“Cavanaugh will have people watching us.” A twinge of sadness was evident in Francis’ tone. “You’ll be safer. We’ll be safer.”
“I know,” Rain repeated. “But you’ll know how to find me if you need to.”
Francis’ sigh just about broke Rain in two. “We’ll miss you.”
That was as close to a goodbye as Rain was going to get, and he choked on the silence that built inside him. He clicked his phone off when the line went dead and gripped it in his hand.
Nora rubbed his chest. “What did he say?”
Rain tried to focus on the steady rhythm of her hand, and not on the ball that was forming inside. “He loves us.”
She slid her body against his and stayed pressed against him for a long silence. “He is a good man.”
“The best.” Rain put down the phone. “Your father is neutralized, at least for the time being. And the team in Mexico is going to have to function without us.”
Nora nodded. “Ah. So that’s what the Maggie Gallagher comment was about.”
With a smile, Rain took her hand and pulled her onto the couch near the door. “Jealous?”
She raised one eyebrow. “Should I be?”
Something about the moment took Rain’s breath away. She was straddling him, her black dress a stark contrast to the white of the sheet behind her. She was so poised and regal and conservative, but she was so raw and real and genuine.
Everything he never knew he always wanted.
Rain pulled her down on top of him and found the zipper for her dress. “I want to see you,” he whispered into her neck as she writhed against him.
Nora sat back and shimmied out of her dress, standing in front of him and discarding the garment.
He took a moment to just gaze at her. Her long torso, the round swell of her heavy breasts, the naked curve of her shaved pussy. He slid his hand up her thigh and spread her labia with his fingers.
She shuddered and her nipples pebbled.
“I haven’t seen you like this before.” Rain stroked her, finding the warm, wetness and sinking fingers inside her.
Her legs buckled and he caught her by the hips, hauling her toward him and settling her pussy over his face. He spread her legs wide with his hands and she petaled before him.
Nora grabbed the back of the couch as he latched onto her clit with his tongue, reveling in the sweet, musky taste of her. She propped one high-heeled foot over the back of the couch and hitched her hips forward for more, better contact.
Rain sucked on her clit until she cried out his name and the urgency building inside him reached a pinnacle. He had to be inside her.
He set her on the couch and tore off his clothes. His erection bobbed in the cool air of the house, and cold pricked at every inch of his skin.
Nora’s half-orgasm-haze face ignited him again and he pressed down on top of her, finding her lips and kissing her until she wrapped her legs around him.
“Fuck me, Rain,” she panted in his ear.
His cock throbbed and touching it was almost painful, but he guided it inside her and they quickly found a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Frantic, passionate, relieved. He drove into her like he’d found his home and could never leave.
Nora groaned beneath him and when his fingers found her clit, she closed her eyes and let out a moan he felt in every molecule of his body. She gripped him with her knees and pushed him back until he flipped to his back on the couch.
She held his hand between her legs and rode him, panting and calling his name, and he could have frozen time and been perfectly happy forever.
When he came, all the tension he’d been carrying melted away, and there was only Nora, smiling down on him in ecstasy, whispering over and over words he’d been struggling to remember.
“Chun tú Geallaim mo chroí agus anam go deo.”
In the fog of his orgasm, he felt magick wrap around him and pull at all of his insides. Something burned down his body, from his head to the soles of his feet, and in the flashes of streetlights that filtered in through his shaded windows, he saw marks began to form on her body.
Sitting across her shoulder, the mark appeared like writing from a wide pen, and swirled around itself into a Celtic knot. The swirls continued around her arm until they were two thick, green bands of knotting, encircling her arm. And the other arm as well.
She touched his arm in the same place and Rain looked up to see tears forming on her cheeks. He swiped at them and pulled her down against him.
The touch of her skin on his had a new hum, a new singing, and when she rubbed against him, he could feel the tingle in her clitoris, as though he was experiencing it through her skin.
Rain shook himself. All of the sensations were new to him, but being able to feel her pleasure, it was a drug that was quickly going to swallow him.
She continued to touch his arm, tracing something along his skin, and he looked down to see that he had a matching set of tattoos to hers. The green on her wrists had disappeared, and the green on her arms stood out nicely against the contrast of her alabaster skin.
He could get used to seeing her branded like this. His brand.
“I didn’t want to wait any more,” she whispered against his ear, sending a tickle through him that lodged in his heart.
“I didn’t want to wait, either.” Rain didn’t move her, loving the feeling of their joined bodies, and reveling in the moment.
He was mated. Bonded.
With the double rings of tattoos that he’d seen on so many of his friends.
This brought a whole new level of responsibility on him. Nora’s safety was in his hands, as much as her heart was, and the trust it took to give both of those things to him was overwhelming.
She sat back and the light from the streets settled against her skin again, illuminating shards of her new tattoos. He would never tire of seeing those marks on her, and he would never forget watching the magick brand her. Just the memory brought a stirring to his cock again. He would never get enough of her.
