Daphne could sense he wanted her to let go, to surrender to her wants, but—
“I swore,” Konstantin whispered, his voice jagged.
She surrendered, and for a moment, it seemed the bliss pushed her out of her own body. It was more than flying, more than anything she had words for—like some kind of nirvana for which only his touch held the key.
Daphne clawed at him, screamed and, finally, as the throes of passion were at their peak, she closed her teeth over his shoulder in the kind of bite she’d denied him.
Chapter Five
When her little teeth scored over his skin, Konstantin’s control dissolved to ash, and it was either surrender to his cock or the beast. He knew she didn’t want the beast. His body tightened, every muscle poised for a battle against himself to claim his pleasure but deny the wolf.
His wolf surged, determined to take what was his. Konstantin, for all of his good intentions, wasn’t strong enough to fight his biology. He denied his own culmination—pulled out and leaped away. The scent of her was still in his nose, the taste of her still on his lips, and the scrape of her teeth—it was agony. His cock ached, full and ready to spill. Konstantin’s teeth had lengthened, and he could taste the venom that would infect her, change her.
Make her mine!
The full change hovered just beneath his skin, hot and volcanic. He burned from the inside out, pain devouring all of his senses.
Still, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever endured. Konstantin was sure it wouldn’t be the last. If he changed her, it was possible the Aeternali would put her down. He couldn’t bear that. He was keeping her safe by not biting her.
Mine! It reverberated through his head, a clanging church bell rattling his skull.
“Konstantin?” Her voice was soft and tender, but the trust there carried all the weight of a wrecking ball as it slammed into him. The beast howled in pain as Konstantin tried to remind himself how he could hurt her. The animal didn’t understand. That consciousness saw only that what he wanted most had been offered, then taken from him. He was determined to take it back.
“You need to get away from me, Daphne. Don’t run—predators love the chase. Just walk, quickly, but steady.” His voice dropped several octaves, gravelly and beastly.
“What’s wrong?” He sensed her as she crept forward.
“Daphne!” he snarled.
“Where would I go that you couldn’t find me if you really wanted to? You can punch through concrete walls and run faster than an F-16.”
His breath shuddered in and out of him in an effort to lower his heart rate and respiration. To calm the raging animal who would let nothing, not even Konstantin’s human consciousness, keep him from claiming his mate.
The agony that twisted his limbs as he fought the change was like his very first transformation.
A howl, long and wretched, ripped out of him.
Her hand on his shoulder surprised him, and he turned to her, his face contorted with the change.
He thought she’d scream and flee, but she didn’t.
Daphne brushed her lips across his twisted mouth and straddled him.
“I’ll hurt you—”
“Right now, you’re hurting yourself.” She shifted until his cock pushed up inside her and her eyes fluttered closed for a second as her lips parted with a gasp. When she opened them, she looked into his eyes.
Daphne moved, rolling her hips.
Just when he thought he was going to fail her, with the wolf erupting from his skin and biting her, she took his face in her hands.
“I am yours.” She rocked again, reassuring him. “I belong to you both. But just as I have accepted the animal, he must accept me. The way I am.”
The muscles of his face contorted, the wolf making himself known. She didn’t scream, didn’t flee then either. That seemed to quiet him for the moment, and Konstantin was in control again.
He closed his arms around her and rested his head on her breast. “How did you know?”
“Because I’ve been studying wolves and werewolves for the last several months almost exclusively.” She pushed her fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry I bit you.”
“Don’t be,” he rumbled—a low appreciative growl. “That was you marking me as your mate. If I weren’t...infected, I could mark you and you wouldn’t change.”
“I know. And Konstantin—” she tilted his head up and looked into his eyes “—if it wouldn’t infect me, I’d want you to do it.”
Her words made his cock even harder and he pistoned his hips, meeting her rhythm. She rode him and worked her body against his—her breasts bobbed enticingly with her effort. Konstantin suckled each one in turn, flicking the tight, tender buds with his textured tongue.
It was only moments before she cried out again, her sheath clenching around his cock as he shared his release with her through the link. He spilled inside her, his immediate discomfort eased, but that spiraling rocket of pleasure couldn’t be trusted, and he refused to surrender. His beast wasn’t satisfied—he was still determined to bite her, but he would be patient, bide his time like any effective predator.
Konstantin didn’t hide those thoughts from her either—he wanted her to know what she was dealing with, and that for all of his humanity, he could not be trusted not to bite her when she was vulnerable.
Daphne shuddered and collapsed against him.
He gave her only seconds before speaking. “We need to take shelter. My howl may have alerted our enemies to our location.”
“There’s a national park somewhere near here. If we go far enough up the mountain, we should be able to find a seldom-used park ranger tower. It will provide us some shelter and some communications.”
“Daphne, you can’t tell anyone you’re alive.”
“It’s an easy enough blood test if they think I’m infected.” She untangled herself from him and shrugged back into her clothes.
