How lucky for him.
“No, Killian. She won’t hurt me,” the petite female with the violet eyes was crying out to her mate. She was wise to warn him away. His strength would not be enough to bring her down, but hers would be more than sufficient to take his life from him.
“You’re not going to hurt anyone,” Victor said. The pressure he put on her wrist made her fingers go numb and release her hold on him.
Her tiger wanted to purr at his show of strength. Nicole headed her off before she could even try to respond to their destined mate. “Look at you being all tough,” Nicole smiled at him. She licked her lips watching as his green eyes followed the path of her tongue.
Good boy.
Dropping to the ground Nicole swept her foot under Victor, knocking his feet out from under him. Killian started forward but didn’t get more than one step before Victor’s commanding rumble warned Killian back.
Nicole swept up a stone into her hand and used it to punch Victor in that spot just under his chin that she knew would knock him out. Victor flew back with the impact, unconscious as he hit the floor. Moving quickly Nicole scooped him up holding him in front of her with one arm around his waist and one around his neck.
“What are you doing?” Angeline asked her, warning in her tone.
“I’m going to take my justice. You two are going to go back to wherever it is you came from. Or I will knock you both out, bun in the oven or not.”
Killian’s black and gray wolf growled showing long, sharp, white teeth. He was edging forward too protective of his mate to be reasoned with. It was a lot more difficult to knock out a werewolf after they shifted than before but it could be done. Of course, it might also kill the werewolf but he wasn’t leaving her much choice.
“Stay with me Killian,” Angeline spoke softly to her mate. She backed away drawing into the dark forest behind her. Sure enough, as Nicole watched, Killian followed his mate into the forest.
The smells and layout of the forest was familiar enough that Nicole knew about where they were in the woods. She used her tiger strength to pick up Victor, all six feet and three inches of him. Hefting him over her shoulder she raced to the east. She didn’t want Rafia’s pack to happen upon her or Victor’s.
She wasn’t joking when she said she was taking her revenge. Victor cost her more than any one person should have to pay, which meant his debt was great.
Oh, you are going to pay alright.
CHAPTER FIVE
VICTOR
The ache in his body as he began to wake was strange. Being a werewolf shifter Victor was accustomed to his body healing itself fast enough that he rarely felt any soreness unless he was recovering from more serious injuries. Searching his mind, he tried to remember being in a battle.
Did Rafi find us?
“It took you long enough to wake up, Victor. I’ve got everything all ready to go and I thought you were going to sleep right through it.”
His eyelids were still heavy but he pushed them open anyway. Nicole sounded furious. The woman he loved, he knew well enough to know that when she was this angry she was often extreme and unreasonable. Her tigress didn’t help with the extreme measures, they were usually the tiger spirit’s ideas.
“Don’t do it,” Victor said before he even knew what it would be, he just saw the wild look in her aqua eyes that glowed in the darkness of the cave.
Nicole laughed grabbing his face and squeezing it with her hand. “I’m doing it. I’m finally going to be free of you,” she said her eyes were moist and her pale olive tone complexion looked so soft and delicate in the low light conditions.
“You may hate me, Nicole but you can’t kill me,” Victor said testing the restraints behind his back. They were not burning his skin or causing his bones to ache. This meant she had not used silver. Why then couldn’t he break the binding?
“I don’t need to kill you to free myself of you, Vic.” She lifted a sharpened rock for him to see. “This mate nonsense that ties us together, I know how to cut the tie.”
“That’s ridiculous. A sharpened rock can’t rearrange the stars any more than it can rewrite destiny,” Victor said pulling harder at the restraints that still weren’t working.
Where are Killian and Angeline?
Nicole swallowed drawing closer to him. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” She grabbed the waist of his shredded shorts and pulled them down to his knees. “Still hard for me, huh? Even though I’ve got you tied up and I’m getting ready to cut your balls off?”
“What?” Victor pulled harder than ever at the restraints and felt then at last beginning to stretch a little. “Have you completely lost your mind, Nicole?” He crossed his legs as she frowned down at his crotch.
“Probably. I mean that’ll happen when the man you love is so fucking selfish that he ruins your life, and has you outcast from your family. When you find out they’ve been slaughtered and that you are all that’s left of your family line and all because you were lucky enough to be predestined to a selfish, coward, asshole.” Her voice was echoing back at him from all around the cave.
Victor nodded in agreement. She wasn’t wrong. Everything she said was true. “Apologizing isn’t enough and there is nothing I can do to bring your family back. Cutting off my balls doesn’t solve anything either.”
“It will silence my tigress.” She unpeeled his legs and pushed them apart, locking her own legs between his so that he would be unable to close them.
Her hand cupped his testicles as she lifted them.
Victor groaned at the feel of her hands on him. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him that it still felt so good to feel her touch even when he knew she was about to literally try to cut me out of her life.
“This won’t change that you love me. It won’t change that I love you.”
“I hate you,” she said her shaky hold tightening as her gaze hardened. “You cost me everything and you fucking abandoned me. I wish I could kill you. I wish you were dead.”
