by Roth
Lukian looked at the man driving the van. Green, almost as old as he was, was well-known for his level-headedness. He nodded a quick thanks at him and set Wilson back on his feet. He knew that he’d shaken the boy up. He hadn’t meant to, but the thought of someone hurting Peren sickened him.
Chapter 3
Whatever was pulling her by the hair let go long enough for her to fall to the ground. She tried to pick herself up again, but knew her limits and was way past them. Something struck the side of her face and her head snapped backwards. For a moment, she wondered if the man had killed her. When she felt like her head was about to burst, her vision swirling with multi-colored dots, she knew she was still alive.
Hot breath blew down on her cheek. She tried to open her eyes to see what was next to her, but the blow she’d taken kept her relatively immobile. Something rough like sand paper and slightly damp, moved over her cheek.
A tongue, it’s a tongue.
Her mind tried to process the information as fast as it came in, but it was too much, too soon.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” a deep raspy voice said in her ear. Normally, this type of bedroom voice would have been sexy to hear. Now, it was terrifying. She let out a whimper and this seemed to excite the beast near her. “It’s time to collect the debt owed to me.”
A huge weight dropped on her. She punched out hard trying to get it off. She heard material ripping and felt the sharp sensation of fingernails being drug down her side.
“PEREN!” Lukian couldn’t have sounded more like an angel if he’d tried.
The thing pulled back from her as she cried out for help. Something heavy struck the side of her head. “Luke,” she said softly.. It was all she could manage to get out before she gave in to the overpowering darkness that surrounded her.
* * * *
He stopped, motioning for Jon and Wilson to stop, too. He could hear something, someone talking and smelled desire floating through the air. It was mixed with so much rage that he knew in an instant the man’s intent was rape. He grabbed an extra weapon from Wilson and took off running, calling Peren’s name.
He felt her fear, then her pain when she received a blow to the head. The muscles in his neck tightened with the anticipation of tearing off the head of the lycan who had hurt her. He heard her whisper his name, or almost his name. She called him Luke. It had been a long time since someone had called him that. The norm now was Captain and had been for over twenty-five years.
Peren’s scent filled the air around him. He was close. He pushed through a large patch of brush and found her lying on her side, clutching herself. A feeling of failure gripped him. He’d let someone harm her when he had vowed he wouldn’t. He scanned the area first for the assailant, then dropped to his knees next to her.
He touched her arm, lightly and she screamed out, jerking away from him. “It’s me,” he said softly. “It’s Lukian.”
“Luke?” Her tiny hand came out and slipped into his.
Jon and Wilson broke through the bushes behind them, weapons drawn, protecting his back while he saw to his Peren. My Peren? The words sounded so sweet in his head that for the first time in a long time he had butterflies in his stomach.
He scooped her up in his arms, shocked to discover how little she weighed. She didn’t look like there was much to her, but holding her confirmed that. No, he wouldn’t let anyone hurt his tiny Peren.
Chapter 4
Roi laughed as Missy, the little black-haired one, tried to stop him from putting her in the van. He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. She smelled as sweet upside down as she did right side up. That has its advantages, he thought to himself.
He wondered how Lukian was doing with Peren. Green had radioed over informing him that she’d been injured, but that had been the only information he’d received. He’d been the one to make the choice to bring the other two girls back with them. Part of his decision was based on pure selfishness. He wanted to fuck Missy. Her tight ass called to him on a primal level. He wanted to have it wrapped around his cock and soon.
The other reason for his decision to bring the girls was out of fear that whomever Lukian had encountered in the woods would come after the girls if left unattended. No, he didn’t want anything happening to the feisty one over his shoulder.
Lance had an easier time coaxing Melanie into the van. She’d believed him when he’d finally confessed that her friend was in terrible danger. The little one over Roi’s shoulder hadn’t been so trusting. The harder she kicked at him and dug her nails in his back, the more he wanted to take her to his bed and punish her.
He’d never had a woman respond to his advances with hostility before. This was uncharted territory for him and he liked that.
She’ll come around.
He tossed her in the van and climbed in beside her. Her short dress rode up and over her hips, showing off a hot little pair of pink panties. He let a bit of the wolf up and sniffed to see if he made her wet and was shocked to find that he hadn’t. He was a good looking man and he knew it. Women usually threw themselves at him. This little one didn’t seem interested in him in the least.
His lips curved into a smile when she sat up abruptly and smacked his face for sneaking a peek at her undies.
Yes ma’am, make me mind.
* * * *
Peren ran fast and hard, trying to stay two steps ahead of her attacker. He would tear her to pieces when he got his hands on her, she was sure of it. She jumped high, trying to cross the narrow stream. Her foot slipped out from under her and she came crashing down into the icy cold water. Large, strong hands reached out for her and she took them.
She looked up into the face of her savior and found Lukian staring at her. His lips came down on hers so hard and fast that she couldn’t breathe. She pushed on his massive chest, in an attempt to alert him to the fact that he was choking her, but he didn’t seem to notice. She felt his cock lengthening beneath the thin material of his pants. Breathing seemed secondary to touching him. She moved her hands down and tried to touch him. Howls came from all around her and she jerked away.
