Rise Against: A Foundling novel (The Foundling Series) Read online

  “After he and Maggie finish visiting, I’ll drop him off at his house.”

  “We’re going to talk about this when I get back, mister.” I drilled a finger into his chest. “All four of us.”

  Whatever Maggie and Miller had gotten up to, I had no doubt Portia had encouraged with manic glee.

  “You can thank us later.” He gave me a nudge. “For now, you better hurry.”

  “Don’t eat my partner,” I warned.

  “Former partner,” he corrected.

  “Miller … ”

  “I won’t eat your friend. I will deliver him to his wife in the same condition as he arrived in.”

  “You better.” I gave him one last jab. “Hurt him, and you hurt more than me. You hurt Mags.”

  The jab landed, and I don’t mean my finger. Miller would never hurt Mags if he could help it, and that meant Rixton was safe. Cole, on the other hand … Unable to shake the nagging sense of urgency spreading through my limbs, I left Miller to chaperone and went in search of my mate.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Soft light glowed through the dense foliage ahead, and I kept swatting aside limbs until I stumbled into a small clearing we once used for feeding deer. A ring of stumpy wax pillars flickered, their repellent scent reminding me of the emergency candles we kept in the kitchen cabinet for power outages.

  “That’s a fire hazard,” I said, but I heard the wonder in my tone. “And is that … a tent?”

  Blankets spread across the pine needles I recognized from Granny Boudreau’s collection in the attic.

  Lured by the sound of my voice, Cole stepped into the clearing with me.

  At a loss for words, I waved a hand to indicate the romantic tableau. “Did you plan this?”

  “No.” He tugged on his ear, the ragged one. “This is all Miller, Maggie, and Portia.”

  “How did they get you out here?” It was obvious how I had been tricked. I would follow Cole anywhere.

  “I smelled the smoke from extinguished matches and came to investigate.”

  Given Famine’s affinity for fire, I couldn’t blame him for that smell making him antsy.

  “How long have they been planning this?” I wandered over to the sun-faded tent and spied a mountain of pillows stuffing its interior. “This is ridiculous.” I laughed. “Magical, but — ”

  Cole slid his palms over my hips and turned me in his arms until we faced each other.

  Music clicked on from somewhere nearby, and I heard retreating footsteps.

  “Damn limb,” Maggie cursed. “Who leaves sticks lying around for people to trip over?”

  “We’re in the woods,” Miller answered dryly. “Sticks are kind of a thing out here.”

  “I can hear you,” I called. “I thought you were talking to Rixton?”

  “He’s waiting for me at the farmhouse,” Maggie said after a rumble from Miller prompted her to answer.

  Amused despite myself, I tossed out, “Are you guys staying for the show?”

  “No,” they shouted in unison as leaves rustled during their sprint out of hearing range.

  “We’re going to have to have a talk with them about boundaries.”

  Meltwater eyes blazing, Cole palmed my cheek. He slid his thumb over my bottom lip, his own parted to expel his shortened breaths.

  “We might not get this chance again,” he said gently. “I’m not going to force you to — ”

  Laughter exploded out of me. “Force me? Are you serious?” I pressed a kiss into his palm. “I spend a portion of every day succeeding in not climbing in your pants while failing to imagine what it would be like to have you want me.”

  A frown scrunched up his face. “I do want you.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked in a small voice. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

  “Are you sure?” The troubled expression smoothed away to delight. “I was hoping you would.”

  At some point, I had to accept he loved me, wanted me, and not her. Sex wouldn’t prove that, but the act of Cole giving himself to me did. I wasn’t strong enough to resist him. I didn’t want to resist him. I wanted him. Period.

  Sometimes it felt like I always had, that he was the itch beneath my skin I could never quite scratch.

  Though it looked like I was about to get my chance to try.

  “Dance with me?” I tucked in against his chest, and Cole wrapped his arms around me. We swayed together, heat building between us, as the music played on. “You move well for a mantain.”

  Cole blinked, and I realized my mistake. I hadn’t meant to give away my nickname for him.

