Chapter 4

He tried to tear his lips from hers. Tried, and failed. The raw, primal hunger for her he’d been fighting since seeing her in the pub surged through him. He snarled with lust and plunged his tongue into her mouth, seeking hers as he grabbed her arse.

She responded to the brutal force of his kiss with a moan, grinding the curve of her sex to his uncovered groin. His cock reacted, instantly and aggressively, growing thick and hard and erect.

Katy moaned again, rolling her hips. Pleasure crashed through him, hot and tight and consuming.

He squeezed her arse cheeks again, slamming their groins and hips closer together as he lashed his tongue against hers.

She tasted like life, honey, and light. With every wild stroke of her tongue against his, with every moan vibrating through her chest into his, his desire for her, his need to be inside her, grew. Grew. Until he couldn’t handle the barrier of her clothes between them and tore at her shirt with his hands.

Without breaking their kiss, he ripped her bra apart, shoving the tattered remains of it and her shirt over her shoulders.

Only then did he drag his lips from her mouth, sucking and biting a path down her throat, over her collarbone, before capturing one of her beaded, dusky-pink nipples with fierce suction.

She cried out, arching her spine, thrusting her breast harder to his mouth. “Holy fuck, yes.” She clawed her fingers over his shoulders, up into his hair. Fisted her hands and held his head as he sucked deeper.

As he did, he yanked open the fly of her shorts and shoved his hand between her thighs, sinking two of his fingers into her pussy.

Her tight muscles enveloped them, warm and slick with her juices. She whimpered, rolling her hips again, her fists in his hair growing wild.

With his free hand he snagged the waistband of her shorts and pushed it down over her hips and arse, squeezing her butt cheek, as he moved his mouth to her other breast.

She gasped, undulating in his arms, on his fingers. “Oh God, Dean…” Her hands moved to his shoulders, back up into his hair. She kicked her legs free of her shorts, parting her thighs wider. “I should…I should be petrified of you…of what you are…”

He sucked at her breast, drawing his head away from her body as he did so, until her nipple popped free of his mouth. “Then why aren’t you?” he asked, the words little more than a growl.

“Because this is so fucking good,” she said, eyes half-closed, breath shallow, rapid. “And I want more.”

Impatient pleasure flooded through him. His cock ached. His balls did the same. The second he entered her, any hope of not being bound to her for life, any hope of stopping whatever was happening between them would be irrevocably lost. Every instinct he had told him that. This might not be normal—when was any part of a shifter’s life—but he knew if he sank into Katy’s body, fully joined with her on the most carnal and primal level, she would be bound to him as well. She might not understand it, but she would be.

Which meant…

He shut the thought down, its intoxicating power and allure sending a jolt of raw lust into his groin.

He couldn’t fuck her. He couldn’t do that to her. But he could make her fucking come over and over. And he would.

Without preamble, he slid his fingers from her wet heat, hauled her off her feet, and carried her around the rocky outcrop to the grassy edge of the billabong.

He laid her onto the soft grass, shoved her thighs wide, and licked a single stroke over her pussy lips.

Pleasure, concentrated and absolute, shot through him at the exquisite taste of her. If he’d still harbored doubts she was his life mate, he couldn’t now. At the very taste of her on his tongue his body erupted with an energy as powerful and consuming as the ancient energy that fed his dual existence.

She was meant for him. How did he fight that? Deny that?

She whimpered, thrusting her hips upward. “Again.”

Dragging in a deep breath, he rose to his feet and looked down at her. “Do not move. Do not close your legs. Do not roll onto your stomach. Stay exactly as you are.”

A flash of defiance flared in her eyes and then she nodded.

He smiled, took a step back, and then shifted into dingo form.

Before he made her scream with pleasure, he needed to make sure they were safe, that Merv was nowhere to be found, or that any other wolf was stupid enough to be nearby.

If they were…

He loped away, tuning his preternatural senses into the surrounding area. The scent of wolf and blood still tainted the air, but faintly. Very faintly.

Merv had, it seemed, buggered off. And with no other scents, he’d been alone. But acting alone, or on Grayson’s orders?

