* * * * *
“He’s burning up.”
Caine gripped Chloe’s hand tightly as he listened to Luke’s words and led them into the living room where Lee was sleeping. He lay on top of the blankets on the couch, still very much in wolf form, his panting and quivering body obviously in worse shape than it had been before Caine had left to get Chloe. Had he known how ill Lee would be when they returned, he wouldn’t have taken the time to stop the truck and try to warm Chloe up to him and to the idea that it had been he who was responsible for her aches and pains.
Well, he suspected he wouldn’t have taken as much time to do it, at least.
“Was he on any kind of medication before he showed up at my house?” Chloe asked as she looked over his body. “Antibiotics? Worm medicine?”
Caine shook his head and watched Chloe kneel by the bed and pry his brother’s jaws open with her fingers. She inspected his gums and throat before glancing up quickly and then reaching for Lee’s jugular to find his pulse. Caine watched Chloe stroke his brother’s muzzle with one hand as she counted the beats of his heart with the other.
“He is hot,” she nodded. “And his pulse is high and irregular.”
Luke was pacing. Nervous. Caine could sense his twin’s frustration. Some of it stemmed from his worry over Lee’s feeling so unwell. But most of it came from his excitement over what he had promised Luke he could do to the next bitch Caine mounted.
It didn’t help matters that the arousal Caine had sparked in Chloe while he drove her to his den was as strong as the smell of her fertility. She had become only slightly aroused at his teasing comment about biting her. But as they had allowed their banter to continue, Caine had been well aware of the way in which her body grew more and more aroused and wet. Evidently aroused enough to make her need to please herself. As Caine had taken her hand to lead her into the house, Caine had found the delicious scent of her pussy transferred from her fingers to his.
He understood his twin’s frustration. Caine wanted to fuck her again as badly as Luke did. Especially since he’d failed to impregnate her the first time. The wolf in him needed it. And now his desire to mount her wasn’t because he simply wanted to breed or because he needed to sire an alpha.
The still potent, dripping smell of her unfertilized womb was most likely the largest thing that was driving his brother into such a frenzy.
Luke wasn’t going to be easily satisfied tonight. Caine could tell by the way his brother’s body was moving. Stalking. He was watching Chloe’s body. Studying her shape and form and weight and size to determine the best way in which to mount her.
And Luke wouldn’t try and seduce her. He wouldn’t try to convince the woman that there was any kind of chemistry between them or any kind of human lust or attraction. To do such a thing was a waste of time in Luke’s opinion. And it would be doubly true tonight with his body so full of need and brutality and with the promise Caine had made encouraging his excitement.
“I need a thermometer,” she motioned to either of the men. She snapped her fingers when neither of them moved.
Caine looked at Luke and then watched his brother leave the room and come back before Chloe could snap those fingers again. And he wondered which of them Luke had just taken his order from.
Caine and Luke shared a look and a moment of masculine and brotherly compassion that neither of them knew they still had as Chloe lifted Lee’s tail and inserted the thermometer. Nothing had ever pulled the two men together like their youngest sibling. The two silently cringed for their third party but made their faces stoic when Chloe sat still and looked back at them.
“He’s definitely too hot,” she nodded as she waited for Lee’s temperature to register. “Are you sure he didn’t have anything else in his system? Heartworm medication? Anything for fleas?”
“Tylenol.”
“You gave him Tylenol!?”
Caine punched Luke with the look he gave him. “No, Luke, it was aspirin.” Caine raised his eyebrows and nodded to his brother. “Dogs can’t take Tylenol.”
Luke looked away and nodded. Caine watched his twin begin to pace again. And study Chloe even more closely as he did.
Chloe was looking back and forth between the two of them. Puzzled. Distrusting. And still holding that damned thermometer in Lee’s poor ass.
“Isn’t that thing about done?” Caine asked and then winced when she pulled it out and wiped it off with a tissue.
Chloe eyed the reading and then reached for Lee’s face again. “What did you give him aspirin for?”
“He had a headache.”
Caine wished Luke would have hit him for that one. But Luke’s look of satisfaction over Caine’s slip of the tongue was just as painful.
