Benny chewed on his thumbnail. “This ain’t good, man. This ain’t good.”
As they watched and waited, Lucas started shifting, snarling in what had to be agony as his muscles stretched and tore, his body reshaping itself back into human form. And when the change was complete and his eyes locked on hers, Seven had to agree with Benny.
This wasn’t good at all.
Chapter Seventeen
She stood her ground as he stalked toward her, chin tilted up, seemingly unconcerned that an out-of-control shifter had her in his sights. That show of strength and defiance pissed him off and turned him on in equal measure.
This woman was going to be the death of him.
“You’re naked!” she blurted.
As unnecessary as that comment was, it eased Lucas’s mind somewhat. She wasn’t as calm as she appeared to be, which meant her self-preservation skills weren’t so lacking that she didn’t comprehend the danger he presented at the moment.
“Clothes don’t normally survive a shift, doll,” Benny muttered nervously. “Unless you’re talking about the Hulk. I never was sure how his pants survived when all his other clothes kind of exploded off him. Did Bruce Banner have a tiny little pecker that didn’t grow when he turned into the Hulk or somethin’? I dunno. Maybe—”
“Silence!”
Seven and Benny both flinched. He didn’t blame them. Enough wolf remained in his voice that he barely sounded human.
He cut his glare to Benny. “Clothes. Find. Now.”
“Y-yeah, OK. Come on, Seven. Let’s—”
“She stays.”
Benny blinked at him. “But are you sure you’re—”
He snarled and took a menacing step forward. Benny let out a squeak, turned on his heel, and took off.
Seven didn’t back down as he advanced on her, though. He stopped when they were toe-to-toe and she had to crane her head back to meet his eyes.
He had a million questions for her, but he was still too pissed off to formulate many words at the moment, so he settled for, “Why?”
Her eyes narrowed on him. “What difference does it make? As long as you have your space.”
Lucas fought back another growl. Would that word haunt him for the rest of his fucking life? “I never wanted space. I said we needed space. And besides, the kind of space that has you fighting vampires every night in a fucking cage? Yeah, neither of us needs that space.”
“None of these creatures are a danger to me,” she said, sounding entirely too reasonable for his liking. “And I needed…”
“You needed?” he prompted.
“To hit something,” she finished. “Finding out you’re in love with Harper made me…angry.”
Jesus, how had he fucked everything up this badly? “I’m not in love with Harper. I thought at one time I was…but I’m not.”
Her eyes searched his with that laser-like intensity he’d come to expect from her before she murmured, “Truth.”
He nodded and leaned toward her, putting his hands on either side of her head against the wall behind her. “I won’t lie to you, Seven.”
Her chin came up, her warm breath feathering across his cheek, her mouth only a heartbeat away from his. She lifted shaking hands and laid her palms flat against his chest. He nearly groaned out loud at the feel of those cool, delicate hands on his overheated skin.
She swallowed hard. “If you don’t want her, then why don’t you want me?”
Surely he hadn’t heard her right. “You think I don’t want you?”
Her gaze lowered to her hands on his chest. “I’m nothing like Harper. She’s…open and funny and beautiful. I’ll never be like her. I’m—”
“If you say broken I’m gonna be pissed,” he said, fighting to keep from yelling at her. “You’re not broken. You’re perfect. So fucking perfect that it hurts not to touch you. Do you get that?”
Her eyes lifted to his and widened, and he was caught. He couldn’t have looked away if his life depended on it.
They stayed like that for way, way too long, frozen as if they were seeing each other—really seeing each other—for the first time. He took a deep breath and the warm, slightly sweaty and entirely too sexy scent of her skin made him lightheaded. Her hands slipped down to his stomach as his chest moved. He couldn’t hold back a hoarse groan.
Get out, he told himself. Remember what Vi said. She needs space. Get out while you still can.
She let her gaze drop to his mouth and she licked her lips.
“Fuck it,” he muttered.
