Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Something was wrong.

Natasha paused. No stars in the sky tonight, no moon. Heavy cloud cover and she could smell the weight of a storm brewing within it. She hoped it was a violent one, with thunder that vibrated through the ground, as lightning split the sky and rain lashed the earth.

The forest creatures would take shelter while she would stand in its fury, defy heaven or hell to show their fucking selves and bring the fight to her. There was no stillness or peace in pain. Only the din of violence drowned out everything else.

Yeah, I'm in a bitch of a mood. Which only happened on days that ended in. Natasha frowned trying to remember. What the hell day was it? Wednesday? What did it matter? In the wilds shee preferred, time was about day or night, winter or summer.

 It wasn't like she had a dinner date or a dentist appointment. Hey doc, polish up the fangs for me. Come close, let me hear that bass drum beat in your throat. Her red eyes half shut as the thought bumped up her hunger.

About time to feed again. Last time, she'd swallowed her distaste for more human-populated areas to forage in the nearest town, about twenty-five miles away. That had been nearly a month ago. Within the past several weeks, no hiker or hunter had unwisely yet conveniently chosen to be out this deep alone when she needed blood. Another meal was due.
 Natasha drew in a deep breath, taking in the heat. In the mountains of West Virginia, it was closing in on fall, but summer's heat was lingering. The day's warmth still lay heavy on everything. A storm might cool things off. In a couple of ways.

 
She turned, her brow creasing. It was more than the impending storm, within and without. Something really was off. Wrong. Natasha can feel someone else's pain, a vibration of it so strong it thrummed through her nerves, tightened her gut. Empathy wasn't big on her list of personality traits, but curiosity was another matter. Paying attention often brought opportunity.

Following her instincts, she cut off the deer path and moved, silent and swift, through the thick woods, emerging onto a more beaten track. Hunters used it most often, scouting out deer and other game, depending on the season. Dropping to her heels, Natasha cocked her head, her senses open and sharp. She worried the rough sides and steel point of her one prosthetic fang with her tongue, an unconscious habit.

Then she scented human, and the still attached and very real fang on the other side of her mouth lengthened.

One, alone. Natasha's red lips curved in a grim smile. Dinner had delivered itself.

She rose and moved without sound through the woods. While hunting, nothing would escape her notice, from the shift of a squirrel in her nest twenty feet above her head, to the rasp of a snake moving over the earth before it glided into creek water, splitting the water currents with its twisting body.

 
It didn't take long. With her speed, Natasha closed in on her prey fast. She normally didn't prolong the stalking phase of things. Natasha had no interest in playing that game. But as she perched in the crotch of a tree and studied her meal, she realized the hunter, his rifle at the ready and with night vision goggles in place, was following something.

 A blood trail. It came to Natasha with the wind shift and explained why the hunter was still out after dark. It was illegal for him to hunt then, but apparently what he'd shot had gotten away and he was willing to bend the law to ensure he hadn't left something injured. Natasha could respect that. When she got ready to kill this guy, she'd give him the same consideration.

 That didn't say anything about her own respectability. Natasha made all her kills fast. While she knew vampires who liked toying with their prey, because they claimed the fear and suffering gave the blood an extra kick, she guessed she had a blander palate. Natasha had no more interest in tormenting her prey than a human girl would her Domino's pizza.

 
To stay within the bounds of hunting regs, the hunter had to have made his shot by a certain time before sundown. The target had led him on a good chase. It wasn't like Natasha needed to be up on West Virginia hunting regulations, but the last time she'd taken a hunter, the man had had a copy of the manual in his pack.

Natasha had whiled away some time reading. It would have been nicer if the guy had had a thriller or mystery tucked in the multiple pockets, but you took what you could get out here. And he'd been carrying some Skittles, which had been a tasty dessert.

  
The hunter Natasha was following stopped. He raised the rifle, not to shoot, but to look through the scope. Abandoning stealth, he whistled and straightened. "Fucking hell. You're not a bear. Holy shit." His deep voice was tinged with excitement. "Can't fucking believe it. A wolf in West Virginia. Look at the size of you, you beautiful son of bitch."
 
The wind picked up, and Natasha stiffened. That wrongness, a wall of it, impacted her like a baseball bat trying to hit a home run with her jaw. The blood she was smelling wasn't human. Nor vampire. Wolf smell for certain. But she'd smelled wolf before and this had something else to it.

 
Something she couldn't identify, which meant it had to be something the human hunter would consider myth, and Natasha had never encountered.

Natasha eased forward until she could see the small clearing where the man had emerged, and what had caused his anticipation. She was no more than five feet from the man, but the human's attention was riveted on his prey. Natasha didn't blame him. Her gaze went there, too.

 
The dark form was as large as a fully grown black bear, which explained why the hunter had mistaken him for one. Now, though, the creature's head was arched back, so the triangular shape of the ears and the long nose were visible, as well as the bushy tail, limply curved along the bumpy earth. The wolf was black with only a spare peppering of silver and brown strands around her face and ruff. She was a piece of the night herself.

But Natasha could see in darkness as well as she could in light. Better, in some ways, because the body's energy was more distinguishable to her. The animal throbbed with a miasma of pain. When life was about to end, a being projected fear, pain. Adrenaline. Sometimes a brief flash of anger. Or resignation.

What she felt from this creature was different. There was pain, yes, but no fear. Only rage. The hunter thought the wolf was dead because she wasn't moving. But her chest wasn't rising and falling because the wolf was taking measured, shallow breaths, to fool her tracker.

Natasha grinned when realize the hunter was about to become the hunted, and he didn't even know it. Natasha settled back into the foliage to watch. Who passed up dinner and a show for the same price?

The hunter approached cautiously, proving he knew his trade, and poked the wolf sharply with the muzzle of the gun, still holding it in a ready position. The body gave limply, no movement.
"The guys aren't going to freaking believe this. A wolf. Where'd you come from, buddy? Think if I take you to the wildlife cops, they'd let me keep your pelt? Yeah, right." He snorted to himself. "Well, far as they and everyone else knew, wolves are extinct in these parts. My guess is you escaped from a roadside zoo. But you look too damn healthy for that."

The hunter straightened and considered the motionless creature. "Buddy, you are a beauty. I'll stretch my girl out on your fur in front of a fire this winter and she'll love the way it feels against all her pretty skin. Going to be a bitch to get you back to the truck, though. I'll have to use my Boy Scout training and make a litter."

