15 Reed #2
A blinding surge of want slammed into the base of my skull, magma roaring through my veins. The truck swerved hard toward the gravel shoulder, stones rattling against the floorboards, before I hauled the steering wheel back with my left arm and rammed the gear lever into second.
“Goddess,” I groaned, the sound tearing out of my chest like ripped canvas. “Avaline... I have magma in my blood. If I lose control in this cab, I won’t just touch you. I’ll tear your clothes into rags. I’ll bite your neck until you bleed.”
She pulled back. Her pupils were blown wide, ringed by brilliant halos of molten gold. Crimson flushed high across her cheekbones, a sheen of sweat glistening at the hollow of her throat. She was wild, lethal, and devastatingly beautiful.
She looked at me, her chest heaving with the effort of denial, the gold in her eyes flaring with quiet wonder. “You impossible man,” she whispered. “You really built an entire army out of my memory.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” I told her, dragging my eyes back to the dirt road as the timber closed in. “There was never anyone else. There never could have been.”
Before she could say anything else, the sky outside the windshield flashed an unnatural emerald green.
A sweeping beam of sickly light washed down the tree canopy, cutting through the pine needles in a slow, rotating cone.
“Drone,” I said instantly, years of hotshot survival reflexes snapping over the Heat. I killed the headlights in one hard pull. “Down.”
Avaline gripped the dash, her posture hardening instantly from feverish mate to the rigid spine of someone assessing a threat.
“The false shepherds. They’re hunting the sacred fire.
Reed, my wolf is awake. My First Heat is singing to the old magic—they’ll track the resonance of the mating call straight through the metal. ”
“Not while I’m drawing breath.”
I didn’t touch the brakes. Braking meant bright red lights in the dark. I used the natural grade of the road to bleed our speed, steering by starlight and muscle memory off the gravel track and into a deep granite overhang carved into the cliff face by an ancient landslide.
The truck rolled silently into the cold shadow of the stone. The rock ceiling swallowed us whole. I cut the ignition, killed the dash cluster, and yanked the emergency brake to its final notch.
Blackness slammed down over the cab.
Outside, the green beam crawled across the gravel road twenty yards away. The light was thick, oily, and humming with dead-magic vibration.
Avaline pressed her trembling hand against the dashboard to steady herself. “The overhang blocks their cameras, but that green light is tuned to the spark of a wolf in Heat. If it catches even a whisper of my aura, they’ll have our coordinates.”
“I have to blanket you,” I said, unbuckling my harness.
“Reed—”
“My blood is native to this mountain,” I said, turning to her in the pitch dark, the sickly green reflections dancing across the windshield glass.
“Founding Alpha magma. But this isn’t just scent, Ava.
The drone is scanning for the magical resonance of your Heat.
I have to lock my aura completely over yours.
I have to cage your magic inside mine like I did in the Dreamscape. ”
A ragged sound caught in her throat. She reached across the darkness, her fever-hot hands grabbing the heavy canvas of my shirt and pulling me toward her with surprising strength.
“I need the words, Avaline,” I insisted, my hands gripping the edge of her seat, trembling with restraint. “Twenty years ago, I moved you without asking. I am never laying a hand on your body without your command again.”
“Yes,” she ordered, her voice breaking with desperate need. “Cover me, Reed. Claim the space. Now.”
I moved.
The cab was cramped for my bulk, but I didn’t care. I dropped my frame over hers, pressing her deep into the worn foam of the passenger seat. I braced my left forearm against the window frame and my right hand against the steel seatback, turning my body into a solid roof of muscle.
I brought my chest down flush against hers.
The contact stole the breath from my lungs.
Her breasts, aching and heavy with Heat, flattened against the rigid wall of my chest, the peaks of her nipples burning like hot coals through the fabric between us.
Every slight movement of her body was excruciating torment.
Even through the heavy layers of my fire-resistant Nomex and her canvas trousers, the friction was agonizing.
She arched upward, a breathless whimper tearing from her throat as her pelvis rocked instinctively up against mine.
The movement pressed the thick, rigid length of my erection directly against the slick heat pooling between her thighs. The heavy seam of my turnout pants was the only barrier left, and my entire body screamed to rip it away.
My vision swam with the blinding agony of restraint. My obsidian wolf threw his massive weight against the bars of my ribs, roaring to tear the canvas, spread her legs, and drive his fangs into her throat while he claimed her.
The urge was so violent I tasted copper on my tongue.