She was, in short, completely fascinating.
It didn’t matter that she was human. That she was under his protection. Aiden still wanted to lay her down for hours…days, and show her in explicit, intimate detail all the things that he liked about her. He liked her blushes. Liked the way her breath quickened when he said something she considered wicked. It was driving him mad, thinking of the things he could say…the things he could do, that would set that pretty pale skin of hers on fire. He liked the idea of commanding her to keep her eyes on him, steady and wide, while he spread her sex with his thumbs and went down on her. Liked the idea of her convulsing against his tongue…
Want her, that familiar guttural voice snarled inside his mind. Need her. Now.
God, this was bad. When she’d showered, he’d damn near hurt himself imagining what she looked like with water dripping down her creamy, petal-soft skin. When she stared at him with her big violet eyes, he had to grit his teeth to keep from coming. And then, when he tried to get things going, she turned him down, making the animal inside him seethe with frustration.
“Face it, Aiden. You…well, you’re way out of my league. I’m pretty average, and I’m fine with that. Honestly. I don’t feel the need to reach beyond, and I’m also fully aware of what kinds of women you do go for.”
Raising his brows, he pressed even closer, liking the way she pulled that full lower lip through her teeth when he nudged his jeans-covered cock against her belly, the color in her cheeks turning darker. “And exactly what kind would that be?” he asked, enjoying the way she had to struggle to concentrate, her smoky gaze hazy with lust. Enjoyed even more that she didn’t pull back, trying to undo the intimate press of their bodies.
“Um, well, easy ones, for a start.” She coughed, sounding as if she’d swallowed something scratchy. “And I suspect you also enjoy a fairly wide variety.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at her assessment, even though she had pretty much nailed it. “That’s an awfully judgmental view,” he murmured.
“But a true one, I bet. Men like you are easy to peg.”
“Honey, you’ve never known a man like me.” To prove his point, he gave her a cocky smile, flashing the pointed tips of his fangs. Then he slowly shook his head. “But my timing probably isn’t all that great tonight,” he admitted wryly, rubbing the backs of his knuckles against the downy softness of her cheek. “So I’ll ease off. For now.”
Before Olivia could respond, he took a deep breath and pulled away from her. The soft glow of the bathroom light made his skin gleam like satin, drawing her eyes to the wide, muscled expanse of his shoulders and chest, his body unlike anything she’d ever seen. Perfect and hard and ruggedly sculpted, the occasional scar somehow only heightening his dangerous beauty, while reminding her that this was a male warrior who lived in a world completely different from her own. “If I were to ask what kind of shifter you are,” she whispered, “would you tell me?”
He pushed his hands into his front pockets, his powerful muscles rippling with the movement. “Sure I would.”
“Well?” she asked, her chest tight as he held her with the dark intensity of his stare.
“I’m the scary kind, Liv.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
He gave a low, rusty laugh. “Pretty much.”
“You’re going to drive me insane, Aiden.”
“Then we’ll get along great with each other,” he drawled around a wide yawn as he took one hand from his pocket, covering his mouth. “My friends all think I’m crazy as a loon.”
“Are you?”
“Naw.” His mouth twisted, caught between sharp, conflicting emotions. “I just like to live a little on the edge.”
She couldn’t help but smile at that. “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I guess you’re just perceptive. And since it doesn’t look like I’m going to get lucky tonight,” he teased, “I say we go ahead and crash.”
“When was the last time you slept?” Lifting her hand, she touched the tip of her finger to one of the dark shadows beneath his eyes.
“Few days ago,” he rasped, his body going completely still as she touched him.
“What have you been doing every night?” she asked suspiciously.
With one hand across his heart, he gave her another slow, knowing grin. “I wasn’t out getting laid, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She flushed with guilt. “That’s not what I mea—”
“I told you we’ve been searching for the Marker Jamie’s wearing,” he rumbled, cutting her off as he turned and headed back into the bedroom, while she followed him. “With Kell’s and my night vision, we were pretty much able to search through the night, so long as the skies were clear.”
