by Eileen Wilks
“It’s easily proved. If I reached for you right now, put my hand on you, you would be mine. In spite of all you have to lose, you wouldn’t be able to refuse me. Your need is too great.”
“That—that—” She managed to tear her eyes away and was able to move again. To pace. “You’ve gone beyond arrogance to ugly.”
“You can’t settle. Something’s eating you from the inside. I can smell your arousal each time you walk past me.”
She went pale, then flushed. “Then breathe through your mouth, dammit. That’s just—it’s intrusive. You have no business—”
“I can’t help it. No more than you can. To be chosen is to have many choices taken away. They say that other choices arrive, some sweet, some terrible. It’s a rare thing, to be chosen.” He was bitter, not seductive. “You don’t want to believe, but you must.”
“I don’t believe. I don’t worship your Lady, and I don’t think you’re in love with me.”
“That’s as well. The primary bond is between our bodies, not our minds and hearts. Though I like you very much, Lily,” he said with a smile as sad as it was breathtaking. “I admire and respect you as well. We have much to build on.”
She couldn’t say those things back to him. Not because they were untrue. Because she didn’t dare. “I don’t think God hands out a sexual geas. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? Not a romantic bond, but some sort of divine geas.”
“Tell me to leave.”
Her feet faltered.
“If I’m wrong, if you are free to choose, tell me to go.”
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.
“Two days ago, you had a dizzy spell you didn’t understand.”
Her head was whirling now.
“It passed within moments, fortunately. Because I realized what was happening and moved closer to you. There are limits to how far we can be separated. I’d surpassed those limits, and we both suffered.”
Her heart beat frantically. “I’m bespelled,” she whispered.
“Can a sensitive be bespelled?”
She shook her head. “But I must be.”
“You aren’t thinking straight right now,” he said gently, stepping closer, “but that isn’t your fault. I’ve the advantage of having had time to absorb the change in my condition. You haven’t. You feel you’re spinning wildly, coming apart while standing still. It will eat you alive, Lily. It’s eating me alive. We have to touch.” And he did.
His hands were large, smooth for a man’s—did he heal any calluses before they formed? He fanned his fingers out along along the sides of her face. She felt each finger clearly. She didn’t move. Her mind was washed white of thought, of possibilities, of anything other than the rightness of his touch.
He moved closer, bringing his head down as if he would kiss her. He didn’t. Instead, his breath washed over her mouth. “Breath to breath,” he whispered. “Sweet, so sweet to breathe you in.”
The air itself had turned rich. Breathing was heady, intoxicating. Her skin was alive and her body ached. But one thing remained missing. “Why can’t I feel you? When we touch, why don’t I touch your magic?”
“Ah. That must have confused you. I would guess that our magics mesh so smoothly you can’t touch the difference.”
She jolted. “I don’t have magic.”
“Sweetheart.” He abandoned her face to gather her close. His clothes were damp, his body hard and hot. “What do you think it means to be a sensitive, except that you’re Gifted? A very rare Gift, but still a Gift.”
Later. She’d think about what he’d said later. How could she think with his body touching hers? Her skin seemed to vibrate like the skin of a drum. And his face, so near hers, the sheer fascination of it . . . She traced his eyebrow with one finger. “I’m pretty much scared shitless, you know.”
He answered with the sudden flash of a grin, so much less seductive than his smile. So much more dangerous. He was real when he grinned. “You do delight me.”
“That’s great. I’m scared, and you’re delighted.”
He shook his head, his grin fading. “We have so much to learn about each other.” He ran his hands up her sides. “Later. I need you now, my nadia, my only one.” He crushed his mouth down on hers.
Everything in her leaped to meet him. His taste—yes, she’d tasted him before, and she needed that, needed him—
A terrible, unearthly howl filled the air. She jerked back, eyes wide. He jolted and tilted his head up, eyes closed, his chest heaving. “Mother help me. Your cat wants in.”
