* * * * *
“Caine?”
The voice was his brother’s. Sleepy. And not loud enough to fully rouse him.
“Caine?”
Louder this time. More authoritative. Deeper than it had been just a week before. Caine rolled to his side but didn’t open his eyes.
He could sense his brother’s presence next to his bed, but he still wasn’t fully awake. Until his youngest sibling said the words very clearly that Caine had known would change his life and the structure of his pack from that day forward.
“She’s in heat again.”
Chapter Twenty
Chloe felt the warmth of his breath on her neck and smiled at the wonderful sensation. His hands had already begun to roam her body, his fingers already wet and musty with her sex before she even opened her eyes.
The rest of him smelled like snow and the frigid midnight air he had just left behind.
But there was nothing even remotely cold about him as far as his body or his actions were concerned. Chloe felt heat coming from his frame that could have melted a mountain of snow. As she reached down in the darkness of the bedroom and gripped the hard, burning shaft of his cock, she was rewarded with the not too gentle pang of his teeth in her neck. A nipple was next, followed by the other.
He ground against her as if marking her entire body with his scent and she responded by squeezing the pulsing flesh of his cock between her fingers. Chloe felt his hard, hungry fingers come to her breast and then travel higher, ending in a twist of her hair that brought tears to her eyes.
He seemed almost angry as he pulled her head downward by her hair and moved himself up on the bed so that she was faced with either taking him into her mouth or having him put himself into her mouth for her. But it wasn’t anger that was causing the man in her bed to demand that she do what they both desperately needed to do.
And he didn’t have to force her to do anything.
She only hoped that fact was about to become clear.
His cock suddenly filled her mouth, almost choking her as he impatiently pushed it between her lips much harder than she was ready to take it. She imagined the impatience she would feel when he finally did push himself into her cunt as she reached to grip the soft, furred sacs at the base of his cock and then began to work her tongue around the head and her mouth moved up and down its hard, smooth length.
He pumped himself in and out of her mouth. Chloe savored the feeling of the action and continued to fondle his dick and balls with one hand while she reached down and found her own slit with the other.
She was drenched with the proof of her own excitement and Chloe felt her fingers glide into the silky wetness of her own body more easily than ever before. Tonight, the anticipation of what she would finally have was more than Chloe could bear alone. Not even on the nights when she’d been left so badly in need that she thought she might explode if he didn’t finish her, she hadn’t been this aroused and wet.
Or as hungry for the feeling of having him inside her.
He hadn’t been the least bit polite when he’d let himself into her house this time, nor was he genteel or discreet about his desires when he’d joined her in her bed. From all indications, it would also seem that he wasn’t going to be gentlemanly when he allowed himself access to her body, either. But none of those facts made Chloe uncomfortable with this man. Nothing, save for the fact that his body felt so much like his brother’s felt, even tried to plague Chloe’s mind.
But this was not the man who had made love to her the first time. There were differences. Tiny differences. Only those that a wife or lover would detect. Things she wanted to know, if only because he was hers and there was nothing about him she didn’t want to know and adore. Chloe tried to memorize them all as she soothed and loved his cock and ass with her mouth and hands.
Her fingers also tried to fill her empty and lonely pussy and she worked her lips and tongue around his cock as furiously as she could, but Chloe knew that neither of them were getting what they really wanted.
Slowly, she pulled his stiff and wet prick from her mouth and looked up to try and see if the magnitude of what they were about to do reflected in his own eyes. The darkness prevented her from being able to see the twinkle of blue that she knew he would be sporting as he looked down to her and confirmed that it was all right for them to do this. It was necessary. Chloe understood that. It was an action that served as a sign that they were bonded to one another.
A bonding that would be so strong, Chloe suspected, that even others would know what they had shared. And a bond that would somehow overcome any past wrongs or indiscretions either of them had inflicted upon each other or themselves.
He would forgive her for what she had done with his brother. But more importantly, Chloe would forgive herself for being human. And she would allow Caine to know the woman she wanted to be with him.