Anger poured into the vat of fear that was churning in his stomach. “I could never hate you. That’s the difference between you and me.”
“No, the difference between us is that I would never have cost you what you cost me. I never would abandon someone I truly loved.”
“I didn’t abandon you,” Victor growled his chest rumbling as his wolf seemed to finally be waking up.
Nicole lowered the rock. “Looks like the tranquilizer darts I pulled out of my back are nearly out of juice. Time to cut free.” Her lips pressed together tightly. Nicole’s hand at his balls trembled and her breath was coming in short anguished gasps. Victor met her aqua blue eyes shining at him with unshed tears and anger.
A hard pull broke the binding at his wrists, his wolf strength was returning fast. He caught her hand with the rock and twisted it, forcing her to drop it. The angry roar out of Nicole told him how much she hated his touch.
Too bad.
The mesh that she was wearing gave him a peak at her deep coral pink nipples. They were tight for him and he could smell the moisture of her arousal between her legs. Hate him she might, but she lusted after him too.
Victor captured her lips even as the warning rumble reverberated from her chest and throat. She could go ahead and kill him, it would be worth it. Not touching her, not going after her was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do and now that she was there, right in front of him she hated him for not coming after her. She hated him for the sacrifice he made for her.
She tasted sweet and spicy. His shaft pumped against her stomach aching to fill her.
Nicole bit his lower lip and kicked him away from her with both feet to the stomach, launching him into the cave wall so hard it cracked. Dust and rock shards rained down on them. Nicole was crouched low on the ground ready to spring, the rumbling in her chest louder than before. Her eyes were wide and filled with anger and fear.
Victor shook the dirt from his body and pulling up what was left of his shorts a
s he watched her. “Do you think I don’t recognize you’re ready to pounce stance?” Victor laughed as he began to make his way along the cave wall toward the opening.
“Running away again?” Her growl continued to rumble even through her words.
“I never ran away.”
The pain and anger in her eyes seemed to set the blue sea of her eyes on fire. “You killed the shifter that was meant to be the father of my child. You were exiled and you left without a fight. Fucking coward.”
Nicole raced forward at a very fast speed but Victor was faster. He caught her and spun her so that she was against the wall and pinned her there with his body. “I was supposed to just stand aside and let some other guy fuck my mate?”
“Yes,” she roared baring her teeth.
Victor roared right back, his wolf rising to match her tiger’s level of rage. “Tradition be damned, Nicole. He would not have made a stronger child with you than I will. All he had to do was step down when I challenged him.”
“You and I will never have a child together,” the rumble was gone, which told Victor her tigress disagreed with her. The denial she was giving him was all of her own. Somehow, that hurt worse.
“You are wet for me even as you deny me.”
Her electrified aqua blue eyes narrowed on his face. “My tigress wants an heir. Don’t flatter yourself. I would never have a child with a man who says he’ll come back and never does. Even after I was exiled you didn’t come for me. After you killed Shan and set the Shadier family against mine and started a war that left me completely alone in the world, still no sign of this one who loves me so much.”
Her rage was driving her. Victor could see it and he should have been better prepared. Nicole’s hand closed around his neck and she lifted him easily off the floor and into the air. “I can’t believe how stupid I was,” Nicole said through clenched teeth. “I waited, and waited.”
Nicole’s eyes spilled the tears and they didn’t stop. She tightened her hold on his throat and he didn’t struggle. Victor wanted her to get it out. Whatever it took he wanted her to forgive him. If he had to be dead for that to take place, so be it.
“I waited until I didn’t exist any longer,” she breathed.
Victor stiffened, not because of his lack of oxygen. He didn’t know that he’d almost lost her to her tigress and it horrified him. If she’d nearly given up to her tigress then she was going to struggle to control her for the rest of her life.
I can’t leave her to be devoured by the spirit she shares her body with.
CHAPTER SIX
NICOLE
Victor’s face was changing a deeper shade of purple and she felt her back quivering as even her body fought her to end her suffering. Who was she kidding? She would never be able to kill, or maim him.
She’d already told him more than she ever wanted him to know. Admitting that she’d waited like she had, it was humiliating. He’d gone on to live his life all the while he’d left her to be on her own without a care as to finding her.
I need to get away from him.
“No, we need the heir. Lay with him,” her tigress argued.
Just as Nicole was about to release him, he stretched his thick muscular leg out and kicked off the wall behind her. The force was strong enough that she couldn’t remain standing and fell on top of him. Immediately she tried to roll away from him.
Victor rolled with her trapping her with his body.
“What the hell did you shoot me with? I should be able to crush your puny little skull.”
“It subdues your tigress to keep her from shifting,” he rasped his voice still compromised from being choked. The sound made her feel sorry for him, and that made her angry. She shouldn’t feel sorry for him.
He doesn’t really love me. He loves himself. Lust, that’s all it is.
“Open your legs to him and let him give us the heir,” Nicole’s tigress insisted not hiding at all her own lust. Nicole wanted to cuss out her tigress as another gush of heat blossomed between her legs.
