Crossroads

Chapter 8

The night was unusually warm and damp, humidity gathering on his skin like a blanket. Derek leaned against the tailgate of his truck and scrolled through his cell phone’s directory looking for Andrew’s home number. Nick had disappeared out the back door with Jackson a few minutes ago for what looked to be a potentially tense conversation, and every instinct in his body screamed at him to follow her. To protect her.

But she’d asked for privacy, and right now it was the best thing he could give her. The gift of his absence.

Which was the whiniest thing he’d thought all day. Fuck.

He stabbed the call button a little too violently, and swore again when the plastic casing creaked. But a moment later the call connected with a soft sound, proving he hadn’t done in this phone like he had the last one he’d tried to use during a temper.

Andrew answered on the third ring, sounding as crabby as he felt. “Is your cousin always unreasonable, or is she just that way with me?”

It wasn’t nice to be amused, but it didn’t stop Derek’s smile. “I don’t know. Has she started screaming about Cousin Arrest yet?”

“I take it that’s a familiar refrain?”

“Tell her she’s the one who thought working for supernatural PIs would be more fun than a video rental store. What the hell set her off? She was fine when I talked to her earlier.”

Andrew hesitated. “I might have told her she couldn’t get her stuff from the office until I could go with her. And she just started screaming at me.”

Screaming wasn’t an understatement, because Derek heard Kat’s voice clearly through the phone. “That’s because you joined the dark side, you impossibly chauvinistic bastard.”

A door slammed, and Andrew sighed. “On the upside, she’s not trying to climb in my pants anymore.”

“I guess not.” Thank God. “Sorry, man. If it helps, she’ll probably forgive you a lot faster than she forgives me.”

“Did you miss the part where she just compared me to Darth Vader?”

Derek fought another grin. “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I was Darth Vader in that insanely fucked-up insult.”

“Dude, in this metaphor, I’m Vader. You’re obviously Palpatine.”

This time he lost the battle with laughter, and it felt good to laugh about something. “Shit, man. Sometimes I forget why my geeky little cousin’s in love with your rock-climbing frat-boy ass, and then I remember you’re just a big fucking dork.”

The front door slammed open, and Nick stormed out of the house. She muttered harsh curses as she jumped off the porch, avoiding the steps altogether.

Derek’s laughter faded. “Hate to leave you to the enraged geek princess, but I’ve got to go. Hang in there, okay? She’ll get over it, I promise.”

“Take care, Derek. Tell Nick I said… Hell, I don’t know. Something reassuring.”

“I will. Thanks. I owe you one. Or two. Or twelve.”

“What you owe me can’t even be quantified, man. Later.”

Derek snapped the phone shut and shoved it into his pocket as he pushed off the tailgate. “Nick?”

Color flamed high in her cheeks as she growled and covered the space between them with quick steps. “I’m angry. I’m angry because it’s easier.”

He reached out and caught her shoulders in a gentle grip. “Easier than what?”

She looked up at him and laughed almost hysterically. “Easier than completely and utterly losing my shit.”

“Oh, Nicky.” She felt so tiny as he slid his arms around her, delicate and fragile. Even knowing that seeming weakness was deceptive, every urge in his body clamored to find someplace safe to hide her away from the world and the misery in it.

But it was her world. He didn’t know the first damn thing about protecting her from it.

Her teeth scraped his arm through his sleeve, and she stumbled out of the circle of his arms. “I’m sorry. I just—I’m losing it.” Her eyes had gone wild, and she dragged her shirt over her head as she kicked off her sandals.

Too late he realized what the power gathering around her meant. “Are you going to run?”

“I have to, Derek.” Her skirt billowed to the ground, and she tore at her underwear. “Come with me. Please.”

“Of course.” His instincts wouldn’t let him stay there while she ran off by herself. Derek tugged his T-shirt over his head, anticipation prickling along his skin. The heat that preceded a change stole through him, something hot and heavy and tinged with a lust fueled by Nick’s naked body.

Her wolf must have been close the surface, because she’d barely hit the ground when the air around her shimmered and then pulsed with energy that washed over him in a hot wave. She stood before him, a small gray wolf who shook and pawed impatiently at the grass under them. Derek yanked at his belt and kicked off his boots, itching with the need to join her.

The change was usually easy, but he’d never done it in front of Nick before. He was far too aware of his body’s reaction, of the fact that he was hard and aroused and shaking under the force of the magic. Closing his eyes, he sucked in a breath and reached for that flickering bit of power inside him, the animal waiting just below the surface.

It felt like magic because it was. Pleasure pounded through him and his skin tingled, and he crouched down and gave in to it. The most natural feeling in the world, because now he was free…

Instinct lifted his face, and the wolf howled pleasure at being let loose. When his exultant howl faded, he found Nick watching him. After a moment, she yipped and took off toward the woods.

