Wolf’s Glory (14 page)

“God, you learn fast,” she groaned. “A little harder. Please, Shadow, a little harder and faster.”

Her hand rubbed frantic little circles just above where his finger was moving inside her.

He brushed her hand aside and did it for her. He loved the little noises she was making. The way her body clenched around his finger when she gasped out his name gave him the same thrill he felt when he brought down game on a long and hard hunt. And the way her whole body relaxed told him she was happy.

“That was awesome!” she said after a minute, when her breathing had gotten back to normal. “Your turn?”

Shadow was barely able to contain his need to bury his cock where his fingers had been.

“Will it hurt you, sunshine?”

“Not anymore.” She spread her thighs wider and reached for his cock. “C"mon, big guy.

Slide that hot piece of meat inside me.”

Before, when he had tried to put himself inside her, it had felt like he had been pushing against something without an opening. Now he found her opening with the tip of his penis and was able to push inside. It took a series of thrusts, but at last he managed to squeeze every inch of himself inside her. And if her body had been warm and slick around his finger, it was hot and tight around his cock. It was pure, molten joy to be inside her. He paused to kiss her.

“All right?” he whispered. “Am I hurting you? You"re shaking.”

“I"m great. Oh, man. Remember how you moved your finger in and out?”

He felt an unexpected rumble of laughter escape. “I know that much. Tell me if I move too fast or too hard.”

She didn"t say much at all, at least not words. Her voice came out of her in gasping moans, in a rhythm that matched his thrusts. Each time he pulled his length nearly out of her and then pushed himself back her hot flesh squeezed him in a loving grip. Her moans became continuous until they were swallowed by a high, thin shriek. The feel of her flesh clenching around him in ripples as he moved within her drove him higher and higher until he felt an explosion erupt inside him, and the release of pressure made him collapse on the soft cushion of her body. He lay still until her hands pushed at his shoulders.

“Hey, big guy. Move. I can"t breathe.”

He didn"t want to let his cock slip free of her body. Small shudders were still caressing him. Instead he forced his arms to hold his weight off her. “Sunshine,” he whispered tenderly.

“That was amazing.”

“I"ve got your hair in my mouth,” she complained, trying to pull the black lock away.

“Sorry. I"ll braid it next time.”

“That"s okay. I kinda like your hair. It"s softer than I thought it would be. And it"s so long that when you were doing your thing, it was everywhere. It tickles. But in a good way.”

“Really? So you like this?” He drew a lock of his hair over her breast.

“Enough! You wore me out. And, could you move?”

He didn"t want to. The way she twitched her hips made him start to get hard again. But he made himself shift to his side and mourned the loss of physical connection when he slid out of her. The scent of their love soothed him. They were well and truly mated now. That soothed him too, and his wolf danced in delight inside him. He lay beside her, still trailing his hair in lazy patterns over her belly and breasts while she drifted back to sleep.

Was that normal? He himself felt energized by their lovemaking. He wanted to do it again right now. But he didn"t need as much sleep as a human woman would, particularly one who had spent days taking care of the sick and wounded. His mate needed sleep, and he would always provide her with what she needed, so he lay beside her, caressing the softness of her thighs and belly with gentle fingertips. The hair between her legs wasn"t pink. It was blonde and as soft as baby hair. When he petted it she made a disgruntled noise and shifted onto her side, showing him the long curve of her spine.

He realized that he hadn"t given her the bag he had found. Its seams had split, maybe from impact with the ground, but the clothing inside was intact. If Rose was right his mate would be pleased to see them and grateful to have them. He smiled contentedly against her shoulder, looking forward to more lovemaking tomorrow.

Glory wondered in sleepy confusion why she felt sore. She wondered especially why she was sore there, between her legs. She rolled onto her back and stretched out her legs. When she encountered a foreign warm body she remembered everything in a rush. Her head whipped around, and she found Shadow leaning on an elbow, the corner of his jaw supported on a fist, watching her with tenderness and alarming possessiveness. Damn, he was gorgeous.

