Taste Me

by Tamara Hogan

  “—do nothing, except recover and regain your strength,” Krispin said firmly as he bundled her back under the covers. “Let the Commander do his job.” Or there will be bloody hell to pay, his flinty expression finished.

  Lukas’s mini-comp vibrated as people checked in, and a gaggle of white-coated doctors hovered near Andi’s door, waiting to examine their now conscious patient. Gideon was taking Andi through it again, the repetition fleshing out the details of what had happened to her at Subterranean. Andi seemed lucid and calm, but her father looked ready to crack as he listened to the details of what Stephen had done to his daughter. For once, Lukas couldn’t blame him.

  There was nothing more he and Jack could do here. “We’re going to hit the street,” Lukas said to Gideon. “We’ll get him, Andi. You’re safe here.”

  “Better late than never,” Krispin said, his voice dripping with accusation and a fair dose of self-recrimination.

  Lukas nodded in acknowledgement. There was more than enough blame to pass around.

  On the way to the elevator, he and Jack passed Andi’s guard and a couple of Gideon’s investigators fine-tuning the security procedures. Lukas stopped them cold. “It’s simple. No one else comes up that elevator. Krispin Woolf doesn’t leave.” Weapons or not, Lukas didn’t trust the WerePack Alpha not to take matters into his own hands. To the guard he said, “Get one of these doctors to take care of your wrist.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” Jack said as they stepped onto the elevator. “He fooled us all. We’ll take him down.”

  “Better late than fucking never. And we have to find the bastard first.” The next ping reported that his father, Claudette, and his siblings were all at Elliott’s penthouse.

  Jack looked up from his mini-comp. “Scarlett hasn’t checked in. Did she contact you privately?”

  “No.” Lukas shoved down a spurt of panic. “Probably has those damned headphones on.” He dialed his home phone number.

  “Why didn’t Stephen attack Antonia? Drum lesson, just the two of them—talk about an opportunity. Why didn’t he take it?”

  Phone to his ear, Lukas paced the elevator like a lion in a cage. “Let the prison shrinks figure it out. C’mon, Scarlett, pick up.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t take too long to run him down.” At Lukas’s raised eyebrow, Jack said, “The guy trails paparazzi. He can’t hide for very long. We just have to keep everyone out of his way until we catch up with him.”

  Lukas grimly hung up the phone. “Scarlett’s not picking up.”

  “Maybe she’s in the tub,” Jack said, even as his index finger stabbed at the already-lit first floor elevator button.

  It was an entirely rational explanation. Feasible—even probable—but it didn’t explain why the hair on his neck stood on end, or why adrenaline seethed through his body. When the elevator finally reached the first floor, Lukas wedged his hands in the door and pulled.

  He hit the lobby floor at a dead run.

  Chapter 24

  “Oh, jeez, let me take that,” Scarlett called from the door as Stephen approached Sebastiani Security. She reached for the unwieldy mike stand as she propped open the door with a hip. “How did you ever carry all this stuff on a bike?”

  “It wasn’t easy. Thanks.” Stephen rebalanced the load of percussion equipment he carried, barely saving the maraca case from falling to his feet. After Scarlett’s phone call, he’d stopped by the Underbelly studio and picked up a little bit of everything because he had no idea what she had in mind. “Sorry it took me so long.”

  On the nearby Mississippi, a barge horn bellowed. Stephen looked back at the empty parking lot. “Where is everybody?”

  “I have no idea. Ten minutes ago, the place just cleared out.”

  How ironic. He’d half-hoped that Lukas Sebastiani would take him down the second he turned into the parking lot and put him out of his misery. Stephen’s stomach twisted as he followed her into the building and onto the elevator, unable to rub at the now-constant gnawing behind his breastbone. Last night’s debauchery had left him feeling so shaky that he’d almost dumped the bike on the way over.

  Truth be told, he hadn’t tried very hard to right it.

  Even death energy wasn’t satisfying the beast anymore. Stephen was out of options. He just… wanted this to be over.

  “Stephen? Coming?” Scarlett asked with a quizzical look on her face.

  The elevator had stopped on the top floor, and she was holding the doors open for him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Are you up to this?”

