Beast Behaving Badly (28 page)

“Aaah!” Bo turned from her and marched back out of the room. “I can't handle this!”

“What's wrong?” she asked, following after him. She gasped, stopping in her tracks. “Are you in love with Dr. Luntz?”

Bo spun around to face her. “
What?
Eew. No! She's . . . she's like . . .”

“Your mother. Oh, how sweet! You don't want him defiling the woman who's been like a mother to you.”

“Why are we having this conversation?”

“Because you freaked out over a half-used box of condoms.”

“Because
you
didn't get out of the shower.”

“Are we back here again?”

“Yes!” he yelled. “We are!”

“Fine,” she said calmly. “Ignore the reality of your situation.”

“And what reality is that?”

“That we're alone, naked, and with a half box of condoms.” She stood by him now and turned the box over, dumping the condoms at his big, bare feet. “See what you miss when you obsess over bullshit?”

 

 

Bo watched Blayne's naked ass walk away. “Don't sashay away from me,” he murmured, enjoying the view.

She gasped, stopped. “I do
not
sashay anywhere.” She talked with both hands now without facing him. “I may saunter. Even glide. But I do not sashay. That is for ladies of the night.”

He liked how she couldn't—or maybe it was she simply wouldn't—say “hookers.” Too demeaning for women probably. Too rude. Blayne hated rude.

“I don't know,” he said, walking up to her. “Looked like a sashay to me.”

Bo brushed his fingers down her back. The damage from the accident was still there. Not nearly as healed up as his wounds were, but they were all superficial. Overall Blayne was healthy and strong, an athlete whose only limits were her own. She talked about his skills, but did she realize what she had?

He moved around her, his fingers sliding over smooth flesh. “So we have a storm outside, a house full of food, and half a box of condoms. What would you suggest we do with our time, Blayne Thorpe?”

“That's easy. We paint each other's toenails while talking about boys and watching John Hughes movies. If we're feeling really adventurous we play the ‘stiff as a board, light as a feather' game and then pray we haven't woken up the undead.”

“I'm almost positive my uncle doesn't have toenail polish or John Hughes movies and I don't like talking about boys because they use me to do their homework, unaware how gorgeous I am until I take off my glasses and get that complete makeover set to a thumping eighties soundtrack.”

Her grin was wide. “Then I'm completely out of ideas.”

Bo stepped into her, nudging her back until she was plastered against the wall. “Then goddamnit, Blayne Thorpe, just fucking kiss me.”

She squinted up at him as if she were trying to see Jupiter. “I'll need a ladder to make that happen.”

He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up, enjoying her squealed giggles; her arms looping around his neck, her legs around his waist.

“And now?” he demanded.

“And now, I'd have to say, you have me where you want me, Marauder. Genghis would be proud.”

“Then you better kiss me quick before I burn your peasant village to the ground and take all your women as my concubines.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered, staring at his mouth. “I'm trapped between wanting to help my people and keep my innocence. What will I do?”

“What you always do, Blayne,” he told her honestly while pressing his body into hers. “Help everyone else.”

She leaned in, her hands moving from his shoulders to his face, her fingers stroking his jaw. “My God,” she whispered, her sweet breath brushing against his mouth, “the sacrifices I'm forced to make for my people.”

Blayne pressed her mouth against his, her lips parting, allowing him to slide his tongue inside and taste her. Their playful teasing stopped, both of them groaning, their hands clutching. Their heads tilting to opposite sides, allowing them to delve deeper inside the other.

Bo's physical reaction to Blayne was immediate and powerful, instantly telling him that the best thing she'd done for either of them that first time they'd met was run from him. Because this feeling was as addictive as it could be destructive when first starting out in life. He'd have ignored everything around him simply so he could enjoy this woman's taste and feel, again and again.

But, ten years later, there'd be no walking away. There'd be no worrying about the what ifs and the if onlys.

He finally had her, and the Marauder had no intention of ever letting her go.

 

 

Oh, man, was she in trouble. Huge trouble. “Call the priest for an exorcism, get the pope on the phone, have the police on standby” trouble.

Because this was not the sweet, patient kiss of a gentleman caller. Nor was this the more typical horny gropings of a guy she knew she'd be done with when the sun came up.

