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"Yes," she moaned, extending her neck in a submissive offering that made something inside him open its glimmering eyes.
Pure possession roared in his veins. Power and strength he hadn't known in nearly a century. She washiswoman,hisOmega, just asthiswas his true form. Not the drugged-out captive he'd been for decades, not the whipped dog he played for the Pack.Thiswas his Alpha nature the way it was meant to be lived.
Jake lifted his head to gaze down at her. At her darkened lips and puffy nipples. At her sultry, lust-drunk eyes and heaving breaths.
"You want this?" he teased, noticing the small thrusts of her pelvis against his abdomen.
Her legs, imprisoned between his knees, were fused together, her plump thighs rubbing one against the other as her pelvis jerked in a needy, seeking rhythm.
"Yes," she whined, squirming on the deck boards. "Don't stop."
With a rough curse, he knocked her legs apart with his knees. First one and then the other, he spread her fleshy thighs wide. Only the sodden scrap of shorts she wore covered her, damp and glued to her body, the swollen contours of her sex plump and rounded with the tantalizing slit in the middle.Jesus god. For a man who hadn't been with a woman in decades, this was too much all at once. Maybe they needed to reverse back into kissing and necking until he could get control of himself. As it was, he'd be jerking off to this juicy imprint of her pussy for the rest of his life.
A burst of her Omega bouquet released into the air, her familiar citrusy essence infused with the sweet scent of slick. He knew it now, recognized it, and it charged up his nose, igniting his lust like an accelerant. He inhaled deeply, drew it into his lungs as deep as it could go, needing to chase away every molecule in his nose that didn't belong to her.
Except another scent interfered with this plan. His body went rigid with alarm. Along the edges, faint but noticeable and stronger still on a panicked second sample, an intruding and unwelcome note appeared: another Alpha on the breeze. Close, far too close.
Zorah wiggled up to her elbows. "What is it? Why did you stop?"
"Hush." He laid a stabilizing palm on her belly. "Someone's coming."
He acted fast, his brain running a half second ahead of his body. Looped an arm under Zorah's hips and dragged her the few feet toward the sunken end of the platform. She released a surprised squeak, and he shushed her again as their bodies slid into the cold water as quietly as he could manage. With one hand cradling Zorah to his side and the other on the platform, he maneuvered them underneath the creaking boards to the darkest corner, his breaths coming fast and heavy with fear and exertion.
Someone was coming, and they were trapped.
CHAPTER 17
Jake
A throbbing noise assailed his ears, like the whomp-whomp of air when riding in an open-topped car. An experience he hadn't considered in years, but there it was, excavated up from some crevasse of his unconscious, hauled to the surface on the heels of the other mental detritus sludging up his brain. Memories of another time of subterfuge and hiding, another illicit love affair, another vulnerable girl, another catastrophe in the long line that made up his life.
His body locked up as it all came rushing back at once: the dark of night in his prison, the inescapable desert cold, the quaking girl in his arms, the bottomless pit of fear. How many nights had Ava come to him like that? How many moments, just like this, had they stolen right under the Brethren's nose? Always skating the edge of discovery... until that final time.
"Who is it?" Zorah whispered, her legs wrapped around his middle and arms holding onto his neck.
"Don't know."
An Alpha emerged from the same pathway that took Zorah to and from the lake, his torch lifted as he examined the tree line, the beach, and the water. Its orange glow illuminated his dark, straight hair that hung loose and dragged over his shoulders as his neck turned this way and that.
Colt.
Jake's worry deepened. The regular patrol route did not bring anyone as far as the lake, and if Colt was, indeed, on patrol, then had something alerted him to investigate the area? Had he heard them playing Marco Polo? Had he heard Jake shouting for Zorah? If Colt had heard Zorah's name from Jake's lips, they were both fucked.So fucked.
Horrible visions marched before his eyes. Zorah being ripped away from him, just as they'd ripped Ava away, from his arms and his life. Instinctively, he cinched his hold on her tighter, no longer with passion or lust but with pure, unmitigated fear.
She gave a small grunt and misinterpreted his intent as her hips began a slow, deliberate grind against his abdomen. With her steaming her breath against his neck, Zorah's hot core scorched his skin and spoke directly to his still-very-interested dick. Both of them unaware or unconcerned with the raging turmoil that boiled his guts.
"Zorah." He spoke softly as possible, a warning wrapped in a groan. "Stop."
For the moment, he couldn't do anything. Well, that wasn't exactly true. He could push her away and leave her here, tucked safely in the shadow of the dock, and swim ashore, pretending he was taking a moonlit dip in the lake, like that was a totally normal thing to do. Only then, he'd have to explain the last three minutes of furtive hiding from the Pack's Second. He wasn't a good liar in the best of circumstances. Colt would see right through him. Christ, he'd probably reek of guilt before his feet even hit the sand. Not to mention, the thought of leaving Zorah made his arm clench tighter. No, he wasn't letting her go.
You should never have let Ava go, either.
Shame reared its head like a haunting specter and stared at him with accusatory, fearful eyes. Ava's eyes, ringed with white and fear as they'd yanked her away. He could feel the agonized squeak of her skin against his palm as that final tether failed. The tight sting in his throat was a harsh reminder of how he'd bellowed her name for hours and rendered himself voiceless. Brutalized his vocal cords with screams and vomit as he'd poured out his stomach contents until nothing remained but bile and agony.
"What's wrong?" Zorah's head rose from his neck, obstructing his view of the beach, but he was so far gone in his panic that he hardly noticed.
Past blended with present and encased his lungs in a prison of ice. Breaths short and shallow, he fumbled for whatever sensation might keep him from plunging headfirst into the past. Fisted Zorah's shirt in his clammy palm. Felt the brush of her thighs against his sides. Stared into the dark shadow of her face. Breathed in her sweet summer scent. Repeated the phrases he'd long returned to. He was clear of scratch; this wasn't his hole; he didn't belong to them anymore; he'd lost Ava long, long ago.
