Wolfe (6 page)

Wolfe

I stared past her at the fire and the embers floating into the night. The crackling of wood burning, the scent of smoke, and this soft, sexy woman in my arms, it rendered me speechless again.

Words came easier than before, but not as easily as thoughts.

Kiara was right. I was the man version of that sleeping girl in the forest, waking after losing years of his past. Or was I Rumpelstiltskin? Now he was some Russian fairytale. I didn’t even know how long I’d been in the US, or how I’d gotten overseas, or why I was there.

That worried me more than having Russian spies chasing me. I had a rock-solid confidence that I could deal with them. My fuzzy past was different. I needed it back but there were vague memories of terrible things, of blood and killing. Was I capable of murder? Maybe the Russians wanted me for killing people and not because of what I could do with women?

This ability had settled into my hands like a weapon I’d trained to use, for years. Locked, loaded, fire away.

I could tell, mostly, which women I could deal with. A few I couldn’t, not many, and sometimes it seemed that was more a result of a temporary malfunction.

I wanted my lost past. What if someone had decided to drug the hell out of me rather than let me loose on society? That made sense. Except this power was something any military would give its left nut for. They’d never leave me rotting in a drugged haze in a low-security rehab village.

“Tell me all the facts you know, Kiara.”

“About Andy Carruthers? He was lost in Afghanistan in 2012 but you said you aren’t him.”

“Yes. What about me, though?”

“Only that you were shot in Thailand less than a year ago. Doctor Hass believes you may not be that man even, because the injuries seen then, well, you don’t have them.”

“And you think that too?” When she didn’t answer, I jostled her.

“I think...maybe you’re him, but you healed.”

Which isn’t normal.
No wonder she was sounding unsure.

“So you think I’m some supernatural being?” I really wanted to know this one.

She lowered her head. “Maybe. But...I think you’re probably just a man who has changed somehow. I don’t know why or how. Nothing in your records suggested anything unusual. Wait. No. Your sight came back early on. That was miracle one. You’ve always healed better than a normal person.”

And the other things made me not normal. Not just this...ability, but what I felt, things I felt in my gut, that made me crave what anyone would call sinful.

I’d fucked her at her apartment, even if my memory of it was mostly gone. Maybe I’d hurt her in ways no man should hurt a woman, and yet...I looked inward, feeling the flare of lust in my groin. The thought of making her squeal in pain while she came, it’d turned me on, instantly.

Impossible not to get an erection with her on my lap.

I needed to keep a close rein on myself until I sorted myself out. Had she betrayed me? Sure. She had reasons for it that made sense. Didn’t make me like it, though.

The firelight limned her hair in a halo of orange. I put my hand to her nape and stroked her there, feeling her shiver, knowing she was already aroused.

A dark shape on her neck had me curious so I pushed her head forward while holding her hair out of the way. Reflections bathed her neck.

“You have a mark here,” I said, tracing it.

“Ouch!”

“It’s deep enough to have bled in some places.”

“I think it’s where you licked me.”

Jesus.
How rough had I been? Seriously, what the fuck, and...I wondered what her neck had tasted like.

Bouncing from caring about her to grim, dark, and macabre bemused me, amused me, made me curious about my own mind.

Why had I lost memories when I fucked her? Forgetting the best parts was cruel.

I let her go and she raised her head.

“Anything else I need to know like...how many of these bad guys were after me?”

“I don’t know. I contact my handler by a thumb drive left in prearranged places and, sometimes, if an emergency, email. Here? I can’t. I was to hand you over after an hour of surveillance at my apartment.”

“We seem to have lost them.”

“Mmm.”

That noncommittal reply bothered me. “Have you seen them since?”

“No.”

Truth.

“Okay.” I squeezed her shoulder. “We should sleep. You can share the sleeping bags with me. It’ll be warmer and we can zip them together. At the pause in her breathing, I smiled. “I’m not going to fuck you.”

Only because I didn’t trust myself.

The slender line of her neck made me dream of biting her, clawing at her, stripping her to nothing but female.

I swallowed. Trust thyself first.

Then fuck her?

My morals were getting damn shaky.

And she’d been going to hand me over to people who might kill me, for all she knew.

That seemed justification for revenge fucking.

No. That sucked. Morals, man, morals.

No fucking her.

“Just, be good. Tomorrow, I think I know where to go. I have a friend who kept a cabin up in Minnesota. It’s been there forever. Anyways, sleep time. Up.”

