The Hunted (Sleeping With Monsters Book 2) (19 page)

“What was the worst?” I asked.
“Getting bitten?”

“No. Deciding to come back up
here. I was pretty pissed off.”

“I’m sorry.” I pressed myself
to her back, and kissed at her shoulders, my arms wrapped around her tight.
This might be for pretend, but I didn’t want to think about that yet. She moved
against me, and I gasped. “You’re so tight,” I whispered hoarsely.  

“I know,” she said, her voice
a little rough. Then she started to squirm. I thought I’d pushed my luck too
far, but she reached and took my hand from where it was over her chest and
pulled it down, pushing it between her legs. 

“Rub me.”

“What?”

“It feels so good, Max,” she
whispered, writhing on my swollen cock. “Touch me there.”

I could hardly deny her. Everything
I did now that she was locked to me felt like it might be the last time, and I
wanted to know all of her now.

She gasped and purred against
me, pushing her back into my chest, wrapping one arm up and around my neck to
hold on. I played her like an instrument – rubbing my hand over the erasers of
her nipples, my other hand circling her clit, and me making the smallest of
movements with my hips, testing the boundaries of her tolerance with my knot.

“It hurts so good Max,” she
said, tensing her ass to make her hips rock back and forth on my knot’s width.
She started to clench me tighter and I growled.  

“Oh God –“ I breathed.

“What?” she asked, and then
she felt it too, giving a soft moan.  I was hard again, inside her. Her
pussy had been too much. But I didn’t want my wolf to come back – I started to
panic --

“Just go with it, Max,” she
whispered, feeling me tense. “And whatever you do, don’t stop.”

So we writhed together quietly.
Her hand went for mine and stopped my rubbing so that I could catch up. The
smallest of movements either of us made were amplified by how sensitive I was
and how tight all of she was around me, and we panted and moaned, our sounds
mixing in with the cricketsong.

“Max – Max – Max –“ she
whispered, in time with my soft thrusts, and then the sensation of her pussy
clamping down as it claimed me as I had her – she whimpered and cried out, her
body rocking against mine gently as she came, and then I gasped into her
shoulder, giving her my second load of the night.

“That’s good Max, that’s so
good,” she moaned as I sagged back, panting. It was another ten minutes until
my knot deflated, and we held each other quietly.

“Is it always like that?” she
asked, breaking our silence as I slid out.

“I don’t know. I’m a virgin,
remember?”

“Not anymore.” She stood first,
shaky. She was as beautiful now as she had been earlier, even though the moon
had sunk.  

I’d claimed her. I really had.
My wolf beat its tail in pleasure. She was ours.

For at least one more day.

I picked her up and carried
her back to the cabin, putting her gently onto the bed. She was asleep – really
asleep – by the time I came back with her clothes and the truck. I’d used the
corner of her sweater to carefully pick up the silver necklace and nestle it
into the bundle of her clothing. 

Half of the woods smelled like
her – the other half smelled of us, together, the dark scent of our sex.

The pack would come tomorrow
night.

I looked around the cabin, at the
traps I’d prepped and the silver laced buckshot I’d readied.

Let them.

Chapter Nineteen

I woke up alone in the cabin
again. Half the traps I’d seen in stacks last night were gone. I knew what Max
was out doing.

I was naked and sore in all
the best possible ways. Last night had been like some kind of dream. Him as a
wolf, and all that came after. I’d never been used like that before, not even
by Vincent. I stood and tried to look over my shoulder at my back and ass to
where I knew red lines and palm marks would stand out as the door opened.

Max was there, dawn’s light
coming in behind him like a halo. He saw me, brightened, and then saw my back
and looked down. “I’m so sorry –“

“Don’t be.” I shook my head
quickly. “This is me. This is…what I like.”

His eyes measured me, trying
to see if I was telling him what he wanted instead of the truth.

“You knew Vincent was a man
with interesting tastes.” I crossed the room to him slowly. “He and I –“ I took
his hand and brought it up to touch my breast, his hand fitting perfectly over
a welt. While I searched for words, his thumb stroked across my nipple, and I
gasped.  “Are you saying you’re used to men treating you poorly?” he asked,
his gaze serious and dark.