  “Thank you.” He hesitated. “I think.”

  These woods had introduced me to his dragon, and he had hunted me through these trees as a man when the edge of need rode him all those months ago. Just thinking about it got me all hot and bothered.

  All coy-like, I traced my fingers down his shirtfront. “You know what would be more fun than dancing?”

  Molten heat sparked in his eyes as he raked them down my body. “I have a few ideas.”

  Taking his hand, I led him to the tent. Spinning him so his back faced the open flap, I leaned in for a kiss — then shoved him as hard as I could before pivoting on my heel and running as if the hounds of hell nipped at my heels.

  A roar split the air when he landed on the pillows, but I was too busy laughing to be properly frightened.

  Cole would never hurt me. Not in a million years. Not for anything.

  That knowledge gave me the courage to flee from the predator crashing through the underbrush on my heels. Unable to chuckle thanks to the stitch in my side, I wheezed out my amusement as he snarled in pursuit behind me.

  “First one to the ravine wins.” The wind snatched the words and flung them at him. “Move it, Heaton.”

  Tree limbs slapped me, and leaves got stuck in my hair. Brambles tugged on my clothes, which gave me the brilliant idea to distract the competition by yanking my shirt over my head and hurling it at his face. It hit him, blinded him, and he lost precious seconds regaining his lost momentum.

  Since that worked, I unfastened my bra and tried hurling it at him next.

  Chalk that one up to a tactical error. True, it was the only piece of clothing left I could remove without stopping, but I had underestimated what a glimpse of side-boob would do to him.

  Hot fingertips brushed down the length of my spine as he grasped for me.

  Unwilling to get caught just yet, I put on an extra burst of speed, zigzagging through the trees to cost him time. The crumbling edge of a ravine loomed ahead, and victory sang in my veins. I knew these woods like the back of my hand, had played in them all my remembered life. He couldn’t beat me unless I slipped up … or let him. But where would be the fun in that?

  Grinning like a maniac, I yelled over my shoulder, “Hurry up, slowpoke!”

  That’s when his breath hit my cheek, his arms went around my middle, and we hit the ground in a hard roll that carried us over the ledge. We plummeted straight down into the water and hit with a splash that soaked the banks of the small spring-fed pond where I used to spend hot summer days swimming with Maggie.

  “Cole,” I howled as I shot up from the icy depths, but he silenced me by sealing his mouth over mine.

  His large body was hot and hard against mine as he hauled me into the shallows.

  “How am I going to get these jeans off now?” I managed through chattering teeth. “What are you — ?”

  Gulping air, he sank down until water closed over his head and started to work on my pants. I braced my hands on his shoulders, toes sinking in squishy mud each time he yanked on the fabric, dunking me in the process. I came up laughing each time, louder and louder, until I couldn’t breathe.

  The universe really did not want me to have sex with this man.

  About the time I was ready to claw my way onto the bank, he achieved his goal, yanking my underwear free with the same hard pull.

  “I’m impressed, Mr. Heaton,�
� I told him when he surfaced, but he filled his lungs and ducked again. “I’m as naked as I’m getting. What are you … ?” His mouth found my core in an open-mouth kiss that crossed my eyes. “Oh.” I dug my nails into his shoulders. “Oh.”

  Pleasure coiled in my middle, winding tighter, burning hotter, and I forgot how to breathe. Writhing in his grip, I clawed at him, at the water, at thin air, desperate for traction, something to send me falling off the ledge where he kept me balanced with masterful strokes of his tongue.

  Two broad fingers speared my core, and I convulsed around them with his name caught in my throat.

  Cole surfaced, and this time there was no clothing between us when he drew the quivering mass of flesh that used to be Luce Boudreau to him. He gripped the backs of my thighs, opening me to him, and slid home with one hard thrust.

  The water had stolen my chance to explore his body, but the way he filled me left me no doubt I had been right. Cole was proportionate. In all ways.

  “Gods, you’re tight,” he breathed in my ear. “Am I hurting you?”

