Claimed by the Mate, Volume 3

by Kate Douglas

  As for Phelan, he only glanced at them momentarily. They weren’t what had drawn him here. He was waiting for something . . . or someone else.

  She knew he had arrived, just as she always did. The scar beneath his left eye twitched only seconds before she came through a side door wearing all black leather. Boots that came up to her thighs, a bra that barely covered the light pink of her nipples, and a thong that displayed the perfect globes of her ass. She walked slowly, being certain not to look at him directly. Her body was slim and compact, breasts just big enough to fit into his palms, ass just slightly bigger. Long, bone-straight, dark brown hair hung down the center of her back, barely covering the two dimples above the curve of her ass.

  Her nipples were already hard and Phelan was willing to bet every dollar in his pocket and his bank account that her pussy was wet. Eureka was always wet, especially for him.

  When she’d come completely into the room, she turned her back to him, and gyrated so that her ass bounced for his viewing pleasure. He despised everything about her. From her husky voice to her penchant for revenge and spitefulness. The latter he could attribute to her DNA. She was a fury; her main purpose in life was to punish people by literally driving them insane. Well, Phelan could attest to the fact that she was damned good at her job.

  The scar on his face tingled and he lifted a finger to rub along the gashes in his skin that had healed as much as they ever would. Lycans normally healed from all their wounds in record time. But this one, the one that was inflicted by another otherworldly being, was there to stay. Just as the curse she’d said she’d put on him. Phelan would have tried to argue that curse, but the fact that he was sitting here, for the ninth week in a row, his legs gaped open, dick hard and waiting, was proof to the contrary.

  Another lycan came in at that moment. Taller and much slimmer than Phelan, his skin darker than Phelan’s olive complexion, long fingers gripping the black paddle in one hand as he walked. Phelan flexed his fingers, remembering all too well how good it felt to hold that handle in his hand, to wield that dominant power over Eureka.

  Without a word Eureka leaned over a high-backed leather chair, so that she was facing the action of the others in the room, her upturned ass on display for Phelan to enjoy. Or to hate, whichever was his passion tonight. It was that way with her now. He hated her for what she’d done to him all those years ago, a searing dislike that went well beyond the physical scar she’d put on him, to the white-hot pain she’d inflicted on his soul. And then there were the moments when he craved her like his next meal. He needed to be near her, to scent her pussy, to watch her climax, to hear her moan in ecstasy, although none of that had come at his hand in the years since she’d scarred and cursed him.

  The lycan stepped closer to her, extending his palm and laying it over one bared ass cheek. She remained perfectly still, without him having to instruct her. That was part of the act—she appeared to be submissive when in reality that was the very last thing that Eureka Trisk would ever be.

  The lycan squeezed her cheek, gripping it tightly in his hand, and Phelan’s mouth watered. His hand moved down slowly to unzip his jeans and release his thick length. Grabbing the root of his cock, Phelan jerked upward, hard, as he watched the lycan rub along Eureka’s other cheek. Without warning the lycan reared back his other arm, bringing the paddle down over her ass with a loud whack.

  She didn’t move.

  Her cheek instantly turned red.

  He paddled her again and again, rotating from one cheek to the next. With each strike Phelan jerked his cock harder and harder, pre-cum already beading and dripping from his slit. When the lycan ripped the black thong from Eureka’s waist, Phelan’s teeth clenched together tightly. The lycan paddled her ass again and again, stopping only to slide his fingers down her slit. When he pulled his finger out, it was dripping with her desire and he immediately put it to his mouth and licked. Phelan pumped viciously into his hand. Another round of paddling and her ass cheeks were so red he could almost feel the heat emanating from them, while rivulets of her essence dripped down the inside of her thighs.

  Phelan came at that moment. Like a storm that had been brewing, his release burst free, dripping down onto his hand and the front of his jeans. He cursed with the pressure that had built along the base of his spine and the tension that remained stretched across the breadth of his shoulders. He’d come, but he wasn’t relieved. Not by a long shot. He never was.

