by D
She gave him a narrow look. “What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.
He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “I want to pull you into a steaming hot shower, cover your sweet body with soapy suds, then rinse you off while I slide into your creamy pussy, and make you scream.”
Julia’s heart was pounding with excitement, her thighs clenching around flesh already swelling with desire. She swallowed the rock in her throat and whispered, “I could use a shower.”
Lachlan’s grin was pure masculine beauty. He didn’t smile like that often, but when he did . . . good God, he was lethal. “Let’s go.” He was already stripping off his shirt as he stood and pulled her up to his side. A minute later, he was lifting her in his arms and carrying her to the bathroom.
“TAKE YOUR SHIRT off,” Lachlan whispered. His breath sent tickling wisps of hair over her cheek, while he ran his tongue over the curves of her ear.
She got the buttons undone, but she couldn’t get it off because he was still holding her. “I can’t,” she complained fretfully.
“Figure it out, love, or I’ll tear it off.”
“Don’t you dare! I love this shirt.” She wrestled with the shirt some more, then finally tugged it off over her head, leaving her in nothing but a pretty silk bra which was designed more for enticement than support. Her breasts spilled over so much that her nipples were barely covered. Lachlan took advantage, the fiend, lifting her high enough to run his lips and tongue over the bare flesh, then sliding his mouth down to suck one nipple through the lace. Julia moaned and tightened her arms around his neck. “Hurry,” she pleaded, as she toed off her boots, letting them fall to the floor as he carried her.
He laughed under his breath as he set her down in front of the huge tiled shower, then knelt to unzip her jeans and strip them off, snagging her tiny panties along the way. She lifted her feet one at a time, tossing her bra aside as she did so, leaving her completely naked.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, wrapping his big hands around her calves, letting his fingers run up the length of her legs, over the gentle swell of her hips, the curve of her waist, squeezing the full weight of her breasts. Glancing up with a wicked, little smile, he curled his fingers around to pinch her nipples, until they were rosy with engorged blood and aching for something she couldn’t name.
Pushing her back against the tiled wall, he held her there with his body as he unzipped his jeans and let them fall. Hands on her hips, he lifted her slowly, letting her feel every inch of him, his erection a hot brand against her thighs, which were sticky with arousal. Her face flushed with embarrassment at how wet she was, hoping he wouldn’t—She cried out, helpless against the desire flooding her body, as he dipped two fingers into her pussy.
“So wet for me, princess,” he murmured. “Maybe I should bend you over the sink and fuck you there first.”
Julia gasped in the last shreds of outrage she had left, but that didn’t stop her body from clenching in hunger at the image of herself bent over and thoroughly fucked. She closed her eyes, savoring every touch, every kiss.
Lachlan’s knowing chuckle was the only warning she got before his hands were on her hips, lifting her effortlessly, swinging her around and bending her over the sink, just as he’d said he would. His hand was gentle on her back, urging her downward, the cold marble countertop stiffening her nipples as he pushed his thick shaft between her slick and swollen flesh, going relentlessly deeper, until his hips hit her ass and his full length was buried inside her. His fingers dug into her hips as the room filled with steam, her forehead pressed into her crossed arms as she struggled just to hold on, to stop herself from coming too fast, even though her entire body was trembling in delicious anticipation. The climax struck like a bolt of lightning, muscles clenching to the point of pain as it blasted from breasts to belly to pussy in a jolt of pure sexual thrill. Behind her, Lachlan’s grip tightened hard enough to bruise, but she didn’t care, all thoughts swept away by the waves of pleasure coursing through her.
He groaned as her sheath clamped around him in a fierce embrace. “Your pussy is sweet perfection,” he growled. “So hot and wet, like a silken glove.” And all the while he kept fucking her, slamming in and out in an endless rhythm, until with a muttered curse, he reached around and fingered her clit, pinching it between his finger and thumb, until a second climax stormed through her in an unbridled ecstasy of nerves and muscle. The deluge of sensation was finally too much, as he roared to his own completion, his release filling her body as he collapsed over her back.
