Irritating shifter.
The charming edge to the smile he tossed at her said he was doing it on purpose, luring her gaze to his body and knowing it would stir the passion he had unleashed in her when they had kissed, desire that was becoming harder to resist.
It became almost impossible when he stuffed the tank top into his pack, zipped it closed, slung the pack over his shoulder and stalked towards her, his charming smile holding steady. He slid his right arm around her waist and hauled her against him, so there wasn’t a point where they weren’t touching.
Iolanthe averted her gaze as heat flared white-hot in her veins, awakening a fierce need to kiss the smile off his sensual lips.
It didn’t help.
She ended up staring at his bare chest and his throat. Her fangs itched and saliva pooled in her mouth.
Gods, she was hungry.
He smelled so good.
She stared at the pulse ticking on the left side of his throat below the strong straight line of his jaw. It called to her and she pressed closer to him, lost in the need rising within her. Heat rolled off him, his earthy scent filling her senses, evoking memories of how his blood had tasted. Powerful. Potent.
She mustered her strength and closed her eyes, shutting out the temptation before her.
She couldn’t bite him.
Because one bite was all it would take.
It would trigger the bonding process between them.
It would change her entire world.
CHAPTER 13
Kyter shifted a pile of twigs and leaf litter with his boot, clearing the corner of the paved area to one side of the ruins of Jupiter’s temple in Pompeii. The full moon cast his shadow out long ahead of him, over the high pale stone wall formed by the large rectangular base of the temple, and threw the world into hues of blues and blacks.
He was glad that it was full. The new moon played havoc with his demon genes and he didn’t want to have to worry about that side of himself emerging tonight. He wanted to enjoy this moment he had found himself in with Iolanthe.
She worked at the front end of the roofless temple above him, prowling like a shadow between the ruined columns, her footsteps silent on the white stone.
When she had teleported him to Pompeii this morning, they had toured the site, locating the temple. She had asked if he had a place to stay, and he had told her that he would find a quiet spot to hide out rather than heading back to his rented villa and would then play tourist for the day while the site was open, and conceal himself again when it closed. She had pressed him not to do anything without her, a flicker of fear in her striking violet eyes, and he had promised that he wouldn’t and hadn’t tried to stop her when she had teleported, leaving him alone.
He had used the day to put the site to memory, checking every building in case there was another place where the item might be hidden and learning all about life in Pompeii from the audio guide he had acquired.
He hadn’t missed Iolanthe’s reaction to what he had said when she had first mentioned the Capitolium.
He was no scholar and had never pretended to be one, but he was damned if he was going to let his lack of knowledge about ancient history tarnish his female’s opinion of him. He had covered the entire site while listening to the audio guide, had read a guidebook he had purchased from front cover to back during a break for lunch at the café, and had then gone around the whole site again.
He was a quick study and had already picked up a few handy facts about the buildings and life in Pompeii that he could whip out at any appropriate moment to impress her and change her opinion of him, hopefully erasing how disappointed she had been in him yesterday.
When he had finished stuffing as much knowledge into his head as would stick, he had switched his focus to studying the roofless temple they were here to explore.
The Capitolium.
The front end of the rectangular temple was open, with broken columns lining three sides and a wall running across the middle of the raised platform. That wall formed one side of an enclosed area that filled the rest of the temple’s base. He had spent hours staring at the temple and the single gated entrance that led under the base, trying to figure out where the temple hid the secret he needed to find.
They needed to find.
He was beginning to understand that this item was extremely important to her too.
When she had returned at nightfall, he had smelled her scent on the breeze and had made his way back to the temple, finding her already at work. She had greeted him with a shy smile that had made him forget about pressing her for information on why she needed the artefact and had listened intently as she had issued him instructions before she had turned her focus to searching the main area of the temple.
Every time he saw her, she grew even more beautiful.
Tonight, she wore her long dark hair tied in a ponytail and had dressed all in black, from her tight combat trousers tucked into her boots to her camisole that plunged low enough to reveal a modest amount of cleavage. Her ears weren’t pointed, a trick elves employed to make themselves blend in with the human world. They could adapt to their surroundings. In her case, her ears transformed to appear human and her eyes changed to a stunning green flecked with gold.
She had kept her eyes violet tonight.
Even the moon couldn’t steal their colour. They were bright, vivid despite the cold light. Entrancing.
Kyter forced his focus back to his work, because thinking about how beautiful she was had him itching to leap up to where she worked, pull her into his arms and kiss her before she had a chance to protest.
He didn’t doubt that she would respond and return the kiss, but it would harm his progress with her. She was beginning to trust him. She was beginning to relax around him, revealing herself to him. He finally felt as if the bridge he had burned between them was restoring itself, the damage slowly reversing, giving him another shot at things.
He would do everything right this time.
Starting with winning her trust by showing her that they could share the artefact.