Yeah, keep talking. Natasha rolled her eyes. The more he talked, the more motionless the black wolf became. Humans couldn't see how dense energy became with a self-imposed stillness, that waiting to strike. But a vampire could. It was as clear to Natasha as if the wolf was tying a napkin around his neck and picking up a fork and spoon, like Sylvester getting ready to dine on Tweety.
 

Wolves were smart, but not that smart. And they weren't this large either, particularly in a state where the species was thought to be gone, hunted to extinction decades ago.

 
Since vampires were so much faster and stronger than humans, an ignorant mortal would consider them magical beings. However, aside from varying levels of hypnotic compulsion skills, which suggested they were distant cousins to the python genus, most vampires didn't have any more ability to manipulate and command energy than the average human did.

  
Natasha had a few more tools in her arsenal than the typical vampire--something she wasn't about to share with anyone other than herself--but she didn't need them for this. Vampires might not be able to do magic, but because they left their senses far more open to other world energies than Joe Human, their sharp senses wouldn't miss the wave of it Natasha sensed now.

Natasha wasn't sure what the wolf's deal was, but it posed no immediate challenge to her, so she'd hang around and satisfy her curiosity. Plus, the wolf could do the work of taking down her meal, before Natasha embraced the challenge of taking it from her.

The hunter set his rifle aside, leaning it against a tree, and started to scout for branches to put the litter together. That was when the wolf lunged from the ground.

She sprang like a mountain lion from her resting position, impressing Natasha with the power of the move. But the concussion of energy that rippled outward from the wolf told Natasha how much effort it took. Magic or not, the beast was wounded. Blood had matted and soaked the fur on her haunch, leaving a muddy puddle beneath her. The bullet wound was a serious injury. Perhaps fatal out here.

It wasn't stopping her. Natasha knew it.

 
She was large enough that her paws landed on the hunter's shoulders as she slammed into his back, throwing him to the ground. The hunter let out a surprised shout, but he was no lightweight. He'd drawn a knife to cut branches, and he had his arm up to take the brunt of the wolf's first bite as he managed to flip and sought the wolf's unprotected side with the knife. The first strike hit the ribs and glanced off, though it tore flesh. The wolf took her own trophy, eliciting a scream as her powerful jaws snapped the bone and ripped out a chunk of flesh. She pulled back, shoved her great head under the male's now useless arm, and went for the throat.

 
Natasha had seen wolf packs bring down deer. It was a remarkable, coordinated effort, but it wasn't pretty, because the dance to stay clear of thrashing hoofs and antlers, combined with the use of teeth as the only killing weapon, didn't make a fast, clean kill possible.

 
This was an ugly struggle of mere seconds. The wolf laid open the throat all the way to the cervical column. The man's death throes were short, his soul light blinking out like a popped bulb.

Well, hell. Natasha preferred the carotid because the blood taste there was best. She couldn't have that now, obviously, but she was going to have to move fast if she wanted the benefit of any of it. The guy was oozing blood like a boat with a bucket-sized hole. Plus, if Natasha was feeding from a corpse, it wasn't going to be over ten minutes dead. After that, the blood was like consuming days-old rotted food.

Natasha emerged from her cover. The wolf sprang up and around, standing over the body, teeth bared and yellow eyes glowing like incandescent embers. Blood spray from the hunter zigzagged over her face and ruff, but plenty of blood elsewhere wasn't the hunter's. The man's blade had found a couple new entry points, because blood was dripping onto the ground with the animal's movements. The wolf was also favoring the injured back leg, clawed toes curled and barely brushing the ground.
 
Natasha obligingly bared her own fangs at the display of aggression. "That's my dinner, bitch. You're probably going to die anyway, so get the hell away from it. Go find a place to lick your wounds. I don't want to hurt you."

 
The wolf's lip lifted as the rumble in her throat became full-volume thunder. Her expression was clear. "You and what army, bitch?"

  
The wolf was badly enough injured she probably wasn't hungry. It was the principle of the thing. Her kill, no one else's. Natasha could respect that opinion. What could she say? She respected the hunter, she respected the wolf. She was a respectful kind of girl. But she had no intention of being denied what she wanted.

The wolf's rage was cocked and ready to go, and Natasha also understood that feeling. She didn't usually find it in an animal, because animals didn't waste time on manifesting their baggage the way humanoids did. Attack was all about prey or fear. Sometimes play.

This she-wolf wasn't in a playful mood. She'd let a hunter believe she was tracking him, and she'd set him up. Now she was ready to take on Natasha over rights to feed that she wasn't likely to live long enough to enjoy. Even now, she was starting to sway.

That groundswell of energy hit Natasha again. Natural magic, what Natasha considered just a fancy word for energy use beyond the physical limits of the body. It put her on guard, though, because she still couldn't identify it. Her gaze darted around the clearing while she kept the bulk of her attention on the wolf, in case she decided to spring at Natasha as she had with the hunter.

Instead, the wolf sank to an elbow, slowly, visibly fighting the compulsion. Then she was literally knocked to her side by those forces Natasha couldn't see. Her head arched back and a strangled howl tore from her throat. She was struggling against something, with a determined ferocity that told Natasha it might be harder to take her dinner from the wolf than she'd anticipated.

 
Natasha drew closer, and the wolf's eyes focused on her, crazed, despairing. Furious. Natasha stopped. One of the two golden eyes was now blue. Cobalt blue, with a dark ring around it that enhanced the size of the pupil. The other iris stayed sunlight gold. Then both eyes closed and the animal convulsed, body rippling as if water moved under the skin. Natasha heard the crack of bone and the wolf snarled, pain and frustration. 

Holy shit... It couldn't be. A fucking shifter. Natasha cursed under her breath.

There were rumors of their existence, so unsubstantiated they could be called fairy tales. Yet being a vampire, and knowing that a lot of what humans called imaginary creatures could exist, Natasha wasn't in the habit of asserting something couldn't, just because she hadn't seen it. Even so, she'd never heard of anyone who'd seen a wolf shifter.

She was seeing one now.

The transformation energy cocooned the wolf like rope, tightening, pulling her body in multiple directions. If every shift was this brutal, Natasha had no idea why any wolf shifter would do so voluntarily, and maybe they didn't. But she had to wonder if the wolf's obvious resistance to the transition was making it even more excruciating.

Maybe she thought she was more vulnerable to Natasha in that form. She probably was, but...

Natasha drew closer. The wolf seemed almost insensible to her now, so she dropped to her heels next to her and laid a hand on her brown fur. The covering felt much thinner, like a silk scarf instead of a thick pelt. That scarf was about to tear.

