Darkest Temptation

by Sharie Kohler

  He groaned against the side of her face, one of his hands coiling in her hair. A wild cry ripped from her lips. She shuddered beneath him as he surged inside her several more times, reaching his own climax. Spent, she sank even deeper into the mattress, a boneless puddle beneath him, small ripples of rapture eddying out through her body.

  With a groan that sounded part sigh and part curse, he flung himself off her. Pressing her legs together, she scooted as far from him as she could, her fingers digging into her thighs. “You’re an animal,” she hissed.

  He stared at her darkly, one arm tucked behind his head. “So are you, baby. Better get used to it.”

  “There’s no man! No boyfriend. No husband. I just need to go!”

  He shrugged as if it didn’t matter either way. “Well, I can’t let you do that. Look. Let’s make the best of the month. I’ll show you a good time.” He scratched his square jaw. “And given your new condition, you’re going to experience urges. Why not experience them with me?”

  His words sounded cavalier enough. And simple. But she knew there would be nothing simple about it. In a month’s time, she would either shift into a werewolf… or die—by his hand.

  She had opened her mouth to resume arguing when her stomach rumbled.

  “Let’s take care of that appetite of yours.” He held up a hand to stop her protests. “And then you can keep trying to convince me why I should let you go.” His gold eyes fixed on her, hard, probing. “And why I should believe you when you say you’ll come back.”

  * * *

  “This is beautiful,” she murmured, sipping her coffee on a deck overlooking miles of wooded hills. “I don’t get to see this in the city.” She gazed again at the stretch of countryside. “Doesn’t appear that anyone besides you enjoys the view, either.” She arched a brow and nodded around them. “No neighbors.”

  “I like my solitude.” He bit down on a buttery croissant, identical to the one she had just consumed.

  She reached for another croissant and stared out at the sea of treetops. She couldn’t even spot a road. “More like isolation.” At the sudden quiet, she glanced across to find him staring intently at her, no longer chewing, no longer moving at all.

  “I’m not human,” he said succinctly, each word a hard bite on the air. “I have no business being around humans.”

  She nodded slowly, nibbling her croissant as she studied him, knowing he meant her to take some sort of lesson from those words. Swallowing, she asked, “I suppose you think I should do the same?”

  “Yeah. You especially.”

  “Why me especially?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’m a dovenatu, a hybrid lycan. I can control my impulses. Can fight the urge to feed at every moonrise. You can’t. I shift at will. You can’t. Every full moon, you will shift and you will kill—”

  “Yeah, Curtis covered this already,” she snapped. “I get it.”

  “Do you? Because you have no business going out into the world until this is… rectified. One way or another.”

  One way or another. She couldn’t stop the shiver from trickling down her spine. “So instead I should stay here and keep you company.”

  His eyes glowed. He idly traced the rim of the glass of juice before him. “The company was good, wasn’t it?”

  She felt herself blush, the burn crawling all the way to the tips of her ears. She stabbed at a chunk of pineapple and replied quickly, “As you’ve said, I have a month. I won’t hurt anyone until then. I’m going home.” Popping the fruit in her mouth, she chewed. It was all bravado. She knew he could chain her downstairs again. Could seduce her with a look or crook of his finger and keep her happily in his bed. But she was hoping he wouldn’t. Hoping that whatever impulse had motivated him to free her of that dark basement still held true.

  “Very well. You insist on leaving the premises. Fine.”

  Relief rushed through her. Her words spilled forth in a giddy rush. “I promise I’ll come back—”

  “I know you will.” He cocked his head to the side and relaxed back in his chair. “Because I’m going with you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Luc followed her into the Sun Valley Rest Home and was instantly assailed by the odor of astringents and decaying mankind. He understood how some people could be uncomfortable with the reminder of their own fleeting mortality. It only made him wishful. Wishful to have lived a life wherein he’d… lived. Instead of merely existing. It made him yearn to age and die in the natural order of man. As God intended, not some witch who’d started the lycan curse over a thousand years ago.

