* * * * *
Chloe heard the scratching sound at the glass door, but she didn’t look at him. And she didn’t get up.
She would tend to the alpha’s paws later. And Caine was fine. He’d gone into the city. It was the only thing Luke had managed to say to her when she’d tried to talk to him.
As for Chloe, she hurt. Emotionally, this time. But it was a pain that was so deep and so violent that her body had taken its cue and started to hurt as well to lessen the burden on her soul.
Body and soul.
Luke and Caine.
And no amount of love from either of them would be enough to make her feel any better right now.
Chapter Sixteen
The pounding was insistent. And loud. Chloe jumped at the sound and sat straight up in bed. It was dark outside and she had fallen asleep in her clothes.
Several muddy footprints were smeared down the door.
The sound of the pounding growing louder drew her attention away from the pang of regret she now felt over not letting her four-legged friend in when he’d come calling. It was wet outside. And cold.
And Chloe could have used an old friend.
Because her newest one had already managed to tear her apart.
She padded to the front door and unlocked the deadbolt that she hardly ever used. And swung the door open.
“Are you alright?”
She nodded. And tried not to cry.
Caine stood in front of her and stared at her with no idea whatsoever of how much he meant to the people in his life. The man didn’t recognize his own strength. Even when he was absent he wielded his power and influence. It was done without so much as a conscious effort or knowledge.
A true alpha is like that.
Familiar hands reached out for Chloe. These hands, she could go to. Because the hands of his brother, his twin, had let her go.
An animal who wouldn’t defy his conscience, or his brother, in spite of the man who wanted to.
* * * * *
Caine could smell it.
They had been together.
But not completely.
His mouth took hers and his brother’s scent met his nose. Caine reached up for her hair and was assaulted once again by his brother’s mark on
his
woman.
His anger was being restrained only by the feelings he had for the woman in his arms. And for the understanding he held for his brother’s desire. Luke wanted her. Just as he’d wanted Meagan.
But Chloe was Caine’s.
Caine’s emotions were completely in control of his thoughts as he ran his hands over the woman he wanted to make his in every sense of the word. Luke had often said that he himself should have simply mounted Meagan when he’d first met her. And now Caine understood why.
Luke had waited. The man had held his urges back for as long as he could, and quite possibly for the first and only time in his life, because he had loved the same woman that his twin loved. But before Luke could make Meagan his own, Caine had answered his own animal instincts and made love to her as she’d wanted him to.
Meagan had married Caine because she had loved him. And she had loved him more than she had loved Luke. Caine had no doubt about that. But another man had quite possibly loved her more than Caine ever could have.
It hadn’t been retribution that had caused Luke to make love to Meagan.
It had been instinct. The one Caine’s twin had felt to love a mate.
The same instinct that Caine felt inside himself at that very moment.
Which made Caine suspect that one of two things was happening at the hands of his brother. The first possibility was that Luke was now planning his revenge with the woman Caine had found who truly completed him. Caine had in his life the thing that he had taken from his brother, and that fact was triggering something inside Luke that was controlling him. Some human emotion that was so strong that even Luke was helpless to its power.
The only other possibility was that Luke had also fallen in love again.
Unfortunately, Caine couldn’t decide which of the two things was causing the tension in the air as he held Chloe in his arms. But it was there. Thick and invasive between them.
Chloe could feel something just as strong. Caine had detected her own emotions as soon as he’d opened the door and taken her into his arms. It was there on her skin, in her eyes, and vibrating back at him through her touch.
But he couldn’t smell its name.
Was this his brother she was still clinging to? Or did the woman inside his mouth and under his touch know and enjoy the fact that it was Caine and not Luke who was supposed to make love to her?
Caine pulled her face back and stared down into her eyes. Those female drowning pools where many a man has lost his will to live.
She smiled at him. Her body relaxed as Caine held her and comforted her. And her scent changed to one he’d never detected this strongly from another female in his life.
Even from his wife.
Her hands were warm and smooth and Caine felt them slide effortlessly around his shoulders and down his back as she pressed her mouth into his. She knew who it was she was holding. Chloe was well aware of the fact that Caine was the man she was supposed to be with.
And she might possibly continue to feel that way. At least until she found out what Caine really was.
Caine pushed the hope down that had started to build when she’d fallen into his arms. Even with as much affection and love as he felt coming from her, he doubted that any woman would quickly be able to swallow the revelation Caine needed to make. Her comment about his family history still stung. He didn’t want to believe that she thought the stories ridiculous, but logic would certainly seem to dictate that conclusion.
“I want you inside me.”
Caine felt her bite down on his neck as she breathed the words. He wanted the same, but it wasn’t going to happen completely. Not as Caine could truly make love to her. Not yet.
Not ever if Chloe couldn’t warm to what he was as well as warming to his affections.
“Let’s go into the bedroom,” Caine stated as he tugged at her hand. At the side of her bed, Chloe allowed him to remove her shirt and her jeans. She stood before him in her panties and bra.
“You’re beautiful,” he said as he rounded his hands over her flesh. “Voluptuous. Healthy.” He felt her fingers cling to his arms as he explored her with his own fingers and eyes. “You look like a woman should look,” he growled.
Her soft, tender flesh would yield to his for years to come as he repeatedly mounted and made love to his mate. The man in Caine loved the warm cushion of healthy female flesh pressed against his harder and less forgiving frame. Her hips and breasts and belly would bear and nourish children with great ease. That trait spoke to both sides of Caine’s being.
