Merrick's Destiny (5 page)

He wanted her need to match his own.

She stared at him, her gaze locked with his. Then she shuddered, her eyes drifting shut before she snapped them open again. “Give me more,” she urged, scratching her fingernails over his back. “Please, Merrick.”

More. The new moon was a day away, but he’d never felt this pull outside of it. The feverish glee as he crooked his fingers in search of the spot that would send her flying. “Say it again.”

“Please.” Her head fell back, and she shuddered again. “
Please
, darling, pl—” Her begging stopped short, replaced by a helpless cry and a renewed rocking that left her shaking.

Once wouldn’t be enough. Once barely took the edge off his hunger. He wanted her cunt gripping his fingers, her body clenching and desperate. Three orgasms, at least, and then maybe he’d fuck her, bring her to that peak again, this time around his cock. “Come for me, sweet Paralee.”

Her cries intensified, interspersed with unintelligible words that sounded like pleas, until she arched and went rigid. She gripped his shoulders, her nails piercing his skin this time as she breathed his name.

He snarled against her cheek and stroked her through the climax. “It’s not enough. Give me another.”

“Fuck!” She shivered and bit his jaw. “Merrick—”

He liked her like this. Soft and trembling, and so wet around his fingers. “Can you do it, love?”

“Can you?” She scratched him again, the back of his neck this time, and pulled his hair.

She was still close to that edge. He could read her body already, read the swell of her pleasure in the furtive shifting of her hips, in her short breaths. He chased it with careful touches, skill learned in thousands of moments that now seemed like rehearsals. Training for this moment, when it mattered.

His mate mattered, and he’d show her how much.

He’d show her everything.

Paralee hid her face against his neck and rode his hand faster. When she came again, her lips parted on a cry that she muffled by sinking her teeth into his shoulder, and that was so good he almost followed her.

Almost. Gritting his teeth, he eased her through the pleasure, stroked her down until the trembling faded and the last of her body’s helpless flutters had subsided. Tomorrow there’d be no stopping him. He’d chase her pleasure until she couldn’t take another drop.

Tonight he had to have mercy. “You all right, sweetheart?”

She made a vague, unintelligible noise and shuddered before lifting her head to blink at him. “Wait, what?”

Yeah, that could turn a man smug right quick. “Nothing, gorgeous.” He drew his hand from her pants and wrapped both arms around her. “You just cuddle on up against me.”

Her head lolled against his shoulder again. “Dinner,” she mumbled. “I’ll just…rest my eyes ’til it’s ready.”

“You do that, my sweet girl.” This was the moment that mattered. Her naked trust, all of her prickly barriers gone. He hadn’t been the first man to feel her body shake with pleasure, but he’d bet all the years he had left that not many had seen her like this, soft and sleepy. Open. His. “You do that.”

“Mmm.” She lifted one hand to his cheek, a warm caress that vanished as swiftly as it had come.

At some point he’d have to deal with the soup and the fire and all the other practicalities of a camp in enemy territory. For now…

For now, he wanted to hold his woman. His mate.

Chapter Four

Paralee never thought she’d be so glad to see an abandoned trading post.

That wasn’t truly what the old building was, though, she assumed. They might have kept a ready supply of goods on hand to do business with trappers and travelers, but the station’s real purpose was to serve hounds—provide them a place to rest, regroup and exchange information.

Even, like now, a place to pass the new moon.

She tugged at a lock of Merrick’s hair. “Will you put me down and let me walk the rest of the way?”

He snarled in response and tightened his grip on her, as if she’d tried to get away. “No. You hurt your ankle.”

Oh, he was going to drive her
crazy
, and she knew she was done for when the thought was tempered by as much affection as exasperation. “I barely lost my footing. If I were a man, you’d tell me to buck up and stop my infernal whining.”

His grumbled reply was too low to be understood, but he did loosen his grip. “Maybe I’ll let you walk once I get a chance to look at it.”

Which would be after they made it down into the low valley—and to the safety of the outpost. She let the matter drop, turning her attention to the building itself. “This area was lost to vampire infestation decades ago, but the place looks intact. Not even a window broken.”

