Drive Me Wild

by Christine Warren

  More.

  He ignored the cries for mercy, the way her ragged breath soughed in and out of her lungs. He could hear her exhaustion, and he didn’t care. He wanted more, wanted to claim her, to erase the nightmare of her attack, the pain of her poor, battered muscles. Leaning down, he drew her tiny bud into his mouth and suckled it like a nipple. Her muscles clenched around his fingers again, a new wave driving her back into climax before she’d barely begun to descend.

  More.

  Her fingers knotted in his hair and jerked painfully. Rafe ignored them. He ignored the burning in his scalp and the ringing cries in his ears. He ignored the bite of her nails into his shoulder when one hand clutched at him, frantic and grasping. He just bit down on her sensitive flesh and drove her over another peak.

  More.

  She began to cry, gasping sobs shaking her as tears tracked down her cheeks to the sheets beneath her head. He saw it and he knew he should ease off on her, but he couldn’t. His instincts rode him hard, ignoring the reason of the man in favor of the hunger of the beast. The beast wanted him to mark her, mark her and keep her forever, permanently hot and wet and aching for him. He flexed his fingers and touched her deeper.

  More.

  Her hands curled into fists and beat at his shoulders, and still he pressed her. Up and up and up until she stopped coming down. Her climax had become one huge, unending orgasm from which she couldn’t break free, because he was constantly there to drag her back. Her voice went hoarse from begging, but it seemed to make no difference. He had no mercy. He growled at her pleas and pushed her higher.

  More.

  Then, abruptly, she stopped struggling. The fight went out of her and she lay still on the sweaty, tangled sheets. Her thighs fell open, leaving her totally exposed. Her hands dropped to her sides and her eyelids fluttered closed. Her dry lips parted, and it was her whisper that brought him back to reason.

  “I love you, Rafe.”

  He froze, fingers buried between her smooth, bruised thighs, tongue dancing across her creamy center. Her words flashed a lightning bolt of pride and fierce satisfaction inside him, and they brought him a new and unexpected peace.

  Gently, he eased his hand away from her, sliding up the mattress until their bodies were aligned and he could take her into his arms, cradling her close. Grasping her uninjured thigh in his hand, he lifted it over his and pulled her hips against his until he could slip inside gently and easily. Her hands came up to push him away, but he refused her. He shushed her with soothing whispers and soft promises and rocked slowly against her, not thrusting, but reveling in the connection between their two bodies. When the climax came this time, it was the gentle ripple of a pond, no more violent than a heartbeat and just as comforting.

  He hugged her to him and tried not to panic.

  Then he tried not to love her and panic became inevitable.

  “Rafe,” she breathed.

  “Shhh.” He brushed her hair away from her forehead, smoothing the tousled curls and pressing a soft kiss to the damp skin beneath. “I’m right here, my sweet Tess. Right exactly here.”

  She slipped breathlessly into sleep, and he followed soon after, still joined, body-to-body, skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart.

  Nineteen

  Rafe woke with a purr, a deep, reverberating sound of contentment that started somewhere down around his toes and ended several inches above what he could only assume to be a cat-and-canary smile. Today everything felt right with his world. Including the warm, soft bundle that currently rested against his chest. That felt the rightest of all.

  His eyes drifted open and went immediately to Tess. With her face buried in the pillow and her body half turned away from him, all he could really see was her tousled curls and the pale skin of her neck rising free of the rumpled sheets. The sight still made him purr even louder. She looked right lying beside him, as if she belonged there. As if she should never sleep anywhere else.

  And wasn’t that a kick in the pants, as others might say? Who would have thought that Rafael De Santos, tomcat, Romeo, and all-around bachelor would ever fall in love, especially with a witch of a woman who seemed to enjoy arguing with him as much as she enjoyed making love with him? He certainly had never seen her coming.

