“Oddly enough, no. My father never lifted a hand to me until I became a Direwolf.” She sighed. “The taboo against child abuse has to be strong, because somebody like Stephen could do so much damage. Particularly since children can’t transform and heal.” The ability to shift only came at age seventeen or so—the Direkind version of puberty.
“That taboo’s pretty strong in mainstream American culture too,” Lucas pointed out, “but that doesn’t stop anybody.”
“But it’s not an automatic death sentence if they catch you at it. Which it is, among us. Our child mortality rate is appalling as it is, with a fifth of all kids not making it through their first Change. If we tolerated child abuse on top of that . . . well . . .”
What kind of life had she lived? Lucas wondered suddenly. It was easy to picture her as a pampered little girl, treated like spun glass. Only to hit puberty, and find she meant nothing to the men around her but a walking womb. No wonder she was willing to do anything to change the system she was trapped in. “The transition from child to Direkind female must come as a shock.”
“It’s that way for everybody.”
“But especially for Chosen girls, I’ll bet. One day you’re Daddy’s little girl. The next, he’s coming after you with claws.”
“Not every day. Not all the time.” Elena stood and moved to the window. Night had fallen while they’d talked. There was a thick stand of trees beyond the privacy fence that circled the yard, their leaves edged in moonlight. She found herself longing to Change and simply run. Lose herself in those dark woods. “Eleven months out of the year, he didn’t much care what I did. It was only during my Burning Moon that he got paranoid.” She shrugged. “ ‘We’ve got to keep the bloodline pure, Elena.’ ”
“You’re twenty-seven,” Lucas pointed out. “Why hasn’t he already married you off?”
“After I graduated college, I figured out how to avoid drawing Daddy’s attention. I moved out, I found a job, and I didn’t get involved with anybody unsuitable. He was heavily involved in Direkind politics, so he let me go my own way.” Elena pulled the curtain back farther, staring out into the darkness. “And my father’s health has been good, up until this past year. He’s seventy-six now, and his magic is beginning to go. Once you can’t transform anymore . . .” She shrugged. Transformations tended to ward off the worst of the damage inflicted by age. But when the magic failed, a Direwolf’s health tended to deteriorate fast.
“He must have been in his forties when you were born.”
“Right. He was ten years older than my mother.”
“What about your mother? You haven’t mentioned her.”
Because it still hurt. “Mom ran her convertible up under an eighteen wheeler at sixty miles an hour. The collision took her head off.” There were some things even the Direkind couldn’t heal. “It was right after Bobby died. I always wondered . . .” Her eyes began to sting, and she blinked fiercely.
He studied her with quiet sympathy. “Losing your mother and brother together like that must have been rough. How old were you?”
“Fifteen. That was right about the time Daddy started . . .” She gestured. “. . . pulling away.” Her eyes started to fill in earnest. “Sorry. Burning Moon hormones.” She blinked hard and reached up to rub her aching back.
“Shoulders hurt?”
Elena gave him a tired smile. “Being a werewolf isn’t a protection against tension.”
Lucas flashed her a dry smile and rose from the table. “Just the reverse, in fact.” He reached for her. She started to pull back, but he took her gently by the arms and turned her around. “Allow me.” Big, warm hands came to rest on her shoulders, fingers digging in gently. “You are tense. Some of these knots feel like Ping-Pong balls.” He found a particularly tight one and went to work on it, thumbs circling and stroking.
Elena let her head fall back with a groan of pleasure. “You’re good at that.”
“Being a cop is pretty high-tension too. Which is why . . .” He leaned down to her ear and whispered, “. . . there’s a hot tub on the back deck.”
She looked around at him, intrigued. “Is there?”
Lucas shrugged. “When you spend your time wrestling bad-tempered bad guys into jail cells, sometimes you need a good soak.”
Elena hesitated. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
His smile turned wicked. “Would you believe me if I promised not to look?”
“Should I?”
He laughed, the sound rich and very male. “Probably not.”
She slitted her eyes, enjoying the warmth of his hands. “I think I’ll risk it.”
• • •
She’d touched him. Pissed as he’d been—and Lucas had been pretty pissed off—Elena Livingston had gotten to him.
Brooding, he stared out across the moonlit back yard toward the stand of trees beyond the house. He’d changed into his swim trunks while she went to clean up. Now he found himself wondering what the hell he was doing.
Well, other than waiting for hot sex with a woman who seriously turned him on.
And why not? Lucas was about to fight a duel over her with a murderous son of a bitch who’d been a werewolf a hell of a lot longer than he had. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get his head handed to him on the end of a rusty pocket knife.
Hot sex was the least she owed him.
So he had no problem with the sex. It was the rest of it that gave him psychic whiplash.
There he’d been, pissed, nursing the ugly suspicion that Elena had played him, when she’d started talking about losing her mother and brother. Not to mention that prick daddy of hers. Those big green eyes had gone so sad, so lonely.
And Lucas’s entirely justifiable anger suddenly hadn’t seemed to matter at all.
Pussy.
