Quirking a silver-white brow at him, Morgan asked, “Do you need to ask what I’d do if I had my hands on you?”
Dustin’s eyes revealed the answer and Morgan smiled coolly. “Her life, her choices are just that. Hers. And the next time I hear or see something like what has happened here, Dustin, you will be sorry. I will see to that. And you do not really want me angry, do you, Dustin? I don’t know if I can control my temper as admirably as her vampire can.”
Morosely, Dustin thought of his aching kidney, and of the fact that he’d be pissing blood for a week. Already sorry. Then he looked at Caris and sighed. The anger in Morgan’s eyes was nothing compared to what he saw there.
Morgan’s temper was a frightening thing, something nobody ever wanted to see loosed.
But right now, he was wondering if it wouldn’t be better to face the silver-haired man, rather than the golden woman in front of him.
* * * * *
As far as bloodletting went, it was a satisfying kill. His belly was full. His cock ached, but he’d drive it into Caris that night and…Jax grinned as he ran back down the trail to her home.
The wild game here was scarce.
That would be a problem.
At least her home was surrounded by forest, that was some help. Life abounded in the distant mountains, so vibrant and rich he could taste it from here. He could hunt there if he must.
His fangs had retracted into their sheaths finally, and the bothersome ache in his jaws had faded away. The wind blew through his hair, caressed the skin of his face, neck and hands. There was nothing like the feel of life that ran through the body after a feeding.
Unless it was the fucking that followed.
He grinned.
Too bad there were so many people in Caris’ house.
He came to a soundless stop outside her house and cocked his head, listening. A slow smile spread across his face. The mountain was slowly and scathingly being torn down into small, tiny little rocks, ground into pebbles beneath the sole of Caris’ delicate little foot.
He padded on silent feet around the house, following the voices. They were in the room she called the library, filled with old…books? Yes, books and a machine she called a computer. It was like the nav-screen he used for reading, gaming, and entertainment back home.
“You arrogant, old-fashioned, mother-fucking son of a bitching jealous prick! What right do you have to tell me what I can and can’t do? And what right do you have to question who I take to my bed?” she snarled. She stood no taller than Dustin’s breastbone, but she hissed angrily into his face, and hammered his wide chest with her fist. “If I want to fuck every male I see, wherever I see him, it doesn’t concern you, Dustin.”
Dustin, wisely, was silent. His lips, nose and eyes were bruised and swollen.
“Damn your ass to hell and back, Dustin. If you didn’t like it, you could have gone outside. What in the hell were you doing up, anyway? You’ve got a bloody suite. It’s stocked, damn it. You could live happily in those rooms for a month and you came roaming out in the middle of the night and got offended when you heard me getting fucked! What were you expecting?
“This is my damn house and I can do what I want in it!” she shouted when he made no response.
Dustin blinked, and looked away. His face was red, underneath the colorful bruises.
“What in the flying fuck were you thinking? You saw what kind of shape Sage was in yesterday. Were you trying to kill him?” she shouted when he didn’t reply.
“He was feeling good enough to get fucked, wasn’t he?” Dustin muttered.
She punched him.
Through the window, Jax watched and grinned widely as her powerful little uppercut sent Dustin’s head snapping back. She wasn’t strong enough to knock him off his feet, but she sure as hell hurt him. “Bastard,” she seethed. “Why don’t you get it? I don’t want you.”
He smiled, then, a sad, odd little smile. He glanced out the window and met Jax’s eyes. Jax lifted one brow. He had sensed him. How odd.
“You don’t get it, Caris. I do understand—you don’t want me, you never have and never will. But I still want you. And I’m always going to.” He moved away, slowly, stiffly, but not showing any sign of the pain Jax knew he was feeling. Even through the glass and the distance, he could smell a strong scent of internal bleeding. Oh, he’d be all right, Jax had not done any severe damage.
But he was in some bad pain.
