by Zoe Winters
“Touch me.” Her voice was throaty. Whoever or whatever this was, it wasn’t her.
“I think it’s a bad idea.” Why the hell was he growing a conscience now?
“I have to sleep with someone now,” she said. “If you don't do it, I’ll have to find someone who will.” She made her way back toward the door, her exit as much a seduction as her entrance.
Like hell, she was. “You aren’t going anywhere. You promised your blood to me, and I will collect.”
She didn’t seem bothered that he’d reduced her to nothing more than a magical blood donor. She stood in front of him, gloriously naked and pulsing with desire, her body vibrating with the purrs he knew were more from painful need than contentedness.
“Please,” she said, rubbing her breasts against him. The action was so feline she might as well have been in her fur.
Dayne gripped her by the shoulders. “How much of you is still in there? Because I promise if you regret this afterward and think you’re running off, I will lock you in the cage downstairs. I’m not having your heat cycle screw this up.”
She was unfazed by the threat, too lost in elevated hormones. “Don’t you want me?” She pouted prettily and then turned in his arms, her ass grinding against his erection. “Mmmmm I see that you do.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Well?”
His hands slid around to her front, running smoothly over her belly and up to her exposed breasts.
“Are you coherent enough to talk to me?” He was in the process of losing his own powers of coherence.
“Don’t wanna talk. Wanna fuck.”
He gripped her by the shoulders again and shook her. “How long does this last, and how often does it happen?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Exposure to eligible mates.” She moaned. “Don’t stop touching.”
“You can’t possibly live like this.” He found it hard to believe Weres were running amuck having heat cycles and getting anything done in the real world.
“I take a pill. They’re in my apartment.” She sped the pace of her grinding.
“Like birth control?” If she didn’t stop that, he wasn’t going to be able to continue the conversation. Not verbally anyway.
“Sort of. Stops the cycle. Mutes it so I can function. Please fuck me now. Talk after.”
“I’ll go get your prescription.”
“Too late, won’t help once it’s started. Have to get them after.”
Against his better judgment, Dayne picked her up and carried her to his bedroom. What was he going to do? Have her rolling around all over him until the full moon? He was supposed to be evil. He was well within his rights at this point. With all he’d heard about the tortures of heat without fulfillment, he was providing a service.
When they reached the bedroom, he set her firmly on her feet and brushed a strand of hair from her face. She leaned into his touch. He jerked his hand away, remembering the same gesture from a few days before. This wasn’t her.
“Please.” Greta’s breath came out in labored pants.
“Oh fuck it, I’m the bad guy.”
He pushed her until the backs of her legs hit the bed. Her knees bent, and she laid back, spreading her legs wide for his perusal, her earlier shyness gone. He leaned down to kiss her.
“Please,” she whimpered.
The kitty didn’t want foreplay. Dayne shrugged and shucked his clothes. He tossed them blindly to the corner and took in the feast in front of him. Her fingernails transformed into sharp, razored points.
“Scoot back up on the bed.”
“Please.”
“Scoot back up on the bed or I’ll leave you here to handle this yourself.” He knew she couldn’t.
She obeyed him; she probably would have walked through fire at this point. If he were more sadistic, he might have tested that theory. Instead, he went to the adjacent room, came back with rope, and tied her wrists to the bars.
“For my protection from those nasty claws of yours,” he said, pointing to the healing marks on his forearm. There was no betrayal in her eyes, only raw lust as she spread her legs wider. Tears streamed down her face.
“Please, Dayne.”
Superpowers or no, she could do nothing but submit when the heat took over.
He looked down at her writhing in heat. She was so fucking beautiful. Her pheromones were heavy on the air, in his nose, in his throat. In his head. Everything was her in that moment.
Her skin was silken as his bare flesh slid against hers. He wanted to take it slow, not just rut like two mindless animals, but she wouldn’t let him. Her legs wrapped around him in a vice, using her considerable therian strength to pull him to her, rubbing her body against his.
Dayne gave up his plans to be noble and slid inside her. In that moment he felt one thing. Possession. This belonged to him. He felt it in the same primal way he felt magic when he’d followed the proper formulas. Whatever she thought this was, she was going to be in his bed for a good long time if he had anything to say about it.
A symphony of emotion played over her face as her more restrained counterpart fought for control. Fear, confusion, desperation, need, and finally surrender, as that part of her lost. She lurched off the bed as her orgasm took her, and he joined her.
When it was over, Greta’s face telegraphed equal parts shame and fear. She turned away, staring at the wallpaper as if trying to imprint the pattern on her memory.
Dayne untied her, and she wrapped herself in the bedspread.
“God, what you must think,” she finally said. She’d been making an effort to keep her crying quiet, but it flowed out of her voice when she spoke.
“I’m thinking, for a quickie, that was amazing. And that I’m probably done with my own species. To hell with playing it safe.”
He smiled at her when she turned back to him and kissed the dampness from her face.
