Prymal Lust (21 page)

“Hold that thought.” He twined their fingers together.

“What is it?” His serious expression had her quaking. “What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing. Simply need to lay cards on the table. One, I grew up without a pack. Two, the only ‘laws’ or rules I know are those that apply to the Teams, to being a SEAL. Three, I fully intend that we will together form our own, I won’t call them rules, more limits and expectations as we go forward. You and I. The Prymals as a pack.”

She beamed at him. This was so much more than she had ever hoped for.

“There is one caveat. I will not compromise where your safety, or that of our cubs, or the Prymals are concerned. My word is absolute law in that capacity. I will not tolerate even a hint of disobedience. Got that?”

He was definitely in SOP mode. Severe. Somber. Stern. Unyielding.

She nodded.

“Say it.”

“Your word is law. You command. I obey.” The three sentences left a sour taste in her mouth.

“Good girl. Now. It’s time to go back to that thought you were holding.” He captured her hands and pressed her palms to his aroused cock.

“It’s kind of scary the way you do that.” She worked on his pants button and eased the zipper of his fly down.

“Do what?” He suckled her ear lobe.

A quivery shiver zapped up her spine. She muttered, “Go from mate to warrior in a heartbeat.”

“I’m always your mate, sweet girl. Trust me in that. You are my one and only.” He nibbled his way down her neck.

“Gawd. It drives me nuts when you do that,” Tania mumbled too crazy involved in the exquisite sensations his tongue wreaked to get her mouth and brain connected.

“I know.” He chuckled. “Come on, mate. Let’s get skin-to-skin.”

“Oh yeah.” Frenzied desire had her movements clumsy. Tania kicked off her shoes and shed her clothes while Axe got naked. “I want to be on top.”

He froze. His dilated pupils glittered in the soft lighting. “Oh yeah, sweet girl.”

The room spun when he picked her up by the waist, sat on the mattress, stretched out his legs, and positioned her in a straddling position over his jutting penis. “Brace your hands on my hipbones.”

Tania couldn’t take her eyes off the glistening engorged head of his cock pushing through his foreskin. Her mouth watered. She set her palms right below his waist.

“Ready?” The growled question made her glance at his face.

He was sweating buckets. Rows of tiny beads of perspiration clung to his brow. One drop hung at the tip of his nose. Tania smiled. He was in as much agony as her. She wriggled around until her core was above his crown. Let her weight settle on her knees and hands. “Ready.”

His hold on her fell away.

She had complete control.

Unable to drag her focus from his cock and her pussy lips, she lowered onto him, and cried out when his penis rimmed her center. Bit her lip and eased down on him. Savored the excruciating bliss of him filling her aching sex. Her hands slipped and he jammed into her and filled her so completely the breath whooshed out of her. The sensation hovered on the brink of pain.

Tania squeezed her eyes shut and waited out her body’s slow accommodation to his girth. She leaned forward and the base of his cock grazed her over sensitized clit.

The explosion burst through her. Her arms trembled. The contractions multiplied and intensified until she arched and collapsed onto his chest.

“Fuck. Losing it.” He rolled them over. “Spread.”

She lifted one eyelid. Couldn’t even muster a smile at his bared teeth and elongated canines. Stretched her thighs apart. “Do me hard, sailor-boy.”

He grunted. Battered in and out of her convulsing pussy. His balls slapped against her slickened folds. One orgasm morphed into another. Each climax corkscrewed higher and tighter.

“Now. Come. Now.” He reached between their joined bodies and tweaked her clit.

Her shriek melded with his howling roar.

They climaxed together. He came in long, jerky ejaculations. His sperm hot and streaming inside of her. They fell asleep while still locked together.

•●•

A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance. The cock-a-doodle-doo echoed and wound around Tania’s brain. Vague reality crept into her half-awake senses. Her pussy pulsed. She shivered when her nipples grazed the fine cotton sheets. The delicious tingle almost too much to bear.

She peeked from under lowered lids. Sunlight, muted by the gauzy drapes, drifted and rippled over the planked hardwood floor. It was morning.

Tania knuckled her eyes and twisted to Axe’s side of the bed.

Empty.

He had left for the base already.

She should’ve known Axe wouldn’t wake her. He had been so concerned about her not getting eight hours of sleep. Resting her head in her linked hands, she stared at the ceiling. In all her twenty-four years, she’d never felt so carefree, so delirious with happiness.

Axe had washed away all the misconceptions battered into her from birth. Simply by being himself. By his actions, cooking for her, refusing to let her clean up, her mate had erased the hated tenets drummed into her during Decorum, Discipline, and Deportment training.

She grinned.

The three D’s were now history. Fucking history.

“Fucking history.” The last couple of years she’d lived a double life. At school and work, she did everything not approved of at home. She swore. She screwed cute boys. She drank. Tequila shots, in particular, because Tania knew her father would’ve had a hissy fit if he knew. She’d even tried illegal substances.

Turned out Axe wanted Tania to shed all her inhibitions, to do what
she
wanted, and he didn’t give a “double crap” about what anyone else thought. He liked her in jeans. Thought her hair loose and wild was sexy. Didn’t think she needed makeup.

She stretched, her arms high over her head, fingers splayed, and toes pointed and curled to that sweet-pain point of locking in place. Prymal, being a new pack, and one forged from different breeds of shifters, had no formal rules and no traditions handed down from one generation to another.

The world was theirs for the taking.

She flipped over onto her tummy, buried her face in his pillow, and allowed herself the treat of wallowing in Axe’s incredible aroma. She sighed. Turned her face to the side, and glanced at the bedside table.