“I was wrong,” Dustin said quietly. “I knew that then. I know it now. Sage was my friend—I may well have lost that. But nothing is going to change what I feel, Caris.” He paused long enough to add, “We have troubles coming. I know it. If Morgan did not need me here, I’d get the hell out. He’s gonna find a way to see it happen soon anyway.
“If I thought y’all might not need me, then I’d go. But I can’t just walk away from what’s coming, Caris. You couldn’t either.”
* * * * *
Caris was sitting in her chair, glaring into the distance when Jax came into the room. “Stupid fuck,” she whispered, her eyes stinging with tears. “I’ve known him since I was a kid. He’s always been—”
“In love with you?” he finished for her as he lifted her out of the chair and sat down, taking her onto his lap.
She flushed red. “You beat the hell out of him. I don’t want it worse,” she said flatly.
“He is lucky I did not give him worse.”
“I meant I don’t want you adding to it. If I’d been awake and seen him fighting Sage, I’d have probably strangled him,” she snapped, her small hands clenching into tight fists. “Damn it, Sage could have died yesterday. It has happened, you know, when one of us has pushed too hard. I was a damn fool for letting what happened last night happen—”
“Sage was well enough. Otherwise he would not have woken up. His body wouldn’t have let him,” Jax interrupted, stroking a hand down her back, easing the tense muscles. He pulled the band from the end of her braid, freeing her hair from the thick, complicated cable and stroking it until it hung free and loose around her shoulders. “Do not feel guilty. You had nothing to do with why he is lying in the state he is in.”
She flushed, her pretty golden eyes flashing with fire. “I knew Dustin was in the house. If I had stopped to think—but damn it, I shouldn’t have to!”
“No. You should not. And you will not,” Jax said easily. As he spoke, he slid one hand between her thighs and pressed.
Her eyes went wide and rounded. “Oh,” she whispered. He shifted again, spreading her legs and pulling them so that she was straddling him, then he rocked his cock against her cleft.
“I’ve a need to be inside you,” he said roughly. “I went too long without feeding and hunted an animal. But I need sex and I need it now. I thought I could wait until tonight, but looking at you, smelling you…” He pushed his cock upward against her cleft and rocked, shuddering as the scent of her arousal filled the air. “I need you.”
She lifted her hands to her shirt and he brushed them away, reaching for the buttons and jerking it open. He shredded the heavy, sturdy material of her jeans and opened the tab of his flight pants before tumbling them out of the chair and onto the floor. He pushed her to her hands and knees, her round little ass in the air, and mounted her roughly, driving into her hard and fast, growling as her tight little pussy closed over his cock wet and eager, like a fist.
She yelped and squirmed against his abrupt invasion, then moaned when Jax reached around and pinched her clit. Her golden-brown hair slithered and fell around her shoulders, spilling to the floor as he rode her harder, his heavy weight taking her down until her torso collapsed onto the floor. Only his big hands kept her ass and hips in the air while he pulled his cock out and drove back in, growling out roughly with pleasure as her slick, wet tissues hugged him snugly.
He pulled out, his thick cock gleaming wetly from her cream and then he surged slowly back inside, smiling as she moaned.
Caris shuddered when she
felt his fingers probing her ass. “I cannot wait,” he whispered hotly. “So tiny, so snug.” He slicked some of her cream around the pink pucker and pushed his finger in, listening to the ragged moan she tried to muffle. He slowed the pumping of his hips and started to plunge his finger in and out, wiggling it a little, stretching the narrow passage.
She keened softly and tried to pull away but he gripped her hip and growled roughly in warning. “Be still, Caris. You will like this,” he promised darkly as he added a second finger.
She stiffened. The burning pain increased as he started to pump his long, thick fingers inside her ass. Like it, hell. And there was no way—oh, shit. Jax reached around with his other hand and flicked her clit, stroking it busily. His cock slid from her body and he shifted so that she was between his thighs, giving him access to her clit and her ass.
A violent shudder racked her body as he drove his finger inside her just as he started to stimulate her clit. Leaning over her, he caught her mouth in a deep kiss, driving his tongue inside, nipping her lip, teasing her into kissing him back as he penetrated her anus ever deeper.
