Ian's Choice (Wolves' Heat)

by Lynne, Odessa

  Craig scraped his lips and teeth along the indentations he’d made over Ian’s collarbone, but the skin remained unbroken.

  “Stop testing me with your words. This isn’t the time.” Craig licked—actually licked—the spot where he’d bitten and Ian cringed a little at the weirdness of it. It felt good though, the warmth and gentle pressure against the bruised skin.

  “At least I’m smart enough not to test you by trying to fight you off. You have to give me something for that.”

  “This.” Craig reached down and started unbuttoning his trousers one-handed. “I’ll give you this.”

  Ian thought about how it had felt to have Craig rutting into him and didn’t say anything.

  “My pocket,” Craig said, and he kissed Ian’s throat, right over his larynx.

  Every press of Craig’s lips and swipe of his tongue played on Ian’s feeling of vulnerability, like a deliberate reminder that Ian was at Craig’s mercy, alive because Craig wanted to mate him.

  “Take out the jar and use it to get yourself ready.”

  Ian reached into Craig’s trouser pocket with the hand that wasn’t being held down against the mattress.

  “The other one.”

  “This is awkward.”

  “You can reach it.”

  He did. He pulled out the small jar, exactly like the one Second had used last night.

  “I can’t open it with only one hand,” he said.

  Craig snorted and sat back on his heels. “I want to watch anyway. But don’t take too long. I’m ready.” With that Craig yanked his shirt over his head and threw it somewhere across the room, then knelt up, all without taking his eyes off Ian, and pushed his pants down over his hips to mid-thigh. He was right. His cock was already fully erect when he wrapped his fingers around the shaft and started masturbating right there over Ian.

  Ian twisted the lid off the small jar and then looked at the greasy substance it held. He dipped his first two fingers inside and scooped out a generous glob. If this turned out anything like last night, he needed plenty. He took a deep breath, reached between his legs, and started smearing the lube between the crack of his ass, letting the tip of his finger probe into the tight ring of his anus.

  Craig watched avidly. “I can’t risk doing it myself,” Craig said gruffly, voice thick with lust, answering a question Ian hadn’t realized he had until Craig spoke.

  Ian thought Craig’s heat was coming on just as fast as it had last night, and it made sense that the flare of hormones his own arousal released could set it off or speed it up or both.

  “I don’t have enough control when you’re like this. I didn’t have enough control last night.” He brought up his hand, and Ian saw the lengthening claws extending from underneath their protective covering. The sight shouldn’t have made Ian’s blood run faster, but it did.

  Craig responded by shifting his knees, widening his stance, his thick thigh muscles tensing. He began to jerk his dick harder while he stared at the motion of Ian’s fingers. Like the night before, Craig came quickly, semen splattering across Ian’s balls, some of it hitting Ian’s hand where he continued to work the lube into his asshole.

  He took his fingers out of his ass and started to swipe his hand against the bedding. He’d only gotten about half of Craig’s semen off the back of his hand when Craig grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand up. He sniffed deeply, gaze fixated on the pearlescent glimmer of his own come as it trailed its way down Ian’s forearm.

  “Lick it,” Craig said.

  Ian probably didn’t do a good job of keeping his shock off his face. Swallowing during oral sex was one thing; what Craig was telling him to do was something else altogether.

  Craig frowned at him. Ian tried to tug his arm free.

  “I want you to taste it.” A rumbling growl started in Craig’s throat.

  Ian sucked in his breath and lurched up at the waist, using the leverage provided by Craig’s grip on his wrist, and quickly licked a small area of his forearm that was covered with Craig’s semen, grimacing even before the bitter tang registered.

  Craig immediately pushed him back down on the bed and kissed his mouth, plunging his tongue inside in a filthy wet swipe meant to capture at least a taste of himself on Ian’s tongue.

  It was disgusting.