“It’s worse than a vampire’s need for blood,” she said.
Another odd quirk. Most Weres reveled in their sexual power and slept with anything they could get their hands on. It was the one reason he’d trusted Jaden. When she’d come to his bed when she wasn’t in heat, he’d believed her feeling for him was genuine. Now he knew what it had really been about. Control.
Her face was tense, no doubt waiting for him to say something cruel.
“Are you okay now?” He sat on the bed beside her, for his part unconcerned with his nudity, as he stroked her back through the bedspread.
“Yes. I’m sorry about that.”
“Believe me, there is nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m evil, remember? Your petty heat cycle doesn’t intimidate me.”
She laughed a little. “It won’t happen again if you can get my pills.” Greta frowned then, lines appearing in the middle of her forehead. “I’m sure my apartment is being watched.”
“I can get in undetected. Will you be okay if I leave you?”
“Yes, go.”
***
The fridge door stood open as Greta debated the benefits of leftover spaghetti versus peanut butter and jelly. She finally decided on chicken nuggets from the freezer.
Over the past few days she’d slowly come to trust she was safe here. The longer she was exposed to the sorcerer’s magical signature, the more she knew the world was shown a very different Dayne Wickham than the reality. Now her unease and fear were back.
“Stupid, Greta,” she said aloud. After the display in the kitchen, she should have known the heat cycle was close. It had been too long since she’d let it go that far without the drugs that suppressed it.
He returned as she finished the nuggets, carrying her pills and something else.
“Mrarr.”
“Mink!”
“You are perverse,” he said.
It was only her paranoia that made Greta think he was referencing their previous joining.
He pointed at the cat. “I spent fifteen minutes trying to talk to her and get her to shift beca
use I was convinced a therian wouldn’t have a pet of the same species they changed into. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Then I realized I didn’t feel any magic coming off her, just the residue in your apartment, so I brought her along.”
Mink was rubbing her cheek against Greta’s hand and purring.
“I forgot all about her because of everything,” Greta said. “She could have starved.”
“Not likely. She chewed her way through the cat food bag. She could have lived off it for a month. Here.” He handed her the prescription bottle.
“Thank you.” She popped the pill, washing it down with milk, and sank back into the chair.
Dayne sat across from her, his eyes serious. “I want us to talk.”
Chapter Six
“I think we should talk about the ritual.”
Greta let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She’d expected condemnation, perhaps a scarlet letter magically emblazoned across her body.
Fortunately, Dayne wasn’t the Puritan she seemed to be. He’d handled the heat fiasco with a surprising amount of grace, and now he just wanted to get back to the business at hand. She straightened in her chair.
She hadn’t asked for details about the ritual. He could be planning to destroy the world and she’d probably let him use her blood if it would save her hide. Maybe she was a coward, but she wanted to live. She preferred not to know the gory details in case it presented her with a moral dilemma.
“What about it?” She ran a finger through the remaining honey mustard sauce on the plate and licked it clean. His eyes darkened with lust and she put her hands in her lap.
What was wrong with her? She’d just taken a pill. Could she not do anything without making it look like an invitation? She bit her lip, as her eyes roved over his body. Dayne was fully clothed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt featuring an obscure grunge band from the nineties.
No matter what he was wearing, she couldn’t stop seeing the sharply defined muscles she knew were hidden underneath. The memory of their earlier coupling ran wild through her mind, becoming clearer each time she replayed it. And she’d replayed it about fifteen times now. Her cheeks flushed, and she looked away.
“Why do you think they want you? Why does it have to be you and not someone else?”
“Oh, that ritual. It’s because I was born a kitten. But I didn’t know it until the other day when I overheard plans for the sacrifice. I mean, how would I know? Not like I’d remember.”
“Explain.”
“Therians are born in human form and die in animal form. Legends got that backward, or at least about the dying part. We don’t go back to human form when we die. We go into animal form trying to survive. It’s the way we heal.
“It’s rare to be able to shift before age five or six. Even then, it’s more normal to start shifting around eight. For centuries, my people have believed our powers come from the gods. So when the gods bless someone as a proper sacrifice, meaning they allow them to be born in their fur, they must be sacrificed on the first full moon of their twenty-eighth year when their power is strongest. But I always thought it was a myth.”
“I see.”
Greta tried to keep the hurt off her face that he wasn’t outraged on her behalf, or sweeping her into his arms. The heat was screwing with her emotions. “Is that all you needed to know?”
“For now.”
She got up and rinsed her plate in the sink. “I’m going to bed then.”
The sex hadn’t meant anything. It was the stupid heat. She couldn’t expect him to be in love with her, and it wasn’t like she was in love with him either. She needed to get a grip.
***
It was after midnight, and Dayne was propped against the headboard of his bed making notations for the ritual. It made sense now why the drawings and photographs had been in human form. They sought a full reversal of the natural order. It was poetic in its way, if not morbid in its poetry. If she’d been born in cat form, her blood would be more potent than most.
