Chapter 11

Two more days passed by, and Tanya was starting to feel down. She and Spark had been absorbed almost seamlessly into the familial environment of this home, and she was surprised to see that it felt . . . good. Great. Even though she had been longing for years when she lived on the Island to return to the freedom of the woods and mountains, she realized now that motherhood had changed her more than she suspected.

With her boy by her side, developing steadily into a young man, she found that the vagrant lifestyle of roaming the forests was not the best for his childhood. She didn't want to raise a feral who would be so unused to civilization and other people that he'd be unable when he grew up to provide for himself or enjoy companionship. These days of watching him with Victor, Logan, and even Lorelei and her son showed Tanya that he needed more stability, a male role model, a healthier diet.

This meant that she'd have to swallow her pride and go back to the Island, to her brother, who could give her son all these things, and more. It would be hard to crawl back to the place that she'd hated, especially since the last time she saw Deek, she'd been rendering him unconscious to set Lorelei free, but she knew that her brother would forgive her in order to care for her and Spark.

Sighing at the thought of leaving this cozy place, she watched Spark dance around an outdoor fire with Jamie, the flames as brilliant as her son's hair. Even though it wasn't dark out, Lorelei had coaxed Logan into building a small fire for the boys to roast marshmallows after dinner. He'd backed the truck a little way down the drive, so that the fire was alone in a dirt area, away from the trees, and on the far side of the small cabin, the opposite side of the new house.

Lorelei was smiling, but Tanya could see that she was poised on the tips of her toes watching Jamie to make sure he was keeping a safe distance from the fire. Logan hugged her into the side of his body, his fingers idly playing with the ends of her chestnut mane and his gaze on the two elated little boys as well.

Turning her attention to Victor, who was sitting a little away from the fire, across from them, Tanya saw a surprising expression on his face, one that she couldn't immediately place. He looked . . . wistful. His eyes were on the youngsters, who were jumping and giggling as their sugar highs reached epic levels, and his eyes indulgently crinkled at the corners as he smiled at the two of them - Tanya wasn't sure she'd ever seen him smile, instead of just sneer with sarcasm.

Marching around the flames, Jamie was following closely behind Spark, who suddenly stopped short, causing the littler boy to bounce off his back and fall heavily to his bottom on the ground. Jamie wasn't hurt, and the expression on his face elicited a round of laughter from all of the adults. Now Tanya saw Victor raking his eyes over Lorelei as she laughed, smiling up at Logan and taking his hand. The naked longing that was on Creed's face was so intense, Tanya had to look away from him for a moment, and when she snuck her gaze back in his direction, she could see that he had averted his eyes, rolling his shoulders as if to shake himself out of a reverie.

She felt that she'd seen enough, for now. "Spark, time for bed," she said abruptly.

"Yes, Jamie should get to sleep now, too," Lorelei agreed. "Come on, you crazy boys."

Logan scooped up his son and headed off to the big house, still holding Lorelei's hand, and Tanya held open the door of the tiny cabin for Spark to walk in, despite his protests. Victor paced slowly around the fire, hands in his pockets, reassuring them that he'd douse the logs in a little while.

"Logan," Lorelei asked, once they were inside their house. "You and Victor were going to finish sealing the windows tomorrow, right?" Now at the end of his four-day work shift, Logan was ready for three days off to power through the rest of the house jobs with his brother, completing the work on their new home.

"Yes, first thing in the morning," Logan confirmed. "It may take all day to dry."

"In that case, since you're going to be busy, I think I'm going to go down to the lake to wash off in a minute, since it's still light out," Lorelei said. "Can you finish putting Jamie to bed? I'm going to get my things together."

"Ooh, that water's going to be cold, Baby," teased Logan. "Yeah, I've got him. You go ahead."

Outside, the flames were flickering lower as Victor stood staring into them, hypnotized. The sky was turning purple and gold behind the trees, and the mosquitoes were starting to come out for their evening meal. He barely noticed when Tanya came back out of the little cabin after Spark fell asleep.

He looked over at her. "Hey. You staying up?"

She just shrugged. "It's still early, and I'm not tired."

His lip curled up at this statement, and his response was almost automatic. "You looking for someone to wear you out?"

She arched one eyebrow. "Oh, please. That's not what you want."

This caught his attention. "Yeah? Matter of fact, I've been getting pretty lonely out there on that grass all by myself." He took a step closer to her, watching her expression.

She looked disdainful. "You want her."

"Who? Lorelei?" He smirked. "If I scent a frail and don't try to fuck her, I'm probably dead."

