"We're wolfen,” he responded evenly.
Danika glanced around quickly, but she should've known he wouldn't have mentioned it if there'd been any chance he would be overheard. “And you can still be hurt. Are they alright? The others?” she insisted, turning to scan the thinning crowd for any sign of them.
"We're all fine,” he said, grasping her arm and leading her away from the building finally. “The locals weren't as lucky. Thirty dead."
The information made her chest feel as if it was caving in. “So many?” she asked, horrified, glancing at the people she now realized had just been informed of the death of some family member or close friend or neighbor.
"Believe me, as bad as that sounds, we were damned lucky it wasn't any worse. Short of containing them all separately—which was completely impossible—we did the best we could—which is to say we protected the uninfected from the
weres
. That's really all we could do."
"I wasn't saying y'all hadn't,” she said quietly. “I know you did what you could. I just ... I hadn't expected it to be so bad."
"One
were
on a rampage is bad. Hundreds is indescribable."
She fell silent when she saw he was leading her to her truck, which was parked at the curb. Everything he'd told her had just made her more anxious to see Balin and the others. She
needed
the reassurance. She needed to see with her own eyes that they weren't hurt badly.
He'd grown angry, or at least irritated, when she'd asked after them, though. She glanced around as they walked instead of asking again, searching for them.
A tidal wave of indescribable, unsortable emotions swamped her when she finally spied them—Balin, Dakota, and Jared, at least. Xavier wasn't with them. Two of the wolfen women she'd seen in the facility were, though.
The men, she realized, had been watching her progress across the compound with Con. The women, obviously preoccupied with the men until they'd noticed the direction of their interest, turned their heads to look at her. Their expressions were carefully neutral, but she sensed hostility in them.
Or maybe it was her own hostility bouncing back at her?
Maybe it was smugness she sensed in them?
She looked away as quickly as she could tear her gaze from the tableaux, stumbling slightly. Embarrassed, she felt her face redden. Con dropped an arm around her shoulders to steady her. “Watch the ground. It's churned up here."
She nodded. “I'm so tired I can hardly see straight,” she muttered inanely, needing to say something to cover her embarrassment—to distract herself from the chaotic emotions churning in her stomach and making her chest so tight she could hardly breathe.
At least she knew they were alright, she told herself. “I see you got my tire fixed."
He grunted. “There was nothing wrong with it except all the dirt and grass you churned up skidding through the ditches were wedged between the tire and the rim. The windows were another matter."
He'd walked her to the passenger side before she even realized his intention. She debated briefly and then climbed in without comment, leaning her head back against the seat and closing her eyes.
"You alright?"
She swallowed against the knot in her throat. “Just tired."
He reached across the seat and patted her leg. “I'll have you home in a few minutes."
Home. She thought for several minutes that she was going to lose her precarious hold on her emotions. She was going to be so
glad
to get home, to put all this behind her!
"You did a good job keeping everyone calm,” Con said when he'd parked the truck in front of her cabin.
"I did? How did you know?” Danika asked, lifting her head finally and looking at him.
"That's the word,” he responded cryptically.
She shook her head and climbed out the truck. “I doubt I made much difference,” she said when she'd rounded the truck. “I tried, but I'm not sure myself how much attention anyone paid."
"You told them what they needed to hear. You stayed calm. They looked to you as an authority that was at least a little familiar to them and it gave them something to hold on to. You did a good job."
She nodded, appreciating the praise however undeserved, and trudged up the steps to the cabin. Con followed her. She wasn't really in the mood for company, but she didn't object. He'd take the hint when she ignored him.
He followed her into the bathroom, watching while she adjusted the shower and peeled her clothes off. He undressed and joined her. Resentment flickered in her, briefly, but it vanished when he began to massage her neck and back as he had before.
He really did have magic hands.
He took the tension and weariness right out of her muscles and then put it back in a deeper place when he began to bathe her. The reluctance she'd felt for any kind of intimacy had completely vanished by the time he turned the water off. Disappointed and mildly irritated that he'd gotten her all revved up and left her with no place to go, she climbed out and dried herself.
He caught her as she left the bathroom, scooping her up into his arms. She looped her arms around his neck. Vaguely annoyed when he headed directly to the bed, she smiled at him a little quizzically. “Do you have something in mind besides
sleeping
in the bed?"
