She rose up to kiss him. His lip curled at her stale breath, and he dodged her mouth.
“Don’t be like that,” she pouted against his cheek. “Can’t you kiss?” She groped her breasts through her nonexistent top. “Guys usually like these. They cost enough. Can’t you say something nice about them? Maybe play with them a bit? The girls would like that.”
Ignoring her, he moved a hand to his zipper. Closing his eyes, the sight of Lily filled his head, her breasts, fresh, ripe… not readily available to every guy in L.A. Air hissed between his teeth and his cock swelled at the thought of her.
“Sorry. I’m low on foreplay tonight,” he bit out, his voice thick and guttural in his mouth. He stilled at the sound, tensing, fighting the swamping sensations. His eyes flew open. Imagining Lily was a bad idea.
“Never mind. C’mere, big guy.” Her hand closed around him and he shuddered. Not because of the way she worked her palm over him… because it just wasn’t right. He saw only Lily. Tasted her. Smelled her scent swirling around him.
With the beast prowling for release, howling in need, he flung himself off the woman. “Go,” he snarled. “Get out.”
“Shithead,” she snapped before vanishing out the door.
He dragged a deep breath inside himself and collapsed against the leather seat, the back of his hand against his brow as he stared out the window at the moon, live and pulsing in rhythm with his heart. Blood rushed in his veins, and his pulse quickened, fought against his body, urging him to turn, to shift… to seek his release on the female waiting back at his house.
He should remain where he was. Even if it meant spending the night in the backseat of his car.
At least he wouldn’t be anywhere near the temptation that resided in the basement of his house. A woman—a lycan—he would have to kill in a month’s time if the hunter failed to deliver her alpha to him.
She had no hope of battling her urges and resisting the shift. She would turn. A slave to her hunger. A killer. Without remorse. Without a soul.
For his sake, he should stay away. For both their sakes. Until next month.
Chapter Five
Luc told himself he was only checking on her to make certain she had not escaped. His steps fell silently. He ignored his reflection in the stainless steel appliances as he passed. He rarely looked at himself. Had not since his family had turned from him, rejecting him so many years ago. He resembled them, saw their faces in his own. The olive skin. Gypsy-dark looks with gold eyes. His mother. His grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. They were all there in his face. He could do without the reminder.
Ivo had been his only true family… and even that relationship had not lasted. Not withstood the test of time. No relationship ever could. Not the endless stretch of time that faced him, anyway.
He eased the door open, wincing at the blackness that greeted him. His eyes adjusted to the dark, instantly finding the still shape lying on the mattress. He could see his way through a subterranean cave. It was part of his gift—his curse.
A soft whimper scraped the air and he tensed, hearing the pain, sensing it, feeling its echo deep inside himself. Remembering his own time.
Initiation had begun. Long, torturous hours in which her body… died. And her new self was born. A new Lily.
Next moonrise, she would answer its call and shift into a beast that fed on mankind. If he did not stop her. If the hunter failed to find her alpha. Luc grimaced. He wasn’t holding much hope for that idiot. The guy had thought Luc a lycan—the alpha of the pack devastating the area.
His feet slid unerringly to a stop beside the mattress. She lay on her side, her manacled hands curled in front of her. Perspiration speckled her brow. Salty-sweat drops he could smell. Waves of heat emanated from her, like the warmth emitted from a fire.
Crouching beside her, he touched her brow and winced at the fiery skin. She rolled to her back, crying out against the manacles impeding her movements. She struggled, possessed, desperate to be free.
“Don’t,” he commanded, even as the manacles cut into her tender wrists. The skin already glowed raw, an angry red.
The memory of his own Initiation rose up in his mind to torment him. His grandfather had locked him in the family crypt. In that dark prison, surrounded by the corpses of his ancestors, he had thrashed on the cold earth, only vermin for company as he’d suffered the bleeding-hot death of his humanity. He cast a quick glance around the dark cellar, not so different from his crypt.
A low keening moan swelled from her lips. A death cry. This girl, Lily, was dying before his eyes. Something shivered through him, and his gut tightened.