  But then, what man ever saw his future until it appeared before him as the present moment? Premonition wasn’t a gift common to his kind—wasn’t a common gift at all, really—and even if he had known that Fate was sneaking up on him, he couldn’t honestly say he would have done anything different.

  Although, speaking of premonitions …

  His purr rumbled to a stop in his chest as he drew the sheet farther down Tess’s back and saw the evidence of the attack she’d survived the night before. The back of her right shoulder bore a nasty bruise the color of rotting meat—black and purple with traces of red and yellowish green around the edges. Just the sight of it made him want to rip someone’s throat out, preferably whoever had dared to lay a hand on her, but honestly at the moment he didn’t feel all that picky.

  Tess had said she never saw the face of her attacker, but she had also said that she’d seen the first blow coming before it hit. Now, looking at the damage the pipe had done to her shoulder and back, Rafe offered up a silent prayer of thanks that the blow hadn’t landed on her skull. If it had, she would have died almost immediately. And then something inside Rafe would have died as well.

  “I can feel you staring,” she grumbled, not bothering to lift her face out of the pillow. It muffled her voice, but his Feline hearing had no trouble picking out her words. “I’d say it’s not as bad as it looks, but since I can’t see it and it still aches like a sore tooth, I can’t seem to muster up the energy to lie.”

  Rafe felt his mouth quirk. It amazed him the way she could make him want to smile even while he continued to contemplate ways to find her attacker and rend him limb from limb.

  He leaned down and feathered a kiss over the tender skin. “You never need to lie to me, sweet Tess. If you are in pain, I wish to know. Should I apply more of your salve?”

  She turned her head and pushed a tumble of curls out of her eyes so she could blink up at him from beneath sleep-heavy eyelids. “It can’t hurt, and it might help with the aching. You remember which jar?”

  Rafe lifted it from the bedside table where he’d placed it the night before. “I have it here. Shoulder first.”

  A small hiss escaped her when he first spread the thick unguent over her bruised muscle, but he murmured something soothing and kept his touch as careful as he could. He hated the idea of causing her more pain in the healing process almost as much as he hated the idea that she’d been injured in the first place. He had meant his words of the previous night: He should have been there to protect her.

  She was his to protect.

  He felt her begin to relax under his hands and smoothed on the last bit of salve, rubbing gently to ensure it penetrated into the muscle. It impressed him that the medicinal balm absorbed into the skin more like a lotion than a greasy ointment, and he found the crisp, herbal fragrance both refreshing and unobtrusive. No wonder his gatita’s store appeared so successful, if she had the talent to produce products like this one. Pride warmed his chest and he had to remind himself to focus on the task at hand.

  “Turn over now. Your leg next.”

  Tess obeyed with a lazy grumble and shifted onto her back even as she kept the sheet pinned to her chest. The gesture made Rafe smile.

  “So shy, gatita?” he teased. “Do you not remember all the places I saw last night? All the places I touched? And tasted?”

  He leaned close and nuzzled the sensitive hollow beneath her ear, which earned him a hunched shoulder and a slap on the chest.

  “Hey, back off, Garfield,” she scowled, but he saw the flash of warmth in her eyes and knew she wanted him as constantly as he wanted her. “Between the mugging I got on the street last night and the workout you put me through when I got home, I think I’m entitled to a day of rest
here, all right?”

  A chuckle of delight escaped him. He took no offense at her words. He could see in the delicate color beneath her eyes and the pale tone of her skin that his Tess really was tired, but he could smell in her fragrance that she still wanted him. That knowledge satisfied him for the moment.

  Still, if he needed to strip away her covering in order to tend to her wounds … well, anything in the name of good health, yes?

  She clung to the cotton with the tenacity of a dog with a bone. “Hey, I said give it a rest!”

  Rafe clucked at her and shook his head, but he couldn’t quite suppress his smile. “You wound me, gatita. I am simply attempting to care for your injuries. I would assume that this healing cream is less effective when applied through a layer of cloth. Am I right?”

