by Vivian Arend
Numb disbelief froze him. What. The. Fuck.
Jealous fury detonated inside him, instantly eradicating every thought but the one screaming in his mind—the fucking asshole had his tongue rammed in Clarissa’s mouth. His woman.
Fists balling in preparation of punching the dickwad’s nose off kilter, Logan growled low in his throat and stalked in Clarissa’s direction. A seat suddenly swerved in front of him, almost jabbing him in the hip. He snarled at the clueless guy straddling the chair before shoving the seat out of the way. Ignoring the guy’s sputtering retort, Logan jerked his focus back to Clarissa. And did a double take.
She was alone.
He took a quick scan of the dining room, not seeing the dickwad anywhere. It was almost as if the dude had vanished into thin air. Another possibility knocked against his consciousness and he grunted. Or maybe I imagined the whole thing. The idea wasn’t completely out in left field. Fuck knows this obsession with Clarissa had messed with his head on more than one occasion. Tunneling a shaky hand through his hair, he continued forward. When he was less than two table lengths away from Clarissa, she looked up and locked stares with him. Every ounce of color leeched from her face. Her gaze darted sideways, toward the back hallway, and he lengthened his stride, fully intending to tackle her if her butt so much as inched off her chair.
Apparently reading his intention, Clarissa muttered beneath her breath. He didn’t need to be a lip reader—or rely on his acute hearing—to make out the words “Fuck me.”
Her irritability, along with her choice of words, stirred the wicked beast within him. Drawing to a halt at her table, he awarded her his best wolfish smile. “Just name the time and place, shug.”
“You know damn well that isn’t what I meant.”
“No? Because I’m thinking that’s precisely what I’d like to do.”
Her cheeks bloomed with a vivid splash of red. “I’m not in the mood for this tonight.”
Clarissa’s testiness only managed to rekindle his anger. “Well, now, I’m real sorry you feel that way, shug. ’Cause the last thing I’d wanna do is piss on whatever urgent plans preempted our dinner tonight.”
“There’s no need to be a prick.” She stood, her eyes narrowing as he strategically blocked her path. “Or make a scene. Please move.”
“What are you gonna do if I don’t? Whammy me? Might be kinda hard explainin’ that one to everyone here, darlin’.”
“Logan, please.” Her voice broke on the last word, stunning him. She glanced down, but not before he caught the faint glimmer of moisture in her eyes. The sight hit him like a sucker punch in the gut, making him feel like the prick she’d accused him of being.
If there was one thing guaranteed to shred him to pieces, it was a woman’s tears. Having that woman be Clarissa only made it a thousand times more terrible. “Clarissa…”
Without saying another word, she rushed past him and hurried toward the rear hallway. Even her strongest holding spell wouldn’t have kept him from chasing after her.
He caught up with Clarissa before she could duck out the door or into the ladies’ restroom. Not that either location would have deterred him. He tugged her into his arms, the ferocity of her expression revealing just how much she hated showing the vulnerability hidden beneath that legendary icy exterior she’d perfected. Tucking her against his chest, he nuzzled her forehead. “Rissa, I’m sorry.”
She stiffened. “Please don’t call me that. I—it’s very inappropriate.”
“Hush.” Unable to help himself, he followed the delicate, silky arch of her eyebrow with his lips. She trembled and sighed, making both man and wolf silently growl in triumph at her tiny show of capitulation. Holding her this close was both heaven and hell, a heady torment that teased every single one of his heightened senses. She smelled luscious and feminine, a delicious main course he could easily feast on all day and night. His hands slid down the slopes of her shoulders, a not entirely unconscious marking of his territory.
Her breath stuttered in her throat. “This isn’t the place to be doing this.” She must have caught her slip of words because she jerked her gaze up to his. “I mean we shouldn’t be doing this at all.”
Tuning out her weak protest, he traced her mouth with the pad of his thumb. “That’s where you’re wrong. Right now, I need to kiss you more than I need to breathe. I wanna taste you. Eat you up.” Make you mine. The thought sprang full born from the most primal part of him, where wolf overruled man.
Clarissa’s eyes widened, but she didn’t draw back as his head descended. Their lips met, clung briefly, before he gave in to the fierce hunger burning low in the pit of his gut. Intent on making his possessiveness—and his desire—known, he nudged the hard ridge of his erection between her thighs. “Feel that, baby? That’s what you fuckin’ do to me.”
He filled his palms with her ass and squeezed, deliberately rolling his hips against hers. Yeah, he was dry humping her against a wall right outside the damn restrooms. But if the frequency of her gasps were any indication, she was enjoying the hell out of it just as much as he was.
His tongue slicked past the nonresistant barrier of her lips, and he relished the soft, breathy moan that escaped Clarissa. She was even more intoxicating than he remembered. Her magic shimmered around them, mingling with his energy and creating a charged buzz that tingled across his skin. He broke off the kiss, his breath ragged against her cheek. “Come home with me.”
She licked her lips. “That would be an epically bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because we both know where it would lead.”
He ducked his head and nibbled a path along her jaw before exploring the soft hollow behind her ear with the tip of his tongue. “If you’re referrin’ to you tied to my bed, then yeah, damn straight.”
