He looked down.And discovered thick, metal manacles locked around his wrists, two heavy steel chains attached to each.
Lifting his stare to Regan, he gave his arms a sharp jerk.The chains snapped taut, kicking straws of hay up into the air.Each length disappeared beneath the pile of hay he sat on, and something about the unforgiving way they stayed tight told him they were fixed to something solid.
“The Rimadyl is only a stop-gap, Declan,” Regan said, inching away from him, cheeks red, eyes apologetic—but determined.“You need antibiotics.Quite possibly surgery.I’m going to find the closest doctor.”
Declan shook his head, anger simmering in his blood.“No, you’re not.”Fists clenched, he jerked his arms upward, readying for the jolt as each chain shattered.They didn’t.Not even close.He leveled a stare at Regan, surprise and, unexpectedly, admiration threading through his anger.
“They’re high tensile steel,” she said.“Australian farmers have to deal with some pretty feral pigs.Even this close to Sydney.By the look of this farmer’s set-up, hunting pigs is more than just a hobby.”A small, wry smile stretched her lips.“Which is lucky for me.”
He tilted his head to the side, giving her a dark scowl and the chains another—futile—tug.“Pigs?You comparing me to Babe, love?”
Regan laughed, the sound rich and warm and so wonderful he almost forgave her for chaining him.“Babe is a cute, lovable character, Declan O’Connell.There’s nothing cute about you.”
“What about lovable, Regan?”he asked, mouth suddenly drier than dust.He paused, chest heavy.“Am I lovable?”
She stared back at him, a tiny pulse leaping to life below her ear.“Unfortunately,” she said on a whisper, leaning toward him once more.“You are.”
Her lips brushed his.Soft.Gentle.Her tongue flicked out and touched his, the tentative caress making his blood roar.He grabbed her ass, the chains clinking as he yanked her hips to his.She gasped, the sound captured by his mouth, and she plunged her tongue deeper past his lips, rubbing her crotch against his rapidly growing erection in small up-and-down strokes.Her hands slid up the back of his skull, tangled in his hair.She fisted them, little jolts of pleasure spurring across his scalp as she tugged on the strands she held.
He groaned into her mouth, sank his nails into her ass-cheeks.The soft cotton of her shorts did nothing to hide the divine firmness of her butt and he groaned again, wanting to tear the material from her body so he could feel her flesh.He shoved his cock harder to the warm junction of her thighs, knowing—even if he couldn’t smell it—she was wet there.Her sex called to his.He ravished her lips, drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked, a part of his passion-fogged brain wishing it were her nipples.Oh, to scoop both of her full, heavy breasts up, to push them together for his mouth to claim both dusky nipples at once.To have each perfect point between his lips, to have them sliding under his tongue at the same time…
His pulse thumped.Hard.Primitive.He felt his wolf flex.Dragging his lips from hers, he scored a line of savage kisses over her bowed neck, flicking at the frantic pulse below her ear before sinking his teeth into the sublime curve above her collarbone.She cried out, tugging on his hair again, ramming her sex harder to his throbbing cock.“You scare me so much, Declan,” she rasped.Her heart hammered, pounding against his chest in a rapid tattoo.“The way I react to you, the way you react to me.”
He lifted his head, gazed down into her eyes, their smoldering, desire-clouded depths almost destroying his control there and then.“I don’t mean to scare you.I don’t want to.”He raked his hands up the curve of her hips, under her top, over her ribs.Her flesh burnt his palms and his balls throbbed, spiking currents of pure pleasure into his groin.“God help me, Regan, you’ve got into my head and nothing matters but keeping you safe.Keeping you in my arms.”He dropped his head and nuzzled on her neck, needing to taste her.“Keeping you on the verge of sexual rapture until time ends and we become creatures of pleasure.”
She moaned and rolled her hips, grinding the heat of her sex over his straining cock.Hands curling tighter in his hair, she arched her back, directing his head to her breasts.
Suck them.
The order sounded in his head, a demand he neither wanted to ignore, nor could.He took the rock-hard nub of her left nipple in his mouth through the material of her shirt.
“Jesus, that feels so fucking good.”
The raw words sent surge after surge of hot blood into his cock.His head swam but he didn’t stop, torturing her nipple beneath its sodden cotton covering.
“Move it.”She pushed her breast forcefully against his mouth and he knew exactly what she wanted, as if she’d placed the very desire directly into his mind.
Chains rattling, he lifted his hands to the neckline of her tank top and, with barely a pause, tore the already tattered garment open.Her breasts spilled free, creamy curves of swollen flesh.He stared at them for a frozen second before, breath shallow, nostrils flaring, he shoved them both together and captured the nipple of each with his mouth.
Regan bucked, her fists tugging brutally on his hair.“Oh, my fucking God!”
He closed his teeth down on each imprisoned tip of flesh, wondrous hunger consuming him at Regan’s wild cries of pleasure.She wanted this as much as he.There was no doubt.No confusion.Everything else boiled in uncertainty—whether he would he survive the upcoming battle with Epoc, whether Epoc would finally have the test subject he always craved—but the way Regan felt about him, the way he felt about her, was as undeniable as the moon and the sun and the planets.
She raked her nails through his hair, over his shoulders.Her sex rubbed at his cock.“Oh, Declan, that feels…that feels…”
Her words dissolved into gasps and whimpers.He suckled harder on her nipples, his hands mauling the soft heaviness of her breasts together, the chains slapping at his arms in stinging bites with every move he made.
His cock throbbed, pushing against the denim of his stolen jeans and the hot curve of Regan’s mons with urgent insistence.He lifted his head from her breasts, blew on the two red peaks glistening with his saliva.She arched, the tips pinching even tighter before his eyes as the cool stream of his breath fell on their tortured surface.“How do you know what I want…?”
Her breathless question made him pause.How did he?She was human, not werewolf.Yet he seemed to sense her every thought, her every desire.Like their souls were inextricably entwined.As though she were his lifemate…
A shiver rippled through her body and she moaned, the low sound raising his gaze to her face.“Lifemate.”The word fell from her lips as her eyelids fluttered closed.
Lifemate.
Blood roaring, head swimming, he stared at her.The need to claim her, to bury his manhood into the folds of her sex had never been so powerful.So commanding.He slid his hands from her breasts, the chink-chink of steel links slicing at the humid air.He watched the passion play over her face as he moved his palms down her ribs, watched her lips part as he removed his hands from her body…please don’t stop touching me, Declan…watched those same lips curve into a sultry smile as he took her hands from his shoulders and place them on the burning bulge of his erection…oh, yes, yes…the chains clinking a rhythmic reminder of their presence as he did so.
“Release me, Regan,” he murmured, dropping his head to brush a feather-light kiss on her lips.“Release me.”
