Marcus hadn’t talked to her much as they drove back, but she kept thinking…he came looking for me.
Why? He had to care, at least a little bit.
She’d been too rattled from the assault to try to talk about it, or anything else. For once she hadn’t felt like teasing Marcus or trying to draw him out or gossiping about her day.
When they’d got back to the Silver Peak property, she’d found out that a big, fancy tent had been erected on Marcus’ property so they’d have somewhere to sleep, and everyone had crowded around her and hugged her and threatened to kill Beacham, until she’d burst into tears of stress and relief and gratitude, and Marcus had growled and chased them all off.
She’d fallen asleep almost immediately afterwards.
But now she was awake, and looking down at the handsome, sleeping behemoth who’d vowed to protect her no matter what the consequences.
She blinked in the dark and looked around the tent. It was very homey. There were wooden pallets arranged to make a floor for them, and a big blue rug spread out across the pallets. Marcus had a hand carved nightstand set up next to a futon bed. He’d hung up a string of twinkling crystal lights inside.
Marcus began moving in his sleep. He groaned. He thrashed on the bed.
“Marcus. You’re okay,” Eileen said quietly.
“Don’t touch him!” Marcus shouted. “Take me! Leave him alone! He’s weak, he’s nothing. I’m the one you want!”
Then he sat bolt upright, panting, staring straight ahead at something that only he could see.
“Marcus. Baby. You’re safe. I’m here,” Eileen said in low, soothing tones. She reached out and stroked his arm, fingers trailing over his bulging biceps.
His eyes focused and lit on Eileen.
“Did I hurt you?” he demanded.
“Of course not,” she said, keeping her voice calm and steady.
He was breathing hard.
“I’ll go sleep outside.” He swung his legs off the side of the bed.
She felt a clutch of panic squeezing her chest and reached for him, grabbing his arm. “Don’t do that. Don’t leave me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and she was afraid he’d go. But then he lay back down next to her and wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed in to his naked body. She could feel his erection pressing against the small of her back, and a slow, warm tide of arousal washed through her body.
“I don’t want to. I never want to leave you,” he said, his voice hoarse with sorrow. “I want to wrap myself around you and breathe you. I want to look at you all the time. That’s why I’m always running away from you. Because the longer I’m around you, the harder it will be when you finally go.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and she slid her hand over his and squeezed it.
“When you go…I’m afraid that’s what will break me,” he said finally.
She felt her heartbeat quicken. “Maybe I don’t have to go when the month is up. I thought that was what you wanted. But if you wanted me to stay…”
He squeezed her hand in return. “I want you to stay more than I want air. Or hamburgers,” he added. “And you know how much I love hamburgers.” She blinked back tears at that, she was so touched. If anyone else said it, it would sound ridiculous, but this was Marcus. Honest to a fault and always spoke his mind.
“Yes. I do know,” she said.
“But I don’t know what’s happening to me, and I can’t promise anything at all. I might go feral, Eileen. No, you have to know that about me,” he said as she stiffened and drew in a breath of protest. “Pretending it can’t happen won’t make it go away.”
“What’s giving you these nightmares?” she asked desperately. Her hand tightened on his, as if she could keep him from slipping away from her.
His voice went dull and rough again. “I can’t talk about it.”
“Maybe you should,” she said. “You keep everything bottled up inside you, but that isn’t working for you. Let it out. I swear that nothing you say could change the way I feel about you.”
He heaved an enormous sigh that travelled down the length of his body. There was a long, long moment of silence and then he spoke, his voice heavy with sorrow. “Ten years ago, I was kidnapped while I was hitch-hiking and forced to be part of an illegal fighting ring. They held me for two years. I nearly lost my mind. I finally escaped, but not really. Not all of me. For a long time I could barely stand to be around anyone; talking to people felt like being stabbed with hot needles. But not you,” he added hastily. “I never felt that way around you.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Eileen blinked back tears and thought about how much she’d like to murder whoever had hurt Marcus, that big, gruff giant of a man who couldn’t see how good he really was.
With a jolt of horror, she remembered what he was talking about. Eight years ago, she’d been in boarding school and she had heard something about a huge scandal involving an illegal fighting ring in which shifters had been drugged, kidnapped and forced to fight to the death. Among those arrested had been Senator Coulson, formerly a pillar of shifter society, a billionaire shipping magnate named Nikolas Constaninopolis, and other names who regularly graced the society pages.
She swallowed her tears and listened quietly as Marcus spoke.
“There was a man… He helped me hold on to my sanity, and then he died because I couldn’t help him,” Marcus said. “And there were a couple of people who survived the whole ordeal with me, but they weren’t able to function anymore after they got out. I send money to their families.”
He paused. “Odds are good I’m going to lose my job. Then I wouldn’t be able to help them anymore. Or...take care of you.”
Eileen shrugged. “We have a roof over our heads. No thanks to me, of course. But you’ll find another job. And I’m going to find work if I have to sweep floors. No, don’t argue with me. We wouldn’t be the first family that went through tough times.”
“Family?” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.
She meant it, she realized. She would stand by him no matter what.
