Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Whatever his other faults, Dominec was good at this.

He cupped the side of her neck, long fingers curving around to her nape as his thumb stroked the underside of her jaw. Awareness bled along her skin until she felt him in every pore.

The fact that he needed her—more than just her body, but that something about
her
could soothe him—was almost an aphrodisiac in itself. Dominec may want to use her for that peace she could give him, but he didn’t ask for anything in return. Simply that she let him be near her. She could do that. With the way he kissed, she was more than willing to do that.

His tongue stroked expertly over hers, a low rumble of satisfaction vibrating from his chest. He pressed her back and she let him guide her down onto her back on the blanket. The roof was cold beneath her, but the chill at her back made Dominec’s heat as he settled himself over her all the more erotically enticing. She arched up into him. He felt like heated stone, all tightly packed muscle covered by a thin layer of skin. There was nothing soft and yielding to him, but she didn’t want soft.

She coiled her arms around his neck, drawing him down into the kiss that stretched on and on, back and forth in a tangle of need. His hand slid up her side, under her jacket, sneaking beneath the hem of her shirt to find bare skin. She shivered, as much from the heat of his touch as the chill air that touched her skin, but Dominec broke away from the kiss, cursing low with a disgruntled growl. He rolled them so he was on the bottom, but the cold air above was no better than the icy roof below. Her legs fell naturally to either side of his and he thrust up—his hardness putting pressure right where she wanted it and she abruptly forgot about the cold.

Until she realized the thrusting was a side effect of Dominec levering his shoulders up so he could twist out of his jacket and flip it around her shoulders like a blanket over them both as she lay over him.

“You’ll freeze,” she whispered in soft protest.

“Worth it,” he grunted, his hand once again wrapping around the nape of her neck to draw her down for another kiss. She let him capture her lips for only a moment before twisting her head to the side.

“Dominec,” she scolded low when he gave up her mouth to trail a line of kisses along her jaw and down the curve of her neck. “You’re no good to me with hypothermia.”

But she had to admit he didn’t
feel
cold, his touch still burning hot, and the addition of his jacket had made her downright comfortable.

His hands were back beneath her shirt, moving upward, the soft thermal knit gathering on his wrists. She braced her hands on his chest and pushed herself up to stop the distracting kisses, but that only gave his hands more room to maneuver and they closed over her breasts, his thumbs flicking unerringly over the lace-covered nipples that were already standing out and begging for attention.

“This is a bad idea,” she whispered, her argument somewhat undermined when she arched into his touch, her neck going a little wobbly and letting her head fall back.

He sat up, his abs tightening deliciously beneath the clinging fabric of his shirt, and nipped her lower lip with a growl. “Stop talking.”

He sucked the spot he’d bitten, flicking it with his tongue before diving back into her mouth for another sanity-stealing kiss. She found her arms around his neck again, her hips rocking against his of their own accord. His hands retreated from her breasts and she whimpered a complaint. A complaint that bled into a moan when he gripped her ass with both hands and ground her hard against his cock. They were both still almost fully clothed, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt anything quite so fucking hot, especially when he growled into her mouth in time with the thrusting of his hips.

She moved against him, mindless and instinctual, her hands itching with the urge to release her claws. She heard another voice, purring in harmony with Dominec’s growls and realized it was her. He kept one hand on her ass, guiding that rocking pressure, as his other worked inside the front of her jeans and beneath the elastic of her panties. Grace whimpered an urgent plea and reached between them to frantically unfasten her own jeans to give him room to maneuver. As soon as the zipper released, his fingers slid down that last inch and found the wet core of her. She released a sharp, desperate keen at the jolt of sensation and attacked the zipper on his fatigues, but he moved before she could get it undone.

He lifted her as if she weighed no more than a feather, the hand down her pants never losing its devastating rhythm. He placed her on her back on the blanket again, fitting himself over her so the hard ridge of his erection pressed against her inner thigh as his fingers worked against her. With his free hand, he opened her coat and shoved up her shirt, bending to press fiery kisses against her abdomen. Growling against her skin, his lips blazed a trail toward her breasts, one hand roughly shoving her shirt and bra out of the way as his other continued to devastate her clit with tight, driving pressure.

Her claws snicked out and she gripped his shoulders, incapable of thought as she clung and writhed her hips, urging him onward, striving for that peak that stayed just out of reach. An icy breeze hit the nipples he’d bared and they furled into nearly painful knots.

