Dakotah's Reading

CHAPTER 7

Domino followed the scent to the edge of the woods, rage burning through him with each step. He stopped just inside the tree line, crouched, inhaled deeply. The Were who’d waited here was a dead man.

Behind him Cable stopped talking into his cell phone, the tiny click signaling that he’d closed it. “Fane says there was a man asking about Dakotah at the campground. His scent is Were. So far no one noticed what he was driving, but Kiziah’s still talking to the people she knows there.”

Domino nodded and stood. Turning so the field where the carnival had been was spread out in front of him, empty except for Fane’s sports car and his own. It surprised him that Dakotah had come back here. It gave him reason to hope that maybe she hadn’t decided to run. A grim smile settled on his face. Maybe she’d even decided to consult with the fortune-teller. That would have made his grandmother’s day.

“Just one of them?” Cable asked. “Male?”

“Yeah. Here for several hours. Long enough to piss on a lot of trees.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t take your car.”

Domino shrugged. “For all he knew, it was stolen.”

Cable nodded and they left the woods, heading to the cars. Domino tight with anger and worry. The scent was fresh. The picture it presented a movie he could easily view.

A lone hunter had waited in the woods. Fired when Dakotah arrived.

The dart had struck her but she’d had the strength and intelligence to remove it quickly. But then she’d fallen next to the car, the dart rolling underneath. The ground absorbing her scent, her heat. Telling him she’d lain there for awhile.

The hunter had made a phone call probably. To the man at the campground maybe. Or perhaps to another. That man had come, had stood next to Dakotah.

Domino knelt beside the tire again, hissing, reacting to the scent of fear lingering near where Dakotah had lain. They’d seen his mark on her. They’d known what it meant. And yet they’d taken her all the same.

They’d invited their own deaths.

Dakotah fought through the drug-induced darkness. Its cloying presence sickening her, reminding her of things she’d long ago forced herself to forget.

Nausea rolled over her and she closed her eyes. Held her breath. Willed herself not to heave. Not to let on that she was waking up.

The first wave passed, followed by long moments of choppiness, clarity and confusion, dizziness, of pulsing gray and black bursts of color at the edge of her consciousness, by heat, as though her blood was burning away the foreign substance in her body. When it was done she was panting silently, coated in a light sheen of sweat. But she was alert. Strong. Though not strong enough to escape the duct tape that bound her wrists behind her, then bound them again to ankles that had been similarly taped, her knees bent so that her ankles and wrists met in the center of her back.

Dakotah clenched her teeth to keep from growling and snarling in rage. From opening her mouth and howling with frustration. The wolf inside echoing her own horror and anger at being caught and rendered helpless by Victor Hale’s men.

Werewolves. The car reeked of human perspiration and flesh overlaid on the wolf’s scent. It smelled of steak and beer, cheap cologne and fear.

“I don’t like this,” the driver whined and Dakotah zeroed in on him, tasted his nervousness, knew he was afraid.

“You’re not paid to like it. You’re paid to forget about it.”

“The vampires—”

“Are Victor’s problem. We told him she was marked and he said bring her anyway. For all we know, he’s going to tell her that he forgives her for killing his son.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“That’s my story. And by the time Victor is done with her, there won’t be enough of her left to identify.” The man laughed. “Even if someone decided they wanted to analyze a lot of wolf shit. Nothing like a group hunt followed by a group fuck and a nice group feast to keep things in the pack so to speak.”

“Count me out.”

“You get invited. You participate. Or else you join her. There are guys who are horny enough to fuck a log when they change. You’ll do if they can’t get a turn at her. I’m hoping Victor invites me. She’s going to be a fighter. Has to have been to take out Anthony. He spent most of his time thinking with his dick, but he wasn’t a lightweight when it came to breaking bones and ripping fur.”

The two men lapsed into silence, their scents deepening in opposite directions, becoming more pronounced. One with greater fear. One growing heavy with lust.

Dakotah’s lips pulled back in a snarl. A silent, fleeting rebellion. But she was a fighter. And she knew better than most how sex could equal survival.

