Harlequin Nocturne March 2014 Bundle: ShadowmasterRunning with Wolves

by Susan Krinard

  When he forgot to hate.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said, coming to a stop.

  “But something has to be done, doesn’t it?”

  Once again she threw him off balance, leaving him with an anger that could only turn on itself. “What do you suggest?” he asked, wondering what she’d say if she knew what he was.

  “All it takes is more people doing what you are. And if...” She swallowed and looked up. “If you need to turn me in to the Enforcers so you can keep doing it—”

  “You’d surrender so easily, after all the trouble you’ve gone to in order to escape?”

  “So you do believe that’s what I want?”

  He released an explosive breath. “If you were like this with your former employers, I wonder why they didn’t strangle you long before you had the opportunity to access that restricted information.”

  “They were tempted more than once, I imagine,” she said, bitter self-deprecation in her voice.

  Drakon moved closer to her. “You weren’t happy there,” he said. “Maybe the blackmail wasn’t just because you needed money.”

  “Do you want my employment history now? My résumé, perhaps? Do you have a position in mind?”

  Now, Drakon thought, was not the time to tell her the position he imagined her in.

  “Who are you, Lark?” he asked, suddenly needing to know. To know everything: about her past, her likes and dislikes, her family, all the little secrets she kept from him.

  “I could ask you the same,” she said. “You’re a mass of contradictions. The difference between us is that you’re already trying to change things, even if it’s only a little at a time.”

  “I’m no hero,” he said.

  “Most heroes don’t think they are,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, Lark,” he said, leaning over her. “There’s no need for all this noble posturing. I will get you out of this city.”

  Her gaze dropped to her lap, and Drakon could feel himself beginning to slide down a dangerous slope, one that called on an emotion even more deadly than sympathy. His body was causing him enough trouble, reminding him that becoming an Opir far from reduced physical desire. In many ways the transformation only increased it, especially if there was blood involved.

  For the hundredth time he tried, unsuccessfully, not to imagine that slender neck bent back, those breasts bared to his mouth, those strong, round thighs open beneath him....

  Her touch snapped him out of imagination and into a reality more jarring than anything he could create in his mind. Suddenly, her face was very close to his, her scent swirling about his head like the most potent aphrodisiac.

  “Posturing,” she said, the word hardly more than a breath. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Ready to make the ultimate sacrifice like some heroine stepping in front of a train to save a crowd of orphans?”

  The image almost made him laugh, though it really wasn’t funny at all. Sacrifices weren’t always noble.

  “It’s not just for them, you know,” she said softly, her fingertip brushing his chin.

  He caught her hand to still it. “What are you talking about?”

  “Brita told me you almost died out there.”

  His body shut down cold. “Brita? But you said she spoke to you before I—”

  “She came here again as your meeting was breaking up,” Lark said. “She had a lot of the same questions you did about how the Enforcers might have found you. She said you were solely responsible for leading the Enforcers away, and that you’d never have let yourself be taken alive.”

  He stepped back, his movement as jerky as a newborn foal’s. “She wasn’t with us. I was never in any danger.”

  “She said Repo told her otherwise.”

  Furious with both Brita and Repo, Drakon started for the door again. Moving more quickly and silently than he would have thought possible, Lark stepped right into his path.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m truly sorry I brought this down on you.”

  Drakon tried to brush her aside without hurting her. “There’s no need for this,” he said.

  “It’s not because I’m attracted to you, though I am,” she said, holding her ground. “Maybe it’s something I just...” She looked away, flushing. “I feel for you.”

  “Feel?” he repeated mockingly. “In a little more than twenty-four hours you’ve developed...feelings for someone you don’t know, a Fringe criminal, because of a few fairy tales?”

  “You wanted to know about me,” she said. “I’ve been alone most of my life. Both my parents died when I was quite young. I developed certain instincts. I learned something about reading people. I learned well enough that I was able to pass the gov exams and get a decent position without any help or any connections.”

  “And yet these ‘instincts’ initially told you that I stole from the desperate and that I could be sexually manipulated,” he said. “And I seem to remember that you got yourself into trouble by blackmailing someone you should have left alone.”

  “Those were both mistakes,” she said quietly. “But I don’t think I’m making a mistake now.”

  “And you tell me this...why?” he snapped, alarmed at the emotion her words seemed to be awakening in him. “What more do you have to gain?”

  “Your life.”

  “I’ve given strict orders that if anything happens to me, Brita will still get you out.”

  “You almost speak as if you wish you were dead.”

  Her insight hit him hard. How often had he wished just that, unable to shake off either the memories of the old life or the obligations of the new?

  “I think you lost something very important to you,” she said. “Someone. I did, too. Maybe that’s why—”

  “You know nothing,” he snarled, pushing her aside. But she caught at him with unexpected strength and swung him around. She rose on the balls of her feet and kissed him, recklessly, hungrily, as if he were her only connection to life—not merely survival, but life itself.

