“A powerful Fae Queen,” Niles said.
“One who fortunately isn’t our enemy. Yet.”
chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
LEIGH! IT’S DARK and cold down here.”
Leigh clung even tighter to Niles, clutching a big blanket around them. “I warned you to travel as a hound,” she told him. “All that fur keeps you warm, not that you ever feel the cold anyway. And I’m not complaining about your dress code.” She held him so close they stumbled.
“It’s your icy skin I’m thinking about,” he told her.
They had climbed down the stairs from the bluff to his home—her home, too, Leigh realized, but she had insisted they were going onto the beach. The tide was low and a half-moon showed in shades of lemon and gray through a membrane of royal blue cloud.
Only a short distance from the moon, that royal blue cloaked to black.
“I want to take you inside,” Niles said, holding her close. “Aren’t the pebbles hurting your feet?”
“I’ve got shoes on. You’re the one who’s barefoot.” She giggled. “And bare-assed.”
“Leigh!” He sounded genuinely shocked.
“Not ladylike,” she said, running a hand over the part of him in question. “I don’t mind if you want to go without clothes all the time. At home, that is. I don’t want any other woman seeing you.”
“Thanks—I think.”
He rubbed her back and she sucked in a sharp breath. Saul had worked on her with his healing hands before they left the others. Energy had flooded back into her body, but the bruises and some of the cuts would take a little longer to go away.
Leigh gazed over fine ripples on the inky water, ripples edged here and there with fluorescence. “This is why I’m here,” she told Niles. “Chimney Rock Cove, the waters and what’s beneath them. And what comes from that rock out there.”
Niles was more interested in trying to keep Leigh covered up than in anything she said.
Time to show him what she was coming to believe. The fountainhead of the Deseron, supposedly extinct but far from it, lay out there.
They reached the water’s edge and she kicked off her shoes.
“Please, Leigh. I think you’re delirious. Aren’t you hurting? Aren’t you exhausted?”
She reached under the blanket to caress him. “Not at all. But I feel as if I’ll explode with joy, and I feel very, very sexy.”
He groaned. “Then we definitely need to go to the cabin.”
“Why?”
“Just because we do. I’ll take you to bed and love you till you are exhausted and pass out from weakness.”
Leigh put first her toes, then her feet into the water.
As she stared out, a pattern of glittering silver formed. It came to rest at her feet but spread straight out to where the rock was and opened in a circle as if to surround it.
And the water was soft and warm, caressing her skin, beckoning her deeper.
She wrapped the blanket around Niles, touching her nose to his when she saw how dark and troubled his eyes were. “It’s all right. Sometimes even the strong have to be led.”
In a swift move she tugged her sweater over her head and ran her fingers through her hair, shaking it and reveling in the sensation of faint breeze slipping around her neck.
Her jeans followed the sweater and she stood there in the faint moonlight in nothing but her flimsy bra and panties. And she struck a pose just for him until he made a grab for her.
Leigh hurriedly waded out of reach. In water almost to her knees, she unhooked her bra and tossed it away.
“Leigh,” he moaned. Then he was quiet for a moment before he said, “You sparkle. What is that? Little points of light flashing from all sorts of places. Are you a witch? Have you been keeping a secret from me?”
Her panties were removed with less grace and she fell up to her neck in that sparkling water. “This is all mine,” she called. “Until I can find the mystical missing Deseron master to take over and teach me the ropes, I’ll just have to go on instinct. Instinct pulls me into this water, into this light. If I sparkle”—the hand and arm she held up gave off bright flashes—“that backs up what I’m telling you. I feel strong here. I’m getting stronger with every moment. I don’t hurt—except for needing you. Come in, Niles.”
He threw the blanket aside and ventured into the water, heading straight for her.
Leigh turned away and waded as fast as she could, then broke into a strong sidestroke, trying to draw him as far from the shore as possible. “Do you see the path on the water?”
