Play of Passion

CHAPTER 22

Andrew would’ve thought he was hallucinating, except that Indigo’s scent surrounded him on every side, the air currents cruel and capricious. Staring at her standing there so proud and so beautiful—so goddamn beautiful—he had to fight with every ounce of his strength not to power through the water and pull her down so he could slick his hands over her breasts, claim her mouth with his own.

Continuing to hold his gaze, she reached up and released her hair from its ponytail. The dark mass rippled down her back, over her shoulders. She swept it away, baring the black curves of the bra that shaped her body. Even from this far away, he could tell it was no flimsy, lacy thing. No, it was functional, supported her . . . and cupped her with breathtaking intimacy.

He’d held her when she was naked, even kissed her when she was naked. But no moment had felt as intimate as this. As he watched, his body rock hard with a sudden, furious arousal that made him burn, she reached behind herself and unhooked her bra.

No.

He dove under, deep enough that there was nothing but silence, nothing but darkness, the water gliding over his body in a caress of liquid satin, cold and sweet. Emerging only when his lungs protested, he shoved the hair out of his eyes to see that the shoreline was empty, Indigo’s clothes abandoned beside his.

A ripple of water against his side and he knew she was in the stone pool with him, her body as sleek and fast as that of a fur seal as she dove under and came up a few feet to his left. Body gleaming wet, she made her way to him, her movements slow and easy—as if she was afraid he’d disappear.

Her caution made him bare his teeth. “I’m not a fucking rabbit.”

“No, you’re a pissed-off male wolf,” Indigo answered, her pulse hammering double time. “Rule of thumb there is to move slowly and try not to get your throat ripped out.”

A low snarl vibrated in the sudden silence around them as the forest creatures froze. “I don’t need my ego stroked, Indigo. You made your decision. It’s done.”

“Drew—”

“Why are you here?” Blunt words, with none of the charm she’d come to expect. “Were you worried that one of your chicks was in trouble?”

“You’re not lettin—”

“Well, as you can see, I’m fine. So you can go back to the den with a clear conscience.”

He’d cut through the water and was pulling himself out before she could stop him. Used to giving packmates privacy, she went to close her eyes, then thought, to hell with it, and kept them open. He was built gorgeously, all fluid lines and supple muscle that hid a ferocious power and strength.

He didn’t look at her as he picked up his dirty clothes and left, but she knew he was aware she was watching. As he disappeared into the forest, she blew out a breath and, floating on her back, stared up at the jewel-strewn sky. “Well, that went well.” No one answered her, the forest denizens going about their business once more, uninterested in the fact that the rules she lived her life by were crumbling around her.

She didn’t know how long she remained in the pool, but when shivers began to crawl over her skin, she finally hauled herself out . . . to find a clean T-shirt and towel placed where her dirty clothes had been. Her heart gave a little beat of hope. Toweling herself down as fast as possible in an attempt to rub heat into her skin, she pulled on the T-shirt.

Earthy warmth and sunshine and laughter.

It was Drew’s T-shirt. Nuzzling her face into the shoulder, she inhaled deeply of his scent before wrapping the towel around her hair and making her way back to the campsite. The scent trail Drew had left behind led her up an easier path than the one she’d used to come down, and she reached the warm light of the laz-fire not long afterward.

Drew was lying on his back on top of his sleeping bag when she arrived, his arms folded behind his head, his body clad in faded jeans and nothing else. He’d made no effort to roll out her sleeping bag. In fact, even her dirty clothes had been packed away. The hint was as clear as a billboard sign.

Growling low in her throat, she ripped off the towel and dumped it on his pack. Then, driven by anger and the stubborn will that had created this mess in the first place, she walked over to straddle his fake-sleeping body. His eyes snapped open as her weight came down on his hips, her arms crossed over her chest.

She glimpsed a furious mix of raw hunger and pure rage in the blue of his eyes in the split second before he propped himself up on his elbows and said, “What? Riaz doesn’t know what he’s doing in bed?” in a voice harsh enough to strip paint.

“Is that an offer?” It was a sweet question as she shifted to cradle the powerful jut of his arousal between her thighs. He felt . . . Her stomach went all tight and twisty, her skin shimmering with a sudden, blinding heat that had nothing to do with the fire to her left.

His face was pure scowl when he responded. “I’m not looking to be the fucking booby prize, so no, it’s not an offer.”

