"You let me worry about myself," he said into the charged silence. "But you have to be sure, Indigo." She opened her mouth to reply, but he pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. "I let you walk away with Riaz because I thought he made you happy."

Oh, she thought, even as he continued with an unfamiliar ruthlessness in his tone, "I won't have the n.o.bility to walk away a second time if you decide you prefer another man. I'll fight to the f.u.c.king bitter end and I won't care about the consequences. I'll take him, b.l.o.o.d.y him if I have to."

Her wolf flexed its claws inside her mind. "If I decide against you," she said, raising herself up on her elbows and tightening her stomach muscles against the impact of his thigh sliding between her legs, "I'll fight my own battles." She'd come to him because she'd f.u.c.ked up, but that didn't mean she wasn't who she'd always been. "I don't need another man to do it for me."

"Good." He kissed her.

Hot.

Hard.

Exquisite.

"Just so we understand each other." A nip to her lower lip. Another to the curve of her neck and shoulder as he used his weight to press her down into the softness of the sleeping bag.

More than ready to dance with him, she wove her fingers through his hair. But he pulled away and was crouching on his feet several feet from her before she knew he'd gone. His eyes glinted night-glow in the darkness. "Run."

Adrenaline pumped through her. Shifting into the same position opposite him, she angled her head. "Feeling frisky?"

His eyes, gone that beautiful, strange, wolf copper, followed her every minute stir. "Run."

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose up, but it was a sign of antic.i.p.ation, not fear. "You'll never catch me." It was a lazy taunt as she feigned right . . . then jumped over the fire in a leap no one but a changeling would ever make.

She heard him growl behind her, but she was already in the forest and doing everything she could to mess up her scent trail. She went through a shallow portion of the stream twice, doubled back, then retraced her steps before heading downwind. Cheeks pulsing with color, her heart thumping in her chest, she looked around.

Silence.

Too much silence.

He was close and the forest knew it.

Grinning, she messed up the trail some more, then found herself a hiding place on the other side of the stream-behind a bush hung with tiny red winter berries that were so inedible, even the birds pa.s.sed them by. Looking over the top, she tracked the other side of the river using the wolf's night vision.

There.

He flowed out of the dark, a wolf in human form. She saw him scent the area around the stream and disappear back the way he'd come. What was he doing? She knew he wouldn't have fallen for that little trick-she wasn't really trying to lose him. They were playing. The fun was in the chase.

And Drew was cunning.

Realizing what he'd done, she spun around just in time to see him streak out of the trees behind her. Her chest filling with laughter, she managed to get on the other side of the bush as he came to crouch opposite her and said, "I found you," in a very wolfish tone.

She widened her eyes, looking beyond him. "Oh, no!"

Protectiveness built into his makeup, he turned to check on the threat . . . and she was gone, hopping across the rocks that forded the stream and up on the other side, her wolf laughing all the while.

Andrew hadn't had this much fun in . . . ever. Chasing after Indigo as she took off, he let her get ahead then circled around to wait in ambush behind a small tree. She scented him, stopped, but they'd pa.s.sed through this area so many times, she had no way of knowing if he was actually there or if it was only his scent that lingered.

He saw her bite her lower lip and knew the instant she decided to go for it. Snapping her back against his chest as she padded past his hiding spot, he nipped at the place in her neck that fascinated him and spun her free. He wanted to play some more.

She understood.

Throwing him a grin filled with pure delight, she pointed behind him. He turned, giving her a head start. He waited almost five minutes before beginning to look for her. She was hiding, not running this time. He couldn't feel the vibrations of her flight beneath the pads of his feet, and the forest creatures were chattering quietly once more, her willing accomplices in offering a cover of noise.

Prowling over the ground in a swift half run that was so fluid it would've appeared impossible to human eyes, he caught a hint of steel in the air, a hint of spring rainstorms . . . and was ready when she "attacked." Spinning while she was in midjump, he caught her against his chest, let her take him to the pine-needle-strewn earth in a tangle of limbs and hair. When she nipped at his jaw, he growled, but she laughed and repeated the provocation.

Pushing her hair off her face, he tugged her down until they were nose to nose, their wolves staring into each other's eyes. When he snapped his teeth at her, she snapped back. His smile spread until it felt as if it might crease his face forever. Their kiss was as wild as their chase, as playful as their game.

