by Amber Kallyn
Primitive instincts rose, making him shake.
The need to claim.
He groaned in surrender when the rush inside him overwhelmed him entirely.
He gave in to it all, unable to resist the call between them any longer.
Though he hesitated at the rise of warmer things twining inside him, though he worried a little at the connection humming stronger between them, Matt could no longer stop.
He had to have her.
Now.
At last.
He drew his palms over her velvety skin, down her back. Molten heat filled his veins, forcing a ragged breath from his lungs.
Anca shivered under his touch, crying out delightedly when he grabbed her delightful ass. Kissed her harder.
Tasting.
Needing.
She moaned against his mouth, tried to draw even closer.
He throbbed in aching anticipation. Before he lost it all and took her here and now—up against a tree, on the ground, his lust didn't care—he stepped back, giving them both a moment to breathe. To try to think.
Desire ringed Anca's smoky eyes with crimson lust. The tips of her white fangs glinted between her reddened lips.
She followed him, step for step, stealing the little air he'd managed from the distance, and kissed him again.
Greedy. Hungry. Hot and wet.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Matt's aura blazed with lusty desire.
An answering need had risen within Anca, roaring through her. She pressed against his hard body and forced him back until a thick tree trunk stopped him.
Kissing him, tasting him, having him touch her, drove her impulses. She couldn't stop.
Didn't want to stop.
This man made her feel so very much. From anger and aggravation, to hot melting desire. And worse, a flutter in her heart.
The stunning connection between them blazed, all encompassing.
She grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and jerked it from his jeans. She shoved it up, revealing his muscled stomach. His chest. It was a scramble of tangled hands to rip it over his head.
Then his strong arms closed around her once more. He drew her close, naked skin to naked skin. Matt devoured her mouth, nipping at her lower lip, her tongue. She drank deep of his whiskey taste.
An urgency pushed her harder. She wanted more of him. And she didn't want to wait any longer.
The top button of his jeans slid undone between her fingers. She trailed a hand over his rippled stomach.
From deep inside her came a demanding need to join with him. A rush of irresistible hunger. She moaned softly, heat turning her muscles weak.
He drew back an inch.
Their breathing came ragged and heavy. Her head spun wildly.
"Anca." Matt nipped along her jaw, then licked the line of her throat. He eased her back another step to merely look at her. "You are beautiful, you know that?"
She didn't really think of herself as such.
A Judge. A warrior. Romani.
Beauty was a small surface thing, and one she used to her benefit, to get her job done. She put on an act of youthful innocence to force people into underestimating her.
Matt tipped her head back until she met his honeyed gaze. "What's wrong? Is there something bad about calling you beautiful?" His brow quirked up.
"No. I'm just not used to hearing things like that, I guess."
Shadows crossed his face. He kissed her with soft butterfly brushes of his lips on hers. "That's a shame. It's something you should hear more often."
A realization dawned. That she didn't have to act or pretend around him. She'd unconsciously stopped putting on her usual show shortly after they began working together.
When exactly?
She didn't know.
But she'd let her guard down. She'd let her defenses fall too.
Her heart thunked hard and heavy. Emotion swirled through her soul. Lit between the two of them.
"You're thinking too much." Matt brushed his mouth over her temple. "If calling you beautiful makes you overworried, I best not describe how deliciously sexy you are." The reverence in his voice pushed the ability to think, or worry, far, far away.
All she managed to utter was, "Thank you?"
His eyes lit and he tipped her backward, over his arm. "You have nothing to thank me for. Yet." A daring grin curled his mouth irresistibly. "But Lady, you will soon."
He nuzzled the valley between her breasts, brushed his scruffed jaw over her skin. In a blink, Matt whirled them around and leaned her back against the tree.
Cupping her breasts, he lavished first one nipple, then the other, until they throbbed achingly. His every caresses left her gasping for air on panted breaths.
"So sweet." His voice was a husky rumble sending vibrations over her skin.
She slid her fingers through his hair urging him on.
Matt nipped her skin with one of his fangs, softly to not draw blood. Pulsing need rushed along her nerves. When he drew a nipple into his hot mouth, she moaned, hands fisting in his dark locks. He chuckled, the sound more sensuous vibrations.
He danced a hand over her stomach, then lower, teasing between her thighs with flitting touches. Matt watched her, heavy emotion darkening his eyes from honey to coffee. A thick band of red encircled his irises.
Something inside her melted into a puddle beneath the onslaught of his expressive gaze and his overpowering desires. Her heart thumped heavily, her breasts rose and fell with each raggedly drawn breath.
Overwhelmed, she let herself fall into all he made her feel.
Matt trailed light kisses down her stomach. Laying his hands on the inside of her thighs, he knelt before her and nudged her legs apart.
With a predatory smile, he tasted her, his mouth and hands wicked on her flesh. Weak-kneed, Anca could only hold onto his shoulders as he made love to her with his mouth.
Wave after wave of pleasure lapped at her, until he drove her over.
Her cries of release shattered the lake's still and silent twilight.
Matt grinned. "Definitely sexy. Definitely delicious."
