Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 13

Then he held her still, tilting her buttocks up slightly so that he could enjoy the sight of his thick, swollen cock slowly forcing its way into her slick passage. Finally. His skin tightened in pleasure when she moaned, a long sigh of wordless satisfaction and mingled pleading while he slowly impaled her. He halted briefly, closing his eyes as her walls clamped hard then released around him, the beginning of her orgasm trembling through her, massaging bewitchingly at his rock-hard length. So, so good.

"I was so right," he groaned, holding still, trying to hold out. "You are so hot, and tight, and wet. Soft. Indescribably perfect." Her passage contracted again to his words, the scent of her arousal pulsing into the night, increasing the burning tremble along his skin as he struggled against the need raging in him. He nudged his cock a little deeper, felt the flash of her igniting, almost there, and began to pump soft short thrusts into her, pushing her higher, higher, his. His rhythm.

His wereem yowled her need plaintively, rearing up and back against him as she tried to push faster, harder, deeper. Mac growled and ploughed deep into her, grabbing her hips and slamming her buttocks back against his thighs as he thrust home. Mine. He stilled, enjoying her squirming, gasping, soundless pleas, fighting for more. Then he held her still as he slowly, steadily withdrew to the very tip. She was trembling on the brink, struggling against his grip, begging, growling with need, and her scent was glorious. So close. He thrust hard to slam home again. Her passage clamped as his thick cock penetrated, the ripple of her pleasure quivering at the edge of explosion, halting as he reached full depth and pressed hard against her inner walls. He looked down at her, his breath hoarse as he strained to hold back. Then he melted, a surge of delight trembling through him, pulsing along his straining cock.

His mate's head was down, drooping, parted thighs trembling in want, and she was just waiting, waiting for him to withdraw and thrust again. Awaiting his pleasure. Mac sighed and bent to kiss her shoulder gently, his cock swelling in painful arousal. His picchu had relaxed into the wolf: surrendering completely now, accepting that the fight was done.

Mine, he told her.

Her scent in response.

Mac felt his eyes glaze over, his own wolf beginning to engulf him, and he began to withdraw and thrust slowly, fully, enjoying the glide of her sweet slick flesh over his aching length. The walls were tightening, tightening to his slow, relentless rhythm. Delicious. Then pleasure flashed along his skin when he felt her explode into exquisite release, her skin flaring heat and colour, slick liquid gushing around his buried organ while the walls of her pussy shuddered in sweet, tight surrender.

Too much.

Mac groaned, lifted back onto his knees and grabbed her hips so that he could pull her off and slam into her properly, forcing the rhythm fast, faster, aching to drive as deep as he could. Then abruptly he rolled her onto her side, lifting her upper leg to press it back against her shoulder, thrusting hard into her with a groan for the new angle. He bent down and sucked the nearer breast hard into his mouth, tonging the nipple, and heard her aching cry as she arched suddenly and a second rush of liquid bathed his rampaging cock, muscles sweetly milking around him. The tingling rush shot down his spine but he jerked out before it hit, breathing harshly, trembling.

Gemma groaned out a pleading sound.

He rolled her over onto her back, growling in need, swiftly parted her legs and pressed both thighs back hard against her chest where she held them while he slid his hands under her knees to close around the beautiful, soft breasts while he mounted her again, panting hoarsely. The tingle was back on the second thrust deep into her wet softness, and, straight-backed, he squeezed her breasts hard, pulling on them for purchase while he thrust desperately deep while the release rushed at him. More.

He growled and began to stab hard, short thrusts down into her melting passage, the angle perfect, the yielding softness sucking at his control, the sweet moans as he roughly gripped her bounteous mounds heightening his pleasure to furious need. A third scream of release leapt from his little wereem's throat as she arched her back and burst into bucking ripples of mindless pleasure; his eyes blanked over and the fire flashed down his spine, the rippling massage of her passage sucking the amassed seed in a long, exquisite series of jolts of pleasure from his aching balls. His thumb and forefinger were clamped hard across nipples while he melting under the shuddering bursts of release swamping through him, his buried cock swelling hard to pulse spurt after spurt into her rippling pussy.