She wrapped her arms around him and didn't protest when he rose with her in his embrace, unwilling to do this on the cold earth, no matter that the pine needles provided a thick mattress. Bold and unashamed, she took his mouth with the pa.s.sion of a woman who knew what she wanted . . . and the man she wanted it with. It was becoming impossible to have any kind of a rational thought, but he broke the kiss, put her on her feet by the fire. "Wait."

Stretching her arms above her head, she teased him with the promise of her body as he pulled her sleeping bag open, unzipped it, and laid it on top of his. There, he thought, that would be softer on her back. She jumped to crouch on it even as he finished, having used the discarded towel to clean off the bottoms of her feet. Her playful mood still apparent, she said, "You're wearing too many clothes," and reached for the b.u.t.ton at the top of his fly.

CHAPTER 23.

He didn't stop her, though the sight, the touch of her fingers so close to his aching c.o.c.k was torture. b.u.t.ton undone, she tugged him forward, pushed. He sprawled backward onto the sleeping bags, spreading his legs to give her room as she came to kneel in between. But she didn't lower his zipper.

No, she bent her head, and-continuing to hold the searing eye contact-pressed her lips to the very top of his groin, a bare centimeter above the pulsing thickness of his erection. Groaning, he clenched his hand in her hair and tugged her up. She came . . . to give him a bone-tingling kiss.

"I'm not the only one who's overdressed," he said against her lips.

"How remiss of me." Her smile was full of pure sensual temptation as she reached down and pulled the T-shirt he'd given her-the T-shirt that had covered her in his scent-off over the top of her head.

His mouth dried up, his brain cells scrambled like so much spaghetti.

Dear G.o.d but she was stunning, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s lush against the toned and sleekly muscular build of a woman who was a SnowDancer lieutenant. Her skin was lightly tanned, her nipples darker, the plane of her abdomen having the slightest curve that he had every intention of laving with his tongue before moving lower to nuzzle those dark curls that hid the moist, earthy scent of her desire. He'd part her delicate folds and stroke and lick and pet until she screamed his name.

As he watched, entranced, she shifted back to her position between his knees and began to tug at the tab of his zipper. He sucked in a breath, sucked in his abdomen, and hoped he wouldn't f.u.c.king embarra.s.s himself. Lights flashed behind his closed eyelids as his erection sprang mercifully free, and he felt more than heard Indigo urge him to lift up his body so she could tug off his jeans.

Opening his eyes, he obeyed, and the jeans went flying somewhere to the side. Indigo put her hands on his thighs, her gaze on his erection. "I want to . . ." she began, but he reached down and pulled her up.

The damp heat of her stroked over his abdomen and he had to grit his teeth to keep from blowing like the Fourth of July. "I get to taste you first." He squeezed her hips. "Then I get to do it again."

She was straddling him, her knees on either side of his chest. When he urged her higher, her eyes went huge. "Like this?"

A chuckle broke its way through the sensual haze. "Don't tell me I've shocked the unshockable lieutenant."

"I should've expected you'd know all sorts of debauched things." But she obeyed him and shifted up . . . until all he had to do was hold her in place with his grip on her thighs, draw in the dark heat of her pa.s.sion, and lap at what he'd been aching to taste.

Indigo's spine arched at the first touch, and she realized the d.a.m.n wolf had her in a steely grip, would not allow her to wriggle away. The pleasure was excruciating. Her claws sliced out of her skin. She fought to pull them back in, failed.

"No more." She'd been hungry too long, and it only took a few wicked caresses to have her body riding a near-painful edge. "Drew."

He let her escape with one final lick. His eyes were pure wolf. "Next time," he said in a voice gone husky and deep and in no way human, "you're going to lie still until I've finished tasting you."

A growl rumbled in the back of her throat. "Am I?"

"Fair's fair."

Her wolf didn't understand his logic, its mind too torn with the hunger for the most intimate, most luscious, of skin privileges. "What?" Sliding down his body, she brushed herself against the velvet steel of his arousal.

Drew's abdomen was taut as rock under her palms, his c.o.c.k even more rigid. "Because," he said in that gravelly, inhuman voice, "I'll lie here and let you do whatever you want, too."

