Wicked After Dark: 20 Steamy Paranormal Tales of Dragons, Vampires, Werewolves, Shifters, Witches, Angels, Demons, Fey, and More

by Mina Carter

  “Hot. Very hot.” He dipped his head, the warmth of his breath washing over my pussy lips giving me half a second to brace myself before he licked me. The first warm, wet touch made me whimper in need, the second stole my breath, and by the time he got to my clit and drew it into his mouth to suck gently, I’d lost the ability to think. Without lifting away for more than a second, he tugged my panties free and slid his hands under me, cradling my hips in them to angle me as he wanted.

  He feasted, gorging himself like he’d been starving for months and I was his first meal. Alternating nibbles and licks with deep suckles, the tension in my body multiplied, but always at the point I thought I would tip over the edge, he pulled back, altered the rhythm so I didn’t quite make it. My lip throbbed as I bit down to stop my cries. I couldn’t take much more of this.

  “Troy. More… I need to….”

  “No. Not yet,” he ordered, one last lick making me shudder, and crawled up my body to wrap me in his arms. “You don’t come until I’m inside you. I want to feel it. Feel it all.”

  He claimed my lips again, his kiss musky, earthy with my scent and taste, but I didn’t care. I wanted him. Now. The need grew stronger with every passing second until I thought it was going to consume me, eat me up until there was nothing left.

  “Yes. Yes. Now.”

  “Not yet, give me a moment.” He shook his head and disengaged himself.

  I bit back a howl of frustration, stuck between the desire to punch his lights out for torturing me, and flipping and pinning him under me. I did neither, my attention captured as he stood and shucked out of his pants and underwear without hesitation. He fished in them for his wallet, the rustle of foil answering the question I didn’t ask.

  Protection. How…sweet. And human. Paranormals didn’t contract STD’s. Hell, most couldn’t even get pregnant unless it was the right time of year, or some arcane ritual was involved. With paras, diseases were passed along in bites and scratches. On the whole, I think I preferred the human way since I sure as shit wasn’t sleeping with half the critters that had tried to give me something.

  The fact that he was hell-bent on protecting me from disease melted something deep inside near the heart I’d always claimed I didn’t have. Which was stupid. This was nothing more than a one-night stand.

  He turned around, unselfconscious in his nakedness as he planted a knee between mine on the leather surface of the couch. The light from the nearby lamp cast him in warm light, like a bronzed Adonis. The suit had concealed a body to die for and, my gaze dipped downward….

  I swallowed back the whimper. Lordy, I’d hit the jackpot with this one. Thick and long, he was suited and booted ready for action.

  “Let me guess.” My lips quirked in the beginnings of a smile. “Boy scout?”

  “Something like that. Always prepared.”

  He lowered himself, gaze locked to mine. He had to have some sort of para-blood running through his veins, because he’d cast some sort of spell around me. I’d never responded in such a primal way to a man before.

  He didn’t say anything, simply hooked his hand behind one knee and pulled my leg up over his hip. The blunt, wide head of his cock pressed against the entrance to my pussy. His nostrils flared, eyes darkening, and he pushed forward. Inch by inch, he parted my aching cunt around his invading cock. Split me and slid within.

  Slow and relentless, he impaled me, his cock sliding into my wet pussy and stroking along every nerve ending in my inner channel. Pleasure and pressure had my eyes fluttering closed, but I forced them open. I wanted to watch his face, see every flare of darkness as he took me. Memorize every expression to replay them back when the Grimm had my nose to the grind-stone and I was alone again.

  “God, you’re so tight. And hot. And wet. Fucki—” he broke off as he bottomed out, hips pressed against mine. My clit, trapped between us throbbed in welcome.

  “…ing hell,” I finished for him on a gasp. Tremors already shook my limbs, the familiar tension ramped up beyond anything I’d ever experienced before. “Move. Now.”

  “No, ease into it. You’re still tense.”

  He held still, cock pulsing where it was buried deep inside me. I was filled, stuffed, stretched almost to the point of pain. But I loved it. All I could think of was him pulling out and doing it again. Faster. Harder. Until he was fucking me like I needed.