A noise startled him. The sound of a door opening and closing, but it was outside. Across the street. The silence of the night had lulled him into forgetting that he wasn’t alone. And Nora’s gorgeous, naked body was far too tempting. But he needed to get them settled into this place. Their new home. And that meant, it would be time to meet the guys.
He picked her up off his lap and set her on the couch, amid protests.
“Don’t you have a bed we can go to?” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, a secret look in her eye. “I’m not done with you yet.”
Rain smiled at her. “I do have a bed. But let me just tell the guys I’m back. It’ll only take me a few minutes.”
Nora pulled at his hand when he stood. “Can’t it wait?”
The old Rain would have shrugged it off. Gone with the mission. Called the guys together, told them everything, planned the assassination of Edward Cavanaugh and set a time to save the day in Mexico as well.
But the new Rain was a mate. He could feel, in his chest, the disappointment that crowded inside Nora when he stood up.
She wanted him to stay.
He wanted to stay.
“It can wait.” He reached over and turned on his lights. Once on, then off, then another flick on, then off for three counts, then on. The guys would see he was back, and safe. He’d tackle the whole Nora thing with them in the morning. They weren’t going to be thrilled about her being a Cavanaugh.
But that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be a Cavanaugh for much longer. He would make her a Dubois in more than alpha bond. And more than mate bond.
She would be his.
Forever.
* * *
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* * *
Chapter One
Sex tent.
Tomás Rivera shook his head and pulled out his weathered Huichol dictionary, certain his translator had gotten the words wrong. He flipped through pages and looked up the original words the Huichol kept repeating as they ushered him through the dark, dirt pathways of the mountain village.
“I think you’re translating that wrong,” Tomás whispered to the broad-chested man named Zolin, who had met him in Choaca and guided him into the mountains.
Zolin grunted, pointing ahead of them. “Sex tent,” he repeated. “You’ll see.”
Nope, he hadn’t heard the man wrong.
“What the hell is a sex tent?” Tomás hissed out the side of his mouth as he smiled at the two half-naked men who practically carried him through the village.
His translator pointed again. “The tent for sex.”
A chill went through Tomás’ body, even though the night was warm. He flashed a smile at an old woman who stood in the door of her dark hut, holding a child back from running up the mountainside with the rest.
Children skipped ahead of them, naked and laughing, picking yellow flowers along the path and tossing them at his feet. Far in the distance, drums rumbled and someone led a group in chanting.
He never should have turned down the second team member’s presence. There was the tiny problem with everyone assuming he and Maggie would be the next to succumb to the lust bunny, like Rain and Nora had done, and Tomás had chosen to go it solo because he didn’t like Maggie that way.
A tiny part of him wouldn’t mind going in the sex tent with her—she would be an athlete in the sack—but it wasn’t like what had happened to Rain and Nora. That had been Fated. He definitely didn’t like Maggie that way.
The men dragged him around the corner, toward a large, chanting circle of people with a roaring fire in the middle. More drums joined in. More people began to chant, and then there was a woman singing.
Ceremony.
His father had told him, the mountain tribes were big on ceremony, but he hadn’t expected to be greeted with one. And certainly not one that involved a sex tent. Gods. There was that phrase again.
“You will wait here,” Zolin said. He parted the wave of people and walked into the center, circling the fire, and barked out several phrases in the Huichol language that Tomás didn’t dare look up. He still couldn’t spell things, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they meant, anyway.
Two women followed Zolin out of the circle, both adorned with beautiful rings of flowers in their hair and around their necks, barely covering beautiful dark nipples and bare breasts. Another ring of flowers hung around their hips, but did not cover them below the waist, either.
Their flower rings moved in time to the drums and they circled him, taking his arms as the men had when they brought him up to the fire. Zolin crossed his arms and followed. The chanting escalated and the woman who had been singing began to careen her voice high above the group in beautiful, arcing melodies.
“What are they doing?” Tomás asked Zolin, but the man didn’t answer. He spoke to the dancing girls and they all moved farther up the mountain, past the crowd, to a dark, heavily-scented pool.
The girls stripped off his pants and boxer shorts before he could protest, and then moved to his shirt. He tried to find words of protest as they guided him toward the water.
“Zolin.” He caught the native man’s dark eyes. “What is going on?”
The translator nodded at the water. “They’re going to clean you. For the sex tent. You will see.”
“I’m sorry, but can you tell them I don’t need to go into the sex tent?” Tomás smiled at the lovely women who cupped flower petals in their hands as they washed him. They did not steer clear of his crotch and it wasn’t long before he could feel some heat rising in his abdomen.
“Everyone goes into the sex tent.” Zolin moved to the edge of the water and dipped a toe in. “The water is warm for you. It comes from a heated spring that flows out of the volcano.”
Both the half-naked girls and Zolin made a swooping sign with their right hands and said a word Tomás didn’t recognize.
