Tempting the Beast

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Dayan had her. He wasn’t touching her, but he didn’t have to. His face was a mask of fury, his lips pulled back in a snarl, his incisors showing as he growled out another warning at her. His eyes seemed to glow, his body tense and ready for attack. Merinus was on the ground again, scooting back desperately as he advanced on her.

“Callan,” her scream ricocheted around the clearing as Dayan reached for her.

Callan acted on instinct. He saw the intent in Dayan’s face, the twisted fury and hunger that raged in the other man. He launched himself at him, a savage snarl erupting from his throat as he tackled the other man.

Callan had known killing rage only one time before. The haze of blood before his eyes, the need for death in his tense muscles as he threw Dayan away from Merinus, the savage snarl of fury should have been enough to warn the other man. Instead, Dayan rolled to his feet, facing the proclaimed head of the pride, snarling in defiance.

Callan narrowed his eyes, seeing the blood in Dayan’s eyes, and knew the time had come to reassert his supremacy within the Pride they had established.

Merinus watched in growing horror as the other man challenged Callan. He was younger, both men were in superb condition and ready to fight.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered, coming to her feet, backing away slowly.

“Taber,” Callan called out, never taking his eyes from Dayan. “Don’t you fucking touch her.”

Merinus looked around desperately. The quiet, black haired Taber emerged from the trees, his jade green eyes concerned as he watched the other two men.

“Don’t make me touch you, Merinus,” he warned her as she turned to run in the opposite direction. “It wouldn’t be pleasant for either of us.”

A scream of fury echoed through the clearing. Merinus swung around just in time to see Dayan go flying over Callan’s shoulder to hit the ground hard. He came up quickly though, launching himself at Callan once again. Callan stepped aside at the last second, a smooth, gliding motion that put him out of touch, and he smiled when Dayan hit the ground once again.

Dayan shook his head this time, appearing rattled by the fall.

“If you had touched my woman, Dayan, I would have had to kill you,” Callan warned him as the other man came to his feet. “I will have no one’s scent upon her other than my own.”

Merinus rolled her eyes. What was it with him and scents?

“You are his mate, Merinus.” Taber must have caught the reaction. He stood close to her, but not touching as he watched the fight progress.

They were throwing punches now, though few of Dayan’s wild swings actually connected. The man was working himself into a froth of fury. Growling, spittle flying as Callan faced him calmly.

“I’m not a fucking mate,” she bit out.

“Watch your mouth. Even Sherra and Dawn do not handle such language,” he told her with a frown, then winced as Callan threw Dayan to the dirt once again.

“Oh, God,” Merinus muttered as both men were suddenly on the ground, teeth bared, fists flying.

Callan’s blows were harsh, hard. Merinus heard his fists connecting with Dayan’s flesh, heard the other man’s grunts of pain, his snarls of rage. She had never seen anything so vicious as the blood and blows that rained between them. Until finally Dayan fell back, nearly unconscious as Callan jumped to his feet.

Savage, glittering amber eyes shot to Merinus. She watched, her throat dry, eyes widening as his cock slowly hardened as he advanced on her.

“Get him out of here,” his voice was a harsh rasp as he grabbed Merinus’ arm. “Get back to the house. I’ll deal with him there.”

“You already dealt with him,” Merinus protested as he began to drag her back to the stream.

His hand was hard on her arm, almost bruising as he forced her behind him.

“I’ll deal with him further,” he bit out, male fury crackling in the air. “But you I will deal with here.”

He pushed her to the grass, moving quickly between her thighs before she could strike out with her feet. He gripped her fists in one hand, stretching her back, anchoring her along his body as his cock pressed the jersey material of her shorts against the soaked entrance to her vagina.

“Callan.” She hated the fear that tinged her voice.

He was too angry, too intense. She didn’t know how to handle the animalistic, savage side of his nature.

He ripped her shorts from her body, tearing them from her and leaving them in shreds.

“I warned you I would rip them from your body.” The shirt went next.

Her furious struggles didn’t deter him in the least. He held her still, watching her body as she writhed against him. Merinus was breathing hard, her skin sensitive, the rasp of the fine hairs on his body caressing her was nearly driving her mad. They were downy soft, stroking against her. The hair on his legs rasped her inner thighs, the tip of his cock nudged at her tender entrance.

Merinus felt the blood thundering through her veins. She wanted him. Oh, she wanted him so bad it was about to kill her. Inside her, deep and hard, making her scream in her need.

