by L. A. Banks
She began chewing again. He resumed cutting meat. She kept accepting it.
“I’ve been off now, like, twelve . . . thirteen hours. I don’t understand the teeth,” she whispered, leaning in. “Do they go away?”
“After you’ve satisfied the wolf, yes.”
“How do I do that?” she whispered urgently, leaning in, still eating, her eyes wild.
“You tell me,” he breathed.
She stared at him as he closed his eyes and tilted his head, and then pulled in a deep inhale through his nose, scenting her. When he opened his eyes, they’d gone amber at the edges, his pupils now depths of eternity. He dropped the fork and picked up a piece of cut steak and brought it to her mouth. To her horror, she took it from his fingers, laving them with her tongue. The only thing that kept her from going over the table toward him was the arrival of the waitress with another plate for them to consume.
But rather than set it on Sasha’s side of the table, the waitress timidly set it down in the center between them. Flushed, she tore off their bill from her pad and slid it onto the table, then quickly left, her voice wistful. “I’ll leave you two alone . . . don’t think I’m ignoring you— but just call me if you need anything else.”
They didn’t even look up at the woman, but kept their mouths closed and eyes averted until she was gone. Sasha immediately picked up her steak knife and the fork closest to her, cut off a large piece of meat from her plate, and then reached out to give it to him.
Almost as though the interruption of their feeding had been painful, Max wove his legs together with hers, capturing one of her thighs between his beneath the table, leaned forward, and took the offered steak. But before she could catch her breath, he’d slid the fork out of her hand and licked the full palm of her hand . . . then down her wrist and back up again to suck the residual juice from his feeding off her fingers. He then captured her damp hand within his as he began chewing what she’d given him; her thighs locked his between hers and she couldn’t have stopped the rhythmic pulse of muscles within them if her life depended on it—and perhaps it did.
His hand went to her hair and the low sound that he released as he touched it bottomed out in the pit of her stomach. The new plate of food that separated them was abandoned. Something insane made her want to cut her palm with her steak knife and offer it to him to lick instead. Before she’d finished the thought, he’d allowed her hand to fall away from his so that he could pick up the knife. Without taking his eyes from her, he scored the heel of his hand and offered it to her. Unable to resist, she cradled his hand, trembling with need, and luxuriated in the scent of his blood before giving in to the pull of it by lavishing the wound with her tongue.
His nails scored the underside of the table in a slow, agonized rake as she tended his wound, nearly lifting him out of his seat as he fought an arch. She knew others couldn’t hear the timbre of sound that he’d released, but she could feel it run wild and feral through her insides.
As though swallowing liquid, salty heat, a slow, pleasure-filled burn covered her tongue, making it yearn for his, making her writhe in her seat to lean in closer to him as it coated her throat, lit the inside of her chest behind her breastbone, and then lay awake in her belly causing her insides to shudder.
He was breathing through his mouth now. Colors formed behind her lids as she squeezed her eyes shut and his massive thighs became a pulsing vise around hers. His other hand fisted her hair until she was done laving his wound. The moment she looked up, his eyes met hers, and within the span of a blink, he’d found her mouth, consuming it mercilessly, allowing his tongue to roam over her trembling lips, then plunge deeper to hunt her tongue and chase hers with his own.
Were they not in a diner . . . but that reality was becoming cloudy at best as his massive hand covered her throat and she released a low moan into his mouth. That sound and the way she’d tilted her head back slightly to expose more of her vulnerability to him seemed to be the very last of his undoing. If she had any modesty left, any shred of nonwolf in her, she knew she had to pull out of the kiss before he came across the table and created a scene.
They both parted, panting. The burn he’d left between her thighs almost made her whimper. Her body was so hot that she nearly ripped off his jacket, but his scent that clung to it made her slowly stroke the arms of it with flat, trembling palms instead. He simply closed his eyes for a moment and began breathing very slowly through his nose. Watching the way his chest rose and fell, the way his nostrils flared slightly on each inhale, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he tried to compose himself, was almost more than she could bear.
