Tempting Trade, page 12
part #1 of Desolate Lands Series
He ignored me, and opened a glass bottle on the sideboard, went toward the door and sprayed it four or five times. The scent on his t-shirt now filled the air.
Jackson came over to me, opened the bathroom door, and pulled me in, called Tils again, and then shut the door, locking it behind us and turning on a bright overhead light. So, his room had a bathroom too! This house could be so grand if it was fancied up.
Tils gave a soft groan as she slid to the floor behind the tub and snorted before licking her lips and closing her eyes.
“Okay, don’t freak out like you did over Alex.” Jackson gave me an intent look.
Oh, Lord, this didn’t bode well.
“When we were given the DNA, nearly all of us were given DNA from a variety of animals, and all calculated to do certain things. So, I might have some bear, some wolf, fuck I could have dolphin for all I know. However, the fuckers experimenting on us, they gave some of us huge amounts of DNA from just one animal. Ben got spliced with wolf DNA, a whole fuck ton of it. You know the belief that Altereds don’t change form?”
I nodded.
“Well, it’s not true in all cases. Some of us do. The scientists were in the process of eliminating all those who did when everything went to shit, and we escaped. None of the rest of our merry little band changes, but Ben does. They would have killed him. He says some days he wished they had. He changes form, but it’s not…he’s not… Shit, he’s not a wolf, and he’s not a man. It happens when his emotions get out of control. I worried that bringing you here might flip him. Seems I was right”
“Why would I flip him out?” I asked.
“Because he wants you,” Jackson replied.
My gasp sounded as loud as thunder in the echoing space.
“Will he hurt me?” I asked.
“In this form? Truthfully, I don’t know. But I won’t let him get to you. I’ll do what it takes to stop him.”
I stared at him, at a loss. “You’ll hurt your friend, your brother as you call him, for me? Am I that valuable to you? You really think I can do what you want and read these people’s minds?”
“I do,” he said. But that’s not the only reason I want to keep you safe.”
“Why else?”
In the small space, with our whispers loud, and the bright light illuminating our faces, the conversation felt way too intimate suddenly.
“I don’t really know.” He gave it to me straight.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” He smirked at me.
“Yes, okay. You don’t know why, and I understand.”
“You do?” He cocked one brow.
“Yeah. I mean, I feel this connection to you. I can’t explain it, I should hate you…but I don’t. I can’t.” I sighed. “I can’t hate you despite wishing so hard I could.”
“Milly.” My name came out on a groan…and then he kissed me.
Jackson kissed me and in doing so erased every single person who had come before him, including Doc.
I didn’t see stars and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy didn’t play, but I did melt under him. I did grow instantly and utterly wet between my thighs. Jackson stopped kissing me for a moment and scented the air, then he groaned and went back at it, deep and demanding. He took my mouth and took what he wanted.
I let him. Me, the girl who should hate him, let this barbarian of a man take what he wanted.
Of their own accord, out of my control, my hands reached for him and my fingers curled around his broad shoulders. I pulled him in, my upper body pressing to his.
This was crazy. I’d found out vampires existed. Then, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a sort-of-werewolf. I’d been kidnapped, bought, and I knew for sure Jackson wanted me to do nefarious things. Yet, I couldn’t stop myself.
All my life, I’d been good. All my life I’d lived in a state of mild terror, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for my safe little world to implode. Well, the shoe had dropped, and it was terrifying, but it was also kind of exciting.
For the last couple of years, my life had been planned out for me. Now, things were so up in the air, the thought scared me shitless, but there was a thrill in it, too. A certain freedom.
With a struggle, I pulled out of Jackson’s arms. “If I do this thing you want, get you the information you need, will you let me go afterwards?” I asked.
Jackson did another of his growls, but this one was different, it was more guttural.
“No.”
“No?”
He shook his head and grinned at me. “Don’t think I want to let you go, baby.”
Then he went back in for more kisses and despite the clamor in my head screaming at me to demand he explain what he meant by that, I kissed him right back. His hand slid up my thigh, and my heart rate skyrocketed. I was in a bathroom, making out with the hottest, scariest guy I’d ever laid eyes on, while a genetically engineered werewolf prowled the corridors outside.
“You smell amazing.” Jackson ran his nose up my throat and bit the shell of my ear gently.
I gasped and then I gave a small cry as his fingers found my soaking folds and parted the flesh there. His other hand pulled the t-shirt up and off me.
Shit, what was I doing?
“Relax, baby. I’ve got you,” Jackson said.
I hadn’t done anything like this before. I’d played around with boyfriends, but this was a whole other level. Jackson was huge, and terrifyingly male, and as if to prove the point, he ripped his t-shirt off revealing a wide chest, with hard slabs for pecs, covered in a smattering of dark hair. His arms were glorious, and it all tapered down to a defined V where his sweat pants hung low on lean hips.
He was beautiful.
Magnificent.
His fingers went back to between my legs and swirled in my wetness as they circled my clit. My breathing came hard and I didn’t pull away despite the conflicting feelings about what I was doing. He touched my body as if he knew it intimately. How did he know exactly where to apply pressure? Where to go lightly? Could it be because of the fevered dreams we shared?
