RawHeat (5 page)

“I love you,” she said, and meant it. It was terrifying and
it probably would really lead them to their deaths—maybe not because of a
too-loud sound, but due to something, a slip, anything—but she didn’t care. All
the stillness in him had melted away and he looked up at her with such warmth,
such feeling.

“You don’t know how I’ve longed to hear you say something
like that. Anything like that, anything at all.
I like your hair today
would have been more than welcomed.”

She rolled her hips, taking him deeper. “Why didn’t you just
tell me? I wish you’d told me.”

“I couldn’t, you know I couldn’t. Ohhhh, that feels so…”

“Amazing?”

“Yes, yes—amazing. Keep doing that.”

She had no idea what he was referring to. The way her sweaty
hands were gripping his wrists? The way she’d started rocking in minute
spirals, greedy for more but terrified of his size?

She had to be honest—it felt kind of like she’d decided to
fuck a flagpole. But it also felt nerve-jangling and delicious, and his wrists
straining against the hand-manacles she’d clamped around them? Only made it
sweeter.

She imagined letting him go—just briefly, just a little
taste of it before her mind’s eye—and him suddenly tearing at her, desperate, fucking
that big thing into her until she could hardly stand it, and God it was good.
It made great swells of pleasure surge through her just thinking about it, so
hot and wet and if she could only grind that sweet spot inside her against his
thick length, if she could catch it right and rub and rub…

But quite suddenly she didn’t need to. She didn’t need to
imagine or catch it just right, because he’d freed his hands and one of them
was over her ass, squeezing and pushing her down and down onto his cock. And
the other had hold of her uniform, ripping when it wouldn’t give, clawing at
the front of it until he could get at her breasts, her stomach, and finally—the
place that needed it most, between her legs.

It took him no effort at all to find her clit. He seemed
half-insensible with lust and unseeing, but oh he knew exactly where to go and
what to do.

It was just the thing. Just the thing she’d been thinking of
all day and all night, in her bed with her hand over her swelling sex, stroking
and sliding through all of her slickness, just longing for it to be his mouth,
his hands, his cock.

And now it was—she could feel him thrusting up into her
hard, his thumb right over her clit, worrying and worrying at it. She grabbed a
handful of his hair and tried to hold on, but it wasn’t possible. She could
feel her orgasm welling up inside her from that firm, slick point beneath his
working fingers, and he was panting things in her ear, terrible things like,
That’s
it, work your slick cunt on my cock, fuck me, fuck me, oh I don’t think I can
stand it
.
I think I want to tear you apart.

After which, she couldn’t stop herself from calling out. The
pleasure was surging through her, thick and strong, and she could feel herself
clenching around his cock, just clenching really hard in a way that made him
choke out a noise, and then, “I’m coming, God, I’m coming!”

It shoved through her, hard and unyielding—and it left her
wasted, just as it had before. She hardly registered him pushing her back onto
the bed, his hands suddenly rough and tense everywhere he touched.

Though somewhere, dimly, she knew he was too far gone. His
eyes had no color at all. When he snarled at her and slammed into her
still-clenching and shivering pussy, she could only see his fangs, glinting
sharp in the dim light. The hands that clasped at her thigh and her
wrist—shoving her into the mattress until she knew there’d be bruises—had
sprouted talons, thornier and more lethal than she’d ever imagined.

It seemed almost mad that she still didn’t feel afraid.
Instead she put a hand to his face, to let him know. She wanted him to know
that it was okay, that it was good, that he still looked like Connor
Grayson—because he did.

When he moaned, it was with his own voice. When he pushed
into her, it was with the same body she felt so familiar with—the same muscles
flexing under her one free hand, and the same glow all over his gorgeous,
honeyed skin. And when he shoved his face into the crook of her neck and kissed
the sweat-slicked skin there, the push of his soft lips felt the same too.