"No," Tanya continued, her voice rising. "You don't want to fuck her. You want Lorelei to do the stuff to you that she does to your brother."

Victor pretended to look puzzled. "Does Jimmy not fuck her? That would make sense, actually, you know," he leaned in conspiratorially, "I think he's incapable. That kid looks nothing like him."

Tanya was undaunted, a goading gleam in her eyes. "You want her to hold you. You want her to snuggle you. You want to- to-" she cast about for the word, then lit upon it in triumph: "spoon her. Like a little bitch."

Victor swiped a paw across her face, claws extended, ripping open ragged gashes across her cheek. She hissed at him and spat blood, even as the wounds were sealing themselves up like they were never there. She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Ohh, you've got it bad, don't you?" Tanya purred, taking pleasure in mocking him. "That must drive you crazy to lay out here, listening to him give it to her every night. And it sounds like he's really good at it, too," she gloated, laughing a little. "Why would you even want to try to measure up to that?"

"It sounds like you are the one interested in them having sex," he said, trying to turn the tables on her. "So you want to climb on my brother, huh?"

"You know you will never have a chance with her," Tanya continued her tongue-lashing. "Why do you hang around here? Everyone is in love with her, so you have to get in line if you even want a chance to kiss her feet."

Victor caught her by surprise, tackling her upper body and pulling them both seamlessly into a roll across the grass, with him winding up on top of her. She was struggling, but he was enraged at this point, and much stronger than she was, regardless. He drove his knees into her thighs, which made her yowl, and she clawed at his face with her razor-like nails.

He growled and bit one of her fingers, tasting her blood, then he jammed his elbows down onto her, pinning one of her upper arms and one shoulder to the ground. This left his hands free to grip her hair roughly, slamming her skull back onto the ground and making her choke a little. Breathing quickly, he brought his mouth down on top of hers.

She was kissing him back, opening her lips and licking him, clashing her fangs with his, and bit down hard on his lower lip, swiping her tongue across the bloody wound. He made a sharp sound at her, reprimanding her for that aggression on him, and he ground his pelvis down on top of hers, which made her moan and purr at the same time.

He adjusted himself, straddling her now, and released her arms, keeping a close eye on her to see what she'd do. She left one arm down by her side, but the other one snaked up, slipping between them until he felt her hand rubbing over his cock, firm in his pants. He snarled appreciatively, and gripped her neck, exposing it to himself more, and mashing his lips there against her skin to snarl again.

Victor stuck his hand up underneath her tank top, using his claws to graze her stomach, making a few shallow slices into her skin. She drew breath in - hard - then continued panting and massaging him, now working at the zipper of his pants. He moved his hand higher, grabbing her breast, his skin making direct contact with hers since she was not wearing a bra.

The month that Victor had been staying with his brother and his wife was probably the longest he'd ever gone without sex. The last woman's body he'd felt beneath his, in fact, was Lorelei's, from the day in the woods when he'd scented her and dragged her to the ground. The sensations from then to now were so different.

Lorelei was soft everywhere. Her skin, even gritty with dirt from where she'd been struggling on the ground, was like a flower petal, and had smelled just as good. Her torso and limbs had been pliant, crushed by his heavy, muscular frame, and he could remember how arousing it was to feel her quivering under him, the roundness of her breasts touching his taut abdominals.

Tanya, on the other hand, was long, limber, and wiry. Her frame was more narrow than Lorelei's, and she was quite thin, with none of the pleasant squishiness happening when he laid on top of her. Victor remembered how Lorelei had tasted when he ran his tongue over the skin of her throat, and his tongue reached out at this memory, lapping a trail from Tanya's clavicle to her ear, where he sucked and then nibbled on the lobe.

He heard her gasp a little bit, and he closed his eyes, nuzzling his nose into her hair and kissing her temple. He brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her deeply, with less urgency this time, and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck to support her head up a little to meet him. Victor could feel her hand cease its attempts to rip open his pants, and he drew his fingers up the side of her thigh, dragging them gently on her arm and encircling her bare shoulder.

He now brought both hands down to her chest, covering her breasts and applying his thumbs to her nipples, making little circles and stimulating them. He could feel her thighs moving around, wiggling together as he touched her cheek with his lips and brushed kisses on her jaw.

Abruptly, Tanya brought a knee up in between his legs, colliding with his balls and simultaneously shoving hard at his chest, the sharp pain he felt making it easy for her to shunt him to the side and leap to her feet. She spat on the ground.

"What. The. Fuck?!" she hissed. "I am a female feral, you pathetic little puppy. If you are not going to come at me with all the man you've got, then don't bother."

