by M. L. Briers
The shock of encountering Dermond, mixed with the fall she had taken, had her reaching for the softness of his top and she curled her fingers into fists around the fabric, as she felt him press her face into his chest and her body against his.
“Who the hell was that?”Mac growled beside her ear. He was fighting his blood lust after seeing his mate assaulted. His fangs were down and his claws had come out, but he was careful not to hurt his mate as he held her tightly to him, protecting her with his body, possessively guarding her against any foe that might still be lurking in the shadows.
“A nightmare from the past.”Fiona shook with the shock that welled up inside her and threatened to spill over into her magic. She needed to regain control of herself.
Mac scanned the area with his eyes, as he listened intently with hearing that could hear a pin drop even in a crowded bar. He could feel Fiona’s body shaking against his hold on her, feel the rush of emotions within her, and soothed her into stillness with gentle words against her ear.
“I need to warn my sisters.”She found her composure coming back to her. Found that with Mac’s words she could think straight, could act on the warning signals that flared within her body, and right then and there the fear that her recklessness had endangered her sisters once again caused a wave of panic to wash through her.
“Let’s go.”
“Fiona…” Hannah felt the beacon within her mind push through the amorous desire that engulfed her body, and she tensed beneath Seth’s touch. Seth felt her pull back from him emotionally and released his mouth from the heartbeat in her neck to stare down at her.
“What’s wrong?”Seth growled. He felt her fear hit him like a crashing wave. In an instant he was off her body and out of the bed, pulling her up with him and scanning the room for danger as he listened to the sounds of the house for anything that was off.
“Fiona’s in danger…”Hannah heard her sister’s feet stomping up the stairs towards them. When the door to her bedroom burst open and two worried faces looked back at her, she felt the grip of fear tighten around her heart.
“Where did she go?”Kay demanded in a rush of panic, as Declan stepped towards Mary and wrapped a protective arm around her waist as Hannah shook her head.
“I don’t know, she said a date with Mac…”Hannah reasoned. Knowing that the vampire could not possibly have anything to do with Fiona’s fear that had reached out to her sisters.
“We’ll find her.”Seth growled moving towards the door. He needed no more than the fear that gripped his mate to know that something was very wrong. He didn’t need to know how or why the sister’s knew something was wrong, he chalked it up to them being Fae, but he knew he needed to act.
The rush to action took Hannah a moment to comprehend as Seth and Declan headed out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The sister’s following in their wake.
Seth’s hand was on the front door, a line of people rushing down the staircase behind him, when his heart lurched within his chest, worry suddenly replaced with relief as he heard Fiona voice outside the door and he yanked it open to see her being carried by Mac at the end of the path.
“She’s safe.”He growled out as four other bodies crowded behind him to peer outside the door, the relief washed over him like a heady wave.
“You, come with me.”Fiona hooked her finger at Lee and beckoned him to follow as Mac placed her on her feet, and she started down the path to multiple questions being shot at her from the sisters all at once. “Slow down, I only have one brain and right now it’s addled.” Fiona scowled as she shooed them all away from the front door so she could enter.
She had felt safe with Mac, but there was nothing like being inside brick walls that a damned vampire hadn’t been invited into to make her feel more at ease.
“What happened?”Hannah demanded as soon as the front door was closed and everyone was crowded into the hallway.
“Dermond happened…”Fiona spat out, part apology and part disgust as she locked knowing looks with her eldest sister.
“Not again.”Hannah hissed between clenched teeth. She wouldn’t have it, not here and not now. They had left their home, moved across the damn country to be away from that vampire and now he was here threatening their new lives…?
“I’m sorry, Hannah.”Fiona offered and saw her sister’s stance melt from tense and ready to rip someone apart, to forgiving and loving and she closed the distance between them and pulled Fiona into her arms.
