The Werewolf Bodyguard (Moonbound Book 2) (3 page)

Aria growled and shifted her hips, her wolf wanted more. Needed more. Needed to feel anything but the pain and loss that seemed to be following her wherever she went. Sex helped her forget.

“I need to come.” It was more pleading than she preferred, but she was more desperate than she’d ever been. Every nerve was alive and every inch of her skin wanted to feel release and comfort. Her chest heaved and the orgasm spiraled within her, just out of reach.

“You will.”

M
arco touched
the surface of the heated tin of Debauve & Gallais, and found it still hot to the touch. He didn’t have much time before the melted chocolate re-formed, and he still had so many plans for Miss Aria LeBlanc.

How ironic that her name recalled soprano oratorios, because he planned to make her hit some high notes. She’d already made a nice start to her operetta, writhing and humming under the stream of chocolate he poured on her wet, erect nipples.

He bent over one breast with his tongue extended and felt her breath hitch as she waited for him to soothe the heat, but this time, he just hovered there and poured more chocolate. She hissed.

The wiggle of her hips, the buck upward. She wasn’t just saying she needed to come, she was really feeling it. He licked at the chocolate on one nipple and dragged his spoon across the other at the same time, with just the lightest touch.

Her breath came so unevenly, he thought he heard her beg for more, but she had not formed the words. He swirled the spoon on the tip again and her back arched in little bursts.

“That’s right,” he said into her nipple, relishing the earthy finish of the chocolate on her salty skin.

He moved to the other breast and felt the wet slide of her hard nipple on his chest. She inhaled at the contact. The chocolate, when let cool in the air, was barely even warm. He needed to work faster.

Marco licked the last of the Debauve & Gallais from her nipple and took the tin down to set it on the floor beneath the table. He knelt between her legs and heard her shudder. Her pussy was so engorged and her arousal so fragrant, he found himself licking his lips.

Nothing would have pleased him more than plunging his painfully throbbing cock deep inside her and watching the expectant satisfaction of peace wash over her as she came. That thought and the accompanying image of his own orgasm shocked him so much, he had to shake himself out of the fantasy.

He never fucked them.

Not ever.

Aria’s legs were pulling at the ropes that secured her to the table, restlessly searching out the comfort of release. But she wasn’t ready yet.

He swiped the spoon into the still-hot tin and drizzled chocolate over the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. She yowled and arched like a cat and her hips bucked whatever horse she was trying to ride.

After a long moment, he followed the chocolate with his tongue and she moaned, wordlessly. His erection strained against rough fabric, anxious to be exposed, to be inside her. Fuck.

One last stream of chocolate, just on the upturned lips of her pussy. This time, she screamed.

“Please,” she begged. Her eyes were closed and she writhed so forcibly, he thought she might wiggle right out of her bonds. He could barely hear her. “Marco. Please.”

He took a long drink of the water he’d prepared and suckled the ice cube, leaning far enough away that he wasn’t eye level with her sex. He couldn’t take much more of this, either. His cock was so hard, and his wolf clawed at his skin… Marco could see the danger ahead for them both if he didn’t make her come immediately.

With his mouth sufficiently frozen and with his fingers spreading her wide open so he could see her clit, Marco attacked his dessert with the flourish of a fine connoisseur. Aria wailed a note that could have shattered glass and then panted out a song Marco would never forget.

Her orgasm lasted long enough that he wasn’t sure it would ever end. Even when he felt the tension release from her body, she didn’t seem relaxed. When he finally leaned back to admire his handiwork, he found himself panting right along with her, tension inside spreading through him.

He looked down at the tin, which now sat between his knees, and found there was chocolate sauce on the crotch of his tented pants. Had he touched himself? Or had he been searching out contact with something while she came, trying to fuck the air? He couldn’t be sure. He almost couldn’t remember.

Marco felt the sailing, soaring feeling that always accompanied the moment right before shifting, and something tightened in his chest. He grabbed the last handful of ice from the cup and stuck his hand down his pants, icing the monster that still wanted to be inside Aria.

The desire to fuck her was ebbing and flowing inside him and he couldn’t stop panting. His erection didn’t subside, even when his pants were soaked with melted ice.

He moved to stroke her leg and she flinched. It wasn’t until he sat forward to untie her that he realized…it wasn’t a flinch. Her body was still moving.

She was sobbing.

Marco made quick work of untying her legs and uncuffing her wrists, and he climbed onto the table beside her. She curled around him. Sobs racked her body.

Her arms clutched at him for a brief moment, and then one fist began to pound on his back. The other beat his side and the two increased in rhythm until she was screaming again and pummeling him.

Once the scream reached its crescendo, she relaxed against him.

“Fuck you,” she whispered.

