by Nara Malone
“Hold tight, little cat,” he whispered into her heat, “we’re going to be here awhile.”
He interspersed licks with nips, using his teeth on her tender pussy lips. Drunk on the beauty of female moans, he caught crisp dark curls in his teeth and tugged cries from her. Scraped her clit and closed his teeth in a firm enough hold to fuck the little nub. Forcing her to stillness, his hold demanded she maintain self-control even when her body was screaming toward orgasm. It would intensify the sensation, and it was just one more tool in the collection he was employing to hold her earthbound and unshifted.
She couldn’t move but she could vocalize, a low, keening sound that rose as she approached the edge. He held his teeth around her clit, every fiber tuned to her need when she came, when pleasure vibrated through her in waves. She blinked in and out, light to dark, like a human firefly, but her energy remained anchored to the altar, and to him. Her orgasm crossed the body barrier, rippling through his cells with a power that stole his breath and milked his cock. The tremors kept coming, the aftershock of one triggering a rise to the next climax.
At first she’d begged him to fuck her, and then she just begged him to make it stop. He couldn’t do either. Like her, he could only hold on until she was too weak to come again.
She was shivering when he finally released her from the altar, wrapped her in his robe and collapsed in a soft patch of grass near the fire. He held her against him, stretching out on his back and looking up at the stars. Head on his shoulder, she adjusted her position, following his gaze.
“It’s as if you could reach up and pick one from the sky,” she whispered.
Stars were a safe topic, much safer than thinking about what had just happened. What might yet happen.
“When I was a boy I’d spend hours star gazing on a summer evening. It’s been too long since I’ve done this.”
“With no television or internet to keep you entertained, it was probably easier to find time for it.”
“So true.” Not that he had time for those popular human pastimes either. And then he realized she’d meant it to tease him about his age. He couldn’t recall when television was invented, but he doubted there were many humans older than television.
“Brat,” he added, rolling over on top of her and looking down. She was grinning up at him and reached to brush hair from his eyes. He caught his breath. It was such a rare thing, her initiating touch. He tried to recall one time she’d reached for him without an order from him. He didn’t believe it was because she didn’t want to be close. For whatever reason, reaching to touch a friend or lover was not second nature. That it happened spontaneously now lifted his heart and his cock.
Her fingertips stilled on his face. Her other hand brushed his chest. Her fingernails skimming over his skin called up sexual reserves he’d thought depleted. And this time, he promised himself, he would stay in command of the encounter. With the edge taken off he might just be able to give her what she really wanted. Now he just had to hope the power of the stones held him earthbound and unshifted as well. That he could give her an experience she would remember with a smile, rather than terror.
“Time for your lesson,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “I haven’t recovered from the one we just had.”
“Sweetheart, that wasn’t your lesson.”
“What was it?”
“A reminder of why you love to do your lessons and will do them faithfully in the future.”
“Oh.”
While she contemplated the warning behind that last comment, he got up and went searching for what he needed. It took a minute, but he found her clothes in the grass near the altar. He extracted her tank top from the pile, aware of her attention lingering on his body. Seeing with his skin was second nature to him. He always knew when he was being watched, could feel her gaze slide over his ass as if it were a physical touch.
He shook leaves and blades of grass from her shirt. It wasn’t ideal, but it would suit his purposes. Turning back toward her, savoring the sensation of heat gliding along his fully erect cock, it seemed a shame he had to blindfold her.
“Tonight’s lesson is learning to see with your tongue,” he said as he rejoined her.
“My tongue? This doesn’t sound sexy.”
“I don’t recall promising the lessons would be sexy.”
“You did,” she insisted.
He rolled her shirt into a narrow strip that would just cover her eyes, and pulled her up to sit beside him. “Perhaps a blindfold will make this sexier.”
The material was just stretchy enough to cover her eyes and tie behind her head. Her breath went shallow.
“What are you going to do?”
He got a mental image from her then, a candle in his hand, wax dripping over his fingers. They were making progress. She might not be able to imprint his face, but an image of his hand was seared in her memory, right down to the crescent scar above one knuckle. “As I said, I’m going to teach you to see with your tongue.”
“Wonderful. When I’m not sure who someone is, I’ll just run up and lick him.”
He pushed her long hair behind her shoulders, coiled it loosely in one hand.
“You have my permission to lick me whenever you want.”
She was trying not to smile. One corner of her lips tilted up, giving her away.
He had to kiss her then, softly brushing his lips over hers, before he said, “Start with a kiss, sweetheart. Let your instincts guide you from there. Don’t think about what to do. Feel it. You draw with pencil and paper every day. Tonight use your tongue to sketch me in your mind.”
He stretched out on the robe she’d abandoned, drawing her down with him.
She pressed her lips to his. Her tongue snuck out, hesitant, the tip gliding right between the slight parting of his lips. She lingered and he knew instinct was already taking hold, teaching her the mating of breath and body, entwining their energies before she pressed deeper.
Her tongue ran over his teeth, then his tongue, even venturing a swipe along the sensitive roof of his mouth. She was going to make a thorough job of this.
