Scion (Norseton Wolves Book 4) (5 page)

He held his open pants up by the belt as he walked to the cab, and then grabbed a blanket out of the emergency kit. He unfurled it onto the ground, and looked at her.

There you go, prima donna
.

It was her move. Her chance to back out, and his chance to say, “
Well, you made your choice
.”

Clearing her throat, she lifted her chin pridefully, and stepped onto the thick blanket.

He joined her as she sank to her knees, and then turned onto her ass.

“On your knees. That’s how your wolf wants you, doesn’t she?”

She didn’t respond beyond repositioning herself. Hands and knees down, with her shoulders to the blanket. Lifting her dress over her ass, he let his pants and boxer shorts fall to his knees and pulled her closer to him.

He parted her wet folds with his thumbs and slipped one between his lips for a taste. He couldn’t help himself, it just seemed like something he had to do, and he didn’t regret it. If he weren’t so strung out at the moment, he would have dipped his head for a longer taste. A lick right at the source. He could tongue her until she moaned and tried to crawl away from the unbearable teasing.

Maybe next time.

He pushed his cockhead against her folds and braced himself for the refusal, but none came. She bore down onto him, taking him in inch by inch and fisting the blanket as she swore under her breath.

Naturally, he didn’t move. The spectacle was too fucking amazing to look away from—her knees spread wide and his cock disappearing inch by hard inch between her folds.

How’s that, motherfucker?
his inner wolf seemed to ask.
You’ve suppressed your prey. Are we happy now? Can we just fuck and not think?

Vic was happy enough for the moment. He wasn’t making any promises about the future, though. The wolf part of him was concerned with planting seeds and siring pups, but the man in him needed to be concerned with more pressing issues like her father, and the elephant in the room—that they’d once been in the same pack.

Worry later. Enjoy now.

On a sigh, he put his head back and closed his eyes.

She rocked back and forth slowly, taking as much of him as she could and squeezing her muscles hard, as if to punish him.

He’d let her punish him all day long if that was her idea of torture.

“You’re gonna—gonna let me do all the work, huh?” Her words were accusatory, but her voice was breathy. “You’re gonna say later this was all my idea, and that you were just giving me what I wanted, right?”

He sighed and put his hands on her hips, squeezing them gently. “Are you really antagonizing a wolf who has his dick inside you? I can do all the work, if you want. You better know what you’re asking for, though.”

“You think you’re the first wolf who’s had his dick in me?”

A growl rumbled from his chest, and he didn’t even bother suppressing it.
Probably the only shifters more prone to jealous rages than wolves would be cougars
.

She laughed and tightened around him again. “If you think I can’t handle whatever you give me, then you need to slowly and carefully deflate your ego.”

He dug his fingers deeply into the flesh of her haunches and thrust into her hard and fast, and she gasped. It was not time to be smug yet, though. She’d teased the wolf, and he needed to make sure she didn’t do it again. She didn’t have the right—not after what her father had put his family through.

She was a Madeira in Carbone territory. The tables had been turned, and the Norseton wolves did things differently. But having her so near knocked him back into the past and made him forget the wolf he was supposed to be.

He was justified in hating her, but the anger would never be productive. It would never create anything useful. Worse, he hated himself, too, for not being the bigger person.

His father would have been.

Ashley had certainly had her fair share of angry sex, but she couldn’t remember it ever taking her breath away.

Vic thrust into her with a stunningly rapid speed that had her teeth chattering, toes curling, and torso tightening with anticipation. She needed air, but she couldn’t draw in a breath. Every time she tried, he’d pull her hips up again and stoke her even hotter. She moaned and gasped, but those things didn’t make for very good breathing.

She knew she shouldn’t have teased him—shouldn’t have pushed him to such an antagonistic place—but she couldn’t help herself. She was the daughter of an alpha, and she was used to getting her way. She
wanted
Vic’s sex, wanted his fire to consume her and burn her alive, if need be. She’d told herself that they could shake out the consequences later, if ever, but for the moment, she wanted what he was giving her.

“Fuckin’ hate you so much.” Without missing a beat, he slipped his fingers between her legs and strummed her clit in such a considerate way she doubted the veracity of his words.

Her exhalation came out in a long, raspy gust, and she pushed up onto her forearms to balance herself. She wanted to help—wanted to make the thrusts even more impactful by adding some of her own. She needed to come, was so desperate for relief. “Hate you, too, asshole.”

Be nice
, her inner wolf chided.

Ashley rolled her eyes at herself. Her
selves
, rather.
He doesn’t deserve nice. He deserves a swift kick in the nuts and a slap to the face.

He leaned over her, still thrumming her tender clit, and pressed his teeth gently to the side of her neck. Not a bite so much as a nip—a reminder he was there, in case she’d forgotten.

How could I forget?

She couldn’t possibly forget, even if she wanted to.

“You’ve got my scent,” he growled out pressed his fingers hard against her tender zone.

Her lungs seized, mouth flew open to catch the breath she couldn’t draw in, and voice sputtered out in an embarrassing vibrato. “
Oh, gods
.”