The magic coiled around the shifter snapped away, striking Natasha with stinging heat before it dis-apparated the wolf. The shift had seemed gradual, torturous, but then, in a final blink, there she was. Natasha was staring at a woman lying against the corpse of another, their blood mixed together and soaking the earth beneath them.

Fuck.

Natasha's gaze traveled over the shifter. As a wolf, she'd been as big as a black bear. As a human, she kept the same impressive build. Long brown hair flowing over her shoulders, her chest covered with a temptingly blush spread over her small beautiful breasts and those long fleshy nipples. Natasha licked her lips when saw the soft mat of gleaming pubic hair that covered wolf's vagina and those soft tanned thighs. In the naked female's position, sprawled on one hip, Natasha had a good view of her ass.

An ass worth saving, noted her pussy.

Why hadn't the wolf just shifted to human when she was out of range of the hunter's sight? When the hunter stumbled on the wolf in wounded human form, she might have been curious about why the shifter was naked, but guilt over thinking one of his bullets might have missed his supposed bear and hit a camper would have made him set questions aside, and aid the wounded girl.

Maybe shifters considered hospitals and doctors pretty much out of the question. Like vampires, their anatomy probably didn't exactly line up with humans.

 
But reviewing the evidence of the past few moments, Natasha decided that wasn't why the shifter had let things play out the way they had. She'd wanted the hunter to catch up to her. She'd wanted to take him out. Natasha remembered the look in the wolf's eyes as she'd sprung. She'd wanted the fight.

"Take my blood, vampire," the female growled. Her voice was tired, broken. "Take all of it. I'm dying. Might as well finish it."

Well, vampires might not have realized wolf shifters existed, but this one knew enough about vampires to identify one. Natasha had no idea what shifter blood would do to a vampire, but it smelled just as appetizing as the human's. More so. Natasha didn't spend a lot of time worrying over those things. If she died from drinking it, she died. No great loss, as long as it was her choice.

That was the philosophy she saw in the shifter's eyes now. She knew she was dying, and she wanted it to happen according to her own terms. She'd taken out the predator who'd gotten her first, and she'd given the vampire permission to drink from her, despite knowing she could do little to stop Natasha. It was another point of pride, like defending her prey against Natasha when she could barely stand on her four feet.

A lot of guts on this one. Cocking her head, Natasha gave them a leisurely look.

The shifter noticed her noticing. Natasha stiffened as a hand that could probably palm a cantaloupe reached for her face, but there was no harm in it. The brunette brushed bloodstained fingers over Natasha's lips and her own lips curved in a humorless smile.  Even bloody and dirty, those lips were appealingly firm and sweet, enhanced by the sexy blush on her cheeks and elegant jaw. She wound her fingers in Natasha's red hair to take a good grip, and she put pressure there.

"There's nothing else once the dark closes in. We both know it. Give me something good before there's nothing."

Under the husky quality, her voice had a melodic, deep woods hillbilly kind of sound, and Natasha's ears reacted to it like her taste buds did to fresh, heated blood. Natasha was pretty sure she knew what the female meant, but the shifter removed all doubt when somehow she lifted her dying, bleeding body enough to wrap her arm around Natasha's shoulders and bring brunette's mouth close. Natasha caught up, cupping the back of her head, tangling her fingers in brown hair even softier as the wolf's pelt. She tightened her grip.

"Hold still, and I will," Natasha ordered, meeting her gaze. As a human, both the shifter's eyes were blue, with gold flecks and a gold ring around them. Extraordinary and mesmerizing. Full of dull pain and raging need. The pain wasn't from her wounds. Natasha knew that kind of pain, the empty agony of a loneliness well beyond fixing.

However, in response to Natasha's order to be still, the shifter's lips curled in an appealing sneer which teased Natasha's dominant instincts to bust-your-ass level. Even so, she wasn't going to deny a gorgeous dying woman . Not when the request served her own interests.

Natasha brought her mouth to the other woman's, stopped just short and stared into those feral eyes. Then she purred. "What's your name?" Natasha didn't question why she wanted to know, but when the girl died, she wanted to remember her. Wanted to think of her with a name attached.

"Maria."

"Easy enough. Natasha."

No need to be tentative or gentle about it, and that wasn't what the she-wolf wanted anyway. When Natasha brought her mouth against those appealing lips, strong fingers dug into her shoulders. The sound the brunette made in Natasha's mouth was so split between human and animal, her cock hardened to lead pipe from the first touch.

Hellfire... Yeah, there might not be anything after, but that was because somebody had tipped divine flame out of the heavens and given it all to this brunette's mouth. Natasha's blood hunger disappeared, swallowed by a far different kind of greed. She didn't give a damn what was offered willingly beyond the kiss. She was going to have it all.

Heat. A slick agile tongue that played with Natasha's fangs in a provocative way no dying woman should have been cognizant enough to do. But hell, if the girl was dying, what better thing was there to spend her energy toward? Her hands slid over Natasha's red hair, her neck, her shoulders, down to her biceps and gripped her as if she wouldn't ever let go. Natasha broke that grip and pushed her to her back, away from the hunter and against the brown earth. Natasha stretched over her so she could clasp her elegant jaw and throat and kiss her as deep and long as she desired. Natasha allowed the she-wolf to latch onto her upper arm and side with either hand, but the position made it clear Natasha was the one in control.

Natasha saw the flame of need and lust in Maria's blue eyes. As well as a hopeless surrender that tore into Natasha's chest and opened wounds she kept closed with the help of solitude and regular doses of violence.

Sex could be violent.

It was only when she clutched the brunette's hip with possessive demand, and the shifter stiffened, that Natasha remembered. Hell, he was mortally wounded.

Well, fuck that. This bitch was living, even if Natasha had to turn her into a vampire to do it. Natasha moved her hand down to touch brunette's pussy, her fingers slide up and down over the slit. Despite her injuries, hell, she it was so wet. Even dripping sticky pussy juice making easy to play with her hot folds. The blue eyes darkened, a flash of surprise among the simmering ferocity. "You aren't dying, puppy." Natasha said sliding three fingers inside brunette's dripping cunt, moving them in and out. "Your pussy belongs to me."

Sparks of rebellion delivered a straightforward fuck-you message, and then the brunette shifter lost consciousness.

Chapter Text

The heat of the day had finally been swallowed by the night. Maria felt the touch of Sharon's hand. They would shift and run together tonight. Hunt for Pepper and their pups.