At my urging, she stood then turned to face me. “Why... Why don’t you just let me go? You don’t need me.”

“I don’t?” I raised my eyebrows. “I have no idea who or what I need.”

When the light was behind her, those yoga pants and the thin skirt of her dress hid nothing of her shape. Though daylight would be better... Hunger stirred.

I met her gaze. “I can’t let you go. You might run to anyone.”

She pouted. “You can trust me. You can make me not tell.”

Yes, but my power seemed to wax and wane. I rose and stared, waiting for her to lower her gaze, she didn’t. There was more to Kiara than one would think. Nurse, spy, kidnapper, what else?

Fuck toy?
To be honest, I didn’t really want to let her go.

* * * * *

Zipped up in the sleeping bag with her, I managed to go to sleep. Only to be awakened in the night by Kiara climbing out. The zip was mostly undone and she stood, silhouetted by thin starlight. I lunged but missed snagging her ankle. Despite her gasp of shock at the glancing touch of my fingertips, she began running.

Leaving me? Hell no.

The speed of her flight slowed when she reached the edges of our camping area, where shrubs grew more densely, and I heard the crunch of leaves and twigs beneath her feet.

My spine cracked as I stretched. Then I leisurely followed her erratic, noisy path.

She didn’t know how well I could see in the dark. The lake was in that direction. If I let her keep going, she’d find the shore where the edges might collapse at her weight. Rescuing her from the cold, weedy depths at one or two in the morning? No.

My passage through the trees was faster but not perfect. I glowered when some roots managed to tangle my bare foot and snarled at the scrape of a rock on my heel. This attempt of hers was futile. Stupid female.

I glimpsed the moon. My blood pulse thudded louder.

Pieces of moon peeled and fell away into the forest, gathering into a scattered horde of pale and dark with the rising shards of fractured trees. I sucked harsh breaths and scored my nails across my bared thighs, trying to wake myself from this miasma of wrongness. I knew what followed.

Light flared on the fungus growing on bark. Red outlined the running girl ahead. The brickwork she placed her hand on wavered then steadied.

Some calmness returned, but I recognized the signs – same as in her car. The prospect of catching her and punishing her gave me chills, good ones. She ran – she suffered the consequences.

I shook my head, flailing my shoulders with my unbound hair, whipping sense into my head.

The buzz subsided, my environment settled. No more floating fucking trees.

“I’m coming after you, woman.” When she darted sideways, I grinned. She hoped to mess up my aim.

“I can see you. Nightmares can see in the dark.” I chuckled.

Weaving through the trunks, with the pale-as-sin sand underfoot and the trees lined up like the bars of a cage, I had time to savor this.

The lake was close and she must’ve realized, because again she altered her path, dodging back through the forest at an angle – coming my way but to the right. I slowed and took care to make less noise. Thorns still whipped across my bare lower legs. I ignored them.

My senses drew a picture of Kiara, a delicious one.

Perspiration, and growing panic – in her fitful breaths and the pinched-off whimpers when she stepped on something sharp. Barefoot like me, but she couldn’t see half as well.

A wall loomed from the trees. Magic. We’d come in a part circle. Just what I wanted and where.

“Stop!” I roared.

She halted, caught in mid-step, then her foot lowered. But she didn’t turn to see me approach.

Simple and effective. This was all I’d needed to do but I’d wanted to see her run.

The forest debris snapped under my weight. I swept aside an overhanging branch and went to her, trying not to let the scent of her sweat and the sting of scratches on my legs stir me.

Pain, her smell, her body heat, and a woman gasping from running, almost to the point of choking. I towered over her from behind, an inch away, only touching her fleetingly. I let her feel my presence. Her fertile scent filled my nostrils. My dick, already hard, engorged some more.

“You weren’t good.”

“I –”

“You weren’t.” Looking down her body, I could see her chest rise and fall, and the trembling, oh the fucking trembling...

Fear. As well as a rising need for me. I could eat that up, suck it in like life juice.

I circled her with my arms, found each of her breasts and gripped them, hard, until she whined. “You’ve been
very
bad.” Then I squeezed a little harder and lifted her backward, pulling her into my body.

The pain made her wriggle and drum her heels on my legs.

I chuckled. “Hate that?”

“Yes!”

With my mouth by her ear, I asked again. “Like it too?”

Her “Maybe” sounded quietly dismayed.

