Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 03

"It worked," retorted Gemma. "I'm still in one piece. You should answer phone calls faster."

Mac sighed, "In one piece relative to what? A broken chocolate bar still in the wrapper?" He smiled lightly as he lifted the lab coat to examine her knee, "And I promise to practise sprinting faster - not that I didn't appreciate the stagger you induced in Nick, but you've taught him respect now, let's avoid an action replay, huh?"

It struck Gemma how strange their exchange was. It seemed as though this wolf's constant, overly protective attitude was rubbing off and she now expected it, demanded that he protect her as her right. Which he didn't query, rather seemed to view as perfectly natural. Well, it wasn't natural to her.

Hmph. A new habit is easy to break.

Then Gemma blushed, realising she had no underwear, and he was pushing the coat higher, so she grabbed it and pushed it back down again. Mac's eyes were incredulous, teasing as he lifted them back to hers. Her flush deepened to a furious crimson as she read the smiling message in his gaze, but she stuck her bottom lip out stubbornly and held on, eyeing him defiantly.

He sighed and let go.

"I just want to heal you, Gemma. That must be painful."

"It's Ok if I don't move," she retorted. And added under her breath, "I've heard that "just healing" line before." Mac smiled slowly as he eyed her. Then he bent his proud head and kissed her.

?!?!?

Gemma was frozen, shocked into stillness by the unexpectedness of it.

Then simmering fire shot through her veins as his tongue traced slowly along her pouting lower lip, softly exploring, trailing tingling heat in a path along her sensitive skin. She dimly felt that this was a problem when arguing with Mac. He nibbled at her lip, her breath speeded up, and Gemma sank into a cloud of feeling, reason rapidly evaporating. Then he parted her lips and his exploration deepened as he threaded that playful tongue inside them along her teeth.

I'm sure we were disagreeing about something a moment ago.

Mac's deepening breathing was brushing her skin and lighting her blood as he played along her lips and closed teeth, savouring her taste, her warmth, her softening. He began to nudge the tip of his tongue gently against the barrier, coaxing her to open, and Gemma responded with a sigh of pleasure, parting to him.

Nothing important.

Then, as his tongue began to stroke more deeply along hers, Gemma found that sliding her fingers over his broad shoulders sent a tingle of arousal shimmering down her spine. When she scraped her nails lightly on his upper arm muscle he quivered lightly, and the feeling spread to her toes, liquid arousal beginning to melt throughout her body. Sinking, she could only feel his heat, his heady scent and the sensations his skilful tongue evoked as she sighed into his mouth and tilted her head back onto his cradling palm.

This just felt so right. There was something deep, meshed, fulfilled that rang with his being here - tongue in her mouth, tasting her, learning her, as he surrounded her with his scent, his heat, and his strength.

She arched up to allow him deeper access, and a sharp stab of pain shot up from her forgotten leg, making her flinch backwards and gasp. Before she even finished the movement, Mac lifted her to seat her more securely on the edge of the desk, frowning down as he admonished,

"Keep still. Let me handle this."

Handle? The word stuttered discord across her rioting senses.

What?

Abruptly, Gemma flung up a hand between them, covering his descending mouth as she realised - or thought, maybe - this, what-? He waited, eyeing her with a calm question - too calm in view of how she felt - while she pulled her swirling thoughts together - including the recalcitrant ones that kept lurching back to the feel of his lips against her palm - and the sight of his chest, stretched inside that t-shirt in front of her - and the scent of his musk. And -.

Snap out of it.

Gemma finally dragged round herself enough control to recover the power of speech. Well, eventually. In a moment. Now. Well, now then. Now.

She queried breathlessly, suspiciously, "Handle?"

He raised his brows in an 'Isn't it obvious?' expression. She scowled, lifting her hand from his mouth, ignoring the large part of her that wanted to trace his lips instead, and just looked at him, waiting for an explanation. Mac sighed, looking faintly guilty.

"It's an internal wound. I need to send my shiele inside, and it's easier to direct if you stop trying to distract me," Dumbstruck, she just stared at him as the words sank in, rapidly cooling her blood. They continued. "And if you'll stop hurting yourself."

Still just staring at him. Feeling cold spreading through her veins.

Staring. The space behind her eyes tightening with tears.

