by Caine
Nope. Still alone.
She laid back again and closed her eyes. Pictured him again. Above her. Staring down at her. Her fingers followed his path down her body, stopping to tease and pinch at every spot in which she needed attention. Her skin felt smooth and cooler than his, and she had to stop and consider if it was the very things such as this that made him hard when he touched her. What it was about a woman’s body that made a man hard had always fascinated her. She felt and looked and smelled nothing like him. Chloe could stand and look at her own body in the mirror for days and wonder what it was that a man saw when his eyes looked at her flesh.
As for what made her wet, Chloe knew the answer to that. And she used it as she continued with yet another solo fantasy. His own flesh was warm and sinewy. And foreign in a way that forced her to remember that it was not her own flesh she was touching, but that of another creature. Of the opposite sex.
She made her fingers his. Chloe imagined Caine gripping her sex. Caine’s hands kneading and caressing her thighs and butt. Caine’s fingers inside her.
He stroked at her clit. Teased it. Chloe brought her fingertips to her mouth and tasted where his skin had been inside her own. Just as he had done before he’d left her. If only for a moment.
He would not be this restrained when he finally came to her. Hopefully. Nor hopefully would she. Chloe’s eyes remained closed and she moaned as she thought about the way he had trembled when he’d touched her. Caine had been exploding inside with need and he had again denied himself. Chloe could only hope that by the time he completely gave in to his urges, the results would match any story she had ever read or even had the balls to imagine.
Perhaps this was what he wanted for her. Maybe it was possible that he had used her own trembling and the sounds of her breath and the feel of her pulse as a lesson in what she really wanted. Being left alone after such a trying day wasn’t what she’d been seeking, but if it led to his being the beast she wanted him to be, Chloe would wait for it.
Her body, however, wouldn’t be that agreeable with her mental satisfaction. Chloe felt her sex begin to throb and pulse deep inside. She slowed her fingers and dove into herself before pressing against her swollen clit again and rubbing. Her nipples ached and Chloe wet the fingers of her other hand with the excitement from her own body before teasing them one at a time.
This was Caine’s mouth on her nipples. His hungry tongue. His lips smelled and were flavored of her sex after he had tasted and loved her with his mouth.
She tightened as she came. And then forced herself to relax as she rode the climax. As she would have to relax when she took all of him inside her. Chloe imagined her sex full and satisfied with so much of him inside it. As much of him as she could take.
Possibly more if he needed this from her.
It wasn’t right or the modern woman’s way of thinking for her to be willing to give so much to a man that it hurt. Physically, emotionally or sexually.
But Chloe’s dreams and fantasies hadn’t been shaped by society. Her sexual imagination had run through the forest with the shadows and stories of men she knew would need more than women of normal, proper society were sometimes able to give. Even when they were willing.
Caine would give her everything she needed. Someday. She knew this. As Chloe lay back and allowed her body to pulse out a beat of at least physical satisfaction, she thought about her great-grandmother’s love. The one who hadn’t existed.
But the one whose presence Chloe somehow felt as her orgasm slowed and she turned to see an old friend sitting outside the glass door.
Watching her.
Grinning at her having come so soon after Caine left her aroused and alone. If she hadn’t known better than to think such a thing.
* * * * *
“Where have you been?”
The wolf walked in through the door Chloe had opened the minute she’d seen him wander slowly up onto the porch. He looked tired, his eyes red and his head hanging lower than it ever should.
Chloe knelt down and reached for the dog’s face. His eyes didn’t come up to meet hers.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
The wolf sat down and sighed while looking around the cabin. Chloe followed his eyes around the room. They searched. She didn’t know for what.
She supposed he could smell that Barklee had just been there.
“Are you feeling all right, gorgeous?”
Chloe sat down on the floor and motioned to the dog. He eyed her nervously before raising his rump and then reconsidering her offer and resting it on the floor again. Chloe moved her own body and reached for the dog’s head.
“Come here, boy.”
She smoothed the hair down his neck. Patted and rubbed his neck. And gingerly kissed the wolf’s warm, wet nose. His eyes came to hers and she watched his tail thump twice against the floor.
Chloe smiled at him and took his beautiful face between her fingers.
“You just need some love, don’t you, sweetheart?”
She moved her finger just slightly to the left and looked at him again. It amazed her how much he looked like the alpha when she covered up that scar.
The animal didn’t even try to get out of her embrace.
Chapter Seventeen
“He’s more of a beast than you could ever be. He just left me here. All worked up and no way to come.” Chloe sighed and smiled at the same time.
“Damn, I want that man.”
Caine lay on the rug in front of the fireplace and listened to Chloe talk about him as she poked at the log about to roll out and singe his beautiful, fluffy, fucking tail. Caine hated winter. The static always seemed to make him puffy and cute. And that pissed him off more than stray dogs who peed on the Hummer’s tires.
Chloe poked a final time without adjusting the log and lay down on the rug beside him. Caine rolled his eyes as he stared into the fire and the impending log roll disaster. He supposed he could piss on the flames when the cabin caught fire, but he was going to need a beer first.