Chloe was completely at a loss now, judging from her expression. “Well, how did you know…”
Caine motioned to his mouth. “He acted like a tooth hurt. Or his ear,” he made a sweeping motion with his fingers trying to indicate something in the headache-worthy area. When Chloe’s look screamed her confusion, Caine shut his mouth and almost decided to let his brother have the bitch out and out. Caine sure as hell couldn’t seem to keep up with the lies and illusions necessary to seduce her into willingly breeding with him.
“Let’s get him to the tub,” Chloe stated as she stood up and looked back down at Lee. “He’s too hot and I don’t have what I need to bring his fever down.” Caine stared at the worried look on her face as he and Luke both went to pick up their baby brother. Luke got to him first.
Chloe followed them to the bathroom and then studied the tub while she spoke. “Normally, he’d get an injection of Novin, but that’s not something I keep on hand. Guys, I need as much ice as you can get. I don’t want him to have a seizure.” She turned to Caine and raised her eyebrows at him to urge him to move more quickly when she requested something be done. By the time he and his brother got into the kitchen, Caine was beginning to wonder who
he
had just taken an order from.
“I’m not backing down this time, Caine.”
Luke’s words were very clear and had delved even more deeply into the hateful grumble that he usually let control his tongue. Only around Lee, and Meagan when she had been alive, did Luke let his softer, human side show. As Caine reached for the door to the garage where the deep freezer was kept, he stopped with his hand on the knob and turned to his brother. But Luke’s anger and need dominated the air between them.
“You’ve had your fun, Caine.” Luke grinned and patted Caine on the back. “And from the way the bitch is walking, I’d say you gave it your best shot, little brother.”
Caine felt his canines begin to descend in his mouth. Luke’s tone and words were challenging him and the alpha blood in Caine didn’t take such threats lightly. Nor did he take trespassing on his territory without serious offense.
And Chloe Evans had been marked as Caine’s property now.
“I make the calls in this family, Luke. Not you.”
Luke growled in response, even as Caine’s voice had warned his subordinate brother about such defiance. Luke’s own growl was low and unthreatening, but it was his own warning, nonetheless. The wolf in Luke was controlling his body as well as his desire, but the man in him was running his temper and his bullheadedness. He knew better than to buck Caine so openly. At least the animal in him did. Which could only mean one thing to Caine.
His brother’s defiance was personal.
It made Caine wonder if it had been personal the first time Luke had defied his rules. And for a brief moment, it made Caine very afraid for the woman he had brought into his den.
“She’s still ovulating.” Luke’s temper was now under perfect control, but his eyes were glassy and his pupils dilated. Luke’s cock was hard, straining the denim that covered it. Almost as hard as Caine’s own cock.
“I know you can still smell it.” Luke nodded and leaned closer to his brother. Caine could see the calm of his twin when they agreed on something. It was a rare occasion since Caine had married, but it did happen. Luke was telling him with his body language and his obvious arousal and his desire for his twin to share in his arousal that they should agree on something tonight. Because they had agreed on something.
Once again, they both wanted to fuck the same bitch.
It was happening all over again. And Caine couldn’t seem to make himself go back to the way he used to feel about mating. Even with his need and his instincts and his responsibility to the pack pounding out their demands in his body. And even though, as the alpha, Caine was capable of being even more brutal and unfeeling a beast than his brother was when he found a bitch he wanted.
“You need this as much as I do,” Luke growled and absently rubbed at his crotch. “She didn’t satisfy you the first time you fucked her.” Caine watched Luke glance down at his swelling cock. “And besides, you have more of a responsibility to breed than I do, Caine.”
“I know what my responsibilities are,” Caine nodded with a growl that was calmer than his brother’s, but no less threatening. “And it’s not your place to remind me of that.”
His brother’s eyes glared at him. “Alpha is not an indefinite position,” he threatened. “If you’re not willing to live up to your responsibilities, it can be taken from you.”
Caine watched something brew in his brother’s face. Something old. And long buried. But no less powerful. “Sometimes a man has to do what is right for his pack, Caine. Even if it hurts the ones he loves.”
