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“That feel good?” she asked, but only because she knew it did. It felt glorious to rub him back and forth over her straining clit, and then back down, down—almost as though she was going to push him inside, but not quite.

  And all the while he twisted above her, face a glorious and tortured picture, sounds coming out of him like nothing she’d ever heard before. But he still resisted, she could see him resisting.

  “Don’t you want to do this?” she asked, and watched him wrestle with it. Sweat gleamed at his temples and it looked as though he was trying to grind his teeth together.

  “It’s not a good idea. If I come inside you it might turn you,” he said, but she could hear the little ring of playfulness behind his voice. A little hint of amusement—something he rarely let himself slip into.

  “You’re only saying that because you know I know it’s not true.”

  “I might give you a werewolf baby,” he said, and there was even more playfulness there, this time—and a real warring tension on his face too, as though he couldn’t decide between delight and agony.

  “Really? A werewolf baby?” she asked, then watched him bite at her again when he recognized the pretense at worry all over her face. “Oh no, oh no—oh wait. Wolves are sterile.”

  “You know that one too, huh?”

  “I do. You want to tell me you’re going to give me werewolf syphilis now?”

  “Oh…stop, don’t. Ohhh that’s really…this isn’t fair. Just…slow down…”

  “You told me we didn’t have much time,” she said, and he ground his teeth together harder.

  “I know what I told you.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “My sanity to come back—ohhh, don’t do that. Just…here. Here. Get on me.”

  He moved too fast for her to check again, arm suddenly around her waist, lifting her. She almost lost her balance when he spread her over him. He was so big, too big really, to straddle—but he steadied her with those huge hands. He got her legs arranged in some good, solid position somewhere either side of him, cock so close to her cunt she could have kissed her clit to it, and then her hands on his…wait.

  Wait. What was he doing?

  “Hold my wrists. Hold my wrists like this—the way I was holding you.”

  He couldn’t be serious.

  “You want me to…pin you?”

  “Just hold my hands to the bed. Don’t let me up.”

  “Are you joking? I could be ten feet tall and six feet wide and I’d still be unable to hold you down. If you want to go for me you’re going to be able to go for me.”

  He looked wistful then, for a second. Sad, almost.

  “I know. But this at least gives me the illusion of safety.”

  It made her shiver, hearing him say something like that. But it made her shiver harder seeing him spread out beneath her, hands at the side of his head, pinned beneath hers. That broad, lightly furred chest of his so solid and hot and firm.

  It was incredible, unbelievable. Not just his frankly perfect body, but everything about the whole situation. She hadn’t even thought about the door with the flimsy chair she’d once again shoved underneath it for a whole five minutes. Nothing existed but this, and him.

  “I’m going to fuck you now,” she said, and felt his hips rock up at her. His cock slid messily between her legs, seeking heat.

  It didn’t take much to just slide down on him, inch by slick, delicious inch. And oh Lord, how it felt…how it sang through her entire body to finally have him inside her, so thick and insistent.

  She moaned aloud—couldn’t help it. But he moaned too, so really, what did it matter? If they were going to be incinerated, at least they’d be incinerated together. She’d have let them cut off her arms and legs before burning her alive, for the sight of his parted lips and his widening eyes, and those teeth flashing bright and sharp at her.

  “I love you,” she said, and meant it. It was terrifying and it probably would really lead them to their deaths—maybe not because of a too-loud sound, but due to something, a slip, anything—but she didn’t care. All the stillness in him had melted away and he looked up at her with such warmth, such feeling.

  “You don’t know how I’ve longed to hear you say something like that. Anything like that, anything at all. I like your hair today would have been more than welcomed.”

  She rolled her hips, taking him deeper. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I wish you’d told me.”

  “I couldn’t, you know I couldn’t. Ohhhh, that feels so…”

  “Amazing?”

  “Yes, yes—amazing. Keep doing that.”

  She had no idea what he was referring to. The way her sweaty hands were gripping his wrists? The way she’d started rocking in minute spirals, greedy for more but terrified of his size?

  She had to be honest—it felt kind of like she’d decided to fuck a flagpole. But it also felt nerve-jangling and delicious, and his wrists straining against the hand-manacles she’d clamped around them? Only made it sweeter.

  She imagined letting him go—just briefly, just a little taste of it before her mind’s eye—and him suddenly tearing at her, desperate, fucking that big thing into her until she could hardly stand it, and God it was good. It made great swells of pleasure surge through her just thinking about it, so hot and wet and if she could only grind that sweet spot inside her against his thick length, if she could catch it right and rub and rub…

  But quite suddenly she didn’t need to. She didn’t need to imagine or catch it just right, because he’d freed his hands and one of them was over her ass, squeezing and pushing her down and down onto his cock. And the other had hold of her uniform, ripping when it wouldn’t give, clawing at the front of it until he could get at her breasts, her stomach, and finally—the place that needed it most, between her legs.

  It took him no effort at all to find her clit. He seemed half-insensible with lust and unseeing, but oh he knew exactly where to go and what to do.

