Marie Harte - Grayson's Gamble

He broke away from the kiss to look up at her. The red slits that were her pupils looked right at home surrounded by brown irises and the whites of her eyes. Like a sexy feline who needed a mate. Not a mate, a man , he tried to correct his beast, but the thing wouldn’t listen. Mate. Mine . The memory of Gray refused to fade. Ours.

She raked her claws over his chest and nipped his lower lip with dainty fangs. “Tasty.” She licked another drop of blood into her mouth. “And so big.”

As she rocked over him, he reveled in being taken. But he wanted to see more. He used his mind to rip her shirt over her head, pleased when she accepted his power as nothing to worry about and instead focused on fucking him.

He’d had women on top before, but now, watching her breasts bounce and her belly flex as she took him inside her and worked his orgasm, he couldn’t look away. She slammed on top of him, her clit meeting his pelvis with every jostle and slap of flesh.

“Yeah, come all over me,” he encouraged, wishing he had his hands free. Since he didn’t, he used his mind to help stimulate her. Not sure how he could continue to direct it when normally his power erupted at odd moments, he focused on her and used his ability to his advantage. He flicked her clit, rubbed and pulled it as she grew rougher, sucking him deeper and deeper inside her.

Then he slapped her clit and felt her seize on him like a vise.

She cried out as she came, and the feel of her pleasure induced his own. Bas’s orgasm took him to another plane altogether. The explosion sealed them tight, his seed rushing into feminine heat as it found purchase in a ripe womb. His beast sniffed and settled, releasing scent to layer over her, bringing both Bas and a faint touch of Gray into the mix.

Ali moaned and shuddered, her release long and overdue, Bas thought with satisfaction. The woman was so tight, so soft, and not as aggressive unless following his lead. He liked the thought of her not so experienced and wanted to slap himself in the head for it. Bas didn’t judge, and he didn’t care about a partner’s sexual partners, so long as they practiced safe sex.

Not at all like we just did , he reminded his beast. Though Circs couldn’t catch disease through sex, they could and did make babies. More. Yes. More Circs. His beast liked the idea. And Bas remained hard, raring to go again when she resumed her rhythm.

They made eye contact.

“Again,” they said at the same time.

Bas lost himself inside his female. He had a sudden flash of worry and frustrated male. With Gray on the periphery of his mind while Alison took him to new heights of pleasure once more, he passed on what he knew into the ether of a mind-link that shouldn’t have existed. But when she came around him again, he stopped caring about Gray finding him and focused on the pleasure swallowing him whole.

Gray nearly lost his legendary cool. Twelve hours later, and he still couldn’t find Bas anywhere. He’d spent the night searching for any trace of the female, or anyone else for that matter, only to come up empty. It made no sense. Gray could hunt better than anyone he’d ever met. He’d found dead rogues and mutants, even their vehicles and the backup truck they’d stashed.

After searching for more answers he couldn’t find, he’d destroyed the engines in the event he’d missed a rogue who returned to escape. Then Gray sought out the one person who might be able to help him.

Not inclined to meet downtown during the day feeling so out of sorts, Gray agreed to rendezvous at one of the passes still covered in snow.

He watched as a blue SUV approached and parked. Then a large man exited the vehicle. With his size and penchant for violence, Jack Keiser would have made a decent Circ. “Gray. Nice to see you.” As usual, the bastard remained closed off. Gray couldn’t read a hint of what Jack thought.

Gray nodded, hoping he looked more relaxed than he felt. “Jack. My partner has disappeared, and I’m having a hard time picking up his trail. You know anything about this person we’re looking for, other than that Al Ross isn’t the man you told us she was?”

When Jack didn’t react, Gray knew he’d been played. He moved in the blink of an eye and held Jack up by his neck. “What the fuck are you up to? Who are you working for?”

Jack said nothing. He stared down at Gray even as his face turned red and he lost the oxygen necessary for breathing. His freakish wolf-gray eyes never blinked, trained on Gray the way one predator watches another.

Gray released Jack and waited, more than annoyed for showing even that much emotion.

Jack rubbed his throat. “Two words for you. Just remember not to kill the messenger.”

“Spill it, Keiser.”

“Alicia Sharpe.”

“I knew it.” Gray fumed. “What the hell is that woman doing now? My partner might be dead. I’m after a fucking woman named Alison Ross, not Al Ross, along with armed humans and rogues turning mutant.”

Jack crossed muscular arms over his massive chest. “No idea what the old woman is up to. All I know is, I still owed her one from that mess a few years back.”

Meaning the occasion when Jack had been duped, along with the rest of them, into believing that the woman he’d gone undercover with in a Circ operation was really his wife. There was a reason mind control should only be used sparingly; Jack Keiser would certainly agree.

“So?” Gray prodded, needing to find Bas and that odd scent he’d captured yesterday for a few brief moments. The urgency to locate and identify the scent shocked him. The necessity felt off, the way he’d been desperate to fuck Bas. Too much mating shit to deal with at a time when he needed his head clear and rational.

“So I told your grandmother about the female in the mountains. I mentioned I’d heard reports of what sounded like rogues in the area. She told me to assist you when you showed, and not to mention Ross was a woman. No idea why, and I knew better than to ask.” Jack scowled. “When you go back, you tell her we’re square. I don’t mind saying that woman freaks me the hell out.”

And not much ever got to Jack, Gray knew. “Fine. But I need more to go on.”

Jack took a map out of his back pocket. “I didn’t give you this, and you don’t have it.”

“Another fucking stipulation courtesy of Alicia?”

Jack nodded. “But I don’t like being messenger boy. I’m done with Circs after this, you get me?”

“I do.” It went unsaid his grandmother would do whatever she wanted. Only she could get away with the things she did.

“That’s something I had one of my people draw up for you. My retrocog, my guy who reads the past? He saw this area the way it used to be. I have a feeling your girl is hiding in that cabin.” Jack pointed to the small circle on the map. “You can’t find it unless you know where to look or you were alive when the thing was built seventy-five years ago. She’s living off the grid, and she’s armed. Good luck.”

Gray held out a hand, shook Jack’s, and watched the man leave as if he’d never been there. A psychic like Gray, Jack and his people now resided in Bend doing God-knew-what for a living. Gray didn’t intend to ask. He wanted to find Bas, kill Ross, then disappear. Except his beast roared in protest at thoughts of harming a hair on Ross’s head. That she was a woman shouldn’t have mattered. The mission was to eliminate the threat.

But if she was being hunted by other rogues, she needed to be protected, didn’t she? Why the hell wouldn’t his grandmother send him out here to do the right thing by the female? No doubt the rogues and mutants after her would rape her as soon as look at her.