Force of Nature Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4) (13 page)

Reaching out tentatively, she brushed her fingers over his chest fur. It was soft and warm. The need to bury her fingers in its depths made her look at his face. She watched for any sign that he would hurt her while she did as she wanted.

“I’m either really still asleep or there’s a wolf in my bed.” That caused her to laugh, but it sounded sort of maniacal even to her ears. “Okay, so you’re a wolf. Now what?”

Austin, because she didn’t know what else to call him, laid his huge head on her leg when she stretched out. She scratched him behind his ear and thought about all the shit she’d encountered over the past six months. Not sure he could understand her, she lifted his head up and looked him in the eye.

“Blink once if you understand me.” His eyes closed and opened. “Well, that could have been a normal blink, now couldn’t it? Let me see. Okay, if you understand me…lick my cheek, the right one.”

He stared at her for so long she started to get up, but his big, wet tongue came out and soaked her right cheek. She couldn’t move.

“I’m not freaking out, but you have to admit this is fucked up. I go my entire life as if nothing is out of the ordinary, and suddenly I know a pack of wolves and a vampire.” She moved to the edge of the bed to think and he moved closer to her. “You need to back off. I can’t think with you touching me like this.”

He moved back to the other end of the bed and she looked at the doorway. She needed a walk. Needed to just go outside and come back in and things would be back to normal. When she moved toward the opening, the wolf growled deep in his throat. She sat down.

“I can’t think. I was just going out…. Why am I explaining this to you? You’re not real. I’m going to go outside and when I come back—”

She was suddenly lying on the bed and he was over her body. When she opened her mouth, his paw, a big fucking paw, came down on her face. She was reaching up to jerk it off when she heard someone outside the truck.

Whispering, she stayed still. “You heard them, didn’t you? I don’t suppose you can tell me who it is, can you? You know, friend or foe?”

She thought she felt him laugh; his belly, warm against her, sort of rumbled. Then the rattle of the door made her stiffen. 

CJ could see that it was locked. She was worried about the other door, the driver’s door, because from where she was, she couldn’t see it. Whoever it was, she decided it was foe. If it had been friend, they would have called out. Both she and the wolf lay very still until Austin got off her, went to the front of the cab, and sat on the seat.

~
Chapter Twelve
~

Austin sat there for the rest of the hour. He didn’t want to leave her because he knew that, even if he could have gotten her to open the door, she’d follow him. She would think to protect him even now that he’d shifted for her. When he could shift back, he went back to the sleeper to find her sitting at the end of the bed with her gun in her hand. Austin didn’t waste any time shifting back this time, but let it come over him quickly.

“You were faster coming back.” The calmness in her voice scared him. “Are you going to get dressed?”

“Do you want me to?” His voice was low and arousal made it deep. She couldn’t stop staring at his cock. “I told you before I want to fuck you. That hasn’t changed.”

His body was on fire. He could see her nipples, hard peaks, brush against her undershirt. She had her hands fisted into the sheets so she wouldn’t reach out and touch him, he thought. When he wrapped his hand around his cock for her, she moaned.

“I can smell you, Charlie. Smell your body’s need, your arousal.” He took a step toward her as he continued. “I want to taste you. Lick your juices from your pussy and drink your cum. Would you like to come in my mouth, on my tongue?”

Yes, she would, he could tell. When he was standing over her, his cock a few inches from her, she licked her lips. His cock jerked in his hand. He needed to be inside her now.

“Lie back. I want to eat you.” She didn’t disobey him, but did just as he commanded. Austin dropped to the floor on his knees and touched her calves. She jerked at his touch.

“Easy, love. I’m not going to hurt you.” He pulled her to the edge of the bed, her legs hanging off as he moved between them. “You smell delicious. Are you wet for me, Charlie?”

Austin moved his fingers along her panties. He wasn’t surprised to find them soaked. Her thighs were also wet. When she tried to bring her legs together, he slid his finger under the elastic and entered her.

“Austin, please,” she begged. “You don’t want to do this. You want…you want to….”

Moving his finger in and out of her, he could feel how tight she was. “I want to eat you until you come over and over. Christ, you’re so wet. I’m going to get my fill of you. But these have to go.” 

Removing his finger from her sheath, she whimpered, and when he curled his hands in the tiny strips of ribbon on either side of her hips, she started panting. Her breath was heating his skin and he had hardly touched her. Before he tore her panties off, he wanted to see the rest of her.

“Take off the shirt,” he commanded harshly. “Take it off so I can see your breasts. I want to see them tighten when you come.”

