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.
CHAPTER 23
He didn’t stop her, though the sight, the touch of her fingers so close to his aching c**k was torture. Button undone, she tugged him forward, pushed. He sprawled backward onto the sleeping bags, spreading his legs to give her room as she came to kneel in between. But she didn’t lower his zipper.
No, she bent her head, and—continuing to hold the searing eye contact—pressed her lips to the very top of his groin, a bare centimeter above the pulsing thickness of his erection. Groaning, he clenched his hand in her hair and tugged her up. She came . . . to give him a bone-tingling kiss.
“I’m not the only one who’s overdressed,” he said against her lips.
“How remiss of me.” Her smile was full of pure sensual temptation as she reached down and pulled the T-shirt he’d given her—the T-shirt that had covered her in his scent—off over the top of her head.
His mouth dried up, his brain cells scrambled like so much spaghetti.
Dear God but she was stunning, her br**sts lush against the toned and sleekly muscular build of a woman who was a SnowDancer lieutenant. Her skin was lightly tanned, her ni**les darker, the plane of her abdomen having the slightest curve that he had every intention of laving with his tongue before moving lower to nuzzle those dark curls that hid the moist, earthy scent of her desire. He’d part her delicate folds and stroke and lick and pet until she screamed his name.
As he watched, entranced, she shifted back to her position between his knees and began to tug at the tab of his zipper. He sucked in a breath, sucked in his abdomen, and hoped he wouldn’t f**king embarrass himself. Lights flashed behind his closed eyelids as his erection sprang mercifully free, and he felt more than heard Indigo urge him to lift up his body so she could tug off his jeans.
Opening his eyes, he obeyed, and the jeans went flying somewhere to the side. Indigo put her hands on his thighs, her gaze on his erection. “I want to . . .” she began, but he reached down and pulled her up.
The damp heat of her stroked over his abdomen and he had to grit his teeth to keep from blowing like the Fourth of July. “I get to taste you first.” He squeezed her hips. “Then I get to do it again.”
She was straddling him, her knees on either side of his chest. When he urged her higher, her eyes went huge. “Like this?”
A chuckle broke its way through the sensual haze. “Don’t tell me I’ve shocked the unshockable lieutenant.”
“I should’ve expected you’d know all sorts of debauched things.” But she obeyed him and shifted up . . . until all he had to do was hold her in place with his grip on her thighs, draw in the dark heat of her passion, and lap at what he’d been aching to taste.
Indigo’s spine arched at the first touch, and she realized the damn wolf had her in a steely grip, would not allow her to wriggle away. The pleasure was excruciating. Her claws sliced out of her skin. She fought to pull them back in, failed.