“LUKE!”
Her eyes opened and she found herself staring into a pair of royal blue eyes. She blinked twice, thinking it a dream. Then, the events in the woods hit her hard. Her body reacted to the fear and she tried to get up. Her legs quivered and her stomach twisted into a knot. Suddenly feeling faint, she needed some air.
A warm hand stroked her forehead, softly. “No, baby, don’t move. Just rest.”
“Luke?”
He smiled down at her. Why was this man, Luke, calling her baby? And, why did it make her insides want to turn to jello? Why was she dreaming about stroking his cock? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She moved her hand up and touched his black curls. A tear rolled down her cheek, but she knew it wasn’t her own. It was Lukian’s pain that she felt, his sadness had manifested itself in her, causing her to weep for him.
This had happened to her on several occasions in her life. Her father tried to explain that it meant she was capable of being an empath. She didn’t care what it meant, it scared her. She pulled her hand away and felt his overwhelming need to kiss her.
She tipped her head upwards to meet his. Warm lips came down on hers, almost crushing her at first. Her dream flooded back to her and the panic in her rose again. Lukian got control of himself and pushed his tongue gently into her mouth. Heat washed over her, causing her nipples to harden and her body to perspire.
What’s happening to me?
His tongue dove around in her mouth, exploring her, charting areas she hadn’t even known existed. She pushed at his tongue with hers, panting softly, feeling the weight of his body moving over hers, Lukian cupped her face in his large palm and she planted tiny kisses on it, noticing how rough it was. He fanned his fingers out and caressed her face. Peren drew his middle finger into her mouth and sucked softly on it. He pulled it out slowly, but she hurriedly latched onto it again.
L
ukian’s eyes closed and his mouth opened. She knew she had him, but she wasn’t sure what had made her take him. She should still be grieving over Kyle. She shouldn’t be lying under a man she’d just met, thinking about having him drive her body into the bed as he made love to her. No, she certainly shouldn’t be thinking about that at all.
* * * *
A low trickle of laughter surfaced when he caught her thinking about him making love to her. She wasn’t pleased with herself for that and that was a problem. However, the real problem was, that’s exactly what he wanted to do to her. He wanted to take her luscious body, fuck it, mark it and claim it as his.
Lukian looked down into her green eyes and wondered how the lover she still longed for could have left her. Her beauty alone was enough to hold any man close to her and he knew that wasn’t all there was to her. No, Peren Matthews was a complicated young woman. That much he was sure of.
He hated to leave her side, but he wanted to triple-check the security around the safe house. He knew he was anal about it, but the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with was lying there, needing his protection and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t give it.
Spend the rest of my life with? That phrase struck him with some force. He’d had many women in the one hundred and fifty odd years that he’d been alive. He’d never once wanted to claim one as his own, as a mate. Peren made him crave that. To have her walk with him as his immortal soul mate would be the greatest gift ever. He dared not wish for it, fearing that the gods would punish him for being so selfish as to think a woman as perfect as Peren would accept him. It didn’t matter, she made him want to offer her the world regardless of the potential backlash.
He reluctantly pulled away from her and walked towards the bedroom door. Her eyes were closed when he looked back at her. She’d had a long night. What did her friend downstairs say? Now he remembered. It was her twenty-fourth birthday. Over a century separated them age-wise. He wasn’t too concerned with that. He didn’t look a day over thirty. Most people had a hard time believing he was even that old. No, age wouldn’t be the major barrier between them, his condition would.
He’d read her fears as she ran from him in the woods. He knew that werewolves had attacked her more than once now and that one had been responsible for the death of her mother. Peren wouldn’t want to be near him if she knew what he really was. Telling her seemed so unimportant next to touching her.
He walked to the room down the hall from him and tapped on the door lightly. He opened the door slowly and heard the sounds of sex. He looked in to see his field operator, Lance, pumping himself into the back end of Peren’s blonde friend, Melanie. Lance looked over at him and smiled wide as he ran his fingers down the girl’s back. She was too busy holding onto the bedrails, screaming out for Lance to fuck her harder, to even notice Lukian standing there.
Lukian looked down and concentrated on Lance’s thrusts, not out of the need to watch him have sex with her, but out of the need to make sure that Lance was using protection. He was. Lukian backed out of the room, nodding his head softly.
Can’t risk getting a human pregnant, it could kill her.
He’d tried to instill that in his men’s heads from day one. He was the only one in the project that had been born a lycan. One had survived an attack. The rest were man-made. Roi was part wolf, like him. In fact, it had been Lukian’s own DNA injected into Roi. Green was part panther, as was Lance. Wilson was part rat and Jon part tiger. They had most of the bases covered. It was an odd grouping. In nature, these animals would never run together, but in their unit, it worked out well. He was Alpha Male, their Captain. No one questioned him. He’d never really given them a reason to, until Peren.
His team had been brought in to eliminate her. They answered to the highest men in the military and no one else, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that the orders came from there. No, someone with a shit load of money had wanted Peren out of the picture and almost had their way tonight, almost.
