Blood Mate: The Project Rebellion, Book 2 (5 page)

The growl was unexpected, the possessive gleam when his gaze swept over her even more so. Reaching out, she braced herself against the side of the truck as it lurched over a series of potholes, and thought before answering. Despite herself, she liked it. The flash of anger in his eyes and the growl. She’d never considered possessiveness an attractive feature before, or even considered herself the sort of woman to elicit a response like that. But she liked it. She shouldn’t, but she did.

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?” He growled, straining at his bonds, all the tightly corded muscles in his frame standing out in high relief. She had to give it to him. He was determined. “Maybe he was your lover? How does ‘maybe’ even work in that sentence? You either know if a guy’s got his cock in you or not. Because, believe me baby, when
I’m
balls deep in you, you’ll know about it.”

She laughed. He was loud and obnoxious, so why did she find him so amusing?

“Oh, really?” She let her gaze linger over his broad chest, trying to make the look derisive. “And just how are you going to manage that handcuffed and locked down with silver like that?”

He smiled, the expression far different from the cocky grin she was used to. This was more of a Mona Lisa type smile, as though Da Vinci had managed to reach through the fabric of space and time itself to recreate his masterpiece on a living and utterly masculine face. Enigmatic, it hinted at dark secrets within and sent heat and wariness slithering along her spine.

Chapter Four

“Oh, that’s simple.”

She froze in the utter stillness which gave a Blood away each and every time. But this time he didn’t focus on her inhumanity, the fact she was a Blood and he was a Lycan. Instead, all he saw were the large dark eyes, the sensuous curve of her lips and the soft sheen of her alabaster skin. Compared to him, she was small and delicate. So beautiful he hardly dared glance her way, but his gaze was drawn to her anyway. Like a compass needle to true north. Everything male within him demanded it. Need and desire raced through his body, aided by his wolf. The creature inside yipped and yammered, testing the edges of his control like a caged dog worrying at a fence, desperate to be freed.

He held the smile. For once, he and the animal were in perfect accord. She’d locked him down with silver, but it didn’t mean he was going to stay that way. Not with the moon still in the sky and his mate within reach. While they’d talked, he’d worked the silver from his system. The metal beneath him was wet with tainted sweat. A little puddle under his ass like he’d pissed the stuff. Opening the connection to his wolf piece by piece, he let the creature free, using the strength and rage to galvanize his human frame.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s simple’?”

He finished the grin. The movement bared his teeth, revealing the lengthened canines behind his human lips. “Easy. I’m not locked down.”

His words fell into stunned silence. Her eyes widened, her slight intake of breath a soft rasp in the air. Their gazes locked and tension spiraled as each waited for the other to move.

He saw it the moment she made her decision. A red sheen tainted the darkness of her eyes, flowing over the surface like oil over water. Man, that was some freaky shit.

A bellow escaped his lips. He yanked on the cuffs. The silver-laced steel bit deep, slicing through his skin like an acid-dipped razor but he ignored the pain. Couldn’t afford to let it slow him down.

Using momentum to snap the chain, he threw himself across the space between them and reached for her. His arms opened wide to wrap her up in a solid tackle but, like him, she was already moving. With a grunt of surprise and anger, she twisted to the side, then rebounded off the metal interior to come right at him.

They met in the middle in a clash of bodies and tumbled, rolling across the truck-bed in a tangle of limbs. She fought like a wildcat. His vision filled with flying strands of dark hair and the flash of her teeth as she snarled. He winced, blocking like a demon while heavy blows rained down on his head and shoulders. Pain flared all over his body but he ignored it and fought through. Forced to protect his sides, his abdomen and his face, he ducked and turned, weaving before he went on the offensive, trying to trap her arms and pin her down.
 

The fight was close and fast as fuck. Despite her aggression and the sheer power behind her blows, he was tougher and bigger. A long, painful minute later he had her stretched out under him with her hands above her head. Still she fought, snapping at his face and neck with fangs that didn’t look nearly so cute when they were threatening to take chunks out of him.

