Omega's Run (31 page)

Despite how my muscles moaned about it in protestation, I pulled myself up so I could press my lips gently to his. He sighed out, his breath warm against my face, as he held me tightly against him. I couldn’t speak the words, not knowing who might be listening, but I could show him.

“Ava…” he moaned out and I loved the sound of my name coming from his mouth.

“Let me get cleaned up,” I whispered and he nodded. He helped me get stiffly to my feet and once there, lifted the tee over my head, letting it fall to the floor. He shoved the pair of basketball shorts he’d been wearing to the floor after them and led me into the broad shower enclosure.

He started the water on the far left one and turned me into the hot spray. I gasped, the warmth and heavily beating water wringing the tension from my muscles. I tipped my head back and let the water soak my long, dark hair; slicking it back from my face.

Remus didn’t waste any time or opportunity; he covered my mouth with his own and pulled me in tightly to his chest, letting his hands slide over my wet skin in a tantalizing touch that left me damn near swooning. I’d like to blame the whole feeling weak thing, but what it really was, was relief. Relief that I had survived, that I could be here, kissing him, touching him back, that I hadn’t left him alone like so many before him and that
I
wasn’t alone either.

I didn’t believe that when we died, we got to see our loved ones again. For me, it was just
it
. No more. We just blinked out of existence like the screen on a television set going dark after you’d switched it off.

There just was no more. Your life, your time on this rock was just
done,
and the ones you left behind, they were left in agony for it. Like I had been when Mathias had taken James, utilizing the wolf-kind as his method of disposal, for
my brother.
The only person in this world I had ever loved, until this man right here, in my arms, pressing my back against the cool tile of the locker room showers.

He bent, hands slipping along my hips and down the outside of my thighs. Despite my still-protesting muscles, I gave a little jump. He did the rest of the work, hauling me up his body, pinning me to the wall while I twined my legs around his lean hips. I let my arms go around his shoulders, pressing my mouth to his with an urgency that was only matched by the aching desperation I felt in my pussy, which throbbed with a want to have him inside of me.

I buried my fingers into the back of his hair and he groaned, sliding inside of me after a few gentle, seeking thrusts. He swallowed my cry and I quivered in his grasp, the angle, like this, sharper; deeper somehow.

We kissed languorously before he started to move, sliding his hips back before surging forward. There was nothing rushed, nothing frantic about how he took me, there against the shower wall.

He attacked the side of my neck with his lips and tongue and I tipped my head back against the wall, moaning as sparks fizzled down the entire side of my body, shimmering over my skin in a light dew of sensation.

“Oh, god, Remus,” I half gasped, half moaned and he growled, deep in his chest, an impassioned and at once possessive sound that tripped my triggers in all the right ways.

He buried himself to the hilt inside of me and I felt like it opened me up, made me come alive, and I was just dying for more, but he was being so
careful
of me. I tightened my hands in his hair and used it to drag his head back. I met his eyes with mine and growled, “I’m not a delicate fucking flower, anymore. Fuck me.”

He grinned, a wicked curve of lips, and lunged forward, biting my bottom lip and surging into me until I cried out. He drove into me, over and over again with powerful strokes, and I could swear I heard the tile crack at my back between the sharp impassioned moans that were spilling from my lips.

He did just what I’d asked. He fucked me, primal, sharp and alive, teeth leaving perfect, neat little prints in my flesh, though he was careful not to break the skin. I loved it, I loved every minute of having Remus Reese inside of me and I couldn’t get enough, as if there would ever
be
enough. I was drunk on him, on my desire and love for him, and it was a high I never, ever wanted to give up.

Chapter 27

Remus

I couldn’t actually remember the last time I was with a woman that I didn’t have to be careful with. I didn’t try too hard to think of one either as I buried myself inside Ava. The tile at her back cracked under the pressure as our voices grew louder with each passing second. The feeling of her body writhing in my arms, legs wrapped around me as we came together over and over; after the fear of nearly losing her it was even more incredible than I could have possibly imagined.