Yes, you will like it, he purred into her mind as her hips started to rock against the maddening caress of his fingers. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and bit down roughly before tearing his mouth from her and kissing his way down her throat.
Like it? Damnation, I won’t survive it… Her skin felt too tight, too small, for the hot, burgeoning needs that flooded her, intense and overpowering. A fine sweat broke out on her body as he brought her right to the edge of orgasm with his artful play on her clit. Then he stopped, urged her lower, and started to fuck her ass roughly with his fingers. Caris started to scream, her body shaking, hot and tight.
Jax felt his fangs drop as he watched his fingers drive back inside the tight, silken well of her ass. She rocked back helplessly, driving the sweet curve of her butt back against his hand while she moaned and squirmed and whimpered. With his free hand, he brought her up, shoved her hair aside, arched her neck and struck just as she came. Her anal sheath locked around his fingers, her supple, slim body pressed up and back against him while she screamed and whimpered and sobbed.
He took only a little—just desperate for her taste. Then he pushed her onto her back while she was still climaxing and mounted her roughly, driving his cock deep inside her convulsing pussy while he caught her hands and pinned them high over her head.
He kissed her blindly, smearing her mouth with her own blood as he jackhammered his cock into her, harder and harder. She arched underneath him, tightening again, and Jax tore his mouth from hers to rasp, “Again…come again, Caris.”
Pulling out, he drove back into the sweet, wet heat of her pussy, harder and harder as he growled against her neck a second time, “Come, Caris…come for me.”
Her eyes had gone blank and she was already there, the minute spasms in her sheath growing ever tighter until she was locked down around him like a wet, living vise. He pounded into her, growling out her name, loving her silken tissues hugging his cock. Loving the hot feel of her blood warm in his belly, the scent of her sex in the air.
The ever strengthening caress of her orgasm tightened around his cock until he could no longer hold his own back. He burrowed deep inside her, the head of his cock lodged at the mouth of her womb, Caris sobbing out his name as he started to come, flooding her womb with hot, wet jets of sperm. His cock jerked and throbbed inside her, pumping the last of his seed deep as her lashes fluttered down and moments later, she went limp under his hands. Jax pushed harder into her, groaning, and holding still while he rode his orgasm to the end.
Then he withdrew and rolled to his side, pulling her against him.
This was going to be a problem.
He couldn’t very well go into frenzy every damn time he fucked her. Her mortal body could not take it. And he had just proven that he lost control even after he had fed.
Ah, it was a problem…
* * * * *
And he was currently staring at another one.
The body was that of someone young and innocent and pure, but the eyes were evil. Jax withdrew his hand from the invader’s forehead and rose, smirking at him as the thing lashed out and tried to ensnare him.
He deflected the clumsy swipe, the uncontrolled power and said, “I told you—I am not such easy prey.”
The boy/man sat there, watching them, his gaze ripe with the foul anger that ate at him.
He beckoned silently to Caris and led her outside, leaving a sullen Dustin to watch over the invader while they spoke.
“We have to have the other body, the one this soul belongs to,” Jax murmured to Caris. He watched through the window, keeping his voice low. “The body can’t survive without the soul, Caris. It can’t. They found a way to switch them. We will switch them back, but to do that, we need the other body. It must be holding the boy.”
“Any ideas?” Morgan asked wryly, joining them with a speaking glance cast toward where the boy/man waited and watched.
Jax turned and watched as Morgan drifted around the corner. The man’s long white hair was flowing freely today, blowing around his face in the breeze. His pale blue eyes were blank and cool, but Jax could smell the rage that all but bubbled under his skin. Too much had happened in the past few days and none of it was good.
“A bit of one, perhaps,” Jax said cautiously. “But I understand your gifts too little. And I do not know if any of you have what I seek.”
“Well…why don’t you tell us?” Morgan asked sardonically, cocking a brow and waiting.
