The Psy-Changeling Collection (348 page)

It remained uncertain about a male who simply did not fit into what it considered the acceptable parameters for the mate it would take as its own—no matter how much he called to both woman and wolf. “I don’t want to hurt you.” What she didn’t add was that she was terrified he’d hurt
her
, that he’d be unable to accept the truth of who she was. That would betray too big a vulnerability. But one thing she did have to say. “I don’t want to make promises I may not be able to keep.”

Lifting his hand, Drew took the one she had on his shoulder and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her heart twisted sharply inside her chest, and it might’ve made her panic if he hadn’t shifted his leg at that moment—the rough caress of denim across her thighs made her hiss out a breath. “
Drew
.”

No smile, but he released her hand and placed his own on her ribs just below the curve of her breasts.

“You let me worry about myself,” he said into the charged silence. “But you have to be sure, Indigo.” She opened her mouth to reply, but he pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. “I let you walk away with Riaz because I thought he made you happy.”

Oh
, she thought, even as he continued with an unfamiliar ruthlessness in his tone, “I won’t have the nobility to walk away a second time if you decide you prefer another man. I’ll fight to the fucking bitter end and I won’t care about the consequences. I’ll take him, bloody him if I have to.”

Her wolf flexed its claws inside her mind. “If I decide against you,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows and tightening her stomach muscles against the impact of his thigh sliding between her legs, “I’ll fight my own battles.” She’d come to him because she’d fucked up, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t who she’d always been. “I don’t need another man to do it for me.”

“Good.” He kissed her.

Hot.

Hard.

Exquisite.

“Just so we understand each other.” A nip to her lower lip. Another to the curve of her neck and shoulder as he used his weight to press her down into the softness of the sleeping bag.

More than ready to dance with him, she wove her fingers through his hair. But he pulled away and was crouching on his feet several feet from her before she knew he’d gone. His eyes glinted night-glow in the darkness. “Run.”

Adrenaline pumped through her. Shifting into the same position opposite him, she angled her head. “Feeling frisky?”

His eyes, gone that beautiful, strange, wolf copper, followed her every minute stir. “
Run
.”

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose up, but it was a sign of anticipation, not fear. “You’ll never catch me.” It was a lazy taunt as she feigned right … then jumped over the fire in a leap no one but a changeling would ever make.

She heard him growl behind her, but she was already in the forest and doing everything she could to mess up her scent trail. She went through a shallow portion of the stream twice, doubled back, then retraced her steps before heading downwind. Cheeks pulsing with color, her heart thumping in her chest, she looked around.

Silence.

Too much silence.

He was close and the forest knew it.

Grinning, she messed up the trail some more, then found herself a hiding place on the other side of the stream—behind a bush hung with tiny red winter berries that were so inedible, even the birds passed them by. Looking over the top, she tracked the other side of the river using the wolf’s night vision.

There
.

He flowed out of the dark, a wolf in human form. She saw him scent the area around the stream and disappear back the way he’d come. What was he doing? She knew he wouldn’t have fallen for that little trick—she wasn’t
really
trying to lose him. They were playing. The fun was in the chase.

And Drew was cunning.

Realizing what he’d done, she spun around just in time to see him streak out of the trees behind her. Her chest filling with laughter, she managed to get on the other side of the bush as he came to crouch opposite her and said, “I found you,” in a very wolfish tone.

She widened her eyes, looking beyond him. “Oh, no!”

Protectiveness built into his makeup, he turned to check on the threat … and she was gone, hopping across the rocks that forded the stream and up on the other side, her wolf laughing all the while.

Andrew hadn’t had
this much fun in … ever. Chasing after Indigo as she took off, he let her get ahead then circled around to wait in ambush behind a small tree. She scented him, stopped, but they’d passed through this area so many times, she had no way of knowing if he was actually there or if it was only his scent that lingered.

He saw her bite her lower lip and knew the instant she decided to go for it. Snapping her back against his chest as she padded past his hiding spot, he nipped at the place in her neck that fascinated him and spun her free. He wanted to play some more.