Then like an idiot, he’d offered to rub her shoulders. Her back had felt so delicate under his hands, with those slim muscles coiled into knots of tension he knew must hurt like a son of a bitch. He’d started rubbing his thumbs over those knots, and she’d made that sweet, throaty moan in her throat.
Lucas had looked down and seen the pretty mounds of her breasts in that shirt, and he’d gotten so violently hard, he’d expected his zipper to bust.
So now they were going to have sex. Only in his case, he was afraid it’d be a little too close to making love.
Elena, on the other hand, was going to be working very hard at getting knocked up as part of a wild-ass gamble for all her personal marbles. He’d give the girl one thing: she didn’t lack guts.
Man, he liked that about her.
You really are a fuckin’ idiot. Lucas thumped his fist on the deck railing in irritation. He was going to screw around and fall for the little blueblood werewolf, despite knowing perfectly well she’d walk right out of his life.
And why shouldn’t she? He wasn’t Chosen. Hell, he was Bitten.
As Lucas had discovered over the last few years, most Direkind females viewed first generation Bitten with considerable wariness. For one thing, if one of the Bitten did something dumb and somebody decided he weren’t fit to be Direkind, his local clan could take out an order of execution on him. No smart girl wanted to get mixed up with a guy who was halfway to a dirt nap.
Which was yet another reason Lucas could count the dates he’d had in the last few years on one hairy paw. No wonder his libido was all but drooling at the thought of Elena Livingston and her Burning Moon.
Pussy was a wonderful thing.
Too bad he had the ugly feeling this particular kitty was going to end up treating his heart like a catnip cat toy. He could almost feel her little needle teeth getting a good grip.
Dumbass.
• • •
Wrapped in a towel, Elena walked out on the back deck. And stopped dead as her Burning Moon hormones h
ummed in approval.
Lucas stood with his back to her, staring out over the yard. He wore a pair of red swim trunks, an obvious nod to her modesty. His back was breathtaking—a broad, well-muscled sweep from wide shoulders to a narrow, delightfully taut ass. His legs were long and powerful, dusted with dark hair, and his big feet were bare.
Elena’s mouth went dry, and she swallowed, clutching the towel around herself.
“Better get in,” Lucas said without looking around. “I don’t know how much longer I can pretend to be a gentleman.”
She laughed and dropped her towel, then stepped over the side of the hot tub. As promised, the water was delightfully warm and bubbling, and she sighed in pleasure as she sank down on one of the bench seats running beneath the surface.
He turned, his gaze hotter than the water as he looked at her. She was suddenly conscious of the pale upper curves of her breasts rising over the bubbling water.
Lucas started toward her, and Elena forgot her own modesty in favor of staring at him. The view from the front was even better. His pecs were wide, solid plates of muscle, and he was so lean, his abdominal muscles lay under his skin in sculpted ridges. When he braced his arms on the tub lip to boost himself over, thick biceps and triceps worked and shifted. Settling into the bubbling water with a sigh, he extended both long arms along the edge of the tub. Moonlight silvered them as he let his head fall back. “Man, I needed this. It’s been a bitch of a day.”
“And I made it quite a bit bitchier,” Elena said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t intentional.”
“No, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re taking a big risk for me. And I’m grateful.”
He shrugged in a lift of those breathtaking shoulders. “Comes with the job.”
“Fighting Stephen isn’t your job, Lucas.”
“Somebody’s got to do it.” He spoke without opening his eyes. “The man’s an asshole. I hate assholes.”
She laughed despite herself. But as she sat watching him relax in the bubbling water, she realized he really could die in Monday’s fight. Lucas was a big man, yes, but Stephen was no stranger to dueling; he had the advantage there. And a fight between Direkind males could be unimaginably vicious, in part because they could heal most injuries simply by transforming.
On the one hand, that meant Lucas could survive anything except a broken neck, decapitation, or ripping out his heart, as long as he could transform. But it also meant he’d suffer a lot more pain than a human would, because he could keep going when a human would simply die.
“You’re thinking about this too much.” He’d opened one eye to look at her.
“Just realizing I have no right to drag you into this.”
He sighed and lifted an arm, inviting her to slide in next to him. “Come here.”
Elena hesitated, then scooted across the tub to settle into the curve of that brawny arm. She rested her head against his wet, muscular chest, enjoying the hard heat of him.
“When I was a kid, my mother had a whole lot of lovers just like Stephen,” he told her softly. “They beat her and they beat me. We got into the habit of going to a different ER every time so none of the doctors would realize she wasn’t walking into doors, and I wasn’t just falling off swing sets.”
She lifted her head from his chest, staring up at him in shock. “Oh.”
“Yeah. There were times I’d have given my left nut if she’d had the balls to call a cop.”
In a flash, Elena pictured him as a thin, big-eyed child, bruised and nursing his rage. “How could she stand by while they hurt you?”
“She’d convinced herself she was either helpless or that we both deserved whatever they did to us. Depended on her mood which theory she went with.” He laughed, the sound short and bitter. “When I was sixteen, she threw me out for kicking her latest boyfriend’s skinny little ass. I was already six-one and a wide receiver on my high school football team.”
“And not in the mood to take any crap.”