They hung there for a moment, too breathless to move, sweat coating their bodies, as Lachlan cupped her ass appreciatively and said, “God damn, princess. I could fuck you forever.” Squeezing her butt cheek, he pulled his semi-rigid cock out and practically carried her the few feet to the shower.
Still shuddering with the vestiges of her orgasm, Julia stood under the hot water and tried not to moan every time her inner muscles flexed in remembered passion. She clung to the faucet handles when Lachlan did as he’d promised, washing her from head to toe with hands that soaped and scrubbed better than any loofah she’d ever owned. Leaving her pussy for last, he put his arms around her and soaped his hands with extra care as she watched, his thick chest pushing against her back, his tongue teasing the shell of her ear.
His sudsy fingers caressed her breasts, moving roughly over her nipples, sliding over her belly and downward until they slipped between the swollen folds of her sex. Julia moaned, one hand reaching up and around to the nape of his neck, fingernails digging in to anchor herself against the unstoppable wave of this sensual craving she had for him.
“Lachlan,” she cried, not knowing if she was begging him to release her or never to stop. His response was to turn her in his arms and lift her against the tile wall, his hands behind her protectively as he entered her with a slow, steady slide of his cock. Her legs wrapped around his hips as her tender flesh, still trembling with her earlier climax, tightened around him, sending waves of fresh pleasure rolling through her body. He pounded into her, until with a growl of hunger, he lowered his mouth to her neck and fed.
Julia crashed into orgasm, giving him the screams he’d promised, fingers tangled in his long hair as she held on to her self, afraid she’d get lost in this man, this beautiful vampire. Without warning, he joined her in orgasm, his cock bucking inside her trembling sheath, while his fangs drew her blood and the heat of his climax filled her once again.
Lachlan stopped slowly, moving in and out of her in a slow, sensual glide, until finally he lifted his head and licked her neck, nibbling over her smooth skin to bite her jaw, before he kissed her thoroughly, lusciously. He kept on until they were both limp, holding on to each other to avoid crumpling to the shower floor.
Julia’s legs were still wobbly when he guided her out of the enclosure and wrapped her in a big towel. She leaned against the wall, already half asleep, as she watched him dry off, his movements brisk and methodical, so very masculine. When he was finished, he tossed his towel aside and moved to her, using a fresh towel to dry her legs and feet, rubbing another over her hair, before carrying her to the bed, a towel draped over her shoulders.
Lowering her to the mattress, he tugged the towel from around her body and pulled the covers over to keep her warm. Julia snuggled under with a happy sigh and surrendered to a delightful sleep.
LACHLAN GAZED down at Julia, her hair a pale cloud around her face, eyes closed in the sleep of a well-satisfied woman. Well-loved, too, though he’d admit that only to himself. Once he’d survived Erskine, maybe he’d tell her. But he wouldn’t wrap her up emotionally when he might die the next night.
Tossing aside the last of the towels, he slid under the covers next to her, pulling her sweetly naked body against his, as the sun lit a fire in his skull. A moment later, his eyes closed and he was gone.
Chapter Twelve
JULIA
WOKE, FEELING groggy and sore. But it was the good kind of sore, in all the right places and all the right ways. She’d never had a man make love to her the way Lachlan did. It was fiercely passionate and very thorough. She wondered if it was because he’d had so many years to polish his techniques, to learn exactly what made a woman cry in pleasure. He did seem to like it when she screamed. She smiled at the thought and rolled over to check the time on her phone. It was just after noon, which meant she’d slept several hours, but now she was hungry. She’d been too stressed to eat much the previous day, but her growling stomach told her that was no longer a problem.
She got dressed and opened the bedroom door, which was more like a vault than any bedroom. Lachlan had given her the exit code, but no one, not even she, could get in once it was closed. She was locked out until after sunset. With that in mind, she paused in thought, then walked back into the room and snagged her laptop bag. She saw that her 9mm Sig micro was still in the side pocket, but then her eye caught on the second bag, this one a sturdy, canvas equipment bag with a heavy duty zipper. Cyn had given it to her, to carry the four boxes of Hydra-shok ammo she’d provided, the ones she’d called her vampire-killer rounds, and one more thing . . . an HK MP5 sub-machine gun. The hours she and Cyn had planned to use for shopping had been spent instead on Raphael’s indoor shooting range. Julia was no sharpshooter, but according to Cyn, you didn’t have to be, with an MP5 and enough ammo.