A single rose lay on the lace doily.

She smiled. Reached across and picked up the flower. Sniffed the tight budded red rose. No odor at all. Must be a hothouse flower. Still it was a romantic gesture, though she much preferred a simple bunch of Sweet Peas to thorny and much over-rated roses.

Then she glimpsed the time. Nine o’clock. The events of early morning came back to her in a torrent.

Eva.

Damn it, she had wanted to cook breakfast for Eva and her mate.

Galvanized, she rushed to get showered and clothed. In record time, she was ready. In case Eva needed medicine or supplies, Tania’d dressed in “street clothes,” black jeans, a blousy emerald sweatshirt, and comfortable wedge sandals.

Humming, she hurried to the kitchen. Not a soul was in sight. She checked the dishwasher, empty. Touched the stove burners, cold.

Good, no one had awoken.

She brewed a cup of coffee.

Rolled her eyes when she recalled Bandit complaining that the Keurig was the most pedestrian of all coffee makers on the market. The man was a total coffee snob.

“Tania?”

She jumped, spilt coffee all over the counter, and her hand. Choking back an epithet, Tania spun around.

She recognized the build and height of the man facing her. “Dax?”

“In the flesh. Eva likes you.”

Tania blinked. “Ah, that’s nice. I like her too.”

“She’s awake.”

Not quite certain what Dax expected, she tested the waters. “Do you think she’d like coffee and some breakfast?”

He snorted. “She’d like it all right, but that’s not happening.”

Whaaat? Dax
didn’t
intend to give his mate what she wanted?

“She wants to see you.”

Dax enunciated the sentence in a tone similar to the one Axe used for issuing SOPs. Tania set her mug down.

“Is she up to a visit?” No way would she let him bully either her or Eva.

The fine lines bracketing eyes the color of a cloudless noon sky deepened. “Yes. Go.”

Okay, Dax and Jurango shared a common trait. They both hated verbosity.

“I said, go,” Dax snarled.

She took one look at his knitted bushy black brows, the gleaming canines bared by his ferocious snarl, and scudded out of the kitchen.

Why on earth had Eva married such an angry and grouchy alpha? If the man cracked a smile, the poles would surely reverse.

Tania padded down the hallway and slowed when she realized the door to the last bedroom door stood ajar. A faint glimmer of sunlight spiked through the open space. She edged into the room keeping her tread light and, hopefully, noiseless.

Eva lay on the bed in a half-sitting position with the pillow propped behind her back and head. The drapes had been drawn and the sun’s brilliant rays vanquished any would-be shadowy corners. She was looking out the window, and all Tania glimpsed was a strand of her straight-as-a-pin thick blonde hair poking out from under the blanket.

Had Eva fallen back asleep?

Tania held her breath when ever so slowly, Eva twisted to face the room’s entrance.

“Oh God.” Tania rushed around the bed, sat on the mattress, and reached for Eva’s hands. After checking to ensure her fingers hadn’t been broken or injured, Tania clasped her hands, and gave Eva a soft, reassuring squeeze.

She scanned Eva s wounds and, mindful of Jaz’s advice earlier that morning, didn’t attempt to stifle her instinctive winces.

A pentagram had been carved into Eva’s forehead. Her cheeks had been slashed, her lips were swollen, and the corners had deep cracks. “Oh Eva.”

“Hi.” Eva’s voice was coarse, the single word barely decipherable.

“Don’t talk. I can see how much it hurts. Oh God, Eva I’m so sorry that this happened to you. I’m so sorry about the baby. I wish, I just wish, I could’ve done something to stop the Jäegers.”

The pain Eva must have endured. Still must be in. How could anyone have hurt such a gentle soul? A murderous rage had Tania seeing scarlet. She’d take a machete and hack off the fingers of each of the Jäeger who executed this carnage.

“Can write,” Eva mumbled.

“Are you sure you’re up to it?”

Exhaustion lined Eva’s features. She had dark shadows under her honey brown eyes. Yellow and purple bruises marred her normal peaches and cream complex. Her nose, once the perfect example of a cute up-turned one, had been smushed to one side.

Eva shook her head and pointed to a yellow pad and pen lying on the dresser.

Tania fetched both items and handed them to Eva who began scribbling furiously. She studied her friend and realized that one of Eva’s eyes was almost closed shut, noticed that her hair had been chopped in places, and that one ear lobe had been ripped.

Had Eva’s father and mother condoned this butchery of their daughter? Tania couldn’t begin to imagine how betrayed and distressed Eva felt. The agony and anguish of having your own family turn on you.

Eva tapped the pencil on Tania’s knuckles and turned the pad around.

Tania jerked out of her morbid musings. “Sorry.”

Need to shift. Dax won’t let me. Help me. Get rid of him. Then help me shift.

“Why doesn’t Dax want you shifting? I won’t help you unless you tell me.” Tania tried to keep her tone even and mellow, but she remembered the acute bolt of pain that had hit her during her shifting.

Eva wrote. Her hands and fingers working swiftly.

Last time shifted was with you. Dax says will hurt. Damn alpha. Can’t handle me being in pain. Won’t let me have coffee.

“It does hurt. Not so much the going to wolf form, but the changing back. I shifted with Axe yesterday. That was the first time for me, too, since our run thirteen years ago. Shifting will accelerate your healing, right?”

Eva’s hunched shoulders relaxed. She nodded, attempted a smile, and groaned.

“Can it harm you in any way?” Tania had already decided to help Eva shift, but she needed to know the repercussions, if any.