Mated to the Pack (9 page)

His lips trailed slowly down her neck, and
he lapped at the skin, drinking the water that flowed down her body
in streams. She arched her back, and his head dropped further to
take one of her nipples between his lips. She moaned softly and
cradled his head in her hands, pulling him against her.

His hands began to caress her breasts,
fondling them gently. His fingers pinched her nipples lightly, and
she gasped.

In one deft movement, he grabbed her body
and twisted her onto the soggy ground. He scrambled to remove her
shorts, which he dumped atop her tank top in the mud. Then his head
dipped to kiss his way down the curvaceous mound of her stomach,
which quivered with delight.

His tongue slipped between her labia, warm
and soft, sliding across her clitoris and sending thrilling jolts
of electrifying pleasure over her trembling body. His finger
slipped inside her, curving upward to tease her G-spot as his
tongue worked masterfully on her ever-swelling clit.

Her whole body quivered with tension. She
wanted him inside her. She wanted to feel herself clenching around
him.

“Take me,” she pleaded. “Please take
me!”

Michael freed himself from the constraints
of his shorts, and she eyed his erection with wide-eyed lust. She
licked her lips, wishing for the opportunity to take him between
her lips, but he was just as eager as she to feel the pleasure of
full penetration.

He grasped his cock and positioned it
between her legs, rubbing it through her glistening slit, gathering
her hot slickness on the head. His eyes captured hers, and she bit
her lip with anticipation.

She felt the head pressing against her, and
she reached up and grabbed his buttocks, squeezing their muscular
fullness and pulling him into her.

He entered her in one smooth thrust,
slipping inside her and filling her, plunging so deep she could
swear she felt him within every inch of her body.

Michael, never breaking eye contact, grabbed
her wrists and pushed them harshly onto the muddy ground above her
head, restraining her. She surrendered herself to him willingly,
matching his thrusts with her own as she began to grind against
him.

His expression was far more than masculine
eroticism. It was primal, animalistic. As he thrust inside her, his
lip curled into a snarl that thrilled Allison delightfully. His
eyes were wide with some savage hunger for her, and he began to
groan a with a fierceness that resembled a growl.

Pleasure was mounting inside her. Her flesh
quivered at random points, and she clenched around his cock as he
plunged inside her and withdrew. Her orgasm began to ripple, and
then it swept across her body like a tidal wave of intensity. She
cried out and clawed his back, arching her head backward as her
eyes rolled back into her head.

“Oh, Michael!” she cried. “Michael,
yes!”

His voice was low and savage, snarling. He
began to pant, and his head dropped to her chest, his forehead
resting there, rising and falling with each breath she took. He
thrust faster now, and his arms began to tremble. His cock
twitched, and then his thrusting became erratic, his timing lost.
He moaned loudly, and he pulsed inside her, spilling his seed into
her in hot, sticky spurts.

Finally, his weight collapsed on top of her
as he struggled to catch his breath. His hand grasped her face,
squeezing firmly and bringing her mouth to his. He kissed her
harshly, and she wrapped her arms around his quivering body and
held on as though she would never let go.

As the rain fell around them and the thunder
echoed its lonely rumble in the distance, they lay entangled, their
breathing slowly melding into one. Michael closed his eyes as he
rested his head on her chest.

Then his eyes popped open and he sat up with
a gasp.

“What have I done?” Michael moaned.

Allison finally realized the gravity of
their situation, and the faces of Luke and Logan stared at her
through the haze of passion from which she was just beginning to
emerge.

“Oh, my god,” Allison murmured.

“They’ll never come back, now” Michael
lamented, running his hand harshly through his dripping hair.

“We won’t tell them,” Allison suggested.

“They’ll know,” Michael said.

“But, you said the bond was broken,” Allison
argued. “Maybe they won’t know.”

“They’ll know,” he repeated. “They’ll know,
and they’ll hate me forever.”

As the clouds began to part and golden
sunlight peeked through the trees in streams, the two of them sat
in silence. What could be done? Was the pack forever broken? There
had to be some way to mend it.

“I know!” Allison suddenly gasped, her face
lit with excitement.

Michael looked at her with an eyebrow lifted
quizzically.

“I’ll let myself get captured by Victor!”
she squealed with glee.

“What?” Michael’s voice boomed more loudly
than the thunder ever had. “Absolutely not! I forbid it!”

“You can’t forbid me! You don’t own me!”
Allison shouted.

“I most certainly can, and I do!” he shouted
back. “You cannot do that! What if they… what if…”

“Michael,” she said softly, her hand
brushing his cheek. “It’s the only way. They’ll come back if they
think I’m in danger. Won’t they?”

“Well, yes, I’m sure they would,” he agreed,
clasping her delicate wrist. “But at what cost? And even if they do
come back, there’s no guarantee they’ll forgive me… or us.”

“But it’s possible,” she said. “I don’t see
any other way. Do you?”

“I don’t,” he admitted.

“Then we must do what we must do,” she said.
“I trust you.”

“I can’t help but think of the what if,” he
said.

“Well, I can’t help but think what if we
don’t,” she said. “There is no other way.”

Michael’s skin turned a sickly shade of
green, and he looked as though he might lose his lunch at any
moment. Allison could think of nothing else to say, but she
snuggled close to him and stroked his arm.

“No,” Michael said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“I said no,” he repeated. “No, I won’t risk
you. There has to be another way.”

“But you said…”

“My decision is final,” he said. “I refuse
to put you at risk. We will find another way. We must.”

She meant to protest, and her mouth opened
to do so, but the stony look on his face told her he would not be
swayed. She sighed heavily and sat back resignedly. Retrieving her
soggy clothing, she began to wriggle into it.

