by Liz Meldon
It somersaulted, churning the heat, spreading the flame.
He shredded my only good dress shirt, those deceptively delicate fingers raking down the front. Buttons rained between us, then peeled off, gently clattering on my desk. I rolled my shoulders back when he tore the rest of the starchy white cotton away, then heaved a gasp the moment his mouth finally left mine. His teeth scored my skin, dragging over my chin, down my throat to the well at its base.
Bright blues flickered up as he slowed and settled atop my cleavage. My nude bra offered great support, but it was probably the least sexy in my arsenal. The sneer I expected never came; Calder’s tongue dipped between my breasts, his gaze never leaving mine, his hands questing lower.
I realized then—I was shaking.
But shaking with what?
Desire?
Fury?
Indignation? Frustration? Need?
I gritted my teeth, and the inner wolf whined when those slender fingers undid the button of my black slacks. I’d ironed them because Calder’s trousers always had a very crisp, very prominent crease down the front. Authenticity. I really had tried.
Dressed like this, I had wanted to send a message—wanted him to know that I saw him. When I’d strolled around the corner of my favorite Solskinn hobby shop and spotted him wearing that fucking ridiculous hat, followed swiftly by neon-pink sunglasses courtesy of Nurse Marte—I saw him. It was all an act, his pleasantness, his inquisitiveness, his indulgent smiles with all the faculty.
Myself included.
Calder Holloway had been fooling all of us like a pro, and I’d started to fall for the charade.
Realizing that as I stood there with spools of wool in hand, looking like a total schlub while he was meticulously groomed as ever—it had been like a silver dagger straight to the heart. A splash of ice water.
He had played me.
He had been playing me for weeks.
So I chose to dress like him for the annual Halloween dance to show him that I knew—and that, to me, Calder was still the scariest predator in Solskinn.
Scarier than me, than the beast within, and scarier than whatever the hell was kidnapping villagers.
Calder the vampire—Calder the liar, the actor, the manipulator extraordinaire.
I saw him.
And now I was letting him kiss me.
Lick me.
Undress me.
How the fuck did we get here? When had I stopped fighting him, his hands skirting down my thighs, his mouth over my pebbled nipple, my bra cup wrenched aside?
And why didn’t I want him to stop?
Clenching the stretchy fabric of my black slacks, Calder yanked it all away—his mouth, my pants, his ice-cold hands and their wanton caresses. An embarrassing little squeak slipped out when the movement dragged me to the edge of my desk, and I clutched at the brim, bracing as he wrenched my pants down. He hit a road bump with my faux-leather oxfords, something I’d bought when they came back into women’s fashion a few years ago and hadn’t worn since, perfect now for my costume, but they soon found a place on the floor alongside the rest of my tattered clothing.
Leaving me in nothing but my nude bra, black cotton panties, and white ankle socks.
And my tie. Black. Loosely knotted, because I hadn’t put much effort into the Windsor knot—just to piss him off, an affront to his prim sensibilities. Now, it trailed down my skin, silky and smooth, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he’d left it.
Calder straightened, expression neither warm nor inviting as his gaze swept over me. In fact, he still looked pissed, two seconds away from tearing my throat out, but even that couldn’t dampen the wildfire blazing under my skin. We studied each other for a beat, logic screaming for me to kick him out—and my inner wolf whining low again, the kind she uttered when she wanted to play, to engage in something mischievous.
Had he done something? Drugged me?
Where were my hackles, and why weren’t they up?
Why, when his hands jumped to his belt, did my stomach loop and my sex tighten, pleasurable tingles radiating out?
Maybe we needed this. Maybe… this would solve everything.
I bit the insides of my cheeks, swallowing a snort as he unbuckled his belt and ripped down his fly. Yeah, right. Like sex ever fixed anything.
Yet there I stayed, clinging to the edge of my desk, legs still splayed open from when he’d forced himself between them. While I tensed when he stalked back to me, my breath hitching when he cupped me through my panties, I didn’t retreat. I didn’t push him away.
Most of all, I didn’t run.
I’d just stopped fighting.
For now.
