Chapter 4
Molly turned slowly, following the circling wolf with her eyes. Moonlight tipped its gray fur, highlighting the muscles that rippled as it moved.
They’d been spinning through the steps to this dance for what seemed like hours. She couldn’t feel her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated for the hundredth time. Maybe the thousandth. The syllables didn’t even sound right anymore.
The wolf’s lips peeled back. It bared its teeth and growled.
That was different. The interrupted rhythm tripped her mid-turn and she stumbled. Strong hands caught her from behind.
“It’s not angry with you,” North said as he steadied her. “It’s pissed at me.”
Molly reluctantly turned her back on the wolf in order to look at the man. Immediately, she knew he wasn’t a man at all.
Oh, he stood on two legs, had two strong arms, the ruggedly handsome face she would probably see in her dreams until she dreamt no more, but that was it. Everything else of him, the aspects of heart and humanity that mattered, those were gone. She forgot all about the wolf as she stared into the jewel-blue gaze of the vampire.
“Do you blame it?” she asked once she found her voice. “You’re trespassing on its territory.”
Vampire North shrugged. “Or perhaps it’s trespassing on mine. You’ve been here before, Molly. What do you think? Did the wolf fit?”
“I…” She inhaled and bit her lip. “It’s not my place to talk.”
“When you cut the keys to the kingdom, you became its caretaker. It’s exactly your place to talk. I think you should open your mouth soon if you don’t want to watch it destroy itself from the inside out.”
Dipping his head, the vampire caressed her ear with a kiss. “Here’s something to think about. If the wolf truly belongs, why is it pacing the outside perimeter while you and I stand safe in the heart?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s you,” he whispered.
The wolf suddenly leapt, throwing itself against whatever force kept it at bay. This time, the barrier didn’t hold it back.
Molly jerked, smacking her head against the boulder that supported her back and shoulders. It was dark. She struggled upright, disoriented by the walls of rock that surrounded her. As she put her hand down on the ground to leverage to her feet, she flattened a trio of wild mushrooms.
“Damn,” she muttered. She’d climbed into the ring of rocks in order to examine the mushrooms she’d spotted growing at their base, but the sun-warmed stone had lulled her tired mind and muscles. Now it was dark. She’d meant to be back at the cabin before sunset so North wouldn’t wake up thinking she’d tried to escape.
North. Certain she’d discovered something important, she tried to hold onto the details of her dream but she couldn’t shake the image of the wolf coming at her with explosive energy. Heart racing, she snatched up the flowers and grasses she’d stuffed into a sling she’d fashioned out of her bra and scrambled over the rocks.
From the new vantage, she could see the stand of trees that grew between her and the cabin—and the beast that charged out of the greenery could see her.
Her scream pierced a bubble of eerie silence and the creature let out an inhuman howl. It was North. Logically, she knew that. Her instincts didn’t give a damn about logic and she whirled, scrambled through an opening between two rocks and plunged into the trees. Behind her, he howled again.
Terror didn’t give her a sudden rush of inhuman speed or night vision or any of the things that carry book heroines safely through the woods at night. It made her clumsy and melted her muscles down to wobbly mush, so the first time she had to leap over a fallen tree, she tripped and landed on her stomach. All her breath left in a rush and nausea made her insides roll. Dizzy, gagging and whimpering, she slid to the ground and curled into a ball, trying to lose herself in the log’s shadow.
It almost worked. North burst through the brush and bounded over the log, so close to her she felt his coarse fur against her bare arm. Miraculously, he kept going. Every loud crack of a branch made her flinch but eventually the noise faded. Her heart rate didn’t slow but she’d regained her ability to breathe. Oxygen seemed to help her legs work again.
Slowly, silently, she uncurled her limbs and pushed to her hands and knees. At this time of year, foliage grew thick and full. Moonlight didn’t penetrate the tangle of leaves and branches. Wary of another fall like the one that had immobilized her, she crawled back the way she’d come, almost blindly feeling for tracks that would tell her she was still heading in the right direction.
It wasn’t long before she became aware of her vulnerability to animals natural to the forest. With North so far gone into the dark, the other animals started moving again. She heard them rustling in the underbrush, felt their eyes on her. The bites of mosquitos stung her legs.
She wasn’t usually the type to break down in hysterics, but when something huffed behind her, a sob broke free. Lurching to her feet, she took off running and exploded into the clearing that housed the cabin. Confusion brought her up short. An instant later, a large, powerful figure barreled at her and lifted her clean off her feet.
Screaming, she twisted and kicked, striking nothing but air until he dropped her to the ground and pinned her with his weight.
Neither of them moved. Molly breathed into the grass, surrounded by the scent of earth and the heat from sun-baked soil beneath her, and the man-beast on her back. His agitation was unmistakable but he didn’t grunt, didn’t growl. He didn’t do anything except breathe and grind against her in a way that made her burn.
The silence wormed its way into her mind until she couldn’t take the discomfort a minute longer. “Do something,” she whispered.
North growled. “Feed.”
