The Alpha's Mate (39 page)

“You bitch!”

Elizabeth felt him lunge and she turned and
swung out with the broom, much as she had done with the poker the
night Max was attacked. Everest grabbed the shaft and wrenched it
from her grasp, tossing it across the room with one hand. With the
other hand, he held her firmly by the throat. He smiled into her
face and squeezed.

Stars sparkled before her eyes and her vision
started to fade. A mighty force hit them from the side, toppling
her to the ground and throwing Everest across the room. She gasped
for breath and as her vision cleared, she had only a glimpse of a
blood and mud covered wolf before the room burst with light.

Everest’s change had been almost instant and
it sent Elizabeth scrambling for the corner. The two wolves leapt
in unison, clashed together in midair and fell to the floor amidst
snarls and flailing claws. They broke apart, circled and hurled
themselves together again. Fangs clattered together and saliva
spewed. The fell to the floor hard enough to make it shudder
beneath them.

Elizabeth curled into her corner, drawing her
knees up to her chest and holding them in place with the handle of
the broom, her hands gripping it to either side of her knees. She
had no idea where it came from, but she couldn’t let it go. The
bloodied wolf had no chance against Everest, not after the battle
he’d just waged in the field. She hadn’t hung around to watch, but
she knew the attacking wolves were either evenly matched or
outnumbered and Everest’s protectors were part of his elite guard.
This bloodied wolf had suffered in the battle. He would be no match
for Everest’s unused magic.

There were no sounds from outside. That
battle was over. There would be no rescue from there. She looked
for a route that would lead to an escape, but there wasn’t one. The
fight took up the whole room. The table was thrown over on its side
and slammed against the kitchen door. A chair tipped, fell and
skidded to her feet with the wolves entangled on top. Blood and
saliva spattered her face and chest. Everest’s jaws snapped inches
from her face and the terror she’d held at bay for almost three
days burst from her. Elizabeth shut her eyes and screamed and
screamed and screamed.

Her screams ignited frenzy in the battling
wolves and their screams joined with hers. Their snarling, snapping
jaws tore chunks of fur and flesh from each other.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop, didn’t stop until
her shrieks turned to rasping croaks. She curled her head into her
shoulder, trying to shut out the sounds of their bloodbath. Her
breath was ragged and her body convulsed with silent sobs.

She never knew how long it was before she
realized the room around her was silent or how long she sat afraid
to open her eyes. After a time, she cautiously peeked out through
her lashes and found herself staring at the bloody wolf. His great
body loomed over hers and his muzzle dripped with blood. Instinct
made her raise the broom. The wolf sat and cocked his head at
her.

“Li-i-zz-ie…”

Elizabeth blinked and the bright blue eyes
that she knew so well blinked back. “Marshall? Oh, Marshall,” she
croaked. She threw her arm about the wolf and sobbed into his ruff.
“I thought you… I didn’t think you… Oh god, Marshall, tell me
Bobby’s all right.” She pulled back to look into his face.
Please don’t tell me you sacrificed a child for me.

Marshall’s wolf grinned.

“Well shit.” Charles stood in the doorway as
naked as the day he was born. He was bleeding from several wounds,
but grinning. “Don’t hit him, Elizabeth. He probably deserves it,
but don’t do it. Not today.”

Elizabeth looked at the broom in her hand and
lowered it to the floor. Marshall snarled at his brother.

Charles backed up, hands in the air. “Okay,
okay. It’s just that I’m supposed to be a Witness. Ah, how about I
tell them the deed is done. Uh, you want me to…” He waved his hand
at something on the floor.

Marshall nodded and snarled again. It was
then Elizabeth saw the body of the immense wolf. Its throat was
bloodied and torn. She stared at the creature, her mind unable to
process what she saw. Calvin Everest’s wolf lay dead on the floor.
Elizabeth body shuddered with a tension releasing sigh and then she
wept with relief.

Charles reached for the body and the room was
filled with the blinding light of Marshall’s change. He gathered
Elizabeth to his chest and held her face against him while his
brother finished his task.

