Wild (48 page)

He wanted her.

In his bed.

He wanted her to be safe.

He wanted to take her with Channing.

But he still wanted her in
his
bed, as if this was where she ultimately belonged.

It was a losing battle he'd been fighting all day. He'd watched through the window in his bedroom as she'd walked through the grass with Channing and Kira, listening as they undoubtedly talked about the mountains and the cascading spring just a few miles away. They took her into the garage, showing her the cars and bikes there. She would have had questions. She always seemed to have questions. Channing would have answered her because he believed in being totally honest, especially with the women they planned to sleep with.

Not that Malec was dishonest. He wasn't. In fact, his basic thought was that it was better when people knew the truth because then they had an idea of what they were dealing with and could act accordingly. He didn't like lies or betrayal for that matter.

But this woman was different. She was a human. And he couldn't easily dismiss that fact.

Nor could he readily disregard the danger she might be in because of him.

He and Channing had gone over it earlier today, once the tour had been completed and Caroline had been swept into the kitchen by Kira.

“He took that dog to her because he knew she would either call or come running to you,” Channing had said, sitting in one of the matching recliners in the front half of Malec's bedroom.

“I know,” Malec had said as he'd paced back and forth from one end of the room to the other.

His fingers had rubbed over his chin, temples throbbing as he'd thought about what to do next.

“If I hadn't taken that first buck to her, she wouldn't be involved,” he'd admitted.

“She's a veterinarian,” Channing had easily replied. “Where else would you take a wounded animal?”

He was right, Malec had thought, pausing momentarily. “So he's been watching me.”

“Probably, but he knows the pack is here. He most likely picked up your scent first since you jog in the forest the most out of any of us. You said you found that first buck along the path where you run?”

“Every morning,” Malec had said with a nod of his head, “I take that same trail before I stretch out farther along the terrain. It's not that far from the house.”

“So, yeah, he knew you would find it,” Channing added.

“I found it, and I took it to Caroline. The next day, he bypasses me totally, then he came back to the forest and howled. Like he was telling me again what he'd done.”

“Twice,” Channing had said. “He took animals to her twice and then left her a note.”

“He wants me to come after him,” Malec had stated seriously.

It was Channing's turn to nod. “I think you're right,” he'd said. “He wants you to lead the pack after him, to lead him directly to Blaez.”

“Or to take us out one by one. I was the last to be added to the pack. The last will go first.” Malec had gritted his teeth after those words. His father used to say them to Malec and Mason, who was the younger twin by eight minutes.

After Channing had left him alone, Malec had searched every book in Blaez's monumental library, looking for anything he could find on the Solo.

They were lone lycans, either because they were cast aside by a pack or by choice. At any rate they were more dangerous because they had no rules to follow, none but their own. And if one was there, hunting him, then that meant it had a plan for something bigger. A plan that Malec would relish breaking into tiny pieces, just as he planned to do to that Solo the moment he found him.

But for now, as he stepped into the dark bedroom, Caroline moving quietly behind him, he had something else to deal with. He wasn't so certain of how it would end.

Taking women had always been a necessity to Malec. He was a lycan, with an insatiable appetite for sexual pleasures. It was like a drug to lycans, coming together and catering to the body's instinctive pleasure requirements. In the beginning it had been mechanical. His body craved, and so he lay with a lycan female to feed the hunger.

Then Mason died.

And the cravings became a reminder of the very thing that had shattered Malec's world. Mason hated being a lycan. He hated knowing that he would never fit in to this human world and that eventually he would become a killer, whether by choice or by proxy. He couldn't stand the differences and the quarrels that had been unfairly thrust upon him, and he'd wasted no time or words telling his parents, Malec, and their two older sisters how he felt about their fate.

“It is what it is,” Oran Zenta had said to Mason one night after an outburst of emotion from his youngest child. “We are who we are, and we have a place in this world. It may not be the place you want, but it is where we are meant to be.”

“We're meant to be outcasts, abominations, and enemies to one another through no fault of our own!” Mason had yelled back.

Lisabeth Zenta sat quietly in a corner, tears streaming down her face. She always cried over Mason's unhappiness, unsure, even as his mother, of what she could do to make it better. Their sisters were out that evening, and Malec had finally stood, beckoning for Mason to come with him. He would take him into the backyard, and they would play basketball the way they always did. The competitive streak that ran deep and long in both of them would provide a provocative game and succeed in washing away the doubts and worries being a lycan could sometimes bring about.

But on that night, Mason hadn't wanted to play.

“I hate it here! I hate this life!” he'd screamed once they were outside.

Malec, with all the knowledge of a seventeen-year-old, had only shaken his head. “Come on, Mason, it's not all that bad. Nobody even knows what we are.”

“And they never can know! That's my point exactly,” his brother had said, turning so fast that in the next seconds he was in Malec's face. “What if I find a woman and fall in love with her? What if she's a human? I can never tell her who and what I really am. What if I hurt her? What if she hurts herself once she finds out the truth, like Nyktimos's wife did?”

Malec had shaken his head. “Aleya killed herself because Nyktimos bit her. He forced her into a life she didn't ask for.” Even as he'd spoken the words Malec had known what his brother would say.

“Just as we were,” Mason had mumbled quietly.

Malec had sighed with exasperation. “There's no turning back, Mason. Like Dad said, we are who we are. We need only to live the life that was given to us, to fulfill whatever destiny it is for us to fulfill.”

Mason had slowly backed away from Malec then. “What if I don't want to fulfill someone else's destiny? What if I don't want to be a pawn in Zeus's petty game? What if none of this is what I want?”

Malec hadn't been able to come up with an answer that night. And the next morning when he'd awakened, it was to his mother's scream and his father's earth-shattering howl. Mason had hanged himself in the bathroom located in the basement of their home.