“Probably warded.” He picked a careful path down the side of the hill, showing no strain from carrying her as well as all of their supplies. If anything, his energy seemed barely contained, as if it grew with each passing hour. “Something the scientists came up with in the early days.”

Half of what he’d told her of the scientists’ work sounded more like experimentation than anything. “To keep people in or out? Sometimes when you talk about the Guild, I’m not entirely sure.”

He huffed out a laugh. “It started as a way to pass messages. They made tubes that would destroy the message if someone didn’t unlock them, and the locks were chemical. Took a hound’s blood to release. Over the years, though, they managed to build them up until they could protect entire buildings. More magic than science, I think.”

“Alchemy.” It was as good a word as any for the strange combination of disciplines that had created the man carrying her.

“Something along those lines,” he agreed. “I can get us past the ward, then engage them again. They’ll hold us safe enough through the new moon.”

The new moon.
Her concern over whether the accident of Fate that had led him to choose her would survive the hunger of the darkened sky had disappeared, banished by the events of the previous night. “Are you worried?”

“A little.” It seemed like a grudging admission. “Never been through a new moon like this before.”

“With a mate, you mean.”

“With a mate.”

She held her tongue while he navigated the last of the slippery, rocky slope. “I don’t imagine it’s something the other hounds discuss.”

“Sometimes.” He paused at the base of the trail, his gaze skipping across the clearing as if studying it for signs of life. “Not in much detail though, no. A hound with a mate gets violently possessive. Best not to show too much interest in her.”

She had no idea what to expect, but she hadn’t thought he might be equally bewildered. “Well, how different could it be?”

“I don’t—” He froze, nostrils flaring before his head whipped to the side. He tightened his arms around her, but it was only a squirrel scrambling up a nearby tree.

“
Merrick.
” He’d bypassed tense and flown straight into jumpy, and they’d never get anywhere this way. She brushed a kiss to his cheek and said firmly, “Put me down and do what you have to do to open the door. We can relax inside.”

He dragged in a deep, ragged breath. Then another. When he finally eased his grip, he lowered her so slowly she thought he might be preparing to snatch her back off the ground at the first hint of danger—or pain.

She gingerly applied weight to her injured leg, testing her ankle. “It’s nothing unbearable, but the sooner we get inside the better.”

Merrick let her walk, but he kept one arm around her body, ready to take her weight, and only relented when they reached the solid door. An odd symbol was burned into the wood—the skull and gears of the Bloodhound Guild’s logo, bisected by crisscrossing lines and surrounded by intricate runes.

Merrick drew a knife from his boot and slashed a careless line across his palm. “Takes a bit more blood when the ward’s this big,” he muttered as he pressed his bleeding hand to the center of the symbol.

At first, nothing happened. Then, as she watched, the runes began to glow with an unearthly light—the ones closest to the center symbol first, followed in turn by the rest, until the door was ringed with light. With the line complete, something inside the door shifted with a metallic creak and groan.

With a satisfied grunt, Merrick pushed open the door.

The inside of the building was dark, with only meager light here and there. The windows had been boarded over with varying degrees of dedication, leaving odd shafts of sunlight piercing the gloom like iridescent spider webs.

“Should be a generator in the basement,” Merrick said as he reached for her hand. “I’ll need the electricity to reset the wards. Otherwise, it’s a ritual I don’t have the goddamned patience for right now.”

She twined her fingers with his. “The boiler provides heat as well, I suppose?” Not that they would need it with the way he’d been looking at her, making her blush continuously at the possibilities.

“If all the pipes are still in working order.” He tugged her deeper into the building, through the beams of light until they reached a roughhewn table. He coaxed her to sit on the splintery bench and pulled one of his guns. “I’m going to leave this with you. Shoot anything that comes near that door.”

Paralee was more comfortable with blades than bullets, but that wouldn’t set his mind at ease. She wrapped her fingers around the stock of the revolver and nodded. “I can do that.”