Standing, he turned, determined to walk away, determined to leave her alone to endure. There was nothing he could do to prevent it from happening. He’d endured Initiation without anyone being there for him. He’d suffered it alone. Why not her?
He froze at the base of the stairs, hands flexing at his sides, stomach clenching at her pained whimpers. He jammed his eyes tight, as if he could block them out. No use. He couldn’t ignore her. Couldn’t hide upstairs. Even in his room, he would still know she was down here. This strange girl who smelled of innocence dying.
Cursing, he dug the key from his pocket and whirled around. Squatting, he unlocked the manacles and freed her. He rose, holding her close to his chest, adjusting her feverish body in his arms, his jaw set in a savage clench. Her cheek pressed against his chest so trustingly, defenseless, the heat of her burning through the fabric of his shirt.
With hard strides, he carried her from the basement, taking the servants’ stairs to the second floor, passing countless empty rooms until he reached the master bedroom. He hesitated before entering, knowing he could drop her in one of the guest rooms and leave her there, in a comfortable bed, satisfied he had done the best he could to alleviate her pain.
But then he remembered what regeneration had felt like. Like dying and being reborn at the same time. He simply couldn’t abandon her to the agony. Couldn’t let her suffer through it alone, as he had.
She moaned, and the sound cut through him, reaching something buried deep… something forgotten, dark and untouched. Striding into his room, he yanked back the comforter and lowered her onto the great bed he had occupied—alone—for the last fifteen years.
Stripping her jacket from her shoulders, he tried not to caress the smooth slope of her shoulders. She arched her spine, almost as though she understood and wanted to help. Her boots followed. He concentrated on the side zipper, not the sexy, supple feel of her calves against his palms. Not the pressing need that throbbed through him, stinging his flesh, pulling at his bones until he feared he had gone too far.
Tossing each boot on the floor, he settled her in the center of the big bed. He dragged a shaking hand over his tightening scalp, watching her as he hovered above the bed. Sinuous limbs twisted, working the skirt higher, to her hips. His palms tingled, burning to feel her again. She arched her neck off the bed, dark brown strands brushing his pillow. Her body shuddered as the lycan twisted its fiendish path through her, killing the old DNA and regenerating new. A jagged moan ripped from her lips.
With a curse, he slid in beside her and folded her in his arms. “Shhh,” he said, smoothing a hand over her forehead, pushing back sweaty tendrils as he absorbed some of her scalding heat into himself.
She clung to him, hands digging into his shoulders as if she would crawl inside him. Unable to resist, eager to feel her skin against his own and knowing it would ease some of her fever, he pulled his shirt over his head. Her whimpers softened as he wrapped himself around her, gritting his teeth to keep his sigh of pleasure inside. Her hands gripped hold of him, the smooth, satiny skin of her palms sliding over his back. Her body writhed, twisted against him, desperate and hungry to both escape her death… and embrace her rebirth.
Her skirt puddled around her waist and he cursed himself for tearing off her panties earlier. Her rich female scent rose on the air, folding him in a fog of lust. Her movements change
d. Became more deliberate, driven from blind, primitive impulse. She clenched her hands around his shoulders and thrust her moist heat against him in a simulation of sex. Air hissed from between his teeth.
He pressed a palm to her damp forehead and made hushing sounds, willing her to still, to calm, to sleep…
After a while, she relaxed.
Holding her tightly, he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep as well, to escape to where he wouldn’t feel… where the beast would cease tormenting him and he could forget how much he craved the hot press of her body. Not some stranger from a bar that he sought to satisfy his body’s insatiable demands, but this woman. One part assassin bent on his death. Another part dying innocent.
Bone-deep weariness closed its fist around her. Lily struggled through the heavy shroud of her thoughts, fleeing the heat, the flames that licked through her, intent on devouring her. Mom. Maureen. A man with eyes of yellow amber who made her quiver inside.
