The Darkling's Desire

by Lauren Hawkeye

  “What are you?” The man leaned over, bracing an arm on either side of her shoulders.

  She had nowhere to run, but she wasn’t the kind of woman to give in that easily.

  “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine.” A hint of a smile crossed the vamp’s lips as she spoke and after a moment of consideration he nodded once in agreement.

  “Some Darklings possess unique powers. I can wrap myself in shadows, can hide in thin air.”

  Anastasia’s mouth fell open a bit at the admission.

  Yes, she was in way over her head.

  “I am a Carpathian Amazon. Sworn ally to the Darklings.” It was her turn…and maybe he truly had no idea who he was messing with. “You’ve just fucked up my mission from the Karpaty Council. So I guess the question is, who the hell are you?”

  The man actually chuckled. He actually laughed at her! Angry now, Anastasia squirmed beneath him, trying to free herself, but only succeeding in making herself aware of the rock-hard muscles that were hidden beneath his black-as-night shirt and pants.

  “You think this is funny? That woman is a rogue Darkling, a creature my people are sworn to hunt.” The man chuckled again, and Anastasia shoved at his chest.

  Strong as she was, he was stronger.

  She didn’t like it.

  “You are small for an Amazon.” Settling his weight more heavily on her, as if experimenting with the pressure, she felt the jut of his hipbones press against the curve of her belly.

  She also felt the ridge of an unmistakeable erection, one that startled her and at the same time made something hot sizzle through her blood.

  To distract herself, she dignified his rude comment with a response.

  “To be an Amazon is a state of being, you rube. It has nothing to do with size.” The man laughed harder, and Anastasia bucked her body up, trying to free herself. She must have made herself at least a bit of a nuisance, because the man placed a hand flat on her chest, in the hollow between her breasts, and pushed her flat onto her back. He held her there until she stilled, glaring up at him.

  “I am Jasper Nagorsky. I, too, am here for the Council. I will let you fulfill your mission, little Amazon. Just as soon as I fill mine.” With that he lowered his head, letting his lips drift over hers.

  Stunned by the movement, Anastasia let Jasper’s lips brush over hers softly but not at all gently. In the back of her mind she knew that he was branding her, claiming her, marking his triumph over her and that the kiss had nothing to do with attraction. Problem was, something deep in her belly responded and had her hungering to return the kiss.

  Just before she lost control she remembered who she was. Why she was there. Bracing her hands again on his chest, she shoved as hard as she could, putting every ounce of her strength into the movement. She saw surprise flicker through his eyes quickly at the force behind her shove, then he settled back on his heels, still straddling her body.

  She wished that that kiss had never happened, because now she was painfully aware of the press of his muscular thighs on either side of her hips.

  Trying to look as dangerous as she could while propping herself up on her elbows, she nearly spat her words at him, all the while thinking frantically of what she could use as a weapon.

  “You will not let me do anything.” She had two weapons at hand: her body, which the thick length jutting against his pants told her he wasn’t immune to, and the metal bobby pins in her hair. Even though heat from the physical contact with this big, raw male suffused her body, she envisioned stabbing one of those pins into his chest, pointy end first.

  Not proud of what she was about to, Anastasia let her torso fall back, even arching her back the slightest bit, displaying her breasts in her tight black T-shirt like an offering. This was kill or be killed, after all. Lesson number one.

  Jasper’s eyes followed the movement, if warily. Slicking her hands up the sides of her body, she ran them through her hair, dislodging two pins at the same time.

  When his eyes darkened with arousal, when he again bent his head, she jabbed the pins into his neck, one on either side. He howled like a wild animal as the sharp metal pierced his flesh, and while she had the momentum, Anastasia flipped him over onto his back, letting her own thighs squeeze tightly and hold him down.

  The flip had brought her tantalizingly close to her knife. She just needed an inch…just an inch…

  Impossibly strong hands grasped her hips, pulled her down, scraping her over hard flesh. Anastasia looked down, her own bottle-green eyes meeting angry gray, and she swallowed thickly.

  Her nastavnyk had never taught her what to do with two hundred plus pounds of enraged, aroused Darkling.

  A hand loosened its grip on her hips, reached up to cup her around the back of her neck and pulled her down. Hot breath warmed her ear and the whisper that followed tickled her skin.

  “You are out of options, little Amazon.”

  Chapter Two

  Jasper was confused, though he knew that he hid it well. He had assumed that the Amazon had blundered her capture of the rogue Darkling in an attempt to show him her true desires. Though he knew that interpersonal skills were not his strongest point, he wondered how he could have so badly bungled this. While he could feels sparks of arousal shooting off her skin, he was becoming very aware that none of this situation had been planned.

  She was far, far too angry for that.

  Now he had two handfuls of spitting mad Carpathian Amazon straddling him, her core open and heating his already painful erection. Ever with her ire up, her heartbeat was slower than normal for a human—there was some kind of supernatural in her, of this he was certain.

