Chapter 9
When Nick looked up from his maintenance of his mate’s wounds, he met a half dozen aggressive gazes.
The six males reeked of challenge and, most important, sexual desire.
A sweeping glance told him each and every one had a massive erection and a yen for his woman.
They had watched her dispatch her competition in a matter of heartbeats, her viciousness and strength arousing their interest in her …
as well as their cocks. Nick felt the way their eyes fastened onto her ripe breasts, the rigid nipples he knew were so easily seen through her snug tee.
They sniffed for her pussy, seeking her scent as they edged closer.
The pack had no loyalty to one another, but they would use the others to weaken him so they might gain advantage and the victory prize.
They all could smell how close to season she was. She was almost ready to be bred and they all wanted to mate with a female who could fight with such dominance.
Nick realized then that the challenges weren’t likely to ever stop.
He could discourage them, but others would always want Amara.
She was a worthy and breathtaking mate. He had known it from the very start.
She would whelp amazing children of strength and equal beauty.
She would fight for all that was hers to her very last breath.
If she had ever been apathetic, it had been forever discarded. It was no longer in her makeup.
Nick gave her scratches one last lap, savoring the flavor of her blood.
That, too, had attracted them. Her blood-scent.
He knew because it attracted him. He was rock-hard with need just from watching her defend her place and desperate to be inside of her now that her flavor washed against his tongue.
But first things first.
Nick ran a proprietary hand over Amara’s breast, palming the full weight of her and even catching her nipple in teasing pinches between his fingers.
She had borne his bite there, her orgasms and his own quite arousing.
His touch certainly aroused her. He could smell the tangy change in her scent as her pussy went wet in anticipation of him.
Soft growls of challenge began to erupt from the other males as they began to crave her just as he did.
Good. Let them. Let them build themselves into a fever of need for what they would never have.
The frustration would make them stupid and sloppy.
His own need was empowering. It made him steady and quite clear on what was his to protect if he wanted to find himself back inside her sweet heat once again.
He slid his hand down his bitch’s belly, his fingers gathering up fabric until he touched the bare skin of her tummy.
All the while, he remained alert, his eyes trained on the restless six watching what he was doing.
His hand glided under the waistband of her sweats and his fingertips combed through tight curls he knew were the color of fine golden filament.
He sought for and found her clit quite easily.
It was moist and a little swollen already, anticipating the pleasures of the cock pressed to the crease between her bottom cheeks.
Nick’s fangs slid into place, his claws curving and pricking her until she gasped and moaned in response.
All hell broke loose.
Nick spun Amara back behind him as the first two males lunged at him.
Natural weaponry aside, before he’d been forced to become a Morphate, Nick had been a federal agent trained in the deadly art of hand-to-hand combat.
Facing down such powerful odds simply didn’t faze him.
He never once worried about the fact that these were Morphates, not men; that any one of them could have the power to defeat him alone. He never believed it.
Luckily for Nick, he really was the most powerful male there.
The others had been slack and lazy with defeat for months.
Nick had still been powerful and fit with rebellion at the time of his transformation.
His strength and skill combined to make him a deadly force of nature—even if that nature in and of itself had been forced.
He mimicked his mate’s kill with his first, snapping the Morphate’s neck like a twig and already attacking the next before the first hit the ground.
This one he took out with a strike across the bridge of his nose.
He went down howling, blood spraying everywhere.
The third and fourth were the first to actually lay hands on him.
Or rather, claws. They shredded through his shirt in front and back, flaying his skin in deep furrows he didn’t even bother to feel.
The idea that Amara would heal him with the stroke of her erotic little tongue was all he needed to swing him swiftly around, hooking the third male by the throat with his arm and ripping him off his feet with his momentum until he sent him slamming into the fourth.
They landed in a tangled sprawl of arms and legs and at least one of them was still alive. Nick didn’t much care.
Number five was smart. After seeing how quickly he had dispatched the others, he abruptly threw up his hands and backed off at a speedy pace.
Number six … well, now, there had to be at least one real challenger.
Number six was definitely it. He was a big, blond bastard, but in a ponderous way. He was like a tank.
“Keep that snatch warm, baby,” he called crudely to Nick’s Amara. “I’m going to want it just as soon as he’s dead.”
Nick saw Amara flip him off, and it was the only thing that kept him from going totally ape-shit on the guy for daring to speak to his mate in such a way. Just that single flash of humorous defiance helped him keep his head and probably his neck.
The two titanic males clashed and tables and chairs were crushed or sent flying in their wake.
Morphates and humans alike plastered themselves to the walls to keep out of their way.
Once Nick threw off the other man, his eyes sought Amara to make sure no others were coming near her.
She was leaning back so casually against the wall she nearly looked bored.
Then Nick realized it was because she had no doubts he would prevail and she was impatient for him to finish what his teasing touches had started.
Her matter-of-fact attitude inspired the same in him.
Suddenly he saw exactly how to dive past those meaty, hammering fists and he took his shot, using his claws to rend through the cotton crotch of his opponent’s sweats and the flesh of his scrotum and penis as he tore up and away.
Had Nick still been human, it would have been considered a low, dirty tactic.
As a Morphate protecting his rights to his mate, it was poetic justice.
The man fell in a screaming, writhing mess of blood and agony.
Nick stood there catching his breath for a minute, his glare challenging the room to incite him further; warning that he could do much, much worse.
All eyes turned away or down submissively, whether they were human or Morphate.
And, without ever meaning to, Nick and Amara became the Alpha Morphates of the room. They didn’t realize it just then, but it would change everything for them all over again.
Nick flung the blood of his enemy off of his claws with a sharp snap of his hand, then he turned to look at his woman.
He lifted his chin, his nose seeking her aroma through the heavy rusted stench of spilled blood.
Still, he found it easily and in an instant.
Sweet ambrosia and eagerly awaiting him, it called him back to her in rapid-fire strides.
He grabbed hold of her as she crashed her chest against his, her arms wrapping around his neck and her legs climbing up around his waist as their mouths melded and dueled in hot, wild kisses of need and victory.
He couldn’t wait.
The knowledge pounded through him with an animalistic roar. He had to reclaim her, right now, right there.
“I have to take you,” he gasped into her mouth as her back hit the cold cinderblock wall. “Right now!”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”
“Watch my back, babe,” he said roughly. It was the only thought he gave to the rest of the room.
He grabbed the waistband of her sweats and pulled them off her bottom.
He bared her just far enough and then withdrew his aching cock from his sweats.
Nick was aiming and thrusting in the very same movement, his instincts for fucking her like second nature now.
They both understood this was a reclaiming.
It would be hard and fast and as crude as could be, but it would stain them with each other all over again and everyone would know she was his. He was hers.
He enjoyed the hard counterforce of the wall, the immovable object allowing him to thrust deepest, hardest, and fastest. She oozed juicy and slick around him, her walls burning hot as his aggressiveness and dominance excited her beyond reason.
She stopped watching behind him when her head fell back so she could eject lusty moans in cadence with his every thrust. He struck her pleasure spot with ease, his huge cock and the erotic circumstances speeding her swiftly beyond her tolerances.
She began to come, squeezing around him so tightly it was like plunging up through a clutching fist.
“Bite me,” he hissed at her as his body burned violently for release.
He wished he could lose himself in her, in the moment, but there was too much danger around them.
Still, in spite of that threat, he could no more have resisted taking her than he could have talked reason into the Morphates who had wanted to take her from him.
Like so many things now, it was a demand he couldn’t ignore.