  And Ian wasn’t ever going to admit he liked it so much that it made him want to shove his cock up against Craig’s hip and rut against him like he was suffering from his own twisted version of a lust crazed heat.

  Craig rubbed himself off again against Ian, his warm, wet release smearing in the hair around Ian’s cock and over his belly.

  Ian was close to coming too, but Craig stopped him from touching himself and clasped the underside of Ian’s own muscled thighs and pulled him open to settle between them. Craig’s cock fit to the edge of his hole and then stole his breath as it breached the tight pucker and slid in slow and relentless, going deep without giving Ian even a few seconds to catch his breath.

  Craig fucked him, too many times to keep up with, making Ian wait to come until he was rutting out his third or fourth orgasm, Ian’s ass full of semen and cock.

  Chapter 5

  Hours later, Ian found himself in the shower again, washing semen and sweat off his body and out of his most intimate places.

  Craig was nothing like a human when it came to how much semen he produced and how often. Ian had been absolutely, uncomfortably full of the stuff by the time Craig rolled over, tucked too damn many pillows around them both, and drifted off to sleep. Ian couldn’t go to sleep like he was, full and sticky and hot and covered in come.

  He had been well-used, that was for sure.

  Ian wasn’t wolf and he wouldn’t ever understand what it was like for Craig, but he would hate to know his body had such a hold on him that he couldn’t control the driving need to fuck, especially the way Craig had been at the end, as if he just couldn’t get deep enough for long enough, no matter what he did or how hard he tried. As if the ultimate pleasure was just right out of his grasp.

  Ian almost felt sorry for Craig.

  Then again, maybe he was crazy.

  He was here, that was a pretty good indication that he might be.

  He had dragged his pants into the bathroom with him, Craig not awake enough to stop him this time. He thought about the phone on the other side of the glass stall door, waiting for him to find the time to reply to the message he had received.

  He didn’t know if he was going to keep putting it off or not. Right now, he was doing the only thing he could. He had no interest in finding himself with teeth at his throat or claws at his back because he hadn’t been cautious enough. He had been caught, and although that hadn’t been his intention when he’d gone into the woods, he couldn’t say it hadn’t been a strong possibility and he couldn’t claim he hadn’t been aware of the risk.

  No. He had known it could happen.

  Now that it had, he had to modify the plan and choose the best course of action based on new information.

  He would be no one’s puppet.

  Ian finished his shower, stopping to cover a yawn as he dried off with a thick towel. He scraped his hair back with his fingers and thought for half-a-second about finding something to wear, then realized almost immediately Craig might not find that kind of initiative appealing. Not that he cared what Craig thought about his appeal, but he did care if he got roared at again, because shit, that had been one scary moment on the bed.

  He gathered up his pants and decided he had no choice but to take advantage of the opportunity he had to send a message, so he dug out the phone he had stashed in the secret pocket sewn into the leg of his pants and turned it on.

  He frowned at the lack of signal. Communication technology had gotten a major boost from the technological advances brought by the wolves but a simple text message was still the most reliable way to make contact when a phone had little or no signal. It was harder than ever to completely block access to a signal strong enough to c
ommunicate through, because the amount of data that could be transmitted in the smallest stream of signal had grown exponentially.

  Only one conclusion made sense. His phone’s signal had been blocked.

  Was the timing of the signal block a coincidence or a deliberate action on the part of the wolves? Craig hadn’t seemed suspicious that morning after Ian had taken the chance to check his phone, but wolves were intelligent, sometimes astonishingly so. And Craig did have that desk full of human computer equipment and his own technology.

  Shit. He thought back on his interactions with Craig, but nothing alarming came to mind. Craig had been much too focused on fucking and mating. Ian hadn’t been all that coherent either during their time together so he could have missed something.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about the pleasure he got out of having his ass fucked by a wolf in heat. He also wasn’t sure how he felt about Craig.