“It’s not you I’m mad at, Fi. It’s that sorry excuse for a…”Hannah bit down on the rush of obscenities that raced through her mind. Every one of them justified in her opinion…
“Care to enlighten me?”Seth growled out, his eyes flicking to Mac with a healthy respect for the vampire in their midst.
“Vampire…”Mac offered and heard the growl from the young Lycan.
“Damn vampires…”Declan took in the raised eyebrow and quizzical look that Mac gave him and mentally shook himself back to awareness.
“Not you, Mac…”Declan offered, almost swallowing his own tongue in shame for blurting out his thoughts. Like his alpha, he had nothing but respect for Mac, and his pack had lived in peace with the elder vampire for almost a hundred years.
“Of course not me…”Mac teased, flicking a smirk at the alpha to show he hadn’t taken offence, but a growl rolled through Seth’s chest anyway and Declan looked suitably chastised.
“Is that the vampire you moved here to get away from?”Seth’s beast was on alert and the growl that rolled through every word made that painfully clear to everyone in the hallway.
Kay shot Fiona a dark glare and Fiona hissed back at her.
“Because you never made a mistake, little Miss perfect.”Fiona drawled and Kay tipped her chin up defiantly and regarded her sister with scepticism.
“There are mistakes- and then there’s repeating the same pattern until you’ve dug a hole so deep you have to move across the country to get out of it…”Kay announced and then tossed her another dark glare. “But this hole followed you, dear sister.”
Hannah rolled her eyes and tried to count to ten, but after being the ringmaster for these two for too many years it was just getting so damn hard to do.
“Well you can stand there and berate me…”Fiona started and Kay folded her hands across her chest in victory.
“Thank you, I will, but I didn’t need your approval to do it.”Kay retorted and Hannah sighed. Lifting both her hands she mentally flicked a sting towards both of her sisters, and they both gasped and glared at her.
“Can we please have a conversation that doesn’t involve the two of you scoring points off each other?”Hannah tried diplomacy as only she saw it.
“If little Miss perfect could manage to keep a civil tongue in her head then yes.”Fiona offered with a certain amount of glee. Hannah lifted her hands again and both sisters clamped down on their lips.
The sound of peace was all too glaring in the hallway as everyone took a long breath and waited for the next round.
“So, I’m going hunting.”Mac announced and Fiona’s eyes snapped towards him. The look of worry was evident as she opened her mouth to protest, but he grinned at her. “Worried about me?”He teased and watched her chew that thought over.
“In so much as I would worry about anyone…”Fiona offered, not giving him the satisfaction of telling him that she was, even though it was evident to everyone present.
“Liar…”Kay shot out and Fiona tensed, turning a scowl back on her sister.
“Wolf bait…”Fiona shot back and Kay’s eyes snapped to Lee who stood there with his arms folded over his muscular chest staring back at her.
“Bite me.”Kay muttered and Lee perked up, saddling up beside her and grinning wolfishly.
“Is that an open invitation?”He drawled against her ear and Mary spat out a chuckle.
“For anyone but you. Yes.”Kay retorted as she took a step away from him, but he moved two steps closer, and she huffed her anno
yance and rolled her eyes.
“I’ll come with you, Mac. Declan, Lee stay with the girls…”Seth growled out and Hannah balked as the sisters hissed in unison.
“Girls?”Three female voices said as one, appalled, and his eyes locked with his mate. Hannah raised one quizzical brow and watched him growl low in his chest.
“Females? Women? Fae...?” He offered ticking them off on his fingers, until Hannah nodded.
“Fae will do, but why do we need protecting? The vampire can’t get in here, he hasn’t been invited?”Hannah gave him a poignant stare and he rolled his shoulders.
“So that none of you leave…”He growled back. Besides, he wasn’t about to leave any member of his pack unprotected, and these sisters were his pack now, even Fiona, being a member by relation.
“You’re going to keep us prisoner?”Fiona scoffed and Mac took a step towards her.
