Authors: Celeste Anwar
Erin’s belly clenched with her own ravaging need.
Abruptly, he bolted upright, grasped her
shoulders and shoved her back onto the mattress. Almost before she’d caught
her breath, he was driving into her. His cock head slid almost bruisingly
along her cleft and plowed into the mouth of her sex.
Planting the soles of her feet on the mattress,
she lifted to meet him.
Mindless with his need and completely beyond
control, he pumped into her again and again until she felt the root of his cock
grinding against her. His frantic need surged into her, sent her own control
spiraling beyond her grasp. She curled her fingers into his arms, dug her
nails in, meeting each thrust with a burgeoning sense of desperation.
When he stilled abruptly, dragging in a harsh
breath, Erin lost the battle to stave off her release. Groaning, she bucked
against him as she felt her body begin to convulse in waves of ecstasy.
Slipping an arm beneath her hips, he began to thrust hard and fast, uttering a
guttural cry as his own body exploded with release.
* * * *
Erin pretended she was asleep when Jesse eased
from beneath the covers and dressed. She was fairly sure she couldn’t go up on
deck and watch him leave without behaving badly and making everyone, Jesse
included, uncomfortable.
It was better this way. If she felt like crying,
she could cry without having to consider whether it would worry anyone else.
She almost gave up the pretense when he’d
finished dressing and stood beside the bed staring down at her for what seemed
a very long time. Finally, he merely turned and left, closing the door quietly
behind him.
She turned onto her back then and lay listening
to the sounds around her. Even without the distant sound and vibration of the
engine, she could tell the ship was moving. The closer it came to shore, the
more violently waves battered the hull and the ship bobbed in the water.
Abruptly the engine stopped. The ship didn’t. For what seemed an endless time
it glided silently through the water. Finally, she heard the sound of the
anchor being released. The forward glide slowed and finally ceased altogether.
Hearing the Lycans moving about on the upper
deck, Erin threw the covers off at last and got up. To her disappointment, she
saw nothing from the cabin’s porthole but winking stars and the ripple of their
light on the water.
She wouldn’t be able to watch them leave. The
ship was facing the wrong direction for that.
Feeling a sudden need to catch one last glimpse
of Jesse, Erin began to scramble for clothes, dragging them on haphazardly and
then dashing from the cabin and along the gangway. Silence had fallen by the
time she reached the deck. She rushed to the starboard railing anyway, peering
through the darkness toward the darker shape some distance away rimmed by a
pale ribbon of sand. She’d almost given up the effort to find them when her
gaze finally lit upon a dark shape moving through the water. She studied it
hard. After a time, she thought she could make out the individual shadows
crowded into the dingy.
She couldn’t tell which of them was Jesse,
though.
“They will be back before dawn.”
Erin glanced at the man who’d come to stand
beside her. “You think?”
He leaned down, bracing his arms on the railing.
“Tonight they will only reconnoiter the place. Tomorrow, or the next day, or
maybe even the day after that, they will sweep through it, destroy all the data
that has been collected, and be out again before the Feds know what’s hit
them.”
Erin frowned as she studied Billy Ray. “Jesse
didn’t tell me that.”
“No?” Billy Ray grinned. “Maybe he git carried
away by the worry in his lady’s eyes, no?”
Meaning he was too busy enjoying himself to
consider her feelings? She knew, suddenly, that that was not the case. He
hadn’t said anything because he fully intended to go in tonight if the
opportunity arose and she was pretty sure Billy Ray knew that.
He was only trying to distract her.
She saw the dingy had reached the beach. Dark
shadows poured out of it and disappeared into the thick jungle vegetation that
edged the ribbon of sand.
With an effort, she forced a smile to reward
Billy Ray for his efforts to reassure her. “So--even if he finds an open door,
he’s just going to look around and come straight back?”
Billy Ray shrugged, but grinned. “If they
welcome him, then maybe he will go in and take care of business, but Jesse is
no hot head, nor one to fall into a trap. He is smart, very smart. He will
study the problem and pick it apart before he strikes.”
Erin nodded, realizing she
was
reassured.
“We’ll wait here for them?”
“
Oui
, for now. If they are not back
before dawn, we will have to move further from shore, but I don’t expect that.”
There was nothing to do but wait.
She was going to be a raving lunatic long before
dawn.
She remained by the railing for a while after
Billy Ray had left. When she could no longer bear the inactivity, she wandered
about the deck, her ears strained to listen for the sound of distant gunfire.
She found no peace when the sound never came.
Instead, her fertile mind began to torment her with other scenarios, of the men
walking into a trap, captured, taken to the laboratory to be tortured and dissected.
Time hung upon her like a pall. The moon rose,
but seemed to stand still in the heavens, not moving by so much as an inch.
Finally, when she realized that everyone but the night watch had gone below to
try to rest, she went below decks and paced her cabin for a while. After
glancing at the porthole for the dozenth time, she decided to go to the main
cabin. At least there she might see something when and if there was something
to see.
She was sorry she’d taken a nap earlier. At the
time, she’d been so exhausted from her anxiety she’d welcomed the chance to
rest. Now she couldn’t even seek that modicum of peace and staring at the
clock on the wall of the main cabin wasn’t helping her nerves any more than
staring at the moon had.
