by Michele Hauf
Her werewolf had put her claws through his chest and broken ribs. He stroked a palm across his chest. He was healed now, but the bones yet ached.
He did not regret a single moment of it. Everything about Blu he accepted. Feisty, playful, daring, unwilling to settle when she could design her own way. A woman who had learned it wasn’t right for men to treat her cruelly. A woman who had lost all family, and found solace with him, a man not even her own species.
A woman like no other.
“I love you.” He hugged her warmth to his side. “So much.”
BLU ATTACKED A HUGE bowl of cereal with vigor. She was always famished the day following her shift. She’d need another bowl, or two, but they were out of milk. She had to find Housekeeper and send her to the store.
A delicious masculine scent perked her senses and she lifted her head to watch Creed enter the kitchen. He wore loose jeans that hugged his hips and revealed the dark hairs below his belly button. The precise cut of his abs made her go loopy with visions of frenzied sex, hips pumping against hers and body parts sliding slickly across one another.
Blu dashed out her tongue to catch the milk drooling down her chin. Her husband smiled at that.
She’d beat him to the kitchen after waking in the bedroom disaster, uncertain about confronting his dismay. Now it was inevitable.
His easy smile went a ways in alleviating her worry.
“How you feeling this morning?” He kissed her at the corner of her eye and hugged her from behind. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he reached around and flicked a stray chocolate crunch piece into the bowl. “Exhausted?”
“Elated actually. And hungry.”
“I see you got the Count Chocula.”
“Yummy chocolatey goodness served up by the Count. You, um…okay?”
“Tired, but elated also.”
She scooped a spoonful into her mouth and crunched quickly. A faint red line running from the center of his chest and across his shoulder revealed a healing talon wound. Oops. “You’re not upset?”
“About what?”
Seriously? “The room?”
“It needed redecorating. It’ll give you a chance to break in the credit card.”
Whew. Could the guy be any nicer?
“What about the talons? I’m sorry. I delivered you some good ones.”
“I heal.” He palmed the red mark. “Some slower than others. This was a deep one. Cut through some ribs.”
Digging the spoon into the cereal, Blu flicked a pale brown marshmallow onto it. No raging? No angry rebuttal to her wild need to push him away and then grab him back? Not an admonishment for the wounds she’d given him?
“Why are you so good to me? I could have killed you last night, you know.”
He nuzzled aside her jaw and kissed the milk trail from her chin. “If that’s what the dangerous werewolf wants to believe, I’ll give you that. But you wouldn’t have.”
“I remember holding a stake.”
“You wouldn’t have used it,” he whispered at her ear.
No, she wouldn’t have. Her werewolf liked to play, to tease, to coerce and, yeah, even claw, but she did not take life. What a hell of a way to get laid. But he’d been a sport about it. Heck, the guy deserved a trophy or something.
“I can’t be responsible for my actions when the moon is full.”
“No wonder you were pushed,” he muttered. “Glad you landed on my doorstep.”
“Even if I’m wolfed out? I mean…can you deal with that?”
“Each and every full moon.”
She smirked. “You talk as if we’ll be together many moons.”
“I hope so.”
She did, too. And how cool was that? The vampire and the werewolf getting it on and living in some kind of crazy harmony.
“Mmm…” Creed slipped his fingers between her legs.
“Seriously?” she said. “Because I’m eating breakfast here.”
“Give me one good reason to stop, and I will.”
Blu crunched furiously, her brain searching for a reason as her body thrummed at her lover’s masterful touch.
“I’m waiting,” he said with a flick of his forefinger.
Blu tensed at the delicious sensation. “I’m thinking.”
“Just one reason. I’ll stop.”
She arched her back, giving him easier access.
“What do you say?”
She stabbed the spoon into the bowl. “I got nothin’.”
She was on the verge of climax when an angry shout echoed down from the upper floor.