Lukian walked down the stairs quietly and listened as Roi and the other girl, Missy, argued in the kitchen. She still wanted to go home and Roi was still trying to convince her that it was too dangerous. He stopped and laughed when he heard Missy call Roi a bastard. Yep, Roi had finally met his match.
He continued down the hall to the basement door. He was pleased with himself for setting up nearly twelve of these types of safe houses around the states. He’d managed to set up more than fifty in foreign countries over the past twenty years. It was always easier to do bizarre things in other countries. Americans, post 9-11, had become more vigilant. Everyone was suspicious of everyone now.
He pushed the door open and headed down to Green’s lab. He turned the corner and found the redheaded man busy at work. Green had his eyes pressed firmly to his microscope, as he babbled to himself.
“Interesting.”
“What’s interesting?” Lukian asked.
Green spun around and shook his head. “Try not to do that, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry. What’s interesting?” He smiled softly. Green had survived an attack by a werepanther almost a hundred years ago, but had never taken to the predator side of the beast. He was easy to sneak up on when he was preoccupied.
Green pulled up a picture on his computer screen and pointed to the cellblocks. “Look here, the target’s…Peren’s,” he corrected himself quickly. “Her DNA is a melting pot. Look,” he said, pulling up another page. “This is normal human DNA…this is normal lycanthrope DNA and here’s hers…notice the extra strings. She’s not human Lukian and she’s not a were either, she’s…” He seemed to be searching for the best way to tell him this.
“She’s what?”
“She seems to be a living and breathing incubator for various strains of supernatural creatures. There are signs of vampire, human, faerie and wolf blood in her. I’m also picking up bits and pieces of cells that I can’t yet identify. I do know that the wolf blood is prominent, I think because of the attack you told me about. She showed me the scars on her ankle. Pretty nasty, she’s lucky she didn’t lose her leg. I’m guessing that having vampire and faerie DNA in her sped up the healing process. That would also account for her throwing out that jolt of energy you felt when she first touched you.” He took a deep breath. “There’s something else.”
Lukian looked at his friend. Why did he suddenly feel like he didn’t want to hear this? “Go ahead,” he said, grudgingly.
“Her father is Dr. Lakeland Matthews, head of Science and Research at…”
Lukian’s stomach dropped. “Oh, God…he was a major contributor to the program until he suddenly went cold turkey,” he thought back, “almost twenty-one years ago.” His mouth was suddenly very dry. “Green, you don’t think that he did this to his own daughter, do you?”
“No. Well, I wouldn’t think so. It’s impossible to do this to someone and not kill them or leave them as a vegetable for the rest of their life. I can’t explain what she is or how she came to be it. I think this happened because of his involvement with the creation of the Immortal Ops, but I don’t think he did it on purpose. At least, I hope that he didn’t do it on purpose.”
“No, he’d better hope not,” Lukian said through gritted teeth.
Chapter 5
Peren sat on the edge of the large bed and pulled her feet up. She was thankful for the tee shirt and sweatpants that Lukian had given her to change into after her shower. Being attacked and then subjected to endless tests from his friend, Green, had left her feeling tired and a little on edge. Green had tried to be quick, but he was the stereotypical man of science, wanting to perform every test possible on her.
She’d tried to rest, but every time she put her head against her pillow she slipped into another nightmare. She couldn’t deal with that right now. She’d had enough with Kyle’s disappearance and the attempt on her life. She had wanted to call and let her father know that she was okay, but Lukian had thought it was best that she an
d her friends just lay low for a while. After spending some time watching Lukian and the men he called friends, it didn’t take her long to figure out that they were some sort of paramilitary group. She’d grown up around enough talk of government covert operations to make her almost immune to it, almost.
A cool brush of energy prickled over her and she knew that Captain Lukian was headed back up the stairs to her room. She turned to the door and watched it open slowly. He poked his head in quietly, obviously expecting to find her asleep. His blue eyes narrowed as he saw her sitting up.
“You should be resting.”
“I feel fine. I’m a fast healer…always have been.”
“You have no idea,” he said so quietly that she almost missed it.
She turned her head away from him. Staring at his muscular arms and wide shoulders made her mind wander to thoughts of sex with him. Right now, though, she needed to be thinking about who would want to put an end to her life and why.
Lukian stepped closer to her and her eyes traveled the length of his body. The man looked like he could bench press a small country. Thinking of him using those powerful arms to support himself while he pressed his cock deep into her made her blush.
What the hell’s wrong with me? I’ve never felt like this for a man before.
Her eyes met his and, for a second, she thought for sure that she could see his soul and it was a perfect match for her own.
It had taken her almost a year to find Kyle remotely sexy. His looks weren’t the problem. Most girls on campus drooled over him. The science department had had a boom in class registration since he’d come on to instruct two courses on zoology. No, his looks hadn’t been the problem; it had been lack of interest on her part. She’d gone through high school and the greater part of college and remained a virgin. She’d dated lots of men, but never found one sexually appealing. A year after her father first introduced her to his new hire, Kyle, she suddenly found him so irresistible that at times she could scarcely keep her hands off him.