by Chloe Hart
It was dark in the narrow alley, the only light coming from a street lamp at the end of it, shining on the main road. But even in the shadows Luke could see Kit’s expression as she came towards him. It was the same expression she wore when she fought.
“Do you think I’m afraid of you?” she asked.
Luke remembered the way he felt when he saw her in Liam’s arms on the dance floor, and he knew his eyes flashed amber for a moment.
“You should be,” he said, his own voice low and dangerous. God, let her get out of here before he—
“Do you really want me to go back in there? To find another man to dance with? Is that what you—”
He couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried. In a flash he’d shoved her up against the wall, his hands gripping her upper arms. He could sense her heart pounding, her pulse racing.
But she wasn’t afraid. If there had been the slightest hint of fear in her face he would have found a way to pull back. But there was no fear in her wide gray eyes, her parted lips, her flushed cheeks.
She lifted her chin. “You said if I let you set the rules, I’m already defeated. But I’ve been letting you set the rules for us.”
“You know why I—”
“No. I’m a warrior. All the things you’re afraid you’ll do…you don’t have to protect me from yourself anymore.” She took a deep breath. “I’m strong enough to protect myself.”
He wanted to believe her. God, how he wanted to believe her. He couldn’t stop his hands from moving, stroking down her arms. Her skin was like silk.
“We had a deal, you and I,” she said softly. In the dim light her eyes seemed to shine like stars. “You held up your end of the bargain. I think you should take your payment now.”
Christ.
He started to shake. “Tell me to stop,” he whispered.
“I don’t want you to stop.”
She was trembling and her heart was beating like a drum, but not with fear.
Kit…
Once again, he was lost in her eyes. So beautiful, so alive...hunger clawed at him as his body hardened with need, but the demon in him wasn’t in control. Not yet.
“Kit,” he said huskily, feeling her fragile bones beneath his hands. “If I take too much, if I go too far, you’ll have to stop me. Do you understand?”
“I won’t have to.”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes!”
He released his hold on her arms, but only to grab her hips as he pushed her against the wall, grinding himself against her.
Kit made an inarticulate sound and closed her eyes. “Look at me,” he ordered, and her eyes opened again, her expression dazed.
He reached for the back of her skirt, feeling for her zipper. He found it and lowered it slowly, keeping his eyes on Kit’s face.
“Luke,” she breathed, as he began to work the leather skirt down over her hips until it fell at her feet. She shivered, and Luke remembered it was a winter’s night.
“Too cold for you?” he asked softly.
“God, no,” she answered, kicking her skirt out of the way.
Luke took a step back and looked at her. She wore a red velvet top, thigh high stockings and black leather boots, and panties that were no more than a scrap of blood red lace. Her leather coat was open in front but it protected her from the rough stone as she leaned back against the wall.
“I like your knickers. Did you buy them for me?”
He stepped close again, resting his hands on the wall on either side of her. Kit’s eyes were dark as she looked at him, her pupils dilated.
Her breath turned to mist on the night air.
He slid his hands under her velvet top and pulled it over her head, dropping it on the ground and covering her naked breasts with his hands. He smiled when Kit gasped and arched against him.
He moved one hand to slide down to the juncture of her thighs, and he covered the scrap of lace with his palm. Kit cried out and Luke almost did the same.
The heat between her legs was like nothing he’d ever felt.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, his hand moving gently, stroking her through the material. Kit began pushing against his shoulders almost frantically, as if to shove him away.
“No, no, kitten,” he whispered, grabbing her wrists and pinning them over her head, trapping them with one hand while he reached back down with the other.
“Did you buy these for me?” he asked again.
He bunched her panties in his fist so she could feel the cold night air sweep across her overheated skin. His knuckles brushed against her, ever so slightly.
With a spasm of strength she jerked her arms free, putting her hands on his chest to steady herself.
“Did you?” he asked again, giving a sharp tug on the material.
“Yes,” she gasped out. “For you, Luke.”
“Only me?”
“Only you.”
“Then you won’t mind if I get them out of our way.”
He ripped them easily, slipping the torn lace into his back pocket and bringing his hand back to cover her, his palm feeling bare skin and soft curls and—
His knees gave way. He obeyed his body’s instinct and sank down at her feet.
His mouth was right where he wanted it to be. “Has anyone ever tasted you here?” he asked, putting his hands on her bare hips and looking up at her.
“No,” she said, and this time there was a little fear in her eyes. Luke chose to ignore it when he saw how much the fear was overshadowed by desire.
“Then I’ll be your first.”
The thrum of her blood and the scent of her arousal called to him in equal measure. His fangs descended but he used his tongue first, licking and stroking and reveling in the honeyed heat of her skin.
Kit moaned. When her pulse sped up he pulled away, his fangs aching as he scented her femoral artery.
She was almost ready. He pressed his thumb against her clitoris and began to rub, hard and fast, and only when he felt her shudder did he sink his teeth into the fragile skin of her inner thigh.
Sweet Christ.
