Читать книгу Dark Wolf Returning - Rhyannon Byrd - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAfter a horrible night’s sleep, and a scalding shower that’d barely made her feel alive again, Carla had changed into one of her last clean pairs of jeans and a T-shirt. There was only so much cash she’d been willing to spend on clothes from the money she’d stolen off the Whiteclaw, and so her wardrobe was limited at best. Life would have been a lot easier if she’d had her stupid wallet on her when she’d been kidnapped, but hey, at least she’d had her cell phone. And she’d thankfully had another bra and pair of panties in her pack for this morning, as well as a hairbrush. So while she wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests at the moment, it was nice not to have bed head.
Eli had woken her up with a touch on her shoulder about thirty minutes ago, just after six a.m., and told her he would be waiting outside the room while she got ready. He didn’t mention anything about their argument from the night before, and neither did she. In fact, she didn’t even look at him. She could forgive herself for her momentary lapse last night, but that was her only pass. From now on she needed to stay sharply focused. She had her eye on the prize—being free of him once and for all—and she wasn’t going to let her stupid hormones ruin it for her.
No matter how crazy desperate for him those little suckers turned out to be.
And I doubt going without will kill me, she thought dryly, running her brush through her hair. If that were the case, I’d have dried up and died a long time ago.
A glance in the mirror over the dresser showed that she was still sporting a few yellowish bruises, had dark circles under her eyes, and the tight pinch of fatigue in her facial muscles. She might be only twenty-eight, but she felt eighty. Damn near looked like it, too. But what the hell? It’s not like she wanted him to be attracted to her. Zipping up her pack, she tossed it on her bed and joined him outside.
As they walked to the crowded diner next door, where they were meeting the others, he asked, “You ever hear from your mom?”
Nicole had finally given up on the pack a year before Eli’s banishment and left Shadow Peak, claiming she needed to find a place where she could make a new life for herself. “No,” Carla replied in a flat tone, wondering if her mother had ever managed to succeed with her dream. If so, she was obviously too content there to worry about contacting the daughter she’d left behind.
He didn’t say anything more, and the guys kept the conversation light when they joined them for a quick breakfast. Afterward, they all headed back to the room she and Eli had shared to discuss the situation in private. Once everyone was settled, Eli explained to her what the men already knew: that his father had had a maniacal plan to take over the Silvercrest. A bloodthirsty plan that had resulted in a significant loss of life, had shattered the pack’s sense of safety, and left an entire group of teens—as well as most of the residents in Shadow Peak—emotionally traumatized. As a result, the town had been left without its leaders, and the Bloodrunners were now handling all elements of security for the pack.
Since it was up to Carla to bring them up to speed on the rest, she explained everything that had happened with the Whiteclaw pack over the past weeks, starting with how Eli’s brother, Eric Drake, had met Chelsea, the human he’d recently married, while she was searching for her younger sister, Perry. Making a bad choice, Perry had gone chasing after the wrong guy and ended up falling in with the Whiteclaw pack who lived to the south of the Silvercrest, and who were now controlled by a man named Roy Claymore. With the Runners’ help, Eric had been able to prove that the Whiteclaw had partnered up with the Donovans, a corrupt local Lycan family, on a number of illegal activities, the most horrific being one that involved human girls. With the Donovans’ support, the Whiteclaw had been drugging the girls and pimping them out for Lycan gang rapes. The drugs not only acted as an aphrodisiac on the girls, but also impaired their memories of the attacks. And Claymore was using tapes of the assaults to later blackmail the participants into aiding the Whiteclaw.
She then told them that the Runners had managed to close down a strip club in Wesley, a human town not far from the Silvercrest’s territory. The Whiteclaw had been using the club to find the girls, and closing it down had only increased Roy Claymore’s power hungry desire to destroy the Silvercrest and take their land. Something Claymore felt would be easy to accomplish, given the state the pack had been left in after Stefan Drake’s failed bid for power.
Later, after an attack that some of the Whiteclaw and Donovan wolves had made on the Runners in the Alley, they learned that the Whiteclaw had also developed a “super soldier” drug that not only made them violently strong, but also camouflaged their scent. Which meant they were damn difficult to defeat.
The atmosphere in the room had been grim during her telling, but the group’s tension only increased when she explained about the plans she’d overheard before making her escape after her and Elise’s kidnapping.