No. No, they wouldn't. Sharon was dead. They were dead. She imagined the young ones' fear. It had all happened so fast, they hadn't totally understood. She hoped. But when she was human, it was on constant replay in her mind, a never-ending torture session. It was why she'd stayed a wolf for so long. But not long enough. She was still alive, goddamn it.

 Why the hell was she still alive?

"Because I wanted you to be. It's your own fault."

Maria stiffened. She was used to the endless monologue of her own internal voice, an unwelcome intruder that never shut the hell up except when she was in wolf form. Which...she wasn't. It felt strange, her human body like ill-fitting clothing. She needed to shift, wanted to shift.

"Oh no you don't." It was a rebuke and command, and reinforced by a firm caress along her abdomen. That unexpected sensation, a humanoid touch on her humanoid flesh, effectively pulled her attention away from her unwelcome state like fresh raw meat did when she was ravenous.

"Yeah, blood's like that, too. Yours is potent, wolf. But I want something else right now."
 A strong hand, more powerful than twenty of the brawny hunter she'd fought, clasped her throat. It tightened just enough to shoot her attention to her cunt and make her realize it was wetting, despite her weakened state. The redhead vampire put her mouth over her.

Maria remembered this.

Just before she thought she was going to die. Demanding, uncompromising, unsympathetic. The vampire hadn't given a damn about her condition. She'd taken what was offered and given back. Enough that Maria grudgingly remembered a fleeting spark in her soul, a reaction to finding one damn thing to regret about leaving this life behind.

The vampire's tongue was teasing her, the fangs scraping her lip. Maria growled and tried to pull her down on top of her. She wanted to feel her  body against her. But as she did, pain seared through her, like an iron shoved through her thigh and side. She clutched the vampire's bare shoulder, and a growl became a low snarl.

The vampire's voice came out husky and delicious. "Yeah, ease back. Might be a little soon to get that aggressive. But you're healing good. The second mark isn't as strong for self-healing as the third, but it gave you the edge you needed to put off death for another day. And I wasn't in the mood to link our souls for all eternity, no matter how great an ass or hot pussy you have puppy."

Maria opened her eyes. They were still in the forest, though a sufficient enough distance from where she'd killed the hunter that anyone coming to look for the man wouldn't stumble on this camp. Not that she suspected that posed a danger to either of them. Between vampire and wolf senses, nothing human had a chance of sneaking up on them.

She vaguely remembered the vampire over her before. Jeans and combat boots, a black leather jacket. The smell of cotton and denim, the leather of her jacket, faint soap smells over skin and red hair. Earth scent was embedded in the fanged creature, telling Maria she was also a forest-dweller. Most vampires she'd heard about, or sensed when she'd been in the city, preferred to be a shadowy part of the human world to take advantage of the comforts of that civilization. Not this one.

Maria could paint a picture with scent alone, but in her human form she added to it with sight. It wasn't a chore. As she swiveled her gaze in that direction, she saw the vampire wore nothing, making Maria's already dry throat drier, particularly as the female rose and moved to the small fire.

She was not tall, as she but she was very strong. Since all vampires were reputedly a seduction to the senses, it was no surprise to see she was pleasing to look upon. But the sharp need that jammed itself through Maria's pussy and in her clit like a tingling charge didn't want to argue about how much of the desire came from Maria, and how much from the vampire's effect on any humanoid that could feel lust.

 She should be near death, with no thoughts to spare on sex. Yet she couldn't take her eyes from calves, thighs, firm ass, back and shoulders, even her big breasts. The muscle groups were a twisting, flowing, rippling sculpture that made Maria want to dig into the clay. Mark it with her pheromones. There was a scar on the vampire's shoulder, an unusual thing, since their self-healing powers were absolute, as far as Maria knew. But it was as if a grenade had been shoved into an open wound and allowed to detonate. The scarring formed a splattering over her shoulders, circling that one deep, oblong scar. It looked like a sun throwing off scattered rays.

The vampire's clothes hung from a tree branch close to a small fire. The leather jacket was a darker shade than Maria remembered. Dampness. Since the vampire had moved Maria, she'd likely stained her clothes with blood, and they'd needed washing. Maria vaguely remembered the digging probe and fiery burn of a knife blade, and suspected the vampire had cauterized the bullet wound after removing the projectile.

She also remembered something odd... It was probably fever, but when the redhead vampire had removed the bullet, she'd cupped her palm over the wound and there'd been something...an energy. Maria knew the touch of what others might call healing magic. This had been sort of like that, but not. She couldn't grasp it. She was still far too fuzzy.

No vampire she'd ever heard about had healing powers, or any magical powers at all. Not like a witch or sorcerer. Vampires seemed too arrogant a race to believe in the power of magic. They believed in their hunting skills; speed, strength, and some ability to entrance their prey, through seduction or other hypnotic means. And--referring back to the arrogance--they believed they were at the top of the food chain in the mortal realms. No argument from Maria...if that conversation didn't involve shifters.

The vampire turned away from checking the clothes. One glittering eye was visible under a fall of red hair. Long red locks shoulders that tempted touch. Maria remembered clutching it to draw her close.

"Mark me, hmm?" The vampire murmured. "So it's that way. Omega of your pack, aren't you? Making everyone toe the line."

Sharon. Pepper. The pups. Victoria, Isabelle, Jemma... Daisy.

The pain that stabbed her this time was ten times worse than the thorb in her leg and side. A bullet and a knife couldn't compete with the loss.

"Thanks..." Maria cleared her throat. The words were strange in her mouth. She didn't want them to sound human. But there was no other way to communicate what was needed.

"Good now. You can move on."

"Maybe you should say it the way you wanted to say it. 'Go the fuck away.' Right?"

The redhead came and squatted over her. With Maria on her back, it was a dominant position she didn't particularly care for. A human wouldn't know, not consciously. But from the flicker in this vampire's gaze as Maria stared up at her, the bloodsucker sure as hell understood the cues, and likely demanded submission from anyone that wasn't her. Yeah, that wasn't happening, even if she was wounded.

 "Okay. Go the fuck away." She stumbled over the unfamiliar exercise of human speech, but she managed enough to be understood.

Fangs bared in a grim smile. One of them wasn't a fang. Well, it was shaped like one, but it was metal, a sharp, curved point, crudely but effectively wired to the adjacent ones. Her inability to retract it was probably what gave her bottom lip the faint scar. It never had the chance to heal before it was cut again, and it had given up and callused over. Maria remembered the sense of it when it was upon her own mouth, an intriguingly different texture.