Caris studied him with narrowed eyes and before Jax could stop her, she reached up and touched his cheek. His eyes met hers as the knowledge poured from him into her, and she said quietly to Morgan, “He wants a teleporter. Jax thinks he can follow the man’s trail to the boy and hold him that way and have the teleporter go in and get him.”
Arching a brow, Jax asked softly, “Will it work?”
“You would need one who was a strong enough psychic to link with you,” she said, troubled. “Sage’s psychic powers are chaotic at times. Unless he’s bonded with the one he is communicating with, it might not work. His other gifts are more reliable.” She slid Morgan a look. “Do we have a teleporter who can go in and out with a traveler? Somebody other than Sage, who has the psychic skills?”
“That would be me,” a low husky voice said.
Morgan stiffened. “Ari, didn’t I warn you about teleporting?” he asked coolly, even though his blue eyes were flashing with something Caris rarely saw—nerves and aggravation. He kept his back to the newly arrived agent as he stared into the distance, not turning to greet Ari.
Her full red lips curved in a sardonic smile before she slid her dark gold gaze to Caris and a real smile spread. “Hey, kid. You look wonderful,” she said quietly. Her eyes, spiked with long, thick lashes, moved on to Jax and they lit with interest. “Hmmm. And I wonder why…who might you be?”
Jax arched a brow at the hand the woman was holding out to him and slowly reached out to take it, aware of the deft, subtle probe she attempted. He deflected it, of course, as he answered softly, “A friend of Caris’.”
“Such an interesting one,” Ari mused, waggling her brows at Caris.
Then she looked back at Morgan who had finally deigned to glance her way. “Oh, sire, I must beg your forgiveness,” she mocked lightly. “The others are in town. I wanted to make sure this place wasn’t a crater before we drove out here—didn’t want to lead them into a trap. Too many are young recruits. Believe it or not, big guy, I do have a brain.”
“What exactly do you need somebody like me for?” she asked, cocking her head and studying them.
Caris sighed and said, “Come inside and I’ll show you.”
Ari studied the house, following them down to the old bomb shelter with a wrinkle of her nose. “I hate underground places like this.”
Her eyes landed on the boy as Caris pushed the door open and gestured her inside.
<
br /> A soft smile had been forming but it faded immediately.
Jax’s opinion solidified. This woman was a good one. She hissed like a cat and drew back three steps, simply looking at the creature in front of her. “What in the hell is going on?” she rasped, her normally husky voice an urgent whisper. “That is no child.”
“No. It is not,” Jax agreed. “However, I believe I can find the child who belongs in that body. With some help.”
“Ergo, the teleporter with psychic skill who can take a traveler,” she said quietly, moving a little closer. “How did they do this?”
“I don’t know, Ari,” Caris said softly. “But we have to find out.” Her golden hair framed her face, tumbling into her troubled eyes. “If they can do this sort of thing, we have to wonder what else they can do.”
Jax said softly, “Not wonder. We must know. Else, you are in danger.”
“I can’t zip around at random the way Sage does. I can go in and get the body holding the child and come back here, easily enough. I can’t do it a dozen times the way Sage does, but I can do it. My stronger skill, as you and Morgan know, is telepathy.” She slid Jax a look and asked, “Exactly what sort of help do you need?”
“A focus, of sorts. To be true, I am not totally certain I can do this, but I must try,” he said slowly, meeting her golden gaze. Her spiked black hair, red-slicked lips, the large gold hoops, everything about her made Caris think of a gypsy, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she and Ari were friends of a sort, she’d be a bit worried.
But then Jax moved and aligned himself at her back, brushing his lips across her neck, resting one hand on her hip. Ari grinned at them, shaking her head. “So when do we get started?”
“It might help,” Morgan suggested wryly, “if Jax knew exactly what you could do.”
“First things first. Let’s round up the rest of the crew,” Ari said. “Anybody up for a trip into town?”
“I’d like some…other clothing,” Jax said, glancing down at his flight suit. The self cleaning mechanism had kept it in good shape, but still…he eyed the jeans Morgan wore. Those looked more comfortable anyway. “Caris?” He added silently, Perhaps we could find a thing or two…
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