Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1)

by Felicity Heaton

  Just the words and the image they evoked were enough to have Loren flying into a rage again. He dodged past Olivia in a blur of speed and fury, and grabbed Bleu by the throat. He slammed Bleu down into the chair, pinning him against it, hissing at him as he tightened his grip to choke him.

  “Loren!” Olivia grabbed his shoulder and hauled him off Bleu, her strength startling them both judging by the ripple of shock that ran through their bond. He clenched his teeth and growled at her, but her look of disgust mixed with horror was enough to ground him.

  He took a few steps back, distancing himself from Bleu, disgusted at himself and disturbed by how driven he was to protect her and stop Bleu from being near her.

  Bleu rubbed his throat and glared at him. “Maybe I can draw my own damn blood or just spit in the vial.”

  He grabbed the needle from the table near him, sent his armour away from his chest and arms, and carelessly stabbed himself in the soft flesh on the inside of his elbow, grimacing as the sharp metal punctured his skin.

  Loren closed his eyes and lowered his head, feeling like a monster for the way he had treated his friend and driven him to harm himself. Bleu’s lip was cut and bleeding, swelling too, and his chest bore deep claw marks. Bleu hadn’t held back when he had struck Loren, but it wasn’t payment enough for what Loren had done to him.

  “I am sorry, Bleu.” He lifted his head and looked across the room at his friend, his black eyebrows furrowed and his heart heavy. “I will wait outside while Olivia tends to you.”

  Loren didn’t wait to hear either of their responses. He headed straight for the twin glass doors. They whooshed open, sliding apart for him to exit the room, and he moved down the corridor far enough that he couldn’t see into the room so he wouldn’t be tempted to look. He couldn’t risk another outburst like that. Olivia needed to record Bleu’s vitals and take his blood, and Loren had no doubt that he would try to kill him again if he saw Olivia touching him.

  He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, seeking some calm amongst the raging storm of his emotions, needing it so his fangs would recede and his eyes would return to blue, masking their true colour from the humans using the corridor.

  He could feel their eyes on him as they passed. Some of them even triggered his senses, warning they were a threat to him, but he didn’t care. If they attacked him, it would be their death right now. He would kill them in a heartbeat to slake some of his thirst for violence. Rather them than Bleu.

  Olivia wouldn’t be pleased.

  Her expression had cut straight through him and he never wanted her to look at him with such disgust and disappointment again.

  Loren’s fangs finally receded and he commanded his eyes to become blue again. He pushed away from the wall and took swift agitated strides along a short length of the pale cream corridor, fighting his desire to return to the room. Too dangerous. He wanted to see what they were doing but he couldn’t risk it.

  His mind supplied images of them, taunting him with visions of Bleu and Olivia. He ground his teeth and tried to shut them out, focusing on other things, anything to get his mind away from his friend and his female.

  The more he tried to halt the images, the worse they became, until all he could picture was Bleu and Olivia, locked in a passionate embrace, his friend pleasuring her as Loren had in his dreams.

  Loren couldn’t take it, or how it made him feel, violent and on the edge, wild and lost to a feral need to claim Olivia as his and put Bleu in the ground.

  He growled under his breath, earning a startled gasp from a young female hunter as she passed and a glare from her older male companion. The male’s hand went to his weapon, a short blade hanging at his waist, and Loren silently urged the mortal to draw it. He wanted to fight. He needed it.

  Loren dragged himself away, turning his back on the humans. This wasn’t like him. He was normally peaceful, seeking diplomatic solutions whenever possible, even with his brother.

  Vail.

  He didn’t want to end up like his younger brother but he feared he was already treading that dark path, and the bond wasn’t even complete.

  Loren stopped, turned towards the wall and banged his head against it. The humans passing by gave him a wide berth and he couldn’t blame them. He was acting like a madman.

  Driven wild by a female.

  He pressed his palms against the wall, despair eating away at him, twisting his insides into tight painful knots. What was he going to do? He had been in Olivia’s presence for barely more than a human hour and he was already close to falling over the edge and doing something terrible that he could never take back. The longer he spent in her company, the worse this hunger was going to become, and if he wasn’t careful, it would end up controlling him. What if he hurt her? What if he killed Bleu?

  He would never forgive himself.

  Loren banged his head against the wall again, grinding his teeth and grimacing as it all became too much for him. The images of Bleu and Olivia still played out in his mind, pushing him ever closer to the edge, until he had to dig the claws of his armour into the plaster of the wall to keep himself anchored there, stopping him from bursting into the room behind him.

  The doors swished open.

  Loren forced himself away from the wall, a second apology to Bleu balancing on his lips.

  It was Olivia.

  Their bond spoke to him, telling him what he could already see in her expression and her soulful brown eyes that always showed him everything she was feeling. She was tense and wary, afraid of him now. He lowered his head, unable to look at her. He had frightened his female, shaking her trust in him.

  “Loren?” she said in a low, gentle voice that curled around his numb heart, thawing the ice that had encased it.

  He was afraid too. He had never felt so afraid. He didn’t want to look into her eyes and see her fear of him, or her disgust, and he didn’t want to hear how he had scared her by allowing her to experience such dark terrible emotions through him.

