Page 34 of Stealing Mercury (Arena Dogs #1)

Chapter Eighteen

Samantha pulled on the tent-like top Mercury handed her.

She considered making him hunt up her real clothes, but it hung low enough to cover all her girl parts, so she went with it and crawled off the pallet.

Padding quickly across the clearing, she slipped between the boulders where Lo had disappeared.

She saw him heading into the trees at the bottom of the slope and jogged after him.

At the tree line she had to slow down. Brambles covered the ground and she was barefoot. She grimaced as fine thorns pricked at her tender skin. Lo had to have heard her follow. He’d either allow her to catch him or she wouldn’t get near him no matter how fast she moved.

She stepped on a particularly nasty patch of underbrush and her foot snagged on a vine.

One minute she was falling right into the brambles, the next she was in Lo’s arms. He came from behind her.

He’d obviously circled around. She sighed.

Probably following her to make sure she didn’t get lost. She really was out of her element in this place.

He stood behind her, his arms a loose circle as she got her feet back under her. At her back, he sniffed.

“You’re injured?” His voice was full of concern as he turned her, his clawed hands carefully gripping her slender arms.

She wanted to put him at ease, but she couldn’t hide her uneasiness with him. “Thanks to you, no.”

His inky brows drew together and his nose made a cute little scrunch. “I smell blood.”

“I have a few scratches on my feet.” She could almost feel the distance between them ease as she watched him fret over her.

He was still scowling, but it seemed more adorable than threatening.

The tension was still there, but she could breathe easier.

“It’s nothing s-serious.” Her teeth had started to chatter and it was getting harder to ignore the cold.

In a move too quick to counter, he slipped an arm under her thighs and lifted her into his arms. “It was foolish to come into the woods without your boots... or a blanket.”

She expected him to carry her back to camp, but without another word he strode deeper into the woods. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but he might have misinterpreted her actions in following him.

“Where are you taking me?”

“There’s a clearing. It’s not far.” He didn’t look at her when he said it and she became very aware of the heat of his body along her side and the hand gripping her leg, just above her knee.

“Lo, I—”

He didn’t let her finish. “I assume you followed because you wish to talk.”

She was reminded of Mercury’s claims that her scent changed when her moods changed and wondered if that accounted for Lo’s seeming ability to read her mind.

“I’ll listen,” he said. “If it will ease your discomfort.”

Her discomfort? “Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She laughed. He was too smart to miss her sarcasm. Somewhere, buried deeply, Lo had a playful side. It hurt her heart to think of the pain that had buried that side of him so deeply.

Lo stepped into the clearing. The moon washed the small ring in a soft light, creating a silvery sanctuary.

The lingering aroma of flowers drifted in the air.

In the daylight, the spot would be full of color.

He set her on her feet in a patch of soft grass.

She stood her ground, not stepping back.

Choosing instead to reach up to caress his cheek.

“Please look at me, Lo.”

She waited until those devil eyes met hers.

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t know how to explain it right,” she said, the cold beginning to seep back into her. “I’ve always believed loving someone means ch-choosing to be only with them.”

His features were closed again, but he nodded, one sharp dip of his chin. “You love him.”

For one moon-drenched moment her heart stopped.

She loved Mercury.

Her heart pounded hard in her chest. “I do.” She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “I can’t believe I t-told you that. I haven’t even told him. I’m not sure I should. None of you realize how much things could change when we get back to civilization. When you get Hera back.”

“Dogs don’t often think of love or spend time trying to predict the future. We think of life and death. Mercury wants to spend whatever life he has with you and he knows you feel the same.”

“Presumptuous,” she said, but there was no heat in her voice and she nodded in acknowledgement.

He pulled her hand from his cheek and moved it to his chest, over his heart.

“You’re in both our hearts. I don’t have a whole heart to give you as Mercury does, but I have room there for you. I’ll keep my pledge. No matter what the future holds.”

Her heart ached for him. She wrapped her arms around his ribs and pressed her cheek where her hand had been.

His skin smelled of the spring fed river and the night.

His arms came around her, pulling her more tightly against his muscular frame and his warmth.

They stood that way as she listened to the steady thud beneath her ear.

One of his deadly hands wove through her hair and the other stroked her back with more gentleness than she thought him capable.

Her body responded to the heat and shelter he offered.

She sucked in a breath. It filled her lungs and pressed her breasts more firmly against the wall of hard muscle.

It sent a jolt of pleasure to her feminine core.

How could she want him so much when she’d just admitted she was in love with Mercury?

She tried to will away her reaction, but she refused to push away from him, unwilling to shatter the peace they’d made.

Her hands stroked the lean muscles of his back, fingers hesitating over the scars that told the story of a life lived in hell.

They’d named him Diablo, the devil, but they’d failed in their attempts to turn him into his namesake.

He had anger, but he also understood tenderness and loyalty. He’d never betray Mercury.

But Mercury wouldn’t see their having sex as a betrayal.

He wanted her to take away Lo’s pain. He wanted them to bond.

She wondered if Lo, with his heightened senses, could smell the arousal dampening her thighs.

“You can’t possibly want me,” she whispered.

“I’m not sure you even like me.” The words slipped out before she could think better of it.

His body stiffened in response. The hand in her hair fisted tight, pulling her head back as he gripped her ass to pull her off her feet and up his body. The evidence of his desire was hard and undeniable and pressed nearly where she needed it.