Dean picked up his pace, the heat of the day streaming through his fur. It was time he and Grayson finished what the wolf had started months ago upon first arriving at the Creek. The Russian bastard needed to be taught what Australian shifters did to those who picked a fight.

With no fresh sign of Merv or any other wolf, Dean sought out Katy’s trail, following it to where she’d left his truck.

He ran to it, shifted into human form, reached through the open driver’s side window and snagged the CB radio’s hand piece from its cradle.

“Cam. You about?”

Static answered him. He didn’t think his beta would be contactable. The job Dean had given him last night required a certain amount of stealth, something Cam excelled at in both dingo and human form. Before Grayson arrived at the Creek and started to worm his way into every facet of running the town, Cam had been the Creek’s main crowd-controller. There were no real cops in Kangaroo Creek. A town populated by all manner of non-humans wouldn’t fare well with the concept of human law, as such, but Cam had been the one to make sure the Creek’s residents kept their shit under control.

And then Grayson arrived and the status quo had gotten fucked up.

“Cam?” He tried again. “Lucy?”

No answer. He wasn’t worried. The husband and wife team weren’t easy targets. When he got Katy back to his place, he’d track down his beta and find out what Cam had learned of her uncle’s disappearance.

At the thought of Katy, Dean’s pulse quickened. His groin tightened.

He let out a ragged breath. It was growing more impossible to deny she was his life mate. What they’d already shared sexually had definitely triggered the bonding in him. He could only hope her human existence wasn’t as imprisoned by it. What human would want to be bound until death to a shifter? And even if for some insane reason she did, she wouldn’t want to stay in the Creek. As soon as she located her missing uncle, she would be gone. Dean, however…

A low growl rumbled in his chest. Would he be bound to her forever?

Perhaps the connection will eventually fade? If you don’t enter her? Fill her?

The animal he was stirred—agitated—at the notion. She was his to claim. His to fuck. His mate. His.

“Enough,” he snarled at his inner dingo.

He tossed the CB hand piece back into his truck and turned, hurrying back to the billabong.

He had to get Katy-Lin Yunker out of the Creek ASAP. Or sooner.

Whatever it was drawing them together, he was shutting it down. Now.

No more kissing, no more sexual activity of any—

Ah fuck.

She stood at the side of the billabong, naked and glorious and dripping wet. Beads of water glistened on her smooth skin, trickled down over her belly, her hips, her breasts. Her nipples were puckered and dark. Water clung to the trim curls of her pubic hair, catching the sun’s baking rays like tiny diamonds.

She smiled at him, that same part-shy, part-playful vixen smile that detonated a carnal desire in him he’d never be able to dampen. “I got hot,” she said, turning to face him directly. “So I took a swim.”

Dean traced every inch of her body presented to him with his gaze, every delectable dip and curve and bump and crease.

He sucked in a slow breath, the musky perfume of her scent teasing him even from this distance. “Katy…” He swallowed. Bunched his fists. “We need…you need to get dressed.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You need to come over here.”

“Katy,” he warned through gritted teeth. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

“Yes, Dean.” She trailed her hand down between her breasts and slipped her finger between her thighs. “I do.”

Dean moved. Fast.

He crushed her mouth with his, unleashing his desire and hunger for her completely. She whimpered, tangling her hands in his hair. He fucked her mouth with his tongue, branded her lips with his teeth. Marked her throat with brutal suction, his hands on her breasts, her hips, her sex.

He sucked on her nipples. Bit at them.

She cried out, begging him for more.

He gave it to her, kneading her arse as he laved her clit over and over with his tongue.

She shuddered, his name falling from her as he licked her to the edge of an orgasm he could feel in his own soul. When his name was nothing but panted sounds bursting from her, he snapped to his feet and plundered her mouth again, wanting, needing her to taste her own pleasure on his tongue.

She groaned, rubbing her pussy at his engorged dick.

The need to slam her to the ground, to bury himself balls deep in her heat, made his head swim. Stole his breath. Instead, he returned his mouth to her sex, once again licking and nipping her to the precipice of eruption.

