But instead of giving him the submission he demanded, she shoved against his chest, tearing her mouth from his in the midst of a moan filled with both pleasure and torment, as if ending the kiss caused her pain. “What is this, Kole?” she panted, accusation in her tone. “You want to fuck me and then lock me away? Is that standard protocol for the Guard?”
“I’m not locking you away. Not unless it’s in a bedroom with me present for about a week.” He lowered his head, brought his lips a breath from hers. “Make that a month.”
She didn’t pull back, but her fingers flexed against his chest. “I thought-”
“You thought wrong.”
She searched his face, electricity charging the air around them.“The King-”
“Can’t have you anymore than I plan to let Derek kill you.”
“I thought you were arresting me. I don’t understand.”
“You will.” His mouth came down over hers again, tongue stroking hers with command. The animal in him was in control, the wolf that screamed ‘mine‘ when Sarah was near, that knew her in a way he’d never known another woman. She would submit to him, she would give herself to him, right here and right now.
This time, she didn’t resist him, she didn’t pull back. Her fingers slid to his hair, and when he pressed her legs apart, she opened willingly, welcoming him as he settled the thick ridge of his shaft, pressing into the intimate core of her body. Kole didn’t need more encouragement. He wasn’t of his normal, controlled mind, where sex was sex, and while he needed it, wanted it, he didn’t have to have it or any particular female. He had to have Sarah, just Sarah, and that need had him all but shaking. He tasted her, kissed her, feathered caresses down her neck, his hands exploring her breasts, her slender waist. And when she stabbed her fingers into his hair, her head tilting in a silent plea for more, he felt his cock thicken, and passion blinded him. He had to be inside her now, in this instant.
A loud thunder of footsteps and some muted voices sounded not far away and Sarah jerked. “Is someone going to walk in here?”
He pulled on her blouse, and the button flew. “Not if they want to keep their fangs.” He shoved down the black lace of her lingerie and teased the rosy red buds into stiff peaks, before suckling one into his mouth and drawing deeply on it.
She gasped and let her weight drop back to the mat. “I think....we need...a bed.”
“We’ll get there,” he promised, kissing his way down her stomach. “We’ll get there. Right after you understand exactly where it is we're going.” He shoved her skirt up and found no panties.
His gaze jerked to hers, something fierce and dark stirring inside him as he thought of her like this with those wolves from the bar.
“The wolves-”
“Smell you,” he finished as something fierce and dark stirred inside him. He moved up her body to bring his mouth to hers. “And you used yourself as bait.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t wait for an answer. He slid his hand between her thighs and pressed two fingers into the slick heat of her body. “Were you wet for them like you are me?”
“No!” she moaned as he stroked her. “Kole...I..”
He pumped into her, his thumb playing with her swollen clit. “Did they do this to you? How far did you go, Sarah, before you killed them?”
“Nowhere,” she panted. “I just killed them.”
“You kissed them?”
“Kole I-”
He covered her mouth with his, unwilling to hear the confirmation, punishing her with his angry kiss, before he added, “You will not use yourself as bait ever again.”
A beat of silence. “I’ll do whatever I have to to get to Derek.”
“No,” he said tightly, “you will not.” He lapped at her nipple and suckling it roughly. He was angry and she was a wolf. She could handle him, at least in bed. That she could handle the other wolves too, well that pissed him off. She was a young wolf, but she knew on some level what they were to each other, she knew who she belong to. He brought his mouth to her ear, still caressing the slick folds of her body, still pumping into her. “Not ever again, Sarah. Do you understand me?”
She moaned, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her back arching, head tilting to the side. “You have no say so in this, Kole.”
Mine. The word echoed in his mind again, a word he’d never used with any other female, and he moved between her legs, licked her clit and suckled it. Mine. She was his mate. He’d hunted for her, grieved for her, and she’d hidden from him as she could never do once they had exchanged blood. He’d be able to track her, he’d be able to protect her. She’d be stronger, live as long as he. Kole lapped at her, licking and tasting, claiming her.