I laughed. I’d known it. In her mind, I could feel her getting wet between her legs.

“Shut your eyes. Don’t open them unless I say to.”

I lowered her then worked a hand down the front of her tights, slipped it into her panties and found the slickness. My nostrils flared as I explored the groove between her lips and a richer eddy of her scent reached me. I reached her entrance and pushed into her, slowly. When my finger was in to the second knuckle, I stopped, feeling her pulse and grip me.

I kissed her ear and her eyelids flickered.

“I’ll be back. Stay.”

I extracted my finger, pleased at her almost inaudible moan.

She whimpered as I stepped away, and I smiled. My control was solid. She’d not move and I had items to collect.

The rope from the backpack. Used for a tent, but I had other uses in mind. The struts from the kite the woman had left in the BMW’s trunk. The bag of tent pegs. More things. I’d look and see what suited the task. Even the trees I passed gave me evil ideas. Excitement enlivened me to the point of making my dick hurt.

Her running had given me just the right excuse.

I’d said I wouldn’t fuck her. I should’ve held my tongue.

Kiara

When Wolfe returned, he clinked and the knowledge he had brought something metal sent my brain scurrying through possibilities. I didn’t like the unknown. I had to raise my feet to let him pull down my tights and panties. My dress was dragged over my head, my bra undone and removed until I was naked, shivering, and dreading what might come next.

Silence, all had been done in silence. He lifted me, wordless, and carried me, cradled in his arms, a few yards backward before I felt him turn, walk a short distance, and duck. We must be inside the tumbled-down building.

I wriggled, wishing I had the willpower and courage to spill from his arms and run again.

Nothing I could do, except listen to the crack and crackle of grass and dry leaves, to the beat of his heart beside my ear, and to the
thud, thud
of my own heart. It seemed about to break free from my chest. When he went to set me on my feet, I found I’d clutched his shirt; a small button pressed into my fist.

“Let go and spread your legs.”

Fuck.

I clenched my hand for a second, then released his shirt, opened my legs. He deposited me, standing up, on something like concrete or brick. Cold penetrated my bare feet. The inside of one foot rested at the edge of whatever I stood on, so I shifted it away.

“Don’t move or you’ll fall. This is a block of concrete. It’s old and crumbling.”

From the direction of his voice – directly ahead – I was a couple of feet above the ground. My stomach clenched. Why was I here?

I’d run without shoes – there’d been no time for finesse and I was sure my feet bled. I’d been desperate, until he told me to stop.

Obeying him when he yelled
stop
had been automatic, maddening, yet strangely calming. I’d still wanted to flee though every muscle in my body had responded to him and not to me.

He’d played with my body until I almost cried then he’d left me alone while he went away to find something...left me alone, in the dark, and I couldn’t open my eyes.

With every step he took that led him away, the noises around me had seemed to intensify. I became more terrified of what those noises might mean than of him. If I couldn’t see, I couldn’t defend myself.

I could only wait, anticipating some random attack from a crazed serial killer cross bear cross night-walking zombie.

My relief when I heard him returning was crazily ironic.

Now, here I stood, stripped naked and teetering on the edge of some ancient block of concrete. My feet hurt and grit stirred under them when I shifted. Cold leeched into my soles; the scratches stung.

His finger pressed into my navel and stayed there. I shuddered, stiffening, as sensation trickled from his skin to mine, then deeper – wisps of desire that teased my breasts, my lips, my mind, then drifted below, to where I held my thighs spread.

I hated that he could arouse me so easily. One touch, one growled word, one application of his hand in just the right way. If he didn’t frighten me, what a lover he would be. If he cared for me.

And there it was – sadly, I ached to have Wolfe defile me.

“Why?” I ventured. Then I said, shakily, in my best and nicest tone. “I won’t run again.”

“No. You won’t. I forbid it.”

“Good.” I nodded. My eyes were still shut, but I could hope. “Then...I can get down?”

“You stay. This was a saw mill. You stand over the blade. The teeth are rusted and big. Fat triangles. Like this.”

Metal scraped coldly and dispassionately up my inner thigh until it bumped at my most intimate place. He slid it between my legs, that sharp metal, and it reached my entrance.

“Found your pretty hole.”

I quivered, sucked in air.

Such dirty words. My clit had liked them. It swelled and stood up, proud. My pussy lips parted, and I had to make myself be still and not squirm.

