality they had been born victims to. Neither, Luke suspected, would ever balance within himself. And neither able to live happily for very long without the other in his life.
Had their chromosomes been cut on the grain as opposed to against it, both men could have had the lives they craved.
But they hadn’t been cut that way. And so Luke was determined to satisfy at least half of his being. With the help of the woman who had begun to moan into his ear as he drove hard, needy fingers inside her and as she moved her hips and legs to position so that he might finish what he’d wanted so badly to do to her the day before. What he would have done had he been the alpha.
Or just a man.
Luke used one of his hands to free his cock from his jeans and then pulled the bitch’s hips forward on the table so he could penetrate her more easily from this ugly and awkward human position. Her own jeans were easily pulled from her legs and Luke simply broke the flimsy fabric of her panties to get them out of the way.
She wasn’t fighting him as much as he’d suspected she would. In fact, had Luke not known better, he might have thought that the woman’s face had the look of extreme pleasure on it as he handled her much more brutishly than most human females were willing to endure without resistance.
Luck’s cock stiffened even more.
Meagan had been almost that same way. Caine’s first bitch had relished in being fucked by the animals that Luke and Caine could both be when they took a woman.
Luke knew this for a fact.
He also knew that the bitch wrapping her legs around his waist to pull his cock closer to her didn’t seem to need any time at all to get used to the idea that she was about to be savagely fucked by something less human than even the wolves she had allowed and encouraged to invade the Caine family territory. Luke also suspected that she wouldn’t need much time to get used to the way that his brother made love either.
An alpha wolf thinks of his pack first.
Always.
And the other part of him, unfortunately, has to wait his turn.
* * * * *
Chloe’s lungs hurt. She’d forgotten to breathe. All of her attention, every nerve, was directed at one thing.
This was not Caine touching her.
She hadn’t had time to see whether or not the scar was down his face before he’d all but thrown her onto the table, but her body had detected something different the minute he’d laid his hands on her. Unfortunately, Chloe didn’t like the message that difference was sending by way of her body.
She was terrified by the man who was causing her body to betray her wishes by obeying his commands. She was wet and aroused and wanted this man to fuck her. And if Chloe couldn’t get control of that desire this time, the life she wanted with his brother would be over before it even had a chance to start.
It would seem that her body also had an ally in its battle for the pleasure Chloe felt running through this man’s fingers and lips and hands. Luke Caine was twice her healthy size and very horny and most definitely intent on taking what he wanted from her.
Chloe didn’t stand a chance. Not if he wanted her badly enough.
Or did she?
Her mind thought about Caine’s books. About the creatures he had imagined. The men who were helpless to their animal urges.
The animals who were helpless to deny their human emotions.
It was fiction. Completely. Chloe knew this and had finally, reluctantly accepted it. But it was fiction that had come from Damon Caine’s mind. A man who was an identical twin to the man whose cock was pressing against the wet, ready opening of her sex. A man who was ready to fuck her again.
Luke’s mind and Caine’s mind had to be similar. Their beliefs and morals had to have some of the same characteristics, even if only due to the fact that they had grown up in the same house with the same parents.
It made sense to Chloe that because she knew Caine through his work and through what her intuition had told her about him as he’d held and kissed and loved her, she might also know something of the man who was kissing her so tenderly. A man kissing her so very passionately, despite the fact that she felt his prick begging to be shoved violently inside her body. The man was offering her a pleasure that tortured her with guilt that such physical pleasure would never give rise to in the animal kingdom.
The desire for monogamy, it would seem, might afford mankind a bit of redemption for his many shortcomings.
And it was this. The feelings that Chloe’s heart and mind were victim to that caused her to not want the delicious pleasure that this man was capable of giving her with his hands and mouth and his sex. Luke was brutal and more like an animal than a man when he fucked. But Chloe wanted Caine. She needed Caine.
At least her heart and mind did.
“Luke?”
She couldn’t keep her eyes open as he breathed into her ear and whispered to her.
“Chloe.”
That growl. That voice. Whatever it was that produced the sound was fatal to Chloe’s self-control. Only testosterone in massive amounts would result in such a
baritone. In a survival of the fittest, Luke Caine might have beaten the Creator himself.
“Luke, please stop,” she managed just before his lips found hers again.
The kiss was warm. Firm and demanding, but tender at the same time. And it would seem that Luke was just as vocal as his twin when it came to silent conversations.
Chloe felt her heart clench when he broke the kiss.
“Luke, I don’t want to do this.”
He’d heard her. But Chloe could still feel the head of his cock at her sex. The warm, velvet tip pressed against lips she had never felt this swollen and needy before. They wanted to allow him to press further between them. They wanted him inside her, where he could fill her first with his flesh again and then with more of his seed. Chloe wanted this exact same thing. Caine family seed in her body. A Caine child growing in her womb.
But it had to come from Caine’s body and because of Caine’s love. Not Luke’s. And not because of whatever force was so consuming she could see it trying to express itself from Luke without his conscious permission or effort.
His hands had lessened their grip ever so slightly. But they hadn’t let go yet. Not completely.
Chloe suspected this man had even more trouble letting go of things he cared about than she did.
She looked as deeply into the eyes of a predator as she suspected she ever would. And saw the life and death handshake she had always watched battle for dominance when faced with such situations grow slack.
He let go. As she always had to, regardless of how much it hurt her to watch an animal go back to the wild or to the painless void of death.
As he released her and she slowly reached for her jeans, she continued to study the eyes of this man. She wanted to see if there had been anger or rage he was still fighting over what they couldn’t share. The anger she had seen the day before when she’d wanted to take from him.
But strangely, Chloe found no anger or rage in Luke Caine’s eyes. There was no hatred for her or her sex in his gaze. No look that told her that some woman had turned his heart cold and unfeeling.