  You’ve lived since Lily crashed into your world—your bed.

  He shook his head and watched Lily smile and nod to both the staff and the wizened infirmed trudging down the corridors with their walkers and wheelchairs. She showed no sign of discomfort. She seemed right at home here.

  “Where are we—”

  “This way. She’s in the TV room.”

  They entered an airy room with several well-worn sofas and armchairs. Three women played cards at a table. Another sat alone on the couch, staring vacantly at the television set.

  Lily eased down beside her. Luc hung back, leaning against a bookshelf of paperbacks so old and worn that the titles on the spines could hardly be read.

  “Hello,” Lily greeted the old woman on the sofa.

  The woman looked startled for a moment, blinking warm brown eyes several times.

  “Hello.”

  Lily glanced at the television before looking back at the woman. “I like Paula Deen, too.”

  The woman gave an eager nod. “She doesn’t skimp. Fried is fried. Like it should be.”

  “Absolutely,” Lily agreed.

  “Do you like to cook?”

  “A little bit. My mother’s an excellent cook.”

  The woman patted Lily’s hand. “Well, you should get her to teach you.”

  Lily blinked fiercely and glanced away, the back of one hand swiping at her eyes. And in that moment, Luc knew that the woman with whom she was conversing wasn’t a stranger.

  “She did teach me how to make a mean turtle cheesecake,” Lily offered.

  “Hmm, I love turtle cheesecake.” Her brow wrinkled in concentration. “I think I might know how to make that.”

  Lily gave a shaky smile. “I bet you do.”

  He looked hard at the woman on the sofa, studying her face, the confused gaze, the melting brown eyes—and knew it was Lily’s mother.

  In that moment, he didn’t know what was worse—being alone and not having anyone to love or having someone you loved no longer know you.

  * * *

  “She wasn’t always that way.”

  He flexed a hand on the steering wheel and weaved through traffic. “I’m sure she wasn’t.”

  “I don’t want your pity.”

  He snorted. “Any pity I feel for you has nothing to do with your mother.” Only partially true. The stark sorrow, the total loneliness he had seen in Lily’s face as she’d sat on that couch, had struck a much-too-familiar chord. It echoed the way he had felt growing up, when he’d endured the hatred of a family that did not want him. When Ivo had fallen to darkness. When Danae had chosen his cousin—and darkness—over Luc.

  “So you do pity me?”

  “What do you expect me to feel for you, Lily? You’re in a shitty situation here.”

  She shook her head. “Couldn’t I just lock myself away every full month? Or sedate myself?”

  “That’s a hell of a burden to carry. If you slip up, innocents die.”

  She jammed her eyes in one tight blink and rolled her head side-to-side against the headrest with a heavy sigh.

  He continued, “You would need one hell of a friend to pull something like that off. Someone to confine you three nights out of every month and then free you. Someone to sedate you if needed. They could never fail. To fail would mean innocents dying.”

  “Innocents?” she bit out. “Like me.”

&nb
sp; He nodded. “Like you were.”

  Her face tightened, the smooth features pinching in distaste at the truth of his words. Her new ugly reality. “Yeah. I don’t have anyone like that in my life.”

  Her words resonated deep inside him. Maybe because he didn’t have anyone, either.

  He glanced to his right. The bright sun struck her hair, bringing out the buried highlights.

  “Even if you did find someone you could trust like that, he wouldn’t live long enough. Not generations like you. The years pass quickly. Sooner than you think, you would need to replace him with someone else.”

  “So what I’m looking for is a keeper who’s reliable, trustworthy, and immortal?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. Can’t be too many of those walking around.”

  She met his gaze. For a long moment, their stares clung. He knew the precise moment when she realized that he was the closest she would ever come to finding that.

  A flush crept over her face. Her voice rushed forth then. “Don’t think I’m expecting you to do that for me. I don’t need you to be my savior.”