Kiziah and Cable had both said that men would be drawn to her. They’d made it sound as though it would happen whether she invited the attention or not. But she wasn’t going to waste time waiting for the pheromones to build.

She closed her eyes and thought of Domino. Pictured the scene in the woods, her hands bound as he knelt before her, worshipping her with his mouth. His tongue wicked as he slid it in and out of her channel, then up and over her clit. His lips and teeth tormenting the swollen knob until she was trying to fuck him with it, to shove herself down his throat as arousal seeped from her slit and coated her inner thighs.

Now that she knew what he was, she wanted him to bite her there. To take her to heights of ecstasy she would never experience elsewhere. She wanted—

The car screeched to a halt, jarring Dakotah from her fantasy and into a sauna of pheromones and lust. Car doors opened then rough hands were jerking her from the back seat, pawing at her clothing.

Fear came with the cold air. Not her own, but the weaker man’s. And yet there was arousal where there hadn’t been before. “We can’t do her by the side of the road.”

His companion grunted. “Take her legs then.”

She let them take her to the woods. Let them think she wasn’t fully aware of what they were doing. But with each step, she could feel some of the mad haze of lust leaving under the burden of carrying her and the fresh air.

She thought about Domino again, imagined his cock sliding back and forth across her cunt lips as they’d watched Cable and Fane make love to Kiziah. As Domino’s words had seduced her.

The fantasy played out in one part of her mind, compartmentalized this time, so she would be ready when opportunity presented itself.

The two men stopped just inside the woods, in a small patch of wet pine needles and trampled grass. A place that smelled of deer and rabbits.

Pain seared through Dakotah’s shoulders and thighs when they dropped her on her back, her arms and legs trapped and bound underneath her. The more aggressive of the two leaned over her, his breath hot and rank, his hands and fingers rough as he tore at her clothing.

She opened her eyes and trapped him with her gaze. Watched as his eyes grew more glazed, as mindless lust consumed him.

The wolf rose inside her, pressing against her skin. Urging her to free it, to let it rip their enemy’s throat out.

She’d thought to wait, suspected they’d free her ankles before they tried to rape her. She’d wondered if she could enthrall the men and then command them with her voice, guessed it was part of a vampire’s arsenal. But the wolf’s solution was simple. Efficient. Brutal.

Adrenaline surged through her. The same wild rush that preceded the change and yet the energy raced to her face, tingling, burning, the wolf prepared to claim only a part of her.

She’d never changed partially, never believed she could or been tempted to try it. But she felt the wolf’s determination. Its resolve. None but its mate would claim the body it lived in.

Dakotah licked her lips, watched as the man’s face went slack. As his tongue duplicated her movement, wetting his own. The stench of his arousal burning her nose. Adding to the pressure, the sense of impending change, the elongation into a snout, a muzzle full of deadly teeth.

The wolf drew itself into a crouch. Its focus entirely on their enemy as his face lowered. As his throat got close enough for an attack. When it sprang, Dakotah ceded control, her face burning first with the fury of the change and then from the hot rush of blood that poured over her.

It was over within seconds. Leaving her ribs and chest and abdomen sore from where his fists and knees had landed. Leaving her coated with blood and covered by death. The body heavy where it lay on top of her.

Leaving her alone. Still bound. But alone. The sight of the attack and the blood ridding the fearful man of his lust and sending him running.

Dakotah wriggled out from underneath the dead man and turned on her side to relieve the pressure on her shoulders. For a brief instant she contemplated changing. But the wolf’s body wasn’t flexible enough to endure the position she was bound in, and the pain would be excruciating unless the duct tape gave with the wolf’s struggles. Instead she wriggled and squirmed, moved along the body next to her and smiled with feral pleasure when she explored his jacket, using her nose and cheek and finding the outline of a knife. Using her teeth to work it upward until it dropped to the blood-soaked ground.

Savage victory filled her at the sight of the black-handled knife. At the sight of one of her knives.