The vampire had clear green eyes. They were a striking contrast with the red color of her brows and hair, pupils red and dark as the forces behind those eyes, like the storm that had been closing in on them before the hunter came for her supposed prey. That was another reason the vampire might be drying out her clothes. Maria smelled the lingering scent of fallen rain.

Her face had the same sculpted quality as her body. Strong, well-formed. All of it had persuaded Maria to touch, to stroke, do what she'd thought was going to be her last act on this cursed earth.

"That's why I said it was your fault you're alive. If you'd just puked up your guts and lost your bowels, like most dying bitches, I would have let you have your merciful end. But you decided to show me just how worthwhile it would be to keep you around."

"You're not keeping me at all," Maria said. She glanced down at herself. "I don't see any chains."
  She was as naked as the other woman, something that made her hungry pussy even more wetter, staining her inner thighs. What the hell? In his current state, the damn thing was going to make her pass out.

The vampire's gaze slid to her sex. Vampires were known for their ambivalence about sexual preference, the sex itself the driving factor, not the gender with whom it was indulged.
Maria would have preferred that, because it could be another step toward treating the female's interest as purely physical, opportunistic. Easier to dismiss. But this vampire looked at her and kissed as if she had a distinct preference for her own sex. Just as Maria did.

"Chains are an intriguing idea," the irritating redhead women commented. "Not out here, though."

Maria narrowed her gaze. "Am I your prisoner, vampire?"

  "Not at all." She rose and returned to the fire. For the first time--proving how disoriented she still was--Maria noticed a pair of rabbits spitted and cooking over it.

"Know you prefer it fresh and raw as a wolf, but in your human form I suspected it was best not to take the chance of you getting sick off raw meat. Especially with you already running a fever from those wounds. Like I said, the second mark called you back from death, but it won't heal you without normal bumps in the road for mortal flesh. Though I don't know much about shifter healing ability; if it's any better than human."

"Faster. And our bodies can bounce back from a lot more punishment."

That intrigued look swept her again, and Maria felt more than fever warm her. "I'll keep that in mind,"

At times, her voice was like the wind when it was strong enough to reach the forest floor, moving and twisting through the trees and foliage. At that deeper level, it passed over the fur and through the body, bringing all sorts of messages in its scent.

"You're not my prisoner," she continued. "You can drag yourself off into the woods, make things worse. I'll give you time to do it, prove to yourself how stupid you're being, before I catch up, re-treat your injuries and make you eat something."
"You could just let me die." Maria response.

"We covered that," the redhead said shortly. "No one but yourself to blame." Hee gaze slid up to Maria's face, lingered. "You and that made-for-sin mouth. It lost you your window. I expect you wanted to die in a fight. Now your choice is to die of your wounds. Far less satisfying, right? So get better, and you can live to fight and die another day."

"Don't you have better things to do than nurse an injured wolf?"

"Tons. But not right now. If that changes, you'll be the first to know." The vamp removed the spit and brought the rabbit to her, dropping to her heels again to offer a piece she tore off. "Here. Eat. Your growling stomach is scaring me."

Maria's lips twisted, but the proximity of the cooked meat made it impossible for her to refuse. She reached up to take the morsel, and found her hands were shaking. Fuck, she felt like shit. The fever had coated her muscles in a light sweat, and suddenly the meat made her queasy, even as her stomach rumbled in a demanding way. The instinct of the wolf told her to gulp down whatever food was available, while her human anatomy warned her against eating anything.

"Here." The small portion was brought to Maria's mouth. "You won't be able to eat as much as usual and keep it down, but you can take the edge off and give your body some fuel to help heal itself. If that doesn't stay down, I'll boil some broth out of this rabbit."

"If I shift, it will help." It was a lie, but she didn't like this form. Maria felt too exposed, too vulnerable.

"If you shift, you may become a lot less cooperative. Not that you're winning any awards on that now. And I won't do this."

Maria's shaking hands were too slow to prevent the vampire from rubbing her fingers along her wet slit. She sucked in a breath as the redhead vampire showed she knew her way around another female's body. As she fingered her swollen folds, Maria's traitorous legs parted as her hips pushed her throbbing pussy at the vampire's fingers. She clamped her hand on the vamp's thigh for an anchor point when two fingers slide inside her pussy.

The vampire's gaze shifted to the contact, but she didn't remove it. She merely watched Maria as she fingered her folds, rubbing her thumb in tight circles over her clit. Fuck, it hurt like fire to move, and she still felt queasy, but Maria couldn't resist the urge. It was as if her libido was operating in a whole different area of her brain than her broken body.

The redhead vampire pulled out her fingers, squeezing Maria's inner thigh. "Yeah, sex drive increases with every mark. Rumor is, third marks want to fuck even on death's door. Take the food."

She wasn't sure what the vampire meant, but Maria had other concerns. She wouldn't allow herself to be fed. She had that much pride.

The other woman gave her a long look, then nudged the food against Maria's curled fingers, lying loosely against her chest over her breasts. Maria managed the transfer from that more stable position and brought the food to her lips. Despite the surge of nausea, she got it into her mouth and swallowed.

"Good. So you said your name is Maria. Right? Can I call you Mia? Or Masha?"

Maria's brow furrowed, parsing the meaning of the question. She noticed the redhead vampire was scrutinizing her, and before she could answer, the fanged annoyance had another question.
"How long has it been since you shifted back to human?"

Long enough. She'd lost track of days, seasons...no, she remembered the seasons. They'd died in the late spring, when it was just giving way to summer. She'd remembered the nearly one-year mark when the summer flowers started cropping up among the sunlit rocks in open spaces. She'd grieved anew and been glad when summer passed into another fall. But by wintertime, it had all proved too much. The last time she'd been human, the despair had overcome her and...

Maria pushed that away. Over two years. Except for surfacing that one futile time in the second winter, she'd stayed a wolf over two years. She'd felt it taking more and more of her human side away, and she'd let it go with no desire to ever take it back. But imminent death at the hunter's hand had forced a shift back to human. When a shifter lost control of her faculties, deepest instinct took over and ensured she was in the form most likely to ensure her survival.

  Instinct wasn't always a friend.

Chapter Text

No brainer on why she'd shifted to human this time. The vampire wouldn't have tried to save her if she'd thought Maria was merely a wolf.