The back of Luke’s head hit the wall behind him as Caine’s hand gripped his throat. He could smell his brother’s anger. He could smell his brother’s frustration and his arousal. But most of all, Caine could smell his brother’s hatred.
Of what they were. Of himself. And of the fact that even he had failed to create a life with Meagan.
“I am the alpha of this family,” Caine nodded, cringing inside that he had to display this side of himself to his twin once again. “And you will mount the bitch when and if I say you will.” He tightened his grip on Luke’s throat until the man looked down in a show of his very reluctant submission. “The alpha breeds first. And the alpha has to give the beta permission to mount a bitch. You should know that after fucking my wife, shouldn’t you?” He waited until Luke lowered his eyes as his answer. “I didn’t give you permission to fuck Meagan and I haven’t given you permission to fuck Chloe yet.” Caine let his words sink in and his human anger subside before he spoke again.
“Do you understand me?”
Luke nodded. Sharply. And Caine felt the air grow more pungent with the hatred that now surrounded them both.
Chapter Ten
Chloe was trying very hard to keep an unconcerned appearance. Unfortunately, the combination of her emotional frustration over Luke Caine and an equally strong yet confusing and dangerous sexual attraction for his twin and even the slow, rhythmic need that had been pulsing low in her belly since Caine had kissed her, paled in comparison to the real worry on Chloe’s mind.
Barklee seemed to be one sick little wolf.
Chloe had no idea of what the dog had gotten into, but his temperature had hit one hundred and six. She suspected that it wasn’t illness as the animal had been fine when he’d been at her house. A drug interaction had been another possibility but as the only thing that he had been given was aspirin, that made no sense either.
Poison was a possibility that Chloe didn’t want to consider, but had to.
He hadn’t gotten into anything at her cabin, as the pup had stayed right by her side the entire time he wasn’t knocked out. By her side or on top of her or with his nose trying to bury itself between her legs like the alpha of his pack had.
Chloe smiled down at the animal as she tried to force the memory of what the alpha had done to her out of her mind. She had no more luck at not remembering the event as she did at not noticing the sexual tension that seemed all around her in this house.
The men she had somehow become entangled with were virile and seductive, seemingly without even trying to be. There was an air around them. An odor of masculinity. And Chloe was finding it hard to ignore that air with her body reacting to it as it was.
But Chloe knew that she needed to turn her attention to the animal she was caring for. Barklee’s eyes were glassy and his body seemed almost limp in her arms as she held his head above the cold water in the tub. As she waited for Caine and Luke to return with the ice, she fretted over Barklee while she stroked his muzzle and even leaned down and gave him a kiss on his nose.
The worst part of her job was getting attached to the animals and then having to let them go back into the wild or else losing them because of their shorter life spans. The little wolf in Chloe’s arms hadn’t even had a chance to grow up completely. He had reached sexual maturity but Chloe doubted that he had mated yet. A fact that she had been grateful for when she’d seen his deformity, but that now made her a little sad.
Even with all of the brutality of the wild, Chloe’s studies had shown wolves could also be very passionate and affectionate animals when they mated and Chloe wasn’t alone in her beliefs that the animals at times appeared to make love rather than simply mate. Chloe had seen mating pairs stay with one another for the remainder of the year, long after the possibility of conception was gone, and this too had only helped solidify her suspicions about the animals being much more feeling than one would think.
“This is all we have,” Caine stated as he leaned over the tub next to Chloe. “I can go get more, but it will take at least…” Her shaking her head stopped his words. The splash of ice into the water wasn’t that shocking but she had jumped because of the heat and jolt of his being pressed against her and the timing had been a perfect cover.
“Sorry,” Caine said quietly as he arranged the ice around Barklee’s body. Chloe could still feel the heat coming from the wolf’s feverish body and now from the man beside her as well. At first, with the wolf cub being so hot, it didn’t register to Chloe that Caine’s own temperature was so high, but when it did, she was startled by it. She suspected the near hypnotic state the man had put her into with his words was the reason why she hadn’t noticed it when he’d kissed her.