“Thaddeus,” Michael said suddenly.

“Who?” Allison asked absently as she
struggled to yank her shorts over her wet skin.

“Thaddeus was the Alpha of our pack before…”
he paused, and she stopped struggling with her clothes to stare at
him. “Before he died.”

“What happened to him?” she asked
gently.

“Victor.”

“Oh. Well, what about Thaddeus?”

“On his death bed, he beseeched only one
thing of us,” Michael said. “And that was to remain a pack and
always look out for one another. An oath made to a dying Alpha can
never be broken. So you see, they
have
to come back! They’ve
simply forgotten about their oath in their distress.”

“Well, how can we remind them?” Allison
asked.

“We have to find them, first.”

“You said you could use pack instincts to
find them,” Allison reminded him.

“Normally I could but…” he paused.

“What, Michael?”

“My instincts seem to be severely hampered
at the moment,” he admitted, hanging his shoulders dejectedly.

“By what?” she asked. Then she saw it in his
eyes, and she added, “By me.”

He nodded.

“It’s not supposed to happen this way,” he
told her. “We live as a pack, we love as a pack, we often die as a
pack, though that’s obviously not always the case. I don’t know
what came over me.”

“You really should just forget about me,”
Allison said. “I’m nothing but trouble for all of you. You should
just throw me to the wol… um… dump me off somewhere and go on with
your lives.”

“You know we cannot do that,” he said. And
then he added, “
I
cannot do that.”

“So what’s the solution to all of this,
then?” Allison asked.

“We bring them back, apologize profusely,
and remind them of their oath to Thaddeus,” he said. “Failing that,
I don’t know.”

“How will we find them?” she asked.

“We let them find us.”

The grave was on a hill underneath an
ancient laurel tree that stretched its arms in a vast canopy that
shaded the surrounding area, marked only by a stone wolf statue
that sat with its haunches buried slightly in the damp earth and
its neck craned high as it howled at an imaginary moon.

Michael approached it with solemn reverence,
his head bowed. He stopped beside it and kneeled.

“Hello, old friend,” Michael said.

His hand brushed lightly over the
grass-covered mound, plucking away an errant twig, grooming it
carefully.

Allison placed her hand on Michael’s
shoulder and paid respects to the man who had led this pack
before.

“He gave his life to protect us all,”
Michael said. “He was like a father to us.”

“I’m sorry,” Allison said meekly.

“That night was like something right out of
a horror novel,” he told her. “The wind was howling so loudly it
was deafening, and suddenly it just stopped. Dead silence. Made my
ears ring. Then a fog rolled in that was so thick you couldn’t see
a finger in front of your face. I’ve never seen anything like
it.”

Allison was silent as she waited for him to
continue.

“We’d been having trouble with Victor’s pack
for a while. They wanted our territory, but it’s been in our family
for over a century. Thaddeus offered to allow Victor’s pack to
blend with ours, but Victor… he’s mad for power. It wasn’t good
enough for him.

“Thaddeus, ever the diplomat, invited Victor
over to discuss it. He showed up, alright, but he brought his pack
with him. It was Victor, along with the cronies you’ve met, Phillip
and Earl, and two others, Pritchet and Sonny.

“Obviously, Victor had no intention of
discussing things diplomatically. His pack attacked, we fought
back, and ultimately we were outnumbered. Finally, Thaddeus ordered
us to retreat.

“Naturally, we thought Thaddeus would follow
us. But he stayed behind. He fought valiantly. He took two of those
bastards down with him – Pritchet and Sonny. But as I turned back
to look for him, I saw in the distance the evil glint in Victor’s
eye as he sank his fangs into Thaddeus’s throat, and even from such
a great distance I could hear that sickening sound as his flesh was
ripped away from his body. I meant to turn back, to help him, but
the Alpha’s command overrode my emotions and I just turned and fled
as he’d ordered me too.”

“Oh, Michael,” Allison breathed.

“I’ve carried the guilt ever since,” Michael
said, his voice breaking.

Michael bowed his head and resting his
forehead on his knee. Allison stroked his hair, but she knew this
was something she could do little to comfort.

“You know it isn’t your fault,” Allison
said. “You had no choice but to obey your Alpha.”

“I still can’t help but feel that I should
have done something,” Michael said, rolling his head back and forth
on his knee. “And now I’ve gone and fucked
everything
up!
Thaddeus is the rightful Alpha. He should be here, not me!”

“Michael, he gave his life for all of you
because he trusted you,” Allison said.

“Well, that makes me feel better!” he
groaned facetiously.

“No, no… I mean he trusted you to make the
right decisions, because you
will
,” Allison explained, her
hand resting on his shoulder. “Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
You’re only human… or… well, you know what I mean. I’m sure even
Thaddeus made mistakes.”

“Perhaps,” Michael said. “But not as
grievous as the one I’ve made. He never betrayed us.

Allison sighed. This weighed heavily on her
heart, because she knew that ultimately the responsibility rested
on her shoulders. If she hadn’t come into their lives, the pack
would still be together.

“You have to stop blaming yourself,” Allison
said. “If I wasn’t here…”

“If you weren’t here,” Michael interrupted
her, pulling to his feet and grabbing her shoulders firmly, “then I
would still be wandering aimlessly through life with no purpose!
You’ve given me purpose! For the first time in my life, I know what
I’m alive for! I’m living for you!”

“My, what a pleasant sentiment.”

The voice startled them both, and they
whirled in unison to face it. Luke was trudging up the hill toward
them, followed closely by Logan, who hid behind him.

Luke kneeled beside the grave and pressed
two fingers to his lips, brushing them through the grass over
Thaddeus’s grave. Then he rose and approached Michael,
seething.