Dark Wolf Running (Bloodrunners) (22 page)

“You like that?” he asked, his soft lips moving against the silvery scars that marred her flesh.

“
Yes.
Do you?”

Breathing against her damp nipple, he rasped, “Oh, yeah. If I liked it any more, it would kill me, El.”

“Mmm,” she moaned, gasping as he pulled her back into the searing heat of his mouth. “I know the feeling.”

Wyatt growled deep in his chest, wanting to fucking consume her. Her nipples, so sweet and swollen, were like little berries on his tongue. He couldn’t get enough of the lush, intoxicating flavor. The soft, silken texture. But there were other places he needed to kiss and taste, so that she would know exactly how beautiful he found her.
Every
part of her.

With his hands under her ass, Wyatt lifted her against the front of his body and carried her back to his bedroom, the pain in his shoulder nothing but a distant blur at the edge of his consciousness, crushed by his need. He wasn’t anywhere near gentle as he tossed her back onto the bed and stripped off the rest of her clothes, until she was lying before him in nothing but skin.

Without giving her time to panic, he crawled onto the bed and spread her legs, crouching between them as he smoothed the pad of his thumb over the worst of the scars he could see. It was so close to her pink, beautiful sex, high on the tender flesh of her inner thigh, and he locked his jaw against the blistering burn of rage that seared through his veins like an acid. It was pure, gut-wrenching horror to realize how close he’d come to losing her before he’d ever even found her.

He knew, from his talk with Jeremy, that even though Elise could remember very little of the rape, she had been conscious of it happening, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine how terrified she must have been. Tears of anger and grief burned at the backs of his eyes, his heart climbing into his throat as he tried to swallow down his fury. He had to shove the acidic thoughts away, knowing they were dangerous to his sanity. When he allowed himself to think about it, about what those bastards had done to her, the intensity of his hatred became such a violent, destructive force that it threatened to consume him. But it didn’t belong here in this moment with them. No, this was meant to be about nothing but pleasure—
Elise’s pleasure
—and Wyatt was going to use every goddamn ounce of experience he’d gained over the years to ensure that he blew her mind.

Breathing in rough, uneven bursts, he lowered his head and nuzzled his face against the velvety softness of her belly, just beneath her navel, the evocative scent of her arousal making his mouth water. He pressed his lips to her scars, one by one, touching the silvery lines with his tongue, while his heart beat out a hard, painful rhythm in his chest. Keeping his touch light, he drifted the fingers of one hand up the inside of her leg, then higher, until he was coasting them over her silken folds. His jaw clenched at the feel of her, so slippery and soft and delicate. She was melting into a hot, slick honey, and he could not bloody wait to get his mouth on her.

“I want to taste you, El. Make you come in my mouth. Do all the things I’ve told you about.” She gasped, then moaned, her beautiful body twisting beneath him as she clutched at the bedding with her hands. “You okay with that, sweetheart?”

“Um...yes. No. I don’t know, because I’ve never tried it. And you might not like it. I mean, with me,” Elise whispered, more than a little shocked by how innocent she sounded. Or was
uncertain
the word she was searching for? She wanted to be bold and seductive for him so that this would be something he enjoyed and remembered. Something that rocked his world as strongly as it would impact hers. But she couldn’t. It was too intimate. Too real. He was talking about putting that wicked mouth of his on the most private, sexual part of her body, and she—

“You’re thinking too hard, baby. And there’s no need.” He took a deep breath, then pressed his lips to her hip bone. “You’ve got to trust me on this, El. I doubt there’s anything in the world I’ll have ever enjoyed more. Christ, if you taste even half as good as you smell, you might never get my head out from between your legs.”

She giggled as her fears started to ease, then slapped her hand over her mouth, embarrassed to have made such a girly sound.

Wyatt lifted his dark head and smirked. “Just trust me, okay?”

She nodded, still covering her mouth, which meant the cry she gave a moment later was muffled by her fingers. He’d leaned down and licked her, right over the opening of her body, where she was the slickest, and it had felt...
God,
she didn’t have words.
Incredible
wasn’t strong enough. Neither were
amazing, marvelous, outstanding
or any other freaking superlative meant to describe how mind-shatteringly awesome it felt to have the rugged, insanely gorgeous, sexy-as-sin Wyatt Pallaton going down on her.

