by Cynthia Eden
His jaw clenched. Don’t lie to me, Isabella.
She advanced with hesitant steps. “What werewolves are you talking about?” But then, before he could speak, she gave a nervous laugh. “Doesn’t matter, though, not really, because I’ve never killed a werewolf. You were actually the first werewolf I ever saw. You know, up close and in the flesh.”
Her words sounded like the truth.
But…
Vampires and werewolves didn’t exactly have the best past. “Vane said you’d tried to mate with others.” The bastard had still been whispering his secrets even as Griffin shoved the silver knife into the guy’s heart. Vane had told him, “She was working her way through the wolves, killing those who didn’t form a link with her. It’s what her kind does…”
She put her hand on his chest. “I was scared.” Her long lashes covered her eyes as she made that soft confession. “I know it’s crazy. I just met you. I feel like everything is moving a million miles an hour between us, but…I was scared when you were fighting. I didn’t like seeing you hurt, and I did not want you to die in front of me.” Her lashes lifted. “I would have broken every single one of those stupid werewolf rules to keep you alive.”
Could she really lie that well? Or was he just desperate to believe her? “We have the mating link. Nothing can destroy that.”
“I…um, that’s good to know.”
“So even if I found out that you’ve been killing werewolves, the link would still be there.”
She blinked.
“Even if I found out that I was just number four in your line—that you’d planned to kill me, too, if the mating bond didn’t form between us—our link would still be there.”
Isabella snatched her hand away from his chest. “I don’t think I like the way you’re looking at me.”
Too bad. He didn’t much like the way he was feeling. Since meeting Isabella, his emotions had erupted. Right then, he was feeling rage, fear, lust…and jealousy. The jealousy didn’t even make sense. But…three other werewolves before me? That thought just opened the doors and made him wonder…who all had she known before him? What lovers had tasted Isabella?
“I don’t like the way you’re talking to me, either.” Her chin notched up. “You know, I saved your ass out there. Vane was charging right at you. I didn’t hear your buddy Carter warning you about the attack. I did that. And you still haven’t offered me even a grudging thank you.”
“I’ve got werewolf’s senses,” he responded flatly. “I heard Vane coming. I didn’t need your shout.” But it had been nice.
Her lips tightened.
He wanted those lips. He wanted her. But Griffin wasn’t sure he could trust her. “Felix said you were a killer.”
“Felix?” Isabella backed up a step. “Please…seriously, tell me you aren’t talking about an asshole named Felix Flemming.”
She knew the name, obviously. Not a good sign. “I’m talking about the asshole in question.”
Isabella swallowed. “He…he was the guy who came to my hotel room in Vegas. He and his goons tried to force me to go with them. I didn’t particularly appreciate a creep with a gun trying to abduct me, so I jumped out of the window.”
He surged forward and curled his fingers around her arms. “Felix is the reason you jumped from the seventh story?”
“Are you working with Felix?”
Griffin hesitated. Horror was on her pretty face and admitting that he’d taken cash from Felix didn’t seem like the best plan at that moment. “Tell me everything Felix said in your hotel room.”
“He said that he’d been waiting on me for a very long time.” She gave a mocking laugh. “I’m a vamp. The guy doesn’t understand the meaning of long time.”
“What else did he say?”
She licked her lower lip, a fast and sexy swipe of her tongue. His cock jerked beneath the towel. “Felix told me that the, ah, the first experiments were failures, but that he had high hopes…” She shook her head. “I can’t remember if he said high hopes about me or high hopes about that night because that’s the point when he started saying that he knew my weakness. The guy threatened to shoot me so that I’d be weakened from blood loss. Once I was weak, he was going to get his jerk henchmen to take me out of the hotel.”
Sonofabitch. “He’s a dead man.”
“How do you know Felix?”
Because he hired me to hunt you. “Our paths have crossed.”