In fact, Blayne didn't know what the hell this was, but she did know that “it” and Bo “The Marauder” Novikov were nothing but trouble. The best kind of trouble but trouble nonetheless.

Yet knowing that didn't stop her from gripping him tighter with her legs while digging her hands into his hair. His mane had come back, tumbling down around his shoulders and to his back, and she knew the reappearance of that mane was because of her. And what red-blooded, all-American shifter girl could walk away from that? Not her that was for sure. And why should she? She was no longer the easily panicked seventeen-year-old who saw a lust-filled gaze as an unprovoked serial killer attack. No, this was something Blayne had been waiting for, for a very long time. Maybe even forever. And now that she had it in her hands, she wouldn't turn away. She wouldn't run.

Bo leaned back a bit and those sweet blue eyes were gone, replaced by what she liked to call calculating feline gold eyes.

“Bed,” he growled, staring down at her.

Blayne shook her head. “Here.” She pulled her arms away and pressed them high up on the wall, giving him a good look at what she was offering him—which was everything. “I want you to fuck me right here.”

He hiked her up higher until her breasts were right by his mouth. Closing his lips around one hard nipple, he began playing with her in a way that had Blayne panting and her claws digging into his shoulder. She writhed against the wall, but Bo's big hands had her pinned there, making her crazier. He switched to her other breast and did the same, pulling a choked cry from Blayne. He was doing something to her with his lips that had her confused and turned on so much she could barely think straight. Her body began to shake hard, and she thought he was going to bring her off right then, but he lowered her again and with his grip tight on her with one arm, Bo leaned over and swiped up one of the condoms that had scattered on the floor. He tore the packet open, and she watched him slide the latex over his hard, straining cock, the pre-come leaking from the head. Once he had it on, his hands slid under her ass and he moved back a bit from the wall. He lowered her so her pussy lined up with his cock and he pressed the tip against her.

“Look at me,” he ordered her, and taking her time, she tore her gaze away from his cock and moved it up to his face. “You sure about this, Blayne?” And she saw the tips of his fangs peek out from under his top lip. She hoped they didn't grow to the full-size versions he had when shifted, because that would be awkward. “There'll be no going back after this,” he warned her. “So you need to be sure.”

She didn't know what he was trying to tell her, and she wasn't in the mood to waste time trying to find out. So she said, “If I wasn't sure, I'd be fighting you off and screaming for help.” She gripped his shoulders with her fingers and leaned in until she could use the tip of her tongue to lick a line across his chest. “Trust me, Novikov,” she said, feeling her own fangs sliding from her gums. “I'm sure.”

She grinned, shocking herself that she was still able to tease him. “Although I do think it was very polite of you to ask.”

His answering smile was beyond wicked, and he pressed forward, the head of his cock pushing inside her. Blayne's first thought was, “Huh. That feels bigger than it looked.” Then Bo rammed it in the rest of the way, and Blayne didn't have any additional thoughts for several long moments. His cock filled her too much. Too much for her to have a cohesive thought. Too much for her to temporarily have
any
thought. Panting, she gripped him tighter and raised herself up a bit until she could press her mouth against his chest.

Don't move, don't move, don't move
, she managed to desperately think.

He moved.

And she had no idea how it went from
Good God! This is too much! Take it out, take it out!
Straight into
Oh, God! I'm coming! I'm coming!
But she was. She was coming hard and fast, and absolutely nothing could stop her.

Claws dug into his shoulders, and he heard a muffled scream against his chest. He could only pray she was coming because he wasn't really sure he could stop. He never thought it would feel
this
good. Sure. He'd imagined it would, but he also imagined he'd like bacon-flavored ice cream because he liked bacon so much. He'd been horribly wrong about the bacon-flavored ice cream. But he hadn't been wrong about Blayne.

With each thrust inside her, he felt more a part of her, the heat of her branding his cock as hers for as long as she may want it. And he really hoped she wanted it for a very long time.

Too soon Bo lost his fight to hold back, but that couldn't be helped. Not with Blayne holding on to him so tight and screaming against his skin. He couldn't hold back. Not another minute, not another second.