Yes, feed. What she should have insisted upon hours earlier. Maybe if she had, they wouldn’t be in this position. He’d be calm, she’d be…what? Dead? A vampire herself? He’d turned to the animals of the forest because he believed he wouldn’t be able to control the vampire’s thirst and the wolf’s growing taste for human flesh. Would she be dead?
Or would he be…
The thought disintegrated, scorched by North’s breath on her nape. She shivered despite the heat surrounding her. He nuzzled the hair behind her ear and touched his tongue to the sensitive hollow. Her breath caught as his maleness grew against her bottom.
“Not like this,” she pleaded, not at all shocked that she wasn’t trying to stop him. “Change first.”
He went still. The air seemed to crackle and she would have sworn she sensed a storm if she hadn’t looked up into a clear, starry sky moments…no, it had been longer than that since she awoke in the dark. Not too far off, thunder rumbled. North’s weight lessened as he changed. When she could draw a full breath, she lifted her head in time to catch the blink of lighting just beyond the range of the hills.
“You weren’t supposed to give me permission,” he rasped in her ear. “I need to defeat one of these demons inside me. Tasting you again will only make them both stronger. How the fuck is this helping, Molly? You were supposed to help me, not shove me over the damn cliff.”
Why is it pacing the outside perimeter while you and I stand safe in the heart?
She tilted her face to the sky and closed her eyes just as the first fat raindrops fell. They splashed on her cheeks and wet her lips. She licked up the warm water. “Maybe you’re looking for the wrong kind of help. Maybe you’re fighting the wrong part of yourself. Maybe…maybe you should let your two halves come together.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he bit out. “Give me your neck and you’ll see.”
The anger and violence coiled in his powerful body shouldn’t have excited her but they did. Her pulse felt heavy, her blood thick as he pushed her hair over her shoulder and bared her neck completely.
The sky opened. Rain pelted the back of her neck and a new roll of thunder almost covered the growl of hunger in Nort
h’s chest. If he wasn’t pressed so close to her, their bodies fused from thigh to shoulder, she would have missed the tell-tale vibration.
The vampire was in him, maybe too deep to be carved out, but it wasn’t alone. It and the wolf were twisted up in blood, fused. The only thing missing now was the man’s surrender.
“I believe things happen for a reason,” she said.
His lips moved against her skin. “Yeah? So why, if you know so much? Why the wolf? Why did you fail to keep it locked up? Why a god damn vampire, too? Why am I going to sink my fangs into you now, maybe killing you? Maybe turning you into what I’ve become?”
It was hard to think through his kiss. She struggled to get out, “I don’t know. There’s no answer guide here. We have to be willing to run without knowing what’s up ahead. Accept that there is a reason to trust it.”
He lifted his weight off her back and pushed her legs apart, making a place for himself between her thighs. “You’re not running now. You should be. Whatever’s ahead has to be better than the monster behind you.” He ground his pelvis against her buttocks.
If Molly ever thought a beast’s hunger started in its belly, now she knew better. A wave was building inside her. She gripped fistfuls of wet grass and hung her hair. North didn’t wear any clothes, so his erection rode up the back seam of her threadbare cut-offs with every pulse of his hips.
She hadn’t allowed herself to look, really look at his sex the few times opportunity had presented itself and now she wished she had. He felt thick and long and hard and the only visual she had was a vague impression of dark, masculine strength.
Fear flickered to life. North was a large man even without the advantage of size typically conferred upon males during the change from human to other. From where she lay pinned beneath him, she couldn’t tell which stage of transition was upon him. He was too articulate to be the same enormous creature that had smashed into her house, but his voice was still too rough for purely human vocal chords.
Molly wasn’t a petite woman by any measurement except height but North had proven himself more than strong enough to carry her across who knew how many miles of terrain, down river and up hills, a trek no regular man could make on his own in a single night, let alone with a plus-sized woman tossed over his shoulder or cradled against his chest.
The man pressing her to the ground now, telling her with his body exactly what he intended, wasn’t normal. Wasn’t human. It was good to fear. Proved she still possessed some degree of self-preservation so when her core clenched with desire and she pushed her ass back to meet his slow grind, she took comfort in knowing the hunger burning hot enough to consume that tiny spark of fear truly came from within herself and wasn’t the product of his magic manipulating her mind.
Gathering her courage, she lifted her head and looked over her shoulder to face whatever—whoever—he was in that moment. He was right there to meet her gaze, his face so close, she felt his breath on her lips.
Blinking rain from her eyelashes, she looked into his glittering eyes and whispered, “I think you’ve been running long enough. Don’t you? Maybe this is what’s been waiting ahead.”
He turned his face aside. His jaw flexed.
“You’re more human than you think.” She twisted her head that extra fraction of an inch and brushed her lips against the corner of his mouth.
With a guttural groan, he shoved his hand into her hair and held her still for his devouring kiss. No need. From the moment he parted his lips against hers, she was lost.
North tasted like every surge of wild magic she’d ever pulled. As he explored her mouth with his tongue, she knew the flavor of rainstorms and winter snowfall, the sweet refreshing taste of new seedlings in spring. Nature’s power was more, though, and it had a dark, earthy side. As North explored deeper, as she embarked upon her own seeking, the sharp point of a fang sliced her lip and the flavor of rich iron spread like the petals of night blooming jasmine.
