Bite the Bullet

by L. A. Banks

  But as he watched Sasha go into her room and kick the door closed, he had to remember to breathe.

  The slam reverberated through him as he brought the last of the weapons into his room. It was symbolic. He set them down on the dresser and stared at the door that adjoined their rooms. Even though he told himself to leave it latched, he still found himself crossing the small space that hosted two twin-sized beds. He lied to himself that he was just going to ask her if she was ready to grab a bite to eat. It was just as possible to walk out the front door, walk a few feet, and knock on her room door and wait for her to answer.

  Instead, he was standing at the partition door, flipping back the latch, trying to come up with fifty plausible reasons why that was so. Then he really held his breath, because the secondary door on her side was already wide open. She’d opened her side?

  He couldn’t move for a moment as he saw her standing in the middle of the floor hugging herself, trying to steady her breaths with her eyes closed. Just seeing her like that paralyzed him; then her incredible she-scent dragged him across the inside threshold between the rooms.

  Sasha held up one shaky hand, her voice wavering as she squeezed her eyes shut tighter. “Don’t.” She placed a hand over her heart. “I shouldn’t have opened the door, Hunter, I’m dangerous.”

  He tilted his head, not completely sure of her meaning but very sure of his own. “So am I.”

  She let out a breath that was a cross between a gasp and a sigh. The sound of her voice contracted his groin and made him begin to breathe through his mouth.

  “Hunter,” she said in a low, quiet tone, so sensual that he stepped closer out of sheer reflex. She opened her big, beautiful eyes and her gaze searched his face in the darkened room. “It’s not you or that I don’t want you. I’m so horny right now that I can’t think straight . . . but we can’t risk being attacked while in the throes, or worse, risk me getting the contagion here in a civilian installation. It’s bad enough that we have all this artillery in here. But the later it gets, the worse it gets.” Tears suddenly rose and glittered in her eyes as her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “I never knew that it could be so bad that it actually hurt.”

  With that she closed her eyes and hugged herself tighter and put distance between them by walking across the room to stare out the window at the moon.

  “Baby . . . I’m right there with you.” Pain was making him stupid.

  He had only processed selected segments of what she’d said: the first and last two sentences. Hell yeah, it could get that bad. Agony was his middle name right now. Need had morphed into acute ache that transformed into heavy, loaded, hard-pant pain. After that his brain had shut down, even though she’d also made sense about the civilians and the virus. Notwithstanding what logic dictated, it felt like all the blood in his skull had fled there to reside in a pounding erection.

  Watching her battle herself in the darkness, with a silver-blue swath of moonlight draping her, almost made him howl out loud. Gooseflesh had risen on her forearms and had made her nipples harden beneath her thermal shirt. Every shaky inhale made her breasts lift, and the slow sweep of her hands up and down her waist made him so jealous of them that he had to briefly look away.

  Common sense told him to get them out of the room. They couldn’t just keep standing there, silent, breathing heavy, about to pin each other to the nearest surface within the next blink. Maybe if they went to get something to eat, got away from the privacy of a space with a bed . . . but the only thing he was ravenous for at the moment was standing by the window bathed in moonlight.

  He wanted to touch her so badly he almost moaned. Just to feel her velvety hair slipping through his fingers, or her creamy, café au lait skin against his palms. Her lush mouth was a study in absolute perfection; just thinking about tangling his tongue with hers parted his lips. Remembering her satiny, graceful hands sliding across his hard surfaces clenched his stomach. Agony? This was agony—standing only a few feet away from her, watching her practically writhing in pain, but unable to draw her into an embrace because his kiss might be lethal, could carry a dreaded germ.

  A gentle caress sent a hard shudder through him. Her Shadow had reached out and touched his in the darkness. The sensation was so intense that he put one hand against the wall to hold himself upright and dropped his head forward, spilling his hair over his shoulders and face. If she didn’t stop, she was going to call out his wolf. If they were ever going to leave the room and meet up with his grandfather to eat, her Shadow had to back off, had to stop playing in his hair . . . oh, damn, had to stop running up his back and sliding down his chest . . . if she went any lower . . . all bets were off.