Marco shook his head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, fuck you.” Aria pushed at him and when she looked up, her eyes were bright silver, rimmed in red. “I never said you could do that.”

“You never said I couldn’t.” He reached for her, but she put a strong hand on his chest.

“I told you I needed to be fucked.”

“You needed to come.” He stroked her shoulder. “You needed someone to unleash all that tension inside you.”

“So, what, now, you’re the fucking wolf-messiah to make all my wet dreams come true?” The anger was back, and it lit her face like a Christmas tree. “No, Marco. No.”

“This is what I do.” He shrugged.

“Well, congratulations.” She slid across the table and climbed onto his floor. “You give great head.”

Stunned, he sat in the middle of the table with his mouth hanging open while she picked up some of her clothing. Aria rounded on him, pointing a finger. “And by the way, whoever your alpha is, he’s going to hear about this. You can’t just be using your wolf to fuck up humans like this, and don’t tell me you don’t. I can smell a routine.”

Marco cocked his head to one side. “My alpha?”

“Yeah, the alpha of the Vegas pack. Don’t think I won’t find him, just because he’s not at the summit.” When she pointed at him, her breasts upturned and perked in the most delicious way. He wanted to suck on them again, and realized they were still coated with streaks of chocolate.

Marco slid after her and caught her wrist as she bent to retrieve more clothing.

“Don’t get dressed yet, you’re all…sticky.”

Aria glanced down at herself and sighed. She sat against the table. “I’m surprised you don’t have some line about
let’s jump in the shower together
.”

A strike to his chest. Marco stepped back and bit his lip. The problem was, she wasn’t wrong. He did usually have a line about cleaning them off. He glanced over at the counter, where the warm cloth and water waited.

She did need to be cleaned off.

“I keep a cloth here so I can clean you off.” When she rolled her eyes, he pointed to the counter. “It’s not sanitary otherwise.”

Aria’s ass shook adorably as she padded over to the counter and took the wet cloth. Her hand on the cloth instead of his, swiping between her legs, and then her nipples. Sticky nipples. He wanted to lick them again.

“I guess I got the full Vegas experience, then.” Her lips pursed and her head tilted to the side. “Like a sex tourist.”

Marco sighed and crossed the room, reaching for her, but she shook him off. “I’ve never seen anybody use their wolf like this. It’s a jackass thing to do.”

“I’m not using anything. You were carrying your tension like the world on your shoulders. You needed to relax.”

“Fine.” She threw the cloth at him. “Fuck me senseless. You’re hot. I was up for it. But this? This…this wasn’t fair.”

Marco touched her hand as she set it on the counter. She was still shaking. He pulled her into his arms and something sparked in him, like his skin was on fire. Aria must have felt it, too, because she jumped.

“What is that?” he asked, touching her arm again. “It’s like electricity.” Marco stopped himself from asking the question he wanted to ask. He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk about it, but he had to. She was so different. He had to know if he was right. “Is that because you go through the change, too? So we can feel each other’s life force or something?”

She pulled back and her gaze fluttered across his face. “The
change
? Life force? What kind of Anne Rice hoodoo bullshit is that?”

“Why? What do you call it?”

Her eyebrows knit together. “Don’t fuck around with me. You call it whatever your pack calls it.”

Something rose inside him. “What’s a pack?”

“Oh, don’t give me the tourist shtick.” Aria rolled her eyes. “I’m a wolf, too.”

“So you can tell I’m a wolf?” He gestured between them, almost touching the still-wet skin of her stomach. “I thought maybe I was the only one who could tell.”

“Like you’re fucking God’s gift to wolf-kind or something?” She backed up a step. “Seriously, Marco. Drop the act.”

“It’s not an act.” He set the cloth in the silver bowl. “I really thought I was the only one who could tell. You’re only the second one I’ve ever met.”

A mix of fear and anger lanced across her face. Her shoulders swayed back and forth. “No more fucking around. I am going to report you.”

“What, like the wolf police?” He tried for a joke to ease the tension, but she didn’t appear to relax at all. Instead, she advanced on him.

“This is total bullshit. Who the fuck is your alpha?”

Marco spread his arms, taking in the rest of his apartment. “I’m my own alpha.”

She walked to the pile of her clothing and dug through it to find her jeans, then pulled out her phone. “There’s no such thing as your own alpha.” Aria dialed some numbers and held the phone to her ear. “Are you really telling me you’re not bonded to a pack?”

Marco raised one shoulder. “I didn’t know there were packs at all.”

“Who are your parents?” she asked, but before he could speak, someone answered the other line, and she said, “Hi, Rain? Where’s Francis?”

A dark voice on the other end began to talk in a raised tone and Marco found his wolf licking at his insides in anger. No one should speak to her that way.