Holding her open with his thumbs, he licked between her folds again, hungrily lapping as if he’d found something sweet that he needed more of, a visceral sound of pleasure rumbling deep in his chest. A moment later, he lifted his head a fraction and looked up at her, then licked her taste off his slick bottom lip. “You know what? I don’t like it, El—I fucking
love
it,” he rasped, and before she could respond, he’d lowered his head again, sucking on her swollen, softly pulsing clit in a way that was so damn wonderful it made her scream. Then he went a little lower and thrust his tongue deep inside her.

“God, Wyatt. It’s so
good,
” she moaned, breathless and unable to stop from pushing her needy sex harder against his mouth, her fingers digging into his thick hair, holding him to her.

After that, anything slow and easy about the outrageously erotic act was over. He went at her like a man starved for the taste of her body, his hands shoving her thighs even wider apart as he moved his tongue in and out of her, eating at her with a purely raw, primitive hunger. He kept going until she was writhing and sobbing from shocking bursts of pleasure as a dark, explosive orgasm tore its way through her, devastating her from the top of her head down to her pointed toes. And even then he stayed with her, his damp mouth closing over her and greedily sucking, swallowing every drop of her release in the most carnal way she could have imagined.

“You are so damn addictive,” he panted, suddenly looming over her, his face close to hers. She could see her moisture glistening on his mouth and chin, his sensual lips slightly parted for his ragged breaths. “And you taste so sweet, El.”

His strong, muscular body was wedged between her legs now, the towel he’d been wearing no longer around his hips, and she could feel him against her thigh, brutally rigid and thick, burning with heat. She was breathing so fast she sounded like a percolator, but she wasn’t ready to run. She wanted every part of him on her,
in her.
His long fingers. His clever tongue. And that hard, pulsing, magnificent cock.

Then he leaned down and touched his lips to hers, rubbing across them as they shared their breaths. She could taste herself on him and loved it, the explicit intimacy making her gasp. Needing to touch him, she rubbed her hands against the sinewy tension in his neck and shoulders, trying to draw him closer, climb inside him, wanting to immerse herself in him so completely she could read him like a book. Know his secrets and his history. Feel his pleasure. Hold his heart.

He was so damn tender with her it brought tears to her eyes. But his tenderness was underlined by something hot and rough and powerful. Elise could taste it in the deepening kiss, his breaths becoming jagged, the grip of his hands tightening as he fell to his side and locked her against him.

“More?” he asked when he pulled his head back to drag in air.

She nodded and bit her lip, needing a distraction from the dangerous path of her thoughts. And needing more of him. More of that erotic, bone-melting pleasure. She had a feeling that no matter how much he gave her, she would never get enough of it.

“More of my mouth?”

“Yes,” she whispered, sifting her fingers through his silken hair. “I want everything.”

He sucked in a sharp breath, then slowly exhaled as his eyes got darker, the primal hunger glittering in their depths becoming even sharper. “Trust me?”

Despite the predatory, almost possessive way he was staring at her, Elise didn’t even have to think about her response. “Of course.”

He fisted one hand in her hair as he kissed the hell out of her again, his tongue stroking and thrusting with skillful aggression while his other hand settled behind her knee, bringing it to his hip. When he finally pulled his mouth from hers, they were both breathing hard. “I won’t hurt you, I swear. You want to stop, just say stop. Okay?”

Elise nodded, unable to get any words past her trembling lips. But she wasn’t afraid. She was so freaking turned on she couldn’t stand it.

Sliding his hand from her hip to the fiery curls on her mound, Wyatt slipped his hand lower, stroking her slick, petal-soft folds with his callused fingertips. Then he pushed two big fingers into her snug depths, hooking them so that he could hit that sweet spot deep inside her, and growled at the way her body clamped down on him, greedy for his touch. “I want in here, El. I want to be buried hard and thick and deep. Right
here.
”

“Yes. God, yes.”

He slowly pulled his hand from between her legs. “El?”

