Beast Within (8 page)

“You just can’t keep from pussy-whipping, can you?”

Dylan clamped his mouth shut against the curses curdling his
brain.

“Dylan, as long as you continue to control the jaguarondi in
you, I give you permission to pleasure me in any way you wish.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Dylan had her on her
hands and knees in front of him. He spread her legs apart. He eased the tip of
his shaft into her. He knew she was still wet for him. She let loose a long
shuddering breath when his width fully stretched her. “Harder, Dylan. Faster.”

As much as he wanted to, he had permission to pleasure her
however
he
wished. He slid nearly out, then slowly entered her again.
Over and over, he continued the smooth solid strokes until she began to keen.
When her orgasm began to shake both of them, Dylan pulled completely out.

“What the fuck?” She dropped to her belly and rolled over to
glare at him.

Dylan pointed a finger to his chest, then to his mouth.

“Talk, you bastard.”

He leaned over the end of the bed and found the long strip
of velvet he’d seen her discard when she came in with her toys. “You said I had
permission to pleasure you anyway
I
wish.” Rapidly, despite her kicking,
he managed to use the velvet strip to tie her ankles to two of the rails of the
headboard.

“This is the way
I
wish to bring you pleasure.” With
her legs spread wide and her ass elevated, he kneeled between her legs and
surveyed her wide-open sex. He held her hands with one hand, then drove himself
into her. He sucked first one breast, then the other, all the while keeping up
the relentless pounding his cock wanted so badly.

He first put the tip of his little finger into her ass. She
arched her back into his driving body. At her obvious acceptance and groaning
pleasure, he substituted his index finger for his pinky. At some point, he
wanted to take her ass with his cock, but right now, his shaft wanted the sublime
slickness and heated shivers of her passage.

The harder and faster he drove into her, the faster her
breathing came. He vaguely felt the changing starting, but forced it into
abeyance. Her body began to shake with her orgasm. He clamped his mouth against
her shoulder but felt the fangs extend and forced them back. With a shrieking,
unintelligible call, her body shook at the peak of her orgasm. He let himself
go, joining her primeval scream with his own deep roar while his cum pumped out
in sharp bursts.

Panting, he became aware of her body supporting his, her
hands stroking his damp back. Lightly, he suckled the skin on her sweet, sweaty
shoulder, happy he’d forced back the fangs and hadn’t torn her skin this time.

Her caressing hands stopped, then her fingers began to
lightly feather his back as though she were searching for something.

“Dylan, untie me now.” All the sex joy had disappeared with
the First Sergeant order in his Amazon’s voice. He had always heard the Amazons
knew exactly how and when to separate pleasure from business. “I want to see
what’s under your skin on your back.”

“Goddamn it all to hell. Don’t tell me I’m now sprouting
some fucking wings.” Dylan reached up his back, trying to feel what interested
Hildy. He untied the velvet rope.

After she flexed her legs, she sat up. “Turn around.”

Her fingers moved in small decisive strokes. She sat back on
her calves and he turned to face her.

“The farmer who found the wounded jaguarondi called me. How
did you get shot anyway?”

“Trying to make connections with my human smuggler contacts
to get them to stop until I got to the bottom of the Hell Hospital.”

Hildy worried her lower lip. “When I took possession of the
wounded jaguarondi, which the farmer tranqued when he spotted it, I patched up
the bullet hole,” she patted the healing spot on his thigh, “and inoculated the
jaguarondi for rabies, feline leukemia and feline distemper.”

“Gee, nice to know I’m protected.”

“The vaccines probably aren’t effective in your human body.
If they were, all of us in animal protection would automatically be vaccinated
against rabies the way the general population is vaccinated against the flu and
smallpox. It won’t hurt you either,” she assured him. “We stick ourselves all
the time dealing with unruly animals. Anyway, I inserted a GPS unit to track
the wildcat for our endangered species program at the same time.”

“I have a GPS unit in me?”

“Actually, the one I put in is just below your shoulder
blade. There’s a second one between your shoulder blades.”

“And there’s only one place where it was inserted. The Hell
Hospital.” Dylan clamped his jaw shut. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Just a wild guess, but someone’s tracking you?”

“That too but not for much longer.”

Haley’s eyes widened. “There’s only one way to remove the
tracking units.”

