“He gave us others down the years. But you were sweeter bait, promised to my brethren for almost a year now. A promise that drew me here too.”
His hardness pushed against me, flickering heat under my skin and with it the instinct to push, to find the joy he offered. Augustus watched me, his eyes pure fire. “I will take you as you deserve to be taken.”
He gripped my thighs, his silver hands gleaming against my pale skin and eased his hips forward. Pain sliced through me and I shut my eyes against it, denying the mewl that wanted to break free. Smooth automata hands gripped mine, yet more stroking over my shoulders and under my breasts, the hum of their metal flesh easing the slow cut of agony.
“Look at me, Rebecca.”
I opened my eyes to the fire in his. Their intensity held me. “I…”
“You belong to us. To me.”
He thrust and buried himself within me. I cried out, arching against his sudden invasion. Tears blurred my eyes, but light fingertips wiped them from my cheek and smooth metal lips brushed my temple.
“Ours.”
The whisper—the soft beat of so many voices within it—washed over my skin.
Augustus drew back, the friction of his metal flesh against mine hot and fierce. “You are perfection. Truly.” He pushed forward again and I met him, driving him deeper, wanting him, the memory of his hard, fast thrusts too clear in my thoughts.
The altar beneath me groaned and Augustus’s grin was wickedness itself. “Yes.” The single word was a growl and his hands dug into my thighs, driving himself again into my body.
Sharp altar stone cut into my back, bringing with it a brief flare of pain before it and the stone crumbled away. Strong hands held me as I flailed, urging me up until I grabbed Augustus’s hard shoulders. I clung to him, my thighs hard around his hips and him firm and wanted within me. Need raged and I ached for him to move again, to fire pleasure through my body and make me his.
His breath misted with mine, the fire in his gaze white with heat. “We were his menagerie. Caught and held for his exhibition.” His lips brushed my mouth. “Though you were equally caged.” His hands cupped my backside, fingers teasing into the cleft and I moaned. My lips slid over his, unsure and wanting, and he briefly took my bottom lip between his teeth. His grin was equally sharp. “Time to set us all free.”
His mouth took mine, his tongue curling, dueling, and I clung to him, moving with the rhythms he set. Fire flickered up my spine as other mouths and fingers played and kissed and licked my skin.
I cried out as a hot tongue darted between my cleft, driving me down hard against Augustus. He grinned at me, something wild and wanton. “We would all enjoy you, Rebecca. It’s our way.”
“Who… What…” My words broke as the tongue pushed deeper, the flare of hot rapture spiraling up through my flesh and dancing light before my eyes. “Dear God in heaven!”
Augustus smirked and thrust deep. “Not quite.”
The tongue found a rhythm with Augustus’s strokes, and I simply fell into the passion of so many mouths and fingers on my body, of Augustus taking me, my flesh pushing hard against the growing heat of his. The rub of my breasts, my belly over his roughened skin drove me to find his mouth for myself, to demand deep, hot kisses, to draw groans from him and a faster, harder stroke into my needy flesh.
Fire danced within me, wreathes of it coiling tighter and tighter in my belly. I shook, but firm hands held me, moved me. Augustus broke his mouth from mine and I pressed my face to the crook of his neck.
His lips burned against my ear. “Let go, Rebecca. Let us take you completely.”
“Yes.” I groaned the word against his softened skin. “I want them. I want you.”
His teeth grazed my earlobe and the pain skittered into sharp pleasure. “You have us. And we will have you.” The promise tightened my flesh almost to the point of pain. “Forever.”
Hot waves of molten fire smashed over me and I cried out, the light, the fierce passion sweeping away my thoughts as Augustus still thrust into my body, harder and faster, deepening my wild joy. His own body stiffened and a long, low moan escaped him. For an endless moment, he buried his face in my loose hair and the touch of the others faded back, leaving only us two.
His trembling hand touched my cheek and he dropped a warm kiss onto my dazed mouth. “Such perfection,” he murmured.
The hands of the automata returned and drew me away from Augustus, pulling me back through the rings to their very edge. My heart turned over. He had promised—
His smile was dark, the silver shine to his skin fading even as I stared. Cracks spidered over his arms, his broad chest, running down across his hips to his legs. Fire churned beneath, making the black lines molten. What was happening? Was it something I’d done? He’d promised, but those cracks didn’t mean forever. I tried to wrench myself free of the hands that held me, but they were unyielding.
