Hidden Trump (Bite Back 2) (12 page)

I’m no waif, but I felt insubstantial against his body. I slid my hands over his back, enjoying the feel of his strong muscles under my hands as I hugged him tightly to me. There’s nothing so precious as something you might lose. Oh God, what would he say when I started talking about cross-infusion? My head fell back and his mouth closed on mine. I’d let myself have just this one kiss, then I’d have to tell him everything.

His lips were insistent and demanding. I trembled at the depth of response he stirred in me. My legs went way wobbly, but that was fine, he didn’t seem about to let me go any time now. My hands continued discovering him, kneading his shoulders, caressing his neck. He was like a living sculpture, so damned beautiful, and the scent of wolf and lust came off his skin like a fine wine.

I had to stop now or I wouldn’t be able to. I broke the kiss.

“Wait, Alex.” My heart was racing, and it was difficult to get enough breath in my lungs to speak. “We have to talk.” My voice came out croaky. I put my hand on his chest to push him away, felt the thunder of his heart beneath my palm and all my remaining strength drained from me.

“Hmm. Yes,” he said. He kissed my neck. “Talk is good.” The way he said talk meant something else entirely.

“No, really talk—”

I squawked in alarm as he grabbed my butt and lifted. He threw me over his shoulder and walked back into the hall and up the stairs. Of course I struggled. Carefully. He might have dropped me, after all.

“Alex, no! The living room. We need—”

“Uh-huh.” He turned sharply down the corridor to the bedrooms, making me clutch at him. The sensuous, rhythmic play of his back muscles under my hands drove me crazy, lighting up fabulously erotic images behind my eyes.

“Put me down,” I yelled, and he obeyed, slinging me onto his bed. A part of my mind noted it was a very solid bed, very well made. No distracting rattles or shakes. That was a good thing, because he leaped onto the bed after me.

I glared at him. Just because I had enjoyed it didn’t mean I should let him get away with it. What kind of a girl did he think I was?

“Is this what you think—”

He kissed me again, gently this time, as his hands tugged my T-shirt from my jeans. I’d shredded his shirt, the last time we’d made love. More accurately, the last time we’d been about to make love. Was it only yesterday morning? He was more in control than I had been and my shirt survived.

We had to break the kiss to get the shirt over my head. The sports bra went with it.

I had to stop this.

“Alex—”

I gasped. His lips trailed down my neck and my traitorous body arched.

No, no, no. It wasn’t fair to him. I had to warn him.

The rest of me had other ideas. My nipples were hard beneath his kiss, almost painfully sensitive to the touch of his tongue. I reached up and sank my fingers into his silky hair, gripping it and pulling his head down against me. All my good intentions were evaporating like water in the desert.

“Oh, save me,” I breathed, my words and actions running away from each other.

To hell with fair.

All the crap I’d been through, all the stress of becoming Athanate and now Were as well, the gut-wrenching fear of losing David and Pia, the fraying of family bonds that kept me centered as a human, they’d all built into a thunderhead that burst out and scoured every hesitation right out of my head.

Our hands fumbled and hindered each other as buttons popped and zippers rasped open. His hand was down the back of my jeans, almost levering them off me, and suddenly slow, deliberate, playful. I groaned. His hand slid along the flesh of my butt, down my thigh, prolonging the contact, making it absurdly sensuous. He tossed my jeans off the bed and poised over me, fists sunk into the mattress on either side of my neck, trapping me, damn alpha wolf posturing.

I twisted, catching him by surprise and shoving him back onto the bed. I rested one hand on his chest, my fingers flexing and sinking my nails into his pecs, but not pushing him down. Dominance is not all about strength, wolf. I tore his shorts off and threw them away.

Oh my!

I placed both hands on his chest, very deliberately, slowly. We were panting, watching each other, enjoying the play.

Mine!

He surged up and grappled me onto my back, looming over me.

His body was tense as a mooring cable, tremors running through it. The look of desire in his face made my whole body sing, and an aching need pooled in my breasts and belly and spread down into my groin. I wanted to keep that look, I wanted to hold it in my hands, I wanted to be able to feel it forever.

