After Dawn, What Came Next

Son of a powerful pack master, her father had been born into a world of privilege and of duty and he had wanted no part of it. As Seff’s son, her father had suffered greatly. He knew quite a bit about loss and cruelty. He had told her things about the man her grandfather had been and Fallon had never had a cause to regret for one second that her father had killed him.

She could thank God that she had never known such a world as the one her father, Catcher, Tracker, and yes, even Eloise had found themselves in. But, she had to wonder exactly how much of that world was in her, hiding beneath the surface. Did she have her grandfather’s capacity for cruelty or her father’s strength to take life to save another? And what about Catcher? Could she sacrifice her life for someone or for the lives of many when her own was held in such low regard?

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Catcher.” Fallon wrapped her arms around his broad, capable shoulders and drew him to her. Stroking her fingers over his head and working free the clasp that held his hair, she ran her hands through the length. Catcher nuzzled his face into her chest and exhaled a deep shuddering breath against her skin. She couldn’t hold the weight of both of them. He was simply too heavy and she too weak to support them both. They fell in a tumble onto the mattress, her on her back and him askew on top of her.

He had been badly damaged when Eloise, after finding the love of her life in Nash, had cut him loose. Lost and weightless he had drifted in a dream state with no real destination in mind. No wonder Texas had appealed to him. The emptiness and working with his hands, rebuilding what was left behind in the rubble and ash, had been a respite to a battered and very weary soul. He moved to lift his weight off of her. Fallon gripped his arm pulling him down to her. It should be some small comfort to her that she was not the only one in need of a safe haven after such a long time of waiting and wandering aimlessly.

They could help each other. He could lose himself in her and she, in him. Together they could be so much more than what they were alone. Sex was the bridge that would take them from the desert of their pasts into the vibrant lush garden of their future. “Take what you need, Catcher. I need you too. I need…so much, Catcher. I need…I need you just as badly as you need me.”



























Chapter 58

Fallon hovered over him, balancing her weight on his thighs as she contemplated him. Her brow was wrinkled in concentration and she nibbled her bottom lip contemplating exactly what she was going to do with him. Catcher could see the shadow of indecision cloud her features before it drifted away once her mind had decided on a course of action. He was hard and eager. She sat lower on his thighs, an almost respectable and somewhat agonizing distance from his groin. Submission wasn’t really in his nature. On his back, pinned beneath her and waiting for her to decide how this should start and where it should go was maddening.

Catcher had no doubt Fallon meant every word she said. He could take from her what he needed. She was willing, but hesitant and a little unsure about what she planned to take from him in return. Her hands fluttered over the hem of her t-shirt and drifted up to touch the band restraining her hair in an awkward ponytail. She would need gentle, slow, and coaxing. Her body was already miles ahead of her brain. He could smell the scent of her arousal perfuming the room. Her nipples were ripe peaks pressing against her t-shirt. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes heavily lidded. Fallon’s alternating between nibbling on her lower lip and pursing her mouth into a tight little O had turned her lips an intense shade of cherry red and swollen them to fullness.

He had never done gentle or slow. When the mistress came to him it was because she needed harsher things. He had never had the opportunity to fully appreciate a woman before and if Fallon were going to give him anything, he was damned determined it would be that. Reaching up, he stilled the nervous fluttering of her hands by clasping her dainty wrists in his grip. She was fine boned and both of her wrists fit easily in the grasp of one hand. Catcher worked his way up, his fingers barely brushing her breasts, up to her collarbones, and over her cheeks to the band holding her hair captive. With a gentle tug on the elastic band, he freed her hair and sent it in a tumble over her narrow shoulders.

She was so soft where Eloise had been so hard. She was a cool autumn breeze while Eloise had been a harsh, scorching desert wind. He was captivated by the play of light in her hair. The curls cascading over the tops of her shoulders were a deep crimson, the shade of turning leaves on a crisp fall morning. The strands curling to cup her face in a wild tumble of ringlets were lighter, the orange-gold of tongues of fire. At the crown of her head, the curls were a mix of honey and ginger, sweet and spice.

Her brows were darker, almost auburn, but not quite as intense. Without makeup, her lashes were a cinnamon color that matched the freckles dotting the bridge of her nose and the tops of her flushed cheeks. He toyed with her hair, tugging on the curls to straighten them and watching in amazement as he let them go and they sprung up into tight spirals.

