Nightfall (32 page)

He palmed her thigh and positioned his cock, but she protested. “Not that way.”

Puzzlement washed through him, and he hesitated. But when she rolled over and spread her thighs, all uncertainty fled. It was a submissive pose, offering him dominance. And he liked it. She took hold of his shaft and rubbed a drop of fluid around his swollen head. Bright spots burst before his eyes.

“Don't,” he growled, his teeth clenched. “Inside. Now.”

She whispered
yes
on an exhale as she guided him in. Mason kept his body up, away from hers. He liked the distance—needed it, just as his body needed its grinding release. They only touched where her hands kneaded and gripped his upper arms, and where his cock surged between her legs. All teasing fled, leaving only the bone-deep need to possess. If he fucked her hard enough, if he pushed in deep enough, he'd fuse them together. No fear there. Just oblivion.

Mason rocked his hips, thrusting up and in. She arched and hooked her legs around his lower back. Her silky, hot depths tightened. Blunt nails scored his biceps. His mouth watered with the need to suckle the soft skin of her neck, but he stayed up, his arms holding him aloft. His strength kept them separated.

The clenching pressure of orgasm built in his balls and at the base of his cock. He doubled his pace, their bodies coming together in a sharp, determined rhythm. Jenna matched his pace, thrashing tangled, damp hair across the pillow. She bit her lower lip. Fierce little noises in the back of her throat urged him on until, eyes open, she shuddered and cried out his name.

So attuned to her now, Mason growled as her orgasm ripped a wide, white-hot blast of pleasure through his mind. His body followed. With a final pump, he ground his pelvis against hers and rode the last tremors of his release.

He rolled onto his back beside Jenna, quivering and light-headed. Only minutes later, as his breathing returned to normal, did he realize that they hadn't kissed. He'd held back as much of himself as he could.

He touched his lips to her hair in silent apology, but she'd already retreated into sleep.

 

The walkie-talkie popped to life. Mason bolted upright, and Jenna rolled into the wall. “Damn,” she said. “What's that?”

“Tru, I think.” The glowing hands on the wind-up clock read one in the morning. They'd been asleep for three hours. He jumped out of the bed and grabbed the handset. “What is it?”

“Mason, get your ass down here now!”

And then the sound of gunshots.

Jenna scrambled into her clothes and followed Mason, who'd headed for the stairs at a dead run.
Jesus.
It no longer seemed strange to sleep with weapons close at hand. She checked her rifle as she ran. Loaded and ready for a fight.

She could have passed him, but that would piss him off. John did his best to ignore the wolf part of her, so she shouldn't press. He could fool himself if he wanted, pretending he had a choice. She wasn't letting him go. No more questioning or wondering.

Mine.
The last trace of their harsh pleasure teased through her body. She'd bonded to him in a way she never could have imagined.

But was this how it would be? Living in permanent crisis mode? She didn't know if she could take it, never making plans, just running headlong from one disaster to the next. Something had to give. Jenna just hoped it wouldn't be her. Or John.

“Tru?” He barked into the walkie-talkie.

More gunshots, closer now.

They pounded past the generator to the weak door, where they found Tru surrounded by corpses. The beasts had finally popped the hinges, forcing the file cabinet away. The kid was covered in blood and gore, shell-shocked. Beyond him lay a tunnel curving into darkness. John stepped through to scout.

“You all right?” Jenna asked.

“I think so. Yeah.”

John returned but didn't take his eyes off the breach. “What happened?”

“I fell asleep,” Tru said. “They must've hit the door at the same time, using all their weight. The hinges on the cabinet snapped, and they took the door down.”

Jenna's scalp tingled. “That's tactical.”

“We had to expect this sooner or later,” John said. “You did great taking them down by yourself.”

“Did they howl before you got them all?” Jenna's instinct drove the question.

Tru nodded. “Before I got the last one, it did. You think that's important?”

She double-checked her gun. “Could've told the others something.”

