Bad Blood Panther (Bad Blood Shifters Book 4)

by Anastasia Wilde

  And his cat went berserk. All those emotions, all that rage—he couldn’t handle it.

  “And you forgot about me,” she said bitterly. “Like you always did when she was around. I was just good old Jenny. Good enough to tell all your secrets to, but not good enough to date. Or fall in love with. You just tossed me aside when somebody with bigger boobs and more bleach in her hair and a perfect face came along. ‘Yes, Alex. No, Alex. Ooh, you’re so awesome, Alex.’”

  “Stop that,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me what a fucking idiot I was.”

  “Maybe I do,” she snapped. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe I’ve waited all this time to tell you what a fucking idiot you were! And maybe I want to tell you more than once.”

  “Like I haven’t been punished enough?” he yelled. “My whole damn life down the toilet? Getting captured by Alexander Fucking Grant and being put through hell? I was twenty-five, and I fell for flattery and a pair of tits, and I paid a price you can’t even imagine. So now you get to call me an idiot. I hope you’re fucking happy.”

  He ripped off his clothes and let his cat take him. Leaving Jenny behind, he took off like a bat out of hell, heading for home.

  Chapter 11

  Xander raced back to the Bad Blood compound like his tail was on fire. It was too much. Too fucking much, and he didn’t know why the hell he’d ever wanted a mate. All she did was rip the doors open to his heart and let all the pain come flooding out.

  He’d hated love for the last three years. Now he remembered why.

  He bounded into the clearing and slid to a stop, yowling. Everybody except Jasmin had been tossing a football around on the lawn, and they scattered in a very satisfying way. Cursing at him—which was also satisfying.

  Xander loved pissing people off. He hissed at them.

  “Oh, hell,” Sloan said. “Looks like the heart-to-heart didn’t go well.”

  No fucking shit. All Xander’s emotions were chasing him, and he had to run. Bite. Bleed. He raced around the clearing, leaping from truck to truck, into his favorite oak tree and down again. Don’t slow down. Don’t think. Hurt slash kill.

  “Ya think?” Flynn said. “Do you want to take this, or should I do it?”

  “I think it might take both of us.”

  Sloan didn’t even have all his clothes off before Xander pounced, rolling him over. Sloan. Best buddy. Kill him.

  Sloan rolled away and came up as a snow leopard, growling a warning. Mmm. His cat was out. Not such a scaredy-cat as he used to be.

  Might give Xander a good fight.

  They crashed together, Xander slashing and biting, Sloan smacking his muzzle aside.

  No claws? How civilized. Fuck that.

  He attacked again, and managed to rake Sloan’s side. Sloan yowled.

  Fuck you. Attack again. Bleed me, asshole.

  Xander attacked again, more seriously, and felt a swat on his flank that almost cracked his spine. Claws raked his skin.

  He twisted, growling. Fucking Flynn. Spanking him like a cub.

  He leaped on the lion’s back, digging his claws in. Flynn roared and reared up, tumbling Xander off. Sloan barreled into him, smacking him into the ground, knocking his breath out of him.

  So that’s how it was going to be.

  Jenny raced into the clearing, panting, the tatters of Xander’s clothes clutched to her chest. She’d heard the roars and growls from a quarter-mile away.

  He was fighting. They were hurting him.

  She jolted to a stop. Flynn and Sloan were both attacking Xander, who bled from a dozen wounds. He was cornered now, hissing, corralled in front of the porch.

  Xander bunched his hindquarters and gave a yowl. But instead of lunging at them, he gave a quick twist and leaped up onto the porch railing, using it as a springboard to jump over Sloan.

  Tank gave a roar and went bear. He ran Xander down in two bounds, pinning him to the ground with his giant paws while Xander writhed and hissed, trying to rake Tank’s belly with his hind legs.

  Jenny couldn’t stand it. She took a deep breath and shouted at the top of her voice. “All of you, stop it! Stop this right now! You’re hurting him. Xander, stop fighting, you goddamn fucking idiot.”

  Everything went silent. Xander went limp, still breathing heavily. He Changed to human.

