Oh, that’s simple.”

She froze in the utter stillness, which gave a blood away each and every time. But this time he didn’t focus on her inhumanity, the fact she was a blood and he was a lycan. Instead, all he saw were the large dark eyes, the sensuous curve of her lips and the soft sheen of her alabaster skin. Compared to him, she was small and delicate. So beautiful he hardly dared glance her way, but his gaze was drawn to her anyway. Like a compass needle to true north. Everything male within him demanded it. Need and desire raced through his body, aided by his wolf. The creature inside yipped and yammered, testing the edges of his control like a caged dog worrying at a fence, desperate to be freed.

He held the smile. For once, he and the animal were in perfect accord. She’d locked him down with silver, but it didn’t mean he was going to stay that way. Not with the moon still in the sky and his mate within reach. While they’d talked, he’d worked the silver from his system. The metal beneath him was wet with tainted sweat. A little puddle under his ass like he’d pissed the stuff. Opening the connection to his wolf piece by piece, he let the creature free, using the strength and rage to galvanize his human frame.

“What do you mean, ‘that’s simple’?”

He finished the grin. The movement bared his teeth, revealing the lengthened canines behind his human lips. “Easy. I’m not locked down.”

His words fell into stunned silence. Her eyes widened, her slight intake of breath a soft rasp in the air. Their gazes locked and tension spiraled as each waited for the other to move.

He saw it the moment she made her decision. A red sheen tainted the darkness of her eyes, flowing over the surface like oil over water. Man, that was some freaky shit.

A bellow escaped his lips as he yanked on the cuffs. The silver-laced steel bit deep, slicing through his skin like an acid-dipped razor but he ignored the pain. Couldn’t afford to let it slow him down.

Using momentum to snap the chain, he threw himself across the space between them and reached for her. His arms opened wide to wrap her up in a solid tackle but, like him, she was already moving. With a grunt of surprise and anger, she twisted to the side and then rebounded off the metal interior to come right at him.

They met in the middle in a clash of bodies and tumbled, rolling across the truck-bed in a tangle of limbs. She fought like a wildcat. His vision filled with flying strands of dark hair and the flash of her teeth as she snarled. He winced, blocking like a demon while heavy blows rained down on his head and shoulders. Pain flared all over his body but he ignored it and fought through. Forced to protect his sides, his abdomen and his face, he ducked and turned, weaving before he went on the offensive, trying to trap her arms and pin her down.

The fight was close and fast as fuck. Despite her aggression and the sheer power behind her blows, he was tougher and bigger. A long, painful minute later he had her stretched out under him with her hands above her head. Still she fought, snapping at his face and neck with fangs that didn’t look nearly so cute when they were threatening to take chunks out of him.

“Shhh…calm down.”

He held on for grim death, throwing a heavy thigh over both of hers when she contorted and tried to knee him in the balls. Sometimes being the opposite sex in a down and dirty fight had its disadvantages, especially when you were the gender with the dangly bits. He was lucky she didn’t have those sharp little fangs anywhere near his crotch. That was one blow-job he could well do without.

“Fuck you.”

She struggled against his hold again. She didn’t…couldn’t break free, not with the firm grip he had on her, but each heave she gave pressed them closer together. The truck aided him, rattling over potholes and jerking them about until she was jammed in the right angle between the floor and the wall. Every inch of her slender but curvy frame pressed tightly against him and his cock roared to life, pushing against the front of his pants, desperate for release.

“Believe me, doll. I’d love you to.”

She froze again, her eyes widening as her struggles rubbed their lower bodies together and she clocked the raging erection hard against her stomach. His gaze caught hers, heat flowing between them. She dragged a shaky breath in over parted lips. His attention riveted on the pink temptation scant inches from him, and he lowered his head, watching her every step of the way. Waiting for her to turn into a spitting cat again.

She didn’t.

Instead, she watched him as if transfixed, her taut body strangely pliant under his, the soft curves and hollows fitting naturally against the hard musculature of his larger frame. A perfect fit. Like she’d been made to be held in his arms. A sense of familiarity, of coming home, assaulted him and he knew he’d give up everything for a few moments in her embrace.

Her pink tongue darted out, wetting her lips in subconscious invitation. He groaned. There was only so much temptation a man could take. He’d wanted to be soft, gentle…prove to her he wasn’t an animal, but need rode him hard. Like a devil on his back, it scoured all softness from him until only lust was left. The driving need to taste her, devour her, consumed him and he swooped down, claiming her lips in a hard kiss almost bruising in its intensity.

Unlike earlier, he didn’t—couldn’t—wait for her to soften.