She considered the weapons. If she didn’t need the Sig, she sure as hell wouldn’t need a sub-machine gun. She was reaching for the Sig, intending to take it out, when her fingers froze midway. She couldn’t have said why, but some instinct told her to take them along. The extra bag was heavy, but since it would only be sitting across the hall, the weight wouldn’t matter. Dismissing the matter with a shake of her head, she secured her laptop in its bag, then picked up both and retraced her steps to the door. She had to put the second bag down to make sure the vault door was secure, but then she hefted it to her shoulder and crossed to the small guest room. Mindful of the guns, she placed the bags on the floor, on the far side of the bed, where they weren’t immediately visible, and left.
Thinking she’d find something to eat, then come back and do some more digging on the internet, she made her way to the kitchen, surprised to see Graeme working busily. She’d expected the house to be empty, but maybe Graeme was an exception to the no humans rule. Whatever the reason, it made her happy because he was baking something that smelled absolutely heavenly.
“What is that?” she asked, feeling like a pastry bloodhound, with her nose up and sniffing the air. But it was such a delicious scent.
“Fresh shortbread, of course. This is Scotland, after all. The lads expect shortbread with their tea. Here,” he said, putting a few on a small platter. “I’ve made a few new flavors. Give ‘em a taste.”
Julia slid onto a stool while she eyed the cookies greedily, her stomach grumbling its impatience as she stared at the treats piled high in napkin-lined baskets. These weren’t the same as she’d had last night. “What are they?” she asked with breathless reverence.
He laughed and pointed to one at a time. “Dark chocolate with lavender, lemon with poppy seed, pistachio, and I’ve got the traditional butter ones in the oven.”
“Can I eat them all?” she asked jokingly, but Graeme surprised her.
“Sure. I always bake plenty. I’ve got big lads to feed.”
“Maybe one of each,” she said. Then since chocolate was her go-to dessert, she bit into that one first and nearly swooned. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, trying not to moan. “These are heavenly.”
“The lads say my shortbread’s better than their own mothers’, though they’ve sworn me not to tell,” he said laughingly.
“You should sell these. We don’t have anything like it in the US.”
“Nae, I’m happy enough cooking for th’ lads.”
“Well, I’m certainly happy you’re doing it,” she said, biting into the pistachio and thinking she should probably eat something more wholesome for breakfast than butter and sugar. But there were nuts, too. Nuts had protein, right? She was about to take another nutritious bite when the sound of gunfire had her spinning off the stool and racing out of the kitchen.
“Don’t go out there!” Graeme shouted.
She didn’t bother to correct him. He’d been hanging around the wrong kind of women if he thought she was stupid enough to run straight into a gun battle. Making a sharp turn out of the kitchen, she ran down the bedroom hallway, thankful she’d followed her instincts on the gun.
Sliding on the guest room’s slippery wood floor, she skidded around the bed and grabbed the duffle, hitting the hallway again, just in time to hear the voice of Lachlan’s daylight security chief. It took her a minute to remember his name—Kerr. She didn’t know if it was a first or last, but it was the only name Lachlan had used.
And who gave a fuck about names?
“Who else is here?” he asked, slamming the front door behind him and stalking from window to window, checking that the heavy automatic shutters were down and the curtains pulled.
“No one but Julia and me in the house,” Graeme said, as he emerged from the kitchen, wearing a ballistic vest instead of an apron, and carrying an MK5 much like her own.
“All right,” Kerr snapped. “Julia, can you shoot?”
She nodded and held up the canvas bag. “I have an MK5 and a Sig micro 9mm, plus six boxes of ammo.”
“Good. You get back in that hallway. I want a barricade set up as far ahead of the downstairs vault door as you can make it, and still be in the hall. Use whatever you need to. Chairs, tables, whatever. I don’t expect it to be bulletproof, but make it as thick as you can.”
