Kodiak Chained (21 page)

“Give me some credit,” he said, sounding aggrieved even to his own ears. “Or did you think I was the most active field healer in brevis just because I can take care of myself?”

She pushed a hand off his shoulder in a quick shove, pulling back without managing to dislodge his grip in the least. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’d
better
know it.” She subsided when he made a noncommittal noise. “It just wasn’t long enough.”

“It wasn’t.” He could still feel it in her—the wrongness, the lurking malaise. “I’m working with sludge. But now I know the sludge does something...and so do you.”

“Sludge,” she said. “You put
sludge
into me.”

He rose to it, would have tightened his grip on her—but saw the tiny little smile at the corners of her mouth, the way her lips pressed together to suppress it.

“You,”
he growled.

She widened her eyes, clear enough.
Want to make something of it?

“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to sort you out.”

“Oh, I think it was a very good idea. Imagine how annoyed Forakkes will be.”

He couldn’t help it; he laughed. “One more time, then.”

“Don’t get impatient,” she warned him.

In answer, he closed his eyes. He skimmed quickly past the familiar feel of their needs, hesitated to ground himself in caution, and reached for the sludge.

It was all wrong, that energy—all wrong that he should labor so hard for such a basic thing. He wobbled to find the balance—enough effort to move the sludge, not so much that he paid the price.

He felt her nudge this time—knuckles pushing into his shoulder; he steadied himself. It was a crude thing, this healing—a barely directed flow of energy applied with a trowel instead of precision and finesse.

But he felt the faint burn of his back, and knew his body had claimed the sludge for its own purposes. He felt Mariska stiffen in his grip, holding her breath on a gasp, and knew that this time, she felt it, too.

Somehow, he kept that balance.

But then she poked him—harder this time—and he thought he’d likely used up his luck. It was a relief to let go of the sludge, watching it drain away from his grasp; it was a relief to step back from the stringent self-control that kept him from going after more. Mariska relaxed in his hands, inching closer. Her touch brushed over his shoulders, stroked down his arms—a soothing thing, as if she understood he needed time to make the transition back out.

Or else simply took advantage of the opportunity.

All right, then.
It went both ways, this touching thing. He followed impulse—following the warmth of her in his healer’s awareness, releasing his grasp of body and bone and wholeness to reach for something more personal. A place he’d never gone before, simply because his grasp of body and bone and wholeness had always come foremost.

The heat of what he found stirred through his limbs, turning liquid—turning her touch into something that sent a shiver right down his spine. He stroked her with it, in tune to the thunder overhead.

Her hands tightened on his shoulders; her words sounded strangled. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

He hadn’t known, either. He would have told her so, but he ended up murmuring her name instead, turning it into an endearment—a satisfied hum, and yet full of awareness that he hadn’t meant to go to this place and that he wasn’t sure he could stop now that he’d started. She moved closer yet, her knees nudging inside his thighs. Her breasts brushed his chest through a shirt still wet, her breath brushed his neck and her lips brushed his ear. “We don’t have time for this.”

“We don’t,” he agreed, somehow managing those words in spite of his complete and total focus on simply being there with her. The tease of bear in her scent, her body both hard-toned and curvy beneath his hands; the very solidity of her, tangled with her lurking exuberance, the promise of unfettered enthusiasm. His breath came sharp on a surge of response, his balls tightening in anticipation. He grasped for words. “We don’t...but we don’t have much choice.”

Her hands slipped over his chest, fingers scraping through crisp hair to wring a groan from him. But she shook her head. “Ian...Sandy...Katie’s vision... We
have
to—” She shook her head again, pressing it against his in regret.

Just maybe she hadn’t noticed that the sky had darkened again, the clouds tumbling to darkness overhead—but when thunder slammed together all around them, they both jumped. Newly roused energies spiraled through their little shelter, rising in a slash of desire and encircling them both.

“Not. Fair.” She was still that close to his ear; she clamped her teeth on his earlobe.

