by Cynthia Eden
“With David out of the picture, Keegan took over the pack. According to the werewolf we’ve got—a real chatty bastard named Dennis who apparently didn’t like being shot in the face—Keegan is one sick sonofabitch. And guess who he has a complete and total fixation on?”
She licked lips that had gone desert dry. “Since he wants me in the trade, I’ll just assume that fixation kind of centers of me.”
“Kind of,” he muttered back.
She whirled to face him. “I didn’t know!”
He stared back at her. “Dennis said Keegan has been killing members of his own pack. If they don’t follow orders, he takes them down immediately. Sure seems like this guy is a real charmer.”
“I. Didn’t. Know!” Did he want her to write it in blood? To swear on her soul? “He was a guy I met at my dad’s office one day. He was wearing a three piece suit, not sporting claws! It’s not like you can just look and instantly say…” She snapped her fingers. “Werewolf! You don’t know until the person shifts. I just…I thought he was normal.” He’d seemed so incredibly normal. “When he asked me out for coffee…” And this was one of the most humiliating parts, but she forced herself to say, “I was just happy a normal guy wanted to go out with me…me, the freak who was so far from normal.”
Connor’s eyes began to glow.
Uh, oh. “Connor?” She inched back a bit.
“You dated him.”
He made those words sound like the worst crime ever. Her spine stiffened. “We met for coffee, and, yes, after that, we went out a few times.” With a sinking heart, she now understood why her father had seemed happy that she was going out with Keegan. Not because he’d been some up and coming young politician like she’d assumed. But because he’d been a werewolf.
Her father had probably been imagining werewolf babies running all around.
Oh, God…this is why my dad messed with my scent! He wanted Keegan to fall for me! Her father had given her the last injection after her third date with Keegan.
Her dad hadn’t realized that was her last date with the guy.
“You dated him?” Connor took another step toward her and shook his head, as if the thought were truly mind boggling.
“I didn’t know! Okay? It was just a few times. I didn’t—didn’t feel a real spark or connection, and I broke it off with him.” She waved her hands in the air. “Then, you know, things kind of went to hell. I found out that my dad had been working to take out the Para Unit. He was trying to push all the wolves to attack, and I was just trying to stay alive.”
Then things had reached an explosive level. Her father had died, and Chloe had lost everything she’d had.
Including my sanity? Some nights, it sure felt that way. Because I killed him. My father didn’t just die. I killed him. I shot my own father and I don’t even remember doing it.
“Did you fuck Keegan, too?”
His words were low, lethal, and absolutely designed to enrage her—Chloe was sure of it. Her hands immediately fisted to her sides. “How is that relevant?”
“It’s relevant, believe me. The guy kidnapped a federal agent. He’s stalking you, doing anything to get you back…so I have to wonder…did you have sex with the guy?”
But there was such a banked rage in his eyes. She could see it. “Jealous?” Wait, no, I didn’t mean to say that, did I?
Everything was so screwed up.
“No.” She shook her head as her breath expelled in a hard rush. “No, I didn’t have sex with him. Things never got that far. It was only a few dates, so I have no idea why the guy is freaking out and stalking me.” But this was more than just stalking. He was killing.
“Yes…” Connor hissed the word.
She frowned at him. Yes, what?
“I’m fucking jealous. I already hated the bastard as soon as I saw what he was doing to Harris. But to know that Keegan was close to having you…” His eyes glowed brighter with the fury of his beast. “I want to rip him apart.”
She exhaled slowly. “Why do I feel like this is the first time you’ve, um, been jealous?”
“Because it is!” Those words exploded from him. “The first time in my entire life!”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“You have no idea…” He gritted out the words. “I will never be like him.”
“Wait, you think you’re like Keegan? Um, you’re not, Connor. I could never imagine you hurting—”
“Not him. My father.”
“What?”
“He was a sick, twisted psychopath. He said he loved my mother, but he was obsessed. He couldn’t let her go, not even when she tried to run. And she did run, Chloe. She ran again and again. She took me and my brother and fled with us. But he kept coming after her.” He paused. “It’s not easy to escape a werewolf, especially when you’re a human and the alpha wolf has your scent.”
She reached out to him. “Connor, I’m sorry.” Her fingers curled around his arm. His muscles were rock hard beneath her touch.
“The last time he found us…she put me and my brother in a closet. She was trying to hide us, and she was terrified. I can remember seeing the tears on her face. She wanted us to stay quiet. My mom…she said if we stayed quiet, we’d stay safe.”
She didn’t want to hear the rest of this story.
“I was so young, so damn little, and I didn’t like the dark.” His voice had gone hollow, all of the emotion bleeding away. “I ran out. I-I screamed. He found me. He found me and mom, and then he killed her right there.”
She didn’t just hold onto his arm then. She threw her body against his and held tight. His voice was so emotionless, but Chloe could feel his pain. “I’m so sorry, Connor.”
“It was my fault. If I’d just kept my mouth shut. If I’d stayed in the dark…”
“No!” She was adamant. “You were a child. Anything that happened…that was on your father. You didn’t cause her death! You didn’t!” She tilted her head back so she could stare into his eyes. “Connor, you’re a good person. You’ve helped me all along. Put yourself at risk and—”
“David Vincent was right about me.”
