Dark Wrath Page 11

  Instead of answering this time, he shrugged.

  “You’re playing a seriously stupid game with some very bad people,” Erin snapped, more scared than angry.

  His lips tightened. “But then, being a dumb animal, I cain’t help myself.”

  Erin gaped at him. A chaotic wash of emotions went through her--frustration, hopelessness, anger and most difficult to deal with, empathy. She could see his point, unfortunately. In her own way, she’d been just as guilty as the others in treating him as less than human, not to the extent he seemed to believe, but she had considered the Lycans little more than beasts. They were beasts when they shifted, controlled more by their instincts than their instincts were under their control, but Jesse at least had a gentler side when he had mastery of his beast, and he was intelligent--and quite devastatingly appealing both in personality and physical appearance.

  As frustrated and frightened as she’d been about everything that had happened, she couldn’t avoid that knowledge.

  Truth be told, believing what he believed about her, he had every reason to behave horribly toward her, to hurt her, or at least want to. He very obviously hadn’t wanted to hurt her or he would have.

  Something else occurred to her as they drove, Jesse moving steadily and with purpose through the city, as if he was very familiar with it and had a specific destination in mind. The Lycans obviously moved among them. Even with everything she’d discovered about Jesse, she’d had a deep rooted prejudice about his kind. She supposed, in the back of her mind, and not too distantly, she’d thought they eked out an existence hidden away in the swamps.

  Juliette was one of them, she realized with sudden insight, and practiced veterinary medicine right under the noses of humans coming and going every day with no clue of what walked among them. No doubt they all did.

  They had money behind them--a lot of money.

  Unless they went around stealing tremendously expensive vehicles and electronic equipment, and somehow she didn’t believe that.

  “What were they doin’ when I arrived?”

  Erin looked at him blankly.

  He frowned, but more, she thought, because he didn’t want to be forced to make an issue of his interest than because she didn’t answer at once. “In the lab,” he added tightly.

  Enlightenment dawned. She repressed a shudder with an effort.

  She thought she’d repressed it.

  “They were about to impregnate me with a little Jesse.”

  His head whipped toward her so fast she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d gotten whiplash from it. “An extremely repugnant thought for you, I see,” he said dryly.

  Erin flushed, but she grew angry, as well. “Was I supposed to be thrilled only because it was yours? I’d like to see how fucking excited you’d be about being strapped to a table and having some asshole shove a syringe full of sperm into you!”

  Several different emotions flickered across his face in rapid succession, too swiftly for her to grasp them all. “I’d just as soon no’ have sperm shoved into any of my orifices,” he said wryly.

  He hesitated, obviously struggling with the urge to say more, and she knew suddenly that he wanted to ask her if the clinical aspect was the only reason she’d been repulsed. He repressed the impulse and a flicker of amusement replaced her anger. “You know what I meant,” she added a little testily. “If it had been you, instead of me….”

  His whole mood shifted abruptly. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Erin sighed. For just a moment they’d almost had a conversation that wasn’t completely antagonistic and then she’d just had to resurrect the past!

  A sense of hopeless frustration filled her with the realization that their past was always going to hang between them like an impenetrable wall of anger. Even if she could master the knack of thinking hard, and examining what she said before she said it, which she thought it was doubtful, she would have to worry that anything she said would touch off a memory better left buried.

  After a moment it occurred to her to wonder why it mattered.

  It did matter. She could lie to herself all she wanted to, but it mattered a lot, and not just because she needed his help to find the baby.

  She couldn’t undo what had been done to Jesse, but she didn’t deserve his hate for her part in it. She’d been just as much a pawn as he had been, and she had neither consciously tried to hurt him, nor been indifferent to his suffering. It just plain wasn’t fair to be tarred with the same brush as those who had deliberately, and with malice, or at least an absence of conscience, trapped, imprisoned and tortured him.

  Her feelings were more even than a sense of injustice, though, and regret for having been involved, she realized abruptly.

  Like it or not, a bond had been forged between her and Jesse. She might not have chosen it if she’d had the choice, but it existed now regardless and she yearned to see that side of him that he had only teased her with, the passionate lover and intriguing companion.

  Chapter Eight

  Despite the nagging pain in her hip from having the tracking device removed, weariness invaded Erin after a time and she dozed. When she woke, roused by the slowing of the car, she saw that Jesse was turning onto a narrow dirt track that led through a thick tangle of vegetation. It seemed obvious from the encroaching brush and the high grasses that grew down the center of the track like a Mohawk hair cut that this track wasn’t used often. In spite of that, or maybe because it was used so seldom, the road was fairly smooth.

  When Jesse stopped at last, Erin stared at the run down building in front of them a little uneasily. There was no doubt that the mansion had once been a grand one, but that had probably been before the Civil War. Now she had to wonder how the antebellum mansion could remain standing. There was hardly a fleck of paint to hold it together. The wood, weathered for so many years and battered by nature, was the same muted color as the woods around it so that, as huge as it was, it blended so well with its surroundings it would have been easy to miss seeing it at all.