She watched as he pulled the gun from the waistband of his jeans, reached up and set it on top of the room’s high wardrobe, where Jamie couldn’t reach, then lay down, settling his long body out over the sofa. Olivia tried not to wince, knowing he had to be uncomfortable on the short piece of furniture…with his jeans still on, but he didn’t complain as he threw one tattooed arm over his eyes, one leg bent at the knee, resting against the back of the sofa.
“Do you want a blanket?” she asked.
“No, thanks.” The wryness of his tone was unmistakable as he reached down and rearranged the massive erection trapped inside his jeans. “With the state I’m in, I doubt I’m going to feel the cold anytime soon.”
Allowing herself a few moments to simply soak in his beauty, his chest rising and falling with his deep, even breathing, Olivia finally turned out the light and settled into bed beside Jamie. Thinking he was already asleep, she quietly said, “Good night, Aiden.”
His deep voice surprised her, reaching through the dark like a physical caress. “Sleep tight, Liv. And try not to dream of me if you can manage it.”
“You are so conceited.” She gave a soft laugh, knowing instinctively that he was grinning like a jackass.
“Maybe,” he rasped with a wicked drawl. “And you’re the one who talks in her sleep, honey. So I’ll be listening, just in case.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lennox, Kentucky
Saturday, 2:00 a.m.
JOSEF SCHECTER DIDN’T LIKE to lose. As one of the few Casus permitted within Anthony Calder’s inner circle of power, he’d grown accustomed to enjoying the privileges and respect that were his due. And after slowly rotting away within Meridian, the hellhole of a prison that had held the Casus for over a thousand years, Josef figured he was due a hell of a lot.
No one, however, was paying out. Instead, his time was being wasted cleaning up after others’ mistakes—a circumstance that a perfectionist like Josef loathed. It was embarrassing to be surrounded by mediocrity and failure. Now the Merrick child was not only gone, she was under Watchman protection, which meant that her capture had just gone from a walk in the park…to deadly.
Staring up at the two-story house where their prey had been hiding, Josef was furious they’d been allowed to escape, his rage like a thick black toxin scraping through his veins. Curling his lip, he shifted his gaze toward the ominous storm clouds gathering overhead, his eyes burning with hatred as though the grumbling heavens were to blame for the asinine situation. But he knew better. No celestial beings could claim credit for the failures that surrounded him. No, it was his brethren who were to blame. Specifically, Miles Crouch. As the bitter December winds chafed the chiseled face of the body his Casus shade now occupied, whipping the shaggy strands of thick, mahogany-colored hair around his head, Josef slowly flexed his hands at his sides, struggling to control his anger at those under his command.
“To lose control is to lose your focus,” he rasped, the low words swallowed by the eerie cry of the wind as it swept through the thrashing treetops. But restraint wasn’t easy. After all, he wasn’t meant to be standing beneath a Kentucky moon, dealing with a bunch of incompetent idiots. Instead, Josef had been meant to come thro
ugh in the final wave, when Calder—the Casus who had risen and offered his imprisoned brethren the chance for freedom—finally returned to this world, bringing the flood with him. But a change in the time line had been necessitated by the problem of Gregory DeKreznick. Despite being mortally wounded several weeks ago, Gregory’s shade had not returned to Meridian. Somehow he still inhabited this realm—and they needed to know why.
They also needed him dead.
Gregory’s brother, Malcolm, had been the first Casus who’d escaped Meridian, and it was Ian Buchanan who had used a Dark Marker to send Malcolm’s shade to hell. Now Gregory was obsessed with destroying the Buchanan Merricks in order to avenge his brother’s death. He cared nothing for his orders or Calder’s authority or even his fellow Casus. In short, he was a loose cannon that Westmore and Calder wanted contained, as well as the Collective Generals, and so Calder had finally sent Josef, one of his best, most ruthless soldiers, to see that the job was completed.
