Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (23 page)

He paused, shaking, gasping for
breath.

“
Oh god!” Laurie groaned
as he began to withdraw in counter to Kane’s next
thrust.

“
Faster!” she demanded,
panting for breath.

Wild jolts of ecstasy rocked her as
they picked up their pace. Her skin pebbled all over as she
climaxed. She gasped, groaned deliriously, shuttering as she hit
the summit and slipped down the hill briefly before she felt
herself coiling for another climax.

Basil drove deeply inside of her and
uttered a choked cry just as her second climax broke over her,
shuddering as his body convulsed with hers. Their combined song of
rapture drove Kane over the edge right behind them. He pounded into
her almost frenziedly for several moments and then stopped, jerking
with the force of his release.

They sank weakly together, panting and
gasping in chorus in the aftermath.

“
That was wonderful!”
Laurie managed to gasp finally in a slurred voice, sinking
gratefully into the dark cloud of bliss that covered her and
whisked her off into happy land.

Kane jolted to earth less pleasantly,
encountering Basil’s hand when he reached to stroke Laurie in
appreciation. Basil grabbed his finger and gave it a vicious twist
before flinging if off and rising up to glare at him.

For several moments, they bristled at
one another before it dawned on Kane to wonder how long they’d been
upstairs with Laurie. “Shit!” he muttered under his breath.
“They’re liable to be back any second!”

They both tumbled out of the bed at
that and pulled their clothes on.

Laurie was vaguely aware of the fact
that they’d dressed and were abandoning her and the bed, but she
was way too satisfied to allow that to spoil her enjoyment of the
moment.

The sound of snarls and growls brought
Laurie out of her blissful stupor a few minutes later. Grabbing her
t-shirt, she jerked it over her head and dashed out to the balcony
overlooking the great room. It definitely wasn’t the
cat!

Well actually, she could dimly hear
the cat growling from her cave under the couch. It was the
bristling wolf-men that were making the most noise,
though.

“
Really? Are we going to
do this every time, guys? Because we might as well just go ahead
and take the furniture to the yard ….”

The four of them halted and tipped
their heads up to scowl at her. They shifted back to man form,
however. “They haven’t been here five minutes and they’ve already
been upstairs to fuck!” Lucien growled.

Laurie glared at him. “Make love, damn
it! You said I was y’all’s woman! I know I didn’t hear that wrong,
because you said it more than once. Exactly how is that supposed to
work?”

Lucien stabbed a finger at
his chest. “I’m the alpha, gods damn it!
I
say when!”

Laurie gaped at him for a moment and
finally let out a huff of irritation. “So much for spontaneity!
Fine! Y’all go down to the creek and settle it. I’ll start
supper.”

Epilogue

Nine months later

The distinct squall of a newborn broke
the tense silence that had held Lucien and Damien for hours, had
them pacing the length of the great room back and forth until
they’d marred the finish on the floor. Instantly, they both froze.
A second later, another thin wail broke the silence and they
whipped a look at one another.

Slowly, a grin curled Lucien’s lips.
“I’m a father.”

Damien chuckled. It was a sound of
both relief and disbelief. “Yeah. I don’t think I ever pictured you
as a father.”

Lucien frowned. “What do you mean by
that?”

Damien shrugged. “I just didn’t—well
any of us.”

Lucien relaxed fractionally. “Let’s go
see my son.”

“
You’re that sure it’s a
son?”

Lucien glared at him. “I’m
alpha.”

Damien rolled his eyes. “Fine. We’ll
go look at your boy, but if there’s no stem on his apple you’re
going to be mightily disappointed.”

Basil and Kane both looked a little
sick when they came out of the ‘delivery room’.

Lucien paled. “Problems?”

They both blinked at him. “It’s boy,”
Basil said finally.

Lucien still felt uneasy. “And there’s
no problem?”

“
Big, healthy boy.
Laurie’s doing good and informed us to enjoy it because she wasn’t
doing that again.”

Lucien glanced at the closed door.
“She sleeping now?” he asked uneasily.

“
Feeding the boy,” Basil
responded.

“
Well …. Why do you two
look like hell?” he asked impatiently.

Kane gave him a look of
outrage. “
We
delivered him, damn it! You try it next time, gods damn
it!”

Damien’s lips curled. “I thought she
delivered him.”

Kane punched him in the
mouth.

“
We helped. It’s your turn
next time!”

“
I thought you said Laurie
said she wasn’t doing it again?” Lucien said irritably.

“
She did. But that was
when she was screaming and pushing. Soon as he came out, she
started purring and cooing at him. I’m guessing she might remember
the purring and cooing more and …. Well, gods damn it! We want our
own rug-rats!”

“
I heard that!” Laurie
said the moment Lucien cracked the door and peered in. “Don’t you
dare call my little darling a rug-rat! He’s a little wolf man
cub!”

The End.

If you enjoyed this Madelaine Montague
novel, we hope that you’ll leave a kindly review for the author
where ever this book is sold! And be sure to look for other
paranormal fiction by Madelaine Montague at New Concepts
Publishing!

Call of the Wolf

Dragon Blood

Feline Heat

Hunger of the Wolf

Night Breeds/Heirarchy

Nocturnal

Wolf

Wolfen

Madelaine Montague also writes Science
Fiction under the pen name of Kaitlyn O’Connor.