Her shallow exhale whispered against the side of his face. “Th-that’s not what I…” She swallowed. “You want to tie me to your bed?”
“More than you could imagine. God knows I’ve imagined it more often than I can count.” He released the tempting swells of her ass and glided his palms up along her hips, taking his time to properly enjoy her lush curves. “You’d be spread-eagled, your whole body tremblin’ and your nipples unbearably tight.”
“W-why would I be trembling?”
He grinned against her neck. “Don’t you also want to know why your nipples are tight?”
“I figured you’d get around to telling me, regardless.”
“Aw, shug, am I that predictable?” Yeah, he was. No way in hell he could temper the urge to tell her everything he wanted to do to her. In precise, Technicolor detail. “You’re tremblin’ because I’m eating your pussy. Lickin’ you inside and out, nice and slow. Savoring you.”
Her pulse skittered beneath his lips. “Logan, please—”
“Yeah, those are exactly the words you keep repeatin’ while my tongue is workin’ your clit and your sweet honey is filling my mouth.” He groaned and shifted, resting his forehead against hers. The fantasy had him hard as granite and desperate to sink into her softness. “Christ. Have mercy on me, Rissa. Say you’ll come home with me.”
Their desire could be their destruction...or their greatest strength.
Cipher
© 2011 Moira Rogers
Southern Arcana, Book 4
Fourteen months ago, Kat Gabriel learned a brutal truth. Under the wrong circumstances, her empathic ability is no gift. It’s a deadly weapon. Now her soul bears the inescapable weight of those deaths—and it aches for the loss of the easy relationship she once shared with Andrew Callaghan. Unleashing her power saved his life, but she couldn’t save his humanity.
Since the attack that turned him into a werewolf, Andrew’s sole focus has been to make himself stronger. Pushing her away hurt like hell, but Kat doesn’t need a friend. She needs a protector strong enough to shield her from the supernatural world that forced her to kill. Strong enough to resist their volatile connection.
As Kat’s que
st to understand the violent legacy of her past leads her into the darkest underbelly of the psychic world, Andrew is at her side. Yet every step forward rips open old emotional wounds and shakes their control. Where they’re headed, distractions of any kind can be fatal—especially when the greatest threat they pose is to each other.
Warning: This book contains a dangerous shapeshifter who could kill you with his bare hands, an empathic hacker who could kill you with her mind, a psychic cult determined to kill everyone, a lot of violence, a little bit of hope, and a happily-ever-after seven years in the making.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Cipher:
She did what he’d done. Reached up and framed his face with her hands, and shivered at the texture of his beard against her palms. “I will never be afraid of you, Andrew Callaghan.”
His chest heaved with shaking breaths, and he groaned as he grabbed her wrists. “It’s dangerous, Kat. I’m dangerous.”
“So am I.” She swiped her thumbs over his cheeks and willed him to believe the same words he’d told her the day before. “Andrew, I’m still mostly burned out, and you’ve got strong shields for someone who’s not a psychic. But I couldn’t just hurt you—I could destroy you. I could drive you to your knees and make you crawl for me. I could take away everything you are.”
He closed his eyes, but he didn’t release her. “Then that makes this a doubly bad idea.”
Andrew was going to walk away from her again, and the tense parts of her that had started to unwind over the last few days would shatter. The only way to save anything was to let him go before he came up with a polite, stilted reason. “I understand.”
“No. No, you really don’t.”
He bent his head and kissed her.
The world stopped.
His lips were warm. Firm. As firm as the fingers locked around her wrists, holding her hands to his face. She’d played out this moment in a thousand girlish daydreams and more than one guilty adult fantasy, and imagination hadn’t provided the little details. The heat of his body, the strength of his grip, the way she melted, like chocolate left in the July sun, and from nothing but that innocent contact.
His lips, on hers. Parting, and oh God, he knew how to kiss, like he was hungry, like he loved the taste of her, and Kat became mortally certain that her knees were going to give out if he got his tongue in on the action. Her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth moving on hers, until she was one exposed nerve, and she would have begged him to touch her anywhere—everywhere—if she wouldn’t have had to stop kissing him.
When he released her wrists, it was only to grip her hips and lift her, mold her to his body, and she moaned her gratitude. He was harder than he looked, an unforgiving wall of muscle and smooth skin, so distracting and arousing that she didn’t realize they were moving until he stepped over the threshold.
Into the bedroom.
“Open,” he rasped, and lowered her to the bed.
Her back touched the mattress—gentle, so damn gentle—and Andrew stretched out over her, shirtless and beautiful, and her brain fritzed out like a fried circuit board as she obeyed and parted her lips.
He touched them with his tongue, a soft sweep of one lip and then the other, and kissed her again, deeper, one hand winding in her hair. That stirred old memories, brought to life every unacceptable fantasy she’d had of their anger and hurt and longing all coalescing into a dark passion that would satisfy her body even as it cut her heart to pieces.
But there was no darkness in the grip of his hand, just a gentle control, a sweet hint of dominance that barely deserved the description, but thrilled her anyway. The throbbing was back, magnified into an ache that pulsed in time with the stroke of his tongue. Every time she tried to catch a breath it escaped in tiny, helpless noises that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been burning alive.