“How.” But her eyes narrowed as she studied him. Anger flashed on her face. “Right. I get it. The stake in the alley…he sent you to kill me.”
Griffin knew he needed to explain very carefully. “Felix sent me after a killer. He told me you were a threat, that you’d been attacking humans. The guy came into my office and said he just wanted proof of your guilt.” But Griffin could see the lies now. “Felix knew what I was,” Griffin realized. “He must have known. He deliberately sent a werewolf after a vamp, knowing what would happen when our paths crossed.”
“My death. That was supposed to happen. You were supposed to drive your stake into my heart.”
That was one option. “Or maybe he got exactly what he really wanted.” High fucking hopes, indeed. “If there are other dead werewolves out there, those could be the failed experiments. The ones who didn’t form the mating link with you.”
She glared at him. “I told you, I hadn’t met any werewolves until you! I never saw any others until you!”
That didn’t mean the werewolves hadn’t seen her. He was still holding her. Beneath his fingers, her skin was softer than silk. He loved touching her skin. Kissing it. Kissing her everywhere. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Don’t.”
He blinked.
“Don’t you dare look at me like you want to fuck me now. Not after you stood in that horrible parking lot with a dead wolf at your feet, and you stared at me as if I were the monster.”
“Isabella…”
“You thought I’d lied. I mean, I get it now. I see now. You thought I’d been picking off werewolves—”
“It was something I had to consider, especially since Vane had just told me you were guilty.”
Her lips parted. “He told you that…and you…still killed him? For me?”
“I said it before, and I’ll say it again, no one will threaten you.” Because when he thought about her in danger, Griffin went a little mad. More than a little. “My feelings for you aren’t exactly normal.”
Her tongue swiped over her lower lip. She needed to stop doing that—unless she was going to let him lick, too.
Her voice was breathy as Isabella said, “You think mine are normal when it comes to you? I’m mad as hell at you right now.” Her voice dropped even more. “But the desire is still there. The need—it’s twisting and growing inside of me, and I know it’s wrong.”
His mouth took hers. A long, drugging kiss, and his cock hardened even more for her. “Nothing between us will ever be wrong.” Screw what the other werewolves thought of their union. Fate had different plans for him. With the mating bond, the lust came first—the instant connection that said two parts of a whole had found each other. Love? Trust? He knew they would come soon enough.
Hell, they’d already started growing for him. Wasn’t he taking Isabella at her word, even over a werewolf alpha? Hadn’t he been so frantic to protect her that he’d gone against his entire pack?
But how did she feel about him?
“Don’t be so sure of that,” she told him. Her eyes gleamed and he was pretty sure those eyes of hers were stealing part of his soul. “The entire situation feels wrong.”
He kissed her again. “Then let’s make it feel right.” His hand slid between their bodies. She’d secured the towel between her breasts, and he tugged on the material. The towel fell and pooled at her feet.
“Griffin…”
“You let me bite you at the motel.” When he’d been bleeding and hurt, she’d come to his aid. “I think it’s your turn.” His f
ingers lightly caressed her nipples. Such pretty, tight nipples. A soft, dusky color.
She shivered. “I think the bites…they make things worse.” Her head tipped back and her eyes closed as his fingers stroked her. “They just make me want you more.”
That’s not worse. It’s better.
“You thought I was a killer just moments before, and now you want to fuck me?”
He lifted her up, holding her easily in his arms. “Isabella, let’s get one thing straight. I always want to fuck you.”
Her eyes opened as a surprised laugh tumbled out of her. He’d been carrying her toward the bed, but at that sound, he froze.
The entire world seemed to stop.
She blinked. “What is it?” Isabella stiffened in his arms. “Is something the matter?”
He wanted to hear her laughter again. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted her happy.
That was the way of the bite. Lust came first, the instant connection and consuming need. And then…
Love? Did he truly believe in love?
I think I could believe in her. Griffin cleared his throat. “I like your laugh.”
