The Black Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “We’ll skip around to the east,” Rafe said. “That’s where we left off.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” the Landau alpha directed as he leaped onto the wall as agilely as if he was still a Were pup, and Rafe and the guards eagerly followed.

  * * *

  Cara sensed Dana outside her closed door, about to knock, and wasn’t in the mood for conversation. She needed a rest and an energy reboot. Her shape-shifts were getting out of hand.

  Rafe’s theory about her being sent here to see if other creatures would follow or could sense her presence had been proven. Miami was a goddamn creaturefest.

  That old vampire hadn’t given up easily. The attack he had directed had called the Banshee she housed to the surface and revealed the dark spirit to some of Rafe’s pack. It was possible the vampire had meant to do just that and hoped Rafe’s packmates would be scared off so she could be singled out. She’d be on her own, without anyone at her back.

  That hadn’t happened. The old vamp would be furious.

  “Do you mind if I take a minute?” she called out to Rafe’s mother, stopping the knock before Dana’s knuckles connected with the door. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  “Sure,” Dana said, with a hint of suspicion in her voice. “I’ll wait in the front room with drinks.”

  Cara leaned against the windowsill. Drinks? They were to sip the hours away while Rafe and the Weres searched through shadows? When vampires and demons had trespassed in the world of men because of her?

  She felt the rise of her own inner darkness and held it back. All forms of darkness fed the Banshee.

  “It’s what the monsters want,” she muttered. “What they always have wanted. You.”

  Her borrowed bedroom was nice, but confining. The breeze coming from the open window stirred Cara’s restlessness. Sleep was underrated. Drinks and conversation with her hostess would be torturous. The fact was that trouble had come here because of her, and she had to deal with it before any more deaths occurred.

  She needed to see Rafe, and she also needed to stay away from him. She desired to share her secrets and her body with him while danger still posed a threat to everyone in their pack.

  This kind of impossible craving was the very definition of the imprinting state. Rafe had warned her of this.

  When she again sensed the presence at the door, Cara whirled toward it, thinking that Dana wasn’t going to let up after all and might be blocking her exit. Still, she also sensed another presence nearby and turned back to the window.

  “Rafe?”

  Maybe she had wished too damn hard for this to happen. Maybe Rafe would have come to her now even if she hadn’t silently called to him, because he wanted this as much as she did.

  He should have been working with the search party. He had no right to be here, but he was.

  And her heart was racing.

  * * *

  Sensing the need for stealth and secrecy, Rafe climbed up the side of the house by digging his boots and fingertips into the grooves in the brick. He had not meant to return again. Though he was needed elsewhere, he found himself back at the house and on his way to Cara as though he no longer had a mind of his own.

  She was waiting for him, and backed away from the window as he reached the sill. She had expected him. Her heart was beating as furiously as his was.

  His need for Cara didn’t stop with eye contact. He had a ravenous craving for his mate, and Cara’s eyes reflected that same hunger. Their needs were mutual. Cara’s desires matched his.

  “You must understand why they don’t want this,” she said with a note of sadness in her tone. “You can be hurt. All of you can be hurt. Those vampires are savages and won’t stop coming. The demons you face will only get worse if I stay.”

  She paused for a breath before continuing. “Keeping the Banshee inside me is at times like swallowing shards of glass. Nothing equals the pain of having all that power and darkness inside me. But in the end, it is separate and belongs to someone else. I have no better explanation with which to warn you about me, Rafe. You have no idea what we’ve done.”

  “Too bad it’s too late for me to have a choice in the matter, then,” Rafe said. “I can’t imagine what that must be like for you. What I see in front of me is the most beautiful and courageous she-wolf I’ve ever laid eyes on. Someone selfless enough to have taken on the burden that was handed to you. Someone who deserves to be loved.”

  She stared at him with her lips slightly parted. “I have more secrets.”

  Rafe slid off the sill to stand beside Cara. “Not everyone is afraid of you or those secrets, Cara. I’m not afraid.”

  He gave her no more time for arguments or protests. Talking wasn’t going to satisfy their cravings for each other. Their wolves were directing how this was to go, and their souls were in accord. They had to imprint, mate, seal the deal, or these cravings would go on and on until they did. He was on fire, and having Cara in his arms was the only way to appease those needs.

  Rafe backed her to into the corner and leaned in close. He pressed his lips to hers, hoping she would respond, and drank in her scent as if his sanity depended on it. Because it did.

  When she sighed with a heated breath, he came undone. Fire became only the smallest part of the feelings that erupted inside him. Her name was being etched on his soul. Real closeness was what he hoped to find, a permanent connection that would last if they made it to that bed.

  Shudders rocked him when she kissed him back. But they had done this before, and this time a kiss or two wouldn’t be nearly enough.

  Her fingers slipped into his hair. The only way they could have been closer was for him to be inside her...and there was no way to explain how much he wanted that.

  She kissed him with fervor now—she was a swift learner with an appetite to rival his. Her skin was hot. Her slender hips ground against his. He was going to claim her as his mate, and his erection was proof of the necessity of their next step. This was what had to happen here with Cara, and no one could stop it. This had been the goal since they had first met.

