Rampant, Volume 1 Read online

  But the thought of her tamping down all of that passion, all of that temper inside a box of her own devising had been heartbreaking.

  So he watched her now, her face open and joyful and happy, and wondered if maybe he wouldn’t have been happier if she had lit the sky afire with her fury instead of sitting down and knitting with tiny angry stitches.

  His attention was distracted by a sudden silence.

  It was Teague’s turn to speak.

  The man looked decidedly uncomfortable. His skin was taut over his cheekbones, and a pulse throbbed at his temple. His eyes were wide and dark, and Green could smell his absolute terror of having his emotions out here in the open for the world to see—the texture of his fear was thick and viscous.

  “I don’t have any good words,” Teague said, stripping off his jacket. “I thought and I thought…. I watched the two of you sleeping in the moonlight, and I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have any fucking words.” He looked beseechingly at Jack, the man at his back for nearly two years and in his bed for scarcely three months. “You know me, Jacky—if I ain’t being a smartass, I just ain’t being.” Now he moved toward the tie that he’d spent a week picking out, and in a moment it was over his head and discarded on the ground.

  Jack opened his mouth to reassure Teague that it was all okay, but Teague cut him off, lost in the misery of being speechless for the one thing he wanted to articulate.

  “So I don’t have good words… but I’ve got….” His hands came up to the buttons of his white shirt. He looked over his shoulder at the bemused gathering, the expression on his face ripe with the misery of a private outpouring in a public occasion.

  But not with indecision.

  With an impatient rip that sent buttons spattering across the lawn—Cory had to duck to avoid catching one in the eye—Teague ripped off his dress shirt and the T-shirt underneath and stood shivering and half-naked. The tattoo that completely covered his back was bright and eloquent as he couldn’t be.

  Three wolves played under a full and vibrant moon, framed by a border of oak and lime boughs. The little she-wolf had a black coat with whitish fringe, like Katy in her other form. The big, lanky beta wolf had shaggy dark hair and blue eyes. The tightly muscled, intense alpha wolf stood between them, glaring from Teague’s back, fierce and protective and angry at anyone who dared to intrude on the threesome.

  The tattoo depicted a burning, intense, uncomfortable kind of love, the kind that spoke of death for an interloper, of the agonizing fear of separation.

  Green blinked in surprise and looked to his beloved to see what she thought, since she had been the first on the hill to mark herself for love.

  There was an unholy sympathy in Cory’s eyes, a fierce glee. She knew that angry, protective wolf. She was that wolf.

  None of Green’s concern about her almost passive acceptance of the day’s disappointment vanished—in fact, he was suddenly very afraid of what she would do to the thing that truly touched her fury. He’d been there the one time that had happened, and she could barely live with the results. But that was not his focus for this evening.

  Katy and Jack had found their voices, found their touches tentatively on Teague’s back. Even through the magically healed and permanent ink they could see he was erupting in gooseflesh and shivering in the February mist.

  “Jesus, Teague,” Jacky half laughed. “A simple ‘I love you’ would have done it!”

  Katy leaned up and kissed his cheek soothingly. “It’s beautiful—it says everything you wanted, I can see it. I love you too, mi corazón. Don’t worry about words.”

  Teague accepted her kiss, bumping noses with her playfully like the wolves they were. Then he glared miserably at Jack, who was bending over to fish the rumpled dress jacket out of the dew-shot grass. It was wet. Jack shook his head and handed it to Green, shrugging out of his own jacket at the same time.

  “I love you, asshole,” Teague groused, not meeting anybody’s eye.

  “I love you too, you dumb motherfucker,” Jack sighed, draping his jacket over Teague’s shoulders. The three of them stood, the perfect triad of gruff affection and true love, in front of their family and friends.

  There was a burst of applause and cheering, and then, on Green’s cue, a long, drawn-out bow to the lovers as the ceremony closed itself.