Carefully, he lowered her onto the bed. Griffin wasn’t particularly shocked to see that he’d lost his own control. Not shocked—and he didn’t care, either. She was spread out on the bed, completely open to his gaze, and he’d never seen anything so perfect in his life.
He leaned over her, and his mouth closed over one sweet nipple. He licked her, sucked, and loved the way she arched toward him. Did Isabella know she was whispering his name? Did she have any clue how much her whisper turned him on?
His hand slipped between her legs. One touch, and he found that she was ready for him. Wet and hot. A good thing because his cock was stretched to the brink. He wanted in her. He wanted her pleasure. He wanted to watch her come.
And he wanted her bite. Because he liked that, too. Griffin didn’t care if the bite made the link between them stronger. Hell, he wanted it stronger. I won’t let her go.
He would also never forget the way she’d come to him in that parking lot…surrounded by a pack of angry wolves, offering her blood to his beast.
Now he offered himself to her. The trust has to start somewhere. It can start with me. He kissed a path down her stomach, loving the moans and gasps that slid from her lips. Down, down he went. His fingers trailed over her sex. He’d never witnessed a prettier sight.
His head bent. His lips feathered over her.
“Griffin!”
His tongue slipped into her.
“Griffin!” Her whole body shuddered. Then her hands grabbed for his shoulders. “I want you, all of you, in me.”
As if he’d deny her. A moment later, Griffin drove into her. Slid right into the tightest, hottest heaven of his life. Her legs wrapped around his hips as she surged up to meet his thrusts. The headboard slammed into the wall, but he didn’t care. She was all that mattered.
They rolled on the bed, and then she was on top. Her hands pushed against his chest as she rose up and sank down. Her head tipped back, her dark hair trailing over her shoulders. Her breath came quickly, and she rode him faster, faster.
He surged upward, his thrust lifting her off the bed. She came that way, gasping out his name, but it wasn’t enough for him. Not nearly enough. “Bite me.”
She slumped forward. Her mouth pressed to his throat. Isabella licked the skin right over his racing pulse. His fingers dug into her hips as he drove into her again. His climax was bearing down on him, but he needed—
Her fangs sank into him.
The whole world shattered. Pleasure was all he knew.
***
“Word on the street…word is that the Vegas pack has a new leader.”
Felix stared at the fire before him—the fire that blazed inside the piece of shit office that had once been the home of Romeo Private Investigations. After he’d finished searching the dump, Felix had thought the fire would be a nice touch.
The flames would destroy any evidence he’d left behind, and the blaze might even draw Griffin back to the city. In the distance, Felix could hear the wail of sirens. Cops, firefighters—rushing to the blaze. If they were coming, then Felix knew it was time for him to make an exit.
“Did you hear me, boss?” Will Hasting demanded.
“I heard you.” He kept looking at the flames. The fire was such a greedy bitch, destroying everything in her path. She was a thing of utter beauty to him. “Who took over?”
“Don’t know yet. When I put out the call for intel on Griffin, I immediately learned from my main source that Vane was dead.”
“Your source.” His lips twisted. “You mean your werewolf side piece.” Because the guy liked to walk—or fuck—on the wild side with one of the female wolves in the pack. She’d been the one feeding them information about the pack from day one. Felix had learned—early on—that every pack had a weakness. That weakness was typically the runt of the litter. A wolf the others treated like shit. In the case of the Vegas pack, Shelly Crenshaw was the runt. She couldn’t shift fully, and she’d been scorned for years because of that fact. Trapped between life as a human and life as a werewolf, Shelly had been utterly alone and the perfect prey.
Will had moved in on her, seduced her, and gotten her to spill pack secrets in near record time. As for Felix…I learned plenty of secrets about Shelly, too. Secrets that had proved useful to him.
“Shelly doesn’t know who the new alpha is. She wasn’t at the fight.”
Of course, she hadn’t been. Shelly wouldn’t have been included in something so important.
