Touch of Temptation

by Rhyannon Byrd

  How did I…

  Quickly running her tongue over her front teeth, Chloe encountered the source. For the first time since her awakening had begun, the Merrick’s fangs had descended.

  She had fangs!

  Dizzying thoughts of sinking those piercing points into Kellan Scott’s strong, corded throat filled her head, and she groaned again, the sound low and keening. Voices could be heard coming from the top of the winding staircase that led down to their cellblock, but she didn’t care. All she could focus on was trying to gain control. Trying to keep herself from screaming for the werewolf to come back…begging him to give her what she needed. She’d truly had no idea the hunger could be so demanding, until Mr. Tall, Dark and Delicious had caught the Merrick’s attention. Her body’s craving for him… God, it was intolerable. A slick, eviscerating acid scraping its way through her veins. Tiny razors slicing at her insides, ripping her to shreds.

  You just have to fight it….

  Just have to fight….

  Curling her arms over her head, Chloe pulled into a tight ball and began to rock—her jaw locked, teeth clenched—while that burning, biting hunger slowly consumed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sunday evening

  ANOTHER DAY OF HELL. Another torturous exercise in self-control that had left Kellan wound tighter than a corkscrew.

  He’d paced his cell for hours, trying to wrap his mind around what had happened earlier that day with Chloe. Yeah, he’d known, after obsessing over the photograph Olivia had given him, that Chloe Harcourt was beautiful and that he wanted her. Had thought about her constantly. Dreamed about her in ways that could only be classified as insanely erotic, not to mention dirty as hell. But he still hadn’t been prepared for the intensity of the lust that had shot through his system the second she’d lifted her head from that pillow and looked him in the eye.

  Pure, one-hundred-proof hunger, in the rawest, most visceral form he’d ever experienced. Potent. Devastating. And the way her mouthwatering scent had wrapped around him… Christ, he was still twitching with the need to get her naked and wet and under him.

  Instead of growing familiar, her scent was calling to him in a way that grew stronger with each second that passed by. Tempting him. Daring him to act….

  He didn’t know what it meant—and he didn’t want to think about it too closely, because nothing good could come from it.

  You know that, you stupid son of a bitch!

  Yeah, he knew. But now the damage was done. Now he wanted to do a hell of a lot more than have sex with her. What he wanted would have probably scared the holy living hell out of her, if it weren’t for the Merrick coming to life inside her.

  The Merrick wants what I’ve got to give, the wolf snarled, its guttural voice rumbling with anticipation. We play the same little games.

  Running a hand over his mouth, Kellan almost smiled, thinking his beast was either becoming delusional…or succumbing to some heavy wishful thinking.

  Chloe wanting the same things as his wolf in its most feral state? Ha. Not bloody likely, no matter how much Merrick was prowling around inside her.

  Being a Lycanthrope, his sexual style was aggressive at the best of times, but now…damn it, it was crazy for him to even be thinking about touching her. He knew it was too dangerous—knew he could too easily lose control and actually hurt her. His primal instincts were in full roar after spending so much time in his feral wolf form. So far he’d managed to keep them under control, but he was tempting fate. Try as he might to act within reason, sooner or later, the beast was going to wrestle that control away from him. As the poison continued to wear him down, he would become too weak to fight it. Then all hell was going to break loose, leaving him at the mercy of those dark, predatory desires.

  And yet, he couldn’t stay away from her. Not when being near her felt so good. So…right. When he’d stood outside her cell earlier, the cold, hollow feeling that’d been lingering in his chest for so long had simply faded away. Instead, there’d been a warm, unfamiliar sensation of comfort. Of…peace. And it’d been fucking amazing.

  So amazing that he’d had to come back for more.

  As he braced his shoulder against the bars at the corner of her cell, her voice reached out to him from the far side of the small enclosure, where she lay on the cot, huddled beneath her blanket. “What are you doing?”

  Kellan raked his gaze over her, making sure she was okay. “Not to state the obvious,” he drawled, “but I’ve come to see you again.”

