Hunger's Mate (32 page)

When she fell limply against the table, he pulled back, yanking that shirt over his head and undoing the buckle and zipper of those pants. His dick was hard and jutting forward, the tip leaking with his fevered desire for her. Spreading her legs wider Ezra thrust until his dick was buried as deep inside her as his tongue had been.

He knew Jewel liked to take control, knew she felt like she needed to in order to enjoy this primal act. But he wasn't that bastard, he wasn't going to hurt her. In fact, he only wanted to please her. It was with that thought that he thrust deeper, pulling out to the tip then going in hard and fast once more. Her back stayed arched, her mouth open as she gasped for breath, eyes closed to the intensity. Harder and harder, faster and faster, he speared in and out of her, loving how tightly her walls hugged his dick and when she was just about to scream, when he could hear the moans getting louder and louder, Ezra pulled out completely.

He stood over her, heaving.

“Look at me,” he told her.

She bit her bottom lip, shaking her head, and refused.

“Look at me, dammit!”

Again she didn't, wouldn't, or possibly couldn't.

His cat roared and Ezra clenched his fists. He wanted to … needed to claim her, to have every part of her, memories and all. So he reached for her, cupping her neck and bringing her head up to meet his. He crushed his lips down over hers, using his tongue to work her lips apart and sinking into the warmth of her mouth the second she did. He kissed her as deeply as he'd fucked her, guiding her head with his hand, giving every ounce of himself in the hopes that he'd get the same in return.

When he needed to breathe, Ezra pulled his mouth away from hers, watched as she took in deep gulps of breath, her eyes—fiery with passion, sparks of gold glistening against the hazel—finally looking up at him.

“Stop me or take me,” he told her as he put his hands on her waist, pulling her off the table. “You're mine or you're his.” He gave the ultimatum, hating the sound of it in his ears, but knowing how important it was for her to stop the comparison, to let go of her past and embrace what was her future.

When she was facing him, her breasts rubbing against his bare chest, Jewel didn't speak. She licked her lips and blinked but did not look away.

Ezra turned her then so that her back was facing him. He rubbed his wet dick along the seam of her plump ass and felt the growl rumbling deep in his chest. It was now or never.

With a palm to the base of her back, Ezra pushed Jewel over the table, waiting, listening, hating the thought of her telling him to stop or moving out of his reach. When she did neither, he stepped in closer, using both hands to separate the voluptuous rounds of her ass until he could see the dampness his tongue had left along her center. His mouth watered, his dick stretching so painfully he thought he might spontaneously combust.

He wanted the tight rear entrance, wanted to claim her there, to make every part of her his, but he did not. He loved her and needed her to understand his desire to protect and care for her. He was not an animal, although half of him was purely animalistic. He was a man and she was his woman and he was going to make her shiver and come, to whimper and plead and call his name.

He entered her slowly, pulling out to the tip, then slipping back inside again. For endless seconds he repeated this motion, until she finally gasped.

“Take me, dammit. Please!” she finally yelled, slapping her palms against the table.

The words were music to his ears, a symphony playing over the otherwise lackluster music of his life. He grabbed her waist, planting his feet on the floor and pumped her until sweat rolled down her back, rivulets of moisture slipping down the crease of her ass until they landed on his dick. He lifted her legs, placing her knees up on the table, then thrust even deeper into her, loving the new angle, the depth and the tightness, holding his cock captive.

When his spine tingled, the cat inside roaring, its mouth gaped wide, feral, Ezra buried himself in her dripping wet cove and let his release ride the wave of her body trembling beneath him. Leaning forward, he wrapped his arms around Jewel's crouched body, loving the heat of their bodies still linked and the scent of their
companheiro calor
filling the room.

“Mine,” he murmured into her ear. “Mine.”

 

Chapter 22

The temperate spray of hot water felt like heaven to every part of her body it touched. After standing for endless moments beneath the showerhead, Jewel finally turned to let the water massage the tense muscles of her shoulders. She flattened her palms on the tiles in front of her and lowered her head, closing her eyes and breathing deeply in and out.