“It’s loaded with special rounds meant to take down vampires.” He hovered for a moment, as if torn between staying and leaving, then ducked down to catch her mouth in a hard, desperate kiss. Before she could do more than pass her fingers through his hair, he tore free and stalked toward the opposite side of the room, muttering under his breath.

She waited on the bench, dazed and more than a little aroused, as he stomped down the stairs and into the dark depths of the cellar. After several minutes of clanking and cursing so loud she could actually make out the swear words, a rumble echoed through the building. Everything remained dark, but somewhere in the rooms above them, a phonograph spun to life.

The cheery tune it played only enhanced the spookiness of the abandoned station, and Paralee sprang to her feet as soon as Merrick reappeared. “There you are.”

He hurried to her side, his own eyes as wild as hers must be. “That’s some damn eerie shit.”

“I’m relieved it’s not simply my nerves.” She licked her lips. “Shall we turn it off?”

His gaze fixed on her mouth like a compass snapping to north. “Yes. After I reset the wards.”

“Can I help you with that?”

He just kept on staring. “Help with what?”

Oh Lord.
His chest was heaving, his cheeks flushed. She chanced a glance down his body and whimpered at the sight of his cock straining the front of his pants. “Merrick, the wards…”

He edged sideways, almost herding her toward the door. “I’ll handle it.”

Paralee had no choice but to brace a hand on his chest as she stumbled backward. She’d thought her own denied arousal uncomfortable, but his must have been downright painful.

A true glimpse at what the new moon would bring.

He backed her right up to the wall, leaning in to nuzzle her neck and inhale before straightening to slam the door shut. This time he jabbed his thumb instead of slicing his palm, pressing the bleeding digit to a smaller version of the emblem on the door.

Gears rolled and clicked somewhere above her head. The phonograph played its sweet, cheerful tune.

Merrick braced his hands on either side of her head and watched her, every scrap of humanity stripped from his expression. “Can I have you?”

She had no idea what it meant, what she was getting herself into. But she trusted him. “Yes.”

He dropped his hands to the buttons on her vest, freeing them slowly as his gaze stayed locked on hers. “Does your ankle hurt?”

“I barely feel it.” The truth, with so many other sensations barreling through her.

Her vest fell open, and he smoothed his hands down her body, over her breasts and all the way to her waist. With a tug he had her off the ground, back against the wall and her hips pinned by his. “This is better anyway.” Then he kissed her again, just as deep and untamed as before, but with his entire body pressing hers into the wall as he growled against her lips.

Within seconds, her head was swimming. Paralee bit his lip before she lost herself completely. “Upstairs. Please?”

“Bed.” He lowered her to the floor, but he didn’t ease his tight grip around her waist. “When I let go, go upstairs.” The words were a low rumble, and he ducked to catch her gaze with his wild eyes. “Don’t run. For the love of God,
do not run
or I will take you on the damn stairs.”

He would, and she would let him,
love
it—only something told her this first time needed to be as proper as possible to satisfy him later. So she eased from his grip and crept across the floor, but not before delivering the only promise she could. “You will. Later.”

“Most likely.” He kept his back to her as he bent to remove his boots. “I’m two heartbeats from giving in to the madness. If I scare you, tell me. Don’t hide it. Your fear and your exhaustion are the only things that’ll stop me until sunrise on the third day.”

Paralee slipped off her shoes and unbuckled her belt as quietly as she could. “I’m not scared, Merrick. Just…unenlightened?”

“Upstairs,” he growled as tore off his vest. “I can smell you. It makes me need—” He spun with a shudder and crossed the space between them so fast she didn’t have time to move. One hand skated down her back to her ass. He tore open her pants and plunged the other hand inside, fingers slicking between her legs.

He teased the pads of his fingers over her clit, jerked his hand free and watched her as he drew his tongue through the wetness on his fingertips, his eyes hooded. “I need your cunt under my tongue.”

His need made her stumble, but not out of fear. She shook because it echoed her own. The things she wanted, craved, but knew better than to admit even to herself because she’d never have them.

Now she could.

She forgot what he said about running. She hurried out of his arms and up the stairs. His growl chased her, but he moved so silently she didn’t realize he’d followed until he swept her off the second-to-top step.