by Larissa Ione
Her eyes went steely. “God, you’re such an asshole sometimes.”
She’d called him that before. Had called him worse. But this time, it actually hurt. Because she was right. “Don’t do it, Sin. Just… don’t.”
“I think,” she said, in a soft voice he hadn’t expected, “you’re forgetting that I couldn’t get out of my job if I wanted to.” She dragged her hands through her hair, which glinted with bluish highlights in the sunlight that squeezed between the treetops. “This is pointless. I either go to the hospital and be a prisoner there, with my brothers as jailers, or I go to my den, where at least I’m my own warden.”
“No.” He couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t—
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and an animal growl rose up in his throat before he could stop it. He spun around, instinctively tucking Sin behind him. The sight of Bran standing in the shadows with two male dhampires came with a gut-wrenching blast of dread.
“It’s time, Conall.”
“Con?” Sin tugged on one of his belt loops. “Who are these douche bags?”
Was it wrong for him to want to smile at that? Nah. “The ugly one would be my clan leader,” he said quietly. “Stay here.” He moved to Bran with swift, sure steps. Show no weakness. “I’m not ready.”
“Your state of readiness is irrelevant,” Bran growled. “Our first female has gone into heat. The rest will be ready to breed by the end of the week. We need you.”
The idea of having sex with anyone but Sin made him cold inside. Hell, the very thought of even feeding from anyone else made him ill. Which wasn’t a good sign, and somehow, Bran was aware of the reason for Con’s reluctance. His dark gaze zeroed in on Sin, then cut sharply to Con when he stepped in front of the dhampire leader to block the view.
“The Warg Council is on our backs as well.” One of the other males, Enric, if Con remembered right, gestured in the direction of the cabin. “The pricolici and varcolac both want our allegiance in their war. We need the Dhampire Council to assemble.”
Con shook his head. “So we refuse to take sides.”
“We’ve already been drawn into it. We have dhampire females mated to pricolici,” Bran said, and Con thought about Sable, hoped she was okay. “Some are fleeing with their families to our lands, and others are dragging dhampires into the conflict.”
Con drew in a ragged breath. He might be able to put off yet another breeding heat, but there was no stalling when it came to a matter of politics and possible war. His people needed him. He’d felt disconnected from them for so long that he could barely consider them his people anymore, but ultimately, he was a dhampire, and it was time to take the long overdue reins.
The sound of Sin’s heartbeat, so loud and tempting even at this distance, reminded him that it was a very good time to get away from her and fulfill his destiny. But the words wouldn’t come. Yes, I’ll go with you. Yes, I’m ready. Yes, let me bend over and take it up the ass for the dhampire race.
Not a single word formed on his lips.
Bran’s hard gaze zeroed in on Sin. “That is the demon female you’re working with?” His nostrils flared, and he cut quick looks between Sin and Con, and shit… Bran knew Con was teetering on the brink of addiction. Hell, he was probably already over the edge.
“Yes,” Con ground out.
“Is the virus out of your blood?”
Con opened his mouth to say yes, but suddenly, Sin was there. “No,” she said. “One more feeding should do it, though. So whatever you need him for, it can wait.”
“Sin—”
She covertly pinched his ass, shutting him up and nearly making him jump. Bran glared, and when he said nothing, Sin made a shooing motion with her hand. “Run along. Leave us to it.”
Bran practically shook with rage, which, to Con, was a combination of funny and oh-fuck. Finally, Bran snarled, “You have until tomorrow to put your affairs in order, Conall. If we have to seek you out, you’ll be kept in the lunecrate for a year.”
Bran and the males left, and Con let out a soft curse. The lunecrate box was the fun punishment place for dhampires. Shoved inside the iron cage during the full moon, a dhampire was left for three days of madness, unable to hunt, howl, or even move. By the time the dhampire recovered from the trauma, the full moon had come again.
Sin’s hand came up to his shoulder, a tentative, surprisingly gentle touch. He turned into her. “Sin… fuck.”
“Yes.”