Her blood was ambrosia. Kit cried out as her body quaked with orgasm, and the taste of her ecstasy made him drunk, dizzy, weightless.
She was so wet his fingers slid effortlessly inside her. She gasped at the sudden invasion, her body clenching around him, and when he took another pull of her blood she spasmed with a second climax.
Stop!
He found the strength to heed the voice inside him, withdrawing his fangs and licking the wounds closed as they both came slowly back to earth.
A sudden noise of voices made them freeze. The sound passed, and Luke realized it was just a group coming out of the pub and walking past the alleyway on their way down the main street.
They hadn’t been seen, but the incident was enough to give him a keen desire for privacy. It was time to go someplace where no one could interrupt them.
He rose to his feet and put his hands on either side of Kit’s face. His touch was gentle but his eyes were burning into hers.
“No one else,” he said, and she didn’t have to ask what he meant.
“No one,” she said. “No other man will ever touch me like that. I swear it.”
He was already hard for her, but at her words there was a rush of blood to his groin. He pressed his denim-clad erection against her glistening softness, his gaze still locked with hers. “That’s my girl.”
He stepped back and grabbed her skirt and top from the ground. “It’s time to go back inside. You should zip up your coat.”
Her face was still flushed. “Shouldn’t I put my things back on first?” she asked, looking at the clothes in his hands.
“No. I want you naked under there until I get you to a bed.” He smiled slowly. “Stephen and Liam were kind enough to give us two rooms for the night, but we’ll only be needing one.”
* * *
Kit could hardly form a coherent thought, and for once in her l
ife she didn’t care. She was so drunk on sensation and pleasure and a kind of deep, shuddering joy that she wasn’t even sure she felt the floor beneath her feet. She might have been hovering an inch or two above the surface.
Luke pulled her into the bedroom upstairs and closed the door after them, and then he started to walk her backwards, slowly, until she felt the bed behind her knees and sank down onto it, falling with him on top of her.
His tongue traced pathways of desire in her mouth, tinged with the intimate flavors of her body and her blood, making her ache with a need that seemed only to spiral higher with every shattering plateau of satisfaction. She murmured in protest when he broke the kiss, but then he was unzipping her coat and tossing it aside, and when he covered her breasts with his hands she arched up with a gasp.
He growled at that, the sound sending bolts of pleasure through her. Her nipples hardened, and he flicked his tongue, that unbearably skillful tongue, over one as he brushed his thumb over the other.
He pulled back a little, gazing down at her breasts with naked hunger as his fangs burst from his gums.
Excitement made her squirm beneath him. “Yes, Luke—”
He descended with the speed of a striking hawk, and an instant of sharp pain was followed by a wave of unbearable pleasure.
Luke suckled with lazy thoroughness, pulling her blood into his mouth as he reached a hand down between her legs. When his fingers brushed over the marks he’d made on her inner thigh, her muscles tensed and released in a voluptuous spasm. A flood of moisture made her wet and he stroked her everywhere, from her slick folds to her throbbing clitoris to the bite mark that reacted to his touch with hot surges of electricity.
He pulled back from her breast and licked the wound closed, and then he was kissing and licking his way down her stomach. He paused between her legs long enough to press a kiss against that place he knew so much better than she did, that spot she’d known about but had never, never experienced as the source of earth-shattering pleasure.
Now he kept moving down, kissing the insides of her thighs and the scar he’d left there, rolling down her stockings with slow sensuality until he came to her boots. Those he unzipped and pulled off, along with her stockings, leaving her utterly naked.
It was his turn now.
“Take all that off,” she ordered imperiously, gesturing at his clothing, and he grinned at her as he did what she asked, letting his jacket slide to the floor, tugging off his shirt, kicking off his shoes, and finally stepping out of his jeans to stand before her in all his glory.
God, he was so big. She felt a flicker of doubt, wondering how all that hardened masculinity was going to fit inside her. She remembered her only other experience of sex and how painful it had been.
She propped herself up on one elbow and reached out, hesitantly, to wrap a hand around his erection.
He shot out a hand to brace himself against the bedpost.
“Kit,” he gasped, shuddering at her touch. He closed his eyes, holding himself as tense as a drawn bow, and Kit felt a thrill of pleasure along her spine. To hold all that contained power in the palm of her hand…to make him tremble as he’d made her tremble…she began to move her hand softly up and down his length, smiling when she heard him groan.
The groan became a growl, and then he was on top of her, covering her body with his, her breasts flattened against his powerful chest and his erection cradled between her legs.
“I want you, Luke,” she gasped. “Now—please—”
Her legs were opening for him, her hips lifting off the bed, her hands frantic on his arms, his shoulders, his back. Luke tensed for one moment before raising himself up on his arms and looking at her.
“I need you to be sure, Kit,” he said, his eyes intense.
“How much more sure do you need me to be? Do you want me to beg? You did say in Paris you’d make me beg.”
He smiled a little at that, but his eyes were serious. “Listen to me, sweetheart. Once we do this there’s no going back. There’s a chance if we stop now that I might be able to let you go someday. So you could have a normal life. But if we claim each other tonight I never will. Never. Once I make you mine this way, I’ll never let you go.”