He dragged his mouth to her chin and then her throat, nipping lightly when she tilted back her head. The scrape of his teeth curled her toes, and the sheer insanity of the way her body reacted splintered fear through her.
She fisted both hands in his hair and dragged his head back, panting for breath. “What are we doing? Are we—”
He panted too, his eyes glazed with pleasure and need. “Are we what?”
If she let him keep touching her, she’d fly apart before she got her pants off. “We can’t do this without talking about it. Sex with an empath as strong as I am—it’s not that simple. I could hurt you. Hurt both of us.”
Andrew’s chest rumbled, as if a growl formed that he didn’t quite voice. Then he rolled away. “I didn’t think.”
Disappointment made her voice shake. “You shouldn’t have to. It wouldn’t be that bad if you were anyone else…but with you I’m—I’ve got—” She covered her face with her hands, and now she was disappointed and embarrassed. “My empathy might as well be hardwired into my sexual responses. Is there a girl version of premature ejaculation?”
He choked on a snort. “I don’t think anyone minds it, usually.”
Maybe her violent reactions had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with chemistry. Maybe wanting Andrew so long had built a tension that would make even innocent touches feel fantastic. Maybe she was in denial.
Maybe she didn’t care.
The room seemed too warm as she rolled to her knees. Andrew had his hand over his face, which made asking the question a lot easier. “If it gets too overwhelming…can we stop?”
He rolled to his side, propped on one elbow, and studied her, his expression intense. “We can stop whenever you want. Whenever you need to.”
Christ, she was a teenager, making rules about where her prom date could touch her while they groped in the back of his car. Except she’d never gone to prom. She’d been sixteen her senior year, struggling with the violent surges in power that made puberty a worse nightmare for a psychic than for the average hormone-riddled teen.
And Andrew—Andrew was not a teenage boy. He was six-foot-something of shapeshifter alpha bastard who had to have his share of instinctive needs. “That’s not going to drive you crazy?”
“I have two hands, Kat,” he reminded her. “I can take care of things myself.”
It was not remotely okay to pause and savor that image, but she couldn’t stop herself. Andrew, stretched out, his face slack with pleasure, the muscles in his arm flexing as he curled his fingers around—
She slapped her hands over her face and actually whimpered. “That was mean.”
“Was it?”
Anything else she said would reveal her newly formed and overwhelming need to watch him and his two hands take care of things. So she leaned down and kissed him again.
He held the back of her head and fit his mouth to hers, slow this time. Easy. A gentle kiss from a controlled man trying to make her feel safe, with no clue that his tender protectiveness turned her inside out.
If her empathy had been at full power, she would have come when he stroked his hand from her hair to her collarbone, and then down to her breast. She moaned, imagining how much hotter his callused fingertips would be against her suddenly tight nipples.
Not that the silly butterfly tank top offered much protection. Kat shuddered and tore her mouth free of his, then shoved at his shoulders until he rolled onto his back. Sliding one leg over his body was reckless, and straddling his stomach was insane. “You’re too hot. My brain is going to overheat.”
Muscle flexed under her as he shifted slightly and gripped her hips. “Isn’t that the point?”
The fine hair on his arms tickled her palms as she touched him, sliding both hands up until they passed his shoulders and she was stretched over him, clutching the blankets on either side of his head. A position of power—if you were fool enough to think an alpha shapeshifter couldn’t dominate a lover from flat on his back.
She might be on top, but the need pulsing through her answered to him. Her body answered to him, held captive by empathy and her growing suspicion that some of the a
rousal turning her inside-out was coming from him, in spite of her shields.
He held her gaze and thrust up, and suspicions and shields were the last thing on her mind as the hard ridge of his erection rubbed against her. Instinct had her moving before she could stop, grinding down to chase the too-perfect pleasure that couldn’t possibly be twisting inside her already.
But it was. Her elbows gave out, and she sprawled across his bare chest, open mouth pressed to his shoulder. Moaning, she clenched her eyes shut, afraid to move. “I can’t come before you’ve barely touched me.”
He flipped her onto her back and stretched out over her, one knee between her legs. “You can come whenever you damn well please.”
Black Gold
Vivian Arend
Their wolves are howling at the moon. Their human halves are on different planets.
Takhini Wolves, Book 1
Lone wolf Shaun Stevens’s automatic response to the words “happily ever after”? Kill me now. Yet with all his friends settling down he’s begun to think there may actually be something to this love-and-roses crap.
One thing’s for sure: his dream mate will have to out-cuss, out-spit and out-hike him. So he never expected the one to push his forever button would be a blue-blooded Southern debutante with a voice as dark and velvety as her skin.
When Gemmita Jacobs steps off the plane in Whitehorse, Yukon, it’s about more than her caribou research project. It’s her declaration of independence from an overprotected upbringing. Except there’s something in the air she can’t quite define—something that unexpectedly rouses her mating instincts.
Moments after their eyes lock, the deed is done—and done thoroughly. When the pheromone dust settles, though, all the reasons they don’t belong together become painfully clear.