She smiled, a baring of teeth, relieved that they’d answered her questions without the necessity of her asking. They were after her and her enemy hadn’t yet arrived. There was no reason to delay over their killing.
As the weaker of the two men slid into the woods, fighting vines and low branches in an attempt to get behind her, she lunged for the one named Chuck, growling in rage when his knife sliced along her shoulder and upper arm as one of her own drove into his stomach and ripped downward like a wolf’s lethal disemboweling of its prey.
Chuck’s scream was piercing, his movements violent as he tried to pry her off him. But the wolf was in a frenzy, driven by the hot, metallic smell of blood.
Dakotah barely felt his blows. She didn’t hesitate to plunge the second knife into his back in the moment that the first blade ripped through his groin, internal organs emerging from torn clothing, trailing after her hand as she slashed at the inside of his thigh, deep enough to ensure that he would bleed out while she dealt with the other man.
She pulled away from him, turning, bracing for an attack that would never come. The second man lay in a crumpled heap at a dark stranger’s feet. A man Dakotah had never seen before but whose scent she knew well.
CHAPTER 3
“Who are you?” Dakotah asked, knives held in front of her, refusing to give in to the wolf’s joy at being reunited with the male from the previous night—even if he was in his human form.
“I am Domino Santori.” An eyebrow lifted as his gaze dropped to the knives in her hands then upward, lingering on her breasts and making her nipples tighten and her cunt pulse. “Surely you don’t need those. Not after we enjoyed each other’s company last night.”
Dakotah hesitated for a moment then closed the knives and returned them to her pockets before using her right hand to explore the extent of her injuries on the back of her left arm and shoulder, the touch sending pain rushing through her and making her gasp, her fingers coming away slick with blood.
Rage filled Domino at the sight of her bloody hand. A ferociousness that was beyond anything he’d ever experienced.
In the blink of an eye he was at her side, swamping her with the pheromones of his kind so that he could remove her jacket and shirt without the necessity of physically subduing her. She was mentally strong, but he was stronger, and he had an ally in her wolf.
Domino growled at the sight of her injury, snarled and cursed himself for not arriving soon enough to destroy both of the men who’d been pursuing her. What had she been thinking to allow the Believers to catch her? Why hadn’t she changed into her other form if she wanted them dead?
He ran his tongue along the deep crevice of the knife wound, healing her even as her blood coated his tongue and fanned the flames of The Hunger. The Heat. And this time it was his wolf who worked against him, who joined forces with the alien inclinations of his ancestors so that Domino carried Dakotah deeper into the woods, away from the corpses of their enemy.
He’d had no intention of taking Dakotah again, either as wolf or man, but now Domino finished what he’d begun, stripped her of her remaining clothing before shedding his own, tossing it to the ground to form a rough shield against damp leaves and cold earth. The Heat was a fever in his blood. A pulsing, raging inferno in his cock. Her name the only one in his thoughts, her scent, the feel of her flesh against his the only things that mattered.
He allowed her to surface from the pheromones in the second before his body covered hers, his lips taking hers, his tongue thrusting against her, their skin so hot that steam rose around them.
Desire swamped Dakotah. Primitive. Familiar. Nature’s celebration of life over death. Victory.
She’d experienced it each time she’d succeeding in killing one of the werewolves Victor Hale had sent after her—though until this instant she’d never given in to the heady need to mate, to rejoice in a wild thrashing of male joined to female. A tumultuous rutting that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with the continuation of the species, with survival.
Dakotah didn’t hesitate, didn’t question. She wrapped her legs around Domino’s waist and welcomed him into her body. A deep moan vibrating in her throat when his thick cock stretched her, filled her, burned her from the inside out.
His hips pistoned hard, fast, pummeling in and out of her channel as though he wanted to hammer into her most private, untouched parts. His growls of pleasure and satisfaction feeding the frenzy inside her, driving her to take everything he had to offer.
He held her wrists to the ground and she allowed it, something she’d never done before. Where usually restraint triggered a savage need to escape, an almost mindless need to strike out and kill if necessary, it was different with Domino.
He had killed for her. His wolf had already coupled with hers.
Dakotah tightened her legs as orgasm neared, she bucked and writhed, fought for release, and he responded by giving her more of his weight, by thrusting harder, deeper than a human male was capable of doing, slamming against her cervix in a way that blurred the border between pain and pleasure, blended them so that there was no clear point where one ended and the other began.
A red haze filled Domino’s mind, a hunger for more than sex, more than blood. But he fought off the programming of his alien cells, determined to fuck her throughout the night as he’d done in his wolf form and then walk away from her in the morning.
He wanted no mate. Needed no mate, despite the way his body craved her, despite the treacherous images going through his mind, the wish that she had fangs in her human form so she could sink them into him.
His gums ached as he kept his canines from descending, from plunging into Dakotah’s soft neck in order to gorge on her as he fucked her. She was temptation beyond any he could have imagined. A wolf even in her human skin. A strong, wild creature that would never be completely tamed.
He growled as her legs tightened around his waist, responded by thrusting harder, deeper, her sheath a tight fist around his cock, resisting him even as it welcomed him. Causing the wolf he carried in his cells to rut furiously. To howl in frustration that its seed wasn’t yet viable as orgasm roared through Domino’s cock in a lava-hot rush to fill Dakotah.
Neither of them moved in the aftermath of release. Instead they remained coupled for long moments, panting, skin slick with sweat, hearts racing in chests pressed tightly together.
Dakotah was the first to stir, the instincts that had kept her alive for so long fighting to the surface, fighting to suppress the wolf, which had escaped its cage and was still shivering with joy at being reunited with the male it thought of as its mate.
Domino might have helped her this night, but she’d learned the hard way that the only person she could count on was herself. She needed to drag the bodies into the woods and be on her way. If she was lucky, she’d be long gone before the corpses were discovered.
She unhitched her legs from around Domino’s waist, pulling her wrist from his grip and pressing her hand to his shoulder, urging him to roll off her. He complied with a grunt, disbelief filling him when she stood, pulling what clothing belonged to her out from under him as she did so.
He’d never had a woman rise from his bed with the intention of leaving unless he’d commanded her to do so. That this one thought she could escape him…
The same savage possessiveness he’d experienced before in her presence brought him to his feet, had him reaching for her, stalking her when she backed away from him. His cock hard and jutting out from his body in a bold display of intention.