Loving Lucius (Werescape) Read online

He snarled, shoving back, his hands slipping away from mine, leaving me behind to slide over my leg.

  Gone. His presence left me empty. Wanting. Dying.

  He snatched me into his arms and rolled me over. "On your hands and knees."

  Anything to get him back, touching me, inside. I lifted my belly off the bedding.

  He grabbed my hips and locked his shaft back into my sex. "Focus, Elise. On the feeling."

  Like I hadn't focused before! I was the one wanting to move. Fast. Just to ride the sensation. Begging him.

  He thrust his thickness back inside me, his strong broad hands wrapped around my hips.

  Holding me. Where he wanted me. His stiff rod buried all the way to the blessed root. Then sliding the amazing thickness back along my channel. Clenching channel. A channel pleading for him to return. He did. In a long drawn-out motion. Over and over.

  "Better?" he groaned.

  Oh. God. Yes. I think I squealed a patronizing yes.

  My body's little demand for moving fast tickled into a ferocious beast.

  A hungry monster. I grabbed fistfuls of the blanket and thrust my ass back, spearing myself with his lance.

  He growled and pumped faster.

  Yes. Faster. Such blessed motion. His strength. Slapping against my aching flesh. Add my whimpers and his growls. Touching became more necessary than eating. Than drinking water. The only thing of importance.

  The hungry monster inside me swelled until pushing back every cell in my body. Suffocating my essence. Squeezing my reality into nothing but his firm grip on my ass and the way his hardness felt, filling me, touching me.

  The monster's squeezing pressure sparked into my most demanding frustration.

  He leaned his hard body over my ass, stroking in focused short movements.

  Tickling me to the point I'd have to bite the blanket and gnaw a hole through it or die. "Please, Lucius," I panted. "Please!"

  One of his arms grabbed around my belly, pinning my back against the curve of his body.

  No. Slipping fingers into my sex. But not into. No above it. Searching. Locating my clit. Touching it. Oh. God. Touching is beyond the meaning of wonderful. I whimpered.

  My body trembled and flinched from the onslaught of need deep inside it and down where only he'd ever touched.

  He growled, his groin and engorged spear shoving me from behind.

  Rocking me like a sobbing baby. I needed to end this. To cry. To thrust backward so hard the frustration would burst inside me while I wriggled against the soft little pad of his devoted fingertip.

  Need shook me.

  Like the electricity I'd accidentally shocked myself with during science lessons.

  My body jolted. His member jerked deep inside me.

  Hitting something indescribable. I screamed.

  He groaned. And we froze upon that brief magnificent moment of absolute bliss.

  I held my breath.

  The heel of his hands fell away.

  To the bedding beside mine. His chest pressing me down. Holding me in place. Rocking his hips like he wrung his soul out within mine. One desperate thrust after another. Shoving my ass.

  He groaned in my ear, his chin on my shoulder. "Oh, little mate, next time," he kissed my neck, "we do it my way."

  His way? Wasn't he happy with what just happened?

  Slowly his movements shortened, then he stilled. "Do you like this? All of this touching?" He kissed my cheek from where his head hung over my shoulder.

  "Yes." Oh. Yes.

  He climbed away from me, along my side, and pulled me down to squirm out and stretch along the solid length of his muscular body.

  Hot. Sweaty. Rattling heart tapping on my breast. His presence called to me. Made me wriggle, trying to meld with him. Those half-shuttered blue eyes. Those adoring tanned lips.

  He tipped his nose down to touch the tip against mine and thrust a handful of fingers into the base of my braid. "That, little mate, is the way things will be between us." He rubbed the end of my nose with his.

  Teasing me with promises. "Good. I prefer you wanting to be with me."

  "Oh, Kitten, you have no idea how much want I feel." He flashed me one of his heart-stopping grins. "And whenever you want to feel how much I need you," he nipped at my upper lip with moist heat before staring back into my eyes, "you just let me know. I'll throw you on the bed and touch you in ways you have yet to experience."

  Really? I could stand for a few more rounds of touching just to learn what he means.

  He chuckled. "Your expression tells me you like that idea."

  Yes. I slid my palm beneath his thick arm, around the hard curve of his ribcage, and up the supple flesh forming his muscular shoulder blade. Drawing my heart closer to his. "Yes, Lucius," I whispered, tucking my nose between his jaw line and sweaty shoulder. "Touching is extremely important."

  He silently chuckled, his chest jerking with the sensation. "I'd do so now. But we need to go find Augustus. I want him to take the blood sample and process it."

  But what would happen when his sire realized I had too much alien DNA?

  "You're panicking again, Elise." His palm ran down my back to begin petting me in long firm yet gentle strokes.

  Calming motions. Touching me.

  "I told you nobody could take you away from Wolf." He kissed my forehead. "Look at me."