“Stop it,” Chloe whispered. She didn’t let him go.
“I spent my life in my father’s pack. That Keegan bastard has nothing on my old man. I saw things…” He shook his head. “I’ll never be able to forget them. And my father couldn’t abide a weak son. He was determined to make me stronger, no matter what.” He backed away from her. “Ian McGuire didn’t raise the weak. He killed the weak.”
She wanted to reach out to him again.
“When I got away from that bastard, I changed my last name. Went back to using my mom’s name, Marrok. Because I wanted nothing of his. But I couldn’t escape him. Not really. I’ve always carried his mark on me.” Connor lifted his shirt. He stripped it over his head and threw it to the floor. The light hit him then, falling right on his powerful chest. The muscles rippled. The muscles, the golden skin, and the scars…
So many scars.
“Werewolves can heal, so can vampires, but my father marked me when I was still a child, long before my first shift.”
She had to blink away tears.
“Every time I didn’t fall in line, every time I fought, every time I tried to get away, he’d use his claws.”
There were so many scars on him. Too many to count.
“When I stopped fighting him, when I acted like the fucking psychotic wolf he wanted me to be, he stopped peeling my flesh away.”
“Stop,” she whispered.
He didn’t. “When I was his wolf, I did things I never want to think about.” He swallowed. “But one day, one fucking day, I got away. I left him. I was alpha on my own, and I wasn’t ever going to bow down to anyone again.”
“What happened to him?”
“Don’t you know?”
She waited, wanting him to tell her.
“From what we can tell, he was in on the plot with your father. Senator Quick was rounding up as m
any werewolf allies as he could get. Purgatory was originally a set-up. Quick wanted the most powerful paranormals brought together because he planned to use them all. My sick old man was another of Quick’s pawns.” His lips curved in a grim smile. “But my father didn’t make it out of Purgatory. He died there, and I got to see it all go down.”
She shivered.
“That’s who I am, Chloe. I’m not some safe guy that you can fool around with. Me, jealous? That’s not what you want. That’s not what anyone wants. Hell, I know I’m dangerous. Because I’m more like that bastard than I want to admit. What if I snap one day? What if something pushes me over the edge?” Now emotion was breaking through his voice. “I already do want you more than I should, but, baby, I am my father’s son.”
She stared at all of those scars. So many scars, all on the outside, easy to see.
“My scars aren’t on the outside,” Chloe confessed.
“Chloe?”
“He never left scars on the outside. Reporters might have seen them, and my father was far too smart to make a mistake like that.”
He’d shared his past. And hadn’t Connor said before…if one shared, the other would, too? Such an exchange of past pain only seemed fair.
“Donald Quick was charming. He was handsome. He always knew just the right thing to say to the right people. You looked at him, and you wanted to believe every single thing he said.” Even though his words had been lies. “But who he was in public, that man wasn’t anything like the guy I saw in private.” A man given to screaming rages. A man consumed by the idea of power—power that would come from being a werewolf.
“My mother ran away when I was a child. She fell in love with someone else, and she just…left. But she didn’t get far. For years, I believed that she’d been the victim of a hit and run, but, on my eighteenth birthday, he told me the truth. He’d killed her. Because she wanted to leave him. If I tried to leave—because then, I was so sick of his rages and the constant tests he was doing on me—he said he’d do the same thing to me. You see, no one could be allowed to humiliate the senator. No one.”
And right then, Chloe made a decision. She’d already been thinking about what she would do to save Harris. And now she knew what she had to do to save herself. To keep that little bit of soul that she still had.
Everyone deserved some happiness, even if that happiness was fleeting.
Keeping her gaze on Connor, Chloe stripped off her shirt. She shed her jeans. Then she stood before him in just her bra and panties. There were no scars for him to see on her body. After his hell, the wounds to her emotions would seem like nothing.
But…
“I think you and I are more alike than you realize,” she told him. “We’re alike, but we are nothing like our fathers.” Because she had made that vow to herself. To do anything necessary in order not to wind up being as twisted as her father had been, especially in the end. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Connor’s gaze had dropped to her body. Heated. He gave a jerky nod.
“I want you.” There, she’d said it. “I don’t care who you were before. I don’t care about any scars you have. I want you.” He needed to understand that. She was the last person who’d judge him.
“You know…” His voice was more beast than man. “That I’d do anything to have you.”
No, she hadn’t known that. His words gave her the courage to continue.
“You asked if I’d had sex with Keegan.”
His hands clenched.
“The truth is…I haven’t had sex with anyone.”
His head jerked up then, and he stared at her in shock.
“I wanted to, but…at sixteen, I was attacked by a pack of werewolves. They bit me, and that’s when my change started. I could never control it. And when I was angry or…or aroused, the change would come out more. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally use my claws to rip open a lover.”
So she’d pulled away. Kept a distance between herself and the men who’d come into her life. Keegan…she’d never planned to go far with him because she hadn’t wanted to hurt him.
Guess he and I were both keeping secrets.