  Teague was so relieved that it was over that he didn’t catch the droll look between Katy and Jack that indicated he’d cut about fifteen minutes out of the ceremony they’d arranged. If Green didn’t know Teague better, he’d think the werewolf had planned it that way.

  Talking was still not Teague’s strong suit.

  Cory: The Trials of a Chess-playing Hamster

  I LIKE my husband’s lover very much, but when I make the mistake of asking him about his job, he can glaze my eyes over in two seconds flat.

  Apparently Nicky could follow him—which was good, since they managed to spend about one week a month in each other’s company. Nicky was currently standing, his bleach-tipped, rust-colored hair carefully gelled to fall carelessly around his face, and staring besottedly into Eric’s eyes while his lover talked to me about the impact of the recent hurricane on gas prices. I’m guessing it had been bad.

  Nicky loved me, and managed to live with me in harmony that other three-quarters of the time, and he was not so besotted with Eric that he forgot about me. He fluffled his featherless neck and took Eric’s hand in his, kissing the back of it tenderly. Eric was only a little taller than Nicky, with sandy hair, and he turned his gray eyes toward his lover with gentle attention.

  “Uhm, Eric? Remember, I go to school with Cory. I know she looks interested, but she’s got this built-in ‘queenie’ thing that keeps her jaw from going slack. We should go dance and let her mingle.”

  I looked at him with a combination of gratitude and exasperation. “Way to blow my cover, bird boy. I’ve been practicing my ‘Lady of Oz’ bit for a year now, and you just showed Eric the self-involved bitch behind the curtain.”

  Eric laughed and then, disconcertingly, gave me a little bow. “I don’t need any incentive to dance with you, Nicky,” he said with another tender smile. Together they headed for the open square of the Goddess grove, where a band that consisted of two vampires and a werepuma—sadly, not the name of the band—was currently doing cover versions of old Dire Straits and U2 songs.

  The minute they were out of speaking distance, I felt Bracken’s hands on my shoulders from behind, and my entire body groaned with relief as though I had been craving his touch on my skin.

  Ah, Goddess, I had.

  There is a club for the Goddess’s get out in Auburn, and Nicky had taken me dancing there a few times. The first time ended in disaster, but after that…. I discovered that there is something hypnotic and sexy about touching your lover to music, especially in a crowd of others doing the same.

  I had never danced with Bracken.

  Tonight, as the opening strains of “Desire” thundered over us, he wrapped his large hands around my thighs and literally lifted me up until I was sitting in the cradle of his hips, my toes barely touching the ground for balance.

  Then he began to move, his swollen groin grinding into my back, his large hands on my hips and stomach or thighs to hold me against him. I could feel his body heat through my dress and his harsh breath in my ear and along my neck as he taxed his strong body to hold me, to move me, to pound me to the beat. Suddenly the cool grove, warmed by Green’s power just enough to make the night pleasant, became hot enough to make the sweat trickle down my back and in the crease of my legs.

  My sex became hot enough to get wet everywhere.

  Oh, Goddess… dancing with Bracken was like making love to music itself as it throbbed between my legs, buzzed my spine, and tingled my breasts. I turned my face toward him, catching glimpses of his profile through my tumbling hair. The long line of his chin, the full sensuality of his lips even as they rubbed against my temple… all of it stopped my breath as I swam through the
tides of Bracken’s audio-sex.

  Desi-i-i-re….

  My head tilted back and my eyes closed—and I both wanted the song to go on forever, building to its ragged, thumping climax, and I wanted to be suddenly alone, running my hands and my mouth along every portion of Bracken’s skin I could possibly reach until he thrust so deep inside me I could see the head of his prick reflected in the backs of my eyelids.

  “Have you done your duty as hostess, due’ane?” he rasped in my ear.

