Base Nature Read online

  They didn’t know why sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. In the way of nature and all its creatures, there was no perfect set of rules or answers. Why were some humans allergic to bee stings and others not? Peanuts? Poison ivy? Spider bites? The list went on. But one thing was certain, were he to ever lose every shred of his sense and change Liv, her life would be one racked with painful changes. Those born human who became part wolf later never had easy changes. They did not fall backward into moonlight and let the lines of their anatomy blur and soften.

  No. They were what horror movies were made of. They were the ones who screamed and cried and were often left bloodied and broken and exhausted by shifts. Even the older ones who’d had much practice. It was rare for a changed wolf to take to change easily. It happened but it was rare.

  Liv turned, saying something under her breath he couldn’t quite make out. He smoothed her hair and said, “I could never do that to you, Liv. I care for you too much.”

  To that, she turned, smothered by some dream of pain already experienced. “No. No. Don’t hurt me.”

  Garrett felt his blood heat a bit at that. Felt his heart wrench so that his breath went ragged. Why the hell did someone so good have to relive so many bad memories? The pain and the fear radiated off Liv like heat off a wood-burning stove. He could close his eyes and feel ripples and waves of anger and worry and terror as she tossed in her dream.

  He pulled her in closer, hoping against hope that some part of her, locked down in there in the black and the gray of her dreams, could feel him. Hooking one leg over his, she pulled at him like a drowning woman thinking he could save her. Garrett wished he could. He wasn’t even sure he could save her going forward as damaged as he felt on the inside.

  Not since Eileen had he felt so very protective. But not since Eileen had he felt so vulnerable. Vulnerable was not comfortable to him, as a man or as a wolf. Vulnerable was the kiss of death in all respects. He’d learned that two years before.

  She opened her eyes for a split second and Garrett smiled down at her. He didn’t speak because he wasn’t quite sure that Liv was awake. “Help me,” she said but somewhere in her eyes she was looking past him. Or so it seemed.

  “Liv? Do you see me?” he whispered in such a soft voice even he had trouble hearing it.

  “Help me,” she repeated.

  Her toes pushed at his calf, her fingers pulled at his shoulders. Her brown eyes wide and darker than dark in the shadowed room.

  “What can I do?” he asked, playing along. She didn’t see him. She wasn’t here. He smiled, smoothing the wild tangles of brown and blonde that climbed around her neck and cheeks like vines.

  “Make me strong. Make me strong,” she said in a panicked voice.

  “You are strong, you just don’t know it.” He bent to kiss her forehead. She would close her eyes and return to whatever horror awaited her behind closed eyelids. And he would hold her and watch over her until dawn or until sleep came.

  “Make me strong, Garrett. Make me dangerous.”

  He froze. She had said his name. Some part of her knew that he was here with her. That he was watching over her. Her words set off an alarm in him, almost akin to anxiety. “Oh you’re dangerous to me, Liv. You make me crazy.” He smiled at her but she still looked past him even though her fingers pulled and plucked and worried at him like she was slipping away.

  Garrett took her hands in his and held them until she stilled. “Make me unafraid,” she said and he could smell her tears before he saw them. The salty, untamed smell of ocean and sky. Garrett kissed her again, his lips pressing to the wet streaks that trailed down her cheeks.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Only you can save me.” She put her head down and was asleep again. But this time she was still.

  He pulled her flush, wrapping his arm across her back, the other looped behind her bottom. Garrett held her there like she was a child and she finally slept without tossing and thrashing. Her breath warmed his throat and her heartbeat ticked off each dark minute until the sun rose. When it did, he had not slept and he was half sure that if she really, really wanted him to, he would give in and change her. He’d capitulate to her needs above his better judgment.

  ———

  Garrett was cooking eggs when Liv came flying into the room. “I’m late!” she said, eyes wide. She’d thrown on his sweatshirt and it hung damn near to her knees. A pair of socks by the bed had found their way onto her feet and she looked good enough to eat, he thought.

  “You are? Where do you need to be?” He stirred the eggs gently.

  “Work!” Liv looked torn between anger and tears and he tried hard not to smile.

