Shifting Currents (14 page)

“Lucas,” she groaned.

He kissed her again, and she could taste her cum on his face. Lucas scooped her legs around his waist. She didn’t have time to shriek in panic as gravity took effect. Slamming into her before she could fall, his body pinned her to the door. No longer caring about holding on to the train, Bethany wrapped her arms around his neck. Lucas went deep, up on his toes. Buried deep inside her, he let the movement of the train rock them. They rattled through the night, kissing. Then he pulled back.

Locking her ankles around his waist, she purred, “Where are you going?”

“Here,” he grunted, filling her to the hilt again.

“Faster,” Bethany gasped as sparks shot up into the night. She wasn’t sure if it was the train or her Tech. She had never been so wet. Every thrust was playing along her nerve endings like a symphony.

“Is this what you wanted when your fingers twiddled that pretty little pearl?” he asked, breathing raggedly into her ear.

“God, yes,” she said. “Harder.”

His hips pistoned, and Bethany thought the door to the compartment behind her might crack.

“More,” she pleaded, his speed pushing her to her limit. “I was so mad at you. I thought you didn’t want me.”

“You’re an idiot.” He sighed. “It’s all I can do not to fuck you every time I see you.”

“Why don’t you?” She laughed at him, squeezing the walls of her pussy tight as he slipped in and out of her.

“I will,” he vowed. He picked her up straight, her back leaving the train. Her breasts were in his face, and he raised and lowered her on his cock. His balance was all that kept them on the train, but she didn’t care. Her hair whipped around them both. She tried to bounce faster, but he held her firm.

“Come for me one more time,
mate
.” He sucked on her breasts while she dug her fingernails into his shoulders, her toes curling.

This sexy man was hers. Delight warred with disbelief.

Crescendo. Waves of music and pleasure swirled around them.

“Bethany,” he shouted, releasing into her. “Mine,” he muttered, rubbing his cheek over her face.

Scent marking, she thought as the sweet drift of contentment floated her on a cloud of bliss. After a few moments, the real world intruding when she realized her legs were cramping. After unlocking her ankles, Bethany eased her legs down.

“Let’s go to bed.” He kissed her sweaty forehead, already starting to chill in the night air.

“Okay,” she said and bent down to get her clothes and the pistol. She would have agreed to pretty much anything he asked right about now. He held the door open for her, but once she was inside, he picked her up into his arms.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not done fucking you,” he said, tossing her into his bunk and clambering up after her.

More?

“I’m not sure I can survive another orgasm like the last two.” She was only half kidding.

Lucas covered her body with his. She spread her legs, welcoming him despite her words. He slid inside her. It was sweet, but she didn’t want sweet. Bethany bit down on his shoulder.

“You want to bite?” he growled, rolling them so they were on their sides. One hand was gripping her breast, and the other hand was on her abdomen, pressing her into him.

His mouth was hot on her ear, and she arched into him, hissing in pleasure. She had been wrong. She couldn’t get enough of him, wanted his cock right where it was—where it belonged.

“You got off when they fucked each other. Now they’re going to get off while I fuck you,” he whispered.

Shock splashed a cold finger down her spine. She didn’t want an audience, did she?

“How do you know they’re awake?” she panted back.

“I can smell their arousal too. Now scream for me,” he said in a dark voice.

When she didn’t comply, he pinched her nipple. The little pain shot desire through her. His other hand moved from her stomach to pull her thigh over his so he could dip his fingers inside her. Bethany gasped.

“Louder,” he commanded and started to suck on her neck. His mouth teased a sensitive spot.

Her eyes closing in bliss, Bethany was on fire with sensation. His fingers flicked around her bud, as his cock plundered her wetness. His other hand tweaked her sensitive nipples. She cried out.

“Louder,” he growled and moved his hands to her hips to grind his cock deeper and faster in her.

He wanted loud? She’d give him loud. Chains she hadn’t realized had been locked around her released with each probe of his fingers.

“Yes,” she shouted. “Oh, fuck me, please. Make me come. I want to feel you come deep inside me.” Her voice was breathy and warm, and it felt naughty to know they were being listened to. Were Mark and Ben’s hands sliding over those fantastic thick cocks, jerking themselves off to her pleasure? She liked the thought and arched into Lucas.