He just had to find it first.
Iolanthe had informed him that there would be a chamber beneath the temple, used to store sacrificial items and offerings. That was the gated area. He had agreed when she had said it seem like too obvious a hiding place for something and if the item they were searching for had been down there, it had most likely been found already. They had checked it out and had turned up nothing.
He still wanted to yank the iron gate open and take another look inside. Only his promise that they would investigate the rest of the temple before dawn was stopping him. He hoped that Iolanthe was right and the item was hidden elsewhere, in a secret place, one not obvious to the archaeologists who worked on the ancient site.
In front of the temple steps to his left, the area had been laid with grass and a barrier erected around it, a mixture of brick wall and iron fences. Behind him where he stood to one side of the temple, low square plinths lined the edge of the paved area, a wide gravel path beyond them. Three white columns stood precariously supporting a piece of another structure. Iolanthe had taken a break earlier in the evening to sit at the edge of the temple base above him and point out several things to him, saying what they had once been. He hadn’t taken any of it in, and not because he had already read about it in his book.
He had been too transfixed by the sight of her bathed in pure moonlight, her eyes sparkling as she talked about the site, her passion for the city and her work overflowing in them. She talked animatedly about this place, and with an air of authority and a frightening amount of enthusiasm.
When she had hurried away from him, eager to continue her exploration of the temple ruins, Kyter had concluded that his mate was a walking history book, and that he found it endearing in a strange way. It made him smile.
Maybe it was her passion about the subject and her work. He was passionate about his business and could talk the hind legs off a donkey if someone asked hi
m about it, telling them every detail about running Underworld. They probably thought those details were mundane, but they were important to him.
This work was important to her.
He leaped up onto the base of the temple, easily clearing the six-foot-plus height to land quietly on his feet between two broken columns.
“Nothing down there but the chamber.” His mission had been to search for possible false walls or stones that could be moved and something could be hidden behind them. He had walked around the entire base of the temple, using his heightened vision and sense of smell to check every stone.
She sighed and paused at her work of scrutinising every inch of the floor and every column in a hunt for a clue.
“If it isn’t in the chamber, maybe we’ll have to dig for it.” He rubbed the back of his neck and slowly approached her, giving her time to adjust to his proximity.
She had turned skittish the only time he had attempted to get close to her tonight. For all her bluster and bite, she was a timid little thing inside, afraid of him. He wasn’t out to hurt her or betray her, not as she clearly thought he was, and he wanted to prove that to her.
He didn’t want to own her. He didn’t want to put a collar on her.
He wanted her to stand at his side, as his equal.
He hadn’t exactly given her that impression though, and he knew it was going to take more than a few hours working with her rather than against her to make her see differently.
He diverted his course and went to his black backpack where he had rested it against one of the shorter pieces of column that lined the front of the temple. He crouched, unzipped the main compartment, and took his canteen out. He had filled it at one of the many taps situated around the site and the water was still blissfully cool.
When he rose back to his feet and turned to face Iolanthe, she was watching him.
He brought the canister away from his lips and offered it to her. She shook her head. Her eyes dropped to his throat and then darted off to her right. His heart pumped harder in response to the brief hungry glance. She wanted to bite him.
Whenever she looked as if she might, he lost track of the world. All of it faded away as his focus narrowed to encompass only her, his mind filling with a vision of her wrapped around him as she had been that night in Herculaneum when they had kissed.
Only her kiss this time was the press of her fangs into his throat.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, the thought of her biting him making him instantly hard in his black combats.
A hint of colour darkened her cheeks and her head dipped lower. She was on to him. She knew that her glance at his throat had triggered a war in him, a battle between desire and duty. Duty had to win, because surrendering to his desire would only set him back with her. He couldn’t act on his need for her until she gave him the green light. That was the challenge he had set himself. She had to be the one to come to him, of her own free will, and initiate things again.
“So you’ve been here too?” he said and she finally looked at him again. The distance between them seemed to shrink as her eyes met his. A flicker of confusion surfaced in hers. He smiled. “I mean when Pompeii was still a thriving city.”
The confusion melted away and she smiled.
Gods. She smiled.
He had never seen anything like it. It sucker punched him, sending his head spinning and his heart reeling, and leaving him sure he must have staggered back a step from the blow. But he hadn’t moved. Maybe the whole damn Earth had shifted beneath his boots then, because for a moment he hadn’t been on solid ground. That smile had lifted him clear off it.
His mate had a smile that could light up the world.
“Yes, I came here a few times back when it was a city. I did a job here.” The casual way she put that one out there had his jaw dropping.
“You were working as a treasure hunter two thousand years ago?” He lowered the canteen and stared at her, questions multiplying in his head, and doubling again when she nodded. “How long have you been a treasure hunter?”
She wrinkled her nose up, looking beyond him, and then shifted her eyes back to meet his. “Around twenty-four centuries.”
