Zurlo, Michele - Riley [Daughters of Circe 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (17 page)

A growl sounded low in his throat, and she reluctantly grasped the rabbit’s foot in her hand. His other hand came up, and he presented her with three more. Oh, the things she did for love.

Soren knelt where she had just been. He gathered some dry leaves from nearby and perused the selection of sticks. After careful consideration, he chose two. With quick, efficient movements, he coaxed smoke and then a flame. In no time, a small fire burned.

“Ideally, you’d dig a pit or at least line it with rocks to prevent it from spreading. But we’re not sleeping here, so it doesn’t matter so much.”

After sleeping all day, she wasn’t too tired. Riley said nothing, but when he held out his hand, she gave him the rabbits. They didn’t turn her stomach as badly as she thought they would.

He held them over the flames.

“Don’t you have to skin them first?” She might not be a meat-eater, but that didn’t make her completely ignorant as far as food preparation went.

“No knife.” He didn’t look away from the rabbit. Flames reached up and licked the paws of the poor things. “And this way, they marinate in their own juices.”

Nausea coiled in her stomach and bashed about. Riley couldn’t quite tell if the cause came mostly from hunger or disgust. The scent wafting from the fire interested her almost as much as Soren’s post-shift scent. It didn’t help that he hadn’t dressed. He knelt before the fire in all his naked glory.

The nausea turned to desire. She stumbled back, tripped over something, and landed on her ass in the underbrush. In the glow of the fire, she saw Soren look in her direction. His gaze shifted back to the rabbit, but the smile he tried to squelch sneaked through.

“It’s not funny,” she said. Need made her voice sound strange to her own ears. “You could help me up.”

“You don’t need help. Given the scent rolling from you, you’re going into heat. You need to get laid.” He followed up with a short chuckle.

Should she be offended by his assessment? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t. Though she was outside the reach of the fire, she felt as if it scorched her. She wondered how he could stay so close to it. Somehow, it seemed alive, almost like a third member to their group. The thing nearly licked his skin. Surely the heat must be unbearable.

She closed her eyes as she remembered. “Fire is your element. That’s how you could start a blaze so easily. That’s why you can stand to be so close to it.”

“It’s this or tear your clothes off and put you on your hands and knees. I’m trying to be a gentleman, Riley. It would help if you shut up. Every time you speak, I can hear your desire. Combined with the scent of your heat, it’s difficult to resist, and I know you have to be sore from the last time. I was exceptionally rough.”

Riley crept closer to the fire, not entirely sure if she needed the warmth or if she just liked how it seemed to assuage the worst of her need. As Soren had requested, she said nothing.

After a while, he took the rabbits away from the fire. He threw one onto her lap and moved to the other side of the fire with the other three. She stared at the blackened corpse, uncertain as to how she wanted to proceed. Could she actually eat it? God, she was ravenous.

She picked it up and looked at it. Her stomach growled, threatening to jump up her esophagus and tear it from her hands. “How am I supposed to eat it?”

“Rip it with your nails or tear it with your teeth.”

A quick glance showed that he had already devoured one of his rabbits. Partially shifting, he used one of his razor-sharp claws to rip open a second kill.

“I don’t have claws, Soren.”

“You ripped the hell out of my shirt and my back. You have claws.”

He didn’t sound upset about it, but heat flooded her face anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

His shrug nearly drew her attention away from the satisfied, cocky amusement on his face. “Eat, Riley. When I finish here, I’m going to kill the fire and we’re heading out.”

Reluctantly, she dug her nails into the poor creature’s flesh. She murmured an ancient prayer of sorrow and thanks. The words were in a language she didn’t understand, but both the words and the meaning were perfectly clear to her. Her nails changed into claws, and she watched in fascinated wonder.

Juices seeped from the flesh as she tore the skin away. The pink muscles gleamed in the firelight, and a hunger she’d never before experienced seized her. When she emerged from her frenzy, she had the vague sense of having eaten like a ravenous animal. The carcass in her lap wasn’t much more than skin and bones. She scrambled to her feet and tossed it in the fire, desperately wishing for the flames to purge her soul.

She hadn’t realized how close she came to following the remains into the fire when steel bands closed around her body. Soren whispered sweet, soothing words into her ear. She couldn’t make sense of them, but the tone of his voice and the solid feel of his chest against her back calmed the panic a little.

“What the hell happened?” Her question came out louder and angrier than she intended.

“You had dinner. It’s okay, Riley. You need to eat. The transformation needs fuel.”

She thrashed in his arms, fighting him with every bit of her strength. Unfortunately, he was the stronger person. “You wouldn’t stop and get food, you ass! You did this on purpose. You wanted me to be so hungry I would completely lose my grip on reality and eat meat.”

Soren sighed and buried his face in her neck. He held her until she ceased struggling. “No, Riley. My demon wouldn’t let me stop to feed you. He seems to have changed his mind. At least, if he’s pissed about this, he hasn’t said anything.”

The little demon had been hopping around the campfire ever since Soren had returned. It yelled and waved its arms now, but Soren didn’t seem to notice it. Now that she wasn’t about to collapse from hunger, she could see the damn thing even more clearly, and she could understand some of the words. It was pissed, yet Soren didn’t react.