  It was just the thing. Just the thing she’d been thinking of all day and all night, in her bed with her hand over her swelling sex, stroking and sliding through all of her slickness, just longing for it to be his mouth, his hands, his cock.

  And now it was—she could feel him thrusting up into her hard, his thumb right over her clit, worrying and worrying at it. She grabbed a handful of his hair and tried to hold on, but it wasn’t possible. She could feel her orgasm welling up inside her from that firm, slick point beneath his working fingers, and he was panting things in her ear, terrible things like, That’s it, work your slick cunt on my cock, fuck me, fuck me, oh I don’t think I can stand it. I think I want to tear you apart.

  After which, she couldn’t stop herself from calling out. The pleasure was surging through her, thick and strong, and she could feel herself clenching around his cock, just clenching really hard in a way that made him choke out a noise, and then, “I’m coming, God, I’m coming!”

  It shoved through her, hard and unyielding—and it left her wasted, just as it had before. She hardly registered him pushing her back onto the bed, his hands suddenly rough and tense everywhere he touched.

  Though somewhere, dimly, she knew he was too far gone. His eyes had no color at all. When he snarled at her and slammed into her still-clenching and shivering pussy, she could only see his fangs, glinting sharp in the dim light. The hands that clasped at her thigh and her wrist—shoving her into the mattress until she knew there’d be bruises—had sprouted talons, thornier and more lethal than she’d ever imagined.

  It seemed almost mad that she still didn’t feel afraid. Instead she put a hand to his face, to let him know. She wanted him to know that it was okay, that it was good, that he still looked like Connor Grayson—because he did.

  When he moaned, it was with his own voice. When he pushed into her, it was with the same body she felt so familiar with—the same muscles flexing under her one free hand, and the same glow all over his gorgeous, honeyed skin. And when he shoved his face i
nto the crook of her neck and kissed the sweat-slicked skin there, the push of his soft lips felt the same too.

  And even though she knew that this was it, that he was probably going to bite her right now on this creaking bed in this silent ward, she didn’t try to stop him. She didn’t scream the way she’d always dreamed she would, in her worst nightmares of forests and running wolves and one of them finally, finally running her down.

  She just closed her eyes and held on to him tight, and waited, and waited.

  He thrust into her hard one final time, his cock pulsing inside her, a groan burring its way through his entire body in a way that made her shake too. And when he did it, she felt his teeth glance her skin. She felt them come so close, so close it was as if the pain really existed, it was really burning into her and she’d have to run with him forever now, through the forests of the night.

  And then he finally pulled away—a softly relieved look on his half-tortured face—and she realized he hadn’t bitten down. He hadn’t done it.

  Instead, she was going to have to get up and walk out of the ward and leave him behind. All of her still human and still herself, and worst of all—still living this endless life of empty nothingness.

  Chapter Four

  When the breach alarm first sounded, she didn’t think anything normal or usual—like, Oh God, now I’m going to be killed by a thousand marauding werewolves. She didn’t even think about Tara, or any other human beings in the underground.

  Instead, she thought of him. Immediately—and quite frankly, irrationally. After all, Connor would be okay. If the alarm wasn’t a false one, he could just have a party with his lost-long buddies.

  Only they weren’t his buddies anymore. She knew they weren’t. The wolves ran free and fierce on the surface of the earth, while he spent his days in cages, being tortured. If they came below that’s all they would see—a pathetically cowed creature who no longer resembled them.

  And so they’d just leave him there, to starve behind the bars. They wouldn’t think of whatever had been done to him—and by God that encompassed a lot, when she really thought about it—and eventually he would perish, along with the people who’d hurt him.

  Unless they smelled a human all over him. And then maybe something else would happen altogether.

  She leapt out of bed, on that last thought. Not because she particularly wanted to, or thought it was a great idea to run in a different direction to all of her screaming colleagues and supposed friends. No, she did it because something got her by the throat and forced her to.

  She didn’t even stop to put on shoes, and she always stopped to put on shoes. You had to, because that was the thing the wolves always went for first. They got you around the ankles and dragged you back screaming into the darkness, or maybe took off a foot or two, because you’d been too stupid to take some basic safety measures.

  But somehow, it didn’t seem to matter now. She could feel her heart beating in her head. She wasn’t dressed for the outside, wasn’t aware of the throng of frantic people around her. She was only aware of Connor, and what the wolves would do to a human-lover, if they found one.

  “Serena!”

  She pretended she couldn’t hear the shouting as she pushed her way through the stream of bodies. The stream was getting thin, however—much thinner than it had been the last time the alarm sounded—which was both good and bad. Good because it meant she could get through easy enough.

  Bad because it meant their numbers were dwindling. And also bad because Tara would absolutely know she was ignoring her, while going in the wrong direction. Her friend couldn’t fail to spot it. She’d just shoved a guy against the sandy wall to get through faster, for God’s sake.

  Though while doing so she hadn’t considered one important thing. What if the wolves were coming in from the direction of the labs?

  It seemed like a reasonable assumption, considering everyone was running away from that place. And she’d left her only weapon back in her room too—though doing so was an easier thing to fathom. Her weapon was a silver-striped machete that cut through werewolf flesh and bone like a sizzling hot poker through ice.