Staring.

"This- kissing - you - it's just healing?!" her voice almost rose an octave on the last word. Then she sank into silence, still staring at him, accusingly, holding back the tears shimmering in her eyes with a stark glare. His eyes hooded over and he sighed deeply again, a tinge of colour to his cheekbones.

"You need healing, Gem. Yes, it's a pleasure to do it, but principally, you need healing."

"So I'll call a bloody ambulance." Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Bad wolf.

The bad wolf snorted, and shook his head.

"They'll want to know how you hurt yourself - and the police will wonder why by coincidence you were viciously injured on the same night as Anne, in the same building." There was a spike of jealousy scouring along her skin as he reasoned - Mac obviously knew the young, pretty girl- wolf's name. Already.

Bad, bad wolf. And he was trying to reason her into letting him kiss her for medicinal purposes. The congealed blood in Gemma's veins was beginning to tighten with rage, heating again.

"So I'll say I fell downstairs!" she hissed.

"They won't buy it."

"So what? Leave me alone - I'll sort something out, just get out. Go." The fury was beginning to make her shudder as she perched on the desk in front of him.

Suddenly, Mac lent over her, bracing his hands on either side of her thighs, so he could stare gravely down into her eyes. The lab coat had ridden up and she could feel his warm arm hairs tickling over her sides of her legs, but she wasn't paying attention. Much. Too busy glaring into that powerful, mesmerising gaze, black beginning to filter into the green.

"My main reason for needing to heal you now," he continued, a quiet note of implacability at the back of his tone, "is that there is a viciously homicidal Grey wolf out there somewhere waiting a chance to attack you for a third - no, fourth time, so I'm not letting you out of my sight until I have you somewhere safe." She opened her mouth to snap a retort and was shut up by a swift hard kiss pressed to her lips, causing an unfair surge of melting, and infuriatingly suspending her voice.

"And I can't carry you past the police without even your humans noticing something." Damn him, damn him. Just one kiss, together with his faintly aggressive brand of protectionism, and she was melting back into his gaze. Gemma rolled her own eyes, trying to haul her anger back in place. That kiss had just been so cheating. As was the concern for her welfare. "And I can't just stand about here and wait with you in this amount of pain," he finished.

This? Hah. This is barely noticeable. Deliberately, Gemma damped the reviving tingle shimmering through her blood by recalling how she'd felt when he'd left yesterday. Then all the afternoon. The evening. And the night. Today. Echoing. Missing. Pain.

They stared at each other.

"Well, I'm not letting you kiss me," Gemma said quietly.

"I'm healing you," Mac's voice was deep, tinged with faint frustration that she wouldn't listen. Been there, had that, Gemma thought glumly.

"It is just for healing, not a kiss," he reinforced, the edge to his words growing stronger as his eyes darkened.

What?!?. Thanks. "Tell that to my aching libido," Gemma muttered. She couldn't stand holding those gorgeous, distant eyes any longer, and dropped her own to focus on her fists, clenched on her thighs.

"It's kissing from this side, Mac, even if you're immune to me," she corrected him sadly.

"I never said I was immune to you," he answered brusquely, and from the corner of her eye, Gemma realised that she could see the shimmer of frustration trembling through his strong frame. It made her skin tingle – maybe she could work around his attitude. Maybe.

"I can just control my feelings when something more important - like damn well healing a multiple fracture - overrides them," Mac's voice held the echo of a low growl. No, she couldn't work him around. Like yesterday. He was paranoid about retaining control. The frustration was probably just from her not saying what he wanted.

She glowered back at him, "Well, bully for you. I prefer not to live with another series of x-rated sensations plastered over my body by you, when you have no intention of following through."

The heat was rising in his gleaming eyes, and he smiled slowly. "I'm more than happy to make sure you thoroughly -."

"No," Gemma cut him off on that one. Better not to let the memory of Mac and thoroughly get any more deeply imprinted in her mind and body. Her mind and body weren't listening to instruction, off reliving some of their favourite highlights, raising goosebumps across her skin.

Mac wasn't listening either, and leaned in closer, the growl deepening. His musk teased at her and colour traced along her cheekbones. This so wasn't fair.

"No," she repeated, placing her hands on his chest to hold him away. They tingled where she touched him. "If I can't touch you, then you can't touch me. At all," she stated brusquely.