Chloe smiled and ran her hands up his chest, dragging her scent and juices up his body in the motion. Rising up on her knees, Chloe knelt in front of him and wrapped her arms around his neck, and brought her mouth to his ear. She bit. Hard. Hard enough to cause his own hands to flex painfully on her butt. Bruisingly hard, in fact.
Chloe gasped and grinned at the feeling and at the knowledge that she felt sure she was mere seconds away from having the brutal man inside her she had always wanted when he finally made love to her.
Or perhaps a whisper away, were the right words used to entice him.
Her breath purred from deep inside her chest before she gripped both hands into that thick black hair and pulled his ear closer to her.
The words had barely even escaped her lips when Chloe realized that her entire life had somehow taken an abrupt and irreversible turn for the terrible.
She suspected that the scar her lips found in the dark as she grazed his cheek on the way from her whispering to him was nothing like the damage that she had just unwittingly inflicted upon herself with the plea she had chosen to murmur. Words spoken before her mind could register who had actually made love to her the first time. And a plea spoken to the man about to give her exactly what she had never wanted.
“Hurt me.”
* * * * *
Caine could hear her screaming even before he turned off the motor. Luke’s silence since the death of their grandfather had been a warning to Caine that the man was a bomb waiting to explode. And whether it had been because he was also angry with Chloe for having brought new packs into their territory or because Luke felt the urge to help re-populate their own pack by way of his own young, Caine wasn’t sure. But he could be sure of one thing.
He wasn’t about to let Luke rape Chloe. The man would brutalize the woman in order to impregnate her and Caine knew he would never rid himself of the guilt he would feel if he were to let that happen.
His need to protect her had nothing to do with territory or mating rights or the way of his kind. It had to do with his heart. The one that had cracked when he and his brother had fought over a woman the first time and the heart that had broken completely in two when that woman had died.
Chloe had healed his heart. She had made him feel love and compassion and hope again. She had made his heart human again and caused it to pump wolf blood through it with an intensity that still frightened Caine.
But not nearly as badly as the sounds of her screams did.
Caine shoved into the front door without breaking it the first time. His anger over Luke’s thinking to lock him out of his own bitch’s house caused him to almost take the door off of its hinges when he slammed against it again. He shoved the door to the side before bolting to the bedroom from where the screams were coming and then turned on the light.
She was bleeding. In Luke’s haste to mount her, Chloe’s mouth had already been hit either by the headboard or the nightstand and her lip was busted from the impact. Caine smelled the blood and felt a renewed sense of anger well up in himself at the sight of his twin about to fuck a woman who didn’t belong to him.
Caine’s woman.
Caine’s wife.
Again.
And this time, Luke was using his more powerful and dangerous form in which to subdue her.
Caine watched Luke’s canine incisors dig deeply into the flesh of Chloe’s neck. Unnecessarily retraining her with his jaws since he’d had the forethought to tie her to the four-poster bed before he’d transformed. Chloe’s vision was partially obscured because of her face down and forward stance, but she knew that something inhuman was behind and on top of her and about to do unnatural things to her. Her screams told Caine this as clearly as any words ever could.
She was terrified. And rightly so. Caine considered his dilemma for only a second before he reached to drag his twin from Chloe’s frightened and trembling body.
Two-inch fangs identical to the ones Caine would possess in this form sank into the flesh of Caine’s forearm for his efforts. Luke quickly shook his alpha off of him and then lapped his twin’s blood from his muzzle and turned to begin to mount the bitch again.
“Caine!”
The tone she’d used to say his name, her frightened plea made to the man she knew would stop this from happening caused Caine to wince at old, unanswered questions.
He’d often wondered if Meagan would have called for him to help her had she known the truth.
Not that it mattered now, though. What did matter was that Chloe had caught a glimpse of him as he’d come into the bedroom and she had called out to him. To help her. To stop Luke from hurting her. From fucking her.
From raping her.