“Oh my God, Dean,” she gasped, clinging to his hair. “How can this be so good?”

Life mate…connected…joined…

For an answer, he pulled her to the ground and pinned her—flat on her back—beneath his body. He took possession of her lips again, replacing his tongue on her clit with his fingers.

She arched and bucked beneath him, raking her nails over his back, his shoulders, up the back of his neck and down to his shoulders again.

“Fuck me, Dean,” she pleaded, wrapping her thighs around his hips. If it wasn’t for his hand between their bodies, his fingers deep in her sex, he would be inside her. He didn’t doubt that. The second her legs slid around his body, he would have penetrated her. Slammed into her.

Joined with her completely.

“Going to make you come, woman.” He nipped at her lips, her jaw, her earlobe. “Going to make you scream my name.”

She arched and moaned, with arousal and irritation. “Fuck me. Please.” She reached for his hand, an attempt to withdraw his fingers.

He growled, snatching her wrist and ramming it to the grass beside her head. “Katy…”

The satiny slick lips of her pussy kissed his cock’s head. Fuck. Fuck, he was going to…he was going to…

He reared back. He couldn’t enter her. He couldn’t do that to her.

But he could make her come.

Releasing her wrist, he shoved her thighs wider, slid his hands under her butt, and delved his tongue into her sweet pussy.

“Holy crap, yes,” she cried. “Yes. Oh yes, yes!”

Her release flowed over his tongue. Shudders wracked her body; her hips bucked upward.

He continued to devour her flesh, her pleasure, his own body shaking with the need to erupt. His cock was a world of agony, exquisite agony waiting to be milked.

And even as he brought Katy to orgasm once more with his mouth and tongue and fingers, he knew he could never be inside her. No matter how painful the denial.

No matter how wrong.

When her cries turned to moans, and her moans to exhausted pants, he trailed a line of kisses away from her pussy, up her belly, over her breast, her nipple, to her lips.

“You taste like the sweetest sin, woman,” he murmured, all too aware how easy it would be to roll his hips and penetrate her wet folds.

Too easy.

She smiled, eyes closed, breath shallow. “Do I?”

He chuckled, forcing brevity into the sound. He needed to get away from her. Before he did the unthinkable. Before he surrendered to what every fiber in his body demanded he do. “And you sound like a woman thoroughly sated.”

She opened her eyes and, before he knew what she was doing, she wrapped her fingers around his engorged length in a firm grip. “Close,” she said. “But not yet.”

His heart smashed into his throat. His blood roared hot in his veins, his ears. “Katy,” he stared down into her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t do—”

She flipped him onto his back before he finished the word and impaled herself completely on his length.

Joining them together.

* * * *

Oh God, oh God, Katy. No condom. No condom. What are you doing? He’s not wearing a condom!

The panicked thought lashed at her sanity, wild and feverish. And was silenced as the concentrated perfection of his erection embedded completely in her sex swept through her. Claimed her.

She closed her eyes for a moment, holding herself motionless as she allowed herself to focus on how incredible he felt inside her.

“Fuck me, Katy,” he whispered, his voice a husky whisper. “I can never let you go now. Never. You’re mine. Forever.”

She opened her eyes, lips curling as she rolled her hips, taking him deeper into her body. “Good.”

A shaky laugh rumbled in his chest and he grabbed her hips, pulling her harder to him as he slammed his hips upward. “Remember that, woman.”

Pleasure—hot and tight and exquisite—radiated through her. Never had it felt so right to have her body penetrated by another. Never had it felt like it was meant to be this way.

Rolling her hips again, she traced a finger over the mysterious tattoo on his chest. “When we’re finished, and you have the breath to talk again,” she said, squeezing his cock with her pussy as she did, “you’re going to tell me about this.”

“When we’re finished,” he growled, smoothing his hands up her back before drawing her upper body down to his, “we’re going to start all over again.”

The arrogant lust in his statement sent a wave of delight through her. Her pussy pulsed around his length once more.

She laughed, and then kissed him.

Rode him, slowly at first, teasing him with her lips and tongue, brushing her nipples over his chest, against his nipples, and then his hips began to thrust upward with increasing speed, and his groans became more raw. Wilder. Animalistic.