  Lukas’s scent was all over her. With both arms full, he couldn’t touch her, so he simply rubbed his head against her shoulder. “I need some coffee. Rough night last night.”

  Scarlett rolled her eyes and gave him a good-natured pat. “I don’t even want to know.”

  You’re right. You really don’t.

  At Scarlett’s invitation, he stepped into Lukas Sebastiani’s home again, wading through musk, dark forest and the deep, salty sea. The place was drenched with the residue of their combined sexual energy. He couldn’t blame Scarlett for shagging Lukas Sebastiani blind, deaf, and dumb.

  He put down the drum case, inhaling deeply. It wasn’t just sex. Underneath the lusty top notes was a complex bouquet of laughter, annoyance, concern, and a delicious male dominance that set fire to Stephen’s body and imagination.

  And love. They loved each other. How long had it been since he’d felt—he grunted as the beast nipped him in warning.

  “Stephen?”

  “Sorry,” he said, rubbing at the sting. “Just a little heartburn.”

  She trailed Lukas’s scent as she moved, and it tugged him in her wake. The speakers crackled as he approached. “That’s annoying.” Scarlett adjusted several levers on the soundboard. “I wish we could work at Underbelly, but…” She shrugged.

  “Why don’t you put on what you’ve got, let me listen while we set up?”

  “Okay.”

  Listening to her voice would give him a plausible explanation for his erection.

  Scarlett bent over the desk and pressed a button, starting the music. “The song is called ‘Undertow.’ I want the music to convey the feeling of being caught in a riptide. Pounding. Timeless. But… soft and throbbing, if you get what I mean.”

  Scarlett stared at the desk. Stephen would bet his last pair of sticks that Lukas and Scarlett had had each other on its very surface.

  He sat down in Lukas’s desk chair, crossed his hands over his lumpy lap, and tried not to be too obvious about his interest in the other man’s possessions. The requisite computer equipment, all dark, dominated the surface. A near-empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol stood next to his mouse. There was a notebook, and an aluminum pencil, the type used by architects or draftsmen. Hung on the wall at eye level was a picture of a man, a woman, and four children. Stephen recognized a younger Elliott Sebastiani, but not the black-haired beauty holding the baby. The gap-toothed little girl—Sasha—grinned as she held rabbit ears up behind her oldest brother’s head. “What gorgeous hair,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “I said, it sounds gorgeous already.” He meant the response as a cover-up, but, as her recorded voice shivered through him, it didn’t make his statement any less true. The glissando, slipping and sliding to a minor lift… it was pure siren, and every man who listened would willingly wreck himself on the rocks. He issued an admiring whistle, and grinned at Scarlett. “Hot stuff. When you sing this, there won’t be a soft dick in the house.”

  A blush suddenly reddened Scarlett’s cheeks. Stephen narrowed his eyes and listened more closely. Was that… yeah, way down in the mix. Feminine gasps and moans—and a soft baritone groan.

  Scarlett had recorded them having sex. The beast shoved to its feet, and it was all Stephen could do not to groan along. “You naughty little minx,” he said in what he hoped was a teasing voice, because he could barely talk.

 
; He’d imagined Lukas would be a near-silent lover, all throttled control, and the recording proved him right. He never would have thought that Scarlett would be so vocal and demanding—very much like her sister Annika.

  How much time and skill would it take to make Lukas Sebastiani shout his pleasure out loud? The speakers snapped as the challenge shrilled through his nervous system. “Okay, I think I know what you’re going for,” he said. “Put it on loop and let me try a few things.”

  Scarlett flipped a switch to record the session, put her headset back on, sat in Lukas’s chair, and let him experiment awhile. He grabbed a set of brushes from the pile of sticks and stood at the snare, losing himself in the music, in her voice, in their bodies as they crashed together. He cocked his head. There was a mild syncopation in the movement of their bodies; Lukas’s stroke wasn’t quite steady. He tried to put himself in Lukas Sebastiani’s head as his hips rolled in and out of Scarlett, the rhythm steadying out as his speed increased. Swishing the brushes over the skin of the drumhead, he tried to replicate the sound of shifting beach sand. A tap against the rim as they crashed on rocks, slow and steady as a metronome.

  “Yeah. That. Keep it going.” Scarlett flipped more switches, increasing the reverb and layering in a throbbing digital bass line, humming along, harmonizing with her recorded voice.