He settled her in the middle and followed her down and settling on top of her. “Abso-fucking-lutely,” he assured her, familiarizing himself with her throat.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Seventeen
Danika was torn—for about five seconds. She wanted him. He'd thoroughly awakened her senses when he'd massaged her and bathed her. Moreover, the sense that her journey was quickly coming to an end and she'd never see him again made her desperate for one last taste of his passion. It was that same sense of leave-taking that made her reluctant, a belated need to protect herself from the pain of separation.
It was way too late for that, though, she realized. She'd let him into her heart—all of them—or she wouldn't be feeling so melancholy already at the realization that it was over.
By the time Con had woven a trail of kisses down her throat to her breasts she'd completely forgotten any need but the need to feel him. He teased her, circling his ultimate objective, massaging her breast with his hands, until she was moving restlessly beneath him before he lifted his head to stare down at the hard tips that had leapt to attention, begging for his touch. Dipping his head, he lipped at them one at the time, the light pressure of his lips only making her hurt more for his touch.
"Con!” she finally whispered, a desperate edge to her voice.
"What, baby?” he murmured.
She swallowed, reluctant to demand that he stop teasing her and get down to business. “Don't tease me."
"I'm not teasing, baby,” he said gruffly. “I'm savoring."
She couldn't prevent a chuckle. “Savor it with it
in
your mouth!"
He covered one tip with his mouth, but didn't close it around her. Instead, he traced the aureole maddeningly with the tip of his tongue. Her belly clenched as he grazed the nipple. “Like this?” he asked huskily.
She swallowed the flare of impatience that swept through her. “More!” she demanded.
He closed his lips over her nipple, applying just enough pressure to tug it gently. A bolt like an electric charge went through her. She gasped.
"Better?"
Her head swam. “Please?” she begged plaintively.
He lifted his head to stare at her face through narrowed, predatory eyes. “Please, what, baby?” he growled.
She licked her dried lips, shifting restlessly, panting faintly from breathlessness.
"You want me to suck it?"
She swallowed, nodding.
"And then, what? The other?"
"Yes."
He went back to teasing her, massaging her breasts, circling the nipples with his lips, just barely brushing one or the other from time to time as if the touch was merely accidental. “After I've done that, should I head north or south?” he murmured thoughtfully. “Chew my way down to the tender lips between your thighs? Suck that sweet little nub or yours for a minute or two? Run my tongue along your cleft? Tongue fuck you until you scream? Or maybe all of the above?” he asked, punctuating each question with a light, nibbling bite on the soft flesh of her breast—top, bottom, sides—everywhere except where she wanted him to!
She dug her fingers into his arms, feeling her insides turn molten. “Con! Don't torture me!” she whispered. “Anything! Everything! Please?"
"Am I torturing you, baby?” he asked curiously.
"Damn it, Con!"
He chuckled huskily. “Anything for my baby,” he murmured, closing his lips over one nipple at last and suckling it so hard her toes curled and her fingers, already digging into his arms, bit deeper as she surged against him.
She fell into a burning pit as he tugged and suckled and nipped at her nipple with the edge of his teeth, felt as if she was being boiled alive. She couldn't catch her breath and thought she might pass out, couldn't see for swirling dizziness, couldn't hear anything but her frantic heartbeat and desperate breaths.
She almost came when he moved to her other breast to torture her swollen nipple unmercifully, felt the walls of her sex quake, tremble, catch fire from the rush of blood and the heated moisture that wept from her body. The frantic need to feel him inside of her swelled within her.
"Come inside me—now!” she whispered hoarsely as he released her nipple and dipped his head to bite the flesh beneath her breast.
"Not yet,” he murmured distractedly, scooting down to bite and suck at a patch of skin below that and then another. Her belly quivered when he nuzzled the soft flesh. She lifted unconsciously to meet his lips, shuddering at the keen sensation that rushed through her as he sucked a row of love bites along her lower belly and then grasped her thighs, pushing them wide and nipping at the soft flesh near her sex.
Con paused, feeling a rush of fury as he spied the marks on her inner thighs. Jared and Xavier, he realized instantly, feeling the urge to find both of them—that instant—and tear their fucking heads off. She was a fucking patchwork of wolfen love tokens, gods damn it! All three vital pulse points—neck, breast, and thighs—already marked and then claimed by another, and then reclaimed as they'd battled over the claiming of her. Tamping his fury with an effort, he bit down on her inner thigh, mingling his blood with hers as the others had.
She shuddered with a small climax, gasping. Slightly mollified by her reaction to his marking, he shifted his attention to the delicate pink lips that had been the other part of his objective, feeding on her ravenously until she was screaming and bucking against his mouth in a harder climax. He had to force himself to stop, alerted to her distress by the weak, choked cries she uttered.