Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 05 (31 page)

Grabbing up the bloodied, shredded remnants of his
clothes, she tossed them into the flames, then crawled to his side and
stretched her body out along his. A low, satisfied sound broke from his throat
as he rolled to his side, curving his long body around hers, and she stiffened
with surprise as a startling truth occurred to her.

She was still in love with him.

She was still in love with Kierland Scott.

The strange, terrifying thought burned its way into
her brain as she nuzzled her face against the warmth of his broad chest, her
eyes squeezing tight as the hot rush of her tears soaked into his thick, silky
fur. A part of her was terrified of what the future would bring, but as his
strong arms wrapped around her in a tight, possessive hold, she couldn’t help
but be thankful for the miracle she’d been given that night. She hadn’t lost
him. It’d been so close, but he’d survived. He’d stayed with her…and God, that
had to mean something, didn’t it?

With a trembling smile on her lips, Morgan shoved her
worries and fears aside, holding on to that fragile burst of hope with
everything that she had, determined not to let it go…and snuggled down to sleep
with her wolf.

Thursday afternoon

KIERLAND OPENED HIS EYES TO the flickering embers of a
crackling fire, surprised by how good he felt, while one nearly
incomprehensible thought kept working its way through his mind, mesmerizing him
with its meaning.

Morgan had come for him. Rescued him. And saved his
life.

She was no longer lying in his arms, but he could
scent that she was near…and that the vampire was not.

“Where’s Granger?” The question came out as little
more than a graveled croak, his throat as dry and scratchy as something that’d
been worked over hard with sandpaper.

“He’s running patrol around the cabin,” she murmured
in a soft voice, and he looked over his shoulder to find her kneeling behind
him on the floor, a glass of water held in her hands. Pressing the glass to his
parched lips as he rolled to his back, she gave him a tentative smile, then
said, “I kept watch for a few hours in the middle of the night so that Ashe
could sleep, and then we switched again.”

“What time is it?” he asked, when he’d drained the
glass, only just realizing that he wasn’t in human form.

“Late afternoon,” she told him, and he noticed that
she was wearing clean clothes, instead of the ones that’d been stained with his
blood. “You’ve slept for a long time.”

Kierland watched her carefully through the wolf’s
eyes, and despite the fact that she’d slept in his arms, he couldn’t help but
be shocked that she looked so completely at ease with him in his “were” form.
Although she had to know that he would never harm her, the fact remained that
he was a predator, and Morgan was vulnerable enough to be seen as prey. “You’re
not…scared?”

A mysterious female smile touched her mouth, her voice
soft as she reached down and stroked the side of his face with her fingertips.
“No, Kier. I’m not afraid of you.”

He could hear the wolf’s voice in his head, guttural
and raw as it made its demands. Take her… Touch her… Claim her.

Closing his eyes, he tried to block out the
provocative temptation of her smile, that soft, warm look in her eyes, but all
he could think about was how she’d saved his life. How she’d faced her fears to
come after him, even when her panic had been crashing down on her. And then
there was the visceral ache of hunger rushing through his veins, his mind
consumed with exquisite memories of how perfect it felt when he was inside her.
How wet and plush and deliciously tight it felt when she held him clasped
within her body.

Kierland needed her against him, under him,
surrounding him, with an urgency that shattered his self-control, but he could
not allow himself to touch her like this. He had to change back, damn it, and
he struggled to take command of the dark, primal hungers raging through his
system, scraping him raw, as he forced his body into the shift that would
transform him back into a man. But he lost the internal struggle before the shift
was fully completed and pushed her to her back, covering her with the bulk of
his larger, heavier form.

