Wolf (11 page)

Mac managed a lopsided smile when she looked up at him, her expression angry.

Her pretty face was all splotchy from crying, her nose red and damp, her lips and eyes swollen and her lashes still spiked with tears.

He still felt his stomach go weightless as he met her gaze. It occurred to him abruptly, and for the first time, to wonder just how old she was, because it was the first time he’d really studied her face. He’d been too focused on the rest of her assets before.

She didn’t have any of the roundness about her face that hinted at lingering babyhood—that said ‘girl’—not that he’d thought for a moment that she was a kid. He might not have studied her, but he’d noticed right off that she was all woman, that there wasn’t a hint of girlishness about her.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her when it occurred to him that was about the worst impulse he’d ever had—guaranteed to piss her off.

He didn’t see any sense in indulging his curiosity at that cost when he didn’t particularly give a fuck how old she was.

What he wanted to know was if the rest of her tasted as good as her mouth did, if the rest of her felt as good.

Bad idea, he thought, even as he leaned toward her to close the distance and pressed his lips to hers. He felt a jolt run through her but before he could decide whether it was the same thing he felt or revulsion because she still had an image in her head of him as a monster, she coiled her arms around his head and pressed more tightly against him.

That was all she wrote! Her mouth was hot and tight around his tongue and the image instantly leapt into his mind of her pussy wrapped that tightly around his cock. He struggled with it, but it flickered through his mind that he could afford to taste a little. He hadn’t infected her … yet. As long as he kept his dick in his trousers ….

Opening one eye, he examined the lay of the land and decided it looked too rough.

Breaking the kiss, he lifted her, guiding her legs around his waist and then pulling her closer so that he could feel her hot cleft through his trousers, rubbing along his cock.

“Oh Jesus, Baby, that feels good,” he muttered thickly, feverishly, nearly mindless with the heat pulsing through him. “Just a little. I won’t do anything I shouldn’t.”

She shuddered, rocking against him in the rhythm he’d set. For a few moments, he focused on it, struggling with the urge to come, grinding her hips down on himself each time she rocked forward in an effort to burrow a little deeper into her cleft.

His heart felt like it was in his throat, choking him. His chest felt like it was caught in a vice. He sought her mouth again, hoping it would appease his need to drive himself inside of her. He almost came when she started sucking on his tongue. For a moment, he pursued it, but reluctance to end it so quickly made him back off.

Breaking from her lips again, he gnawed and sucked at the soft skin along the side of her neck and her throat, enjoying the soft sounds she made and the way she quivered at
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his touch almost as much as he enjoyed the taste of her and the texture of her skin.

His throat closed more tightly as he felt the brush of her breasts. He released his grip on her ass and cupped one in each hand, massaging them, enjoying the softness and the weight of them in his hands for a few moments before he caught her waist and brought her up high enough to suck at the hard tip of each. He wrapped his arms tightly around her when he felt her waver, felt her thighs tremble weakly.

He was so intent on sucking her nipples that he lost track of everything else until he felt her tugging at his hair.

“Please, Mac,” she said shakily, a note in her voice that made the blood pound in his temples.

His mind instantly leapt to his cock, straining painfully against his pants. He’d already reached for his zipper when a spark of sanity reared its ugly head. He hesitated and instead slid his hand over her belly. Parting the hot petals of flesh between her legs, he pushed his index finger up inside of her.

He nearly came when he felt the moist walls of her sex enfold him, clutch at his finger. He explored it, trying to find her g-spot to tickle it. She bucked against his hand when he found it, dropped her head weakly to his shoulder. “Please, Mac,” she whispered against his neck. “Don’t leave me like this.”

“Shhh! I won’t, Baby. I’ll make it good for you,” he promised, fighting another round with the nearly overpowering urge to free himself and plow into her.

He hadn’t meant to take it so far.

He should’ve known he wasn’t going to be able to pull back, that he’d want more once he started.

He supposed he had if it came to that.

He drew her down onto his lap again, silencing her pleas with his lips, driving his finger in and out of her almost feverishly in an effort to bring her off before he lost his mind. She wasn’t having it. She reached for his trousers, stroking him through the fabric, but then she was feverishly working at his zipper.

“Don’t!” he growled, breaking from her lips again.

She opened her eyes and stared at him in reproach and he felt like a fucking dog.

“I can’t, baby. You know I can’t.”

Her expression hardened. For a moment, he thought she was going to leap off of his lap. Instead, she unzipped his pants and caught hold of his cock. It was like being punched in his stomach. He thought for a moment he was going to black out.

“You started it!” she said angrily, jerking her hips to dislodge his finger and thrusting the head of his cock inside of her.

He caught her hips, but there was no fighting the beast riding him then. Instead of thrusting her away, he began straining to pull her down over his cock, panting for breath as he felt the walls of her sex squeezing him. “Jesus, Baby! Oh Jesus!” He uttered a guttural growl as he felt his cock jerk threateningly.

It was like a dam breaking. He completely lost control, lost all focus beyond driving into her until he’d pumped his seed into her. He was dimly aware that she was shaking as badly as he was, jerking, but the convulsing of her pussy around his cock didn’t leave room for thought. He grunted breathlessly with a mixture of satisfaction and something akin to pain as his balls ejected his seed in a scalding fountain, tightened and erupted again, over and over until there was nothing left to pump into her.

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He felt so weak when it finally stopped he was just relieved that it had. Holding her tightly, he pumped into her a couple more times, just to make sure he had nothing left, and finally collapsed backwards with her. He hit something on his way down that jolted him from the edge of consciousness.

Sylvie, sprawled on his chest, uttered a sound that made him open one eye.