Confused, he frowned at her. “What?”
She pressed her curvy body against him, and his body sparked to instant, fierce life. “Make love to me.”
“Right here?” He hoped she didn’t notice how strangled he sounded.
“Well, not this close to the cabin.” She placed her hand over his heart, and the wolf in him howled. “Please. It sounds like you have some sort of crisis to handle, and I have to go, so it might be the last time for a while.”
Or forever. The unspoken truth hung in the air between them, literally visible in the fog of their breath. He still didn’t want to let her go, but Bran’s untimely visit had clarified things. A lot. If Sin went to the hospital, she’d be accessible to him, and he didn’t think he had the willpower to stay away. Going to the den would be best for both of them.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “Fuck, yeah.”
She dragged her finger down his chest, made a playful flick at his waistband, and then took off in a dead run. A few yards away, she cast him a sultry glance over her shoulder… and his prey drive activated. He caught her as she wove between the fir trees and he took her down to the fluffy snow. Once down, she didn’t fight him. Instead, she flipped him so he was on his back, and though it was freezing, he wasn’t cold at all as she tore open his pants and released his raging erection.
Then she stood, peeled off her pants. The sight of her straddling him, her sex spread and glistening, nearly made him come. “You need to feed, don’t you?”
“I can’t.” His voice cracked humiliatingly. “Not from you.”
“You don’t have to drink. I just want to feel your fangs in me one more time.”
“Sin,” he groaned, but he couldn’t deny her, and besides, this would be the last time. After this, he’d go to Scotland and never see her again, so her life wouldn’t be in danger—from him, at least, and eventually, his cravings for her blood would die.
Though he knew his desire for her never would.
“I can’t wait to feel you inside me,” she whispered.
He groaned again, and as she walked up his body, his breath grew hot. Strangled. And as she lowered herself, he stopped breathing altogether.
His hands actually shook as he cupped her gorgeous ass to hold her steady. She put her sex against his mouth and he kissed her, pure heaven. Then he penetrated her with his tongue, wielding it as he would his cock for a few strokes before swiping the flat of his tongue up her valley.
“God, that’s good,” she rasped, even as she shifted her weight to put her femoral artery over his mouth. He could still taste her, and as his fangs unsheathed, he allowed himself one more quick taste, a flick of his tongue over her clit.
Then he sank his teeth into her thigh, relishing the spill of her lifeblood into his mouth. Her spicy taste mingled with that of her arousal, and his hips began to pump of their own accord, seeking the place his tongue had just been.
Sin’s blood hit his bloodstream like a shot of heroin, both satisfying his hunger for her and intensifying it, strengthening his addiction to her. At the same time, her incubus pheromones hit him, and his erotic hunger warred with his blood hunger. She moaned, tipping the scales. Thank the gods he’d fed this way, because he’d have to stop feeding to fuck her. Had he taken her by the throat or wrist, stopping might be impossible.
Reluctantly, he disengaged his fangs, licked the punctures slowly, and continued the journey to her sex. Gently, he spread her, speared her with his tongue, and let her ride him until her desire forced her to take more aggressive
action.
She tore away from him and backed down his body, dragging her mouth over his chest, abs, until his shaft slid between her lips. Holy damn, that was good. Her tongue flicked over the head of him, and then she took him deep. The sucking sensation was exquisite, and he had to pant through the pleasure to keep from coming. Finally she lifted her mouth away, but before she seated herself, she scooped some snow.
He arched an eyebrow, and she gave him the wickedest smile he’d ever seen as she formed a small, loose ball. He nearly swallowed his tongue when she spread herself with her fingers and inserted the snowball into her core. Jesus. He’d done a lot in his thousand years, but this? This was a first.
Taking his shaft in her hand, she guided his cock inside her. She was slick, hot, and when the head of him kissed the ice, the erotic contrast made him hiss in pleasure. Slowly, she rocked back and forth, and though her feet and legs had to be freezing, she didn’t complain. Didn’t seem to notice. Each downward stroke gave him that a-fucking-mazing mix of hot and cold, and each time he struck the snowball, she whimpered.