  Reaching down beside him, he opened the black case that was always left there for him. Using the wipes and hand sanitizer, he cleaned himself, and stood from the chair, not caring to see the lycan finally thrusting his rigid length into Eureka’s pussy, or the others who were still there, very near to finding their final release.

  Phelan didn’t give a damn about any of it. He wanted to leave. Just as he always did. Hating the fact that he’d driven all the way out here in the first place, but unable to stop the monotonous routine.

  Phelan’s boots thumped loudly on the stairs as he made his way out of the building, thoughts and recriminations roaring through his mind while he moved.

  “Leaving so soon?” Her voice carried through the air, echoing off the cinder-block walls.

  “Got what I came for,” was Phelan’s terse reply.

  “And that’s all you ever wanted,” Eureka countered.

  Phelan turned quickly, staring up the last flight of stairs to see her standing there, a sheer knee-length robe covering what remained of her leather outfit.

  Once upon a time there was so much he’d wanted to say to her, so many things he’d thought about sharing, about admitting, but then he’d found out her true purpose.

  Shaking his head, he responded. “Don’t do that,” he warned. “There’s nothing for us down that road.”

  “This time?” She arched a brow, crossing her arms over her chest, looking like a goddess—a goddess of temptation and rage.

  “Any time,” he said, turning again to leave.

  Her screech was loud and long and pierced straight through to his gut, but Phelan didn’t stop moving. So what if she was angry. He’d given up on caring about the way Eureka felt about anything he did or said a long time ago.

  “It won’t go away!” she yelled after him. “I will never leave you, no matter how far you try to run!”

  Phelan kept moving, kicking through the door and stepping out into the night air. He had no idea what time it was now, just that the sky was black, overcast, with no stars in sight. Typical, he thought as his feet crunched on gravel before he stood near his bike once again. Grabbing the helmet, he slipped it on, throwing a leg over and lifting his bike beneath him. He sat for a moment before starting the engine, inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly.

  She was right.

  She had never left him. Not in the ten years they’d been separated, the years since he’d found out she’d been sent to kill him. Her excuse for betraying him had been that she’d fallen in love with him, but that was a lie. Just like everything else she’d said and done. She hadn’t loved him; the thought of bringing him and the leader of the Trekas pack to Zeus had intrigued her. Aroused her, yes, that’s one thing Phelan could lay claim to. But Eureka was easily aroused. She was fuckable and she was an evil bitch with vengeance flowing in her veins.

  And she had been with him every day since then in his mind and, infuriatingly, his soul. Every fucking day. The scar was the physical reminder, but the hardening of his heart, the firm set of his jaw, everything down to the strict rules he put on his sex life, were a direct result of his experience with Eureka.

  Starting his bike, Phelan drove away from Club Entice. He left the thoughts of his past behind to instead focus on more pertinent matters. The human world had been aware of the existence of shape-shifters living among them for a year now, but the residents of Blackbriar—the small Montana mountain town where Blaez, the alpha of his pack, had moved them more than a year ago—were now up in arms about them being there.

  After Malec h
ad killed the Solo—a lycan with no pack and no affiliation to the Hunters or the Devoteds—who had been threatening Malec’s mate, Caroline, in her apartment, the town had let loose on the pack that had renovated the log cabin in the woods. So far, however, the security measures that Phelan had instituted had kept them away from the lodge, but tempers were flaring. The humans were planning and Zeus was still hunting Blaez. A bounty had been set for the capture or killing of the half demigod, half lycan, and Phelan and the other betas in the pack were charged with keeping him safe.

  To say Phelan had other shit on his mind besides the claw marks on his face and the still-raging hard-on pressed uncomfortably against his thigh was an understatement. And as he rode along the highway in the dark of night, nobody would ever guess the weight laying heavily on the lycan’s shoulders.

  Nobody but . . .

