Winter Howl (Sanctuary) (26 page)

He dipped his tongue into her navel, and her hips canted up of their own accord. The slick surface of his lupine teeth slid against skin. “Careful, love. You don’t want me to slip, now, do you?”

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, throwing an arm over her eyes. She bit her lip as he began to move lower, where it would be that much harder to keep still. His laugh came in waves of vibrations through her body.

“You’ll find it’s easier to stay still if you let yourself scream,” he said, tracing lines up and down the inside of her thighs with clawlike nails. “Let them know which wolf is in your bed, Red.”

That’s what Britt calls me
, she thought, though he’d called her that before. But her thoughts were tenuous as he began to bite and suck the folds of pink flesh between her legs. She could feel him breathe her scent and his in, as if he were determined to make it stronger. His tongue was a little longer and flatter, but still thick and powerful, and he reacquainted himself with the sensitive nerves of her perineum and lower. She couldn’t clutch at him, couldn’t bring him closer to her, and she found that all she had left was to fist the comforter and let the sounds out—wailing, begging, crying. They shattered the already broken barrier in her throat. There were no words but his name. There was not even enough of her in her mind to think that she would be embarrassed by how loud and needy she was being once he was finished.

His body below her rocked with every lick, every tease and taste of wet, fragrant flesh. He was rubbing against the comforter, growling into her and making the most obscene noises with his tongue. He seemed to draw passion from how vocal she was. What he did hurt as much as it made her blood pulse strongly through her clit and her cunt, and when he drew the orgasm from her, he also drew his claws down the outsides of her legs, so hard that they broke skin. But she was biting her arm through her second climax, which was quicker but almost as strong as the first.

When he crawled up her body and thrust his erection into her, forcing her legs up until her knees were against her breasts, she could finally wrap herself around him again. It was oddly soothing to hold him when he was as wild as he was. His feral teeth were clenched, holding his growls in his throat until he finally came.

The room was now strangely quiet but for their heavy breathing. Renee surprised herself by squirming, her clitoris still swollen with arousal. Grant gave a short bark of laughter as he rolled his hips down, giving her a little pressure. He pressed his human mouth to her shoulder and slid from her to rest next to her on the bed. They would have to get rid of the comforter eventually—it was filthy.

“And they say alcohol decreases the libido,” he muttered into her skin.

“I told you I don’t get—”

“Yes, you did,” Grant said. “And I can handle correction.”

“Then here’s another.
Tell me
when you’re playing a game. I’m not good at telling the difference. Not with you.” She circled the pads of her fingers gently around his nipple—the one she had bitten and left marks on.

“Oh, my dear, you fear me when you shouldn’t, and when you should, you only hold me closer,” Grant said, chuckling. “I have to confess, it’s attractive.”

She looked at him, drawing her eyebrows in over the bridge of her nose.

“I could have bitten you and torn your life to pieces. Hell, I could have transformed and had you for dinner until you were a bloody mess on the bed sheets,” he murmured. “And you knew it. And you know that I very much want to. You know that I am far less scrupulous than you…with your knife and Junior’s big gun. But you didn’t even fight me when you felt my teeth. Admit it, love,” he said. “You liked it.”

“You’re not going to bite me,” said Renee. “And if you killed me, my pack would know. And they’d hunt you down and kill you. You’d destroy your life by ending mine.”

“Maybe I just want to bring you down with me,” he whispered.

Grant rolled over to turn off the light, but Renee kept her eyes open as the afterimage faded.

* * * *

When she woke up, it was still mostly dark outside, although it did not seem to be as dark as when they had come in. She could not believe her sleep had been broken. Even as she stirred, she was exhausted. While the first time she’d had sex with Grant had left her aching, it did not compare to waking up now. She winced with every movement that she made, felt places tear anew that had only just begun to heal.

Grant’s arm was around her stomach, but he wasn’t too near her, and she was easily able to slip away, biting back the urge to groan as her body protested. But Grant’s breathing was still even, so she assumed she had not woken him.

And even if she had, Renee thought,
Screw it
.

She bent over, hissing through her teeth, and pulled out the toiletry bag she had packed. Once she was in the bathroom, she shut the door and turned on the light. As she started the water for a bath, first cold for a while, then hot, she took a cursory look at herself.

If she had not known that the marks on her body had been made during particularly rigorous and sometimes violent sex, she probably would have been even more concerned, but as it was, she was only moderately so. She stood up to look at herself in the mirror. It was even worse that way—there were bite marks all over her body, some of them just bruises, others bordering on broken skin. Bruises where he had held her too hard or where she had hit herself on furniture. Claw marks all down her legs. The place on her arm where she had bitten herself. She thought she should be ashamed of them, and although she was slightly horrified, it was more because of their appearance, not because of what had caused them. At least it was winter, and there would not be much cause for someone to ask about places on her body that they would never get the chance to see.

She looked into the mirror until it began to fog up. She opened the bathroom door so that some of the steam would escape into the bedroom rather than get all thick in the small bathroom. She briefly turned the running water cold to cool it down a little bit, then shut the water off and lowered herself in.

She was unprepared for the stinging of the wounds all over her body, from her legs up to her neck. Breath slid through her teeth in a prolonged hiss as her skin pulsed in protest before settling down. She could breathe again. She clutched at the side of the tub when she stretched out her legs, pulling at sensitive, stinging places. Finally, she was able to lie back and reach for the soap. She lathered it up on a washcloth and began to wash the dried sweat, blood, tears, and other things from her body, cleaning the clotted places and staining the rough white cloth a little pink.