He could feel himself shaking inside with the need to make it so, could feel his skin heat as if flames were burning him as they had by that warehouse. The need to strip her naked and take her right here and now was almost unbearable, and so was his anger, at the thought of those wolves touching her, fucking her.
She tensed and shook, her body clenching at his fingers in release. He worked his tongue over her, in her, all around her, until she collapsed in heavy gasps. He was on top of her again in an instant. His mouth came down on hers and this time it was brutally passionate, filled with anger and primal need, he didn’t even try to contain. His anger at her wasn’t fair, when he’d let this happen, when he’d failed Sarah. “How many rebels did what I just did to you?” he demanded as he felt the tension curled around his fingers, the edge of her orgasm.
“None,” she whispered. “It’s not what you think. It’s-”
“Don’t explain,” Kole said. “Not now.” He shoved to his feet and brought Sarah with him, before she said something and he snapped and lost control. She might not know the volatile state of a wolf with a mate he has yet to bond with, but he’d seen many a male in that state and it wasn’t pretty. To think he could be otherwise, had been foolish. He wouldn’t claim a mate who was destined to resent her desire for him.
“Why not now?” Sarah asked, stumbling to steady her footing, and quickly tugging her skirt down. “I didn’t do anything you think I did and I don’t see why its your business anyway.”
“You know why its my business,” he said, his voice low, tight. “We both know, Sarah. We both knew before any of this happened with Derek.” His gaze dropped and raked over the slash of skin where her shirt gaped, one of her nipples peaking from the top of her bra. His blood thickened and his cock joined the party, stretching against his already straining zipper.
“Kole you-”
“Cover yourself before we end up back on the mat and I do something to make you hate me more than you already do.”
She adjusted the bra. “I don’t hate you and I’m without buttons. My shirt won’t shut.”
Because he’d ripped them off just like he wanted to rip off the rest of her clothes. “I’m more aware of that than you can possibly know. Let’s go.” He snatched the rope dangling from her arm, every muscle in his body tense.
“Like I have a choice,” she said in a soft challenge behind him.
He halted his retreat.“You always have a choice.”
She studied him, searched his face. “Then let me go, Kole.” There was a plea beneath the words.
“I can’t do that and you know it.”
Her tone hardened. “Then I don’t have a choice.”
“In all things but your own death wish you do. So hate me if you must, but I won’t let you die.” He turned and started walking, not giving her an option but to follow thanks to the rope.
Kole led her down yet another hallway, knowing he was doing exactly what Shi had done five years before, turning his back on the Guard for a woman. And that woman had burned Shi, damn near destroyed him, and Kole feared he was headed the same place, only unlike Shi, Kole would deserve it. He might as well have been standing on a ledge about to jump hundreds of feet to a concrete smack down with a rebel shoving a silver loaded weapon to his back. He knew he couldn’t
survive the fall but he was going to jump anyway. That idea quickened his pace down a hallway with a good half dozen studio style living quarters that resembled hotel rooms, all used by the leather-clad, and sometimes shady wolves, that Shi contracted as mercenaries.
Kole stopped at the last door, room ten, and entered. Once they were both inside, he let go of the rope and turned to face Sarah, wondering if her beauty would ever stop punching him in the gut. He’d known his share of gorgeous females, but none did this to him, but her. It was the mating heat and he knew it. She felt it too, she’d cave to it just as he would, and regret it later. He couldn’t let that happen.“You aren’t to leave this room without me.” But he was leaving, before the damnable sweet scent of her, sexual and flowery, at once, convinced him otherwise.
She inhaled and let it out. “So I’m just what I said I was. A prisoner you want to fuck.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “No. Yes.” He forced his gaze to hers. “I want you more than you can possibly understand and that’s why I’m leaving before we both forget why that is such a bad idea.”