Josef was only too happy to send Gregory back to the pit, if they could actually find the bastard. Westmore had been using all the resources at his disposal to come up with a lead on Gregory’s whereabouts, and had even gone so far as to capture Chloe Harcourt, the female Merrick whose awakening had been caused by Gregory’s return to this world. According to the rules Calder had established for their returns, her “kill” should have been reserved for no one but Gregory himself, providing him with enough power to pull another shade from Meridian without any help from Calder and his followers. Stealing her was the ultimate insult—and at this point, they were looking to strike out at Gregory with everything they had.
While waiting for Westmore’s men to pick up a lead, Josef had contented himself with hunting down his own awakened Merrick, who had just so happened to be Chloe Harcourt’s older sister, Monica. It had been the most delicious of surprises when he’d learned that she was not only part Merrick, but a Mallory witch, as well. The witch had been the first of her kind that Josef had ever killed, but she definitely wouldn’t be the last. Not when he’d discovered just how intoxicating it could be to sink his teeth into warm, delectable Mallory. Though many of his brethren had hunted the Mallory prior to the Casus’s imprisonment, that had been before the clan of witches had been cursed—and it was because of the curse that Monica Harcourt’s death had been so…perfect. So addictive that he now wanted the woman’s sister and daughter with a hunger that scraped his insides like metal against bone, but they had been decreed off-limits.
He’d have liked to rage at the heavens for that as well, but knew he had no one to blame but himself. If he’d kept his mouth shut, Chloe Harcourt could have already been his. She was in Westmore’s custody, hidden away in a place where no one would ever find her. If he’d asked, odds were that she would have been given to him once he’d completed his mission and destroyed Gregory. But Josef’s lone mistake had been in telling Westmore about the intense pleasures of his kill when he’d taken the sister’s life. Upon hearing Josef’s description, Westmore—who remained embarrassingly eager to please Calder—had immediately decided that Chloe Harcourt should be kept for the leader himself, so that Calder might claim the pleasures of her death as his own.
And despite the fact that Monica Harcourt’s daughter was too young to wholly satisfy a Casus male’s hunger—since they preferred to rape their female victims while they fed upon their flesh—there was always the chance she might give her killer the same kind of kick her mama had provided Josef. Hoping Calder might enjoy killing the child for her Mallory blood alone, Westmore had put out the order that she be brought in, as well. Her capture had been placed in the hands of Miles Crouch, but Josef had been asked to oversee the operation, since Westmore was no longer in the country.
Though Josef was now busy with his search for Gregory, a recent lead in Mississippi taking his full attention, he’d gotten to Lennox as quickly as possible when he’d learned that Monica’s daughter and the child’s aunt—the human Harcourt stepsister named Olivia—were finally going to be taken that night. Unfortunately, he hadn’t arrived until a quarter of an hour ago, and by that time, Miles had not only allowed them to escape…but had also lost most of his unit in the process.
They’d been waiting weeks for this opportunity, and now Miles had blown it. It had been impossible to get to the child when the Harcourt house had been packed to the gills with humans. Too much potential for exposure, and Westmore had demanded they keep a low profile. Josef knew it had been a simple case of waiting them out, but now Miles had delivered them right into the hands of the Watchmen.
Westmore was going to be displeased, to say the least. And Josef was ready to draw blood.
While his own personal unit of Casus searched the surrounding area, Josef knelt and scooped up a handful of grass and dirt from the house’s backyard, lifting it to his nose. With a low growl he pulled in a deep breath, his muscles coiling as the scent of the child’s aunt slid down his throat. For a human, she smelled deliciously ripe. He’d given Miles specific orders to bring the human bitch and the child to him, so that he could deliver them to Westmore himself. They’d deemed it too dangerous to leave the aunt behind, unsure what she would do once the child was taken. Josef assumed Westmore had something in mind for the woman, and though he considered himself a loyal soldier, he found himself tempted to take Olivia Harcourt for his own. Westmore wouldn’t be happy, but Josef considered it a fair exchange, since he wouldn’t be allowed to touch the little girl.