  I answered him by nipping his throat hard enough to draw blood and linking my ankles at his spine.

  Permission granted, he pistoned his hips into mine, his hands tight on my waist, until the force of our lovemaking broke his grip. Growling at my slick skin, Cole walked us to the bank then pinned me to the silty ground without missing a beat, giving me the leverage to give as good as I got.

  Cole roared my name when he came, and the steady rumbling purr in his chest where our bodies stuck together shoved me over the edge again.

  An earthy scent rose from his skin, and I filled my lungs with the intoxicating fragrance.

  “You marked me,” he growled softly, his lips blazing a trail down my throat. “I wasn’t sure you could.”

  “That’s me?” I lifted my arm to my nose, inhaled, and shrugged. “I don’t smell half bad, honestly.”

  Rocking his body into mine, his length hardening with each breath, Cole groaned helplessly against my shoulder.

  Smoothing my hands down his back, I had to swallow a moan to ask, “Again?”

  “Yes.” He quickened his strokes, the vibration in his chest deepening. “Your scent … ”

  “I know.” I smelled it on him now, and it caused my gut to clench, my nipples to tighten. I wanted to bite him, to mark him with my teeth, but this claiming would have to do. “Take what you need.”

  “You,” he whispered, his voice guttural. “Only you.”

  And he spent the next few hours proving it true.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Adam woke in his Jackson, Mississippi hotel room to an acute pinching sensation in his chest. He rubbed his tired eyes with his fingertips and blamed the tightness on the grim news he was about to deliver.

  The peculiar ache plagued him as he dressed, as he checked out of his room, as he made his way to the roof and then covered the distance to Canton.

  Landing at the farmhouse where Luce grew up brought him no ease, the opposite in fact, when his arrival failed to bring her running with a demand for how he found her.

  No curtains rustled in the living room. No one came to the door. No one called out a hello.

  But the tracker he had secreted in the lining of her NSB-issued boots told him she was here.

  Rubbing the skin over his heart, he turned on his heel and set out through the woods.

  A whiff of extinguished candles, the cheap kind that smelled about as much like their intended fragrance as burnt tires, drew him into a scene right out of one of the romance novels Luce had left stacked on her nightstand at the bunkhouse.

  Blankets were scattered over the dirt. A tent had been pitched under the cover of limbs to make aerial surveillance difficult. Pillows overflowed its interior. And music played. Soft country ballads that broke him out in a feverish sweat.

  This was a carefully planned seduction, but where had the seducer or the seductress gone?

  Inhaling deeply, he drew in the distinct scents of Luce and Cole. Both were hours old.

  Peculiar.

  No blood tingled in his nose. No fear burned his sinuses. No signs of interlopers, either.

  Before he could second-guess his motives, Adam set out down a path trampled by two sets of boots. The tread on one was familiar, the Lucchese logo an imprint in the soft dirt. The other boasted thick treads, the style Cole favored.

  The farther he ventured, the stronger the trail, until his gut clenched in response to the tantalizing perfume of Luce’s arousal that coated the back of his throat until he was swallowing her taste.

  Desire thrummed in his veins, beat in his head, made it hard to think beyond the want turning his blood molten.

  He heard their murmured conversation before he crested the drop-off leading straight down into a deep pool. Despite the fact he had trouble breathing when he spotted them, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Luce. She lay curled against Cole’s side, both of them naked, their legs tangled. Cole reclined on the bank, covered in mud and oozing satisfaction. He kept stroking his hand down her side, tracing her curves like he couldn’t believe she was his to touch.

  The scent hit him then, knocked the breath right out of him.

  Luce had marked Cole.

  Several times.

  The steady downward trajectory of her hand made him think she planned on doing it again.

  They no longer carried individual scents. They smelled like a meld of the same person, with the balance tipping toward Luce the way it always did with Otillian matings.

  Luce was strumming his hipbone like the strings on a guitar, and she gazed at him with so much love in her eyes that Wu recoiled from his voyeuristic perch as she closed her hand over Cole’s stirring interest.

