by C. T. Adams
¡Madre de Dios! It was happening again. The tea should last longer than this. It always had in the past.
“Adam… we have to stop.” She fought to get the words—closer to whispered pants—out, because part of her didn’t even want to say them. And she was glad he didn’t stop when she asked. He continued to flick his tongue against her hardened nipples while raising his hips to press against her. It felt so good. God, it felt good, and she wanted him inside her. Her hands reached toward his belt buckle, and he moved her backward on his legs to give her room before returning his hands to smooth against her spine, trailing magic like tiny electric fingers that caused another series of contractions inside her. She watched with horror as her own desperate fingers undid his buckle and started on the zipper even as she tried to pull back.
She swallowed hard, fighting the need. She was really going to do this if she didn’t fight harder. There would be no protection from whatever he wanted, and however often he wanted it. She was alphic, and could wind up pregnant or… worse. In desperation, she yanked his head backward with both hands, using his hair as a handle. His eyes were fully glowing with a deep, almost violet light, and he growled again, baring his teeth. Only a flicker of humanity was still in those eyes. He was nearly lost to his animal. “Adam! Listen to me! It’s happening again, and you have to help me stop. I’m going into heat. We can’t do this… not like this.”
His biceps flexed, trying to pull her against him again. His low, rumbling growl made her breathing still. His muscles were so smooth and solid and her body ached to feel them surround her. Hot tears welled in her eyes as Mami’s battered face came to her mind again. She understood now… knew what the prayers had meant, and why she’d been so afraid, and looked so… hopeless. “Please, Adam!” Tears began to flow down her face, even as she released him and buried her face in his hair. “I do want to do this with you someday, but as humans, not… animals! I don’t even know you yet!”
Cara’s body, or more precisely, the wolf inside her body, fought for control and her tears wet his hair as she sobbed, knowing what was going to happen. His hands were between them, loosening her zipper, even as her own hands had finished opening his. His cock strained against the fabric of his underwear, pulsing against her hands as she ran fingers along the length of it. It would feel so good… she needed him to ease the aching.
She surrounded it with one hand, squeezing lightly as heady musk filled the air. But then Adam paused, his fingers just inside the elastic top of her pale blue silken panties, brushing the already slick hairs.
A violent shudder overcame him and his hands moved back to his sides. When she looked down, they were clenched into white-knuckled fists and a fine trembling vibrated his muscles. She leaned back, her hand still involuntarily resting against his crotch, and looked at his face. His eyes had stopped glowing and were filled with understanding and… horror.
“Not like this.” He repeated the words shakily with a low rumble still threading through his voice. He shook his head, as though trying to clear the need from his mind.
The wolf in her railed against him stopping. She growled again, ending with a needy whine, and waited for a response. But he gritted his teeth and refused with a firm shake of his head.
“Please—” The word had double meaning and she hated the desperate tone from the two halves of her mind. Stop. Don’t stop. Each equally needy and praying he’d listen.
He took a slow breath and then released it, while she sat on his legs, naked and hungry for his touch. “We need to calm you down. That’s the first step.” He grabbed her wrists, pulling them up and away from his open fly. “I know this isn’t your fault. Will and Viv explained it to me back at the motel. So I know you can’t just step away and let this go. Even if I walked out, you’d go out and find someone else, and you might hurt him.” She knew it was true, even as the words left his mouth, and the thought of it sickened her enough to make bile rise into her throat.
He held up her arms so her hands were in front of her face while she swallowed hard and stared at him with desperation, not daring to speak.
“Can you lock your fingers together for me?”
She nodded yes, but then her hands refused. They turned in his grip and began to stroke his hands while the wolf opened her scent glands wider. He closed his eyes and let out another shaky breath. “Shit, woman! You could make a fortune bottling that stuff. I feel like a teenager locked with naked cheerleaders in the shower room right now—not sure where to start first.” Another breath and a sharp head shake. Then his eyes met hers again. “Fuck. Okay, let’s try again;” He moved her wrists so her hands were resting on his bare shoulders. The wolf liked that and began to knead the muscles while he groaned.
