Cry Of The Wolf (Eye Of The Storm)

by Hardy, Dianna

  “Oh, god…” she pushed back against him…

  And then he stopped.

  She screamed. A long, furious holler, jumbled with swear words and promises of castration.

  His fingers found her clit once more, and he feathered it lightly with barely a touch. “Answer me.”

  She howled in defeat. “Why?! Damn it – fine! Yes, I came hard; really fucking hard. Is that what you want to hear?”

  He slid his tongue along the length of her in reward and her insides clenched. The ache was almost unbearable, reminding her of the mating pains she’d had last full moon before her release. Except this time, there was no pain in her chest – all the agony was centred in her groin. And all the while, he kept his ministrations soft, gentle, teasing her, keeping her needed liberation at bay…

  The warmth in her belly began to billow out like a furnace in the wind.

  Again, he pulled away.

  With a cry of surrender that was almost a sob, she lost their battle of wills. “Please … Lawrence, please…”

  Everything went deathly still behind her.

  Held down with his hand on her back, she couldn’t turn to see him. She might as well be blind. What was going on?

  Silence. Eerie silence.

  She was surprised to discover it was worry she felt – not for herself, but for him.

  She bit down on her tongue to keep from calling his name, sensing any noise might be destructive rather than helpful; the way you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker from their dream.

  She recognised the light scent of saltwater before she felt the drops…

  Tears.

  Falling onto her back.

  Oh, god.

  The urge to turn, to take him in her arms, was overwhelming beyond belief, but she held her position without struggle and kept as still as she could, submitting of her own free will.

  The realisation of it was a little dizzying.

  Finally, there was movement and the sound of him pulling at the fastening of his trousers. She held back her groan of want, her mouth watering in expectation as a fresh flow of juices coated her sex.

  “Do you know what it’s like to have no choice?” His voice broke over his words. “To be a true slave to another’s will? To watch everything that means anything to you taken away, and not be able to lift a finger against it?”

  The thick head of his erection prodded her entrance, and she gasped at the feel of it. Hell, she might just come like this. “I feel a little like that now,” she whispered.

  “Good.” His hand on her back glided upwards to her neck and encircled it. “I need you to understand.”

  She’d expected him to enter her hard and fast, all in one go, but he bided his time and eased into her slowly, every thrust taking him a little deeper; taking her a little closer to the edge of her sanity.

  Her gums ached where her teeth elongated. Her senses became sharper; her vision, even more so.

  She wished she could see him; see what his cock looked like. It must be big given his size – at the moment it felt like the whole fucking world.

  “There are things I need to tell you about me … but I need you to understand.”

  He was fully inside her.

  She moaned, but barely had time to get used to his size – to the feel of him – when he grasped her under her chin and forced her head back, almost painfully. Her eyes now locked with his, upside down. The look in his was torture – pure torture – and she struggled to take in her next breath, but she couldn’t tell if it was owing to the torment coming off him or the angle of her neck.

  With his other hand, he pulled her pelvis back, locking her lower half in place as well, and ground into her once.

  Deep.

  The result was unrivalled pleasure with a bite of pain. Her eyes welled up. She would have cried out if she could have moved even an inch, but all she managed was a grunt, any movement denied to her, his dominance complete.

  “God…” the ache inside her was cavernous … “it hurts,” she breathed out, raggedly.

  “It doesn’t hurt, baby. You don’t know what hurt is. I’d never hurt you.” Then he began to thrust – deep, determined, driven…

  The pleasure didn’t just build. It crescendoed, reaching its height in a matter of seconds. It came from a place inside her she didn’t know existed – a place where she was split open and naked, and dying and alive all at once.

  Tears free-flowed down her face. Little sobs from the intensity of it all, and from the dark chasm that was Lawrence, choked their way up her throat against the feel of his hand there.

  Then it happened: that energetic union. That bonding between mates. A fusion that occurred naturally when two wolves surrendered to each other and to the fate that had brought them together.

  She’d experienced it with Ryan, both in dreams and in real life, and here it was again, snaking its way from the deepest part of her, around the base of her spine; invisible tendrils trailing upwards, entwining, then shooting outwards to encircle them both.

  For some reason it hadn’t occurred to her that she would feel it with Lawrence. Her surprise was mirrored in his eyes – he felt it too and he hadn’t been prepared for it, she could tell, so embroiled as he was in whatever was eating away at his soul.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. Just as he needed her submission to him; this new entity that held them both in its grasp, demanded their submission to it.

  Those ethereal cords that ran between them coalesced, merged, joined them together in an infinite union, and for a moment, she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.

  She floated upwards as if leaving her body, then something like an electrical current shot through her, and that lightning she tried so hard to harness finally danced across her skin, and then across his.

  His thrusts became wilder, almost vicious. She heard him groan, a hungry, fierce sound that she felt at her core, and with it she absorbed the silent cry of his wolf; his pain and anguish; his devastation; his fear, knowing all the while that he was also devouring the most secret parts of her.

  His hand tightened around her hip as he drove himself home … swelled inside her… “Please understand … I need you to … understand … I need you—” His words ended on the raw sound of release as he climaxed inside her.