And even though she knew that this was it, that he was
probably going to bite her right now on this creaking bed in this silent ward,
she didn’t try to stop him. She didn’t scream the way she’d always dreamed she
would, in her worst nightmares of forests and running wolves and one of them
finally, finally running her down.

She just closed her eyes and held on to him tight, and
waited, and waited.

He thrust into her hard one final time, his cock pulsing
inside her, a groan burring its way through his entire body in a way that made
her shake too. And when he did it, she felt his teeth glance her skin. She felt
them come so close, so close it was as if the pain really existed, it was
really burning into her and she’d have to run with him forever now, through the
forests of the night.

And then he finally pulled away—a softly relieved look on
his half-tortured face—and she realized he hadn’t bitten down. He hadn’t done
it.

Instead, she was going to have to get up and walk out of the
ward and leave him behind. All of her still human and still herself, and worst
of all—still living this endless life of empty nothingness.

 Chapter Four

When the breach alarm first sounded, she didn’t think
anything normal or usual—like,
Oh God, now I’m going to be killed by a
thousand marauding werewolves
. She didn’t even think about Tara, or any
other human beings in the underground.

Instead, she thought of him. Immediately—and quite frankly,
irrationally. After all, Connor would be okay. If the alarm wasn’t a false one,
he could just have a party with his lost-long buddies.

Only they weren’t his buddies anymore. She knew they
weren’t. The wolves ran free and fierce on the surface of the earth, while he
spent his days in cages, being tortured. If they came below that’s all they
would see—a pathetically cowed creature who no longer resembled them.

And so they’d just leave him there, to starve behind the
bars. They wouldn’t think of whatever had been done to him—and by God that
encompassed a lot, when she really thought about it—and eventually he would
perish, along with the people who’d hurt him.

Unless they smelled a human all over him. And then maybe
something else would happen altogether.

She leapt out of bed, on that last thought. Not because she
particularly wanted to, or thought it was a great idea to run in a different
direction to all of her screaming colleagues and supposed friends. No, she did
it because something got her by the throat and
forced
her to.

She didn’t even stop to put on shoes, and she always stopped
to put on shoes. You had to, because that was the thing the wolves always went
for first. They got you around the ankles and dragged you back screaming into
the darkness, or maybe took off a foot or two, because you’d been too stupid to
take some basic safety measures.

But somehow, it didn’t seem to matter now. She could feel
her heart beating in her head. She wasn’t dressed for the outside, wasn’t aware
of the throng of frantic people around her. She was only aware of Connor, and
what the wolves would do to a human-lover, if they found one.

“Serena!”

She pretended she couldn’t hear the shouting as she pushed
her way through the stream of bodies. The stream was getting thin, however—much
thinner than it had been the last time the alarm sounded—which was both good
and bad. Good because it meant she could get through easy enough.

Bad because it meant their numbers were dwindling. And also
bad because Tara would absolutely know she was ignoring her, while going in the
wrong direction. Her friend couldn’t fail to spot it. She’d just shoved a guy
against the sandy wall to get through faster, for God’s sake.

Though while doing so she hadn’t considered one important
thing. What if the wolves were coming in from the direction of the labs?

It seemed like a reasonable assumption, considering everyone
was running away from that place. And she’d left her only weapon back in her
room too—though doing so was an easier thing to fathom. Her weapon was a
silver-striped machete that cut through werewolf flesh and bone like a sizzling
hot poker through ice.

And when she thought of it now, all she could see was Connor
without an arm. Connor without a leg. Connor chopped into two pieces like she’d
done to the wolf who’d cornered her and the little girl whose name she’d never
actually found out.

You had to, that was the thing. You had to when they were
coming at you, because they wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop, the way Connor
had. The way he absolutely had even though he’d been given every reason to bite
down hard.

Was he just different? Different, like Reddick claimed? She
didn’t know, and now Tara was shouting and shouting after her and any second
she was going to follow her to the labs and—

“Fuck you then, you maniac!”