My eyes threatened to flutter closed as he massaged me, palming my clit, working my slickness through the cotton. Calder hissed, gripping me harder suddenly, his eyes hooded, obscured beneath obsidian lashes.
“You are fire,” he growled, “you infuriating creature.”
I prided myself for seldom being at a loss for words around Calder Holloway, but when those bright blues darted back to mine, I had nothing. Heat flashed in my cheeks at the thought of whispering something back, but I couldn’t play that game. I couldn’t talk dirty to save my life, not without dissolving into a puddle of giggles, so I went for the next best thing: snark.
“So, what,” I muttered, breath quickening when his need brushed up against my thigh, barely contained, straining against his black briefs, “you’re telling me a dead man can actually get it up?”
Calder stilled, a finger hooked under the soaked fabric of my panties. In an instant, his anger dissipated, replaced by something smug, something dark and dangerous—something that told me I had poked the bear one too many times. My inner wolf had fallen silent, as if holding her breath right alongside me.
“Oh, Emma, of course,” Calder rumbled, his voice gravelly and deep, its timbre vibrating in my marrow. In a flash, too quick for me to track, his hand snapped from my swollen sex to my barely intact bun. I grabbed at his jacket, twisting the expensive material when he wrenched my head back again, neck exposed. Smirking, the vampire trailed his nose along the arc, lips faintly parted as he breathed me in. A shudder rippled down my spine as I made myself watch, made myself remember the gleam in his eye when he cocked his head to the side, then flashed two sharp, very real fangs up at me. “A dead man can always get it up—with the right persuasion.”
I exhaled a breathy cry when those fangs sunk into me, breaking my toughened shifter skin, piercing my neck. My first thought was the pain, the agony of a predator ripping into my throat, but there was only euphoria. Sweet heat flooded my veins. Lips parted, breath ragged, my vision shifted in and out of focus as the most intense climax of my life ricocheted off every part of me. Tingling in my toes. Looping in my core. Burning in my chest. Watering in my mouth. It left me light-headed, startled—elated.
Trembling hands reached up for him, but I couldn’t find my grip, fingers splayed across his still-clothed frame. Warmth trickled down my throat, pooled between my breasts, soaked through my bra. Logically, I knew what he was doing. Physically, I couldn’t grasp it. Couldn’t comprehend. Couldn’t fathom the sheer pleasure of his bite—
Just as swiftly as it had started, the onslaught of pure ecstasy vanished when Calder pulled away. A faint prick of pain, like the first prick of a needle, and it was all over. Gasping, I skimmed my chest, my neck, and my hands came back bloody. But the euphoria still tingled between my thighs, faintly, a distant memory of what had just happened. Wide-eyed and gawking, shaken to my very core and aroused as fuck, I met Calder’s eye. He smirked, icy fingertips pressed to my bare thighs, his body like marble situated between them.
“Why do you think we have groupies, darling?”
A rush of anger brought me back to, well, me.
His bite—the fucker had drugged me.
My features twisted in contempt, allowing him a split second to prepare for when I shoved at his chest. Calder caught my wrists as he stumbled bac
k, dragging me with him, hauling me off the desk. My legs wobbled, and I swayed, unsteady on my own two feet as my inner wolf emitted another long, low whine. Less desperate this time, less eager for a romp, she too must have felt the effects of Calder’s… attentions.
I rotated my wrists to break his hold, only to have him surge forward and toss me hard to the right. The concrete wall broke my fall, and I pushed myself up it, hating how hard my breath fell, like I’d just jogged a ten-mile loop in my wolf form. Calder peered down at me, hands loose at his sides, expression unreadable. A quick wipe of my neck told me the bite marks had already disappeared, healed in the blink of an eye.
Thank goodness. Rumor had it that a vampire’s bite slowed a shifter’s healing process; it was one of the reasons they were so dangerous.
But my body had taken his bite, his venom, and molded it into something so exquisite that I still didn’t understand it.
That I still ached for it.
And he knew it too. The smirk resurfaced, my blood on his mouth, his chin, his cheeks, and he strolled toward me, nudging down the elastic band of his black boxer briefs. I tried to hold his stare, chin lifted defiantly, heart pounding, but I couldn’t help sneaking a peek.