Not sure how long this lasted, only positive that it wasn't working, she finally sighed. While the water felt good, the clean bathroom a welcome change from that dingy hotel she'd been in the night before, the fact still remained that she was in some underground hideout with a legion of people that were not human.

And so was her father.

In the years she'd known Bas and Jacques she'd never seen either of them do anything other than be perfect gentlemen and excellent businessmen. They treated their staff fairly and still maintained a very down to earth relationship with those around them. Even after she learned what they were, she'd had a hard time believing that she should be afraid of them. She liked to think of them as just being dealt a different hand in life. Just as she'd originally been given a crappy hand, so had they. In the end, they'd both made the best of it.

Now, however, people were dying. There were guns and man-made abominations roaming around. Suddenly it hadn't seemed like worrying about having a normal life was the priority, but that worrying about staying alive, period, was. She had no doubt that Larry had planned to kill her. Of course he would have had sex with her first, he always liked sex first, but then he definitely intended to kill her. So Jewel had decided she would be the one to strike first. She had planned to kill him.

It hadn't worked, and even though, before Larry, she'd never imagined herself taking another life, she was pretty damned pissed off about that fact. Larry was still alive, but he hadn't gotten the chance to take her sexually again. He hadn't gotten the satisfaction of watching her beg for her father's life, which she would have done at any moment if she'd thought it would help. Maybe on some level she had won where he was concerned.

After scrubbing every part of her body until her skin tingled she stepped out of the shower and went into the bedroom knowing instinctively that Ezra was not there. She felt alone, almost as if something were missing. It was a weird feeling centered in her chest. Her heartbeat was loud, steady but still echoing in her ears, another fact she couldn't figure out.

On the bed was her backpack, which held her clothes and at the very bottom, the velvet pouch full of diamonds. Unless … panic hurried her steps across the room—the very large, very bright room that had the furnishings of an upscale hotel. She yanked at the bag, hoping, praying that they were still there, that he hadn't … no, please say he hadn't.

Rummaging through the bag, finally pulling out all the clothes and tossing them on the bed, Jewel breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the familiar black bag with its pearl-white drawstring. The diamonds were still hers, nobody in this place had decided to take them from her, even though they all now knew she'd stolen them.

She dressed quickly in leggings, a tank top, and a longer, baggier sheer top. Slipping her feet into her sandals brought forth the memory of Ezra stripping all her clothes off in that smaller room and leaving her sandals on. Those thoughts brought heat washing over her body so quickly and so powerfully she stumbled a bit. She had to grasp the heavy duvet on the bed to keep her balance.

Her vagina throbbed, an intense pulsating that had her thighs shaking. She tried to take a deep breath but her nostrils filled with an eerie scent. It was rich and potent like someone had spilled a man's cologne. Her head spun and she closed her eyes, one hand going between her legs, pressing hard in an attempt to stop the almost painful throbbing. Now coming in quick pants, her breath was loud, to the point where she could have sworn someone was watching a porn flick somewhere nearby.

Then there was a knock at the door and she almost whimpered at the interruption. She needed to go answer the door, she knew, but couldn't quite move. Willing whatever madness that had come over her to go away she forced her hands to her sides and stood up straight. The heat was still intense, the scent settling around her like a shroud.

The knock sounded again, this time a little more persistently. She tried to take a step and still could not move. To keep whoever it was on the other side from possibly knocking it down, she yelled, “Come in,” just as the third knock sounded.

“Hey,” Priya said, coming inside and closing the door behind her. “Is everything okay?”

Jewel put forth every ounce of effort she could to appear just fine. Priya always seemed to have everything together, even when she was running around the resort trying to pump Jewel for information about Bas. She had a confidence about herself that Jewel admired. And when she'd left Perryville to go back to her home in D.C. instead of staying in Sedona pining after Bas, Jewel had even greater respect for her. Bas was a great-looking guy, with that blatant kind of sex appeal that just grabbed a female by the throat. And yet, Priya had made him come to her.