Then she struggled to ignore the little voice inside her whispering that she was touching him, just a little bit, and he didn't seem to mind, so why not slide those hands a bit further down. Down. No, further than that.

Luckily, he clamped her hands under his, and growled again.

"Gemma, I told you why we can't - I can't control the change when I get too excited."

Many people would have been nervous to have a large, powerful, aggravated male glowering down at them, growling angry words.

"So just shut up and let me kiss you," the angry male added frustratedly.

It wasn't a frightening phrase. They both knew he could stand her on her head without raising his heart rate. They both knew he wouldn't.

Gemma clenched her jaw and repeated, "If I can't touch you, then you can't touch me."

"Will you stop being so bloody obstinate?!" he snarled.

Hah! Welcome to my world.

She snorted inelegantly and tilted her head, "Pot, meet kettle."

He flung his head back, breathed in sharply, then leaned back over her, "Let me heal you. I swear you'll feel much, much better if you just -."

Not this time.

The rage re-ignited in Gemma, burning up the lust. "I know I'd feel amazing. Then you'd take yourself off. The answer's no."

His eyes were actually glittering, small black flecks seeming to explode like starbursts in the pupils as he breathed heavy anger and she could feel him willing her to give in. Hah.

"Human medicine can take days, weeks – you'll be vulnerable to his greys and in pain all that time," he bellowed.

Little you know about humans.

"Make that months for a multiple bone fracture," she corrected him and he flinched, then rolled a long growl at her, fury at her obstreperousness firing his eyes. Stubborn little human who wouldn't let him put it right.

"And if you're so worried about Nick, why the hell did you just let him leave?" Gemma knew that that was unfair, but anger was necessary. It worked. Mac abruptly straightened and stepped back from her, a flicker of expression she couldn't quite catch chasing across his hard-etched, strong features.

Then suddenly he stilled, looking completely blank, just before a deluge of emotions chased each other across his face, each too fleeting to recognise. Mac's hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides as he started to shudder, blinking rapidly, and he actually flickered into a towering, powerful, hair-covered lycan form and back as his breathing deepened and green flecks shot through the black fire in his eyes, making her insides melt again with swirling arousal as she watched the furnace rising in his gaze.

He seemed larger, more forceful, when he finally settled himself, skin shuddering, and re-focussed on her. A small smile was playing around his mouth and a hot, predatory gleam lit his eyes, making her pulses rocket, before they settled on merely trying to batter the blood out of her veins.

"Argen rope," Mac purred softly, the smile in his eyes deepening as he held hers. Deep, deep green and so, so hot. She could feel herself leaning forwards, towards the call in his gaze as he stepped back toward her, trembling faintly.

"What's -." She couldn't recall what he'd said. "Uh?" The colour of his eyes was thickening, whirling, black and green melding, drawing her into their heat, their want.

Her nipples tightened and the liquid heat began to pool between her thighs, blood shuddering sweetly in her limbs as it hurried to answer his eyes, his scent, his strength.

He was murmuring something else, but the intensity of the furnace in those bewitching eyes was increasing the crescendo of blood singing in her veins, obliterating all else. The words whispered on the other side of a fog of sensation, and she reached up unsteady fingers to brush over his full lips, to feel the whisper of his breath calling every atom of her blood, curling her toes and lifting the hair at the nape of her neck, along her arms, across her scalp. There was nothing, nothing in the room but the ferocious joy in him, the heat in his eyes, his scent, the quivering power barely restrained by his skin, and her own soft, shimmering skin waiting for him to touch her, to melt her further. Pleading, straining with every fibre. Wanting, waiting. Pressure and friction, please.

She whined, leaning in towards him. What had he said?

The scent enveloped her as he bent close, "So let me heal you," the words whispered in her ear, dancing tantalisingly over her trembling, sensitised skin. His tongue traced over the delicate shell before he nipped lightly at the lobe, then suckled the nick to form a pinpoint of deep, aching pleasure. Gemma shuddered, leaning her forehead against him, breathing deeply of his heady, aroused musk. Stronger, stronger, the pull, the power was tightening its silken hold.