“But she heard Vane’s body was being buried.” Will whistled. “Vane’s death has to be connected to Griffin, right? I mean, hell, do you think he challenged Vane?”
It was a possibility that couldn’t be overlooked. “If Vane found out that Griffin was mated to a vamp, then the fight would have been inevitable.” Vane would have wanted to kill Isabella, and Griffin would now be hard-wired to protect her at all costs. My experiment just gets better and better.
The sirens were coming closer. Felix turned from the scene and stalked toward the black SUV that waited for him. He climbed inside, and Will hurried in after him. Felix’s driver slammed the back door shut. As he sat in the back seat, Felix tapped his chin. “Pack law…” He’d made a point of learning everything he could about pack law over the years. Know your enemy. “Whoever defeated Vane now gets everything the old alpha possessed.”
Will leaned back against the leather seat. “Sounds like one sweet ass deal to me.”
It was. Provided you survived the fight to the death. “Vane’s house.” A slow smile spread over his lips. “Griffin would have won Vane’s house.” He already knew all about that place, courtesy of the chatty Shelly. A big, fancy mansion in the desert. The perfect place for the pack to run wild. “That’s where Griffin is right now. The guy went from that piece of shit office…” Ah, but it was burning so well. “To paradise. He’s going to be in the mansion.” Felix laughed. “And he’ll have my vamp with him.” Found out all this…and didn’t even have to pay the hundred grand.
The driver slid into the front seat. “Where to, boss?”
Felix peered through the window, staring up at the dark sky. He wouldn’t attack, not until dawn. But he could go ahead and make his plans.
You can run, Isabella, but you can’t hide. Not from me.
Chapter Eight
Sex wasn’t supposed to be so consuming. An orgasm wasn’t supposed to practically shatter her, and when Isabella bit her donor, his blood wasn’t supposed to make her entire body hum with pleasure.
But Griffin wasn’t just some donor. And sex with him would never be considered average or casual. And the orgasms he gave to her? More, please.
She was in bed with him. The sheets felt cool against her skin, but his arm was warm as it wrapped around her stomach. Her heart was still racing, she swore she could still feel him, inside, and Isabella knew she was in serious troub
le.
She stared up at the ceiling. “Lust comes first.”
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder.
Her eyes closed. “Then…love?” Was that really the way it worked? Was it even possible? The bite recognized physical compatibility, okay, she could go with that, but…
“You ever been in love before, Isabella?”
“No.” Not even close. “Vamps aren’t exactly, well, long-term commitment isn’t possible, not with a human lover.” A lover who would die and leave you alone and grieving. “And other vamps…” Okay, time for her confession. “I don’t exactly have the best relationship with my own kind.” Her eyes opened. Her head turned. She found his gaze on her. “I’ve been running,” she admitted, her voice stark.
“Tell me who you want me to kill.”
Her lips parted in shock. “What?”
“If someone’s after you, tell me. Give me a name. Or names. I don’t care if it’s one vamp or an army of them, I will—”
“I left them because I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to live that way, not anymore.”
“What way?”
It was so hard to tell him about the dark places inside of her. “The bloodlust can overtake you. You forget that you have a soul. You’re just feeding and getting high on the rush of power and life. Nothing else matters. And then you look down and you realize…the blood is all around you, and there’s…there’s a body on the floor.”
His face hardened.
“I don’t like to kill.” Her words came out in a rush. “I don’t want to take and take until nothing is left. I learned control. I made myself learn it. But the others, they didn’t care. They said I was unnatural. That we were the top of the food chain, and we could do what we wanted.”
“Isabella…”
“I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve hurt people, and I can’t ever forget what I did to them, but I am trying, I swear, I am trying, to be better. That’s why I only attack people who deserve it.”
His gaze didn’t leave her face.
She felt shame burn through her. Isabella rolled away from him and crawled from the bed. “You think no one deserves what I do. That I shouldn’t bite any human.”