  That would explain why she had been sent for this particular mission, when she was clearly not experienced or even that disciplined.

  What he could not explain was this attraction that he felt. Something about her teased at the edges of his memory, connecting her to someone else that he had long worked to forget, but this…this was stronger. More vital. It had nothing to do with the bloodlust—he was not hungry, although to him, her blood smelled like ripe fruit and honey gone warm in the sun. He was too old to give in to base urges like biting just to taste, so he should have been too old, as well, to want to strip her down to her skin, to bury himself in her tight little body.

  It seemed that he was not.

  “You had best go, little Amazon.” Abruptly he released her, slipped out from beneath her hips with vampire speed. Now standing across the room from her, he ran his fingers through his thick, tousled hair as he studied her intently one last time, filing every detail into his memory. “You do not know what you are playing with.”

  After allowing her mouth to fall open for a split second, the Amazon hissed—actually hissed at him—and followed him across the room. “My name is Anastasia, you ignorant ass, and I know exactly what I am playing with. Do you not know who the Amazons are?”

  She slapped a hand on his upper arm, digging her fingers in, and Jasper lost control, both of his temper and his arousal. With his hands clasped at her waist, he lifted her up and carried her to the table that sat a scant few strides away. And with one sweep of his arm he cleared it of the heavily scented candles and richly colored crystals that it had held. As the objects crashed to the floor, he laid Anastasia on the table, wrapping her legs around his waist.

  Though she pushed at him again, he sensed that her heart was not truly in the movement. Clasping one
wrist in each of his hands, he took her mouth in a kiss that tasted to him of rage and of acceptance, of hatred and desire. He let his tongue sweep her mouth, let his fangs—now fully descended—nip at her lips, though not hard enough to draw blood. It was a kiss full of wanting, a wanting he hadn’t felt for years.

  She cursed into his open mouth, then ground her hips upward against his own. He swallowed her small cry when his cock rubbed insistently against her cleft, and when she tugged to release one of her hands, he let it go. She worked the hand between their bodies, dipped it just beneath the waistband of his pants, where it circled the silky head of his shaft.

  Releasing her other hand, he filled both of his with her breasts. She moaned and kissed her way wetly to his ear, which she nipped. He turned his head to give her better access to the tender flesh, and as he did, his razor-sharp sight zeroed in on the silver of her blade, glinting in the fading afternoon sunlight from where it lay abandoned on the floor.

  What was he doing? He was a Darkling, a soldier. She was a Carpathian Amazon. Though each knew of the other’s existence, they never mingled, not like this. It was for the good of the species, something that had been ingrained in him for decades, and for good reason. He had a job to do here, and instead of following hot on the tail of Aubrey Hart and her Witchling, he was tangling with this woman who had the potential to mess up everything.

  He had broken this rule once before. The Council had allowed him to live because he had tried to rectify the mistake as soon as he could, but he had no illusions that they would do so a second time.

  Closing his eyes in acceptance, Jasper reached into his back pocket, withdrawing the handcuffs that the Karpaty had given him. They were specially made, forged from titanium rather than silver or iron—ones that would not harm his skin.

  Before Anastasia’s mouth had even left his own, he had her wrist circled with the cuff, and its twin attached to the iron table leg. The table was bolted to the floor—perhaps Madame Esme had seen more supernatural tussles in here than he’d imagined—and Jasper knew that Anastasia wouldn’t be able to get free.

  At least, not until after he had learned what he could about Gavin Thibodeau, the Witchling. Not until he was on a flight back to Lviv, back to his life, in which he gathered intel, nothing more, nothing less.

  He knew that, though the Amazons lived somewhere near the Coucil’s headquarters—his home—they rarely ventured out of their compound. The chances that he would again see this tantalizing and infuriating creature were next to none.

  “What…” Slowly, as if his kisses had drugged her, Anastasia sat up on the table, pulling short when her shackled arm would go no farther. Narrowing her eyes in his direction as he inhaled deeply, more to burn her scent into memory than for any other reason, she nearly spat at him when she realized what had happened.

  “Bastard.” It wasn’t the worst word that she could have called him, but the tone beneath the two syllables made him wince. He wanted to apologize, and that made him want to run.

  There was something about this mysterious, somewhat clumsy Amazon that could be very, very dangerous to him.

  “I’ll send someone when I’m done. Then you can fulfill your own mission.” He started for the door, feeling terrible but knowing that he was doing what he had to do, when he was pulled up short by a small, choked cry-one that would be inaudible to the ears of a human.

  Slowly, feeling as if he would regret it, he turned around. Anastasia was kneeling on the table, defiance in her eyes, but he knew what he had heard.

  “You’re going to just leave me here, alone and unarmed?” He sensed rather than saw fear skitter through eyes, though she very nearly succeeded in burying it under bravado.