“You ran from me,” he growled, sinking a bare inch of his erection into her.

Merinus felt the tiny thrust, her muscles clenching around it, weeping for more. Her clit throbbed, her breasts ached, the sensitive nipples so hard and hot she wondered if they would burst.

“I won’t let you—” She shook her head, her back arching as another inch sank into her.

“Mine,” his vow was low and rough.

“No—” She was crying from need now. Her drenched cunt begging for more of him. “I won’t let you do this to me. I can’t.”

He pushed in a bit more. Merinus held her breath, feeling the tight stretch of her muscles as they conformed to his width. She pulsed around him, feeling more of her juices easing around his flesh. She was slick, frothing with lust.

“Tell me,” he ordered her, his voice dark, rough. “Tell me you are mine, Merinus.”

He stared down at her, his eyes bright, intense as he held her securely while pushing inside her by slow, torturous degrees. She was shamefully aware of the pulse of her inner flesh as it milked him, caressed him. She was drowning in her own lusts, her own needs.

“Touch me,” she begged shamelessly, her breasts pressing against his chest. “Please, Callan, touch me.”

His tongue licked over her breasts. Rough, rasping her flesh, she arched against him, needing more.

“Tell me, and I will give you what you need,” he told her tautly. “Say the words, Merinus.”

“No.” She shook her head, her hips twisting as she fought to get closer to him, to drive that steel hard flesh deep inside her.

“You will tell me,” he groaned, his hand gripping her hip while the other held her hands anchored to the ground.

She looked up at him, seeing the savage lines of his face, the determination in his eyes. His body was hard, so hot against hers it nearly scorched her. She had to fight to keep the words he wanted from pouring from her mouth. He wanted surrender. He wanted to dominate and possess and she refused to allow it. She couldn’t let him. If he did it now, there would be no stopping him from doing it later.

“Are you mine?” she asked him instead, her muscles clenching on the few scant inches of hard flesh flexing inside her. “Who do you belong to, Callan?”

His eyes narrowed.

“My brothers will be here soon,” she told him, panting, fighting to keep her sanity. “They’ll take me home then. Whose will I be then?”

“No,” he bit out, his hips pulling back, then easing his erection inside her again, no further though, than it had been before.

“No, you aren’t mine?” she whispered, gasping as his teeth nipped at her breast, his tongue stroking over her nipple.

Oh, how she wanted to give in.

“You will not leave,” he growled, nipping her again, then licking the wound.

His teeth were hard, sharp, the little flashes of heated sensation speared to her womb, causing it to clench hard, deep.

“How will you stop me?” she whispered, staring up at him, straining to get closer, to get him deeper inside her.

He breathed in hard. Rough.

“You are mine. Mine, Merinus.” His hips plunged hard, driving his cock deep inside her, causing her body to scream with pleasure, with an overload of sensation that made her cry out as her teeth sank into his shoulder.

There was no stopping him then. He moaned, harsh and wild into her neck as he began to pound into her. He filled her cunt, stretching the sensitive tissue deliciously, stroking it as a million bolts of erotic electricity sizzled along her channel. Deep, driving thrusts that had her screaming, begging for release. She felt his cock throb, then along the soft tissue of the roof of her vagina it began. At first, just a soft nuance of change. A stroke, like a whisper of sensation. A separate pulse, a heated prong of pleasure she couldn’t stand. It raked against nerve endings she never knew existed, made her twist, fight for more.

“Merinus,” he groaned her name as it began happening, his voice fraught with unbearable pleasure.

“What is it?” Her head twisted as it became firmer, stroking her harder, driving her higher. “Oh God, Callan. I can’t stand—”

She screamed with what little breath she had left. She felt it extend, pulsing as it lodged in the ultra sensitive muscles in the depths of her flesh as Callan’s release began bursting inside her. She couldn’t stop her own climax. It tore through her body to the pulse of that nubbin stroking the exact center of her sensations. Her legs tightened around his hips, grinding her clit against him, feeling the hard beat of release there, as well as deep inside her womb. She was pulsing, erupting, begging for breath as the pleasure seemed never ending, until she collapsed against him.

His arms were tight around her. She never knew when he released her hands. His head was buried in her neck, his own breath heaving from his chest as he fought for air. His body was tense and hard, dominating.

“Mine,” he whispered again into her neck.