“
This
can go inside you. It’d cut because it’s a knife. So would the rusty saw teeth. You want to keep still. Or else...bad things happen to you...to your cunt. Get that?”

I gritted my teeth, nodding even as his blade nudged into me, slipping in as if it meant nothing. He toyed there, rotating it, this way, that way.

“I could fuck you with this. You’re wet enough to let it go in deeper. Maybe, if I was careful, it wouldn’t cut you.”

I shuddered, afraid, yet feeling my pussy tighten then release. “I said I wouldn’t fuck you though.”

With a knife. God.

A knife.

I was still drifting on the promise of that threat when something swished past, overhead, then whipped back down. It sang past my head.

“Put your hands out where I can tie them.”

Oh, this was evil. He could hold me, control me, but tying my hands seemed a whole other universe. From behind the blackness in my eyes, I wondered why that was so.

I raised my arms from my sides and held them out front, with my wrists together. He grabbed them, wrapped stiff rope about them, knotted it quietly and efficiently, then hauled on the rope until my arms stretched above my head.

Though flat on my feet, I felt this need to balance – it pulled and made me want to close my legs. I mustn’t do that. So I waited with the rope creaking and rasping on whatever it was cast over.

“So beautiful, like this. My offering.”

He covered my right breast with his hand and I realized my nipples were like little rocks, sticking out. When he began to squeeze, I let out a shivery moan.

I bit my lower lip, striving not to moan again. Whatever he did, I liked it. Inevitable. Nasty, bad, but true.

“I think I promised not to fuck, only if you stayed good.”

“I hate you,” I whispered.

His laugh malevolent. “No. You don’t. You hate what I can make you feel, or make you do.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you to hell and back.”

“I heard you. Now shush. No more words.”

My throat and mind became bare of language. Just like that – with only a ringing sound in my ears that subsided. And his hands worked at something below. The metal blade left me then a minute later it returned and he wedged the tip inside me, slowly. Only a fraction of an inch but that was enough.

My inhalation was sharp. Deviant man.

Where the metal entered me, his fingertip circled.

“Yes,” he murmured. When I looked down, he bestowed a shocking kiss upon my clit. I made a strangled noise.

“Speak,” he said.

“Don’t.”

Wolfe laughed.

Already my thighs ached from having to stand as I was – with my legs apart and unmoving.

“Is it hard to keep still? Poor girl. This is tied to the end of a stick. The stick is wedged next to the saw. If you sit things get nasty. This goes in here.”

Again, his fingertip traced about the tip of the knife, nudging my labia apart, spreading my wetness. Him doing that, toying with me, with his other hand on my ass...I gulped. There was fear and there was what he created, a mix of lust, control, and the evilest thing imaginable.

Would he cut me? I didn’t know. A whimper escaped my lips.

I heard the rasp of cloth as he stood.

“Don’t bite.” A second later, he wormed two fingers into my mouth, past my teeth, then he hooked them into my cheek, casually holding me.

His lower hand dragged moisture from the knife tip all the way to my clit. He began to play...games – stroking my clit, toggling it back and forth, pinching it until I yelped, then playing some more. My eyes rolled back.

My arousal burgeoned into an impending climax.

I grabbed the rope that led above my hands and twined my fingers into the strands until the pain from that agonized. I wouldn’t come. I wouldn’t move. Mustn’t.

Except, he could make me.

The tension built, until I thought I’d burst if I held back. I sucked bubbly air past his thick fingers, my hips thrusting back and forth by micro fractions.

Remember. The blade. Remember.

I was going to come apart.

Any. Fucking.

Second.

“If you come,” he said, from close by, and I heard his feet shift. “If.” Then his mouth was on mine, despite his fingers still occupying my mouth. I felt the movements of his lips as he formed words. “I get to punish. I think that’s fair.”

He squashed finger and thumb onto my clit, held it. I moaned, impossibly close...

Too late. I jerked and gargled some impossible reply as I came onto the knife, with him inside my mouth, inside my mind, holding my clit, and watching as I unraveled into the devastation of orgasm.

Fuck. Him.

My knees almost gave way but I straightened, swallowing drool as his fingers left me. Twitching and more than a little undone with the aftershocks, I managed to stay where he’d put me though my head flopped back.

The stars were up there. But my eyes stayed shut.

I wasn’t cut.

“You came.”

I had.

Which meant...

I heard the crunch of his feet.

A swish through the air warned me...