  “Why?” she groaned, pulling the blanket over her head.

  With his hands shoved in his pockets, he moved along the front of her cell, until he’d reached the middle, where the door stood, which was as close to the cot as he dared. The rough gray stones were cold beneath his feet, but his body was burning with heat, the skin he’d washed earlier when the guards had brought each of them fresh water and food already sheened with sweat. “I can hear you groaning from my cell,” he rasped, “and it’s driving me bat-shit. I can’t stop worrying about you.”

  “I told you I was fine,” came her muffled reply. “All twenty freaking times that you’ve asked me in the past hour.”

  “Yeah, well, I needed to see for myself that you were okay.”

  “For the twenty-first time, then, I’m fine. F-I-N-E. Now leave, before I embarrass both of us again.”

  Softly, he said, “You didn’t embarrass me, Chloe.”

  Peeking over the top of the blanket, she cracked open one eye. “Really? Because from where I was standing, you looked like your grandma had just shucked her panties and asked you to do something that would be illegal in at least forty-nine states. Not to mention seriously whacked.”

  He gave a gritty laugh that rumbled deep in his chest, finding her funny as hell. “You just took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  “Ha. I’ll bet I did,” she snorted, finally moving into a sitting position on the cot. As she braced her back against the wall, the flickering firelight from the continuously burning hearth that sat on the far side of the underground level played over her feminine features, and Kellan was struck again by how beautiful she was. It wasn’t an in-your-face, porn star kind of look, like most of the women he’d bedded, but it worked for him. She had an ethereal, serene kind of beauty, like something you expected to see in the pages of a fairy tale. She was small and slim, her fair skin smooth and fine, her mouth lush in a face that held a dainty nose and slim, sweeping brows that arched over the most mesmerizing eyes he’d ever seen. They were big and long-lashed, with an unusual black ring surrounding the smoky irises. Her hair was so dark, it almost looked blue in the golden light of the fire, the glossy strands still a little damp from where she’d washed it.

  Want her now, the wolf insisted. Don’t wanna wait….

  The beast was still working on him, trying harder than ever to wear him down. It continuously whispered through his mind in a guttural rasp, the erotic phrases centered on how desirable she looked. How tender and pale and soft. It remarked upon the delicate slope of her shoulders beneath the thin white cotton. The tantalizing shape of her small breasts. The sensual curve of her throat as she tilted her head to the side.

  And it taunted him with image after image of his fangs breaking the surface of that smooth, vulnerable flesh. With the provocative promise of her hot blood pumping over his tongue, slick and warm and delicious.

  Not to mention the intensely erotic moment when her own fangs would pierce his throat, her sweet mouth working as she pulled on the wound harder…and harder.

  His head started to spin so badly, Kellan couldn’t think straight, his resolutions swinging from one extreme to the other with the crashing force of a wrecking ball.

  You’re killing her by not giving her what she needs.

  No!

  Yes, it hissed. Look at her eyes. The dark shadows beneath. So thin. So starving…and desperate.

  Damn it, what in God’s name was he meant to do here? He wasn’t trying to be a pr
ick, but he didn’t want to harm her, either. Yeah, she needed to feed the creature awakening inside her, and he could give her what she needed. But…what if he hurt her more than she was already hurting in the process?

  And then there was his less-than-stellar reputation to consider. No matter how he looked at it, Kellan couldn’t help thinking that even if he didn’t pose a serious danger to her safety because of his wolf, it still wouldn’t feel right to touch her when she was so vulnerable. Not when she would have obviously chosen another guy if she had the choice. One who wasn’t such a monumental fuckup. Who hadn’t nailed so many women, the names could have filled a bloody book.

  And the fact that they hadn’t meant anything to him, had merely been a means to an end, only made it worse.

  Melodramatic idiot, the wolf snarled. You think she cares where your dick’s been? Stop acting like such a sap.