She watched his wound heal, his skin knit closed as though it had never been cut. Inhaling deeply, she snuggled into his jacket, not taking her eyes off him.
“You smell familiar,” she murmured, her voice low and husky with want.
He nodded. “I am familiar. I am your shadow.” His voice was raw, just like his gaze. “You’ve just healed your shadow.”
“Teach me about my shadow. I don’t understand it.” Her voice was a blend of plea and demand. She didn’t care. She’d never encountered anything like this in her life.
“You need to come with me up into the mountains, then.” His body was in constant contact with hers. His hands fondled hers both roughly and gently. His legs burned against hers, capturing them in complete possession. But his gaze literally ate her alive.
“I can’t,” she said, hyperventilating, and unashamed that she was. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, finally touching his hair, pulling the band from it, and allowing the lush texture to spill through her fingers. “Oh . . . God . . .”
He gently slipped the band into his inner jacket pocket that she was wearing, allowing his fingers to graze her left breast. “Why not . . . before dawn, before the moon finally—”
“I have to report to base in forty-eight hours . . . less than that . . . and if I don’t show up on Monday morning at nine hundred hours, they’ll send MPs.”
He took her mouth. She nearly crawled across the table to him.
“They’ll never find my den.”
“I can’t—plus, it isn’t prudent to disappear with a man who might want to kill me at some point.” She stopped kissing him for a moment, and swallowed hard, still breathing hard. Her inner woman was in a death struggle with her inner wolf, and it felt like hand-to-hand combat, her with a mental Bowie and the wolf with all the advantages. “Because I am changing. I can feel it in me . . . If I transform, then what?”
“Do I seem like I have killing you on my mind?” His fingers sought her hair as his smoldering gaze trapped hers.
“Yes. I think you’d probably try to fuck me to death right about now.”
He stared at her for long seconds without smiling. “Lesson number one—never deny the wolf. That only makes it hungrier.”
“Was I wrong about how you’d try to kill me?” A half-smile appeared on her face.
“No. I will most assuredly try to do that, if given half the chance.” He nuzzled her neck roughly. “Sasha . . . let your wolf come out to play.”
“It’s a long drive up the mountain . . . and I have to go to Wal-Mart . . . then gotta call Doc,” she whispered roughly, kissing him between words, finding his deep, musky scent delicious, and now able to smell her own wetness, knowing it was driving him crazy.
“Wal-Mart? You’re not serious, are you?” He traced her cheek with a finger and then cupped it, his mouth on her collarbone as he breathed her in.
“Yeah . . . I need to buy clothes. I have to call Doc . . . sometime later today. Gotta rent a car, for reasons you’ve shown me. The bugs. Gotta buy clothes, again for—”
“Go later today. I’ll take you there. Use my truck.” His gaze became furtive. “If you have only forty-eight hours before they ship you off again . . .”
“I have others to consider . . . I—”
Another feral kiss stole the words right out of her mouth. She’d lift
ed up and half out of her seat, he’d caused her breasts to ache so badly; his mouth had been so close to them, his knee was pressed tightly against the swollen, pounding flesh between her thighs. Right now every one of her arguments seemed so distant . . . as long as he kept touching her, pulling her wolf up and out of her. She needed to be with him so badly now that tears stung her eyes. Her skin hungered for his, creating a need to rub the length of it, all of it against him. She bit her lip not to cry out and sensed a strangled howl trapped in his throat.
“Don’t make me go against my people. I can’t walk away just like that. I need answers.” She was begging him, sure now that if he demanded it she might agree to his terms.
Her fingers splayed in his hair and then she slid her palms lower until she touched the wondrous shadow on his face . . . it was like a covering of black velvet and growing longer by the moment, making the very centers of her palms ache. He quickly turned his face into one of her hands and pressed a deep kiss there as he held the nape of her neck firm.
