Bloodright

by Karin Tabke

  She hung suspended above him, her body trembling as a thin sheen of sweat glossed her skin. She closed her eyes and released his hands. As she slid her hands down his arms, she moved against him. He rose into her, unable to stop what she had set into motion. Her fingers dug into his hair and her lips slid against his. Digging his fingers into her hair, he held her head and kissed her fervently. He let her set the tauntingly slow pace. God, she felt good. She gasped when he ground up into her special spot. He had his cock pierced for his pleasure, but the Apadravya piercing gave a woman pleasure, too.

  “Luca—” she breathed.

  His cock swelled at her endearment. He just wanted to plow into her, but he kept his control by giving her control. She arched her back; her nipples swept across his lips. He caught one and suckled it against the roof of his mouth. Falon cried out, digging her nails into his scalp. He growled and nipped her. She cried out, this time in pain.

  “Harder,” she gasped.

  He tugged at the sensitive tip with his teeth. Falon moaned pressing into him. Her sultry body shivered in response. Her hips rocked into his, the pace racing to frantic. She sat up, completely on him. He grasped her breasts. She grabbed his wrists to steady herself so that she could increase the pressure of her thrusts. Her body was liquid heat around him, sucking his cock deep inside only to reluctantly release him, then to grasp him again. In feral abandonment, she fucked him to annihilation.

  Locking her thighs around his, she ground her pussy onto his cock, holding him captive in her vise girp. He thrust up into her, her feral moans of pleasure driving him crazy. He wanted to toss her onto her back and fuck her until she screamed her throat raw.

  Throwing her head back, Falon screamed. Then, fiercely, just as her orgasm slammed into her, she sank her teeth into his neck, finally marking him as hers. Lucien roared his triumph as her muscles clamped him and like a fist pump, she pulled him with her. Lucien exploded inside her with such violence she toppled. He grabbed her to keep her from falling off him, holding her hips down on his thrusting maddeningly into her.

  “Too… deep,” she cried as her body wracked with another explosive orgasm. “Ah, God, Lucien,” she gasped.

  He could not stop. His body was out of control. The bloodlust of the fight combined with Falon’s mark pushed him over the edge of everything sane.

  Their bodies gyrated madly, as one violent wave of passion slammed into another.

  In a wild chaotic spiral, they crashed against each other. Falon’s hot, slick body fell exhausted against his. Still connected, all he could manage was slipping an arm around her pulsating body to keep her from sliding off his sweaty skin.

  He closed his eyes under the warmth of the sun.

  “Luca?” Falon softly said, nuzzling against his neck where she had marked him.

  “Hmm?”

  “You belong to me now.”

  His heart hit his chest hard, followed by an emotion he could not name. He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “I always have…” He let himself float off into a state of perfect euphoria. He must have dozed, because he woke to Falon’s warm wet tongue licking the wounds her teeth had left on his neck.

  “That feels good,” he murmured, tightening his arms around her. His cock stirred. He did not know what it was about her, but he was a walking hard-on whenever he touched her.

  “Lucien,” she said against his jugular. “I want to do that again.”

  “Kill Vipers or fuck my brains out?”

  She raised her head to gaze at him, her blue eyes all soft and sexy, her hair a wild black halo around her. Her pouty lips glistened with his blood. “Both.”

  He rose up and licked her bottom lip. “Which one first?”

  Her lips parted in a beaming smile. “Hmm.” She looked down his belly to his fire-breathing dragon, then back at him. “I want that,” she said, turning toward his cock.

  He breathed heavily, anticipating those ruby red lips of hers locked around him, but the distant sound of baying hounds abruptly broke their private interlude.

  “Falon,” he said, sitting up and bringing her up and around to him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Slayers. And they’re on the hunt.”

  Instantly on her feet, Falon looked across the swirling river. “For us?”

  “I suspect for Layla. We need to get to her before they do.”

