Scorpio Sons 4: Chase: (SF/Shifter Romance) (16 page)

Fighting down his own repulsion at the thought of those men who had tortured the young girl she’d been, he almost lost the desire to go on. But he wanted to teach her that sex could be a beautiful thing, if done right. He wanted that for her.

While she whimpered, he slipped his tongue between the damp folds between her legs. The scent of her arousal was all the aphrodisiac he needed. His own arousal grew to painful proportions, but he pushed down his desire and sought to give her what she needed.

Slowly, he coaxed the hard bud between the folds with his tongue and was gratified to hear Anna moan and sigh, burying her fingers in his hair to either keep him in place or push him away; he wasn’t sure. He doubted even she knew which need drove her. But he persevered, licking and sucking the point of pleasure until he knew for certain it was not to push him away that she clawed at his hair.

When he knew she was fully aroused and her sweet, salty juices were flowing, he gently eased a finger into her channel. If there was going to come a moment when she rebelled, it would be now. But though she stiffened at the first intrusion, she quickly relaxed again as his finger slid easily in and he used it to stimulate the underside of her clit, while he continued to minister to the actual bud of pleasure.

When she came undone, he felt it, her inner muscles convulsing around his digit. Pleased beyond words that he’d been able to give her at least this much pleasure, he also felt gratified that she’d trusted him enough to allow him to do what he’d wanted, showing none of the fear she must have been feeling.

While she was coming down from that first orgasm, he began working her again, slowly this time, knowing she’d be super-sensitive. At the same time, he eased a second finger inside her sheath and stretched her. He felt a little roughness from scarring, and wondered if that would interfere with the sensations for her.

Trying not to worry, he sucked her bud into his mouth and felt her again come undone around his fingers. She screamed as she did so, and threw herself back onto the pillows, her hands clawing, this time, at the bedding beneath her.

Mindless; she was now mindless with pleasure and need. If there was to be a time to claim her, now was it. He slid up her body so that he could watch her face as he positioned himself at her core. If he saw any sign that she was in pain he would stop. He didn’t care how much it cost him, he would stop. There was no way he was going to cause her more pain than he already had.

Anna threw her head from side to side as she clawed at his shoulders, seemingly oblivious to everything but her need. His cock butted against her entrance and she automatically widened her legs, wordlessly giving him encouragement. Then he was sliding inside her, feeling the tightness and the slight abrasion he’d identified with his fingers. But her body was fluid, and as she widened to take more of him, he was easily able to slide home.

Home.
Fuck, never had that word meant more. Cat or man, he knew the truth of it now. She was his home. Being inside her, feeling her all around him, warm, slick and tight; that was what it meant to be one with another person. No woman he had ever been with before had made him feel like this.

Holding himself above her on his trembling arms, he watched her face. Her sex-drugged eyes were half-closed, but they looked up at him in surprise. She really thought this was going to hurt, and yet she’d wanted it anyway.

Where was the fear and revulsion he was sure he’d see when this act reminded her of other such joinings?

Nowhere. He saw nothing but bemused delight and sexual need.

Anna’s arms wrapped around his back, her fingers kneading his muscles, encouraging him to move, to take them on the next stage of their erotic journey. Happy to oblige, he drew back and then slid home once more, pushing deeper this time. Still, she showed no sign of discomfort.

Wrapping her legs around his hips, she pushed him deeper and moaned. That was all it took, his cat exploded onto the scene and immediately he was plunging in and out of her body, no longer aware of where she ended and he began. The man in him feared it was too much, both in violence and in feral claiming, but Anna seemed to go with him, her cat rising to match his.

Suddenly she was pressuring him to fall to the side so she could roll on top. In the next breath his mate buried her fangs in his shoulder with a sexy growl.

God, he thought it was good the last time she did this. Now, buried deep in her slick sheath, and with her fangs in his flesh setting off a barrage of incendiary bombs of such exquisite intensity, he had no choice but to come. Hard.

While she held him in place, his body convulsed deep inside her, his seed spurting out to flood her womb. Her internal muscles clamped around him almost painfully tight, as she followed him over the edge. But even after he came, the explosions of blissful releases continued.

Finally, when he physically couldn’t take any more pleasure, he urged her to release him. This she did reluctantly, and then, after licking his wound closed, settled down at his side, his still hard sex sliding out of her body.

“You okay?” he croaked, surprised by his inability to use his vocal chords properly.

“Mmm. You?” she got out, seemingly finding words as difficult to vocalise as he.