  “Fuck easing.” I almost managed not to snarl. Almost. “Just…screw me. Now. Hard and fast. Slow, next time.”

  Lust tightened his expression into something near feral. Forget taking a para as a lover, the most feral and primal species out there is plain old human. They might not be kitted out with natural weaponry, but don’t discount them in a fight. Or in the bedroom.

  “Next time,” he drawled as he leaned down until his lips were a mere fraction from mine. “I’m in command.”

  He kissed me before I could respond to that, pulling his hips back at the same time to slide back into me. Harder. Faster. Until his thrusts rocked the sofa under us. His tongue tangled with mine as we moved together, straining to reach the tantalizing pleasure of completion that hovered just out of reach. I rocked my hips in counterpoint to his, but the extra roll he added, trapping and rubbing my clit between our bodies had my eyes rolling back in my head as sparks exploded behind my eyes.

  *

  “That’s it. Come for me, baby,” Troy rasped as her body tightened around him. The sensation was exquisite, his eyes almost crossing then and there, but he fought it off to power another thrust deep into her welcoming heat. “I want you to come. Squeeze my cock in that sweet little pussy.”

  For a second, he worried that he’d taken it a step too far. Some women didn’t like a guy to talk dirty, and to be honest, it wasn’t something he’d ever considered before. It seemed natural with her somehow, like she drew out the feral side of his nature.

  She didn’t bat an eyelid though. Instead, the liquid moan that escaped her lips, and the increased grip of her body around his cock buried deep inside her said that she was okay. More than okay. And he already knew that she liked it a little rough.

  Even so, he limited his strength, and didn’t slam into her like some kind of animal. She was so tiny and delicate that he felt like a brute next to her. His hands were too big to be worthy of touching her, and when he’d first entered her… it was so good that his heart had almost stopped. Being inside her had been so damn perfect that he’d thought for a moment that he’d died and gone to heaven. But hell, what a way to go. She was so small and tight he’d been terrified that he’d hurt her in his passion.

  But she took the decision out of his hands. Shifting under him, the demand that he fuck her hard and fast had been music to his ears. He didn’t know a man out there that would refuse an order like that.

  He gripped the edge of the cushions under her head, bunching them to form a pillow under her neck and released the power in his body to surge his hips forward. His ass was like a piston, hammering his thighs against hers. She gasped and moaned, every shudder that rolled through her body urging him on. Her pussy held him in snugly, squeezing as he drove into her, and clenching as though unwilling to release him when he pulled back.

  Twinges of a cramp pulled at his calf, his toes digging into the carpet to brace himself as he took her, but he ignored it. Far more interesting things were happening to other parts of his body at the moment to pay it any attention.

  She cried out, clenching around him, and a shudder ran through him as she came hard around him.

  Fuck. His thrusts faltered, then picked up pace. He slammed into her over and over, each hard thrust sparking a whole new universe of pleasure in his body. Fire worked through his veins, rolling through his muscles, and stealing his strength to send it straight to his cock. It drew a circle around his balls and pulled them up tight as her body milked him in rhythmic pulses.

  His legs shook, but he kept on powering forward, using each hard-won thrust to draw out her pleasure, determined to make this
the best experience she’d ever had. Screw those pixie men, he wanted her to measure all other men by this night—by him—from now on.

  Jealousy and rage drove his next thrust, filling him to overflowing at the thought of her with another man. Any other man. The spurt of energy made him snarl and haul her closer. She was his, no others.

  She gasped, his name on her lips, and threw her head back. Caught by the beautiful image she presented, the lean lines of her throat beckoned him to lean down and see if they were as soft as they looked and he faltered for a moment.

  Sensation ambushed him in the second between his lips brushing her skin and his hips driving forward. Tension shattered, his climax hitting out of the blue and taking no prisoners. He grunted as his hips slammed into hers, his sight greying at the edges as ecstasy exploded at the base of his cock and spiralled outward at speeds a missile would envy.