Panting, panting, hoarse, rasping breaths as he slowly released her breasts and leaned forward on his arms to lift his weight off her. Her eyes were glazed, glittering black, unseeing as she continued to shudder in endless little ripples of delight under him. Lost.

God he never got enough of her.

Gemma snuggled up inside Mac's arm and flicked a pebble into the glistening dark waters of the lake, leaning dreamily against her mate's shoulder as they sat together on the rock on the shoreline, their bare feet sticking out over the edge above the water. His back was resting against a tree, and she was, as usual, resting against him. Her clothes, such as Mac had managed to retrieve, were skimpy and torn after their chasing through the forest, not much protection against the cool night, but she had a big furry blanket handy. OK, so the bearer was a bit hard and muscular but there were compensations.

You weren't complaining about me being hard and muscular earlier, taunted Mac.

The bearer is also quite useless when it comes to respecting private thoughts.

My deliciously wanton mate is useless at holding her shields together under sensual assault, replied Mac cheerfully.

"Need more practice," whispered Gemma, and felt him smile as he cuddled her closer.

"I'll - um- enrol you in an intensive training session soon," promised Mac huskily, his voice giving new meaning to the verb. Gemma groaned at the atrocious pun. "You're a wereem; you'll heat to the rut within the next month at the latest." Her mate's voice was a deep, joyful breath directly into her ear, his words whispering along her sensitive, sated skin.

Gemma's blood pulsed in delight, skin tingling with an almost unbearable shimmer of feeling, although her aching, exhausted pussy throbbed protestingly: Not right now.

Her mate was exuding happiness, relaxation, and she could feel the shimmer of delighted anticipation rising off him. No. But soon, he replied.

In the middle of a war? she queried doubtfully. He had no time for this. They had no time for this.

We're not at war currently - and we'll just have to take time out. That's why I'm training up Hakan as my second with the Whites; Karl is used to leading the Mackelds when necessary.

Then Mac continued aloud, changing the subject: "So, picchu. Anything happen today while I was out? Apart from lots of delightful scheming." He turned his head again, nuzzling and kissing her ear, and whispered, "Thank-you."

Gemma sighed and tried to drag her unwilling mind away from her tingling ear, the feel of his breath on her neck, the muscular, warm chest rising and falling behind her where she sat perched on his right thigh, and turn it back to science. When she finally managed, she felt a surge of familiar irritation.

"I've been looking back over all our results - what we have found out doesn't make sense," she grumbled, feeling the I-am-so-sick-of-this frustration surging in her. At least she'd get a break from this everlasting frustration when she came into heat. Then she would do nothing but laze around in her rug and let Mac feed her. Oh, and other things. The antithesis of frustration. Gemma smiled. Despite the exhausted, sated lethargy plastering her lazily against her mate, her blood was beginning to smoulder again in response to her thoughts.

"How doesn't it?" asked her mate softly.

Gemma blinked, and tried to remember what he was talking about. Then she remembered and another flash of irritation shot through her. She hauled her thoughts together again, reeling in the errant fingers which were sneaking south through his fur, and settling back against him, blinking her eyes to clear her mind.

Think.

She drew a long breath and rattled off the gist of the mismatching results of the myriad of skin and hair tests she'd evaluated, a habit she had fallen into with her mate every evening they could. It cleared her thoughts and he often put forward helpful comments.

They had found a variety of pieces of the puzzle, but couldn't fit them together. Mac, her current control until she received another packet from the fort, was carrying some of the elements she thought were attaching the scent-masking to the ex-Grey adults, but his scent wasn't affected. The cubs weren't carrying them, but their scent was still fainter than it should be. The mismatching pieces were driving her up the wall.

Mac sighed a long, deep breath, and his arm tightened around her waist.

"Maybe we're looking at this wrong, picchu," he grunted, his voice soft. "Maybe it's not the drug we think it is."

"Grey is desperate to get it back, we are definitely on the right track," protested his mate. Her mind flashed with rage at the worry over Bethan and Kate; what was happening to them. She had to work this out.

Mac soothed a gentle palm across her skin. "We definitely have something he will kill to stop us getting," he agreed.

"That masks scent," added Gemma.