He sighed. “The Aeternali are acting in conjunction with your government. My brother, who designed the virus, is the project head. Where do you think they’re going to get more infected to study?” Konstantin watched her as his words sank in. “I didn’t see anyone come when Bethany was turned. No supervisor. No investigation. Isn’t that protocol?”
“You’re saying he had permission to infect Bethany? Me?”
“It isn’t out of the realm of possibility, is it? The first outbreak was in a small village in the Eastern Bloc. There was no viral presence here until my brother brought it here. In me.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
“The Alpha of Alphas took down all of his infected and destroyed his stores of raw forms of the virus, but my brother escaped here. The Aeternali want to weaponize it, just as your government will. But my brother, he wants to be me. The virus was designed to bond to our DNA—and with me, it did. I’m a new species, a new race.”
And he was utterly alone. He’d infected the other woman, but it was on a guess that he could save her. There would be no more.
“So we have no choice.” Daphne’s lips, swollen from his kiss, compressed into a grim line. “With your brother sanctioned by my government and yours to make more of this virus, to hurt more people, we have to find a cure.”
“We need to do it before he finds something other than my bite to turn him. If he does, he’ll be every bad thing you feared was in the dark. Because that’s what lives under his skin instead of a wolf.” This was his fault. If Konstantin had allowed his father to kill Ian when he was born, none of this would have happened.
She touched his shoulder again. “This isn’t your fault.”
“It is,” he confessed. “Twice, fate has given the world a reprieve from him and twice, I’ve stood between what was right and my brother. Everything he’s done, all the horrors he’s wrought—that blood is on my hands.”
He waited for her to snarl in disgust at his weakness, but there was only compassion in her eyes. Humans were very different creatures.
�
��Will you tell me about it?”
“That will not make you sleep any better tonight, ma cherie.”
“Maybe not, but I want to know.”
Konstantin didn’t want to tell her. It wasn’t that he was baring his soft underbelly—Yes, yes, it was. This wasn’t only weakness, it was failure.
But she’d asked.
He sighed heavily. “My father was already blood-mad when my brother was born. I was seventeen. Young for a wolf, but in those days, a man grown. It was a cold and frozen night when he came into the world screaming. He was small, and born without the cocoon of wolf children. Henri wanted to snap his neck then. I said I would take responsibility for him. I would rear him. Protect him. Teach him. He was given to me. My mother nursed him, loved him. Did all that a mother should.”
“What happened?”
“He was very young when I found he’d killed a pair of hunting hounds because he wanted to know what it felt like. He wanted to hunt and kill as wolves did, he said.”
Daphne was silent and waited for him to continue.
“After our father was put to death for his crimes in Gevaudan, I petitioned the Aeternali to be rid of the name La Croix, and we took Gevaudan in memory of the innocents killed, so they would live on. My brother started to age rapidly, like a man instead of a wolf. He asked me for my bite and I did it. I gave it to him. For the uninfected, it takes three.”
“And he still didn’t change, but he got all of the other perks?”
“I made a monster. If I’d let him die—”
“You’d be the monster. You saved your brother as much as he could be saved both times. You did all that you could do. His actions aren’t your sins to bear. They’re his. God, Konstantin. How long have you been carrying around all of this guilt? For your father, your brother...” She put her hand against his cheek in quiet absolution.
She didn’t understand. As a wolf, he was truly his brother’s keeper. It was the way of the pack.
Maybe it was better that she didn’t want to be a wolf. Then she’d never hear the wolf in her head telling her that he wasn’t a worthy mate.
The look on her face right now was the one he’d never thought he’d see from anyone. Admiration and trust, maybe even a bit of pride in him. The most damning thing was the one he wanted most. Her acceptance. Even after she’d seen the animal. Even after he’d confessed his sins.
Konstantin was a fraud, but part of him reveled in this moment anyway. It was a good thing she was mortal. He couldn’t keep that light in her eyes on forever. Eventually, she’d see him for what he was and it would dim just as it had in his mother’s eyes when she realized how he’d failed.
No, he couldn’t keep that light on forever, but he’d damn well try.
His wolf was strangely silent.
“We need to go, Daphne. We’ve already lingered much too long.”
She started to dress. “The ranger station isn’t going to work. We need somewhere with reliable electricity. I can rig a lab fairly easily. Biohacking is sort of a hobby.” Daphne flashed a grin. “There are few things I haven’t figured out how to hack. So you might have to make yourself right with a little B and E.”
“B and E?” He raised a brow.
“Breaking and entering. We could get what we need at the university research hospital, but if we have to steal, I’d rather do it from a pharmaceutical company. They have better insurance. I’ll make a list.”
“Or you could just go with me.”
“What happened to Mr. Protective? Now you’re leading me astray?” she teased.
“The ease with which you spoke of breaking and entering tells me you’ve gone plenty astray all on your own. But even wandering off the straight and narrow path, you’re still safer with me.”
“I’m glad you see it my way.” She wrapped her arms around his neck with no hesitation. “I’m ready to fly again.”
