Carnival of Hearts: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (12 page)

Max was awake, though he wished he wasn’t.
Awake
meant that he sat in his cage playing the events of the day over and over again in his mind, marveling at how awful it all was, and imagining how he would die in the morning. He wondered if the Ringmaster would strangle him to death with the tamer’s whip. Or maybe the bearded woman would shoot him with her shotgun, or poison him with her drugs. Or maybe a good old-fashioned beheading. He didn’t know what it was going to be, but he didn’t want to die. For every time he’d followed Thomas fearlessly into a fight, he didn’t want to die. And he certainly didn’t want to die on his knees. He stared at the back of the tamer’s head, where he was standing guard by the cage door, and thought about how badly he wanted to live.

Then the breeze brought a new scent: a mixture of blood and bear. Max lifted his eyes and watched the wounded man approach Baptiste. The two men spoke quietly for a moment, and then Baptiste took the bear’s arm and helped him back the way he’d come, and out of the little avenue where the animal cages were kept. Max didn’t think much of it, until the wind shifted, and he smelled
Kat
. Sunlight and green, green grass. He blinked, then looked sharply over to the door of the cage, where she was hastily unlocking and removing the padlock. He started towards her.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m helping you escape. It’s kind of my thing right now.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you don’t deserve to die, and my father doesn’t deserve to have to kill you. So I’m going to let you out of this cage, and then you’ll go back to your pack and tell them we let you go, and not to attack us again. And everyone lives happily ever after.”

She yanked the cage door open.

Max got to his feet but he stood there looking at her for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to do. He’d never in a million years have imagined that she would set him free. He’d chased her through this damned carnival a day and a night ago with every intention of tearing her throat out. And now she was opening the door. He walked slowly to the edge of the cage. And then she reached out and grabbed his hand.

“You have to move
quickly
,” she said and pulled him right out of the cage and swiftly towards the darkened perimeter. He couldn’t run, though. He was too beat up.

“I can’t move that quickly,” he told her.

“Well, then, just move
quicker
. You have to get to the tree line before Baptiste comes back. You have to get as far away as you can before Baptiste gets back.”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked her again.

“I don’t know, maybe because I’m not a fan of murder.”

Just at the perimeter, he dug in his heels and stopped moving. She stopped too and turned to look at him, and he saw frustration flicker across her face. He liked the way she crinkled her nose under all those freckles when she was annoyed. He reached forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her. And in the moment their lips touched, he realized he’d probably wanted to do that since he’d first smelled her. The wolf in his heart howled its approval too, and though she hesitated a moment as he got his arms around her, soon enough she softened and then her lips were parting against his, their tongues touching in a curious, delicious dance.

His heart started pounding in his chest as desire bloomed between them. She didn’t feel or smell or taste like any of the females in his pack. She was softer and warmer and there was something at once fragile and strong about her need. It was intoxicating. And as he pushed her up against one of the trees and sank his fingers into the wild curls of her hair, and she lifted up against him with a soft, pleasurable sound, it was just as he’d imagined it would be. But then she flattened her hands against his chest and pushed him back just an inch, her breath coming hard between them.

“We don’t have time for this,” she gasped. “You need to go. I’m sorry, you need to go. Now. Before they know you’re gone.”

“I want you,” he told her, unable to help himself. “I think I love you. I just know that I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything, even”—he realized it was true as he said it—“even freedom.”

She stared up at him with those brilliant green eyes, and her expression went slack with surprise. His heart beat out the seconds before she said anything. Three. Four. Five.

“I want you too,” she finally told him, and smiled. He thought his heart might burst. But then her smile vanished. “You have to
go
!”

She pushed him again and he stumbled back. He looked from her deeper into the forest, and then back towards the twinkling nighttime lights of the carnival, and then right back to her. Before he could ask her to come with him, she just took his arm and started pulling him deeper into the forest beyond the carnival grounds. He hurried with her, but took her hand instead.

“You have to tell your pack,” she was saying as they went. He felt stronger. He gripped her hand and they started to run as quickly as both of them were able. “You have to tell them that we’re not a danger to them, that we’ll be moving on soon, and they should just leave us alone.”

“I’m not the alpha of my pack,” he told her. “They may not listen to me.”

“But you have to
try
,” she insisted.