  And to top it off, he had this mate thing going on, because Craig seemed to think he was going to get to keep Ian indefinitely just because he’d decided that was what he wanted. Alphas were obviously used to having their way with their people—their betas—but Ian wasn’t a beta by nature. At least not as far as he understood the meaning of the word in human English. If the wolves’ meaning for “beta” was more nuanced than the human form of the word, then he was just fucked, because he barely understood what it meant anyway. He didn’t consider himself to be submissive. Far from it, and his current submission was entirely dependent on the vulnerable situation he found himself in with these wolves and his desire to live to fight another day.

  He heard the bed creak in the attached bedroom and then a hollow thump as feet hit the floor.

  Ian cursed and fumbled the phone for one heart-stopping moment before he caught the edge of it. He shoved the phone back into the pocket in his pants’ leg and rolled the pants into a tidy cylinder.

  Craig opened the bathroom door just as Ian reached it.

  “You showered?”

  “I couldn’t go to sleep like that.”

  Craig’s nostrils flared gently. Ian would have missed witnessing the careful sniff if he hadn’t been staring right at Craig when it happened.

  “What?” he asked. He looked down at his naked body, cock soft against the thatch of hair at his groin, balls loose in the warm air, toes still covered in droplets of water he’d missed when he dried himself off. Did wolves have claws on their feet? He hadn’t thought about that once since he’d been caught and couldn’t remember seeing the answer. He glanced at Craig’s feet. The same dark fingernail like material covered the tops of his mostly human-like toes, fine boned with a light dusting of dark hair. He’d bet his last gold ten-dollar that claws hid underneath those nails.

  “You smelled better before your shower.”

  “Yeah, to you maybe. I smelled like a whore house.”

  Craig’s eyes glittered bright and sharp on him. “We’re mating. You are not a whore. You smelled like me. No one else.”

  Ian stepped back and put his hands up. “Sorry. I wasn’t calling myself a whore. I was just trying to make a point that I wanted to clean up before I slept. Won’t say it again.” Hell no he wouldn’t, not if the reaction he got was bristling wolf and eyes full of ire.

  “Why do you have your trousers with you?”

  The question came without warning, and thoughtlessly Ian tightened his arm around the jeans, then realized what he was doing and tried to relax. “Thought about sitting up for a while after I got out. I didn’t want to do it naked.”

  Craig stared at him. “Come back to bed. You need to rest while you can. I’ll go get food.”

  “I could eat,” Ian said.

  “I’ll bring plenty.” Craig put out his hand. “Let me have your pants.”

  Ian’s arm tightened again around the rolled up denim. “What? Why?”

  “They’re filthy from your run through the woods. They should be cleaned.”

  “I’d rather not be left without any clothes.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Ian tried to keep his voice calm, but the urge to just say no almost overwhelmed him. “There could be a fire, anything.”

  “I’ll give you clean clothes. You can wear anything you find in my room.”

  Ian rubbed his hand across his chest, and then made a fist and let his arm drop to his side. “Please,” he said. Because what else option did he have? He couldn’t give up the pants without risking everything, but he couldn’t defy Craig without his submission being brought into question. “I feel better knowing I still have my own clothes.”

  Craig gave him an appraising look. Ian realized Craig was lightly tapping his forefinger against his thumb, and he was certain he saw the edge of a claw there. But then Craig spoke and Ian raised his gaze back to his face.

  “Don’t leave the room while I’m gone. If one of the others runs across you wandering around, you could be hurt before I find you.” Craig turned away from the door and left.

  Ian carried his pants back into the bedroom with him, took out the phone, and then tossed the pants in the corner of the room onto a padded, unarmed chair sitting by a chest of drawers. Hiding them would be stupid after making it so obvious they were important to him and would just lead to more questions if Craig noticed they weren’t around.

  As it was, Ian felt sure he’d crossed the line anyway. Craig was probably going to wonder at their importance now and Ian had to do something with the damn phone. Which meant he was about to make it that much harder for himself to get his hands on it later unnoticed.