“Mmmm. It didn’t hurt?”

“Not at all. I can’t believe it. Maybe I’m bigger than I was when I was twelve... You know, down there.”

He kissed her cheek and drew her closer, their bodies damp with cooling sweat. The sun was now shining in through the window, and he no longer thought about the artificial lights that created the illusion. To him, it was a real sunrise that warmed their room.

“Maybe. But a woman has to be ready, or sex is painful for her. I doubt those men ever cared if you
were
ready.”

Anna shuddered, and he knew it was from the memories overwhelming her. Chase expected her to draw away from him. He was like those men, after all; he’d taken his pleasure from her body, just as they had.

But she didn’t draw away. Instead, Anna burrowed deeper into his side her head pressed in under his chin. Chase tightened his hold on his mate, trying to communicate to her, yet again, that she was safe now. That she would always be safe while ever she had him at her side.

“I tried to read
Cosmo
once. An article that said just that. But it freaked me out so badly I stopped reading halfway through. I didn’t believe it related to me. That was for girls who weren’t damaged goods.”

“Don’t call yourself that. You make it sound like you’re an item on a grocery shelf that’s been dropped. You
have
been damaged by what they did to you. But you aren’t damaged in the way you mean it. You’re not inferior.”

She kissed his chest. “You made me feel whole. When you first slid inside me, I thought,
this is what I’ve waited for
.
This is what it’s about.
Those others just tried to turn what is beautiful into something ugly, and I let them. You showed me that...” Tears choked her so she could say no more.

Even though he had experienced something similar as they were joined for the first time, hearing her voice her feelings was frightening. This was what he’d fought against. He didn’t want her to feel attached to him in this way, to possibly love him. He’d neglect...

Then he remembered what she’d said. Damaged but unbreakable. He couldn’t break her. Even if she loved him, he couldn’t break her, because she was stronger than his mother had been. She was a survivor, first and foremost.

He relaxed at the realisation. It was okay to enjoy what they had found together. He couldn’t harm her. Even when his cat had taken over during the heat of the moment, he hadn’t hurt her. Maybe this could work. Just maybe...

Anna was pulled from deep sleep by the sound of something buzzing. Her eyes opened to bright sunlight and the press of a hard body against her back. The instantaneous fear was immediately replaced by delight as she recognised the scent of the body wrapped around her. This was Chase. This was the man who had given her such pleasure last night.

Her
mate.

There was no room in her thoughts for anyone but him.

With a moan he rolled over and hung off the side of the bed, feeling around for his phone. Though outside reception wasn’t possible, the internal network was effective in HQ. So if Chase was getting a call it was from one of the Sons.

She could hear Caleb’s voice as clearly as if he was in the room with them. That thought alone made her blush. But her teacher and friend was all business.

“Big shipment of hi-tech parts arrived at the Exodus site. Word just came through. Tracked it back to a German aviation company owned by Guild. We gotta get someone in there, now.”

Chase sat up, instantly fully awake. Anna couldn’t hide the smile at his bedhead and sleep-encrusted eyes, nor at the lack of the ever-present stress she’d come to associate with the leader of the Sons during the last week she’d known him. Was it really only a week? It felt like months that she’d lived beneath ground like a mole.

“Any word from the team on the ground about ways in?”

“There’s no way in that isn’t watched and secured by electric fences. Our men are monitoring things from
Przemyśl, but the way this shipment came in just now... well, it’s significant, real significant. We gotta do more than just watch from the outside.”

“Przemyśl?” Anna asked, her interest peeked. She remembered the town from her childhood. It was just over the border from Ukraine. It was to that area her parents had taken them camping.

Chase turned to her, his light-brown eyes troubled. “Yes. You’ve heard of it?”

“My father’s family came from there, generations ago, and he and his cousins, like all the kids in the family before them, used to run wild in the mountains around there. Dad would take us back to the area for vacations. I wasn’t much interested in roughing it, but the caves were interesting.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Chase told Caleb as he disconnected. “Did you ever see a large area cordoned off by a barbed wire fence?”

She sat with her back against the headboard and frowned. Her memories of the time before her captivity were hazy, more dream than real. But most of that last camping trip the summer she was approaching her twelfth birthday still stayed with her, because it was the last one.

They’d hiked all over those hills, her dad pointing out the tunnels used during the war. The mountains were riddled with caves and the best fun was when they explored them. Occasionally, inside a cavern they’d find the most amazing limestone cathedrals that rose majestically above them. It was really something when they’d suddenly come upon a sight like that after clambering along some narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel for hours. It was like a magical treasure hunt.