Her wolf froze, looked at him, licked its lips. Big and gorgeous and dangerously aroused, he made her want to . . . The words wouldn't come, her body too hot, too needy. Ending the teasing play of her body against his, she said, "Now."

His hands tightened on her hips, and then he was flipping her so she lay beneath him, her legs spread wide to accommodate his bigger, heavier body. His skin shimmered with perspiration, and the tension in his muscles had turned them to steel. But though he nudged at her with the blunt head of his erection, the shaft pushing eagerly at the entrance to her body, he stopped long enough to give her a wet, openmouthed kiss that was all licks and little bites, tender and affectionate and s.e.xy all at once.

And then, as her body arched up, he thrust into her in a single hard push.

Her scream fell into his mouth, her fingers clenching on his biceps.

Neither of them moved for the next few seconds. She could feel his heart pounding beneath her palms, and it echoed the frantic pace of her own. Realizing her claws were out just a tiny bit, just enough to blood him in the throes of pa.s.sion, she went to pull them back.

He bit her lower jaw. "I like it."

Taking him at his word, she scratched lightly at him as she tried to get used to the feel of him inside her. Hard and thick and deliciously long, he stretched her to the limit, but they fit. Oh, they fit very, very nicely. "Guess," she managed to gasp out after several seconds, "the rumors weren't exaggerations."

He didn't answer, his entire body trembling with the effort it was obviously taking for him not to pound her into the earth.

"Drew," she whispered, nipping at his ear, "I'm not fragile."

Wolf-copper eyes met hers, nothing of humanity in them. "No, you're mine." Gripping her hip with one hand, he braced himself over her with the other, and then he rode her.

There was, Indigo thought as her senses exploded, no other word for it. It wasn't any kind of sophisticated mating-it was raw and hard and primal, the power of Drew's thrusts sending shock waves through her entire body. She'd have been shoved off the sleeping bags more than once if his grip hadn't pinned her to the earth, if she hadn't locked her legs around him and given in to the heat and strength and driving s.e.xual hunger of him. She'd never had a lover as abandoned in her life, and she loved it. Adored it.

Adored him.

Clawing at his back, she lifted her hips to meet his strokes, but his rhythm was too fast, too aggressive, and her body was already tightening into an explosive bow. It didn't matter-it was impossible to halt the movements of her hips now, her flesh claiming and releasing his in an abandoned s.e.xual rhythm that drove him impossibly deeper. Somewhere in between, she realized the fingers of his free hand were locked with hers as it lay palm up beside her head.

The tension built inside her. Tighter. Hotter. Agonizing. "Drew!" It was a scream as the pressure reached boiling point and exploded.

Her last thought was that Drew, too, had finally let go.

She roused some time later to find that he'd flipped them again, so that she lay sprawled on his chest. Her right hand remained entangled with his, while her left hand was curved around the back of his neck. She'd hooked one leg over his hip; the other lay stretched over one muscular male leg, the hairs on his skin deliciously abrasive against her sensitized flesh.

His own hand stroked up and down her back, a little rough, all perfect. "Wake up, Indy."

"Mmm." Shifting a fraction, she felt his renewed erection against the skin of her inner thigh. "Even changelings can't recover that fast." Her heart was still pumping from the ecstasy of the first ride. She was fairly sure the stars dancing in her vision had nothing to do with the ones in the sky.

He turned her onto her back, one of his arms cushioning her head. "See," he said, "this is what you get for choosing a younger lover." That c.o.c.ky, teasing light was back in his eyes.

She hadn't realized how much she'd missed it, missed him.

Swinging her leg back over his hip, she pulled him down until he was braced on his elbows above her. "Is this where I have to lie still?"

"Yes." He pushed up her other leg so it was bent at the knee . . . and slid into her in a blunt thrust.

Her spine arched off the sleeping bag. "Drew!"

Freezing, he brushed her hair off her face. "You weren't ready?"

She heard the naked concern, saw the wolf flicker in his eyes. Stroking her arms around his chest, she nipped at his jaw. "Oh, I was ready-but a little warning might be nice."

A slow smile spread across his face, the wolf continuing to glow in his eyes, but amused now in the most sensual of ways. "No, I don't think so." Taking her mouth before she could snap at him for that adorably arrogant statement, he began to move in her.