He was half-afraid she would scream for Granger or
demand he get the hell away from her, but she did neither of those things.
Instead, the beautiful little Watchman curled her hands around the back of his
neck and lifted her mouth to his cheek. Her lips were exquisitely soft and cool
against the burning heat of his skin as she pressed sweet, tender kisses to the
places where her claws had cut across his face, though the wounds were already
healed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice cracking with tears as she
lowered her head back to the rug, locking her watery gaze with his. “I was so
scared you weren’t going to shift. You were dying, Kier…I was watching you
die…and it…it was killing me. I had to do something, anything, to keep you with
me. But I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here… I’m fine. Because of
you. I’m not going anywhere,” he tried to murmur, his voice still too guttural,
too much of the wolf in it for him to risk touching her. But he couldn’t stop
himself. Fur had melted into burning rosewood skin, his head returning to its
human shape—and yet, he still sported his deadly claws, his body bigger than
usual, taller and packed with thick slabs of powerful muscle, capable of
crushing her so easily if he wasn’t careful.

With his pulse roaring in his ears, his body aching
with a violent wave of scalding lust and blistering need, Kierland braced
himself over her, caging her beneath him, and rasped for her to take off her
clothes. A warm flush burned beneath her creamy skin, her luscious, provocative
scent growing stronger as she followed his rough command, her shields
completely down. Catching her full lower lip in her teeth, she pulled her jeans
and sweater from her body, the sight of her graceful curves and smooth skin
ripping a dark, savage groan from his lips.

When her bra and panties were gone, and she lay
beneath him naked and trembling with excitement, Kierland could only stare,
mesmerized by the blinding, beautiful details, and the next thing he knew, his
mouth was pressed to the lush curves of her breasts. His claws ripped gouges
into the rug as he licked and suckled greedily at her deliciously pink, swollen
nipples, loving their taste…their texture, then forced himself to pull away.
Turning her to her front, he pushed the heavy fall of her hair over her
shoulder, and reminded himself to take it slow…easy, while the wolf silently
snarled that he needed to be in her now. He shuddered as he nuzzled the warm,
silky skin on the back of her neck, her scent stronger in the damp strands of
her hair. Beneath her ear. Behind her knees. Along the tender curve of her
throat, where her skin was so fragile and smooth.

“Kierland, please,” she groaned, arching against him.
“I need you. Please.”

There was so much fear, so much worry churning inside
him, but he couldn’t stop himself from turning her back over and spreading her
beneath him, her legs sprawled explicitly wide, her tender little sex as
glistening and pink as some delicate hothouse flower. With his breath coming in
sharp, ragged bursts, he knelt between her sleekly muscled thighs, and greedily
pressed his face against that most precious, intimate part of her, his mouth
eating hungrily at her succulent juices, his tongue in heaven as he lapped and
stroked and thrust inside her. She arched beneath him, her nails digging into
his shoulders, her head flung back, a husky moan spilling from her open mouth
as she started to come for him with strong, rhythmic pulses of pleasure, and he
couldn’t wait. Her breath sucked in with a sharp, startled cry as Kierland
braced his weight on his left hand, retracted his claws and began feeding his
cock into that tiny, narrow entrance, but she didn’t push him away, didn’t
scream for him to get off. Instead, she reached up, cupping the hot sides of
his face, and pulled him over her. The position forced him to go deeper,
tearing another sharp cry from her lips as she touched her mouth to his, their
torsos rubbing together in a steamy, sensual slide of skin against skin.

“Sorry,” he gasped, bracing himself on his elbows as
he tried to keep from pushing, shoving, terrified he was going to hurt her.
“It’s too much, damn it. You’re too small.”

“Am not,” she breathed against his lips, the huskiness
of her voice slipping up Kierland’s spine like a smoldering lick of flame,
curling around the backs of his ears, and he rolled his hips, another broad
inch of his dark, vein-ridden shaft sinking inside her, spreading the tender
passage impossibly wide. He knew he should get the hell away from her, but like
a miracle, she was already getting wetter, slicker, bathing him in softness and
heat. He sank a little deeper, his eyes nearly rolling back in his head at the
intensity of it. Kierland had never, in his entire life, had sex when he was
this close to his “were” form, and the sharpness of sensation just about killed
him, not to mention the fear of just how far he could take this. He’d retracted
his fangs, but they were still heavy in his gums, burning for release. He could
so easily see himself opening his mouth, sinking those long fangs into the
fragile slope of her shoulder, and making the bite that would forever bind her
to him, body and soul.