Most of those caves weren’t on any maps, and had never been explored. Only the main ones that had been used in the war were well known. But her dad and his cousins had been shown some pretty impressive places by their own fathers, places regarded as family secrets, and it was to these tunnels and potholes that her dad would take them.

Did she remember seeing fences? Only the once when they’d taken an alternate tunnel back outside after a few hours of exploration. Her father had been confused by the sight of those fences and a little frightened, if she'd read him right. They’d been hustled back down the tunnel the way they’d come and returned to the surface using their normal exit route. Her dad hadn’t wanted to talk about those fences. They’d somehow spooked him.

Later, her father had gone out on his own after the rest of his family were settled in for the night. She’d only known because she’d gotten up to go to the toilet and found him missing. The next day they all packed up and left in a hurry, cutting their vacation short.

Why hadn’t she remembered any of that until Chase mentioned the fences?

“Anna?”

“Sorry, I was just trying to remember. We used to go potholing through the caves in that area. It was kind of a family tradition. Every year we did it, I think. But that last year we tried another way out and we came to the surface inside a fence. That freaked Dad out and he backtracked fast.”

Chase edged onto the bed and took her by the shoulders. “How well did you know those tunnels?”

She shrugged. Though she and her brother hadn’t been allowed to roam the foothills on their own, the same way her father and his cousins had, her dad had wanted them to know their way around the maze of tunnels well enough to be able to, in turn, pass on the family secret to their kids.

Well, there would be no kids for her. And Petro was dead. So, unless her cousins were still around somewhere, she thought the secret of those caves would die with her.

Casting off the cold shiver that ran up and down her spine, she answered Chase as truthfully as she could. “Back then I would have said I knew those caves, caverns and tunnels like the back of my hand, but I’ve forgotten most of it now. Sometimes I think I intentionally forgot because it hurt too much to remember.”

“Could you draw us a map? If your dad found a way inside that complex, then we can too.”

Though she desperately wanted to be of assistance, Anna could only shake her head. “No, I’m sorry. There are only patches of information left. Not enough... but my dad’s cousins and their kids might still be around. They could show you the way, and I
might
be able to remember where we deviated.”

“Cousins?”

“Yes. My parents were both only children, but dad had a lot of boy cousins. That’s why he used to go to Przemyśl when he was a kid. To stay with his cousins. But I can’t remember ever meeting any of them. Maybe they didn’t live in the area anymore.”

“Can you tell me their names?”

Anna thought deeply. “There was Antoni and Jakub who were the sons of Dad’s father’s older brother; then there was Marcel and Igor who were the sons of the younger brother. My grandfather fought for the Soviets during World War Two and moved away to Ternopil after the war because he wanted to be more than a farmer. And we were Ukrainian in our hearts, as was the whole Volyn, really, no matter what the political parties said.”

“So they all had your last name? Not Jarvis, clearly.”

Anna grimaced. “As you rightly determined, that identity on my passport isn’t real. I am Anna Makarovska, my father was Oleksandr Makarovskyi. His father had changed his surname from the Polish Makarowski when he went to war.”

“So we’re looking for Antoni, Jakub, Marcel and Igor Makarowski or their sons. Is that right?”

She nodded, her thoughts muddled. That was a lot of cousins and their children. Why hadn’t she ever met any of them? She knew the tensions between the two countries had been bad for maybe a century or more, the borders changing with such regularity that it must have been hard to keep up with it, for those who lived there. Yet her father’s family had remained comparatively close, no matter who was in power on either side of the Curzon Line.

By the time the Communist regime fell, only a few years before she was born, things had improved a lot. So even if her dad hadn’t had much contact with his cousins once they grew up, surely once he started bringing his own family back to the area again the connections would have been rebuilt once more. There was just so much she didn’t know, and had been too young and egocentric to ask about back then.

“My dad stopped visiting the area when he was about fourteen or fifteen. That was in 1970, I think. Sometime around then. He was born in 1956 and was a lot older than mom. Anyway, there should have been lots of our family in Przemyśl, but I can’t remember ever meeting any of them. Isn’t that weird?”

“Maybe the families fell out. It happens. From what you've told me, your dad was almost certainly Résistance. Any chance the rest of the family were too?”

“I have no idea. I’m sorry...” She couldn’t hold back the tears. These questions should have had answers, but she didn’t know them. And it only served to bring back, with cruel force, the grief she felt. Because she could never go back to her parents to get the answers now. Those answers had gone up in smoke along with her loved ones in the fire.