Then her thoughts slid into something else, something new and terrifying. Her senses came alive, stretched taut and sizzling with awareness. Yellow fog rose up to surround her. Yet she wasn’t alone. She felt them. In the wild thrumming of her blood, in the huge moon overhead, summoning her, a pearl in the black sky. Shadows crowded her, lengthening and widening… taking shape, becoming them. She tasted their wild hunger, knew it for her own. Silvery eyes cut through the fog, homing in on her.
She ran. Fled the demon beasts, so real, so terrifying, so… tempting. They surrounded her, silver eyes glowing through a fog so thick she could not see her own hand before her. They were everywhere. They chased her. Hunting her. Tempting her. Her enemies… her brethren.
She winced at the heat swamping her, at the sensation of her skin tightening and pulling. Shivers shuddered through her despite the terribly wonderful burn. Moaning, she writhed, wiggled as if she could shake the fever free, as if she could lose it—them—herself, this terrible thing that was happening to her. As if somehow she could make her skin stop tingling and itching and aching all over.
Another burn began to consume her. This one a hurt she could take care of… if the hard body against her would press closer, deeper, ease the clenching ache…
She opened her eyes to a darkened room… but saw everything with amazing clarity. Colors everywhere. Vivid colors she never knew existed before. The golden brown of a firm chest, rising and falling with deep, even breaths. She lifted her cheek from that chest and inhaled deeply of salty masculine flesh. Her gaze drank him in. Lithe lines and sculpted muscle. Her skin tingled anew, humming with a sort of electricity. Her already pounding heart beat even harder, and she felt dangerously close to fracturing apart.
While he slept, his lashes cast crescent-shaped shadows on his cheeks. She shook her head and tried to focus on his face, to clear the grogginess from her head, her thoughts thick as syrup.
Her hand slid down the center of his chest. Down, down, down…
She knew him. Even in the grip of whatever seized her, she remembered. Remembered the hard hand that had torn her panties in one feral swipe. The steel thighs that had pinned her down, squeezing around her hips. The molten taste of his lips. The liquid caress of his tongue. The gold eyes that drilled into her.
The fact that she fondled the man she had come to kill did not faze her in the least. His was a body that could make her forget. A warrior’s body that heightened the already throbbing pull between her legs. She shook her head, knowing such thoughts were absolutely not her… and still not caring. Not enough to stop, anyway.
He was too delicious. And she was too hungry, too achy in all the wrong places. The right places. There was that voice again, its dark little whisper whipping across her mind, directing her in all things wicked and wild. Strangely enough, that voice felt comfortable. Right.
The hunter, Curtis, had told her lust ruled lycans. And now she understood that. Embraced it.
With a desperate little moan, she crawled atop him and covered his sleeping lips with her own even as her hand freed that part of him she craved. Needed. Closing her fingers around the satisfying length of him, she stroked him, elated to find him already hard. She gasped her own excitement against his lips, directing the hard tip of him between her thighs, grateful for the lack of clothing.
A pair of hard hands closed around her arms, stopping her.
Before she could draw breath, she was flung through the air. Flat on her back, she arched against the hands imprisoning her, desperate for the pleasure she had been so close to claiming.
She growled, her gaze snapping to his. To a fierce pair of eyes, brutal enough to chill anyone’s blood.
Only Lily wasn’t anyone. She wasn’t even herself. Not anymore.
Her blood ran scalding hot in her veins. Baring her teeth, she hissed her frustration, her desire. Desperate to tempt him, she managed to free one hand and wedge it between them. He kept her bound to the bed with his other hand, preventing her from moving an inch. As if she were some wild animal that might devour him given the chance.
Smiling, she wrapped warm fingers around him, her touch seductively gentle despite the fantastic surge of strength coursing through her. With a purr, she flexed her fingers around his increasing hardness.
“Stop,” he ground out.
She pumped him in a deep, languorous stroke. Once. Twice. “That’s not what you want.” She didn’t even recognize the sound of her voice, all thick and guttural in her mouth.
“Yes. It is.”
She slid her thumb over the tip of him again, smiling in dark satisfaction at the drop of moisture rising to kiss her. “It’s not what your body wants.”