“Family,” she repeated firmly. “Besides, do you even like your job? It doesn’t seem to be where your interest lies. You spend all your spare time making those wonderful, beautiful carvings.”
“And then I break most of them, because, you know. Crazy.”
“Well, don’t break them,” she said reasonably. “Sell them. They’re stunning. You could make a living off them. There, problem solved. Everything will be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“Eileen.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “There’s nothing I want more than for us to stay together, but you deserve better than a broken down, raging…” He drew a shaky breath.
“I thought I was getting better. Not getting better to the point where I could be with people all the time, but…it didn’t hurt me as much to be around them. And then...just a few weeks ago, it started getting bad again. Nightmares every night. This rage just fills me up sometimes, comes out of nowhere. And I see the people who died, as if they were right in front of me.”
A few weeks… For some reason, that meant something, but she couldn’t think why at the moment. There had to be a reason that his nightmares had returned. What was doing this to him?
“Is it possible that you’ve seen or heard something that triggered those memories?” she asked. “Someone from your past?”
“I thought about that too, but…me and a couple of other prisoners killed the people who were holding us. The people who did this to us…they were all arrested and jailed for life. I know who the survivors were, and I haven’t seen any of them.”
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”
He moved, sliding half on top of her and staring down into her face. “Eileen, I would lay down my life for you. But I can’t promise you anything right now. I’m trying to hold on, but I’m falling over the edge. It’s just...” He reached down to stro
ke her face.
“It’s just that when I’m with you, it’s different. The darkness…it fades a little bit. But as soon as I’m away from you, it comes back.”
He needed her. He really did need her. She actually meant something to somebody – to her mate. Just by being her.
She’d never leave this man’s side, she realized.
“Okay,” she said. “You don’t have to promise me anything, but I’m promising you. I’m not leaving. I don’t care if you’re broke, I don’t care if you’re crazy. We’ll take it day by day.”
He moved a little, and she felt his hardness and smelled the musk of his arousal. He let out a low groan. “Dear God. Eileen. I want you so much right now it hurts.”
“Then take me. Stupid,” she added. “Since when are you so damned chatty? Less talk, more action.”
His eyes gleamed at that, and she grinned up at him. Giving him a hard time was the best way to break him out of his moods, she was learning.
Laughing – a low, musical, joyful sound she never would have thought she’d hear from him – he pounced, wrapping her up in his arms. They rolled and tumbled, wrestling playfully, until Marcus pinned her to the bed, his hips between her spread thighs, his large, capable hands trapping her wrists above her head.
He grinned down at her, eyes sparkling, but then his expression became more serious. For a moment her heart sank, but then she realized his eyes didn’t hold their usual shadow and his face wasn’t closed off. He was looking not inside himself at some painful and inescapable past, but at her.
What was more, he didn’t see Eileen Pennyroyal, spoiled socialite and scion of one of New York’s most elite families. He didn’t see deportment classes and finishing schools and elocution lessons and a Fifth Avenue wardrobe. He saw past the glossy, high-society veneer to the person she was inside.
Just as she saw past his gruffness, his antisocial boorishness, to the sweet, gentle man who was so terrified of hurting others that he continually tortured himself instead.
Then his mouth descended on hers.
She was surrounded by his scent, intoxicated by his big, sleep-warm body over hers. His mouth was hot and fierce on hers, and he nipped at her lower lip with sharp, white teeth, urging her to open to him. He devoured her greedily, his tongue dancing against hers, and she moaned into his mouth, urging him on.
He wriggled down her body, planting kisses on her throat, her collarbone, and she squeaked with surprise when he tweaked her nipple with his teeth, then moaned when he soothed the furling bud with the flat of his tongue. He suckled, sending silvery threads of sensation playing over her skin, and she parted her thighs further, moaning with need.
Marcus worked his big hand between her splayed thighs, testing the wetness there, and those clever fingers found the sensitive bud of her clit, making her gasp and jerk. As he kissed and sucked her breasts, he circled her clit with his fingertip in a smooth, confident motion that built her excitement to a thrumming need. She stroked the scarred muscles of his back, gasping for breath, her heart thundering. When he worked his finger into her sopping-wet slit she rolled her hips against his hand, silently pleading for more. He groaned against her sweat-damp skin with possessive satisfaction.
She put her hands on his broad, muscular shoulders as he worked his way further down her body, dipping his tongue into her navel and grazing her hipbone with his teeth. He parted her legs with his palms and lapped at her inner thighs, tasting her sticky juices, and she writhed and clutched at his head when he flicked his tongue over her engorged clit.
He kissed her pussy as he’d kissed her mouth, playing his lips over the slick folds and darting inside with his tongue, sending her spiraling out of control until she was coming hard against his mouth, holding his head between her thighs with trembling hands and giving hoarse, helpless cries of passion as she spasmed with pleasure, over and over again.
He moved up over her again, taking her mouth, and she tasted her own excitement on his tongue. She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his hot, rigid shaft and he growled in response, his length twitching against her palm. The way he reacted to her touch was like a drug.