“No. I’m trying to tell you
that I like to get hurt,” I said.

His expression was a
complicated thing, trapped between utter despair and elation. Then he pinched
my nipple, pulling it up and towards him as he did so, making me rock toward
him on both feet. A long moment passed between us, him watching my face for any
sign of fear or hesitance, before he let go. Sensation flooded back, making
everything my nipple felt sharp.

“All right.” He bowed his
head. “But know that I don’t ever want to hurt-hurt you, Sam.”

“Then don’t die tonight.” The
words came off my tongue and flowed out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Everything was still for a moment, both of us frozen by what I’d said. And then
he leaned forward and his mouth was on mine and his hands were on my waist.

He picked me up and threw me
onto the bed, pulling off his clothes as he stood beside it, looking down at
me, his chest heaving, cock hard. I spread my legs – we didn’t have time for
foreplay, not when we were racing the moonlight. He knelt on the bed, then
leaned over me, and slid in.

I groaned to feel him in me
once again. My hands wound in his hair, my lips on his lips, kissing him
fervently as he thrust. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled his chest
down onto mine, wanting to feel every inch of his skin pressed close. The
muscles of his arms, the broad sweep of his shoulders – I had so little time to
memorize him, but I had to – “Please,” I whispered, more to myself than to him,
and he stopped.

“Please what?”

Please don’t die
, was
what I wanted to say. But I didn’t dare. One moment of vulnerability a day was
enough – “Please – more –“ I whispered, and he complied.

He grabbed my hands and set
them over my head so I couldn’t get away, and thrust in earnest, twisting his
hips as he did so, leaning just enough over me so that I could grind my clit on
his stomach as my hips answered his. The blood was rushing in my ears and I
tried to fight back – not him, but all my memories, everything and everyway
this could go wrong, after losing Vincent, I couldn’t lose him, too –

One of his hands let go of
mine – and he used it to slap my face hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. I
blinked them back, looking up.   

“Stay with me,” he growled.

I nodded, helpless – and my
body took over. I started rocking with him, prolonging the contact between my
pussy and his cock, and it was like we were dancing on the bed, moving as one
amazing creature, friction building inside and out.

“Sam,” he whispered hoarsely,
bowing his head in concentration near my ear. “Your pussy – I’m going to –“ he
warned between panting breaths.

“Go. Go-go-go,” I whispered
back, and with a strangled gasp he came. I watched his orgasm ride him as he
rode me – and then his knot took, and it was my turn to sound wild. My hands
clawed his shoulders as he spread me thick and deep, feeling myself stretched
all over again, deliciously sore from the prior night. “Oh Max –“ I whispered,
and he growled and kept fucking me, rubbing his hips against me hard until I came
around him and beneath him in a series of gasps and shivers.

At the end of it I lay under him,
trapped, his sweat dripping onto me, mine dripping onto his mattress. I moved a
little – and he moved with me, his cock sealing us tight.

“Are you okay?” he asked,
holding himself up over me with his well-muscled arms.

I nodded. I linked my feet
behind his waist, since there was nowhere else to go.

He gave me a half-smile. “It’s
a little embarrassing. Sorry.”

“Or, charming. I mean, I’ve
seen some dicks in my day, but I can genuinely say that yours is something
else.” I tried to give him a cheerful smile back. It was hard to ignore that
every second that passed now was one less we had to prepare.

He rolled over a little and I
went with him, until we were side by side, one of my legs tossed over him. He
reached out for me with a gentle hand and smoothed away a wrinkle on my
forehead.

I wanted him to say that it
was going to be okay, that of course we’d succeed, because I’d mated his wolf,
hadn’t I? But he either didn’t know that, or didn’t want to lie. The latter
seemed more likely.

“You know, Vincent and I
always had a back-up plan.” Or rather, I thought we had a plan. “We always said
if we got separated, we’d meet up at the Bica Museum coffee shop the next day.
That we’d do anything we could to get down there in time.”