His laugh was more of a gasp. “Not mine,” he told her, pulling her closer with no mercy at all. She settled in on him, her knees hitting the stone behind them, her ankles hooked back over the top of his open thighs—flexible, at that, and spread so completely open to him. Another peal of thunder rolled through as he reflexively thrust against her, a groan behind his words. “Not that time.”

“We should...” She lost track of those words, her hands stroking his sides, skimming up to his chest and down between them again to hover at his jeans. “Our friends. Forakkes. We should—”

“We
can’t.
” He lifted his hips to offer the wood buttons on the jeans, digging his heels into the thin soil of the slope below them. “Not until this storm passes. Or haven’t you had enough fieldwork to dodge a high desert monsoon before?”

She paused with her hands on the top button and her teeth resting on his throat. “Are you messing with my temper?
Now?
”

“Maybe,” he told her, as the rain started again, soaking into the legs of his jeans. He pushed her away, just enough to give her a satisfying and possessive once-over, not the least bit gentle inside. Wet strands of hair escaped her braid to wisp around her face; high color washed over her cheeks and brightened her eyes. The wet shirt clung to her skin, outlining every detail of the form beneath.

“Maybe,” he said, and traced the line of her bra where it sloped close to the nipple, “I think I like your temper.”

She swore and yanked at his jeans, then gave up and yanked at her shirt.

“Patience,” he said, as if he wasn’t aching to do the same, “I’ve been told it’s a virtue. And we need what clothes we have left.” But his head dropped back as the energies he’d loosed wove between them, tightening around them; he grabbed her hips to push against her, the groan deep in his throat.

She swore again; her voice rose in pitch. “You did that on purpose!”

Ruger spoke through his teeth. “Not while I’m still wearing these pants, I didn’t.”

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons to her shirt; he joined her, working from the bottom up so they met in the middle. She closed her hand over his, then, stilling him a moment; her dark eyes were full of conflict—passion and regret and the looming loss of control. “We really can’t—? We’re stuck here?”

“We really can’t,” he said, and pushed back an errant strand of hair to cup the side of her face, holding her firmly. “We’re stuck here. Take the moment, Mariska.”

She showed him her teeth, the wild flaring high in her eyes, her legs tightening around his thighs. “I’ll
take,
” she said, as much warning as promise. She yanked the shirt off and tossed it aside.

He reached around for her bra fastener—only to stare at the sprinkling of pale lavender blooms over the swell of otherwise sporty material. “Flowers.”

“What of it?” she said, stilling her hands to glare at him.

“Like ’em,” he told her. He left the clasp alone to cup her breasts through the material, running his thumbs firmly over both nipples.
Perfect.
Her glare dissolved to grasping neediness, and he might have been smug about it had not the awakened energies surged up to include him.

Mariska emitted a sound of despair and jerked away, hands at her pants even as she stood. The rain splatted against her back; she had to grab at the rock to maintain her balance on the slope, and by then Ruger had untied her shoes, pulling them off one by one as she lifted each leg to tug away the pants.

“See?” he said. “We
can
work at as a team.”

“Shut up and do something about those pants!” She threw herself back on him just as she’d been, leaving just enough room between them to reach his jeans. But he was erect against them, painfully so; he fumbled the wooden buttons as if he’d never handled them before.

She shoved him back against the gritty angle of rock, leaving the whole of him sprawled out before her, and tackled the pants—more gently than he might have supposed, and with a whole lot more—

A whole lot more—

Touching. Stroking.

He growled, just to let her know he knew what she was doing, and she laughed. The growl turned to a groan as he tipped his head back against rock and pushed helplessly against her hands.

Wicked, wicked hands.

She played with him long after she tugged his jeans aside, touching him everywhere—adding a nip and kiss, small hands clever and bold. His toes curled; his fingers clutched at rock and dirt. More than once he tried to drag her up across his body—to get his hands on her. More than once she interrupted him. It took nothing more than warm breath and just the right touch—and it didn’t help when she reminded him, “I owe you.” Her voice hummed with heat and satisfaction, the energies he’d roused taking a life of their own to wrap around them both.