“Can y’all meet me in the casino in fifteen minutes? I think we have another problem. I found another unbonded wolf.” She ended the call before the other man could talk again and Marco’s wolf calmed a touch.

“What problem do we have?”

She slid her panties on, but kept his eyes. “Who are your parents, Marco?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. It matters to
wolves
.” She zipped her pants. “Just tell me. Who are your parents?”

Marco could feel his heart pound and his nostrils flare. The rawness of his emotions after experiencing Aria’s orgasm with her… It was playing with his insides so much that even the thought of his mother brought tears burning up the insides of his nose. He held them back and breathed deep and long.

“I don’t know my father.”

“And what about your mother?” Aria pulled at his arm. “Marco, please.” She breathed short bursts through her nose, pointing at the table with her other hand. “You asked me to trust you and I did, against my better judgment. You have to trust me when I tell you it is imperative that we know who your mother is.”

A moment of cracking open had his mother’s name on his lips, but he did not utter it. Instead, he bit his tongue and closed his eyes against the image of her.

“I don’t know her,” he lied. He couldn’t look at Aria, knowing the trust she had put in him on that table only moments before. But he’d made a vow never to speak of his mother to another living being, and that included Aria, no matter how close he had been to spilling himself inside her.

Her eyes flared. “Shit.”

“Why
shit
?”

She shook her head. “You have to come with me, right now.”

Marco looked down at his chef’s coat, stained with chocolate and covered in her scent, and then at his pants, where his dick had thankfully calmed down, but which were also covered in Debauve & Gallais.

“Let me change first, and you finish getting dressed, then I’ll go wherever you want.”

“Hurry,” she said. “I can’t keep my alpha waiting.”

Something cascaded inside Marco as he walked away, and he didn’t say aloud the thing he’d been wanting to say since she came so beautifully under his mouth. He wanted more of her.

And he hated that she called another man her
anything
.

A
ria marched
through the lobby of the hotel where the packs convened for the summit. She could sense them—the magick—everywhere. It vibrated like a living organism in the air. The hotel was full of wolves from all over the country.

No one knew where Elise Blanchard, now mated to Jared VonBrandt, was from. Just that Jared found her in New Orleans and that she was unbonded and without knowledge of her parents or origin. Just like Marco. Gods, it was a fucking epidemic. The alphas were going to flip their switches.

Here they were meeting in Vegas to find out if anyone knew anything about Elise’s origins and she’d fucking
found
another unbonded werewolf who claimed he didn’t have a clue where he came from. No parents. Nothing. It’s not like baby wolves grew on trees. How the hell had either of them hidden themselves for so long?

By the gods, she needed a stiff drink. And a good fucking. She hadn’t gotten that from him yet, but she would.

Aria whirled to face Marco. He’d stopped following her and was standing statuesque in the center of the busy lobby. “Come on,” she beckoned.

“What is that?”

“What?” She narrowed her eyes.

“That sensation of something alive—”

She shushed him and grabbed his arm. “It’s our kind. You can’t talk about things in the open like this. We have to get to my alpha.” Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She checked the screen.

Good. At least Francis was taking the time to see her. He certainly didn’t seem to care if she was around anymore, now that his daughter wasn’t an enforcer for the New Orleans pack. He’d been like her father since the accident that had stolen not only her parents, but Rain’s as well. Still, he was her alpha and her uncle and she’d worked side by side with his daughter, Reyna, for years. They were more like sisters than cousins. A little consideration or at least a few words before putting Rainier in her place would’ve been nice.

Now she had a werewolf in tow that doubled their problem. Plus she still wanted to strip Marco down and have her way with him. Something was up with that.

She shook her head. Imagining Marco naked needed to stop. Being distracted would not help her get her position back as head enforcer.

Aria led Marco to the elevator bay and they rode up to the tenth floor where the alphas had made sure to reserve every single room. Other than hotel staff, who were easy to avoid, no human had any reason to be on their level.

They stepped off the elevator and Aria breathed deeply as the magick of the packs washed over her. It was stronger here than downstairs because all the alphas were in one place. She loved the sensation, the power, and the rawness of wolf magick. But the poor man next to her wasn’t breathing and his heart was racing.

“Breathe, Marco. It’s just the magick. Same thing you felt downstairs, but it’s amplified here because of the presence of alphas
.
” She led him down the hallway and stopped in front of the door labeled Red Dragon.

“Doesn’t this make you crazy?”

She texted Rain back and shook her head. “I’ve never felt it this strong before. But it doesn’t make me crazy. It feels great. The power of a pack is amazing.”

“I feel like I’m coming out of my skin.” Marco rolled his neck and grimaced.

He was fighting his wolf. But why?