  Kellan growled in response, the guttural sound making her flinch, but she immediately collected herself, lifting her chin, as if determined not to show even the slightest touch of fear in front of him. He thought she’d order him to go away again, but instead, she said, “I overheard your visit from Spark today.”

  His neck prickled at her tone, and he sensed…trouble.

  Spark was an assassin for the Collective Army and one of Westmore’s new favorites. Though the two should have been enemies, they were now working together, the partnership between Westmore and the Collective Army yet another strange twist in the war the Watchmen and their friends were fighting. An organization comprised of fanatical humans who were intent on ridding the world of all preternatural life, the Collective operated with one goal: to kill those who weren’t a part of the human race. It made no sense for them to be partnered up with Westmore and the Casus, but they were.

  And all because of greed. Not for money…but for blood.

  The Collective had possession of certain items, as well as unlimited monetary and personnel resources, that Westmore wanted to get his hands on, and so he’d gone to the Collective Generals and made them a deal they’d been unwilling to turn down. In exchange for his demands, Westmore had given the Army the secret locations of four Deschanel nesting grounds, with the promise of more clan locations to come. The deal had resulted in the gruesome slaughter of hundreds of vampires, including many women and children. It also meant that a good number of human Collective soldiers were now working directly for Westmore—though Kellan and his friends had heard rumors that the deal was no longer sitting well with the Army, and the Generals were regretting what they’d gotten into. While Westmore had assured the Collective that he would use the Casus to stop a dangerous time of anarchy that was coming to the clans, and then eventually destroy them, it was becoming obvious to all that he’d lied.

  And that, Kellan thought, is what you get when you make deals with the evil and deranged.

  He felt no sympathy for the Collective, and he sure as hell wasn’t interested in Spark. She was one of the cruelest bitches he’d ever known, and she was obviously delusional if she thought he would ever actually lay a hand on her.

  What was even more obvious was that Chloe hadn’t liked what she’d overheard that afternoon.

  “What? You think you’re too good for me now?” Spark had drawled in a raised voice, after Kellan had refused her offer of sex. “Or is it that you don’t want your new little jail buddies here to know that I’ve already had you?”

  When he’d told her to shut up, she’d gotten a sly gleam in her green eyes and had taken perverse pleasure in talking about how raunchy it’d been between them, describing in detail all the things he’d bent her over. All lies, since Kellan had never laid a finger on her, but he knew she’d only been trying to screw with his mind, taunting him with the suggestion that he would sleep with the enemy…since that’s exactly what he’d done in Washington. Still, he’d had to be careful how he reacted, lest the assassin pick up on the truth.

  The truth being that it bothered the hell out of him that Chloe might believe anything that came out of Spark’s mouth. And he’d been right to worry, because it appeared that she had.

  “What about the visit?” he sighed, rolling a shoulder.

  She shrugged. “I was just surprised. I mean, I knew you got around, but I figured you for better taste than that.”

  Crossing his arms, Kellan braced his shoulder against the bars again and stared her down with narrowed eyes. “Tell me you’re not actually buying that bullshit. Come on, Chloe. I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “How could you think anything?” she asked, her demeanor changing within the blink of an eye. Her face became flushed, her gray eyes glowing like silver fire, and he knew the Merrick was rising back to the surface, as hard and fast as a torpedo. “God, Kellan. We’re strangers! You don’t know jack about me. I could be a raging bitch for all you know. An idiot. A brainless bimbo!”

  Despite his worry and irritation, he snorted, which clearly ticked her off. “Are you…are you laughing at me?” she rasped, the low words vibrating with outrage.

  “Stop talking nonsense,” he murmured, slowly raising one of his brows, “and I’ll stop laughing.”

  That obviously pissed her off even more, because she growled at him. Actually growled.

  And the rigid state of his dick told him that he’d liked it. A lot.

  “And not that it matters,” he told her, “but I’ve never laid a finger on the redheaded bitch. And I sure as hell wouldn’t start now.”