Her scent enflamed him. Her challenge entranced him. Human concerns bled away as he launched himself after her, wanting nothing more in the world than to run at her side.

Nick’s muscles burned. She had to focus on breathing, on drawing in one gulp of muggy night air after another. That was exactly what she wanted, to occupy her mind with something other than the fact that, one way or another, her sister might die.

Even if she hadn’t heard him, she would have sensed Derek behind her, a warm zing of magic that dovetailed perfectly with her own. He felt solid, right, with his trampling steps echoing hers.

She knew he’d follow her until exhaustion claimed him, if it didn’t take her first. But it was too hot to run for long, and Nick stumbled over a fallen log and tumbled to the ground under an ancient oak tree.

Letting go of the wolf was easier with fatigue quelling her nervousness. Twigs snapped under hands and feet instead of paws, and she collapsed onto a bed of moss, her chest heaving.

Fire. If it had only been the pull of exertion, she could have ignored it. But the change burned through her and scraped her nerve endings into a vicious flurry of arousal. “Derek,” she rasped.

It took him longer to regain human form, but soon enough he crouched at her feet, his muscular chest straining under his panting breaths. He looked massive in the moonlight filtering through the trees, a hulking giant of tanned skin stretched over hard muscles. When he lifted his head, she caught a glimpse of eyes still glinting yellow.

His gaze caught hers and drifted down her body, the stare so blatantly sexual it stole her breath. One hand dropped to her ankle, and his large fingers encircled it easily. “Tell me to stop.”

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “No.”

Derek dragged her ankles apart and dropped to his knees between her legs. He tickled his fingers up her calves as he jerked his gaze to hers again. “Put your hands over your head.”

Sheer primal instinct drove her to obey. She licked her lips and exhaled a shuddering breath. “I need you.”

“Not as much as I need you.” His thumb traced along the inside of her knee, a small teasing caress that vanished when he moved his hands to the ground on either side of her hips. He loomed over her, his wide shoulders blocking out the light filtering through the trees.

His expression was wild. Feral. His gaze locked with hers, and he shuddered. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” The answer would have been the same even if she hadn’t been aching to feel his skin against hers, even if they hadn’t spent the last few days learning about each other. “With my life.”

A rumbling noise of approval started deep in his chest and escaped his lips as he lowered them to her breast. His tongue circled the tip in a teasing flick, and he drew her nipple into his mouth with another low noise.

Nick tried to stifle the cry that accompanied the sharp rush of pleasure, but it rolled out of her between clenched teeth. Her back arched off the ground, toward his mouth, and she barely remembered not to move her hands.

She felt the scrape of teeth, then the heat of his mouth disappeared. A low, masculine laugh rose as he nuzzled her stomach and dropped tiny kisses on her damp skin. “I can smell how hot you are for me.”

Something witty should have popped to mind, the perfect rejoinder to his soft, sexy words. “I want you so bad it hurts. I always have.”

He dragged his tongue up the center of her chest before veering off to nip at her shoulder. “And now you have me.”

Do I? The words hung in her throat as the throbbing need in her body grew worse. Her skin flamed wherever he touched her, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. “Derek, please.” Her fingers curled into the mossy earth above her head. “Let me have you.”

His teeth closed on her neck, hard and possessive, and he groaned against her skin and shifted his weight above her. One hand skated over her hip and slipped between her legs, and his fingers stroked through slick folds. He lifted his head and watched her, his face tight. “I want to see you come,” he growled a moment before his fingers centered on her clit.

She thrust her hips up with a whimper. He touched her as if he’d been doing it forever, as if he knew every inch of her already. Desire took over, and she felt him watching as she bit her lip and arched her head back. “Don’t stop.”

He did, but only long enough for his thumb to replace his fingers. Then his fingers shifted lower, easing into her as he groaned. “God damn it, Nicky. Come. Come so I can be inside you.”

“I need—” Her words melted into another desperate cry as the pinpoints of heat and pleasure scattered through her began to gather and tighten. “Kiss me.”

His mouth landed on hers, hot and a little rough. There was no hesitancy, no doubt. Just his tongue, sliding over hers before thrusting into her mouth, and his low groan as he hurried his movements.

Nick forgot to be still, forgot everything but Derek and the way he surrounded and filled her. She shoved her fingers into his hair as release swelled in her, then dug her heels into the ground as it took her. She managed to muffle her scream against his neck, but nothing could stop the shudders that wracked her.

“Yes.” Her body still shook when he pulled his hand away and the world tilted. Derek’s fingers wrapped around her hips and dragged her upright until she straddled his legs. “Like this, so I can watch your face.”

