Crave The Night by Michele Hauf, Sharon Ashwood, Lori Devoti & Patti O'Shea

by Michele Hauf

  “No. I’ve seen you at your worst.” She tore her gaze from his and studied the floor. “But I won’t be the one responsible for returning you to that worst. What was your bottom, exactly?”

  “You think I was huddled in some dark corner with the shakes, jonesing for dust?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t even want to imagine.”

  “Dust brings up my Hyde. It makes me volatile. I think I can run the world and kick everyone else off it. But don’t worry, it’s not going to happen again.”

  He leaned in closer. The fringes of his bangs tickled across her lush white curls. The sweetness of Bree blossomed like a meadow thick with honeybees and pollen.

  “I’m too smart for that,” he said. “And even were I not, I know you’re one smart faery.”

  “Smart enough to entertain kissing a dangerous man?”

  “I’m not dangerous to you.”

  She exhaled. “You don’t know that, Rev. Right now? My heart is racing for you. And my wings are tingling. You fascinate me. You attract me. I want to know the touch of your mouth against mine. And that feels so dangerous.”

  “Exciting,” he corrected, whispering it against her soft cheek, and loving her confession. “Exhilarating.”

  “I don’t want to get hurt.”

  He paused, and looked into her searching eyes. “I would never, I swear it to you.”

  Her fingers glanced across his cheek, finding the same path they’d taken half a year earlier, searing heat into his flesh and marking him in its wake.

  “Bree, I’ve dreamed of your touch,” he said. “You touched me like this then. I’ve wanted it again. The memory of it is what kept me sane in my darkest moments, and made me want to get clean.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded, and pressed his forehead to hers. Still she stroked his face, exploring the rough stubble darkening the hard line of his jaw and tracing under his chin as if to map out his sensual zones.

  “Promise this isn’t a trick to get me to spill, to start informing again?”

  “This has nothing to do with business. Us, right now, this is what I want and need.” He wanted to tug up his shirt and feel her hot and pulsing against his skin. Not yet. Slowly. He would make this moment right. “Kiss me, Bree. Give me your touch again.”

  Her mouth landed on his. He stood a head higher than her and he liked that she was small, yet unafraid of his brawn. Her lips crushed against his, warm, seeking. The tip of her tongue skated his lower lip, then dashed to trace the indent marking his upper lip.

  He had never tasted a woman so exquisite, one so unabashedly curious and unafraid to explore what she claimed dangerous. Her courage quickened him.

  He lifted her and she wrapped her slender legs about his hips. This one was his. He felt it in his heart, he felt it all over his skin as she glittered into his pores and captured his nerve endings in a riot of desire.

  “Bree, can this be as good as it feels?”

  “It can never be right.”

  “Right is boring. But this, this is interesting. Forbidden. And yes, dangerous. I won’t ever bite you. That will keep you safe.”

  “You may not want to now, but the more you touch me…”

  Neither wanted to finish the sentence. Both knew it ended with a monkey clawing deep into Rev’s shoulders. A renewed plunge into devastation.

  It wasn’t worth the risk.

  But risk meant nothing when holding Sabrina Kriss in his arms. She belonged to him; his body screamed for that ownership. And he would have her.

  “I won’t let that happen. Let’s take this as it wants to go.” He scanned her gaze. “Can we do that?”

  “Fooling around with me won’t interfere with your job?”

  “I have to get the information, Bree.”

  “So you’re seducing me to help the vampires?”

  “I said I would not. I know it’s a conflict of interest, but I think I can work the business around the pleasure. Right now I just want to hold you. To kiss you. You were made for my mouth.”

  She kissed him full and lush and deep. The faery in his arms, light and clinging, brightened his senses with wonder and marvel. Rev pushed down the dress strap to kiss her shoulder. There her skin sparkled with the dust innate to her kind. Sweet on his tongue, the minute taste reignited a familiar craving.

  He tensed. You're stronger than that. No more tasting.