“I understand you not wanting to abandon your pack,” he said on a breathless murmur, pulling back enough to briefly look into her eyes. “But I am now your totem to call upon whenever you need me. I’ve willingly given you my blood. You’ve willingly healed my wound.”
She nodded and stood, somehow understanding the connection. “Pay the lady.”
THE BLARING OF the telephone made him reach blindly toward his nightstand. Through bleary eyes he saw the clock and a surge of worry cleared his mind.
“General, sir, sorry to wake you at this hour, but there’s been a significant disturbance at Captain Butler’s home.” The voice on the line hesitated, sounding extremely stressed. “There was gun report that brought local police . . . they found carcasses . . . and his body.”
The general sat up and closed his eyes. “Jesus H. Christ—clean this up, man.”
His wife stirred and her worried gaze asked if everything was all right. He nodded to her absently as the major on the line filled him in with the details.
Up and out of bed now, the general pulled on his robe and walked into the hallway toward his office for privacy. He closed the bedroom door behind him as he clutched the cordless telephone receiver to his ear. Dorothy didn’t need to hear this, never needed to hear anything related to what he did to keep her and their family living in safe, secure comfort.
“Send in a team with FBI badges to spin a cover-up that there was a crazed stalker who used the apartments of deployed military—something,” he said as soon as he closed the heavy walnut doors to his personal sanctuary. “Make this go away as an unsolved but pending case and then drag in some known serial killer within the next two weeks and close the books. And find her. You tracked her Nitro to the homes of every man on her team; there was a police report at each one. She’s armed, might be in some kind of state of transition. Get Holland on the line and ask him if we need to put her down yet.”
“Yes, sir, General, sir . . . but—”
“But what! Speak, man!” The general rounded his desk.
“We can’t find her, sir.”
The general closed his eyes. “You can’t find her?”
“We’ve located her car, and it seems as though she’s gotten rid of her clothes, sir. The vehicle went first to each squad member’s home as stated, as though she were trying to bond with her pack. Then, as I told you, sir, her location culminated at Captain Butler’s, where it was clear that she was in some level of distress. The recordings register . . . her talking to him, then growls, snarls, animal sounds, and shooting as though she panicked when she saw him in his transitional state within the apartment. What she found might have sent her over the edge. Then her vehicle went north to where it had been earlier that evening, sir. An establishment called Ronnie’s Road Hog Tavern. We sent in a capture-and-recovery unit there because her movement seemed to be stabilizing and we feared she was injured, sir . . . might have, considering what she saw, put her own gun to her head. We drew that as a possible conclusion because she hadn’t moved in so long. But what we found was shreds of her clothes, her empty wallet, weapons, unspent ammo—”
“Raise Holland, stat!”
“We’re only getting voice mail, sir. He says in his message that he will be on vacation this weekend and returning to the office Monday morning at nine.”
“I want a full manhunt. She might have Turned. I want her back in our possession before she does any more damage or before she’s abducted by a black market cell.”
“Sir, do we shoot to kill, or bring her in alive?”
“If she’s in a human body, bring her in so we can study her further—she’s the last one we’ve got. Wasn’t scheduled for extermination for another six months at least. But if she’s too far gone, you know what to do.”
CHAPTER 6
BARELY MAKING IT out of the diner to Hunter’s truck, down the road a half mile to the pay-by-the-hour motel, she suddenly found herself somewhere she’d sworn she would never go in her life. But the moon was dipping below the mountains and the sun was trying to fight its way across the slate-blue darkness. Like the horizon, she was in transition. Her entire life as she’d known it was in chaotic transformation.
Sasha forced herself to stay within the steamed-up F-150 while Hunter handled the necessary transaction to get them a room.
It was a good thing that she could barely see out of the windows. Watching him jump down from the truck and lope toward the office had almost made her flee the vehicle to tackle him in the parking lot. Oh, yeah, it was a good thing that a tiny shred of her nonwolf mind remained. It was absolutely terrifying to be this out of control.