“I will try,” he promised. Then he actually heard her. “Wait, you’re going to leave?”

She looked at him. “The carnival will move on in two days, as soon as Liam has healed some more and we can break everything down. We’re getting out of your territory.”

He growled in spite of himself. “But you can’t leave, I just…you have to stay with me.”

“I can’t stay with you,” she said. “That’s impossible. My father would never allow it. I
freed
you to save everyone and because I care about you, but I can’t stay with you.”

Max caught a scent and stopped, pulling her to a halt as well. He tilted his face towards the sky and inhaled, and listened. Sure enough, to the east he caught the scent of silver. And to the west, he caught the scent of wolf. Then he heard a howl, and he bent down and hauled Kat right up into his arms, turning to the west, and started sprinting towards the sound.

Kat held on to Max for dear life as he ran. Over his shoulder, she saw the tree line receding and the carnival lights vanishing in the distance. A dozen different feelings zinged through her mind and body at once. She wanted to go back, but she didn’t want to let go of Max. She should have been afraid, but at some point she had decided that he wouldn’t hurt her, and she still completely believed it. And maybe this was the moment, this was how she gained her independence from the carnival itself. Maybe Max would be that spark that was missing from her life. When she looked at him, when he kissed her, she certainly
felt
a spark. And it was unlike any connection she’d ever felt to anyone before.

By the time Max slowed down, the lights of the carnival had vanished, and Kat couldn’t tell where they were, the sky obscured behind the canopy of the forest trees. She caught glimmers of moon and starlight, but she couldn’t see the mountain peaks anymore, and her senses were caught up in Max himself. The strength of his arms around her and the scent of clean sweat and fresh straw that listed from his skin. She remembered the kiss and shivered against him, and he paused, lowering her feet back to the ground, and looked into her eyes.

“We’ve crossed into my pack’s territory,” he told her softly. “We’re safe now. They’ll find us soon.”

“But what about my father and the carnival?”

“I won’t keep you against your will, Kat.” He drifted his fingertips through her hair. “But I want you to have a choice.” He smiled a little. “I hope you choose me.”

Kat wanted to choose him, but of course the thought of just up and abandoning her father and the carnival and all those who had loved and raised her seemed horrible. There had to be a way, she reasoned. Max wanted her to have a choice. Surely D’Orfeo would want her to have a choice as well. He couldn’t have expected to keep her trapped with the carnival
forever
, could he?

When she’d set Max free, she had known there was going to be a fight once her father found out. And she’d promised Liam that turning him loose would be the end of it. But now she thought that it wasn’t so simple. She couldn’t just let go of Max, and she couldn’t let go of the carnival either. She felt tears sting her eyes as she looked up at Max, because she had no idea what to do. When had she gone from being a girl with no options to having to make such a terrible choice?

“I think I love you,” she admitted quietly to the werewolf. “But I love my family too.”

“Shh.” Max used his thumb to brush a few tears from her cheeks. “No tears now.”

He leaned in and kissed her again, and this time it was soft and exploratory. Her heart jumped in her chest and she decided that he was right, now was not the time for tears. As before, when Kat had given herself over knowing that it might only be for an hour or two and never again, she threw herself into it, kissing him fiercely back. She threw her arms around his neck and jumped up, and he caught her, wrapping her legs around his waist. If this was all the time they would ever have, Kat wanted it to be everything. Max seemed to perceive that. He pressed her back against a tall oak tree, hands squeezing her thighs as she sank her fingers into his hair once more.

Kat felt herself flush with longing, more powerful and all-consuming than any kind of tentative or curious desire she’d felt with the first boy she’d made love to. She thought now, as Max’s hands traveled beneath her t-shirt, brushing skin and then drifting down to unbutton her jeans, that she had never actually felt desire before. It was hot and demanding. She squeezed her legs around him and he pushed back against her, a soft sound in his throat that thrilled up her spine.

“I want you,” she told him.