She stared at him for several seconds. He could see the glazed look of need in her eyes. After barking at her again to take it off, she lifted it over her head and dropped it on the floor beside his discarded clothes.

When he ripped her panties from her body, her breasts jerked. His beast snarled at him to bite, to sink his canines deep into the soft flesh and mark her. Trying to calm the wolf, he shifted on his knees and buried his nose deep in her pussy.

He had tasted her before, but she wasn’t fighting him this time. Her body wanted his…the cream gushing from her pussy told him that. He lapped his tongue from gate to clit and was dizzy from the taste of her. Taking her hard nubbin into his mouth, he sucked hard and entered her again with his finger.

Christ, she was tight. Her channel milked at his finger, pulling him deeper with every thrust. Using his free hand, he lifted her up until she was a feast before him. Pushing his tongue into her pussy, he gathered her cream and tasted her. Even as he slid another, then another finger into her, she filled him. Her bud, ripe for him, beckoned his mouth. Taking her clit into his mouth again, he nipped her and she shattered.

Austin knew he wasn’t going to last. He wanted her with a desperation he’d never felt before. Standing over her, he looked down at her even as her body continued to spasm and jerk. A fine dew of sweat covered her, and he thought if he lived another three lifetimes he’d never see anything more beautiful. Reaching toward the shelf above her head for a condom, not wanting her to refuse him now, he tore the package open even as his wolf snarled for release.

“Take me. Now. I want you to take me now.” Her breathless plea nearly felled him. He held the rolled condom in his hand. “Now, Austin, take me please. I want to feel you inside of me when you come.”

“I won’t last. Not long, I won’t last. And my wolf…he needs to take his bite. He needs to mark you.” He would take her whether she wanted the wolf or not, but he wouldn’t bite her unless she said yes. And he also needed her to understand she’d be his. “The bite, it will mark you. No one will touch you. No one will live if they do.”

She nodded. “Yes. I beg of you, take me.”

He felt the wolf snarl at him and move along his skin. He knew what she was seeing, the change, the shift. His canines sharpened in his mouth and he snarled at her. Coming down onto her, he entered her hard and fast, then stilled when she cried out.

A virgin…Charlie was a virgin. He calmed then, held himself up on his elbows, and looked down at her. Tears ran down her cheeks and using his thumb, he brushed them way.

“You should have told me. I would have…I would have tried to take more care with you.”

She looked up at him.

“I don’t…do you no longer want me?”

Austin burst out laughing. It came from deep within him and startled him. “No. I want you. Now more than ever.” He brushed another tear away. “Did I hurt you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t…you’re very full in me. I didn’t even have time to wonder if you’d fit. You didn’t, did you? I’m sorry. Maybe if I move—” She moaned when she shifted her hips. When she did it again, her eyes widened and her mouth opened. “Austin, can you…will you move? Please?”

He slid out of her tightness only to move back slowly. He could feel the sweat move down his spine, the effort to not hurt her killing him slowly. But the look on her face, the look that told him she was enjoying this, made him want to see to her pleasure over his.

“Wrap your legs around my hips. That’s it.” He groaned when she did as he asked. Reaching down, he cupped her breast and nibbled just on the tip. 

Moving slowly, he felt her body responding to his. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and then moved down his back to his ass. Her nails dug deep. He needed to slow her down or he was going to come before she did. Rolling to his back, he brought her with him so that she now spread over him. Adjusting her legs so that she straddled him, he showed her by moving her hips in a ride what to do.

“Oh yes, oh yes. You’re so deep.” He watched her move, her breasts flushed with need. When he took her hands and cupped them, he nearly swallowed his tongue when she looked down at him while she pinched her nipples.

If he thought to slow things down, he realized this wasn’t going to help. He sat up, took her offered nipple into his mouth, and slid his hand between them. Gathering her cream from her clit and stroking it, he moved to her rosette at her ass and rubbed her juices into the puckered entrance.

“I’m going to fuck you here,” Austin told her as he circled the tight muscles. “I’m going to ram my cock deep into you and fuck you from behind. Would you like that? Want to feel my cock taking your ass?”

“Yes. Please…Austin, I’m coming.” Her sheath rippled around his cock and nearly strangled him. When he felt his own release coming quickly now that she had, he rolled her back to the bed and slammed into her. He knew she’d be sore, but need ripped through him. With a final thrust, he came. His cock jettisoned deep and his fangs ached to mark. Licking the place where her shoulder met her neck, he bit.