Chase wrapped her in close so that she could hear the thumping drum of his heartbeat. This kind of comfort was so rare; it still felt unfamiliar and slightly uncomfortable. But beyond that discomfort was the overwhelming sense of safety he gave her. All of the bad things in her life were over, now he was there beside her.

When she was at peace once more, Chase drew back and kissed her forehead tenderly. “You are so young, my sweet girl. I still feel like a cradle snatcher being with you. But I don’t regret a moment of last night. Do you?”

“Not a moment. I’m still reeling from finding out that I
can
enjoy
sex. I was convinced it wasn’t possible."

“The resilience of the cats is amazing. We have seen some impossible healing done between mates in the last four months. By the Mates not the Sons, I grant you. But maybe there was healing done when you were activated. It is all a bit of a mystery. Just let’s accept our good fortune.”

She nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly.

They’d overslept and missed breakfast, so Chase grabbed them something from the kitchen and then they headed for the IT suite and Caleb. Once the geek was caught up, his eyes shone brightly with enthusiasm.

“My favourite activity, tracking people. The sooner we find them, the sooner we can get inside that fence and discover what the Guild are up to,” he exclaimed with OTT glee.

“Get Anna involved. She can read docs not in English. Do you speak Polish?” Chase looked at her, his eyes filled with pride.

“Yes. My father spoke it and we kids learned it easily enough. I can probably read it without too much trouble.”

Chase beamed his approval, dropped a kiss on her cheek, and exited the room with a spring in his step.

“He’s looking a hell of a lot better. You been working a little Mate Magic on him, sugah?” Caleb asked with a cheeky smirk.

A blush burned its way up into her cheeks and Anna scuttled to take her place behind the nearest terminal. “We sorted out a few things last night, that’s all.”

Caleb laughed loudly. “I need a little of that sorting out myself, right about now. Maybe I should go clubbing in town. It’s been a long time since I got
sorted
.”

Ignoring him, Anna began her search through the superficial layers of the net. Caleb had explained that what most people saw as the world wide web was simply the tip of the iceberg. There was so much more there that no one but geeks and people in the know had a clue about. So while she did the superficial searches, Caleb went in deep. It made for great teamwork.

“Oh shit,” Caleb said about an hour later. Up to that point neither of them had turned up anything substantial on the current Makarowskis. Sure, there was a family tree that went back to the middle-ages, but not much since the rise of Communism.

“What?” she looked up and frowned.

“You didn’t know these people, right? So you won’t be upset if you find out what happened to them?”

“Happened to them? Something happened to them?” She felt suddenly numb. Part of her had been excited at the thought of finding family, even if, biologically speaking, none of the Makarowskis were blood kin to her. The idea that they had died too, along with her parents and brother, seemed too awful to contemplate.

“Yeah, you could say that. All four cousins were shipped off to work camps in 1972, along with their fathers. None of them ever came back.”

“Work camps? But why?” she gasped out. “I know there was a lot of that kind of thing going on after the war, but not that late.”

“Doesn’t say. But what’s interesting to me is that it was only the year before that the Exodus property was consolidated and security tightened around the area.”

In her mind’s eye she witnessed again her father’s terror when he saw the fence and realised where they’d come out. Had he always known there was a connection between the building of the complex and his family’s disappearance? Or had the penny only dropped that day when he realised where the caves led to?

He’d been fifteen the last time he was there, and that fateful summer of 2007 it would have been thirty-seven years since he’d seen his cousins and uncles. Maybe her father had been no wiser about the events of that time than she was at a similar age. Maybe he’d heard things from his father, reasons for staying away from the area, which kept him from returning until after the Soviets had lost their power. Maybe he only felt safe to go back then.

“Was it definitely the Communist regime that took them?” she asked for clarification, a horrible idea starting to surface.

“Not clear. This is an archived police report for the town. Maybe we could find out where they were sent if we spoke to some of the older locals.”

“What if it was the Guild that made my dad’s family disappear because they knew the secrets of the caves? What if the Guild didn’t know about my dad until... oh, god... until that last summer when we came out inside the fences and dad freaked out. What if... What if he was seen, tracked, and the house fire wasn’t an accident? What if my abduction wasn’t by chance? I was a lot older than the other kids. I thought they took me because I looked young for my age, but what if it was a way of making sure I eventually died, too, so the secret of the caves was lost for good? Oh, no... no... no!” She pounded her closed fist against her forehead with each negation.