Tangle of Need

Chapter 40

HAVING SPENT TWO hours with Bowen, going over the advantages the artificial shields might present the humans in SnowDancer and in the packs of their allies, Riaz reported in to Hawke via a highly secure satellite comm link set up using equipment at a small SnowDancer office hidden in Venice. Though the office was unmanned except for when Pierce was in the city, it had multiple layers of security not even a teleporter could breach without setting off a silent alarm. Not that they’d find much except some expensive comm equipment—the call history was set to erase itself the second after a user signed out.

“Bo says he couriered Ashaya the final chip earlier today, after making the decision to let us in on the secret,” he told his alpha. “Have her test it as well as she can.” Riaz wasn’t certain how far the scientist could go without implanting it in anyone, but it was worth a shot. “No way I’m taking Bo’s word on the effectiveness of the technology.”

Hawke nodded, and Riaz could almost see him weighing up every possible variable before he said, “I also want to send Judd in, test the one Bo has in him.”

“I figured. Bo’s expecting it.”

Hawke glanced to the side, his head cocked at a listening angle. Turning back to Riaz after a couple of seconds, he said, “Judd won’t be able to get there until tomorrow night. You okay to stay?”

“Yes.” He turned to the woman beside him. “You?”

Adria nodded and spoke directly to Hawke. “I cleared two days just in case.”

“Even if you hadn’t,” Hawke said, the wolf’s laughter suddenly in his eyes, “Riley’s so happy right now, he’s granting leave to anyone who asks. I’m half afraid to turn around and find the entire den has left for the Bahamas.”

They all grinned at the idea of solid, stable Riley in a spin of joy. Riaz couldn’t imagine it happening to a better man. “He drive Mercy to violence yet?”

“Not so far, but I have popcorn for when the show begins.”

Signing off after another round of laughter, Riaz and Adria reset the office’s security and left via an ingenious passageway that spilled them out into a small but busy shopping district.

The walk to the hotel was quick, the streets around them swathed in velvet darkness broken by the twinkling lights from several eateries spilling warm conversation onto the street. “Dinner on the balcony?” he suggested as they entered their second-floor room.

Adria lit up.

And something in him gentled, wild tenderness invading his veins. “What do you want?” He picked up the room service menu.

TIPPING the waiter at the door, Riaz took the food out to the balcony himself. The temperature had cooled but remained comfortable, the night below dotted with pretty colored lights from a nearby restaurant, the golden-hued windows of another small hotel, the old-fashioned streetlights. Not far in the distance, water danced black and silken through a canal.

Pouring two glasses of wine, he handed one to Adria. “To Venice.”

She clinked her glass to his, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. “To Venice.”

It almost felt as if they’d made a vow … but to what, he didn’t know.

The food was simple but the flavor satisfied, as did the darkly romantic music lilting up from an evening busker. Wineglass in hand after they’d eaten, the wine midnight rubies in the muted light, Riaz watched Adria. She’d twisted in her chair to cross her arms on the curlicued metal of the railing, her face tilted into the soft wind and her ear cocked to the music. All her cares seemed to have vanished, the hardness created by life gone, until her beauty was exquisite, the lines of her face elegant and graceful.

This, he thought, this was who she was beneath the wariness and the hurt and the shields. A woman who, he suddenly knew, would tell him truths the other Adria never would. Dangerous though it was, this tightrope he was walking, he put down his wine and held out a hand. “Dance?”

A startled look, the gold streaks in her eyes vivid in the dark … her wolf coming to the surface. But she stood, flowed into his arms, one of her hands at his nape, the other locked with his own as he wrapped his free arm around her waist. She was tall enough that he didn’t have to bend, didn’t have to do anything but step closer. Their bodies aligned in sweet perfection, her head coming to just below his chin.

A faultless fit.

Drawing in the hidden notes of earthy warmth in her scent, he moved to the sway of the music, his blood hot, his body ready. But neither part of him was in any rush. He’d rushed too much with Adria, always been in too much need. Tonight, that need was tempered by the sexual pride of a dominant male, the desire to show her the lover he could be when his head wasn’t messed up.