Oh. Oh, yes, of course, she thought, leaning her head on his chest, trying to capture her breath. That was definitely Harry, howling his challenge. “He smells you.”
“Yes.” He sounded grim. “You love this cat?”
“Of course.”
“Of course.” He sighed. “A dog would have been so much easier. And he’s male, too. You had better let him in.”
“But—” But I can’t let go, can’t just stop, I hurt with wanting. Couldn’t you—couldn’t we . . . She shook her head, denying the image that had flashed through it. Her body mocked her, telling her clearly what she needed. Him. In her. Now. “I’m losing my mind.”
“You’ll regain it, but not until we join. First, though—” He grimaced, dropping his arms as he stepped back. “I must meet your cat.”
She swallowed. She had to let Harry in. The neighbors would complain, maybe throw things at him. She didn’t want him hurt. He was still howling, that rising and falling combat song of his. “I don’t think meeting him is a good idea. I’ll put him in the bedroom.”
“No.” Rule shook his head. “He needs to defend you. Let him in.”
“You won’t—”
“I won’t hurt him.”
He might hurt you, she thought, and grimaced. That was ridiculous. Rule fought other werewolves, for crying out loud. He could handle a cat. Even a seventeen-pounder with major attitude problems. Couldn’t he?
She glanced over her shoulder at Rule as she reached the door. He crouched in the center of the room, knees flexed, arms ready. He was taking Harry’s challenge seriously.
Maybe he should. “Um—his name’s Dirty Harry.”
Rule’s eyebrows rose. “You named your cat for a fictional cop who blasts the bad guys?”
“It fits. Though his definition of bad guys is pretty inclusive.” She turned the lock and opened the door.
Harry shot in—straight at Rule.
They moved too fast, cat and man both, for Lily’s eyes to track them properly. She did see Harry leap. Rule seemed to translate from one spot to another without touching all the places between—something she’d seen Harry do at times. Then Harry was crouched a couple feet away, ears flat and tail lashing.
“That’s right,” Rule murmured, not taking his eyes off the cat. “You’ve the right to protect, but I won’t hurt her. You don’t wish to share, either, but that you will have to do.”
Harry leaped again. Rule ducked—and had a cat on his back. There was another blur of motion, this one ending with Rule rolling on the floor, Harry separated and spitting.
Blood dripped down Rule’s face. Lily took a quick step forward.
“Stay back,” Rule snapped without looking at her.
She halted. Man and cat stared at each other out of narrowed eyes while she tried to figure out why she was following Rule’s orders. And what, exactly, was going on.
Abruptly Harry gave one last growl and sat back on his haunches, looking away from Rule.
Rule straightened and turned his head, as if fascinated by the wall.
Harry stood, twitched his tail once, and stalked over to her, his fur still bristled. He stropped her leg once, meowed, and headed for the kitchen.
“He . . .” She swallowed what might have been laughter. “He wants me to feed him.”
“He needs to assert his place with you,” Rule said, still studying the wall.
“This is weird.” But she foll
owed Harry into the kitchen, where he waited by his dish, glaring at her. She fed him and went back in the living room, shaking her head. “I’m obeying a cat and a sometimes-wolf. I don’t know what I’m doing. Obviously I’ve lost my mind. You’re still bleeding.” There were two crimson tracks along his cheek. One had bled down his neck. The other stopped just below his eye. She swallowed. “Did you let him do that? He barely missed your eye.”
“Don’t belittle your champion’s skills,” he said wryly. “I let him do nothing.”
“You knew he would attack you when I opened the door.”
He shrugged. “I allowed him to set the terms of our negotiation. The claws in my face were entirely his idea, however.”
She started laughing. “That’s a negotiation?”
“Cats negotiate differently than humans.”
“I should get something for that cut. Some antibiotic ointment.” But she moved toward him, not the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The pull was so strong. “I didn’t expect you to like cats.”
“I respect them.”
She stopped in front of him.
He touched her hair. His eyes were hot and dark with need. “Nadia. I can’t wait any longer.”