  And he lost the battle. Every human and Opir instinct deserted him, the knowledge that this was dangerous...wrong, according to his old code, the code he’d been forced to set aside when he’d been converted. It had been so long since he had wanted a woman this much. So long since he’d done more than simply satisfy his carnal urges.

  It wasn’t like that with Lark, and he didn’t know why. He couldn’t make sense of it. Admiration for her courage and level head wasn’t enough. Her concern for him—her feelings—weren’t enough.

  But suddenly his tongue was thrusting between her lips and her hands were digging into his back as he cupped her bottom. She pressed her hips against him, rubbing his swollen cock through his clothing and hers.

  A few moments later they were on her slightly sagging bed, and Drakon wasn’t thinking at all. There were endless seconds of urgent fumbling as he worked at the buttons of her borrowed shirt and she his fly.

  There was no undressing. He suckled on her nipple through her thin T-shirt as she kicked off her pants. He didn’t even bother to remove the slip of damp, silky cloth beneath; he simply pulled it aside and thrust into her wetness, some part of him remembering to move slowly until her thighs tightened around his waist to draw him deeper. After that it was all fast, hard rhythm and Lark’s little gasps and moans, her back arching and her eyes closed, murmuring the occasional hoarse demand that he move still harder and faster.

  Somehow, they both made it last. When he felt himself, or her, come too close to completion, he slowed and buried his head in the curve of her neck, smelling the blood, feeling it beat in time with his, wanting it so badly that he thought he might lose control, utterly.

  She bent her head farther back as if she knew what he wanted, as if she wanted it, too. But she didn’t know what he
was. Could this be the kind of instinct sometimes found in serfs...that the giving of blood could sometimes result in the kind of ecstatic sexual pleasure few humans ever knew?

  His teeth ached, and he knew he could no longer restrain his need for release. He pounded into her, and she cried out as her body tightened and throbbed around him. He followed an instant later, shuddering, his muscles tensing and relaxing until he pulled out and rolled over, bathed in sweat.

  Lark lay quietly, making no attempt to move closer to him or even touch him. She stared up at the ceiling as if she had no idea what she’d done. As if the whole encounter had been as much beyond her volition as it had been beyond his.

  “Lark,” he said.

  She moved her head slightly toward him without meeting his gaze. “I didn’t...” She swallowed. “It wasn’t what I expected.”

  Suddenly, he was angry again—irrationally, furiously angry. “Not the tender lover you expected?”

  “That isn’t it.” She finally rolled over to face him, her expression grave rather than relaxed and sated. “I already told you...” Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  She turned away from him, folding in on herself. Drakon felt something in his heart give way, dammed emotion that wasn’t only anger, after all. He touched her shoulder gently.

  “You’re imagining these feelings, Lark,” he said.

  Hiding behind the shield of her tangled hair, she shook her head. “You’re making fun of me.”

  As if that were the worst thing he could do to her, he thought. “I’m not making fun of you,” he said, pulling a strand of hair out of her face. “You’re naive. I’m not.”

  “No. You’re just stubborn. And blind.”

  Drakon sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, yanking on the zipper of his fly. “There can’t be anything more than this.”

  She rolled over again and smiled a sad smile, her hair fanned across the pillow. “Maybe not,” she said. “But I still want you to have the information I was going to trade for my escape, no matter what else happens.”

  “I want nothing more from you.”

  “But you’ll take it, because you can do more good for the people here if you do. And I’ll show you. Personally.”

  “No.”

  “Because you still think I’d betray you.”

  Stifling a laugh, he tucked his shirt into his pants. “Strangely enough, I don’t.”

  She got up, tugged on her pants and came to stand behind him. “Then let me help.”

  Drakon knew he was insane for even listening to her. She’d been good. Very good. She’d given him more than any woman ever had. And he’d felt something when he’d been inside her. Something other than mere physical pleasure.

  He turned to face her, longing to push the perspiration-damp hair out of her face again, kiss her, fall into bed with her, into her....

  All he had to do was make one mistake, and it was over.

  “I’ll consider it,” he said.

  “That’s all I ask. But...”

  “But what?” he said through clenched teeth.

  “At least you could stick around a little longer. Talk to me.”

  “About what?” he asked. “After you’re gone—”

  “I told you something about myself,” she said. “Quid pro quo.”

  “I’m not interested in talking about myself.”

  “At least you could tell me a little more about how you came to be Boss of this outfit and chose to help people the way you do.”

  Drakon glanced at the door. There was no earthly reason to stay. The idea of repeating his cover story—so closely built on his own life—one more time seemed like an abomination.

  “You already implied that I must have killed to get where I am,” he said.