“I know. Can you do it?”

“Can you keep yourself from turning into a jaguarondi when I
cut it out? I have some local anesthetic, but it’s for animals. I don’t know
how effective it’ll be on you.”

“Just do it,” Dylan said. He grabbed the briefs and
scrambled into them and the jeans while Haley grabbed a terry cloth robe. “You
realize I’ll have to run from here as soon as you get both of these out.”

“Right. And I’m coming with you. Come on to the kitchen.”
They ran to the kitchen. “The light’s better in here and I have a powerful
flashlight also. I can get a scalpel from my vet kit.”

“Why do you have so much veterinarian stuff? Are you a vet
too?”

“Qualified as a vet’s assistant. Authorized to use some
specific drugs.” Dylan watched her lovely hands efficiently unpack instruments
and packets of things. He recognized Instant Skin and one packet that looked
like a general antibiotic. “Parks and Wildlife management does a lot of
treatment of injured animals. Most times the animals’ injuries have to be
stabilized before they’re moved. And we always vaccinate animals we release
back into the wild.”

Haley continued. “Are you sure you want both units out? I
don’t think anyone will track the jaguarondi I tagged.”

“If the Hell Hospital is responsible for the shape-changing
I do and put their own GPS tracking unit in me, I can just bet they’ll figure
out about the jaguarondi’s GPS. Take them both out.”

She swabbed both areas with alcohol, then wiped them with
another pad of something. “Where do you want to go? West Texas? The Davis
Mountains?”

“Might as well. We’ll need cash. They’ll track the money
cards.”

“I always keep cash on hand. Why let the blood-suckers at
the IRS know exactly how much money I have? And if we’re going to West Texas,
we can stop by one of the Indian casinos and run it up. Are you ready for me to
cut?”

Dylan gritted his teeth. He focused on his internal clock.
He was himself—the jaguarondi needed to remain deep within him. “Go ahead.”

He hissed at the first sharp cut, then again at the sharp
probe into his muscle. He forced his hands and feet to remain still. “How do
you intend to run the cash up? Poker shark?”

“No,” she said, calmly handing him the first bloody GPS
unit. “I have phenomenal luck at slots.”

He felt her smoothing a stinging cream across the cut, then
the soothing coolness of Instant Skin being applied. “Nobody has that kind of
luck at slots.”

“I do. Ready for the second?”

He nodded. “Go ahead.”

“One of the men my old roommate lives with got curious and
had a friend run a bunch of tests. I seem to have a photographic memory and can
calculate odds in a flash. I watch the slots for a while and get the rhythm.”

Again came the quick cut, then the digging probe. Again he
made himself focus on remaining human, despite the tearing pain in his hands
and feet.

“The worst I ever do is double my money. And,” she handed
him the second gory unit, “if we go to the Indian casino I know, we not only
can collect some extra cash, but I can sell my car to one of the chiefs who
lusts after it.” She finished patching the second wound.

“Why does he lust after it and not after you?” Dylan flexed
his shoulders, stood and followed Hildy from the kitchen. He stopped by the
bathroom and flushed the GPS chips down the can.

In the bedroom, Hildy had put on a pair of tiny panties and
a lace bra. “He lusts after me too. But you’ll see. Let’s grab some clothes and
get the hell out of here before your creeps come hunting us.”

In the heat of the midday sun, Dylan marveled again at the
depths to which Haley gave him unconditional support. Elliot Hawksky, not only
one of the chiefs but also the tribe’s head of security, counted the last of
the cash for Haley’s pristine 1965 Shelby GT350 Mustang Hatchback into her
outstretched palm.

“Now, Haley,” Hawksky’s voice rumbled like distant thunder,
as dark as the jet-black braid hanging down his back, “if you should choose to
become one of my junior wives, I shall gift you back your car.”

“Not even to be a senior wife, El. Come on, Dylan, let me
show you how to play slots.”

“Please do not break our bank, Haley,” Hawksky told her. “We
must earn a living.”

“You know no matter what I win, the other patrons will still
give you a profit. Come on, Dylan. It’s fun.”

“I wish to speak to you alone, Dylan.”