Instead, he demanded and took, parting her lips with a hard sweep to sample the treasures within. Her taste exploded on his tongue, a heavenly combination of tart and sweet, fascinating his senses and totally indescribable. She tasted sublime. Ambrosia. If he died right now, he’d go having tasted a little piece of heaven itself.

The truck rattled again, rolling him so he completed the movement. Pulling her into his side, he held both her wrists with one hand and used the other to sweep down the length of her body. She started, a jump of surprise when he cupped her ass and palmed the luscious curve before pulling her leg up over his thigh. He settled against her. His hips cradled in hers, he moved in to deepen the kiss.

She didn’t fight him, just held her body still under his as he stroked his tongue along hers. Enticing her. Teasing her. She moaned, the sexy little sound lost under his lips. He ravaged her mouth, taking and demanding, and then giving back in equal measure when she responded. Slowly at first, just the tentative sweep of her tongue, her body rigid as though she fought temptation…then the dam broke. She whimpered against his lips, the sound of her surrender sweet music to his ears, and kissed him back.

Triumph roared through him. All the while his mind screamed at him about operational awareness. That now he had her subdued, he should be doing something about escaping. Wrap the chains around her wrists and imprison her against the cold, hard steel of the truck-side instead. Not kiss her like his life depended on it. Certainly not groan as her tongue slid against his, and roll so she rested on his chest.

Her hands drove into his hair, tugging and pulling at the long locks as she plastered herself over him. Her breasts mashed against him, the soft mounds delicious pressure against the hard muscles of his broad chest. Her nipples were hard bullets under the damp fabric of her T-shirt and his groan joined hers as she rubbed herself, cat-like, over his chest.

Heat arced, little lightning strikes every time her skin slid over his, a storm playing out over and between them. A storm of passion he wanted to wallow in, dancing and fucking in the rain to make the woman under him his at last.

Knees on either side of his hips, she ground down, rocking against the rigid length of his erection and nipping his lower lip. Arousal shot through him at the pleasure-pain, washing over his scalp in a thousand tiny pinpricks before rolling through his body to lodge behind his balls and cock. A hot, rolling ball of lust, the thick rod ached to be free, to sink into the sweet cunt just a few layers of clothes away.

“Tease.”

He broke from the kiss to accuse and then dragged his lips along the sensitive curve of her neck, pausing halfway to breathe in her scent. Arms wrapped around her slender waist, he closed his eyes and held her to him.

Perfection. Utter perfection.

“I’m the tease?” she challenged, hands in his hair to drag his head back so she could look in his eyes. The red in hers was gone, replaced by a new darkness that set his blood and body aflame. He surged into movement, sitting up with her in his lap, and reached for her lips again. She was his. He had to have her—

The truck braked and turned, the mechanical sounds of a gate and conversation reaching them. Darce stiffened, fingers biting into her hips, but once again she was too quick for him. The needle pierced his shoulder before he could push her away. Silver flooded his veins, the fresh hit stealing his ability to move. With a grunt he slid back, his eyes still on her.

“I’m sorry. I have to take you in.”

 

 

“You know, when Capt’n Jack said ‘supplies’ he wasn’t talking about donuts, right? He meant real food,” Nic demanded, her voice sharp and biting as she crouched beside him behind the mountain town’s single store.

Joe Sanders, formerly Private First Class and now a fully paid up member of Alpha-Three lycan unit, shrugged, zipped his duffle and slung it crosswise over his body. They were both dressed sparsely in sleeveless vests and combat pants with bare feet, but neither of them noticed the chill of the receding night. Their altered bodies ran too hot for such things to be important.

“He said essential supplies. Donuts and coffee are essential supplies. Let’s see what you got,” he replied quietly, nodding his head toward the matching duffle she carried. He crowded a little closer to peer into the bag in the pre-dawn light.

They’d been tasked to scout the local area and secure some supplies while the rest of the pack was either on patrol or out on reconnaissance. He and Nic, the smallest and fastest of the pack when on all fours, had been sent to the farthest location—a little town nestled high in the pass between the mountains. An hour’s hard run had gotten them there, the exercise welcome after their recent incarceration. Now they were crouched behind the only store in town, checking over their haul.

Sanders rolled his shoulders. Nothing like a little exercise after getting out of lockdown. He hated being in a cage. Either a real cage, bars around him or the cage of his own body when his abilities were shackled with silver—the Project MO when dealing with lycans. Unlike the captain, or even the pack second in command, Lieutenant Foster, Sanders couldn’t force the drugs out of his system on his own. He needed the help of an alpha’s touch. Something which bothered him less than it did the female wolf at his side.

Accepting help from another—anyone at all—pissed Nic off no end. Which was no different than normal. Some days Nic could fall out with her own fingertips. After what they’d been through, Sanders didn’t blame her. They were all dealing with what had been done to them in their own way.