“The Whiteclaw were hoping to blackmail the other packs in our region into helping them by providing foot soldiers. But they haven’t secured the kind of numbers they were hoping for, so they came up with a new plan. They’ve used a sizable portion of the money they’ve made from the gang rapes to purchase help from someone in your line of work. A man named Jack Bartley.”
“Son of a freaking bitch,” Kyle muttered.
“You know him?” she asked.
“We’ve gone up against him before,” the merc explained. “He’s human, but he’s a maniac. Has a small army under his command, and they’ll do anything for the right price.”
“He’s human?” she murmured with surprise.
Kyle grimaced. “Well, most of him is. It’s rumored he has shifter blood somewhere in his family tree, which is how he knows of our existence.”
“You were right to be worried,” Sam murmured. “Bartley and his men will spell bad news for your pack.”
She wanted to argue that they weren’t her pack, they were Eli’s, but bit her tongue instead. She didn’t need to make herself sound any bitterer about the pack’s longstanding treatment of the Runners than she probably already had.
“When you went up against him, did you win?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Eli muttered from his position against the wall, his muscular arms crossed over his chest. His dark brows were knitted with tension. “But it was at a cost. We lost one of our best men. A guy who would often come and work with us when he needed to earn extra money for his wife and kids. Bartley got his hands on him during the op, and by the time we found him, all that was left was a bloody pile of tissue and bone. They’d skinned him alive.”
“Jesus.”
Holding her worried gaze, he said, “He can be stopped, Rey. We just need to outthink him.”
“Can you do that?”
He jerked his chin toward his men. “These guys can.”
“So these different drugs—the ones they were giving the human girls and the ones that they use on themselves to improve their abilities—are still in production?” Kyle asked from his seat on the foot of the bed. Lev had positioned himself up by the pillows, his back braced against the cheap headboard, while Sam had his shoulders propped against the door and James sat in the desk chair. Carla sat on the foot of the other bed by herself.
Answering Kyle’s question, she said, “As far as we know, production has been halted. We have a Fed named Monroe dealing with the drug labs out west, where it was all being made. Monroe’s sister is married to one of the Silvercrest males, and the Fed is someone we consider a friend. But there’s still the problem of the drugs they have stocked in Hawkley.”
“Why did they target my sister?” The quietly spoken question had come from Eli, and she took a deep breath before turning her head to look at him again.
“They wanted to make a dig at the Runners, and saw Elise as an easy mark. We never should have let her stay up in town by herself, because it drew their attention.”
He made a low sound of agreement, but she could tell he knew there was more to the story. Things she wasn’t telling him. But he didn’t push, and she wondered if he was dreading the explanation as much as she was dreading having to be the one who gave it.
“It’s getting late,” he suddenly muttered, pushing away from the wall. “We can talk things over some more when we stop for lunch, but right now we need to get on the road.”
Fifteen minutes later, they had their gear stowed in the backseat of the truck James and Lev were driving, the rest of the group loaded into the other one, and were heading back down the highway.
With Sam and Kyle in the front seat of the truck she and Eli were in, Carla didn’t speak to him during the journey, though she’d carried on some light conversation with the two mercs. For such ruthless badasses, they were nice guys who even managed to make her laugh a few times, while Eli glared out his window, lost in his own thoughts. The hours went by faster than she’d thought they would, and before she knew it they’d reached a little town the men had stayed in before, where they planned to stop for the night.
They ate together at a great little diner that made killer fried chicken, then grabbed rooms at a local motel. Six of them, at her insistence, which had caused the men to slide curious looks between her and Eli. He went off with Kyle to meet up with a local weapons dealer they’d done business with on several occasions, hoping to score a small arsenal that they could take back to the Alley with them, and refused to let her come along. So she was left sitting alone in her room, with nothing but her thoughts for company. It was still only nine and she was too wound up to sleep, so when Lev knocked on her door and asked if she wanted to grab a drink at the pool hall around the corner, she was glad for the distraction.
They ordered a pitcher of beer, picked out their cues, and before she knew it, she’d laughed her way through three games and they were starting on their fourth.
“No, no. You’re going at that shot all wrong,” Lev drawled, coming up behind her and leaning over her back. “You’ve got to move this hand here, and this one here,” he told her, rearranging the placement of her fingers on the cue.
“Thanks,” she said with a smile, when she made the shot. “That was—”
“Slivkoff!”
She jumped as Eli’s guttural shout silenced the noisy pool hall, the back of her head connecting with Lev’s chin. He swore as she quickly turned to apologize. “Sorry!”