She moved onto her knees, the look in her eyes making his heart pound even harder—a deep, endless blue glowing with hunger, and beyond beautiful. Then she shocked the hell out of him by placing her hands against his stomach and pushing him to his back. Before he could ask her what she was doing, she leaned over him, her hot mouth covering the head of his cock, and he nearly died. Christ, he couldn’t even remember his damn name. He was too long and thick for that perfect mouth of hers, but just like the night before, she somehow made it work. Somehow pulled him in deep into all that wet, luscious warmth, sucking and licking, and managed to reduce his higher brain functions into a grunting, gasping pile of primitive instinct.

“Fuck, El. You’re gonna make me come.”

“Good!” she breathed against his blunt tip as she stroked him with both hands, his body straining.

“Damn it, I want to come inside you,” he growled.

He could just make out her sexy smile through the fiery veil of her hair. “Coming in my mouth
is
coming inside me, Wyatt.”

“You know what I mean!”

She laughed as she sat up beside him, blue eyes bright and excited, that plush lower lip caught in her teeth, and there was something beyond breathtaking in her expression, thank God, that told him she was ready. That she wanted him.
All
of him. So out of his mind with need he was shaking, Wyatt quickly grabbed her and twisted her beneath him, his mouth hungrily latching on to a beautiful breast when someone started pounding the hell out of his front door.

“Ignore it,” he muttered, wanting to kill whoever was out there as he dragged his mouth to her other breast, ravenously licking the sweet, puckered nipple.

“Open the hell up, Pallaton!”

“That was Eric!” she gasped, shoving against his shoulders with enough strength that it surprised him. Scrambling out from beneath him, she snatched up one of the pillows and held it against the front of her gorgeous body, as if she needed to shield her nudity from her brother.

Braced on his knees in the middle of the bed, Wyatt fisted his hands at his sides and fought for control. No one had seen Eric or his little wife for days—but then Wyatt could hardly blame the guy for spending his time with his new bride. What he blamed him for was the shittiest timing in the world.

He wanted to beg Elise to ignore Eric’s pounding at the door but could see that it was already too late. She was searching in the tangled bedding for her discarded clothing, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
Shit.

“Wyatt! I know you’re in there, so open the damn door!” Eric shouted. “We have an emergency!”

“Fuck,”
he snarled, rolling off the bed. He grabbed an old pair of jeans and yanked them on, hiking them over his hips as he headed toward the hallway. “I’ll see what he wants,” he said over his shoulder, forcing himself not to look at her. If he did, Wyatt knew he’d be on her again in a heartbeat, her brother be damned.

“What the hell is so important?” he growled as soon as he ripped his front door open.

Eric’s dark gaze sliced over him with the sharpness of a blade, his nostrils flaring as he scented the lust still rolling off Wyatt’s body. But the Runner didn’t give him shit about it. Instead, he muttered, “We’ve got to go.”

“Go where?”

Eric’s guttural voice shook with rage. “I just got a call from Shadow Peak. Elise’s house is burning to the ground.”

*

Two hours later, Wyatt was finally pulling back into the Alley. What had undeniably been on its way to becoming the best damn night of his life had turned to shit. By the time he and Eric had made it up to Shadow Peak, Elise’s house had been engulfed in flames...and Browning was presumed dead. From what they’d been able to piece together, her well-meaning neighbor had tried to save as many of her things as he could, only to get trapped inside the structure by the quickly spreading flames. They hadn’t found the body yet, but Mason and Brody were still there, searching.

He dreaded telling Elise about the death, worried about how she would react. He knew she was going to blame herself, and he hated it. Hated that there was nothing he could do to make it right.

He and the others didn’t have any doubt that the fire had been arson, and Wyatt wanted the bastards who were responsible so badly he could taste the violence of his need on his tongue. Wanted their damn blood on his hands. The only thing that had kept him from taking off like a madman to hunt them down was the fact that she was here, waiting for him. He’d left her with Carla for protection, and after helping out with the fire, Cian had come back down to join them.

With a harsh sigh, Wyatt parked the Jeep in front of his cabin, eager to get inside and just hold her, assuring himself that she was safe, even though he was going to have to tell her about Browning. But the instant that he and Eric climbed out of the Jeep, he knew something was wrong. Cian was coming down the front steps of his porch, looking grim-faced and pissed, and a thousand scenarios started running through Wyatt’s head, none of them good.