  Pleasure made a puppet of his body, his hips jerking a few more times with no will or control of his to drive them. He was just there to hang on for the ride, and hell, what a ride it was. Buried deep, his cock jerked and pulsed as he emptied his balls deep within her.

  Irritation and frustration filled him at the membrane that separated them and the need for his seed to find fertile ground rocked him to the core. He’d never felt that way about a woman before. Never had the need to settle down. Hell, he was always meticulous about protection. No rugrats for him.

  Except with her. He’d known her all of three hours, still wasn’t sure what she was, but one thing he did know… He’d do anything to bind her to him, to keep her at his side forever.

  The groan worked its way up from the depths of his soul as he bottomed out, balls empty. Wrung out, he pulled her closer, trying not to collapse and crush her beneath him.

  “That was…amazing.” He managed to get his voice and body to co-operate, rolling and sliding from within her at the same time as he lifted her. She settled against his chest, nestling in his embrace so perfectly that the same little ache started up in the center of his chest. A quick reach between them sorted the condom.

  “Yeah. You’ll do,” she murmured, her voice rough with weariness.

  He tightened his arm around her, concern replacing the arousal running rampant through his body for a moment. He had no idea what she was. He also didn’t know why she was in town. Best guess, it wasn’t for the scenery and excellent restaurants.

  He didn’t want to think about the danger she’d been in that alley with the Were, but it raised questions. Not many women would head into a dimly-lit alley at night. The media and social pressure warned them against it practically since birth. And the fact that she’d even gone outside after she had to have seen the Lycan in the bar niggled at the back of his mind, but he put it aside. She could have been killed.

  A bolt of protectiveness surged through him to galvanise every cell in his body. As long as he had breath left in his body, he would look after her and protect her from whatever nasties were out there. Nasties that he’d learned in the last year or so extended far beyond the human race.

  “For a pretty boy, anyway.”

  Amusement bubbled up, curving his lips into a broad smile, and he dropped a kiss against her temple. Snark. Just what he was learning to expect from her, and he was finding he liked it. Liked it a lot.

  “Oh yeah? Pretty boy? You really want to go there?” He was more than ready to get down and dirty again, and proved as much with a roll of his hips, sliding his still rock-solid shaft between her folds. Her soft gasp, the one with the little mewl at the end that drove him wild, made the male animal within preen with pride. He’d done that, he’d made her gasp and cling to him as though he were her rock.

  “Oh, yeah...” He answered his own question, the words trailing off as their eyes locked. Like putting a match to touch paper, heat blazed between them, going from slumbering to inferno in less than the time it took him to take a breath. “Upstairs,” he ordered, the growl in his voice surprising even him. “Now it’s my turn to give the orders.”

  Chapter Five

  HEARING THE SOUND of breaking glass in the early hours of the morning is nothing new for me. On a normal night, I’m the one causing the breakage though, by the tried and tested method of throwing someone through it, not being yanked out of sleep in a cute guy’s bed because of it.

  I jerked upright into a sitting position, sheet slithering to my waist, and listened. My own breathing rasped in my ears, mocking my attempts to hear what was going on downstairs. Ordinary human, remember? I don’t have the vision of a hawk or the hearing of…whatever hears really well.

  My reaper senses engaged in a screaming match with good old human, survival instincts and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Something was in the house with us, and let’s be honest, it wasn’t here for anything as harmless as borrowing a cup of sugar.

  Troy grunted and turned over in the bed next to me, managing a neat roll and tuck maneuver that snagged all the covers. I’d have to remember he was a duvet-hog. Slipping from the bed, I sent a silent prayer upward that habit had made me put something on after we’d finished our last round of pulse-pounding sex.

  Tingles chased over my skin as the memories tried to take root. Troy was good. Like really good. We’d barely made it upstairs after the couch…well, okay, we hadn’t made it to the bedroom straight away. I had carpet burns on my ass to prove it.

