PrimalFlavor (7 page)

Stomping down the steps to the halfway mark, she looked over
the shifters still fighting and snarling and throwing fur all over her carport.
They were both bleeding, but the more she studied them, the more she realized
the wounds were superficial, as though they didn’t want to hurt each other too
much. Her blood pressure shot through the roof. While they didn’t seem to want
to kill each other, they didn’t seem to mind destroying the things she used to
make her living. The crab traps were flattened mounds of wire and Styrofoam,
her battered truck was more battered than before and she was almost positive
the piling holding the very center of her house was listing even more than it
had a few minutes before.

The fuckers.

Colette hefted her pitcher and waited for the perfect
moment. Condensation from the ice melting in the sticky heat dribbled over her
fingers to splatter on the wooden steps beneath her feet. But still she waited,
willing the idiots to roll in her direction.

As though they heard her, Zach did a kick with his hind legs
she’d seen housecats do, sending the strange wolf hurtling in her direction.
Luckily for her, and them, the canine caught himself before he hit the wooden
steps. He hopped to his feet and waited for the tiger to come to him, almost as
though he was taunting the cat. Zach, of course, answered with a muted snarl.
The minute the two males tangled up together right beneath her, Colette leaned
over the railing and emptied the bracingly cold water over both of their hot
heads.

* * * * *

Really, he shouldn’t have been enjoying himself so much, but
it’d been a while since Zach had a fight as perfectly balanced as this one.
While he’d never go so far as to say the wolf was a tough opponent, he would
admit that the canine didn’t give up. He outweighed the wolf by at least a
hundred pounds, but no matter how many times he swatted the wolf away, the
canine would bounce right back to his feet and come back for more. It was as
though he had some stake in the outcome, as though this fight was for a mate.
The thought wiped out any feelings of camaraderie he might have felt for the
wolf. The ball-licking bastard could just forget about going near Colette.

He had no idea how long they fought, only that once in a
while he caught the strong, drugging scent of Colette, which only fired his
blood even more, fueling his strength when he might have tired. This fight, it
was for her. She’d probably never know the lengths he’d go to protect her, to
make her safe and to mark her as his. And that was fine with him. The fight
didn’t matter. It was a small step in the direction his tiger demanded he go
and Zach was damn tired of fighting the cat.

Pinned under the wolf for a moment, he kicked out at his
opponent’s belly, flinging him across the carport. Unfortunately, the bastard
still didn’t give up, scrambling back to his feet. Zach had to admire the wolf’s
spunk. There weren’t many who’d go up against him in his cat form and keep
bouncing back like a Weeble. But that didn’t mean he would just let the wolf
taunt him, the way it was doing now. Zach read it in the cold, blue eyes, the
clear, smug fuck-you attitude that had kept this fight going longer than
normal.

He was tired of it. Tired of the fight, tired of this wolf
thinking he had some kind of right to be here and he was damn tired of being
down here when the luscious woman he smelled was upstairs. He hadn’t come here
for this. He’d come here to somehow get that woman in bed, not play with
wolves. It was time to end this. Now.

Zach launched himself at the wolf, covering the fifteen feet
between them in two bounding leaps. The canine must have realized this was
different because when they clashed, there was a new strength in the animal.
They wrapped up in each other, claws digging into fur and skin, fangs extended,
muscles straining for supremacy. Battle heat and bloodlust filled the air
around them. Someone was going home hu—

Ice-cold water rained down on both of them. The shock of the
freezing water, complete with chunks of solid, square cubes, slapping him in
the face made him let out a ridiculous squeak. He would have been embarrassed
by the sound except the wolf yipped like a puppy spanked with a newspaper. Just
like that, the fight was over. He and the wolf separated, shaking and flinging
the icy water from their fur. If he had been in his human form, goose bumps
would have sprang up all over his body. It was like jumping into a cold shower
after being in the sun all day. Sudden, painful and unwelcome.

“Now that I have your attention, do you mind getting the fuck
off my property before I call the police? Or my family?”

The sweet, husky voice shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d
known she was crazy, but now he had proof. She’d stood up to him in the swamp
last week and marched through a crowd of predatory shifters as though they were
sheep in a petting zoo. But looking up to see Colette Robicheaux standing on
the stairs above them in nothing but a towel, a towel that did nothing to hide
her lush, pink charms from him since she was above him, left him wondering if
crazy wasn’t a good thing after all. Because she didn’t seem to realize, or
care, that she was flashing him and the wolf, that they could see straight up the
towel to the lush center of her body.

