With Her Capture (7 page)

There were other
reasons she didn’t need involvement with a male. There was no
ignoring them. No male ever wanted to run with her. She certainly
would never be the female they would bring to their den and
introduce to their litter. For Magda, in her twenty-five years, all
males who sniffed her out did so out of sheer, limited time only,
fascination. Her breed had been sentenced to death. No male cared
to smell that truth for too long.

No one would ever
accuse her of smelling of self-pity. It wasn’t as if she’d ever
been different than how she was now. Magda might have a beautiful
black coat, but she also had a gift that no one else had. The way
she saw it, she was blessed, which made up for being different. If
that meant she would run alone her entire life—so be
it.

Of course, if she ever
made it to the Malta werewolf pack in Colorado, there might be a
male waiting for her there. It was hard to believe he’d be anywhere
as perfect as Ayden, though.

There was no denying
she wanted Ayden. Her craving for him grew every time he entered
the cave. It was more than physical beauty with him. His inner
strength. His ability to smell past what other werewolves told him
to smell. His willingness to do so much to help her, although she
wouldn’t become reliant on it, made Ayden damn near perfect. Magda
thought it only fair that she sample perfection at least once in
her life. As long as she didn’t let him break her heart, all would
be fine.

“
This is what you want,
isn’t it Cariboo?”

She wasn’t ready when
Ayden flipped her off of him. The cave floor was hard, and cold. He
crushed her back against it. Before she knew what had happened,
he’d taken control.

Ayden pinned her to the
ground. His muscular arms locked, straight, pressing her shoulders
into hard stone underneath her. His legs moved between hers,
preventing her from bringing hers together, or raising them in an
effort to fight back.

“
More than anything,”
he snarled, his expression suddenly hard and almost
terrifying.

His scent changed, and
it wasn’t what she’d expected him to smell like.

“
There’s no reason to
be angry.” Magda forced herself to relax when all she wanted was to
throw him off of her.

She fought not to
sneeze from the spicy smell of outrage that suddenly filled the
cave. Magda wasn’t sure what just happened but his getting pissed
wasn’t how she’d thought he’d react.

“
I think the normal
reaction is to be aroused,” she whispered, hoping she sounded
seductive, although she wasn’t able to keep a hint of sarcasm from
surfacing.

No way would he sniff
out how nervous he’d just made her.

“
Is this how it is for
you,
ma beaute noire
?”
he grumbled. Silver laced through his blue eyes like lightning. The
closeness of the change burned underneath his flesh and added to
his strength.

Magda wouldn’t dwell on
how much stronger he was, or how he had her pinned so well she was
completely his captive. “I told you. I am not
your—“

“
Do you believe I am
here simply to fuck you then run to the next
female?”

His question smelled
genuine. Magda studied his broad cheekbones, the intense way he
stared at her. There was anger under the surface of his harsh
expression. But another emotion, not as easily detected, simmered
there, too. She wasn’t able to label it.

“
I know why you’re
here,” she snapped, frustrated that he was so hard to sniff out.
“I’m not like the females in your pack. I am forbidden and that’s a
turn on to many males. You aren’t the first to come sniffing around
because you smell something you shouldn’t have and that excites
you.”

“
As thin as you are,
the others must not have offered you much to eat.” With the same
speed and agility he’d used to slam her to the cave floor, Ayden
leapt to his feet and yanked her up with him. “So this is how it’s
been since you’ve been on the run.”

“
What does that mean?”
Magda wasn’t able to free herself from the iron grip he had on her
arm. “I said others have come sniffing around. But I never howled
anything about raising my tail to each and every one of
them.”

“
I don’t need to be
paid with sex for taking care of you.”

“
What?” she gasped. Her
shock at how close to the truth he had just howled pissed her off.
Not that she looked at it that way. Hell, at the moment she wasn’t
sure how to smell the truth. “How dare you!” she
yelled.

Magda felt her shoulder
pop when she tried tearing free of his hold on her. Instead of
letting her go, he started dragging her toward the entrance of the
cave.

“
My beautiful black
bitch, I dare,” he ground out through clenched
teeth.

“
Where are we
going?”

“
Hunting.” Ayden
turned. “Unless you’d rather remained caged in this cave and
fight,” he suggested, his voice too smooth to mistake the cold,
underlying rage he barely contained.

When he quit dragging
her and turned to face her, Magda almost walked into him. Ayden was
tall—really tall. His short blond hair looked thicker than when
he’d arrived, and his blue eyes were radiant against his sharply
chiseled face. He had broad shoulders and an incredible, perfectly
sculptured chest. She almost pressed her free hand against all that
ripped muscle but pulled back just as her fingertips brushed his
shirt.

Ayden grabbed her wrist
and pressed her palm to his heart. He towered over her, pulling her
so close she had to tilt her head back to see his
face.

“
When I fuck you it
won’t be because you think it’s what is supposed to happen next,”
he growled. “It will happen when neither of us can restrain from
having the other any longer.”

Her first thought was
that would happen very soon. Magda was caught off guard by the fire
burning in those intense, dark sapphire eyes. His scent wrapped
around her, drawing her to him.

“
You smell a bit too
sure of yourself.” She almost choked on her words when he lowered
his head and nipped at her lower lip just as she got the words out.
“Oh,” she gasped.