Still trembling, Anca shoved at his jeans. She pulled his zipper down with a raspy zzz. His eyes slid half closed. She felt her every move watched, felt his shock and awe. Her own.
She slipped her hand beneath the waist of his jeans. Under silky boxers. Crisp hair tickled her palm. She caressed his velvety hardness, curled her fingers around him.
Matt groaned, a ruble of sound that made her tremble. He pressed into her touch, kissing her hungrily until her head spun.
Wrenching away, Matt stepped back, leaving her supported by the tree.
He jerked off his hiking boots, then his jeans and silky boxers.
Standing as naked as she, Matt allowed her to look him over. From head to toe, the man was made with a warrior's steely strength.
And yet when he returned to her, it was with gentleness.
Matt laid her on the soft ground. Rose over her. She stared into his eyes, realizing the trembling she felt wasn't just her own.
The emotion and desire blazing between them was overpowering.
Consuming them both.
Matt thrust deep inside her. Magic exploded around them, raining a shower of sparks over their skin.
The budding threads of connection between them solidified in a knotted weave.
Feeling Matt on a level she'd never experienced with anyone, Anca took him in, welcoming him deep. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled his mouth to hers.
He kissed her so sweetly, opposite the driving thrusts of his hips.
He captured her gaze, neither of them able to look away.
She felt so much tender emotion from him, from inside herself, it settled over her in a strange sense of vulnerability. As if on some level, like their understanding of one another's painful pasts, she also understood the softer things so clear in his look, his touch.
Then he kissed her again, scattering such thoughts, pushing
her to live in the moment, in the wickedly wonderful way he made her body sing.
Another orgasm rushed through Anca, breaking down her every last defense. The rosy warmth of deepening bonds washed over her every sense. Matt stiffened above her with a low guttural cry of release, holding her tight, close, protected.
Her heart near bursting, Anca couldn't control herself, between the combined rush of emotion and the waves of pleasure.
Her last remaining shields fell.
For him.
Her deepest magics exploded, sparking the air around them.
Matt froze.
Passion disappeared beneath a sudden wave of coldness.
He stiffened, inch by inch. His hands tightened, until his fingers dug into her skin almost painfully.
Matt drew away, leaving Anca wrapped in ice.
With sharp, controlled movements, he got to his feet. For a long minute, he silently glared down at her.
She scrabbled to sit up. Couldn't look away. The cold penetrated her, numbing the sudden wound.
She knew exactly what he'd felt. What conclusion he'd come to. It was there in the way he looked at her. Like she'd just become a stranger.
And a despised one at that.
It was the look she'd known would come. The one she'd begun to dread. But she hadn't expected the pain ripping at the soft things waking inside her.
His gaze red fury, Matt demanded hoarsely, "Tell me I misread that magic just now." His tone turned almost pleading. "Tell me you're not a Judge."
She could only look at him, horror churning her stomach.
An achy bleakness turned their earlier passion to poison.
Matt grabbed his jeans and jerked them on, then cradled his shoes and the rest of his clothes against his stomach, hunched over and shaking.
He backed away, never looking away from her, as if she'd suddenly attack. When he spoke again, rage filled his shout. "Tell me you're not a fucking Judge, damn it!" His accusing gaze pierced her.
Anca tried to speak. Had to swallow past a tightness in the back of her throat. When she managed words, they were a near inaudible whisper. "I cannot."
Shutters blanked Matt's expression. Shirtless, his jeans riding low on his hips, the button and zipper still undone, he somehow pulled a cloak of righteous fury over himself.
For the first time in more than four centuries as a Judge, Anca regretted that part of herself. She wasn't quite certain what had been happening between them.
But it was over now.
And the depths of the chasm opening between them, a matching pit inside her, were startling in their enormity.
Though neither of them moved, distance grew.
Suddenly self conscious, Anca crossed her arms over her breasts and half turned away. The day lost all warmth, leaving only a lonely wind to whisper around her.
Matt's growl was soft, but empty. "You knew how I felt about Judges," he spat the last word. "Why would you lie about it? How could you hide such a thing? From me?"
Unable to deal with the pain trying to fill her, Anca called on centuries of training, of neutrality. She straightened and gave him a cold look devoid of the emotions and feelings rioting inside her. "Your King told me not to inform you."
And once she'd gotten to know Matt, she'd understood how he'd close her out, permanently, when he learned the truth. A fact that, as time had passed, she'd stopped thinking, worrying, over. Forgotten about with everything else happening, so swiftly, so unavoidably.
Matt's sneer was cutting. "Since when do you follow the orders of anyone but your damned Council?" His eyes turned impossibly hard, angry.
Gritting her teeth against the things stampeding through her, Anca struggled to close her feelings away. Otherwise, the apology on the tip of her tongue just might slip out.
She would not apologize for who she was. Nor did she like being on the defensive. Biting back the many things she wanted to say, but could not, she replied just as coldly, "It kept you close enough that I could investigate you, didn't it?" Never mind that she'd come to enjoy his company. Yearn for it. For him.
Matt's shocked, hurt expression nearly undid her. "Investigate me?"