“We should expect more of them,” John said, grim in the ruined doorway.

“Is there any way to get the cabinet back up?” Jenna studied where they wrenched the hinges out of shape. “Or maybe not.”

“The door's not the solution,” John said. “It's in the tunnel.”

Footsteps sounded behind them. Ange and Penny trailed Chris. They all looked scared, but Chris seemed to have found some steel in himself. He summed up the situation with a glance and an under-hisbreath “Damn it.”

Ange passed her daughter to Chris and took a step toward Tru. Funny—her first thought didn't seem to be dead wolves, weapons, ammunition, or the tunnel. Instead she ran exploratory hands over Tru, seeking injury and ignoring him when he tried to shrug her away.

We need her for that
.
Someone who thinks about people first.

If that had ever been Jenna's role, it had changed in the woods. She would look after John; she had no doubt of that. But he belonged to her on a cellular level. Everyone else—well, however much she liked them, they were expendable. With practical certainty, she knew she'd let them all die to save John. A colder and more savage part of her insisted it had to be that way. Wolves mated for life.

“I'm fine,” Tru said, shaking free of Ange. “Damn, lady. They didn't get close enough to take a chunk of me. I scrambled back when I heard the first hit, and I was on the other side of the room by the time the door came down.”

John nodded, looking proud. “You emptied your magazine.”

“Yeah.” The kid inclined his head, acting like the approval didn't matter, but Jenna saw his small smile as he glanced away, his shoulders hunched.

“Welsh, what's the strongest door in the place?” John asked.

Penny held her bear, and the doc still held Penny. At some point he'd gotten pretty good at it. The blond girl laid her head on his shoulder and closed sleepy eyes. She didn't seem worried. After everything, she had faith the grown-ups would figure it out.

“The maintenance room,” Chris said. “That's fire-rated eighteengauge reinforced steel. It's meant to prevent the spread of harmful materials during cleanup, which is why the shower's there.”

“Then that's where I want you, Ange, and Penny.” Mason handed the man his nine-millimeter. “If it comes to it, if we fail out here—”

“No.” Chris's face went ashen and rigid. Then with more conviction, he said, “I'm not doing that.”

Jenna blinked in surprise as Ange reached for the gun, her hands steady. “If you won't, I will. If we could make sure that what happened with Jenna worked for all of us, that'd be different. But we have no guarantees, and I'm willing to do whatever I must. Neither Penny nor I will end up a half-turned thing ... or food. I'd rather die.”

Chris looked horrified, one hand coming up to frame the girl's head. “You'd
do
that?”

“Being a mother means making a thousand hard decisions before breakfast,” Ange said. “Sometimes that means terrible choices, things you'd never otherwise consider—except that's what your child needs. Goddamn it, that's what you do. Over and over again. So if a quick death is the best I can manage for her now, I'll do it.”

“You shouldn't have to.” Chris reached out for her.

Instead Ange took Penny from him. “No, but there's a lot of
shouldn't
in the world now. Regret hasn't helped me a whole lot. So if you can't, I'll take the gun.”

Chris squared his shoulders, looking as if he'd taken a fist to the face. Jenna hurt for him. He didn't belong in this world. Too logical, too thoughtful, and too mired in cause-and-effect. A new god had arisen, one that valued only survival.

“No, it should be me.” He tucked the gun into the back of his pants, then pushed his glasses back into place.

Ange nodded, apparently trusting his resolve. “So why'd they attack now?”

“It's the snow,” Chris guessed. “This is the worst storm we've had yet. While we were watching earlier, we got at least a foot of new powder. Imagine being out there in that. And their numbers are down. Whatever cannibalism they'd managed before won't be an option much longer.”

No hope.
Jenna didn't feel sorry for the evil beasts, but she could identify with their instinct for self-preservation. That bothered her, and she feared what it said about her true nature that she had adapted so quickly.

“Nothing to lose,” John said. “This is it. All or nothing.”