  “You work on Saturdays?” he asked. He kept his eyes on the stovetop while she digested that.

  “It’s Saturday?” She dropped her robe and her nightgown at her feet. They whispered into a white and red pile.

  “Yes ma’am. All day long.” Garrett finally gave in and grinned. Then he laughed because she was laughing, her shoulders shaking with her giggles.

  “Damn. I was terrified. Terrified and— Hey, are you making food?”

  A woman with a good appetite. He thought he just might die. “I am. I am making some bacon and eggs and biscuits and orange juice. I don’t suppose you like any of those things.”

  Liv crept forward. He’d seen weaker animals do that in the forest, creep forward to see what they could see. To see if they could get a morsel for themselves. But humans were not animals in the usual respect and the fact that she approached him, even cautiously, was a good sign. “I do. I love all of those things.”

  “Do you love coffee? Strong coffee, be warned.”

  Liv dropped her head in mock frustration. He could smell her high spirits and playfulness and the smell to him was as perfect as fresh air and sunshine. “I guess I can force myself to drink some strong, fresh coffee.” She forced a sigh and shuffled forward in the too big, slouchy socks. Her manner was easier now, not tense and stressed but happy and loose. Garrett handed her a mug and she filled it with dark brew. Her brown eyes were clear despite their meager sleep and her bad dreams. Garrett had no intention of letting on that he had witnessed her unconscious tortures. She sipped and rolled her eyes.

  “Good?”

  “Does a bear sh—never mind.”

  Garrett bent in and kissed her. Her mouth tasted like toothpaste and he laughed.

  “What?”

  “Did you do the old finger-toothbrush trick?”

  She sipped again and snickered. “I did. Guilty as charged.”

  He took the mug from her and pulled her in briefly for a hug. “You smell nice,” he said, his cock agreeing wholeheartedly by growing stiffer with each second she was this close.

  “I smell like sex,” she whispered.

  “Which I happen to think smells nice.”

  “Does it smell different for you?” she asked, pushing her pelvis to his cock.

  Garrett caught her mouth up in a kiss and tried to be gentle. It was an effort that was failing him, fast. “It’s more intense. I think I can smell layers of me on you, that you can’t.” And it made him nuts but he didn’t tell her that part.

  When she put her hands on his neck and opened her mouth wider for him to kiss her harder, deeper, he lost his battle, putting the frying pan on a cold burner and hiking her up on the counter. “What about the food?”

  “Food reheats.” He pushed her legs wide and dropped to his knees. Garrett kissed up her thighs, licking the salt of her skin until his cock was so hard he feared it might snap. That would be bad. To have a woman like Liv around and be cockless. He laughed.

  “What’s funny?” she asked and he felt her stiffen. He didn’t want her worrying. Garrett looked up.

  “I was worried about my cock snapping off I want you so bad.” The truth would always be best with Liv. She would always worry she’d done wrong, he realized.

  Her cheeks flushed but her eyes sparkled. He kept his gaze on he
r but pressed her clit with his thumb through her panties. He felt her jump a bit and the thick smell of arousal filled his head. He was a goner. “I don’t want that to happen.” She found his hard-on with her toes and stroked him lightly. Garrett shut his eyes for a moment.

  He leaned in and inhaled the scent of her and then pressed his mouth over her pussy without moving. He simply breathed in and out, in and out, letting the moist heat of his mouth flood over her. Letting the dark, mystical scent of her fill his head. He wanted to fuck her so bad but couldn’t.

  She read his mind, pushed her toes to his cock harder. Laughing, she said softly, “You don’t have a condom down here, Garrett.”

  Chapter Seven

  Improvisation and Visitors

  He stopped and Liv shivered. His eyes were dark blue with mischief, he cocked his head like he was listening to something far off and said, “Who said, Little Liv, that I need a condom?”