  As one, they shifted and picked up the Lycan’s scent. As they raced through the timber, the baying of the hounds grew louder. Layla’s scent was strong. They came across the discarded trap. Falon swallowed hard. Layla’s freedom came with a price. A wolf paw was clenched between the iron jaws. So desperate for freedom, Layla had bitten her foot off to escape. Falon’s growl mirrored Lucien’s. They picked up their pace. Layla’s fresh blood scent was easy to follow. It would be for the Slayers as well.

  They hurried, Lucien racing just ahead of Falon. As they made a sharp turn, there was a loud snapping sound, and Lucien was snatched up into a thick metal net. He roared furiously and shifted to human.

  “Lucien!” Falon cried. Shifting to human as well, she climbed high into the tree the net hung from, to the sturdy branch that held the weight of him. “Tell me what to do!”

  The net burned his skin. He looked closer. Interwoven through the steel were strands of silver. A Slayer trap. The baying hounds loomed closer.

  Lucien calmed so that she would not panic. “Falon, the net is made of steel and silver. See if you can unhook it.”

  “It’s a locked metal strap!” She grabbed it and yanked it hard. Then pulled and shook it viciously. It did not give. She shifted and used her powerful wolf jaws on it, but to no avail. She shifted back to human in full panic mode. “I can’t break it! Lucien! What should I do?”

  She looked over her shoulder. The braying of the hounds closed in. And mingled with their scent was that of at least a dozen Slayers. Payback for this morning’s raid no doubt.

  “Run to Mondragon, Falon, get help,” Lucien said calmly.

  “They’re too far! I’m not going to leave you!” She dropped from the branch to the ground and grabbed at him through the netting.

  The hounds were closer, maybe three hundred yards out. “Go, damn it! You can’t handle the Slayers!” He knew what they would do to her if they caught her. He could not stomach it. “Falon,” he said urgently. “Get help. There is time, they won’t kill me immediately. They’ll want their fun first.”

  “I won’t leave you!” she cried frantically, pulling at the net.

  “Go, damn it!”

  “No!” she screamed, shaking her head. “I will stand and fight.”

  For the first time since he’d watched his parents die before his eyes, Lucien panicked. Falon was right, Mondragon was too far to the south. Vulkasin was closer. That meant she would be with Rafe. He swallowed hard. But she would be safe. He could not bear the thought of any part of her touched by a Slayer. Gathering what calm he could, he softly but firmly said, “If you care anything about me, Falon, I need you to go to Rafe now. He will protect you.”

  Falon reached through the steel and silver netting and grasped his fingers. Pressing her lips to the metal she said, “I’ll be back with all of Vulkasin!”

  “Now!” He shouted as the dogs came snarling around the corner. Lucien shifted into wolf and wondered not if he was going to die, but if the blood bond between he and Falon was strong enough to withstand her love for his brother.

  Nine

  FALON RAN FOR Lucien’s life to the one person that could save him. The brother he had sworn eternal vengeance against. As a wolf, she flew through the forest to Vulkasin. As soon as she picked up Rafael’s familiar scent, the desperation in her calmed.

  Rafa!

  When he refused to answer, her desperation spiked. The high walls of the compound loomed like a fortress before her. As she approached, she called to Rafael again. When he didn’t answer, she called for Angor, his Berserker, the huge mutant wolf whose life she had saved. Th
ough the beast answered only to Rafael, he would not harm her. At least, he would not have before she had been given to Lucien.

  Angor answered with a low warning growl.

  “Angor, you forget who saved your life!”

  He whimpered for forgiveness.

  Falon leapt high over the compound walls and into the yard.

  “Rafael!” she screamed as she shifted to human and continued her mad pace into the clubhouse. Naked and breathing hard she stopped as the congregated pack turned wary eyes on her. “Where is he?” she demanded as she inhaled Rafe’s deep woodsy scent. A wave of longing swept through her, but she shook it off. Lucien was in mortal danger.

  And Rafe was close. Anton, Rafael’s sergeant at arms, inclined his head toward the stairway. Falon ran past them and up the stairs to the bedroom she had shared with her chosen one. Familiar scents collided with heart-wrenching emotions as she raced to the man she loved in order to save the man he despised.