She rolled over, working herself into position. The movements slow and painful, awkward. The effort to grasp the knife, to open it, to cut the tape, excruciating.

But she succeeded.

Dakotah stood and lifted her face to the sky. To the moon. The wolf inside howling. The woman reveling in the moment, in the fierce satisfaction of surviving.

When the wild emotion settled, she turned her attention to the corpse at her feet and went through the dead man’s pockets. Finding her second knife along with her cell phone. The sight of it bringing the question, What now?

The wolf’s answer was simple. Return to their mate.

Dakotah hesitated for only a second before agreeing. Before calling Cable, knowing as she did that it would be Domino who came.

It humbled Domino that she’d called. Sent an uncomfortable, unstable mix of emotions cascading through him. Instinct and alien heritage demanded that he assert his dominance and punish her for leaving the safety of the house when she knew he didn’t want her to go. And yet his heart demanded that he hold back. That he recognize the progress he’d made with her. She didn’t yet need him, not as he needed her, but she’d called Cable anyway, knowing that Cable would turn the information over to him.

He didn’t know what her life had been like before arriving at the carnival, but his grandmother’s words offered a clue. They rang through his mind and made his heart ache.

Her life has been one of famine and drought instead of abundance. Of harsh choices and betrayal.

That Dakotah had sought refuge in the carnival told him much. That she’d survived the last attack as well as this one, by her own courage and intelligence, told him more.

Resolve stiffened his spine. Anticipation stiffened his cock. She would no longer fight her battles alone. She was his. And he would let nothing threaten or harm her.

Dakotah stepped out of the trees when Domino entered the clearing. The wolf whined and quivered inside her, wanting to race to him. To rub against him. To lick at his lips in greeting. The woman stood her ground despite the tightening of her body, the slick swell of her vulva.

Domino’s nostrils flared. His fangs elongated.

She was covered in blood. The clearing reeked of it. And yet it wasn’t The Hunger that compelled him to close the distance between them, it was The Heat.

A hundred hearts could have thundered around them, but it was only hers that could hold his interest. He wanted to drive his fangs into her. To feed, not to sate a hunger of the body, but to sate one of the soul. He wanted to take her to the edge of human death and then fill her with his own blood, his own existence.

He’d never imagined how desperately he could want it, crave it, need it. “Never again, Dakotah,” he growled. “Never again will you be unguarded, unprotected.”

She licked her lips and he leaned in, duplicating her action, tracing the path her tongue had taken. Taking her scent and taste and leaving his own.

Dakotah shivered. The men she’d been forced to service, the ones she’d known even before then, the life she’d led—none of them had prepared her for Domino.

There were parts of her that argued against trusting him, against believing what he offered was real and not an illusion. But the wolf was stronger and the hum of the blood they shared too loud to ignore.

She licked her lips again, tasting him as she’d done on other occasions. Her heart expanding in her chest, the secret places inside spilling out, flooding her with a happiness she couldn’t deal with.

She stepped back, put some distance between them. Buried her hands in her pockets and took comfort in the cool feel of the knives.

His nostrils flared slightly, as though he could smell the steel, as if her retreat bothered him.

She tensed and met his eyes, knowing what she was risking and yet offering a challenge all the same. He surprised her by smiling. A flash of lethal fangs. “Do you think I want a mate with no mind of her own? No courage of her own?”

Dakotah rubbed her thumb over the handle of one blade, remembering how she’d woken up in the clearing alone after they’d run together as wolves. “Did you want a mate at all?”

“No. But now that I have one, I find that I want to keep her.” He took a step forward, his eyes daring her to retreat as he once again closed the distance between the two of them. “Now that I have one, I find I’m consumed with thoughts of her, with the need to know she’s safe.” His voice was low and husky, seductive. “I crave her in ways I never imagined possible.” His eyes flashed with amusement. “She’s The Empress to my Emperor. My World if the tarot cards are to be believed.”

Dakotah laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “You really did let Helki read for you.”