  He looked back to the road, biting back the mad urge to say he would do that for her. To put an end to his lonely existence… would it be such a sacrifice? As long as he could have her every night. As long as he could keep her with him forever. His hands tightened on the wheel. Impossible. He couldn’t keep her. She was a lycan, not a pet. As long as she lived, she was a danger. To the world. To her immortal soul… to him.

  Besides—she didn’t want him. She wanted her life back. Her freedom.

  “Let’s just hope your hunter comes through.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured. “Let’s hope.”

  * * *

  “You can sleep here.”

  Lily peered into the guest bedroom, her feet nudging across the threshold. Either he had changed his mind about their enjoying each other for the reminder of the month, or he’d had his fill of her. For some reason, both possibilities made her feel hollow inside.

  Something had happened to him during the car drive home. He stared at her as if she were a stranger, the gold fire of his gaze banked, remote. “There’s plenty of food downstairs. Help yourself to anything you like.”

  She strolled into the bedroom, dropping her bag on the center of the bed. They had stopped off at her house and gotten a few things to last the month.

  Facing him, she crossed her arms. “No jail cell again?”

  “I trust you won’t run.”

  She smiled, but the curve of her mouth felt brittle. “Do you?”

  He advanced on her, and she forced herself to hold her ground. “You said you wouldn’t. And I don’t think you would be foolish enough to try.” He stopped directly before her, his eyes at a hard glint. “I would hunt you. And find you.”

  This close, he flooded her, their breaths mingling hotly. Her skin tingled, every pore vibrating in awareness of him. His eyes dilated, the white flame back again at the centers as he read her desire, the beast in him waking and responding.

  She felt him, the attraction deep, primal. Beyond her experience. Heady, euphoric. His earthy male scent filled her nose. She tasted him without touching, the salt of his skin coating her tongue, making her salivate.

  Hungry for more, she inhaled, a gaspy sound on the charged air. Then, with a blink, the light vanished from his stare. Without another word, he turned and left. She chafed her hands over her arms, willing the goose bumps from her flesh, willing her heart to still its impossibly fast tempo. Looking around, the room suddenly felt bigger and emptier without him in it. She felt alone, but she was accustomed to that. No reason her heart should ache with an expectation for more.

  Basic survival at month’s end. She craved nothing more.

  But she did. She hungered for more. For life.

  For him.

  * * *

  Silence hummed around her as she stepped into the darkened hall and strode toward the winding stairs. Her feet landed unerringly on each step. She moved with ease, as if it were not dark at all. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, seeing everything as if midday light poured through the house’s many windows. A symptom of her newly altered state, she knew. Even her hunger did not belong to her but to her newly altered self. Lily, the lycan.

  She’d eaten alone hours ago. No sight of Luc other than his knock at her door and terse words informing her that dinner was downstairs. Alone in her room, little else had occupied her save thoughts of the future… and Luc. Luc and the future. Neither of which meshed together… but for some wild reason she could not separate the two.

  In the foyer, she paused, turning away from the hall leading into the kitchen. Moonlight spilled a wide, irregular circle on the tiled floor. She moved, gazing through the front door’s stained glass to the outside world. Turning the lock, she opened the door and stepped outside. The night throbbed all around her. Alive. Pulsing.

  She listened, hearing everything in the silence. The wind. The rustle of branches. The scurrying of a small animal nearby. The pulse of the city a half-hour drive from here matched the quick thud of her heart. Closing her eyes, she let herself feel, absorb her new world. Lifting her face skyward, she could see the waning moon even with her eyes closed. Could see it. Sense it. Feel it. Linked, bound to it, she took another step, reveling in the lush, vital world throbbing around her.

  Then there was the faintest shift. On the air. In the quickening of her blood. A scent that had not been there before. She whipped around with the speed of a hurricane, the tiny hairs on her arms prickling, telling her she was no longer alone.

  One moment nothing was there. Only the whispering night. The next, he was there, unfurling before her like a great wall.

  He grabbed her. The biting pressure on her arm made her cry out. “I told you that you could not escape me,” he growled.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know?” His eyes glowed, twin torches in the moon-soaked night. “Wouldn’t feel it the moment you stepped foot from your room?”