Damn, that did sound good.
Caine got up and walked all the way to the refrigerator before he realized that at the moment he didn’t have his goddamned thumbs.
And he could very distinctly smell Michelob in there. Chloe had followed him to the kitchen.
“You want something to eat?”
No, I want a beer.
“How about some jerky?” She dangled it. Caine rolled his eyes again.
Honey, could you possibly know how much anything with the word “jerk” in it fails to excite me right now?
“Let’s see…”
Caine sat down and watched Chloe start rummaging through the fridge. He spotted the beer. And some Chinese leftovers that would have been tasty as well. But nothing got his attention quicker than what the bitch did next.
She bent over.
And Caine’s ancestors would have raised their own Milkbones to toast his form.
Although his dismount left a lot to be desired.
* * * * *
“Shit!”
Chloe reached for the alpha’s body before she even picked herself up off of the floor. She hadn’t meant to knock them both down like she had, but the force of his trying to mount her had been just a little more than she was prepared to handle.
“Oh, dammit,” she cursed again as she examined the wolf. She’d very distinctly heard his head crack against the wooden floor when she had fallen on top of him in her attempt to get him off of her backside. Chloe tried to get her housecoat to stay closed but when it kept falling open and getting in her way, she jerked it off and threw it down on the floor before reaching back for the wolf again.
“Shit,” she said for the umpteenth time as she started to push herself up from the floor to find something to lay down for the wolf to rest his head on until he could stand up again. At the exact moment she once again used the potty mouth that she knew she would have to clean up once she and Caine had children, a log from the fireplace rolled out onto th
e rug in front of it and quickly lit the woven material into a crackling, cozy blaze.
“Oh, goddammit!”
Good thing she wasn’t expecting or anything.
And that was an understatement, to say the least. She wasn’t expecting Caine’s children yet and she hadn’t been expecting the alpha to try to make his own children with her, and now she wasn’t expecting her uncle’s cabin to burn down.
Chloe scrambled for something to do. Anything to do. And there was just so much all at once. She had to, um, fire…yes. Put out the fire first. Then put ice on the dog’s head. Find him a mate. Maybe that should be first. Close the refrigerator door…
“Goddammit!”
She earned that one because Chloe hadn’t expected to get tangled up in the housecoat she had thrown down. And she hadn’t expected the floor to be quite so hard when she hit it face down.
“Fuck!”
She managed to roll over and survey her masterpiece in the catastrophic. Her housecoat was mysteriously gone from around her ankles. The jerky she’d forgotten she was holding while she stood at the refrigerator looking for something for the alpha to munch on was strewn across the floor. Her ankle was swelling with every beat of her heart. The front door was wide ass open and the alpha was nowhere in sight.
Oh yeah, and her uncle’s cabin was soon to be the site of the world’s largest weenie roast.
Chloe gritted her teeth together and tried to stand on the ankle she’d just twisted. It hurt like hell. So she started to crawl across the floor, hoping to God the alpha wasn’t behind her this time.
He wasn’t.
But what she saw walk in the front door when she looked up from her hands and knees was more shocking than even attempted canine induced sodomy.
* * * * *
Chloe watched Caine from her position on the bed as he swept up the last of the embers and threw them back into the fireplace. She could see him as he crossed back and forth in front of the bedroom door, pink silky housecoat flying behind him each time he turned to gather more debris.
Luckily, he couldn’t seem to keep the damned thing closed either.
Chloe grinned as she caught a good look at what she had suspected he’d been hoarding in those Levi’s he usually wore. And then she frowned. If the way he had angrily put out the fire and then scooped her up and wordlessly plopped her down on the bed before he went to clean up the mess her little oopsie-daisy had caused was any indication, Chloe wasn’t ever gonna get any of that.
He was pissed.
He was dirty and nasty and smelled like smoke and was cleaning up a mess that never should have happened because Chloe knew good and well how to tend a fire.
And he was doing it all while wearing a pretty pink robe.
Ladies, you have got to love a man for times like these.
Chloe could not agree more. She had no earthly idea of how Caine was going to explain the fact that he had evidently been traipsing through the forest while completely naked—thus the need for her pink robe—and had mysteriously come upon her cabin when it had burst into flames. And she doubted that he would be so blatant as to actually admit that he had been secretly watching her and getting his jollies that way or anything. She wasn’t positive, but she could guess that such outdoor experiences served as creative fodder for the man who wrote about such things as naked men chasing women and fucking the hell out of them right in the middle of meadows and on creek banks and while propped up against tree trunks.
The thought of Caine and Luke running bare assed naked through briars and underbrush in order to fuck her on a stump excited her for reasons she couldn’t even begin to understand. Although she would never admit that to either of them or her shrink. But she would admit one thing. To anyone who bothered to know.
She loved this man.
She loved Damon Caine about as much as her mind and heart could stand without it driving her nuts. They would laugh about this someday on a Tuesday afternoon in a September when it was raining too hard and it was much too cold and ugly outside for either of them to want to do anything but stay in bed and fuck like bunnies on Ecstasy.