He raised his hands between her arms, being careful not to brush against her breasts. His face twitched from time to time as she pressed against his crotch, trying to encourage him, even as she fought to keep from doing it. “Okay, this is something my mom used to do to us kids when we were little—on nights the wolf got too hard to handle.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. Even the wolf found it funny. It took him a moment to get the joke, but then he chuckled. “Not quite what I meant to say.” He placed his palms flat on her cheeks, and then began to stroke the skin on the sides of her nose with his thumbs, applying a light downward pressure. He pushed his magic in a flowing wave that tingled every hair like an electric current.
The first, almost lazily slow, caress made her eyes open wide as a shock of sheer pleasure clenched her body enough to hurt. The second movement of his thumbs froze her in place as intense waves of warmth swelled her skin. On the third stroke, her fingers dug into his shoulders and she threw back her head, crying out as a violent orgasm swept through her body.
The tingling contractions and out of body sensation must have lasted for the better part of a minute, while she ground herself against his crotch with short, frantic movements and dug fingers into his neck. It really did feel like her heart stopped for a long moment in the middle, just like she and Yo used to read about in novels. It was easily the best climax she’d had in her life and that made meeting his eyes all the more difficult after. But when she could catch her breath, and see again through the dancing white lights that had erupted in her vision, she had to ask. It took two tries before she could get the words out, but she had to know. “Your mother used to do that?”
Adam’s face was stunned and his hands frozen in place where they’d been before she pulled away and screamed. His scent was embarrassed beyond belief, and his voice horrified at the implication. “Well, certainly not with that effect! It made us fall sleep! I was pressing along where your whiskers are in animal form. It’s supposed to be calming.” He lowered his hands, not quite sure what to do with them now, as he flushed and laughed. “Wow… well, I suppose it did still solve the problem.”
Yeah, solved one but started another. She loosened her grip on his shoulders and looked around as heat rose into her face, searching on the floor for her shirt. But it wasn’t on the floor. One of them had flung it across the room, where it was hanging from a cabinet pull next to the refrigerator. She glanced at him again, obviously uncomfortable with bare chest and open jeans. He was still erect, probably painfully so, but she didn’t know what to do about it without making things worse. Would even standing up start things rolling again?
Adam noticed where her eyes fell and shrugged, then pushed her backward gently with his hands safely on her jean-clad hips, until she was on her feet off to the side. “I’ll live. Guys get used to this sort of thing, don’tcha know. Just don’t ask me to try to zip up or walk for a few minutes.” He chuckled again nervously and pulled his chair forward until his legs were underneath the table. She couldn’t see where her bra wound up, but she quickly retrieved the shirt and buttoned it while he put his elbows on the table and dropped his forehead into his hands with a groan. “Oh, and you might want to brew up some of that tea you mentioned this afternoon and maybe open a wi
ndow. That scent is making me want to do some pretty strange things.”
She hurried to do just that, because with his head down on the table, every muscle in his broad back stood out in sharp, defined relief. Even now, she fought the urge to run her tongue up his spine between the ridges of muscle. She had to close her mouth after she realized she was actually drooling on the floor.
Yeah, definitely time for a cup of tea.
Chapter 14
ADAM KNOCKED ON the door of Lucas’s room, the early morning sunlight not quite breaking over the treetops yet. A light breeze pushed a scent across his nose that smelled remarkably like Cara. Uffda! Everything smelled like her this morning. He couldn’t get the scent out of his head. Dew, peaches, and honeysuckle musk, like some seductive wine that made him drunk with the barest whiff. He’d spent the whole damned night dreaming of her—his mind working through a dozen scenarios where they didn’t stop. In some, he’d taken her right on the tabletop; in others, he carried her upstairs to her bed. In a few, they’d run outside in their other form, letting the night air thrill across their fur as they—
“Come in.” The voice from behind the door startled him enough to make him flinch and for the hundredth time, he had to shake the images out of his mind. All the better reason to talk to Lucas.