  Anger swept over her. She wrenched her arm free and growled into his darkly furious face, “I told you I would stay—”

  “I don’t put a great deal of faith in the word of a woman. Or a lycan.” He uttered both woman and lycan as if they were the foulest epithets.

  “What’s wrong? Some girl do you wrong?” A muscle in his jaw ticced fiercely, and she knew she’d hit a nerve—the truth. “I’m not her,” she hissed, absurdly jealous over any woman who had possessed enough influence in his life to affect him. Unlike her. Someone he merely babysat, waiting to see whether he needed to destroy her before the next moonrise.

  A long moment passed before he gave a slow nod. “Maybe not, but you can’t be trusted any more than I could trust her.”

  “Yeah? Trust this!” Unaccountably angry, she kicked him hard in the shin and tried to break free. To run, as he’d accused her of doing. Maybe it was his comparing her to another woman, maybe it was the entire hopeless situation.

  Or maybe it was just that she was falling for someone she could never have… .

  He grabbed her again and shook her. “And why should I trust you? She was a dovenatu and she couldn’t resist the darkness. You’re a lycan. How can you fight it?”

  “I’m not her. I’m Lily. And I wasn’t running away. You don’t know me at all. I’ll face this thing. I wouldn’t risk hurting anyone. I would die before I did that.”

  Their gazes locked, clung. Impossible words filled her heart. A ragged breath lifted her chest, and, unbelievably, she spoke the words her heart battled to deny. “I want to stay here.” It was true. She didn’t feel that burning need to escape him anymore.

  His glittery eyes devoured her. For a moment she feared he would shake her again. Or strike her. That muscle in his jaw ticced wildly. The savage beat of his heart bled into her from where his hands gripped her. She waited, braced and ready.

  With a groan, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her in a hug so tight that
she feared he might break one of her ribs.

  Then they were kissing, dropping to their knees on the ground in a feverish tangle of limbs and hot, melding mouths. Their clothes fell away. Removed or ripped.

  He came over her, seized her hips and entered her, driving hard, deep, pushing her into the unforgiving ground. She wrapped her legs around him, indifferent to the dirt and twigs scraping her back as she met his body’s every thrust. Branches swayed above them… the silent moon watching through the latticework of leaves.

  He cupped her face, snaring her gaze in the glittering gold of his eyes as they moved fiercely together for several moments. Groaning, he shuddered above her. She arched off the ground, crying out and meeting him in his climax.

  He collapsed over her, the heavy weight of him thrilling, intoxicating. The sound of their gasping breaths clogged the air. His lips moved against her shoulder, his voice rumbling through her as he spoke. “I won’t let it claim you.”

  His words jerked her back to reality. By it he meant the beast, the surrender of her soul. Moisture burned her eyes. She dragged fingers through his hair, stopping at the short ends, clutching them tightly, never wanting to let go. “It might not.” Her voice faded on the words—words she could not completely believe. Her life hinged on the slim hope of a might.

  “I can protect you. Like I talked about in the car. I can keep you safe as long as you’re with me—”

  She shook her head, knowing what he was offering yet unable to accept. “I won’t stay this way.” Something so dangerous. An evil creature driven to feed on humans. Like the monster who had devoured Maureen. She had not put her life on hold, caring for her mother for seven years, to lose herself to such a fate. She refused to live that way. She stared hard at Luc, an ache building in her chest at the sight of his too-handsome face. Not even for him. “I won’t put such a burden on you.”

  He stared down at her, his golden eyes intense beneath dark brows. “Let me decide what’s a burden.”

  A grim, vague smile curled her lips. “We’ll see.”

  But she already knew she would not make him spend generations as her keeper. She liked him too much to do that. She winced. Like. A pathetic word to describe her feelings for him. But her mind shied away from anything else. She did not believe in love at first sight. Love took time to grow, to build. Whatever she felt for him… it was something else. Lust. And she would not give up her mortality for it. She could never stay like this. Somehow she would end the curse. Or die.