She wet her lips and his cock jumped right up to answer, pressing uncomfortably against his zipper. “Kole-”
“You can’t leave the room. The door locks from the outside.” He turned to exit.
She moved quickly and inserted herself in the small space between him and the door, her back to the surface, her hand flattening on his chest, wicked heat spreading through his body. “Damn you, Kole Smith,” she ground out between her teeth, “you will not leave me locked in here. I have to go. I have to get Derek.”
“He’s turned the table, Sarah. Tonight proves that. He’s outsmarted your magic just as I did. He’s coming for you. You’ve become the hunted.”
“All the more reason for me to get him first.”
“I’ll get him.”
“You deal with the rogues and the rebels,” she said, her lips tight where they’d been soft and yielding only a few minutes before. She dropped her hand and hugged herself. “I’ll do it myself.”
He shoved his hand to the wall next to her.“And no. You won’t.” She was his mate and he would protect her. It was an instinct so powerful, so part of a wolf, that fighting it was impossible. She needed to fully understand that, she needed to know just what he would do to save her, and to get Derek for her. “Derek isn’t some random rebel like those kids in the bar who don’t know their fangs from their two left feet. He’s a part of something much bigger.”
“I don’t understand why me killing the rebels is a problem. You want them gone. I want them gone.”
“Exposing us to the humans is only going to start a civil war and create more blood loss,” he said. “You need to come home where you belong.”
“In jail? Thanks, but no thanks, Kole.” She tried to turn away.
Kole shackled her arm. “I told you. I’m not taking you to jail.”
“I’m not going back to the Society. Not now. Not ever. If you try to take me there, I’ll fight you. I’ll fight you with everything I have inside me.” Her lashes lowered, and she seemed to struggle with emotion, before they lifted again. “I can’t be there, Kole.”
“I’m not taking you to jail. I won’t let that happen. You have my word.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.”
She cut her gaze. “I can’t.”
“Try.”
She looked at him, shadows swimming in the depths of her eyes. “They won’t be there so I can’t be there.”
Her family. Kole felt her pain like a punch in the gut and he understood now. She wasn’t running from him. She was running from the reality he’d become a part of, not dealing with it at all, and it had left her alone and desperate. Only she wasn’t alone.
Kole scooped her up into his arms and headed into the room.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“What I should have done a long time ago. I’m taking you to bed.”
Chapter Seven
Dangerous. That was the word playing in her mind as Kole went down on the bed, on top of her, his mouth slanting over hers, hot with demand. She tried to resist and failed. Dangerous and delicious and everything Sarah needed and didn’t need, all at once. In an instant, she was lost in the hot strokes of his tongue, her hands tracing hard muscle and broad shoulders.
“I never stopped looking for you,” he said, tearing his mouth from hers. “I never would have stopped. ” His hand stroked hair from her face. “I’m not losing you again.”
Her throat tightened. “Kole-”
His mouth came down on hers, his tongue pressing deep and stroking against hers, caressing her into the submission she gave far too easily. Some part of her mind said to fight the delicious heat sliding through her limbs. He was Royal Guard, trouble to her in every possible way. He would steal her control, he was stealing her control, so why did she yearn to hand it over to him? It was confusing and wonderful. But still, dangerous. So very dangerous. And apparently dangerous aroused her beyond belief, because she found herself tugging up his t-shirt, desperate to feel his skin, to feel him close.
He pulled the tee over his head, and she pressed her lips to his chest, her hands exploring sleek muscle beneath taut skin. His hand slid into her hair, tangling there and forcing her gaze to his. “Do you know why it drives me wild to think of another man or wolf touching you?”
Her heart thundered in her chest, and heat pooled low in her belly. “Because you don’t like to share?” she asked, knowing that wasn’t the real answer, sensing their bond more now than ever. Wanting it and fearing it at the same time.