It may as well have been poison ivy, as fast as North tore his mouth from hers.
Groaning, he loosened his hold on her hair and rocked back to crouch above her. Molly touched her tongue to the spot he’d nicked. It had been an accident, but accidents were just as real as deliberate actions and this one reminded her of his intentions.
Rolling to her back, she leaned up on her hands and faced him. For a moment, all she did was look. Rain beat down upon them. It soaked his hair and ran in rivulets down his broad chest to the thick erection spearing the air between them.
Molly sucked at her tiny wound as she dragged her eyes back up to his. “That wasn’t so bad. Do you want to do it again?”
He dug his fingers into his thighs. “You know I do. Don’t tease me, witch.”
“Not teasing. Inviting. What do you want? My neck?” She let her head go heavy and arched her throat.
The rain was coming down so hard, she couldn’t keep her eyes open so she didn’t know North had moved until his mouth opened over her collarbone. Even though she’d expressly welcomed him, she inhaled sharply at the unexpected contact.
The cleansing rain had stripped his scent down to its essence. As she breathed in, his spicy musk dominated her senses. She could smell him, taste him, and even though thunder cracked the night, she heard him, too. A low rumble of hunger and appreciation reached her ears. Even after the primal sound faded, it filled her mind as he drew his tongue along the tendon on the side of her neck.
Her body lit up. Eager for more contact, she wrapped her arms around his neck and arched her back. As she pressed her breasts against the warm planes of his chest, her nipples tightened to stiff points. North slid one hand between her shoulder blades and pulled her even closer, pinning his erection between them.
“Good,” he muttered at her throat. He worked his hand down to her lower back and past it to palm her ass. Grip firm, he lifted her off the ground like she weighed nothing and anchored her against his groin. “You’re so fucking soft, Molly.”
He ground the underside of his shaft against her, driving the seam of her shorts into her cleft. A spark of pleasure arced through her, stealing her voice. She managed an incoherent moan and shook her leg around his hip, hoping her desire was clear enough.
Must have been because he reared upright and pulled her other leg up so she couldn’t let go of him without falling. Once he had her where he wanted her, he pulsed his hips in a rhythm she couldn’t ignore. Panting, she tucked her face against his neck and matched him grind for grind.
Since she was holding herself up, he was free to stroke and squeeze whatever he wanted. He raked his blunt fingernails down the outside of her thighs and up the backs before shoving his fingers into the legs of her shorts. His buttocks tensed as he forced his way past the resistant wet denim and into her panties to get his hands on her bare ass. She felt a seam give but then he had his fingers at her slick entrance and his fangs at her throat.
North’s chest expanded on a deep breath and with a growl, he plunged his fangs into her artery the same instant he speared his fingers into her core.
Her muscles jerked and then went slack, weakened by a riot of sensations. North didn’t let her fall.
Molly grew lightheaded as he suckled and stroked. Rain stung her bare skin, spilled into her open mouth. She felt like she was washing away, swept off by the storm he’d brought to her door.
Somehow she lifted her arms to fist his hair. Her touch seemed to trigger something in him. He worked another finger into her heat and slid his thumb up through her wetness, finding a pressure point that made her dizzy.
“North,” she panted. “I’m spinning. Don’t let me go.”
Something wasn’t right.
The longer he sipped from her veins, the softer she became, until she felt boneless in his hands. Holding her seemed so right, he ignored the warning signs until her breathy nonsense finally penetrated the fog of lust.
Slowly, he gentled his kiss and licked each puncture to seal the mark, stopping the flow of blood. Mo
lly moaned.
“That wasn’t the last time,” he promised. Raising his head, he looked down into her blissed out face.
At her words, she slowly opened her eyes. Instantly, the hot blood he’d just taken from her ran cold.
Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, the pupils bigger than they should be this far away from lights. That well-kissed fullness of her lips looked like a black bruise against skin that was so pale, it had a blue tint.
“Molly.” He shook her once and her mouth tilted in a vague, dreamy smile.
With a roar, he surged to his feet and swept her up into his arms. The cabin squatted a good hundred yards past the trees. Tucking her face against his chest, he sprinted the distance while the storm raged around them.
What had he done? What was he thinking to take so much from her? Witches were the most human of the dark kinds. The most fragile. He could have killed her and not known it until her blood ceased to flow across his tongue.
As he rounded the corner of the cabin, the wind shifted. Molly’s blood congealed in his veins, chilled by the scent of werewolf. Meat. And that putrid rot of a vampire in the throes of feeding.
And the source of the stench…
Body parts littered the ground. He identified a mauled arm at the base of a tree and found its mate on the stairs to the cabin’s crude porch. Rain had washed blood from flesh, revealing sleeves of tribal ink ruined by great, ropey scars. The limbs were human…except when they were werewolf.
“Jarvis,” he snarled. He would recognize the bastard who changed him even if the male was in pieces.
“Was that its name?”
North whipped his head around, tracking the unfamiliar male voice to a knot of trees. A tall man emerged from a full canopy of leaves. He stopped walking at North’s warning growl, but didn’t back down.
Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More Page 105