  She glared.

  “Now, now, be a good girl,” he urged, tugging at the thin fabric covering. “If you behave and take your medicine, maybe you will get a special surprise later on. How does that sound?”

  Tess snorted and dropped her gaze between his legs. “Less than surprising,” she grumbled drily.

  He chuckled. He couldn’t help it. When he was with Tess, he always felt like laughing. She did that to him.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, sweet Tess. I had something more like ice cream in mind. But I suppose that if you insist…”

  “Oh, just give me that,” she snapped, holding a hand out for the salve. “I can take care of my thigh without your help.”

  He turned serious. “But it gives me pleasure to help you. If I could not be there to prevent your injuries, then I at least need to be the one to tend to them. Please.”

  The please seemed to act like a key in a lock, doing away with Tess’s irritable expression and making her soften back into the bed.

  “Fine. Do your worst,” she said.

  “Only my best for you, gatita.”

  She let him draw the sheet down to the foot of the bed, her only protest the rosy flush of color that stained her cheeks and her chest with heat. Rafe found the sight entrancing. He couldn’t stop himself from taking a moment to drink in her beauty, all soft and warm and spread out before him like a saucer of heated cream. With her fair skin, golden hair, and blue eyes, she looked so different from him, so much smaller and more delicate. Fragile, even. When he put his hands on her, he marveled at the contrasts between them, then marveled again at how right it felt to touch her. Like she belonged.

  To him.

  Tess cleared her throat nervously, and Rafe offered her a reassuring smile. Dragging his attention back to her wounds, he surveyed the damage to her luscious, curved thigh. The bruise there had come up sooner, so he’d seen more of it yesterday than he had on the one on her shoulder. He had to admit that while it still looked painful—and apparently felt that way, judging by the way she drew in a sharp breath when he touched it—the salve did appear to have sped the healing up a little. Rafe could see larger margins of yellow, green, and gray around the perimeter of the bruise, signs of later stages of healing. Grunting in satisfaction, he began smoothing the salve onto her skin.

  “I am still not convinced you should not see a doctor,” he said, scooping up another dollop of goo.

  Tess propped herself up on her elbows to watch his treatment. “I told you, I’m fine. Nothing is broken, and a doctor can do less for deep bruising than I can do for myself. I just need a few days for the swelling to go down, and they won’t even hurt anymore. Trust me.”

  Rafe did trust her; he trusted her with his very heart, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel the urge to wrap her up in cotton wool to ensure no harm ever touched her. He never wanted to let her out of his sight.

  He opened his mouth to speak, to try to tell her what she had come to mean to him, but the strident peal of the doorbell cut him off.

  Tess frowned and glanced at the clock. “It’s barely nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. Who the heck is at my front door?”

  She swung her legs to the side of the bed and stood, hurrying over to her closet to grab a long, cotton robe off its hanger. Rafe already had his trousers on and busied himself fastening the buttons.

  “I’ll see who it is,” he said and left the bedroom before she could stop him.

  He heard her protests but ignored them. Instinct, deep and primitive, made him determined to place himself between Tess and any intruder. He didn’t care if it was her best friend at the door; from now on, anyone who wanted to see Tess would have to go through him.

  Unfortunately, the door opened not on Tess’s best friend, but on her grandfather.

  “Mr. Menzies,” he said smoothly, or as smoothly as he could while standing half naked in the living room of the visitor’s only grandchild. “What a surprise. Would you like to come in?”

  Lionel pushed through the door with little grace.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised, unfortunately,” the old man snapped, planting himself in the living room so firmly, Rafe would not have been surprised to see roots growing into the carpet. “I was afraid this had happened. And to think I rushed all the way to this ghetto in the hope I could stop it before it was too late.”

  “Granddad?”

  Both men turned at the sound of Tess’s voice. She stood framed in the door to her bedroom with one hand clutching the sides of her robe closed in front of her. The pale blue material covered her from neck to toenails, but she didn’t appear comfortable with her appearance. Maybe because she and Rafe both looked as if they had just rolled out of bed.