“Shhh…calm down.”

He held on for grim death, throwing a heavy thigh over both of hers when she contorted and tried to knee him in the balls. Sometimes being the opposite sex in a down and dirty fight had its disadvantages, especially when you were the gender with the dangly bits. He was lucky she didn’t have those sharp little fangs anywhere near his crotch. That was one blow-job he could well do without.

“Fuck you.”
 

She struggled against his hold again. She didn’t…couldn’t break free, not with the firm grip he had on her, but each heave she gave pressed them closer together. The truck aided him, rattling over potholes and jerking them about until she was jammed in the right angle between the floor and the wall. Every inch of her slender but curvy frame pressed tight against him and his cock roared to life, pushing against the front of his pants, desperate for release.

“Believe me, doll. I’d love you to.”

She froze again, her eyes widening as her struggles rubbed their lower bodies together and she clocked the raging erection hard against her stomach. His gaze caught hers, heat flowing between them. She dragged a shaky breath in over parted lips. His attention riveted on the pink temptation scant inches from him and he lowered his head, watching her every step of the way. Waiting for her to turn into a spitting cat again.

She didn’t.

Instead, she watched him as if transfixed, her taut body strangely pliant under his, the soft curves and hollows fitting naturally against the hard musculature of his larger frame. A perfect fit. Like she’d been made to be held in his arms. A sense of familiarity, of coming home, assaulted him and he knew he’d give up everything for a few moments in her embrace.

Her pink tongue darted out, wet her lips in unconscious invitation. He groaned. There was only so much temptation a man could take. He’d wanted to be soft, gentle…prove to her he wasn’t an animal, but need rode him hard. Like a devil on his back, it scoured all softness from him until only lust was left. The driving need to taste her, devour her, consumed him and he swooped down, claiming her lips in a hard kiss almost bruising in its intensity.

Unlike earlier, he didn’t—couldn’t—wait for her to soften.

Instead, he demanded and took, parting her lips with a hard sweep to sample the treasures within. Her taste exploded on his tongue, a heavenly combination of tart and sweet, fascinating his senses and totally indescribable. She tasted sublime. Ambrosia. If he died right now, he’d go having tasted a little piece of heaven itself.

The truck rattled again, rolling him so he completed the movement. Pulling
 
her into his side, he held both her wrists with one hand and used the other to sweep down the length of her body. She started, a jump of surprise when he cupped her ass and palmed the luscious curve before pulling her leg up over his thigh. He settled against her. His hips cradled in hers, he moved in to deepen the kiss.

She didn’t fight him, just held her body still under his as he stroked his tongue along hers. Enticing her. Teasing her. She moaned, the sexy little sound lost under his lips. He ravaged her mouth, taking and demanding, then giving back in equal measure when she responded. Slowly at first, just the tentative sweep of her tongue, her body rigid as though she fought temptation…then the dam broke. She whimpered against his lips, the sound of her surrender sweet music to his ears, and kissed him back.

Triumph roared through him. All the while his mind screamed at him about operational awareness. That now he had her subdued, he should be doing something about escaping. Wrap the chains around her wrists and imprison her against the cold, hard steel of the truck-side instead. Not kiss her like his life depended on it. Certainly not groan as her tongue slid against his, and roll so she rested on his chest.

Her hands drove into his hair, tugging and pulling at the long locks as she plastered herself over him. Her breasts mashed against him, the soft mounds delicious pressure against the hard muscles of his broad chest. Her nipples were hard bullets under the damp fabric of her T-shirt and his groan joined hers as she rubbed herself, cat-like, over his chest.

Heat arched, little lightning strikes every time her skin slid over his, a storm playing out over and between them. A storm of passion he wanted to wallow in, dancing and fucking in the rain to make the woman under him his at last.

