Pawn Among Wolves

The coffee shop and internet cafe looked somewhat tatty and uncared for, the windows slightly smeared and the paintwork peeling lightly off the old boards. Tatty suited Gemma just fine. She'd blend in perfectly. She'd never wanted a bath and clean clothes so much in her life, her skin felt as if it was keening, pleading with her to get this cake of sweat and dust OFF. Plus certain other evidence of her perpetually aroused state. Weirdly, despite the Marsh wolves referring to this as her blood heat, there was at least none of that around - her body seemed to have gone off at a tangent from the normal course, and was trying to drag her with it into this uncharted whirlpool of pure, ferocious lust.

However, dirt was preferable to being caught, and while she didn't think her unwelcome suitors were going to be put off by a little sweat, she'd take any help she could get. It felt like she was tiptoeing through the eye of a hurricane, waiting for the second half to catch up with her. Any second.

Shit

.

She shivered lightly.

She was walking stiffly, footsore and aching, down the unpaved dusty slope of the hill towards the shop in the soft morning sunshine. Her legs were spaced slightly further apart than usual - it was just that they were stiff from all the running and didn't work properly. It had nothing to do with avoiding further unwanted stimulation. Not a bit. Nope.

No

.

When Gemma had finally spotted an Internet sign, she'd blazed straight past to the top of the hill on the bike, making a dazed, relieved beeline for the first likely-looking fence she could see. A fence that she'd be able to get back onto the monster bike from. There were disadvantages to borrowing (ahem) bikes off guys who were at least a foot taller than she was. Like not being able to stop without somewhere to prop the bike, as she couldn't reach the ground with even the tips of her toes, and knew the machine would probably refuse to stop keeling over when she finally

could

put her foot down, and would then use her leg as a nice pillow if she didn't jump fast enough.

She really didn't think lying trapped under a motorbike waiting to see who found her first would make her day any better.

Not that she didn't like the bike. She appreciated it, was exceedingly grateful for its existence and eagerness to sprint at the drop of a hat.

God, she was weary, her mind felt like it was dribbling little patches of disconnected idiocy, fudging coyly sideways whenever she tried to get it to focus on the problem at hand. Like how to escape the ravening wolf pack on her tail. Running all night after three nights of too little sleep was no joke - too little sleep due to somebody's idea of a good wet dream waking her up every few hours... Mac should really be ashamed of himself, some of the stuff he got up to in her dreams... no, don't go there. No. I said NO.

Why are you not listening

? No, I did NOT want answers on a

pornographic postcard

.

Ooh, she was so damn aroused.

All the time

. It was exhausting. Her skin felt like there were little feathers brushing over every single inch, softly, tantalising, unbearable. And her nipples were little hard bullets, rubbing against her t-shirt, while her clit and cunt throbbed, demanding touch, demanding attention. Incessantly. Increasingly insistently.

This

was why she couldn't think. Every thought led down to her cunt. What it wanted. Needed. Not even getting off the bike had provided any respite, she was going to have to buy herself a gag soon to stop herself from groaning. Screaming.

Mac. Mac. Mac. Get here.

Now

.

He didn't even know she needed him. Unless he'd contacted the cubs.

Internet

, the faint spark of rational thought remaining in her brain squeaked at her, and she stumbled back into movement down the hill. She hadn't realised that she'd stopped. Or that her hands had been softly stroking southward toward the zip of her jeans.

Doh

.

She stuffed her fingers into the front pockets to prevent them wandering off on their own anywhere embarrassing. Which was easier to do than usual, the jeans were looser. This had something to do with her having knotted the elastic from her shredded panties through the belt loops to stop the rear of the trousers dangling below her knees. Then she'd tied her fleece around her waist, over the top, to avoid flashing the neighbourhood with her bare buttocks through the huge rips in the denim.

The light breeze that sneaked through the tears and caressed the heated, wet, tingling skin between her thighs was just so not helping. Her blood felt as though it was panting. She was kind of glad she was dazed from physical exhaustion and hunger. She had a feeling that if she'd been alert, she'd have been slavering and whimpering aloud.

Life was a little strange at the moment.