Ayden’s confidence was
off the charts. Magda had known a few males when she’d run freely
on her mountain before the humans burnt them out. Most litters
surrounding their den lived there because, for whatever reason,
they preferred not to be part of a pack. With her litter, the
reasons had been obvious. She’d never bothered asking other litters
why they preferred living in isolation; mainly because none of the
males who’d sniffed after her had ever really impressed her. If
she’d run across a werewolf like Ayden it might very well have been
a different story.

Magda breathed in the
scent of him. She leaned back, needing space. It seemed her feet
were pinned where they were. That or she didn’t want to move.
Standing this close she swore the sex appeal radiating off him
caused every inch of her to start tingling. Ayden was probably
everything she’d ever dreamed of finding in a male. However, it was
the way he’d been raised, the world he lived in, and the only one
he’d ever known that had so much to do with carving out the male
who stood before her now.

Ayden lived in a pack.
He’d never known suppression, hatred, or the smell of disgust
simply over the blood flowing in his veins. Magda imagined he not
only ran with honor, but believed no other werewolf would challenge
his beliefs. Possibly no one ever had. Magda didn’t know a life
like that but pictured it in her head as one hell of a way to
live.

It didn’t matter how
great that life was. It would never be her life. She managed to
start a step backward when Ayden laced his fingers through her hair
and yanked her head back further. Her neck stretched. His face was
so close to hers that it blurred. The way his scent changed,
growing stronger, richer, and smelling so damn good, Magda didn’t
care if she saw him clearly, or not. The imprint of this sexy male
holding her had fixed itself in her brain. She could look at it
anytime. Right now she allowed her other senses their
stimulation.

“
Magdaline,” he
snarled, his voice thick with lust.

Seldom did anyone use
her full first name. The way Ayden said it caused trickles of
desire to tease and torture her insides.

It was all he said
before taking her mouth. If there were reasons not to do this they
got lost in the overwhelming waves of passion that exploded between
them. He didn’t just kiss her. His lips seared hers. Heat unlike
anything she’d ever known robbed her ability to
think.

Magda felt his shirt
against her palms. She’d grabbed him, fisting his clothes in her
hands and held on as she spiraled toward a center too intense for
it to come at her this fast. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t come
before. But with a kiss!

His mouth had more
ability, more skill, than most males possessed with their entire
bodies. He’d created an impenetrable fog in her brain. She gave up
on her sense of sight. She smelled him. And damn, a male had never
been so overwhelmingly enticing from his scent.

Magda hadn’t paid
attention to where his hands had been. His kiss was too demanding
to focus on any other activity around her. She most definitely felt
his hard-packed muscles and incredibly solid body pressing against
her breasts, her hips, her thighs. But until that second, she’d
accepted his hands tangled in her hair.

She suddenly grew
acutely aware of him touching her when those large hands, with his
long fingers and calloused fingertips, stroked her shoulders. Then
he was touching her back. His hands glided down her body and
gripped her ass. When he abruptly lifted her off the ground, Magda
wrapped her arms around his shoulders and willingly held
on.

He impaled her mouth
with his tongue, creating an ancient dance their kind had been
performing together for over a millennium. It was one she thought
she knew. But as she clung to him, his strong hands cradling her
ass, she was certain she’d never experienced what she was right
now.

“
Magdaline,” he
whispered again, and scraped his teeth over her lip before
biting.

“
Mmm,” she
hummed.

“
I’m going to lay my
kill at your feet.”

Magda blinked. He
didn’t really mean that he wanted a relationship. “You already laid
it outside the cave,” she murmured, and tried kissing him again.
She didn’t want to think about how impossible it would be for a
male like Ayden to seriously chase down a female like
her.

He didn’t hesitate. “I
mean it.”

A male brought his kill
to a female if she was his mate, or if he wanted to make her his.
It was another tradition, and one still honored
today.

He lowered her to the
ground and stepped away. “If you change in here your clothes will
be warm when we return.”

Magda didn’t follow his
meaning until he let go of her and left the cave. She started
toward the exit but then froze. Her view was slightly impaired but
not so much that she couldn’t see Ayden strip off his shirt. His
back was to her and muscles bulged and rippled under white flesh.
He was a perfect specimen, a deadly male who would outrun and
outfight any other male if they made the mistake of sniffing too
close to pure danger.

What the hell was he
doing with her?

Someone like Ayden
would end up being alpha male. He would lead his pack. The best
female would run by his side. If any other Cariboo saw him running
with her they would attack first and possibly not even bother to
take the time to sniff out the situation. Malta werewolves were a
condemned species. There was too much of that blood in her veins to
deceive anyone into thinking she was another breed.

“
Are you hunting with
me, or not?” Already his voice had a gravelly edge to
it.

Magda stared a moment
longer. He bent over and pulled off his boots then unzipped his
jeans. Fire ignited inside her as the change began. It made her
senses more acute even before her body physically altered. She
breathed in his rich, dominating scent. Ayden dropped his jeans and
boxers. His muscular ass would be a sight imprinted in her brain
always.

God damn he was
perfect!

Magda almost stumbled
out of her clothes. She was barely naked when Ayden had dropped to
all fours. His coat was thick, and as shiny white as hers was dark.
The fire inside her, igniting the change, burned with fierceness
stronger than usual. If she had dared dream of a perfect male on
her mountain he would look and behave just like Ayden. She might
actually have dreamed of him if she’d known such a male
existed.