Creed slipped from her, and Blu cursed Housekeeper as her burgeoning orgasm slipped away.
“I’ll handle this,” she said, and made a furious beeline for the stairs.
Interrupt her morning pleasure, eh?
Stomping up to the bedroom, Blu arrived upon a frantic maid mumbling something in Spanish, which she didn’t understand. Housekeeper flung her hands about before her to punctuate her frenzied tirade. She thrust a gesture toward the destroyed bedroom, then made an I-don’t-understand gesture.
“I think I got it,” Blu said. “You can’t figure how that happened?”
Housekeeper rambled off a litany in Spanish.
“How ’bout this?” Blu bared her claws before the woman.
Housekeeper peeped to an abrupt silence. She gaped at sight of the claws, then fainted.
“Oops.” Blu teased the tip of her little finger into her mouth and gave the approaching vampire her best innocent flutter of lash.
Creed strode down the hallway and bent to lift the prone woman over one shoulder.
“That’s why I call them Housekeeper,” he said. “They never last for more than a few weeks. Sometimes it’s shock, sometimes it’s—hell, it’s blood loss. So I’m not a saint. But this time,” he admonished with a waggling finger, “it’s entirely your fault, wolf. Welcome to the family.”
Giving him a catty snarl, she clawed playfully at him. “You gonna come back and toss me over your shoulder when you’re finished with her?”
“Get undressed. I won’t be long.”
“Mmm, goodie.”
THE WHELP HAD THE audacity to stare straight into Amandus’s eyes. Eugene Ryan hadn’t so much as offered a hello or what-did-you-need-me-for? He simply stood like some roughhousing bar bouncer waiting to be challenged. The muscles strapping his biceps were so big he couldn’t even relax his arms aside his torso.
Amandus bristled and stood fully, bringing his stature only an inch higher than Ryan. “You,” he muttered in the whelp’s face, “are out.”
Ryan gaped. He clenched fists before him, but didn’t strike out.
“You’ve a spy amongst your men,” Amandus continued. “Those bloody longtooths have found the past three sporting events you have overseen. It is utterly senseless the depths of your idiocy.”
Amandus stepped back two steps until he felt the stolid presence of Ridge at his left shoulder. He glowered at Ryan, waiting for him to babble out some excuse for his ineptitude.
“Out.” Ryan nodded, shaking his head at the same time. “So just like that, then? First you take away my fiancée and now I’m out of the pack? I’ve served you well, Principal Masterson. I’ve kept your involvement in the sporting warehouses quiet—”
Amandus lashed out, his claws striking Ryan across the face. Four lacerations opened across his cheek, eyelids and forehead.
The wolf yowled, and punched a fist into his open palm. “I don’t need this headache! And I certainly don’t need to follow your weak ass around anymore.” He stepped back, putting up his palms when Ridge moved to parallel Amandus. “If you didn’t have him to loom over you like a carrion-hungry crow, I’d take you out, old man.”
Amandus smirked. “Get out of here before I command my crow to do the same to you.”
Lifting his chin in abject disobedience to the leader, Ryan backed toward the door. He fisted an angry gesture at them both, then stepped quickly out of sight.
> “You want me to follow him? Tie up loose ends?” Ridge asked.
Sucking in breath through his nose, Amandus shook off the acrid odor from the defiant wolf lingering in his senses. “Not yet. We must play our cards right. The Council watches us too closely right now.”
Chapter Seventeen
CREED DROPPED HOUSEKEEPER at her apartment in the city. She was still under his persuasion and would wake in a few hours with only a distant memory of a short gig for an eccentric man out in the country who made major messes. He left a generous cash severance on the kitchen counter, then headed home.
Tucking his sunglasses in a front pocket, he followed the thumping beat of music down the hall. The theater-room doors were open, and he saw Blu’s feet bob to the tune. She turned her head before he gained her side, smiling up at him. She wore red lace this time, to match the red wig.