She tore her lips from his, pulling away from him enough to see his face.

He looked up at her, eyes burning amber-gold fire.

“Mine,” he said, the declaration more growl than word, teeth somehow sharper, longer behind his lips.

“Yours,” she whispered, the unnatural light in his eyes feeding her pleasure.

“Fuck, Katy,” he groaned, closing his eyes. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

And with that, he gripped her hips with savage pressure, rolled her onto her back, and slammed into her. Over and over and over again.

Sensations detonated inside her, a cascade of pleasure firing along every nerve ending she had. She cried out, clawing at his back, as her orgasm consumed her.

Crashed through her.

Dean drove into her, his breath hot on the side of her throat, his rhythm growing erratic. Frenzied.

She heard him whimper her name into her shoulder, felt him shake his head, and then, just as she didn’t think she could erupt again, he came, each powerful thrust propelling her into her own release.

They came together, and—as one—came down together, their rhythm once again in perfect sync, their breaths mingling.

He lifted his head and gazed down at her, his eyes no longer glowing.

She studied him, waiting for him to say something.

When he didn’t, she touched her fingers to his cheek, reveling in the feel of his spent length still buried inside her. “This is the part in a movie where you would say ‘Welcome to Australia.’”

A haunted shadow seemed to fill his eyes for a split second, before he let out a loose chuckle, his lips curling in a slow grin “Welcome to Australia, Katy-Lin.”

He kissed her—a playful peck—and then withdrew from her body. “I’m going to take a dip. Join me?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. By the time she straightened to her feet, he was in the water.

“What is this place?” she called, walking towards the edge. “How can a pond like this exist in such an arid, empty landscape?”

He laughed, splashing her as he stood waist-deep in the water. “It’s called a billabong, woman, not a pond. And it’s part of the unique Aussie Outback experience you’re currently enjoying.”

She rolled her eyes. “Wild, earth-shattering sex one minute, walking, talking travel brochure the next. You are a strange man, Dean Singleton.”

He bowed, dipping his forehead into the water. “Ta muchly, love.”

Walking into the pond, she grinned at him when he straightened. “Hey, can I call you Dean the Dingo?”

“No.”

She laughed. “Singo the Dingo?”

“Not unless you want me to tan that delectable backside of yours.”

Drawing closer to him, the cool water sliding around her bare limbs, between her thighs, over her pussy, she smiled. “Singo the Dingo,” she repeated.

He grabbed her.

They made love in the water, her legs wrapped around his hips, his thrusts deep and slow and incredible as he worshipped her mouth and throat with his lips.

They came together, their cries rising to the cloudless blue sky.

A little while later, wordless and yet not separate, they climbed out of the pond. He took her hand, his fingers threading through hers with gentle possession.

She smiled, loving the way his palm pressed to hers.

She didn’t question why being with him felt so perfect, so right. It just did. He might be a stranger, but she knew him. In her soul, she knew him, which was insane, but the way it was.

He left her to get dressed with a lingering kiss. “I’ve got a spare set of clothes in my truck,” he said at her frown when he began to walk away. “For…shifter emergencies such as this.”

A little shiver rippled up her spine at his mention of what he was. Her brain tried to tell her she was freaking crazy for doing what she’d done with him—he’s not human, Katy, not human—but she told her brain to shut the hell up.

Tugging on her shorts, she allowed herself a moment to ponder the situation. Best sex of her life. Still missing uncle.

Not what she’d come to Australia for, that was for certain.

“Regroup time,” she muttered, snatching her torn shirt and bra from the ground. They’d find Uncle Martin, and then they’d…they’d…

What? Live happily ever after?

She closed her eyes, a weird pressure prickling over her scalp and at her temples.

“Katy?”

She squealed, the sound soft but clearly audible.

Turning, she looked at Dean, standing a few feet away, dressed in loose cargo shorts and an equally loose, open shirt.

