by Andrews, Jo
“God, Ian!”
She clung to the rails of the headboard, arching and writhing under him as he drove into her, thrusting her relentlessly higher and higher. It was an excruciating rapture, unbearable. Her whole body convulsed and she cried out as she came hard, fireworks going off in her brain, felt him jolt and groan helplessly against her and the rush of heat as he too climaxed.
His forehead hit the pillow beside her head and his weight was heavy on her for a few minutes while they gasped against each other’s faces and the aftershocks trembled through them.
“Don’t fall asleep,” he murmured. “We’re not done yet.”
“You’re never done.” She rubbed her cheek against the rolling muscles of his forearm and sighed with satiety. “But I need a breathing space.”
He withdrew with a sigh and a laugh, then slipped onto his side. She twisted to face him, snuggling blissfully into the arms that held her so tenderly.
“How much sleep did you get this morning?” he asked when she yawned.
“Enough. I got up to help Annie with lunch.”
“That means not much at all.”
“It was still a few hours more than you did.” She stroked his side from armpit to hip, loving the feel of his body under her hands. “I wonder how much sleep we’ll ever get from now on.”
He smiled against her forehead. “Sleep is overrated.”
“Variations are nice,” she murmured with deep satisfaction. “I never thought lust could be so wonderful. But it is.”
He went suddenly rigid in her arms. Then his chest heaved against her as he took a deep breath and released it in a slow, harsh exhalation.
“Is that what you think this is?” he said, an odd, strained note in his voice. “Lust?”
“Isn’t it?”
“You don’t know anything, do you? Or…you don’t want to.”
She drew back a little to see his face. It was very still and his eyelids were down so that his eyes were dark, unreadable cuts above the high curves of his cheekbones.
“What’s to know? You can’t call this love, Ian. It’s just pleasure, pure and simple. That’s what it is between us. All it is. So why not be honest and call it lust?”
“Because it’s more than that! Sure, it’s not love. Love is to give. To want to give all. But what’s between us isn’t just lust either. Lust is to take, and then take more. To use up. It’s greed. It’s selfishness. That isn’t what we have.”
It wasn’t.
“What do we have?” she asked and her voice shook. She didn’t really want to know the answer. He was right. Love gave and didn’t take. But it also left itself defenseless, wide open to emptiness and pain and loss. She didn’t dare to take the risk.
“Passion. Hunger. Something somewhere in between. Can’t you come even that far toward me, Sierra? Meet me halfway? Or do you want to stay with just lust?”
After a long hesitation, she whispered, “I can come that far.”
Even though it was further than she wanted to go.
Chapter Eight
Drown her with pleasure, he thought. She wasn’t used to pleasure. He could make her crave it, make her crave him. Then maybe she’d stay, at least for a little while.
He didn’t know what he would do when she left. Which she would surely do, sooner or later. She was making a huge concession in coming toward him as far as she had, coming even halfway. She was frightened of that. He could see it in her eyes—the wariness, the reluctance.
She didn’t love him, didn’t want him to even say the word. She didn’t trust that word, especially from him. She believed him incapable of commitment. He didn’t know how to make her see that he was committed to her and always would be. The trouble was that real commitment in her eyes meant marriage and kids.
God, he wanted to marry her. Bind her to him so that she would never leave. He could give her marriage all right, but he couldn’t give her children. And most people wanted that, tried for it over and over again, enduring endless tests, drugs and all kinds of crap just for the slightest chance of having kids of their own. Well, Shifters couldn’t breed with humans. So there was no chance, no chance at all for Sierra and him.
Even Shifter females had at least one cub before deciding not to have more. It took a lot of love for someone to give up having kids entirely. And Sierra had made it clear she didn’t love him.
He stared blindly up at the ceiling. The dawn chorus twittering outside had woken him and he hadn’t been able to drop off again. Sierra was still asleep, her breathing steady and cool against his breastbone. They were lying tangled up together, her slim body half over him, her head on his chest, arm around his waist, one leg between his thighs. A light, sweet, whispery weight. He turned his head to feel the softness of her hair against his lips.
He didn’t know how he would be able to give this up. Didn’t know how he would be able to ever give her up. Her arms holding him so closely, her body surrendered to his, her sheath surrounding him, clenching upon him, milking him. He wanted so much more from her than just physical pleasure, but even that was precious to him. It would break him to lose it.
She stirred, her arm tightening around his waist. He felt her turn her head to rub her cheek back and forth against his collarbone.
“Is it morning?” she asked drowsily.
“Yes.”
* * * * *
Sierra stretched luxuriously. It felt wonderful to wake up this way, she thought dreamily in a haze of contentment, to come out of sleep enveloped by him, his arm holding her close and his big hand splayed over her hip. She could feel the hardness of his jaw against the top of her head and the steady rise and fall of his stomach muscles against her own as he breathed. His scent was all around her, his skin satin against her lips, and she didn’t want to leave this warm, sweet tangle of sheets and limbs. Oh yes, she could get used to waking up this way. All too easily.
“We have to get up,” she sighed.
“Five minutes more,” he murmured and she laughed.