  I turned my gaze to his.

  "Trust me."

  We dressed, departed for Augustus' lodge, and found him alone at his long table, sitting with large books and maps spread out in the indirect sunlight offered by two windows.

  "Well, I see you two have made amends." He'd tied his shoulder-length hair back in a queue.

  Maybe the clan leader could make that call because Lucius held my hand.

  Lucius flashed me another dazzling grin. "We had a talk."

  Did he have to mention the discussion? He promised not to share the subject. Why should I have believed him after he kept promising to leave and then he didn't?

  "Well, Elise,"Augustus said in a loud voice, "you appear happy with Lucius after he marked you."

  Was the marking that obvious? I glanced at Lucius' smiling eyes.

  "Shifters can smell it," he winked.

  Augustus could probably smell the stink of our mating. That had to be what tattled on us.

  "Now, Elise, I expect a grandson by next spring." Augustus winked too.

  Oh, no. I'm surrounded by intelligent facetious men.

  Lucius grabbed me, pulling my chest into his. "I think you and I can handle that chore." He planted a big kiss on my forehead, then focused on his sire, releasing me. "Run her blood work. Let us know what you learn."

  I suppose there's no other way to deal with my fears. I turned to the alpha.

  Augustus' silvering brown eyebrows arched. "What am I looking for?" His gaze darted curiously between Lucius and I.

  Lucius will just blurt it out.

  My heart cringed.

  My mate gave me one gentle pat on my lower back. "Whatever you manage to find."

  Augustus placed his broad palms on the table and shoved upward. "Well, then, let's go down to the lab and do the deed. You can show her around. Choose a suite too. Maybe next to her sister."

  What? Violet or Sherry?

  The door creaked open behind me.

  Harsh sunlight danced around a male form.

  "Well, I see our efforts weren't wasted," Marcus called out.

  "What?" Lucius growled, his arm tightening around me.

  "Calm down, Lucius," Augustus said. "Marcus never wanted to mate Elise. He and I have been plotting for three years to push you to mate."

  Marcus snorted a laugh where he stood in the illuminated doorway. "And talk about one Gods-be-damned chore for a sire's son. I thought we'd never find a female your Wolf would bite."

  Augustus chuckled. "Then along came Elise."

  "Yes," Marcus chuckled exactly as his sire had done. "I knew she was perfect for him."

  "
Oh, did you?" Lucius condescended.

  "Let's go now, Lucius." Augustus stepped to my side and winked.

  Fine. We all needed to do something before Lucius' Wolf felt like teaching his younger brother a lesson.

  Augustus led us into the warm sunlight.

  "Do you plan to raise Violet?" Augustus asked us.

  I was probably too short to warrant a glance where I stood between their armpits. But if they bothered to look down at me, they'd find a glare. Nobody's raising Violet except me.

  "Of course," Lucius said. "Elise wouldn't want anything else. And the little one's bright. Even though you could leave her education to any of the other Shifters and know she'd be just fine in the long run."

  As if they'd even try to send Violet to be reared by someone else.

  "Good. It's always difficult to send a sibling into foster care." Augustus turned back to the path winding between the lodges. "Now, Elise, the lab and village are underground. We're far beneath the three feet of earth necessary to survive an extraterrestrial extermination beam."

  Village? Subterranean? Such a feat would take an army to build places similar to those beneath the New cities. And I have yet to see an army. "How large is this village?"

  "Seventeen Shifter families and extra rooms for new ones. Adult Shifters who have yet to mate live above ground to provide the façade of a small community to outsiders. We have plenty of storage too. Add the lab, community kitchen, community school, library, and community shower, and it's quite cozy."

  They'd built this place? "Amazing. So you live down there?"

  "Only mated Shifters," Lucius explained. "That's why you and I were above ground."

  "Those who have yet to mate give the illusion of a small Shifter outpost to aerial surveillance." Augustus waved a hand at the bath. "This way."

  We entered the large community shower lodge's cool shade. Nobody had run the hot water for a bath in the claw-foot tub or used the primitive shower today. If so, humidity would have clung to the shadowy space.

  "Over here." Augustus walked to a closet door, led us into the long narrow space with floor-to-ceiling shelves, strode past the soaps, towels, and whatever else they kept here, and stopped me with a hand about six feet from the end. "If there's ever a reason for you to hide somewhere, come here." He wormed his fingertips into the crack at the far corner of the floor and heaved up the entire end section of the wooden beams like a door.

  Hidden hinges maybe? I don't know how it appeared a length of floor when the panel moved like a door. But he lifted the wood aside to the right and propped it against the wall.

  A sheet of gray metal stretched beneath where the sheet of planking had been.

  "And the mechanism…" Augustus pointed to the closest corner on the left. "Push that small square button." He did.