Her breath caught. He was gorgeous, sexy. The picture of relaxed, easy-going charm and seduction. She could look at him forever. She could. Even now, just gazing at him made her feel more calm and content. And yet, she knew nothing about him except he was a dingo shifter and he knew something about Uncle Martin.

And that just being with him, in his company, feels wonderful.

He studied her. “You about to freak out?”

She nodded, her chest tight. “I think so.”

His smile stretched, warm and tender. “Fair enough. Let’s get you in my truck before you do. The sun’s starting to burn your skin.”

She touched her cheek with shaking fingers. “O-okay.”

He held out an arm to her. “C’mon. We dingoes don’t bite. Well, not often.”

A laugh bubbled up in Katy’s chest.

He smiled and removed his shirt. “Here.”

Katy frowned.

“I ripped your shirt and bra.”

“That you did.” She took his shirt and slipped it on. Her body instantly reacted to his scent and warmth lingering on the item of clothing.

They walked to his truck, a silence falling between them. There was nothing awkward about it. Katy liked it, which was weird given she’d never been one for long silences after sex with her previous partners.

None of them had been paranormal beings, though, had they, Katy? Or rescued you from Russian wolf men. Or made you want to laugh just with a self-deprecating comment.

Or made her feel utterly content by just walking beside her.

Whoa.

He opened the passenger door for her, watched her climb in, and then closed the door.

“Dean?”

He paused from turning away. “Yeah?”

“Is this weird? What’s happening between us?”

An unreadable light flickered in his eyes and then he grinned. “Hell yeah.”

She couldn’t help but laugh.

Silence fell over them again as he drove away from the billabong. She studied his profile, her head a whirlwind of confusion and contentment. The conflicted emotions continued to war for control of her thought process, churned her stomach. If he knew it was weird, what did that mean?

Another frown dipped her eyebrows.

“Wondering why we didn’t do it doggie style?”

Katy raised her eyebrows. “Okay, that is the best tension deflector I’ve ever heard.”

He winked at her.

She rolled her eyes, that surreal sense of comfort rolling over her again. “Tell me about you,” she ordered. She needed to understand what was going on, and perhaps knowing more about Dean might help.

“What do you want to know?”

“How old are you? What’s your favorite movie? Do you like to read? What do you do for a living? What’s the tattoo on your chest mean? How often are you a dingo?” She nodded her head. “To start with.”

He chuckled. “I’m thirty-eight—human years, over a hundred in dingo years, which makes me a spring chicken. Mad Max is my favorite film. The first one. I love to read, especially autobiographies. I dabble in property investment and seem to have a knack for it. The tat is an ancient Aboriginal dreamtime image about dingoes I got one night when I was sixteen and drunk, and I can stay in either human or dingo form for an indeterminate length of time, although I tend to stay in my human form.”

“Why?”

She almost missed the slight bunching of his jaw. “The allure of being an animal, a predator, is very…powerful. It’s easy for me to get lost in the savagery of that existence. And that savagery can seep into my life as a man if I’m not careful.” His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat. “I’ve been told I’m a Grade-A arsehole after being a dingo for a long time.”

Katy frowned. “You don’t seem very asshole-ish.”

“Dingoes, by nature, are playful,” he said, his focus on the arid land beyond the windshield. “But we are also a very ancient species. And very protective of our own. Threaten a dingo and things stop being playful and become…bloody.”

Playful. Bloody. Ancient. Katy’s head spun. Of those three words, only one would be on her list to describe a potential boyfriend.

Boyfriend? Seriously, Katy? You’re using the B word already?

“Any more questions?”

She licked at her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. “What do you know about my missing uncle? I found a piece of paper under the bed in my room above the bar. It had your initials on it, written in my uncle’s handwriting, along with that shed thing I went to last night. So tell me, why did Uncle M write about you?”

Dean’s jaw bunched again. His grip on the steering wheel intensified, his knuckles growing white. And then he let out a shaky sigh and shook his head. “Your uncle, Martin, is a nice bloke. Smart. He came to the Creek with evidence my species really existed. Evidence of me, my dual existence, before I moved to the Creek.”

“Before?”