“You’re just trying to make me—”
Cry,
he would have said.
Beg mercy. Just plain
beg
.

But he didn’t have the breath for it, his body going tight, tighter—

“Mari,” he managed, teeth clenched and control a thing of the past.
“Mari—”

“Good,” she told him. “Because oh, I
want
you.”

Before he knew it, she had him. She came down over him with a sharp cry of delight; he barely heard it over his own ragged gasp. Pleasure pulsed between them and he grasped for those energies, trying for control; they broke apart into wisps and re-formed, enfolding Mariska—enfolding Ruger. This time they soaked in—through skin, sinking into muscle and nerve and firing heated tension along the way.

Mariska breathed out a deep groan, leaning back to prop her hands on his thighs. It changed the angle between them—they felt it at the same time, a single, gasping cry from both throats. Ruger lost control of that energy—he lost control of everything. His heels dug into the slope; the rain pounded against his legs and he reared up to pound himself into Mariska. He grabbed her hips and slammed her down hard, feeling her strength, her easy ability to absorb him—to
take
him.

Oh, he lost control, all right. And so did she, and then the energies rose wild between them, and Mariska dug her fingers into his thighs and keened. Hot pleasure rose to take them both, and together they cried out helplessly into the thunder.

Chapter 17

R
ain. On her face.

Rain on her face.

Rain.

Mariska opened her eyes only an instant before reflex tripped them shut again. Absurd to be so unwilling to move, when the big drops splatted heavily against her face and torso. Absurd to be resting against Ruger’s thighs, folded back on her own legs, and downhill, at that.

Absurd to be so content with it, at the wondrous feeling of encompassing his hips—of being filled so completely, leftover pleasure pulsing between them with a delightful warmth.

He shifted beneath her, and that was delightful, too—just the play of muscle and sinew and strength, his whole body involved as he sucked in air. She could still feel the pressure of his hands—at her waist, and her hips, shifting as necessary but no holds barred.

No holds barred.

And she’d given it right back to him. Grasping at him, pounding over him...she’d shoved him, she’d grabbed him, she’d...

She’d been herself.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said, a non-sequitur piece of conversation that he could have taken wrong in so many ways, but didn’t. As if she would be talking about anything else but that wild surge of pleasure that had tangled around and through them, wringing them both into completion.

Still, he responded only after he took in more air, his hands curling comfortably over her thighs and his legs strong beneath her—propping her just enough so she didn’t slide right off. “Don’t think I did,” he told her. “I started it, maybe. Then...I think
we
did.” And then, with hardly any hesitation at all, “Come in out of the rain, Mariska Bear.”

A particularly dire rumble sounded above her; she sighed. “I wanted to wallow in this for a while longer.” She levered herself up, settling firmly over him again and unable to hold back the smile at the stunned look on his face. “That was the most unique inclined sit-up
I’ve
ever done,” she said. “I take it you approve?”

He made a strangled sound of agreement, pulsing inside her. She laughed out loud, and bent forward to kiss him lightly beside the mouth, brushing her cheek against his. His face was like the rest of him—strong-boned features with the perfect balance between size and refinement.

Perfect for me.

She sighed, settling herself against him, squirming a little to find just the right spot where skin, damp with sweat and rain, created friction. “I could almost forget that there’s an amulet working running wild inside me, or that Forakkes is planning to do worse to the rest of us...or that we lost Jeckle, and Ian and Sandy and Heckle are waiting for help. I could almost not feel guilty.”

He stroked a hand down her back, all the way down to cup and hold her bare bottom, his fingers so intimately placed that he touched both of them where they joined. “Nothing’s changed. We can’t do anything in this rain.”

“We could try,” she said, muffling her words against his shoulder and moving ever so slightly in response to the pressure of his fingers.