A Tiger's Bride (A Lion's Pride Book 4) (11 page)

His nostrils flared. “Kitten, while I appreciate your impatience, please note this is just as hard for me as you. I might even say
harder
.”

She found her eyes drawn to the part of him that he referred to. Despite his reassurance, it was pretty damned big. Perhaps he had a point about holding off. What if he was wrong and she required medical attention after?

For distraction she said, “Boxers or briefs?”

“Such a dirty mind with only one direction. Absolutely delightful. But the answer is none. Now my turn, do you like chips or chocolate? Me, I’m a fellow with a sweet tooth.”

“Chips. And this is stupid.”

“No, it’s not. Look at how much we are discovering. Do you—”

Since she couldn’t convince her idiot husband to seduce her, time to take matters in her own hands. Or, in this case, lips.

Crouching over to press her mouth to his might not have been the most comfortable pose, but the electric touch of their lips made up for it.

“You know,” he said in between nibbles, “perhaps we could cuddle.”

Cuddling sounded—“Eep.” She yelled in surprise as he rolled from her lap, seated himself, and dragged her onto him all before she could mutter a husky, “Dmitri.”

“Say it again.”

Facing him, she couldn’t hold his gaze, not when it smoldered so hotly. “Dmitri.” She whispered it, but he still groaned.

“Why is it, when you talk, I want to crush you in my arms and devour you?”

“I wish you would.”

“Which surprises me, little kitten. You are untouched. I am virtually a stranger. An enemy really in your family’s eyes. And yet, you would give yourself to me.”

“To my husband.”

“A husband who forced you to marry him. Most women, especially Russian ones like my sister, would have gutted me with a knife by now and made herself a widow. Yet you…” He stroked her cheek. “You, my precious kitten, you beg me to take you. You stress the limits of my patience. You fill me with a burning desire. I do not understand it.”

“People would say it’s fate.”

“Fate is us discovering one another in the first place. This connection I sense between us… It is—”

“Frightening?”

“Never. More like awe-inspiring. Precious.
Mine.
” He growled the word against her lips before taking them in a torrid kiss. His hand spanned the back of her neck, holding her close while his fingers threaded her messy strands.

The fire at her back warmed but not as much as he did, the heat from his body scorching through her layers, teasing her with the fiery passion that simmered between them.

His lips left hers and blazed a trail across her cheek, to her ear, down her neck. “Oh, Dmitri.” She breathed his name as her head tilted back and her eyes shut.

Liquid fire coursed through her veins as he touched her. More than anything so simple as touch, he awakened all her senses. Ignited her desire.

I want.

She wanted more than just kisses.

Her turn to clutch his face and bring her mouth against his for a hungry embrace. Their tongues dueled. Their breathing meshed. Their hearts raced as blood pounded through their veins.

She grumbled at their position and pushed at his shoulders. He lay on his back for her, dragging her with him so she lay atop. Much better. She could now feel the length of him. Hard muscles were hers to explore, and she did, her hands skimming the skin that had lost all its earlier chill.

She didn’t need sexual experience to know he enjoyed her touch. Nor did she need any help when it came to pleasing him. She simply pleased herself, allowing herself to explore and ignoring his protests.

“Kitten, we shouldn’t.”

“I don’t care if we don’t have a bed,” she grumbled.

“I do, but that’s not the real issue. Aah. Aah.” He lost his train of thought for a moment, probably because she’d found the ridge of his nipple.

She bit it. He liked it.

So she did it again.

“I should have nicknamed you little devil. Tempting me like this.”

“Is that bad?”

He rolled them, his movements careful and gentle, but the end result was he ended up on top.

She wiggled under his weight. He groaned. “How did I get so lucky?”

“Shh.” She dragged him down for a kiss. “Don’t jinx it.”

Words were lost and forgotten as they embraced, but with him atop her, the experience took on a new level for her.

His body nestled between her parted thighs, and despite her dual layers, she felt him. Hard. Thick. And pressing against her sex.

Her breath hitched. He rubbed again, and she made a sound, a sound he caught with his lips. His hand quested under the fabric of her shirt, reaching up to grasp and tweak her nipple.

A gasp escaped her then a moan of pleasure as he rolled the erect nub, teasing it into a hard point.

She’d never imagined how it would feel to have someone else caress her. She’d naïvely thought her own exploratory caresses of her body were it. That foreplay was just a pleasant thing.

How wrong she was. How delightfully wrong.

