“Jamie, I’m…I’m actually scared. I’m scared that I’ll lose you. I’m scared that I’ll lose myself, and if I go dark again, I might kill the people closest to me.” He let out a harsh, shaky breath. “I want to claim you more than I want to breathe, but I can’t.” He grabbed her hand. “You brought me back this time. It was all you. But what about the next time? What if you can’t?”
He was telling her things he wouldn’t tell anyone else, and he was calling her by her fake name.
Dakota buried her face in his shoulder. She thought about all the lies she’d told, and how someday her father would probably find a way to track her down and take terrible revenge on anybody he suspected of helping her. If she told him the truth, he’d probably offer to protect her. And she couldn’t let him do that. Her father’s pack was huge. Things were just starting to settle down here. The Fenris Pack couldn’t afford any more enemies.
She couldn’t think about the future. She couldn’t reassure him, or beg him to claim her, because her whole life here was a lie.
She couldn’t do any more than live day by day.
She looked up and met his gaze wearily. “You’ll be all right, because you’re strong, and you care about your pack more than you care about your own life. And Sarah ran away, by the way. We were staying with the bears. Anders and Jefferson and some other guys went out to look for her.
Miles swore. “Damn it. All right, I’m going to walk you back to my cabin, then head out there to find her. I’m the best tracker we’ve got. Wait here for me?” There was a note of pleading in his rough, husky voice.
“Of course,” she said, and she let him take her by the hand and lead her out of the woods.
Chapter Eighteen
“We’ve found her!” Miles burst through the door of his cabin two hours later. Dakota sat bolt upright in his bed. She was still wearing her pajamas, as she had been when the cubs had first woken her several hours ago. She had been lying there trying to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, she’d been haunted by visions of Sarah being dragged away in a net, screaming.
“Oh, thank God. Are you all right? Is she all right?”
Miles walked up to the bed and began stripping off his clothes. “I’m fine. She’s fine. I’d like to tell you some great tale of heroism in which I fought off a dozen rabid, slavering Alpha Primes to save her life…”
“But?” Dakota sat up,
“She was actually at the Early Bird Café with Anthea. Anthea was out for a late-night stroll through town and caught Sarah rummaging through a dumpster. I guess old habits die hard. She grabbed Sarah and dragged her to the café, and after a while it occurred to her to call her brother, and he sent one of his men after us.”
Miles pulled the sheets back and slid into bed next to Dakota. “It was very anti-climactic. Anyway, I just dropped her off at Baldwin’s cabin, and Naomi is reading her the riot act.”
Now that she knew Sarah was safe, Dakota could focus on Miles. And how much she’d missed him. Craved him. And now he was right here in bed with her, with that look in his eye, the look that made her feel like the sexiest, most desirable girl in the world.
“Speaking of climaxes…” Dakota grinned at Miles.
He cocked a brow. “Yes, please. Let’s speak of them.”
He practically pounced on her, making her giggle – a giggle that quickly turned into moans and gasps as he kissed her thoroughly. He palmed her breast through the thin cotton of her pajamas and sucked on the blue-and-white striped fabric, tonguing her nipple and leaving a damp spot.
When he tugged at her top, she unbuttoned it and discarded it before he yanked too hard and popped off the buttons, then she shimmied out of her bottoms. She snuggled up against the hot length of his muscular body, running her hand across his broad chest and down over the defined ridges of his six-pack before her hand crept lower and she wrapped her fingers around the hard, pulsing length of his erection. She squeezed gently, ran her fingers along his length from root to tip and back down again, then rolled his balls gently in her palm.
He groaned, and his eyelashes fluttered over eyes suddenly unfocused with lust, but then he took her wrist and gently pulled her hand away from his cock.
“Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“Oh, I like it,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “I like it so much I’ll be coming in your hand if you don’t stop.”
And he parted her legs and pinned her beneath him, holding her fast as he kissed her throat, grazed his teeth over her collarbone and moved down over her to lavish loving attention on the tightly furled, painfully sensitive peaks of her nipples.
She squirmed and wriggled underneath him, but he was relentless. He placed a trail of ticklish kisses over the curve of her stomach, and played his fingers in the dark curls between her legs…then moved to the insides of her thighs, licking and nipping. Her pussy tingled, and she moaned, desperate to feel the heat of his mouth and the sweep and flicker of his clever tongue against her most sensitive flesh.
He continued to torment her, moving closer and closer to her core until she had her fingers curled tightly in his hair and was pleading with him breathlessly. She was sure she felt him smile against her inner thigh before atlasthe moved his mouth to her slick, pulsing core.
He French-kissed her pussy, dipping his tongue inside her and sweeping it over her clit in tight, intense spirals that had her hovering on the brink of orgasm, pulling his hair and arching her hips against his face. Her thighs trembled and a shivery sensation of arousal feathered over her skin, making her cry out helplessly.
As he upped the pace, lapping relentlessly, he plunged two fingers inside her, and she came in a powerful, throbbing wave of bliss, crying out and clamping her thighs against his ears.
When the spasms of her orgasm had faded, he sat up laughing breathlessly, his mouth and chin shiny with her juices. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before pinning her underneath him again and kissing her. His mouth pressed firmly against hers and she could taste herself on his lips.
Then he rolled her over so that she was straddling him. She braced herself with her palms on his chest and looked down at him. He was so incredibly beautiful, with his hair mussed and tousled, still slightly out of breath.