  And when she thought of it now, all she could see was Connor without an arm. Connor without a leg. Connor chopped into two pieces like she’d done to the wolf who’d cornered her and the little girl whose name she’d never actually found out.

  You had to, that was the thing. You had to when they were coming at you, because they wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop, the way Connor had. The way he absolutely had even though he’d been given every reason to bite down hard.

  Was he just different? Different, like Reddick claimed? She didn’t know, and now Tara was shouting and shouting after her and any second she was going to follow her to the labs and—

  “Fuck you then, you maniac!”

  Or maybe not. Thank God, maybe not. Weird, that she couldn’t stop thinking thank God over her best friend leaving her to die and calling her a maniac, but there it was.

  Only Connor mattered now.

  She wrenched open the door to the lab thinking two terrible things—the first being, It’s been shut and locked, as though there are already things in there, waiting for me. And the other was just the image of Dr. Philips using his tranq-gun to put a dart in Connor’s eye. Like a final fuck you to the wolves, before he fled his lab forever.

  Would a dart kill him? Loaded with nightshade, most probably. And when she did get in there, heart trying to rip out of her body and everything in her screaming run, run, it was so dark she couldn’t tell a thing. She couldn’t tell if she was going to get a wolf to the face any second. She couldn’t hear anything because of the alarm that hadn’t stopped wailing and wailing.

  All she knew for certain was the sound of her own panicky breathing and the smell of horrible things burning and darkness, darkness everywhere. She stepped forward and knocked into something loud and clattering, then slapped her hands tight over her mouth.

  If anything was in here—anything that had escaped or breached its way in—it wouldn’t do to scream. The stench of blood and sweat and burned flesh in here might keep a wolf off her scent.

  But a scream would surely draw it.

  God, how she wished she’d brought her machete. Not bringing it just seemed so soft-hearted and ridiculous now. Connor would probably call her soft-hearted and ridiculous, for God’s sake. She’d seen him tear apart another wolf when it threatened him. He knew the score.

  Even while probably full of nightshade and likely dead, he knew the score.

  She tried not to sob into her hand, but several things made it hard. Like trying to remember if she’d ever felt this strongly about anyone in her entire life, so strong it was making her weak and flail-y in the darkness. She couldn’t recall ever feeling this way about her mother, and had never known her father. All her friends were disgusting sociopaths.

  Who did that realistically leave? Commissioner Reddick?

  She reached out through the dense blackness again, searching for the completely dead control panel. For the cages, maybe—but then again, if she got too close something could leap at the bars and get her.

  Something far more bestial than Connor.

  Though as she searched, she realized something pretty fundamental—that being attacked by a beast in a cage was the least of her worries. Actually finding the cages was more of a concern, in blackness thick as tar. She stumbled into things without meaning to, hands running over objects that could have been anything in the dark.

  A console. A chair. A wolf, eight feet tall and ten feet across. Mouth like a shark’s. Eyes glowing and glowing and just waiting for her to spot it, skulking in the thick shadows.

  “Serena?”

  She almost screamed. Her brain turned the voice into a wolf’s roar without her permission, and some silly sound just threatened to burst right out of her. Only clutching on to something crazy—like her own hair—kept it in, and even then she knew she was whimpering.

  S
he actually stood in this darkness, bleating like a sheep. It didn’t shock her that embarrassment was her primary emotion, when Connor quite suddenly spoke.

  “Serena, it’s okay, it’s okay. Come toward my voice.”

  Her immediate instinct was to hold down the relief that bloomed inside her—because really what if it wasn’t him? What if her mind was just playing tricks or even worse—what if the wolves had somehow gained the ability to mimic each other? He sounded so cool and measured and yes, true, there was the hint of that rich-chocolate warmth in there.

  There was a hint of Connor.

  But how could she really know for sure?

  “I have twenty-twenty night vision. I can see you freaking out over there.”

  Though the touch of deadpan in his words was something of a clue.

  “Are you okay?” she asked and oh it was mortifying how waver-y the words came out. All up and down and full of more whimpering, while he somehow managed to sound so unruffled.

  Even when he went with some really painful sentences, he sounded unruffled.

  “I have three nails in my left shoulder, but I’ll live.”

  She fumbled toward him, arms out.

  “Watch the chair Dr. Philips overturned in his haste to flee.”

  Oh, definitely Connor. No doubt about it.

  “Can you really see everything perfectly?”

  “You know I can. A little to your left—don’t go too fast, you’re almost at the bars.”

  He didn’t have to tell her, however. The smell of blood had gotten strong enough to gag her.

  “Are you hurt anywhere else? It stinks like a fucking slaughterhouse in here.”

  “They cut one of my fingers off.”

  He even said a thing like that in a glassy, reasonable voice. As though he’d just told her what the weather was like in France.

  “Jesus Christ,” she managed to get out, but the sob couldn’t be held back this time. It strangled her words into submission, then kicked dirt over their graves.

  She wrapped her hands around the oily bars and tried to just shake them.