  She burst into the bedroom and stopped short. Rafael stood staring out the window. He would have seen her approach. Heard her pleas. Yet he stood as if he were deaf and blind. He didn’t turn to face her. Her gaze swept him from head to foot, but paused on his swollen left hand. She gasped. His skin was burned and raw around the Eye of Fenrir, the ring that held untold power.

  “Rafa?” she said cautiously as she slowly approached. She wrestled against the need to throw her arms around him and her desperate need to save Lucien.

  He turned hard, distant eyes upon her. Falon gasped. “Rafa! What’s—happened to you?”

  “Do you really expect me to answer that?” he asked, his voice so low and cold she didn’t recognize it.

  Her heart clenched. She grasped his hands and brought them to her lips. She kissed the rawness on his hand. Where her lips touched, his skin healed before her eyes. She wished she could heal his heart as easily. “I’m so sorry all of this has happened. You can’t know how much I’ve missed you.” She looked up into his dispassionate eyes. “But, Rafael, they have Lucien! I need your help to free him.”

  He regarded her with a coolness she did not deserve. It was not her fault they were not together!

  “Please, before they kill him!”

  A spark of fire flashed in his eyes. “Who has Lucien?”

  “Slayers! We were tracking Layla—”

  More realization in his expression. His eyes widened but she kept talking.

  “The Vipers had her. We fought them, but Layla took off. We went after her, and Lucien was caught in a silver net. I couldn’t free him. We could smell Slayers, hear their dogs. They’ll kill him!”

  When Rafael did not respond, Falon fought back the urge to slap him into action. Though he made no move to help her, she saw the turmoil flash in his beautiful aqua-colored eyes. Eyes that had looked at her with such love and passion it had stirred her soul.

  Slowly he shook his head and she felt that same soul shrivel and die.

  This was not her Rafael.

  The anguish in her heart was unbearable. “We cannot leave him to die!” Her hands tightened on his. He hissed in a breath of pain. The burns were already back! “What happened to your hand?” she demanded. “What’s wrong with you?”

  He pulled his hands from her grasp and turned back to stare out the window.

  “What the hell has happened?” she demanded again, stepping up behind him.

  Without turning, he said, “Fenrir fights for release.”

  Falon grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. His eyes widened at her strength.

  “Rafa, listen to me, we need to save Lucien. Gather the Berserkers and your men. We need to go now!”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. Finally, emotion. “Little more than a week ago you wanted to kill him!”

  Falon sucked in a deep breath and found she could not look at him. “Things are—different—”

  “Different how?”

  Still refusing to meet his eyes, she said, “He is a man in mourning, too, Rafa.”

  “Do you love him?!” Rafael demanded.

  Her head snapped back. “No! I—” She didn’t know what she felt. “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s complicated? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Falon shook her head, not understanding what she did or did not feel for Lucien. “I don’t know what it means. But even if I did love him, he’s your brother! Does that mean nothing to you?”

  Rafael’s features hardened to stone. “The day he took you from me is the day he died to me.”

  “He saved my life! For that would you at least repay him?”

  He grabbed her to him. “I pay for it every minute of every day you are gone from me.” He dropped his forehead to hers. “I love you, Falon. It tears me apart every time I think of you with him.”

  His pain was so intense, it singed the edges of her heart. Melting it in half. And perhaps it was. Because she loved Rafael with every part of her, but she also cared deeply for his brother. It was an impossible situation. Hot tears blurred her vision.

  “Oh, Rafa. If I had known what lay ahead of us, I never would have walked into that deli that night.” She would have turned and run as fast and as far as she could. The pain of love lost was unbearable. She touched his cheek. “I am so sorry.”

  “I would not change a thing. Had I not met you that night, Falon, I would never have known what love is.”

  Falon swallowed hard. Her broken heart swelled with huge love for this man. “Rafa, if by some crazy stroke of fate, there is another chance for us, would you take me back?”

