Mated for Keeps Boxed Set: a BBW Werewolf Shifter Romance (The Lost River Pack) (15 page)

Would he seize her head and fuck her mouth or would he throw her down on this mattress and fuck her right?

How far could she push?

She bent over, sweeping her hair aside. The muscles of Jackson’s thighs were so taut, her nails barely dented the skin, but she grabbed them anyway, slid her hands up the hot flesh until she could cradle his wide hips. His erection jumped, his fists turned white as she blew hot air over him.

The first glide of her tongue along the thick, silken shaft elicited a low growl.

The second ended on a sharp curse as the tip of her tongue flicked at the sensitive ridge just under the head of his cock.

When her lips closed over it, Jackson’s hips lifted. “Yes,” he gasped.

Yes.
Just one word, three little letters.

Perfection. She wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft, stroked him up and down as she sucked hard at the head. He grunted in synch with her, his breath already pushed into short pants. “Good,” he groaned. “So good. Natalie,
fuck
.”

She’d get to that. Just as soon as she was done sucking him off, swallowing every last bit of the come he’d give her. Like a drug, she craved it. She’d do anything for it.

Trusted him to know her limits even when she might forget.

And the thought of that—the realization that he trusted her enough to put his body in her hands, that she could give over everything to him and knew he’d be there—only ramped up her hunger.

Her body flooded with heat, with wanting so fierce that she opened her mouth wide and swallowed him down—head, shaft. As far as she could, using her hands at his hips for leverage, she widened her throat and held her breath and took him so far deep inside her mouth that all of him—the taste, the smell, the heat—filled her senses. Her thoughts.

He tasted like salt and sweat and sex. His cock throbbed inside her mouth as he threw his head back and pushed up, heels digging into the bed. It drove his cock deeper than she was ready for, harder than she’d expected; amazing in every way.

But not enough.

She wrapped her tongue around his shaft, dragged it up and down, in and out; a long, slow fucking between her lips that had him gasping. And when she very gently scraped her teeth over the delicate skin, Jackson’s heady sound of pleasure spiraled straight up into her pussy and demanded more.

Her patience snapped. Her wolf rose in her skin, nails digging into his hips and leaving bloody half moons as she threw back her head and snarled in outright challenge.

Jackson’s lips peeled back from his teeth as she pulled away form him, left his cock wet and slick with her saliva and traces of his own arousal. He wanted to grab her, to throw her down—she could read it in his face. In the savage hunger he fought so hard.

She liked that, too.

Never in her life had she prowled up a man’s body, never had she trusted in herself enough—believed in herself enough—to crawl over a man like she was starving and he was a four course dinner.

Never had she felt her wolf so close to the surface.

Her tongue slid out over her lips. Wet them.

Jackson’s breath shuddered in his chest. His eyes gleamed, hot and hungry, as he met her stare. Held it.

“Take me, Jackson.” Her knees came down on either side of his hips, centered her aching sex just over his cock. So close she could feel the heat of him seeping into her flesh. “
Take
me.”

“God.” Cords strained in his throat. “Do you understand—
Fuck!
”

The word grated as she raked both hands down his chest. Skin parted, filled the air with the coppery tang of his blood. She bent, pressed her lips to one deep line and growled, “I know what I said. Take me, Jackson King, or lose me. Right here.” Her sex dragged over his cock, and she thrilled when his nostrils flared, breath jagged. Sparklers shot through her body as he let go of the sheets to grab her waist, anchoring her in place over him.

His eyes snapped brilliant green, harsh planes carved into his features. “How?”

“All the way. Every way.”

“Fuck,” he rasped again, and with strength she didn’t sense coming, he surged upward, flattened a hand against her chest and swept her entirely off him. Only to plant her squarely on the bed, his hips nestled between her open legs, hands splayed at her thighs to force her knees up. So close she could have licked one.

It exposed everything to him. Her sex, pulsing and wet. Her ass. His to look down at, to stare at—feast with a gaze every bit as desperate as she felt.