She swallowed. “I’m going to do this, aren’t I?”
“We,” he said, and wrapped his hand in her hair. “We are going to do this; yes.”
“Then do it,” she said, suddenly fierce. “Quit talking and do it. Put yourself in me.”
As if she’d hit him, he gasped. Then his mouth came down on hers, hard.
She clutched him with both hands, digging her fingers into the flesh beneath the damp T-shirt, and hung on. He ran his hands up her back, then down, cupping her butt and holding her hard against him. She moaned.
He had a scent, too, she realized—one even her human nose could find when she nuzzled his neck. A wild scent, mingling man and damp cloth and something else, something indefinably Rule. It made her crazy. She bit him on the column of his throat. “Now.”
He groaned. One of his hands moved. He unzipped his jeans and sprang free, then tugged at her sweatpants and panties. She stepped out of them, dizzy with need. Shaking.
“It’s all right,” he told her, and put his hands beneath her butt and lifted her off the ground. “Put your legs around me, Lily. Yes, like that.” He shuddered when she obeyed, opening herself to him. “It will be all right,” he repeated. Still standing, he slid inside.
She made a noise, the sound of something breaking open—something private inside her being breached. “Ahh,” she said then, clutching him, squeezing her eyes closed and seeing white, not dark behind her lids—swirling white.
He was thick. Long and hot and thick inside her.
Then he began walking, still lodged inside her. The sensation was incredible. Her eyes flew open. “What, you do it walking?”
He may have meant the stretch of his mouth for a grin, but strain made it a grimace. “The chair. I can’t make it to your bed.”
I love you. She almost said it and was appalled. Where had that come from? Because he was inside her? Because she was a fool, an idiot, unable to tell the difference between—
“This will be crowded,” he said, looking at her chair and a half. “It’s made for snuggling, not fucking.”
And he ought to know. He’d probably fucked more women than she’d shaken hands with men.
“What is it?” His eyes were suddenly fierce. “Where did you go? You aren’t with me anymore.”
She stared back. “If I were an inch more with you, you’d be inside my uterus instead of rubbing up against it.”
He groaned. And sank to his knees with her riding him, causing his cock to move inside her, rubbing places that had never felt quite that sensation before. “Hold on. Hold onto me,” he said, and eased her onto her back. And began to move.
Driven by the flexing rhythm of his hips, she flung her head back, dug her fingers into his shoulders, and met his thrusts with her own. It was a wild ride. Her need, and his, made it a short one. Climax ripped through her, bucking her body and blanking her mind. He cried out.
When she drifted back to herself moments later, her face was wet. Her name, she realized. It had been her name he’d called when he came.
Why would that make her cry?
Rule was sprawled on top of her, his head next to hers, his breath stirring her hair. He’d caught himself on his forearms as he collapsed, so not all of his weight was on her. He was still inside her . . . and still hard.
“Lily?” He propped himself up on one elbow. “Ah, cara, don’t. What is this?” He pressed his mouth to the corner of her eye, then licked at the tears. He kissed her mouth, his tongue soft, persuasive. His lips said to trust him. To let him inside, all the way inside. “Don’t cry. Please don’t.”
“I don’t . . .” Her breath caught as he shifted his hips. “I don’t cry. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Is that”—she pushed up with her hips, demonstrating—“normal for you?”
“Very little is normal for me right now. Or for you, which is why the tears, perhaps.”
“I guess.” She wanted him still. She’d just hit a home run for the record books, and the need was already building. “If this was supposed to clear my mind, it didn’t work.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Then we’d better try again. See if we can get it right.”
“I know the male answer to everything is sex, but—oh!”
He’d bent and was suckling her through her T-shirt. After a moment he looked up. “Naked would be better.”
“Yes.” She ran her hands up his back. “Yes, it would.”
