InsatiableNeed (5 page)

Chapter Five

In the space between the happy fall back to earth, Raegan
contemplated a lot of things. Time seemed suspended, allowing a parade of
possibilities to dance by her tired, confused mind. Whatever had just happened
had completely transcended anything in her line of experience. She felt
horribly exposed, and she hated being exposed. The thought alone of anyone even
sneaking a peek of what lay beneath her carefully crafted safeguard left her
more than naked, especially when the creature daring to catch a glimpse was the
very reason she had dived into her career.

Natalie’s death had changed things. Though Raegan bore her
wounds like proud shields of armor, she doubted anyone knew just how much her
friend’s murder had shaped her. The werewolf responsible, Razor, hadn’t seemed
like a monster at first. At one point he’d been the cute guy from her alma mater,
the lead singer in a punk band he’d co-created; a guy who carried just enough
Goth with a touch of realism to make him the star of a young co-ed’s dreams.
Raegan had found him all kinds of hot, but it was Natalie who wound up in his
bed.

It was also Natalie whom he sought after his first
transition of the semester. The wolf had tracked her scent to the dorms,
cornered her in the bathroom, and left behind a bloody pool of ripped flesh and
scattered innards. If Raegan had been there herself, chances were she’d be
dead, too.

But she wasn’t dead. She’d lived to hear the coroner’s
report—
some kind of wild animal,
they’d said—and, at his request, had
later met with an agitated Razor. The ensuing conversation had escalated to an
argument by means still not clear to her. All Raegan knew was they’d been
yelling at each other one moment, and the next she was screaming herself hoarse
and commanding her feet to run. Razor had crumbled to the ground, barking
things she couldn’t hear, his bones shifting with nauseating pops and cracks,
his snout elongating and thick black and gray fur spreading across his skin.
His clothing shredded with a final strain of muscle, and she’d stood face to
face with a snarling monster right out of a John Landis film. Had campus
security not been on full alert, had she not run the right direction, had she
not crashed into a sea of people, Natalie’s fate would have been her own.

Instead, she had found help. Found an animal control officer
patrolling the grounds in enough time to watch a tranquilizer shoot into the
man-turned-beast, ending one nightmare at the expense of a new one.

Instead of dying, Raegan had walked away with a fucked-up
psyche, a headful of questions, and an important lesson—trust is an enemy’s
greatest weapon. With college-age stupidity, she had trusted everyone, allowed
anyone who showed an interest to get close to her.

That philosophy had worked until Zeth. Zeth had transformed
just as Razor had—out of control, without warning, the full shebang. Yet where
Razor had come after her, canines barred and ready to kill, Zeth had fled the
scene. Left her before he could do any damage. It was the first time since
Natalie’s murder that she’d experienced the beast called doubt. In all the days
that followed, Zeth had not once given her reason not to trust him, but he had
likewise not given her a reason to throw everything on the line. To open
herself up to the possibility of not only being hurt, but watching everything
around her destroyed as a result.

No matter how close she felt to him now, she couldn’t let
herself get wrapped up in the moment. She couldn’t fool herself into thinking
she’d finally found something different.

She couldn’t let him break her.

“Get off.”

Zeth lifted his head drowsily, smacking his lips together.
“Raegan?”

“It’s over. Let me up.”

She could see it coming. His tenderness evaporated, and then
he leered at her unpleasantly again. “What’s the hurry?” he asked, wiggling his
hips.

Impossibly, she felt her body reacting. Felt her sated
nerves sparking with new life, her pussy clamping around his cock, which was
hard and ready to go. Was that the spell or a product of some sort of inhuman
stamina? She didn’t want to know.

“Stop that.” The words weren’t as strong as she would have
liked.

Zeth, of course, noticed her lack of conviction. He chuckled
and thrust hard into her. “You don’t want me to stop.” The softness of his tone
offset the scold in his words, but that didn’t matter the next second when he
dropped his mouth to her throat. “Oh yeah.” He grunted around a mouthful of her
skin, moving inside her in slow, agonizing strokes. “Squeeze me tight. Just
like that.”