  He looked down at the slender black device and bit off a curse. It really didn’t matter where he hid it. If Craig or any of the wolves started searching the room, they would find it. So he chose the simplest and easiest to get to spot, crossing the room to the bed. He yanked up the edge of the blanket he had yet to use and shoved the phone between the mattress and the support springs beneath it.

  Then he climbed up on the bed, curled himself around one of the fat pillows Craig seemed to love so much, and let himself close his eyes for a few minutes while he waited for Craig to return.

  Chapter 6

  Ian jerked awake to the blood chilling roar of wolves.

  He lay still for a moment in the silence that followed, the only sound his thumping heart, sped up by the rush of adrenaline that came from waking so suddenly and abruptly.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but he was alone and the light had faded, the window letting in what looked like the last rays before sunset.

  Where was Craig?

  Just when he started to think he might have been dreaming, another fierce roar rattled through the house, and this time Ian jerked upright on the bed.

  The sound freaked him out in a way he hadn’t experienced since he’d first curled into a ball on the forest floor and accepted that he had just been caught by wolves during the heat season.

  His heart pounded wildly and he scrambled to the end of the bed. He lurched off the edge and hit the floor already moving toward his pants. One leg in, then the other, and he had just hitched them up on his hips when the door to the room crashed in.

  Third stood there, his shape outlined by the light spilling around him from the hallway at his back, made more arresting because it wasn’t until then that Ian noticed how dim the bedroom had actually gotten.

  He could see the lack of anything resembling rationality on Third’s face, his lips pulled back in a way that showed off the sharp points of his eyeteeth and wearing a glassy-eyed look that told Ian this wasn’t a time to be participating in a staring competition because…because he would end up with those teeth in his throat if he did.

  So Ian dropped his gaze to Third’s heaving chest, noticing right away the tear in his shirt, the welling blood, and lower, the half-open fly of his pants.

  Ian hurriedly zipped his own pants and wished the hell he had on more clothes.

  He wasn’t surprised when he saw Craig crest the top o
f the stairs behind Third, barreling down the hallway toward them both. Ian wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew he wanted to be somewhere else.

  “Submit!” Craig roared, his voice like a strike to an anvil on Ian’s eardrums.

  Third twisted to look over his shoulder, but his attention didn’t waver from Ian for more than a second, much too short a time span for Ian to do more than turn to fully face the raging wolf, certainly not enough time for him to figure out if Craig was talking to him or Third, or both.

  The thought that it was probably meant for the both of them flitted through his mind right as Third snarled, and lunged. Ian slammed himself back and away but was brought up short by the corner of the chair and he stumbled to the floor, his knee smacking into the hardwood with a loud and painful thud.

  He grunted, rolled, and jumped up a few feet from the window and thought honestly about throwing himself at it before his common sense reasserted itself over the white hot rush of panic. This was a second story room and there was no telling what was below that window. At least here, he knew what he was up against.

  “I submit!” he yelled out, for lack of anything better to say and because it was the least he could do to stop what he was certain was coming—death by claw and teeth if Craig didn’t get to Third first.

  He dropped to the floor on his ass, ready to curl into a ball and protect his neck and gut but the contact of wood to tailbone and the jarring impact through his tender, overused ass drove a pained gasp out of him that sounded as much like a whimper as anything.

  Whatever he’d sounded like to himself must have sounded many times worse to Craig, because Craig roared again, wild and ear-splittingly fierce.

  Ian overcame his discomfort without another thought and threw himself toward the far side of the bed. A hand seized his leg at mid-calf and yanked him backwards.

  Had to be Third, he knew, even though he couldn’t see around the corner of the bed at that moment.

  He heard the thump more than felt the jolt of Craig landing on Third’s back. The bed scraped loudly across the floor as it shifted at least a foot at the impact. Claws that had until then not actually pierced his flesh jabbed through the denim and into the skin and muscle of Ian’s calf.