Then he kissed her.
Seven didn’t really have any experience with kissing. The one time she’d decided to have sex was more out of curiosity than anything else, and kissing hadn’t really been involved.
Now she knew what she’d been missing out on her whole life.
Lucas had always been tender with her, careful. But not now. He kissed her with an almost feral intensity that stole her breath, and his heart pounded against hers like a bass drum.
She wasn’t sure what she loved more: the stretch and pull of his corded muscles and smooth, golden skin against her as he shoved her back against the wall, or the hot, wet slide of his tongue against hers. All she knew for sure was that she wanted more. And his low moan—not to mention the insistent press of his erection against her stomach—let her know he felt the same way.
Seven threaded her fingers through his hair and tugged him closer. Lucas growled low in his throat and moved his mouth more deliberately over hers. She was sure she’d ever tasted anything so amazing in her life. He tasted like peppermint and lust and need, and Seven wanted to devour him whole.
He slid his hands down her shoulders, along her ribcage, then slipped his fingertips beneath the snug bottom of tank top. Heat spread across her chest, her belly, and pooled between her thighs.
But still it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted everything. All the passion and fire she’d been denied for so long. She wanted to absorb his heat and feel every inch of his bare skin beneath her greedy fingers.
Seven hitched a leg over his hip and ground against him in an effort to better fit her curves to the hard angles of his body. And still he wasn’t close enough. Lucas must have sensed her struggle because he slipped his hands to her waist and lifted her. She wrapped both legs around his waist and moaned as her hips rubbed against his.
Together, they were a perfect fit.
Panting, he leaned into her, holding her in place with his weight as his hands shifted from her waist to her outer thighs, then up under her so that his hot palms were cupping her bottom.
Seven let her head fall back against the wall as his mouth slid down her neck. She gasped when his tongue dipped into the hollow at the base of her throat.
He left one hand on her bottom and used his other to tug down on her tank top. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he murmured.
So was he. Miles and miles of hot skin stretched taut over corded muscle. Masculine beauty at its finest.
He trailed teasing fingertips over the swells of her breasts, and her entire body tightened in anticipation. If he didn’t touch her breasts fully she was going to scream, and then he did and she almost screamed anyway from the sheer pleasure of it.
The cool silk of his hair brushing against her throat, the warm strength of the hand that cupped her breast, the sharp pull of desire that rocked her as he flicked the tip of his tongue over her tightened nipple…God, it was almost more than her senses could handle.
And just when they’d gone as far as they could with her clothes still on, just when she was on the verge of begging him to drag her to the nearest bed and fuck her senseless…
A throat cleared, and someone said, “Wow, now I see why you needed these pants so bad.”
Lucas rested his forehead against hers and muttered a curse. “Timing, Harper,” he said through clenched teeth. “Yours could be better.”
Harper grinned. Then she shrugged and said, “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Chapter Eighteen
With supreme effort, Lucas forced himself to set Seven on her feet and release her.
Jesus, he’d been about two seconds away from fucking her against a wall, outside, in the middle of the shittiest part of town. What the hell was wrong with him? So much for his promise to Vi to keep his distance from Seven. And the worst part?
He’d do it again.
To distract himself from the fact that he was naked in an alley with a raging hard-on, he glared at Benny, who was trying—and failing—to hide behind Harper. “What the fuck, man? I told you to find clothes, not call Harper.”
Jesus, anyone but Harper would’ve been preferable.
Benny threw up his hands in exasperation. “I didn’t call Harper! I called Riddick ‘cause he’s about your size.”
Ugh. He was wrong. Riddick was definitely less preferable in this situation.
Harper smirked at him. “You didn’t think I could listen to a call where Benny says, ‘Yo, Riddick, Lucas needs pants’ and not show up, do you? I think you know me better than that. The comedy potential sounded like gold.”
Benny rubbed his forehead. “Shit, I didn’t think that through. Sorry, Lucas.”