As she wavered wearily on down the road, Gemma passed a side street, and suddenly felt an electric shock shiver down from the top of her spine. Her skin tightened and the small hairs across her arms raised to alert as a feather of intense feeling caressed over her torso. Anticipation radiated through her veins. Her lips parted to pant gently, and her eyes clouded with lust as she angled herself to the right, body following instinct with no thought. Absolutely glorious, the scent melted into her like warm chocolate, enticing, luscious.

Too far right. Not there.

She turned herself back slightly, mind blank of all but the need to find him, to trace back along that delicious scent trail, and she swayed as the waves of eagerness washed higher, higher, pussy throbbing with pure want.

There.

That

way

.

Her nipples were erect, taut, drawing her forward as she paced softly, thoughts fogged with lustful images, in the wake of this musk. Her skin was screaming with joyous anticipation and her tongue traced along her upper lip.

Then suddenly, from nowhere, a blast of anger slammed into her and she staggered to a halt, still burning under the lust, but with fury searing through her veins, fighting the want, clearing her eyes as her body swayed under the internal onslaught.

Wrong scent.

WRONG

.

Breath rasping harshly in the air, she swayed on the spot, and then managed to drag herself around, her skin, her bones, her blood all desperately screaming

no!

as she forced them to turn away. She could taste the tang of the salt iron in her mouth where she had bitten through her lower lip to prevent the screaming howl from escaping. Her feet scraped along the ground as she compelled herself inch by slow, fighting inch back to the main street, body yowling, struggling in fierce protest while her mind battered her with the white-hot needle-point burns of

wrong

piercing into her with every breath.

Bloody hell.

Anger shot another jolt of rage through her, anger that it was so damn hard to force herself into retreat, and it spurred her on to stagger across the street drunkenly. She weaved on her unsteady feet as lust and anger fought for supremacy, then collapsed to lean both palms against the cool glass of a shop front, gasping.

No

. It was getting harder the further she hauled herself from the source of that scent. Tearing herself in two.

Bloody HELL.

NO

.

Desperately, her body was fighting to turn back. To follow. Her mind was raging, empty of any thought beyond fury as the two sides struggled. Her senses were calling, desperately pleading, yearning towards that wolf-musk. Yearning to taste, to smell, to nuzzle, to touch the male wolf; to present her aching, wet pussy to him and have him mount her, mate her, fulfil and subdue this fierce, aggressive need. Her blood was tumbling in a melee of anticipated, ecstatic release, wrenching her, sucking her down the side-street after that scent.

Her mind was slamming waves of incandescent anger against the deluge of want, each wave crashing in and slamming her back into sense, into herself, halting her sway to

follow.

The sense of wrongness swamped her, briefly subsuming the burning lust before each spike of fury sank and her small frame teetered and swung back again under the inexorable pull. Which made her furious.

Exhausting

.

Her small, curvaceous frame was bent almost double as she leaned her palms against the glass, her long, dark, wind-blown waves of hair hanging in a dusty curtain about her face, shielding the contorted agony of her expression as she desperately fought the desire pounding at her, through her, her glazed eyes fixed, unseeing, on a small shiny emblem in the window display.

The blood was a sharp, welcome contrast in her mouth as she prevented herself from screaming at the feeling of being ripped apart, pulled in two by the raging forces inside her. Hands tensed into claws, shoulders hunched, she leaned closer against the glass, panting as she pressed her heated forehead against the smooth surface, even as she felt herself sway back towards that street. A cold finger of fear traced down her spine as she struggled under the lash of the rage. She couldn't maintain this level of fury, it would have to burn out. Whereas the lust - the lust was slowly swamping the fury. Fear cleared Gemma's her mind slightly, and her eyes settled on the small item on display in front of her.

Cross.

Then she shuddered, clenching them shut again in agony as she teetered under the renewed onslaught between the warring fires inside her.

A silver cross.

Her eyes opened again, this time intent.

Silver

.

Abruptly, her brain cleared, settled, and a cold clarity spread out through her frame from the coolness in her mind, smothering the trembling shivers creasing her as she stared hard at the necklace in the window, forehead furrowed in worry.