The fact it wasn’t, even though he stood in Venice, where it had all begun, was because of her, this strong, guarded, complicated woman turned into a lazy-limbed goddess in his arms. He couldn’t quite understand how it had happened, how he had come to trust that she would never betray his secrets, but he did. So when she lifted her face to his, long fingertips stroking his nape, he bent his head and met her kiss halfway.

Hot and lush and open, it was a languid tangling of mouths. The softness of her, the curves, the lean strength, it all intoxicated. Her scent was in his every breath, and he wondered if she was becoming embedded in his skin, becoming part of him. It happened with lovers—he’d fought the change, not wanting another woman’s scent on his skin … but his wolf didn’t claw away the idea this time.

Painful as it was, the wild heart of him had accepted what could never be, though he couldn’t yet forget. But it wasn’t simply that, would never have been enough. Man and wolf both, they were fascinated by the enigma of Adria. The courage he’d witnessed under fire was only a single facet of a complex gemstone. Already, he knew her harsh, prickly surface to be a facade, the woman underneath one who understood SnowDancer’s most vulnerable … and who knew how to offer comfort to a broken male without unmanning him.

Spreading his hand on her lower back, he urged her closer. “Do you know what the words to the song mean?” he asked as the busker began to sing a song in Venesiàn, a language Riaz had made an effort to pick up during his time in Europe.

She shook her head, strands of ebony silk catching against his unshaven jaw. “It sounds beautiful, though.”

Nuzzling at her, he began to translate, their clasped hands held against his chest. Her sigh at the poignant emotion of the romantic ballad was eloquent, the lips she pressed to the dip at the base of his throat lush and inviting. It stroked a low, deep sound of pleasure from him, his body primed. “Stop that if you want me to keep translating.”

A teasing feminine chuckle. “I’ll behave.”

Riaz murmured the words to her until the song ended, the busker’s voice replaced by the sweet sounds of his fingers caressing the strings of his guitar.

“We should tip him.” She moved the hand at his nape down to curve over his shoulder, her breath blowing a delicate kiss across his skin when she spoke.

“Do you want to go down?”

She looked up, violet eyes lit by amber. “Yes.”

Fingers tangled, they left the room and made their way to the busker. The tip they dropped into his open guitar case made him grin. “Come,” he invited with a flourish of chords, “dance!”

Adria’s smile was shy. “Would you like to?”

Riaz had his arms back around her before he realized he was moving, the familiar cobbled streets of Venice made new by her laughter as she navigated the uneven surface high enough to have escaped the flooding, her fingers tightening on his hand.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured.

His wolf, so long trapped in pain and confusion, pressed against her, happy. Sliding his hand down her back, he danced with her under the half moon, barely aware of passersby until an older Italian couple, the woman’s hair a luxurious mink streaked with gray, her mate’s face lined with age and life, swirled in to join them.

The dark truth he carried inside him struggled to awaken in the face of their unspoken bond, but the night was too beautiful to mar with regrets. Man and wolf, he focused every part of himself on dancing with the captivating woman in his arms. He didn’t know how long they swayed in the sultry warmth, but when they drew apart, it was in silent agreement. Leaving the other dancers, they walked back to their room, the music following them upstairs.

He’d left the balcony doors partly open, and the gauzy curtains floated in the gentle breeze. Keeping the lights off to assure their privacy, he ran his fingers over Adria’s cheek, luxuriating in the warm smoothness of her skin. “No,” he said when she went to take off her T-shirt. “Let me.” Running his hand down the curves of her body, he drew up the soft fabric with slow anticipation.

SHE was being seduced, Adria thought, as Riaz gripped her hips and pressed a kiss to the bared skin of her breastbone, her T-shirt having crumpled soundlessly on the rich cream of the carpet.

“You taste like berries,” he murmured, kissing his way up the slope of her neck. “Ripe, lush, juicy.”

Except for when he’d asked about her fantasies, he’d never before spoken much in bed. The deep timbre of his voice hazed her mind, his callused skin on her own threatening to tangle what threads of reason remained. “You never told me your fantasy,” she whispered against his mouth.

He angled his face to rub his jaw delicately against her cheek, his thumbs shaping the vee of her hip bones. “A strong, sexy woman in my bed, mine to do with as I wish. You.”