From that moment on everything about who Malec was and what his role in this life would be irritated him. Sure, he believed his father's words—they did have a purpose, and it was up to them to see it through. He was a lycan, and that could not be changed. But he did not have to like it. And he would not take the same path as his brother. Even with that knowledge Malec knew he could not live in that house without Mason. Two days after the funeral he'd enlisted in the Marines, and he'd walked away from that house in Dayton, Ohio. He'd never gone back.

After that, when the sexual urges came, as they were going to do as long as he drew breath, they'd brought with it a darkness that Malec had never been able to explain. It was as if everything Mason had hated about being a lycan had been transferred to Malec so that he abhorred the thought of these sexual urges so much that he'd learned to sate them in the darkest, most depraved ways possible. He'd begun taking lycan females in groups. This way the females didn't need to know him, and he didn't need to know them. They did things, all sorts of things to each other, and then moved on to the next. It was both tiresome and numbing, and when it was over Malec was able to face the world one more time. He was able to do the things that Mason could not.

Channing had called it a stroke of fate that they met while in the service and that both of them had harbored their own dark secrets, allowing them to enjoy the same deviant sexual tastes. It had seemed inevitable that the duo was born, and after the first night that they'd shared a woman Malec had no choice but to agree. The things they did to a woman together, the pleasure that soared through his body, reached down so deep into his soul that it became Malec's lifeline. It became the only way he could continue on without Mason.

“Why do you do that?”

Her voice seemed foreign in the quiet of this space. Maybe it was simply because there'd never been a female voice in there before. Malec never brought a woman into his private rooms. Sure, he and Channing had occasionally, especially since moving out there, brought the lycan of their choice out to the lodge to be with instead of taking her to a hotel as they had when they'd lived in the big city. But on those occasions they used Channing's room, or any other room in the house that was not occupied. Now, they traveled to Entice, a club in Bozeman that was owned and run by lycans. It was a four-hour drive, but in Malec's McLaren, it usually only took them two and a half.

“Why do I do what?” he replied, immediately releasing her hand because that too had begun to feel foreign.

“You're angry one minute and contemplative the next. You want me and then you act agitated because you want me. Too many contradictions,” she said as if she weren't questioning but stating a simple fact.

Malec did not like the statement.

“I know exactly what I want at all times,” he replied. It was a lie of monumental proportions.

“Then you may just be the only one in the world that can claim that,” she said with a slight chuckle. “Look, I think we both know that there's been a strong attraction between us since that first day at the clinic.”

That was a vast understatement, Malec thought. They were still standing in the dark. He hadn't moved to turn on any lights, nor had he turned to face her. Despite his claim of knowing what he wanted at all times, he had no idea what he wanted to do about her at the moment.

“Do you know what I want?” he decided to ask her.

There was something in the level tone of her voice, the way she'd stood toe-to-toe with him just a few minutes ago in front of everyone. She hadn't refused to come with him, but she had made it known that she wasn't coming for any other reason but that she had decided on her own. Confidence and independence. She had both in spades. He didn't know why that intrigued him. He'd never given much thought to the traits of the women he'd been with in the past.

“I know what we both want,” she said before touching a hand to his back.

He hadn't heard her move closer, hadn't even sensed it, but now he felt her fingers flattening on his back in a light touch, but one that had his body stiffening and his dick throbbing.

“Right,” he said finally. “What we both want.”

Malec turned to her then, taking her in his arms. She was soft and warm, all delicious curves and tender arousal. Her hands came up instantly, cupping his face. Her head was tilted, and she tried to stare into his eyes. Because of the darkness she could not see them, could not see how fearful he was at this very moment.

To ensure that was true, Malec closed his eyes. He followed his instincts until their lips met and he kissed her. Thrusting his tongue immediately between her lips, he moaned when she opened for him. A bold and spicy flavor assaulted him instantly. The wine combined with the chili, her arms that reached around his neck to pull him down closer, and the quick thrust of her hips against his growing erection. She had been right—she knew what they both wanted.

As the kiss deepened, so did Malec's thoughts. His hands cupped her generous ass, pressing her full into his raging arousal this time, letting her feel every inch of how much he wanted her.

“Right now,” he said, his teeth skimming a heated path along her jaw. “I want to be inside you right now.”

She let her head fall back. “Yes!” she whispered. “Yes, Malec, that's what we both want.”

He kissed down her neck, stroking his tongue along her bared skin. With his hands still gripping her ass and hers cupping the back of his head, Malec moved even lower. Without using his hands he pushed at the collar of the loose-fitting shirt as he moved downward, his lips and tongue making their mark along the plump swell of her breasts. Malec groaned as his face sank farther into the cushiony depths, turning his cheek to rub along her nipple.

Cursing, he realized she must wear the thinnest bras ever because he immediately felt the hardness of her nipple and the ball of her piercing. He was growling by this point, reaching up a hand and tearing the shirt and bra from her. He cupped that breast, holding it up to his mouth where his tongue extended, flicking over the pierced nipple and feeling his dick harden with each lick.

Caroline moaned as well, holding the back of his head up to her breast like she was feeding him. When his teeth closed around her nipple and Malec shook his head, Caroline hissed, her nails biting into the skin at his neck. He moved to the other breast, licking and suckling until he was growling with need. The hunger beat at him like a battering ram, and Malec almost buckled under the weight of it. Instead, he pulled away slowly, grasping Caroline's hand once again.

He walked deeper into the room, past the recliners and small table, going straight to his bed. There were small lamps in his room instead of overhead fluorescent lighting because Malec preferred it to be obscure. Actually, his preference was candlelight, as would be evidenced by all the candles he kept in the bottom drawer of his bureau. Candles reminded him of home.