Her hair was soft and her skin smooth like satin. He ran the pad of his thumb over her lips and marveled at their velvety texture. Catcher’s skin felt too sizes too small for the tendon and bone and the blood and muscle trapped within. There would be no relief other than sharing her flesh and joining their two skins to accommodate what would be one body.

Fallon blinked at the gentle brush of Catcher’s thumb over her lashes. He was staring up at her in wonder. Playing with her hair, tugging random locks straight and then releasing them and smiling as they wound up into their usual unruly spirals. She could taste the path the pad of his thumb had taken across her lower lip. The lingering taste of him on the tip of her tongue was salty and male with a slight chemically hint of the gel she used in vain to tame her wild curls.

God, she could lose herself in the gentleness of this man, in his touch, in his taste, and in everything he was. Catcher was easy to like and would certainly be easy to love. He had been through so much and had never known gentleness or kindness. She could be kindness and gentleness. Heal him and along with him all the battered parts of herself she had ignored for so long.

He ran a hand through her hair, gently tousling the curls away from her face. The way he stared up at her with a ghost of a crooked smile on his face infused her with warmth. She was melting heart, body, and soul from a smile, a touch, from the feel of this man beneath her. Fallon wanted to close her eyes and get lost in him. Simply let go and let the current tugging at her heart pull her under.

Catcher was a beautiful male, all rugged planes and sharp angles. His sinfully full lips parted as she ran her fingertips over his squared jaw. Thick, dark, expressive brows capped his long lashes and wide, deep-set eyes. His eyes were open, flaring with the golden heat of male arousal and watching her exploration of him with mixed parts curiosity, amusement, and masculine, very, very masculine interest. His chest rose and expanded and his heart pounded beneath the weight of her palm. Strands of dark hair fluttered light as feathers over his high, broad cheeks. He had a shadow of stubble on his chin and creeping up along his jaw, dark and rough, slightly rasping beneath the pads of her fingertips.

His body was tight as a springboard beneath her thighs. This was a man who could rend flesh from bone with a flick of his wrist and very little effort on his part and yet he handled her so carefully as if she were made of spun glass. She took his hands in hers and lifted them to her lips to place a soft kiss in each of his cupped palms. His nostrils flared in a sudden intake of shocked breath. She could only guess at the destruction these hands had been ordered to inflict during their service to Eloise, but they were his hands now and, build or destroy, cause pain or pleasure, he could do with them what he wanted.

Fallon gave Catcher a smile, which he returned with an upturned curve of the corners of his mouth and a flash of white teeth. With her decision made and her mind fully in line with the urgings of her body, she released his hands. They wandered up to her hair to play with the curls. Her hands wandered down, gripping the hem of her t-shirt. In a decisive move, she pulled the stretchy cotton over her head and tossed the shirt somewhere behind her, not really caring where it landed.

His fingertips trailed over the curves of her shoulders, light as a chaste kiss and reverent as if he handled something of more worth than gold. The ends of her hair tickled her breasts teasing the nipples to ripe, pebbled peaks, or perhaps, it wasn’t the hair that caused her nipples to peak but the mix of unquenched male desire and appreciation reflected in his eyes. His hands were careful, working through her hair and arranging the thick mess of it over her shoulders for a better view of what was hidden beneath the curls. “She dances in a ring of fire and throws off the challenge with a shrug,” Catcher said in a low voice almost a whisper.

Fallon smiled and shook her hair off her shoulders. “Quoting Jim Morrison?”

Gently tugging a wayward strand of Fallon’s fire hair away from the corner of her mouth, Catcher shrugged and returned her shy smile. Fallon was his fire and he would gladly dance with her in the ring of flames and risk the fear of burning alive just to feel the heat searing his flesh. He tightened his fingers around the gentle curve of her neck and drew her down to him. Cupping her cheeks, he held her still and inhaled the exhale escaping her parted lips. “I dance, swaying in the breeze. I feel her arms around me. A pain grips my chest as I think of her lips on mine.”

“We dance and I’m shaking. I need to be freed. The melody echoes in my head and the thought of countless dances, countless moments, countless dreams, echoes through my brain.”