She hadn't answered the vamp's question. None of her damn business. Maria kept taking bits of food from her fingers, though. The grease made the contact a slick passage that in turn made her think of other slick things. The vampire's nakedness showed she'd responded to Maria's arousal in kind. Her pussy was as frustratingly hot as the rest of her, throb and wet enough to make a woman lose her train of thought, spreaded puffy folds as her pussy juice drips down freely staining her ass and inner thighs.

Maria wanted to rub her greased fingers over vamps's dick and see how the other woman responded to being worked as she'd worked her.

Or work that grease over her slit and then go there and ride her, fuck her until she was pleading, show her exactly why she shouldn't have messed with a she-wolf. But the strength in the vamp's hand said that it wouldn't be as easy as Maria fantasized it would be. Wherea the vampire taking her ass? Right this second, it would be as easy as it had been for the vampire to skewer the dead rabbit.

The redhead vamp kept watching her with those eyes, that contradiction of  clear green irises with an abyss of darkness behind them. It was as if she could read her mind. But if she could, she didn't speak to Maria's thoughts. Not directly.

"So can I call you Mia?"

"No," Maria managed at the additional prompt. "Just Maria."

"Hmm." A grunt in reply. "I'm Natasha. You may not remember me telling you that. Natalia Romanova originally, some two hundred years ago. Made vampire. If you know anything about my kind, you know that makes me blue-collar class among the fanged bipeds."

Maria had to recall what blue collar meant. When she figured it out, she wasn't sure how that applied to vampires, but she repeated the name. "Natasha."

The vampire wiped Maria's mouth with a caressing thumb, startling her. "Terrible table manners. Don't talk with your mouth full. Someone would think you'd been raised by wolves."

Wolf jokes. Great! A few days of this and dying of her wounds instead of in battle wouldn't look so bad. Maybe a few hours.

Natasha's red lips curved again and this time there was no mistaking the timing. Or the food was helping to clear Maria's mind. Suddenly, the incomprehensible comments about marks sank in. She also remembered Natasha's voice in her head when she woke. A startled panic rippled through her, agitating the wounds anew as she started back, an involuntarily reaction.

'You can read my thoughts?'

"Yeah. That's part of what second mark means." Natasha gave her an odd look. "My blood can also spur your healing, somewhat. Thanks to the first mark that's part of the second, I can locate you wherever you are, within a few thousand miles. As I said already, the marks also give you some additional healing properties, and not just from drinking my blood. Though I gave you some when you were out, just to be sure and help you along."

"I didn't consent to that." Maria frowned.

Natasha brow rose, a thin red curve. "I didn't ask your permission, puppy. For one thing, you were dying and out of it. For the other, what makes you think I had to ask?"

"Decency. Moral code. Respect for another will."

"Yeah. Vampires don't really go for that kind of stuff. Where's your pack, wolf?" As she spoke, Natasha removed the rabbit from the spit and laid it on a flat rock beside where Maria was lying. When the vampire used his sharp knife to cut more uniform pieces off the rabbit, Maria noted it was a knife more than capable of gutting prey. Or using lethal force to repel an attack.

Maria closed her hand on the discarded, conveniently sharpened stick.

Summoning a reserve that came purely from will, not from physical strength, she propelled herself up, seized the vampire by the back of the neck for leverage and thrust the stick toward her chest. She shoved herself against the vampire to turn her in the necessary direction.

Because she was injured, she didn't expect to match the vampire's speed and strength, even with the element of surprise.

But if they managed to take one another out, Maria wouldn't have any problems with killing the vampire, rather than simply pissing her off to initiate the mortal combat she craved. Natasha had goaded Maria twice, the intelligence in hee gaze saying she knew the likely reason an Omega would be a loner. She was right. Decency wasn't part of her, and that supported what little Maria knew of vampires, leaving her no regrets for her ungrateful act. But she hadn't asked to be saved.

Natasha deflected the blow, but it made good contact, jamming up under her ribs hard enough to produce a grunt and result in a puncture that broke skin, but that was as far as it got. She knocked the weapon out of Maria's hand and seized her arm, wrenching it back. The pain drove Maria in a different direction and she took it at a full mental run. She contorted, the cry that broke from her lips becoming a howl. The shift was agonizing with her wounds, should have killed her, but maybe that would happen in the aftermath.

The important thing was she'd escaped to her sanctuary. If she was going to die, she was dying as a wolf.

The redhead vampire jumped back, her eyes hard and glittering as Maria finished the transformation and made it to her feet, panting hard, swaying but standing. Her ears went flat on either side of her head as she bared her teeth and crouched, prepared to spring. The effort to think like a human was discarded, intent narrowed back to the simplest terms.

Run. Leave. Fight if she tries to stop me.

She charged.

The redhead vampire stepped aside and let her go. Deep inside, what was already desolate became even more barren. The wolf had a disturbing, confusing image in her mind. A hand reaching out, the sensation of touch, the first she'd felt in a long while that meant more than nothing. But it wasn't enough. She wouldn't let it be.

Natasha let her run. Restraining a wild animal when she was already injured would only stress her out further, particularly when she was in a fighting mood. She suspected Maria had been in a fighting mood for a while now.

But holy fuck. Even injured, the woman had damn near made the killing blow. Only the speed of Natasha's reaction had saved her, and she wasn't sure it would have, if the shifter was at full strength. Go figure. She supposed most vampires went through life assuming they were the biggest, baddest things ever. Which just showed they hadn't had the shit kicked out of them enough. Didn't take long to lose that sense of superiority.

Unfortunately, it meant the she-wolf had done it again. Despite the brunette's intriguing physical attributes, Natasha doubted she would have broken camp to chase after the surly canis lupus if Maria had no more to offer than the novelty of watching her shift--check that off the list--and being a hot omega female human--double check. Natasha had already invested more time in her than she'd expected, hauling Maria's two hundred plus pound body far enough away from the hunter kill site.

But thinking the shifter might be a match for her physically? Well that made the challenge of having her ass all the more irresistible. Definitely a departure from the usual same-day, different-shit mantra Natasha carried inside her.

Even so, for form's sake, Natasha grumbled at the need to pack up camp, including the cooked rabbits, but she completed the necessary tasks, pulled her damp clothes back on, and went back on the hunt.

Based on Maria's fever, how she'd been shaking and the severity of her injuries, Natasha estimated the wolf might make it a mile before her wounds dropped her. She made it three, winning a grudging smile from Natasha, and something else.

 When Maria had gone after her with the spit, trying her best to get Natasha to kill her, the up-close-and-personal depth of her agony had penetrated Natasha's cynicism, something she admittedly maintained to a hard-as-rock exterior.