  Somewhere above them, thunder sounded, but she couldn’t focus enough to tap into it because the cords that bound them together burst like lava from a volcano, melting and welding everything in its wake, careening her into an orgasm, indescribable in essence, shared only with her mate and no other.

  No other, indeed.

  Her experience with Ryan, although no less remarkable, had been completely different. Without a doubt, she was now bonded to two males – truly bonded – both of them as different as night and day.

  Chapter Seven

  Amil snuck a sideways glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. Five minutes to four. He had to be at Sarah’s in an hour and he was already cutting it fine, but there was no chance he could get away from Gabriel’s piercing gaze. No. The best thing to do was act as calm as possible. That was the only way Gabriel could be pacified: if everything around him appeared to run smoothly.

  He’d been here for two hours already and Gabriel had kept him waiting and waiting, only calling him in, finally, two minutes ago.

  The new leader of The Trident waited for his answer.

  “I brought you everything back that I could find, the syringe being the most important.” He had become an expert liar since becoming a Trident, even able to control the scent he gave off when he told a fib, and that was no mean feat.

  The grey-eyed Alpha twirled a pen through his fingers. “Everything except information, Amil.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  Gabriel reached into the draw beside him, at the desk where he sat, and pulled out a newspaper which he tossed at Amil.

  He caught it as it smacked into his chest. The Surrey Times. He scanned the articles on
the page it had been opened on until his eyes landed on a picture of the warehouse where all the Tridents had been killed – all except him. “It’s the warehouse,” he stated blankly. He really had no clue what he was missing.

  Gabriel’s eyes flashed in annoyance, no doubt at his stupidity. “Look at the destruction to it.”

  The photograph showed the ruined building, roof torn apart by lightning from the unexpected storm. “They needed better lightning conductors on the side of the building,” said Amil, and then he winced, wishing he hadn’t spoken. Gabriel didn’t look impressed.

  “There are many more, much taller buildings around that warehouse, some with aerials on the top of them even, yet that one, and only that one was destroyed by lightning. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  He supposed it might be, but he really couldn’t see what—

  “Storm-wielder, Amil!” Gabriel slammed his hand down hard on his desk. “Why was that not reported back?”

  For the first time, Amil felt the tendrils of fear dance over his skin. “Storm-wielder? But, sir, they are myth.”

  “They are not. Do your homework. They’ve been scattered and thinned out, they keep themselves so well hidden nowadays it’s next to impossible to find one, but they are far from myth. That,” he pointed at the paper in Amil’s hand, “looks very real indeed, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, sir,” he muttered.

  Gabriel eyed him scrupulously and waited.

  “Sir?”

  “Are you telling me that you never noticed a storm-wielder in your midst that night?”

  “As I put in my report, as soon as that grenade dropped I understood the wolves’ intentions and I fled the building the moment everyone rushed in, and the grenade exploded. There was a female wolf there – the Alpha’s mate is who Loretta believed her to be – but there was no indication at all that she was a storm-wielder.”

  Silence. “Fled the building, Amil?”

  Amil gritted his teeth. “Yes, sir.”

  “Not very loyal of you, was it?”

  But very astute as I’m still alive, sir. He kept his mouth shut. Tridents, for the most part, were a bunch of idiots, right down to the way they liked to parade the symbol of their species around: on the front of their buildings, on their clothes and letterheads, sometimes on their bodies as tattoos… I mean, come on! They were getting cocky in their indiscretion. Loyalty was one thing, but that was loyalty to a fault. Loyalty was useless if it got you killed. That didn’t make you loyal, it made you a schmuck. A dead one.

  Gabriel steepled his fingers together, still gazing at him, indomitably, as if he knew things about him even he couldn’t fathom. “I want to know who and where. There’s a she-wolf somewhere in Surrey who harnesses the power of creation. The one wretched thing we share with the wolves is the need for the storm. I want her locked up in a cage – our cage. Whoever she is, she’s our life-blood. That blood needs to be flowing in our veins – bred into our species – and her electrical maelstrom needs to be channelled appropriately.”

  “I’ll find her, sir. I promise you I’ll find her.” And he had no doubt he could keep that promise. He had the blouse – the one he’d secreted away. The one that had faint traces of his lovely Sarah on it, and the one that boldly carried the she-wolf’s scent. The storm-wielder.

  Storm-wielder. That boggled his mind. It didn’t seem possible…

  He’d have to be careful. He still didn’t fully understand why the wolf’s blouse had Sarah’s scent on it … and another one – the scent of a male wolf that wasn’t the Alpha Loretta had captured. Sarah’s had been the weakest scent – barely there – and he couldn’t tell if it was connected to the she-wolf or the male. There was a possibility the she-wolf was a friend of Sarah’s somehow… Yes, he’d have to tread very carefully…

  “Don’t disappoint me, Amil. Your background is … colourful; your entry into The Trident no less so.”

  He blanched. He didn’t want to talk about this.

  “Do you know why Dr Trident created us?”

  Because he suffered from delusions of grandeur.

  “Because of his need to perfect power. He saw the werewolf with all its weaknesses, and knew he could do better. You do want to be part of a better race, don’t you?”