“I will, only I’ll tie you to the damn bed and leave you there if I need too, to keep you safe.”He informed her and dared her with his eyes to challenge him on that one. Fiona swallowed down her annoyance and looked away from him as Kay chuckled beside her.
“Finally a man who could make you shut up.”Kay sneered and squeaked when Lee grabbed her around the waist and turned her towards him. Pulling her against his chest, he covered her lips and demanded entry with his tongue, as Fiona’s eyebrows shot up her forehead and she chuckled in glee.
“Speaking of which…”She retorted as Kay melted into her mate until he eased back away from her, worried he might just take her on the damn floor in front of everyone if she responded to his touch any more than she already was.
He thought he might just be able to do a good impression of a woodpecker with his arousal, he’d never been so damn hard in his life before, and he ached with a need that he didn’t think would be easily sated.
“Oh behave…”Hannah growled at her sisters and met Lee’s eyes. “Not you, you can keep doing what you’re doing…”She offered and he gave her a wicked grin.
“Oh sure throw me to the wolves…”Kay muttered before she pouted and pushed her mate away from her.
“Just one, sweetheart, you’re all mine.”Lee growled down beside her ear and she shivered from head to toe with the desire still pumping through her veins.
Hannah shook her head, she’d have much rather thumped her forehead against the nearest wall with the way she was feeling right now, but all she’d get was a damn headache to go with the seven other headaches she had at that moment in time, and that wasn’t counting Dermond, who was the biggest headache of all…
“Fine. Go hunt and be manly, but…”Hannah held up her hand. “Use the back door if you’re going to shift, you can leave your clothes in the conservatory.”The brilliant flash of white teeth as Seth gave her a wolfish grin made her heart skip a beat and her mind roll back to what they were doing not so long ago in her room, and she thought it had suddenly gotten so much hotter inside her clothes.
Lee stood at the open door to Fiona’s bedroom and watched Kay potter around inside.
“I know it’s got to be here somewhere, she loved that top…”Kay found what she was looking for in the bottom of the drawer and wrenched it out with a look of glee towards Lee. “Told ya. The Clash, an original. Not sure how old the guy she snatched it from was exactly, but he looked about twenty, but then you know vampires.”Kay nudged the drawer closed with her hip and crossed the room back to where Lee was standing.
“And she won’t mind me borrowing it?” Lee asked with a half smile of knowing.
Kay gave a slow shake of her head and regarded the ceiling, “nope.”
“Then why didn’t you ask her?”Lee leaned in and snatched the top from Kay’s fingers and she gave him an innocent shrug.
“She’s busy, besides, I’m sure Mac wouldn’t want to scent her in that…”Lee held it up to his nose and caught a strong scent of Fiona and a mild scent of vampire.
“Probably not, but all the same…”
“Why are you in my room?”Fiona demanded from her place at the top of the stairs, and Lee turned towards her as Kay snatched the top out of his hands and Fiona’s eyes went wide. “And why do you have my top?”She gasped stomping across the hall and holding out her hand.
“Lee stinks of beer, he needs a shower and a top, and mine won’t fit him…”Kay gave her sister a look of defiance. Could Fiona actually refuse to lend her sister’s mate a top?
Fiona rolled her eyes and snatched her hand away. “Fine, but if he damages it I’m going to damage you.”Fiona shooed them from her bedroom and strolled inside, slamming the door behind her and muttering to herself as she crossed to the bedroom window and stared down at the back garden, waiting for any sign of Mac. Not that she was worried, or even interested, she was just… Worried and interested, and she wished he would come back so she knew he was ok.
Kay reached inside the cupboard and yanked out a bath sheet and a hand towel. The sound of the lock clicking on the bathroom door made her pulse race with excitement within her, and she turned around with a scowl to face Lee head on.
“So you planning to go at it right here and now?”She placed her small fists on her hips and tipped her head to the side to regard him with all the disdain she could muster, even though her body was suddenly on fire with the idea.