  Fury flashed in his eyes. “I know what you have done. I know that you wanted him. That you begged for his touch.” He sneered. “The scent of your sex still clings to you! How could I take you back?”

  For the hundredth time since she had laid eyes on him, her heart wrenched painfully. Heat infused her cheeks. She looked down at the ground, thinking she should feel ashamed that she had been so bold with Lucien when his brother’s heart broke for her but oddly she did not. Not now. She had been thrown into an impossible situation. And she had made the most of it. What was done was done. If Rafael could not see past her impossible situation, then she could not make him see. Not now anyway. Her head snapped back and she looked him directly in the eye. “You will mark another mate by the next full moon. I am with Lucien. Nothing will change that. Now, Rafael, I am begging you, for the love you once had for me, help me save him.”

  “Because of him, I do not have you! Because of what he did to you, I cannot take you back even if he were dead!”

  Desperation had a chokehold on her. “Rafael, I love you! I loved you last week. I loved you when Lucien took me. Because of your sacrifice, I allowed him to mark me!” She grabbed his hands. “I love you now. None of what I feel for you has anything to do with Lucien! What I do or do not feel for him will never change what I feel for you.”

  “What do you feel for him, Falon?”

  She shook her head and answered honestly and quickly. They needed to go. “I don’t know, but I do know I don’t want him to die.”

  He flung her hands from his. “Then save him yourself.”

  Dumbfounded by his refusal to do what was right, Falon shook her head. “What happened to the honorable man I fell in love with?”

  Rafael’s eyes hardened to ice. “He died the minute my brother marked you.”

  “Oh, Rafa, don’t do this. Please, don’t do this to yourself. This is not who you are.”

  “It is who I have become.”

  Tears blurred her vision as she rose up on her toes and kissed his tight lips and softy said against them, “I will mourn my true love’s death until my last days.” She turned and strode to the door. With her hand on the handle, she turned and looked back at him. He had not moved. But his eyes mirrored what was truly in his heart. It made walking out of his life that much harder. “Good-bye, Rafa.” She shifted and ran to Lucien.

  Falon cleared the high compound walls and ran as if hel
l were on her heels to where she left Lucien. Somehow, she would find a way to free him even if she had to—she didn’t want to think of what she might have to sacrifice for his life. But she realized she would do it. Whatever it was.

  She did not want to think of what Lucien meant to her. All she knew was that what she shared with Lucien she did not share with Rafa. He had brought something to life inside her. Something primal. The sex, the fighting, the killing. It was like a drug. Lucien was dangerously unpredictable. He was volatile, he was ruled by his emotions. Rafael was so different. He was methodical, honorable, and though his emotions ran deep within him, he controlled them. He did not make the emotional mistakes Lucien made.

  The brothers were as different as day and night, and she was trapped between dusk and dawn. She knew why Rafe refused to help, but she would not let Lucien die.

  Falon picked up Lucien’s scent. His blood scent. Her heart hammered in her chest and her rage grew. They’d hurt him. Snarling, she dug deeper and ran faster. They would pay for each drop of his blood.

  Lucien’s scent stopped at the banks of the churning river. Falon looked across the fifty-yard span. She didn’t know how to swim as a human but as a wolf it would come naturally. She waded into the cold water and was immediately swept away by the powerful current. She went under but allowed her body’s buoyancy to bring her up. Instead of fighting the current, Falon swam with it while she kept her eye on the opposite bank. As the river swept her farther downstream, the current picked up. Her body slammed into a boulder knocking the wind out of her. She yelped and went under. The current dragged her down. Panicked, she flailed in the water, trying to break the surface. Her lungs ached, her eyes burned. She could see the sunlight from beneath the water. Her back leg hooked on a fallen tree trunk. The velocity of the pull made her yelp; she swallowed water. She could not get the momentum to bring her body to the surface, the current was so strong, pulling her downriver underwater.

  The gray fog of unconsciousness blurred her vision.

  Luca!

  But he didn’t answer.

  “FALON!”