The steam, the roughness of the washcloth, the smell of her soap, the movement of her aching muscles—it all made her feel a little better.

“You don’t have to wash my scent off yourself anymore,” Grant said from the doorway. “You’re not where they can smell you. And you’re not around them. You’re with me.”

“It’s not about that,” Renee said. He had startled her, but she was glad that she had not shown it. “Not to get you off of me. I just hurt.”

Grant stepped into the tub. Renee drew her legs up against her chest to let him in. They were cramped, but aside from the bones of her ass pressing against the porcelain, it was not uncomfortable.

“The good kind?” Grant asked, leaning to the side to avoid the faucet.

Renee stared at him for a minute, running the washcloth over her arm. Then she nodded. “The good kind.”

“Good,” Grant said. He slid his legs between hers until the two of them overlapped in the water. He did not try to initiate anything else—he looked tired himself, as though the sound of the water filling the bath had woken him up. It was just his hot limbs against hers, his toes under her thighs, the hot water rocking around them. “It’s a good kind of hurt for me, too.”

Chapter Ten

She let him drive in the morning. Her suspicion that she was going to wake up with a hangover had been spot on, but she had had worse hangovers in her life. And in spite of the soak in the middle of the night with Grant, her limbs and cuts still ached and protested when she tried to move. They had managed to remove the dirty comforter to sleep under the cleaner sheets after the bath, though, so she had not felt the need to shower when she woke up. Grant seemed unaffected both by the liquor and the rigorous sex, even though there were livid marks where she had bitten or scratched him, and there was a small corner-shaped bruise where she had hit him in the side of the head with the Gideon Bible.

He broke away from the highway once, making for an out-of-the-way diner that he had apparently frequented in the past. He knew exactly what to order—waffles, eggs sunny side up, hash browns and sausages. She let the waitress choose for her. What she brought out was just right—two pancakes and a smaller side of scrambled eggs. Renee stole one of Grant’s sausages, surprised that she was so hungry. She usually ate plenty, but a breakfast as big as these pancakes wasn’t her usual fare. Even so, her stomach was still growling halfway through one of them. Grant looked amused as he watched her eat.

Renee could tell when they got closer to the city. The clumps of small towns started getting denser, and buildings began getting bigger and shinier. And there were more billboards and intersections, more cars, more people than Renee was used to seeing at once. It was all right while she was in the car, but she began to play with the buttons of her coat as she wondered how she would be when she had to get out of the car.

At least she was not wearing that skirt anymore. Grant told her that something more practical would be best for that night—they would be in a wooded national park area in the cold. So she was able to wear her long jeans and boots, but she also chose a nicer dark blue blouse over one of her usual camisoles. She didn’t care if it got dirty—she had not even known it existed until Britt had found it behind everything else Renee owned. Then there was her coat and scarf. She was not going to be walking into a warm bar, and it was important for her to cover up. But Grant moved his hand over her thigh to the slight flash of skin above the waist of her jeans. He was not insistent—it was as though he needed to touch her. As long as he was able to drive in a straight line and the weather stayed clear, Renee did not mind.

There were some thick, high clouds in the distance, but the weatherman on the rock station said that all the storms would be south of Minneapolis, and Grant said that the place they were heading was to the northwest, although he did want to take her into the city after a night with the pack. He insinuated that they might not be alone. There was an odd glitter to his eyes—not tears, not sadness, not anger. Just memories. Renee wondered what he had left behind. And why he had left it behind to come to a dog sanctuary, where he knew there would be canine shapeshifters but no werewolves.

She knew they had to be getting close when Grant turned the music down.

“Imagine, if you will,” Grant said, “a community of people who may not be completely like me, but they have many of the same traits. I don’t think I have to tell you to stay near me. Werewolves tend to be leery of humans in their space, even more than weaker shapeshifters or other magical creatures. Our instincts are trained to see humans as prey more than any other animal. You will have wolves circling you.”

He looked at her, keeping his eyes on the road with his peripheral vision. There weren’t many people on the road anyway. “You’ll handle it, love. You’ll do just fine.”

“As long as I stay close to you,” Renee said.

“I’ll keep them from tasting you, yes. I mean you’ll do fine when they’re trying to intimidate you.”

“Like what you try to do to me?” she asked.

He looked at the road again, but not before his lips twitched. “Exactly. And my original plan for calming you down is still in effect. If you start to panic, I
will
kiss you. Believe me, though, the wolves love an exhibition, so you have some motivation to stay calm. Unless you want to give another performance, in which case, I only have more ideas what we can do.”

Renee rolled her eyes and looked out the window, but she knew he was serious in spite of the laughter in his tone. She always had to be the most attentive when he was the most amused.

* * * *

Her truck was not the only vehicle in the gravel parking lot, but the area did not look nearly full enough for the largest werewolf pack in the north.

Grant must have noticed her looking around, because he said, “Many members of the pack stay in the woods permanently. The rest run all the way here from wherever they live nearby. Or they carpool. And then there are the few like me—just a visitor from time to time.”

“Were you always a visitor?” Renee asked.

There was a beat before he answered. “No. I was once in one of the subpacks here.”

Grant got out of the car and threw the keys to Renee. She slipped them into her coat pocket and buttoned them in. When he opened her door, she slid her legs to the side to step down, but he stopped her.

“And other rules still apply,” he murmured. “The game’s still on, my dear. If you need to scream, then scream. And if you need to hit me, then hit me. There are no holds barred here. There are no rules. Particularly the ones you seem to have assigned to yourself. With the exception of ‘stay close to me’. Because if I’m dangerous, what do you think seventy-five wolves are to you?”