  Tank backed off, letting him go, and Changed too.

  Xander sat up, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. The only sound was his breath rasping in and out of his lungs.

  Flynn and Sloan Changed back. The clearing was full of hot naked men, dicks swinging, but Jenny’s attention was all on Xander.

  Finally he climbed to his feet, blood and dust streaking his body. “Fuck everybody,” he muttered. “I hate you all.”

  He stomped off towards his trailer.

  Jenny watched him for a moment, then strode after him. Flynn started to say something, and Jenny flicked her claws out and raised her hand at him, forgetting to be scared. “Shut up,” she said. “Don’t even.”

  Flynn backed up, hands spread. “I’ll just let you two work this out, then.” He looked…amused? Fuck him. Fuck everybody.

  Xander wanted to have this out? Fine. They’d have it out.

  Xander stood in the tiny shower for a long time, just letting the water run over him. His wounds stopped bleeding and the hot water ran out, and he still stood there.

  Because when he got out, he’d have to deal with the shit. He couldn’t bleed more people or throw knives or go hunting. None of that would help, because Jenny would still be right there making him remember things, ripping the wounds open all over again.

  Finally the cold water made his dick shrivel and his fingers wrinkly, and he opened the door and got out. Fuck. No towels. He found some not-too-disgusting-smelling clothes draped over his hamper and yanked them on, not caring that he was still wet.

  He still wanted to bleed somebody. When was this feeling going to end?

  He strode into his bedroom and stopped dead. Jenny was sitting on the bed with a pile of clean towels in her lap, bunching and unbunching them as she clenched her hands over and over.

  He just stood there, hair dripping, staring at her like an idiot.

  “I called Lissa on your phone and asked her to bring them,” she said, holding out a towel. Her whole body was tense. “Because you’re such a damn guy that not only do you forget having sex with your best friend, you don’t even have clean towels.”

  Xander grabbed the towel out of her hand, stared at it, and threw it on the floor. She was seriously coming in here and talking about fucking towels? He’d had his whole life ripped apart three years ago, and now she was doing it again, and somehow it was all about her. And towels.

  “You knew!” he growled. “Tell me you didn’t know that Cindi was going to Turn me.”

  “I sure as hell never thought she’d do it without telling you!”

  He stared at her. “But you knew,” he whispered. He couldn’t believe it.

  Jenny shoved the pile of towels to the floor. “It was supposed to be me, you asshole!” she yelled, getting to her feet, fists clenched. “You were supposed to fall in love with me, and be my mate, and then some day, when you wanted, I was going to—I hoped—”

  Xander couldn’t process it. “You wanted to Turn me? Why?”

  She stared at him, her face incredulous. Then she shoved him in the chest. “You. Fucking. Idiot.” She punctuated each word with another shove. “God. How dense can you possibly be? I loved you!”

  She couldn’t mean what it sounded like she meant. He couldn’t have been that oblivious. “As a friend,” he said.

  “As everything! Gah.” She walked around in a small circle, growling, like she didn’t know what to do with all the energy pent up in her.

  Finally she turned on him. He was shocked to see tears in the corners of her eyes. “You broke my heart, Alexander Fierro,” she said. “You broke my goddamn heart, and not only didn’t you care, you were too stupid to even fu
cking notice!”

  His brain felt like it was going to explode. “Seriously?” Xander yelled. “And for that I deserve this?” He swept his hand down his body as if to encompass everything that had happened to him. “You were so pissed off at me for not being in love with you, you couldn’t even manage a ‘hey, heads up, Cindi’s going to turn you into a monster’?”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “Does it matter? At least you could have tried!”

  He could feel the rage overtaking him. He was on the edge; in the mirror over the dresser, he could see his eyes beginning to go feral green.

  Jenny saw it too. “Don’t you do that!” she snapped, shaking him. “Don’t you go fucking hide inside your cat. You’re furious at all of us. You’re furious at me. Fucking own it!”