Adam opened the door and found Lucas seated at the desk, a dozen files open all over the room. Ziri was in a chair next to the bed, watching cartoons on television with rapt interest, even though the sound was off. There was still plenty of noise from her crunching down a bowl of Corn Flakes. The scene made her look like every other kid on a Saturday morning—if you didn’t look at her clothing too closely.
“Do you have a second? I need to talk to you,”
The visual contrast struck Adam as funny while he waited for the other man to reply. Lucas was barefoot and wearing faded jeans and a well-worn yellow shirt with his name, the word coach, and a snarling wolf emblazoned across the back, while wearing a Rolex and chewing on the end of an expensive, engraved fountain pen. He circled an item while waving Adam to a chair. “Clear off a place to sit and grab some coffee. I just need another minute so I don’t forget what I wanted to tie together in these files.”
The coffee was the same brand as he normally bought, so he poured some in the surprisingly nice mug from the motel tray and added some cream from a miniature white pitcher. Either the motel did room service, or Lucas had already been down to the little restaurant on the corner to snag real cream. He sipped and watched the television with Ziri, who turned to him once when a commercial came on and smiled. She pointed to herself and said, “Ziri.”
He nodded and did the same. “Adam.”
She repeated the word several times, making it sound more like Aah-dome, but it was close enough and he nodded.
Lucas closed the folder in front of him and turned around. He smiled at Ziri and said something in Mayan, with a much smoother, conversational tone than in the desert. He must have gotten some practice over the evening. It made her nod and move to the other side of the room and spin the television on the turntable away from them, so Lucas could sit down next to him and they wouldn’t get distracted.
Adam raised his brows and gestured toward Ziri with his head. “Anything new?”
Lucas let out a little frustrated sigh. “Not enough. She definitely saw something out there, but I don’t know if dragging it out of her will do anything more than traumatize her. I’d rather find the information some other way if I can. I made some calls and found a small resort near her village that was willing to send a runner to let her family know about the accident, and that she’s okay. I’m thinking we might want to keep her housed here for awhile. Sending her back would be an insult to her family, and I’m not willing to send her forward to her original destination. I can’t take her along when I leave, so that leaves here.”
A thought occurred to him. “Any idea how old she is?”
Lucas nodded. “She’s fifteen, although she doesn’t look it. She’s the oldest child, which is why she came here to find work. It’s probably a good thing she didn’t understand what was in store for her. Those birds probably saved her from a sweatshop where she’d earn pennies, or winding up in some pimp’s stable.”
He certainly agreed. “Cara’s sister, Rosa, has a daughter just Ziri’s age. The father works for the post office, and Rosa has a part-time restaurant so she’s able to say home with the kids a lot. If Ziri just spoke a little English, or even Spanish—”
“Actually, I’ve been working on that.” He raised his voice. “Ziri.”
She turned her eyes to Lucas, and struggled not to flick them back to the brightly colored animation on the screen. “Can you understand what we’re saying here?”
“A leetle… yes?”
He answered in Mayan and she went back to the program. “I’ve been spending time touching her mind, trying to implant words and some syntax. Sort of like a mental Berlitz course. She can carry on a simple conversation right now, but it’ll be better by the time I leave. I’ll talk to Cara about placing her with the sister until I get back. Good thought.” He paused and then went serious. “So, what can I do for you, Adam?”
He swallowed hard and took another sip. “I… I think the council needs to find another alpha for down here. I don’t think I can… work effectively with Car… Alpha Salinas.” He tried desperately to keep his mind blank as to the reason and watched the other man carefully to see how he reacted.
Lucas’s face remained studiously blank. “Ah. Well, then you’ll be happy to know that Cara dropped by this morning on her way to work with the same request.”