“Yes, but I don’t know how. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“It could be that now we are mates, you will have some of my powers.” She trod water. “Do you think that means I’ll start being able to turn into a hound?”
He broke his stroke but only for a short while before driving forward again and reaching her. He tried to stand, but the water was too deep and they clung together, legs tangled together, holding each other’s faces.
“You will never become a hound,” he said, and she drew back at the anger in his voice. “It was forced upon me, and helping to make hounds acceptable, desirable even, became my job. And with your help, I’ll succeed. But what happened to me will not happen to you. I want you as you are—always.”
Running her hand along his jaw, Leigh smiled. “Hah, look at you.” She pointed to his shoulders and arms. “You’ve got the magic shine, too. Mm, I think I could slide all over you.”
Taking her by the waist, Niles held her still and gradually raised her until her breasts settled on top of the water. “Ah,” he said softly. “Now there’s a sight to make me think about all kinds of slippery, sliding things.”
He grabbed her against him and kissed her open-mouthed, moved his tongue to touch as much of the inside of her lips and cheeks as he could reach.
Leigh’s core burned and pulsed.
She slid one knee between his legs, all the way up until she felt the rigid length of him.
Niles kissed his way from her lips over her jaw and bent her gently backward to smooth her breasts with his palms between.
The words he whispered were indecipherable.
His kisses traveled in a line between her ribs, down her belly, to her center. He held her almost out of the water to tease her with his tongue until she flipped around and grasped his shoulders. “Make love to me,” she said.
“You’ve managed to make mush of my brain,” he told her, holding her bottom with both hands and urging her against him. “But not so much I can’t think at all. You should be freezing.”
“But I’m not. Feel me.”
“I have felt you. I am feeling you. You’re not and it’s crazy.”
She flipped upside down in the water and drew his penis into her mouth, as much of it as she could. He struggled not to let his desire get the better of him and managed to haul her up to the surface again.
“You’ll drown, little minx,” he said. “In we go, now.”
Leigh slid up and down his length, catching his most vulnerable parts between her thighs with each pass.
“What’s wrong with here?” she said, guiding the tip of him just inside her. She loved the way the strong lines of his upturned face shone by moonlight. Slowly she inched him deeper inside her, not stopping until he gripped her waist and buried his face in her neck.
“There’s no protection,” he muttered. “I don’t want to risk a child until I know more. We risked it before, but I won’t lose you in childbirth. Nothing is worth that.”
He kissed her neck and she took advantage of the opportunity to thrust herself all the way over him. Whipping her legs around his hips, she locked her ankles together and held him there.
“How am I supposed to resist you?” He was breathless.
“If there’s a child, there’s a child. Not that it’s likely so soon.”
“Perhaps not, but… Leigh, there are no more werehound females left. Part of my original quest to find a
human mate was to find someone strong enough to be the mother to my children. But that has no meaning to me anymore. I just want you. The risk is too great. If I have you, I have everything.”
Leigh had learned much about risk in the past few days. She could see in Niles’s eyes that his concern was genuine, but her need for him—to build a future with him—was stronger. Wrapping her legs even more tightly around him, she urged him toward her center.
He gave a single thrust into her and she cried out.
“Niles, without you I don’t have anything. Please, this is what’s meant to be—us together. I am not a hound. Eventually, if we are meant to have a child, it will be different. Don’t worry about it now.”
The silken waters ebbed and flowed around them, folded over their bodies. Pressure mounted in Leigh’s body, pounded through her, throbbed, ached, burned all over again.
Niles didn’t talk anymore until much later, after they lay on top of the damp blanket, on top of the beach pebbles, enfolded in the warm, tingling light from the sea.
This was the beginning…
She’s a feline shapeshifter. He’s a werehound. Together, they are perfect—and lethal.
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Darkness Bred
Available in December 2012
Prologue
Chinatown, San Francisco
IT WAS ALREADY too late.