“Okay. Then I have to go help Annie.”
“If you must. You know you don’t need to.”
That reminded her. She stilled.
“She knows about us,” she said abruptly.
“Does she?”
It didn’t bother him in the slightest. Well, it wouldn’t. It just added to his rep after all.
“Do you mind?” he asked, picking up her uneasiness.
“I’m not sure. The whole town must be speculating, but they don’t really know. Annie does. But she’d be discreet about your women, wouldn’t she?”
“Probably. I have no idea, since I’ve never brought any of them here.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No.”
That pleased her, that she was the only one. Then she remembered that the reason she was here was just because he felt he had to protect her.
His body was coiled-spring taut in her arms and she could feel the quick beat of his heart under her cheek upon his chest. It was always that way. He never seemed to really relax except just after he came, when his body went limp and his heartbeat slowed below normal in satiation. But then almost immediately he would be wound up again.
“Why are you so tense?” she asked. “You’re always so tense.”
“I want it too much.” He drew a harsh breath. “Keep waiting for the chop.”
She raised her head sharply to look down at him. His eyes were closed, but his lips were pressed together, their corners faintly pointed with strain.
“What do you m—?” But she didn’t really want to hear the answer, changed the subject hurriedly. “What are you doing today?”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he laughed wryly.
“Gonna go over to Kurt’s once I’ve had breakfast. With any luck Kihain will be healed enough to talk. What we do after that depends on what he has to say.”
“Keep me posted,” she said with sudden fierceness.
His eyes opened and he smiled up at her.
“Care a little, do you?”
She was beginning to care too much. It was scary.
“Of course I do,” she admitted almost resentfully.
He pulled her head down and kissed her. “That’s progress.”
Maybe for him. She herself felt as if she were losing ground, caught in quicksand and sinking inexorably. He was becoming too important to her.
After breakfast, the hands headed out, but Sierra noticed that Gregor remained. He had apparently been assigned tasks around the ranch itself. It gave him a good reason for hanging around.
“Don’t go anywhere without him while I’m gone,” Ian said quietly in her ear.
Sierra began to protest, then remembered how uneasy she had felt last night. “All right.”
His fingertips stroked down her throat, lingered in the hollow at its base, then slid down into the open neck of her chambray shirt to press lightly and provocatively between her breasts.
“Ian! Someone will see.”
“Could have made it my tongue,” he murmured, his eyes dancing. “Would have preferred that. I like the way you taste. But you being the private person that you are, I knew you’d object. So I was being discreet.”
“You call that being discreet?” But she couldn’t help smiling as she pushed his hand away. “You don’t care who sees, do you?”
“No.” His hand turned to catch hers. “Do you?”
The whole town probably knew by now that she was one of Ian Raeder’s conquests. But suddenly she didn’t care. That wasn’t the issue.
“Not really,” she said and watched the smile in his eyes deepen. “I guess you’d call that progress.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said and lifted her hand to press her fingertips against his lips. “It might be two steps forward and one step back, but it’s still progress.”
Behind the laughter and the tenderness, his eyes were intense. She shifted from one foot to the other uneasily.
“You’d better go.”
“Yeah.”
“Remember to keep me posted.”
He gave her his flashing grin. “Wouldn’t dare do otherwise.”
She watched him drive off. Annie was coming out of the house when she turned.
“I’ve got some errands in town, but I’ll be back in time to make lunch,” Annie called as she headed toward her Jeep. “Would you like to come too, Sierra?”
The yard was deserted now that all the hands had headed out, but Sierra noticed Gregor leaning unobtrusively against a fencepost not too far away. Annie’s invitation brought a frown into his eyes and an immediate straightening away from the fence.
“No, thanks, Annie,” she said quickly. “I’ve an order to complete. Some greenware that should have dried enough for me to glaze and fire today.”
“Oh, sure,” said Annie, climbing into her SUV. “I’ll see you later, then.”
Unseen by Annie, Gregor gave Sierra an approving nod, then wandered away toward the stables. Sierra went and spent a couple of satisfactory hours happily glazing pots. Half an hour before Annie was due back, she set them into the kiln and went to wash off her hands. She was busy cleaning up her studio when something caught her eye outside the windows.
The sunroom was set at the back of the house on the ground floor. Its windows overlooked a wide terrace beyond which was a long sweep of lawn ending in flower beds and plantings, all presently brightly sunlit. On that stretch of grass, something moved.
Except the lawn was completely empty. There was nothing there.
Sierra blinked and looked closer. She still couldn’t see anything, just grass, bushes and a dazzle of sunlight. But she had a puzzling sense of something moving in the middle of all that. Her vision seemed strangely distorted, with an emptiness at its center like the faintly sparkling blank spot that happens when one has a migraine.
Maybe she did have a migraine. She had been concentrating pretty hard on those pots. Sierra shrugged and went back to tidying up the studio.
The French doors leading from the sunroom to the terrace swung open. Sierra glanced over her shoulder at them, startled. She mustn’t have latched them properly the last time she went out onto the terrace. She picked up a couple of jars of glaze, made sure their lids were tight, then set them onto the shelf among the rows of acids, colorants and wax resists.