I responded by touching him back. The moment my fingers splayed over his chest I felt as if I’d come home. This man was a stranger, but also achingly familiar. He moved his head and his long hair fell over his shoulder, revealing those leather ties he wore. I stared, and my heart skipped a beat. Definitely the man from my dreams, I couldn’t deny it any longer even if I wanted to.
His scent curled around me, the cologne he wore giving way to the deeper tones that were uniquely him.
I recognized him, his hair, his feel, his smell.
All of it.
He purred, straight up purred and it threw me back into one of the last dreams I’d experienced. He’d purred at me then, too.
“I know you,” I breathed.
“Yes, Milly, you do. And I, know you.”
He pressed one finger, slowly, carefully inside me, and I whimpered against him at the sensation.
“Is that okay?” He asked.
Yes, it was more than okay. It didn’t hurt. Instead, his finger pressing inside, his thumb on my clit, they were leading me toward an inexorable precipice. One from which I might fall and never get back up.
“Touch me, baby,” he said.
I was touching him. Then I realized what he meant when he used his free hand to push his sweatpants down.
His cock sprang free and it was as beautiful as the rest of him. Long and thick, wet at the tip.
I wrapped my hand around him and his head fell back on a sigh.
Tentatively, I worked him, my hand moving up and down. His big body responded by tightening, muscles flexing.
“Oh, shit. I’m not gonna last. Your touch is amazing.”
His words, the passion behind them, and the power I felt at making this magnificent male specimen almost come from my first touch, all coalesced at my core.
I spasmed around his finger, more wetness leaking onto my thighs as I came apart in front of him.
“You’re more incredible in real life than you were in my dreams,” he whispered.
Then he tensed, and put his hand over mine, making my hold tighter, and jacked himself using my hand. He pumped three, four times and with a grunt he began to come.
He came all over me and there was a lot. I dripped in his come, and I loved it. My breasts were covered, and some had hit my collarbone.
When he finally stopped, he let his head drop until our foreheads touched.
We stayed that way for a moment, breathing heavy, until he lifted his head and looked at me.
He grabbed a washcloth from the side and began to clean me.
I felt awkward in the comedown from the high. Maybe he regretted it? But then he grabbed me and kissed me, hard.
He pulled the t-shirt he’d lent me back over my head and put his own on. Gently, he gathered me in his arms and held me to him. He laughed and said to the top of my head. “Talk about wrong time, wrong place. Not ideal when you’re being stalked by a werewolf.”
“Would he really hurt us though?” I asked.
He gave a dull laugh. “Yeah, baby. I think he’d really hurt us. He isn’t himself when he’s changed. He loses control. He’s not fully there. He says he has a semblance of himself, but it’s not enough to control the animal, and the animal is angry. We don’t know why. I tried once to get into his head and see if I could tempt the wolf out to talk to me, but it didn’t work.”
We fell silent, and the only sound was Tils’ deep snorting breaths as she slept curled up on the floor a few feet away. Warm arms around me, my dog calm nearby, I could almost fool myself that I was safe. For a while, I let myself luxuriate in someone giving me some damned affection for once in my life, but then I forced myself to pull away.
“Jackson, seriously, I’m terrified I can’t do what you want. But if I can… If you train me… If I do what you want… Will you let me go after?” I needed to be free. He couldn’t simply keep me as if I had no will of my own. Damn it.
He gave that growl again. The guttural one. “I’ve changed my mind about what I want you to do.”
What did that even mean?
“I can’t do what I’d planned, Milly.” He tipped my chin up. “I should have known the moment I dreamed about you, I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I thought getting the information overrode everything. Now, I know it doesn’t.”
“What exactly were you going to have me do?” I hesitated to ask but needed to know the gory details.
“Doesn’t matter now. It’s all irrelevant because you aren’t doing it.”
“So…you’re not letting me go?” I asked, unsure. Scared.
“You’re mine, Milly.” He stated this as if it wasn’t insane.
Then he went one further.
“You’re ours. And we are yours. We’ll protect you until the day we die, Milly.”
Theirs? Oh, good Lord what had I gotten into?
Chapter Ten
Milly: Claimed
We stayed in the bathroom until the sounds of roars and carnage from outside slowly died down.
Eventually there came a long, low whine, then silence.
My head spun with all that had happened in such a short space of time and I didn’t know what to make of it. Any of it.
What the hell had Jackson meant when he’d said I was theirs?
“Come on.” He took my hand and opened the bathroom door. I followed him nerves jangling, all senses on alert.
At any moment I expected a hairy beast to lunge at us. Instead, when Jackson opened the bedroom door there was nothing. Tils followed us out, shaking herself.
“She’ll be scared on her own,” I said.
“Don’t let her get near Ben,” he warned. “We need to rustle up something to feed to her too.”
I tried not to warm inside at him wanting to feed my dog but failed.
We walked along the corridor and got to the section where the three separate corridors merged. We turned left and crept to the grand central staircase. Jackson sighed and shook his head as he bent over the bannister and looked down.