“You,” he said, his free hand shoving down her bra and caressing her breast. “I won’t share you.”
She moaned and bit her lip as he teased her nipple. “Good,” she whispered before she could stop herself, because she didn’t want him to share any more than she wanted to share him. But as surely as the word escaped, she knew it was an admission far more dangerous than this wolf, because you never tempted a wolf to stake a claim unless you wanted him to do it, and she quickly added, “You feel good.” And that was true, so very true.
“Why do I feel good?”
She laughed and tried to kiss him but he held steady, denying her. “Tease.”
“I’m not a tease, sweetheart, and I think we both know that,” he said before repeating, “Why do I feel good, Sarah? Say it.”
“Because you’re a hot alpha werewolf, I suspect,” she said, “which is great in bed, but it sucks in real life.”
He growled low in his throat and nipped her lip roughly before soothing it with his tongue, letting her know that her avoidance of the ‘mate’ word didn’t please him. “You know what I want to hear.”
Her fingers curled on his jaw. “I want you because outside of the last few intense hours excluded, you’re funny and sweet and sexy and...and you saved my life and tried to save my family.”
He inhaled sharply on those words, his entire body going stiff before he settled his forehead to hers. He buried his face in her neck, and she could feel the waves of torment in him.
“Kole?” she asked, feeling tension ripple through the muscles of his body, and concluding the only thing she could. “Do you....you think I blame you for their deaths?”
He rolled off of her, onto his back, his arm going across to cover his face “I didn’t save them. I should have saved them.”
“You tried,” she whispered, crawling to his side, settling one hand on his chest and using the other to pull his arm down to see his face. “I don’t blame you. I didn’t leave because I blame you.”
“I blame me.”
“Don’t. Please don’t. I don’t want you to feel that way. I don’t blame anyone but Derek.” She reached out to touch his face.
He shackled her wrist, his eyes glowing the yellow of male mating heat. “If you keep touching me, Sarah, I can’t promise you I won’t do something you’ll hate me for later.” He tried to move awa
y.
The need to stop him was instant and intense. Without a conscious decision to do so, Sarah pressed his shoulder to the mattress and then climbed on top of him, straddling his hip. “I can’t. I can’t let you go.” She knew that truth clear to her soul.
His eyes darkened to a deep amber. “But you want me to let you go?”
She was confused. So very confused. “It’s not about what I want.”
She had barely spoken the words before he rolled her to her back, his big body framing hers again. “It absolutely is about what you want,” he murmured a moment before he kissed her.
The taste of him exploded on her tongue, the scent of him and of his desire, tantalizingly male, uniquely Kole. Her desire to resist was nowhere to be found or maybe she wasn’t looking. Her arms wrapped around his neck. She was done fighting. She wanted him. She wanted him so badly it hurt. She wasn’t going to think about the rest.
He seemed to sense the change in her and deepened the kiss, raw, masculine power and energy, crackling off of him, and consuming her. His hands were already moving over her body, driving her wild, and she arched into him, trying desperately to get closer.
“Stop trying to save the world,” he murmured against her lips, “and let me save you.”
“I don’t-” His mouth closed down on her nipple, stealing her objection, her claim she didn’t need to be saved. Oh sweet bliss, she thought as her fingers twined into his long hair, and silently begged him not to stop. He was suckling her just right, tweaking the other nipple at the same time. His hands, his mouth, his teeth....she lost all sense of time and place.
When her skirt came sliding down her waist and his mouth pressed to her stomach, she tried for one brief moment to remember why this was bad, why being with him was dangerous. But then her shirt and bra were gone and she had no idea how, nor did she care when he began pulling her skirt down her hips.
His teeth scraped her shoulder and need curled and uncurled inside her. She tunneled her fingers into his hair. “Kole,” she whispered, a plea, though she didn’t know for what. Him. Kissing her, inside her. The darker side of her wolf, the sexual side awakened in a way it never had before. “I need-”