“Not really, no. I bunked on my friends’ couches until I turned eighteen and could enlist in the Marines. Did my tour, came home, and became a cop.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“Lung cancer. Six years ago, before I became a werewolf.” Lucas met her eyes and gently cupped her cheek. “The point is I know what it’s like to be a victim. I know what it’s like to be willing to do absolutely anything not to be hurt anymore. I know how fear sits in your stomach and goes acid until all you want to do is throw up.”
“Yeah, I guess you do,” she said quietly.
“I also know it wasn’t easy to come to a stranger for help. Much less ask him to get you pregnant. I admire you for that.” He stroked a lock of hair back out of her eyes. “So you have nothing to apologize for.”
Elena blinked hard, feeling her eyes begin to sting. “Thank you. You don’t know how much that . . .”
Lucas leaned forward and took her mouth. It was a slow kiss, just a light brushing of lip on lip at first, almost chaste. Elena sighed and opened for him. He made a soft, growling sound and deepened it, his mouth possessive and hungry as his tongue slipped between her lips in a teasing, wet stroke. He tasted of steak and beer, a rich, thoroughly male combination that suited him.
Deep inside her, something tight and frozen began to thaw, to bloom. She moaned and tangled both hands in his hair. He rumbled something and hauled her against him. Elena caught her breath at the feeling of his firm, hair-dusted chest crushing her naked breasts.
This remarkable man was hers, if only for the moment. She could touch him, hold him. Pretend they shared something more than a weekend snatched from the teeth of violence.
The Burning Moon burst into full heat, running like lava through her veins. She had to have him.
Gasping with need, she tore free of the kiss and let her head fall back. Lucas’s warm, skilled mouth found the line of her jaw, tasting, biting softly, sending chills of delight racing over her skin.
Then one big hand discovered her breast, cupping it boldly.
“Oh, God.” She sighed.
He rumbled something, thumb and forefinger stroking the tight peak, coaxing it even harder, each caress sending another jolt of pleasure through her nervous system.
Dazed, she met his eyes. He was watching her, his gaze direct, predatory. His lips looked kiss-flushed. “Has anybody ever told you your breasts are perfect?”
She swallowed. “They are?”
“I love the way they fill my hands.” He looked down at the soft globe he cupped and petted. “Your skin is like satin.”
As if unable to hold back any longer, Lucas slid an arm around her waist and arched her back over it. Her nipples broke the water’s surface, hard as cherries in the moonlight.
He covered one peak with his mouth, a sudden, delicious envelopment in wet heat. Then he started suckling, slow, deep, each sweet pull of his lips sending a pulse of raw pleasure through her nervous system.
“God, that feels good.” Biting her lip, Elena closed her eyes and let herself float in sensation—the water bubbling around her sensitive skin, the strength of his arms holding her, his mouth, gentle and greedy at once. She let herself go completely limp, surrendering to him.
Lucas’s free hand slipped between her thighs, gently exploring. He found her nether lips and traced his fingers over the soft hair covering them, then gently parted her.
The first stroke of that strong finger into her core arched her back with a jolt of thick, luscious pleasure. Crying out, she bucked against him.
Lucas lifted his head from her breast to watch her pleasure. “That’s right,” he said softly. “Let go. Give it to me.” His thumb found her clit, strummed over the tiny erection to draw out another molten swirl of delight. A second finger joined the one inside her, pu
shing deep, then scissoring apart. Tormenting her deliciously.
With every stroke of his fingers, every swirl of his tongue around her nipple, another pulse of pleasure rolled through her. Until finally she was writhing, maddened with it, so close to coming, so desperate for the release her body craved.
He lifted his head from her breast to watch her, enjoying her pleasure, her desperate yearning.
“Lucas,” she groaned. “Please!”
Another taunting stroke. “I like the sound of my name on your lips. Say it again.”
“Lucas!”
“You’re close, aren’t you, baby?”
“Oh, God, yes! Please, Lucas!”
“Oooh, yeah.” And he thrust hard, deep, simultaneously circling his thumb over her clit.
Her back arched, bowing ferociously as she cried out, the orgasm sweeping her up and throwing her high. Sweet, endless pulses of it that went on and on.
Until, at last, they subsided, leaving her panting and spent.
Dazed, she looked up at him.
His gaze was intensely satisfied, possessive—and hungry.
And she realized he was far from done with her.
CHAPTER 6
Even as Elena’s slowing heartbeat sped up again, Lucas set her back on her feet, then caught the edge of the hot tub and vaulted out.
He met her gaze with a smoldering stare. “I want to look at you when I take you.”
She swallowed, feeling inner muscles clench. “All right.”
“I wasn’t asking permission.” He reached over the side of the tub and caught her in his arms, lifting her out as if she weighed nothing at all to him. Which she didn’t, given his Direkind strength.
Swinging around, Lucas carried her to a red-stained wooden chaise lounge, then lowered her to the thick cushion.
He straightened and stood looking down at her a moment, his gaze hungry and possessive. That look would have insulted her coming from anybody else, yet from Lucas, it felt . . . right. Not to mention wildly arousing, particularly combined with the thick tent in the front of those trunks.
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