When he came, it shot through him like a potent blast of adrenaline, tearing through his veins, into his fingers and toes, and finally out his cock. He wrapped his arms around Blayne and held her against him as each ejaculation ripped through him. By the final one, Bo didn't think he could move anymore. That he'd ever be able to move again.

Shaking, he went down on his knees and then on his ass, Blayne still held tight against him. Unable to do much of anything else, he kissed her sweat-soaked forehead and listened to her hard breathing.

For a long moment, he worried that maybe it had all been too much for her. That he'd been too much. She always seemed so small to him compared to the full-breeds. But then Blayne Thorpe said something that was very Blayne Thorpe and let him know she was just fine.

“Wowski,” she sighed.

And Bo smiled, knowing that he'd never hear a better compliment.

CHAPTER 21

B
o stared up at the ceiling, his hands smoothing up and down Blayne's back. “We're going to have to clean this hallway before my uncle gets home,” he murmured. Although, to be honest, not feeling the need to clean at the moment.

He really should feel bad. He'd kept Blayne in this hallway for about two hours. They kept trying to get to a bed or a couch or something a little softer, but they simply couldn't manage it.

If Blayne minded, she certainly didn't show it.

“Later.” She sat up, brushing her hair out of her face. It had dried into a mass of curls that she obviously had no control over without a hot iron. “I'm starving.”

“We've got food.”

“Real food? Or seal blubber?”

“Probably both.”

She stood and stretched, and Bo was reaching for her again, his hands on her waist before she realized it and scrambled back.

“No! Food!” She headed off to the bathroom. “I'll be out in a minute.” Less than that, as she shot back out again. “Oh, my God.”

“What's wrong?”

“We left the shower on.”

“That's not good for the town water supply.”

“Thanks, Mr. Helpful.” She went back into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Bo dragged himself off the floor, stopping to pick up the empty packets and used condoms he'd tossed around like some heathen, since he assumed all heathens were messy. Unwilling to use the kitchen trash for his used condoms, he walked outside naked to drop them in the big cans his uncle had behind the house. That done, he headed back inside, guessing that the weather was probably a negative twenty Fahrenheit. Weather that was not for the weak or the felines.

Once in the house, he closed the back door and headed to the dining room, passing the living room. That's when he stopped and walked back. Blayne had on one of his high school hockey jerseys and nothing else. Although she didn't need much else since it went past her knees. She'd found his uncle's CD collection. What Bo used to call his “subversive music pile” for no other reason than it pissed the old bastard off.

She'd put on some French alternative band singing about Tokyo and was dancing around his uncle's living room like she hadn't just spent the last two hours with Bo buried either cock first or head first in her lap. Where she got all that energy from, he'd never know.

“Come on,” she said, jumping up onto one of the couches. “Dance with me.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“I'm never too hungry to dance to pretentious French music!” And only Blayne could make a compliment out of an insult.

“I can't dance to this,” Bo told her, walking across the room.

“Are you one of those guys who won't dance?”

“Not everyone has your lack of shame.” He dug through his uncle's collection, going for what he had in the back since he knew the CD was his and not Grigori's. He popped it into the player. “After cleaning up that hoarder's nest you call an apartment—”

“Hey!”

“—I know your taste.”

Blayne's mouth dropped open when she heard the first bits of the song. It was from a very old movie soundtrack that few people knew about.

“How . . . how did you get this?”

“Bootleg. Not easy to come by.”

“I know! I've been trying to find this for years.”

If there was one thing Bo always had a weakness for it was sixties music and bad sixties cult movies. “Hot Rods to Hell” or “Riot on Sunset Strip” or anything with hippies and ridiculous drug usage and uptight parents . . . he was there. But “Wild in the Streets” was one of his all-time favorites, and he'd searched with his old computer and even slower modem all through high school for the soundtrack. He somehow knew Blayne was the one person who could appreciate the great get-up-and-riot tune “Fourteen or Fight,” and he was right. She not only knew the song, she knew the words to the song.

She crooned the first slowly sang line, and Bo crooned the next one back to her, moving up to her as she stood on his uncle's couch. Something he'd normally never allow simply because it wasn't his couch and they'd already destroyed the man's coffee table. But it was Blayne and . . . and she knew the words to “Fourteen or Fight!”