Then he pulled a pair of sweats and a T-shirt out of the messenger bag Harper was carrying. He squinted at them, then held them up for Harper’s inspection. “What does Riddick have against colors, doll?”
“I don’t know. He won’t admit it, but I think he’s color blind. He only ever wears black.”
“Dude’s like Johnny Cash, man.”
“I know, right?”
Lucas face-palmed. “For the love of God, can you just toss me the clothes?”
“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to leave you hanging. Literally.”
Harper snorted with barely suppressed laughter at Benny’s joke, and Lucas kind of wanted them both dead at that particular moment.
Benny tossed him the clothes. “There you go. Feel free to tuck little Lucas away before the ladies are even further scandalized.”
Seven’s gaze immediately dropped to his dick. “Is that considered little?”
Harper and Benny dropped their gazes, too. “No,” they said in unison. Seven looked really…interested, which wasn’t helping him lose his hard-on.
“Jesus,” Lucas muttered, not sure if he should be happy everyone agreed his dick wasn’t small, or freaked out that everyone was studying his dick that closely. Was this really happening?
“It’s just a figure of speech, hon,” Harper explained to Seven.
“Oh,” she said, frowning. “I don’t really understand most of those. Especially in English. They never seem to make much sense.”
“Yeah, English is tricky,” Benny agreed. “I always liked Latin better.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “You don’t speak Latin, Benny. Pig Latin isn’t the same thing.”
“It ain’t? Huh. Learn something new every day, I guess.”
As Lucas pulled on the sweats, Harper said, “Hey, nice work on the cage in there, Lucas. It looks like the Kool-Aid man ran through it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Benny quipped in his best Kool-Aid man voice, then fist-bumped a giggling Harper.
Lucas suddenly felt about 700 years old. “Sweet Christ, you guys are immature. What the—”
“Get down!”
Lucas heard the shot pierce the night air a split second before Seven shoved him to the ground none too gently and dove on top of him. Benny tackled Harper, shielding her with his body as a second shot hit the wall behind them, showering brick shards down onto their heads.
The noise from the crowd that had been loitering in front of the foundry after the match grew to earsplitting levels. Lucas couldn’t see them, but knew from the sound that they’d heard the shots and were panicking, screaming, running, and practically tearing each other apart in their attempts to escape.
“He’s gone,” Seven said in a shaky voice, unsteadily climbing to her feet.
“Jesus,” Benny said, reaching down to help Harper up. “What the fuck was that?”
Lucas dusted off his borrowed sweat pants and looked back in the direction the shots had come from. “It sounded like a sniper rifle.”
Harper ran a hand through her disheveled hair and frowned as her fingers got caught in the tangled curls. “Who the fuck were they shooting at?”
“Me.”
Lucas looked back at Seven just in time to see her gingerly touch the back of her head, and frown as her fingertips came back coated in blood.
“Oh, shit,” Benny whispered. “Seven…”
“No,” Lucas grated out as he reached for her. “You can’t be hit! You’re bulletproof!”
She glanced down at the blood on her hand, looking confused and pale. So, so pale.
“I thought so, too,” she murmured. “Huh. I guess I’m not.”
His wolf’s unholy howl ripped through the alley as she fell forward into his arms.
Chapter Nineteen
The ER doc, a bedraggled fifty-something with smudged glasses, questionable stains on his scrubs, and a bedside manner only Stalin could love, worked furiously to stabilize Seven and assess her injuries. Even though the bullet had only grazed her, blood poured from the wound at the back of her head, quickly saturating every white gauze pad the doctor pressed against it.
Lucas didn’t need the annoying beeping of the monitor to tell him her heart rate was lower than it should be. He could hear it himself. And he knew why.
The fucker had shot her with a silver bullet.
Dhampyres weren’t violently allergic to silver like pure-blooded vampires, but they were sensitive enough to it that it dramatically slowed their healing process.