She heard Charles giving orders outside and
then he stuck his head back in the door. “The deed will be done,
won’t it?” He snickered and winked. “Baby brother always was a bit
slow with the girls.”

Elizabeth felt Marshall stiffen and start to
rise. She wrapped her arms around him and held him to her. “The
deed will be done,” she whispered because she could do nothing
else. “You have our word.”

Two seconds later, Charles was back at the
door. “I’ll head back and take care of your pack.” He wiggled his
fingers and the golden glow appeared. He grinned and waved the
glowing hand. “No need for thanks. I know, I know, I’ve fought a
skirmish, watched my metrosexual pack get the crap beat out of them
- we won, by the way – and now I’m about to exhaust myself further,
but that’s okay. It’s for a good cause.”

“Charlie.” Marshall took a deep breath and
nodded to his brother. “Thanks, bro.”

Charles wasn’t smiling now. He nodded in
return. “I wasn’t there for you before, Marsh. I hope I’ve made
amends.”

Marshall waited until he was sure they were
alone before he spoke. “We don’t need to do this, Lizzie. It isn’t
right. It isn’t what I wanted for you. We can wait until the next
full moon. I want to give you the mating you deserve.”

She brought her hands to his face and used
her thumbs to wipe his blood stained lips. “I deserve this,
Marshall. I’ve earned the right to be called the Alpha’s Mate, your
mate. All I ask is that we clean ourselves first. I don’t want
Calvin Everest’s blood between us. He’s gone and I want his taint
gone as well.”

Marshall picked her up and carried her to the
bathroom where he set her down and turned on the water to warm.
Elizabeth started to undress, but he stayed her hand.

“Let me,” he said. “I wanted to do this the
first time I carried you to the shower. You’ll never know how much
of my magic it took to keep the touch under control.” He bent on
one knee and removed her sneakers, caressing her calves as he
removed each one.

Elizabeth blushed when he raised her soiled
dress and revealed the granny pants beneath. Marshall stroked his
hand over the soft white cotton. “You were wearing something just
like this, the first time I saw you. Don’t blush,” he laughed
softly. “That little white rear dancing in the air while you looked
for something in your car tortured my dreams for weeks.”

He lifted the dress over her head and slid it
down her back. Along the way, he unhooked he white lace bra. It
too, slid to the floor. His hands moved slowly around to her
breasts. As he kneaded the soft flesh, his head fell back and he
sighed with the pleasure of it.

Elizabeth sighed, too. “Not until we’ve
showered. Please, love, I need this beginning to be fresh and clean
and free.”

Marshall sighed again, turned the shower on
and slid her cotton panties down her legs. She had barely stepped
from them, when he picked her up and stepped into the tub. The warm
water pooled pink around their feet. They stood, embraced, for
several minutes, until the water ran clear.

Somewhere along the path of her flight, she’d
lost her woodland crown, but bits of debris still littered her
hair. Marshall was the soul of patience as he picked it out and
released the tight braid.

He reached for the shampoo, but she took it
from him. “You first,” she said. He didn’t argue. She scrubbed his
head and soaped every inch of his body, clucking over every cut and
bruise, and even laughed a little when they awkwardly switched
positions in the tiny tub so he could rinse. “You’re beautiful,”
she told him when she was finished.

“I thought that was my line,” he laughed.

“It’s true. You’re beautiful. Not just your
face and body, though they’re certainly not lacking. It’s in your
soul, I think. It’s in the way you care for the people you love,
the way you make them feel, the way you make me feel.” She handed
him the shampoo and turned her back to him. “Tell me how you
rescued Bobby.”

Marshall poured a little in his palm and
massaged it into her scalp. “I heard you and I went because I felt
the boy’s terror. It was the wolver who chased him up that tree who
needed rescuing. The fool forgot he was twice as heavy as the boy
which meant Bobby could climb twice as high. Just as I got there, a
limb snapped and the fool fell. Broke both ankles when he landed.”
He shook his head and water sprayed in an arc from his hair. “You
sent me on a wild goose chase, woman. I ought to spank you
both.”

His laugh turned into a choked sob and he
turned her to him, holding her so tightly she almost couldn’t
breathe. He buried his face in her hair, heedless of the shampoo’s
foam.