  With a smooth move that required little effort, Rafe had her on her back, on the bed. Looming over her, perched on his arms, he took the time to search Cara’s flushed face.

  Her eyes were dilated and still green. Her lips were a pale shade of pink that would never bruise beneath the weight of his passion, because Cara was above all a wolf.

  Their passion would take them to heights no one had ever seen. He would love her deeply, completely. And after that, he’d come back for more.

  Rafe exhaled his next question in a breathless rush as the last few seconds of sanity ticked away. “You did lock the damn door?”

  Chapter 26

  Cara had no desire to answer Rafe’s question, and he wouldn’t have let her if she had. Instead he kissed her with a fury that sent her senses haywire. Whether they were safe or not amid the chaos going on outside the Landau estate, this room was going to be their personal haven, just as it had been for her parents.

  Still, Cara was instantly aware of a tug on her senses that threatened to interfere in these moments of passion, and the tug was familiar. Her mother and father were crowding the room. Their presence rode on the crest of her emotions. Shutting them out would take more energy than she had and split her loyalties, but she inwardly protested the intrusion. You did the same thing and survived. Let me have my chance.

  Rafe’s hands were on her face. Her body was surrendering to his touch. He lay beside her on the mattress. They had too many clothes on for this mating thing to work. No one had explained about the birds and the bees when she was growing up. She had never seen her father touch her mother, though she had heard their lovemaking on many occasions when they assumed she wasn’t around.

  It was her turn now to find out what sex and closeness were all about. She was going to find out what
being Rafe’s mate would be like, and how this act might change the future.

  Instincts took over as she curled into Rafe’s heat, seeking to be bested by him, and only by him, willing to loosen her hold on her own strength and power. The sheer force of his hunger drove her deeper into the pillows. She tore at his clothes with both hands to get at the smooth skin beneath, and he did the same, reaching her bare stomach in a few mad seconds.

  Cara gasped as he slid his hand upward to her breasts and stalled there, possibly expecting an argument she didn’t make. He stroked her rib cage and ran his fingertips in small circles without landing in any one place. She strained toward him, offering herself, silently demanding that he comply with her wishes.

  It was too much, and not nearly enough. She was determined to take whatever Rafe had to offer. Only in that way would she be able to think straight and get her priorities in order.

  His touch, unlike his kisses, became suddenly tender. When his movements slowed to a controlled exploration of what lay under her shirt, Cara began to get a sense of the ecstasy that was to come.

  She tugged at him with her hands and nipped at his mouth with her teeth in an unspoken, wolfish command for more. Biting turned Rafe on. He had her shirt over her head before her next breath. His lips left a trail of kisses along the base of her neck, and all Cara could think about was how sanity could be so overrated.

  More heat filled her, soaking through every cell. It was the heat of a fever, like sinking into a tub of scalding water. But Rafe didn’t focus his attentions on any one place, because time wasn’t on their side.

  Her pants joined her shirt in a pile on the floor, leaving her naked at last. Though Rafe had seen her this way before, his gaze swept over her longingly, as if he coveted each angle and curve and regretted not being able to linger in all of those places.

  His hand moved downward over her hips and her belly, leaving fluttering muscles in its wake. Dipping his fingers between her thighs made her growl. The pressure of his fingers on her sensitive parts made her insides quake. When he found what he wanted there, the place so hidden and low on her body, his kisses stopped long enough for his eyes to again find hers.

  “Don’t think,” he said roughly. “Go with it. Feel. Enjoy our bond. This is what matters, Cara. You have no idea how much. Let me prove that to you.”

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “We go from there.”

  His fingers tested her willingness, her moistness, her waiting heat, before he stood up to remove his clothes and give her a first full look at the Were she was going to pledge herself to.

  Rafe was incredibly well sculpted. He was masculine and beautifully built. His skin was bronze and mostly flawless, except for two small scars near his left shoulder that were evidence of an old fight. And he was magnificently hard.

  He was hard for her.

  He lowered himself to her slowly, so that she felt his hardness pressing close. His eyes bored into hers as he eased himself into her with a slow, slick slide that robbed her of breath. Muffled cries erupted from her throat, not out of pain, but from her intense need for more of what Rafe had to offer.

  She took hold of Rafe’s hips and pulled him closer so that he slid farther inside her. Then she growled again, deep in her throat, and tried to hold on to both Rafe and her human shape when the animal inside her threatened to bloom.

  Wildness rose in her as her wolf rushed upward to the surface, encouraged by the overwhelming sensations and the new emotions she was experiencing. She had never felt anything like this. Like him...

  “Now!” she whispered, feeling the fierceness of her wolf. “Before it’s too late.”

  His next plunge was deeper, and followed by a swift retreat. He then entered her again and again...with a rhythmical buildup of sweet and terrible speed that kept her entranced.

  The extremes of the pleasure he gave her caused her body to seize. Waves of heat licked at her insides and that distant drumbeat she had sampled once before spiraled toward Rafe as if it had developed a special relationship with him.