She let her eyes slide down the broad, muscled chest and rippled abs to the … Holy crow, he was as big as she remembered! The tent was a little dim, but there was enough light to see his cock was standing straight and hard, obviously ready for round two. That had been inside her last night? No way! She considered the soreness and shrugged. Yes, way. But it wasn"t a bad soreness. More like a lingering memory of him moving inside her. If it wasn"t for the fact that her bladder was shouting for attention she would have liked to start all over again. From the looks of him, he would have liked that idea. Curse her tiny little bladder.

“Good morning, sunshine.” He ran the backs of his fingers over her bare breast in gentle caress.

She jerked the blankets up to hide her nakedness from him. “Good morning.” Geez, this morning-after stuff was awkward. What was she supposed to say to a lover she woke up next to after the best sex of her life? “I gotta pee,” she blurted.

“Let"s do it again,” he commanded, dragging her, blankets and all, under him.

“No freaking way!” she shouted, painfully aware of her full bladder and the taste of her mouth, and the daylight that would show off her overly abundant belly and hips. “Let me go.

I told you I gotta pee.”

His face was still as he stared down at her, his dimple hidden. “Do you hate me after what I did to you last night?”

“God, no! That was great! You were great! But not right now, Shadow. I need some girl time. I would kill for a shower and clean clothes.”

The solemnity of his face was broken by a grin that he couldn"t seem to control. “Then go have a shower. I will meet you there with some clean clothes.”

She felt her spirits lift. Clean clothes? “Really?”

“Really.”

“Where did you get…?” Her attention veered away from her increasingly demanding

bladder to remember why he had left in the first place. “Did you find Rose and Sky? Are they okay?”

“They are both well. Sky is here, and Rose is safe with my cousin"s pack near Kearney.”

“Well, that"s a relief. And speaking of relief, I need some. Get off me, big guy, so I can go hit the bathroom and shower.”

Shadow lifted her to her feet with no effort. It still thrilled her that there was a guy in the world strong enough to pick her up like that. And he seemed to have a thing for her. Her ratty navy blue and fuchsia outfit was lying in careless muddles on the grass floor of the tent. She wondered what kind of clothes he had found for her, but when she asked he said it was a surprise. So she wrapped the blanket securely around her naked body and scuttled over to Jill"s tent where her toiletry bag was.

She expected people to point at her and giggle but the few Clan people she saw just smiled and wished her a cheerful good morning. Jill"s smile was a little more knowing, but all she said was that one more of the injured had died that night,but the others all seemed to be on the road to recovery now. She ran into Heather on her way to the bathroom, but ignored her with dogged determination. She must be getting used to the facilities, because she was exceedingly grateful to use them.

One of the other survivors was already at the shower. Unlike Heather, who hadn"t even been hurt, Marissa had helped as much as she could with the other wounded even though her shoulder had been dislocated and her arm broken in the crash.

“Morning, Glory!” she said cheerfully and chortled at her words. “I wouldn"t have pegged you as a flower. Um … I guess you get that a lot, huh?”

“My dad always said that when I was a little kid,” Glory grumbled. She flinched a little from the memory that he was dead. It hurt even more because that"s how she wanted to remember him: an affectionate and teasing dad, not the distant, too-busy-for-his-only-child executive he became about the time she started junior high. “Every morning he"d come barging into my room, flip on the light, and yell, „Morning, Glory, rise and shine!"”

Marissa was struggling to get dressed with one arm. Glory moved to help her. “That"s hard,” Marissa said. She combed her thick dark hair with her fingers. “Remembering people, I mean. Like, I had a little boy. I suppose he"s dead too.”

Wow. That was way harder than losing parents. “Maybe not. He might have survived.”

“Faron would be fifty-four. That"s thirty-two years older than me. I could be a

grandmother. Hell, I could be a great-grandmother!”

There was nothing to say to that. “You named your little boy Faron?”

“Faron Paulson. When he was a baby I called him Fary, but it sounds like fairy, so I stopped that when he started to walk.”

“Yeah, good call.” Glory grimaced. “You married? Divorced?”

“No.” Marissa managed a half wicked, half shamed grin. “I was a wild child when I was younger. Never got married. I was pretty much always in trouble until I started college a couple years ago. I"m starting to grow up now. At least that"s what my mom says. Said.