She wanted no secrets between her and Connor. “My silver sensitivity is back. So it’s probably just a matter of time until the rest of my…well, until everything else is back, too.” Then she’d return to the land of pain and terror. “Before that, I want to be with you. I want to know what it’s like to go wild in a man’s arms and not fear hurting him.”
Connor didn’t move. “I’m not a man, baby. You know I’m more. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
She stepped toward him. Put her hand on his chest. His skin was so warm. Almost blazing hot. And his muscles were like stone beneath her touch. “I don’t think you ever would.” Her gaze searched his. “You have your control.” She knew that.
He shook his head. “Not with you. With you, it breaks.”
She pushed up on her toes. Skimmed her lips over his throat. Felt the frantic beat of his pulse beneath her mouth. “I trust you, and I want you.” She needed this. Before midnight, before the pain that would come, Chloe had to be with him.
Just once. Shouldn’t she get one time? To want and be wanted?
You can still love and be loved.
Chloe slammed the door on that thought, hating the whisper that had just slipped through her mind.
She licked his skin, then lightly scored him with her teeth.
Connor shuddered against her. “You shouldn’t…I shouldn’t…”
Oh, they most certainly should. She kissed a sensual path down his chest. Carefully, she spent time pressing her lips to each scar, hating the pain that he’d endured. His father had been a true bastard, and she was glad the man was dead. Glad that he’d never hurt Connor or anyone else again.
His body seemed to grow even harder, even hotter as she kissed him. Her hands feathered over him. She loved touching Connor. He was so powerful.
Down, down she went.
“Chloe…”
Her knees hit the wooden floor. Her fingers didn’t even tremble when she reached for the snap of his jeans. She popped that snap and pulled down the zipper.
He grabbed her hands.
“I want this,” she said, looking up at him. “I want you.” So she didn’t have the practical experience, that wasn’t holding her back. She’d always been a fast learner. She wasn’t fighting claws and a painful change. She was riding the crest of desire she always felt when Connor was near.
“Us…what we do…it will change everything.” His words sounded like a warning, but his hold had eased on her.
She wrapped her hands around his fully erect cock. So long and strong. Wider than her wrist. “I don’t care.” Chloe put her mouth on him. Her lips slid over the head of his arousal. Her tongue feathered over him, and then she took him deeper into her mouth, fighting to gain a rhythm even as she savored the slightly salty taste of him.
Every lick of her tongue, every move of her mouth seemed to turn Chloe on more and more. She’d thought to bring him pleasure. She hadn’t realized just how wild she’d make herself. She wanted more and more and—
He lifted her up. Pretty much yanked away her bra and panties and put her on the bed. She bounced a little and heard the ragged heave of her breath.
His eyes were glittering. Connor stared at Chloe as if he could devour her right then.
Yes, please.
His hands closed over her thighs. He pulled her to the edge of the bed, opened her legs wide, and stared down at her sex. “So pretty.” His voice was a growl. A deep, sensual growl that rumbled over her. “Pink and pretty.” Then he put his mouth on her.
There was no hesitation from Connor. He licked her. Stroked her with his fingers and his mouth and he had Chloe arching off that bed.
But when she tried to pull away from him because it was too much, too intense, her whole body was quivering—he held her hips. He kept her against his mouth and—
She came.
An explosion that burst through her body. Chloe started to scream his name because it was seriously that amazingly good.
Then she remembered where she was. Who could hear them. She bit her lower lip, bit it hard to hold back her cries as she rode out that powerful storm of release.
Connor rose slowly. Pushed his body up so that he was above her. “Was that the first?” Connor wanted to know.
She managed a nod.
“Good, fucking—” He broke off and his eyes fell on her mouth. “Oh, Chloe…you’re bleeding.”
She hadn’t felt the pain.
“Let me help…” Then his mouth was on hers. He kissed her so softly. So carefully then…
His fingers slid over her breasts. Traced her nipples. His touch had her eagerly pushing up against him. Was the desire supposed to return so fast? She’d come, but she already wanted him again. Her nipples felt hyper-sensitive, and his every touch had her yearning to feel more…to feel him, deep inside.
He was kissing her neck now. Hot, open-mouthed kisses that seemed to send a streak of fire right to her sex. She was wet and hot for him, and she wanted Connor inside of her this time when she came.
“There’s pleasure in the bite…” Connor’s voice was such a delicious rumble. “Let me give you pleasure, Chloe.”
She wanted him to give her everything. There was no going back. Chloe knew that. A few more hours, and her life would be over. She needed every bit of pleasure now. She needed Connor—now.
So she turned her head and she offered him her throat. A sign of submission for a wolf. For a vampire? It was an invitation.
“You give yourself to me, Chloe?”
“Yes.” She wanted him in her. She wanted to give him all that she had and to take everything he had to give her. She would remember this moment—this time—with him, always. Because Chloe knew she would need something to hold tight when the nightmares came later. When all she had were nightmares.
She’d remember him.
His teeth raked over her throat. No, his fangs. And when his fangs sank into her, she braced for a quick flash of pain.
Pleasure.
She came right then. She shuddered and bucked beneath him but the pleasure wasn’t ending. There was no crest—it just kept going and going.