Domino grimaced. “No doubt the story of my failure to hold on to my bride will grow with each telling.”
Fane strolled in, zipping his jeans. “Or you could simply let her go and endure the herbs. You have long claimed you don’t want a kadine. Her lifespan is short against our own. With her death you’d be a free man again.”
Domino’s eyes flashed to red. His lips pulled back to reveal deadly fangs. “She is mine and she won’t escape that fate.”
Fane grinned, stopping next to Domino and offering his wrist in a gesture of trust. “Then perhaps you’d better feed so we won’t need a leash when we go out in public with you.”
CHAPTER 7
Domino followed the scent to the edge of the woods, rage burning through him with each step. He stopped just inside the tree line, crouched, inhaled deeply. The Were who’d waited here was a dead man.
Behind him Cable stopped talking into his cell phone, the tiny click signaling that he’d closed it. “Fane says there was a man asking about Dakotah at the campground. His scent is Were. So far no one noticed what he was driving, but Kiziah’s still talking to the people she knows there.”
Domino nodded and stood. Turning so the field where the carnival had been was spread out in front of him, empty except for Fane’s sports car and his own. It surprised him that Dakotah had come back here. It gave him reason to hope that maybe she hadn’t decided to run. A grim smile settled on his face. Maybe she’d even decided to consult with the fortune-teller. That would have made his grandmother’s day.
“Just one of them?” Cable asked. “Male?”
“Yeah. Here for several hours. Long enough to piss on a lot of trees.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t take your car.”
Domino shrugged. “For all he knew, it was stolen.”
Cable nodded and they left the woods, heading to the cars. Domino tight with anger and worry. The scent was fresh. The picture it presented a movie he could easily view.
A lone hunter had waited in the woods. Fired when Dakotah arrived.
The dart had struck her but she’d had the strength and intelligence to remove it quickly. But then she’d fallen next to the car, the dart rolling underneath. The ground absorbing her scent, her heat. Telling him she’d lain there for awhile.
The hunter had made a phone call probably. To the man at the campground maybe. Or perhaps to another. That man had come, had stood next to Dakotah.
Domino knelt beside the tire again, hissing, reacting to the scent of fear lingering near where Dakotah had lain. They’d seen his mark on her. They’d known what it meant. And yet they’d taken her all the same.
They’d invited their own deaths.
Dakotah fought through the drug-induced darkness. Its cloying presence sickening her, reminding her of things she’d long ago forced herself to forget.
Nausea rolled over her and she closed her eyes. Held her breath. Willed herself not to heave. Not to let on that she was waking up.
The first wave passed, followed by long moments of choppiness, clarity and confusion, dizziness, of pulsing gray and black bursts of color at the edge of her consciousness, by heat, as though her blood was burning away the foreign substance in her body. When it was done she was panting silently, coated in a light sheen of sweat. But she was alert. Strong. Though not strong enough to escape the duct tape that bound her wrists behind her, then bound them again to ankles that had been similarly taped, her knees bent so that her ankles and wrists met in the center of her back.
Dakotah clenched her teeth to keep from growling and snarling in rage. From opening her mouth and howling with frustration. The wolf inside echoing her own horror and anger at being caught and rendered helpless by Victor Hale’s men.
Werewolves. The car reeked of human perspiration and flesh overlaid on the wolf’s scent. It smelled of steak and beer, cheap cologne and fear.
“I don’t like this,” the driver whined and Dakotah zeroed in on him, tasted his nervousness, knew he was afraid.
“You’re not paid to like it. You’re paid to forget about it.”
“The vampires—”
“Are Victor’s problem. We told him she was marked and he said bring her anyway. For all we know, he’s going to tell her that he forgives her for killing his son.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“That’s my story. And by the time Victor is done with her, there won’t be enough of her left to identify.” The man laughed. “Even if someone decided they wanted to analyze a lot of wolf shit. Nothing like a group hunt followed by a group fuck and a nice group feast to keep things in the pack so to speak.”
“Count me out.”
“You get invited. You participate. Or else you join her. There are guys who are horny enough to fuck a log when they change. You’ll do if they can’t get a turn at her. I’m hoping Victor invites me. She’s going to be a fighter. Has to have been to take out Anthony. He spent most of his time thinking with his dick, but he wasn’t a lightweight when it came to breaking bones and ripping fur.”
The two men lapsed into silence, their scents deepening in opposite directions, becoming more pronounced. One with greater fear. One growing heavy with lust.
Dakotah’s lips pulled back in a snarl. A silent, fleeting rebellion. But she was a fighter. And she knew better than most how sex could equal survival.
Kiziah and Cable had both said that men would be drawn to her. They’d made it sound as though it would happen whether she invited the attention or not. But she wasn’t going to waste time waiting for the pheromones to build.
She closed her eyes and thought of Domino. Pictured the scene in the woods, her hands bound as he knelt before her, worshipping her with his mouth. His tongue wicked as he slid it in and out of her channel, then up and over her clit. His lips and teeth tormenting the swollen knob until she was trying to fuck him with it, to shove herself down his throat as arousal seeped from her slit and coated her inner thighs.
Now that she knew what he was, she wanted him to bite her there. To take her to heights of ecstasy she would never experience elsewhere. She wanted—
The car screeched to a halt, jarring Dakotah from her fantasy and into a sauna of pheromones and lust. Car doors opened then rough hands were jerking her from the back seat, pawing at her clothing.
Fear came with the cold air. Not her own, but the weaker man’s. And yet there was arousal where there hadn’t been before. “We can’t do her by the side of the road.”
His companion grunted. “Take her legs then.”
She let them take her to the woods. Let them think she wasn’t fully aware of what they were doing. But with each step, she could feel some of the mad haze of lust leaving under the burden of carrying her and the fresh air.
She thought about Domino again, imagined his cock sliding back and forth across her cunt lips as they’d watched Cable and Fane make love to Kiziah. As Domino’s words had seduced her.
The fantasy played out in one part of her mind, compartmentalized this time, so she would be ready when opportunity presented itself.
The two men stopped just inside the woods, in a small patch of wet pine needles and trampled grass. A place that smelled of deer and rabbits.
Pain seared through Dakotah’s shoulders and thighs when they dropped her on her back, her arms and legs trapped and bound underneath her. The more aggressive of the two leaned over her, his breath hot and rank, his hands and fingers rough as he tore at her clothing.
She opened her eyes and trapped him with her gaze. Watched as his eyes grew more glazed, as mindless lust consumed him.
The wolf rose inside her, pressing against her skin. Urging her to free it, to let it rip their enemy’s throat out.