The wolf. Zach shook off his pussy stupor and rounded on the
wolf still peering at the delicate petals of Colette’s sex. The cold water had
stopped the bloodlust, but it did nothing for the possessive jealousy that
raged through Zach. He slammed one massive paw across the wolf’s head, spinning
the canine around a hundred and eighty degrees. That was fine with him because
it meant he was no longer looking at Colette.

“I swear to God if y’all start fighting again, I’m getting
my gun to shoot you both in the ass,” she threatened from above. “Now get the
hell out of here.”

No, it wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. He heard it in the
calm steadiness of her voice. The wolf must’ve recognized it as well. He shot
Zach a look promising retribution, but he slinked away from her house, his body
low to the ground as though to avoid being seen. Zach stared after the
retreating canine. He was glad to see the bastard go, but there had been
something weird about the whole incident, something that—

“You can carry your happy ass out of here too,” Colette
said, interrupting his thoughts. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re
doing here, but you’re not welcome and I really don’t want to have to shoot at
you. Again.”

Zach forgot about the wolf’s intentions. If he knew what was
good for him, he wouldn’t come sniffing around Colette again. But his tiger
purred because in the animal world, any retreat meant the last shifter standing
won the prize. He swung his head around to look at his prize poised on the
stairs as though she were some beast master, her lightly muscled arms folded
across her chest and her face set in a scowl. The stance, which he supposed was
meant to be intimidating, was ruined by the peekaboo show she gave him with her
towel and the thick fall of hair spilling over her shoulders.

Seeing her like this, her bare skin glistening from her
recent shower and the smothering heat, her hair fluffed around her head, Zach
felt like a conquering hero. And his prize was the crazy woman eyeing him the
way she would a slug.

He sauntered to the foot of the stairs and looked up at her.
He wanted her to run, to take this dance to the next level and its natural
conclusion—covering her with his body and fucking her into submission. A loud
purr rumbled deep in his throat at the thought. Her eyes, those amazing purple
eyes, widened when he put one paw on the bottom step.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned in a firm tone.

He ignored that and strolled up the stairs as though he had
every right to. Which he did by right of battle. She didn’t back away. Not at
first. She threatened him with all sorts of awful things involving her family,
guns, knives and his various body parts, but his tiger wasn’t daunted. It heard
the breathlessness in her voice and scented the sudden musk of her arousal. In
the tiger’s world, the female was supposed to put up a fight, to demand that
her possible mate show his worthiness. Colette, human by nature but a predator
by choice, was following the mating dance perfectly.

When he was four steps below her, she started to back up,
the pitcher in one hand and her other hand on the railing. Her feet were tiny
with the cutest little red-tipped toes. He wanted to lick his way from those
toes, up her surprisingly long, lean legs until he could nuzzle the tender skin
in the crook of her leg, bringing him closer and closer to her sweet cleft.

“S-stop,” she stammered. “I’m not playing, Zach. You shouldn’t
be here.”

He shifted between one step and the next, not even aware of
it until she stumbled over the top step, the pitcher falling out of her hand
and rolling down the stairs. Zach sidestepped the container, his only goal the
woman watching him with hungry eyes. He swore he could almost feel her gaze
like a touch as she looked him over. His cock strained upward, toward her, the
crown growing damp when she fixated her stare on it.

“Oh,” she breathed and the air thickened with the musk of
her arousal. “Um.”

“You threw water on me,” Zach said as he stalked her across the
porch and into her house, closing the door behind them with a soft click. He
didn’t break eye contact with her, not even bothering to look away from her
long enough to glance at the inside of her house. He only needed to find a spot
for him to finish this first step of the dance. “You let that wolf look up your
towel.” He growled, causing her eyes to widen even more.

“I did not!”

He backed her up against the arm of her sofa. She stopped
with a gasp, but he had her exactly where he needed her. He reached out, his
hands itching with the need to touch her skin and when he made contact with her
flesh, it was as silky soft as he’d imagined. His dick lurched. This was the
moment he’d dreamed about for a week, the feel and scent and sight of her
exactly the way he’d imagined.

“Mine,” was all he could say in response to her denial. No
wolf was going to look at her again, no other man was going to be able to give
her what he could and he’d make damn sure she realized that.