  The night air had been growing cooler as it was now in the midst of the fall season. It had rained earlier in the day drenching the area in scents of wet leaves, damp mud-packed grounds, and, for a Devoted lycan, the scent of their archenemies, the Hunters. The pack had picked up the aroma earlier in the week, even though they’d all been expecting more of the lycans who had vowed to destroy all Devoteds and especially the one true blood relation to their creator, Nyktimos. But the full moon was weeks away, so an attack wasn’t expected until then.

  Yet as Phelan inhaled deeply once more his shoulders hunched, his fingers tightening on the handles of his bike. He leaned in closer, his gaze trained forward, to the car driving a short distance in front of him. The scent was coming from there. He sped up without another thought, leaning into a lane change until he came up alongside the SUV. The windows were tinted so that he could not see inside, but the stench had grown stronger, more potent than it had been just seconds before.

  It wasn’t simply a Hunter’s scent, either.

  No, Phelan thought with a shake of his head. It was too strong, too feral, unrestrained, desperate, and possibly afraid.

  It was a new blood.

  * * *

  She was going to be sick.

  Marena had never gone through a registration so quickly in her life. But she’d barely managed to get out of her car and run up the steps to the quaint little B and B nestled just off the road, surrounded by a copse of trees. Once inside she murmured something about needing a room for the night and slapped her credit card on the desk. Deep breaths while the desk clerk spoke what Marena knew was probably important information but somehow sounded like jibberish had kept her from keeling over right there in the lobby, on the lovely and most definitely expensive Aubusson rug.

  By the time the clerk, a woman wearing a thick beige sweater and wire-rimmed glasses, handed her back her credit card and gave her a room key, Marena could feel the bile burning at the base of her throat. She snatched the items from the woman’s hand and raced up the stairs, barely reading the room numbers but somehow getting the key into the right lock and flying into the room, heading straight to the bathroom. She made it just in time and ten minutes later felt like collapsing on the pretty black-and-white-tiled bathroom floor.

  She’d just managed to pull herself up to use the facilities in another way and then went into the outer room to retrieve her toothbrush from her bag when she heard something. Footsteps, she thought, but then shook her head when she also heard some ringing and the definite rumbling of her stomach reiterating the fact that she hadn’t bothered to eat during her fifteen-hour ride from San Francisco to Montana. Of course, she’d stopped for gas and to use the restroom, but somehow food just hadn’t appealed to her tumultuous stomach. Now she was thinking maybe she should at least try something light.

  Marena was in the bathroom, toothpaste foaming at her mouth, when she heard the footsteps again. This time they echoed in her head as if someone were walking right beside her. Inside her heart thumped wildly, sensations moving just beneath her skin like a live entity, and she shivered. Leaning forward, she rinsed and spit, grabbing one of the soft, light blue towels from the pearl white rack and wiping her mouth. After she shut off the water, Marena stood, listening.

  The footsteps had stopped, but whoever had been walking wasn’t gone. No, that person was near. Very near, and Marena wondered what that meant.

  Without even knowing why, she walked into the bedroom and stared at the door. Not only was her heart pounding, but her temples throbbed now, too. The sickness in her stomach rolled around as if it were ready for an encore. She was standing there, holding her stomach with one hand, her head with the other, when the first knock sounded.

  She didn’t want to answer. A voice yelled loudly in her head for her to ignore the intrusion, while something deeper inside told her not to. It didn’t make sense. None of this did. Why couldn’t she open the door? She had no idea who was on the other side. And why the hell was she feeling all these strange sensations? She wanted to sit down, or lie down and get some sleep. Surely that would make her feel better.

  But then it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do because he was there. He came up behind her, pushing her hand away from her head and wrapping something over her eyes. Instinct told her to turn and fight, to swing and kick and get to her purse, to her gun . . . again. But something else, that same something that had insisted she let him in, calmed her and Marena stood still. The thumping in her heart and the pain in her temples ceased immediately. Her stomach stopped churning and warmth ensconced her.