“Oh,” she moaned long and loud, like a whore.

Was that an answering moan from the bunks across the room?

“Oh, ohohoh!” she shrieked and surprised herself by playacting herself into coming. This time the orgasm was quick and delicious. She squeezed him so he stayed deep inside her.

“Yes,” Lucas said, his voice thick with satisfaction. “Yes.” He kissed her shoulder and curled tight against her.

“Yes,” she agreed with him, leaning back for a sleepy kiss. She fell asleep with him still hard inside her.

Chapter Eight

Lucas

Lucas’s cock twitched inside Bethany’s sweet slit, and he considered waking her up to suck him off. But she felt so right cuddled into him, limp and exhausted from their frenzied lovemaking. He hadn’t told her about the creatures stalking the train. Never catching up but never quite giving up. Why worry her? He heard Mark and Ben slurping each other, and he imagined the two men were sixty-nining. Lucas moved inside Bethany, and she sighed in her sleep. His hands went back to her breasts as he rolled onto his back, her on top. He slipped out of her and nestled himself between the crack of her ass and her back. Needing to feel her mouth on him, he woke her up by playing with her breasts. They fit into his hands, and he toyed relentlessly with her nipples.

“Lucas,” she moaned. He liked the way she said his name.

He turned her over and slid her down. He heard the slick wet sounds from the bunk across the compartment and smirked.

“Is this what you want?” she asked, licking his balls.

Lucas cupped the back of her head and pressed himself into her face. She took him deep in her mouth, halfway down her throat, and Lucas nearly went off then. But she glided her mouth back up his cock and started concentrating on the tip with flicks of her tongue as her hand wrapped around him. He was lost in the rapt enjoyment on her face, and the feel of her slithering her mouth and tongue over him was intoxicating. He always liked watching her. Even when he was in bird form, and she was walking in the woods. He liked her body, the sway of her ass. He liked her style and the curve of her smile. He liked talking to her and fucking her. They fit. He could very well start to love her. That thought made him pause and dispelled a little of the erotic haze he was sinking into. It was pure decadence for him to lie on a soft bed, in a train going fast enough to be safe from attack. He had let his guard down, and the little moans she was making as she enjoyed his hard dick in her mouth made him open to the emotions he had tried to stay away from.

The suction on his cock tightened. Lucas arched up, the sensations slamming into him back as he enjoyed the sweet grip of her mouth. It was dangerous for a Shifter to love a non-Shifter. They didn’t understand being hunted. But Lucas thought maybe she would understand betrayal and avoid it. Bethany looked up at him with such love and trust in her eyes that it shook him, and he came with a deep grunt of satisfaction. She swallowed him and licked her way up his stomach to nestle next to his neck. He enfolded her in his arms and enjoyed feeling her slip into sleep, trusting him enough to protect her.

He heard Mark and Ben settle into sleep as well, and then all he heard was the rumble of the train as they ate up the tracks to Colorado and what was waiting them there. When Lucas was scouting ahead, he had spotted dragons basking in the sun. As luck would have it, they didn’t seem to have any interest in the steam engine or the tracks. They were fat and lazy in their nests, content to stalk and hunt prey that wasn’t encased in a moving metal object that belched smoke and fire.

However, the train was going to hit the end of the line in Bellevue tomorrow, and then the most treacherous part of the journey would begin. It had taken twenty years after the meteor to dig out the tracks. The next steam engine that would take them from Ohio wasn’t as modified as the New York one. It was rickety. Lewis and Clark put most of their money into the first leg of the trip. The second leg was going to be more difficult. The Bellevue train was heavily armored—it had to be to withstand the nomad attacks. Speed was out of the question because the tracks were heavily damaged from sabotage and bad terrain. But it would get them to California faster than walking and it gave their horses a break. Lucas had his doubts that the tracks would be unbroken all the way to Colorado, but every mile was one mile closer to the ocean.

