She wasn’t ready to come yet, and if he kept putting thoughts like that in her head, she’d be spasming against his mouth in seconds. Daphne knew he’d restrained himself earlier because he didn’t want to hurt her. He deserved to know what it was like to go under, experiencing wave after wave of orgasm crashing over him, just as he’d done for her.
It took all of her willpower to pull away from his talented mouth, but she managed long enough to reverse her position so that while she straddled him, she could offer him the same ecstasy.
“Daphne,” he began.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. I know I won’t.” She pushed back onto his mouth and locked her hand around the hard shaft of his thick cock. The guttural sound from the back of his throat was all the encouragement she needed.
Daphne took the sensitive crown into her mouth, tongue swirling over his flesh and mirroring the pattern of how he licked her.
She liked having him like this—his muscled thighs spread wide, his abs so tight, hips struggling not to thrust up into the heat of her mouth. He was exposed and vulnerable, as needy and hungry as every sensation he wrought in her.
Daphne drew her tongue up the shaft to suckle the crown again and began to stroke. His cock surged under her ministrations, swelling and growing as his body prepared for culmination. She circled her fingers around the base next to his balls to delay his orgasm, and hers.
While she taunted and teased, he lapped and fucked her with his blunt digits. She found herself rocking her hips and grinding on his mouth, but the closer she got and the harder she pushed, the more he wanted.
She tried to shift forward to take him deeper into her mouth, but then he withdrew his fingers and grasped her around her thighs, anchoring her. Daphne shuddered and lost her rhythm, finding it impossible to concentrate while she hovered so close to the edge.
Daphne redoubled her efforts, tried to dull the sensory input, but it was too much. Especially when he opened the mind link.
At first, she didn’t want to see herself that intimately. Her cleft splayed and wet, but she didn’t see it with her own senses. She saw herself with his.
Daphne tasted like caramel to him and looked even better, sweet and pink, swollen just for him.
No, it wasn’t her cleft. That wasn’t the word he used in his head when he thought of her spread out for him. It was her pussy. That was the word he used—the word he liked. He wanted to hear her say it, have her demand that he lick her pussy, straddling him as she had—grinding down on his mouth and taking her pleasure from him.
She clenched and shuddered, still fighting him. This was supposed to be about Konstantin’s pleasure.
Then she realized it was.
His most intense pleasure came from hers.
She’d never been one for dirty talk, but she’d never had orgasms like he’d given her either. Daphne continued to jack him and said, “Then come for me. That’s what I want from you. Come while you lick my pussy.”
His response was immediate. Konstantin surrendered and Daphne fought to keep the mind link open. She wanted him to feel her satisfaction—how this pleasured her. How everything about his body brought her to this state.
And she’d admit she liked knowing how he thought of her. How he was completely and utterly focused on her. Seeing herself through his eyes, she found none of the faults she usually found in the mirror.
To him, she really was a goddess.
That was more addictive than any drug, or even the thrill of the chase.
When they were both spent, she collapsed in a boneless heap next to him. After a moment, she spoke. “Konstantin?”
He mumbled something, already asleep.
Daphne decided to let it go. She was going to ask him about the nightmares, but she’d done what she set out to do. She’d given him some peace, if only for those moments he spent inside her.
Chapter Seven
Konstantin’s predatory gaze trained on Daphne as she moved through the kitchen of the little beachside hovel they’d rented a week ago. Watching her work was a thing of beauty, both because she was brilliant and because he simply liked looking at her.
She was, in a word, magnificent. Her dark hair was tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck, the pale swan curve a sharp contrast that consistently drew his eye. He remembered what it was like to press his mouth against her pulse—to feel her so warm and alive beneath him.
Daphne looked up from her task, errant strands of hair escaping her bun to fall across her cheeks. She smiled at him, tucking a few strands behind her ear before she bent back over her work.
He loved the casual elegance of her movements, every gesture choreographed to perfection. Perhaps it was the time period when he was raised, but his favorite thing to watch was her legs. The delicate point of her ankle, the curve of her calf, the dip behind her knee—he wanted to know, if he kissed her there, would she laugh? Would her thighs part slightly and—He cut the thought off.
Both because he knew she had to work and because he couldn’t risk strengthening their bond. He’d claimed her in a moment of passion, but the wolf walked a thin line. Every touch was a temptation.
Konstantin had no idea how to fix it either. He couldn’t have her, not wholly, but he couldn’t let her go. Right now, he appeased his guilt by reminding himself that she needed him to protect her from his brother, her government and the Aeternali. When the threat had passed, when she found a cure for the other wolves—and he had no doubt that she would—what would he do then?
Konstantin wondered if his need for her was another symptom of the same blood madness that had taken his father.
Mind made up, he spoke. “I need to make a call. I’ll be back soon.”
She didn’t answer him, but he knew she wouldn’t. She was so deeply immersed in her data and figures she probably wouldn’t notice he’d gone. Although, that didn’t bother him. Her brain had more important things to do.