His eyes held mine as his head lowered over my breasts. It was just a kiss. A kiss. His lips on my nipple. His flesh against mine. I gasped at the sensations. My eyes shut, all the better to feel him, as he traced a lazy path of lust down my quivering stomach.

In moments, I had no thought of anything else. He shouldered my thighs apart and I clutched him as his serpent tongue whispered wickedly against my trembling body.

I gripped his hair and pulled him back, reaching down for him.

His eyes were all wolf now. Golden, scary, wild, as I guided him inside.

I moaned as he filled me and we began to move, matching each other, rocking together in a haze of delight. I held onto him desperately, my arms and legs wrapping around his sweat-slicked body as I abandoned myself to the soaring sensations, burying my face against his neck.

His neck. The dark thrill seared through me like sheet lightning. His blood, hot with desire, was pumping through him not a finger’s width away from my mouth, my fangs.
Oh my God, no
. My sight dimmed and I howled with hunger.

But it was too late anyway. The rising tide of pleasure was like an avalanche, lifting us together and hurtling us over the edge. I arched backwards and screamed in release as my climax hammered through me and his frenzied thrusts peaked.

We shuddered to a halt like an ancient, battered locomotive run off the rails. And peace fell. Shocked, wordless, touching, kissing peace. And the knowledge that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Chapter 12

He’d rolled us around so I was lying on top of him.

I had thought for a minute there that I could make this work, like a normal relationship, boosted by the glow of satisfaction from fantastic sex. Right. I knew too little about my own nature, almost nothing of his and absolutely nothing about what had happened to my marque. This couldn’t work. Anyway, he wouldn’t want to be kin any more than Jen would. And I’d just made love to him without warning him about what had happened to me. He was going to be pissed.

I hid my face against his neck. Make believe just a little longer.

“You going shy on me, hot stuff?” His words vibrated through my chest.

“Sorry,” I muttered. So cool. “Stupid. I was going to bite you just then.”

“Yeah, and? Knock yourself out, vamp. If you get a bit carried away, I’ll let you know.” The amused tenderness in his voice made me look up. Bad idea. The wolf still lingered in his eyes, and my heart missed a beat.

“Alex…”

He caught the tone and looked puzzled.

Crap. Here goes nothing.

“You remember you said Were and Athanate don’t cross-infuse?”

“Yeah. That’s right, they don’t.”

“Turns out that’s not the case for me.”

“Eh?”

I pushed away a little. “I…my marque’s changed. Diana said I’ve picked up a bit of Were. I’m sorry, I should have said.”

“Not possible.” He frowned.

“Use your damned nose, you stupid wolf,” I snapped, angry at myself. I was the one who’d been stupid. And now irresponsible.

He did use his nose, pulling me back tightly against him and pressing his face against my neck. My heart stuttered and I pushed him away again. I didn’t trust myself.

His eyes cleared and lit up. “Oh, yes.
Damn.
You have.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered again.

His brow creased. I managed to stop myself from stroking it smooth. “What are you sorry about?” he said. “This is awesome. Weird, I’ll give you that, but fantastic.”

“Alex, think. If you’re changing my marque, what am I doing to yours?”

“Shit.”

I saw the realization hit him, and braced myself for his anger. But when it came, his response wasn’t what I thought he’d say.

“How has this gone down with Altau? What can I do to help?”

“Not well, but I’m okay for the moment, I think. That’s not the point, Alex. I’m just a side issue for Altau. You’re a full pack member. What’s the pack going to do?”

“Hold on, Amber. We don’t know that anything’s happened to my pack marque. I mean, can you tell?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ve got nothing to check it against.”

“Okay, let’s think this through. You’re new Athanate, I’ve been Were for a while. Whatever happened, it’s so unusual no one’s ever heard of it. It’d be double that for it to happen both ways.”

He was trying to convince me, but he wasn’t sure himself.

“Unless I’m the unusual thing,” I said. “You’ve got to admit, I’m already there.”

“Yeah.”

He pulled me back in again and I didn’t move to get away this time. It was strange. I’d relied on people in the army—it goes with the job, you have to. Then I’d come out and learned to rely on nobody. And suddenly, I was wanting to be able to rely on someone again, to have him on my side.