“I want you,” he said. “More than I have wanted anything since... I haven’t fucked a female for my own pleasure in a long time.”

She should probably be offended that he might want her just to ease his horniness, but her body responded to the longing and hunger in every syllable.

And she knew behind his words there was a truth he was unable to speak.

She wasn’t one of the greedy women who’d used his body with no care for the man.

He’d chosen her. She was something he wanted for himself. The knowledge was intoxicating.

She wrapped one leg around his hip, instinctively seeking the pressure she needed to appease her heated core.

His hands shifted and he adjusted her, drawing her legs more firmly around him and rocking his restrained cock against her aching pussy.

He buried his face in her neck. Licked the pulse point. Growled deep in his chest.

Samantha moaned and ground against him.

Lo’s hands shifted again, pushing aside her shirt to squeeze her bare ass.

He boldly traced the valley with the fingers of one hand.

His hands were firm, but there was no prick of claws as he touched her.

Her heart raced as one careful finger dipped slowly into her wet flesh, but in that moment, she trusted him with the most secret parts of her.

“I want to taste you,” he whispered. “I want to taste his seed on you.”

She shivered at the thought. Cringed at the reminder of the man she loved. Was she really doing this?

“Lo—”

He nipped at her lips, silencing her protests as he carried her across the clearing and to a blanket stretched across the ground.

When her eyebrows shot up, he explained.

“This is where I went earlier when Mercury was fucking you.” He lowered her to the blanket then traced a finger across her forehead, easing the signs of a frown.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be glad of this.” He grinned—the first happy expression she’d seen on his face.

“He’ll be glad as long as you’re well pleasured and there is no doubt of that. ”

She believed his boast. His face was all arrogance.

He was sure of his ability, but there was no malice in that knowledge, no intent to use it against her.

If her desire for him had been nothing more than lust she could have left him there and gone back to Mercury.

But it was more than lust. She didn’t know if that made it less or more of a betrayal, but she let the tender feelings bubbling up inside her tug the corners of her mouth into a smile.

Lo dropped to his belly between her legs.

Large hands gripped her thighs, pushing them wide and preventing any attempt to thwart his purpose.

He turned his head and licked at the soft skin over trembling muscle—a long, wet lap of his rough tongue that had her squirming.

He tended to the other thigh in the same way, lapping away the evidence of her earlier bout of lovemaking with Mercury and the cream of her more recent arousal.

“You taste as sweet as you smell.” His words rumbled up from somewhere deep in his chest. The next swipe of his tongue burrowed between the lips of her sex and stroked directly across her clit.

Lightning shot through her, bowing her body.

The next lick of his tongue followed the same path, sweeping aside all thought.

The only thing in her mind was the wicked stroke of Lo’s talented tongue and the vague thought that she needed to talk to him about the proper pace of foreplay.

But maybe not. She felt tender and swollen, needy and hot.

Relentless, he stroked her to the edge of orgasm.

And then the pressure was gone. She wanted to weep at the pain of the loss.

She blinked him into focus. He hadn’t gone far.

He stood in the moonlight, fighting his way out of the tight pants to bare all of his beautifully masculine body.

His cock stood up, hard and full. The tip shimmered with pre-cum and the length jerked in anticipation of fucking her.

He dropped back to the blanket. He turned her to her hands and knees then thrust into her.

Already wet, her flesh provided no resistance.

In that one stroke he was fully, deeply inside her.

He withdrew and slammed home again. She screamed her pleasure.

He wrapped his hands around her hips and set an unyielding pace, fucking her hard.

He was wild and reckless and she didn’t want anything else in that moment.

The hard pounding shook every cell in her body, without providing any hope of relief.

It was as if he needed to fuck out his pent-up pain—something that could give them both searing pleasure, but not release.

Release was not something he wanted for this tortured part of himself.

As his cock surged in and out of her, he found all the dark corners of her soul.

Places that denied her any pretense of fucking Lo because it was what Mercury wanted.

Places where she was forced to acknowledge she wanted Lo only for herself and she gloried in the wild freedom of the physical.

Later she would worry over what he’d touched inside her.

What she’d allowed him to uncover. But not now.

Not when the pleasure was a blaring horn in her head, drowning out any rational thought.

When he finally slowed, her arms were shaking, her thighs trembling. Panting hard, he leaned over her back and wrapped one arm around her hips. He held her tight against his groin as they both took a moment to catch their breaths.

Lo rotated his hips in one sensuous grind, then eased out of her.

She wanted to protest, but couldn’t yet form her thoughts into anything coherent.

She was far more compliant than she intended as he repositioned his knees along the outside of hers and slipped his cock back between her thighs.

But he didn’t enter her, instead he slipped the head of his cock against her clit.

She gasped. Her back arched and she threw her head back.

His cheek pressed against her temple as he moaned. Her thighs were forced tightly together by the position, making a tight, wet channel for him. He thrust against that sensitive nubbin in short strokes that kept him surrounded in her slick heat and supplied her with a constant, unbearable pressure.

Instinctively, she started to fight to free herself, but he only wrapped more tightly around her, controlling her and the need to fight died away as pleasure stole her will and left her limp and stunned.

Just as the world went black at the edges, she heard him throw back his head to howl and felt the hot splash of semen against her belly.

In the distance, a second howl joined Lo’s throaty bay... Mercury.