When his skin brushed hers, she felt it like a brand upon her body. When his fingers tweaked her bud, it sent a jolt of aching desire right to her sex.

As for when he pushed her shirt high enough to latch his mouth around the tip…

“Dmitri!” She might have screamed his name, the sensation proved so electric.

A rumble vibrated her flesh in his mouth as he chuckled. “So sweet.”

So enjoying his touch he should have said.

She arched her back, her body knowing what to do and that was get more of what felt good.

His mouth tugged and sucked at her breast. His tongue swirled decadently.

She cried out when he let go with a wet, popping sound, only to moan as he poured his attention into arousing her other breast.

But that wasn’t the only thing he wanted to lick. His mouth tickled and burned its way down her stomach, tracing her curves in a path that took him to the waistband of her pants. They didn’t deter him.

His fingers tugged the fabric and slid under the elastic.

She sucked in a breath.

The tickle of his fingers through the fur on her mound had her panting. Her hips quivered, and she ached. Ached for something.

Him.

She screamed his name for a second time as he found her slick sex, his rougher fingers stroking along the sensitive curve of her nether lips. A moan escaped, and she clamped her lip with her teeth as he delicately spread her. He seesawed a finger back and forth across her moist cleft.

Her thighs clamped tight over his hand, holding him against her, and her hips arched, pressing against it.

“Easy, kitten. You make it hard for me to be gentle.”

‘Maybe I don’t want gentle,” she growled.

“Then I’m succeeding in my wooing,” he murmured against her belly before placing a kiss.

He withdrew his hand from her pants, and she almost cried—
Why are you punishing me?
—until she realized he needed his hand to work her track pants over her hips and down to her thighs.

The air in the cave had warmed, whether from the fire or his actions she couldn’t have said, but despite her exposed skin, she didn’t shiver from cold. She did, however, shudder with expectation.

Who wouldn’t when bright blue eyes stared at her denuded bottom end with such hunger?

And it seemed he meant to quench his need for her. She sucked in a breath and yet couldn’t find it to exclaim much more than a squeaked “Dmitri!”

As if her feeble protest would stop this man on a mission. Between her legs, he nestled his face, and all so he could lap at her with a warm tongue.

Warm, slightly raspy, and oh dear god. That felt so fucking good.

Back and forth he licked her, the wet tip of his tongue stimulating as it found her hooded clit for play. When her cries became too strident, and her hips too arched, he let his tongue travel to the entrance of her sex, where he probed at her until she sobbed his name.

Then back to her swollen button he went, teasing her. Pleasuring her. Driving her to the bridge and…

Aaaah. She fell over an edge, an ecstatic plunge into orgasm that shook her body and wrung her with waves of utmost pleasure.

It took her a moment to come back down from such climactic heights, but when she did, she found herself cradled in his arms, his lips pressing soft kisses against her temple as he murmured to her softly in Russian.

“That was…” Words failed her, so she sighed.

He chuckled. “I know.”

“That’s arrogant.”

“It’s not arrogant to state the truth. You enjoyed that.”

She wouldn’t lie. “Yes, I did. And see, we didn’t need a bed.” She wiggled against him, her sensitive parts very much attuned to the fact that he still pressed hard and erect against her.

“I will not have it said that I debauched you in a dirty cave.”

Stubborn man, but given the glow suffusing her, she’d allow it. But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t get a prize in return. Maybe incentive to give up his foolish idea.

She pushed at his shoulders, and he complied, rolling onto his back and bringing her with him so she lay splayed across him.

However, much as she liked the feel of him against her, she had a different goal in mind.

Getting to her knees, she braced her palms on either side of his chest and leaned in to place soft kisses on his skin.

Kisses with a destination.

“Kitten, what are you doing?”

Wasn’t it obvious? She’d read enough books to have a pretty good idea of what to do once she reached his throbbing shaft. She couldn’t wait to experiment…and taste.

Nothing like the click of a weapon being primed to stop a girl from going south.

And to piss a tiger off.

He dies. Slowly. Painfully. Maybe a day for each second of annoyance and torture I am suffering.

As soon as Teena began her innocent exploration, Dmitri pretty much decided to hell with waiting for a bed. Teena was ready for him to claim her, and he was more than ready for her.

The honeyed taste of her sex still sweetened his lips. The vibration of her orgasm still tickled his tongue. She was determined to return the favor.

And this asshat just had to go and interrupt. Totally unacceptable.