  I tried to think, but the music was rocketing to its conclusion and the hamster who usually powered my brain jumped his little wheel to get laid. What came out of my mouth was meant to be something like “I don’t know, I should check with Green.” What it actually sounded like was “Uuhhrrrrnnnngggg….” And that’s all Bracken needed.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispered, and I listened to him. So help me Goddess, I listened to him. I was tired. My compulsion to do the right thing, to be the lady of the house in all ways, was weakened, dimmed by the disappointment of not graduating and made ridiculous by Teague’s awkward, perfect, grandly beautiful declaration of love before Goddess and family. I wanted Bracken, I wanted him naked, and I wanted him now.

  Bracken’s primary duty in Green’s house was to keep me happy, and he gave me what I wanted.

  Before the cymbals stopped shushing, he had swept me into his arms and down the granite staircase, through the hallway, and into our room. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights, and I think only his sidhe-quick dexterity kept my dress from being destroyed as he worked the buttons in the back.

  He didn’t give his own clothes the same consideration—he literally ripped his specially tailored shirt and slacks off his body. His pale skin was damp and slick, and his oversized erection stood rampant from his body.

  I wanted him so badly I heard snarling, grunting sounds coming from my own throat, and my hands on his cock weren’t gentle. The way he tangled his hands in my hair wasn’t either, but I gloried in it, I gloried in him as I slid my lips down his smooth skin with its hard ridges of veins underneath. I couldn’t make it to the base—it would have been madness to try—but I wrapped my fist around him and squeezed tightly, shuddering when he moaned because I did that to him, I brought out this frenzy in my due’alle, my lover who was my equal, the only lover bound exclusively to me.

  He shuddered and spent just a little bit into my mouth, and then he grunted and pulled my hair back. I went reluctantly, putting an insistent vacuum on his prick with my lips and letting him go with a loud, wet pop. I’m sure my face was a mess of spit and pale lipstick, but Bracken kissed me as though he would devour me, his taste on my tongue and all.

  His hands were big as they spanned my ribs, covered my breasts, cradled my head, and finally parted my thighs. Before he buried his face between them and kissed my sex as passionately as he kissed my mouth, he grinned up at me, his teeth glinting in the darkness of our room.

  “Due’ane,” he whispered wolfishly, and I gasped, because he’d moved his thumbs to part me too.

  “Due’alle,” I replied, and then I stopped speaking words at all. There was something wild in me this night, something begging to be let off the leash of my hard-earned self-restraint. I wanted to give Bracken everything he asked for as his tongue and fingers moved wickedly along the tender, nerve-screaming parts of my body.

  But it wasn’t until he slid up along my skin, slinking along my body with his perfectly shaped, perfectly smooth chest and rib cage, that I was truly at risk of losing control of the monster of power growing in my heart. That didn’t stop me from spreading my legs and welcoming him into my sex with a shriek and a small spill of orgasm just from his cock in my body.

  He was too large for me, had always been too large for me, and he pushed at me, battered at every pleasure place, battled for complete domination over my shaking, screaming sex. We were an uncomfortable fit, too tight, too painful, too intense for simple and sweet and tender, and our bodies moved in pounding rhythm, in terrible synchronicity, in painful bliss.

  We were perfect, we were glory, we were cock and cunt and come and tender, sweet, and love, and my orgasm shredded my body, shredded my womb, annihilated my barriers of self and power and set the blazing comet of magic that slept restlessly in my loins free upon the world.

  “Aw, shit…,” I breathed, holding reins over the power that was practically blistering the skin back from my face and hands. I had to control it—I had to. I had used this power to reform the crown of the hill, and it was full of people now. I couldn’t set it loose among them.

  “Fireworks,” Bracken breathed, the blue veins popping under his sidhe-pale skin as he held back his own orgasm to help me battle with my body.

  I hated fireworks—the smell and the sound terrified me.

  “Flowers,” I rasped, remembering the pinks and the daffodils on the lawn that morning, and with that I groaned and screamed, and Bracken covered my mouth with his and swallowed my total, utter shriek of completion and release.

  My hands clenched and unclenched, blazing furiously blissful magic at the watercolor-tinted ceiling.

  Bracken groaned into my throat, then threw back his head and roared as I wrapped my feet around his hips to pull him into my body and hold him there, shuddering.