And when he dropped his mouth to the flesh between her legs, Natalie’s cry burst from her throat as wave after wave of searing pleasure rolled through her. One arm banded over her stomach and hauled her higher against him, shoulders pinned, legs in the air; pulled her tight against his mouth. His tongue plunged inside her, speared through her flesh and set every nerve jangling. Every breath echoed with a keening sound she couldn’t believe came from her own chest, but it did.

Wanting. Needing.

Feasting
.

He consumed her, lapped at her. Stroked her higher and higher. His tongue slipped away, only for his teeth to close gently around the aching pearl of her clit. At the same time, he anchored her hard against him and thrust three fingers into her sex.

She jolted, seizing handfuls of the sheets by her head as she screamed for more, begged for more.

Fingers, mouth, they weren’t enough. As if he knew, he pressed his wet thumb to her ass and laved at her clit. In and out, his fingers scraped her nerves in all the best ways, dragged her pleasure from her in razor thin spirals of desperate demand. The extra sensation from his thumb short-circuited what was left of her mind; Natalie checked out in ways she’d never allowed herself to try before.

But Jackson had her. Held her. Thrust his fingers inside her, his tongue over her clit, over and over, until Natalie screamed her ragged pleas for more—and if it sounded more like her wolf than human, she didn’t care. Desire tore through her skin, left Natalie shivering violently, gasping desperately.

The smell of her arousal, the shape of her need, pushed Jackson over an edge she didn’t know he walked—his eyes bled to violent yellow and the snarl torn from his throat echoed hers. With inhuman strength, he rose up onto his knees, flipped her onto her stomach. He seized her hips, dragged her up onto her knees, and then flattened a hand between her shoulder blades to shove her face down onto the mattress with a low, savage sound.

Natalie struggled, but it wasn’t to escape. Fury rode her skin, her wolf howled, and she tipped her hips up for him—for Jackson to claim, to ride. To take.

Mate
.

He could. She wanted him to.

Her wolf wanted him to try.

Jackson’s cock pressed against the entrance to her sex. Just long enough to make her shudder, knees wide, hips angled up. Just long enough to center himself before he thrust hard, fast, so deep pain bloomed a nanosecond before pleasure swamped her under a tide so dark and thick and heavy that she screamed into the sheets. Cotton tore under her nails as the whole bed rocked violently.

He didn’t wait.

Didn’t stop.

She wanted more. More of him, more of the wolf he unleashed beside her. Inside her.

His body curved over her back as his cock withdrew, only to pause and slam inside her again. His hands pinned her wrists to the bed, warm and large, and the weight of him, the heat of him against her back only wrapped her in the heady glory of his strength as he fucked her.

Hard. Fast.

Hungrier than she’d ever known.

Perfect.

The sounds she made weren’t human anymore. She didn’t care. Every thrust, every way his cock stroked against her inner channels, dragged perfectly against every sensitive part of her, drove her higher on a peak she’d never before climbed.

“Yes,” she panted, “yes, yes,
yes
, God,
Jackson
!”

A hand curved around her throat, pulled her bodily upright. Her back collided with his chest as he opened his mouth over the side of her neck. She grasped at his straining hips, dug her nails in as he angled himself just right and his cock dragged over a spot so perfect that she screamed.

Blood tainted the air again. Jackson snarled a savage warning, fingers sliding into her mouth, then bit hard at the curve of her neck. This time, it was her skin that parted. Her blood that mingled with the sharp, musky smell of arousal and need and mating frenzy.

And it was too much.

Natalie’s back arched, forced into a curve that would have been impossible if Jackson wasn’t supporting her. Her body rippled, bloomed as he thrust so deep inside her that she couldn’t begin to guess where he ended and she began. All she knew was that he fucked her. He marked her.

Uncompromising, unafraid.

Everything she desperately wanted and more.

She came with his fingers in her mouth, his cock buried to the hilt in her sex, and the prickling sensation of her skin as it knit around the bite that should have been the seal on his claim.

Instead, a black wall swamped her vision, rolled the world out from under her. As her climax crested its highest peak, Natalie’s consciousness collapsed.

