Gray (The Boundarylands #10) - Callie Rhodes Page 0,31

hated, it was all drifting away, replaced with a hollow chasm of need.

"Something's wrong," she mumbled, more to herself than to him.

The alpha narrowed his eyes and began slowly moving toward her, slipping out of the moonlight into the shadows.

No, not moving—stalking.

Olivia recognized that gait, just as she recognized the bright sheen in his eyes, even in the dark. She'd seen it many times through the lens of her camera. It reminded her of a lion on the hunt on the Serengeti, a prowling tiger in Bandipur, a hungry pack of wolves in the Alexander Archipelago.

All of them behaved precisely the same way right before they pounced.

Olivia couldn't understand why she wasn't more frightened. She'd photographed the bloody carnage that followed this scenario too often not to know what would happen next.

The big, bad wolf was about to swallow her whole.

Olivia's knees trembled at the realization, but not from terror.

"Nothing's wrong," the alpha muttered quietly, the odd rumble in his voice strumming her nerve endings and making her heart beat so much faster. "At least, nothing I can't fix."

Olivia gasped as the heat inside her burst into a raging, blinding bonfire. The floodgates simultaneously opened between her legs, sending a warm rush of liquid heat coursing down her thighs.

The alpha's rumble grew louder as he closed the distance between them, wrapping one hand around the nape of her neck. He drew her to him roughly and captured her mouth.

This kiss was new. It was every bit as hungry and savage as their first, down by the spring, but something had changed between them, something that Olivia knew she could never explain if she lived a thousand years.

Him. Yes. More.

Her thoughts were reduced to staccato demands, and all she knew was that she was exactly right where she was meant to be, with exactly who she was meant to be with.

Olivia's fears and doubts dissipated like smoke on the breeze to be carried into the forest and mountains around them, welcomed by the chorus of insects and creatures hidden out of sight.

She flung her arms around his neck, and the blanket fell to the ground, forgotten. She lost herself in his body's heat, her own flowing out like a receding wave, finally finding balance. This—the touch their bodies yearned for—was all she would ever need.

Olivia kissed him back, exploring the contours of his lips with her tongue, drinking in the magnificent, masculine taste of him. The longer it went on, the more her body seemed to come alive with new energy, blasting away her fatigue and sharpening her thoughts.

Suddenly, the haze was gone; she found her balance. She felt as strong and ready and sure as she had felt confused and desperate only moments before.

The alpha growled his approval and picked her up in his arms, already heading back inside. He kicked the door shut behind him, not even bothering to carry her back to his bed.

Instead, he lowered her down onto the woolen rug in front of the glowing orange embers of the fire. He straddled her and swept his hands up her body while Olivia clawed at his shirt, too clumsy with need to unfasten the buttons.

She seized the fabric in both fists and ripped.

The alpha laughed. "You're a little hellcat, aren't you?"

Olivia had no answer. Her ability to speak seemed to have been abandoned outside, along with any desire for conversation. All that mattered was the need screaming through her and the yawning emptiness inside her—a void that only he could fill.

She clawed at his pants, and he tore them off to reveal his cock silhouetted in the dying fire's glow—huge, impossibly hard, gorgeous.

Olivia spread her legs as wide as she could, urging him to take her, to pound inside her, and claim her. But the alpha held himself back, gazing down at her body while he towered over her, his hand shoving down his cock as though he was trying to tame it.

"No," he said hoarsely. "You tore yourself up pretty good fighting me this morning. We have to let you heal."

Instead, he delicately swept a single fingertip over her folds, fluttering them like the petals of a rose.

Olivia cried out in equal measures of pleasure and anguish. The need inside her was shocking, burning her from the inside out, and if she didn't get him inside her soon, she was going to die.

She wrapped her hands around his muscular thighs and tried to pull him closer, but she might as well have tried to move the