Loving Lucius (Werescape) (21 page)

He thrust his thickness back inside me, his strong broad hands wrapped around my hips.

Holding me. Where he wanted me. His stiff rod buried all the way to the blessed root. Then sliding the amazing thickness back along my channel. Clenching channel. A channel pleading for him to return. He did. In a long drawn-out motion. Over and over.

"Better?" he groaned.

Oh. God. Yes. I think I squealed a patronizing yes.

My body's little demand for moving fast tickled into a ferocious beast.

A hungry monster. I grabbed fistfuls of the blanket and thrust my ass back, spearing myself with his lance.

He growled and pumped faster.

Yes. Faster. Such blessed motion. His strength. Slapping against my aching flesh. Add my whimpers and his growls. Touching became more necessary than eating. Than drinking water. The only thing of importance.

The hungry monster inside me swelled until pushing back every cell in my body. Suffocating my essence. Squeezing my reality into nothing but his firm grip on my ass and the way his hardness felt, filling me,
touching me
.

The monster's squeezing pressure sparked into my most demanding frustration.

He leaned his hard body over my ass, stroking in focused short movements.

Tickling me to the point I'd have to bite the blanket and gnaw a hole through it or die. "Please, Lucius," I panted. "Please!"

One of his arms grabbed around my belly, pinning my back against the curve of his body.

No. Slipping fingers into my sex. But not into. No above it. Searching. Locating my clit. Touching it. Oh. God. Touching is beyond the meaning of wonderful. I whimpered.

My body trembled and flinched from the onslaught of need deep inside it and down where only he'd ever touched.

He growled, his groin and engorged spear shoving me from behind.

Rocking me like a sobbing baby. I needed to end this. To cry. To thrust backward so hard the frustration would burst inside me while I wriggled against the soft little pad of his devoted fingertip.

Need shook me.

Like the electricity I'd accidentally shocked myself with during science lessons.

My body jolted. His member jerked deep inside me.

Hitting something indescribable. I screamed.

He groaned. And we froze upon that brief magnificent moment of absolute bliss.

I held my breath.

The heel of his hands fell away.

To the bedding beside mine. His chest pressing me down. Holding me in place. Rocking his hips like he wrung his soul out within mine. One desperate thrust after another. Shoving my ass.

He groaned in my ear, his chin on my shoulder. "Oh, little mate, next time," he kissed my neck, "we do it my way."

His way? Wasn't he happy with what just happened?

Slowly his movements shortened, then he stilled. "Do you like this? All of this touching?" He kissed my cheek from where his head hung over my shoulder.

"Yes." Oh. Yes.

He climbed away from me, along my side, and pulled me down to squirm out and stretch along the solid length of his muscular body.

Hot. Sweaty. Rattling heart tapping on my breast. His presence called to me. Made me wriggle, trying to meld with him. Those half-shuttered blue eyes. Those adoring tanned lips.

He tipped his nose down to touch the tip against mine and thrust a handful of fingers into the base of my braid. "That, little mate, is the way things will be between us." He rubbed the end of my nose with his.

Teasing me with promises. "Good. I prefer you wanting to be with me."

"Oh, Kitten, you have no idea how much
want
I feel." He flashed me one of his heart-stopping grins. "And whenever you want to feel how much I need you," he nipped at my upper lip with moist heat before staring back into my eyes, "you just let me know. I'll throw you on the bed and touch you in ways you have yet to experience."

Really? I could stand for a few more rounds of touching just to learn what he means.

He chuckled. "Your expression tells me you like that idea."

Yes. I slid my palm beneath his thick arm, around the hard curve of his ribcage, and up the supple flesh forming his muscular shoulder blade. Drawing my heart closer to his. "Yes, Lucius," I whispered, tucking my nose between his jaw line and sweaty shoulder. "Touching is extremely important."

He silently chuckled, his chest jerking with the sensation. "I'd do so now. But we need to go find Augustus. I want him to take the blood sample and process it."

But what would happen when his sire realized I had too much alien DNA?

"You're panicking again, Elise." His palm ran down my back to begin petting me in long firm yet gentle strokes.

Calming motions. Touching me.

"I told you nobody could take you away from Wolf." He kissed my forehead. "Look at me."

I turned my gaze to his.

"Trust me."

We dressed, departed for Augustus' lodge, and found him alone at his long table, sitting with large books and maps spread out in the indirect sunlight offered by two windows.

"Well, I see you two have made amends." He'd tied his shoulder-length hair back in a queue.

Maybe the clan leader could make that call because Lucius held my hand.

Lucius flashed me another dazzling grin. "We had a talk."

Did he have to mention the discussion? He promised not to share the subject. Why should I have believed him after he kept promising to leave and then he didn't?

"Well, Elise,"Augustus said in a loud voice, "you appear happy with Lucius after he marked you."

Was the marking that obvious? I glanced at Lucius' smiling eyes.

"Shifters can smell it," he winked.