I had come within a hairsbreadth of losing her forever. The enormity of that hit me as I pushed her over the edge and she clamped down on me so tightly that it very nearly hurt. I moaned loudly as she came around me and I joined her, both of us shaking violently and clinging to each other as the world fell away and then rose back up to meet us.

“I love you,” I muttered against her neck as she held onto me.

She laughed, a quiet, throaty sound and wrapped her arms tightly around me. “I love you too, Fido.”

“Hey!” I swatted her ass with one hand and she laughed again, a little louder. It was with a great deal of regret that I slowly slid out of her and we rinsed off under the cooling spray of water, quickly exiting the shower.

She winced occasionally still, but I could see that she was moving a little better than she had even half an hour before as she worked out the stiffness in her muscles. I dried her as gently as I could, but quickly since it was cold in the cement room, and got her into some fresh clothing before leading her back down the hall to her room.

“Where the fuck are we, anyway?” she demanded after I’d coaxed her back into her bed. In the end she’d only agreed to lay back down if I joined her, so I slid into the bed with her and pulled her against me so her head was lying on my chest, one leg thrown over mine. She started idly tapping on my chest with her fingers again in time to my heart beat.

“Neutral territory. After you got through the first day we figured you were going to make it and it would be safe to move you, so we loaded you and the whole bed up into the back of a truck and hit the road.”

“So where’d we end up, and what’s ‘neutral territory,’ what’s that mean?”

“You mean you don’t know?” I was honestly surprised by that. It was the kind of information I would have thought the Hunters would have had. “In most states; not all of them, but most, there are halfway houses. Places built and operated by the larger wolf-kind community for the loners.”

She lifted her head, giving me a strange look. “I thought wolf-kind were pack animals by nature.”

“We are, but there are occasions when someone loses their pack. Accident, death, Hunters, or even being branded Omega. A lone wolf-kind can’t just wander into any territory they want, it’d be suicide soon enough. So places like this were set up, dotted all around the country. They’re safe havens for wolves without a pack or without a territory of their own.”

“Youth Hostels for wolf-kind,” she muttered. “Huh, who’d have thought?”

“Close enough. So Craig’s family apparently operates this one. We’re in Wyoming right now, but we’re ready to move at a moment’s notice if need be.”

“Why the rush to leave Colorado?”

“Our presence was a strain and a danger to the Alpha Wolves. O’Toole let us stay long enough to make sure that you were going to pull through, but then he started making some not so subtle hints suggesting that we get the hell out of their territory before he decided to just kill the lot of us and be done with it.” She arched an eyebrow at me and I laughed quietly. “I told you he wasn’t exactly subtle about it.”

She chuckled again and settled against me. “So why Wyoming?”

“Closest neutral house we knew of. Again, Craig’s family operates this one and it’s sort of off season, fewer loners passing through the area than usual. That, and it’s fortified to a certain extent. It basically originated as a bunker for American militiamen.”

“So what else has been going on? I’m feeling out of the loop after sleeping for nearly a week.”

“Well that couple we found at the facility are still hanging around. Though that’s an ugly situation. The guy, Evan, woke up a day or so ago and he’s been having a bit of trouble adjusting to things.”

“He wasn’t turned voluntarily, I imagine?”

“Not by a long shot,” I scoffed. “Army vet, he’s been homeless for a while now. His leg was messed up apparently while he was on duty so they gave him a medical discharge. He’s got some serious burn and shrapnel scars and who knows what else. Apparently some of the Hunters scooped him up off the street and dragged him into that facility a few weeks ago. They had one of those electric collars on the girl, Macy, and it turned into a situation of bite the human and turn him or we’ll see how long it takes for your head to explode from the current we run through your cranium.” I was frowning. I had long hated the Hunters, and Mathias in particular. But these experiments... a large portion of the Hunters were misled, lied to, being manipulated and tricked into hating something they just didn’t understand. Some of them were starting to remind me of that German doctor that supposedly did experiments on Jewish prisoners back in World War II. He was just plain evil, and he was gathering his own supporters, separate from the actual Hunters’ organization.