“No problem,” he murmured, casting a funny look over the top of her head. She couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh...or run for cover.
Sensing Eli was close, she turned and found him rounding the pool table, heading right for her. Once again, the scowl on his gorgeous face matched his tone as he growled, “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
Huh. Was it just her, or did he ask that question a lot?
Squaring her shoulders, Carla slowly arched one of her eyebrows. “What did it look like I was doing? Lev asked if I wanted to play some pool.”
His nostrils flared as he stared her down. “And that meant you had to rub your little ass in his groin?”
Lev started to argue that point, but she lifted her hand to silence him. Setting her cue on the table, she took a deep breath, crossed her arms over her T-shirt covered chest, and tried not to let Eli see how furious he’d just made her as she carefully said, “Considering the bimbo blonde who was passed out in your lap last night, I don’t think you can cast any judgments here, Eli.”
He opened his mouth, then obviously changed his mind about whatever he was going to say, because he snapped it shut again. A muscle was starting to pulse at the edge of his jaw, his pupils were nearly blown, and his teeth were clenched so hard she was surprised they hadn’t cracked. Carla recognized the signs of him struggling with his temper, and couldn’t help but shake her head at his outrageous display of jealousy. After ditching her when he was banished, he didn’t have any freaking right to get pissed about anything that she did!
“We’re getting out of here,” he finally muttered, jerking his head toward the door. “Now.”
She could have argued with him, but since he’d already ruined her fun, she didn’t see the point. Instead, she gave him her snarkiest smile and said, “Sure thing, boss man.”
Lev was grinning like a jackass when she turned to tell him goodbye, so she socked him in the shoulder, which just made him laugh. Turning her back on the goofball, she wondered if he’d set this whole thing up just to make Eli jealous, and if so, why?
Whatever Lev’s reasons were for asking her to play pool with him, it had definitely put Eli in a bad mood. Not that he’d been anything but irritable the entire day. But now she could feel him seething behind her as she headed back to her room, his glare all but drilling holes in the back of her head. Not to mention her ass. When she reached her room, he managed to push his way in behind her before she could slam the door in his face, which had been her intention. After the way she’d broken down in front of him the night before, the last thing she wanted was to be alone with him.
Instead of moving deeper into the room, Carla leaned back against the door after she’d shut it, and crossed her arms over her chest again. The graze on her side from the bullet was no longer hurting, thanks to her healing abilities. It’d already scabbed over and probably would have been gone in a day or two, if she weren’t so run-down at the moment.
“Did you get the guns?” she asked, watching him pace along the foot of her queen-size bed, his big hands braced on his hips. He was dressed like the badass mercenary he was, wearing black boots, a faded pair of jeans that perfectly molded his muscular thighs, and a black T-shirt, its short sleeves stretched tight around his powerful biceps. Wherever you looked, his tall body was hard and sinewed and ripped. Even his hair-dusted forearms were mouthwatering, with heavy veins and ridges of muscle pressing against his scarred, golden skin. Then there were his thick wrists. And those big, masculine hands...
“Yeah, we got them.” He sounded distracted, and she could sense his agitation and his...hunger. She just couldn’t tell who or what it was for. Her? Food? A fight? Or some woman she didn’t even know? The bond wasn’t strong enough to give her any definitive answers—just annoying enough to mess with her head.
Pushing her bangs out of her eyes, she went for the safest topic she could think of to take her mind off her nerves. “I noticed that both of the trucks were missing from the parking lot. Did the guys go out somewhere?”
“Yeah,” he muttered without even looking in her direction. “They’re out finding women.”
“Ahh.”
He stopped in the middle of the floor and shot her a piercing look, the lamp on her bedside table casting a soft spill of light over his right side, while his left was bathed in shadow. Voice low and rough, he asked, “Given their agenda for the night, why do you think Lev was here with you?”
“How would I know?” she snapped, throwing her arms out wide in a gesture of frustration. “Maybe he just liked the idea of spending time with a woman he knew wasn’t going to have sex with him?”
He didn’t make any verbal response to her outburst. He simply folded his arms over his broad chest, the black cotton stretching tight across his solid pecs, and glared at her.
“The truth is I don’t know what he was thinking, Eli. I just know that you’re acting like an ass.”