  “Loren?” Her tone held a firmer note and he obeyed, unable to ignore a command from his ki’ara.

  Loren looked down into her eyes. They filled with pity, softening more with each second that he dared to look into them.

  “I’m done now,” she said, casual despite the nerves he could sense in her. “I did my best not to touch him. That was what it was all about, wasn’t it?”

  Loren shut down the fury that curled through him on hearing that she had indeed touched Bleu while he had been out here pacing like a caged animal, refusing to let it own him. He was master of his body, not this wretched bond.

  He hated to admit it but Olivia needed to know what he had dragged her into so she would know the cause of his outburst and could perhaps help stop it from happening again.

  “I could not bear the sight of you touching him,” Loren said, the tight gravelly sound of his voice shocking him. He had never sounded so dark and possessive before. He had never felt it either.

  He wanted to possess Olivia. Body and soul. He wanted to claim the heart that was rightfully his.

  His to own. His to cherish. His to protect.

  His to love.

  She belonged to him.

  His fangs itched and the points of his ears began to extend. Loren fought the change but it was hard to suppress it and stop it from happening when he was thinking about Olivia, and also thinking about her touching Bleu. It was a one-two punch that knocked his senses reeling and had him back on the verge of losing control. A male doctor coming towards him eyed him, not a challenge but Loren felt it as one, and he wanted to rise to it and beat the male into submission.

  The male’s eyes narrowed. He had noticed Loren’s eyes changing. Loren cursed beneath his breath and looked away, fighting to master his emotions. His gaze caught on Olivia’s and he stared down at her, feeling lost and bewildered, tired of the constant battle against his emotions and the effects of their incomplete bond. He wanted a moment to breathe.

  He needed a min
ute to rest, sixty seconds away from this world, alone with Olivia.

  Olivia moved closer, raised her hand and touched his cheek, staring deep into his eyes. Bliss. Loren leaned into her touch, finding his balance in it, mentally stepping away from the edge and towards her. His ki’ara.

  “It’s fascinating when your eyes do that... and your ears. Why does it happen?” She brushed her palm across his cheek and a hot shiver went through him when she feathered her fingertips up his ear to the tip. He barely stifled a groan. He wanted her to stroke them. Lick them. His eyes began to change again.

  “It is a response to my emotions. Certain ones trigger a change and it is difficult to stop it from happening.” Difficult was the understatement of his extremely long life. Impossible. Especially when she was gently caressing his ear, brushing the pointed tip, her eyes filled with the fascination she had mentioned.

  “Emotions,” she whispered and then her brow crinkled and her brown eyes shifted back to his. “Such as anger?”

  He nodded.

  “And?”

  Loren frowned. “And what?”

  “What other emotion?” She tilted her head to one side, her fingers continuing their exploration of his ear, driving him mad with the emotion she was asking about. “You said emotions. Plural. What other emotions trigger this change?”

  Loren stared at her, his gaze drawn to her rosy lips and his mind instantly leaping to recall his vivid erotic dreams of her. He wanted to sample her mouth and know her taste as he had in those fantasies. He wanted to explore every inch of her soft skin and show her what it was like to be loved by him. He wanted to slake his thirst for her.

  His fangs grew long again and his ears extended, and he knew from the surprise in her eyes that his had changed and from the arousal darkening her irises that she had figured out the other emotion that would always make him lose control.

  Loren claimed her waist with both hands, careful not to hurt her with his claws, and pulled her closer to him.

  She wanted to know what other emotion fuelled this change in him and he would spell it out for her.

  “Desire.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Olivia swallowed hard, held captive by Loren’s beautiful rich purple eyes and the passion in them, falling into them with no hope of stopping herself. The feel of his hands on her waist shattered her self-control, plunging her deep into dangerous territory, and her guard slipped. His gaze locked onto her lips, burning her with its intensity, stealing her breath away. Enough men had kissed her in her life for her to know that was what he intended.

  He wanted to kiss her.

  And by God she wanted him to do it.

  She wanted to kiss him, had skirted around that desire several times in the past hour alone, pretending it didn’t exist and that she didn’t hunger for the feel of Loren’s hands on her body, bringing her out of the dark loneliness of her life and awakening passion and pleasure within her.

  Loren angled his head, his eyes hooded with desire, locked on her mouth.

  Olivia panicked, unsure of her feelings. They tore her in two different directions, pulling her between shoving him away and letting him draw her into his embrace.

  Her heart pounded.

  His breath stuttered.

  Olivia’s gaze betrayed her and fell to his sensual lips as they parted, her pulse increasing as she subconsciously leaned towards him, rising on her toes to meet him.

  The doors behind her opened, the sound startling in volume in the silent corridor. Bleu muttered something dark sounding in the elf language.

  Loren froze, eased his hands away from her hips, and moved back a step, placing some distance between them.

  Olivia came to her senses too and wished that she hadn’t because she couldn’t bring herself to look at Loren when her head was full of thoughts about kissing him, and she definitely couldn’t bring herself to look at Bleu.