He snared her wrist between them, stopping her. “Fortunately, I’m a lot smarter than my cock is.”
“Are you really?” She rotated her hips, locking her thighs around him tightly. He groaned at the sensation of her hot sex nudging against him. Her scent rose, heady and ripe. Every fiber of her being screamed in need. She had to have him. She would not relent until they were one. Until he was hers.
Chapter Six
Silver eyes gazed up at him, and something withered, dying inside of him at the sight. She was one of them now. But then he had known that would happen. Seeing her lovely brown eyes gone just drove home that she was no longer an innocent girl. No longer like the girls in his boyhood village. Girls he could not have had. The ones his family had beaten him for for even looking at.
She was something else entirely. Something even more exciting. In the throes of dark and primitive lusts, she was overwhelming to him. Something the beast in him could not resist. Every instinct demanded that he claim her, even as his conscience screamed against it—against having her, loving her body only to later destroy it. As he must.
He flexed his hands around her slender arms, his fingers tightening along smooth limbs that would tear and stretch and twist into something dangerous and terrible in a month’s time. The same kind of creatures that had brutalized his mother and aunt years ago, resulting in his and Ivo’s births. Creating them both—blights on the family.
Still, he craved her, and he could not keep himself from releasing her hand to continue its sensual assault on his body.
She resumed sliding slim fingers over his cock, the feverish touch of her skin deliciously hot. Dangerous and desirable. He arched into her clasp, closing his eyes tight and imagining it was her sheathing him.
He thrust several more times into her hand before opening his eyes and locking gazes with her. The silvery pewter of her eyes gleamed up at him, as wild and menacing as the animal clawing to be freed inside him. Lycan eyes. Beautiful in a way he’d never thought eyes like that could be. She rubbed the head of him against her moistness, teasing it at her opening, sucking the tip of him inside her. Exquisite torture.
Gritting his teeth, he held back, preventing her from going any further. Any deeper. Sweat beaded his brow at the agony of it. The bliss. She was no longer human. Nor was she a dovenatu like him… like Danae, his cousin’s ma
te. He had thought Danae loved him, had thought she’d wanted the things he had—had wanted him. Instead she’d chosen darkness. She’d chosen Ivo.
And he’d chosen this life. A life of solitude. His lip curled back over his teeth. Perhaps not the best choice if it drove him to crave the touch of a lycaness. Clearly he’d gone mad during these years of self-imposed exile.
Air hissed between Lily’s teeth and she released an inhuman growl, surging against his hands, struggling to fully merge their bodies.
Clearly he was not the only one moved to madness. In her right frame of mind—as her proper self—she would never have acted this way. He’d seen that when he’d dropped from the trees and landed at her feet. He’d seen the terror, the revulsion, the wide-eyed stare of a good woman. A woman whose careful, controlled life had unraveled. A woman who would never let someone like him touch her. A woman who would have chosen death over a lycan’s existence. Knowing her only a night, he knew this much about her. She would never choose to live in the darkness.
No matter what happened, he would lose her.
His most primitive self rose from within him in a hot surge of rage. But you can have her now. For this night. Take her, take her.
An answering growl emerged from deep in his chest.
Of all women, this was one he should not touch, yet his hands loosened their hold. The last of his will crumbled. His hands dropped to his sides.
She lifted her hips, impaling herself on him with a satisfied moan.
Buried deep, he groaned at the slick heat of her tightening around him. Not since Danae had he felt this. Perhaps not even then. So feral and yet so right. As if she’d been made for him alone, her fit so perfect. He felt the tightening of his face, the telltale pull of his bones, and knew he was losing himself… letting the beast come out.
She worked her hips, her nails scoring his chest, oblivious that he was more beast than man in this moment. He gripped the softness of her hips, one hand sliding around to squeeze her plump cheek. Clenching his teeth, he held his passion in check and shoved the beast back into darkness, but hers was on the rise. He watched her in her frenzy, wondering how much she would remember later.
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