Sneaking a peek at what was a very hard, very full, very impressive cock.
Another rumor disproven. Vampires could, in fact, get it up—in all its thick glory, a smattering of black hairs at its base, a pair of veins curving around it, a glistening drop on its smooth head.
He wants this just as bad as I do.
I pressed further against the wall, fully aware that it made no difference, then offered a smirk of my own. And Calder knew—he knew that I knew, that I still saw him. The sharp line of his jaw, the irritation, the frustration, didn’t reach his eyes anymore, and it certainly didn’t reach his dick.
My smirk, however, reached something. Touched a nerve—a raw, frayed nerve, a live wire that triggered him just as his smirks always did me. Because the way he stormed over, expression stony, cock out like a sword leading the charge, and then hoisted me up, this wasn’t a seduction. This wasn’t a dance between lovers. As I wrapped my arms around his neck, speared my fingers into his hair, I recognized that it wasn’t sweet, indulgent, or tentative like so many first-time dalliances.
And thank fuck for that. Calder’s mask was indulgent, his public persona sweet. I wanted neither. I wanted his tongue dragging up the nape of my neck, sweeping the blood away. I wanted his groan as he did it, the hushed, gravelly hum of his vocal cords as he delighted in the taste of me.
And, while it stung, while it startled, I needed the way he ripped my panties to the side and thrust unceremoniously into me. No real foreplay—just a bite disguised as an orgasm, and a kiss that had me wet. Our noises rose in unison, in time with his body lifting into mine, hips colliding, bucking, rolling together. I fisted both hands in his hair, twisting as my sex tightened around the thick intrusion.
Curiously, my inner wolf had fallen silent.
And I had the sudden and undesirable urge to bite him back—to peel aside his fancy black suit and sink my teeth into the meat of Calder’s muscular shoulder.
To mark him.
Which was insane.
If I was going to mark anyone, it would be my mate—my fated mate, preferably, and I had skipped right out of Maine to avoid all of that nonsense.
So, I arched my back when he laved his tongue over the blood smeared across my cleavage. I relished the feeling of fullness, the sensation of having proper sex for the first time in years.
The weight of a man who could handle me.
Maybe even overpower me.
Still lapping at the spilled blood, a notion that ought to make my stomach roil, Calder bucked his hips hard against me. While he had given me a few precious moments to adjust to him, to accommodate his girth, there would be no more wasted seconds. No slow burn. No easy ascent into frenzied chaos. He took me hard and fast, pounding into me, hissing, groaning against my skin, his growls mirroring mine as I dragged my teeth along that rugged jawline, that razor-sharp cheekbone.
He kissed me like he wanted to hurt me, and quickly learned that I gave as good as I got. Calder might have set a brutal pace, slamming me into the wall like he was desperate to plow straight through it, but I was still a wolf. My kiss could bite. It could dominate.
I could be wild.
And I tasted my savagery when his lip split, when my teeth nicked his tongue.
When I finally twisted so viciously in those midnight-black locks that Calder’s hands stopped bruising my thighs and started bruising my wrists, yanking them out of his hair and pinning them against the wall. As if sensing I couldn’t be broken, emboldened by my soft moans, my muffled cries, he bucked harder, burying himself inside me, right down to the hilt with every brutal thrust.
All the while, my first true climax of the night clawed ever closer.
But I didn’t want to come like this.
I wanted to do it on top of him, with Calder splayed out on my desk, my hands on his chest. Naked—or, just as naked as me—while I rode him, while my experienced fingers danced over my clit until I howled.
“S-so, is this how you vamps did it?” I whispered, snapping at his earlobe, sinking my teeth into his flesh. He wrenched his head out of reach with a snarl, and I bit my lip to keep from smiling too brightly. The look in his eye, the adjustment of his angle to plunge deeper, told me it really, truly bothered him that I could hurt him, potentially mar his moon-kissed skin.