Two thousand four hundred years.
“How old are you?” he blurted and her cheeks darkened again.
He cleared his throat and cursed himself for just tossing that out there with zero finesse. Men weren’t meant to ask women how old they were. He hadn’t been able to help himself though. He had thought perhaps she was a little over two thousand years old because she had been to Herculaneum when it had been a city, before disaster had struck it. Now he was beginning to suspect she was older.
Much older.
She almost smiled. “I have lived for one thousand years longer than I have worked.”
Just the three thousand four hundred years then. Far older than he had ever imagined or could have guessed.
She was close to ten times older than he was.
No wonder she viewed finding a mate as a collar or a form of enslavement. She was used to her freedom and had been a treasure hunter for twenty-four centuries, almost six times longer than he had been alive.
Kyter replaced the cap on his water and dropped the canteen onto his backpack, needing a moment to take everything in and process it.
“I feel like a toy-boy,” he muttered. “I guess that makes you a cougar.”
A frown pinched her fine black eyebrows. “I am not a cat shifter like you.”
He smiled and chuckled. She knew her history, but it seemed she wasn’t up to speed on the modern world.
“You’re older than I am.” He turned to face her again and took a step towards her. “In human circles, that would earn you the title of cougar. Cougars prey on men far younger than they are.”
She planted her hands on her hips, pressing her fingers into her tight black trousers, and huffed. “I am not preying on you. If anything, you are preying on me. That makes you the cougar.”
He laughed and she looked startled by it. “I can’t be the cougar. I’m a guy. Going for a younger woman is the accepted norm for a guy.”
Her eyebrow quirked. “Biologically it makes sense for a female to go for a younger male. They are more virile. Stronger. They would produce offspring with a higher chance of survival.”
Kyter smirked and ran his gaze over her. “You’re so sexy when you talk all scientific and clever… my little scholar.”
That earned him another glare and she waved him away.
“You make no sense. Toy-boys. Cougars. I have no interest in your silly way of talking.” She turned away and walked a few steps across the temple base before stopping and looking back over her shoulder at him. “I am older than you are?”
He nodded.
“By how much?” She didn’t exactly look as if she wanted to know the answer to that question. She looked as if it terrified her. Afraid of being a cougar? Hell, he wasn’t exactly thrilled that he was a toy-boy.
He looked up at the stars, drawing out her pain and enjoying teasing her, and raised his eyebrows as he said, “Oh, just the three thousand years.”
He dropped his gaze to her in time to catch her eyes widening and the look of horror that crossed her pretty face before she recovered and raked a gaze over him.
“You are only a few centuries old? You are a mere boy.”
That stung and he growled at her, stalking towards her and closing the distance between them. She hurried backwards, her eyes going as round as the full moon suspended above her and her hands rising at her sides.
“Cat shifters age differently to elves. I’m a grown man and I have been for the last three centuries.” He advanced on her with long-legged strides, backing her towards the end of the temple that was enclosed by walls around his height, perfect for what he had in mind. He needed somewhere private. He dropped his voice to a low husky murmur. “You know I’m not a boy… but if you want… I can prove that I’m more man than you can handle. I can show you just how vi
rile I am.”
A fierce blush darkened her cheeks and she blinked rapidly, her heartbeat off the scale in his sensitive ears and her scent of exotic flowers becoming mingled with the heady honeyed smell of her desire.
Gods, he wanted her when she reacted so sweetly to him, giving away her feelings. She wanted him too. He prowled towards her.
“You are being silly again,” she muttered and bolted, moving so swiftly he couldn’t track her with his eyes.
He could with his nose though.
He turned to face her where she had stopped near his backpack, her face still flushed and her eyes still dark with her desire.
It thrilled him.
The sight of her so flustered and the rich scent of arousal rolling off her made him want to keep up his pursuit, to drive his prey to surrender to him.
She wanted to know how much of a man he was, even if she refused to admit it.
She stared across the temple at him, the darkness in her eyes luring him in and tempting him into taking a step towards her. He wanted to hunt her. He wanted to stalk towards her and see the desire rising in her eyes, coming to match the ferocity of his need for her. She would run again, but it would only crank his hunger for her up another notch, making the hunt even more intoxicating and the moment when he finally captured her even sweeter.
He wanted to kiss her again.
Kyter dialled back that need, drawing down a deep breath to bring it back under control. She had to come to him. As much as he wanted to stalk and hunt her, he had to bide his time. He was happy with that. His kind were ambush predators. He would wait until his little kitty was within his reach, ready to surrender to him, and then he would make his move.
He backed off a step, towards the enclosed area. “Maybe we should check out this cellar thing you mentioned.”
Her rosy lips curved in a small smile. “It is called a cella. It is an inner temple. A place where only priests could enter.”
Hunted by a Jaguar Page 13