  “I own it every damn day!” He raged up and down the room. “This is me now. I’m angry all the time. It makes me so crazy I want to kill things—kill people—and watch them bleed and tear their flesh. I love my damn crew like family, and my cat still wants to fucking kill them half the time. Do you know how many scars they have because of me?”

  He grabbed her arm, his fingers hard and bruising on her skin, and turned it to show the fading marks where he’d clawed her the night before. “And now you do too.” He flung her arm away. “And I hate that, and it hurts me, but part of me still wants to—”

  He turned away and wrapped his hands around the back of his neck, crouching down as if that would keep everything inside him.

  “I hate you! God, I fucking hate all of you. I hate them because they’re fucking shifters, and I never wanted to be a shifter. I hate you because you’re a panther, and panthers stole my goddamn life. I had friends. I had family, and a job, and I loved them all, and you all took that away from me.”

  He stood up and moved toward her, watching her back away, hating himself for being glad she was scared.

  “I wish I didn’t blame you,” he said. “But I do. And you’re standing there, so beautiful and sexy and smelling like fucking heaven, and I keep getting all these feelings, and then I just want to fucking…”

  He had her backed against the wall, rage shimmering through him. He could feel his cat riding the edge of that wave. He was about to go over it, about to go crazy.

  About to hurt Jenny.

  Time stretched out.

  Then his lips crashed into hers, angry and punishing. Hating her for everything she’d done, for everything she hadn’t done, for all the yesterdays they’d lost and the tomorrows they might never have.

  He held her arms with bruising force, thrusting his tongue into her mouth.

  She pressed against him, finally as wild and angry as he was. She tore her mouth away from his and bit her way down his neck, hard. The sharp pinpricks felt right, as if they lanced some huge festering sore that had been trapped inside him.

  Jenny tugged at his shirt, buttons flying, and he yanked her toward him, grabbing hers at the neck and ripping it down the back. He tore the strap of her bra apart along with it, and tossed everything aside.

  She’d shredded his shirt and was raking her fingernails up and down his chest, hot sexy growls coming from her throat. Her eyes sparked green amidst the blue, angry and hungry.

  They tore at the rest of each other’s clothes. Xander’s hand found her breast and he ducked to clamp his teeth around the nipple, just hard enough to make her moan and thrust toward him.

  He sucked and licked, wanting her to want him, wanting to dominate and claim and demand and devour.

  She was no submissive, though, no matter how shy she might seem. She clawed at his back, breaking the skin. Her hand, hot and demanding, shoved his jeans down and found his shaft, pulling long and slow while her other hand gripped into his shoulder.

  It wasn’t enough. He wanted her hot, deep core, wanted to hear her scream, howl, beg.

  He knelt down, tearing away the rest of her pants and shoving her legs apart so she was open to him. She growled, and he pinned her hips to the wall with one arm.

  He plunged his fingers into her sexy wet opening, and she moaned again. “You like that?” he said. He slid his thumb over her clit, then pumped his fingers into her again.

  “Fuck,” she muttered. “I—”

  He stopped, still holding her against the wall. He leaned forward until his lips were brushing her clit. He licked it slowly, and then said, “Tell me you like it, or I’ll stop.”

  “I—like it.” He licked her clit again. “More,” she growled.

  He slid his fingers into her again, slower, and she moaned. He kept licking her, her scent and heat and sexy cries urging him on. Her legs began to shake, and he could feel her climax building. More, just a little more, and she would be gone.

  He kept at her relentlessly, wanting to feel her explode, needing her raw emotion, her surrender—needing to know he had the power to send her screaming over the edge.

  She clenched around his hand, throwing her head back with a feral growl. He could feel the release—not just the sexual energy, but her own molten core of fury and pain she’d kept buried inside.

  She gasped and moaned, her claws manifesting, digging into his shoulders with pinpricks of fire.

  The pain somehow merged with his anger, fed his desire.

  He wanted more. He needed more, needed to drive himself into her until something inside him broke, until he could lose himself in her and just forget.

  He stood and pulled her to him, capturing her lips again. She nipped at his bottom lip, drawing blood, then licking it away. His dick swelled and tightened.