“Did what?” he hissed, grinding my wrists against the wall, his thrusts becoming shallower, faster, barely pulling out as the symphony of slapping skin, of moaning, groaning supernatural creatures intensified. I sucked in a quick breath, my limbs clenching, the fire spreading.
“How you got your sex-god status in pop culture,” I clarified, forcing myself to sound alert yet unfazed, like I had gloriously rough sex on the daily, like Calder Holloway was old news. “By some luck of the draw chemical r-reaction in your—ah—bite?”
That was a close one; pleasure surged, threatening to spill over and drown me. Fortunately, I sometimes had a hint of self-control. Sometimes.
Calder wore a concerning sort of grin as he nipped at my neck, my chin, my lips, the tip of my nose. “You think I can’t make you come, Emma?”
I lifted a challenging eyebrow. “Fuck you.”
He chuckled softly, slowing everything to a grinding halt. Pleasure roiled up from my core, my nipples painfully tight pearls in need of some attention, the blood-soaked bra suddenly too constricting. As he started to rock his hips, rolling them rather than pumping frantically, the pleasure became languid, like lava oozing down a volcano’s face rather than a white-hot blaze charring a grassy plain. I swallowed hard, fighting to keep my eyes open, to not succumb to the delicious burn—to not come undone in his arms.
Not while he was wearing that stupid grin.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he murmured, his hand drifting down my raised arm, slowly, lazily, not stopping until it clutched my chin hard enough to make me gasp. His fingers slipped between my parted lips, toying with them, stroking my tongue, pumping in and out. I let him do it, half enjoying the salaciousness of it, half waiting for the right moment. Calder added a third finger, openly testing me. “The correct terminology is fuck me, Mr. Holloway, preferably with a please somewhere in there—fuck!”
I seized the moment when it presented itself and clamped down on those bold fingers as hard as I could, until I tasted blood. Calder inhaled sharply, features contorted with rage, and ripped his hand away. Dark crimson-red blood spilled across his fingers, and I tipped my head back, wearing a feral grin of my own.
“Oh, please,” I cooed. “Fuck me, Mr. Holloway.” I clenched around him, not missing the way his eye twitched when I did it again, harder this time, pleasure blooming, and then twirled a loose blonde lock around my finger. “There. Did I do it right?”
Calder responded by pushing off the wall and dumping me back on my des
k, all the while wearing a dark, determined smile that made my stomach loop. He then pulled out and flipped me over, moving so fast, so sure, that the best I could do was plant my socked feet on the floor for stability—all the while bent over my own fucking desk, a vampire’s rigid shaft against my ass, my cheek pressed to the cool wood.
But only just long enough for me to catch my breath. Moments later, the tie I’d all but forgotten about came back into play, with Calder wrapping it around his fist and wrenching it up. Smooth, silky fabric dug into my throat, and I shot upright with it to keep from choking, forced flush against him, my back fitting snugly to his still-clothed chest. I arched, needing to break the physical contact, teeth gritted as I lifted my chin up and away.
His lips danced along my throat, the threat of another bite ever present with each brush of fang. Calder dragged an open-mouthed kiss across my jaw, up to my ear. My skin prickled in response, to the frost of his touch, a sharp, wonderful contrast to the fire burning in my belly.
My hands—I had no idea what to do with them. Fight. Grab. Push, pull. I knew what I should do with them: gouge his eyes with my thumbs. Instead, my fingers twisted into his jacket, my head thrown back against his shoulder, my breath falling harder now with the tie tight around my windpipe.
Calder’s hands, meanwhile, had purpose. The one kept me restrained, leashed.
And the other ghosted down my body, sliding a finger between the valley of my breasts, plucking at the bloodstained bra, then down, down, down, until—
“No.” I bucked when he yanked my panties down my thighs—when his fingers found my clit, latching onto the little bundle of nerves with unsettling precision. A moan slipped out, forced out, as he massaged me, breathing life back into the pleasurable embers in my core, working me like he had done it a thousand times before. Skilled fingers pinched and plucked and swept across, his thumb adding variety to the routine, making me twitch in his arms. He pulled back on the tie when I squirmed, when I protested, attacking his immovable forearm uselessly.