His words barely registered, and she cut them off with another kiss. A lingering hunger made her writhe in his lap, lifting and moving until the head of his cock nudged her entrance. She pulled back far enough to meet his eyes, whispered his name and started slowly lowering her hips.

He growled and dragged her the rest of the way down to him with a sharp tug of his hands. “Fuck, you feel so good.”

Nick could barely breathe through the vise of pleasure that squeezed tight around her, and she dug her nails into his back with a moan. “Whenever I saw you, I thought of this. Of making love to you.”

One of Derek’s hands skated up her back and wrapped in her hair, pulling her head back. “Is this making love?” he panted, the words low and feral. “Too hard, too fast…”

His voice was gentle despite the harsh tone of his words, and she sighed. “It’s you.”

He kissed the pulse pounding in her throat and drew his tongue over it as he shifted their bodies, settling into a tormenting, rocking grind. “No, Nicky. It’s you. You’re everything.”

She had to cover his lips again to silence the satisfied scream that had as much to do with the adoring look in his eyes as the pleasure set off again by the hard thrust of his body inside hers. Mine. There was no room for doubt here, stripped of everything that didn’t matter, with nothing separating them.

Derek rocked back suddenly. He crashed to the ground with a muffled grunt, her body still on top of his. His feet found purchase on the ground, and he rocked up into her with another strained noise. “Ride me, Nick.”

Her knees hit the ground, and the weight of her body drove his cock even deeper. For a moment, all she could do was shiver over him, lost in sensation, in possession. Then she began to move, need urging her to take up a hard, fast pace.

Over the past two months, she’d seen a thousand variations on guarded or wary flicker through Derek’s eyes. Now they were gone, replaced with an open, desperate longing that reflected her own, so deep it stole her breath. Large hands curled around her hips as he found her rhythm, just like they’d done it a thousand times before. “So good—so good—”

Heat blazed through her, and she’d have lost the rhythm completely if he hadn’t been guiding her hips to move. Blood pounded in her ears, and she only vaguely heard her own voice chanting Derek’s name.

Then everything stopped, closed in for one still, incandescent moment, and she screamed again as pleasure crested and crashed over her.

He whispered her name and thrust up, hard, and it was magic. Their energy meshed as easily as their bodies, power swelling between them until it felt like one glorious, continuous wave.

She collapsed against his chest, relishing his scent and strength as well as the mingled power that lingered around them. “That was… I don’t even know what that was.”

Derek’s voice was nothing more than a rasping whisper. “That was making love, dirty style.”

Her hands slid over his skin, slick with sweat and humidity. “That was mating.”

Underneath her, Derek’s body went rigid. “Shit.”

Nick froze. “What is it?”

“We forgot the birth-control issue again.”

The glow faded abruptly, and she pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. “We’re not always very good at that, I guess.”

He rubbed his hands up her back. “I didn’t think. God, when you touch me I can’t think.”

His words were reminiscent of the ones Michelle had given her to explain how she’d ended up pregnant. Nick laid her fingers over his lips. “It happens, a lot. Not to me, I mean, but in general.”

“Yeah. The math of mating.” Derek squeezed his eyes shut. “I think Alec left out a few variables when he tried to explain it.”

“What did he tell you, exactly? Besides the sexy-blind-date thing?”

“That chemistry was bad, emotions were worse, and both together would wipe out your higher reasoning capacity.”

Nick laughed helplessly. “That about covers it, actually. It probably lost something in translation, what with Alec’s amazing powers of understatement.”

Derek lifted his hand and stroked the back of her head, his fingers sifting through her hair. “I think the gist of it is that I’m going to need a lot of condoms and you might need pants that I can’t unbutton so easily.”

“Good idea.” She stretched and kissed him softly. “Though this time I think it was the shifting. Sometimes it makes me crazy.”

“Maybe it was…” His voice faded, and he tilted his head to one side. A moment later, Nick heard it too—the sound of underbrush snapping in the distance as someone or something approached them at a run.

Derek moved fast, coming to his knees and getting his body between hers and the noise. Nick gripped his shoulder with a noise of protest and moved up beside him.

The wind shifted, and carried with it a scent she recognized. Derek frowned a little, his eyebrows coming together. “Is that—?”

A sleek cougar burst out of the trees and skidded to a stop, paws slipping on the moss. Magic shimmered in the air before the cat regained her balance, and Mackenzie appeared, trembling and out of breath.

Fear seized Nick. “What happened?” Her own voice sounded far away and hollow. “Oh God, Michelle—”

“Not Michelle.” Mackenzie looked at Derek. “It’s Kat and Andrew.”