  “Of course, sir. I strive for perfection in all I do.” No need to lie – that statement was true.

  Gabriel eyed him in silence, assessing him, then waved his hand. “Dismissed.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Amil. He made no attempt to linger and strode out of the door of Gabriel’s office as quickly as he could without looking like he was rushing.

  An awful smell assaulted his senses, and he zoned in on an old, human woman sitting on a chair in the waiting area. She was way too old for mating – what the hell was she doing here?

  Damn it, Amil, you’re curious to a fault; always have been.

  This was true. He turned his attention away from her and got the hell out of there. He had other things to worry about.

  Stepping out into the afternoon sun, he let out a sigh of relief and looked at his watch. Ten past four. Shit. He’d have to rush after all.

  ~*~

  Lydia had no recollection of how she ended up lying face down on the soft earth. When had she let go of the pine tree?

  Lawrence was still on her – in her – his breathing less heavy, his wet cheeks pressed into her shoulder.

  Wet cheeks…

  She gave in, at last, to the urge that overruled all others and turned over in his arms so she faced him.

  He glanced at her, diffidently, then lowered his eyes.

  She wasn’t having any of that and neither was her wolf. In her mind, the animal languished, contentedly, in post-coital bliss. Yeah, her wolf was pretty damn happy right now, and a little smug that she’d gotten her way. Cheeky bitch.

  With a tentative hand, she stroked the side of Lawrence’s face, tracing his tears, then turned him to meet her gaze again.

  “I’m not good at this,” he whispered. “I’m sorr—”

  Her thumb on his lips silenced him. “The one thing you should never do to a woman, whether you make love to her or fuck her, is apologise straight after.” She offered him a small smile.

  He returned it with an even smaller one, but he looked ghostly pale.

  “I’m no good for you. As a mate, I mean. I’m about as damaged as they come, Lydia. I have nothing to offer you.”

  “I guess the powers that be think differently.”

  He shook his head. “I … I need to tell you things…”

  She raised her eyebrows, waiting.

  “Not here. Tonight.”

  She didn’t think it was possible, but he turned a shade whiter. “Lawrence, you don’t have to tell me anyth—”

  “I do. It’s been too long … too long since…” He trailed off, unable to finish whatever he was trying to say. “Besides, you’re my mate – you really should know.” He attempted another smile. She wondered if it hurt because it was so rigid she was scared he might crack under the strain of it.

  So much ice.

  She thumbed a drying tear away.

  How much water can the weight of ice carry?

  Without thinking, she grasped the back of his head, leaned towards him and kissed him.

  It was chaste and soft, and he was solid as stone … until finally, he yielded. She brushed his lips with her tongue, lightly. He let out a small moan, then responded in kind, gently. Far too gently for the tempestuous act they had both played out just moments ago.

  When the kiss ended, he looked at her with nothing less than astonishment. “What was that?”

  A little laugh flittered out of her. “A kiss. That was our first kiss.” She touched her forehead to his. “I wanted something soft to remember you by, because we both know you’re going to go back to being hard as soon as we leave here.”

  He looked at her impassively, and then with meaning. “I don’t want to be like that with you; I d
on’t want to push you away.”

  “Then don’t.”

  But there was that impassiveness clouding his eyes again. She sighed internally, but didn’t hold it against him. She had caught a glimpse – more than a glimpse – of the black hole he lived in. She had no idea what had caused that terrible chasm, but the need to protect yourself was something she related to.

  Guilt for her chaotic part in Brendan’s life tugged at her heart. He was right – she had pushed him away. Him and everyone else. She vowed to make it up to him as soon as she got the chance. And on that note, she supposed she should finally call her dad, too…

  “It’s getting late.” Lawrence eased himself off her. “We should head back.”

  She reached for her underwear and jeans as he fastened his trousers – they hadn’t even ridden down past his arse. Damn, he looked really fucking neat. She didn’t even have to look at herself to know she was a mess.

  “What time are you free tonight?”

  She stared at him. I guess he really does want to tell me things. “I’m on the late shift until closing.”

  “Skip it. I’ll get someone else to cover for you.”

  “But it’s Russell Maddox’s final performance. It’s going to be busy as hell – I really should be there.”

  His face grew stormy at the mention of the actor.

  What’s that about? she thought as she did up her own trousers.

  “I’m not sure I want you in the same building as him,” Lawrence growled.

  “Er … okay… but poor Lisa’s gonna be—”

  He sighed. “Fine, but I’m picking you up after work and bringing you straight back. I need to run a background check on that guy – I don’t want you anywhere near him alone, got it?”

  Astounded, she agreed. “Funny thing about Hollywood celebs is they never want to hang out with me either, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  Without warning, she was pinned to his chest, his mouth on hers in a possessive kiss that was nothing like the last one.

  Whoa…

  “I mean it, Lydia,” he said, his voice low. “You’re a storm-wielder who appeared out of the blue, and he’s … a problem that appeared out of the blue at around the same time. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t take a chance that it’s coincidence. I’m not putting you in danger and I’m sure as hell not losing you, no matter what else I have to lose in the process.”