The kind of power released from blood like that on such a ritually significant date . . . He could see why therians believed it caused the gods to bless them. That much overflow with the right ritual, her essence was bound to be absorbed.
Whether they were aware of it or not, they weren’t so much keeping in the good graces of the gods as they were stealing her power. If he’d wanted to live up to his reputation, he should be bottling her blood and selling it on the black market.
From a practical standpoint, it meant he’d need less blood than he would from a normal therian on just any full moon. Without that crucial knowledge, he could have had a magical boo-boo of pyrotechnic proportions.
His personal grimoire sat propped open on his lap. He was penciling in the amount of blood he’d need, when he heard an unearthly howl. Moments later, a bundle of black fur shot across his floor and into the bed. She’d burrowed halfway under the covers before he could get to her.
“Greta, calm down.”
Her fur stood on end, and she was digging her claws into his 800 thread count sheets, digging clear into the mattress. She looked past him, seeing something that wasn’t there. Then a pitiful, crying meow tore through her throat. His chest tightened, and a rush of compassion overwhelmed him for the frightened animal.
“Greta, look at me. You had a nightmare. There’s nothing here.”
The part of her that could understand human speech had obviously receded, drawn back into the cat-shaped shell. Dayne gently stroked down her back, speaking soothing nonsense.
Gradually, the tiny talons receded back into her paws and her fur laid flat. His fingers smoothed over her until a rumbling purr started. This time he watched as she transformed back to her human form.
Their eyes met as he continued his ministrations over her silken skin. She rolled over onto her back, stretching her arms over her head as his fingers played over her breasts. He watched her reaction, half expecting her to pull away or recover her earlier modesty.
She let out a soft sigh; her eyes glazed over. He replaced his hand with his mouth, licking and teasing over the nipple of one breast as his hand moved farther south to pet her sex.
“Dayne,” she panted.
He released her breast to give her his full attention. “Yes?”
“I don’t know if we should.”
A finger dipped inside her, and she bucked off the bed. A purr emanated from her chest as she whimpered and pushed against his hand, urging his finger deeper. He withdrew it.
“Well, if you don’t think we should . . . ”
He smiled down at her and watched the angry spark flare in her eyes, then die away as she caught his grin and realized he didn’t intend to kick her out of his bed.
He chuckled and moved down her body to swipe his tongue over the flesh where his hand had been. She moaned and dug her hands into the sheets. He wondered between her cat side and her human side if there would be any sheets left by the time he was finished with her.
***
Greta was in Dayne’s bed, wrapped in his arms for the second time that night. She wished she could stop the contented purring. The pills had stalled the immediate need of the heat, but the adrenaline from her fear had caused her to weaken when his hands were on her.
His fingers stroked through her hair and trailed down her back as she arched into his touch. Like most cats, she was never able to get enough.
“Do you want to tell me about the nightmare?”
She stiffened. She’d forgotten the dream. She hadn’t been human enough to retain the memories. Already in her cat form and in such a primal panic, all sense of humanity had left her. She wasn’t usually so disconnected from her human thoughts, even in her fur.
If she’d remembered the details of what had gotten her so scared in the first place, she wouldn’t have run into Dayne’s room. She shuddered as the dream came rushing back in its full Technicolor ugliness.
“I just dreamed about the sacrifice. They took me and w
ere draining my blood out. I was dying. That’s all.” She couldn’t tell him she’d dreamed he’d stood there and let it happen, that he’d been in on it from the beginning.
She’d run to him thinking he would protect her, but the tribe had sent her to him to ensure she’d be at the ritual. In the dream, Dayne was the one who made the cuts down her skin and smiled as the blood ran out.
She hadn’t smelled any evil on him, not once she’d gotten past the persona he was trying to live up to. But then sorcerers could mask their scent with magic. Jaden had taught her that. She pulled out of his arms.
“I think I’m going back to my room,” she said, unable to make eye contact. She couldn’t let him see her fear.
“Are you sure? Maybe you should sleep here, in case you dream again.”
She was already edging toward the door when she looked up at him.
Dayne’s eyes narrowed. “You’re right; perhaps you should sleep in your own room. You’re only here a few more days.”
It wasn’t as if she’d said she wanted a relationship. She hadn’t even implied it. The first time she’d been in heat, and the second he’d initiated. He had some ego. Or was his comment because he knew she’d be dead? Greta crossed back to her room and crawled in under the covers with Mink. This time she slept with her door locked.
***
Dayne sighed. It wasn’t necessary to overreact like that. Her wanting to sleep across the hall didn’t mean she was using him.
The truth spell he’d cast wasn’t for short-term use. He could have done that without her blood. He’d instead wanted something longer lasting, an insurance policy to protect his interests in the event that he got too soft-hearted toward her and started doing all his thinking with little Dayne.