“You think Mathias is trying to build his own little private army?” I asked suddenly and Ava’s fingers stilled for a moment in their tapping on my chest before resuming the steady beat.

“I’m not certain,” she admitted. “But it makes as much sense as almost any other theory we’ve thrown around in the last few weeks. Nothing about his actions really makes sense in the long run. I’m reasonably certain that only Mathias knows what the actual end-game is with these experiments of his.”

I stared up at the ceiling while Ava continued tapping on my chest for a few minutes, when suddenly her stomach growled loudly and I chuckled, looking down to find a sheepish smile on her face.

“Come on, let’s go see who else is up and around.”

“I thought I was supposed to be resting.”

“Pretty sure you’ve rested enough, Babycakes. We should probably get you moving. Work the kinks out and start teaching you what things are going to be like. The full moon is coming in about a week, so you’ll need to be ready for that.”

She nodded and pulled away, somewhat reluctantly, which made me smile like some kind of retard. To know that she didn’t want to move away from me, gave me a sense of satisfaction like no other, gave me back a sort of missing piece of myself.

I pretty much immediately wanted to slap myself for acting like a sap, but I was really starting to understand what had driven William to fight so hard against Romulus. With his mate’s fate in the balance, he would have moved mountains to save her. That desire to fight for the ones we love is built into us, and it has served our people well over the centuries. I’d never really felt it until her.

“What about the girl?” she asked as we dressed a little more completely. She pulled on her cargo pants and black shirt again but left the Joe Rocket jacket hanging in the closet where I’d put it, soon after we’d arrived at the house. Her clothes and equipment had all been cleaned and checked over, Markus even stripping and cleaning her guns for her. I had told him he didn’t have to do that but it’d been a long time since the old soldier’d had a chance to play with some decent hardware like that so I’d left him to it.

“Which girl?”

“The one we grabbed from the facility. Macy?”

“What about her?”

“Well you told me about Evan. Veteran, wounded, homeless, so on and so forth; but what about her? All you gave me was a first name.”

“Not even sure if that
is
her first name, could be her last, hell, it could be made up entirely to be honest. We don’t know much about her. She keeps to herself when she’s not around Evan. And he’s been trying to avoid her as much as possible. He sticks pretty close to Markus, I think ‘cause they both have a military background. The old wolf has sort of taken the kid under his wing. I get the feeling he’s trying not to blame her for what happened but you know, it’d be hard, considering the circumstances. You at least got to choose, and from people that only meant you well. This guy was thrown into a nightmare from the beginning and he’s just trying to find his footing.”

“So you don’t know where she’s from or anything?”

I shrugged and pulled my new cut on over my bare chest. I’ll admit, I kind of liked the dark leather vest. My brain was still turning over possibilities, ones I’d have to discuss with Ava in the near future, probably.

“We haven’t really been able to get much out of her, not that I can really blame her. She’s not an Omega, no brand, but she definitely doesn’t have a pack of her own, either. She’s been alone for some time from what I can tell.”

Ava stretched, linking her fingers together and reaching as far over her head as she could until she actually came up on her toes. She wasn’t wearing her boots, something I noted idly and figured had to be part of the wolf-kind mentality; that or she trusted I’d have her back. I liked that last one best of all.

Speaking of which, her back popped a couple of times and she suddenly relaxed and came over to hook her arm through mine.

“Food,” she ordered and started dragging me from the room.

“Right turn,” I said when we got out into the hall and she turned without a word, still dragging me along. We were on the second floor and at the end of the hall, next to the stairs leading down to the ground floor, was the clock she had heard when she woke up. A simple thing with a stainless steel finish and gold numbers on a black background. To a human’s hearing the quiet tick of the second hand on its endless circuit around the face would have been nearly silent, but we could hear it clear as day with the enhanced senses that come with being wolf-kind.

She stared at the clock for a second, her face unreadable before the smell of the food still waiting downstairs urged her onward.