J
ackson braced
himself against the bar counter, a bottle of water in one hand and sweat still drying on his skin. His heart thundered in his chest, still savage even after Natalie had passed out in his arms. He’d cleaned her up, tucked her back into bed, and restrained the hungry demands of a wolf that demanded he try again. Try, try and keep on trying until
her
wolf gave herself up in weary submission.

It took everything he had to leave her sleeping soundly, peacefully, instead of fucking her into submission.

Under that primal beat, worry gnawed at him.

He smelled Nico before the other man stepped inside the kitchen. It shot a spike of aggression through his senses, slapped another wave of adrenaline into his already fraying control.

The bottle crushed in his hand. Water exploded in a cool spray that pattered his hot skin.

Jackson cursed, long and savage.

“That was some soundtrack.” Nico’s voice was low. Carefully non-aggressive as he hooked a towel from the hook by the oven and tossed it over.

Jackson caught it, threw it over the mess on the counter top and focused on glaring that into submission instead of the man he wanted to be his alpha. “Fuck,” was all he could manage.

Nico chuckled. “Succinct. And obvious. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” He shifted his weight, dropped the wet towel to the floor and used his foot to clean up the water there. Droplets trickled down his chest, soaked into the waistband of his jeans, but he left it. It felt good against his superheated skin. “I gave it everything I got, man. Didn’t hold anything back.”

The other man skirted the circle of water. His wolf-pale eyes gleamed as he studied Jackson’s chest and neck. The wounds she’d inflicted were already well on the way to fading, but Jackson knew Nico saw them when his mouth hiked up in a lazy grin. “So I see,” he replied. “But nothing?”

“Nothing.” And he wanted to break something for it. “It felt right, Nico. I swear to God, it felt
right.
It just didn’t…” Jackson fumbled for the word, feeling slow and clumsy and angry for it.

Nico stopped on the other side of the counter, folded his forearms and leaned on it. His grin faded to a thoughtful line. “It didn’t click.”

“Yeah.” Jackson stared down at his feet. Then caught himself and met Nico’s gaze instead. “She wants to be claimed, Nico.”

“I know she does.” He rubbed at his jaw. “So does her wolf. Bad.”

“Then why?”

“Don’t know.” He reached across the counter and snagged an apple from a wide green bowl. “Maybe she and her primal nature are still hashing it out. Maybe her wolf needs more than she’s gotten.”

The answers didn’t make Jackson feel any better. They just made him feel worse—worse because he couldn’t figure out what Natalie needed, because he couldn’t give her what he didn’t know, and most of all, because he felt like he was letting her down. It ate at him, a black stain in his heart.

Battering at his pride.

The sound of Nico’s teeth tearing through the apple grated like knives against his awareness. Jackson’s teeth flashed before he caught himself.

Nico wasn’t so slow that he didn’t notice the effort. “Hey.” He pointed at Jackson across the counter with the same hand he held the apple with. “Keep this in mind: it’s up to her.”

“I know,” Jackson snarled, and felt every bit the broken record he sounded like. “Fuck, I know, okay? It’s just… it’s killing me, Nico. Not knowing what she wants. Even if it isn’t me, I just want to—”

“Give her everything.” Nico’s teeth gleamed with a smile that reached his eyes. “Yeah. I know. But you have to remember that it’s up to her. It means,” he added, stressing the words as Jackson took a breath to argue, “that she’ll work it out. Have some faith, Jackson.”

Trust. Faith. There was a lot of that being thrown around his way. Jackson swallowed his hot words and raked unsteady hands through his hair. “Yeah,” he sighed. A sharp sound. “I’m trying.”

“Good.” Nico bit off another chunk, took his time chewing. Then, after he swallowed the sweet fruit, added, “Meanwhile, I need your head in this game. Her pack’s here to bring her back.”

That stopped him cold. “The
hell
,” he snarled, every inch of him prickling like the savage wolf he couldn’t keep himself from being. Even on two legs, he felt ready to tear a body limb from limb.

Starting with the assholes who’d treated her like less than the incredible, beautiful, amazing woman that she was.

Nico straightened, apple held loosely in his fingers. “Victor brought an entourage. Not so big that we can argue, but big enough to be a problem if things go bad. The next few hours are going to be critical.”