  Her belly tingled then, was he going to take her up on her offer? There was something enticing in a nearly sinister way about having sex with him with nothing between them but body heat. He pushed his face to the V of her thighs again, running his tongue over the already sodden patch of cotton between her legs. Liv forgot her taunting, gasped and arched up to his tongue. Imagining him in her mind pulling the panties off and finally putting his hot tongue to her clit. She imagined it and imagined it like a visual prayer, hoping against hope that he would read her mind. He did. He tugged hard and the small band of elastic at her hips snapped with a tiny popping protest. He pulled the panties off in a swift motion like a magician, paused to grin at her and then put his mouth to her pussy and started to lick.

  Liv pushed up to meet him, forcing her legs wider to get as much of the feel of him as she could. She touched the small strands of pure white that were woven in his darker than dark hair. She sifted his hair through her fingers, tugging lightly so he groaned. “I don’t need one,” he said, his tongue sliding up and down the ridge of her clit and wet pussy so that she stilled, heart beating too hard to breathe deeply. “There are other ways to get you off.”

  Garrett sucked in her hard nub, sucking hard enough to stir a deep echo of pleasure in her womb. His thick fingers pushed into her cunt, fucking her in slow even strokes. First one finger, then two. Arching with an expert pressure against her G-spot so that her body warmed rapidly, her limbs tingling and heavy. “What about you?” She toed his cock, trying to push him past his rational little game plan. No unprotected sex.

  Why is this so important to you, Liv?

  She didn’t know. Her toes slipped clumsily up and down Garrett’s erection but she provoked him into thrusting and that thrilled her. Every time she knew she had pushed him just a bit, it swelled up in her. A huge rush of power and excitement. Something about being able to make him react thrilled her. More than with any other man.

  “I’ll make do.” His free hand captured her foot and held it and he slowly thrust his cock against her foot so that she was now the one to shake with excitement. He curled his fingers in her, pressing harder so her legs closed a bit involuntarily. Garrett licked her harder, biting her clit with just enough pressure to make her sob a little, and she was coming. Trying desperately to synch up her toes to her orgasm so that she could maybe, somehow, magically tip him over the edge.

  But he pulled back from her, removing his hand and planting both of his palms flat to her thighs. He held her wide on the counter, drinking in the soft wash of juices from her pussy, licking her clit that now felt unbelievably fragile in that moment until her whole body accepted the stimulus and raised up to meet him. She went from too sensitive to the verge of another release in a few wet drags of his tongue. “Fuck me, please,” she said, not above begging. “We can go up and get one. I can wait. Or I’ll follow you.”

  She’d apparently bargain to have him hard and inside her.

  Garrett laughed softly, the sound and sensation traveling through her pelvis. Her pussy clenched around nothing and she wanted to cry but it felt too good.

  Warm autumn sunlight streamed into the kitchen through the opaque white curtains. At least no one could see her pinned her on the counter, man-beast between her legs. She laughed at her own name for him and he stilled. “What’s so funny, girl?”

  Everything was more vibrant at that moment, the cornflower blue walls, the rich smell of coffee, the musky smell of their sex, the sound of a lawnmower somewhere on the block. His big blue eyes pinned her, daring her to lie. She couldn’t. Her heart was too big, her chest too small, the air too thin. She had never felt better. “Nothing, I just called you man-beast in my head.”

  She held her breath waiting for him to get angry but he grinned a lupine grin and tsked at her. “Hmm. How to punish a bad girl. Oh I know.” He bent and lapped at her until she squirmed. The brief reprieve to her clit only making this pleasure and pressure that much more intense. Garrett licked her until her fingers curled around the lip of the counter and her legs shook and then he stopped.

  “Wha—” She was breathing hard and now confusion filled her mind like muddy water.

  “Such a bad girl. Time for a lesson from the man-beast,” he chuckled.

  Liv waited to feel fear or even anxiety. A lesson could be harsh or bad. No fear came. No worry. A frazzled kind of excitement was what she felt. “Oh,” she breathed.

  “Yeah, oh.” With ease he hefted her. He grabbed a spatula from a sunflower patterned pitcher and plopped into a big ladder-back chair with her draped over her lap.

  “Garrett!” she gasped, seeing what was coming now.