Lewis and Clark were very rich men. Their tribe was equipped with rifles and bows and arrows, and they hung off the train, guarding it from whatever would threaten it. He wished he could see Bethany’s reaction at seeing the tortured landscape for the first time. It was supposed to be “amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties.” It was a wasteland. The crater that one of meteorite’s pieces had made took up the entire state of Texas. It was filled with brackish water that housed strange creatures. He had flown over it, but didn’t want to risk landing.

The train shook the landscape and terrified what creatures had dared try to find food. The hunters took down what they could get from the train and sent the Shifters out to retrieve the food.

Bethany made a cute snoring noise against his chest. Stroking her hair absently, he fell into a fitful doze. Jesse coming into the compartment woke him a few hours later.

“Bethany?” she said.

“Mmmm?”

“It’s time to get up. You’re needed in the caboose.”

The snarl left his throat before he could stop it. Bethany bolted awake.

“What?”

“No,” Jesse said. “Not for that. They need you to power up the facilities and other stuff.”

“That other stuff is what I’m worried about,” Lucas said. He might not be sure about forever, but as of right now she was his mate, and he wouldn’t share her.

“Can you give me a few moments?” Bethany said. “I’d like to get dressed and shower.”

“Shower’s ice-cold.”

“I can fix that.”

“Well, all right. I’ll meet you in there. In another stall,” Jesse corrected in a hurry when Lucas poked his head out from behind the curtain.

“I should be going as well,” he told Bethany and watched her eyes cloud with concern.

“Are you going out scouting?”

“The Shifters need to spring any ambushes waiting for us in Ohio. We’ll dispatch them if we can, come back here to warn you all if we can’t. If all goes well, we’ll also need to fortify Lewis and Clark’s holdings in the station if we’re going to survive the attacks.”

“You sound so sure there will be a force waiting for us.”

“This is the farthest we’ve ever gotten. The farthest the tracks have been repaired in one solid line. Everything stops in Ohio while we switch trains and take the other line as close to California as the repairs will get us.”

“Are the attacks always in the same spot?”

“No,” Lucas said. “The guards are heaviest at the train station, so we’ll probably not have any problems after the first attempt. But when we bring out the wagons? Bet on it.”

She shivered, and he wrapped himself around her again.

“I wish we could stay here forever,” she said.

“Not under Lewis and Clark. I don’t have that kind of stamina. You know you don’t have to fuck them—even if they get persuasive about it.”

“I know.”

“You don’t want to, do you?” It bothered him that her answer meant a lot to him.

“I just want you. For however long you want me.”

Lucas grinned and swatted her on her ass. She bit him on the arm in retaliation. “Keep that up, Lady Tech, and we’ll be here all day.”

“Or until Jesse comes back looking for her shower, or Lem needs me to fire up the grill or something. Or the batteries that were running the lights and stoves last night fizzle out.”

“Sounds like we both have work to do.”

“Yeah,” she said and then surprised him by giving him a sweet kiss before climbing down to her own bunk. He listened to her get her things together for her shower and jumped down when she went to leave the cabin.

“Wait,” he said.

She turned back to him and blushed, her hands covering up what he had thoroughly enjoyed last night. His cock twitched when she ogled him.

“I’ll be gone for a while. Maybe a couple of days. Stay close to Jesse and Lem when you can. Don’t be alone with Lewis or Clark.”

“I can handle them.”

“Then don’t overdo it pulling the Tech.”

“You stay safe too.” She hugged him again.

After one last kiss to remember him by, he opened that door and shifted into the eagle, flying out into the sky. Other Shifters were circling the train, too afraid or perhaps unsure of the way. Lucas ignored them. They were not his pack. Lisa was hunkered down with her lover, having pulled night-guard duty last night. He was scouting today, and he would do it alone.

He banked on a warm current and left the train far behind him. He saw some men working on the tracks and hoped they would finish before the train got there. Lewis and Clark didn’t handle delays very well. And the looters would take advantage of the stopped train.

The forest had grown back with a vengeance. The Midwest looked like a desiccated rain forest, as scrub brushes fought with nature for water and sun. Everywhere there was decay from the smell of rotting corpses to the rusted scraps of cars and buses littering what used to be highways. Great big pits and rough terrain made traveling slow and difficult, and the nomad tribes were as dangerous as the wild animals and twice as feral.