Part of it was how the she-wolf hadn't been entirely self-sacrificing about the matter. She would have been happy to take Natasha down with her, a convenient perk to her suicide wish. The shifter was hurting, grieving, and yet pissed as hell. A worthy opponent. She wanted to die, supposedly, yeah, but she wanted to go down in a struggle to the death with an adversary, someone she could fight to deal with that grief.

The loss of her pack. Her family.

Yeah, that part wasn't hard to decipher. Everyone had pain and loss. Big fucking deal. The shifter had lost her family. Boo-hoo. Yet the look in her cold blue eyes when she'd spat out those words, decency, morality, had made Natasha feel...less. That intrigued her.

Anyone who could get her to feel anything intrigued her.

As she dropped to her heels next to the she-wolf, Natasha probed with all her senses to be sure she was unconscious, not wanting a replay of the hunter's mistake. This time she hadn't shifted back to human. Since the girl obviously preferred her quadruped body, Natasha guessed there were states in which the shift was involuntary, like when she'd become human in front of Natasha, despite an obvious desire not to do so.

Her gaze coursed over the wolf. When Maria was standing on all four feet, her lifted head would damn near reach Natasha's shoulder. Natasha revised her opinion on the weight issue. Given the bone structure of both woman and wolf, she expected Maria was probably two hundred and fifty pounds or more in full health, and the wolf wasn't far from the same. The brunette had looked a little on the lean side, like she hadn't been eating as much as she should to feed all those muscles.

At least Maria had fallen out near a fresh water source, a gurgling creek. Spreading out her bedroll, Natasha considered moving Maria's body onto it, but decided on something else first. Dropping back to one knee, she laid her palm on Maria's rising and falling chest. Her breath was shallower than it had been before. The dumbass had pushed herself.

"You're not dying." Natasha wasn't taking any more shit on this from the Grim Reaper. This wolf was going to live, at least long enough for Natasha to enjoy a good, thorough fuck with her.

Creation was a multi-faceted tool, even when staying clear of the darker side of its coin. It could reach out and feel so much, translate different kinds of languages, all unspoken.

Natasha closed her eyes, connecting to it, and to what was beneath her palm. Maria's energy...it was earth and blood, wind against her face. And pain. The wolf and the woman had experienced the grief and loss together, but the wolf was less self-destructive than her human side...and more protective.

Could she have done it if Maria was awake, in control of her faculties? Probably not without a hell of an ugly fight, but it was a path Natasha was able to follow right now, probably because it served both her interests and that of the wolf's.

She let the energy unwind and then broke the contact as whatever was inside Maria took over, triggered by Natasha's push and the shifter's unconscious will to survive. Literally.

The shift was smoother this time, more like watching sculpting clay shape itself on a spinning wheel. A few breaths later, the brunette lay there, not even a tuft of wolf hair remaining.

"Nifty." Natasha grunted. She cleaned the wounds again, ripping up one of the shirts in her pack to bind them. Because vampires healed instantly from anything but death blows, she didn't carry a first aid kit. A quick trip to town might eventually be needed. She really was investing an unreasonable level of effort in this woman.

But the hunter's vehicle was a few miles off. She could use the SUV to save her some running time. Leaving it even farther away from the kill site wouldn't be a bad thing.

 With some antibiotics and other supplies to keep the wounds clean and dressed, Natasha suspected the shifter's own healing ability, and her second mark upon Maria's, would do the trick.

 Teasing the brunette's lips open with the neck of her water bottle, Natasha massaged her throat to get her to swallow. Small amounts at a consistent pace to keep her hydrated. Natasha also dampened a piece of the ripped shirt and ran it along Maria's face, neck and groin area to help cool her down. It was a pleasure to touch her body, to handle her firm breasts and  tender vagina, muscled stomach, warm inner thighs. She had a nice soft tanned legs that Natasha stroked with her fingertips as she rubbed the soaked cloth over her feet, bemused by the long arches and surprisingly smooth soles.

"Why not...let me die?" The she-wolf whisper.

"Because I'm pissed at the world, too," Natasha said shortly. "It isn't a good enough reason to check out. You're right, there's nothing after, so how the hell can you make everyone else miserable if you're not around?"

At the resulting silence, she looked up. Maria's eyes had closed tighter, as did her mouth, reflecting a pain that had nothing to do with her wounds. "Can't fight what you can't change," the brunette said. "Hurts. Just want to stop...hurting."

Abandoning the cloth, Natasha poured some of the water over her hand and used the flesh-on-flesh contact to cool the tanned flaming skin. "You're less vindictive than me, wolf. If I'm hurting, I want everyone else to suffer with me."

"Love...not like that. Only...assholes."

Maria eyes opened to mere slits, the gold-flecked blue. Her fingers reached out, questing, and Natasha looked down as the brunette touched her chest, the place through which Maria had almost succeeded in shoving the stake. The shallow puncture had already healed, though with her current state of hunger, Natasha could still feel the throb beneath her skin. She'd had some of Maria's blood when she'd given her the second mark, but she hadn't taken more than a swallow or two, not wanting to drain the injured women's strength.

"You're delirious," Natasha informed her. "Which makes you very attractive, but not very credible."

 Maria's fingers coiled and dropped limply to Natasha's denim-covered thigh. The wolf was out again.

Natasha passed the time keeping her cool, listening to the forest sounds, getting more water into her. On a usual night, she'd enjoy a run through the forest, covering miles and miles. Climb trees to the topmost branches that could bear her weight, and stare out at the view. Chase down deer or smaller game to hone her reflexes and speed. Keep her senses tuned for any human activity that could result in a meal, when it was time for her to feed.

 But after all those things were done, often her night didn't look much different from this. Sitting and listening, not doing much thinking. Just experiencing freedom. Solitude. Things that had been so absent during the first century of her life that she hadn't caught up with the unquantifiable need for them, even after hitting her two hundredth birthday.

As she returned to her patient's side, a touch told Natasha the fever was turning to chills. The brunette was mumbling, talking to someone, nothing intelligible. Delirium was taking hold.
If she had to do it, she'd give Maria the third mark. Unless a third mark didn't lock into a shifter the way it did a human, it would save Maria's life. Nothing could kill her then, short of a metal stake through the heart or something irreversible, like a decapitation.

 Natasha wasn't sure if she believed the eternal soul-binding bullshit about vampires and fully marked servants, but there was enough about it out there she'd shied from doing it. Yeah, the wolf might not intrude on her solitude the way a human did, but hooking up souls for all eternity? Natasha couldn't tolerate anyone more than a few hours, so a third mark might not prolong the wolf's life.