Augustus could probably smell the stink of our mating. That had to be what tattled on us.

"Now, Elise, I expect a grandson by next spring." Augustus winked too.

Oh, no. I'm surrounded by intelligent facetious men.

Lucius grabbed me, pulling my chest into his. "I think you and I can handle that chore." He planted a big kiss on my forehead, then focused on his sire, releasing me. "Run her blood work. Let us know what you learn."

I suppose there's no other way to deal with my fears. I turned to the alpha.

Augustus' silvering brown eyebrows arched. "What am I looking for?" His gaze darted curiously between Lucius and I.

Lucius will just blurt it out.

My heart cringed.

My mate gave me one gentle pat on my lower back. "Whatever you manage to find."

Augustus placed his broad palms on the table and shoved upward. "Well, then, let's go down to the lab and do the deed. You can show her around. Choose a suite too. Maybe next to her sister."

What? Violet or Sherry?

The door creaked open behind me.

Harsh sunlight danced around a male form.

"Well, I see our efforts weren't wasted," Marcus called out.

"What?" Lucius growled, his arm tightening around me.

"Calm down, Lucius," Augustus said. "Marcus never wanted to mate Elise. He and I have been plotting for three years to push you to mate."

Marcus snorted a laugh where he stood in the illuminated doorway. "And talk about one Gods-be-damned chore for a sire's son. I thought we'd never find a female your Wolf would bite."

Augustus chuckled. "Then along came Elise."

"Yes," Marcus chuckled exactly as his sire had done. "I knew she was perfect for him."

"Oh, did you?" Lucius condescended.

"Let's go now, Lucius." Augustus stepped to my side and winked.

Fine. We all needed to do something before Lucius' Wolf felt like teaching his younger brother a lesson.

Augustus led us into the warm sunlight.

"Do you plan to raise Violet?" Augustus asked us.

I was probably too short to warrant a glance where I stood between their armpits. But if they bothered to look down at me, they'd find a glare. Nobody's raising Violet except me.

"Of course," Lucius said. "Elise wouldn't want anything else. And the little one's bright. Even though you could leave her education to any of the other Shifters and know she'd be just fine in the long run."

As if they'd even try to send Violet to be reared by someone else.

"Good. It's always difficult to send a sibling into foster care." Augustus turned back to the path winding between the lodges. "Now, Elise, the lab and village are underground. We're far beneath the three feet of earth necessary to survive an extraterrestrial extermination beam."

Village? Subterranean? Such a feat would take an army to build places similar to those beneath the New cities. And I have yet to see an army. "How large is this village?"

"Seventeen Shifter families and extra rooms for new ones. Adult Shifters who have yet to mate live above ground to provide the façade of a small community to outsiders. We have plenty of storage too. Add the lab, community kitchen, community school, library, and community shower, and it's quite cozy."

They'd built this place? "Amazing. So you live down there?"

"Only mated Shifters," Lucius explained. "That's why you and I were above ground."

"Those who have yet to mate give the illusion of a small Shifter outpost to aerial surveillance." Augustus waved a hand at the bath. "This way."

We entered the large community shower lodge's cool shade. Nobody had run the hot water for a bath in the claw-foot tub or used the primitive shower today. If so, humidity would have clung to the shadowy space.

"Over here." Augustus walked to a closet door, led us into the long narrow space with floor-to-ceiling shelves, strode past the soaps, towels, and whatever else they kept here, and stopped me with a hand about six feet from the end. "If there's ever a reason for you to hide somewhere, come here." He wormed his fingertips into the crack at the far corner of the floor and heaved up the entire end section of the wooden beams like a door.

Hidden hinges maybe? I don't know how it appeared a length of floor when the panel moved like a door. But he lifted the wood aside to the right and propped it against the wall.

A sheet of gray metal stretched beneath where the sheet of planking had been.

"And the mechanism…" Augustus pointed to the closest corner on the left. "Push that small square button." He did.

The metal slid sideways, toward the flooring Augustus leaned against the wall. A gaping rectangle, lit from below, offered a series of descending concrete steps. Augustus stepped to the right and Lucius led me underground. A click behind us and a mechanical hum noted Augustus closed the entrance.

The enormous subterranean space had a series of lights offering a soft glow in between stretches of shadow. Just enough light to allow for comfortable passage. The place smelled a little dusty. But being underground, one would expect such an odor.

"How long did it take to build this place?" I asked.

"I don't know," Augustus said from behind me. "It was built AEI. The government constructed a concealed facility to deal with epidemics. That's why I'm here. To use the lab. My sire was very young when the aliens came. His sire was a doctor employed by the government to study diseases. Military. That's how he came to be a Shifter. He was captured, genetically altered, and returned to earth. So, he raised my sire to follow in his scientific footsteps. And my sire taught me. Did you know that all Shifters were originally soldiers or scientists?"

No. Fascinating. And that explains a lot of how humans fought back against beings with the odds in their favor.