  Slowly, because he now had a healthy respect for what this woman could do—was doing—to him, he crossed the room and picked up her blade. It burned his fingers, and he quickly moved his grip to the hilt, which was made not of the same silver as the blade, but from what looked to be carved onyx. His fingers played over the characters, Ukrainian ones, and he allowed his mouth to quirk up in the slightest ghost of a smile as he made out what they spelled.

  Huntress. Yes, this woman was dangerous, all right, just not in the way that she thought. With his cock still aching, and his fangs beginning to tingle in the start of what he knew to be hunger, he crossed back to the front door of the magic store. He turned to toss the blade to her just before he wrapped himself in shadows and exited, not willing to risk discovering if she was versed in knife throwing or not. But her curses followed him into the cloudless twilight, and the smell of syrupy sweet, delicious fruit remained in his nose. Part of him wanted to chuckle again, but he quashed it. The other half—the sensible half—urged him to put distance between himself and the siren with the bad attitude and delectable mouth.

  There was no place in the world for dalliances between Darklings and humans-even ones who were possible not entirely human. If something in that knowledge made him ache, well, he would soon forget, he was sure. Years earlier he had made a vow to never again touch a human…and least not in that way…and he would continue that way for centuries more, or face death. Yes, he would soon forget about the pretty pink flush of Anastasia’s blood in her throat as arousal came over her, of the fire in her eyes when she cursed at him.

  He would do his job, he would go home, or move on to the next assignment.

  It was better that way. Better for everyone.

  * * *

  Anger gave Anastasia a strength that she hadn’t known she had. The titanium of the handcuffs had proven too resilient for her attempts to dislodge it, and besides, there was no point in battering her wrist needlessly when she would need it to kill. The iron that bolted the table to the floor, however, had finally come free when she’d really put her back into it.

  She’d wondered at that briefly before shaking it off and heading out into the night to track down her target. Oh, she knew that she still had a responsibility to take out Aubrey Hart, but that would now wait until she’d taken care of a certain Jasper Nagorsky.

  She knew exactly where he was heading…it was where she would go, too. She was good at what she did, damn it, no matter how badly she’d bungled this mission.

  She laid the blame for that squarely on Jasper Nagorsky’s gorgeous head. He had no idea who he was dealing with, none at all. Amazons hunted down the worst of the worst and ate them for breakfast. Jasper had no hope.

  Okay, well, Amazons didn’t exactly eat anyone for breakfast, rogue Darklings or not. But the Carpathian Amazons had sworn a blood allegiance to the Karpaty Council centuries ago. Her sisters-in-arms trained from the moment that they could fist a weapon, their purpose to rid the world of vampires gone bad.

  She had a responsibility to hold up this legacy. That she had messed up so badly mortified her.

  She had to make it right.

  Anastasia had checked out the setup outside of Aubrey Hart’s apartment building, and the hospital as well, before she had settled on her stakeout at the magic store. She approached the building slowly, knowing that as soon as she got close, Jasper would hear her heartbeat. She wouldn’t be able to completely surprise him with her arrival, but hopefully he would be startled enough by the fact that she had escaped to give her a bit of an edge.

  At least it meant that she didn’t have to hide. She scanned the parking lot for a sign of the Darkling and saw nothing. Though she had always had good eyesight—for a human, at least—she squinted against the blueberry
twilight and finally had to admit to herself that if Jasper didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t find him.

  Not only did he have Darkling strength and speed in his arsenal, but he could wrap himself in shadows. It seemed an unfair advantage, but it was one that she’d been aware of her entire life.

  She wasn’t about to give up that easily. A combination of fury and guilt still fizzled throughout her body,and she wasn’t going to let these feelings go unresolved.

  If she were to hide here, where would she do it? Letting her eyes roam the lot, Anastasia scanned the clumps of barren trees that edged the forest, the dumpsters and recycling bins, the piles of junk—it wasn’t the nicest part of town—and finally came to rest on a small swell of frost-bitten grass in a small thatch of pines.

  If a person laid down flat in the grass, they could watch without being seen, shadowed by the conifers overhead.

  She started to tiptoe around the edge of the asphalt, then reminded herself that her heartbeat would be clearly audible to vampire ears.

  If he was here, then he would know that she was, too.

  Inhaling deeply, she stepped out into the middle of the parking lot, her rubber-soled boots quiet on the pavement. The lot was half-full of debris as well as vehicles, most of which had seen better days, but she still managed to walk a fairly straight path to the knoll on the far side of the lot.

  When she stepped from the concrete to the grass, the frosted tips crunched underfoot, releasing their spicy scent into the air. She stopped, her fingers clasped on the hilt of her knife, and held her breath until she felt dizzy.

  The face that she had been looking for appeared in the branches of the verdant tree, so quickly that she almost would have believed that he had materialized just at that moment.

  Oh, wait. It probably had.

  Still, Darklings were not infallible as a species. They could be killed.