She understood.

Throwing him a grin filled with pure delight, she pointed behind him. He turned, giving her a head start. He waited almost five minutes before beginning to look for her. She was hiding, not running this time. He couldn’t feel the vibrations of her flight beneath the pads of his feet, and the forest creatures were chattering quietly once more, her willing accomplices in offering a cover of noise.

Prowling over the ground in a swift half run that was so fluid it would’ve appeared impossible to human eyes, he caught a hint of steel in the air, a hint of spring rainstorms … and was ready when she “attacked.” Spinning while she was in midjump, he caught her against his chest, let her take him to the pine-needle-strewn earth in a tangle of limbs and hair. When she nipped at his jaw, he growled, but she laughed and repeated the provocation.

Pushing her hair off her face, he tugged her down until they were nose to nose, their wolves staring into each other’s eyes. When he snapped his teeth at her, she snapped back. His smile spread until it felt as if it might crease his face forever. Their kiss was as wild as their chase, as playful as their game.

She wrapped her arms around him and didn’t protest when he rose with her in his embrace, unwilling to do this on the cold earth, no matter that the pine needles provided a thick mattress. Bold and unashamed, she took his mouth with the passion of a woman who knew what she wanted … and the man she wanted it with. It was becoming impossible to have any kind of a rational thought, but he broke the kiss, put her on her feet by the fire. “Wait.”

Stretching her arms above her head, she teased him with the promise of her body as he pulled her sleeping bag open, unzipped it, and laid it on top of his. There, he thought, that would be softer on her back. She jumped to crouch on it even as he finished, having used the discarded towel to clean off the bottoms of her feet. Her playful mood still apparent, she said, “You’re wearing too many clothes,” and reached for the button at the top of his fly.

CHAPTER 23

He didn’t stop
her, though the sight, the touch of her fingers so close to his aching cock was torture. Button undone, she tugged him forward, pushed. He sprawled backward onto the sleeping bags, spreading his legs to give her room as she came to kneel in between. But she didn’t lower his zipper.

No, she bent her head, and—continuing to hold the searing eye contact—pressed her lips to the very top of his groin, a bare centimeter above the pulsing thickness of his erection. Groaning, he clenched his hand in her hair and tugged her up. She came … to give him a bone-tingling kiss.

“I’m not the only one who’s overdressed,” he said against her lips.

“How remiss of me.” Her smile was full of pure sensual temptation as she reached down and pulled the T-shirt he’d given her—the T-shirt that had covered her in his scent—off over the top of her head.

His mouth dried up, his brain cells scrambled like so much spaghetti.

Dear God but she was stunning, her breasts lush against the toned and sleekly muscular build of a woman who was a SnowDancer lieutenant. Her skin was lightly tanned, her nipples darker, the plane of her abdomen having the slightest curve that he had every intention of laving with his tongue before moving lower to nuzzle those dark curls that hid the moist, earthy scent of her desire. He’d part her delicate folds and stroke and lick and pet until she screamed his name.

As he watched, entranced, she shifted back to her position between his knees and began to tug at the tab of his zipper. He sucked in a breath, sucked in his abdomen, and hoped he wouldn’t fucking embarrass himself. Lights flashed behind his closed eyelids as his erection sprang mercifully free, and he felt more than heard Indigo urge him to lift up his body so she could tug off his jeans.

Opening his eyes, he obeyed, and the jeans went flying somewhere to the side. Indigo put her hands on his thighs, her gaze on his erection. “I want to …” she began, but he reached down and pulled her up.

The damp heat of her stroked over his abdomen and he had to grit his teeth to keep from blowing like the Fourth of July. “I get to taste you first.” He squeezed her hips. “Then I get to do it again.”

She was straddling him, her knees on either side of his chest. When he urged her higher, her eyes went huge. “Like this?”

A chuckle broke its way through the sensual haze. “Don’t tell me I’ve shocked the unshockable lieutenant.”

“I should’ve expected you’d know all sorts of debauched things.” But she obeyed him and shifted up … until all he had to do was hold her in place with his grip on her thighs, draw in the dark heat of her passion, and lap at what he’d been aching to taste.