He glared at her, then got to his feet. "I'm man enough for you, bitch."

"Don't make me laugh." She continued in a low voice. "I don't spend my time stroking and hugging and giving butterfly kisses - save it for your Princess. When you're ready to remember that you are an animal, then I'll let you come back and beg for it. Until then, you can just sit here picking her flowers, hoping one day she'll run out of people to brush her fucking hair, and then you can hop up and volunteer for the job," she said scathingly.

He gave a primal rumble, deep in his chest, but she was already sprinting away, and he could hear her jumping up the steps to the cabin and shutting the door.

Victor started pacing aimlessly in the gloaming, not noticing where he was going. His balls ached, both from their connection with Tanya's bony knee, and from the prospect of sex being ripped so suddenly away from him. He lashed out with his claws, scraping them against a tree.

And even his sore testicles couldn't completely distract him from the thing that was causing the pit in his stomach: Tanya was right. Although he'd tried to prevent it, and deny it, he was in love with Lorelei. And of course he fucking knew he had no chance with her. She was still sort of scared of him, for one thing, and there was his brother, for another. Even if he were the kind of man who would steal his brother's mate (which he was), Jimmy would come kill him deader than dead without hesitation if he ever touched her again.

He hadn't deliberately tried to be so tender with Tanya, didn't even realize he was doing it, but he acknowledged now that he had been gentler, envisioning it was Lorelei's supple body that was responding to his touch, and her hands reaching for his manhood. He cursed himself for allowing this fantasy to take control of his body, since now he didn't get any sex, and was completely humiliated in front of Tanya. In her eyes, he had just joined the ranks of simpering, drooling pricks who saw Lorelei as the sexy Siren incarnate.

Which, fair enough, was true. She was breathtaking, and he was captivated by her. But beauty wasn't everything. In spending the last month at their house, Victor had watched her with young Jamie - the way she doted on him, the way he worshipped her - and he knew that he also loved and desired this aspect of her. He wanted young of his own: cubs that would follow him around, looking up to him. And he wanted Lorelei to care for them the way she did with little Jamie.

He also saw how she molded her body against Jimmy's, glad to see him and embracing him when he came home for the day, and Victor wanted that, too. He wanted her kissing his cheek, making him dinner, gasping from his touch between their sheets at night. Fuck, he realized. I think I want her to be my wife. Dammit.

Kicking his way through the bushes, he found himself suddenly coming out between branches onto the crumbly top of a cliff, one he'd never walked along before. The lake spread deep blue below the summit on which he stood, the water reflecting the sunset back up to the sky.

A little movement caught his eye way down below, and he looked at the earthen shore, where he could see Lorelei walking, with something in her hand that he couldn't make out. She stopped and set the thing down, then bent over and removed her shoes.

Victor was confused by this, though he probably shouldn't have been, so it was a surprise then when Lorelei reached behind her, unzipping her dress and stepping out of it. His mouth dropped open, and he instinctively stepped partway behind one of the wild, overgrown trees nearby, even though she clearly had no idea he was there.

Her body was so fair, her long dark hair standing out against the whiteness of her skin, and her breasts hung ripe on her chest, the nipples looking small and pink and delicious, even from this far away. Victor only had a second to admire them before she slid her black panties off her hips, exposing a chestnut triangle at the apex of her thighs - the same color as the hair on her head - which now captured his attention.

Victor leaned precariously on the shelf of soil, stretching himself to get as close as possible to her nakedness. She turned to the water, taking a few steps forward and dipping her toes in, exposing her curvy waist and gorgeously round ass at the same time. Turning again so that he saw her front, Lorelei reached for the objects she'd set down, which Victor now realized were soap and a towel.

Faster than he would have thought possible, he had his pants unzipped and pushed slightly down, and he held his cock in his hand. He sighed, rubbing the head of it with his thumb, and gripped it firmly with his palm; the whole shaft was rock-hard from looking at Lorelei's nude body, and it felt hot, too.

He began stroking it up and down, gripping a sturdy branch with his other hand for support as he started to get a little unstable from the attention. He looked down at her, increasing his speed a little as he jerked himself off, and threw back his head as he imagined he was buried inside her.

Or her mouth . . . . Victor moaned softly, thinking about her warm, wet lips engulfing him. That did it, and he ejaculated, blowing his load all over the leaves in front of him, trying not to get any on his shoes. He exhaled, feeling a little lightheaded.

"Just what the hell are you doing?" asked Logan's voice quietly behind him.