  The grounds were not in much better shape than the building itself. Waist high weeds and young pines cluttered what must once have been a beautiful lawn.

  Jesse had pulled under a porte chochère, she saw as she got out of the car and looked around.

  Having moved around the car to meet her, Jesse cupped a hand beneath her elbow and guided her inside.

  Surprise filled her when they entered. It was like stepping through a passage into another world.

  The interior of the house, far from ramshackle, was beyond clean and neat and well kept. It was opulent. Thick rugs carpeted the hardwood floors and thick drapes covered the tall windows. The furnishings were modern, not new, but certainly in good condition.

  A man stepped into a doorway at the far end of the narrow hallway where they’d entered. After nodding at Jesse in silent communication, he disappeared again.

  Jesse guided her down the hall and into a wider hallway that appeared to bisect the mansion. Reaching a grand, curving stairway, they went up and followed another wide hallway to a room near the rear of the house.

  Expecting to be shoved inside and locked in like the prisoner she knew herself to be, Jesse surprised her by entering the room behind her.

  Without a word, he began to undress.

  Erin gaped at him, trying to wrap her mind around his actions.

  He glanced up at her after a moment. “You should try to rest.”

  Feeling color wash into her cheeks at the comment, which made it clear that he didn’t have on his mind what she’d thought he had in mind, Erin turned away. She wasn’t wearing much, though, and she certainly had no need or intention of taking the gown off. Instead, she looked around a little hopefully for signs of a bathroom. There were two narrow doors along the wall adjoining the one that separated the bedroom from the corridor. After a slight hesitation, she headed toward the larger of the two and was rewarded with the discovery of a well-appointed bathroom.

  The doo
r had no lock on it.

  Erin studied it in dismay for a moment and finally yielded to her needs. When she’d relieved herself she moved to the shower, adjusted the water and, dropping her gown onto the hamper close by, got in. The heat of the water stimulated her milk glands. With a mixture of emotions, she watched as tiny beads formed on the tips of her nipples and began to flow down her belly.

  She felt a sudden urge to cry. What was the point, she wondered, in struggling on and on to keep her milk in production for the baby she might never hold in her arms again? The baby that might never suckle at her breasts again? It was nothing more than an irritant and an inconvenience to her, a constant reminder of what she’d lost, and of no use to Joshua. Even if she found him, he would’ve been bottle fed all this time and might refuse to take the nutrients and antibodies her natural milk could give him.

  Fighting the depression and sense of hopeless, she massaged her breasts to stimulate the glands.

  She jumped and then froze when the bathroom door opened abruptly, gaping at Jesse as he crossed to the shower and pulled the curtain back.

  His gaze went immediately to her breasts.

  She released them guiltily, and then blushed with a mixture of resentment and embarrassment.

  It wasn’t as if she’d been fondling herself for the pleasure of it! Snatching the curtain from his grasp, she jerked it closed again.

  He cleared his throat. “I brought you a clean shirt to put on.”

  How thoughtful! And he had to jerk the curtain open to tell her?

  “Thanks!” she responded shortly.

  He didn’t leave. “I’ll just leave it on the hamper.”

  “You could’ve done that without looking me over!” she muttered.

  She heard the distinct grinding of teeth. He snatched the curtain open again. “I was just checking to see if you were floating face down in the damned tub,” he growled. “You lost a lot of blood.”

  Surprise flickered through her. He’d been worried about her?

  “Worried ‘bout the beast getting’ a glimpse of you?” he added after a moment. “Well, I’ve seen every inch of you, chère --tasted you too--and been inside of you. It’s a little late to be so damned concerned about me lookin’ at you.”

  Anger surging to the forefront again, Erin slapped at the water, spattering his face and chest liberally with it. “Bastard!”

  He grabbed her forearms and hauled her against his chest. “Bitch!” he growled, shoving his fingers into her wet hair and planting his mouth roughly over hers.

  Heat spiraled through Erin the instant his mouth ground against hers, forcing her lips to part. Weakness and desperate need followed the heat as his tongue breached the weakened barricade of her lips and plundered her mouth thoroughly. Shivering, her arms trapped by his grip, she curled the tips of her fingers into his sides, settling fully against him and kissing him back with all of the pent up desire that had been tormenting her since forever it seemed.

  He stiffened at the collapse of her defenses and then gathered her closer still, lifting her against him and pulling her from the shower. She uttered a sound of protest as he withdrew the pressure of his mouth from hers almost as abruptly as he’d claimed her, and then a sound of encouragement as he dragged his lips along her cheek to explore her ear, the side of her throat.

  The heat of his flesh and both his and her own desire almost instantly replaced the heated water that had washed over her moments before. Finding her arms freed, she twined them around his neck, pressing as tightly against him as she could. His hands skated down her back, cupped her buttocks, massaging them as his fingers delved the cleft of her ass and then lower. Grasping her along the tops of her thighs, he lifted her.