Heedless of his nakedness—and still raging erection that bobbed majestically—he rose from the hard ground. With a glare, he fixed the intruder, who continued to point a gun at them and leer.

Does he dare to look at my woman? Does he truly dare to lust after my wife?

It wasn’t only his tiger that thought he should tear the eyes from this man’s sockets. The man found himself in the grips of jealousy the likes of which he’d never experienced, not even when his mother bought his sister that wondrous Mercedes SI500 on her twenty-first birthday.

A step sideways provided a shield for his wife in the form of his body. Behind him, he could hear Teena righting her clothing. He could practically feel the heat of her embarrassment.

Worry not, little kitten. I shall protect your honor.

“I think I caught some pussy cats.”

The human got one thing right. They were cats. But caught?

I beg to differ.

Sneaking up on Dmitri while he was majorly distracted was one thing. Actually prevailing?

Not today.

“Do you know that my family, centuries ago, used to celebrate their conquests by eating the flesh of their enemies?” Dmitri took a step forward.

“Fucking animals.”

As if he’d not heard the insult, Dmitri smiled. “It is said that devouring the flesh of our foes steals their honor and strength for our own.”

“Bloodthirsty bastards.”

“Yes, yes we were. Are. Do you know what my grandmother remembers best of those years before the higher councils banned it? Just how good human blood tastes.” Dmitri lunged with a snarl more beast than man.

Funny how a firearm wasn’t always the best defense. The idiot in the entrance to the cave could have fired it. Swung it as a bat. Even sidestepped the forward thrust of Dmitri’s body.

However, fear was a funny thing, especially in humans. Fear made people not always react most efficiently. Fear had only one instinct—survival.

The guy, with the gun in hand, spun on his heel and uttered a very unmanly squeak. Dmitri’s lips stretched into a feral grin.

“Dinner!” he practically sang as he dove after the human.

So here was the thing about climbing rocks, covered in snow and ice, in the dark while a strong breeze whistled and tugged. For those who weren’t surefooted, say like a certain human terrified out of his mind, it could prove treacherous.

Slip. “Aaaah.”
Thud
. “Oomph.”
Crash
. Silence.

Head cocked, Dmitri leaned over the ledge and regarded the body at the bottom of the incline. “Dammit. I’d hoped to question him.”

Peering over his shoulder, Teena pressed against his back. Once again, his wife proved her worth. “You should grab his clothes before they get wet.”

A practical woman. He could have pressed her against the wall of the cave and taken her, right then and there.

But…the moment was lost. Their enemy had found them, and although they’d defeated one, more possibly followed.

Together they made their way down the mountain, him offering his lady a helping hand, which she took with a smile.

As for when she lost her footing, landed on him, and they both fell back in a cold drift of snow? The snow in unmentionable places proved unpleasant, but the warm laughter against his lips and the soft kiss more than made up for it.

Pleasant as it was, though, they couldn’t waste time melting the snowbank. He’d gotten caught off guard once. He couldn’t allow it again.

It took a few attempts, and some laughter, before they managed to make it to their feet and out of the deep drift. He didn’t argue about taking some of the clothes. Even for someone who’d practiced cold-weather survival—just one of the training camps his mother had sent him on to prepare him for life as a leader—he knew he needed some clothes.

In the end, they shared the gear, the boots too small for his feet, the jacket barely large enough to span his width, but the shirt fit well over the bulk she wore, and the hat kept her head snug.

“Ready?” he asked.

“For what?” was her reply. Bright-cheeked and clear-eyed, she regarded him. Her lips seemed to hold a permanent little smile. A result of their earlier pleasure?

As if there was any question.

He shouldered the strap of the rifle and then grasped her gloved hands. “We have to leave.”

“What happened to staying and waiting for your sister while holding off the enemy?”

“Shifters have a certain honor. At least in Russia. If a group had come after me, our battles would have taken place, one on one. Easy.”

“What if there’s like four or five? Fighting that many, even one after another, isn’t what I’d call easy.”

He arched a brow. “If you think that, then you should come to my training. Since a young age, my mother has had me fighting the best. The wiliest.”

“And yet I hear Leo got the better of you in that fight at the club.”

Her smile took the sting out of her insult. But he bristled. He didn’t want her to think him weak. “You wound me, kitten. Did it never occur to anyone I let him win? By that point I knew I didn’t want your sister, and yet, to say so would have meant me losing face. A man has a reputation to uphold.”

“So you threw a fight?”