  He collapsed on me with a grunt and then rolled over, taking me with him.

  “Goddess,” I panted, laying my head on his ridged, washboard stomach. “That was so fucking close!”

  “It happens,” he panted back, “when we’re close to people and fucking.”

  I tried not to laugh—I was horrified at myself—but it was our own personal word to play with, and we were, of course, the only two lovers on the planet to ever use it in every possible permutation.

  I groaned and relaxed against him, not wanting to poison his testosterone exultation with my atomic-weight self-doubt. I kept my fears and my recrimination to myself, petting his perfect chest instead, taking casual swipes at the sweet, salty sweat on his nipples with my tongue. The sweat was not from the physical exertion, mind you, but from wanting me so badly he had no choice but to sweat.

  Goddess—if that didn’t turn a girl’s head and turn her on at the same time, nothing would.

  “I love you impossibly huge, you know that?” I asked, my eyes closing already with satiation and sleep. We wouldn’t shower—not now. Not when there was the possibility we would do it again. The elves loved body fluids, especially sexual ones. You didn’t wash yourself up after a moment like that one; you hoped you got to taste it again when the time was right.

  “Is that anything close to English?” he laughed, the perfection of his playful smile and his rarely seen dimple in those harshly clean and handsome features catching my breath all over again.

  “Let’s pretend it is,” I said to keep away tears. “I love you impossibly huge, tremendously large, gloriously fantastically ginormous.”

  He chortled and then added, “You just love that my prick is impossibly huge,” with understandable arrogance. I shook my head at him.

  “I wouldn’t care if it was completely humanly average,” I told him soberly, enjoying the way he tilted his chin up and half closed his eyes when his head was back on the floral pillowcases. I wondered if every couple since the dawn of time has had a conversation like this. I’m too big, I’m not big enough, I hurt you, you couldn’t feel me…. Were these the male equivalent insecurities of I’m too fat, I’m too plain, and I’m not worthy of all this glorious attention you shower on me like oxygen? Maybe so, but that sameness didn’t make the words and the reassurance any less vital to the heart currents that flowed between us.

  “I would love you just as huge, Bracken, if you were short and small, with a sunken chest and no chin to speak of.” Of course, I don’t know if his arrogance and protectiveness would have been in full force if not for the reassurance of the sidhe beauty he had always possessed, but it didn’t matter. It was the way he loved me that was the gift, not the package
the gift came in.

  And I had to admit, in Bracken’s case, sometimes the package was a gift all by itself—but he had fed my body his life force when I’d been dying, and I had laid hands and healed him of mortal wounds. Nobody did that for an empty box.

  “You love me ‘huge,’ huh?” He grinned, and I grinned back at him, content beyond words, perched on top of his chest, my body humming and languorous.

  “Huge?”

  “Impossibly.”

  “Tremendous?” His grin lost its sharpness as his desire spiked, and he arched his hips and bumped me with his growing erection. Lucky sidhe to recover that quickly, lucky me to love him. I shimmied and wriggled down his body until I engulfed him again, slick and hot from earlier. He arched his body off the bed to pull me up and capture my mouth fully, slowly, in a kiss that engaged and parted, and again and again and again, and he moved under me, holding my hips and pushing into me gently, in no particular hurry and with a repressed rapacious urgency.

  It was slow and sweet this time, and I kept the fireworks to myself.

  THIS TIME, when it was over we showered and fell immediately asleep, my head pillowed on his outstretched arm.

  Adrian was gone. I could smell his soul on my flesh and feel his blood coating me like rain, and my power, the power he had helped me discover within myself, was building.

  It was building and building, and the scream in my throat was blocked like a dam, with all of that pain and grief and fucking destruction ready to blow, and I was looking at the faces of the enemy, those who’d helped kill my beloved, the faces of the damned.

  And instead of stranger’s faces, they were faces I loved. Renny. Max. Arturo. Bracken. Oh Goddess… oh Goddess oh goddess oh goddess oh goddess….