Overhead, the sky splintered with a sudden sharp crack of lightning, and from the corner of his vision Josef spotted Miles Crouch stepping out of the shadowed woods, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. The Casus looked worried as he moved across the wide lawn, but then he had reason to be. This was the second time that he’d screwed up, the first being when he’d taken it upon himself to try to talk Gregory into being a team player, instead of taking him down when he had the chance in Washington. That mistake had resulted in the loss of too many Casus, and now he’d lost even more, their shades returning to Meridian, where they would have to wait until they could be pulled back across the divide.
Moving to his full height, Josef let his mouth curl into a hard, dangerous smile that stopped the approaching Casus in his tracks. “I see you’ve failed again,” he drawled. “Tell me, Miles. Is this becoming a habit of yours? Because it certainly seems that way from where I’m standing.”
“You know the Watchmen are lethal fighters,” Miles grunted, the moonlight glinting off the pale skin that covered the shaved head of his human host, while a crimson patch of blood spread out over the shoulder he’d obviously injured during the fight. “And they had a Marker with them.”
Josef arched his brows, his voice a slow, cultured drawl as he spread his arms wide and said, “Look around you, Miles. Do you see any burning piles of ashes? No one’s been sent to hell. Their possession of the Marker was irrelevant tonight.”
Miles’s beefy hands flexed at his sides. “The bastards used guns on us, instead of fighting hand-to-hand.”
“Then the answer seems simple.” Josef fought the urge to shred the idiot’s face with the razor-sharp claws prickling at the tips of his fingers. “Get a fucking gun.”
“What’s the point,” the Casus argued with his characteristic stubbornness, “when bullets don’t even kill most of the shifter breeds?”
Josef took a step forward, going nose-to-nose with the bald behemoth. “I’m going to offer you a little advice, Miles. And if you’re smart, you’ll take it. Calder expects you to succeed when you’re given a task, and that means adapting your strategy so that you can defeat the enemy. I would have thought that became rather obvious after you got your ass kicked in Washington last month. They weren’t worried tonight about sending our brothers to hell. They just wanted to get the human and the child out alive. It stands to reason, then, that a few well-placed bullets, which would certainly slow them down, might have been a good idea. Who gives a damn if it doesn’t kill them, so l
ong as it enables us to get our hands on the target!”
“The Watchmen have bought them some time,” Miles muttered, sounding like a belligerent child, “but that’s all. I won’t fail the next time.”
“You’d sure as hell better hope you don’t. And seeing as how you allowed your Casus unit to get sent back to the pit, you’ll be taking Westmore’s men with you now.”
The Casus’s face turned blotchy with rage, and Josef didn’t even try to hold back his mocking smile. “I can see the idea doesn’t sit well with you,” he drawled, “and to be honest, Miles, I really don’t give a shit.”
“I refuse to work with the Kraven,” the Casus snarled. “Aside from Westmore, I don’t trust them.”
A lock of hair fell across his brow as Josef shook his head. “You can refuse all you like, but it isn’t going to matter.”
While he gave himself a moment to enjoy the way Miles ground his jaw, no doubt choking on his bitterness, a sound off to their right caught Josef’s attention. Turning his head, he found two of the Casus from his own unit coming toward him, a struggling teenage girl trapped between them. They’d gagged her with a strip of cloth, her muffled cries for help too silent to draw anyone’s attention from the neighboring houses, though they sent a shiver of anticipation down Josef’s spine.
“And what do you have here?” he asked, his blood already heating as he ran his gaze over the girl’s scantily clad body, a short nightgown and hoodie the only clothes covering what was clearly a lean, athletic build.
“We caught her creeping away from the house next door,” the Casus on her right replied, his long fingers digging into the wriggling girl’s biceps. “Said she was sneaking out to meet her boyfriend, but we haven’t found any sign of him.”
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