No shit. Jackson took a deep breath, held it and closed his eyes. The images dancing behind his eyelids didn’t do much for his calm—Natalie naked, Natalie laughing, Natalie screaming as she orgasmed around his cock—but he didn’t need calm. He needed control.

She was worth every effort.

His heart thundered. He rode the anger. The savage need.

Rode the impatience.

When he exhaled, he opened his eyes to find Nico watching him with approval. He flashed a smile and tossed him the half-eaten apple. “Get some calories in you. I’m gonna need you in fighting form.”

He caught it easily, transferred his grip to the ends and licked the juices that splattered his palm. “You think Victor will want a fight?”

“I think if she doesn’t go with them,” Nico replied, “Victor will have no choice.”

Jackson’s spine locked. His eyes narrowed on Nico’s expression, which betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Nothing of his plans. It never did.

But trust. He’d learned to trust the mercenary leader.

They all had.

Even so, Jackson couldn’t help the growl that trickled from his lips. “She’s not fucking going back.”

Nico’s laugh was quiet, but it bit nonetheless. “It’s up,” he said gently, “to her.”

“
N
o
.” Natalie crossed her arms over her chest, clutching at the sweatshirt one of the men had let her borrow. She didn’t know which—it smelled fresh and clean, worn soft and faded where a sports team logo had been. Her chin came up, even if she did feel like something of a waif standing in flannel pajama bottoms and the too-big sweatshirt.

Every last eye settled on her. Only Alek’s and Nico’s expressions seemed unsurprised. They sat on opposite sides of the living area, each claiming a chair, while Damien leaned against the back of Alek’s and watched her with something thrumming under the surface. Something both hungry and delighted by her firm outburst. Trouble-maker, through and through, but she could count on his support for this. She knew it.

Damien, in the human form that looked exactly like his brother’s, still startled her. She was so used to his wolf form that she forgot sometimes that there were two of them with the same face.

Same face, but different in every other way.

Ben looked like he’d swallowed thumbtacks. His mouth twisted, but he said nothing. She’d learned enough about him that she knew she’d listen when he spoke, but she refused to be swayed by whatever he said. No matter what.

It was Jackson who gave her exactly what she expected. “The fuck you say.”

“No, that’s what I
do
,” she shot back, “and I’m still saying no. I’m not hiding.”

Damien snorted, hiding his laugh behind his hand as he turned sideways to stare fitfully at nothing. Alek reached over and hooked an arm around his neck, pulling him tight against his side in a loose head-lock. Whatever he said in Russian, it had Damien turning red and digging an elbow into his brother’s ribs.

Nico held up a hand before anybody else could interject. “Speak your piece,” he said mildly. He leaned back in his chair, legs loosely crossed at the ankle.

No arguments. No aggression.

Jackson’s features blackened. His arms folded over his chest in the same way, but there was nothing defensive about his. He looked like he wanted to push away from the mantle he leaned against and grab her. Shake her. Hold her.

And take her. Again.

And again.

The mere thought of it filled her with conflicting emotions—fear of what she wanted, hunger for what he could give her. Terror that
she
was the mistake.

She’d woken up aching and feeling empty. Unmated.

Scared.

Her fingers clamped over her own arms. “I can’t stay here.”

She was all too aware of the breaths they all took, the sudden inhalation that signaled argument. Nico held up a hand before anyone could interrupt.

She wasn’t sure she could manage to say it all if they did. Her gaze pinned on him, desperate to get it all out. “I can’t stay here,” she repeated, “while you guys go off to face them. I have to talk see them, see Victor. I have to tell him I’m not going back.”

His pale eyes searched her face. “Why?”

“Because it’s my life,” she replied raggedly. “Because it has to be. There’s nothing for me there, and…” And
everything
for her here.

As if he could sense her uncertainties, her fears, Ben’s dark eyes filled with slow warmth.

It did more to ease the shaking fear inside her than anything she told herself. Support. God, she hadn’t known how strong it made her. How strong she could be when she didn’t have to fight for every little thing.

They didn’t demand she swallow her pride. Didn’t ask that she humble herself.