She never heard him or saw him round her side of the truck. The door simply opened and she was abruptly gathered into his arms. Under any other circumstances it would have been a fight to the death. But instead she anchored her arms around his neck and sought his mouth with hers in a primal hunger.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard the truck door slam, felt him reach behind her to close it, but that was all so distant as she climbed up his body, her nails raking his back. Right now the only thing she could hear was his ragged breaths as he walked a short distance holding her, then a thud against their room door, a key turning in a flimsy lock. A slam. Additional warmth. They were inside. Another slam. A flash of sensation. Belly against belly that would soon be skin against skin. He’d dropped to his knees. Her back and skull hit something solid—the floor. He’d put her down hard and covered her with muscular heat.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t trust the bed to hold—”
His apology went ignored, eaten from his mouth as she rolled him over onto his back and blanketed him. He stripped her sweater up over her head and she pushed up, straddling his waist, breathing hard while staring at him. His eyes and the strange amber amulet he wore were both softly glowing.
The last shred of sanity she had left was spent on a single, halting statement. “I don’t want to curse a child with what we have,” she whispered, “because I’m not prepared, but I want you.”
He nodded in the semidarkness and leaned up slowly to kiss her abdomen, making her gasp when his lips pressed against her skin. The slow, suckling caress from his mouth left a deep burn of pleasure in its wake and his tongue became a patient, licking reminder not to deny the wolf.
As though quietly debating the dilemma she’d presented, his hands glided over her hips, molding to them through her ruined leather pants. He didn’t say a word but kept moving forward until he was fully facing her and she slid back to straddle his lap. She had to close her eyes for a moment. Feeling the rock-hard length of him straining against his jeans, straining to get inside her, the muscle it owned causing it to pulse against her swollen slit, crushed the last of her will.
“Look at me,” he said quietly, his voice a low, calm rumble as his hands swept heat up her back to unhook her black lace bra. “I told you I’m no liar.”
She could only nod as she gripped his thick biceps.
The sheer force of his unblinking gaze was like an entity unto itself, something that was part of him, but also something with its own aura that called her out and made her look at him.
Drowning in that deep, endless gaze was so possible. Touching his skin, letting her fingers tangle in the onyx spill of hair that washed his shoulders, scenting him, trembling in his arms, all of it was necessary, every bit of it impossible to avoid.
The moment he stripped off his sweater her hands slid over the sculpted bricks of his chest. She held his gaze as his eyes demanded, even as his hard, coffee-bean nipples bit into her palms and his breath hitched. Surprisingly, the amber piece that he still wore glowed brighter as she caressed it with her thumb and traced the oddly cool silver chain. Watching his eyelids become heavier with desire as she studied his expression made her suddenly need to rub her skin against his.
But he kept his chest a fraction of an inch from hers, close enough for her to feel the heat rise off his skin to lick hers, but not soothe it. Ever so slowly he peeled her bra away from her body as though taking off a wound dressing, and as the last of it came away from her skin, she literally cried out from the sensation of being freed. The urge to drop her head back and close her eyes was so fierce that a shudder devoured her. She needed him to touch her but he seemed intent on communicating something with his gaze that she couldn’t fathom.
“I am your totem,” he whispered. “Your wolf . . . You cannot conceive from me unless you’re in heat.”
She nodded, not knowing what the hell he meant but sure that she was experiencing heat.
“No, it’s much worse than this,” he murmured against her throat, while not allowing her breasts to press against his chest. “This morning we are shadow dancing.”
“What is shadow dancing?” she whispered into his mouth, not really caring as long as he kept making her feel like this.
“Look,” he murmured as he pulled away from the kiss gently. Holding his body farther away from her, he nudged her jaw with his so that she could peer at the long shadows created on the wall in the semidarkness.