He pulled her close against his chest and away from the tree, turning to sink to his knees on the ground, cradling her to his body as he cleared away some leaves. Then he spilled her to the grass beneath him, and the two of them laughed as they struggled to strip each other of their clothes. Despite the laughter, a growing urgency was rising between them. Kat shoved at Max’s t-shirt, her hands lingering on the hard ridges of his abdomen as she slid the hem up to his shoulders. Then she shed her own, and Max yanked at her jeans, tugging them down to her hips along with her underwear and discarding it all to one side. She tried to pull him down atop her, but he shook his head, bending to press kiss after lingering kiss to the inside of her thigh. She fell back against the grass, gulping down breaths as she felt his breath between her legs, the anticipation delicious and turning desperate.

When he finally kissed her sex, his tongue sliding over her clit and then into her, she jerked and gasped, and he gripped her by the hips to keep her still. Then he was licking and suckling at her entrance and she had to grab handfuls of dirt and grass to keep herself from bucking against his face. No one had ever done anything like this to her, and her body sang with pleasure, a mounting pressure coiling inside her and heating rapidly up. By the time his fingers joined his tongue inside her, she was shuddering with her first orgasm, writhing beneath him, and before her limbs were even finished shivering with delight, he was lifting his head and crawling up the length of her with a satisfied smile on his face.

He reached back, pushing his jeans down to his hips, and Kat got her legs around him again, sliding her hands up his sides as he settled between her thighs. Her body was throbbing, pulsing with desire for him and with the leftover aftershocks of pleasure. Max kissed her lips again, and she nibbled at his bottom lip, relishing the taste of him. As he kissed down her jaw, her throat, over her collarbone and the curve of her breast, she arched against him and reached between them, gripping the hard, long length of his cock where it rested against her thigh. She stroked him, and he made another growling noise deep in the back of his throat, taking her nipple into his mouth to suck as she slid her fingers up and down the length of him. They rocked against each other, Kat’s breaths turning into moans as he sucked, and Max’s hips driving his cock into her hand as she stroked, and eventually he couldn’t take it anymore.

He lifted his head from her breast and reached between them, gently moving her hand aside so that he could set the head of his cock at her entrance. He looked down into her eyes, and she thought she saw something wild and hungry go flitting through the depths of his gaze.

“I want you,” she told him again, voice thick with it.

“You have me,” he gasped as he entered her, sinking his cock to the hilt inside her. She arched her back and he held her, withdrawing slowly only so that he could slide deep into her again. Kat thought she might die from pleasure. She’d never felt so full. Her body adored his, opened for his, and every time he pulled out and drove back in again, she felt a bolt of satisfaction slam through her.

She gripped at the muscled planes of his back, at the soft curves of his ass, and he grunted and hastened his rhythm when she lifted her hips to meet his. His grunts turned into groans as he thrust harder, faster, and Kat couldn’t help the cry that escaped her lips, her legs tightening around him again as the pressure and pleasure soared through her. Her nails dug into the flesh of his back, and he rose to his knees, hands clutching at her thighs as he straightened up and redoubled his efforts, pumping his cock as hard and fast into her as he could.

With another jerk and a full-throated moan, Kat’s orgasm ripped through her. She shook and grasped at her own breasts, riding it out as Max continued to thrust into her, the ecstasy of it so powerful that she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything but the firing nerves of her body and the glorious slide of Max’s cock in and out of her sex. Then Max gave one last, powerful thrust into her, and he came as well, arching above her with a triumphant howl of satisfaction and strength. He spilled forward, catching himself above her on his hands and knees, and she realized he was watching her come down from the high of her climax, grinning brighter every time she twitched or gasped as it wound down.

“You are beautiful,” he whispered.

She laughed, rolling onto her side, and he curled up around her, impossibly warm when his skin met hers. Like a living furnace.

“You’re amazing,” she told him. He buried his face in her hair, and Kat wondered how she could ever go back to the carnival after this. How could she possibly leave Max now? He was the best thing that had ever happened to her, no matter what shape he’d originally taken. Somehow she’d fallen completely in love with a wolf and she couldn’t stand the thought of ever letting him go.

She was so tired now, between their efforts and all the running and the fact that she hadn’t slept well in days. Her limbs felt like lead. She thought she could easily sleep for a week just like this, with Max curled thusly around her, right here on the forest floor. But, as soon as she started to drift off, Max shifted behind her and sat bolt upright, sniffing at the air. She struggled awake.

“What is it?”

He frowned. “My pack. They’re near. Quickly, get dressed.” He grabbed at her jeans and gathered them up, pushing them into her hands.