  “Five swats for being such a bad girl.” He did wink at her and that tamed the small flutter of uncertainty in her breast. “One,” he said, smacking the flat of the white spatula so that she yelped. The sting blended into a pleasurable hot pulse in her skin. Her cunt echoed the pulse and she noticed for the first time the hard press of his cock against her belly. Liv wiggled and he laughed. “Bad, bad, bad. Now another.” He whacked her again and her pussy grew taut. She felt so swollen. So hot. So ready, she wanted to scream. She wanted to wiggle back and suck his cock. She wanted to climb onto his lap and slide down his hard cock, ride him until she came. Until he came, his teeth on her shoulder. Instead she braced for three and bucked under the smart, stinging swat.

  “Please, please, please. I need—” Liv stopped.

  “What do you need?” He didn’t deliver four. Instead he parted her thighs wide and she felt the cool, plastic end of the spatula run a fast circle around her clit and up her slit. Her head fell down, her forehead banged his leg.

  “Oh God.”

  “What do you need?” Garrett slipped the handle inside her just a bit. Slow, cool slips into her, halting drags out of her. He propelled the handle up and into her with a gentle motion and as she raised her head to speak, she felt the biting sting of a blow from his palm.

  “Make me come. I need to come.” She said it as honestly as she could. Her head tossed back, watching him over her shoulder as he clenched his jaw. His eyes on her. The flicker of weakness when she wriggled just so and rubbed his cock with her belly. To make her point she said, “Four.” Liv dropped her head and watched her hair brush the floor.

  “One more,” he said, hurrying his thrusts with the tool. Pushing against that sweet spot inside her his fingers had already found. “One more from the man-beast.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. And he smacked her harder than ever even as he obviously tamed his own strength. Liv let the orgasm take her under. Wet and fast and overwhelming like a swell of water. She fell into it and let go of herself, sobbing on his lap, moving as she came. The feel of his erection pressed to her middle. The evidence of his want of her.

  “I wanted you to fuck me.”

  “No protection.”

  “But you…” She was still balanced on his lap as he ran his palms over the warm skin of her ass. She felt each heartbeat in the places where his blows had landed.

  “I’m not worried about me.” He
was telling the truth but she could feel him hard and unfulfilled right there under her.

  “I am.” He gave one half-assed grab at her but she wiggled around between his thighs and tugged at his blue boxers. “Come on. Don’t hurt my feelings. Give it up.”

  “Give it up!” he cried, grinning.

  “Yeah, don’t hold out on me, baby,” she cooed. But before he could laugh again, Liv bent and licked at the silken pink head of his cock. She ran the tip over her lips and reveled at the feel. Like warm flower petals or smooth sun-baked stones. It was the smoothest thing she’d ever felt and the smell of him overwhelmed her. She opened her mouth wider and took him in. Her hands on his thighs and his hands in her hair.

  There was that rush again. Of more than affection, more than attraction and a consuming rush of power. She could push this man to be a bit weak, a bit desperate. The power to affect him that way was a bit of a buzz. Liv had never reacted this way to another man. Always there was a vein of worry and trepidation in her when she met a guy. What would make him turn? What would make him angry? At what point would she start doing it all wrong? She had none of those feelings. Only the thought of his hands on her and his voice soft in her ear. The image of him coming through her window and grabbing Kevin. The feel of him protecting her.

  “Do you like that?” she asked, dropping lower, licking up the back of his cock with the tip of her tongue so he danced a little in the chair.

  “Do you have to ask?” His voice was deeper than she had ever heard it. A rocky, dry gasp when he tried to form words.

  Could she push him far enough to shift?

  Liv pushed the thought away. That was a wonder for another day. Right now her slippery hand slid up and down his shaft as she kissed his inner thighs, the spot above his knee. She went back to him with her mouth and he slipped forward in the chair, thrusting into her mouth like a man who had lost that final little tether to self-control. “Don’t move, Liv,” he said, thrusting. His movements firm but gentle. He held her head in his big hands and it occurred to her that most likely he could kill her if he chose to. Not even mostly likely. He could kill her if he chose. In man form or wolf form. Instead of terrifying her, the realization shot through her like a tiny orgasm, igniting a tumble of electric nerves in her belly and cunt.