  Her bed.

  “Tessa,” Lionel acknowledged coldly. “I would ask for the meaning of this, but it would only serve to insult us both. The evidence does, as they say, speak for itself.”

  Rafe saw Tess flinch and lift a hand to smooth back her hair. Her grandfather’s words clearly affected her.

  “Granddad, what are you doing here?” she asked, in a tone Rafe had never heard her use before. She sounded subdued, almost deferential. As far as he knew, his Tess never deferred to anyone.

  “I hardly think why I came is the central issue, now that I’ve been greeted by this little scene.” Lionel gave Rafe an insulting visual once-over, then focused on his granddaughter with a haughty glare of disdain. “Really, Tessa. I’ve never credited you with much discrimination when it came to your personal life, but this? This is outrageous. You’ve given yourself to an animal. You couldn’t find yourself a man of at least the same species? Even an unmagical human would have been better than this.”

  Tess must have heard Rafe growl, because she shot him a quelling look and gestured for him to stay where he was. “I didn’t think you had any interest in my personal life, Granddad. You rarely ask me about it anymore, after all.”

  “Why should I bother to ask? I know the answers would only disappoint me,” the old man glowered. “I did my best to steer you you in the proper direction while you were under my roof. I raised you, I dressed you, I introduced you to all the right people. And how did you repay me? You did nothing to secure the proper sort of husband I tried to steer you toward. You could have been the wife of a councilor, and instead you chose to defy me and become some sort of hippie, selling herbs and potions like some medieval peasant woman. That was humiliation enough. But this?” He waved a hand toward Rafe. “This is too much.”

  While he had decided long ago that people who threw around such nasty words were not worth listening to, Rafe now learned that hearing them spoken to his woman made him want to rip out the tongue that uttered them. Only Tess stepping forward to place a hand on his arm held him back.

  “This? You might think it’s ‘too much,’ but you don’t seem surprised by it,” she said, her voice quiet but calm. Only through her touch on his bare arm could he feel the tension that gripped her. “In fact, you seem as if you already knew Rafe and I had formed a relationship over the past couple of weeks. How is that, Granddad? We haven’t exactly been painting the town red these days.”

  “You can’t hide these things from me,
Tessa. I always find out.” Lionel’s blue eyes speared into her, and Rafe had to fight back the urge to step between the two family members, to protect Tess from the man who had raised her. “As it happens, I began to suspect something when I encountered your animal friend here at the Vircolac Club. Your energy clung to his aura like dryer lint. I had intended to prepare him for his meeting with the council, but now I’m no longer sure that meeting should even take place. Not only has De Santos compromised his impartiality by consorting with a member of our community, such as she is, but from what I saw at the club, he can’t even control his own animalistic tendencies. As far as I’m concerned, I should go straight back to the Witches’ Council and advise them to rethink their request to meet with the Others. Especially with an Other like this.”

  Once again, Tess held him back. His jaguar chafed at the restraint, at being asked to allow his mate to be insulted in his presence. The beast wanted to teach Lionel Menzies some manners, preferably through the judicious use of claws and fangs. The man, however, realized that violence would solve nothing. It would only distress Tess and prove Lionel’s point.

  But that didn’t mean Rafe had to be happy about the situation.

  Beside him, Tess drew a slow, deep breath.

  “Grandfather,” she began, and he could hear how she had to strain to keep her tone level, “I doubt anyone cares whom I date enough to approve or disapprove. The only person who gets a say in how I run my life is me. Of course, I do try to take your feelings into consideration when I can, but—”

  “You call this taking my feelings into consideration?”

  “Maybe not, but I had no reason to believe you would have any feelings one way or the other. You’re not usually very interested in my life. I, however, am interested in hearing about when you two ran into each other and why I’m only hearing about it now.”