Or maybe not. Thank God, maybe not. Weird, that she couldn’t
stop thinking
thank God
over her best friend leaving her to die and
calling her a maniac, but there it was.

Only Connor mattered now.

She wrenched open the door to the lab thinking two terrible
things—the first being,
It’s been shut and locked, as though there are
already things in there, waiting for me
. And the other was just the image
of Dr. Philips using his tranq-gun to put a dart in Connor’s eye. Like a final
fuck you to the wolves, before he fled his lab forever.

Would a dart kill him? Loaded with nightshade, most
probably. And when she did get in there, heart trying to rip out of her body
and everything in her screaming
run
,
run
, it was so dark she
couldn’t tell a thing. She couldn’t tell if she was going to get a wolf to the
face any second. She couldn’t hear anything because of the alarm that hadn’t
stopped wailing and wailing.

All she knew for certain was the sound of her own panicky
breathing and the smell of horrible things burning and darkness, darkness
everywhere. She stepped forward and knocked into something loud and clattering,
then slapped her hands tight over her mouth.

If anything was in here—anything that had escaped or
breached its way in—it wouldn’t do to scream. The stench of blood and sweat and
burned flesh in here might keep a wolf off her scent.

But a scream would surely draw it.

God, how she wished she’d brought her machete. Not bringing
it just seemed so soft-hearted and ridiculous now. Connor would probably
call
her
soft-hearted and ridiculous, for God’s sake. She’d seen him tear apart
another wolf when it threatened him. He knew the score.

Even while probably full of nightshade and likely dead, he
knew the score.

She tried not to sob into her hand, but several things made
it hard. Like trying to remember if she’d ever felt this strongly about anyone
in her entire life, so strong it was making her weak and flail-y in the
darkness. She couldn’t recall ever feeling this way about her mother, and had
never known her father. All her friends were disgusting sociopaths.

Who did that realistically leave? Commissioner Reddick?

She reached out through the dense blackness again, searching
for the completely dead control panel. For the cages, maybe—but then again, if
she got too close something could leap at the bars and get her.

Something far more bestial than Connor.

Though as she searched, she realized something pretty
fundamental—that being attacked by a beast in a cage was the least of her
worries. Actually
finding
the cages was more of a concern, in blackness
thick as tar. She stumbled into things without meaning to, hands running over
objects that could have been anything in the dark.

A console. A chair. A wolf, eight feet tall and ten feet
across. Mouth like a shark’s. Eyes glowing and glowing and just waiting for her
to spot it, skulking in the thick shadows.

“Serena?”

She almost screamed. Her brain turned the voice into a
wolf’s roar without her permission, and some silly sound just threatened to
burst right out of her. Only clutching on to something crazy—like her own
hair—kept it in, and even then she knew she was whimpering.

She actually stood in this darkness, bleating like a sheep.
It didn’t shock her that embarrassment was her primary emotion, when Connor
quite suddenly spoke.

“Serena, it’s okay, it’s okay. Come toward my voice.”

Her immediate instinct was to hold down the relief that
bloomed inside her—because really what if it wasn’t him? What if her mind was
just playing tricks or even worse—what if the wolves had somehow gained the
ability to mimic each other? He sounded so cool and measured and yes, true,
there was the hint of that rich-chocolate warmth in there.

There was a hint of Connor.

But how could she really know for sure?

“I have twenty-twenty night vision. I can see you freaking
out over there.”

Though the touch of deadpan in his words was something of a
clue.

“Are you okay?” she asked and oh it was mortifying how
waver-y the words came out. All up and down and full of more whimpering, while
he somehow managed to sound so unruffled.

Even when he went with some really painful sentences, he
sounded unruffled.

“I have three nails in my left shoulder, but I’ll live.”

She fumbled toward him, arms out.

“Watch the chair Dr. Philips overturned in his haste to
flee.”

Oh, definitely Connor. No doubt about it.