Her mouth opened, the indignation in her eyes sparking into
the spitting fury he recognized, and enjoyed, so well. “What did you say?” she asked
through clenched teeth, her anger burning bright enough that he could feel it.

Yeah, he was a sick man, but he found he actually liked her
hot temper and her unpredictability. He liked it enough to repeat his caveman,
chest-thumping claim. “Mine. You’re mine.”

In a million years, he would’ve never expected her to grab
her towel and throw it at his face. He supposed she did it to distract him. And
it worked, but probably not the way she intended. The minute he saw her lightly
bronzed skin bared, the pale-pink nipples that topped her perky little tits and
the smooth, flat plane of her stomach that ended in a little strip of pale-brown
hair, he caved. And did as his tiger had been urging him to do for a week,
tackling the swearing, snarling, pissed-off Cajun to her sofa.

Colette found herself naked and sandwiched between her sofa
and a hard, hot place. Oh sure, she’d dreamed of this exact position several
times. The position that had her naked thighs wrapped around Zachary Trahan’s
naked hips and his big, thick cock pressed tightly to her pussy. She just never
realized her dreams were absolute shit compared to the real thing.

She hadn’t imagined the hair-roughened body pressing against
hers would be a lot different from the nude body of her youthful lovers. She
hadn’t known how satiny-smooth his skin was or how the muscles of his shoulders
would feel beneath her hands. She needed to let him go, shove him off her, move
away from him before he could lead her into temptation. Except this was a
temptation she never thought to touch, to smell, or to be buried beneath. It
kind of helped that Zach was also a lot heavier than she was, but she found she
liked the weight of him. It made her feel as though she had no control, as
though she was being ravaged.

Her body thrilled at the thought, especially when he grabbed
her hands, pinning them to the sofa on either side of her head. They stared at
each other. His eyes were all sexy and gold and slumberous and trained on her.
Not some other woman. Her. The breath caught in her throat as he levered
himself over her. He was solid and hot. God, he was hot, scorching her where
they were plastered together from chest to hips. The massive erection he
sported was even hotter, reminding her why she’d stared and let herself be
caught.

It was all his fault. He’d mesmerized her with his cock, the
subtle bobbing as he climbed the stairs and stalked her, emptying all thoughts
of self-preservation from her mind. The man didn’t have a lick of
self-consciousness, not that he needed it, but it still awed her. And it was
that awe that put her in this position. Captured. Helpless. His for the taking.

Her pussy gave a slow clench of excitement. Colette tried to
ignore the moisture gathering along her channel, preparing the way for that
much man to enter her. There would be no sex, she told her traitorous body. No
fucking. No thrusting. No— He leaned down to kiss the tip of her nose.

“Mine.”

Colette blinked up at him. She’d heard him right. Did he
honestly think that was hot? That she would get off on hearing him say that she
belonged to—

Zach kissed her cheek. Colette turned her head to the side,
not giving him her mouth. She had stuff to say. Important— He kissed his way
across her cheek to her ear. He nipped on the lobe, which suddenly seemed to
contain a zillion nerve endings and each one of them connected to her pussy.

But even the hard, heavy pounding of her heart couldn’t
drown out his growled, “Mine.”

Colette closed her eyes as the moist heat of his breath
caressed her ear. It was one of the most sensitive spots on her body and he
seemed to know it, tracing the outer shell with his tongue. Not licking, barely
touching her, he caused her blood to heat up. Her pussy ached. She’d thought he
turned her on before, when he was just some man who’d kissed her and appeared
in her dreams. She hadn’t known what desire and hunger meant before now. Before
he set to tormenting her with her own body.

“My Colette.”

Her nipples had tightened when she’d stupidly thrown her
towel at his face. Why had she done that again? Oh. Right. She thought it would
blind him. If she had breath to spare, she’d snort at her idiocy. He hadn’t
even blinked when the towel hit him in the face, his gaze trained on her body.
Her very naked, very aroused body. And then
wham
she found herself here.
Under him, with his mouth trailing down her throat, tongue lapping at her skin
and his cock leaving a damp trail over her stomach.

“I knew you’d taste like this,” he murmured into the hollow
of her throat. “Salty and sweet.”