“That’s a very dominant male fantasy.”

Sensual amusement in his eyes, he just looked at her.

She laughed, though her pulse was a staccato drumbeat. “Yes, why am I surprised?”

His kiss was as slow, as romantic as the night, the kind of kiss a man might give to a new lover he was wooing into his bed. “Let me,” he whispered again, unhooking her bra to pull it off and drop it onto her T-shirt before pressing her against him again, big hands splayed on her back in a way that shouted possession. “Let me.” A kiss pressed to the sensitive spot behind her ear.

Shuddering, she wove her fingers into the thick silk of his hair, willing to be petted and caressed and adored enough to surrender the reins to this man she trusted not to betray her faith.

It had been so long.

“Yes.” It was the barest whisper, but he heard her.

Fingers on her jaw, another gossamer kiss, his body so big and hot. “Hold on.” With that, he reached down and swung her up into his arms, carrying her to the bedroom … and to the bed made up with soft white linen on which some romantic soul had scattered rose petals. They were velvet bites against her back when he placed her on the bed, the faint light spilling in from the balcony the only illumination.

They were wolves. It was all they needed.

“We should turn down the bed,” she said, her eyes on him as he reached back to strip off his T-shirt, baring a body she craved even more today than the first time they’d shared the most intimate skin privileges.

“No sheets,” he said, kicking off his shoes and reaching down to tug off his socks with curt male efficiency. “I want to see you.” He came around to get rid of her boots and socks as quickly, before prowling up over her, his hair falling across his forehead. “You are so beautiful.” He sounded almost … surprised, as if he was seeing her for the first time.

Perhaps he was, because she didn’t quite know this lover either. The one who touched her with sensual fascination and wanted to discover her every secret pleasure point. “Riaz,” she whispered when he kissed his way down her navel, having tugged off her jeans and panties to discard them over the side of the bed.

“Mmm.” A wet kiss pressed just above her pubic bone, his hands pushing her thighs apart, the roughness of his skin a shock that made her quiver.

It was the most intimate of kisses, his patience exquisite. Her soft cries lingered in the air, shimmered on the fine layer of perspiration that turned her skin into a mirage. And still he petted her with a slow attention to detail that made it crystal clear that while she was the one who trembled and broke, this was very much his pleasure, too.

His fantasy.

The realization was more intoxicating than any wine. Surrendering to the sensations, she was still gasping for breath when he finally made his way up her body to nip at her throat hard enough to leave a mark. All the while, he petted her breasts, her abdomen, the tops of her thighs with hands both proprietary and demanding enough that she knew his control wasn’t as impeccable as it appeared.

She opened her mouth to his kiss, her legs to the jean-clad thigh he pushed in between. But he withdrew it after only a second, muttering, “Skin,” before rolling away and stripping off his clothing to return to her, a big, dangerous predator who had decided to pet her to pleasure such as she’d never before felt.

This time, he settled himself over her, his erection pushing aggressively against her abdomen. He allowed her to close her fingers around the heated steel of him, the skin that sheathed him paradoxically soft. She wanted to taste him, please him as he’d done her, but tonight, she was his to do with as he wished. It wasn’t in the nature of a dominant female to give in so utterly in bed, but Adria hadn’t ever felt so treasured by a lover. It threatened to make her afraid, but she refused to submit to the insidious emotion, refused to taint a night she knew would become a memory she’d cherish.

His mouth at her breasts, licking and tasting. His hand between her legs. His fingers sliding deep into her, his way eased by the molten heat of her need. She squeezed, attempted to hold him, but he withdrew … and then he was nudging her thighs apart and pushing into her with the thick intrusion of his cock.

“Let me,” he whispered once more, sliding one hand under her head to fist it in her hair, stroking her leg up over his hip with the other.

She could do nothing else, her body his instrument. Rocking home with a grunt, he claimed another kiss, this one hotter, more demanding, but continuing to hold that lazy edge that said he had all night to love her. And when he began to move, it was with the same languorous rhythm, their bodies locked in a slow dance that seared pleasure through to her toes.

Seduced … she was being seduced.