Cyberevolution I: The
Awakening

Cyberevolution II: Total
Recall

Cyberevolution III:
Abiogenesis

Cyberevolution IV: Cyborg

Cyberevolution V:
Illumination

Cyberevolution VI: Cyborg
Nation

Cyberevolution VII: Rules of
Engagement

Enslaved One: Genesis

Enslaved Two: Spawning, The

Enslaved Three: Gladiators,
The

Adaptation

Below

Chaos Forged

Dark Solstice

Discovery: The Forgotten

Dragon Lord

Lords of Mayhem

Night Raven

Ninth Orb, The

Portal, The

Sleeping with the Enemy

When Dawn Breaks

When Night Falls

Excerpts from some of the Madelaine
and Kaitlyn books follow.

Feline Heat

By

Madelaine
Montague

Chapter One

“
You’re up next, Kate!
Move it!” Marty growled.

Kate’s belly instantly knotted into a
tight ball of fear. Her heart rate shot up and her lungs began to
labor to drag in air. Breathe, Kate, she commanded herself! Deep
breath in, exhale slowly. Deep breath in, exhale.

Her mind was chaotic. It was a wonder
she even managed to gather enough sense to focus on breathing
slowly to keep from hyperventilating.

The man airbrushing the last of her
‘costume’ on, hurried to finish at Marty’s prompting and finally
stepped back. “You’re ready.”

Like hell!

She didn’t voice the thought aloud. In
the months since she’d ‘agreed’ to dance for Panas to work off her
ex’s gambling debts she’d learned it was a lot safer just to smile
and nod like a good little slave and jump to do what she was told.
If she looked sullen or moved too slowly she was liable to get
slapped stupid. Voicing a complaint was just an invitation to get
the shit beat out of her.

To the Russian mob that ran the
operation, the Exotique`, the ‘weaker sex’ just meant easier
control and they weren’t the least bit bashful about using their
superior strength to exert it.

Her knees felt like the bones and
cartilage had melted to the consistency of jelly as she stood up
from the bench where the man had been applying her ‘costume’ and
surveyed the results in the tiny mirror above her make-up table.
Her hair, which she’d always worn fairly long, had grown nearly to
her waist, she saw with a touch of surprise, but it still fell
short of concealing her nakedness. It had been lightened from her
natural medium to dark brown with auburn highlights to a shade of
red she’d hated since the first time she looked at it.

She was a feline tonight. God only
knew what breed of cat she was supposed to be---Liger?—her skin was
hyena with dark stripes here and there.

She decided she looked like a walking
camo for a jungle setting rather than any kind of cat from the wild
as she dropped weakly to the stool in front of her table and
quickly darkened the tip of her nose, gripping her eyebrow pencil
in a trembling hand to sketch a wobbly trio of ‘whiskers’ on either
cheek.

She’d gotten used to standing bare
assed naked on the stage in front of a roomful of hooting men—as
used to it as she was ever going to get—but the special ‘treat’ the
management had in mind for the night had threatened to turn her
bowels to water.

She was supposed to ‘make love’ to her
feline ‘mates’ on stage—an ‘artistic’ imitation of the act in
dance, she’d been assured, not in actuality, but the ‘props’
weren’t merely stuffed animals like those Panas typically used.
He’d brought in two very much alive, great cats—drugged, he’d
assure her, almost to the point of unconsciousness, chained, but
still alive—and still dangerous because they were straight from the
wild, not even close to tamed or trained beasts.

Of all the bizarre things that prick,
Panas, had thought up, this one was light years ahead of anything
else.

For the first time in her
life, she wished
she
was drugged—too high to have any idea of what was going
on.

They were bringing the beasts onto the
stage when she arrived and positioned herself for the opening of
her act. She thought for several horrifying moments that she was
going to pee on herself, or worse, as she watched the keepers lead
first an enormous Siberian Tiger and then an equally huge African
Lion out on the stage and secure the chains threaded through their
bejeweled collars to an eye bolt embedded in the floor on either
side of the stage.

Both cats staggered drunkenly, their
movements slow, awkward, as if they were swimming through water. It
reassured her a little, gave rise to pity she hadn’t
anticipated.

The tiger dropped heavily onto his
side once the three men half dragging, half pushing him managed to
get him within reach of the bolt to secure his chain.

It also reassured her to see that
they’d only left enough play in the chain to allow him to lay as he
was. She doubted he’d be able to get to his feet.

He was absolutely enormous, though.
She’d had no idea the things were so huge.

And muscled. She could see the muscles
rippling beneath his beautiful coat.

As tall as the Russian thugs were,
she’d be willing to bet he would top them by several feet if he
stood on his hind legs.

A shot of knee weakening adrenaline
spiked through her when she discovered the cat was watching her
through narrowed golden eyes. As dulled as they were by the drugs
pumped into him, she saw a gleam of both intelligence and interest
in those golden depths as he surveyed her with unblinking
intensity.

She hoped to hell they’d fed him
before they brought him out!

Shivering, she dragged her gaze from
the tiger and watched the men securing the lion. Like the tiger, he
was a magnificent specimen. His coat sleek and healthy, his mane
thick and luxuriant, he was nearly as big as the tiger. He was also
almost as ‘brawny’.

And, like the tiger, he seemed far
more interested in her than he was in the men moving around
him.

The men stepped off curtain, but they
remained well within her view.

She wasn’t reassured by the fact that
they’d taken up the poles with loops on the ends she’d seen animal
handlers use to catch and control animals.

Stinging prickles of dread rippled
over her skin as she heard Panas, just on the other side of the
curtain that still concealed her from the audience, trying to work
the almost exclusively male audience into fever pitch
anticipation.

The noise from the audience rose to a
volume that literally vibrated the wood beneath her
feet.