She moved her hand back and forth, squeezing gently as she got to the head and feeling the stickiness of precum against her skin. Then she worked her way back towards the base of his cock before allowing her fingers to tangle in the crisp curls of his pubic hair and rolling his balls gently in her hand until they tightened in her palm and he muttered a curt, desperate plea for her to stop before he lost control.
They were both panting with desire as he gently disengaged her touch and took his shaft in his hand, positioning himself against her needy entrance and pushing inside her slippery pussy with a single smooth stroke.
Eileen cried out and arched towards him as he began to move inside her. He set a fierce, insistent pace that made every nerve ending sing out in response. As he thrust, he kissed her as if he wanted to eat her alive, groaning into her mouth, sometimes pulling away to mutter incoherent words of need and desire.
He hitched her knee higher, over his hip, straining even deeper inside her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, opening herself to him.
With each pistoning movement he rolled his hips and she rocked her pelvis up to meet him crying out as she came and almost sobbing as at once the pressure began to build again. Marcus pounded into her with animalistic abandon, losing himself in her body, allowing himself to lose his hard-won control with her…for her.
As something exploded deep inside her, she dug her fingernails into the flexing muscles of his back and cried out, every muscle locked and shuddering in a soul-blistering orgasm.
The spams of her bliss sent Marcus over the edge and he threw back his head and howled, pumping into her until he was spent and Eileen was weak and trembling with the aftershocks of bliss.
Chapter Seventeen
Marcus shifted fitfully in his sleep, limbs tangled in the covers. He heard himself groan. He half-knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t force himself to wake up. He never could. He’d been trapped then, when bored millionaires had taken bets on whether he’d leave the ring a victor or be torn to pieces and lie bleeding to death in the ring while they counted their winnings or cursed their losses. And he was trapped now, as night after night his hellish ordeal replayed itself behind his closed eyelids.
Tonight he was back there, in the ring, on the last night of Matthew’s life. He’d known it was coming, had known he’d be the one chosen to fight the big shifter. But that didn’t lessen the twisting pain he felt in his heart as he stumbled into the ring, pushed from behind, and saw his friend standing there. That was why they’d done it, of course. Because they knew it would hurt him.
Matthew stood slumped at the far side of the ring, his eyes glassy and focused on nothing. His expression was entirely blank – he had long since retreated inside himself, tucking his mind away somewhere far from the pain and indignity visited on his body. He didn’t look afraid – he didn’t look as if he was there at all. Marcus wondered whether he knew he was going to die. He wondered whether that thought even had any meaning for him anymore. He might as well be dead already.
He felt a slight, grim sense of satisfaction that their captors would be cheated of the vicious combat they had come here to see. It was clear nothing would induce Matthew to fight. They had pushed him too hard, and something inside him had broken. He had no will left.
Marcus knew he had no choice but to end the man’s life, but at least he could give him a swift and dignified death. However much their keepers jeered and taunted, even if they took their whips to the flesh of Matthew’s back, they wouldn’t be able to make him fight.
He wasn’t their puppet anymore, because they had so mistreated him that they had broken his strings.
But when a bloodthirsty roar went up from the crowd, Marcus knew at once he had underestimated the depths of their cruelty. Three huge, sleek wolves slunk into the ring, low, menacing growls rising from their t
hroats.
These weren’t captives like Marcus and Matthew. It was clear from their glossy coats and the powerful play of muscles beneath their fur that these wolves had not been beaten and starved to within an inch of insanity. Even if their well-fed condition hadn’t told him as much, the jagged scar on the snout of the biggest of the wolves would have told him who it was. These wolves were the brutal killers hired to manhandle the fighters, their jailers, and Marcus had given the biggest wolf that scar when he’d first been captured.
Marcus heard a growl from the other side of the ring and saw that Matthew’s eyes were fixed on the three wolves circling his friend. His massive fists were clenching and unclenching. They knew they couldn’t make Matthew fight Marcus, so they were going to make him fight for him.
He could almost have admired their inventiveness if he hadn’t been half-blinded by rage at their cruelty.
The biggest wolf sprang. He had a score to settle.
With a hoarse cry of rage, Matthew launched himself into the melee.
“No, Matthew! Don’t fight them! It’s what they want—”
Marcus’s words were cut off and all the air was driven from his lungs as the biggest wolf knocked him to the ground. He threw his forearm across his throat to protect it from the snapping, slavering jaws, then heaved in a breath as Matthew seized the brute by the tail and the scruff of its neck, his huge muscles bunching as he tossed it aside. His strength was uncanny…but the copper manacles strapped to his wrists would keep him from shifting. There was no way a single shifter in human form, no matter how big and strong, could win against three well-nourished, vicious wolves.
And now they surrounded him, snarling, tearing at his flesh and then withdrawing. Marcus scrambled towards the group, but every time he tried a new approach he was driven back, and in his weakened state he was no real match for even one of them. Turn by turn, one of the wolves drove him back as he tried to reach his friend, while the others toyed with Matthew, playing with him the way a cat might play with an exhausted mouse.
Shifters of Silver Peak: Mate For A Month Page 9