He sighed again. “Before I came back to the Creek, I lived in Sydney. Not a lot of dingoes running wild there. I was young. I turned my back on my family here. Wanted the life of a city boy. But I’m not a city boy. Nor a city dingo. I fucked up one night—after getting in a brawl at a pub over fucking cricket, of all things—and spent the early hours of the morning in dingo form in King George Park. Big park. Sydney’s version of Central Park, I guess. I ran amuck. Footage of me was captured, and before I knew it, I was all over the news and Facebook: wild dingo runs free in the city. Thankfully, the other footage of me—footage that showed me shifting back into human form in an alley—never made it to public consumption.”

Katy swallowed. “Why not?”

He slid her a steady look. “Because the teenager who took it found himself faced with a very threatening, very pissed off naked guy who promised a whole world of grief if he didn’t destroy his phone right there and then.”

A cold finger traced up Katy’s spine.

“But,” Dean went on, returning his attention forward, “your uncle somehow found out about it. Followed a trail I didn’t think existed anymore and ended up in Kangaroo Creek.”

“And he saw you shift?”

He nodded.

A chill crept through Katy. She stared hard at Dean’s profile. “Did you…did you do…anything to my uncle?”

“No. He saw something he wasn’t meant to, but he’d been in the Creek for a while. We’d talked in the Longyard, shared a beer. This was before he knew I was the dingo shifter he’d been tracking. Before I knew why he was here.” He stopped, once again glancing her way. “Your uncle is a nice bloke, Katy. I wouldn’t hurt him, or let anyone in my pack hurt him, either.”

“Your pack?” Okay, so her mouth was dry again. “How many of you are there?”

“In my pack? Or dingo shifters?”

“Both.” Her head was spinning again. A freaking tornado of worry and excitement and fear.

“In Australia, to the best of my knowledge, there are over one hundred dingo shifters.”

She blinked.

“Here at the Creek? Three. There used to be more—my family—but they died while I was in Sydney. Now it’s just me, my beta, Cam, and his wife Lucy.”

“The couple who are pregnant,” she said, even as she still reeled at the number. Over a hundred people in this country who were dingo shifters?

God, could she take any more of this kind of thing? Dingo shifters, wolf shifters… What other kind of creature lived and breathed amongst an unknowing society? Or did most of society know, and she was just one of the clueless?

Not clueless. Uncle M has been talking about what Dean is, his kind, people who can change from human to animal for as long as you can remember. You just chose to think he was a little loopy, is all.

“The couple who are pregnant,” he repeated. Her stomach fluttered at the genuine happiness and love in his voice. She studied his profile again. What he was, what he could do, was beyond her brain to comprehend. It was the stuff of Hollywood, not reality. It was scary. And yet, at the joy in his voice as he spoke of his pack, she realized any fear she had of him was long gone. Not drowned by her sexual hunger and desire for him, but lost to the sense of rightness she felt with him.

“You said you don’t know where he is?” she said, heart racing. “Last night near the shearing shed. When you were…on top of me, holding me to the ground.”

“Before you ran off into the night, trying to get away from me, you mean?” He grinned.

“Yes.” Her cheeks grew hot. Who would have thought she’d ever feel stupid about running away from a man who could change into an animal? “Then. You said you didn’t know where Uncle M is, but you said you wished you did. And you didn’t look happy about it.”

“I think,” he began, before pausing. His knuckles whitened again, his grip on the steering wheel twisting. “Until you turned up, I didn’t think he was missing. Just that he’d been freaked out by what he’d seen and taken off. I’ve known of humans committing themselves to institutions after witnessing something like that. But now I know that’s not…”

He didn’t finish.

Katy frowned. “What? Not what?”

“We’re here,” he answered.

Still frowning, she twisted in her seat.

They’d arrived back at Dean’s home, the electronic gate slowly inching open to reveal not only his house, but a shiny black Range Rover in the driveway.

A tall man climbed out of the driver’s side as Dean drove up to the house, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes as he watched them approach.

“Who’s that?” Katy asked, her pulse thumping in her throat.

“Cam.” Dean pulled on the handbrake and killed the engine. “And I hope to hell he’s here with good news about your uncle.”