She gave his bottom lip a little nip when she finished exploring his mouth. His cock twitched and her lips, curving into a smile against his, told him she noticed. How could she not with her thigh draped over it?
She didn’t lick his face in the traditional Pantherian way, with full-tongued swipes. Her tongue barely protruded past her lips. It made him think of her clit, the way it just parted her plump pussy lips, peeked between dewy folds.
Her lips swiped over his cheekbone, then his eyelid. A dainty rasp of tongue here. Tickling breath there. She was driving him senseless and she wasn’t below his chin.
Her body straddled his now, breasts brushing his chest, her pussy wet and hot against his belly.
She sank her teeth into his earlobe and he twisted her hair, trying to haul her back. Centuries of disciplined training broken within a minute.
“Let me,” she murmured, her words a humid caress. “Let me finish.”
He eased his grip, determined to be what she needed if it killed him.
She didn’t make it easy. Settling into a lick, nip, kiss-it-better pattern that set him on fire one cell at a time. Down his neck, across his chest. His nipples turned to burning coals under her talented teeth. She outlined each rib. He tensed, giving in to the vanity of wanting to be firm under her tongue while she spent extra time licking away every drop of the sweet female perfume she’d drenched him in.
Then she started on his cock, tongue encircling the flared head, lips closing over it, the gentle vise of her teeth capturing him.
He didn’t dare try pulling her back by her hair now. He shuddered. So much for the belief he’d have more control this time than he’d had the last. He unclenched his teeth long enough to beg, “Please…” She smiled around his cock, dipped her head, taking him deep. The head of his dick wedged against the back of her throat.
He groaned. The sensation of
a swallow squeezed him.
“Allieee…” Her name escaped on a growl. How could a female raised in a world so alien to her nature discover the wildling inside so quickly?
“Please,” he said again, aware that for the first time in centuries he was not the one in charge. Had he ever pleaded or begged for anything?
She released him and before she could draw breath to speak, he had her under him.
“I haven’t finished sketching you,” she teased.
He moved between her legs, poised there, the head of his cock pressed against her tight opening. She made a squeezing motion that snatched her name from him again.
“Allie…” It was the only word he could remember.
Her playful smile faded, replaced by something more feral. Lips pulled back over her teeth, as if she dared him to back down again. Her eyes never left his. Not even when his first thrust had her back arching and her fingernails raking down his back. They fucked like beasts. With teeth and nails and snarls. They devoured each other with frantic kisses. He pounded her and she drove him to it, begged him to fuck harder. Faster.
He would forever have an image of this moment burned in his memory—Allie with her dark hair fanned out in the grass, head tipped back, teeth bared.
“Say my name,” he demanded, wanting to brand himself in her mind as well. “Say it when you come.”
As if she’d been waiting for his command, her pussy tightened around him, unlocking his seed as she cried out his name, again and again.
Would this be enough?
Would she remember him now?
When he could stand again he carried her into the house and tucked her into his bed.
“Rest,” he said.
“Don’t leave, Marcus. Please—”
He bent, silencing her plea with a kiss. “I have to go, precious. I promised to help someone.”
Her arms went around his neck and she was clinging. “Not yet. Hold me a little longer.”
He relented. He snuggled in next to her, stroking her back, murmuring a soft string of endearments in Russian. In five minutes sleep, with a little help from an entrancement, won out and she was deep enough in a dream world that he could slide from the bed.
He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Pain, a sharp, physical squeeze around his heart, tightened his hand in her tresses. He forced himself to let go, brush his lips over her forehead. A chorus of howls from near the river tugged at him.
They had a rescue to make. He welcomed the danger. He needed something that would demand all his skills and attention, give him distance.
Chapter Eight
The scent of wolves entwined with the scent of sex and females. The women the pack had been playing big bad wolf with were gone. The pack gathered in the dwindling light cast by the fire in the moon garden. The lean bodies of the wolves threaded between columns as they approached. Marcus—while tempted to shift to a wolf body and join the bumping play and nipping—stayed in his human form. Why stir up more trouble for the family line, when the tribe already found his son’s unusual coloring disturbing. If they knew he could shift across species, fear of genetic mutations might permanently bar his male descendants from obtaining a mate.
He could take the shape of his tribe, a tiger Pantherian, but as tigers weren’t common in Virginia, he didn’t want to risk some unseen observer seeing anything more alarming than a wolf pack. He conversed with the others telepathically.
Your playmates all off the compound?
Ben, a black wolf and leader, moved away from the group and stood beside Marcus in the shadow of a pillar. Yes. And yours?
Jake will be along to collect her. She’s under a suggestion and shouldn’t wake up before sunrise. I’ll just need you to show me where the hybrid is and I’ll take it from there.
We can get close to the lab through the portal downstairs in Adam’s lab.
Marcus shook his head. The high council had been monitoring portal traffic lately. Let’s not leave any traceable aura trails that will link this place to what we do there.
It’s a three-hour drive from here, Magus.