Joy surged through Riley as she realized Teigh’s plan was working. Sex with Soren had siphoned off enough of his energy to diminish the demon’s influence. Unfortunately, that meant Riley could see it all the better. On the plus side, she had no desire to do as it commanded.

She relaxed into Soren’s embrace. The musky scent of his recent transformation permeated her senses. “I’m not sore.”

Surprisingly, she wasn’t. He had been rougher with her than ever, and she felt no tenderness, nothing to indicate bruising. Having him so near and secreting that scent made her knees weak.

She turned her face and burrowed her cheek against his chest. “Why does the smell of you make me want to throw you to the ground and skip the foreplay?”

“Pheromones. You’re in heat, Riley. The smell of you makes me yearn to throw you to the ground and fuck you senseless.” He ground his erection against the small of her back.

Her breath came in short pants, and she felt control slipping away. Soren released her arms a bit, and she used the small amount of freedom to unbutton her jeans. Wiggling her hips, she shimmed out of them and rubbed her backside against Soren.

With a growl, he dropped one hand. He fumbled between them. The next thing she knew, she was on her hands and knees, and he knelt between her legs. One arm still held her around the waist. The tip of his cock poked at her wetness. She arched her back and whimpered in invitation. Her new instincts warned her against pushing her alpha too far too fast.

He entered her slowly. This wasn’t what she wanted. Part of her knew he was trying to hang on to his control so he wouldn’t hurt her. She loved him for that, but she wanted him to let go completely and take her like the mate she was.

“Please. I need this.” She whined as she begged, a completely lupine noise that must have snapped Soren’s control. He plunged into her hard and fast. He didn’t stop to allow her time to adjust to his size as he normally did, and for that, she felt intense relief.

The feeling didn’t have time to spread. Soren’s thrusts came every bit as fast and hard as his initial entry. Shivers shot through her system, battering her body with relentless waves and generating more heat than she’d ever felt. Her pussy felt as if he fucked her with flames. The burning coiled tight, and her orgasm washed through her like molten lava.

Her entire body bowed and tensed, and she was unable to scream. She lost the ability to move, but Soren didn’t falter. His fingers dug into her hips as he held her still to meet his every thrust. The second orgasm followed, fast and furious. It robbed her of strength. Her arms gave out and she dropped to the ground, only her hips held aloft in Soren’s grip.

He howled, his triumphant noise penetrating the forest and quieting every single critter within hearing range, and his hot semen spurted, bathing her womb.

And still, he didn’t stop. His cock didn’t soften. He pumped into her several more times, and then he pulled out. His absence from her body was momentary. Without warning or preparation, he impaled her ass. Good thing her juices had been thick and freely flowing. The pinch of pain was minimal. He rammed into her, battering her ass with the same ferocity he had used on her pussy.

Riley liked having her ass fucked, but she had always needed clitoral stimulation as well to make her climax. Too tired to lift her hand to her pussy, she expected to lie there and ride out the storm. Heat bloomed and she felt more connected to Soren than at any previous time. He was part of her soul, and there was no way she would let his compulsion tear apart their family.

The orgasm took her by surprise. The intensity of it stole her vision, and her consciousness followed.

* * * *

Soren looked down at the limp woman in his grip. Completely unconscious, she didn’t groan or protest as he removed himself from her body. For that, he was grateful. Once again, he had been too rough with her. At least he didn’t scent the metallic odor of blood. He hadn’t actually hurt her.

He had used her body, and she hadn’t seemed to mind one bit. Her single protest had been a plea for more. She hadn’t made much noise that he could hear above the blood pounding in his ears.

Gently, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to a stream he had discovered nearby. The water was cold, but it failed to rouse her. Careful to keep his touch light, he cleaned evidence of their coming together from her body. When he finished bathing them both, he carried her to the fire and pulled her clothes over her limbs before dressing himself.

He lay her down next to the fire and curled his body around hers. Grief burned in his gut.
Would she be able to forgive him for what he would be driven to do?

Consciousness drifted away, and sleep overtook him. Not too long after, a sound jerked him from his uneasy slumber. He eased his arm from under Riley’s head and sat up, ready to defend them against anything.

The sound came again. He realized it was the breaking of brush underfoot. Soren frowned. It wasn’t like him to need time to identify noises. His advanced senses, acute even for a wolf, let him know these things innately. It came again and again. Someone prowled the woods, and that person was close. Too close. Soren should have sensed them long before now. Not only should he have sensed them, at this distance, he should have been able to catch a scent. He could not.

He shucked his clothes and crouched on the ground next to Riley, who remained blissfully unaware. Good. She needed time to heal, both in body and in spirit.

A pale glow soon presented itself as a beam of light. At last Soren’s senses kicked in, and he recognized Teigh’s scent. He rose to his feet and slipped back into his jeans. Before long, Teigh stumbled upon the miniscule clearing where they had made camp. The ambient light from Teigh’s flashlight mixed with the pale moonlight filtering through the canopy, giving enough light for Soren to clearly make out Teigh’s strong and striking features.

He wore hiking boots, jeans, and a heavy flannel shirt that didn’t quite look right with the long dreadlocks that fell over his shoulder and down his back. Soren watched in silence as Teigh stepped closer, looking for evidence of anger or hate. When he locked gazes with Teigh, he found nothing but relief.