  When they had been alone, Bleu had made no secret of his feelings. He had told her straight that Loren was off limits to her and that he would protect his prince by any means necessary. She had filled in the blanks for herself. Bleu would kill her if she made any attempt to steal his prince’s heart.

  It was a good job that she was only interested in him in a purely academic way then, wasn’t it? She had absolutely no desire to grab Loren, pin him to the nearest wall and kiss him senseless. That would be stupid. She would probably lose her job and her head shortly afterwards.

  It didn’t stop the thought of going through with it from spinning around her head though.

  Loren wanted to kiss her too. Bleu evidently knew that and had made it his personal mission to keep them apart. Would something as innocent as a kiss complete the bond between them?

  She didn’t think so. If it could, then Loren wouldn’t be giving her heated looks that had her toes curling in her trainers, risking provoking her into planting one on him.

  He wanted this bond broken.

  Didn’t he?

  “Maybe we should test your stamina,” Olivia said and blushed when both men quirked eyebrows in her direction, as if she had suggested a marathon lovemaking session. “On the treadmill.”

  Olivia scurried away, leaving them to follow her.

  Loren said something terse to Bleu in their language and she glanced over her shoulder to see if they were following her. He looked across at her just as she did. His eyes met hers again and a flash of purple briefly coloured them.

  Lust or rage?

  He followed her, dragging Bleu along by the arm until the male shirked his grip and obediently followed, still muttering black things under his breath. Loren’s handsome face twisted in a grim expression and he shot Bleu an irritated glare.

  Perhaps it was a bit of both making his eyes switch.

  Olivia turned away and led them down the cream corridor to the large room where they tested the hunters’ fitness levels. The wall lining the corridor was mostly glass, allowing everyone to see inside. She didn’t enjoy the thought of everyone being able to watch Loren while he ran, seeing his body on display. It caused a tight knot in her chest that was impossible to ignore, even though she did her damnedest to do just that.

  She hoped for their sake that Loren and Bleu could control their emotions while she was testing them too. If Loren had another outburst like the one in the other room, when he had tried to strangle Bleu because she had dared to touch him, someone would see it through the glass. They would have hunters inside in an instant and the other doctors would be reporting them to her superiors.

  Her superiors would probably order the hunters to catch and contain them, labelling them dangerous.

  Which she supposed they were. Loren wanted to kill any male who went near her, including his friend. Bleu just wanted to kill everyone else.

  What the hell had she gotten herself into?

  Olivia reminded herself that this whole affair wasn’t her fault. It was some elf called Vail’s fault. He had orchestrated this to weaken Loren and have revenge on him, all because Loren had tried to take him down by harming his female. It sounded petty to Olivia, but if someone tried to harm Loren right now, when she was feeling a little bit possessive of him too, she would probably try to make them pay for it.

  She went into the room and set about getting two of the treadmills ready for them. She wasn’t sure what speed setting to use so she cranked it right up and then dialled it back a couple of notches. Many fae and demons displayed incredible stamina and speed. She had seen Loren cross a room in a blur to launch an attack on Bleu. Elves were most likely one of those fae.

  Bleu said something gruff to Loren.

  Loren came forwards and studied the two running machines, and the wires dangling from them. “What are these?”

  “You run on them. I’m going to hook you guys up, and we’ll monitor your vitals, and your breathing too. It will give me a better picture of your abilities and it’s one of the tests I have to run for the other doctors.” Olivia probably shouldn’t have added that part abou
t the other doctors. It caused Loren’s black eyebrows to pinch together and his eyes to narrow.

  Bleu bit out something she couldn’t understand.

  Was he going to talk in their language around her all the time now? It gave her the feeling that he was shutting her out and trying to make Loren do the same.

  He was probably saying horrible things about her and Archangel.

  “How long must we run?” Loren said and she moved away from the machines, went to the end of the room nearest the doors, and set up the computer.

  “Thirty minutes.” It would give her enough time to monitor the effects of the bond on Loren. If he were weaker because of their incomplete connection, then he would show signs of fatigue and elevated stress levels. Olivia caught his concerned look as he gazed at the machines and then at her. He didn’t need to say it aloud for her to get the message. She was already aware of what she had proposed. She was signing up for the same fatigue and stress, and the same raised heart rate. “Believe me. I’m looking forward to it as much as you are.”

  “When we break the bond, you will no longer suffer this tie to me.” Loren eyed the machine and frowned as he curled his fingers into fists at his sides. “The same will happen if we must complete it.”

  Olivia was going to pretend he hadn’t just mentioned completing the bond again. It wasn’t going to happen. If he tried to force it on her, he was going to have Sable and half of Archangel dragging him down to the cellblock for some very nasty jail time with the twisted ex-hunters who guarded the prisoners. They were notoriously heavy-handed and ‘accidental’ deaths of the inmates were common.

  If he died, would the bond break?

  She opened her mouth to ask but snapped it shut again before the words could leave her lips and slid a wary glance at Bleu. The elf would probably kill her on the spot to free his prince from the bond if she suggested they broke it via one of their deaths.

  She finished setting up the machines, grabbed two sets of sweat shorts off the pile of clean clothes and held them out to Bleu and Loren. They both cocked eyebrows at them.