“You lost control of your tiger spirit?” Victor asked her. His green eyes wide and round. He was looking at her like he was full of pity for her. Probably thinking how pathetic it was that she’d actually given in to her tiger spirit. How weak she truly was.
Nicole didn’t like feeling this vulnerable, especially with Victor. “No. It was close but no. Of course not. Now get off me before I slice your belly open,” Nicole said, the sharpened rock in her hands once more.
“You said you didn’t exist any longer,” Victor pushed.
“I exaggerated,” Nicole said as she brought the blunt end of the rock up to knock him out again but he caught her hand and pulled the rock from her grip.
The rock hit the wall over his shoulder as he tossed it away. “You don’t exaggerate. Not like that.”
Her breasts were swelling and her nipples pressed into his chest. It was excruciating to be this close and yet so many worlds apart. “Rafi and his pack will tear you apart for abducting me.”
Instantly Victor’s wide-open expression closed up. His teeth shined in the dark like the moon. He was baring them at her.
“You won’t stand a chance against his pack. It’s not just a single type of shifter pack-”
“I know enough about Rafi and his pack of misfits,” Victor growled gripping her small waist with one of his large hands as he stood up. He didn’t let go of her for even a moment. His hand slid up her back. Since his touch was heading away from her ass, she thought she would get a small measure of relief.
She didn’t.
His hands on her body was like turning on the oven and leaving it on, then each following touch a nudge on the dial, turning up the heat.
“Rafi will kill you, do you hear me?” Nicole pushed. “Don’t you want to live? Being the coward that you are I would’ve thought that staying alive would be your top priority.”
His growl echoed through the cave, a sound of predatory power. Of course, her tigress found it very sexually appealing. It took nearly all her energy to keep the damn tigress from purring.
“It wasn’t me who was too afraid to tell my family no when called forward to accept another to fuck for the sole purpose of impregnation.”
Victor wrapped his fingers around her bicep and began pulling her out of the cave. He wasn’t being rough but he wasn’t giving her an inch to go a different way either. Nicole tested his grasp and balance. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the clumsy sort. He never had been though. She wasn’t surprised when she found herself held closer and more securely.
“Excuse me for loving my family more than myself,” she snarled at him.
“It worked out great for your family that you weren’t brave enough to tell them no, didn’t it?”
The old Victor never would have said those words aloud to her, even if he thought them. This wasn’t the softhearted boy she grew up with. His words hurt and he’d known they would when he spoke them.
“Giving them an heir that will survive is my duty. You couldn’t possibly understand that. You are just barely able to comprehend anything outside yourself, aren’t you? The world doesn’t revolve around you, Victor. In fact, I’m sure it never noticed your arrival, your death will be no different.”
“Yep, still the bitch you always were when you’re mad. Rafi must love following you around like a sick, gutless, puppy.”
Nicole let the tigress purr so she could concentrate instead on how she would escape Victor. “Just hearing Rafi’s name gets my tigress hot. You’ll have to excuse her.”
Victor smiled at Nicole as he pulled her out into the light of day. “If your pussy needs pleasing, I’m happy to stand in, though I won’t be whimpering at your feet like the guy your using at the moment.”
No way in hell am I telling him that Rafi and I don’t actually have sex. He can go ahead and think it.
“You’re not hung like, Rafi,” Nicole said hoping to piss him off bad enough he would mess up and give her a chance to escape.
>
Victor laughed. “Is that why you couldn’t stop staring at my dick and groping my balls?”
Nicole felt her face burning with the heat of her blush.
Why do I care if he saw me? I don’t give a shit what he thinks.
The tigress was too busy purring to argue with her. Good. At least she could think without being interrupted. Resisting him was keeping him on guard. Nicole allowed him to lead her voluntarily. Watching his body language, listening to the pacing of his heart and breathing. He wasn’t relaxing.
Damn him for knowing me so well.
Even after an hour of walking he was not relaxing in the least. Victor wouldn’t relax until they arrived to whatever destination they were going to and she didn’t know where that would be. Nicole didn’t want to know where it would be. In her weakest moments, she might miss him enough to try and seek him out. Knowing where he was would make it too easy.
“I keep thinking about Rafi, and the damn tiger won’t shut up. Maybe I should take you up on your offer and let you use your little pecker on me,” Nicole said when he gave her another smug look at her continued purring.
Her comment managed to wipe the smug look right off his face and that made her very happy.
“Rafi has such a big thick tongue too,” she said listening to his heart beat speeding up. At least it was a change. He didn’t care at all for Rafi, that was easy to see. Why he didn’t care for him wasn’t her business.
The heated look he gave her when she said she might take him up on his offer, warmed his hand on her arm, almost to the point of sweatiness. A slippery hold would give her just enough time to yank free and climb the trees. Leaping from tree to tree she’d be able to lose him.
“I like these images you are thinking. You are going to seduce him. Good, we will get a baby.” Her tigress purred louder.
Seduce? Yes. Fuck? No.
The tigress’ purring turned to a growl.
Rizer Pack Shifter- Complete Series Page 42