Mine.
Even as her blood filled his mouth, he could feel the bond forming.
Mine
. The bond that only mated couples felt. Nothing had prepared him for the overwhelming need to protect, to care for and to keep her.
Mine
, he thought over and over. Licking the wound again, his essences sealing the ragged opening, he nearly dropped on her, but rolled to his side again, pulling her lax body over his. His last thought before falling to sleep was that he’d forgotten about the person at the door.

~~~

CJ woke up tangled in the bed with Austin. Her body flushed with heat when she remembered what she’d begged him to do to her last night. Moving her hand to her neck where he’d bitten her, she expected it to come away bloody. But other than being slightly tender, it seemed fine. She moved to the edge of the bed and slid to the floor. 

It only took her a moment to find her clothes and get dressed. She was starved, and was putting on her boots when she was suddenly pulled back into the bed. His mouth covered hers before she could utter a protest.

Heat filled her body as he tugged her down onto him. When he rolled her over onto her back, he grinned when her belly growled.

“We worked up an appetite, didn’t we? I don’t suppose I could persuade you to skip breakfast and let me make love to you all morning, could I?” Before she could answer, her belly growled again. “I’ll take that as a no. Let me get dressed and I’ll go with you. Besides, I want to see if I can smell who was at the door last night.”

She flushed, remembering why he hadn’t looked last night. She was suddenly glad his back was turned to her. She knew her face was flaming.

“I wonder if whoever it was thought I was alone and wanted to…I don’t know, have dinner or something.” She pulled on her boot and reached for the second one when she found herself back on the bed. “Austin?”

“I meant what I said last night, Charlie. No one can touch you. I’m a very jealous wolf and you’re mine.”

She remembered. But there was no reason for him to get all macho on her. She shoved him off her…or at least tried to. When that didn’t work, she turned her head away. “Get off me. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a long time.” He didn’t move for several seconds and she looked up at him. The look on his face confused her. He looked…well, he looked sad. Before she could ask him, he rolled off her and stood.

“Let’s go. I’m starved too. Let me go out first. I want to see if I can scent anything.”

She waited in the passenger seat while he climbed out the driver’s, and watched him come around the side of the truck and sniff around. When he backed up several feet and shook his head, she nearly climbed out to see what happened. He looked like he got a whiff of something that didn’t agree with him. He stopped her with a raised hand. Then he did the international sign for rolling down the window—a winding hand. She rolled her eyes as she reached over to turn the key to make the electric window go down.

“You know that crank windows are about faded out, right?” Then she asked, “What did you smell?”

She actually didn’t feel as stupid as she thought she would asking him that. First of all, hello, man here, and secondly, after last night it was hard to deny that what he’d told her was anything but the truth.

“A male touched the door as recently as last night. A shifter…not wolf though. A cat, tiger.” She started to ask if there were really weretigers, then snapped her mouth closed. Of course there were.

“I don’t know any two-legged tigers.” At least she didn’t think so. “How will I tell when…am I a wolf now too?”

That was a weird thought. He’d bitten her and they’d had sex…boy had they had sex. He said he’d marked her, but hadn’t he already done that? She decided she was going to make a list of questions to ask him so that she wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed.

“No…not yet anyway. We’ll talk about it. And you won’t be able to tell. But I will. I have the scent now.” He opened the door for her and she nearly got out. She turned back, put the window up, and took the keys. “Let’s just pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary.”

She snorted. “Okay. We’ll just pretend that we didn’t have this spectacular sex last night and that you didn’t flip into a wolf and my—”

“Shift,” he interrupted her. “I shifted. And was it really spectacular?”

She stopped to stare at him.
Not even going there
, she thought, and started toward the diner again. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to his body, his mouth covering hers in what could only be described as hot.

The world around them was fading away and all she could think of was the way his body was hard against hers when someone nudged her. She might have ignored them, but the second time she pulled away to yell, she was suddenly pulled into very tight arms.

“I’m so happy you worked out your differences. It’s so nice to have another female around. Well there is Mom, but she isn’t all that into shopping. Please tell me you like to shop. Oh my God, that would be just sinful if you don’t. We’ll have to go shopping for Christmas presents together. Won’t that be so wonderful? And then—”

“Holly, take a breath. Christ, you could talk a deaf man to insanity.” Austin kissed the woman on the cheek and then turned to stare at her when a low growl spilled from CJ’s lips. She blushed.

“I’m sorry. I don’t…I didn’t even know I could…do you think you could step away from her? I have this urge to tear her eyes out and I don’t much care for it.”

The woman he called Holly stepped back and laughed. Austin pulled her back and grinned. “Charlie, this is my sister, Holly. Holly, meet my mate, Charlie Force.”