Before the bouncer let him in, before the doors to the club closed behind him, before he walked through a crowded hallway toward silver lights pulsing in time to mind-pounding music and a wildly spinning stream of shining reflections around magenta walls—it was too late.
A man hustling a woman up the stairs from the sidewalk outside had looked back at Sean Black and stood still for the beat of one long, triumphant stare. Then they had gone inside.
And Sean had followed like a jumper to the edge of a cliff.
He could never forget that face, the sharp, predatory features, the sneer creased across his almost lipless mouth. In the back room of a saloon in Creed, Colorado, Sean had saved the man’s life, and in thanks, the man as good as took his.
“Why, Jacob O’Cleary, as I live and breathe,” a smoke-stained voice ground into Sean’s ear. “What a surprise to see you. Small world, as they say.” The man had waited for him to follow, known he would. Holding the elbow of a young brunette whose eyes were too big for her face and scoured a puffy purple underneath, he walked ahead into the surging crowd.
Hearing his birth name for the first time in far more than a century jolted Sean. Jacob O’Cleary—the only name this ancient werehound knew him by.
Walk the other way, Sean.
Only he couldn’t, because it was already too late.
Trolling San Francisco’s Chinatown late on a Saturday night didn’t happen by accident, not to Sean Black. Whispers through his own hidden world that a dangerous hound known only as Aldo had been sighted in the area, and was asking about him, had brought Sean to the city. He expected to spend days, maybe even weeks tracking Aldo—not to all but fall over the guy.
But of course, Aldo had planned it that way. He needed to taste the power of dominating a superior intellect again, and that could only mean that Aldo had begun to deteriorate. Sean could restore him.
Once through the entry hall, the place was bigger than it looked from the outside, with rocking, rubbing bodies smashed together on a central dance floor and tables all around the edge. There were booths for those who wanted privacy, and plenty of stools along a long bar for parties less concerned about their conspicuousness.
Sean looked around and quickly identified a number of vampires and a shapeshifter in drag. What the shapeshifter might be without the curly red wig and four-inch heels would take Sean longer to figure out. The vamp groupies, male and female, were impossible to miss. Their fawning advances on those they desired were sickening, but the often degrading looks, touches, and even painfully administered physical rebuffs didn’t stop them from pleading again to be used.
With the exhausted and scared-looking woman balanced on a stool, Aldo stood at the right end of the bar. A tall, thickset man with oiled black hair that made a heavy blunt-ended helmet curving to his earlobes, he would be hard to miss.
Other patrons, most of them high almost to insanity, gaped but still had enough sense left to give Aldo plenty of space.
Aldo leaned back, bracing his elbows on the bar, staring straight at Sean. They hadn’t seen each other in over a century, but the look in Aldo’s hooded, red-brown eyes said he didn’t doubt his power over the hound he thought of as little more than his escaped slave. Aldo expanded his chest and flexed muscle inside a skin-hugging green T-shirt.
Only he was not as massive as Sean, and neither did Aldo share—nor was he aware of—the rare twist that helped bind Sean and the rest of his team together.
Like his alpha, Niles, and some of the others they regarded as brothers, Sean had even more deadly strength as a human than as a hound.
Sean braced his feet apart and crossed his arms. With his eyes he dared the other one to try proving his superiority.
Aldo pulled the woman off her stool and she winced. Sean had no doubt that her tight-fitting sleeves hid bruising—or that when she was naked, her voluptuous little body would be covered with marks of domination.
Tears shone in her eyes, eyes that Sean realized didn’t focus. He took a step toward the couple. Aldo virtually held his companion up. From the way she started to slump, Sean figured she would fall without support.
“How’ve you been?” Aldo said, his nostrils flaring despite the wider grin on his mouth—only on his mouth. He came closer, shuffling the girl along with him. “Let’s see. Where was it we last met?” With one pointed forefinger, he tapped his chin.
“Do you need help, ma’am?” Sean asked the woman quietly. “Just say the word and I’ll get you out of here.”