She rubbed the side of his head. “Tree.”

He smiled blissfully, ignoring the throbbing pain. “Did I knock it down?”

She snickered again. “No, but you knocked the bark off of it.”

“It’ll live,” he said indifferently.

Releasing a deep sigh of contentment, she snuggled against his chest. For the first time it dawned on him to wonder if he’d managed to satisfy her before he’d come.

Relieved that he obviously had if she was in such a good humor, he closed his eyes to savor the blissful sense of relief that had engulfed him.

It took a while for guilt to begin nagging at him. He lifted a hand to stroke her hair apologetically. “I fucked up, Sylvie. I really fucked up.”

“You did,” she murmured. “Next time, I’ll get on the bottom and you can fuck down.”

The comment caught him off guard. He uttered a snorting laugh, wrapping his arms around her and dragging her upward along his chest to nuzzle his face against her neck. The move ‘unplugged’ her and he felt hot semen leak from her body and on to his belly. It sobered him.

At the same time, it gave him an odd thrill, knowing he’d filled her body to the brim with his seed. His cock stirred with the urge to pump more into her, but he was sated enough at the moment he couldn’t get a rise out of it.

Just as well the flesh was weak, he thought wryly. He would’ve been mightily tempted to roll over and take her up on her offer. “We need to bathe and get to camp.”

She didn’t argue, but she sighed a little regretfully before she got up and it made him feel a little better. He sat up and watched her, struggling with a mixture of guilt, regret, and the growing desire to do it all over again.

“I shouldn’t have exposed you like that,” he said finally.

Sylvie flicked a glance at him. “You think it’s in your semen but not your saliva?”

He frowned, feeling his face heat. “I didn’t mean to do that either.”

She shook her head. “I kissed you—that first time. I suppose you could’ve warned me, but I can’t think of a time that would’ve been … appropriate. You think you should’ve stormed my boat bellowing ‘Beware! I could be carrying something!’”

Mac was almost amused … almost. “God damn it, Baby! This is serious shit!

I’m trying to tell you I’m worried about you!”

Sylvie stared at him a long moment and finally approached him. Dropping to her knees in front of him, she caught his face between her palms. “And, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I think you should stop worrying about this … thing, whatever it is. I know it must be … scary. From what I understand, you got it months and months ago, though. If it was going to hurt you, make you sick or even kill you, I think it would have by now. You and the others … you’re … strong, amazing, too strong for this to be anything detrimental to your health.”

He swallowed with an effort, struggling with the sense of relief trying to take hold
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of him. “We can’t control it,” he ground out. “You saw what we became. Any time we’re threatened, even get pissed off, it takes over.”

Sylvie studied him for a long moment, thinking back. “You can control it,” she said with conviction. “You weren’t threatened when those men attacked me.”

“I was fucking pissed off, though.”

She met his gaze and leaned closer to press a light kiss to his lips. “You can control it. You’ve summoned it when you needed it—twice. I know it can’t be …

pleasant for you, trying to live with it, but people learn to live with all sorts of things that happen to them. You just need to take the time to understand it and learn how to deal with it.”

His lips tightened. “You aren’t worried I gave it to you?”

She considered it. “I haven’t really had time to think about it or worry about it.

I’ve been too busy trying to get in your pants.”

He burst out laughing. He shook his head at her when he’d mastered the laughter.

“You can get in my pants anytime you want to, baby.”

She smiled at him seductively. “Really?”

He heaved a disgusted breath. “Except right now. I’ve got to get you back to camp and try to catch supper. I’m starving.”

“In that case, I guess I might as well get dressed,” she said wryly.

Her shirt was wet—and still bloody. Her belly clenched and guilt smote her, but she reminded herself that the wound hadn’t looked as bad as she’d first thought. No doubt, they’d put together some kind of medical supplies from the boat. She knew there’d been a medical kit.

When she’d rinsed the shirt as thoroughly as she could given that it had grown so dark it was hard to see, she wrung it out and put it on. The pants were damp and filled with sand. She shook them and stepped in them.

She couldn’t quite decipher the looks the others trained on them when they finally arrived at the camp, but she strongly suspected that they had a good idea of what had happened between her and Mac.

For one thing, Mac looked so damned cheerful and relaxed he might as well have strolled into camp whistling. It pleased her enormously to have had a part in lifting the burden from his shoulders, but she wasn’t particularly happy about the hungry looks from the others or the way they looked at Mac—like they wouldn’t mind tearing his throat out.

“I don’t think food is going to drop out of the sky,” he said. “Hawk, you and Beau keep an eye on Sylvie. “Cavanaugh, come with me.”

Despite the animosity she felt radiating from them, Cavanaugh got up immediately. Beau returned his attention to filling the water bottles they’d emptied.

Hawk took the pot when he emptied it and headed back to the stream.

“How’s your shoulder?” Sylvie asked a little uncomfortably.

He shrugged and swiveled to show it to her in the firelight.

She sucked in a sharp breath of surprise when she saw it. “How?”

He made a sound that might’ve been disgust. “Doan ask me,
chère
. It jus’

happens.”

Sylvie swallowed a little convulsively when she remembered what Hawk had said. “When you’re hurt, it heals like that? Every time?”

He grunted. “So far.”

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“But it still hurts terribly, doesn’t it?”

He squirmed a little uncomfortably. “Nah. Weren’t too bad. Adrenaline, you know? You doan feel too much until it goes away. I wished I’d tore that panther’s head off, though. You ok, now?”

Sylvie felt her face heat with embarrassment. “It didn’t hurt me. It just scared the hell out of me. I was … upset because y’all were hurt protecting me.”