Jenna set her jaw. “We can fight. They'll need time to gather what's left of the pack. They'll be split up, hunting in smaller groups—easier to sustain in harsh conditions. But they'll muster on the orders of their alpha.”

Only when she felt the weight of their combined stares did she realize she'd spoken with utter conviction. Not speculation. This was just something she knew.

“You're sure?” Chris asked.

Ange licked her lips, her hands coming up to shield Penny's head, as if she thought Jenna might suddenly go wolf with a taste for little girl. That's me, Jenna thought darkly.
Just call me Big Bad.
The urge to snap and snarl swelled inside her.

Don't,
came John's voice in her mind.
For me? We don't need this now.

With effort, she uncoiled her muscles. Only because he asked.

“Canine is canine,” she said. “Pack structure is similar. And you could say I have a new wealth of insight.” She flashed her teeth.

John shook his head at her.

“Then let's get down to it.” Her mate eyed the tunnel, as if expecting dark, rabid shapes to come flying through, despite what she'd said. But that was John. Always on point. Possessive warmth settled in her belly. “Their leader shows signs of higher thought. He deploys forces with strategy—or he did earlier. We need to be ready for the same here.”

“I'm not hiding,” Tru said quietly. “I'm not waiting around, listening to the fight until those things take the last door down. Then what? I eat a bullet. No.”

John stepped over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You up for this?”

A shudder worked through the kid. “Sure. So what's the plan?”

“I need you at our back, covering us, while Jenna and I fight to the curve. We'll push them back, collapse the tunnel, then hoof it back here. We'll keep walkie-talkies with us to gauge progress and keep in contact. Got it?”

Though it was more or less what Jenna had envisioned, the idea spoken aloud sounded even more kamikaze than it had in her thoughts.

Chris was already shaking his head, not in disagreement but with an expression of disbelief. “Why the tunnels?”

“We won't be safe,” John said. “Not if our power source is also a wide-open back door. A collapse will keep them out.”

“You'll have to find a place to close it all up while keeping the water flowing.” Chris hooked a thumb back to the generator. “Otherwise we'll lose power again.”

“Noted,” John said. “I know the place, down by the ravine. What do we have for explosives?”

Chris ran through a list of chemicals and quantities, but John kept shaking his head. Finally, the other man threw up his hands. “This isn't a munitions factory, Mason. You can't expect me to keep—oh, wait.” A satisfied, masculine smile cut across his face. “Cans of machine lubricant. Two cases of them.”

John grinned too, like they were two boys planning firecracker pranks. Typical. The first thing they shared was a genuine interest in blowing shit up.

“Good,” John said. “That with the gasoline should do well. We
do
have gas, right?”

“Diesel, sure,” Chris said with a nod.

Tru seemed to want to get in on the party. “How does it work?”

“We wrap each can of oil in a gasoline-soaked rag,” John said. “Then we pop the can with a slug. Boom.”

If it was possible, Ange grew even paler. “That's nuts. You'll blow yourselves up.”

Well, yeah
, Jenna thought
.
It wasn't like they had a computer to calculate placement of the explosives. They could be crushed by rubble, eaten, suffocated—an endless variety of ways to die. But it didn't seem so bad if she had John fighting beside her.

Tru put it best. “You got a better idea?”

“No.” Ange held tight to Penny. “I'll get supplies.”

“Lay in lots of food and water,” Jenna added. “Everything you'll need to wait out a siege.”

And it would come to that: three against a bestial army. Incalculable odds. In her heart, Jenna knew they needed to say their goodbyes beforehand. Leave nothing unsaid.

She lightly caught Ange's arm. “I know you're scared of me... and I'm sorry. But I want you to know ... you've become like a sister to me.” She paused, feeling the other woman's tension drain away. “And I love your girl too. I'll do my damnedest to make it safe for her.”

She fought off guilt over the thoughts she'd had earlier, regarding her single-minded devotion to John's survival. Conflicting instincts fought within her—human versus animal—and left her sick with selfloathing.