  A gasp escaped her as her butt settled on the cold surface of the vanity and then another as he bent her back and covered the tip of one breast with his mouth.

  For a moment, reality intruded and the anxiety filled her that his suckling would stimulate her milk glands again. That concern vanished almost at once, however, as a bolt of heat shot through her, culminating low in her belly.

  Releasing her breast after only a moment, he lifted her against him once more and strode from the bathroom with her in his arms, falling across the bed with her. The impact barely fazed her. It flickered through her mind that they would have the sheets thoroughly soaked, but she wasn’t in any state to care at the moment.

  Already drunk with the delightful, rough caresses of his hands as they explored her, his essence, the scorching heat of his mouth, all that filtered through her heat fogged mind was that the sensations were so much more pleasurably intense without the drug that had been pumping through her system before when they had come together. Now, she was far more aware of his lightest touch, the pleasurable sensation of his weight along her length.

  He did not pull away from her to remove his trousers. Instead, he settled beside her, his mouth and tongue driving her mad with want as he struggled with the fastening of his pants and skimmed them from his hips, working the material down his legs until he could kick free of the encumbrance. The moment he was free, he rolled over her once more, tangling his legs with hers, stroking her smooth skin with the soles of his feet as his hands glided over her body cupping and then massaging her breasts. He covered her mouth in a fiery, possessive kiss, pressing his body against hers and she felt the hard length of his erection undulating along her hip.

  The strength and weight of his body, the heat, the solidness and breadth of his engorged flesh, and the silken feel of the skin that sheathed his hardness sent a thrill of anticipation through her, magnifying her need in a heady, dizzying rush. Returning his heated kiss with fervor, she shifted closer, feeling fresh waves of pleasurable sensation wash through her as the faint abrasiveness of his chest and arm hair slipped across her smooth skin. Being with him was everything she remembered, and yet surprisingly more intense without the drugs that had driven her to him in the beginning.

  Her reaction sent his own desire spiraling out of control. His kiss became more fevered, more aggressive. When he tore his lips from hers at last and turned his attentions to her body, she felt the nip of his teeth along her skin and goose bumps burst forth, heightening and expanding her senses until a restless need to feel him inside of her began torment her.

  He ignored the increasing desperation of her attempts to urge him to take her, seemingly determined to explore every inch of her body with his lips, tongue, and teeth.

  She sucked in a hoarse breath, digging her fingers into the hair on his scalp as he moved along her lower belly. The muscles of her belly jumped and clenched almost painfully as he wove a chain of kisses across it from one hip bone to the other and then nipped at the exquisitely sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. Dizzy with need, it took a moment for her to realize his intent. By the time she did, it was too late. He had pushed her thighs wide and wedged himself between them.

  She clamped her thighs tightly against him anyway, her fingers tightening in his hair. Ignoring the tugging command, he stroked his fingers along her cleft and then parted her nether lips, covering her clit, almost painfully swollen with need, with his mouth. A sharp cry tore its way up her throat as she felt the heat and suction of his mouth. The tension that had been slowly but surely coiling inside of her shot skyward.

  She gasped again, squeezing her eyes shut, struggling to stave off instant culmination, desperate to hold on to the pleasure only a little longer. The finesse of his mouth and tongue were delightfully torturous, however. Within moments she felt herself quivering on the brink of release, heard herself chanting his name, whether as a curse or benediction even she wasn’t certain.

  She came unexpectedly, explosively, wracked by one shockwave after another of rapturous release. The stinging nip of his teeth along her thigh barely penetrated the liquefied bliss of her mind, but it sent a fresh, hard shockwave of ecstasy through her that tore another cry from her hoarse throat.

  He shifted, moving over her while the waves were s
till pounding through her. Supporting the weight of his upper body on his arms, he pressed the rounded tip of his cock into the mouth of her sex. Her channel, still convulsing with release resisted his penetration. She spread her thighs wider, lifting to meet his second thrust, feeling almost faint with her gasping efforts to drag enough air into her lungs as she felt his hard flesh spreading her, delving slowly deeper.

  He was gasping hoarsely himself by the time he’d filled her fully. “Now you are mine--irrevocably,” he whispered in a harsh, gravelly voice that sent waves of tingling pleasure spiraling through her.

  With a tremendous effort, she opened her eyes to look up at him, but no thought of contradicting his claim entered her mind. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she lifted upward, closing the slight distance between them and pressed her lips to his.

  Her mute acceptance seemed to send him over the edge of restraint. He began to move within her in hard, swift driving thrusts. Surprise flickered through her briefly as she felt her body instantly respond to his stroking thrusts along her channel. Within moments she was struggling upward toward release again, her body coiling tightly for the leap into glory. The bubble ruptured as she felt his great, sweat slickened body begin to shudder, felt his cock jerk inside of her. For many moments it almost seemed as if her soul soared free of the restraints of her physical self. Awareness of her body certainly vanished at the white hot explosion of ecstasy that mushroomed upwards and outwards and finally, slowly began to dissipate, leaving her as little more than a limp puddle of exquisite repletion.