“You’re not mad at me?” I grimaced. I was sounding like a freaking fifteen-year-old.

“What? No.”

“But it would be a big deal with the pack?”

He snorted. “If you have the pack marque, you’re in, and if you don’t, you’re not. I’ve heard of people moving between packs, and your marque has to change when you do that. Being in Denver with a different marque? Yeah, that would be a problem for us.”

That little word carried such a lot of thoughts behind it, good and bad. The pack wouldn’t like me being partly Were and in their territory. Maybe the same for Alex with Altau. But ‘us’ also implied we’d face it together.

And together for me involved kin. If Alex became a little bit Athanate, would that make it easier for him to understand kin?

Suddenly uncomfortable, I slithered off him and buried my face in the pillows, trying to think how to put it all into words.

He rolled on top of me, trapping me, and started to kiss my back, working up my shoulders to my neck. All those bright, smart words spilled right out of my head.

His kisses reached my ear and my heart started doing double time. One hand made lazy patterns on my back and the other slid beneath me. I snagged it, dragged it back out.

“Stop,” I whispered, mouth and body heading off in different directions again. I kissed the inside of his wrist.

Wasted on a man,
Tara said.
Try that on Jen, she’ll love it.

“Shut up,” I whispered, but his wolfy hearing was too good.

“Talking to yourself?”

“No,” I said, fighting my way out and twisting around to face him. “That would be crazy. No, I’m talking to Tara. She lives in my head.”

He grinned and bent his head to plant a single kiss on my neck. “What did she say?”

I took a deep breath. “She says I have to tell you about kin and blood and everything,” I blurted out.

“Hmm.” He kissed the other side of my neck. “
Everything
will take a long time. This Tara is a smart girl.”

“Stop it.” I held him away from me desperately. “Look, all this ‘us’—what if this is just temporary?” He looked angry at that, but I plowed on. “New Athanate, dizzy with hormones, burning it out with a Were. Right?”

His eyes were gold again, inches from mine, and not happy.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded. It’s not you. It’s me. I’m the one with the hidden agenda.”

“And that is?”

“I’m looking for kin, Alex.”
Go on—say it. Say it.
“People to feed off.” I tried to hide my face in shame.

“You really don’t understand it yet.” He was chuckling, like a big diesel truck engine idling, lump, lump, lump. I would have hit him if I could have wriggled out from beneath him. That’s probably why he didn’t let me.

“You’ve just paid me the ultimate Athanate compliment,” he said. Lump, lump, lump.

I glared at him. “So, I’m Athanate now. What happened to ‘vamp?’”

“I only call you vamp to yank your chain.” He eased to one side, then the other, letting me get my arms out. I decided against hitting him, for the moment. It was either lie there with my arms flat, like the classroom resuscitation dummy, or put them around him. I put them around him. It felt far too good.

He went back to kissing my neck. “I don’t even know if I qualify for kin, but when an Athanate says kin, they don’t mean letting off a bit of steam, having just a physical thing.”

“Yeah, but...”

“But what?”

“It’s not like it’s exclusive, Alex. You want something one to one, don’t you? Forget about us just for a second. Just theoretically, okay, a couple of weeks ago, maybe you were thinking where’s the one girl that’s right for me. One guy, one girl. That can’t be me.”

“Why?”

“Because kin is plural,” I said, exasperated.

“Hmm,” he said, completely unsurprised. “So, who else are we talking about?”

“Jen,” I muttered. “Jennifer Kingslund.”

His chuckling paused, but his kisses didn’t, damn him. “And what does she think of being kin?” he asked between kisses. “Alongside me?”

“I can’t tell her anything till after the...till after the weekend. Mucho Athanate secrets.” I huffed. “She’ll probably walk anyway.”

“Maybe.” My head was tilted back, all the better to offer him my neck, damn him again, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “Have you and she...”

“No! I can’t even think of it until she knows what she’s getting into. Maybe even not then, until I know I can control myself and not turn her. And I could be misreading it all.”

My heart skipped another beat at the memory of Jen’s kisses on my neck, her voice whispering,
I’m good at this.
No, I hadn’t misread it at all.