He stilled, and waited. And she whimpered, and nuzzled at his shoulder. He waited. Then, slowly, the last phrase penetrated. Gemma blinked rapidly, leaning on him. She couldn't believe it. Crying inside, she pulled back, the disappointment that he'd tried to influence her that way coursing coldly through her. And an echo of rage - he could have just carried on and she'd never have stopped him, but now she had to turn him down again.

Then, abruptly, she focused on the silvery cord he laid across her palm. Silver cord. Gemma jerked her head up, heart pounding as she stared at him in disbelief, captured by the aroused, taunting, challenging smile curling his lips as his eyes gleamed down into hers.

"Let me heal you," he repeated softly, "And then I'll let you tie me up and have your wicked way with me."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Her nipples tightened to agonising bullets and a surge of liquid heat pulsed between her thighs at the images that his suggestion, together with those knowing eyes, were throwing into her head. His challenging smile deepened as he held her gaze, watching the red fire flare in her cheeks as he smelt her deep arousal. He leant forwards and brushed a soft kiss across her lips, taunting his own version of her words back at her,

"If you let me kiss you, then I'll let you touch me. All of me."

Gemma was submerged, surrounded by the fire, engulfed in it, and couldn't seem to find the surface, the way out, - did she want to -? But - the images in her head. She couldn't. She'd never - and only once ever - and she hadn't exactly been directing matters last time - and now - tie him up..?

That meant she could -.

Another wave of heat surged colour over her delicate skin, a trickle of moisture pooling at the juncture of her legs, and Mac laughed quietly, joyously, a husky little bark as he trailed the tip of his tongue over her scarlet cheek, pressing the heat of his inner wrists against her thighs. She squeezed her legs together in response to the fire of his touch, compressing, compounding the pulse of liquid fire between them and tightening the deep ache in her belly.

Damn it, she realised belatedly, the conflagration in her blood surging, cresting over the embarrassment in her head as the ache in her nipples became painful, and she almost whimpered. He meant to do that, bad wolf - teasing her, arousing her further.

"You set the rules," Mac murmured.

She met his gleaming eyes, and glanced away quickly, reddening. But he was so happy, his happiness melting the resistance of her embarrassment. Mac wanted this, wanted her, was so joyous, so aroused, so amazing, how could she let a little shyness stand in the way of pleasing him so much? Pleasing both of them? But - tie him up? What did she do then?

The image of his powerful, aroused body spread-eagled on the floor for her, his eyes calling her, burned across her imagination. How the hell was she supposed to restrain her brain or body with that image fused into her retinas? She couldn't do it, didn't want to take control, didn't know what to do. But - say no? No way. What if she got it wrong, though?

Gemma could feel her mind stuttering. She didn't know what to do, what to say, right now, or - well - later, if she said yes, then -.

Once she said yes, her internal voice interrupted. Then she could-. she closed her eyes as the image of him, and what she could do, how she could taste him, savour the exploration, seek to make him moan - it all blazed across her mind, shaking her frame with a wave of uncontrollable desire.

Who was she kidding - she knew what she wanted to say. What she was going to say. She just needed to man up and say it. Gemma took a deep breath and opened her eyes to look into his. Deep, deep green fire. Sparkling. Knowing. Enjoying.

"Mfph." At the gleam in his eye, coherency went out the window, her decisiveness swamped by a fresh tide of embarrassment coursing through her, flaring a new, vibrant trail across her skin.

His soft chuckle tingled over her, and Mac leaned in to breathe deeply of her fully aroused scent, brushing his nose lightly against the pulse at the base of her jaw as he felt himself harden still further, almost unbearably. She was so responsive. So open. Untried. Eager. Delicious.

Gemma found her fingers were tangled in his hair, stroking softly as she leaned back against his arm, enjoying the ease with which he held her, savouring his closeness. Let him tie her up. Delete that.

"You can just nod, picchu." Mac brushed the words against her pulse with an accompaniment of light kisses. Then he pulled back to look down into her eyes, waiting for them to open. His were playful, joyous, ferociously aroused.

"Or shake your head," he suggested teasingly. Holding her eyes with the fire in his, he stretched slowly, luxuriously, in front of her, etching the powerful lines of his body into her mind, taunting. Standing smiling down at her, hands clasped behind his head, enveloped in her heady mating scent with his own aching arousal evident, Mac offered himself.