He nodded in approval at the contents of her bag. She’d snagged a shed-load of meal replacement bars and protein shakes. All lightweight, the small packets provided the best bang for the buck, or in this case, the most nutritional value per packet for their weight. And they needed it—all the wolves burned through calories like wildfire, their metabolisms wickedly fast since they’d all been turned.

“Cool beans. Did’ya get strawberry? I call dibs,” he declared, rooting around in the bag. Unlike some of the others, he didn’t mind the protein shakes, but he couldn’t stand the banana ones. They made him want to hurl. Strawberry though…that was an entirely different matter. He rifled through the packets, looking for any with a pink stripe.

Nic chuckled. “Of course I got you strawberry. You think I’d forget something like that?”

He flicked her a grin before pulling his hand out of the bag. The packets slithered over each other and something else caught the corner of his eye. Frowning, he looked back. It looked almost like…lace?

“What’s this?”

“Nothing. Leave it,” Nic squeaked, trying to pull the holdall away and clamp her hand over the opening, but he was too quick for her. He drove through the shake packets, searching for the scrap of pink fabric he’d caught a glimpse of. His fingertips grazed something soft. With a crow of triumph he grabbed and pulled. Nic swore, shake packets spilling from the bag as Sanders held up his prize.

And realized he was holding a bra. In hot pink.

“Fuck.”

Heat hit his cheeks and Nic snickered. He avoided her gaze and stuffed the bra back in the bag like it had burned him. He wasn’t interested in women…mostly. He’d seen Nic naked more times than he could recall and nothing, despite the fact she was a damn sexy woman. So why did the sight of female underwear have him coloring up like a kid on his first date?

“Honey, if you were interested, I’d already be doing you.”

He dropped his head to try and hide his blush and looked up at her through his bangs. He needed them cut, but they grew so quickly there wasn’t much point—not when there were more important things to do. “Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence. If only others…”

He trailed off, zipping the bag up to avoid the subject, but she knew what he meant. He’d had the hots for their unit sergeant since he and Nic had been transferred in, way back when they were all human. But Leon was as straight as they came—a real ladies’ man who wouldn’t look twice at Sanders. No matter how much his heart and body ached to tell the bigger man how he felt.

Understanding and sympathy flowed over Nic’s features in place of her usual pissed off expression, and she reached out to pat his shoulder. Anger and frustration rolled through him. Why couldn’t he find Nic attractive instead of Leon? She had more screws loose in the head than he did, wouldn’t let a guy near her other than him. They could have been each other’s salvation.

“I know, sweets. I know.”

Letting go of him, she resettled the bag and looked around them. Dawn had started to break with a vengeance now so they couldn’t stick around. Not without getting spotted by the locals and having to answer some interesting questions about why they were wandering around in the ass-end of beyond without any shoes on.

“Let’s split, shall we? Long run ahead.”

He didn’t need telling twice. He motioned for her to precede him, and then they slipped out of cover behind the store. They ran low and fast along what passed for the main street before they turned and ducked into cover behind a fence, which ran parallel to the local diner. The trees of the surrounding forest loomed large behind the small building.

Letting Nic take point, he turned and cast a glance over his shoulder. It was an automatic reaction from his soldiering days to ensure that no one had followed them. The little alley was empty. At this time of day he hadn’t expected anything different. Turning again, he followed his patrol partner into the forest.

Even barefoot and laden with heavy holdalls, the run back to the pack’s base camp deep in the forest-covered mountains was nothing arduous for the two wolves. As soldiers, they’d been used to carrying more weight over rougher terrain and their conversion to something more than human—to lycan—had only made them stronger and faster. Between them they could have carried a small car back to camp if it would have fit between the trees as they dodged and wove through the closely packed trunks.

The sky lightened while they ran, the sun making its way higher above the horizon. It was fully raised by the time they neared the camp. Sanders once again brought up the rear. The breeze ruffled his hair, blowing it back from his face as he scanned back the way they’d come. It was a habit—a holdover from the days when he’d been human. These days sight wasn’t his strongest sense, but with the wind behind them, he knew they hadn’t been followed.

A dark shadow moved in the undergrowth. Leaves parted on a whisper of sound to reveal the glint of an amber eye deep within the shadows, focused on them with an intelligence and perception not found in the animal kingdom. Movement rustled in the undergrowth, releasing a wave of damp earthiness. A set of hulking furry shoulders became visible through the leaves before the huge wolf settled again.