“Dominec,” she panted. “Please.”

His hot mouth closed over one chilled nipple with sudden, fierce suction and Grace shrieked, her back arching high, hips grinding helplessly against his hand as an orgasm ripped through her in hard, shuddering waves, a rough, unforgiving tide of bliss.

“Oh God, oh God,” she panted as she came down. Dominec’s fingers had eased their pressure, but every so often he gave a teasing little flick and she convulsed with another electric aftershock. She whispered his name and he ceased tormenting her nipple with his tongue, stretching up to lie against her, a purr humming through his body as he buried his face in her neck.

She could feel him, ruthlessly hard against her inner thigh, but he made no move to lower his trousers. His fingers retreated from the front of her panties with a final flick that sent her muscles jerking helplessly. She opened her eyes to find him tugging her shirt and bra back into place and fastening her jeans one handed, dark eyes watching her skin disappear.

“But you…” she mumbled, reaching for his zipper.

He angled his hips away from her. “Not tonight.”

“Why not?” She knew she sounded like a spoiled child denied a treat, but she didn’t particularly care. The man had just fingered her to one of the best goddamn orgasms of her life. He deserved the main event. Hell,
she
deserved the main event. Or if she hadn’t earned it, she was more than willing to do whatever it took to get there.

Her eyes went again to the bulge in his pants and she licked her lips. More than willing.

“Stop,” he growled when he caught the direction of her gaze, though he didn’t move away from her, his body still a warm presence along her side.

“Why?” she asked again. She trailed her claws lightly up his back, with just enough pressure to tease.

He shook his head and lowered his face back to the curve of her neck, drawing in her scent in a long, deliberate inhale.

She was starting to notice the cold as her afterglow wore off, but she didn’t like the idea of leaving him unsatisfied. Her brain was waking up after its brief hiatus and asking a dozen questions, first among them:
where did that come from?

“Dominec?” She smoothed a hand over the firm, muscular swell of his shoulder. “Why did you…?”

He lifted his head just enough for his dark, glittering eyes to blaze into hers with something fierce and possessive and—sweet holy hell she nearly came again from that look alone. “I needed to make you come for me.”

He said the words like they were a simple statement of fact and Grace shivered, incapable of looking away from that blaze of dark need. “Okay,” she whispered.

His focus seemed to tighten around her. He rumbled an irritated growl. “You’re cold.”

She would have lied, said it was downright tropical on the roof, but she had a feeling her teeth were about two seconds away from chattering. “African lionesses aren’t exactly equipped for making out on snowy rooftops in the middle of a Canadian winter,” she admitted.

He growled at her again and she got the distinct impression he was annoyed with her for
allowing
herself to get chilled. Then he was on his feet, the move so smooth and swiftly graceful that her mouth went dry and something hot clenched in her core. He would move with that predator speed in bed.

This had been good—okay, it had been fucking epic—but she knew she wouldn’t be able to wait long before the main event.

“Coming?” he asked, surly and irritable as ever as he thrust his hand down at her. Though she couldn’t exactly blame him. From the stiff way he was moving, the cold wasn’t doing much to take the edge off his hard-on.

Grace let him pull her to her feet and stood by as he gathered up the blanket and his jacket. He walked to the edge of the roof and dropped the bundled fabric onto the snowy pavement below. When she came to stand next to him, he crouched and hooked one hand onto the gutter, giving it a tug to test that it was firm and then swinging his body over the edge and onto the walk below, making it look insultingly easy. Grace followed, pleased that her maneuver was almost as graceful as his—though she wasn’t going to complain when his hands caught her waist, steadying her landing.

He quickly set her away, moving down the stairs to the lower level with sure, silent steps. At the base of the steps, he collected the comforter and jacket, tucking them under his arm and nodding her toward her motel room door.

Grace frowned, surprised he would pick her room when his was farther away from the sensitive ears of the lions, but she pulled out her key to unlock her door anyway. If he wanted to advertise their affair, she could hardly quibble after the way she’d surprise-attack kissed him this morning at the pride.

But when the door to her room opened silently on blessedly oiled hinges, Dominec stopped her from leading the way inside with a hand on her stomach. The blanket was tucked under his other arm and he looked down at her with a piercing intensity. She had no idea what he was trying to say with that look, but then he leaned toward her and she stopped trying to decipher it.