Mercy.
He twisted the chair—the aisle seats were rotating rockers—and she clasped her legs about his neck as he squatted before her. Her red spike heels clicked behind his head.
“Adam Ant?” he asked of the music he’d never admit to liking in the eighties.
“‘Desperate,’” she sang, and tickled her fingers through his hair, “‘but not serious.’”
“Desperate for a little of this?” He nudged her barely there panties aside with his nose. Dashing out his tongue, he speared her wetness. The taste of her hardened his erection instantly.
“Mmm, you’ll make me howl,” she teased.
“I love to make the wolf howl.”
Tearing away the insignificant bit of lace, Creed ventured deeper; his prize, the wolf’s sexy howl of encouragement. She spread out her legs, and he ran his palms along them, worshipful in his pose.
It would be another month before he could dally with the werewolf who preferred him scratched and bleeding before having sex. He looked forward to that adventure again.
But even with her claws sheathed, Blu filled his thoughts, his senses, his desires. Not in nine hundred years had he met his match.
The wait had been worth it.
Fingernails dug into his hair and scalp and she tugged as climax fluttered panting whimpers from her lips. He loved when she came softly like that. His fangs were already down. He’d not noticed that.
He should have come to expect it by now. He would be careful with his teeth not to cut her.
Hours later, Creed sprawled on a cozy leather theater chair, one foot propped on the seat before him, the other leg stretched in the aisle. Blu sat on him, her stomach and breasts crushed to his bare chest, her cheek nuzzled against his neck, quiet in her satiation.
His cock was still inside her. This was the place he’d never found over the centuries. A place of comfort. Equality. Acceptance. And now here he sat. Blissfully satisfied.
The red wig was tilted on her head. He gave it a tug, and she reacted.
“What?” She lifted her head. “Oh, I think I dozed off a bit. Mmm, lover, you make me come so much, I have to take naps to recover. Maybe you could float me upstairs to the bed for a while?”
“Float you?”
She lifted her head and kissed him. Brilliant eyes danced with his. “Like you did last night. You moved me. With wind or air, or something. It’s your magic, right?”
“I have air magic, yes. Also earth, water and blood magic. You promised you weren’t going to tell.”
“And you said you were not going to use it.”
“Yes, it is the one vow I find I cannot keep. And it’s stupid, really, the minute things I use it for. The witches fear I would use it to control people or have the advantage in a battle against them. That was why I took the vow. Also to atone.”
“Tell me about it, Creed. It’s a part of you I still haven’t learned. Did you steal your magic from a witch?”
This was a conversation he’d never purposefully bring up, but he could not deny her the truth of him. It wouldn’t be fair after all they’d been through. She’d opened up to him. He could spill a secret and know she would not judge him for it.
“I did. Long before the Protection spell was cast.”
She nodded and laid her head on his shoulder. Red hair plushed across his cheek. Her tongue dashed out to lick his chin before she said, “I know a little about the war between the vamps and witches.”
“It ended decades ago.”
“Right. But you were there for the beginning. Something like a thousand years ago?”
“Eight or nine hundred years.”
“So you kept the witch enslaved to drain her of her magic?”
“That’s how it worked.”
“Tell me.”
“Very well.” He hugged her head aside his chest and tangled his fingers in the glossy wig. “After the Capetians’ rule ended and the House of Valois began to reign in France, I left the vanguard. Well, I hadn’t much choice. I’d been changed to vampire against my will. And while much war is fought during the night, I simply could not function as a soldier in the king’s army, you understand.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Not really. I enjoyed battle.” Still did. But not so much when Blu was lying in his arms. He snuggled her close, feeding on her delicious warmth.
“I resisted joining the tribe that changed me, even though at the time, the tribes were almost as war-hungry as the mortals. I used the excuse I wanted to learn things on my own, to go out and experience the world. The tribe ousted me, which suited me fine. I had grander plans. I would gain magic and become a force to be reckoned with.”