“I was just locking the door while I stripped, but if you want to wash my back…”Lee was peeling his clothes off right there and then, and Kay couldn’t even hope to speak as her mind shut down to anything but what he was doing, as her mouth dropped open with every inch of toned, muscled skin that he was revealing to her.
“Eye candy…”She muttered to herself and heard him chuckle, low and deep, and she somehow managed to drag her eyes up his chest to the wolfish grin that held a lot of male pride, and the heated look of desire in his dark gaze as he stared back at her.
Kay mentally slapped herself upside her head and snapped her jaw closed as she rolled her eyes in her head and looked somewhere he wasn’t. It wasn’t like she could make a quick escape, not with him standing there half naked in front of the locked bathroom door, and if she was honest with herself, she didn’t really want too.
Add to that the fact that out of the corner of her eye she could see him peeling his jeans down his thick thighs and uncovering the rest of his delectable body to her, and she didn’t know if her legs would even work to carry her away.
“What’s wrong sugar? You never seen a man undressed before?”Lee drawled, or growled, or did both at once, as he kicked off his jeans and padded towards her. Kay turned back towards him, in what she told herself was self defence, just in case she needed to defend herself, when deep down she knew she couldn’t not take in his manhood. It was just too tempting a free show.
Kay felt the slow squeak of a word that rumbled up her wind pipe but never quite made it out of her mouth, as her eyes snapped down to the rock hardness of his shaft. Thick and long with a silken smooth tip that she thought would be like being impaled on a watermelon, and she swallowed hard.
Of course she’d seen naked men before, she wasn’t a damn virgin. She’d just never seen a naked man that was so… imposingly large. Kay swallowed again, harder this time to clear the lump of something in her throat, perhaps it was her tongue? But she couldn’t take her eyes of his impressive manhood as it bobbed, weaved, and waved towards her, dragging her mate along with it…
“Oh, wow…”She felt her thighs clench together in an involuntary desire for self preservation. The words - torn asunder- came to mind, and she wanted to take a step back from him, but in truth, his manhood had her pinned to the spot.
“Thank you sweetheart. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me so far…”Lee knew he was big, maybe not by all Lycan standards, and it wasn’t like he was toting a flagpole, but most human males did seem to pale by comparison. He guessed his mate had only been with human’s… “You’re not a virgin right?”He growled down at her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
One half of his brain said- please be a virgin so I never have to think of you with another man- While the other part said- please don’t be a virgin, because I don’t know how slow I can damn well make it and I want to take you over and over until I get my fill.
Kay just shook her head from side to side, her eyes still locked on his penis, and Lee couldn’t help it when he moved his hips and waggled it about, grinning to himself as her eyes followed its progress back and forth.
“You ok?”Lee’s amused tone registered somewhere within her mind. In some small dark corner that was hiding from the huge thing waving at her.
When the tip of her tongue came out to moisten her dry lips, Lee couldn’t help the growl that rolled through his chest. His damn mate was trying to torture him with her eyes on his shaft and her tongue out for god sake, he told himself, as he took a long step closer to her and reached for her cheek, cupping it with his palm and bending his face into her line of vision.
“You were made for me.”He told her gently. The smile that was on his lips was less wolfish now and more encouraging, and she took a long, deep breath and nodded.
“I knew Lycan’s were…”She couldn’t get the rest out of her mouth, she swallowed again and tried to clear her head of all other thoughts. Out of sight out of mind, although…
Lee wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her towards him. He didn’t give her time to consider what he was doing as he claimed her mouth and demanded entry.
Kay sighed with the touch of his lips, and when he ran his tongue over hers she parted them, accepting his demands. He took over her entire senses with one sweep of his tongue over hers, and when he stroked his fingers down her spine she arched against him. The feel of that rod of satin and steel pressed against her stomach, and she had the urge to reach out and touch him, gage just how thick he was with her fist, and then she heard him growl into her mouth and realised that she had palmed his flesh.