The kiss was an abrupt, overwhelming invasion. Her thighs clenched, her body instantly readying itself for him in a hot, slick rush. She made a soft sound in her throat—plea, demand and well-pleasured moan all tangled into one. With his hand on her stomach, he coaxed her backward into the room until they were clear of the door.

The end of the kiss was so sudden, so unexpected, she was still standing there gaping like a guppy when the door clicked shut.

With him on the other side.

What the…?

She would never understand that man. But as she flopped in boneless lassitude on the bed, she decided she could handle his mystery man routine if it came with orgasms like that. ’Cause
damn
.

Grace brushed her fingers over lips and breasts still swollen from his attentions. If he left her feeling like this, he could be as enigmatic as he wanted.

Grace roused herself only enough to strip, before falling into the heavenly, dreamless sleep of the sated.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dominec listened to Grace moving around the room next door, trying to detect some whisper of sound that would tell him whether she was annoyed with him for leaving her without so much as a goodbye. He knew that wasn’t how things were done, but he’d known if he stayed a second longer, even to say farewell, he would never have gotten himself out of that room and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

He’d probably confused her. Leaving himself in a state of rigid pain hadn’t exactly been his game plan from the beginning either. But then he hadn’t had a plan. He didn’t think where she was concerned.

But he’d gotten what he wanted tonight.

His cock might be a fucking flaming brand in his pants, but he was satisfied. The demons that lurked in his soul were quiet.

He hadn’t come, but his satisfaction had been drawn from hers. From the knowledge of what he’d done to her. From knowing he owned her passion like that. She was his now.

It had been too much to ask that he make himself vulnerable in front of her tonight. Even with Grace that was a level of trust that he could not leap to lightly.

But his cock didn’t care about his emotional satisfaction. It demanded its own release.

Dominec checked the chain on the motel room door, then went into the small bathroom, closing and locking that door as well, checking the lock on the window and only then allowing himself to relax. Not all the way, but just enough for his body to take what it needed.

He unzipped his fatigues, hissing with relief when he closed his fist around his length. He wasn’t gentle. A few quick, rough strokes and he was bent over the sink, his free hand braced hard on the edge of the counter as he jerked himself off. He didn’t bother imagining it was Grace’s smooth, soft hand in place of his. All he had to do was remember the way her body had bowed with the force of her own orgasm, the sound of her startled shriek of pleasure, and his vision blanked out as his balls released their load in hot, spurting jets that splashed over the sink and mirror.

“Fuck,” he murmured softly, hunched over the sink, panting hard.

He hadn’t done that in a while. So long, in fact, that he was having trouble remembering when—not that his memory was in such great shape to begin with. But the simple fact was his sex drive hadn’t been the same since his captivity.

He’d still feel arousal—the scent of a female in heat still affected his body as strongly as anyone else’s—but it never went farther than a physiological reaction. He’d written his lack of interest off as a function of growing out of his horny teens and twenties. Male sex drives went down as they aged—he’d heard that chestnut about sexual peaks at eighteen too many times to count. He’d just figured that everyone’s libido went into remission.

He hadn’t wanted to let himself think that his loss of interest was another way the Organization had broken him. They had taken enough from him without laying that at their door as well.

But now with Grace it was back. That need. Hotter and more demanding than ever. Though maybe that was a function of the fact that it had been building up for so long. Whatever the cause, he wanted Grace with an animal ache that getting himself off had done little to ease.

Which was good. Fucking
great
. He was a man again, the most primal part of him wanted to yell.

But it was also dangerous.

He’d forgotten his surroundings for a moment there on the roof tonight with Grace, completely lost his awareness of the outside world—and he hadn’t even entered her. Hadn’t even taken off his fucking pants.

How much worse would it be when they had sex? How much more vulnerable to attack would he make himself?

It was too dangerous to lose track of the world that way.

He trusted Grace. She was the only person on the planet he could imagine being so vulnerable in front of, but they would be exposed. He had to watch his own back, but also to protect her. Not that she needed his protection—she was a warrior and a leader and it would be sacrilege to try to take that away from her in any way. An unthinkable insult. But he had to be the one guarding her back. It was a need he didn’t question. She was his now. She might refute his claim, but it was there nonetheless. Grace was his to guard and his to pleasure—even if it couldn’t be anything more than that.