Caine’s kind had always been forced to debate a fine line between the man and the animal in them. They had always had the internal dialogue go on as to whether what they did in the name of keeping their species alive was more animal or human.
As Caine watched the wolf in his brother about to mount a human woman he didn’t love, and a woman who didn’t love him, merely for the sake of the pack and regardless of what the man in Caine wanted for any of them, that debate once again plagued Caine’s mind.
But that line grew very, very clear in his heart.
Luke knew that he would be banished from the pack because of these actions. And Caine’s twin had come to Chloe’s cabin knowing that Caine could rightfully kill him for mating without the alpha’s permission.
But Luke understood Caine, it would seem, even better than Caine knew himself.
And Luke knew that every human had a fatal flaw when it came to such matter as the drive to survive. But as in every species, their pack could possibly die out if Caine didn’t learn to control the human part of him that wanted to deny its own animal ancestry. The counterproductive way of thinking that discouraged man from listening to the urges that would ensure that his species survive. An urge that religion and society had long ago deemed ugly and wrong. But that his animal forefathers and present day cousins respected because of the power of creation such an urge held when it was obeyed. But more importantly, they respected it for the power of destruction the urge held when it was denied.
Luke’s actions had nothing to do with his desire to hurt Chloe or Caine. It had nothing to do with retribution or anger.
The man simply didn’t think that way. Caine’s brother thought about survival. About the survival of his species. Of the pack, first and foremost. And only then did he think about his own needs.
As an alpha should.
He suspected that had Luke been more like himself, he too could have gotten pleasure from making love to a woman. But Luke’s mind didn’t think about his benefit. The animal in him did his duty. And rarely had the man in Luke ever found the time or opportunity to take anything for himself. In fact, Caine could remember only once that his twin had actually seemed happy to be a man.
And this was not that day.
As Caine neared the bed again, he came to understand a fact he should have accepted long ago. The part of him that his twin had already accepted as the more pure and natural of their souls.
Compassion will never fill the belly of a predator.
But now Caine understood that neither the animals nor the men inside them had ever derived any pleasure simply from the act of predation. The pleasure came from another source altogether.
He and his twin were a precarious balance of nature within themselves. They were human, as their mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers had been. But they were also animals. As their father and grandfathers were.
The purity of their animal fathers. The males of their species. The predators. It would seem, the inflictors of pain for the sake of survival.
And the brutality of their mothers.
The females. Of every species. The prey.
The inflictors of a pleasure that no man has ever been able to resist for long. And in that, truly the creatures who sustain life.
Chloe twisted and called out to him again. A low threatening growl came from Luke’s throat as Caine neared the bed. Caine raised his hand to his brother. A silent signal that he would not kill his twin.
But Luke
would
have to defend himself against Caine. Because he had defied his alpha. And because Luke had once again attempted to take what wasn’t his.
“Luke.”
His brother shifted his head to the side and glanced at Caine. The tone Caine had used was calm. Knowing. The tone an alpha uses when he knows his pack is soon to be safe.
“She’s mine, Luke.”
The wolf raised his head and turned without looking at his brother this time. Caine reached out and stroked his twin’s back. Soothing him. Thanking him for what he had been willing to do for the pack. And then removing his clothes in order to protect what was his.
Luke moved from his position and jumped from the bed. Caine watched Chloe’s eyes as she twisted to see what was happening behind her. Caine tugged his shirt over his head and let his jeans and belt drop to the floor underneath him.
Chloe’s eyes were fixed and bright. Watching him as best she could from her odd position. Caine watched the hair on his brother’s back rise, signaling his desire to fight, as he paced at the foot of the bed. Out of Chloe’s sight.
Caine moved to the head of the bed. Where she could see him. Naked. Aroused, as the physiology of his ancestors had allowed his penis to be at all times. But appearing to be human, if only for a moment more.