“Come here.” Caine cupped a still-covered breast with one hand and brought his knee up to press against the thin material covering her sex as he pulled her to him. She gasped a little at the heat that his knee afforded her. Another benefit of his mixed blood that she had already found but hadn’t yet explained to herself, Caine suspected.
Her nipples were showing themselves to him, begging him to take them and Caine moved his hand to squeeze one of them between his fingers. Chloe’s own fingers came up to satisfy the other one while her mouth came to his.
He ignored the smell that his brother had left on her skin and the taste he had left in her mouth. Caine concentrated only on her. Her smells, the sound of her breath and sighs and whimpers, the sight of her body flushing crimson with excitement and desire.
“I want to know everything about you,” he said between nips and bites. “Everything, Chloe.”
She was struggling for breath as she gave her rebuttal. “There may be some things about me you wouldn’t like, Caine.”
He shook his head and released the nipple between his teeth. “There’s nothing about you I wouldn’t like, sweetheart.”
He had merely to urge her and she lay back on the bed. His hands roamed the landscape of her body, his fingers taking time to find each slope and every sensitive area of flesh and all of her warmth and softness and curvaceous shape.
His mouth tongued her navel. Caine felt Chloe suck in a breath at the hint of where he was going. He smiled and brought his tongue back up to circle a nipple through the slick fabric that encased it.
“You want this, don’t you?”
She didn’t answer, but Caine already knew. He’d seen her want this. His canine eyes had felt this need come from her before. It was a need to connect with another living being. And he had easily satisfied that need for her that time. His human eyes had also watched her be pleased with amazing ease at his fingertips.
Too easily in fact, Caine believed.
His idea was cruel. And much more like something his nemesis in the animal world would do. But Caine could tease and torture and play cat and mouse just as well as the panthers that shared the forest with his kind did.
But there was a reason for Caine’s wanting to torture Chloe with the anticipation of his completely pleasing her and loving her.
Although he wanted to believe that Chloe would accept his ways and would grow to love him even more than his wife had, he had no way of knowing for sure. He hadn’t known her nearly as long as he’d known his wife before he made love to her. But he did know one thing for sure.
A woman in desperate need of pleasure was just as dangerous as a man with wolf blood pumping through his heart. And a woman desperately needing to be fucked was much more accepting of her man than a woman satisfied.
And Caine knew how to make a woman desperate with need.
He’d level the playing field, so to speak. Her fertile cycle was over and so Caine had another month or so in which to tease her into submission. After seeing how much Chloe had enjoyed his more brutal side when she’d thought he was Luke, Caine didn’t really want to lower his own level of brutality when he made love to her the next time. So he’d simply raise his mate’s. Whether the bitch wanted him to or not.
Now why hadn’t he thought of that sooner?
To be honest, sometimes Caine amazed even himself with his ingenuity. He chuckled to himself as he brought his mouth up to hers and his hand downward. He gripped her. Firmly, but without hurting her again. Allowing just the tip of his fingers to slip into her. He teased her again by keeping her panties between their flesh. And for just long enough to feel her pulse begin to strengthen inside her panties.
His tongue darted into and then quickly out of her mouth. Telling her what he would soon do to her.
He just didn’t tell her that he’d already done it once. Or that a repeat performance wasn’t going to happen today.
“Caine…please…”
Chloe’s body began to tighten and relax in a sexual rhythm as Caine moved his mouth down to a nipple. His fingers went inside the silk and found the hard bud of her breast. He squeezed. Firmly, but not as firmly as she wanted. He could feel the frustration in her movements.
Caine grinned to himself at her response. One masochistic little bitch, she was.
“Harder,” she whimpered as she squirmed underneath him. Her body twisted and tried to work its way into a more pleasurable position, as if she could somehow tighten his grip for him. Her body flirted with his eyes. The way she moved was seductive and suggestive. Promising him whatever he wanted if only he would oblige her this request. Her actions and body language asked coyly for him to squeeze her nipple harder, if only because he knew she wanted this. After all, her tiny grunt of irritation asked him, wasn’t that what a man was for?
When that still didn’t work, the next whimper that came from her throat was a beg.
Caine grinned again at a woman’s truly brilliant and effective way of thinking and acting when she wanted something from a man. And somehow he still managed to refuse her what she asked of him.
He gave her his mouth again instead. Chloe latched onto his lips, tightening her mouth in the exact proportion to what he suspected she wanted when he took her nipples or her sex between his lips. Caine studied the pressure. The intensity. And he fought with the need inside himself as he listened carefully to the moans and sighs of his woman as she felt his touch on her.
It was a twofold action on his part, he decided. He would study her. Learn her. Discover what made Chloe herself and like no other woman. And then, when it was safe for him to tell her the truth, and when he had her in such a state of need that she would be too horny to care that it was a mutation of nature’s law inside her body and not a full-blooded man, Caine would make love to her again. As the man he so wanted to be again.
Or perhaps, she would simply love him too much to care what he really was.
That was what he really wanted. This was Caine’s desire. To accept himself and have his woman accept him as well. And herself. And it was also his desire for his twin, although he suspected that many other factors would have to come into play before he saw that dream come true.
For now, he had this task at hand. And at mouth. And under his control, as far as Caine could see.
He brought his lips away from hers and slid back down her body. Caine reached up and gave her nipple the exact twinge it had wanted and paused only long enough to drive two of his fingers around her panties and into her sex once, quickly. Caine took his fingers into his mouth and savored her taste. He watched her pupils dilate at his action before he left the bedroom and locked the front door on his way out.