Knees on either side of his hips, she ground down, rocking against the rigid length of his erection and nipping his lower lip. Arousal shot through him at the pleasure-pain, washing over his scalp in a thousand tiny pinpricks before rolling through his body to lodge behind his balls and cock. A hot, rolling ball of lust, the thick rod ached to be free, to sink into the sweet cunt just a few layers of clothes away.

“Tease.”

He broke from the kiss to accuse, then dragged his lips along the sensitive curve of her neck, pausing halfway to breathe in her scent. Arms wrapped around her slender waist, he closed his eyes and held her to him.

Perfection. Utter perfection.

“
I’m
the tease?” She challenged, hands in his hair to drag his head back so she could look in his eyes. The red in hers was gone, replaced by a new darkness that set his blood and body aflame. He surged into movement, sitting up with her in his lap and reached for her lips again. She was his. He had to have her—

The truck braked and turned, the mechanical sounds of a gate and conversation reaching them. Darce stiffened, fingers biting into her hips but once again she was too quick for him. The needle pierced his shoulder before he could push her away. Silver flooded his veins, the fresh hit stealing his ability to move. With a grunt he slid back, his eyes still on her.

“I’m sorry. I have to take you in.”

“You know, when Capt’n Jack said ‘supplies’ he wasn’t talking about donuts, right? He meant real food,” Nic demanded, her voice sharp and biting as she crouched beside him behind the mountain town’s single store.

Joe Sanders, formerly Private First Class and now a fully paid up member of Alpha Three Lycan unit, shrugged, zipped his duffle and slung it crosswise over his body. They were both dressed sparsely in sleeveless vests and combat pants with bare feet, but neither of them noticed the chill of the receding night. Their altered bodies ran too hot for such things to be important.

“He said essential supplies. Donuts and coffee
are
essential supplies. Let’s see what you got,” he replied quietly, nodding his head toward the matching duffle she carried and crowded a little closer to peer into the bag in the pre-dawn light.

They’d been tasked to scout the local area and secure some supplies while the rest of the pack was either on patrol or out on reconnaissance. He and Nic, the smallest and fastest of the pack when on all fours, had been sent to the farthest location—a little town nestled high in the pass between the mountains. An hour’s hard run had gotten them there, the exercise welcome after their recent incarceration. Now they were crouched behind the only store in town, checking over their haul.

Sanders rolled his shoulders. Nothing like a little exercise after getting out of lockdown. He hated being in a cage. Either a real cage, bars around him or the cage of his own body when his abilities were shackled with silver—the Project MO when dealing with Lycans. Unlike the Captain, or even the pack second in command, Lieutenant Foster, Sanders couldn’t force the drugs out of his system on his own. He needed the help of an alpha’s touch. Something which bothered him less than it did the female wolf at his side.

Accepting help from another—anyone at all—pissed Nic off no end. Which was no different from normal. Some days Nic could fall out with her own fingertips. After what they’d been through, Sanders didn’t blame her. They were all dealing with what had been done to them in their own way.

He nodded in approval at the contents of her bag. She’d snagged a shed-load of meal replacement bars and protein shakes. All lightweight, the small packets provided the best bang for the buck, or in this case, the most nutritional value per packet for their weight. And they needed it—all the wolves burned through calories like wildfire, their metabolisms wicked fast since they’d all been turned.

“Cool beans. Did’ya get strawberry…I call dibs,” he declared, rooting around in the bag. Unlike some of the others, he didn’t mind the protein shakes, but he couldn’t stand the banana ones. They made him want to hurl. Strawberry though…that was an entirely different matter. He rifled through the packets, looking for any with a pink stripe.

Nic chuckled. “Of course I got you strawberry. You think I’d forget something like that?”

He flicked her a grin before pulling his hand out of the bag. The packets slithered over each other and something else caught the corner of his eye. Frowning, he looked back. It looked almost like…lace?