Unfolding her arms, Indigo leaned down to brace herself with her palms flat on either side of his head. Drew fell back, his hands coming to close over her hips. “What are you doing?” Gritted out through clenched teeth.

Those hands, those fingers, they felt like brands on her skin, burning through the fabric of the tee to imprint her skin. “Trying to figure out why the hell I came all this way to get abused.”

His fingers tightened. “Yeah, why did you?”

“Maybe because I wanted to do this.” She nipped sharply at his full lower lip. “And this.” Sucking his upper lip into her mouth, she released it with slow pleasure. “And this, too.” Pushing her fingers into his damp hair, she swept her tongue inside his mouth in a brazen kiss that held nothing back.

A growl vibrated in his chest and it made her shiver. “That felt good,” she said, breaking the kiss to gasp in a breath. “Do it again when I’m naked.”

His hands slid down, then back up her thighs to close over her bare buttocks. “What are you doing, Indigo?”

But she stole the question with her mouth, raising one hand off the soft cushion of the sleeping bag to stroke against his cheek. The stubble of his unshaven jaw rasped over her palm, and she wanted to feel that same sensation on softer, far more delicate skin. Her thighs clenched around him, and he felt it, if his response was any indication.

Squeezing the flesh he’d palmed, he slid his hands down to her upper thighs, played his fingers along the highly sensitive inner faces just enough to make her gasp . . . then slid his hands right back to where they’d been. “Tease.” She broke the kiss, looked down at him. And saw something that made her bury her face in his neck as she stretched out her legs until she lay on top of him, his hands still on her bare flesh, his erection rigid beneath her thigh, his chest rising and falling in a jagged rhythm.

Her own breathing wasn’t exactly steady either, but she licked her lips, tried to talk. “This isn’t a game.” It came out soft, husky.

But Drew was a wolf, his ears predator-sharp. Shifting, he rearranged her with possessive hands until she lay on her back, with him braced on one elbow above her. His damp hair was messy from her hands, tumbling over his forehead, making him appear even younger than he was.

Yet the firelight flickering over his eyes told a different story. There were shadows there, echoes of pain and sorrow, loss and hope. He’d lived, this wolf, fought and bled for the pack, and she had no right to devalue that simply because she had four years on him. “No games,” she said again, daring to raise her hand to stroke his hair off his forehead.

“Then what?” he asked, allowing the touch, continuing to pin her with one leg thrown over her own, but still so coolly distant, still not the Drew she knew.

She ran her fingers down his cheek, along his jaw, stroking the heated silk of his shoulder. Her thighs clenched in silent, sensual response as the muscles flexed under her touch. “I’m willing to try.”

“That’s not good enough.” Hard words, his jaw a brutal line.

Her wolf growled at the challenge. Drew stared back in unflinching demand. “I want to try,” she said when he refused to break the deadlock. “I want you. But I don’t know if my wolf will accept what it is you want from me.”

It remained uncertain about a male who simply did not fit into what it considered the acceptable parameters for the mate it would take as its own—no matter how much he called to both woman and wolf. “I don’t want to hurt you.” What she didn’t add was that she was terrified he’d hurt her, that he’d be unable to accept the truth of who she was. That would betray too big a vulnerability. But one thing she did have to say. “I don’t want to make promises I may not be able to keep.”

Lifting his hand, Drew took the one she had on his shoulder and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her heart twisted sharply inside her chest, and it might’ve made her panic if he hadn’t shifted his leg at that moment—the rough caress of denim across her thighs made her hiss out a breath. “Drew.”

No smile, but he released her hand and placed his own on her ribs just below the curve of her breasts.

“You let me worry about myself,” he said into the charged silence. “But you have to be sure, Indigo.” She opened her mouth to reply, but he pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her. “I let you walk away with Riaz because I thought he made you happy.”

Oh, she thought, even as he continued with an unfamiliar ruthlessness in his tone, “I won’t have the nobility to walk away a second time if you decide you prefer another man. I’ll fight to the fucking bitter end and I won’t care about the consequences. I’ll take him, bloody him if I have to.”

Her wolf flexed its claws inside her mind. “If I decide against you,” she said, raising herself up on her elbows and tightening her stomach muscles against the impact of his thigh sliding between her legs, “I’ll fight my own battles.” She’d come to him because she’d fucked up, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t who she’d always been. “I don’t need another man to do it for me.”