Merinus felt tears come to her eyes. She was naked, stretched out on the grass in the middle of a damned forest with a man she didn’t even really know still lodged inside her body. Her flesh still shuddered from her orgasm, her vagina clasped around his erection, unwilling to let him go, and she was suddenly terrified.

“Let me up,” she whispered, pushing at his shoulders, fighting the weariness and the fear rising inside her.

She felt his lips at her neck once again. Warm, the caress sent tingles of sensation over her body. Her nipples beaded once again and she felt the fluttering need in her womb as her body responded to it. Her breath hitched, she felt her tears as they fell from her eyes and rolled down the sides of her face.

“Merinus?” His voice was soft, low, a husky purr of satiation as he levered himself above her.

She turned her face from him, shifting her back, suddenly aware of the rough ground on her flesh. He moved from her, and she could barely control her sobs as she felt the firm length of his cock slowly draw from her inner flesh.

“Did I hurt you?” He eased her up, his hands gentle as they ran over her body, his expression somber, remorseful.

Merinus shook her head, fighting her tears. She was damp with sweat, his semen and her juices leaked from between her thighs, a warm reminder of the fiery orgasm that had gripped her moments before.

She heard him sigh wearily as he moved away from her, then he was drawing his shirt over her head, tucking her arms into it, covering her body. He moved away from her then, jerking his jeans from the forest floor and pulling them on. His moccasins came next, his movements graceful, fluid, despite the anger she could feel pulsing from him.

“Stay here. I’ll get your shoes,” he ordered her.

Merinus nodded, staring at her bare feet, the red polish that needed replacing on her toenails, the dirt on her feet and legs.

A broad, male hand moved to her chin, turning her face to him. She jerked away, hiding her face, her tears. His hand gripped her chin, pulling her face up as he stared down at her, his expression brooding.

“I told you not to push me,” he reminded her, his tone harsh. “Now will you stay here, or must I drag you with me to find your damned shoes?”

She nearly choked on her sobs as she fought to contain them. She nodded jerkily. She couldn’t speak, if she did, she was terrified she would lose the control she was fighting so desperately for.

He released her, demanding nothing more, then turned and stalked away. Merinus wrapped her arms around her waist, biting her lip as she tried to stem the tears that fell from her eyes. She was suddenly so frightened she could only shudder with it. What in God’s name had she gotten herself into?

“Here.” Callan knelt at her feet. With gentle hands he put her shoes on, then tied them quickly.

Rather than moving when he finished, he continued to kneel there, his head lowered, his fingers caressing her ankle.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was edged with frustration. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

His head raised, his eyes dark with concern and bemusement. As though he too were treading in waters so unfamiliar the threat of drowning was imminent.

“Kane will come for me,” she whispered. “You have to let me go, Callan.”

His lips twisted bitterly. “I know,” he agreed, his hand lifting, his thumb wiping her tears from beneath one eye. “But to take you, Merinus, he’ll have to kill me.”

The finality in his voice terrified her. The resounding echo in her heart shattered her last hope that she would ever be free of him.

“You said you could walk away,” she sobbed. “That even if it hurt you could walk away.”

“And an hour later I found you gone and lost my sanity,” he told her bleakly.

She shook her head. This couldn’t be happening. Not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Kane won’t let you keep me,” she said, desperate for him to understand, to let her go. Desperate to make herself believe, despite the agony throbbing inside her. She didn’t want to be free of him, and that frightened her more than anything.

“As I would refuse to let any man hold Sherra or Dawn against their will,” he answered her, his expression drawn into lines of acceptance. “This will be up to you to solve, Merinus. One of us will die if you try to leave with him. I won’t let him take you.”

“You said the doctor would find a cure.” Her fists clenched as she rejected his brutal statement. “You said he would make it better.”

“And while you were running, I learned he cannot.” Callan reached up, pulling her hair back from her face as he watched her. “It will have to ease on its own, and he believes it will. But he believes it will never go away completely. This need, Merinus, whatever it is, could be something neither of us will be free of. Something I’m not certain I want to be free of.”

She heard the curious note of vulnerability in his voice. A bemusement that he felt that way.

“I have to call my brothers. They have to know I’m safe.” She knew Kane was going crazy with worry. He wasn’t safe to be around when he did that.

Callan sighed wearily, rising to his feet.

“Come on. Let’s go back to the cabin. We’ll discuss it there.” He held his hand out to her.

Merinus stared up at him, anger and pain shattering her.

“You won’t let me call them, will you? You won’t let them help me.”