And when a man found a woman like that, he let her stomp all over his uncle's damn furniture or anywhere else for that matter!

 

 

Marci had insisted they check on the kids since they were out for a late-night stroll anyway. Harsh Maine winters didn't bother Ursus County bears, not when you were born and raised here. Although Grigori didn't need much of an excuse to stay the night at Marci's, he also figured his nephew could use a little space. He'd always been a little awkward around girls. Either too gruff, too busy staring, or just too . . . OCD. Most females couldn't handle it.

Still, the boy didn't need a babysitter, but try telling that to Marci Luntz. Grigori didn't bother to argue some things with her. She could be stubborn as any black bear he'd ever met before. The grizzlies and blacks never as relaxed as the polars.

They lumbered up to the house, his belly full of the dying old walrus he'd found on the beach and Marci's face still covered in the honey and pissed-off bees she'd taken from the year-round hives the town kept a few miles away.

Marci was about to go up the stairs and into the house, but Grigori knew better. Using his body, he pushed her toward the side of the house with the big picture window. As they came around the corner, they both froze, their mouths open in shock while they focused on that window and what went on behind it.

Seeing Blayne on his couch didn't bother him a bit. She was a little tiny thing, so it wasn't like she could do any real damage. But seeing his nephew naked and dancing
with
Blayne while they listened to that crappy sixties music the boy loved . . . well,
that
was something Grigori had never seen, never expected to see, and was now kind of freaked out by seeing.

Not because the kid was naked. Not because he was singing—the boy had always been a bit of a hummer when he thought no one was around. But the smiling? The laughing? The pretending he had a mic while Blayne played a hippie backup singer with her long hair covering her face?

That was something Grigori
never
expected to see. At least not without the use of very strong hallucinogens. And the reason why was simple. This was Bold Novikov. The kid who only seemed to come alive when he was on the ice or discovered what he considered a mess somewhere in the house. Otherwise, Bold kept to himself, watched everything, said nothing, and plotted his escape from town.

Grigori didn't think he knew
this
kid and never thought the boy had it in him.

Not wanting to get in the boy's way, he turned to Marci to lead her back to her house. But he found her on her back, in the snow, laughing her black bear ass off. Anyone else, he'd think they were laughing at the boy, and Grigori wouldn't stand for it. But he knew Marci Luntz. She would never laugh at Bold. No. This was pure happiness for a little boy she'd cared for and loved nearly as much as her own cubs, and Grigori could already imagine the conversation he'd have to hear for the rest of the night about how
she
knew that Blayne Thorpe was perfect for “her” Bold and how long before they figure it out and blah blah blah. He was already dreading it. Nothing worse, sometimes, than chatty sows.

Deciding he wouldn't wait for her to get off her ass, Grigori grabbed her ankle and dragged her back to her house.

She laughed the whole way.

 

 

Blayne stared out the window, a hard-driving wind throwing snow and ice against the glass. Normally storms like this depressed her unless it was Christmastime because it usually meant she was trapped at home, bored out of her mind. Although she was rarely trapped for long, being the one person in all of Philly or New York who could track down an open Chinese restaurant when everything else was closed due to the storm. She'd find the food, get it, and bring it back to her father or Gwen's Pride. Whoever she figured would be the most welcoming. Anything was better than being trapped at home by herself with no one to talk to her but, ya know, herself. Which she tried to stop doing when she was thirteen and the nuns kept asking her if she was speaking with Satan.

Big arms looped around Blayne's shoulder and soft lips brushed her cheek.

Nope. This time she wasn't depressed at all.

“Who made the beef stew?” she asked.

“Mrs. Henderson, I think.”

“Best. Ever.”

“I'll let her know you liked it.”

“Nah. I can tell her.”

“You know Mrs. Henderson?”

“Met her earlier today. Met lots of people.”

“Any problems?”

She laughed. “Stop worrying. Everyone's been really nice to me.”

“Let me know if they're not.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” She turned in his arms and basically climbed him like she would a rock wall. Arms around his shoulders, legs around his waist, she pressed her forehead against his. “Let's fuck!” she exclaimed.

Bo sighed, pulling her in closer and heading toward the bedroom. “Have I mentioned that I
adore
your absolute lack of subtlety?”