Dylan barely heard Hawksky’s voice. He didn’t know what the
chief wanted, but he knew he needed to hear it, just like he needed to get into
the Davis Mountains. “You go on, Haley. I’ll catch up. I want to cry over this
Mustang just awhile longer.”

After Haley disappeared into the casino, Dylan followed
Hawksky to a hut set away from the modern buildings of the casino, the modern
housing for the tribe and the hotel for the guests. When Dylan ducked into the
hut’s door, he saw an old man sitting on a blanket on the dirt floor. Facing
the old man, Hawksky placed a palm to his head, then to his heart, backed out
of the hut and left the two of them.

The old man waved a palm to indicate Dylan should join him
on the blanket. He offered Dylan the pipe he smoked.

Always one to respect his elders, Dylan took a draw and
returned it.

“I dreamed of you this morning as the dawn rose. I told
Hawksky to bring me the wildcat shapeshifter who comes with the woman with the
moonlight silver hair. You are he.”

After discovering he changed into a jaguarondi and
struggling to control it, it didn’t surprise him to have an old Indian he’d
never met before calmly recognize him as a shapeshifter and tell him he’d been
the center of a dream.

“I change into a jaguarondi, yes.”

They waited in silence.

“Those of us who find our way to our animal shape are rare.
You must celebrate your discovery of your inner self.”

The smoke from their shared pipe curled around them. Dylan
didn’t want to celebrate turning into a jaguarondi—he wanted it to stop.

“You do not accept it yet. You must learn to not fear the
change. You must learn to embrace it. You must become the jaguarondi. The
jaguarondi must become you. If you do not, you will lose what you most need.”

“What I need most is to control this changing. Can you teach
me that?”

The old man shook his head. “You are the only one who knows
what you need. You must embrace the jaguarondi to keep what you need.”

The old man set the pipe on the ground in front of them,
then closed his eyes. As though he’d been summoned, Hawksky entered the hut
again and motioned Dylan to leave. Although the old man’s eyes didn’t open,
Dylan copied Hawksky’s respectful hand signals to the old man before he crawled
out of the hut’s small door.

Slowly, the two men walked back to the casino.

“Do you believe my father’s grandfather?”

“Do you?” Dylan tasted the iron tang of fear at being stuck
with this changing shit happening to his body the rest of his life.

The chief laughed. Strong white teeth gleamed against his
dark, bronze skin. “Hawksky is not just pleasant-sounding syllables. It’s what
I am inside. You’ll learn.”

Hawksky’s casual gaze sharpened suddenly. “What the hell is
going on there?”

Dylan followed the direction of Hawksky’s look and started
running.

Both of them pounded across the empty tribal land,
determined to catch the men forcing Haley, his Hildy, across the parking lot.
Hawksky barked orders into the communications unit strapped on his shoulder.

Haley, his Valkyrie, wasn’t going without a fight. Reservist
Amazon of the Hellcat Battalion, Master Sergeant Haley Lundberg was fighting
them with dirty moves that impressed the hell out of Dylan. One man lay on the
parking lot tarmac clutching his balls. A second already bled from scratches
across his face.

A man in the uniform of tribal security lay in front of
parked cars, bleeding from a head wound.

Windshields shattered from bullets fired by a man in the van
to which four men were trying to drag Haley. Another tribal security officer
spun with the impact from a bullet and dropped to the ground holding her
shoulder. Tribal security officers ducked behind cars and steadied rifles,
obviously reluctant to return fire with Haley being held.

With three men struggling to contain his fighting Haley, the
fourth man hit her across the head with his gun.

Dylan’s mate drooped in the arms of three predators. Dylan
pushed his way out of his remaining clothes. He launched his jaguarondi body at
the predators who dared attack his mate.

He added his own claw marks to the face his mate had marked
and gained intense satisfaction at seeing the man clamp his hands to his
bleeding eyes.

He bit a second man in the groin. His pointed teeth easily
penetrated the man’s uniform. Dylan hoped he’d bit the predator deep enough
that the shrill soprano note he shrieked indicated he’d need penile surgery.

One man had a hawk tearing at his head and face. Dylan let
the hawk take care of that one.

His mate lay on the ground, holding her head and groaning.

Dylan attacked the predator who had struck her. When he was
done, he shifted back into human form. He wiped the blood from the bastard’s
torn throat off his mouth.