Hell. It would have been so perfect, so right, if not
for the fact that he was too much like his father, and she was a woman who
would never truly belong to any man. One whose heart could too easily be given
to another. She’d done it to him before. Wanted him, and then given herself to
Granger. She would do it again. Would never be able to love him in the ways
that he needed.

Love him? Oh, Christ.

He hadn’t wanted it, but there was no hiding from it
any longer.

No, the truth had become startlingly clear to Kierland,
like a big neon sign blazing in his brain, and he flinched from the brightness.
This burning, incomparable lust had always been there…and he hadn’t tried to
see past it, too afraid of what he might find. He knew damn well that some
truths were better left unknown, unexposed, because you never knew what lies
were the ones holding you together. The little half truths that made it
possible to get through each day. Take them away, and there’d always been the
chance that he might fall apart. Crumble into pieces, or shatter in some
violent, rending act, like an explosion. Emotional overload, and God only knew
that he sucked when it came to handling emotions.

And now Kierland had to face the terrifying,
gut-wrenching fact that he was in love with Morgan Cantrell. A head-over-heels,
heart-ripped-open-and-bleeding, worship-her-until-the-day-that-he-died kind of
love. The kind that could never be broken or crushed. That would tie him in
knots every minute of every day, for the rest of his godforsaken life.

A warm, glowing spark of warmth hovered at the edges
of his consciousness, beckoning him, telling him that this was a gift. A
miracle. Something to be valued and treasured and protected. But he couldn’t do
it.

No matter how badly he wanted to, he could not surrender
to it, because it scared the hell out of him, chilling him to the bone. And
maybe, he realized, that right there was why Granger had walked away from her
all those years ago. It was maddening to feel yourself consumed by so much
worry for another’s safety, when there were so many dangers in the world. Even
without the mountain of nasty, difficult issues that stood between them,
Kierland knew he would never be able to get past the infuriating fear that
something might take her away from him. Damn it, there were so many things that
could go wrong. That could happen.

And as far as he was concerned, their current mission
had become too bloody dangerous for her to remain in the Wasteland.

But I want her, the wolf snarled, seething with fury
as it prowled the confines of his body. I need her. We need her.

With his jaw locked, Kierland struggled to block out
that guttural voice as he straightened his arms, pumping himself into the
cushioned, liquid depths of her body, forcing her to take him deeper…and deeper,
and then she opened her eyes, and he almost flinched from what he saw as she
stared up at him, locking her gaze with his. The soft gray swirled with too
many emotions, like a window into parts of her that he knew better than to look
at. He needed to rip his gaze away, damn it, but he couldn’t. She had a lock on
him, and she wasn’t letting go.

Jesus. This was intolerable. He had to do something to
set it right, while he still could.

Kierland could feel the blistering heat rising up
inside him as he gritted his teeth, gripped her behind her knees, pushing them
high and wide, and held her spread beneath him. Sweating and cursing, he drove
himself as deep as she could take him, slamming his hips against hers, shoving
himself into a scalding, explosive release, his body erupting with hard,
visceral surges that made him feel as if he was spilling his bloody soul into
her. His face was prickling with tiny pinpoints of hot and cold, his mouth
shaking, his eyes burning with a suspicious sheen of moisture, and he started
to turn his head, but she stopped him.

“No,” she whispered, reaching up and touching the damp
sides of his face with her fingertips, the fluttering pulses of her inner
muscles telling him that she’d found her own release while he’d been crashing
over the edge. “I just… It’s so amazing….”