“I don’t
want
to squeeze your…” Raegan’s mouth fell
slack when he wrapped his lips around one of her breasts. Her traitorous pelvis
rose to clash with his every time he tried to drag his cock away from her
aching pussy. “Uhh…”

“Admit it,” Zeth drawled with a grin, teasing her nipple
with his teeth. “You’re just eating this up.”

“Get
over
yourself.”

“Well, you were earlier, anyway.” He bit lightly at her flesh.
“That was your first time, wasn’t it? Taking it down the throat like that?”

Raegan’s skin flushed hot. Why on earth would he think that?
Was she that bad? “No,” she ground out, enjoying the way his eyes widened in
shock and…jealousy? God, her life just couldn’t get any stranger. “No… You…
Uhhh…”

“You let someone else into your mouth?” he demanded, his
gaze burning with illogical outrage, his thrusts driving to frenzy without
warning. Raegan squeaked ineloquently and squeezed his shoulders, her head falling
back as she tried desperately to match his pace. Every time his cock left her
body, he took a part of her with him.

He growled something unintelligibly into her skin, rocking
against her with sharp, jerky thrusts to accentuate every breath that escaped
his lean body. Not until his mouth neared her ear did she make any sense of
what he said at all.

“Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine…”

The headboard crashed against the wall again. Zeth’s cock
pounded into her pussy, his mouth at her ear, his hands exploring her body
possessively. He marked her, damn, he marked her all over. No part of her
didn’t shake, didn’t tremble under the influence of his sinful touch. No part
of her felt anything but him.

“Mine!” he snarled, and she felt his fangs nudge her cheek.
Fangs? Raegan reeled back long enough to see a yellow glow in his eyes. A thick
smattering of fur had sprouted along his shoulders and chest, inching up his
neck, but going no farther. Holy shit, she’d never seen him like this. She
hadn’t even known it was possible to only kinda-sorta wolf out, and even if she
did, she definitely would never have expected the sight to make her heart pound
with anything but terror.

In that moment, he was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen.

Raegan was too startled—too aroused—to balk or scream or do
anything but pant and moan and hope he didn’t kill her when his fangs pierced
her neck.

And why didn’t that worry her? She knew he would bite her,
and for whatever reason, she didn’t care. She couldn’t worry about his fangs.
She couldn’t. She felt too preoccupied with the wicked strokes of his cock.
With the way she felt like dying every time he slid from her pussy, no matter
how much his movements made her body sing.

Zeth growled and fisted a handful of her hair, jerking her
head back. “You’re mine!” he snarled, his thrusts hard, his gaze feral. “You’re
mine
.”

A sliver of fear, tagged with defiance, raced down Raegan’s
spine. She belonged to no one, least of all Zeth. It didn’t matter that he was
wolfed out and currently screwing her into oblivion. A spell was a
spell—nothing more. She had no control over herself, and she owed Zeth squat.

“Mine!” he barked again, smashing inside her. “
Mine!
”

“No!”

The feel of his ivory fangs slicing into her throat
triggered an explosion of pure euphoria. Her mouth fought to latch on to
something—anything—to stifle her elated cry, but Zeth’s incisors were buried in
her neck, he pounded her into an Raegan-shaped hole in the mattress, and
nothing could prevent the scream of his name from flying off her lips.

“
Mine!
” he snarled again, his head snapping back, his
yellow eyes swallowing her whole. His lips were red with her blood, and she
felt a rush of unadulterated lust shoot straight to her core. “You’re
mine
,
Raegan!”

“Oh God. Oh God.”

“Say it! Tell me you’re mine!”

A warning bell went off. Something felt wrong. Somewhere in
the back of her head, screaming for recognition, was a voice telling her the
second she said yes she would enter a lifetime of regret. But in that instant,
there existed no other truth.

She belonged to Zeth. Completely.

His head dipped, and his mouth sucked on the bite he’d given
her. “
Mine!
”

“Oh yes. Yes. Yes!”

Her nails raked down his back, and her muscles clenched
around him, and when he growled against her throat and spilled himself inside
her, she’d never known a sweeter homecoming. She felt, for once in her life,
that she was exactly where she belonged. She felt completion. Utter completion.
The world around her dissolved in bliss.