  The metal slid sideways, toward the flooring Augustus leaned against the wall. A gaping rectangle, lit from below, offered a series of descending concrete steps. Augustus stepped to the right and Lucius led me underground. A click behind us and a mechanical hum noted Augustus closed the entrance.

  The enormous subterranean space had a series of lights offering a soft glow in between stretches of shadow. Just enough light to allow for comfortable passage. The place smelled a little dusty. But being underground, one would expect such an odor.

  "How long did it take to build this place?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Augustus said from behind me. "It was built AEI. The government constructed a concealed facility to deal with epidemics. That's why I'm here. To use the lab. My sire was very young when the aliens came. His sire was a doctor employed by the government to study diseases. Military. That's how he came to be a Shifter. He was captured, genetically altered, and returned to earth. So, he raised my sire to follow in his scientific footsteps. And my sire taught me. Did you know that all Shifters were originally soldiers or scientists?"

  No. Fascinating. And that explains a lot of how humans fought back against beings with the odds in their favor.

  The corridor's sharp turns and strengthening scent of hot food finally led to a large room lit partially with larger rectangular lights overhead. Lights like those back in New Pittsburgh. Technology manufactured AEI.

  "Here's the communal room," Lucius stepped aside allowing a view of the men, women, and children sitting at tables.

  Metal tables with metal chairs. More factory-produced objects.

  Sherry and Tacitus spotted me and shot glances between one another.

  Like I was an alien surprising them with my appearance.

  "It's lunch." Augustus' wide palm nudged me forward from behind. "Let's see what's on the menu."

  Pork roast and a soup of dried vegetables and herbs. I could have sucked down three bowls of delicious soup salted to perfection. But Augustus was in a hurry to collect my blood sample. Joy of joys.

  We passed into another section of the compound. Solid metal doors lined both sides of the corridor. Fifteen on each side. Each with a number up to thirty.

  "These are the suites. Families are housed here. And, of course, more Shifters always show up wanting to take root, building a life around the hope that this facility can give a man dedicated to fight extraterrestrials." Augustus continued through a metal door with a large rectangular window.

  A light flicked on with Augustus' presence. Strange symbols were painted on the walls. Circles with shapes inside them. Meaningless to me.

  We faced three solid metal doors. One had lab painted on it. Another said shower. The third was labeled basement.

  Augustus pointed at the door marked basement. "Our storage, the classrooms, and the library are below us. Lucius can show you around down there later. We're going this way." Within seconds we stood in an enormous room that looked like a sea of waist-high black countertops. The counters were pitted with sinks and topped with all sorts of machines and glassware.

  "This way." Augustus strode to the far end of the large space, flicked on a light above where he stood, and opened a drawer.

  He had to know everything about this room because under each black countertop were loads of unmarked drawers. I'd be completely lost searching for something here.

  The alpha produced a needle.

  Nothing new to me. I'd seen many and been pricked by them plenty of times.

  With the skill of a person familiar with needles, Augustus washed his hands, cleansed my skin, and drew three vials of my crimson blood without nary a spark of my discomfort. He used a strange stretchy kind of tape, one lacking the tackiness of tape I'd used before, to secure small squares of white gauze over the tiny wound.

  "There you go. All finished. I hope you weren't uncomfortable." Augustus winked again.

  Just like a father, who swore something wouldn't hurt and had successfully proven he hadn't lied. Augustus was suave. A man anyone would like. A man any woman would mate. "Not at all." And I mated his son who behaved more and more like his sire with every passing moment. Okay, maybe he mated me. But I was the one who ultimately won in the end.

  Augustus placed his samples in a container. "You two go look around. Choose one of the suites. And bring Violet down. Now that Elise has mated into our community, Violet should continue her education." He eyed me. "I'm assuming she's as educated as you and Sherry."

  "Yes." Violet needed to continue to learn. Any person who could needed to. Or the aliens would have an easier time eradicating what was left of humanity.

  "That reminds me," August studied me. "You have been educated more than most of the mates here. I think we could use you best in the school." He slid his blue gaze to Lucius. "What do you think?"

  Lucius nodded thoughtfully. "As long as you don't work her to death."

  A devilish grin stretched across the clan leader's friendly face. He winked at me yet again.

  Why? Winks are starting to make me nervous. Did they note some hidden joke the sire shared with his son? Because that unsettling grin certainly should make me worry.

  "Come on. I'll sho
w you around." Lucius slid his fingers down my arm and took my hand, pulling me back to the corridor.

  My mate definitely had my best interest at heart. He reaffirmed this conclusion when he closed the door of suite 19 and shoved me against a wall. Frisky couldn't describe Wolf.

  "You won't be very useful in the school until after the Mating Fever runs its course," he gasped, all breathy, pulling off my clothing.