He didn’t want to leave her unguarded, but Konstantin needed to get in touch with Luka Stanislav—Alpha of Alphas. Since Konstantin was no longer his Beta, they didn’t share that same awareness of one another’s place in the world as they had before. That had been a kind of death and hurt more than the silver needles his brother had used for the virus acupuncture treatment he’d used to infect him.
It didn’t take him long to run to the small tourist trap they called a town. He didn’t even bother changing forms. He bought a throwaway phone with international minutes and dialed Luka.
A woman answered the phone, breathy and giggling. “He’ll have to call you back.”
Her voice resonated through him and he knew without asking Luka had claimed his mate. A wealth of emotion washed over him: joy and sorrow all tangled together in sticky vines. Part of him wanted to end the call and go back to the tiny dump on the beach—bite his woman and live what time he had left until fate came for him. To gorge on everything while he could still taste it.
But he’d made oaths.
“Please tell him Konstantin is on the line.”
“Where are you?” Luka’s voice demanded. “What happened?”
“The States. North Carolina, near Charlotte.”
There was silence on the line for a long moment. “You’ve changed, Kon. It’s in your voice.”
“I’m infected,” he began. “My brother had a testing facility here. The Aeternali and U.S. government are working together on the U.S. outbreaks of the virus.”
“Why wasn’t I consulted?” His voice dropped to a dangerous timbre.
“You know why. They’re going to weaponize it. There’s nothing we can do to stop that, but I have a scientist working on a cure.”
“Your mate,” Luka intuited.
Their connection was still strong. Strange, but Konstantin had felt it being ripped out of him like breaking a bone when he’d been infected. “In name only, as it were. I can’t risk infecting her.”
“We’re coming, Konstantin. My mate might have a cure.”
/> “How?” Was it possible?
“I was infected when I eliminated the packs. So far we haven’t been able to manufacture a vaccine that worked on the zombie-wolves, but it worked on me. I’ll call you when I land in Charlotte.”
“Before you come, you should know all of what you’re getting your mate into.”
“She knows. She was a Guild cop.”
“And me? Do you know what I am?” he asked, heart heavy. He and Luka had put down infected wolves together, now Konstantin was one of them.
“You are Konstantin. Friend. Brother. That’s all that matters.”
He’d left out the Beta. He knew Konstantin was no longer either his Beta or one of his people. “Luka?” He hoped his unspoken request to keep Daphne safe no matter what it took would be heard.
“I’ll do whatever needs doing, my brother. We’re coming and bringing the fury of hell with us.”
He snapped the phone closed and jogged back to the run-down beach house.
Daphne was where he’d left her, bent over her slides and machines. When the door clicked shut softly behind him, she looked up from her perch at the breakfast bar.
“I’ve had a breakthrough!” She bit her lip and then her fingers fluttered over the papers in front of her. “It’s not a cure, but I know how the virus works! Come see!” She motioned him over, jubilation bright on her face.
She had two samples and she combined them on a slide before shoving them under the electron microscope.
“Look, that’s my blood and your blood.”
He watched on the slide as the two samples were inexplicably drawn toward each other like magnets. They blended together, the red blood cells bonding to form a new kind of cell.
She jerked the slide out. “Now this one!”
There were other blood samples and he watched as one sample ravaged the others—even as it deteriorated. But once it was bonded with his, the degeneration stopped and the sample turned blue.
He didn’t understand why she was excited. They already had this information from seeing it on a larger reactive scale.
“Don’t you see?”
Konstantin shook his head.
She went on excitedly. “The pure form of the virus attacks cells it thinks are inferior and replaces it with its own. But it’s not meant to survive without a suitable host cell, and unbonded it degrades—eating holes in the host cells while dissolving themselves. This is what’s happening in the victim’s brains, too. Spongiform encephalopathy. Little holes like a little sponge.” She grinned. “But your strain of the virus—it’s not only bonded with all of your cells, but been absorbed. You and those like you are something completely different from the virus.”
“Then why didn’t it change my brother as he intended?”
“His cells are obviously inferior.” She looked from side to side, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I don’t know that yet, actually. But I will find out.”
Her excitement was palpable. “I know that you will.”
“If you were curious, your cells are all stable. There’s no disease, no aberration, but for the LZ virus, and it’s part of you now. No degeneration.”
“There’s more to it than biology, Daphne.” He was quiet.
“No, there’s not. There are facts—scientific evidence. The rest is all supposition and what-ifs.”
“You know, maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “You’d agree that you can’t fight science?”
She narrowed her eyes and stood, arms akimbo and one hip cocked. “No, I wouldn’t agree to that at all. Sometimes our understanding of facts change. So it’s not fighting it, it’s redefining by newly discovered parameters.”
“I know you’re going to find the cure, Daphne. This is what you were born to do. Understanding of the world around us, both supernatural and natural, has changed so much during the span of my life. When I was young, the cells you look at under the microscope would’ve been called demons, and you would’ve been burned as a witch for looking at them.”