Perfect. We’ll get there about four a.m. The night watch should be bored and getting tired. There’s rarely a researcher in a lab at that hour.
Ben stretched and gave his shaggy coat a shake. Drive it is. He shifted from wolf to man.
* * * * *
Black vans with light-warping shields that could make them invisible to security cameras were handy. Marcus decided he was going to have to get Ben’s crew to put one of these together for him. They parked in the most heavily shadowed end of the lab’s parking lot. The light-warping device had to be turned off before any of them could leave the van. The pack moved out in wolf form, while Marcus and Ben went as men. Ben had changed to black jeans and a black shirt, but Marcus stayed as he was, wearing the black robe he’d wrapped his lover in hours ago. With the hood up it would reveal less about his physical features to cameras. If he had to shift, getting out of clothes would be that much faster.
Ben prepared the way, disabling security and locks from a laptop inside the van. He waved Marcus toward a door near the loading dock as rain started to fall.
Marcus didn’t need the room map Ben had shown him to find the snow leopard. Her distress reached through the walls and down the halls. Her misery hit and rippled through his cells in the same way a stone dropped in a puddle sent ripples across the surface.
The fact that he came in human form didn’t throw her at all. She recognized him as the answer to her longing. He could feel the tension drain from her body when he opened the door and stepped into her line of sight. Snow leopards were an endangered species—the experiments performed on her should see someone thrown in jail. She lifted her head, licked his hand when he reached into the cage and pressed his palm to her swollen middle, tuning into the energy of the litter she carried. He supposed the researchers might insist they were trying to save the species with their hybrid experiments, but the mutants in her belly would not survive. One was already dead. Their oversized bodies crowded her organs. They’d implanted more fetuses than her small frame could support. She was bleeding internally, too weak to stand.
There wasn’t as much as a blanket in the cage for padding. He took off his robe, intending to wrap her in it, wanting to keep her as warm and dry as he could. The leopard turned her head, attention caught by something, blew breath out her nose. Marcus glanced around but didn’t see whatever had spooked her.
“There’s my sweet girl,” he said softly. She looked at him with such trust when he held out the robe, trust she may not have shown in her own land, healthy and standing proud. It was a sign how beaten down she was that she would so easily trust a stranger, Pantherian he may be, but he’d done nothing to earn her trust at this point. It worried him. As a being reached the end of life, the sense of the true nature of others was heightened in the extreme.
“You hold on, sweetheart. You’ll be back in the wilds before you know it.” He lifted her and could feel the babies twist and turn in her belly, a sharp cry from her nearly made him drop her. He thought something fluttered against the back of his hand.
Ben’s voice in his mind called out. Someone’s coming to check. Abort.
No. He would not, could not put her back in the cage. “Shh,” he murmured, his own heartbeat conveying the danger. She went still, limp as a kitten in her mother’s jaws and he hefted her. He guessed she weighed near seventy pounds. Underweight for a female. He tuned his mind to the presence of humans in the building. He had time, one was close, but he could do it. He swung out the door and down the hall to the stairwell near the service elevator and ducked through the door.
I’m in the outer stairwell, Ben. Guide me out of here.
You’re three flights from the bottom.
We’re on our way. Move the van closer.
He had one more flight to go and had his mind trained on the directions Ben was giving.
Shit. Ben’s curse coincided with the door t
o a hallway being swung open and a blonde woman in a lab coat looked him right in the face.
What he hadn’t calculated was that the heavy doors between stairwells attenuated sound enough that he wouldn’t hear someone coming.
Sorry, Magus, I was watching the guard upstairs, didn’t spot the woman until it was too late.
Sensing threat, the leopard snarled and swiped with a paw.
Confronted by a naked man carrying a leopard, the woman—probably not any older than Allie—opened her mouth in a silent scream. Marcus blocked the cat’s swipe, catching a forearm full of knifelike claws. Blood sprayed. The woman fainted. All he could do was shift the leopard over his shoulder and try to catch the woman before her head connected with the concrete landing. Catching her with his good arm and enduring the reflexive dig of the leopard’s claws into his back and belly, Marcus dropped to his knees, pain stabbed up his spine as he tried to balance two shifting weights. Had the leopard been stronger, Marcus doubted he or the woman would have survived her panic.
Talk to me, Magus.
Marcus lowered his human burden to the floor and fought to balance the leopard once again, folding his wounded arm against his chest as blood welled. He was aware of blood dripping, but he didn’t have time to do anything to cover his trail.
Magus?
I’m here. Where now?
There’s a fire exit just before you reach the southwest corner of the building. The van is there.
An alarm trilled and a light in the basement strobed.
They have their security up. Tell everyone to get out, Marcus said, straining to hold on to the shifting weight of the cat. She writhed in his grasp, agitated by the flashing lights and noise.
No one’s going anywhere without you, Magus, so you better get out here before they corner us.
Cursing the lack of respect of the younger generation, Marcus broke into a wobbling run. He found the fire door and hit the red exit button. Outside cold air revived him enough to keep him on his feet. Ben scooped the leopard from Marcus’ arms.