Mentally taking herself to task for working
herself into a mass of screaming nerves, she strode purposefully to the cabinet
that housed Juliette’s collection of reading materials and dragged out a stack
of magazines. After a brief internal debate, she chose the couch and settled
with the stack beside her, flipping the pages idly and trying to focus on the
pages rather than the thoughts teasing at the edges of her mind.
It would’ve been easier, she thought wryly, to
distract herself with the damned things if they’d actually held anything of
concern to her, but even the ads, which naturally enough were related to the
subject of the magazines, didn’t pique her interest. She persevered,
struggling to focus her mind away from her worries. She’d flipped through most
of the stack when a sound outside caught her attention.
She froze, listening more intently. She’d just
decided it was purely imagination when she heard a very distinctive thud on the
deck above her. She was on her feet before she even formed the thought. They
were back!
Dropping the magazine, she strode briskly from
the main cabin, glancing at the clock almost absently as she moved past it.
Three O’clock. Three hours. A prickle of uneasiness went through her. She
didn’t realize why, or what errant thought had caused the wash of anxiety until
she’d reached the stairs and started up.
They’d only been gone three hours and it had
taken them a good twenty minutes even to reach the shoreline from the ship.
Could they possibly have gone, stayed long enough to see what they needed to,
and come back in no more time than that?
Abruptly, the door at the top of the gangway was
flung open. Erin stared upward at the beast that leapt through the opening and
uttered a scream of pure terror.
Chapter Eleven
Jesse’s face was grim as they emerged at last on
the beach nearest the island that was their objective. It had taken nearly two
hours to reach this point, far longer than he’d expected. The island itself
where the facility lay was a good six miles from the mainland, no great
distance if they could have crossed it openly in the dingy they’d lugged
through the jungle, but to cross with stealth would take more time. The moon
was high now. They would have to settle and wait until it was nearing the
trees on the western horizon before they could chance a crossing.
The uneasiness that had been plaguing him since
he’d left the ship deepened, making his flesh creep. He’d struggled with the
undefined anxiety that something was wrong ever since. No matter how much he
assured himself, he was certain that it was nothing more than reluctance to
leave Erin.
The seed she’d planted in his mind had been sown
in fertile soil. From the moment he’d left her he hadn’t been able to get it
out of his mind that she was vulnerable. Ordinarily, he would never have
doubted that the three men he’d left to guard her and the yacht were perfectly
capable of handling most any situation. He was certain the only reason he
doubted it now was the fear Erin had planted in his mind that someone would
harm her or take her from him.
He was almost certain.
Irritated, he left the men resting near the
forest edge and followed the tree line a little further down the beach,
sniffing at the wind and trying to catch the scents of the jungle. It was an
exercise in futility. The wind blew almost constantly off the water, carrying
scents inland.
If there was anything there….
The hackles along the ridge of his spine rose
abruptly as a faint scent teased at his nostrils. Whirling abruptly, he raced
back toward the others, uttering a warning call. Almost before the sound had
ceased to vibrate from his vocal chords, a chorus of feline snarls answered.
From every direction if seemed save the beach
that trapped them at the water’s edge, dark shapes sprang forth, leaping from
brush and the overhead limbs of the trees. Something heavy impacted into his
back so hard the weight and momentum of it slammed him into the ground. Claws
tore at his back. Snarling, he twisted beneath the beast’s weight, clubbing it
on the side of its head with his fist.
Any doubt he’d nurtured that the beast that had
attacked him was no more than an animal vanished in that moment. The blow
would have taken the head off of a man, crushed the skull of any jungle cat.
Blood shot from the creature’s nose and mouth,
spattering him, the smell driving his beast mad with bloodlust. The adrenaline
that surged through him in response magnified his strength. He bucked,
breaking the creature’s grip on him and launching it into the brush.
Coming up onto all fours, he bellowed a
challenge. Even as he struggled to get his feet beneath him and rise, three
more creatures sailed from the tree limbs above him, driving him into the dirt
once more, pinning him.
“Yield,” the creature on his chest bellowed. “We
have your woman!”
It took several seconds for that to penetrate
Jesse’s maddened mind. When it did, he uttered a roar of pure rage and fought
harder, but defeat was already seeping into his mind. His ears told him the
battle was already lost for the rest of his men. They were outnumbered perhaps
three to one. Strength would avail him nothing at this point.
They had Erin. He could not save her if he
allowed the madness to push him to a fight to the death. Abruptly, with a
tremendous effort, he began to struggle against his beast, to find control.
“Release us,” he snarled. “We have no quarrel
with your clan. We are here to kill the humans on yonder island and take back
my son.”
“You have encroached on the territory of the
panthers without leave,” the one who had threatened Erin snarled. “We do not
take trespass lightly.”
“Our quarrel is not with the clan of the
panthers,” Jesse growled as they hauled him to his feet. “And neither should
yours be with us. Those humans there have taken the Lycan to build their
armies. No shifter is safe if we do not destroy them, not even your people.”
“We leave them alone and they do not bother us,”
the panther responded, but he turned to study the distant island through
narrowed eyes. “You can tell your strange tale to Carlos. But I will warn you
now he is in no benign mood and unlikely to listen to anything you might think
to say now. You know the protocol. You should have gone to him at once and
negotiated a treaty between our peoples. Then, perhaps, he would have given
you permission to bring your war to our doorstep--and maybe not. But it is
less likely now.”