“I let the omega of the pride I was hosting with, a rather large, intimidating man, come out only slightly ahead in our altercation before your sister interrupted.”

“Okay, cocky one, if you think you can take on that many shifters, then why does a group of humans scare you?”

“Because of these.” He indicated the gun. “These take the honor out of the equation. These could seriously hurt you.”

“And you.”

“Bah. Scars make a man.”

“Crazy,” she said the word softly with a little laugh.

“Russian.”

Was it him, or did he hear “mine” whispered softly?

For a moment, he was tempted to stay. He wanted to peel the layers from her and indulge in the beauty of her. But some things were more important than quick pleasure, such as her survival.

More warmly attired, they headed away from their temporary shelter. He led the way, eyes and ears scanning the deep shadows around them, only dimly illuminated by the sliver of moonlight in the sky.

The wind might prove brisk, but the air itself had warmed in the hours since their crash.

Good, and yet bad. They wouldn’t have to fight the frigid chill that liked to cling to bones and take limbs prisoner. However, warmer temps meant possible melting. Fluffy flakes brushed off; clingy, damp snow soaked.

Reaching the bottom of the hill, he closed his eyes for a moment and tilted his face to the sky. He inhaled deeply, sifting the scents. Wintertime was the worst when it came to scents. The air, so crisp, did not hold scent well. The many layers humans, and even shifters, wore masked their innate musk. It made tracking so much harder.

On the upside, at least there were prints in the snow. His and Teena’s, flashing beacons to whoever tracked them, and then there were those of the dead man.

He followed them, and Teena hissed. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t we move away from the bad guys?”

“This bad guy didn’t walk all the way here. He had some kind of vehicle. I want it.”

“You think he drove?”

“Or…” Dmitri smiled as they came across the team of dogs and the sled, the only way to truly travel out here in silence. Snowmobiles, with their loud, growly motors, tended to warn people miles away, especially in the open places.

With a good team of dogs, other than a whisk of runners on snow, they were death on silent wings.

Beside him, Teena stiffened. “Are those dogs?”

“A team of pure-bred huskies. Well trained, too. See how they wait without a tether to anchor them for a signal.”

“Um, I think I should warn you. Dogs act funny around me.”

She stepped behind him, and he wondered at her trepidation. Had she suffered an incident with canines as a child? She was a cat. Perhaps it was some kind in innate leonine fear? Oddly enough, despite the fact she hid behind him, he didn’t smell fear from her. More…apology?

Apology for what?

It began with one whine then two. Then it seemed the entire team of Siberian huskies took up the sound. Some sat. Others stood and wagged their tails while a few projected a mean set of puppy dog eyes.

“What the hell are they doing?”

“Loving me.” Teena smiled as she approached them, and if they could have died with tail-thumping happiness, they would have. The moment she got close enough, these big, trained dogs, with massive teeth, were wiggling around and yipping in ecstasy as she did her best to stroke and scratch them all.

“There’s my good puppies. Who’s so handsome? What a soft belly you have. Do you need a tickle?”

Was it wrong for him to be so jealous of some dumb dogs?

He moved to approach, and as one, the team raised their heads, pivoted in his direction, and fixed him with eyes glaring with baleful intent. A few had their lips curled. And, yes, that was definitely the sound of growling.

“Are they seriously threatening me?” He blinked. He was a freaking tiger. Dogs did not menace him.

Leaning forward, he let his wild side rise to the surface and growled back.

That shut them up, but they also clustered closer to his wife and kept close watch on him.

“My little kitten, a dog whisperer. Your various levels are vastly intriguing. Just what other surprises do you hide?”

“You’ll have to find out. So, is this our ticket out of here?”

He bowed and swept his hands toward the sled. “Your chariot awaits.”

As they clambered aboard, Dmitri noted a strapped bag at the front end of the sled. Kneeling, he opened it and found more clothing, as well as a few protein bars and a warm flask.

As they sipped the hot coffee, laced with something that fired the belly, Teena stared at the travois behind the sled, the one with straps.

“Is it me,” she said, “or does that look like it’s made to carry a body?”

“You are correct, wife.”

“So whoever sent this guy after us wanted him to bring something back.”

“You mean someone. The question is, was he supposed to bring us back dead or alive?”

“Given the hijacking, I’d say alive, but—”

“Expendable if we can’t be taken. Someone is playing a dangerous game.”

“What will you do?”

Dmitri couldn’t help but smile. “Change the rules of course. I don’t like to lose.”