  Aaah. His groin ached and burned. They’d found the seed of it.

  The beast scraped teeth against his sternum. Scarlett’s big black cat poked his head from the kitchen and hissed.

  “Calamity, stop it.” After scribbling a quick notation, she sat back, closed her eyes, and simply listened as he continued to play. A slight syncopation, a double stroke, a tap on the snare to catch the crash of the wave—or the groan of a man bottoming out in his lover’s body.

  Stephen took a deep breath. Scarlett might be dissatisfied with the mix she’d produced before he arrived, but he was absolutely enthralled. Did Scarlett realize what a talented producer she was? With nothing more than her voice, Lukas’s voice, and this ancient board, she’d layered the sounds in such a captivating way that anyone who’d ever been in lust—in love—would feel the emotions as they listened.

  She’d captured the essence perfectly.

  Scarlett’s recorded moans grew thready, picking up speed and volume, rising in pitch. Her voice now dominated the mix, making the occasional moan or bitten-off groan from Lukas all the more precious. In the chair, her body tensed. He inhaled deeply. Yeah, he’d found the groove all right. Would she come from simply listening to him play along? And if she did, would Lukas’s scent be stronger? Because he wanted—

  Ah, damn. Electricity surged in his lower torso, traveling a circular route from tailbone to balls to cock and back again. His mouth opened, but he didn’t make a sound, the speakers crackling and popping. Under the headset, Scarlett’s eyes were still screwed shut, her body poised on the knife-edge of release, so lost in the music that she hadn’t noticed the hitch in the beat, that he’d stopped playing.

  Putting down the brushes, he walked toward her. The skin over her cheekbones was drawn tight. Her neck craned in submission. Lukas’s scent bloomed from her body. She was almost ready to—

  Ah, there. Scarlett’s body quietly quaked. Suddenly he was standing over her, mouth open, huffing her release with deep, lung-filling breaths. His hands were clenched around her throat.

  Her eyes flew open. His soft mental “no…” was completely drowned out by the beast’s howling demand. Electricity arced off the board as he breathed in her musk, her fear, and her frantic need for air. Her body still shuddering in aftershocks, Scarlett clawed at his hands and wrists, tearing open the scabs Andi Woolf had carved there with her wicked nails. The metallic scent of blood stung his nose.

  Bad move, Scarlett. The beast loves blood.

  As glorious music vibrated in his bones, Stephen covered her mouth with his and pressed with his thumbs, swallowing as she gasped into his mouth.

  He could almost hear the beast smacking its lips as it suckled and gorged on every strangled moan, kick, and desperate toss of Scarlett’s head. He burrowed his tongue into the dark corners of her mouth to catch what remained of Lukas’s flavor. Power sparked and surged into him, bathing away the ache on the underside of his skin

  Rage. Adrenaline. Testosterone. Lukas was nearby. Of course. His penis kicked in response as he moaned into Scarlett’s mouth.

  I’m going to taste him if it’s the last thing I do.

  It very well might be, his common sense replied.

  But what a way to go.

  ***

  The faintest wisp of ashes hit Lukas’s tongue as the car cornered into Sebastiani Security’s parking lot. The lot was completely empty—except for Stephen’s motorcycle, parked next to the door.

  Fuck. He’d left her wide open.

  Knee-knocking fear shot through Lukas’s already-overloaded system. He squealed to a stop next to the door, knocking down Stephen’s bike in the process. Slamming the car into park, shattering the stick with his forceful action, he vaulted out of the seat. Let the fucker roll right into the Mississippi, he thought as he eyed the fourth floor windows on the run. He had to get upstairs. Scarlett was fighting for her life.

  His opening yank nearly tore the heavy outer door off the hinges. He ran past the empty reception desk to the stairwell and pounded up the stairs, shoulders careening off the walls as he wound his way up. The closer he got to the top floor, the stronger Scarlett’s terror tasted.

  Fuck stealth. He went in hard, splintering the thick wooden door, not bothering to hit the threshold in a crouch. The sun shone. Music throbbed, saturating the room with Scarlett’s lush sexual energy. He smelled ashes, semen, ozone—and iron-tinged blood.