Aria reached out and touched his arm. “Breathe. Let the magick flow over you. It’s part of you. Don’t fight it.”

The door across the hall opened and she yanked her arm away and turned to face Francis and Rain. The two men looked at her and then at Marco.

Francis’ eyes widened, but he didn’t speak right away. Instead he approached Marco silently.

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Marco Disanti.”

“You grew up here in Vegas?”

Marco nodded.

Aria caught the sexy chef’s gaze for a brief moment before turning her attention fully to Francis.

“Why don’t you have a pack? Who raised you? Being alone is dangerous.”

Marco’s face darkened and Aria had the sudden urge to protect him. Get between Marco and Francis. She clenched her fists and remained still. Her libido wasn’t going to make a fool of her, especially not in front of her alpha.

“I don’t know who you are and I don’t owe you anything. Aria had no right to tell you my secret.”

Francis snarled. “Aria protects her pack. She did exactly what she should’ve. Do not speak ill of her.”

Warmth blossomed in her chest, but with it came more agitation. It pained her that Francis was angry at Marco. By the gods, what was wrong with her?

“Aria?” Rain took a step closer and leaned toward her. “You okay?”

She jerked away and glared. “Like you really care.”

“I’ve always cared,” he replied softly. “How did you find him?”

Aria crossed her arms. “I’m that good.”

Rain chuckled and shook his head. “Sure you are.”

“Aria.” Francis’ voice silenced them both. Aria hurried to her alpha’s side.

“Yes, sir.”

“This summit is going nowhere. We have no leads and everyone is bickering about what to do. You need to take him to the Vegas pack, they declined the invitation to the summit, but we need to know what info they have on Marco.”

“I’m standing right here,” Marco hissed.

“Yes, you are, and you’re being about as helpful as a tree stump,” Francis responded. “Aria. Take him to see Carl Rivera, the Vegas alpha. Find out what they know.”

F
rancis trusted
her to do this. To take Marco. Meet the Vegas alpha. Either that or he realized in his infinite wisdom that she
couldn’t
let Marco out of her sight.

Probably the latter.
Damn alpha bond.

Still, he hadn’t sent Rain with her to babysit, so there was at least that.

Aria stopped the rental car in front of an old singlewide on the outskirts of town and took a deep breath. The Vegas pack kept a low profile, but they were powerful and plentiful in this area. Underestimating them wasn’t on her To Do List.

She didn’t doubt that Marco wasn’t part of their pack, but as separated as these wolves stayed from the city, they
knew
everything. Just because no one saw them in the city, didn’t mean they weren’t there—watching everything. Vegas was their territory.

All of it.

If anyone knew where he came from, Rivera and his pack would.

“Ready?”

“For what? To get mugged by a bunch of desert thugs?”

Aria snorted out a laugh. “Come on, Marco. We need information and these guys will have it in spades.”

“They don’t look like they even own a computer.”

“They don’t roll in money like other packs, but they do fine. Plus they are one of the largest packs this side of the Great Plains. A rock doesn’t drop in Vegas without Rivera knowing where it fell from.”

“So why wasn’t he at your alpha meeting in town?”

“Rivera isn’t very social,” Aria answered.

“What the hell are we doing here then?”

“You don’t know anything about your mother. Rivera will. If she ever lived here, he’ll know. We need to know where you and Elise came from.”

“Who the fuck is Elise?”

“Another wolf who doesn’t know where she came from.”

“She lives here?”

Aria shook her head. “She was in New Orleans. Coming?” She slammed the door shut and walked to the front of the car and sat on the hood.

“What are you doing?”

She nodded her head toward the front door. A large man wielding a shotgun stepped through the screen door and two other very large men, also holding rifles, came around from the back of the house.

“You’re trespassing,” growled the man at the top of the steps.

“I’m here on behalf of Francis Dubois. I need to speak to Carl Rivera.”

The men’s gazes wandered to Marco, but they didn’t question his presence, which solidified Aria’s assessment that they did indeed know who Marco was and had allowed him to live all this time unbonded.

“Get back in your car and follow us down the road.”

Aria tipped her chin at the guy on the landing before returning to the driver’s seat of the rental. Marco scrambled for the passenger-side door.

The three men jumped into a Jeep parked a few yards away. Gravel pinged the front of the rental car as Aria turned down the bumpy road to follow them.

“They had guns. We are not going to follow these redneck werewolves into the desert. I know I’ve seen that on
Criminal Minds
.”

“You said you don’t know anything about your parents.” Aria studied Marco from the corner of her eye. His heart rate had increased and his breathing was sporadic. He was lying about something. She just hadn’t figured out what yet. The men with guns weren’t what was bothering him. He’d been this way since she asked about his mom the first time.