Moving with the slow, predatory precision of a hunter, he lowered his arms and came toward her, his heavy-lidded gaze so hot she felt scorched. “You keep pushing me like this, Rey, and I’m gonna start thinking you want me to do something about it.”
She shook her head. “Am I even meant to know what that means?”
He came even closer, until she had to tilt her head back in order to hold his gaze. “It means that if you think you can get my attention by flirting with my men, you’re going to end up getting a hell of a lot more than you bargained for.”
Pushing off from the door, she jabbed her finger in the middle of his chest. “Back off. You have no claim on me, so stop the act. I’m not buying it.”
“You think it’s an act?” he rasped, the softness of his voice giving her chills.
“I know it is!”
He had her backed against the door before she even knew it was happening, pinning her there with his big, muscular body, his rigid erection pressed hard against her stomach. Cupping her jaw, he tilted her head back even more, and put his face right over hers, so close their noses were nearly touching. “This feel like an act to you, Rey?” he asked huskily, his warm breath coasting over her lips.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned. Though the effect was kind of ruined by her quickening breaths and flushed cheeks.
His eyes were still angry and hot, but the corner of his mouth kicked up in one of those deliciously wicked, crooked grins that had always made her melt. “Baby, I can’t seem to think about anything else.”
“Try—harder,” she sniped. “Because I’m seriously not interested in being your sloppy seconds, Eli.”
It seemed to take him a moment to figure out what she was getting at, and then his expression darkened. “I didn’t touch the blonde,” he told her, biting out each word.
A harsh, humorless laugh jerked up from her chest. “Oh, really? So she just happened to pick your random lap to pass out in last night?”
That muscle started to pulse in his jaw again, the day’s growth of stubble looking damn good on him. “What she was doing there isn’t any of your business.”
“Exactly!” she yelled, shoving hard at his shoulders. “So get the hell away from me!”
Catching her wrists, he pinned them against the door on either side of her head, the tight tips of her breasts pushing into his muscular chest as he pressed even closer.
“Tell me you don’t feel this the same way that I do,” he said against her lips, rubbing them softly with his. “Tell me and I’ll leave you alone, Rey.”
“Damn you,” she moaned.
He laughed roughly, the low sound deep and dark and sumptuous, like he was suddenly feeling happy and hungry all at the same time. “That’s what I thought, baby.”
And then, before she could blink or scream or draw her next breath, his mouth covered hers and his hands left her wrists, laying claim to her body. His touch was aggressive, greedy, as if he’d wanted the feel of her under his hands for too damn long to control himself, while his kisses were...mouthwatering. Slow, deep, and deliciously intimate, his tongue stroking and rubbing, while he ate at the shivery, needy sounds that she made. He’d only just started this...this...whatever this was, and she was already lost, sinking into the moment like a weighted body being pulled deeper and deeper into the sea. Drowning...no longer even trying to resist. She only wanted to fall deeper because she’d been just as desperately starved for the feel and touch and taste of him. She didn’t even remember moving her hands when he released her wrists, but they were fisted in his shaggy hair, the silky strands so warm and thick against her fingers. She pulled him tighter against her, lost in the slick, explicit kiss that made her think of his powerful body moving and thrusting into hers. It was that intense. That raw and hungry and achingly erotic.
When he pulled his head back and suddenly buried his face against the side of her throat, Carla gulped at the cool air, her lungs starved. He was rolling his hips against hers, one hand shoved up under her shirt and bra, molding her heavy breast, his thumb and forefinger pinching the throbbing nipple, while his other hand gripped her hip, jerking her against him. She crawled up his hard, rugged body and wrapped her legs around his waist, giving him what he wanted. He notched the thick, heavy ridge of his erection against her jeans-covered sex and thrust against her, stroking her clit at just the right angle, and she cried out as her head shot back, hitting the door, the husky sound of her shout echoing off the room’s dingy walls.
“Need it in my hand,” he growled against her throat, breathing hard, his voice little more than an animal’s primitive snarl. His mouth was directly over the place where he’d started to mark her all those years ago, and she wondered if he even realized. “I need it now, Rey.”
In a distant part of her mind, she knew this was...wrong. Foolish. Dangerous. To her heart and her pride. She wasn’t meant to fall into his arms...or crawl up his body, holding him as if she wanted to crawl right inside of him. Claim him. Keep him. Forever. She knew that, damn it, but it didn’t matter. When he was touching her, the hot, drugging scent of him filling her head, his exquisite taste on her lips, nothing else mattered but him. Needing him. Wanting him. Getting him.