More cream flowed along her channel, her womb contracting hard
at his words. His purr reverberated through her entire body. Colette bit back a
whimper. She should not be doing this, this… Whatever this was. But her need,
the one that had sparked to life when she first saw him at his bakery demanded
to be fulfilled. It demanded appeasement. He slid down her body, the wedge of
his torso forcing her thighs wider. Her cheeks burned as she realized the
spread lips of her pussy were leaving a line of juices on his rippled abs. He
didn’t seem to care, his mouth nibbling and licking and—

Her back arched when he took one of her nipples into his
mouth, a strangled whimper catching in her throat. The man was the devil. An
absolutely evilly tormenting devil because he released her tight peak before he
did more than swirl his tongue around it.

“Mine.”

Colette couldn’t hide her whimper this time. Not when his
breath washed over her damp nipple, making her very aware of what he was doing.
He was claiming her. The thought alone should have been enough to snap her out
of this, but then he was there again, his mouth taking her, his tongue lashing
her. She’d read that before, that some hero in a book gave the heroine a tongue
lashing and thought it sounded silly.

Maybe it was for others, but with Zach’s tongue flicking and
lapping and circling her nipple, Colette found nothing about this silly. It was
arousing, amazing, torturous, awful and awesome, but not silly. And then he
left her tormented breast to tease the other neglected peak. She squirmed
beneath him, not getting far at all. Her thighs were soaked. She was probably
leaking all over his stomach, but there was no helping it. Not when he had her
pinned and was going at her like a cat with a bowl of cream.

The continuous purring didn’t help either. Not when she
could feel it vibrating between her legs. Then he was sliding away from her
again, leaving her damp, swollen nipples to the cruel, cool air of her living
room. Her arms were free, but there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to
stop him. In fact, she held her breath, anticipation and excitement and a touch
of fear holding her immobile. His weight wasn’t pinning her down any longer. He
didn’t need to because she wasn’t going anywhere. Then his mouth left her skin
and he was gone.

Her eyes popped open. A glance down had her cheeks burning
hotter than ever. Zach had made her forget that he’d tackled her to the sofa,
that she was naked as a jaybird. His mouth had made her forget she was sprawled
in the most obscene way, her hips propped up on the arm and her legs spread
wide, everything on display for him.

She should have clamped her knees together faster than you
could say “sin”, but the glowing gold eyes staring down at her exposed sex, the
dangerous glitter and hectic color riding high on his cheekbones made her feel
sexy. Not obscene. As though this was the most natural thing in the world, as
though offering her body to him in such a blatant position was the perfect
conclusion to the crazy tango they’d been a part of.

So instead of closing her legs, instead of covering herself
the way she would have with any other man, Colette lifted her arms over her
head and arched her back. Surrendering herself to the man who’d touched her
heart without even knowing it.

At what point had he died and gone to heaven? Zach couldn’t
say. Maybe he’d fallen down the stairs and broken his neck. Or maybe she really
shot him this time, not missing the way she had before. Whatever it was that
had brought him to this point, he couldn’t be sorry. Not when she lay spread
before him like a caramel-and-strawberry dessert topped by whipped cream.

He stood over her, his cock aching and leaking, his balls
tighter than ever, and stared. It was all he could do, the awe nearly
overwhelming. When he’d tackled her, her hair had fanned out into a wavy, white
cloud around her head, the perfect contrast for her red sofa. Violet eyes had
gone black with want after he took his time making her pale nipples bright pink
and swollen. Her bronze skin, with the slightest difference in color showing where
she worked in the sun, was flushed and dewy with want. She sprawled over her
sofa, her legs spread wide in welcome, the deep-pink of her swollen folds
glistening with her juices.

It was enough to bring any man to his knees and he was no
different. There was a loud crack and distant pain when he dropped to the
wooden floor, bringing his hungry gaze level with the heart of her body. He
hadn’t stopped purring from the moment he tackled her on the sofa and the sound
ramped up louder. The scent of her on his skin, her sticky need coating his
stomach, all of it combined to make Zach and his animal two of the smuggest
sons of bitches this side of the Mississippi.

Normally, with any other woman, he would’ve eased into
tasting her, gentled her to his hand. Because with other women, they were
scared of him despite their desire. Not with Colette. All he could smell was
her vanilla spicy scent and the strong musk of her arousal. All he could see
was the way her body wept. For him. No one else. He wanted to mark her, his
gums throbbing with the tiger’s need to sink his fangs right into the skin of
her inner thigh, but he needed her to come first. Needed to make this so good
for her she wouldn’t even realize he was keeping her.