“You’re about to say something that’s either going to break my heart, piss me off or both. Whatever it is, no. Just no. If you’ve taught me anything in these last days it’s that the world doesn’t have to be so rigidly defined. Can’t it wait?”
The look on her face cut him, but it couldn’t wait. “I know how this ends. It is a biological imperative that I mark my mate with a bite. I can’t control it. The longer I spend with you, the more perilous your position.”
“That’s crap. You’re a sentient being. Your wolf is a sentient being. You choose who you are. You choose what you do.”
“Are we? Did you choose to bite me? Or was it instinct?”
Her lips clamped tight.
“If I closed the distance between us right now, leaned down near that stern little mouth, my breath warm on your cheek, would you close your eyes? If you did, would it be a choice or instinct?” When she would have spoken, he did exactly that and moved in close to her. “Or when your lips plump in expectation of being kissed, is that conscious invitation, or is it biology?”
She licked the lips in question and swallowed hard. “The swelling of the lips in expectation or arousal is biology. The decision to kiss is a choice. Action is a choice. Would you force me to have sex with you just because you’re hard?”
Disgust bloomed on his features. “I’d hope you’d already know the answer to that.”
“Then why should violating my humanity be any different?”
“The need to bite you is different. It’s like breathing. I can hold my breath for short periods of time, but in the end, I always come back to the pre-programmed automatic function. My wolf is just that, a wolf. An animal.”
“I disagree, but what exactly is your point here?”
“After you’re safe, I’ll release you from your vow and you’ll release me.”
She studied him for a moment and put down her pen. “I’ve committed to you, Konstantin. I’ve thrown away my career for you. Any hope of having a normal life. But you don’t want me because I won’t change for you? That’s not what a mate does in any species.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Fine. You know this isn’t what I want, but you’re not going to stop until you get your way. You know I’m completely dependent on you, so you manipulate me with threats of leaving. Do it. Mark me. You need it that badly that you’re going to take it anyway and still want me to tell you it’s okay.” She shook her head. “Fine. It’s okay. Bite me,” Daphne snapped.
His beast rallied at her words, taking them at face value, but he clamped down on his human form so hard a yelp echoed in his brain. “I’m trying to protect you, not hurt you. It’s always there, hovering at the edge of my control. I know you don’t want it. I’m trying to save you, Daphne. I’m trying to give you the life that you want.”
“Every time you talk of breaking whatever this is between us, it feels like I’m dying. I know I won’t actually cease to exist without you. I’m not that pathetic. But whatever it is that’s bonded us together is deeper than either of us understands. Do you really think simply saying that you release me will do any good?”
Chapter Eight
Daphne could see by the look on his face he didn’t think any words would be able to break the bond between them.
“I don’t know.”
The hopelessness in his voice stung and her anger vanished as quickly as it had come. “For as old as you are, one would think you’d learned patience.”
“Being close to you makes me feel things with an intensity I’ve never experienced. You were afraid of me.” He nodded. “But, Daphne, you terrify me. All of my failures burn in the spotlight when I’m around you.”
She smiled. “We’ll have to fix that then, because you make me feel like I’m perfect. Except when you talk about biting me. You’re an Alpha. You should always know your own worth.”
He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. “When I came into the height of my power, I chos
e to serve instead of building my own pack. I was once Beta to Luka Stanislav, Alpha of Alphas. The Adam—the first of our kind. I was with him in Aynkava to destroy the infected. There was a horde of them trying to get at this cop who was investigating the Aeternali involvement in the virus. There were too many of them and they took me down. I was immune to their bites until Ian slipped a needle in my vein with a pure form of the virus. The only reason I’m an Alpha is chance. It’s not strength or power.”
She finally understood. He still didn’t think he was good enough. “From what I know of studying the werewolves, Stanislav wouldn’t have accepted you as Beta if you were unworthy to lead in his place. Stop pushing me away. It’s too late, you already claimed me. And if you even think about saying you wish you hadn’t...” She let the threat hang. “You are Konstantin Gevaudan. That name means something. It’s time that you remembered it.”
“You are so ferocious. Perhaps you should be the Alpha,” he said wryly, deflecting her praise.
She smiled. “I’m just your partner. This is my job. As it will be yours to remind me I know what I’m doing and I will find the answer when I’m sobbing over my slides in frustration. That is what mates do.”
A quiet little voice in her head asked her how she was going to do that as a human—as a mortal. An epiphany exploded like fireworks.
Of course he wanted to push her away and break the bond. Wolves mated for life—hers would be considerably shorter than his. She was barely a blip in the span of years he still had before him, but this was it for him.
All of her words came back to singe her tongue. All the prattling about what mates were supposed to do for each other clanged in her ears. People died because they had no choice. She could choose to be with him forever and instead she’d had a tantrum like a child afraid of the dark.
Daphne thought about how it made her feel when he said he wanted to leave her—to break the bond. She realized that every time she denied his beast, he didn’t hear that she didn’t want to be a wolf. He heard, “I don’t want to stay with you. You’re not good enough.”
Claimed by the Beast Page 5