This pack of strays trying so hard to become family were all that she wanted.

But now it would cost them, and the thought scared her deeply.

She swallowed the ache in her throat before it welled up into the tears she didn’t want to shed. “I know it’s not perfect. Nothing is working out the way it’s supposed to.”
Damn it.
A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it impatiently away. “Maybe the mating thing is my fault—”

Alek stirred. “
No
.”

“No way,” Damien echoed flatly, crossing his hands into a T for timeout.

She didn’t realize that she’d edged closer to Jackson until a large, warm hand settled at her back. “Females are rare enough that there
is
no standard,” he said, and though she could feel the anger crackling through his voice, she knew him enough to know it wasn’t at her. Somehow, she could sense it.

He was angry at the situation. At the Yellow Canyon Pack, the demands Victor made of her, even at the fact that he couldn’t protect her.

Ben shifted his dark gaze to Nico. “Seems clear.”

“So it does.” Nico scratched at his scalp, easing his fingers through the loose bun he kept his hair in, and studied her with thoughtful interest. “I don’t even think we could argue her down, at this point.”

The hand at her back eased to her hip. She laced her fingers through it, but didn’t dare look at Jackson. If she did, if she saw the worry she knew he fostered in his stare, she’d crack.

Protecting them, protecting herself, meant it was time she stand up for what she wanted.

And that meant meeting Victor with every weapon at her disposal.

“Victor thinks he owns me,” she said, voice low. Nerves swirled in her belly, but she forced them down into a tight knot—of anger, of determination. She lifted her chin. “He doesn’t. He needs to know he doesn’t, and I can only think of one thing that he’ll pay attention to.”

Nico’s head tilted. “What do you want?” A phrase he asked so often.

One she was never getting tired of hearing. Her mouth eased up at one corner. “Mark me.”

Jackson’s fingers tightened at her hip. “What?”

“I want you to mark me,” she repeated. Her fingers cramped in the sleeves of her sweatshirt, but she couldn’t seem to let go. It wasn’t fear, exactly. Not quite nervousness. Anxiety of a sort, but also, anticipation.

Slow, sweet hunger.

A desperate urge. A last ditch effort. Everything,
anything
she could grasp.

Victor scared her in every way. His violence, his demands. The effortless way he could ignore her and what she wanted, force her to submit by sheer arrogance and overwhelming force.

She needed to make her voice heard. Make her
will
heard. She mattered.

She mattered to the wolves of the Lost River Valley and, damn it, she wanted everyone to know.

They wanted her. They wanted to protect her. They wanted to love her, and she…

Natalie wanted to acknowledge that with everything that she was.

Ben understood. He leaned forward in his chair, clasping his large hands together, elbows braced on his knees. “If she smells like us, if she’s marked by us—”

“—Then Victor’s claim loses something,” Nico finished slowly. “And we gain a bit of an upper hand.” His features were only unreadable in that the faint line of his smile didn’t shift, but his wintry eyes flicked to Alek and Damien with unmistakable authority. “What do you say?”

“With pleasure,” Damien replied. His body was still under Alek’s arm, shoulders tight, but his gaze raked over every inch of her body with deliberate appreciation.

The mirror image of his brother’s gaze didn’t roam, but pinned to Natalie’s. Maybe she was wrong about the question there, but she answered it anyway. “I want to feel you,” she whispered. A muscle jumped in Alek’s jaw. “All of you. I need to stand with all of you. Like…”
Like she belonged.

Behind her, Jackson eased out a low, shuddering growl. “Then you’ll have us. Every one of us.”

This time, Nico’s smile slipped wider—a hitch at the corner that caused his eyes to crease. “Slow,” he cautioned. He didn’t have to. Jackson pushed her gently to the center of the room, left her to stand there alone in a ring of werewolves who all wore the faces of men but smelled like the predators they were. Rich and dark and deep, mysterious and powerful. Every one of them had branded themselves into her senses, into her skin and soul, until she could differentiate each male merely by his presence.

Could taste the fragrance in the air as each slowly let go of the control that leashed their primal natures.

But the one that overwhelmed them all belonged to the alpha male they all looked to.