“Please,” she heard herself beg, too desperate to even care that she was pleading with him. With the monster who had broken her heart. “God, Eli. Please!”
His lungs worked hard as he ripped at the buttons on her jeans, his mouth hot against her skin. His tongue stroked across her racing pulse point just as he shoved his hand into the front of her cotton panties, the fabric already drenched with her juices. His fingers delved, separating her slick folds, searching out the small, sensitive opening. He circled it, before pushing inside, working that long finger deep into her tender, clutching tissues while his thumb found the tiny knot of her clit and started playing it...stroking it...faster and faster. He pushed in a second finger, forcing her body to stretch and take it, and her hips rolled, needing them deeper. Needing to be full of him.
“Jesus, Rey. You’re just as tight and soft as I remember,” he groaned, each roughly spoken word laden with something, with some unnamed emotion, that made her want to scream at him for breaking her heart and destroying what they’d had. “I’ve fucking dreamed about this so many times.”
“Eli,” she gasped, sinking her nails into his shoulders, the pain in her heart momentarily forgotten as he used his fingers to drive her wild, thrusting them hard and deep, stretching her in a way that felt so good she could feel tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, her throat shaking. She needed him inside her. Not just his fingers, but the thick, engorged shaft she could feel him grinding against her hip. Needed him on top of her, his body hard and heavy and hot against hers, while he shoved all those brutal inches inside her until she was clenching around him, milking him, lost in the most mind-blowing climax of her life.
Her sex was creamy and swollen and ripe, ready for whatever he wanted to give her. Fingers. Tongue. Cock. She was aching and desperate for every part of him, same as she’d been every night that she’d dreamed of him since he’d left her. Even years before then, when she’d wanted nothing more than for him to make her his, always waiting...and waiting. But he was fighting it. She could tell. Resisting with everything that he had, and it frightened her to think of why. Why she wasn’t enough for him. Why he’d always struggled against their connection with such ferocity.
Fight back! Resist! Damn it, she should be tossing the rejection she could feel coming right back in his face, but she...she couldn’t. As he touched her between her legs, his rough fingers stroking through those slick, plump folds with such perfect skill, making her gasp...arch...shiver, the only thing she was willing to fight for was more.
But as with everything else when it came to this man, she was destined to lose.
One moment his fingers were buried deep, bringing her to the cusp of a shattering orgasm, and in the next she was empty, his palm pressed tight against her sex, cupping her, holding her...and she could feel the smooth, hot slide of his fangs against her vulnerable throat. Ohmygod! Did he want to bite her? What on earth was going on with him?
His body was pressed so rigidly against hers, and she sensed his...pain. A visceral, devastating, burning agony. He cursed hoarsely, and she felt the first tremor that rocked through him, followed quickly by a second, until he was shaking so hard in her arms it made her teeth chatter.
“E-Eli?” she stammered through lips that were salty with her tears.
He quickly set her on her feet and pushed away from her with a choked roar, his eyes hooded and bright as he clenched his teeth. His dark brows were drawn with an emotion she could have sworn was anguish. Something had stopped him, but the bond was too weak and his emotions were too intense for her to read him clearly. Which was perhaps a good thing. Whatever had caused him to pull away from her, she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it.
“What the hell, Eli? Are you—”
“Don’t! Don’t touch me!” he snarled, stumbling back from her when she started to reach for him. His gaze darted from side to side, reminding her of a trapped wolf desperate for escape.
She crossed her arms over her middle, determined to hold herself together. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he scraped out, sounding as if a brutal set of hands was crushing his throat. “Just...just go to bed, Carla. It’s late.”
“No. I want to know—”
“Just get in the damn bed!” he barked, brushing her aside so he could rip the door open. “And lock this damn thing behind me!”
He slammed out of the room then, and she reached out and slid the lock into place with a shaking hand, her thoughts reeling, and her body... Oh, God. Her body was vibrating...awakened. Misery crashed over her like a cold rain, and she shivered even harder, somehow making it to the bed. For the second night in a row, she crawled onto a lumpy mattress and curled into a ball, trying to block out everything until she was nothing more than molecules of air. Weightless. Floating. No pain or fear or emotions.
Carla tried to reach that feeling of nothingness with every ounce of her will, but it never came. As she lay there in the cold, depressing room, she just kept wanting and longing and aching...for things she would never have.