“Where… ah, yeah, right there… did you learn that?”
Leaning forward, she brushed her cold lips across his. “I slept with this pack of ice trolls once, and—” At his insanely jealous curse, she laughed, a pure, tinkling sound. “I’m kidding. It was just a sudden flash of brilliance.” She sat up on him again, closed her eyes, and threw her head back. The slender arch of her body was a graceful line against the wild backdrop of the trees and distant mountains, and once again, the wolf in him howled. “I never get to play like that.”
With a tortured groan, he gripped her hips and guided her faster. “Play all you want.” And then it struck him; she wouldn’t play like this again. She’d be back to screwing males because her body demanded it, back to hating who and what she was.
And the idea that she would be screwing any male other than him put acid in his stomach and a serrated growl in his throat.
“I love it when you growl like that,” she breathed. “Mmm… Con…”
Despite his possessive fury, hearing his name on her lips sent him over the edge, and his climax blasted through him. He bucked hard, his hips coming out of the snow. Sin cried out, but he slipped his palm into her mouth, and she bit down, muffling the shout that might have attracted attention from the medical team still combing the area for the dead and injured.
The erotic pinch of pain set Con off again, igniting a chain reaction in her and a series of orgasms that kept milking him, dragging out his orgasm for so long he thought he might have blacked out.
Gradually, she sank down on him so they were chest to chest, her face buried in his neck, and even though they were half-dressed, lying in the freezing snow, this somehow felt like the most intimate position—and situation—they’d been in. He could hold her like this forever.
Or, at least, until they either froze to death or Eidolon found them and killed Con.
“I’ve always been quiet during sex,” she murmured.
“Sweetheart, you just defined the term ‘screaming orgasm.’ ” He felt her smile against his skin, but he couldn’t find anything amusing about it. This was just one more example of how he’d broken through her shell, and probably not for the better. And wasn’t he a massive ball of indecision? Because he couldn’t decide if it was best for her to feel again or not. She needed to be happy, to have a family. But she also needed to protect herself.
He sighed, and Sin joined him. “I know,” she murmured. “We need to get back to the cabin.”
“I’d give anything to be able to make love to you without worrying about what’s next,” he said, kissing her neck lightly. “To just lounge around and do nothing but touch you. Feed you. Watch movies.”
She chuckled. “Sounds so normal. I wouldn’t know what to do.” She lifted her head, stared into his eyes, and her smile faltered. “What if… What if I could get out of my commitment to the Assassin’s Guild?”
Grief hollowed out his chest, turning it into a bottomless pit as he brought his hand up to cup her cheek. Even if she could get out of it, he couldn’t get out of his own obligations. And he definitely couldn’t risk hurting or even killing Sin. “Don’t. Let’s not go there.”
She nipped the pad of his finger. “Come visit me. You can come to the den—”
“Sin…”
“Please.” The strain in her voice matched the pain in her eyes. “I’m not… I’m not ready to give you up.”
God, his heart broke wide open, and he heard himself reply with a serious disconnect between his mouth and his brain. “Yeah, I’ll go to you,” he said.
But it was a lie.
Twenty-one
The emergency department was in chaos when Con stepped out of the Harrowgate, leaving Sin inside, her lips swollen from his good-bye kiss.
Don’t think about it.
Not thinking about it actually turned out to be easy, given the crazy medical situation. The injured wargs from the battle in Canada had been triaged, were lying around the emergency department on stretchers and on the floor, lined up all the way down the two hallways leading from the area.
Con immediately jumped in to help, and it was nearly four hours before the situation was under control. He spent the next hour with Bastien, doing what he could to comfort the warg until Con called time of death. Afterward, Sin’s brothers, Tayla, and Luc joined him in the waiting area.
“Where’s Sin?” Shade asked as he stripped off his bloody surgical gloves.
Con’s own gloves got tossed in the trash, and man, he couldn’t wait to get in the shower. “On her way to the den.”