She'd enjoyed the h.e.l.l out of their first ride, expected hard, rough strokes again; he was a young (younger!) male and finesse wasn't exactly a strong point at that age. Except this was Drew-unpredictable, wild Drew. His strokes were long and slow and deep this time, and her claws were digging into his shoulders by the fourth, her body undulating beneath his.

He closed his teeth over her lower lip in playful reprimand. "You're not lying still." One hand cupped her breast, fingers tugging at the taut peak of her nipple.

Inhaling a gasping breath, she opened her eyes to fire a retort . . . and saw the wolf looking down at her. "h.e.l.lo," she whispered.

His answer was to kiss her, his tongue pushing inside her mouth in audacious demand, his body strong and beautiful above her as he drove her stroke by slow stroke to another shimmering peak. This time, she held him as he shattered, his body going taut above her.

When he collapsed on top of her, she nuzzled him close, one leg wrapped around him, the other raised at the knee by his side. It felt sinfully luxurious to lie here so very, very sated with a man who made her body sing . . . and who apparently, she thought, licking her tongue over a few of the claw marks on his shoulders, had no trouble with the fact that she got more than a little wild during s.e.x.

To be honest-her grin was wide and bright-it would be pretty much impossible to be too wild with a lover as unrestrained and as enthusiastic as Drew. Rubbing her cheek against the side of his head, she ran her fingers through his hair, ma.s.saging his nape.

Stirring a little, he relaxed even more heavily on top of her.

And with that much muscle, he was heavy. But she wasn't made of gla.s.s-and there was something to be said for being covered by the hot blanket of a sated male wolf. Smile curving her mouth, she tugged the top of the sleeping bag over him so he wouldn't freeze, and then she continued to pet him, this wolf who'd made every one of her preconceptions come crashing down around her ankles.

Now . . . now they'd see what the future held.

They changed positions when he muttered he was "squashing her" and moved to tuck her by his side, one hand spread across her abdomen. Curling her body into his, she went to sleep, well pleasured, warm, and certain the area was safe. Her wolf wasn't ready to give up full protection of her body, her self, to him-might never be ready to give that up to any man-but it was content enough with his skill and strength to close its eyes and let sleep sweep them both under.

She woke to find her nose snuggled into the crook of a male shoulder. There was no disorientation, no moment of wondering who he was-his scent was too familiar, too welcome. Allowing herself an uncharacteristic moment of laziness, she stroked her hand down his chest. He was asleep, his arms locked around her-no doubt about it, it was a possessive hold. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about that, but being with a dominant predatory changeling male required some adjustments.

Adjustments.

She thought of her aunt, Adria, thought, too, of the adjustments Adria made daily, and felt her muscles begin to lock. No, she whispered inside her mind, no. Hawke was right-she wasn't Adria. She'd kick Drew's a.s.s out the door the instant he pulled s.h.i.t like Martin pulled with Adria.

Not that she could imagine that kind of pa.s.sive-aggressive behavior from Drew. For all his sneakiness, he wasn't subtle enough for that type of hostility, she thought with open affection. No, he was more likely to yell at her, and if that didn't work-now that they were intimate-strip her naked and try to win by drowning her in pleasure. Those kinds of dominance games, she understood and welcomed.

Cheered up by the realization, she pressed a kiss to the part of him closest to her mouth. He stirred but didn't rouse. Dropping another kiss on his skin, she pushed gently at him. He made a rumbling sound in his chest, the vibrations causing her nipples to tingle, pressed as they were against his muscular form, but he didn't let go. She bit him on the jaw. "I need to get up." When he still didn't move, she pushed harder.

Grumbling, he loosened his hold enough that she was able to wiggle free. He immediately sprawled over the s.p.a.ce she'd vacated, his face on its side, hair all rumpled. She couldn't help it. She reached over and nuzzled a kiss into the warm curve of his neck. Another grumble. "Not a morning person," she said, nipping provokingly at his ear-that got her a sleepy snarl. "I never knew that." It was a half-wondering statement. She'd thought she'd known everything about him, but she hadn't known this.

Startled, she kissed him one more time before trying to find a T-shirt. She finally located the one she'd been wearing the night before hanging over the limb of a tree branch. How it had gotten that far up, she had no idea. Standing on tiptoe, she'd just snagged it when she heard an appreciative wolf whistle.

CHAPTER 24.