  Rolling her eyes, she said, “Yeah, well, from what I’ve heard about you, Kellan, a woman’s personality isn’t exactly high on your list of prerequisites for bed partners. You’ve always had more valid concerns, like breast size and how long a woman’s legs are. And Spark does have one hell of a figure.”

  He didn’t say anything at first. He just pushed away from the bars and started pacing along the front of her cell, his hands shoved back in his pockets, his jaw locked so tight he was surprised he didn’t crack a tooth.

  “I may be a lot of things,” he finally muttered, forcing the graveled words out, “but a masochist isn’t one of them, Chloe. I’m trying to change, and I know it sounds like a line of bullshit, but I’m not the jackass I was a few months ago. I try to think with my head these days, rather than my dick. Not that my dick would have ever been interested in that psycho bitch, either. Even it has standards, as twisted as they might be.”

  He didn’t look at her as he kept pacing, the seconds ticking out in slow motion, stretching time, the heat of her gaze burning against his body as he moved. He was ready to launch into another spiel about how he was trying to clean up his act, when she finally said, “I get that this is a totally personal question, but do you always talk about your sex organ as if it’s a sentient being?”

  His own gruff bark of laughter caught him completely by surprise, and he came to a stop, his shoulders hunched as he roughly ran a hand over the back of his neck.

  “Well?” she prompted him.

  “I, uh, I don’t know.” With a slow shake of his head, he cut her a wry look from the corner of his eye. “Never really thought about it before.”

  Smoothing the blanket over her legs, she said, “Just to let you know, you should probably consider stopping.”

  A grin kicked up a corner of his mouth. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She turned her head to the side, but not before he thought he saw her lips twitch, on the verge of a smile. How they’d gone from snapping at each other to smiling again, he didn’t know. But it was obvious their moods were all over the place, shifting as swiftly as desert sands.

  Pushing a hand through his hair, he said, “Please, just don’t listen to Spark, okay? She gets a kick outta messing with people’s minds, but it’s all a load of crap.”

  Her fingers plucked nervously at the drab blanket, her profile…sad. Strained. From the side, her lower lip looked a little swollen, as if she’d been nervously pulling it through her teeth, and she swiped it with her tongue before saying,
“Listen, Kell, it’s really none of my business what you do with Spark, or with any woman, for that matter. I’m not judging you, and if anything, I’m probably just jealous of all the freedom you’ve had, when that really hasn’t been an option for me because of the curse. But that was my choice. The Mallory have always been seen as evil manipulators who twist guys to our whims, and I never wanted to have anyone throw those accusations in my face. Plus, it would hardly be enjoyable to hook up with some guy and spend the whole time worrying he was only interested in me because of some stupid spell.” She brought her gaze back to his, her voice a little huskier as she added, “Anyway, I think it’d be better if you just didn’t come over here again. At least not until we’re ready to die trying to get out of this place.”

  “Don’t say that. You are not going to die.” He forced the words through his gritted teeth, surprised by the vehemence of his reaction.

  Carefully, she said, “I don’t want to fight with you, Kellan. So please, just go.”

  With his jaw locked, he paced along the outside of her cell again before stopping and wrapping his fingers around the cold rods of metal. “I don’t want to go,” he muttered, holding her with his stare.

  Her gaze burned with frustration, but before she could say anything, he continued talking. “I know you feel like crap, and to be honest, I’m not feeling all that great, either. But it makes…it makes me feel better to be with you. And before you ask me to explain what that means, don’t. Because I don’t have any idea. It’s just the way it is.”

  She studied his face, no doubt noting the ravaging effects of the poison on his system. “You…you don’t look well. Are you ill?”

  “Nah.” He scraped a palm against his stubbled jaw. “It’s just some poison I’ve gotta get outta my system.”

  “Poison?” she said slowly, the word trembling on her lips. “They poisoned you? When? How?” She started talking faster. “Why would they do that? Is it meant to be some kind of torture? Raine said they still think you came here to steal back the three Dark Markers that are in their possession. Does it have something to do with that?”