“Mine,” Zeth murmured into her throat, his hardening cock
thrusting shallowly into her pussy. “You’re mine.”

Raegan sighed and curled her arms under his shoulders,
trembling when he began to purr.

Perfection.

“Mine,” he growled again, pillowing his cheek against her
breast. “Raegan…”

Then the world stopped. Somewhere in the back of her head, a
memory surfaced. A memory buried in the pile of research she’d exhausted
herself on following Natalie’s death and Razor’s revelation. Every book by an
authority on the subject had been very clear about two things. One: werewolves
mated for life and beyond. Once a bond was forged, nothing, not even death,
could break it. Two: becoming mated to a werewolf took words of ownership and
acceptance of that ownership.

And in a blaze of orgasmic glory, she’d given herself to
him.

“Oh my God.” Raegan shoved him hard. She sat up with a
start, ignoring the sharp pang that shot through her the second he left her
body, and pressed her hand to her neck.
Okay. Panicking.
“Did you just—”

Zeth frowned and bounced lightly at the foot of the mattress.
She really hadn’t intended to shove him that far, but…well, then again, yes she
had. She couldn’t shove him far
enough
away.

It really didn’t help that he remained close enough to touch
her. If he touched her, her anger would dissipate, and she wanted to hold on to
her anger. She deserved it. He’d just done something monumentally stupid. Her
body already missed his touch, but that seemed the last thing she needed to
consider.

“Raegan—”

“You
claimed
me, you son of a bitch!”

To his credit, Zeth didn’t look any more thrilled at the
prospect than she did, now that the fog across his face had dissipated. “I
didn’t mean to!” he objected. From how visibly he shook, though, pointing out
how very little that detail mattered likely wouldn’t do either of them any
good. “I just…” He froze and shuddered. “Oh God.”

Raegan scooted over and smacked his arm. Hard. “You
claimed
me? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I obviously wasn’t.” He scowled, sat up on his legs,
wrapped his hand around his erection, and started to stroke. There was
something seriously wrong with this picture.

Only that had pretty much been the motto for the night, so
it lacked the shock Raegan would have liked. And why in the world would he beat
off while she remained sprawled naked in front of him? Was she not good enough
now that he’d claimed her?

And why would that bother her?

“No,” Zeth growled irritably, pumping himself harder. “You
shoved me out of your cunt, remember?”

“I…I don’t give you permission to read my thoughts.”

“I
can’t
read your thoughts. Claims don’t work that
way.”

“Then how—”

“They’re called ears.”

“I said that out loud?”

“Yeah. And my ears are particularly sensitive, so I can hear
even if you are muttering under your breath.” He smirked unpleasantly, palming
his balls and giving them a good squeeze. “You want me back inside?”

Yes. She ached all over. She felt wet and desperate and very
much in need of him. She needed that cock inside her and not in his hand…no
matter how hot watching him masturbate made her. Especially when his gaze
flickered alternately between her breasts and her pussy. Especially when he
licked his lips and snarled possessively.

She felt certifiable. Absolutely certifiable.

“The spell’s over,” she said slowly, knowing it wasn’t true.
“It has to be over now. We’ve already—”

“I don’t know about
you
, Raegan…” Zeth paused and
sniffed at the air, his mouth stretching into an obnoxious grin. “Well,
actually, I
do
know about you. Nose doesn’t lie.”

“Ugh!” Raegan shot out a leg in his direction, only to have
him seize her by the ankle with his unoccupied hand. She tried to ignore how
good his fingers felt against her. “Get over yourself.”

“We’re not done,” he replied softly.

Then he tugged on her leg, dragged her down the mattress,
ignoring her surprised yelp, and positioned himself at her opening yet again.
She felt certain that any second now her heart would leap out of her chest. She
lay on her back, stretched out before him, and he had her pelvis lifted as an
offering for his cock. He didn’t touch her at all. His body didn’t stretch
above hers. His chest didn’t press against her breasts. He held her only where
he needed to, rubbing his length across her slit.

“You’re mine, Raegan,” he said again. Slowly. Intently. He
refused to look at her—his focus was on her pussy. “For better or worse.”