  Carrying her across the room, he laid her on the bed beneath the moonlight and crawled over her.

  “Not so fast, vampire.” She lifted a knee to keep him from snuggling the length of her body. “You want to make love?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re moving too fast. I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “Sorry.” Right. What was he thinking? He’d stepped beyond a boundary he’d imposed not a few minutes ago. “Just kissing. In more places than here?” He kissed her mouth. She giggled as he tugged down the other dress strap. “Maybe here?”

  “Mmm.” She purred as he nudged his nose along her skin, tracking toward the small, perfect breasts that had earlier hugged his chest.

  He tongued a hard nipple and followed by laving at it hungrily. Bree’s body arched against his chest and hips. Her arms stretched out and fingers clung at the bedspread. He couldn’t get enough of her skin, her soft flesh, and the hard tight buds crowning her breasts.

  “Goddess, that’s good.” Her fingers slid through his hair and she grasped at the back of his head, encouraging him. “No teeth, vampire.”

  He willed his fangs up. Bad, vampire.

  But you’re tasting her again. Watch it, Rev.

  He paused over her breasts. Looking up, he found her mouth open, her sigh dusting the air. Dust? It wasn’t visible, but he knew when faeries became aroused it seeped from their pores in a fine sheen.

  He pulled his hands from her body as if burned. Studying his palms, he searched for a glint of dust.

  “Why are you stopping? Rev?”

  Why was he stopping? He wanted all of her. In his mouth, at his tongue, beneath his body. He wanted to be encompassed by her, to be inside her.

  “You’re right, this is too fast,” he finally said.

  He pushed off the bed and paced away. Easing a palm over his erection he cursed his body’s insistent and greedy needs. Behind him, Bree tugged up her dress straps and licked her lips. An abandoned innocent, she sat in the middle of the big bed. Delicate.

  And sinister.

  “I’ve some work to do with the project,” he summoned the lie. “Can only be done at night. I promised you I wouldn’t mix business with pleasure. This was stupid. I’m sorry to leave like this.”

  “I understand.”

  She did. And that understanding tore out his heart and smashed it against the wall. Did she suspect he wasn’t as strong as he thought he was?

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and rushed for the door.

  Shoes clattering down the metal stairs, Rev turned into the alleyway with no destination to mind. It wasn’t long before he found himself inside a club pulsating with the scent of desire, desperation and temptation. Music thundered in his brain and the sensory overkill made him wince. Darkness shrouded his sweating skin. He could sense when he rubbed against another vampire, for the telling shimmer tickled his veins.

  When a thin woman in red dress with matching red hair skimmed his hand with her thigh, he stiffened. Faery. His pores opened in anticipation of the fix.

  Rev slammed a fist into the wall. The faery flinched and shoved her girlfriend into the crowd to get away from him.

  Clenching his jaw, and closing his eyes, he fought the mental desire to succumb. “You don’t need it,” he growled. “You want it, but you don’t need it.”

  Get out of here. He had to remove himself from temptation as he’d done by swiftly exiting Bree’s home.

  Rev fled into the night, and when the darkness overwhelmed, his footsteps sped to a run. Run away from temptation. It was all he could do.

  Chapter
Five

  The best way to avoid temptation?

  Rev counted three-hundred-fifty as he lifted his upper body from the workout bench. Sit-ups at a forty-five degree incline always worked up a sweat and cleared his thoughts. It was something he’d learned he couldn’t not do. If he skipped a workout, his idle muscles would go wandering in search of a fix.

  He needed this workout now to get her from his brain. Sabrina Kriss. Her last name sounded too much like kiss not to conjure images of them kissing.

  “Kissing the faery,” he grunted as he sat up for another excruciating hold. Feet tucked under a padded bar, he kept his knees bent to increase the pull at his hamstrings. “Idiot vampire.”

  Dropping backward, he didn’t allow rest, and strained to pull up his body weight again.

  Sweating cleansed his pores of any latent faery dust he might have rubbed into his skin while touching Bree. He felt it on him, scurrying beneath his epidermis like heat-seeking missiles.