  “If you ever killed anyone, it was in self-defense or to protect someone else.”

  In spite of himself—his frank recognition of the dangers of getting to know anything more about her, or vice versa—Drakon found himself responding. “Just how much violence have you seen in your life?” he asked.

  Chapter 8

  A flicker of some unreadable emotion passed behind Lark’s beautiful hazel eyes. Drakon was momentarily distracted by the way they changed, seeming to shift from brown to gray to green all within a few seconds.

  “I didn’t grow up with the kind of hardship the people here do,” she said, retreating to sit on the bed again. “Before my parents died, we were...well, not exactly rich, but not poor, either. In a regular kind of neighborhood, in the usual middling kind of apartment.”

  Like one of the many high-rise apartment buildings that covered the majority of San Francisco, Drakon thought, built after the devastation of the War to replace the many varied neighborhoods of single and two-story family homes. Too many people to cram into one city, every square mile of space needed to house survivors who had lived in countless towns and smaller cities throughout what had once been known as the Bay Area.

  “How did you...” He swallowed, almost unable to speak the words. “How did you lose your family?”

  “My father was doing a dangerous job for the government, and when he died, my mother...she couldn’t bear to go on without him.”

  Drakon looked away. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I moved into a group home until I was old enough to apply for a job,” she said, her face expressionless. “There were many of us living in close quarters, and I didn’t have a lot of friends. After my gov application was accepted, I moved to a dorm and lived pretty comfortably with other men and women in my position. I never wanted for anything, really. But I already told you that.” She met his gaze. “Now it’s your turn.”

  With a sigh, Drakon dragged the chair halfway across the room and straddled it backward, his arms crossed and leaning on its wobbly back. “You want to know how I became Boss?” He smiled in a way meant to chill rather than encourage. “What if you’re wrong? What if I have killed? Maybe more than once?”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “Naive,” he said, though he spoke as much of himself as of her. “I did kill someone. The previous Boss.” He hesitated, wondering why he should have to justify himself to Lark at all. “It was necessary.”

  “You did it to save someone else.”

  “I’m sure Brita will be happy to tell you all about it.”

  “Was it her life you saved?” Lark asked with what seemed to be more than mere curiosity.

  He couldn’t manage to make himself lie to her. “As I said, ask Brita,” he said. “But keep in mind that she tends to embellish.”

  “Somehow, I doubt that,” Lark said softly. “You pretend not to have ideals, but you do. Ideals and a philosophy that gives you some reason to treat people with decency.”

  Drakon realized it really had gone too far. “I have dealings with evil men,” he said. “I trade with them, haggle with them, work with them. What does that make me?”

  “Human.”

  Drakon came very close to simply walking out of the room again. But somehow, with her voice, with her utter lack of judgment, he felt the urge, the need, to talk of a past long dead.

  “I grew up in the Mids, as you did,” he said. “I had a regular job, as you did. But my...” He paused, hardly able to believe he could admit so much to a stranger. “I had a family. I was married. I had a child.”

  “Oh,” Lark whispered, drawing her knees up to her chest.

  “And you want to know what happened?” he said, hearing his own voice turn harsh again, beating at her as well as himself. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly sorry.”

  “I made a mistake,” he said. “Someone I trusted turned against me.”<
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  Lark was quiet for a long time, her chin resting on her knees, her eyes downcast. “You trust Brita,” she said slowly.

  He stared at her intently. “Is there some reason you think I shouldn’t?”

  “No. It only proves that whatever happened in your past, you’re still able to trust someone.”

  Drakon wondered if she was speaking more of herself than him. “You never finished your story,” he said. “What did you do after you got your job? Obviously, you didn’t leave anyone important behind when you ran.”

  “No.”

  “No lovers?” he asked, meaning to be cruel.

  She glanced away. “A few,” she said. “No one who ever meant much to me.”

  A strange, disturbing mingling of satisfaction and anger coiled in Drakon’s chest. He couldn’t bear to think of those other men touching her, caressing her, moving inside her.

  “I find that hard to believe,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re beautiful, desirable, good in—”

  “Bed?”

  “I should have said brave, stubborn, determined, too intelligent to hold a low-level government position.”

  “Maybe that’s all I wanted. A simple life.”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe it was ambition that led you to access information above your security rating, not a mistake.”

  “I can’t make you believe what you don’t want to believe,” she said, “but I’ve never been ambitious.”

  “Then what are you, Lark?”

  “Like you. Human.”

  It was the second time she’d said it, and Drakon no longer trusted his ability to maintain his mask. “Is there anything else you want to know?” he asked, climbing off the chair.

  “Everything. But it can wait.” She rose. “Are you going to let me show you what I have for you, Sammael?”

  It was his name on her lips that made him decide, though he knew it was sheer madness. He had to know.