"For a few seconds," interposed Mac calmly. "We always knew that silver masked scent, but you say that it's the barbiturates and other compounds which have that effect. Well, silver isn't a binding agent, but it's present in all - which makes no sense at all, if you already have a mask to scent."

"I'm the chemist around here!" she growled sitting angrily upright on his thigh and twisting to scowl at him.

"I'm quoting the chemist," her Alpha returned, unperturbed. "What if the reason you can't work out how to get from A to B is because the map you've got only covers A to C?"

"Oh, quit with the map metaphors," grumbled Gemma, turning and leaning back against him again while she thought. "I did not get us lost."

"No, because I was here with my infallible nose," replied Mac.

"Infallibly smug nose," muttered Gemma.

"You seem to confuse the words 'smug' and 'right', picchu," he murmured teasingly.

"You seem to have no concept of the term, 'modest'," she retorted, the corners of her mouth turning up in a faint smile as she rubbed her head against his shoulder, telling her brain to think. It was hard after the night they had shared. She just wanted to melt back against her mate and purr.

"Mo-dest," he enunciated quietly, slowly tasting the word, as though an alien concept. Gemma treadled her claws into the arm snuggled around her waist and her wolf bit her earlobe gently in retaliation, his lips smiling.

"Let me think," she grumbled, and her teasing mate stilled underneath her.

Gemma stared out across the dark waters of the lake, distractedly admiring the gleam of the stars on the gentle swell. Mac sat silent, chest rising and falling peacefully at her back, his cradling arm warm around her waist, and he turned his head to rest his cheek against her hair.

So if it wasn't a scent-masking drug she was testing for, what was it?

Having exhaustively discussed the range of ways of concealing scent with Valerie, Gemma had been a little blinkered to any other possibility.

"You said that there is a clear pattern of the contaminants in the hair of the adults, and a different set, faint, but visible, in the cubs," mused Mac.

"Yeah, but some of the adult ones, you also carry," murmured Gemma. "Background pollution that obviously any wolf picks up leading a normal wolf life, so it can't be those."

Mac tensed violently. His skin shuddered and his arm was a vice, clamping her to his side convulsively.

Gemma felt the wild feeling inside her explode to its feet: quivering, alert, poised. But instead of fighting it automatically, she listened - the black anger wasn't bound with the wildness, her mind was instead smothered in a reaching, calming, settled feeling that rolled through her from nowhere. A desire to calm. She felt her fingers stroking gently over his, where they were clenched around her left hip, her fingertips tracing the faint hairs dusting the backs of the tense fingers.

Mac?

His mind was barricaded behind an impenetrable, fierce shield-wall, separated from the world. The lonely echo of distance sank into her senses, the shield of distance within him, the distance which he had always held around himself. Or which he had used to hold around himself, before they started this.

The scent rising off him told her of his internal revulsion.

Gemma was smothering under an internal keening, the fierce pull of the wildness within her, the dragging sense that she needed to comfort her mate submerging all sense of self. A different kind of blankness, but just as frightening until she let go and allowed it to just turn her to wrap her arms around him and settle under his chin, her senses smothered under the blanket of calm. She cuddled close, cradling him, to wait with more patience than she had thought her internal wolf had.

Several long, silent minutes passed. Mac stayed deathly still, something inside him raging.

Eventually she heard him swallow, and another deep sigh. His arms tightened, and he curled around her, burying his nose in her hair, breathing deeply, quivering lightly in tension as he released the iron control he'd clamped down on himself. Gemma had a sudden, vivid memory of Marsh scenting his daughter's hair to help him retain control, and felt a shiver of pride as Mac did the same, with her. Love and trust. She gently drew her mate's hand up until it was cupped inside hers, nestled between her body and his, and kissed the palm.

As her lips explored, a memory drifted idly to the surface of her mind, a memory of the sheer pleasure of loving his lips joyfully when they had finally rolled together in a sated heap earlier, of pressing a light, gentle flurry of kisses over every inch of his face to reward her mate for catching her oh so satisfyingly.

The lips against her hair quirked, and Mac took another deep sigh.

"Maybe," he said, and then stopped. He cleared his throat, sighing for a third time, and she felt him relaxing his control further, settling back into himself. He pulled away, sliding around in front of her and rolling onto his back to rest his head in her lap. Gemma sat up, cross-legged, and began to run her fingers through his tawny mop of hair, massaging his scalp gently, caressing, tracing the beloved features.