  “You don’t need to see right now,” the male voice said from behind her. “You need to feel. To experience and to learn. It is just the beginning.”

  Marena jerked against the covering over her eyes, but he was stronger and he pulled it tighter, and when he was done, let his hands slide slowly down her arms to grasp her wrists. She moved again, a weak attempt at getting away because there was something overriding all the fight-or-flight instincts she’d developed over the years of being a single woman. Something that she craved much more than her own safety. It was peace.

  Her head no longer throbbed with incessant pain and her stomach was no longer revolting against her. In fact, Marena felt calmer now than she could remember ever feeling in her entire life. Why was that?

  His hands moved back up her arms after her seconds of contemplation. Tender touches that she wasn’t sure were meant to be intimate but had her thinking of warm winter nights, cuddled up in front of a fire with a man who loved her as much as she loved him. It was a foolish thought to have at a time like this. Foolish and out of place. Weird and unexplainable. Just like most of the things that had been happening to her in the last forty-eight hours.

  When those fingers touched her shoulder heat soared through her body and still she shivered. She wanted to open her eyes, to turn and look to see who this was who had come into her room this time. Her luck with hotel rooms and guys walking in on her sucked!

  Marena took a step forward, until his hands were no longer on her. She turned slowly in the direction in which she’d thought she’d heard his voice. Then, as if just realizing it, she reached up and yanked the blindfold from her eyes.

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked immediately upon seeing the tall man dressed in black leather standing in the middle of the room. “And how did you get in here?”

  For a few seconds—which actually seemed like an eternity—he simply stared back at her. The intensity in his piercing green eyes warming her in places they definitely should not be able to touch. She had no idea who this guy was or what he wanted. And she wasn’t anywhere near her purse this time.

  “You left the door ajar. I knocked, but you didn’t respond,” he told her.

  “So you just came inside,” she countered. “You came inside and tried to blindfold me. Who does that? Never mind, don’t answer. Just leave. Now! Before I call the cops.”

  She’d made the threat, but she knew she wouldn’t do that. For all she knew there was now a warrant out for her arrest due to Davis’s disappearance. Well, at the very least the cops in San Francisco we
re actively looking for her to question her again. She hadn’t checked her phone in the last few hours, but at the last rest stop she had noticed that Gail hadn’t returned her urgent call. That troubled her, just as this guy who was still staring at her did.

  “They cannot help you,” he told her simply, hooking his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants.

  It was a cocky sort of stance, one that said “you need me and you don’t even know it.” Marena didn’t like it, but she couldn’t help staring back at him with what she felt might be intrigue.

  “And you can? You don’t even know me,” she quipped. “Are you high? Did you get lost and need to find your own room?”

  She attempted to walk around him then, to go to the door and hold it open wide for his departure. But he grabbed her arm. The touch was electrifying, sending jolts of what felt like fire-tinged tendrils up her arm and exploding throughout her body.

  “Let me go,” she started to say, attempting to pull away from him but stumbling back instead.

  He reached out both arms then, catching her by the waist before she could fall flat on the floor. And that was no easy feat. Marena was a big girl, always had been. She was proud of her size 18 curves on a good day—20 on a viciously horrific one—and went the extra mile to select the most stylish in plus-sized clothing to ensure she looked her very best at every moment. Even now, after hours of traveling, her jeans were still crisp, the long-sleeved charcoal-colored T-shirt was only marginally wrinkled, and her Stuart Weitzman Rialto flats still managed to look cute on her unusually small feet. Still, all of her weight was relying on his hold on her and Marena knew that was no slight matter. Yet he was staring down at her as calmly as if they were sitting on a park bench sharing a hot dog.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said without blinking. “You don’t know why yet, but you need me here. I’m guessing that’s why our paths crossed in the first place.”

  She shook her head, noting the electrifying green eyes and the ugly scar beneath one of them. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you.”