Maybe then she’d ask him about the robe and his creative muses. And his jollies.
But for now, she had to figure out a way to get him less mad at her for making him her Mr. Fix It, Sweep It, Put The Fire Out, Show It To Me One More Time, Big Boy…
Chloe leaned far enough over to catch another glimpse of his goodies that she bumped her head on the nightstand. Caine was at the door to make sure she hadn’t gracefully fallen out of bed and hurt herself again before the thump even stopped ringing her ears.
“I’m alright,” she insisted, rubbing her forehead and avoiding the look he was giving her that was smacking her around for her obvious and endless talent for being her own worst enemy.
Damn, he was mad.
But not mad enough that he wasn’t going to make sure she was taken care of before he killed her with his bare hands. Chloe didn’t even try to get him to speak as she watched him bring an ice pack into the bedroom and carefully wrap it around her ankle. He straightened the covers and then tucked her in. And turned out the light.
Chloe heard the front door slam on his way out. Hard.
And then she heard it open again. A trail of pink flowed past her bedroom door once again and she saw the glow of the fridge being opened and then closed. The pink trail went past again, toting her six-pack and her Chinese leftovers. The front door slammed once again. Just as hard.
“Well, that son of a bitch.”
The possibility that he’d heard her cuss him was the only thing she could think of when the front door opened yet again and the Great Pink and Pissed One appeared for an encore presentation inside her house. Beside her bed.
She was dead. Chloe knew it.
He loved her as much as she loved him. But he was going to kill her now.
Oh shit.
Chloe looked at the six-pack dangling from his hand and the Chinese carton wedged underneath his arm and tried like hell not to laugh at the way his nipples poked through the dainty pink lace on the front of her robe.
Quick. Hard. No tongue. Just a peck on the mouth.
He wasn’t going to kill her, after all.
He did, however, love the hell out of her.
Well, I’ll be damned.
I mean, darned.
Chloe couldn’t wait to see what he brought her for breakfast.
For now though, the beer he tossed to her on his way back out would do just fine.
* * * * *
Caine slammed the front door and then stopped just a few feet inside his parents’ house.
And pointed at Lee. And then Luke.
“Don’t.”
At the very least, out of respect for their fearless and perfect alpha leader, they could have waited until he got upstairs before they laughed quite so hard.
* * * * *
“I didn’t have any goddamned clothes, remember?”
Luke and Lee sat teary eyed and doing a terrible job of hiding smiles, side by side on the couch in their parents’ garage. The bursts of laughter that occasionally spurted from one or the other made their faces even more red and forced Caine’s anger to lessen just a little more each time he heard it.
Family.
This was what is was all about. It felt good. It meant laughter and togetherness and fun. Sometimes it was hard for Caine to remember what the point was to his even being alive. For a moment, he leaned on his pool cue and watched his brothers take turns bruising each other’s arms, big, tough, psycho cop Luke having more fun swapping licks than the teenager beside him, and Caine remembered everything.
He remembered that when Lee was little he and Luke had once put a leash on him and taken him for a walk in downtown Asheville and when Lee had needed to pee he had transformed back into a boy because he wasn’t coordinated enough to hike his leg yet. Caine and Luke had stood cracking up at the naked five year old trying to pee fast enough to transform back into
a wolf cub before anyone saw that he was a naked, five year old boy wearing a collar and being led around by a dog leash.
He supposed they could have taken the collar and leash off of him, or even taken a set of clothes with them in the first place. But then the memory wouldn’t have been so funny, he supposed. Self-imposed laughter was still laughter, Caine decided. You take happiness when and where you can find it.
He eyed the dog collar that Lee now wore religiously and grimaced. He and Caine had scarred the poor kid for life, most likely. But that was what brothers were supposed to do to one another. Wasn’t it?
The jagged reminder of not so happy times stared back at Caine from Luke’s face.
He hadn’t yet confronted Luke about what had happened between him and Chloe. It was tearing Caine apart. He knew that the situation had most likely pitted his family and his future mate against each other. With Caine in the middle.
Were Caine to completely defend Chloe, he stood the chance of losing his brother. His pack mate.
His twin.
But if Caine was to let Luke’s advances toward Chloe slide, he stood the chance of losing her, even if she did manage to love him for what he was. That thought, unbelievably, was just as painful as losing one of the brothers who sat on the couch.
There was also the issue of his being responsible for the discipline of the pack. And although Caine would love nothing more than to let the past stay in the past, this too, meant family for a Caine man. And it wasn’t a leash so easily removed from around any of their necks.
Caine watched Luke squirt Cheeze Whiz into Lee’s mouth and then up his nose and he laughed with a knowledge that gave him some consolation, albeit a small one.
At least they all felt the same tug.
Chapter Eighteen
Chloe looked up from the kitchen table when Caine walked through her front door like he belonged there or something.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
She glanced around the kitchen for an answer. They had all burned up in the fire, evidently.