Her red lips twisted wryly, but then Maria called out hoarsely, hands reaching, grasping at something she seemed to miss catching, because they clutched and all her muscles spasmed. She arched her head back and let loose a chillingly real wolf howl, a cry of pain and need whose haunting poignancy and roller coaster volume made Natasha back up a few paces.

 "Okay, no," she said decidedly. "We're not doing that."

Natasha dropped to her heels beside Maria, intending to stroke, soothe, do a few things like that to calm her down. Or shake her awake with a sharp command if necessary. Yet her skin was like ice. Maria's eyes opened, but they were seeing something beyond Natasha and the camp. They were filled with an anguish that speared Natasha through the chest.

 "No...no..." Light died out of them and Natasha's gut clutched. Her one fang started to lengthen, instinctive response to her decision to third mark the brunette if she came too close to that edge. But then she realized the dullness of Maria's gaze was an emotional response.

 The shifter was doing something with her hands. Looking down, Natasha noticed she was rubbing one hand in a scraping motion against the wrist of the other arm. Closer inspection showed it was a deliberate motion, not a convulsive tic, and the hand was curled as if holding something. Something that could cut.

Natasha's eyes narrowed. She'd cleaned the brunette's wounds, but she was still in need of a bath to get all the blood and dirt off her the night's efforts had incurred. As a result, Natasha hadn't catalogued the older scars the wolf shifter had. Suddenly, two were far more noticeable.

She gripped the brunette's wrists, tugging the moving hand with firm insistence away from the other arm. She stared at the thin vertical scar. Lifting the other captured wrist, she saw there was a matching one there, beneath the curl of her fingers.

Like most things, it pissed her off. But this bugged her more than usual, and she wasn't entirely sure why. People couldn't hack it and offed themselves. It happened. Life could suck too much sometimes and they didn't have it in them to push past it, strike out instead of self-destruct.

"Didn't let me." Maria's sudden coherent words and harsh chuckle startled Natasha. Looking up, she met the shifter's eyes. Fever made the already vibrant color deeper, the gold like sparks of sunlight in the ocean. "Wolf took over...shifted. Somehow...pinched off the arteries. Wouldn't let me bleed out."

"So your wolf isn't the bitch that you are."

Maria didn't acknowledge the caustic comment. Her muscles were all tight, sheened with sweat again even though she was shaking from cold. Yet her fingers were reaching, touching Natasha's face, tracing it. Natasha gripped her wrist, holding her. Feeling the ridge of the scar beneath her palm, she wondered if the scars would disappear if Maria was third marked. She didn't have a lot of experience with servants, but she'd heard that some old scars didn't go away, and no one knew why. Or maybe they did know why, and they just didn't want to talk about it.

Their clasped hands fell on Natasha chest and Maria's fingers curled against it. She'd removed his shirt again, giving the heavy weight cotton more time to dry from the earlier rain. Natasha's large boobd were pale a contrast to Maria's, with its firm small tanned boobs that Natasha had been threading her fingers through as often as she pleased.

Another shudder passed through Maria's and her eyes rolled up into her head. Her jaw was twitching, teeth chattering. "Fuck it," Natasha muttered.

 Stretching out beside the shifter on the blanket, she wrapped it up around the two of them. She put her body flush against Maria's, arms around her, adjusting Maria so her head was tucked under Natasha's jaw. It bemused her when the brunette unconscious reaction was to wind her weak arms tight around Natasha, one around her waist and the other over her hips.

"Hang in there," Natasha found herself murmuring. "Don't die. Soon as you're all right, I'm going to kick your ass for even trying."

She didn't know the woman. If she died, she died, end of the story. But she still said it, meant it. Maybe because with her arms around Natasha it was impossible to ignore that touch was the most basic of needs for almost every species on the planet. A need sometimes more important than any other.

Maria grunted, but it wasn't an acknowledgment. She kept muttering, saying very little that was understandable. Some of it sounded like wolf speak, coming rough and awkward out of human lips. She'd stayed in that form over two years. That was what Natasha had read from the brunette's mind. Was that normal for a wolf shifter? She expected it wasn't. From how much Maria seemed to want to flee back into her animal self, Natasha also suspected it wasn't the best thing for her long-term recuperation.

She had a couple ideas of how to handle that. But for now, she stroked the snarled brown long hair, flattening her palm against the strong tanned back and tracing her shoulder blades. When Maria pressed her bare hip into Natasha's groin, her dick responded with a healthy push back under the denim, her ass tightening to help it along.

"Fuck you," Maria muttered.

Natasha had no idea if it was a plea or a curse, and if it was aimed toward her, the universe or an unknown enemy, but she'd take it as a raincheck invitation. She cupped her hand over the brunette's jaw and face, her warm palm against clammy flesh as Maria shook some more. "It's okay," Natasha said. "I've got you. You're all right."

No idea where the hell that came from, because she didn't do the nurture thing, but she kept saying it. It seemed to help the she-wolf shifter settle deeper into her embrace, her breath evening out, her turbulent energy easier.

"There you go. We can fight or fuck later. Just get better."

Natas had been alone a long time. She'd be alone again. But maybe, for just a little while, she'd enjoy what not being alone felt like, even if it was with someone who wished Natasha had never come into her life.

Well, that wouldn't make Maria different from almost anyone else who'd ever known Maria, would it?

Her lips twisted, but Natasha found herself brushing them against Maria's brow. When the brunette tipped her face up, Natasha thought what the hell, and kissed her again, a long, slow swim in fevered waters, where Maria's hands wandered over her body in unconscious response. She dug into Natasha's back when Natasha deepened the kiss, so Natasha cupped Mari's smooth ass cheeks, holding her tighter against her bulge.

Maria groaned into her mouth, her shuddering increasing, such that Natasha made herself ease back. No good if she pushed the woman into the Reaper's hands by overtaxing her. But even injured, unconscious, the shifter's response was mesmerizing. Natasha wanted her now. Only the desire to have her more than once reined her back. She wasn't above fucking her prey before they expired, sending them to the other side with a last good memory, heavily helped by the pheromones vampires could release with their bite. But she wanted more than a single memory with this one.

Yeah, Maria had admonished her about consent. The brunette seemed to know more specifics about vampires than Natasha would have expected, but that rebuke told Natasha the shifter's knowledge was surface stuff. Because anyone inside the vampire circle knew the word "consent" wasn't in their vocabulary.

 Natasha had learned that the hard way.