Catcher pecked the tip of Fallon’s nose with his lips and tipped his chin, not kissing, but brushing his mouth against hers in a way that was more intimate than any kiss. “She breathes in me. Again I feel the music caress my soul. Aching yet healing, helping me to remember and remember to forget.”

Teased by the temptation of Catcher’s kiss and her head reeling at the part of his soul he had chosen to reveal in his recitation of poetry, Fallon closed the narrow gap between them and let go. She abandoned the past hurts, giving them to him with the swab of her tongue inside of his warm mouth. She took into herself, the heartache of his loneliness in the molding of her lips to his. Catcher sought her out in the kiss and she made sure he found her. The kiss was one of those kisses a woman never forgot, searching and finding, delving deeper and deeper, swallowing her whole and at the same time releasing her. “I only want to feel. They’ll never get cold. They’ll never get hungry. They’ll never get old.”

Catcher shuddered in Fallon’s embrace. The past melted away from him as the present engulfed him with its endless possibilities. He cradled her head to his chest, feeling the warmth of her breath prickle his skin. His heart pounded a million beats a minute in time with hers. Gathering her hair in his palm, he released the curls and watched them fall in a spray of sparks and flame to cover them. “I feel the dance grip me and I remember, in worship, in honor, and I know that even though tomorrow I have to go back to my shitty little life tonight I am alone with my memories.”

The deep rumble of Catcher’s voice echoed against Fallon’s cheek. He needed her so badly, not just a joining of bodies, but her…everything she had to offer. Yet, he had resigned himself to accepting so much less. As if he deserved nothing better than simply scraps. He expected her to toss him out of her bedroom when the night ended. He didn’t believe he was worth more than that. She lifted her head from his chest and willed him to meet her eyes and see the truth and depth of emotion reflected in them. They were both survivors of wanting things they couldn’t have and knew the cruelty of having the carrot dangled mere inches from their noses.

The poem was one of her favorites and in so many ways the story of her life. Catcher couldn’t have known that. Running her hands over the rasp of whiskers on his cheeks and tasting his masculine taste on her lips, she wanted to promise him things she had no right to promise. The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “We never have to go back to our shitty lives, Catcher. We never have to be alone again with nothing but our memories as companions. I dance in a ring of fire and throw off the challenge with a shrug. Catcher, will you dance with me and risk the flames?”

“I’d gladly burn to ash with you rather than never feel the heat of the flames and dance the steps of the dance at all.”































Chapter 59

Fallon rested her chin on Catcher’s bare thigh and stared up at him reading the emotions drifting across his face. She had gotten things going, boldly climbing out of the bed and stripping the rest of her clothes. Despite the fall coolness and that the furnace hadn’t yet been turned on for the season. Her bedroom was nice and toasty warm and there wasn’t any need to crawl under the covers, not with Catcher in her bed. She had taken her time undressing Catcher. Slowly unbuttoning his shirt and running her fingertips down his chest and around to his back to coax his arms free. Not all of Catcher’s scars were internal. She had taken her time kissing the silvery tissue while biting back her revulsion at the hash marks left behind by claws and whips on his beautiful tanned skin.

Catcher’s chest was rock hard, smooth, and bare with the exception of the puckered, knotty scars. She had kissed her way down and nibbled at his belly button with her front teeth. His washboard stomach had rippled beneath her lips as she tickled and teased him to ease the seriousness of the moment. A stray patch of soft, dark hair began just below his belly button and trailed down below his belt. Of course, a man like Catcher would not go anywhere unarmed and it had taken nothing short of a miracle to coax him out of his weapons. He hadn’t batted an eye when she worked the zipper of his fly down, but when she moved to ease the holster from around his hips. He had stilled her hand. Somehow she had managed though and his holster and weaponry rested within easy reach on her bedpost out of compromise.

She had made short work out of peeling him out of his jeans and silk boxers. The boots and the calf holsters secured around both calves had been a bit trickier. She had been surprised at the array of weapons he managed to secure on his person. The man was armed and well prepared for anything short of an out and out nuclear attack.