It was uncomfortable to confess to his past indiscretions, but Creed wanted her to know the darkness that still resided within him. He owed her that much after all she and her werewolf had revealed to him last night.
“I stole air magic from a witch who I seduced. Told her I loved her, but really, I was focused on obtaining her magic. For a vampire to steal magic from a witch he has to have sex with her. It’s a blood sex magic thing.”
“Sounds sexy.”
“It was calculated.”
She wiggled upon him, and his cock enlivened within her. “I like that you’re so honest with me. I find that sexy.”
That comment bolstered him and his growing erection.
Creed continued. “The witch can grow very weak, I learned, and literally becomes enslaved to my bite and my selfish need to draw out her magic. When I saw she was becoming too weak, and felt I’d drawn enough magic from her, I abandoned her. On to the next witch. I was determined to gain all the elemental magics.”
“Air, earth, fire and water?”
“Yes. Earth was next. I remember that I had some feelings for that witch beyond the desire to steal what I could from her. When she was close to death, I couldn’t bear it, so I stopped having sex with her. But she insisted, saying she would rather die making love to me than be burned at the stake.”
“You must have been quite the macabre Casanova.”
“Must have been?”
She smiled against his chest and rocked her hips slightly.
“I obliged her, and she did die. She’d requested I burn her body and return her ashes to the earth, from which her magic had originated. Using air magic, I spread her ashes through the sky and then settled them upon a lavender field.”
“That sounds pretty.”
The depth of his depravity wasn’t quite permeating her brain.
“But I would have so kicked your ass if it had been me,” she added. “Those poor women.”
So maybe she did understand what an asshole he’d been.
“Yes, well, the water witch nearly succeeded in doing just as you desire. I rescued her from a dunking chair. It’s strange, in medieval times they used to dunk supposed witches in water. If they drowned, they were innocent—but then also dead. If they did not drown, they were accused as witches—and then killed. Dead either way. It made little sense. And honestly, no talented witch would have ever got caught in such a predicament. Except Celia.”
“Was
she not so powerful?”
“She was the most powerful witch I have known. Yet her downfall was her heart, as it is for all of us.” He kissed the crown of Blu’s head. “She fell in love with a witch hunter, and found herself bound to a dunking chair. I rescued her, and…”
He thought back to that escapade. Celia was so angry after he’d rescued her she was literally spitting water. She fought him so much he’d had to rebind her wrists and carry her over his shoulder to his home. Once there, he’d fed her, asked her nicely for her magic, and when she refused, well…
“The seduction was short, abrupt, and she did eventually agree, but I think I was a rebound guy, to use today’s terms.”
Blu shifted against him, working her hips lazily. It was growing more difficult to concentrate on his tale as his mind threatened to play mutiny and let the cock do all the thinking, but he continued.
“I took what I could from her, but she fought me tooth and nail. And I learned one must never get too close to large bodies of water when in the presence of a water witch. She nearly drowned me in the Seine. Fortunately, vamps don’t drown easily. I gave up after she pinned me to the bottom of a full well for a fortnight. I have just enough water magic now to be a menace.”
“What about fire?”
“Never found a fire witch. They are rare. Fire is the one thing that can kill a witch, so you don’t often find practitioners in that element. Though, they are out there. After Celia the Protection was put into place. She was one of the original spell casters.”
“I’ve heard about the Protection, but never met someone directly affected by it. So the spell made all witches’ blood poisonous to vampires?”
“Yes. One bite, and the vampire is ash. It’s not an easy thing to witness. And I have a few times. Should a vampire survive a witch’s blood attack, he becomes a phoenix. There is a Council member who is a phoenix.”
“Yes, Nikolaus Drake. I’ve heard of him. But you are immune?”
“Only because I’ve witches’ blood from before the Protection in me.” He tapped the ring on her finger. “Still, I don’t trust that.”