The work table beside her shifted as if something had bumped into it and a nearly empty bag of dry clay fell off it and thumped to the tiled floor. Sierra looked down at it in surprise.
Something caught her by the neck, yanking her backward.
Sierra cried out involuntarily in shock, but her strangled shriek was choked off by what felt like a muscular forearm across her throat, cutting off her breath. She clawed at it wildly. Something grabbed her by the waist and lifted her right off the ground despite her kicks and struggles.
She could feel a man’s body against her back, could feel arms around her throat and waist, but she couldn’t see them or even scent him. It was as if the air had seized her.
She was whipped around to face the French doors. Whoever it was meant to take her through them and out of the house. To take her to Arrhan, what else? She caught the corner of her work table and clung desperately to it with both hands, then was yanked away by irresistible force.
“No!” she gasped, struggling furiously, and twisted her head down to bite the arm around her neck as hard as she could. She tasted blood and heard a snarling curse in her ear, but could still see nothing.
Gregor could have helped. But Gregor wasn’t here, probably wasn’t even aware of the intruder, with neither sight nor scent to warn him.
A pale-gold streak crashed through the window, sending glass flying everywhere. Then it flashed toward her, thudded into her. She and her captor were both knocked over. All of a sudden she was free, scrambling to her feet while a leopard rolled across the floor, battling with something unseen. The leopard’s familiar markings told her that it was Ian.
“Gregor!” she screamed. “Gregor, help!”
There was a snarl from outside the house, but she didn’t know whether it was Gregor or another assailant. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of a car engine, but most likely it wasn’t help coming, just Annie on her way back home. Sierra knew she should run, but there was no time to do even that. Everything was happening too fast.
Abruptly, Ian was thrown toward her, his claws screeching on the ceramic tiles of the floor. He rebounded to his feet and crowded backward into her, pushing her against the wall. For a second she resisted, then realized what he was doing. She was protected that way, her back against the wall, her work table on one side, the shelf of jars on the other and the leopard in front. His nose was wrinkled up in a vicious snarl over bared fangs that gleamed white in the sunlight. He was terrifying like that, but she wasn’t scared, just relieved that he was there.
He backed hard against her hip, a solid reassurance in front of her. She laid a shaking hand on his haunch, feeling muscles like steel cables moving beneath the thick gold fur. He was turning his head from side to side, trying to track the attacker. But there was neither sight nor sound nor scent to guide him and she realized that right now he was as vulnerable as she was, not knowing from which direction the attack would come. He could have his throat torn out any second and wouldn’t see it coming.
A lion smashed in through the door leading into the house, then crouched on the floor in bewilderment, growling. Gregor. But he was as blind as they were, couldn’t see where their enemy was either.
Then in front of the kiln—a tiny distortion of the air. A sparkly blank spot.
“There!” Sierra exclaimed.
Both leopard and lion swung around. But it was clear they saw nothing.
Sierra bent, snatched the almost empty bag of dry clay from the floor at her feet and flung it at that slight distortion. The powder in the bag sprayed out, then settled. A form suddenly became apparent, delineated in cloudy splotches—a broad muzzle, the long line of a back, the corner of a mane.
Only bits and pieces, but they gave away where the intruder was and that it was in lion shape.
Both Ian and Gregor landed on it the next second.
Ian was deadly silent, but Gregor and the stranger were both roaring. The struggle sent tables and chairs flying, jars smashing onto the tiles.
Gregor fell back for a second, slashed across the belly. But the blood smearing the floor wasn’t all his. The intruder was wounded too, and was squalling furiously as he and Ian rolled across the floor. Gregor flung himself forward just as Ian’s jaws closed on the back of the lion’s neck, pinning him to the ground. The lion twisted desperately to tear free. But as his head came up, Gregor ripped out his throat.
Blood sprayed, then the lion collapsed. The air quivered and twisted oddly about him, then his corpse became entirely visible, sprawled limply on the ground, the tawny gold of its fur marked here and there with powdered clay.
Sierra turned away quickly. That dead lion had been a person, not just an animal. He’d had hopes and dreams and feelings just like everyone else. When she had killed that lioness, her overriding imperative had been to keep Ian alive. She had acted on instinct. But now she knew Shifters, saw them as people, and enemy though he might be, the lion’s death struck her with as much force and dismay as if a human had died.
“Are you all right?” Ian demanded, back in human form, his hands gripping her upper arms. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She clung to him, her face buried against his chest, and he held her tightly. “You came in time. How did you know?”
“Kurt Lowe’s place was attacked too. Kihain’s gone and the guards who were watching him have been killed. The boy himself couldn’t have done that. He was too weak to stand. Arrhan’s people must have come and taken him. When I saw the dead guards, I realized they might make a try for you too. I tried to call, but there was no answer, so I came as fast as I could.”
“Annie went to town. I think I did hear the phone ringing while I was washing my hands, but I wasn’t sure over the sound of the water running.” She winced at the sight of the limp body on the ground and the blood on the floor. “Did you have to kill him?”