Eidolon swore. “I thought you were going to talk her out of that. She didn’t need to go back there. She’d be safe here.”
Unbelievably, Lore came to Con’s defense. “She’s better off there. She needs to get back to normal.”
Normal. What a fucking joke that was. Her normal was pain and isolation. And meaningless sex. Probably with that Lycus guy. Jealousy expanded in Con’s chest as an inappropriate blast of heat curled through his veins. There had been nothing meaningless about what he and Sin had done at the mountain safe house. Or in the snow. Every cell in his body vibrated with hunger for her, both for her body and her blood, and just thinking about it was revving him up again.
“What about you, Con?” Shade asked, and Con took two deep, calming breaths before he answered.
“What about me?”
“You aren’t a danger to her, right?”
“No,” Con said levelly. “I’m not.” But even he didn’t believe his own words.
Wraith flipped a blade in the air, a very Sin-like move. “Okay, what the fuck is all the subtext here?” He blinked when everyone stared at him. “What? Like I don’t know what subtext is? I watch movies.”
“That’s because you can’t read,” Tayla said brightly, and the demon shot her the finger. One on each hand.
E and Lore returned their focus to Con with varying expressions of confusion, and Shade looked like he might want to rip Con’s throat out. Yeah, Con’s secret was about to be revealed.
“Male dhampires are prone to blood addiction if they feed off the same female host more than a few times,” Shade said. “Isn’t that right, Con?”
Eidolon swore under his breath. “How did I not know that?”
“Ever had to chain up a female dhampire and, ah, coax out her deepest, darkest secrets?” Shade asked, every word laced with dark sarcasm. “Well, that’s why.”
Con’s entire body jerked with surprise. “You tortured a dhampire?”
“Trust me, she didn’t get anything she didn’t want.” Shadows writhed in Shade’s eyes as he locked them on Con, as if daring him to challenge him.
“There were things Shade had to do before he met Runa,” Eidolon said quietly. “So let’s drop it.”
Damn. Con had seen Shade’s little BDSM cave hideaway once, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Shade had used it for anything other than pl
easure. And what did E mean by “had to”? Con wondered what other information Shade had gotten from the dhampire female.
“So?” Shade asked. “Are you a danger to our sister?”
Con struggled to keep his voice level, to convince these guys that he was no threat to her. To convince himself. But the image of her being with other males was making his blood boil and his temper flare.
And he was… hungry.
“I am not a danger,” he swore. “I’m never going to see her again.”
Lore’s gloved hand worked into a fist at his side, something Con had noticed he did when he was agitated. “Why not?”
“I’m quitting Underworld General as of now, and after I take care of a few things, I’m going back to my clan’s lands in Scotland.”
“Ah… does Sin know?”
“No.”
“Fuuuck.” Lore scrubbed that gloved hand over his face, looking suddenly worn out.
“You son of a bitch,” Tayla snapped, her green eyes blazing. “She cares about you. And you’re going to slink away without telling her?”
“Yeah, it’s a dick move,” he said. “But I can’t see her again, Tayla. I’m already too close—”
“Fuck that. You could have told her. You could have warned her.” When Eidolon slung an arm around her shoulder, she softened against him, but it was obvious she still wanted a piece of Con.
Shit. He didn’t know why he’d lied to Sin, except that he didn’t want to hurt her after they’d just had mind-blowing sex that had actually meant something.
He was such an asshole.
“Are you coming back?” Luc asked.
“No. Come tomorrow night, a ritual will bind me, as a Council member, to the land and the clan. I won’t be able to leave except for short periods.”
“That sucks.” Luc’s voice was gruff. “Bad.”
“It’s what I’ve wanted all my life,” Con said, but his voice was hollow, wooden. Because no, he didn’t want this anymore. And truthfully, he wasn’t sure he ever had. His rebellion against the clan had started early, peaking with his edgy, idiotic flirt-game with addiction that had ended so badly for Eleanor and had gotten him kicked out of the clan. He’d lived off the chain ever since, leaving smoke behind him as he burned a path of death wish.