  Though neither of them moved, his Shadow pulled hers into a hard embrace. She released a deep, ardent moan that nearly buckled his body. His mind dissolved on a single thought: If she wanted it half as much as he did, she’d be weeping by now. Sasha turned and looked at him without blinking, tears streaming down her face.

  “Oh, shit . . .” he whispered, and started toward her, practically panting.

  She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head no. He understood; it just wasn’t safe. He stopped in his tracks and placed his hands on top of his head for a moment to keep from touching her.

  “Then just let me Shadow dance with you,” he said in a tight voice, not believing he’d gotten to the place of nearly begging. Hell, who was he fooling, he was begging. “In the lobby . . . I can get condoms—I know it’s not the way of the wolf, but we’re not going to make it through the night.”

  Compelled, he crossed the small space that separated them and cradled her cheek; she turned into the caress and kissed his palm deeply as she released a soft moan. Unable to resist, he pulled her into a tight embrace, her body burning against his. Her mouth rained hot kisses on his neck and shoulder, her pelvis mating his as his hands traversed her back.

  “I want to kiss you so badly,” she gasped against his neck. “My body’s on fire.”

  He held the sides of her head for a moment, his fingers thrust deeply into her lush thicket of dark hair, and stared into her eyes. He bit his lip to not take her mouth and plunder it, but the agony shimmering in her eyes made that so hard not to do. Rather than risk infecting her he kissed her forehead slowly, then drew her chin into his mouth and found the cleft in her throat until she cried out while grasping his shoulders.

  “Sasha . . . baby, I want to kiss your mouth so much, too. . . . I never fully understood what just that one thing did to me until I couldn’t do it.”

  Burning up, he briefly released his hold on her but never released her pained gaze, then ripped his shirt over his head. He needed to feel her skin, even if they couldn’t swap spit, couldn’t kiss—it didn’t matter. As long as her hands stroked his bare chest and shoulders and back he might be able to catch his breath. But as her fingertips played across his torso and her mouth French kissed his nipples, his breathing and heart went into mild arrhythmia. Suckles against his abdomen pulled a trapped moan up and out of his chest. The sensation made him pump slowly against air; her tongue promised so much just before she stood to strip her shirt off over her head.

  For a second he briefly closed his eyes and turned his head as though she’d slapped him. Her pendulous breasts bounced free and the erotic sight was pure sensory overload. He opened his pants to release some of the pressure and then found her hips, pulling her closer. Fabric voiced its complaint in audible friction. Kisses that her mouth denied he lavished on her breasts. Her gasping moan encouraged him to make each sweep of his lips deeper, wetter, longer until her fingers tangled in his hair and she was practically climbing up his body.

  Losing his mind, he dropped his kisses in a wild smattering against her rib cage, her waist, her belly, and forgetting, he unzipped her pants—only her fist in his hair reminded him to stop.

  He looked up, breathing hard. The wince on her face made him stand and kiss her temple. “I’m sorry . . . got carried away, won’t happen again.” />
  She didn’t answer; her flat palm against his back slowly became a fist. Damn . . . he knew exactly where she was at. Knowing made him nuzzle her temple hard, find the side of her neck to spill kisses down it as his hands slid down the front of her pants.

  The sound she released was such a low, subsonic moan that it sent a stabbing throb along his shaft with a rush of leaking seed. He needed to kiss her so badly, be inside her so badly, yet all he could do was torture her bud, torture himself, his fingers sliding against her slippery glaze while wishing so badly that they were him.

  Soon erratic, frustrated thrusts tried to capture his fingers inside her, but he couldn’t risk scratching her where they might not even know that she’d been nicked. He petted her hair and held the nape of her neck while caressing the swollen part of her that demanded what she couldn’t have. She kept her hands in tight fists at his back, but he could almost feel her fighting not to rake him. When her jaw filled, he pulled back to stare at her eyes that had gone wolf, and when she threw her head back and gasped, she’d lost the battle to her canines.

