The first feral principle of how to handle shifters was never let them smell your fear; the second, and far more deadly, was never let them taste your lust.
Isolde's private incantation echoed one time in her mind, a desperate one to chase away the heavy, copper glow of the holding cell. The air was thick with the scent of musk, ferocious iron, and crude, beast electricity of hunt coming back to life. And her hunger was an electric wire in the room, flaring and unavoidable. She had broken the second rule.
Soren, a massive northern black-furred Lupine, knelt in the center of the darkened room, the chains on his thick wrists finally loose. His human body was a map of his struggle, cabled muscle contained within pale skin, marked with the raised silver welts of scars already healed and the new, red ones from tonight's session. His chest rose and fell, not from the incontinent panic of the beast, but from the forced, controlled respiration of a man struggling against a primal drive of a different nature. His grey eyes were fastened upon her, and in them the beast still raged, but no longer irrationally. It was concentrated. Starved.
"The session's over, Soren," Isolde said, her own voice low, even and one that she barely recognized as belonging to herself. Her own body vibrated in direct counterpoint, each nerve ending aflame. The black tactical gear that she wore now felt restrictive, too tight against her flushed skin.
"Is it?" His voice a snarl of rumble, a raw scrape from hours of snarling. The first human sentence he'd spoken in a week. He shifted, the chains ringing out a soft, evil counterpoint. "I can still hear your heart, Trainer. It's beating against your chest like a caged bird. Is that fear?"
He breathed deeply, a hunter savoring the wind. "Or something else?"
He knew. Of course, he knew. She had been the very picture of control for months, mending him, goading him, mastering the beast within him by sheer force of will. And then, when at last he had given way not to exhaustion but to the glimmer of awakened consciousness, twisting his battered neck to her in an act of ultimate vulnerability, something within her shattered. A burst of hot, possessive flame swept over her, so intense and jarring she could see he'd felt it. His Lupine senses didn't miss anything.
Isolde did not back away. Backing away was accepting prey-position. She held her ground with her chin up. "It's the crash of adrenaline. For both of us. It's been a long night." The lie was weak, a slow and calculating grin carved a dimple into his cheek, rendering his fierce expression into something incredulously sexy.
"A lie smells sweeter than fear, but it's just as easy to catch," he breathed. He began to rise, his movement a deadly beauty that belied both his size and his recent ferocity. The chains trailed behind him like discarded promises of imprisonment. He stopped a breath away from her, his heat an electric spark against her flesh. His scent, fresh sweat, wild woods, blood, was the scent of drunkenness. "I sensed it, Isolde. The change in you. Your control is a pretty, delicate shell, but I felt the crack."
His hand rose, not with cruel swiftness he could have employed, but with a jolting, purposeful slowness. He did not touch her. He kept his fingers inches away from the wildly pounding beat in her throat. Her body hungered for his, ached for him with an ache so intense it left her breathless.
"You want to see what's under my control, Soren?" she challenged, her voice growing husky. "Then see it."
It was all he needed. His caress, when it finally came, wasn't what she expected. It wasn't harsh or demanding, It was respectful. The edge of his thumb brushed over the racing pulse in her throat, a silent acknowledgment of her surrender. The touch was so self-apparently human it unraveled her completely.
"Yes," he breathed, the answer a prayer in itself. His other hand came up to frame the side of her face, his thumb outlining the shape of her cheekbone. His eyes scanned hers, the storm in them receding to one burning point of focus. Her.
"What's your safe-word, Isolde? Say it to me."
The professionalism, the training, all cried to her to regain control. But a more primal, more fundamental desire now moved her. "Crimson," she whispered, the word afire on her lips. "It's Crimson."
"Good." A deep thrum of agreement vibrated in his chest. "If you wish for me to stop, you say it. It ends. Everything ends. Do you understand?"
The fact that Soren, fresh from the brink of bestial madness, was the one to request permission fed fire only to another careening wave of hunger. She nodded, wordless.
His lips fell on hers.
The kiss was a bursting of the tension that had been building for months, of unspoken, smoldering silent dance between trainer and charge. It was ferocious and violent, the metallic taste of his bloodied lip covering her tongue. He kissed her with the same wild ferocity he fought with, but it was controlled and concentrated, a flood of passion well-harnessed. His tongue thrust into her mouth , and she kissed him just as wildly, her hands coming up to rest on his shoulders, touching the tense knotted muscles beneath her fingertips.