Max pulled away from me, even
though our hips were still connected. “Sam, you still need to get out of town
–“ he made a rumbling sound, half a growl, deep in his chest. “I’m only
clearing out the pack. Not the family.”

“I know. But the family isn’t
everywhere. They don’t have eyes on every corner. I’ll wear the wig –“

He reached for me, and pulled
me close, burying me in him, his skin, his sweat, his scent. Whatever words I
was going to say next were lost against his neck. He held me like he might
never get to again, until his flaccid cock slipped out.

“Okay,” he said, pushing back.
“I have to go back –“ he jerked his head toward the door.

“How can I help?” I asked as
he stood. He reached into his jeans and tossed a closed knife, which I caught.

“You can start cutting the top
of that mattress into four by four squares.”

I worked while he did, leaving
with bundles of traps over his shoulder, his pockets stuffed with things that
smelled like me – like us. He said it’d infuriate the pack, and I believed him.
I knew Syd’s temper was dark, I’d seen him take it out on people often enough
before.

Halfway through the day he
returned and the cabin was empty, except for the few last guns he was going to
set up in here. I knew it was time for me to go, but I didn’t want to be the
one to say it.

He stood in the doorway, the
keys to the truck in his palm, offered out to me.

“These are for you.”

By then I was wearing another
outfit cobbled together from his clothes, a plaid flannel that swallowed me
whole and jeans I’d been forced to create a belt for to keep up. I wanted
nothing more than to take all of it off again and just be with him, one last
time.

But instead I nodded, picked
up my bag with the book, IDs, and cash, and walked up to him.

If I kissed him now, one or the
other of us might break and lose resolve. But I was his mate, because I was
strong enough to be one, just like he was strong enough to be an alpha. And
people like us – we did what we had to do.

“The coffee shop. Tomorrow
morning,” I said as I took the keys from his hand.

“I’ll be there,” he said with
a nod.

I carefully stepped around him
and walked out, and I didn’t have to look back to know he was watching me. 

Chapter Twenty

She had to be the strongest
woman I’d ever met – that I ever even knew. The way I could fuck her with
abandon, the way her pussy clenched my cock – every moment in her presence made
me hard. I would never tire of seeing her, tasting her, smelling her, touching
her – and I was watching her walk away.

Almost-alpha,
my wolf
growled, our gaze following the sway of her hips.

That’s right,
I agreed
with him. Back to business.
 

Tonight was going to work. It
had to.

I had to do my thinking as a
man, and my construction around a wolf. How would the pack enter the forest?
How many trails would they go down, into what groups would they divide? Could I
lure some of them far enough away that no one would hear them get shot? What if
they howled in pain – would the pack stop? Keep coming more slowly? Or faster,
in anger?

I set traps, making sure some
of them smelled like her, and some of them didn’t, hiding them among the low
shrubs and leaf litter that scattered the forest floor. At strategic locations
– the trail into the creek and back out again – I mounted loaded shotguns,
spinning out the thin tripwires that would set them off.

I’d rubbed fabric with her
scent over so many trees – they’d have to know it was a trap after the first
wolf got maimed or killed. But I knew just how angry my pack members were –
they sharpened their anger like some men sharpened knives – and they all
thought they were smarter than me, and smarter than one another too. I’d
probably be able to kill three or four of them before they realized the danger
they were in was real.

After that though, it would
require cunning.

I knew they’d wind up here. I
nailed up boards over windows, so that the only way into or out of the cabin
was the front door. And then I strung up trip wires for that, too, mounting
shotguns to point across the doorway at wolf-height, and for one gun to point
back out the door itself, hoping I would get whichever wolf’d hung back.

Then I mounted a third from
the stove, I’d quenched its fire this morning.

If they made it through all
the silver-poisoned traps and the silver-laced shotgun shells, I would be right
here behind it, waiting for them.

It was hard not to test the
wires again once I’d gotten all of the guns properly set up. Inside me, my wolf
paced in circles, ready for his chance to be in charge. I was half-scared he’d
go running after Sam, but knew he understood the gravity of becoming alpha,
first. If we managed that – if somehow we killed Syd tonight – then after that,
anything else was possible.