All Jewel had ever done was make hundreds of men come. Then pay for her services. Closing the door to that thought, she cleared her throat.

“I'm fine,” she lied to Priya. “Just getting dressed so I can go see my father.”

Priya nodded, her highlighted hair pulled away from her face by a thick black band. She wore black jeans and a white fitted T-shirt and looked like an urban princess when the light hit that massive diamond on her ring finger.

“I stopped by the medical facility on my way here because I knew you'd want a report,” Priya said, coming closer until she sat on the opposite side of the king-sized bed. She crossed one leg under her, leaving the other to dangle off the side as she turned to Jewel.

“He was dehydrated. They have him hooked up to an IV and were considering strapping him to the bed since the first thing he tried to do when he opened his eyes was jump out of that bed to find you.”

“Oh,” Jewel said, lifting a hand to cover her mouth. “I should have been there,” she said, surprised to find that this time when she attempted to move, she actually did.

She was near the edge of the bed where Priya sat when the woman reached out to grab her arm. “He's doing fine now. They've got his vitals stable and are trying to make sure they have all the meds he needs on hand. If not, one of the medical assistants will have to go out to get them.”

“No,” Jewel replied, pulling her arm out of Priya's grip. “I have a complete list of his medications and the pharmacist we go to all the time will happily fill them before we get on the road. I just have to go and let him know that we'll be leaving soon.”

Priya nodded. “So you're just going to leave Ezra.”

It was an accusation, spoken with an edginess that Jewel didn't understand.

“I was never with Ezra, so I wouldn't be leaving him.”

Priya nodded again. “Is that what you really think?”

“Look, Priya,” Jewel stated matter-of-factly. “I don't know what Ezra told you, but I am not one of his conquests. And I'm certainly not hung up on him, nor am I staying here to wait for him to…”

“Wait for him to do what?” Priya asked, lifting a perfectly arched eyebrow.

“Nothing,” Jewel said after gritting her teeth and berating herself for talking too damned much. “Nothing. That's precisely what's going on between Ezra and me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to see to my father.”

“Is that going to be your excuse for everything?”

Jewel had already turned her back on Priya and was a couple of steps away from the door when she looked over her shoulder. “What did you just say?”

“I asked if your excuse for every decision you make will always encompass your father?”

“How dare you?” Jewel said, moving quickly until she stood directly in front of where Priya sat.

“How dare I what? Tell the truth?”

She had the audacity to chuckle and Jewel's fists clenched.

“You don't know me, Priya. I know you came to be hot shit around Perryville the moment you slept with Bas, but I'm telling you that you do not know me, or what I've been through,” Jewel said, still trying to hold onto her composure.

“Oh, don't I,” the other woman replied. “I know that you think you're special because you've had to fight for something all your life. You fought to get into school, fought to pay those financial-aid bills, and then what? Your mother gets sick and you're standing right by her side while she fights the cancer that was ravaging her body. And when that battle was lost you thought it was because of something you didn't do. So you took that ‘take care of your father' straight to the heart and your brain. You dropped everything and did anything to make sure he was taken care of. And when the every- and anything got out of hand you ran, all to save your father. Never once to save you.”

Jewel exhaled. “Look, I didn't sign up for a counseling session.”

“And I didn't sign up to be the only one with an ounce of good sense in my family. I didn't ask for my brother to be kidnapped and for me to be blackmailed. I sure as hell didn't ask to fall in love with a man that could shift into a gorgeous jaguar. But that's precisely what I got. That's the hand I was dealt in life, and it's the hand I fully intend to play until I take my last breath,” she said with a shrug.

“What are you saying? That I shouldn't have taken care of my father? That I should have left him to die the way my mother left us both? Are you really saying I should have stayed with that abusive man?”