Faron was staying with my parents in Omaha while I was going to be doing an internship in Denver for six months. It was really hard to be separated from him … At least, I thought it was hard then…”

Glory was intensely relieved to see the other woman pull herself together. She couldn"t handle tears. She waved good-bye when Marissa left the shower area. As she steeled herself for an ice-cold stream of water, she wondered what it would be like to have a son who was thirty years older than she was. Maybe not much different than having your best friend age fifty years overnight. What a crazy world this was.

It was too cold to be taking outdoor showers. Glory dried off with the same scrap of towel she"d been using for days, and quickly wrapped up in her blanket. Her teeth were near chattering when she stepped out into camp and looked around for Shadow. He had said he had clean clothes for her. She hoped they were warm clothes.

They weren"t particularly warm, but she was overjoyed to see them. Shadow stood near a tree, cradling a tatty-looking blue bag in his arms. He was smiling with a boyish mix of arrogance and hope.

“Oh my God!” she shrieked. “That"s my bag! You found my bag!”

With anybody else she wouldn"t have launched herself at him and jumped to hug him, but Shadow was strong. She trusted him to catch her. The big lug laughed and caught her with one arm, tossing her higher so he could hold her with his arm under her hips, the way a mother would hold a toddler. She was so excited over having her own clothes that she kissed him exuberantly. Then she squeaked when he let them topple over onto the grass. She remembered she was dressed in nothing but a blanket, and her bare ass was hanging out for him to squeeze in his big hand.

“Shadow, move your hand or lose your hand,” she threatened.

His satisfied smile didn"t take her threat seriously. “Rose said you"d be happy to have your clothes,” he said smugly.

“Well, yeah, I am. But anyone can see us here. We need privacy for this.”

His answer to that was to stand up, scooping her and her now jumbled clothes up in his arms and begin to lope away from the camp. His long muscular legs ate up the ground. Glory clung for dear life, demanding to know where they were going. And, she said to herself, how far could he carry her? How fast was he going? He wasn"t even breathing hard! And he had picked her up in a way that kept the blanket tucked neatly around her.

“A private place, so you can thank me,” he answered briskly.

Glory opened her mouth to slap him down, but she saw his perfect mouth twitch with a suppressed smile. “Uh-huh. What sort of thank-you did you have in mind, big guy?”

He was still moving smoothly, without visible effort. “Something … enthusiastic.”

“Really?”

He slowed and stepped carefully through some trees and thick bushes into a small grassy area. “It"s private here, sunshine. Nobody can see us.” He let her slide to her feet but kept her firmly against his chest. “Do you want to thank me now?”

Glory arched an eyebrow. “If you ask me,
you
should be thanking
me
.”

His smile was almost sweet. “I do. Thank you for letting me kiss you, like this.” His lips were gentle on hers. “And letting me taste you here.” He tugged the blanket loose to touch his tongue to her breast. “And letting me touch you here.” His hand slipped under the bottom edge of the blanket to pet her between her legs. She jumped and grabbed for the falling blanket. He intercepted her hand and wrapped it around his erection. “And thank you for touching me here.”

Holy crow! He was ready again. Or still. She momentarily forgot the blanket at the feel of his velvet-soft, iron-hard cock. She squeezed gently, just to see what he would do. His choked breath made her feel powerful. She was still feeling tenderness from last night, but she could be persuaded to have a little more fun with him.

“You know, I"m a little sore,” she whispered, but his hoarse voice cut her off.

“I"ll be gentle, I promise.”

Well, that wasn"t anywhere near enough persuasion, Glory decided. She wanted him to work for it. “Well, I don"t know, Shadow…”

How did she get on her back so fast? When had he spread the blanket out over the grass?

She realized with sudden horror that he was kneeling above her, looking her naked body over with slow, thorough eyes. In broad daylight! She wanted to cringe and hide herself, but he caught her hands in his and held them still. Some of her embarrassment faded at the look of intense pleasure on his face while his eyes caressed her. He might be able to fake an expression, but his cock was hard. If he didn"t like her body would his cock be hard? She felt herself relax under his hot eyes.