“What was that?”
“It was an honoring of the god who lives in the volcano,” Zolin said before they all made the sign again. “We do not speak his name.”
One of the girls slid open a vial and poured a viscous liquid across his chest, rubbing it in and beckoning the other girl to do the same. They slicked his body with the oil and the sharp scent of it overwhelmed him. Tomás had to blink to keep himself focused.
“They really don’t need to do this.” He tried to meet one of the women’s eyes, but they just continued to rub him with the slick, earthy liquid until they had finished his chest and abdomen.
Tomás let out a howl as they moved down toward his hardening dick and grabbed their hands. “Whoah, whoah, whoah. Now. Before we start with that. Will someone please explain to me… what the hell is going on?”
The two women gave Zolin a wide-eyed stare and he shooed them, coming down into the water. “These women have the very great honor of preparing you for the sex tent. You should not take away this honor.”
“I don’t think you understand why I’m here.” Tomás searched for his clothing, which held his translation book, and his maps. And his phone. “There has been a big mistake.”
“No mistake.” Zolin grabbed his arm and pushed him farther into the water. “Wash yourself, in case Fate decides to reveal your mate to you tonight.”
Tomás almost shook his head. “Wait. My mate?”
“Wash.” Zolin pointed to the side of the pool that was covered in petals, which they apparently used in place of clothes or sponges. At least in this ritual.
Someone should have prepared him for this.
“I’m here looking for the men who helped Father XX__XX destroy a wolf brothel about thirty years ago.” Tomás picked up some of the petals and half-heartedly wiped at his skin. He didn’t dare touch his cock. There must have been some kind of aphrodisiac in the oil, because he was hard as a stone.
“Yes, I know. You said this in Choaca.” Zolin tossed him the vial next to his foot. “You must put this on so I can take you to the sex tent.”
Damn. There was that word. Tomás wasn’t sure how to get out of this, but he just wanted to get them to answer his questions. He poured some of the oil on his skin. This kind was sweet, and it made a heady mix with the woody scent of the last lather.
“Are they here?” Tomás asked. “I need to find them.”
“First, the sex tent. Then, you meet the elders.” Zolin gestured for him to follow and turned to march back down toward the fire. “We must know if your mate is in our village.”
“My mate?” Tomás laughed. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“I never joke.”
“Then you are mistaken.”
“I am never mistaken.” Zolin stopped halfway back to the fire.
Tomás looked around. The huts were empty and the path was wide. It seemed to be some kind of gathering place, and it was surrounded on all sides by giant, thick trees. He couldn’t see the women who had been washing him, but he imagined they must have gone to prepare someone else. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to join anyone in the sex tent.
If he hadn’t been alone in a strange place, he would have crossed himself. His family occasionally talked of Fate and mating, but Fated matches were rare in his pack, small as it was. He had never even discussed it with his parents. Tomás had long assumed he would be the pack enforcer, as the alpha’s son, until he became alpha himself. When he had more responsibility, he would worry about a mate. Until then, the whole idea of t
he sex tent would make him run for the hills.
Only he was in the hills. The mountains. The far-flung mountains of Western Mexico, among a people rumored to be among the most magickal in the world, and they wanted to rub him down with magick oils and send him into a tent for sex.
Not for sex, though. For mating. That was way too much responsibility for a twenty-six year old single guy from Vegas.
“I can tell you a secret.” Zolin cast his eyes around the empty space as though afraid of being overheard. Surely, there weren’t many Spanish speakers in the area.
“What?” Tomás asked.
“I have not been in the sex tent myself.” He leaned in and whispered, “Because I have found my mate. But the men who have gone in have always come out more than satisfied with their result.”
“You say I’m supposed to find out if my mate is here?”
Zolin nodded. “Every visitor who comes to our village, whether wolf or man, is first invited to sit in the sex tent with our women. We must know if your mate is among us. Honor the magick.”
Tomás was tempted to roll his eyes. He
“It is not like this in your village?” Zolin’s eyebrows tented.
With a laugh, Tomás said, “It is not.”
“Well, we honor the magick above all. If Fate has a match for you, we would welcome you in to the village and make you one of our own.”
Oh gods. Tomás tried to force a smile. “Sounds great.”
Zolin pulled him by the arm and they walked next to the fire, around to where Zolin had stopped. He addressed the crowd again, gesturing to Tomás and then to his still-erect penis. That oil was some kinda mojo. He hadn’t had an erection this long since he’d accidentally tried some of Tio’s Viagra.
Energy coiled inside him as they ushered him into the big, dark tent, past a row of completely naked women. He rolled his shoulders and tried to relax, but every piece of him was hard and pulsing and on edge.
Had they given him some kind of drug? The air crackled with magick and he felt high on something. Once inside the tent, the low glow of a small fire lit the area from the center of the room.
The Werewolf Ranger (Moonbound Book 3) Page 9