  A gasp rang in his ears. His. Shocking him like a slap to the face.

  This wasn’t part of the plan. None of this. He shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t bother him. He’d had a mate, a woman he’d loved, and she was dust and memory now. Luce was … an experiment. A test. A creation.

  His father saw himself as a god, and perhaps the apple hadn’t fallen so far from the tree.

  Adam had forged Luce Boudreau, and the primitive core of him wanted to keep her for himself. But she deserved to live, while she could, and love for as long as any of them had left. He had already tasted his happiness, and it had died on lips gone cold centuries ago. What he felt for Luce was chemical, biological.

  He might like her. He might even imagine her as a friend. But he couldn’t love her.

  Forcing his fingers down before they worried bruises on his skin, Wu jerked back, hiding, but water splashed, and a possessive growl from Cole carried to him.

  “It was just a bird,” Luce teased. “Or a deer. Maybe a bunny.”

  “We should go.” The snarl didn’t leave his voice. “We should return to the farmhouse.”

  “Relax, nothing will get past Miller or Portia.” A soft laugh escaped her. “Besides, you destroyed our clothes. I’m not walking back there naked. At least if we hit the campsite first, we can lift some blankets.”

  “All right,” Cole said, caving under the kiss Adam heard Luce bestow on him. “We’ll stay until dawn.”

  A teasing note entered her voice that explained how they ended up here. “Race you back?”

  “I won last time,” Cole said, smug. “You won’t beat me.”

  “I don’t have to.” Luce splashed, either exiting the water or provoking Cole. “I win either way.”

  The hungry growl Cole emitted filled the basin, startling a thrilled squeak out of Luce. The joy in the sound gave Adam heartburn, and he wasn’t sure why. He couldn’t feel romantic love for her or any other female.

  Too bad the bond stretching between them, taut as a wire, hummed disagreement.

  Unable to watch her streak past with Cole in pursuit, two lovers reveling in the discovery of one another, he shut his eyes. For her, all of this was new. The powerful physical connection with her own kind, with her own mate. For all th
at Cole had bedded Conquest throughout their tumultuous relationship, Luce was a fresh experience for him too.

  She had given Cole her heart, and a woman like Luce was loyal to a fault. Even if she had feelings for Adam beyond attraction, she would never give up Cole for him, and that was before she learned the truth.

  Once she realized who she was to him, what he had done, he might wish his father had killed him before she got ahold of him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Though our boots squished when we walked, Cole and I were otherwise dry and ready to face the day. We didn’t make it far before the first nose wrinkled in our direction. Being that it belonged to Portia, and was on Maggie’s face, I couldn’t say I minded too much.

  “You two had sex.” She leaned in closer. “A lot of sex.” She gave herself a high five. “Way to go, Mags. We’re brilliant.”

  Santiago, who must have arrived during the night, walked up behind Portia and shoved her aside to look at Cole and me.

  “He stinks to high heaven.” He gagged a little. “How are we going to hide with the two of you smelling up the place? Any decent tracker will be able to latch onto your marking.”

  Ever the peacemaker, Miller joined us to defuse the situation as much as any situation involving Santiago could be defused without knocking him unconscious and thus removing him from the situation completely.

  “Portia and Maggie dreamed up the laidcation idea while they were sick in Reno,” he told us. “Portia left herself notes that Maggie would read over and add to so they could both contribute. They were just waiting on an opportunity to spring one of their plans into action.”

  “Laidcation,” I repeated.

  Santiago rolled his eyes at me. “It’s like a staycation but with sex.”

  Cocking an eyebrow, I had to wonder if Portia hadn’t bounced ideas off him too. “How do you know?”

  “Gods, that stench.” Santiago made a production of pulling his tee up over his nose, a copout if I ever saw one. “It’s worse than ever.”

  “Aww. Thanks.” I wrapped my arms around Cole’s middle. “We had extra sex just for you, Santiago.” I made kissy sounds at Cole while he chuckled at me. “Pretty sure I could go again.”