  Frenzy was in her eyes as she slid his hand out of her pants and shimmied them down, then unlaced her boots and shucked everything off. “It’s not working,” she said, gasping out the words. “I need more than that while in heat.”

  Even though he wanted her beyond all comprehension, and knew from all he’d ever heard in the clan that this was what made rival males battle to the death, how could he call himself a man—her mate—if he’d risk her to becoming something his entire species abhorred? No matter what his grandfather had said, Silver Hawk didn’t really know for sure. Sasha’s life deserved more than playing a hunch.

  “Sasha . . . baby . . .” he murmured as she slowly stalked him. “We can’t . . . not like this—you were right.”

  “Forget what I said earlier—I’ll take my chances,” she said in a low, sexy growl, beginning to circle him.

  “You’ll draw blood like this,” he said, his voice bottoming out as he backed up, shaft throbbing. “I can’t even mount you with a condom.”

  “Why not?” she whispered, holding her breasts and then dropped her head back. “Oh, God, Hunter, why not?”

  He stood transfixed for a moment, trying to remember human language, trying to remember why not, canines filling his mouth, pants slung down low on his hips, balls aching, desire like a silver bullet lodged in his temple. “Because . . . like this . . . I’ll draw blood.”

  She shuddered hard and looked at him, panting. “Then draw it.”

  It was perhaps the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life, but he stepped into a Shadow to avoid her touch. She released a fury wail then sat down hard on the bed and wept softly with her arms wrapped around her body; he found the closest wall to silently bang his head against. There wasn’t enough air in the room to fill his lungs. He needed to cum so badly he was hyperventilating. Six hours till sunrise; he’d never make it not touching her. Not when she’d dropped back on the bed and thrust her hand between her legs, then rolled over on her belly moaning with frustration. There was antitoxin in the truck, condoms in the lobby . . . Great Spirit, give him strength, please know his heart, he loved her but was also flawed and male.

  The sensible thing to do would have been to quietly slip into his own room, close the door between their rooms, relieve the tension that was driving him insane by hand, and try to go to sleep. But he was so far from sensible at the moment; he was trapped by his own need.

  Just watching her damp behind lifted up off the bed in a deep, inviting sway and undulating in the moonlight . . . listening to the slick, steady sound that he so badly wanted to be, hearing her breaths get tangled up with his murmured name—it was enough to drag him out of the Shadows. How could everything male in him not respond to witnessing the incredibly sensual combination of her hand clutching a breast, thumbing a taut cinnamon-hued nipple, while the other drove two fingers deep to a pounding rhythm?

  “Hunter . . . Shadow dance with me . . . anything . . .”

  The anguished request made his Shadow practically tackle hers. The wail she released doubled him over with need. She turned to stare at him over her shoulder, luminous eyes capturing moonlight, then she pushed off the bed on all fours in a power lunge that sprawled him on the floor. Try as he might to avoid her mouth, he couldn’t. She swallowed his moan with a forceful kiss and anchored his skull between her palms. Reflex put his hands in her hair, sent his tongue in search of hers, and the sensation of her hot body blanketing him arched his back, exploding his lungs with her name.

  It was too late to worry about drawing blood, swapping spit, or making any other hazardous contact. He slid into her with such heat-slicked force that tears were welling in his eyes. Her gasp cut the night as she fisted his hair and rode him hard. Choking out her name every hard thrust she drove against him, lifted him up off the floor in return, his palms halving her backside in a grip that threatened to split her.

  The convulsion that hit him felt like a blade had been jabbed into his sac to send a current of white-hot lightning up his shaft, twitching his sphincter. Her name was embedded in the holler that morphed into a howl. It hurt so good he was pulling up carpet nap with each wail, charley horses formed in his hamstrings, his abs quick flexing, his spine snap-jerking—hell yes, he understood now what the old man had told him!