“He always was an interfering fool,” Aldo said, leaning down to put his head close to hers. “Don’t worry, Lily. I’ll make sure he doesn’t take you from me,” he tutted. “Still trying to pick off other men’s women, Jacob? I would have expected you to be more mature by now.”
Sean saw it then, what he had feared, the oblivious stare some drugs brought. Lily blinked slowly at Aldo and leaned, her face turned up to his.
“What’s your game this time?” Sean said. “She needs to go home.”
“She belongs to me,” Aldo said through his teeth, his lips barely moving. “What I want, I own. You know that.”
“Why are you here now?” Sean asked.
“I came for you.”
Sean laughed. “Generous of you, but no thanks. I’ve got all the friends I need.”
“Friends? I need no friends. You and I have unfinished business. I want you and you belong to me.”
Sean forced down the urge to take this vermin by the throat. He ought to get out while he could, yet he could not leave Aldo with his helpless victim, and neither could he go without attempting to turn this vicious animal into a toothless joke.
With his fingers sticking into Lily’s thin arm, Aldo moved to pass Sean.
“Leaving so soon?” Sean said. “Why did you come at all?”
Aldo’s awful grin split his face again. “Did I say I was leaving?” he whispered hoarsely. “The fun has only just begun. Look around you. Everyone shares here and I must share Lily.” He swept one arm wide. “My entertainment first, then theirs.”
“Let her go,” Sean said. He made sure that although his body might seem relaxed, every muscle and nerve was ready to spring.
Lily’s belt came undone easily and Aldo dropped it on the floor. With one tug he unsnapped her jeans and yanked them halfway down her hips. She flapped her hands at him ineffectually.
Whatever Aldo had given or done to her was making Lily increasingly disoriented and helpless.
Pushing a hand inside her skimpy white shirt, Aldo squeezed a pale, bruised breast until the woman moa
ned with pain.
“Enough,” Sean said, keeping his voice low but penetrating enough to get to Aldo. “If you want to push someone around, try me.” He beckoned with both hands.
“Who could ask for anything more?” Aldo said, and his red-brown eyes turned hot. “But sometimes a man wants to be chased. You come and get me this time.”
The breath Sean drew in took long enough for Aldo to slash his claw down the front of Lily’s body. Sean reacted instantly.
He sliced the side of his right hand into the narrow space beneath Aldo’s nose, and drove hard.
Aldo shook his head, blood flying from his nose, and bared his teeth. “Defending a whore’s honor,” he said. “How touching. She’s here because she wants to be. Do you think I looked for something like her? She wants me and what only I can give her.”
He threw Lily into the arms of a gawking, spotty kid who looked underage. This one held her up and gazed, fascinated. When he parted his lips, a double row of sharply pointed teeth showed and his ears began to elongate. He was some sort of fae.
Sean made a move to grab the woman away, but he felt as much as saw Aldo swing something through the air and whirled around in time to block a bottle heading for his own face.
The powerful hand that held the bottle connected with Sean’s shoulder and glass shattered, hung in the air in a net of glittering shards, then sprayed over the nearest patrons.
Only in the farthest reaches of the club did people continue to dance and laugh, and ply themselves with whatever made them feel invincible.
Scuffles broke out, and shrieks. People bled from glass-inflicted wounds, most of them small, unlike the one on Sean’s shoulder that soaked his shirt.
Sean’s arm would heal soon enough. No time for giving in to pain. He hauled the woman away. Aldo was using her because he knew Sean would intervene to help her. Regardless of why she was here, or what choices she might have made, now she was suffering because of him and she was his responsibility.
The music stopped, but the screaming and panic raging around him rose like a shifting wall of sound. Weight on his back, pressing him down on Lily, infuriated him, but he dared not show the full extent of his strength. To do so would mean that too many questions would circulate and an advantage could be lost to his team forever.
Darkness Bound Page 26