She saw the look of possession flare up in his eyes, and something rose within her in answer.
“I’m yours,” she said, and it must have been the right thing to say, because he crushed her mouth beneath his in a fevered kiss.
This time it was Kit who broke away, pushing against his chest and gasping for breath. He pulled back, and she put her hands on the swell of his biceps, marveling at the feel of him, the smooth skin and the strength beneath, like silk stretched over steel. His erection had felt the same way.
“But it goes both ways,” she told him. “If you ever go near another woman, I’ll cut her heart out. Or at least do some serious hair-pulling,” she amended.
He shook his head at her, but he was smiling. “You know better than that. I’m your slave, Kit. I’m yours forever.” His erection nudged closer, pressing against the sweet hot place that was swollen with eagerness, damp with need. “And you’re mine,” he whispered.
The words of the claim. “Yours,” she gasped. “I’m yours, Luke…and you’re mine.”
For one instant they stared at each other. Then Luke struck, his fangs piercing her throat as he thrust inside her, and Kit had never imagined that being split in two could feel like heaven, like the only thing she needed for the rest of her life.
He held still a moment as he drew her blood into his mouth, letting her grow accustomed to his length and breadth inside her. Kit could feel her body stretching to accommodate him, and then a low thrum deep within.
Only when she began to rock beneath him did he move again, in and out, his movements gentle at first but increasing in intensity, in power, even as he drank deep.
Her blood was rushing in her ears, thundering in her head. “Harder,” she cried out, raking her nails down his back.
He growled against her throat, and gentleness turned into savagery as he drove into her again and again, bumping her pubic bone with each thrust, and suddenly they were there, the thousand spiraling shocks that started in her belly and built, built, built until she thought she would die from the pressure.
And then she did die.
It was the only word that could describe the explosion in her brain, her body, as stars burst behind her eyelids and she bit down on something to muffle her screams.
As it happened, it was Luke’s neck.
He roared, and came, slamming into her once more and then collapsing on top of her, withdrawing his fangs. She could feel him shaking as he lay there, his forehead pressed against hers, while she wondered if she’d ever be able to move again—or want to.
He rolled them over so she was lying on top of him, and she let her head rest on his chest.
It took a long time for her heartbeat to slow down.
She felt his hands moving in her hair, a touch so gentle it sent little shivers down her spine.
“We’re mated, now,” he told her softly.
A bolt of pure joy shot through her. “I know.”
“I love you, Kit.”
“I love you, too.”
There was a long, exquisite silence. Then—
“Good night, my angel,” he whispered.
“Good night.”
Her eyes were already closing as she said the words, and Luke turned so she slid off his body and curled up at his side. He reached down for the blanket at the foot of the bed, and before he finished tucking it around them she was asleep.
Chapter Seventeen
Kit’s bout the next morning was no contest. Bran Llewellyn was a more cunning warrior than either Stephen or Liam, but even if he’d been able to give her a fight a day or two ago, he was no match for her now.
Her night with Luke had woken a power in her unlike anything she’d ever felt. She fought Bran with a new level of awareness, her reactions so fast, her obser
vation so keen, that she seemed almost to know what her opponent would do before he did.
Bran was the first to cheer her when the fight was over, followed by Stephen and Liam. And then Luke was at her side, scanning her for injuries. She was completely unscathed, but Luke wouldn’t believe her when she told him so.
Finally satisfied that she hadn’t sustained any mortal wounds, he took her hand in his. The bite mark on her neck, invisible to everyone but him, tingled. She put a hand up to it and smiled at him.
At her mate.
“I think this calls for a celebration. Eggs and bacon on the house,” Stephen announced, and the five of them went upstairs. The pub wouldn’t open for business for another few hours, so they had the place to themselves.
“You know, you’re younger than I expected,” she said to Bran a few minutes later, after they poured themselves coffee and settled down at one of the scarred oak tables.
“I am?”
“They said you’re the Head of the Order. I guess I thought you’d be—”
“They said I’m the Head?”
Bran sounded so incredulous that Kit had to conclude that he wasn’t. “Well…I just assumed…they said I’d be meeting the Head of the Order today for my final test.”
Stephen spoke up then. “You are meeting him today. Bran was your final opponent in physical combat, but the Head—”
“The Head will be testing a different skill.”
They all turned at the sound of a new voice, and there in the doorway of the pub stood the Vice-Chancellor of Snowdon University.
Kit shot a glance at Luke and saw that he was as stunned as she was.
“Merton,” he said after a moment, rising to his feet. “I guess this goes to show that you never really know someone…even when you think you’re friends.”
There was a steely note in Luke’s voice, and Kit knew that whatever test she faced today, if it didn’t go in her favor, Merton’s friendship with Luke would be in jeopardy.
She squeezed Luke’s hand as she stood up. She loved him, but she hoped he knew he couldn’t interfere with whatever happened next. She needed to meet whatever challenge Merton Ambrose threw at her.