“I won’t let them take you,” he corrected her. “And if they can find you, they will try to take you, Merinus. They will convince themselves you can be cured. That the need can be taken away. I don’t believe it can. I believe nature is having its last laugh on those crazy bastards who created me.”

“What do you mean?” She shook her head, even more confused than before.

“The hormone releasing from my body to yours counteracts the contraception injection the doctor’s been giving you,” he told her softly. “We were created to be unable to breed, our semen incompatible with normal humans. But that hormone is changing that, slowly. Reversing the DNA coded into us. We’re mated. Nature will allow us no other choice.”

Merinus felt her world tilt. Her hands pressed to her stomach, she had to fight for air.

“Am I—?” She swallowed tightly.

“Not yet,” he assured her. “But eventually you will be. There’s nothing we can do but see how this anomaly intends to work itself out.”

“No.” Desperate, pleading, she came to her feet, her hands gripping his arms. “No, Callan, you have to do something to stop this. Wear a condom. That would protect me.”

Mockery slashed across his face. “What, Merinus, unwilling to breed with an animal after all?”

Shock held her immobile for only a moment.

“Damn you,” she lashed out at him. “I’m unwilling to be an experiment for you. You don’t love me, Callan. I’m nothing to you but a bodily function. I refuse to have a child under those circumstances.”

“A condom will not work anyway,” he told her bitterly. “That part of me that gives you such pleasure, that swells and throbs within your flesh would not allow it.”

“What are you saying?” She shook his arm, her nails biting into his flesh. “A condom would work, Callan.”

“A condom would split when the barb swells from my cock, Merinus. At full erection, it fills the back of your tight little cunt, locking it into your flesh. It doesn’t hurt you, because it’s blunt-tipped, but it’s too large for a condom to sustain.”

Merinus felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees weakened, her heart beating sluggishly within her breast.

“Barb?” Her voice was strangled now as she fought the rising nausea erupting in her stomach.

“I told you I was an animal, Merinus,” he bit out. “Do you not remember me warning you, that day at the station?” His gaze was hard, cold as he watched her now. Merinus felt the chill of it running over her body. “You should have believed me.”

Merinus let go of his arm, fighting to breathe past the panic filling her.

“Then we just fight it,” she said, her lungs fighting to draw air past the constriction in her throat. “We don’t—don’t—” She waved her hand at the erection showing beneath his jeans.

“Fuck?” he questioned her sarcastically, arching a golden brow in inquiry.

Merinus shook her head, her temples throbbing, her pulse rocketing through her body.

“Withdrawal is just that.” She fought to breathe evenly. “We’ll get over it. We just abstain.”

“Fine,” he growled. “You can abstain all you want. I’m not so willing—”

“No.” She shook her head, moving away from him. “You have to, Callan. You have to. We can’t bring a baby into this. Please. Babies are innocent. They don’t deserve this.”

She was crying again. Her stomach was rioting with nerves, her chest tight with pain. She could feel panic overwhelming her, hysteria rising inside her. She couldn’t have a baby. She wasn’t ready for a baby.

“Come on, we need to get home.” His arm went around her waist.

Merinus jumped back from him. Terror was freezing the blood in her veins. She shook her head, holding her hands up, backing away from him.

“You can’t touch me,” she whispered. “We can’t let this happen, Callan. We can’t. I won’t let you do this to me.”

“Merinus, let’s go home. We’ll settle it there,” he told her, his voice pitched to a soothing level.

“Damn right we’ll settle it,” she gasped, determination hardening her voice. “We’ll settle it in different rooms, Callan. On different sides of the house. This is over. I refuse to have a child, now or in the near future. Especially with a man determined to risk everything he is for pride. I’ll be damned if I’ll trust you to protect our child, when you don’t even take measures to protect yourself.”

She watched the anger settle in his face, in his eyes.

“I will allow no child of mine to be tested or taken from me, Merinus,” he informed her coldly. “You can count on that.”

“And just how the hell do you think you can ensure that?” Incredulity sped through her.

“I will ensure it,” he bit out, gripping her arm and moving her steadily along the path back to the vehicle. “The conversion hasn’t been completed yet. When it has been, we’ll deal with it. Until then, I will not let you go. Brother or no.”

“You can’t keep me forever.” She stumbled against him, shivering as the soft, ultra soft hairs of his chest caressed her arms. Damn him. He didn’t have to feel so good. He didn’t have to do this to her.

“We’ll just see about that.”