  A garbled scream came from the desks. Stephen had Scarlett pinned to Lukas’s desk chair, his hips churning between her kicking legs, Calamity’s teeth latched firmly to his calf. Stephen’s hands were wrapped around her throat, his thumbs pressing into her windpipe. Scarlett was fighting for air—and losing.

  With a roar, Lukas barreled across the room, grabbed Stephen, and simply threw him. He landed in a heap under the windows, his elbow jammed in the drywall. A foot higher, and he’d have flown through the glass to land with a splat on the asphalt four stories below.

  Lukas spared a glance to make sure he was down, then brought his attention back to Scarlett, who lay still on the desk chair, arms limp at her sides, eyes rolled back in her head.

  Not breathing.

  “Don’t you dare,” he said, bowel-loosening fear turning his voice surly. CPR. He knew CPR. He dropped to his knees and poked his index finger into her ribs, where he knew she was most ticklish. “Breathe for me, sweetheart.”

  Her chest heaved in response, setting off a paroxysm of coughing. Good. Coughing meant air was moving in and out. The hand she raised to cover her mouth was stained with blood. He quickly examined it. She had tissue under her fingernails—she’d nailed the bastard good, but… Jesus. The scent of semen sliced at him. He hovered his hands over her body, afraid to touch her.

  Don’t panic. Analyze the scene. He took a shaky breath and did his best. Pants. Scarlett’s black stretch pants were still on her body, the waistband snug against her hips, right where it belonged. Unlike Andi Woolf or Annika Fontaine, Scarlett’s belly-baring T-shirt still covered the essentials.

  What the hell had happened here?

  Scarlett finally stopped coughing. “Lukas?” she rasped, looking at him with eye whites speckled with pinpoint hemorrhages.

  Petechiae, his left brain noted. His right brain simply roared. “I’m right here,” he said, holding her bleary gaze as he quickly probed her skull and jaw line for injuries. She recoiled when he examined her throat, jabbing an icy spear through his heart. “It’s me, Scarlett,” he said. His own throat was clenched so tight he could hardly force out the words. “It’s just me. I need to make sure you’re okay.” He ran his hands over the slim tendons in her neck, over her shoulders, do
wn her arms, her torso, abdomen, hips, and legs. He tried to keep his touch professional and businesslike, but he couldn’t help stroking her cheekbone with his fingertip. “I don’t think anything is broken,” he said. “Sweetheart, can you sit up? Here, let me help—”

  A shockwave hammered into his upper back. He clutched at his chest as he instinctively rolled away from Scarlett. Jesus. His heart was flip-flopping against his ribs like a fish on a hook.

  “Lukas.”

  The horror in Scarlett’s voice penetrated. Stephen stood, his left elbow cocked at an odd angle. He held the other arm out in front of him, staring at the electricity arcing between his outstretched fingers.

  “Well. That’s new,” Stephen said.

  Heat flashed against his upper back, quickly licking its way up his neck. He smelled singed hair. Lukas rolled, but the hardwood floor didn’t do a damn thing to—

  “Here!” Scarlett’s T-shirt was in his hand. He quickly snuffed out the fire, reducing the pain from nuclear to merely excruciating, and lurched to his feet.

  “Get back.” He shoved Scarlett behind him.

  “We really don’t want to hurt Scarlett.” Stephen inhaled deeply, momentarily holding his breath like he was taking a hit from a bong. When he released the breath, pleasure hazed his eyes. “But you? That’s another matter entirely.”

  We? Shit, he hadn’t cleared the room. Lukas opened his senses, his gaze darting to every corner and entrance. Behind him, Scarlett scraped breath into her lungs. He didn’t hear anyone else.

  “So nice of you to join the party. We were sure you’d arrive sooner or later.”

  Lukas stared at the electricity arcing and snapping off the smaller man’s body. The gun closet hidden behind a slab of wood at the far end of the maple shelving unit might just as well be on Mars. This’ll teach you not to carry, you arrogant asshole.

  Behind him, Scarlett rasped, “There’s no one else here.”

  As she spoke, Stephen jumped. Lukas grunted as another surge of electricity slammed into him. His knees buckled like someone jacked him from behind with a crowbar. “Jesus,” he gasped, trying to tug Stephen’s legs from around his body. The little bastard was burning him alive.