  Or was it merely the former addiction tickling at his nerve endings, laughing as it waited for his next fall?

  “Won’t happen.” He blew out. Abs strained as he held the punishing crunch. “Can’t.”

  Blowing out a lungful of air, he dropped and slid off the bench. He paced the floor, working his muscles by swinging his arms to ease his strained deltoids back and forth.

  Twenty years ago he could have never imagined this life for himself. But he was living it. And not hating it. This crazy world tossed him something new every day. And what it tossed at him was always paranormal or beyond mortal man’s belief. Made the scientist in him cringe, and then titter with glee. The dark denizens of imagination did exist. And faeries fluttered—nix that. He’d never seen a faery fly, though a few years ago he had once glimpsed a trio of faeries at a rave with wings exposed. Knowing the dangers of dust, he’d not given them a second glance then.

  And when he’d been a freak for dust, he couldn’t remember their faces let alone if they’d had their wings out or not.

  “So why can’t I stay away from this one little faery?”

  After what he’d been through, Bree should be the furthest thing from his thoughts. Was it that she had literally gotten inside him? How to completely purge her?

  “Do I want to?”

  No. Honestly, he wanted to pursue this woman. Kiss her again. Find out for certain if the attraction was heartfelt or merely a deadly tease.

  “Another fight last night?” Bree chatted with her girlfriend Blu Masterson on the phone, the only werewolf Bree truly loved and cared about. Blu told her about a blood fight the werewolves had organized. Blu’s husband had been too late to rescue the enslaved vampires, and both captives had died during the match. “This has got to stop.”

  “I thought you were informing the vampires?” Blu said.

  “I don’t know anything, Blu, all right?" When she'd been working at the strip club, one of the strippers had dated a wolf who worked the blood games. Bree could not stand back and allow it to happen, so she'd begun informing. "Just…don’t ask me anymore.”

  “Who has scared you, Bree?”

  Friends always knew better.

  “No one," she lied. "And since when do you work with the Rescue Project? Your hubby sic you on me since the other guy doesn’t seem to be working?”

  “What other guy? I thought you’d told me you made a break with the vampire you were informing to.”

  “I did.”

  The bastard Degas had threatened to hand her over to the werewolves—or worse. And yet, had her abduction something to do with Degas? She'd thought it merely idiot wolves looking to torture the vampire with faery dust. She needed to learn the truth. From Degas.

  “The Rescue Project sent a new vampire after me. Someone I know.”

  Suddenly she gasped and a teardrop plopped onto her ankle.

  “Bree? What in heck?”

  “It’s him, Blu. The vamp I told you about from that awful night in the sporting warehouse."

  "The one you think is your Intended?"

  "Yes. Rev Parker is his name. He’s been here twice and I kissed him last night, and I can't stop thinking about kissing him again, but I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Whoa. Slow down, sweetie. The vampire you let bite you is on your case now to continue informing? Wow. You were really attracted to him.”

  “Are, not were. He’s amazing, Blu. So sexy. And he’s got these intense dark eyes that focus directly on me. It’s like he sees through me. It makes my wings shiver."

  "A reaction to him being the one for you?"

  "Yes. Maybe. Oh, Blu, when a sidhe finds her Intended it should be exciting, not crazy fearful. The last guy I ever expected to be the one for me is a vampire."

  “Hey, don’t knock vampires.”

  Blu, a werewolf, had been forced to marry a vampire recently to bring together the werewolf and vampire nations. She hadn’t expected to fall in love, but she had, and now she and her husband Creed were closer than close.

  Despite her tears, Bree smiled. “I'm not knocking them. And you know I have nothing at all against vampires. It's just…we are so wrong for each other.”

  “Did you tell Rev he's your Intended?"

  "Don't know how to. It's not like I'm the best thing for him. If he doesn't know, then he won't feel obligated toward me."

  “Oh, sweetie, I wonder if there's a way you two could ever be together?"