She did! His jaw dropped and the coffee cup nearly fell from his hand. Rather than happy, Adam discovered it made him angry and… hurt. Didn’t she think he had any control? Or was she questioning his ability to be a good pack leader? He noticed Lucas watching his reaction and pulled himself together, nodding sharply once. “Oh. Good. Then it’s settled.”
The other man smiled slightly and raised up his cup. But before he took a sip, he said, “Not really. I told her no. She has my bottle of cologne, and that should help block her scent for the time being.”
Relief mixed with horror, and blended with… what? He didn’t know and he couldn’t even think to reply.
Lucas continued on as though he hadn’t reacted, dropping the subject completely and moving to a new, or rather, an old topic. “Oh and, I’ve been doing some thinking since then about our discussion here yesterday. And doing some checking around, too. I was just about to make a call to another agent. I’d like you to listen in because it directly affects you.” He reached out and put down the cup, then picked up his cell phone and pressed the down arrow until he reached the number he wanted. After three rings, the call was picked up by a man with a medium baritone. “Yeah? What’s up, Lucas?”
“Can you catch a flight to Minneapolis today, Tony? I need your particular expertise to find out whether someone is telling me the truth about some questions I asked.”
Adam could hear the muffled reply of the man—presumably agent—named Tony. He must be new, since nobody by that name was with Wolven when he was an agent. “Hell yes! Anything to get away from these damned hundred-year-old files. The paper falls apart in my hands. Haven’t you people—and I use that term loosely—ever heard of microfiche or scanning?”
The chortle was nearly a growl, as though Lucas was indulging the man… barely. “Yes. And we dismissed the idea. Tapes can be stolen and so can data. File folders with brittle paper are more difficult to slip in a jacket pocket without anyone noticing. And it’s tough to fit even a single page of parchment the size of the Declaration of Independence in a sock, if you know what I mean. Now, when you get to Minneapolis, you need to seek out the pack leader, Josef Isaacson. He’s your mark.”
“Mm-hmm. And am I there for interrogation or enforcement? It’s getting harder to get guns on a plane on short notice. That’ll cost you big bucks.”
Adam’s ey
ebrows rose, but he didn’t comment. Since when did Wolven members need to use guns on pack leaders? And when did agents start dictating their own pay?
Lucas shook his head, as though the man on the other side of the call could see him. His voice was confident and commanding, with a hint of danger around the edges. It was as though he wore a different persona when talking to this agent. “No guns. I don’t want you to do anything to Josef if you discover he’s lying. He’s out of your league, and I don’t want him put down without council orders. I just want you to overhear a conversation between him and his Second, Adam Mueller, from two weeks ago. That’s Adam… M-u-e-l-l-e-r. Write it down. It was a private meeting, in Josef’s office, and they were discussing splitting the pack. I’m getting two different stories on what happened and so far, I’m believing Mueller.” He nodded to Adam with that, and ignored his dropped jaw at the conversation. What in the hell was being discussed here?
“Don’t let Isaacson know what you’re doing. Specifically, I want to know whether he told Mueller to come to Texas this week. Oh, and if you can find out whether he later had any conversations with a Vivian Carmichael—leggy honey-blonde and all around scheming alpha bitch—I’d like to hear about that, too. If he does make you, keep him in place until I get there in about three days. Alive, but wounded is fine.”
“Should I take Bobby along with me? He’s in a mood for… wounded.”
Lucas appeared surprised and pursed his lips. “Agent Mbutu’s in Chicago? Axe he and Asri—?” He let the statement hang, as though not quite sure what to say.
Tony chuckled just as Adam smiled at the name. Damn. Robart Mbutu! He didn’t know anyone named Asri, but he remembered the African chemist fondly. They’d shared a love of chocolate—even though the python agent could never fully enjoy candy because he tasted each ingredient separately, rather than as a whole. “Nah. Nothing like that. But his lovely wife doesn’t do morning sickness very well. Asri… suggested he take a hike for a few weeks, so she didn’t slice him up by accident—accidentally on purpose, in my opinion. He’d hoped the second trimester would be better, but… not so much.”