He ended the kiss, his breath hot on her face. "I have to touch you. All of you." His hands moved to her tactical vest straps, his fingers fast with an unexpected delicacy. He peeled the layers off of her in an unwavering patience that was more sensual than any mad clawing could have been.
Each inch of skin he exposed was met by his mouth, a burning kiss along her shoulder, a bite at her collarbone, the raspy track of his tongue along the border of her sports bra.
Standing naked in front of him in the chill of the cell air, his gaze was a body caress. He did not view her as a trainer, as a win, but as a miracle. "So beautiful," he growled, his arms around her waist, lifting her up with effortless strength until she teetered on the edge of the giant steel examination table bolted into the floor.
He stepped back, and without ever diverting his attention from hers, shed the torn remnants of his own shredded clothing. Standing tall and immobile, his length thick and proud, a proof of his desire.
The look of him, muscle-scarred and powerful and wholly focused on her, made her core clench with a desperate, hard need.
He moved closer to her, lying between her legs, arms curling up her outer thighs to her hips, his grip holding her in a possession that made her whine. He reached forward, his mouth closing over one hard nipple, sucking hard, his tongue tracing the tip until she was bucking against him, her fingers tangling in his black, sweat-greased hair.
"Soren, please," she begged, the words torn from her. She was wet and aching, every cell in her body sensitized to the void he alone could fill.
"Please what, my Isolde?" he panted over her breast, his voice all raspy with desire. "Say it."
"I need you inside me. I need you to fuck me hard. Now."
A low rumble of raw male pleasure vibrated his chest. He lowered himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock against her hot wetness. He lingered, his churning eyes locking on hers for a final moment, a questioning light in their depths.
"Yes," she gasped, pulling him inside. "Yes."
He surged into her in one hard, slowly drawn stroke, stretching her, filling her to the brim. A gasped strangle was ripped from her throat at the sensation, the whole, complete sensation of being filled by him. He paused, speared to the root, shuddering with the strength of his restraint.
"Look at me," he growled.
She opened her eyes, amazed, and met his blazing gaze.
"You have me," he said to her, the words raw and unvarnished. "All of me. The man and the beast. They both need you. They both love you."
And then he began to move.
His rhythm was one of discovery. It was not the wild, bestial beating of the monster he could be, but the slow, rolling, powerful thrusts of a master artist. Every stroke measured to pull against that beautiful spot deep within her, every pull a honeyed pain she whimpered for. He filled and refilled her, his pace unrelenting and beautiful. The restraints at his wrists bruised against her legs, a cold reminder of the risk this intimacy created.
He lifted her leg higher over his hip, and she moaned as he penetrated further. The world contracted to the searing, wet rub of their joining, their harsh breathing in syncopation, and the scent of their combined desire. He dropped his head to her neck, his teeth grazing her pulse point in a possessive gesture that was pure Lupine, and the sensation, so dangerously close to a claiming mark, sent her spiraling higher.
"I'm close," she panted, her nails digging into the hard muscle of his back.
"Let go," he growled in her ear, his thrusts more wild, harder, having some control slip. "I want to feel you cum around me. Soak my cock in your wet desire, Isolde."
His dominance shattered every last reserve of hers. The orgasm burst from her, a cataclysmic feeling that wrapped around him, milking his cock in brutish, tense throbs. She screamed his name, a raw, uncut scream that was muffled against his skin.
Her own climax unleashed his. With a feral roar, he drove one last, final time into her, his body bucking as he came deep inside of her, his seed hot and unregulated. He lay on top of her, his weight a comforting anchor, his face hidden in her hair as they both panted.
For a moment, there was only the pound of their slowed hearts. The cell that was a battlefield was now a sanctuary. He pulled away from her, but immediately drew her back into his arms and held her to his chest as he slid to the ground, propped back against the cold wall. He never uttered a word. He simply held her, his hand caressing her hair with a gentleness that tightened her throat.
Finally, he spoke, his voice low and gentle in her ear. "The safe-word is still Crimson," he said to her. "It always will be Crimson. You are still in control here, Isolde. You always will be."
She lifted her head to look at him. Feral light no longer danced within his eyes, but glowed instead a tired, contented peace. And something more. Something that looked forbiddingly like love.
She had come to rehabilitate the beast. Instead, she had tamed him , and in doing so, she unleashed something in herself that could never be caged again.
And when his arms tightened around her, she knew with a grisly, thrilling certainty that the most dangerous part of this was just about to begin.