  Tears wet his cheeks as she collapsed against him, shuddering. He dropped back with a thud and hit the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” she panted and hid her face against his neck. “Oh, God, I’m so embarrassed.”

  He shook his head, too winded to immediately speak, and petted her smooth, damp back. “Don’t be.”

  “I’ve never . . . in front of . . . oh my God.”

  The erotic image clawed its way to the forefront of his mind and sizzled. It was moonlight and madness and he was all the way gone. The more it burned, the more it made him hunt for her mouth, and the more it made his hands touch her skin. Breathless as renewed heat entered his body, he turned her over, crouching above her on all fours. He took her mouth hard and then appraised the length of her beneath him, releasing deep, long exhales and inhales, a love-slicked erection bouncing to his breaths, and then he finally trapped her gaze within his.

  “Turn over,” he murmured in a half growl, “and do it again.”

  He sat in the diner with a knowing smile, sipping his coffee and waiting on another steak. The moon was most beautiful when she was full and elegant. Maybe, if the Great Spirit was merciful and the pack lands bountiful . . . maybe he’d even live long enough to see great-grandchildren.

  “Yo, Woodsey, not complaining or anything, but this place sure looks real different at night.”

  “You’re telling me? The daytime version was bad enough stuck in my mind,” Woods said, glancing around through the rental car windows. “But the nighttime version gives me the creeps.”

  “Sure hope that’s why the hair is standing up on the back of my neck,” Fisher said quietly.

  “This location is an ambush ready to happen,” Woods muttered, taking the safety off his weapon as he pulled into the driveway, his eyes roving the unkempt bushes.

  “Trudeau can sure pick ’em.” Fisher checked his clip.

  Woods and Fisher stared at each other for a moment.

  “So what do we do now, dude? Walk up the steps and just ring the bell?”

  Woods ground his teeth, making his jaw pulse. “Yeah, I guess—that and pray whatever’s in the fucking house doesn’t come out snarling or shooting.”

  Chapter 13

  Being knowledgeable didn’t help. Being a highly trained soldier didn’t help. Being an alpha she-Shadow didn’t help. Sasha simply stared at the ceiling listening to Hunter snore. This biological condition would happen once a quarter during a full moon, and she now knew it to be a hard fact. It would last three unrelenting days and nights, just like she’d been warned. The second night, the peak phase—a code name for the most intense night—would and ha
d undoubtedly been the worst. She could therefore look forward to this humiliating reality effectively stealing twelve days a year from her life.

  Knowing all of this didn’t help. Nor would it keep her from going completely out of her mind in the future like she just had. That was the scary part. Being so out of control. She hated being held hostage to some gender-based biophenomena that felt like a biological defect.

  There was still so much she had to learn about the Shadow life. In fact, one day she really wanted to know who Doc had gotten the sample from—which Shadow Wolf in the pack or the clan had supplied the donor cells to fuse with her mother’s ova to give her the spark of life. She’d been so blown away by the whole concept that the details had escaped her, but the more she thought about it, the more questions battered their way to the forefront of her mind. Lying here next to Hunter made her want to know all now. There was a genetic link to her within the clan, but then that would also mean a familial link, too. What was that old saying, one of Xavier Holland’s many adages . . . if it didn’t kill you it would make you stronger?

  Stronger, hell! Sasha blew a damp curl up off her forehead in exasperation. If she could live exclusively in a Shadow pack or clan, then there’d be no problem. But she had to make moonlight madness and quarterly heats work in the context of the U.S. Military. Oh yeah, this would go over big in a Black Ops Comm. Not!

  Hunter stirred and she tensed, not trusting herself. Soon his lazy strokes up and down her back made her wary. Truly, his touch should have been comforting, a steady, easy rhythm that asked for nothing more than a lover’s connection through an absently delivered caress. For chrissakes, the man was still asleep and his hand trailing up and down her back was practically a blind reflex. However, reverse logic was in full effect.