“I came back when I learned you were being hunted by the Believers and found you’d left the carnival. She’s a stubborn old woman. She wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone until I submitted to a reading.”

“You could have hypnotized her.”

“I could have. But to do so in that circumstance would have been a breach of trust and a great show of disrespect.” He leaned down, brushed a feather-soft kiss across Dakotah’s lips. “Another time, in a different situation, I wouldn’t have hesitated despite my ties to her. My…nature demands certain things of me.”

“So there are no promises?”

“What promises would you have?”

Dakotah turned away from him. Feeling lost. Confused.

Her thoughts went to those moments when she’d been braced against the chair. When she’d watched Fane and Cable with Kiziah, when she’d seen pleasure that was an expression of love, passion that sprung from the heart. When she’d hungered like a beggar at the edge of a feast. Felt starved as though she’d lived through a lifetime of famine.

What promises did she want? What promises would she believe?

Her life was full of lies and deceit. Betrayal and loneliness.

Only in the last year had she found it possible to trust even a little bit—though she’d held her secrets close.

“Who is behind these attacks on you?” Domino asked, surprised at how the play of her emotions stirred his own, caused his heart to ache and tempered his behavior. From the moment he’d learned that she’d been taken, he’d resolved to find her, to reclaim her. To not allow her out of his sight until the second and third exchanges had been made. And yet now… His grandmother’s words rang in his mind and echoed through every cell.

Her secret heart yearns for a man to prove that all men aren’t like those who have come before him.

It shocked him how desperately he wanted to be the man who proved himself to be different from the rest. How much he wanted her to come to him willingly. Not because of the wolf. Not because of the blood-tie. But because he was her choice.

“Tell me who’s behind the attacks,” he repeated, “and I will see that they end.”

“In exchange for what?”

He grimaced, realizing he should have seen the question coming. But he didn’t want to bargain with her. He couldn’t. It would be a lie if he told her she could leave him now.

“I will do it because I can and I must, Dakotah.”

He moved into her personal space and curled his hands around her forearms. Relief surging through him when she didn’t stiffen or pull away.

She licked her lips and he wanted to lean in and cover them. To savor her taste and explore her mouth with his tongue.

The night was melting away and despite the tension between them, he was hard, hungry. Aching.

Dakotah closed her eyes. Hearing Helki’s words.

The time will come when you will face the enemy who wants you dead, but you will not do so alone. Another change awaits you. This time at the hands of a man unlike any you have known before. A man who wants your life, not your death.

And like Sarael before her, she could feel the truth in them. A truth she couldn’t run from. A truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to run from.

“Victor Hale. His pack is in Atlantic City.” She opened her eyes and met Domino’s. “I killed his son and ended up a werewolf in the process.”

Domino shrugged. “What matters is whether or not he wants to join his son in death. The choice will be his.”

“And us?”

This time Domino did lean in and cover her mouth, his lips gently sucking at hers until she willingly opened them and invited his tongue into her mouth. “You have seen the effects of what you gained from ingesting my blood?” he asked when the kiss ended.

“Yes.”

“It will get worse until the second exchange is made. I will leave the choice of when the exchange is done up to you despite the fact that every instinct I possess demands we do it tonight.” He lifted his hand and stroked her cheek. “I can allow you that choice, but not the choice of whether or not you will remain with me.”

Dakotah nodded, admitting to herself that she wanted to be with him. She was tired of running. Tired of fighting. At least for tonight. “We can’t leave the body here,” she said just as Fane appeared.

He flashed a smile as his gaze swept over the dead man, then Dakotah’s blood-soaked clothing, before landing on Domino. “The trail of your courtship seems to be littered with corpses. How many more nights will I have to spend disposing of them rather than attending to the needs of my own kadine?”

“Don’t bother with this one at all,” Domino said. “Send for the padralls and have them deliver it to the wolves in Atlantic City, along with a message. Dakotah is mine. Regardless of whose blood changed her into a Were, it is only mine that matters now. Victor Hale’s hunt stops now with a blood pledge or a challenge.”