I followed his line of vision and gave a soft gasp. Laid out on the floor, naked and whimpering, was Ben. He was in the fetal position and every now and then his body gave an almighty jerk, as if he were being shocked.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Jackson replied. “Happens every time.”
Poor Ben. It looked awful.
“Come.” Jackson led me down the stairs, but we stopped a few feet from Ben. Alex and Doc were both a few feet on the other side of him.
“Help him,” I said to Jackson. “At least give him a blanket.”
He shook his head. “It’s not safe to go near him. He’s bitten one of us before even while in human form. Like I said, it takes time to get back into his head.”
I huffed out a nervous breath and walked over to Ben. Something, some deep-down instinct told me Ben wouldn’t hurt me.
“Milly,” Jackson made to grab me, but I dodged out of his way.
I neared Ben and saying soft, soothing words of nonsense, I dropped to my knees by where his head rested on his bent arm.
I reached out and touched him, stroking his hair gently. My throat was dry, and my heart beat a wild tango, but my overwhelming sense was that he wouldn’t hurt me. It was that strange voice again, the one I’d not listened to previously. The one that had been whispering to me for weeks before I got taken that something bad was coming for me. Now that voice told me I would be safe to help Ben.
He moaned, but didn’t make any moves to stop me or hurt me.
“Oh my God,” Doc breathed.
“You’re taking a big risk, baby.” Jackson said.
“He won’t hurt me.” I looked to them as I kept on stroking him.
I sat down and stretched my legs out and Ben moved closer, until his head rested on my lap. I continued to pet his hair as I talked to him.
Tils came over and I pushed her back. “No girl, he might not be as gentle with you.”
“Can I introduce her to the other dogs?” I asked the men as I continued to stroke Ben.
“You can do anything you want,” Jackson said with a shrug. “You’re not bound to your old life now. You’re free to do as you please.”
I laughed at his words. As I did Ben lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were bleary, but he was there. His soul was back in his body, if you believed in such a thing as a soul, which I most assuredly did.
“Welcome back,” I murmured.
“Milly,” he breathed and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight.
The action, the simplistic, instinctual trust it showed, had me blinking back tears.
“Why did you laugh?” Jackson demanded, jerking me out of the nice moment. “You don’t have to live by the constraints your family put upon you anymore.”
I stood, helping Ben up as I did and trying not to look at his impressive junk. He didn’t seem phased by being naked and smiled at me.
“You are such a hypocrite. I might be free from the constraints of my parents and the life they had planned for me, but at least then I could go out. Go and study. Go to the few stores left. You’ve already told me you’re not letting me go, that I am yours. You can’t simply make me yours, yet that’s what you want to do. These aren’t caveman days.”
“No, they are much worse than caveman days.” Jackson fixed me with a heated gaze. “You need to understand. You are mine. Ours.” Jackson swept his arm around the men in the foyer with us. “You know you feel the pull so don’t act as if you don’t want us.”
“Yes, I want you. So what?” I put my hands on my hips. “It may have escaped your notice, but you’re all insanely hot. I feel the pull to chocolate every single hour of the day, but I vary my diet. I don’t live on sugar, as much as I might wish to. We all get tempted. Doesn’t mean we have to act on it. I can’t stay and what? Be your fucking concubine? Service you all?”
“More like we’d service you,” Doc said with a grin.
His words sent a jolt of heat between my legs, but I pushed it to one side.
“You can’t simply say I am yours and then make it so. I can’t spend my days in this house.”
“Why not?” Jackson asked with a puzzled frown.
“Are you purposefully being dense?” I shot back. “I have a life I need to get back to.”
“What life?” he demanded. “Your parents are not safe out there, but we can make them safe here. Your brother is a shit who would sell your soul for a bar of gold. You were going to enter a loveless marriage with a man who has no interest in you from what I have learned about you. Here you have four men who want you. We will cherish you. And you will be safe. You can do what you like. Any class you want you can take. I’ll take you myself and fucking guard you the whole time you write your notes. You want to go shopping, ditto. If you want something just ask and I will get it for you. Or Doc will, or Ben, or Alex.”
Oh God, it all sounded so very tempting, but insane, too. They might get bored of me after a month and simply kick me out. I did sense the intense connection with them, Jackson in particular, but how the hell could I trust in something so out of the ordinary?
“You don’t even know me,” I exploded, contradicting my heated words from our tryst in the bathroom. “This is crazy talk. You don’t know me in any of the ways that really matter.”
“Oh, but I do. I’ve been in your head more times than I can count. I’ve spent many a night with you.”
“Okay,” I tried for patience. “You think you know me because of our connected dreams but why would Doc want to share me with you? He hasn’t had the dreams. Or Alex? Makes no sense.”
“Baby, I’ve told you before, we are linked.”
“Let’s say I buy that there’s a connection between us…” I told him.
“You better after what happened in the bathroom,” he retorted.
Ben sniffed at me, honest to goodness put his nose next to me and sniffed like a dog, then he gave a deep rumbling growl. I tensed but he rubbed his nose on my neck and gave another low sound, this one more like a satisfied snort.
I pushed on, trying to discuss this with Jackson while Ben hung all over me. “That doesn’t mean I have the same connection with any of the others, does it?”