He kept stroking, rocking his hips again and again, and pushing his cock head past the G-spot that had already set off one debilitating orgasm. Now it seemed he was intent on completely undoing her—cutting the puppet strings holding her up so that she fell apart right there in the desert, half-naked and wild, with red dirt in her hair.

She was boneless. Didn’t want to move or even hold herself up, but he wasn’t done.

As she collapsed onto her belly, gasping with the aftershocks of her orgasm, he followed her down and kept going from the new angle.

Adaptable, her mate was.

And there went his teeth again in the meat of her neck, then his hot tongue lashing up the column to the now unadorned earlobe. He pulled it between his lips and sucked, and he seemed to find a direct, nervous line to her sex. With every suck came an answering tug down below, and she didn’t think she could any more.

“You’re going to kill me,” she whispered.

“Not like this.”

Having uttered those inscrutable words, he backed off of her, only to slip his hand beneath her and angle her ass a bit more upward.

“I should paint your ass with my seed,” he said. He had to know as well as she did that he wouldn’t. Not only would it be an insult to his mate, but it was their first time together. His inner wolf would be extra incentivized to mark her in every way he could, inside and out. He wouldn’t cut off his own nose to spite his face when he had a biological imperative to reproduce.

“Whatever gets your rocks off,” she said and squeezed his cock tightly inside her. “Go on, Vic. You wanna act like a porn star, go on and do it.”

“You’re asking for trouble.”

“You assume that anything you can do to me would be a surprise. Think again. I’m not a sheltered as you seem to think. Just because you’re my first and only mate doesn’t mean I haven’t had plenty of practice. You couldn’t even scandalize me by shoving it into the wrong hole. Been there—” One more squeeze just to taunt him, and it set off another small orgasm for her that had her squirming beneath him and biting her lip. “Done that.”

“You—
fuck
!” He twitched inside her and pinned her very flat, holding her very still until his cock stopped moving.

Score
. She smiled ruefully as he pulled out of her until he gave her ass a hard swat.

“Do you
ever
stop talking shit?”

“Do you ever stop
being
a shit?” Growling, she pushed up onto her hands and knees and crawled toward her underwear. Risking a glance over her shoulder, she found Vince tucking himself back into his boxers.
Still hard
. Of course he would be, though. She’d never known a wolf like him who wasn’t ready to go again within a few moments. All that testosterone was good for something.

Well, not good for
her
at the moment. Contrary to what had come out of her mouth, she didn’t think she could handle another round just yet. The adrenaline was crashing and her body was starting to report in to her brain with all the aches and sensations that had been stifled beneath the pleasure. Even with her superior werewolf healing, her hips would probably be aching for days.

“You could probably never go home now, even if you wanted to.” He pulled open the truck door and leaned into the crew cab. After some rustling, he drew out a raggedy towel of questionable cleanliness tossed it to her.

She cringed, but since beggars couldn’t be choosers, she used it to clean her sticky thighs the best she could before slipping her panties on. “Why can’t I go home?”

“You reek of Carbone now. You’ve got one for a mate and one for an alpha. That’s not gonna sit well with your folks back east.”

“Why not? Enough with the insinuations. Out with it, already. Obviously you know something I don’t.”

He stood in front of her with his arms crossed over his chest and drummed his fingertips against his biceps as he stared at the sky. “If you still had a phone, I’d tell you to call your daddy and ask him why your pack shrank so much when you were a little girl. Hell, I’d lend you my phone so you could do it, but I don’t want my number traced. I know your daddy is good at that. So—
hmm
. How about this?” His pale brown gaze fell to her face.

She would have bet her heirloom gold cross that at that moment that he had a bit of the devil in him. She wasn’t so afraid of the devil himself, but of the truths he told.

“Why don’t you ask one of the women in the pack if you can borrow her phone? Maybe Stephanie or Lisa. Ask your daddy what happened, and then tell him who your new mate is. That is, if you haven’t talked to him already.”

“Why, so he can rescue me?” The suspense was killing her.
What does my father know? No, what does Vic know?
Obviously, too much.
Does that mean Alpha knows it, too?

Frustrated, she twisted the end of her ponytail into a knot she’d probably have to cut out later.

“He’s not gonna want you back, unless he’s become a hypocrite in addition to being a cheat. Say whatever you want to him, but I’m gonna listen in on the call. I would strongly suggest you not clue Daddy Dearest in on your location, because if you do, you’ll regret it.”

“Because you’ll hurt me.”

He furrowed his brow and took a step away from her. “I may dislike who you are, but I don’t hurt women unless they try to hurt me first, and mortally. You are my mate. There may be absolutely no affection between us at the moment, but I
will
protect you to the best of my ability, and make sure you’re provided for. I can’t make any promises beyond that, but I won’t hurt you.”

“You won’t love me, is what you’re saying.”

She didn’t know where the words had come from. Love seemed a petty concern at the moment. Maybe it was her inner wolf speaking through her human half, or maybe it was just her sex-addled brain making her spew gibberish. Either way, she did want to know the answer.

He was quiet. His expression gave nothing away, and his body language remained closed off.
Cold as ice.