“Caine, you’re warm, too.” Without asking, Chloe raised her palm to his forehead and pressed it there. She watched Caine’s eyes shift and his pupils reflex wider at the cold shock of her touch. And because he was so aroused by her touch and closeness.
His arousal was obvious. It was visually obvious. And it would have been obscene had Chloe been in any position to scold someone for being aroused. Unfortunately, the water he’d splashed hadn’t done a thing to help hide her nipples or her own aroused state.
The wolf whined and she glanced down at him, never taking her other hand off of Caine’s face. “Surely you both don’t have something…”
Chloe looked from one male to the other. It wasn’t completely unheard of for different species to catch things from one another, but it was rare. The wolf whined even louder and Chloe reached back for him.
“I think he’s coming to,” she smiled and ran her hand down the wolf’s back. “The fever was keeping him from responding to you,” she added. She looked back at Caine. “But as for what you have…” Chloe shook her head.
“I’m always a bit warm,” Caine offered. Chloe watched his blue eyes go from her to the wolf and then back to her again.
Her mouth watered. And her face flushed under his look.
“Is he going to be all right?”
Chloe nodded and leaned down to take Barklee’s face in her hands. She took the moment to try to get her body under control again. “I think so,” she nodded again, but with much less enthusiasm. “But I took a couple of blood samples to make sure we don’t have some contagion on our hands.”
“Contagion?”
She reached for a towel as the wolf tried to stand in the tub. She quickly found her own legs equally weak and unsteady. Chloe felt Caine’s hand on her hip as she regained her balance. Even his fingers were hot. She could just imagine them scorching her from the inside.
“Barklee could wipe out the entire wolf population in the mountains if he’s carrying something,” she managed.
“But he’s all right for now, right?”
Chloe couldn’t understand the tone in Caine’s voice. It was worry, but even greater worry than he’d expressed before. “I think he’s going to be fine…” She was interrupted by the wolf thrashing about in the tub. “In fact, I think he’s fine now,” she smiled and let out a breath.
Caine quickly came up off of the floor. Chloe felt her body being shuffled out of the room and looked back in time to see Barklee leap, wet and playfully, from the tub.
“Caine, what is wrong with…”
Again, her words were cut short, but this time by the sight of Luke standing at the other end of the hallway. Caine’s grip tightened on Chloe’s arm so that it made her grimace. Her sex pulsed a strong disturbing spasm at the combination of the two factors.
“Is Lee alright?”
Chloe watched Caine nod to his brother and felt him resituate his grip on her arm. Luke took a step toward them and Chloe felt her body being pushed back just a little.
“No.”
Whatever was going on, Caine’s single word caused a red flush to move up Luke’s face. His scar seemed to deepen and then engorge itself on the blood flow as Chloe watched. The man was very angry about something now. Old pains and arguments not yet settled between himself and his brother, she suspected.
And for some reason, even that anger had something to do with her.
She had no idea of how she knew that, but it was very clear in her mind. As was the knowledge that her skin was tingling in the same excited reaction to fear she felt on rare, delicious occasions when she approached a wolf den without knowing she was trampling on the animal’s territory. Or when she misread an animal and it turned on her, and she was forced to blink in that fraction of a second when life and death turn and look at one another and have to come to an agreement on who is really in charge of the situation.
The man holding her arm, the man she had met only a matter of an hour earlier, was protecting her for some reason. And the man she’d met and made love to, if only physically, seemed to be the thing Caine was protecting her from.
Even more so now than ever in her life, Chloe couldn’t tell right from wrong. Or man from animal. The scar was her only hint. And even it resembled something beautiful, despite its damaged bearer.
“Caine, I told you.”
Luke had closed the gap between them. Chloe could see the scar more clearly than she had yet as he brought his face so near to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek. For the first time, Chloe realized that his scent was something different than it had been when he’d been in her bed. It was an odd smell that she would have remembered on a lover. Because it was a mixture of things that Chloe couldn’t separate at first in order to identify them from one another.
She felt Caine’s grip tighten again as Luke’s hand came up to her hair.
Leather and sex.
The baby fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood up at the sensation of having both of these men touch her at the same time and her sex spasmed another pulse at the recognition of the sensual odors. And at the fact that she hadn’t detected the scent when Luke had been inside her.