Sanders squinted, trying to make out more detail. But while the LY infection had cured him of the need to wear glasses, it hadn’t given him the vision of a hawk. The early morning sun didn’t penetrate all the way through the thick leaf canopy overhead and the male had hidden himself well, like he’d been trained to do.

Another shifter. Sanders’ eyes narrowed, piecing the slight variations in shadows together. The male was tucked under a fallen log next to a large outcrop of rock, just his eyes visible…if you knew what to look for. Members of the pack were masters of camouflage. A human could walk right on by and never know that a creature from a nightmare lurked in the shadows. Watching. Waiting.

From the size and coloring, it had to be Thom or maybe Blake. Only the lieutenant and captain were bigger, but the fur color was wrong for it to be either of them. One way to be sure. Sanders took a deep breath to catch the scent. Thom. The other male’s familiar scent filled Sanders’ sensitive nostrils. He nodded at the wolf while Nic stomped past without acknowledging the well-hidden guard. They stepped from the trees into the small clearing currently serving as the pack’s impromptu base of operations.

“Please tell me you got something decent to eat,” a voice begged.

Sanders swept a glance around the clearing, empty apart from the two of them and the tall man rising to his feet to greet them. They hadn’t started a campfire, but he wouldn’t expect them to. With the Project out looking for them, they couldn’t risk the smoke giving away their position. They didn’t need another couple of gunships on their case, especially without the backup of the heavy weaponry on the hummers they’d had to ditch in the foothills. Which was a bitch because Sanders had sure enjoyed that show. Even if he’d had to be careful Richards didn’t catch him looking. Acres of naked male skin and muscles and…

Sanders suppressed the shiver trying to roll down his spine at the thought.

Blake—Thom’s patrol partner—was across the clearing and rooting through Nic’s bag as soon as it hit the dirt.

“Meal bars and protein packs. Tastes like shit but they’ll keep us going for now,” Nic commented, watching Thom with amusement.

Sanders kept his own bag firmly looped across his body and looked around. “Where is everyone?”

“Richards and Palmer are out on recon, following the blood bitch who took Foster. Apparently they split off, didn’t meet up with the rest of the Project forces.”

Blake sat back on his heels, disgust in his eyes at Nic’s meager haul, and eyed Sanders’ holdall with a speculative look. Sanders caught the glance, and backed up a step. Then another. They all knew he had a sweet tooth and a partiality for donuts.

“Oh no, these are mine. All mine.”

Blake grinned, showing sharper-than-human canines. “Hand them over. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

Sanders cocked his eyebrow and swung the bag on its strap to rest against his back. He might have been one of the smaller wolves in the pack but that didn’t mean he was a pushover, not where the donuts were concerned. They were one of the two things he would fight to the death over. Them and his pack…his family. It muddied the waters when his family wanted to fight him for the donuts.

“Oh, break it up, you two.” Nic reached out to cuff Blake behind the ear. The big man sidestepped, grinning at her as he advanced on Sanders, making a “bring it on” gesture behind Nic’s back.

“Where’s the captain?” she asked. “How’s Lillian doing?”

At the female’s rapid-fire questions, both men paused. The last twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind of action. From their barracks-stroke-cells being stormed by armed commandos, their drugged-up incarceration in the nuthouse right through to their escape from said nuthouse, none of the pack could forget the slender, delicate human who’d helped them. Despite the fact the Project had sent a vampire and a horde of zombies. A human who’d turned out to be the most precious of gifts. A wolf-mate. The captain’s mate, to be precise. The first one they’d found and a discovery that gave them all hope there could be someone out there for them all.

Even for Sanders…

Before Thom could answer, a howl ripped through the quiet air of the morning forest. The three went on alert, dropping into a crouch to listen. Eyes wide, Sanders opened the connection to his wolf, feeling the prickle under his skin as he held the change just beneath, ready to burst through it within a second.

The three wolves bunched together, backs to each other in case the Project had sent another team after them and they needed to fight. Determination welled up, joining the energy rolling through Sanders’ system. It would be bloody and brutal but they could do it. The three of them could beat whatever rag-tag team of newbie wolves the Project sent after them. Since the pack had gone native, and the previous two teams had been terminated, the Project was running out of options. All they had left were the teams below Alpha-Three, wolves not long out of their conversion and too weak to pose a serious threat to the pack.

Hopefully.

The howl rang out again, closer this time. The voice was unfamiliar but it wasn’t the sound of fury and battle he’d have expected for a wolf tracking them. Instead the sound welled up with wonder and joy, as though being alive and able to make such a sound was the best thing in the world. Then the howl altered, the sound dropping from the wolf into a very human, and female, “Woohoo.” Sanders turned, a grin on this face. Nic and Thom beamed from ear to ear.

“I guess that means Lillian made it through conversion.”