Mac. Poisoned.

His name in her mind solidified the steady chill advancing through her body, cooling the raging lust, anchoring it, and she wondered why the hell thoughts of Mac hadn't surfaced earlier when that male musk had sideblasted her. All the objection that her instincts had come up with was the unthinking sense that that scent was wrong - but she hadn't been able to focus on why, there had been no clarity in the feeling. Until now. The thought of the poison still eating into Mac's belly cleared her head further, fear echoing in her mind.

He hadn't said much last night. In fact, he'd been too busy ordering her off the phone and out of Marsh's rooms to be counted as chatty, but the way he had reacted to the news - and more, the reaction of the other two on the line, the roughness in their voices, had told her that there was something serious to worry about here. That

they

were seriously worried about him. Gemma straightened, gingerly stretching out her aching limbs as the shattering chill spreading through her smothering the lingering tug of the burning lust, and she swayed as she faced the fear -

how ill was he

?

She swallowed the blood in her mouth as she felt a hollow emptiness echo through her mind, and swayed under the feeling.

How the hell was she going to find a cure for him?

Mac was right - not that she was going to tell His Smugness this - she was a little spooked - scared - ok, terrified, about going back to her own lab. It was not somewhere she felt safe with the Grey on the prowl, not after he'd pulled that stunt with security last time. The memory of the vicious fury in Nick's black eyes the last time she had seen him seemed bleached into her mind. Who knew who else the Grey leader had corrupted, coerced or bribed?

Gemma shivered again in the warm sun.

There was an alien, aching coldness to the scabbed-over wound on Mac's abdomen. Help. She must help. But if the Grey caught her before she found something, then she

couldn't

help Mac, so what to do? She wavered in uncertainty, mind echoing with worry as she lamented the lack of her usual facilities to work with. Lack of opportunity. She couldn't go there. Too risky. Shit, shit, shit, but she had to do

something

.

Her mind was echoing blankly, circling in empty, useless thoughts and her memory idly traced up from the wound in Mac's toned abdomen to the sleek, sculpted planes of his muscular chest. A tingle of heat simmered across her skin, then suddenly her pussy clenched in need and the fire roared into life in her veins. The flames in her blood surged back to engulf her, clouding her brain but the terror rose also; she quickly hurled her focus back to the memory of the chill, parasitic feel of that taut scab frozen into his skin, fighting fire with ice-cold fear of what might happen to him.

Concentrate.

She

had

to find a way to heal Mac. For both of them. But -

no lab

?

Since when did you get stuck on thinking there's only one way of tackling a problem?

the

you-are-so-dim

voice in her head echoed sarcastically.

Her breathing was light, tense, and her mind cold, the fire subsiding again to a dim smoulder sunk beneath the cool reason commanding her attention.

How to find Mac an antidote without access to her lab

? Gemma turned and walked carefully into the shop, thinking hard while she fished her own scribbled copy of the poison formula out from her fleece pocket, together with her bank card.

Brief shop stop. Then Internet.

The Marsh Alpha blinked incredulously, watching from the second storey window of the inadequate bedroom he'd hastily hired in the hotel, while the little were-girl turned and walked into the jewellers. He had been impressed that she'd managed to turn at all, once she'd started after his scent trail, and had been anticipating having that fire beneath him as he watched how hard she had fought the pull of his musk. But to then turn her back entirely? To refocus?

What the hell have you found, here, Mac?

His loins tightened further and his aching cock pulsed demandingly - he hadn't even scented her, all he had caught was the trail in his chambers, but god, he wanted her even more now. His body was shuddering with contained lust. It had been long years since he had last scented a wereem on heat, but he didn't remember being this intoxicated by just their footprints in his carpet. All were-girls smelt Alfamme when on heat, because they all had Alpha shiele in them, the shiele of their Alpha, their mordeur. But he'd never heard of one with Alfamme control.

More like the opposite.