Catcher was old fashioned about his choice in armaments. He went big and he went ugly. The handguns he carried were heavy and bulky in her grip. Of course, a man like him wouldn’t appreciate the aid of a laser sight on his gun, but she bet his aim was dead on and lethal without any help. His daggers were thin and sharp without the finery of carved handles to add to the bulk he carried on his person.

He didn’t bother with a stun gun or any means to slow an attacker down. If he had to draw a weapon, he liked it up close and personal, and he liked it permanent. If he was forced to draw, he did so to kill. Most modern weaponry was designed to leave someone alive. His relics from the past used old-fashioned bullets, not the rubber ones certainly capable of killing, but usually didn’t. His bullets were the kind that made a little hole going in and a huge, irreparable mess coming out.

Catcher’s body was a lethal weapon without the aid of daggers and handguns. He was long and lean without an ounce of body fat anywhere. Every inch of him was honed sharper and finer than any blade. There was not a part of him that was not a weapon of destructive design. His narrow waist, broad chest, and long, long legs were built for speed and endurance. His big hands, muscular forearms, and long fingers could crush a person’s larynx with no more effort than a flick of the wrist. Heavy, dense bone, thick and strong as steel, supported his sinewy muscular bulk.

Catcher was tall, large, even for a wolf. His feet hung off the end of her bed, dangling over the footboard. He easily reached the six foot six inches tall mark, perhaps even taller. The mattress dimpled under his weight. He probably weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds, all of it muscle and bone, and dangerous, dangerous male. She had never seen Catcher’s wolf. Being that he was almost an exact carbon copy of his twin, she had to assume that their wolves would also be copies of each other. Catcher’s long fingers and toes, when in his wolf form would form into razor sharp claws capable of rending flesh from bone. Tracker’s wolf was one of the largest males in the pack. Perhaps, only the Great Father was larger, but just marginally.

Fallon had begun to feel the stirrings of pity for Catcher. He was right when he had told her he had been created, genetically engineered, as a weapon. He was a weapon and as males were measured, the very standard of physical perfection. He was trained to be emotionless, to kill without thought on his master’s command, and to die, if need be, in defense without a moment’s worth of hesitation. She could have done whatever she wanted to him and he wouldn’t have reacted at all, not to pain, not to pleasure, not to…anything unless she demanded it of him.

After finally divesting him of his weapons and his clothes, she had worked her way up his long frame. His muscular legs were covered with a fine dusting of coarse dark hair. There were bare patches, linear strips of tanned skin where the hair beneath had been abraded away from the leather straps of the holsters he wore strapped to his calves. She had kissed the smooth skin and trailed a path up from there with her tongue.

Catcher was perfect…everywhere. His penis was straight out of an anatomy textbook. Hard and standing erect at an angle from the curling mass of his black pubic hair, the ripe head was flushed and a single tear of moisture beaded the tip. His long shaft was ribbed with a crisscross trail of engorged vessels. His heavy sac rested between his thighs, contracted tight against his body from arousal. Fallon ran her fingertips over his penis and along his testicles, marveling at the different textures, the soft and the hard and the smooth and the rough.

He was big. Maybe it was just a side effect of the careful engineering that had created him into being. She doubted the scientists that had spliced him together out of bits and pieces of genetic material had made such a provision. She was new to this world of carnal pleasure and wondered how something so big was going to squeeze into a place so small. Fallon quickly dismissed her doubts. If a female’s body could birth a nine-pound, twenty-three inches long baby, surely a penis of just about any reasonable size, even Catcher’s, could fit in. She refused to guess the true length and girth of him. Her hands were not dainty or necessarily small for a woman’s and she could easily stack one hand on top of the other with a bit of room to spare on his shaft before she reached the very top.

Gathering what courage she could muster she had taken the tip of him into her mouth and worked over his ripe head with her tongue. If she hadn’t felt a twinge of pity for his genetic perfection before, she certainly did now. Having a penis of this size was probably more of a nuisance than a source of male pride. No wonder he was so controlled and so rigid about everything. Catcher’s eyes never roamed. His thoughts were always focused and his jaw tensed. She wasn’t a man and didn’t know what having the necessary equipment that made a man a man was like, but she imagined that for Catcher, an unwelcome erection in a pair of snug size thirty-six waist jeans or worse, combat leathers would hurt.