“You’re not going to hold the perimeter?” Graeme asked, surprise in every word.
Kerr shook his head grimly. “They outnumber us three to one, all heavily armed. Erskine must have rounded up every gunman in Scotland.”
“Erskine?” Julia repeated. “But—”
“Human gunmen,” he clarified. “He clearly meant to soften us up before sunset.”
Julia was the one who voiced the nightmare, the truth that Erskine hadn’t changed since Lachlan’s clan had been slaughtered. That he hadn’t grown a soul in all the years since. “Or take out the vampires as they sleep,” she said flatly. “He’s done it before.”
“He has,” Kerr agreed. “But he won’t this time.”
“No, he won’t,” she agreed, but the hard edge of her voice was nothing compared to the thoughts in her head. Erskine had taken too much from her already. No way in hell was he going to get away again with murdering someone she loved. She started piling furniture in front of the hall archway—tables and chairs from the great room, a dresser from the guest room—it all went into her barricade, each piece piled onto the next like a game of Tetris until there was nothing but a slender open slot, just big enough for her to slip through.
The sound of gunfire intensified outside, punctuated by screams and shouts of men who sounded much closer than they had been when Kerr had first come through the door. Bullets pinged off the metal shutters for the first time, making her cast a startled look over the barricade to where the daylight security chief was having a low, intense conversation with someone on the other side of his Bluetooth headset. He glanced up, as if feeling her staring at him, and said, “The shutters are ballistic. It’ll take more than that to break through them.”
“The door?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t secure it yet. This is the only safe retreat left for most of my men. The barracks are secure, but they pushed us back too quickly. Their target is clearly this house.”
Julia nodded her understanding, then began closing up that last bit of open space between her and the main room. She’d just broken the legs off an elaborate side table, a
nd shoved the top slab against the wall with a shriek of delicate wood, when Kerr strode over to give the construction a critical look.
“Good job.”
He sounded so surprised that she was insulted. How much brain did it take to build a pile of furniture, for fuck’s sake? “What about your men?”
“They’ll be coming inside any minute. They’ve already started their withdrawal.”
She nodded, as if she understood, which she did, sort of. She’d gotten the impression on her first day here, that the human guards never entered the house during daylight. But they couldn’t be expected to die on their swords for no reason. Or maybe those rules went out the window during war. Because this definitely sounded like a fucking war.
Taking up her position, she laid out her ammo and weapons. She didn’t worry about Lachlan sleeping right down the hall, because she didn’t have to. They were never going to get past her.
When the first of Erskine’s fighters finally broke into the house, the sun was still in the sky, streaming through the broken door to where Lachlan’s human guards were waiting. The first rush was a suicide attack. Or maybe “sacrifice” was the better word, because those first invaders gave the men behind them a protective shield to hide behind as they slipped into the house and took up positions.
Julia didn’t have time to do anything but kill after that. She ignored her little Sig micro-compact after seeing the sheer number of the enemy. She was a good enough shot, but the Sig’s 7 lousy rounds wasn’t going to do much damage. Instead, she picked up the MP5 and started shooting, using short, controlled bursts, and avoiding the kind of spraying gunfire that was so popular in movies. According to Cyn, that technique wasted ammo and had a low kill ratio.
Kerr’s men must have gotten the same training as Cyn, because they, too, were armed with sub-machine guns and were firing the same kind of targeted bursts. The front part of the house was being rapidly destroyed—furniture smashed, windows shattered in front of the still-closed shutters, and walls ripped apart—but Kerr’s men seemed to be holding the line. Julia could feel the sharp pain of cuts on her arms and face, mostly from wood and glass shards, but she ignored them as she kept firing. More than once, Erskine’s men attempted to rush her position. The first time they did it, she’d frozen. They were no longer faceless, armored figures firing from forty feet away. She could see their faces, their determination, and in some cases, the hatred as they forced their way closer. It was the hatred that pulled the trigger on her weapon. Unreasoning, thoughtless hatred. For Lachlan.