Thirty minutes later she was flat on her back in her bed. Rule lay beside her on his back. They were both breathing hard, which gave her some satisfaction, considering the advantage his nature conferred. “I think . . . I can safely say”—she had to stop and drag in air—“that yes, naked is better.”
He chuckled and rolled onto his side, propping himself up to look at her. “Mmm.” He drew his hand along her ribs, down her hip. “You are as close to perfection as it’s possible to get without boredom.”
She turned her head to look at him. “You couldn’t possibly.”
“No?” He quirked a brow at her. “I’ve heard that the first month for a Chosen pair can be . . . strenuous.”
“I’m not sure I buy all this Chosen stuff. There’s a bond, a pull, something. I don’t deny that. But you might have some of it wrong.”
“Perhaps. I believe that everything I’ve told you is fact, but this . . . what’s happened to us . . . it’s rare. I don’t know all there is to know about it.”
She fell silent. She ought to ask questions, and part of her wanted to do that. To interrogate him, break down his story—or find out the truth of her condition.
She didn’t want to know. Lily closed her eyes, tried to close off her thoughts. She was in bed with a man who was still a stranger to her in many ways. But worse was that she was a stranger to herself.
She needed to finish what she’d begun, find the answers to Carlos Fuentes’s death. To Therese’s. She was a cop. It wasn’t just what she did; it was what she was. But a cop without a badge—What did that make her? “All in all, it’s been a hell of a day.”
“For both of us. These charges against you . . . we weren’t lovers before, as they claim, but we are now. How will that affect you?”
She turned her head. The pillows were on the floor, as were most of the covers, so she looked straight at his face with nothing between them. “I’m probably sunk.”
His face twisted. “I’m truly sorry.”
If he was being straight with her, he’d had no choice, either. He was as trapped as she was, as unable to undo any of it. All she could do was go forward from where she was now. And now . . . it felt so right to lie here with him. Necessary.
And if that bothered her, she’d deal with it tomorrow.
“Distract me,” she said and pressed a kiss to his s
houlder, running her hand down his belly.
His breath sucked in.
Already the pleasure was rising in her again, drawn from her as easily as the sun draws mist from water. “You can’t make any of it go away,” she said, “but maybe, for awhile, I can forget.” She nipped the side of his throat. “Maybe we both can.”
EIGHTEEN
THEY were coming for him again.
Cullen lay on his back on the hard floor, picking up the vibrations from their footsteps with his body. He didn’t get up. They thought he couldn’t sense anything outside his cage, which was damned near true. Glass was miserable to work through, being all but impermeable to magic, and the walls and ceiling of his cage were heavy, tempered glass in a steel frame. The floor was rock, but with a mesh of power beneath it that resisted his seeking with painful efficiency. That mesh was tied to the nearby node, and the node was keyed to Her. The Old One these crazies worshiped.
Desperation can be a real mother, though. His had given birth to patience bordering on obsession. And he’d know about obsessions, wouldn’t he?
They’d kept him alive at first for the novelty factor. A werewolf sorcerer? It wasn’t supposed to be possible. He’d performed for her holiness three times now—the first time while in a great deal of pain.
The pain wasn’t so bad now, but her staff kept her safe, damn it and her, while he did his tricks. It held more raw power than he’d ever seen, more than enough to control him. But she wasn’t herself a sorcerer. She had power, vast power—and little more idea of how to use it than a child playing in the cockpit of a 747.
They needed him. They didn’t trust him but wanted badly to use him. He’d had little trouble convincing them of his essential venality. “Ask anyone who knows me,” he’d told her. “I’m a selfish sod. I can be bought—but money isn’t my price.”
There were disadvantages to having lived a thoroughly selfish life, though. No one would look for him. Max would grumble when he didn’t show up to dance, but he wouldn’t be alarmed. Rule—
The creak of the door had him sitting up. “She’ll talk to you now.”
That was the guard he’d dubbed the Hulk. He was big and stupid, and he had a temper . . . which, unfortunately, Cullen sometimes couldn’t resist tweaking. It was so damnably boring here.