“You don’t tell me anything, Luke,” Caine stated much more calmly than Chloe felt. She felt his hand slightly lessen its bruising grip on her arm. His thumb absently rubbing the sore spot he’d just made told her things about the man holding her, but fanned a confusion that words couldn’t have conveyed with regards to her situation. Caine shook his head and stared at his twin.
“I said no.”
Luke’s eyes changed. They dimmed. And his frame relaxed as Chloe watched. But he never looked away from her as his hand gripped behind her head, causing a pang at the back of her scalp.
With Caine right beside her and with the way Luke had disregarded her, it wasn’t nearly as pleasant as it could have been. Chloe felt her own body stiffen and unconsciously shift to try and hide itself behind Caine’s. She didn’t get far enough away from Luke. Not in time to keep him from running his fingers down the skin of her throat. As soon as she felt his flesh against hers, she wondered if her mind hadn’t purposely delayed her body’s reaction.
Luke gripped her neck firmly, pulling her closer before leaning forward and dragging the tip of his nose up the side of her face.
He breathed her in. And then back out. His tongue followed the path as Chloe felt the bruise on her arm begin to throb again under Caine’s grip. Luke’s affection felt nothing like it had when he’d been alone with her. When he finished tasting her, Luke caressed her with the very same grin she’d seen Caine use on her.
The same physical reaction flooded through Chloe’s body.
But not her mind.
“Little brother, my patience is wearing thin with your rules.”
Chloe felt her heart pound as she watched the two men in front of her. The heat of Caine’s feverish body as he pressed it against hers made her feel safer, but it did nothing to help the feeling of confusion that pumped through her mind. The woman in her knew what was going on. She knew what both men obviously wanted from her. But that same woman wanted to deny the very possibility that she had run across men like this. Men like Luke Caine. A man Chloe knew made very little effort to control his brutal nature.
And men like Damon Caine. A man Chloe suspected could bring out a brutal side she hadn’t been aware that she held in herself.
No sooner had that thought gone through Chloe’s head than Luke proved the first half of her suspicions true by reaching down and quickly grasping her breast, dragging his fingers outward to pinch her nipple. The grip sickened her for some reason even though she had allowed the man to touch her in much more intimate ways. She felt Caine’s grip on her tighten at the same time that his brother’s mouth mashed crudely against her lips.
What Chloe’s body wanted as she stood in the embrace of these two men was something she had never considered having. Something she had never known she would like. And considering how wrong one of the men felt as he touched her, something at least one part of her couldn’t find arousing in the least.
A part of her tried to consider Luke’s coldness as she was able to look upon the way the animals in the forest mated. Without love, true. But with no ill intent either. Unfortunately, Chloe also had to remember that these were not unknowing animals surrounding her. And she had to remember that although she thought she had felt tenderness coming from Luke when he’d been in her bed, she couldn’t be sure. Most importantly, Chloe thought as her skin alternated being teased by one brother and then the other, these creatures were not merely wolves who were afraid for their pack or their territory. These were men.
Creatures that could hurt her even more than her four legged beasts ever could. And certainly if she was to try and take them on as a pack.
Luke’s tongue swept though her mouth and Chloe wondered if the flavor she found there was her own. Or if some other woman had also fallen victim to his methods of arousing but cruel and loveless sex even since she had.
Caine held onto her, even as his brother’s hand moved down and slipped inside her panties and his mouth continued to molest her. The grip coming from Caine was even tighter and more relentless than Luke’s. As if the man she had met a mere hour ago had some right to be upset with what was happening to a woman his brother had already had.
Her body throbbed violently inside itself at the hands of these two men. But quietly. Undetected by anyone but herself. It was the result of so many unanswered questions Chloe had about herself. About whether the stimulation she was receiving was meant to be pleasing to her or not. And about whether or not the stimulation could possibly develop into full-fledged pleasure. The way Luke was making her feel with his hands and the memory of what he could do to her was no less intriguing than the comforting, seductive way Caine was treating her simply by way of his possessive grip that told of his displeasure with the situation.