He transformed right in front of her. His spine shortening and then curling slightly to give him his canine posture made her breathing increase. His arms growing longer to match the length of his powerful back legs caused her to lick her lips and her to shift as he suspected her nipples began to harden against the bed. His mouth and nose reaching out to allow room for teeth and jaw capable of killing either of the other two creatures in the room as well as most any who lived in the forest caused a surge of excitement that Caine could have smelled a mile away.
Chloe’s mouth was agape. As were her eyes. She was no longer even aware of her restraints as she watched Caine turn into the very thing he had written about for the bulk of his adult life. And that he had been for a span of time a mere three minutes shorter than his twin.
Caine had to turn his attention away from his mate. The mate who would carry his young before he left her bedroom this night. And after Caine made his position in the pack clear once again.
Luke’s grip on his flesh was immediate and deep as soon as the transformation was complete. Caine had known that his brother would not go easy on him. Luke simply had too much respect for their ways to be swayed by such frivolous emotions. And Caine had expected nothing less from the man. In fact, he was more grateful for it now than ever.
The wolves fought viciously. They bit at one another’s skins and ripped only to bite harder when mouth found meat. As wolves do when engrossed in a battle for territory.
The men fought with dignity and grace. Each fighting as passionately and furiously as they could while respecting the other’s skill and right to win if he proved the stronger of the two.
The blood they would always share fought to keep the brothers from killing one another.
Caine felt the wound on his front leg being torn open further by his twin’s teeth and then another fresh gash on his chest. The pain should have been intense under the strain of such piercing weapons, but Caine felt no pain as he and his beta fought. He felt nothing unpleasant from the gashes his pack mate inflicted upon him.
And he doubted if Luke felt any of his own wounds.
For minutes that seemed like the entirety of their lives together, Caine felt the tearing of his own flesh whenever his teeth sank into Luke. The blood in Caine’s mouth was not his own, but he tasted himself as he bit into his twin. He tasted the blood of Luke and of Meagan and of Chloe and of every animal of prey he or his family or their ancestors had shown mercy upon by ending a life that had become burdened with disease or injury.
His mate watched them as they fought. The woman Caine had loved since she had been conceived lay bound to the posts of a bed where the first of Caine’s hybrid children would soon be conceived. And in the bed where he would hopefully make love to the woman who would soon become his wife.
Luke’s strength was such that Caine found it much more difficult to overcome his brother in this battle than it had been in any other. The struggle they now found themselves locked in, it would seem, was not one that would show them a clear winner or loser. Luke had as much right to be the alpha of the pack as Caine did. It had always been that way and had they been able, they would have shared the responsibilities. But their pack was wolf based. An hierarchy. Only one of them could be the alpha male of the pack. And both of the men had always known that.
Caine doubted that Luke would ever admit that he had given in when they had first fought over the alpha position. They could have easily fought to the death in that battle. As Caine had been prepared to do at the time.
His twin, it would seem, hadn’t had the heart to inflict such punishment on someone he loved as much as he loved Caine. Three minutes. One woman.
And the powerful love one human being can have for another.
The wolf’s greatest flaw, it would seem, was the extreme opposite of the hatred Caine had always thought controlled him. Luke had given in, regardless of what the wolf in him knew it should do. And regardless of what would have been best for the pack.
And so Caine had rightfully been named the alpha.
As they had that time, the wolves tired and became more bloody and torn, and the brothers began to slow in their attacks on one another.
But unlike that time, finally,
neither
dog offered to inflict any more pain upon the other.
Caine and Luke stood silently and still before one another. Two wolves, both worthy of being an alpha, yet both also knowing that the pack could survive with only one. Such a dilemma was one that their full-blooded relatives of either species would never have to face.
Had they not been what they were, Caine and Luke would have fought until there was a definite alpha. Until one of them gave up and relinquished his rights. To save the pack.
Or died.
Neither man was willing to kill half of himself in order to satisfy that urge. They were wolf. Both of them. But they were also human and feeling and most of all, brothers. And this time, it would seem, they were both willing to balance both parts of themselves for that fact. In order to save their pack, and at the same time, each other.