"I thought I would have healed completely by now, regenerated the hair and skin," he said softly, his clear, star-deep eyes meeting hers staunchly. "But maybe we had better ask Valerie's volunteers, or more Fealden wolves, to be your control, Gem."

Mac added a last, barely audible phrase, his eyes now distant, looking past her shoulder, "I was experimented on by Grey many years ago."

His mind was calm, but the door to his emotions was tight closed, holding back she knew not what explosion of feeling, memories. Gemma shuddered, then looked down into his still face, her fingertips sliding over the bones and the soft skin. She bent and kissed his nose softly. Cheek. Chin. Along the line of his jaw. He didn't need her anger just now.

Light, gentle brushes of love. She could hear the lapping of the waves against their rock, the light rustle of the wind in the trees. The water scent was clean, clear, this far from the city, and the pine-fragrance was strong. The only other scents were herself and her mate, and she could feel and sense him relaxing , enjoying the warm tingle of deep feeling that welled through her with each touch of her lips on his warm skin, her mind adrift, holding apart the burning anger.

"Well, we were going to kill Grey anyway," murmured Gemma eventually, almost as an aside. Mac pulled her head down to kiss her lips.

"It was a long time ago," he said. "I'd pretty much forgotten it, it wouldn't have occurred to me - I didn't realise it might make a difference in your tests."

"But you have no loss of scent."

"No, that wasn't what they were trying to do. They were trying -," Mac stopped. He slowly curled to sit upright, stomach muscles rippling effortlessly, thinking furiously.

Gemma moved to sit cross-legged beside him, staring, waiting. Crossly she twitched her thoughts away from the molten flash of bewitchment woven by watching the smooth, easy strength of that hard, flat stomach pulling him upright, and distracted her internal wolf by focussing on the bleak, barricaded look in her songmate's eyes as he sifted through vile memories. Then she responded to the much stronger urge to slide closer and hug him again.

"They?" she breathed quietly, leaning against him.

"Nicolas and his father," Mac murmured absently, his arm slipping around her waist. Gemma felt an ache growing behind her eyes, the fiery wish to kill trembling through her, but she breathed deeply of her mate's scent, concentrating on what he needed - her, sane, listening, and the feeling subsided.

Blazing green eyes stared off into the night for a long time, and then turned to look down into hers, the scorching feeling humming across the short distance between them. Her heart jolted at the fully alert, intense scent exuding from her Alpha, the power raising the hairs on her skin.

Looking back, and knowing what I now know, I think," her mate breathed, "That they were trying to control me."

They stared at each other, breathing hard.

Gemma opened her mouth. Closed it again. Opened it, and whispered, "The cubs don't carry what you have. Only the adults."

"I - yes, that makes sense," replied her mate quietly as he thought. "It also explains why the Grey cubs were only isolated until just pre-pubescent. Before its shiele develops, a young cub is as vulnerable to control as you, picchu; predominantly protected and controlled by the parents, but any strong adult can prevent a whelp from doing anything stupid. He would have no reason to drug the cubs."

Then Mac blew out a sudden long, harsh sound, "No wonder Grey's taking such risks to retrieve the drug; before, you had no idea what it did. Now, with both cause and effect clear in front of you..."

"I might be able to map out the route from A to C," Gemma finished, and unwound to her feet, quivering with excitement. A vague gem of knowledge flashed through her and she added, "Humans use barbiturates to control fits too - they affect the mind."

"My beautiful little genius," responded her mate, eyes gleaming with burning, fiery pride into hers as he rose beside her. Burning his pride in her. His hands suddenly slid up her back to clasp her head firmly, urgently, and he bent over her to crush her lips under a passionate kiss, bending her back over his arm.

"C'mon," said the Alpha when he finally lifted his head. He steadied her breathless sway on suddenly wobbly feet, a hand sliding down to engulf hers and tug her off the rock.

"I take it controlling you was a non-starter," laughed Gemma as she stumbled along through the heather, trying to keep up with him on her still shaky legs, feeling the delicious, sated ache between her legs throbbing to the urgent power shimmering off him.