“I thought I’d lost you, Lizzie. I thought I
would be too late.”

“Shh, now, shh.” She rubbed her hands over
his back. “You weren’t too late. You were just in time.” Her hand
slid around to fondle him between his legs. “Now help me rinse my
hair,” she said with a sultry laugh. “It’s time you fulfill your
duty as the winner of the Chase.”

Chapter 41

The kissing started as he rinsed her hair and
drying each other became an exploration of bodies with hands and
lips and teeth and very little towel. She was wrapped around him by
the time he carried her to bed; her arms around his neck, her legs
around his waist. She needed him, wanted him, couldn’t get close
enough to him.

She could feel the need in Marshall, too. He
wasted no time when they fell to the bed. His mouth was on hers,
plundering, demanding. His tongue danced over her lips and teeth
and plunged inward to taste her tongue. Her mouth, as hungry as
his, followed where he led. His mouth moved to her eyes, her cheek,
her chin and moved to the lobe of her ear. Elizabeth moaned
softly.

“The touch, Marshall,” she whispered, “I
want, I need your Alpha’s touch.” It would be the final stroke in
erasing Calvin Everest’s taint from her soul.

Marshall laughed; a joyful sound of victory
that echoed through the cabin. He rolled with her, carrying her
over his chest, ran his hands through her tangled wet hair and down
her back to rest on the globes of her rear where he pressed her
tightly to him.

Her body exploded with sensation, every inch
of her burning to be touched. Her nipples tightened further and
they ached. How they ached. She rubbed them against his chest,
feeling each tiny hair send a fiery tingle that pulsed through her
veins and lit up her heart. Her nipple found his and the connection
was electric.

Her mouth traveled over his chin, the line of
his jaw, his neck. She kissed, she licked, she nibbled and tasted
the sweet flavor of the forest, felt sunshine through his skin,
smelled the sweet, clean aroma of mountain air.

Her hips writhed against him, pressing
herself to him, wanting more than this contact allowed. Fire was
burning between her legs and only Marshall’s touch could quench it.
She whimpered with frustration.

“Touch me,” she begged, “Please.”

Marshall pushed her shoulders back until she
was sitting, her head thrown back, her breasts jutting forward. His
hands sought them out, molding them, rubbing his roughed hands
against nipples already over sensitized. She gasped when he rolled
the pearled and constricted buds between finger and thumb, hissed
when he released them.

“Please, please.” He knew what she wanted,
what she needed. Why wouldn’t he give it to her? But all she could
whisper was, “Please.”

He laughed, ran his fingers lightly down her
ribs and circled her navel. She pressed against him and lifted her
hips to force his hand to travel to the place where she needed him
most. He ignored her and began instead to play with the triangle of
curls at her mound. She whimpered.

At last, long last, he reached her slit and
rather than finding satisfaction in that touch, her need flared
higher. His finger began to lazily circle that heart of desire. He
changed its speed, pressure and position until he found the place
that made her eyes go wide.

Elizabeth moaned and moved against his hand
desperate for more. Her breath was coming faster, her body
beginning to sizzle. Her need for him was almost unbearable. His
mouth caught hers and swallowed her cry of longing as he plunged
his finger home. Faster and faster he pumped, the base of his palm
pounding against her swollen and sensitive nub while his finger
reamed her insides. And all the while, she was riding it harder and
harder, wanting more. Another finger joined the first and then
another and now it was his thumb that darted and played around her
swollen nub. Beneath heavy lidded eyes she saw him watching her,
smiling in satisfaction as she rode higher and higher through the
flames until she thought they would consume her. And then they
did.

Elizabeth‘s senses burst in a fiery red
eruption, a release of cosmic energy. Marshall’s magic. Nothing
mattered but this sweet release from the fires of her desire. It
lit up her whole being with glorious sensations and left her
whimpering and moaning as it passed. She collapsed onto Marshall’s
chest.

She could have lain there forever, basking in
the afterglow of such a stunning experience. But the Alpha’s touch
had control and now that her own needs had been sated, temporarily
at least, her attentions turned to Marshall.