A small smile lifted his lips and a predatory gleam lighted his eyes as he watched the girl re-emerge from the shop and head on down the main street, out of sight, brow furrowed in a scowl at the sheet of paper in her small hand. Her focus held her oblivious to his musk trail. A thrill of excitement shuddered along his burning skin, lifting the tiny hairs. He could barely remember the last time he had had to work to entice a mate; even the on rare, sweet chances which arose to chase down an unmatched Alfamme, the female would belly to him, quivering with delight as soon as he cornered her enough for his scent to roll over her.

The pulse of blood throbbing in his veins was growing more insistent as a bead of his seed moistened the end of his cock.

Oh, he wanted this one.

He would delight in hunting her down and matching her fierceness until her struggles melted and she lifted tail - or actually that delectable ass, in the human form.

He

had no objection to humans. His erection swelled at the image in his mind and Marsh had to concentrate on cooling his raging blood for a moment, before refocusing on the problem at hand.

How to tempt the little wereem out of human sight without getting so close that his control wavered? An Alpha - and a Warlord - had a certain reputation to maintain. He couldn't go subduing the curvaceous little dark beauty and rutting her in public, it might reignite some of the legends among the humans that his people had spent decades carefully dampening.

His cock surged in ecstasy and his teeth lengthened at the thought of her small form pinned under him as he mounted her. Blood raging, Marsh briefly considered just killing any witnesses.

No.

Sometimes it was such a pain, having to maintain this legendary control.

A few hours later, Gemma's head felt light, her brain clear as she carefully re-read the advertisement that she had drafted on the university website. The desk and floor around her were strewn with scribbled workings, the flowery kitten-patterned notepaper which was all she'd been able to buy off the begrudging proprietor was decorated with her untidy scrawl, circular brown coffee-cup stains and the odd smudge from a greasy pastry.

She smiled as she reached the bottom of the page, satisfied, stretching her tense, aching shoulders and fingers, and rubbing her blurry eyes. The dormant smoulder between her thighs rippled into a humming purr as her fierce concentration lifted slightly.

She had needed to set the paper for applicant for the research internship anyway, and it usually attracted the elite students. This would be a good challenge for them.

And it had not taken as long as she had feared to work out the possible avenues for them to test - she never usually worked completely theoretically, but her mind had a clear-cut focus that she'd never before attained. It was also interesting - it had taken her a while to recognise the formula for blood in the workings copied from Anne's textbook detailing the reaction of the poison in the wolf body, because there was a lot more iron at the heart of the organic polymer than usual. Evidently wolf blood wasn't exactly the same as human.

So hopefully none of the applicants would realise what they were working on.

Gemma scoffed at herself at the very idea.

Werewolves don't exist, remember

?

Her engorged cunt-lips throbbed between her thighs. Hopefully

her

wolf would be around for a lot longer. Around here. Right here. Any second.

Now

. She tore her mind away from images of Mac pressing her down onto the computer desk and pulling her thighs apart, and struggled to refocus dazed eyes on the screen, scrambling the mouse across the page to the Post button.

He's poisoned. Weak

. Remember? A flash of the chill of reason cooled through her, and she pulled herself together, glaring at the page.

This had to work. Or at least one of them did. After the intense hours of poring over the online literature and urgently scribbling on her notepad, Gemma felt fiercely hopeful that one of her three antidotes would work as a cure for him.

She prayed.

She also needed at least one of the students to be able to follow her methods and mix them right. It was an unusual way of auditioning. To say the least. But if even one of them managed to combine the precision and the delicate techniques required to produce the formulas she'd just invented in their own school labs, then Gemma had a feeling she'd be sending that star student the coveted welcome-to-the-department pack in a few months.

She also prayed that Nick wouldn't go so far in staking her out as to check the intern posting. A little smile lit her face - she doubted even the Grey would have managed to corrupt the holier-than-thou head of faculty, who was the only other person connected with her that she knew would definitely read the ad.

The smile broadened into a not very pleasant grin as she imagined the reaction of her boss once he found out that she'd only allowed applicants a week to return their solutions - with carriage pre-paid by the university. So he'd scream at her a bit for the extra cost, and because he'd have to deal with the irate parents complaining that their Einstein offspring hadn't stood a chance with the timescale and the practicality of the set task. She had greater problems right now. Like creating a cure for a poisoned werewolf - sorry, wolf.