  Fiery, feisty mate. He lost himself in the moment, her scent soothing him and setting him on fire. She was wet and hot and panting, her fingers flexing against his arms.

  He could feel the blood dripping from where her claws punctured him, and he wanted it. He wanted her—the pain and the glory.

  He turned her to face the wall, pressing up against her, fisting her hair and biting her exposed neck. She half-moaned, half growled. She was like a live wire, arching her back, rubbing her ass against his erection until he wanted to fucking die.

  His heart felt so cold. He wanted her with a desperation that infuriated him.

  “Do you want me to fuck you?” he whispered, biting her earlobe. He nipped his way down the tendon of her neck, leaving faint marks on the skin. Jenny moaned.

  “Yes,” she panted.

  “Do you want me to be gentle?”

  “No.”

  He reared back and thrust himself into her from behind. She gasped, then arched her back. “Yes,” she moaned. “This.” She moved frantically, pushing him deeper inside.

  He pulled partway out and thrust into her again, deep and hard. He wrapped one arm around her hips, and the other found her breast, playing with the nipple as he moved within her, holding her ass against him and circling his hips.

  Jenny reached behind her and cupped her hand around the back of his neck, bracing the other against the wall. She was giving little yowling moans with every thrust, making him and his cat both crazy.

  No more playing. He grabbed her hips and drove into her. She was wildly hot, amazingly soft. She met him with equal force, taking everything he had, matching it with her own wildness, her own anger, her own need.

  Her heat set him on fire. He heard her gasp, felt her arch against him again as she came. Her panther let out a wild, sexy snarl.

  With a groan, Xander let himself go. All the rage and pain, all the loneliness and despair, coalesced in the pit of his stomach. She took him into her body and accepted it all, opening to him, pulling him in.

  He rode the wave of need and desire, stroking into her with a hard, relentless rhythm.

  He wanted this unending wave of emotion and sensation to rise, and break, and take him someplace new, someplace where everything was different.

  He moved the hand that gripped her, slipping his fingers between her legs to find her most sensitive spot. She gave a drawn-out moan, and he could fee
l her muscles tensing, her climax building again.

  Surrender. He didn’t speak the word out load, but the moment he thought it, she shattered with a wild, ragged cry. He buried his face in the crook of her neck.

  It wasn’t enough.

  He drove into her, desperate for release, and finally it came with such force it almost brought him to his knees.

  He pulled Jenny tight against him, still buried in side her. He couldn’t move, couldn’t let her go. He was drowning. Pain and rage and confusion, loneliness and longing and despair. Hope destroyed and regained. It was rushing him away, tumbling him over and over until he couldn’t breathe and he the darkness threatened to overwhelm him.

  Their breathing slowed, but he couldn’t let her go. He felt like if he didn’t hold her tight against him, he would fall apart into a zillion pieces.

  Chapter 12

  Xander stood holding his mate, feeling lost. The anger that had fueled him and been his constant companion for three years had drained to a low ebb, like the tide going out.

  It wasn’t quite gone. Maybe it would never be completely gone. But there was so much space where it had been, and he didn’t know what was supposed to go there now.

  It was empty. Cold. Scary.

  He started to tremble.

  “Hey,” Jenny said softly. She was warm and real and there, and he had to hold on to her. She rubbed his arm, still wrapped around her, and leaned her head back against his shoulder. “Hey, now. It’s okay.” She made a little cat noise, one his panther remembered from last night.

  He walked backwards, pulling her with him until they tumbled on the bed. He was shivering. Why was he shivering? Jenny pulled the covers over them and cuddled up close. Her cat crooned.

  A tiny place inside his rib cage started to feel warm, way way down inside. It grew, getting warmer, until his whole chest felt like there was a marshmallow toast going on inside it. Hot and sweet and gooey.

  Gradually his shivering subsided.

  Jenny was all curled around him, naked and beautiful. He brushed her hair back, reveling in how the curls wrapped around his fingers. How beautiful the curve of her shoulder was. He ran his fingertips along it, dipping in the hollow of her collarbone, caressing the smooth column of her neck.