Indigo’s spine arched
at the first touch, and she realized the damn wolf had her in a steely grip, would not allow her to wriggle away. The pleasure was excruciating. Her claws sliced out of her skin. She fought to pull them back in, failed. “No more.” She’d been hungry too long, and it only took a few wicked caresses to have her body riding a near-painful edge. “
Drew
.”

He let her escape with one final lick. His eyes were pure wolf. “Next time,” he said in a voice gone husky and deep and in no way human, “you’re going to lie still until I’ve finished tasting you.”

A growl rumbled in the back of her throat. “Am I?”

“Fair’s fair.”

Her wolf didn’t understand his logic, its mind too torn with the hunger for the most intimate, most luscious, of skin privileges. “What?” Sliding down his body, she brushed herself against the velvet steel of his arousal.

Drew’s abdomen was taut as rock under her palms, his cock even more rigid. “Because,” he said in that gravelly, inhuman voice, “I’ll lie here and let you do whatever you want, too.”

Her wolf froze, looked at him, licked its lips. Big and gorgeous and dangerously aroused, he made her want to … The words wouldn’t come, her body too hot, too needy. Ending the teasing play of her body against his, she said, “Now.”

His hands tightened on her hips, and then he was flipping her so she lay beneath him, her legs spread wide to accommodate his bigger, heavier body. His skin shimmered with perspiration, and the tension in his muscles had turned them to steel. But though he nudged at her with the blunt head of his erection, the shaft pushing eagerly at the entrance to her body, he stopped long enough to give her a wet, openmouthed kiss that was all licks and little bites, tender and affectionate and sexy all at once.

And then, as her body arched up, he thrust into her in a single hard push.

Her scream fell into his mouth, her fingers clenching on his biceps.

Neither of them moved for the next few seconds. She could feel his heart pounding beneath her palms, and it echoed the frantic pace of her own. Realizing her claws were out just a tiny bit, just enough to blood him in the throes of passion, she went to pull them back.

He bit her lower jaw. “I like it.”

Taking him at his word, she scratched lightly at him as she tried to get used to the feel of him inside her. Hard and thick and deliciously long, he stretched her to the limit, but they fit. Oh, they fit very, very nicely. “Guess,” she managed to gasp out after several seconds, “the rumors weren’t exaggerations.”

He didn’t answer, his entire body trembling with the effort it was obviously taking for him not to pound her into the earth.

“Drew,” she whispered, nipping at his ear, “I’m not fragile.”

Wolf-copper eyes met hers, nothing of humanity in them. “No, you’re mine.” Gripping her hip with one hand, he braced himself over her with the other, and then he rode her.

There was, Indigo thought as her senses exploded, no other word for it. It wasn’t any kind of sophisticated mating—it was raw and hard and primal, the power of Drew’s thrusts sending shock waves through her entire body. She’d have been shoved off the sleeping bags more than once if his grip hadn’t pinned her to the earth, if she hadn’t locked her legs around him and given in to the heat and strength and driving sexual hunger of him. She’d never had a lover as abandoned in her life, and she loved it. Adored it.

Adored him.

Clawing at his back, she lifted her hips to meet his strokes, but his rhythm was too fast, too aggressive, and her body was already tightening into an explosive bow. It didn’t matter—it was impossible to halt the movements of her hips now, her flesh claiming and releasing his in an abandoned sexual rhythm that drove him impossibly deeper. Somewhere in between, she realized the fingers of his free hand were locked with hers as it lay palm up beside her head.

The tension built inside her. Tighter. Hotter. Agonizing. “Drew!” It was a scream as the pressure reached boiling point and exploded.

Her last thought was that Drew, too, had finally let go.

She roused some
time later to find that he’d flipped them again, so that she lay sprawled on his chest. Her right hand remained entangled with his, while her left hand was curved around the back of his neck. She’d hooked one leg over his hip; the other lay stretched over one muscular male leg, the hairs on his skin deliciously abrasive against her sensitized flesh.