  "If we have sex and bond maybe that would overwhelm the addiction."

  "Then what's stopping you? Oh, wait. Sorry. The fact your dust sends him into a dust freak stupor is stopping you. Poor girl."

  “He’s cautious. We were making out, and he stopped before it went too far. He’s like no man I’ve ever known, Blu. The kindness in his eyes… But I see pain there, too. I want to hold him and make it all better.”

  “You can’t always be the one to make things better, Bree. Think about yourself. What’s best for you?”

  “What’s best is some intimacy. I haven’t had a man for months. Is it so wrong to crave affection? To want to claim the one man put on this earth just for me?”

  “Not at all. But you can date other men. What happened to the three day sex rule?”

  The rule they considered gospel between girlfriends. One should never go longer than three days without sex. It just wasn't right.

  “I know, I've been having a bit of a dry spell lately. But, Blu, the bonding between a sidhe and their Intended is supposed to be amazing. If we could get together as lovers we'd never desire another. How can I not want that? If we could have sex,” Bree suggested, teasing a strand of hair across her lips, “then I think he’d move beyond the desire for dust.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “No. Maybe. What better way to lead a man from addiction than to offer him a greater high?”

  “Sounds possible. We do love to make our men happy with sex. But be careful. And don’t forget my party next weekend.”

  “Right. BYOB?”

  “Yep, that’s Bring Your Own Boy. And if he’s a vampire then he’d better not be strung out on dust. Got that?”

  “Got it. See you soon. And don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” Bree hung up and sighed. “Mostly.”

  Life wasn’t worth the spin unless it was dangerous. She knew what she was doing. Having some fun with a man who made her wings curl. And if he decided to have sex with her, then yes, baby, yes.

  “Do I need to put another agent on the informant?” Creed Saint-Pierre stalked before Rev, fists to his hips. The nine centuries-plus vampire wore his years well on his face, and always wore Armani on his body. “We lost another man last night during that damned blood match!”

  “I’m sorry, Saint-Pierre. I’ve made contact with the informant. She’s…skittish.”

  “Fernando’s reports weren’t thorough. He never did explain why she stopped talking to him. Who the hell got to her?”

  “I’ll find out. Give me another day or two. I’m getting closer to h
er.” But not the kind of close his leader wanted to know about. “I will bring you results.”

  “You’d better.” Creed marched off, leaving Rev to let himself out of the man’s estate.

  With his capture, he’d almost become a statistic himself. And to succumb to the dust? He’d kept those months hidden from the tribe, claiming he’d needed time after his imprisonment to recover, get his head on target. He'd wanted to be in top form to help the Rescue Project.

  In reality, Rev had been gorging himself on mortal blood in an attempt to purge his system of dust. Hadn’t been pretty. But he took heart in the fact he never killed mortals, and never would.

  Now he was more determined than ever to come back strong and to prove himself. He was an asset to the Rescue Project. He’d once worked tactical, charging into the fray with a rescue team to extract the victims. He knew the interior workings of the sporting warehouses. Now he needed to learn the warehouse locations that moved constantly.

  Bree was the only one who could help him with that.

  He followed her, keeping a half block distance between them. She’d exited the Goddess strip club and was walking home. She said she’d stopped working there after the incident. Wonder what she’d been doing inside just now?

  The faery carried herself with confidence, and winked at the passing cars that slowed to give a cat call or hoot at her. Mortal men wouldn’t know what hit them if they were to indulge in her enchantments. Faery dust wasn’t as addictive to mortals, but it could be wielded like a weapon to either enchant or disenchant them. That vampires were so susceptible killed Rev.

  Truly, he’d discovered his kryptonite.

  And now he would have to face that sinister delicacy if he wanted to prove himself to his tribe members.

  She passed through the wooden gate surrounding the parking grounds below her building. Moments later, Rev passed through the gate and was slammed against the fence.

  “Why are you following me?” she said. “Why not catch up and walk with me? We know each other. No reason for the spy games.”