Zach pushed the annoying thought away. His tiger was talking
crazy again, something they didn’t need right now. Not with that beautiful, wet
cleft beckoning his mouth, his tongue.

Placing a hand on either side of her pussy, he leaned
forward and tasted her without preamble. He made a hungry, desperate sound in
the back of his throat as he curled his tongue from the entrance of her wet
cunt to the swollen pearl of her clit. Salty and sweet, his Colette was like a
cool glass of water on a hot summer day. The more he had, the more he wanted,
lapping at her, tasting her, drinking her down like a man dying of thirst.

And maybe he had been until now.

All he knew was that the taste of Colette was better than
anything he’d ever baked, anything he’d ever tried. He devoured her, nipping,
lapping, licking and sucking, oblivious to everything but her unique flavor. He
curled his tongue into her cunt, scooping her delicious arousal into his mouth
before he circled her tight little nubbin. Over and over, tracing a traveling
figure eight with his mouth to make certain he didn’t miss a single square inch
of her. Her cries were vague sounds he heard over his constant purring and
growling. Her hands tugging at his hair spurred him to take more, to slide two
of his fingers into the tight clutch of her pussy.

“Zach!” she screamed, her muscles nearly snapping his
questing, searching fingers in half.

The pleasure she gave him, the delicious taste of her, to
see her flushed, damp face tightened into a frown of concentration had him
forcing his eyes open all for the joy of watching her. Her white teeth sank
into her bottom lip as she tugged and pulled on her nipples, tormenting the
peaks to a darker color. He curled his fingers inside her cunt, searching for
that special spot, and rubbed.

She screamed again, more of her delicious moisture soaking
his fingers and running down his hand. He growled, lapping up every drop, his
own arousal put on the back burner. He wanted to make her come again and again,
until he’d wrung so much pleasure from her that she would never look at another
man, until he was so entrenched in her body that it would respond only to him.
He went to another place in his mind, his only thoughts to make Colette need
him as much as he needed her.

Nothing mattered as much as that. As much as making her
realize she was his. When she came down from the orgasm, he brought her back up
again. Orgasm after orgasm until they seemed to roll right into one another.

His gaze trailed up the graceful arch of her body to her
flushed face. To her parted lips that panted and moaned and cried out his name,
to the damp eyelashes trembling on her cheeks. Beautiful. How could he have
ever thought she wasn’t? She was exotic and gorgeous, and oh so his.

Zach shoved the goddamn tiger away again, not wanting the
distraction, but the animal’s unwelcome thoughts helped center him. Colette’s
face was twisted in an expression of tortured pleasure, her knuckles showing
white where she gripped the sofa. Her tiny breasts with their flushed peaks,
rose and fell as though she’d run a marathon. Sweat glistened on her skin,
giving it the appearance of sugar sprinkled over chocolate. Beautiful.

He pressed a gentle kiss to her mound, the scent of her
seeping into his pores, and rested his chin on his pussy. His pussy. Some of
his urgency had fled during his exploration of Colette’s body. Sure, he couldn’t
wait to be inside her, couldn’t wait to feel what it was like to have her tight
cunt wrapped around him, squeezing his dick until his eyes rolled to the back
of his head, until he wished he could die from pleasure. But it wasn’t as
important as soothing her, as necessary as bringing her down gently and easily.

His hands stroked over her smooth, silken skin, not to
arouse, but to relax. She was so soft on the outside, but the more he touched
her legs, her stomach and ass, her back, the more Zach felt the strength of her
lithe body. She was human, but she was strong. She was female, yet she evened
the playing field against a predator with fangs and claws. It was sexy as all
fuck.

Without knowing how long it took for her breathing to even
out, for her shuddering and quivering to stop, Zach did something he’d never
done before. He thought of someone else. He gently cared for her, tended to her
until she quieted again. His cock was still hard, his balls still ached, but
this wasn’t about him. It was about her, this hard woman who drove him insane.
He smiled against her thigh, not really caring that his legs were falling
asleep. This was something new and exciting and unbearably sexy. It was
intimate and theirs.

When he heard a delicate, unexpected sound, he lifted his
head from where he’d rested it against her mons, breathing in her scent,
reveling in it. A guarded glance showed her eyes were closed, her face relaxed.
Sleeping. She let out another soft snore. Zach frowned down at her. Should he
be insulted she’d fallen asleep? Offended? Flattered?