He’d already failed Ksenia and Micah. He had to be on his guard at all times. He must not fail Grace.

Dominec was his usual surly self when they left the motel the next morning, but Grace didn’t mind. She hadn’t been expecting afterglow. Her body still felt pleasantly relaxed and her mood was remarkably cheerful—considering they were about to hike into what could loosely be considered enemy territory.

Wolves and lions weren’t natural enemies—but only because their territories never overlapped in nature. The two shifter species had more than a few things in common—both hunting in packs and living in family groups—but they were also both insanely territorial. The shifter wolf packs and lion prides of North America steered well clear of one another, but in the few times border disputes had erupted, the bloody conflicts that resulted had made the Hatfields and McCoys look like good neighbors.

They parked the SUV at a campsite at Meadow Lake and put on their packs in silence, preparing to start the hike into the wilds Black Lake claimed. Grace studied her little band, hoping they looked like ambassadors, but having a nasty feeling they radiated don’t-fuck-with-me predator vibes for miles.

Grace had handed the compass and maps over to Tyler and he started up a trail, leading the way. Kelly followed and Grace fell into step beside Zoe, leaving Dominec to guard their tails.

“How did you get the ambassador gig?” she asked the Texas lioness as they began the first gradual climb.

Zoe shrugged, adjusting the straps of her pack on her shoulders. “You want the short version or the long version?”

“We have time.”

“Long version it is.” She took a few more steps, gathering her thoughts. “I already told you my brother and I were raised in a pride in Florida.”

“Yeah.”

“Decent place. Traditional. Not bad people, but not a lot of imagination, you know?”

Unbidden, Grace found herself thinking of her parents. “I know the type.”

“Yeah, well, predictably, Landon—that’s my brother—grew into a big old bossy bastard and the Alpha started to feel threatened by him. You can probably predict the next part.”

“Familiar story,” Grace commented. Roman had been kicked out of the pride he grew up in as well. It was common practice for the older Alphas to root out younger males who might one day challenge them for control. Greg was the only lion Grace had ever heard of who had broken away from that practice to choose and train his own successor instead.

“Yep. And when Landon got the boot, I went with him. Partially because I love my brother and all that sappy crap, but mostly because I wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Grace’s eyebrows flew up and she found herself studying Zoe more closely. It was virtually unheard of for a lioness to make the choice to go nomad. Almost as unheard of as a female lieutenant.

“We traveled around for a while,” Zoe continued her tale. “Drifting from place to place. I liked it a lot more than Landon did—he was always trying to find home, you know? Whereas I’m more of a home-is-wherever-I-hang-my-hat kind of girl.” They went single file as they scrambled up a narrow bit of the path and Zoe resumed her story when they got to the wider, flatter ground beyond. “Anyway, we got to Three Rocks and Landon challenged the dickhead who was running things and kicked his ass out. I never really planned to stay in one place for the rest of my life—not my thing—but I hung out for a while to help Landon ease into Alpha life. I guess it was about a year later when Ava—that’s Tyler’s baby sister—went into heat and my oblivious brother realized she existed and got hit upside the head with the love stick. When things settled down after their mating, I had this great plan to leave, but then Michael—another of Tyler and Ava’s brothers—had a little
incident
where he went a little too fangy in the local bar. He’s always had trouble with his control, but this time he lost it in front of some humans and all of Three Rocks went on crazy ass lockdown. Which I thought was stupid as fuck—we didn’t even know what people in town were saying!—but Landon didn’t want me to leave when things were unstable.”

Grace noticed that the group had tightened up. Zoe wasn’t speaking loudly, but all of the shifters could easily hear her and Tyler had slowed his pace, obviously listening.

“I was about to be all,
fuck that, you’re not the boss of me
and go off to do my own thing again, when dumbass up there—”

“Hey,” Tyler rumbled without heat, glancing over his shoulder.

“—decided he was in love with me—”

“That isn’t how I remember it.”

“—and couldn’t live without me and shit—”

“You’re revising history.”

“—so he begged me to stay and be his mate—”

“When did I do that?”

“—and I was all, ‘No! I am a tumbleweed in the wind and I cannot be tamed!’”

“A tumbleweed in the wind? Really?”