“Listen, the other mates might be at home now. You should be able to catch one.”

Now it was her turn to be silent. She didn’t think any of the ladies would have a problem loaning her a phone. They were probably going to ask her why she needed it, but that wasn’t a big deal. Ashley had always been able to come up with a good lie in a pinch. The thing that scared her more was the possibility that Vic’s taunts and jeers were founded in something other than just outright meanness. There might have been some truth in them. She’d never known the promise of truth to be such a frightening thing.

Holding her head up high, she walked around to the other side of the truck and got in. She’d done nothing wrong. She wasn’t going to start acting like she had.

___

Ashley thanked Stephanie for the use of her phone, and the other woman waved her off. The redhead backed down the path toward Darius’s house with heavy shopping bags dangling from her forearms. “Just hold onto it until I see you again. No need to bring it back in a hurry.”

Ashley nodded and glanced toward Vic’s house.

He waited in the doorway with arms folded over his chest. She didn’t want to be closed into that house with him again, so she headed for the bench she’d sat on during the mate-matching ordeal.

She pulled in a long breath as she dialed her parents’ home phone number, and then froze before putting in the last digit.

Maybe calling Daddy isn’t a good idea.

Her father would be suspicious if she called out of the blue and started asking questions. Or perhaps, he might have been expecting it and already had answers queued up and ready for her.
That would be bad
. She would learn exactly what kind of liar he was, and confirm that what Vic was saying was the truth. The really fucked up part was that she wasn’t quite sure who’d she prefer to be the liar—her father or her mate. Either way, she didn’t expect to have a smile on her face when all was said and done. She was screwed.

“Fuck.” She cleared the digits and put in her mother’s number instead. Her mother answered on the third ring.

“Hi, who’s this?”

“Ma, it’s Ashley.” She looked over her shoulder and found Vic headed up the path, likely to supervise her call.
Just like he said he would.

“Ash? Why’d you skip out on us like that? That’s some crazy stuff you did. You’ve got your father all in a panic.”

“I bet,” Ashley said dryly.

“When are you coming home? Did you get bitten, or what?”

Ashley pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, I got bitten. I stink of my mate, but that’s not important right now. I need you to tell me the truth about something.”

“Getting a bite’s not important? One that you hightailed it out of here without a word to get? Come
on
, little girl. Really, Ashley, what’s wrong? You need your dad to come get you? Where are you?”

“Leave Daddy wherever he is for now. I’m okay. It’s just a simple question or two.”

“Is it about what happens after a woman gets her bite? Honey, that’s normal. It’ll pass. You won’t be so—well,
amorous
forever.”

Ashley rolled her eyes. She certainly hoped not. Being as horny as a teenager with her only outlet for relief a mate who looked as though he could set her on fire with his gaze wasn’t her idea of a good time, and even if Vic was an epic dickhead, she wasn’t a cheater. She’d just have to suffer—and perhaps buy a vibrator and lots of rechargeable D batteries.

“What’s he like, this guy? Better than you would have gotten here? I don’t think so. None are better than here.”

False.

Vic plopped onto the bench next to her and leaned his forearms onto his knees, watching Ashley through the corners of his eyes. She was grateful he didn’t look her straight on. He was too intense—hard to look at for too long without her questioning her worth. And she did question it.

Might as well come out with it
. She pulled in a bracing breath and fiddled with the wrinkled fabric of her dress. “You remember when I was around—gods, I don’t know—eight or nine, maybe? A bunch of folks left the pack in a couple of days. I remember the gatherings were smaller for a long while. Why was that?”

Her mother always had a response, and usually a quick one. For once, she was silent, and that scared Ashley. If it weren’t for the ubiquitous classic rock her mother always kept playing on the radio in the background, Ashley would have thought the connection had dropped.

“Ma?”

“Hey, maybe you should talk to your father about that. Why are you bringing that up now? Where are you?”

“Oh,
gods
. Why can’t you just answer the question? It’s simple enough, right?”

Ma groaned. “Look, sometimes, packs just need to be culled.”

“I understand that. Packs send boys away all the time, but we lost a lot of folks at once—adults, too.”

“They left on their own.”

“Really?”

Vic shook his head and scoffed. He whispered, “If she believes that, she’s deluded.”

Of
course
he could hear her. He could probably hear a pin drop on the moon. Ashley was grateful for it, though. He might learn that she really had no clue about most of the things going on around her, and that she
hadn’t
lied about not telling her parents where she was.

“Why are you asking? It was so long ago. Don’t you have more important things to worry about? Tell me about your mate. What’s he like?”

“Actually, he’s the one who told me to call. I think he’s under the impression you might know who he is.”

Silence again. Ashley counted off seconds in her head.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.

“Well, who is he?”

Ashley pressed the phone between her ear and shoulder and pinched off a cuticle that was peeling back toward the painful danger zone. “Last name is Carbone.” She cut her gaze to Vic, who raised an eyebrow. “That name familiar?”

“God
damn it
, Ashley. Somehow I always knew you were gonna get us in trouble.”

“
Us
?” Ashley squeezed her bleeding digit between her thumb and forefinger and pulled the phone back from her ear.