The doctor looked at Lucas over the tops of his glasses. “I need you to go to the waiting room.” He gestured to the little blonde nurse who was scurrying around the room, gathering supplies. “We’ll take care of her.”
Lucas looked down at Seven—so pale, so tiny, so alone—in that bed, and immediately thought, yeah, no fucking way. He tightened his grip on her hand. “I’m not leaving her.”
The nurse dropped the roll of gauze she was holding and her eyes widened in alarm. He couldn’t say he blamed her. He was pretty sure his eyes were blazing yellow as he fought to keep his emotions—and his wolf—in check.
But the doctor, who’d obviously seen a thing or two in his day, looked unimpressed. “I’ll call security if I have to,” he said, his tone serious as a fucking heart attack.
Lucas met him glare for glare and bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile. There weren’t enough rent-a-cops in the whole building to tear him from her side. “Good luck with that.”
The stare down continued for a moment or two longer, until the doctor seemed to realize he’d need to call in the National Guard if he wanted to drag Lucas out of the room. He eventually sighed and grumbled, “Fine, but you need to stay out of our way while we take care of this head wound and figure out what to do about her heart rate. We don’t get too many vampire hybrids here.”
Behind him, Harper cleared her throat. “Just worry about the wound, doc. We can take care of the rest.”
Lucas glanced back at her, brow raised.
“I called Leon,” she said.
No further explanation was needed. Lucas immediately felt some of the starch melt from his spine.
Leon Steinfeld was Harper’s office manager. But before that, he’d been a biochemist for Sentry. Leon and his group were directly responsible for the existence of dhampyres. He was a crooked, shady, unemployable-by-anyone-but-Harper little dude, but if there was anyone who’d know how to help Seven, it was Leon.
“I’ve got Benny back at the scene talking to witnesses, too,” Harper added. “And Hunter and Mischa are talking to the fighters. We’ll find the shooter, Lucas. You don’t have to worry about it being left up to the VCU.”
He’d probably care about all that when he knew Seven was going to be alright. But right now? He found it hard to give a shit about
anything but the woman who’d shoved him to the ground to keep him safe. The woman who’d taken a silver bullet to the back of the head while trying to protect him.
Seven shifted restlessly, moaning. Lucas braced his hands on either side of her head and leaned in close to listen. Her heart rate was increasing. Her eyes didn’t open, but he could see her pupils moving underneath her lids.
Thank you, Jesus.
“Seven, sweetheart, time to wake up,” he said. “Open your eyes for me. Can you do that?”
“Lucas,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“That’s right, sweetheart. How about you put me out of my misery and show me those gorgeous blue eyes of yours? What do you say?”
Her eyes fluttered open and locked on his. “Hi,” she whispered.
For the first time since she’d passed out and fallen into his arms, he took an easy breath. He brushed her hair off her forehead, and let his knuckles brush over her cheek. “Hi, yourself.”
The doctor elbowed Lucas in the ribs. “You need to move. We need to take some blood.”
Lucas sat up and glanced over at the little man, who looked beyond exasperated as he stood there, syringe in hand. “Yeah, OK, sorry. I’ll—”
“No!”
Seven jerked upright, grabbing Lucas’s arm with one hand, flinging her free hand toward the doctor. The syringe shot out of his hand and flew across the room, slamming into the wall. The needle sank into the sheetrock up to the plunger.
“Holy shit,” Harper murmured.
Holy shit’s right.
If Seven’s hand had made contact with the doctor’s hand, the whole thing wouldn’t have been so surprising. But…it hadn’t.
The suddenly white-faced doctor glanced from his now-empty hand to the syringe sticking out of the wall, then back at his empty hand, visibly struggling to process what had just happened. The nurse traced a symbol of the cross over her chest.
Seven grabbed his T-shirt in two white-knuckled fists and buried her face against his chest. Tremors wracked her body. “Please don’t let them touch me. I can’t…just…no more.”
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 70