Grace bit her lip as Zoe strode on, ignoring her mate entirely as she waxed poetic.

“But then the dastardly Organization assholes caught both of us—”

“Because you never listen to me and wouldn’t just run when I told you to,” Tyler grumbled.

“And while fighting for my life, I realized that Tyler was somewhat decent, as bossy lions go—”

“Thank you, snookums.”

“Anytime, sugarplum,” Zoe called sweetly, acknowledging her mate for the first time. “Anyway, after we escaped, we decided we were going to do the whole happily-ever-after, ride-off-into-the-sunset thing, but I still had a little problem with the idea of living in one place for my whole life—because dear God, how do people do that without dying of boredom?—so Tyler manfully decided to give up his vocation of micromanaging his younger siblings’ lives—”

“Zoe.” The growl was back in the big lion’s voice.

“—and come with me on a diplomatic mission to unite the shifters against the common enemy. And here we are.”

Grace cleared her throat, fighting the urge to laugh. “So, Tyler, you have a lot of younger siblings? Me too.”

The Texas lion instantly took the peace offering. “Four siblings. Caleb, Kane, Michael and Ava. All grown now.”

“I’ve got five,” Grace said conversationally. “Hope, Will, Valor, Honor and Faith. None of them grown. Though Hope likes to think she’s an adult.”

“Your parents had a thing for naming their kids nouns, huh?” Zoe asked. She glanced at the cowboy moving up the path near Tyler. “What about you, Kelly? You got any siblings?”

“Two older sisters,” he called back.

“Yeah, you struck me as the spoiled-baby-of-the-family type,” Zoe said, clearly trying to get a rise out of Kelly—it had become her latest game, trying to rile the un-rile-able lion. He just laughed and kept walking.

Grace tuned out the chatter as Zoe continued to try to goad him. She’d forgotten Kelly had sisters. Forgotten about his parents too. They were friends with her own. A nice lion family.

No wonder her mother was so fixated on the idea of her with Kelly. What would her mother think if she met Dominec? Grace glanced over her shoulder, slowing her pace slightly to widen the gap between herself and the chattering lions ahead.

“Do you have siblings?” she heard herself asking, pitching her voice low so it didn’t carry. She knew so little about him.

“None.”

She let that terse response settle into her image of him, walking a few more minutes before asking, “And your parents? Are they still around somewhere?”

“My father left when I was young. I was twenty when my mother died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dominec shrugged one shoulder, the gesture somehow extremely Gallic.

“I never hear you speak French,” she observed.

“I don’t anymore.”

She walked on for a couple minutes, wondering if she could push him for more details, ask him why, when he abruptly offered the information on his own.

“The Organization discouraged their captives from speaking any language other than English in the cells. I lost the words over time.”

She wanted to ask him if he’d ever tried to speak French again—she seemed to have nothing but questions where Dominec was concerned, but she didn’t know what was right to ask. She, who had never worried about whether a question might offend someone, didn’t want to say the wrong thing to him.

But she’d never learned how to be tactful.

“Did you speak French with your wife?”

He grunted. “Mostly. Her English was poor. My father’s first language was English, so I learned it as a boy, but Ksenia had only Russian and French when her family emigrated.” His accent was becoming more pronounced, the pattern of his speech shifting slightly. “She wished for me to speak Russian with her, but I took to it slowly.”

“Was she beautiful?”

She didn’t know why she asked that. Petty jealousy, perhaps. A sense of possessive greed. Of course his wife would be beautiful. He had been unbearably handsome—she had seen the unmarked side of his face. But for some reason she didn’t care to examine, she wanted him to lie. To say his wife was plain.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Incredibly.”

Grace smothered her reaction. “She was a tiger as well?”

He hummed an affirmative. “The only female Siberian of my generation I’d ever met. I was nineteen the first time I saw her. She was in heat. The result was not surprising.”

He didn’t say it was love. Not that it mattered. But her stupid brain couldn’t seem to stop fixating on his lack of emotion when he spoke of his wife. Of course, he never really spoke with emotion…unless he was speaking about the death of Organization personnel.

“After the fact I realized my mother had set us up. She knew she had cancer. Knew it was bad. I think she didn’t want me to be alone, so she arranged for a meeting with a tigress. Though I’m not sure she was aware Ksenia was in heat at the time. It worked out, in the end. She got to hold her grandson before she died.”