  I walked into my boots, zipping them up the sides in a practiced movement. Vest, panties and boots, I wasn’t going to win any fashion shows, but there was no time for pants, and to be honest, if my semi-nakedness gave me an edge in a fight, I’d take it. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve flashed the girls and kicked an opponent in the balls while he was distracted.

  Not bothering to wake Troy, I went to grab my blades from their sheaths on the back of my belt. The sheaths must be be-spelled or something. When the sickles are away, I can walk through a cop-shop without anyone screaming about me being armed, and Troy had brought my clothes up from downstairs without a word. Although, he had been frowning, his thumb rubbing over one of the sheaths as though something bothered him.

  I pondered that for a second. Was he a sensitive? Perhaps had something non-human in his family tree somewhere that allowed him to see creatures like me. I pulled and the blades came free with a small snick. It was almost soundless, but I cast a quick glance over to the bed anyway. Last thing I needed was Troy waking up.

  Men are a nightmare in a fight. Most want to wade in and protect the little woman, which meant I’d have my hands full kicking the crap out of whatever was in the house and protecting him as well. No, better he stay up here asleep while I worked.

  The house was too quiet. I closed the bedroom door behind me, the soft click making me freeze and listen. My breathing roared in my ears again. How frigging loud does that seem when you’re trying to hear something as quiet as a mouse fart three rooms away?

  Holding my breath, I strained for any sound, or absence of the same that would tell me what I was facing. Lifelines crowded in my vision so thick and fast that I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped me. Red, silver, gold, purple…colors I hadn’t even seen before almost blinded me.

  What the fuck was going on? I’d never seen so many lines, not at the same time. And they blinked in and out, some going dull before flaring up again, but none of them were dying. Which meant I was the only reaper out and about.

  My expression set as I moved along the landing, muting the lines so my vision wasn’t impaired and kept my eyes on the stairs. Whatever was going down in this town was big, and if I was the sole company rep in the vicinity, I’d have to take care of business. Wholesale.

  Fuck. Just what I wanted.

  On the other hand, more reaps in the town meant I might get to stay here a while. With the amount of lines crowding to get my attention, it was going to take me weeks to clear the backlog. If I was lucky, I’d manage it before any of the weird and wonderful brethren started to snack on the human population.


  I reached the top of the stairs and snapped around the bannister post, blades held ready. It was my best full-on Jet Li pose, and a total waste. The stairwell was empty. Not sure whether to be relieved or pissed no one had been there to see my awesome ninja skills, I padded down the stairs on silent feet.

  A red line broke through the suppression I had on that part of my vision. Lycan. If he was inside or outside was something the Reaper part of me didn’t know. One thing I did know, if it planned on getting in here after Troy, it was as dead as a fucking dodo.

  I took the last couple of steps as slow as I could bear. The stairs opened onto a small study area. Arched doorways led to other rooms. Moonlight filtered through the open blinds to bathe the room in shades of silver and gray. Nothing moved apart from dust motes dancing in the shafts of light.

  I eased along the wall. A cold gust of air from the direction of the kitchen clued me in. Cold air meant that was the location of the busted window. Glass crunched, and I froze. Listening. The red line in the corner of my vision throbbed harder than a cock on a porn set. Was it the Lycan from the alley earlier? If so, he was dumber than I’d thought.

  I stepped out into the doorway, easily spotting my prey. Not difficult when he was over seven feet and covered in fur.

  “Oi, Fido.” I whistled between my teeth to get his attention. “Over here.”

  He whipped his head around, shining amber eyes telling me I had all his attention. Good. I wanted this over and done with pronto so I could get back to bed and the warmth of Troy’s arms.

  I edged into the room. From the ragged tear in one pointed ear, it looked like I was talking to the same critter that had jumped me in the alley. My jaw throbbed in memory as a nasty little grin spread over my lips.

  Payback time.

  “Did you not get the message in the alleyway?” I asked, picking up an apple from a nearby bowl and hurling it across the room. He snarled, the air a mass of gleaming claws. Bits of apple dropped to the counter-top. Built in slice and dice. What fun.