Chapter Six
Dawn had reached sticky, orange fingers across the sky by the time they’d gathered supplies and rented a small “beach house.” It was actually more like a shack—a single-wide trailer parked in the sand—but it suited their purposes. It was cheap, well-hidden, and off the grid. It belonged to someone who owed Konstantin a favor and didn’t ask questions when that favor was cashed in during the middle of the night.
She didn’t know where Konstantin had gotten the cash, but she didn’t really want to think about it. Daphne rationalized it was survival of the fittest, and avoiding the whole end of the world by werewolf zombie apocalypse sort of depended on it. She was sure he wouldn’t hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to crawl into the bed next to him and rest her head on his shoulder.
Her rational mind told her that this was madness. Before last night, he’d been a test subject behind glass. A brutal animal.
But he was none of those things—not as she’d imagined them anyway. Daphne wasn’t so innocent as to think his teeth and claws were meant for knitting. She knew better. Konstantin was more human than some of the Homo sapiens she knew.
This link between them... Talk about the one-night stand that wouldn’t go home. Only, she couldn’t imagine home being anywhere that he wasn’t.
Her rational mind reared its stupid voice again and told her that he was just like the rest of them who were behind bars, except she’d fallen for his lines of crap because she wanted so desperately to believe them. Love was built on commitment, intimacy, investment. This was—
Right.
Daphne’s heart couldn’t explain it to her head. She belonged to him—with him. And he with her. She had to stop trying to explain it to herself and just go with it. There were more important questions that needed answers.
Like the virus.
The wheels of her brain kept spinning, and sleep eluded her.
When his breathing evened and the tension fled his body, Daphne crawled out of bed and began setting up the lab. Sleep was for after the cure.
Her lab coat offered her a wealth of material to work with. There were several samples of dried blood she was sure belonged to Ian, and a blue stain that could be the virus in its pure form.
She didn’t want to think about where that spot was on the coat. How close Ian had actually come to injecting it into her veins—to making her a monster.
Daphne paused. Ian wasn’t stupid. He was rather brilliant, actually. He had to know that Konstantin wouldn’t bite him. He’d obviously observed Konstantin and Daphne’s connection. What was his endgame?
Excitement tingled through her fingertips, with a nice guilt chaser. The reason she’d become a scientist was the thrill of the chase. Finding answers to questions that thus far had none. The harder, the better.
Ian was a worthy opponent.
After all the pain and suffering he’d inflicted, Daphne shouldn’t find that pleasing. Ian was the real monster in all of this. At least the things in the cage with Konstantin had been driven by a biological imperative. Instinct. They didn’t know any better. Ian’s every move was calculated toward one end and it didn’t matter what he had to do to get there.
She was in the process of securing the last viable sample when a sound like none she’d ever heard before stabbed through her awareness. It was the resonance of despair. Her eyes and nose burned with it, like brewing grief before an onslaught of tears.
Daphne found Konstantin in the grip of a nightmare—or a memory.
His fingers were knotted in the sheets and his body was strung tight as a bow string. He arched up off the bed as if his shoulders and feet had been restrained and an electric current jolted through him. Konstantin’s face was contorted in pain, and the corded tendons on his neck flexed as he fought the next attack.
His eyes shot wide-open, but unseeing, as another note of that terrible sound burst from his throat.
Daphne could only imagine his pain. She remembered what he’d told her about how they’d tried to exorcise the bad blood from him.
Torture.
She shed her robe and slid back into the bed next to him.
His body shook and trembled so that she was afraid he was going to shatter his own bones. Daphne wondered where his beast was, and why it hadn’t protected him from this.
“Konstantin?”
Another guttural cry.
Daphne straddled him, and bent low close to his face. “It’s over. Wake up,” she prodded gently. “Come back to me.”
He tensed and she pressed her lips close to his ear. “Come back to the light, Konstantin. There’s nothing in the dark that can hold you. Alpha of Alphas.”
Still, he was trapped in the hell they’d inflicted on him.
If she ever met those Aeternali, Daphne swore she’d find a way to make them answer for what they’d done to him.
“I need you,” she whispered.
The bonds that held him snapped and she found herself pinned beneath him on the bed, a hot rage in his beautiful, stark eyes. His lip curled back from his teeth and he growled.
As recently as a week ago, Daphne would’ve been terrified to be in this position. Instead, her pupils dilated and the smoldering fire of desire sparked to hot, vivid life.
The rage cooled, and when he scented her need, Konstantin rolled on his back so that she straddled him again. He locked his hands around her waist and with his great strength lifted her. He settled her with her knees outside his shoulders and her mound against his mouth.
Her gaze locked with his, she watched the gauntlet of expression on his chiseled features as his tongue worked her clit. It was the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced. He seemed to know she was still tender from before, and his powerful tongue swirled and teased more softly.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded from bliss, but she didn’t want to look away. Those electric-blue depths were as intoxicating as his touch. So was the pleasure he derived.
My lips should always taste of you.
Claimed by the Beast Page 4