"You have a traitor in the clan." She was forced to glance away before she broke down. Did something stupid. Like cry. "I owe you no allegiance, therefore I kept my secrets."
Să te ia dracu. The devil take it all. She was a Judge, here for the Magic Council. Not for this man, no matter the things he made her feel. She'd forgotten that somewhere along the way. And this was what she got for it.
For letting her shields down. For coming to care about this man.
Anca desperately clenched at anything that didn't hurt. The numbness. The anger at anyone causing her to doubt herself.
His expression turned harsher. "All this time and you'd hide what you are? You'd let me—" He bit off his words.
Let him what? She yearned to know what he'd been about to say. Not that it mattered to her.
Not in the slightest.
Stiffening, he drew down a mantle of inner strength. His aura spat waves of anger. "You'd let me fuck you, knowing how I feel about your kind?"
"My kind?" She stood up. "My kind just saved you, your town, your people. But hey, we're all evil monsters, right?"
Shock crossed his face at the illogic of his statement.
She stared him down. "You really are an idiot, you know that?"
His eyes flared wide and she read the war between hatred and the possibility that had been rising between them. A connection now severed.
After a long, tense moment of silence, Anca said, "I'm getting dressed."
Matt didn't reply.
She moved behind a few bushy trees where she'd left her clothes hanging, and slipped them on. Her thoughts sinuously twisted and looped and knotted. Around things she didn't know how to deal with.
All she could do right now was block it out.
Force it away.
She gritted her teeth and straightened. There was nothing to say, except goodbye.
Anca strode back to the beach, ready to tell him she no longer needed his help.
Matt was gone.
He'd left her. Without another word.
Sinking a fang into her tongue, she concentrated on the pain—the coppery taste in her mouth hid lingering hints of male and whiskey—trying to convince herself that nothing else viciously hurt.
Certainly not a suddenly hollow spot in her chest.
She didn't need Matt.
She'd learned to not need anyone on the day she'd been forced to watch her young sister, and the last of her family, fully descend into the bloodlust of a child vampire.
The same day Anca broke her promise to protect and save the girl who'd once turned to her with love.
She knew why such memories, usually locked away tight, returned with such ferocity. The weakness rampaging through her from Matt's rejection held a touch of the same desperate agony she'd felt back then.
She hated the idea. That he could mean so much to her. It wasn't possible.
So his leaving was for the best. The ties that had, for such a short time, lit between them, now lay dull and lifeless.
She couldn't deal with this.
Not right now.
There was a job to do. People to protect. As she'd spent her life trying to accomplish. Always unable to fully assuage her guilt for failing those dearest her.
Anca walked back to camp, barely seeing the earth spirits, their movements slow, their magic dim, as if they too could feel the encompassing emotions trying to swallow her up.
Feelings she'd learned in the past to ignore. To push back until they faded.
Just as she'd do this time, until she could no longer feel the pain.
***
Matt strode through the forest, kicking at the rocks and sticks in his path. Without thought, he rubbed at his chest. Maddened, he wanted only to rampage, to decimate the trees around him, reduce them to splinters.
His mind replayed ov
er and over, everything they'd just done, reminding him far too well how Anca fit perfectly in his arms. How she'd tasted of ambrosia. Being inside her had felt right. As if she was where he belonged.
Reality crashed down once more. The stinging buzz of a Judge's power continued to bite at his skin.
A damned Judge.
The spearing ache in his heart flared icily.
Why did she have to be the one thing he despised above all else?
He kicked another rock. It whizzed through the air, then ricocheted off a tree, leaving a patch of white in the bark.
How could she, and his King, have kept such a thing from him?
Shaking his head so hard his vertebrae popped, Matt strode faster, not caring his steps echoed with every thud of boots on dirt, with every crinkling leaf he destroyed.
She was a damn Judge.
His time as a vampire had taught him the horrors of the Arcaine. And their supposed officials, making Laws their executioners happily enforced.
She might look beautiful and innocent, but she'd surely killed. Many.
Perhaps countless.
How many of them hadn't deserved to die?
And investigating him? As if he'd ever betray someone. He'd never keep heartbreaking secrets to himself, either. He wouldn't lie just to get a job done.
The way she'd been acting since her arrival had been a ruse. Perhaps everything she'd told him had been lies. Including how the Council hadn't actually sanctioned the unforgiveable actions of Coronado or the other Judges gone Rogue in Spain.
In reality, Anca didn't care about anyone in town. She didn't care about the clan.
She sure as hell didn't care about him.
The little air in his lungs whooshed out and he couldn't draw in another breath. For a long moment, he struggled against crushing weight.
He had to get this under control. There was no time to be distracted by a damn Judge. She'd finish up her job, kill anyone else who got in her way, and leave as abruptly as she'd shown up. Days. A few weeks at the most. She'd be gone.
He'd never see her again.
So why didn't the thought bring comfort?
Anca was a Judge.
Therefore she was nothing to him.
After a few deep breaths, he managed to shove it all back enough to think. He grasped at gossamer strands of coherence, focusing on anything that didn't hurt.