  When he stopped, she clawed at him with her fingertips. But he didn’t move again, and didn’t need to. Buried inside her, Rafe locked her to that beat until sparks flashed behind her eyes and internal fireworks went off...so many fireworks that Cara thought she might die of pleasure. Then he moved one more time...a perfect strike so deep that it seemed to have reached her soul...and Rafe Landau collided with her in the fury of that internal beat that only the two of them could share.

  This was the wolf’s mating dance, their union, and it sealed the bargain their souls had made without them.

  Caught up in the rush, Cara threw her head back and arched off the bed. Rafe’s arms were shaking. His eyes were closed. This time when she growled, Cara heard Rafe do the same. When she howled with her newly found satisfaction, Rafe’s howl mingled with hers, echoing through the room.

  But as the sounds of the culmination of their lovemaking faded and Cara lay breathless beneath Rafe on the bed with her self-defenses on hiatus, something else began to worry her.

  The past had again interfered.

  Without a word of warning or explanation, Cara slid out from beneath Rafe and reached for her clothes. Uttering just one more growl—of caution this time—she climbed onto the windowsill and crouched there.

  Rafe was up quickly and moving toward her, his expression one of shock and surprise. But she didn’t take that jump of escape she had been about to make. Instead, she was stopped by the shimmer of air that she had anticipated would gather around her.

  Shapes began to form inside that moving shimmer—rippling images that told a story. Her mother and father had been in this room in the past, and they had mated on the bed where she and Rafe had lain together. Cara saw this clearly now, as if that act was taking place on the same rumpled sheets. Two naked bodies were joining. She heard them groaning with pleasure, and she couldn’t make the image stop or go away.

  Black hair spread across the pillow in the same way hers had. A muscular backside of pure white skin glowed in the light from the open window as the male drove in and out of the female beneath him with a fierceness that Cara had only moments before experienced with Rafe.

  God...they were here. Her parents had taken over the space. Like them, she and Rafe had broken the rules set forth by their respective families by mating. Just like Rafe and her, Rosalind and Colton had thumbed their noses at what was forbidden and sealed their souls together.

  The dreamlike images overlapped with Rafe’s approach. Cara put a hand to her head to try to halt the whirling that went on and on, with those two commingling bodies centered on the mattress. She had to speak, break the connection to the past. Her voice cracked when she said, “Did we just do this, Rafe, or did I imagine it?”

  He was beside her, tall, buff, naked and shining like a bronze star in the moonlight streaming through the open window she huddled in.

  “Are you real?” she whispered. “Or are you, like them, a dream?”

  Rafe’s was the scent embedded in her lungs. His was the body she had shared hers with. Surely she knew this?

  “I’m real. This was real. Are you all right. Cara? What are you seeing?”

  She didn’t stop to listen to him. Pleasure had pushed her over the edge of reason, and only her wolf could cope.

  All ten claws sprang from her fingertips at once. The room filled with the sound of bones realigning. There was agony in this transition, possibly stemming from having experienced the heights of a pleasure that went beyond anything she had known mere seconds before. Or maybe the pain arrived like a silver-tipped arrow to her chest because she didn’t really want to run from Rafe like this but felt that she had to.

  Whatever the cause, the sharpness of her discomfort paused her transition halfway. She looked at Rafe, who was glorious and masculine, strong and caring, and cried out when moon
light hit her face. She roared with her wolf’s throat, then turned away from her lover...and jumped.

  * * *

  “Damn it...” Rafe reached for Cara but found the space empty. Pressing himself to the sill, he stared at the drop to the ground below, swore several times more, then hurriedly retrieved his clothes.

  Forgoing the door—and whoever would be in the house to question him—Rafe climbed out the window using the foot and handholds in the brick, the same way he had gotten in.

  Had Cara not liked feeling vulnerable? Did she regret what they had done? She might not be afraid of vampires and other things that slithered through the night, but it was conceivable that she feared real closeness with another being, and therefore feared him.

  That was a hell of a bad thing, given how much he wished for a repeat of what had occurred between them on that bed. Both man and wolf craved that. But her face...the look Cara had given him before she jumped had been...

  “There is no escape, Cara,” he whispered as his boots touched grass. “It’s you and me from here on out, so I need to know what’s going on.”

  He saw no one in the yard. No hint of Cara. Cameron and the other two Weres had been in the park, along with his father. Whether or not they had missed him didn’t matter. Only finding Cara did. He had to find out why she had run, and what she had seen in that room that made her question their closeness.

  Cara had to be assured that she was not a freak, and that she could be loved. That he loved her.

  “It’s all right,” he messaged to her. “We both can handle this. Just give me a chance to prove that.”

  The three wolves who squatted on top of the wall at the end of the yard nodded to Rafe when he climbed up beside them.

  “Did she come this way?” Rafe asked, searching the dark. “Did anyone come this way in the last few minutes?”

  The answer was no, so Cara had somehow managed to avoid all these watchful eyes. Rafe landed lightly on the park side of the wall and set off in an easterly direction, not sure which Cara he’d find this time, if he found her at all. Full wolf? Half wolf? Vampire? Human? She was so many things.