“Good.” He kissed her.

Hot.

Hard.

Exquisite.

“Just so we understand each other.” A nip to her lower lip. Another to the curve of her neck and shoulder as he used his weight to press her down into the softness of the sleeping bag.

More than ready to dance with him, she wove her fingers through his hair. But he pulled away and was crouching on his feet several feet from her before she knew he’d gone. His eyes glinted night-glow in the darkness. “Run.”

Adrenaline pumped through her. Shifting into the same position opposite him, she angled her head. “Feeling frisky?”

His eyes, gone that beautiful, strange, wolf copper, followed her every minute stir. “Run.”

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose up, but it was a sign of anticipation, not fear. “You’ll never catch me.” It was a lazy taunt as she feigned right . . . then jumped over the fire in a leap no one but a changeling would ever make.

She heard him growl behind her, but she was already in the forest and doing everything she could to mess up her scent trail. She went through a shallow portion of the stream twice, doubled back, then retraced her steps before heading downwind. Cheeks pulsing with color, her heart thumping in her chest, she looked around.

Silence.

Too much silence.

He was close and the forest knew it.

Grinning, she messed up the trail some more, then found herself a hiding place on the other side of the stream—behind a bush hung with tiny red winter berries that were so inedible, even the birds passed them by. Looking over the top, she tracked the other side of the river using the wolf’s night vision.

There.

He flowed out of the dark, a wolf in human form. She saw him scent the area around the stream and disappear back the way he’d come. What was he doing? She knew he wouldn’t have fallen for that little trick—she wasn’t really trying to lose him. They were playing. The fun was in the chase.

And Drew was cunning.

Realizing what he’d done, she spun around just in time to see him streak out of the trees behind her. Her chest filling with laughter, she managed to get on the other side of the bush as he came to crouch opposite her and said, “I found you,” in a very wolfish tone.

She widened her eyes, looking beyond him. “Oh, no!”

Protectiveness built into his makeup, he turned to check on the threat . . . and she was gone, hopping across the rocks that forded the stream and up on the other side, her wolf laughing all the while.

Andrew hadn’t had this much fun in . . . ever. Chasing after Indigo as she took off, he let her get ahead then circled around to wait in ambush behind a small tree. She scented him, stopped, but they’d passed through this area so many times, she had no way of knowing if he was actually there or if it was only his scent that lingered.

He saw her bite her lower lip and knew the instant she decided to go for it. Snapping her back against his chest as she padded past his hiding spot, he nipped at the place in her neck that fascinated him and spun her free. He wanted to play some more.

She understood.

Throwing him a grin filled with pure delight, she pointed behind him. He turned, giving her a head start. He waited almost five minutes before beginning to look for her. She was hiding, not running this time. He couldn’t feel the vibrations of her flight beneath the pads of his feet, and the forest creatures were chattering quietly once more, her willing accomplices in offering a cover of noise.

Prowling over the ground in a swift half run that was so fluid it would’ve appeared impossible to human eyes, he caught a hint of steel in the air, a hint of spring rainstorms . . . and was ready when she “attacked.” Spinning while she was in midjump, he caught her against his chest, let her take him to the pine-needle-strewn earth in a tangle of limbs and hair. When she nipped at his jaw, he growled, but she laughed and repeated the provocation.

Pushing her hair off her face, he tugged her down until they were nose to nose, their wolves staring into each other’s eyes. When he snapped his teeth at her, she snapped back. His smile spread until it felt as if it might crease his face forever. Their kiss was as wild as their chase, as playful as their game.

She wrapped her arms around him and didn’t protest when he rose with her in his embrace, unwilling to do this on the cold earth, no matter that the pine needles provided a thick mattress. Bold and unashamed, she took his mouth with the passion of a woman who knew what she wanted . . . and the man she wanted it with. It was becoming impossible to have any kind of a rational thought, but he broke the kiss, put her on her feet by the fire. “Wait.”

Stretching her arms above her head, she teased him with the promise of her body as he pulled her sleeping bag open, unzipped it, and laid it on top of his. There, he thought, that would be softer on her back. She jumped to crouch on it even as he finished, having used the discarded towel to clean off the bottoms of her feet. Her playful mood still apparent, she said, “You’re wearing too many clothes,” and reached for the button at the top of his fly.