And then Augustus simply…shattered.
I screamed and strong hands held me up as my knees buckled. My vision darkened, and I fought not to faint. What had I done? My desire for Augustus had destroyed him.
“Rebecca…” His voice swept over the drone in my ears. It was low…and amused. “Look at me.”
I shook my head to clear my thoughts. In the center of the floor, a floor clear of rings and blood and sigils, stood Augustus. But he was no longer encased in steel. His skin held an earthy, reddish hue and great wings grew from his back to brush the curve of the brick ceiling. In the flickering lamplight, I spied the slim flick of a forked tail.
“Do you fear me?”
He was a demon. Henry had trapped a spirit from hell itself. And I should have feared that, but it wasn’t terror thrumming through my blood and making my heart pound. I’d wanted him from the moment I saw him. I didn’t care from whence he came.
I swallowed and pushed against the hands holding me. They drifted away. I smiled and on unsure feet, I closed the distance between us to stand before him. Nervous fingers tracing a slow line down his broad chest. He was hot, his skin smooth, and under my palm I found the heavy thud of his beating heart.
Augustus closed his eyes and a trail of thyme-scented smoke curled from his mouth. His tail curled around my thigh and teased a fresh run of pleasure under my skin.
The sudden hiss of air around me, sweeping warmth across the floor, forced me to look away and I found the cellar empty. “They’re like you?”
“To a degree.” He held my gaze, his eyes alive with a golden fire. His lips twisted into a wicked smile. “A lesser degree.”
My cheeks reddened and nerves pulled at me again. I began to doubt his promise. The menagerie had flown free of the cage my guardian had built around them. “Tell me what you are.” I needed to know, so that when he left the memory of our time together could warm me. And he would vanish. He was a demon. Doubt said that he would never keep his word. “What did Henry want with you?”
He curled a damp strand of my hair around his finger. “We are Antanelis.” His voice was deep and achingly soft. The need to melt into it, to press myself against him, feel the beat of his heart under my cheek seared through me. I resisted. “Warlocks trap us for amusement. For proof of their power and skill.”
“You’re lightning in a bottle.”
“Yes. Simply that.”
I glanced back to the empty cellar. “For so many years.” I pressed a light kiss to his heart, closing my eyes as the scent of his skin threaded through me. Demon or not, no one deserved such torture. “I’m sorry.”
He tilted my chin to brush my lips with his, the lingering hint of thyme wrapping around my tightening heart. I kept my eyes closed, desperate not to witness his leaving. He’d given me a kiss of good-bye.
“You promised me a place with you.” The words escaped me and I winced. I was being silly, stupid. The vapid girl Henry thought me. No, I had to be practical. “Of course, you don’t have to honor…”
“Rebecca.” His shadowed grin was lascivious as he pres
sed his hot hands to my hips. His tail dipped between the wetness of my thighs and my pulse jumped. “I will always have a place for you.”
The warmth and softness of his wings enfolded me and with his kiss warming my lips, we vanished from my guardian’s house.
THE WILDEST SPIRIT
Sacchi Green
Coyotes howled at the cold white eye of the moon, igniting a deeper howl low in the man’s throat. He fought it down, resisted the damp autumn earth tugging at his feet, the maze of scents coiling from the shadows.
“I promised you they’d sing.” She stood silhouetted in the doorway, her blanket spread wide so that its shadow reached out across him like great wings while her warm, demanding scent enfolded him.
Impossible to guess how much she understood. If she knew… He had killed for that. But not this time.
The thought of flesh on flesh, of smooth arms and slim, strong legs, drew him toward her. Even now, with the moon and the cool, dark forest calling to him like a home he’d never known, her human body kept him still in man-form.
He had sensed the danger since their first chance meeting. In one of his biology courses at the university there was talk of coyotes moving into resurgent wilderness at the eastern edge of the valley, so one day, on impulse, he drove into the hills to look for signs.
Not far along a gated logging road an approaching horse and rider made him turn abruptly back. Even in man-form his effect on horses could be, at best, unpredictable.
The hoofbeats quickened. Before he reached his car the mare had cut him off, and his growl, too low for human ears, did no more than send a shiver across her chestnut hide.
The University Police insignia on the saddle blanket explained it. This horse was trained for steadiness even among drunken, rioting students. Well trained, and well handled. He looked up at the rider.
She had no special claim on grace or beauty. Her tawny hair, tied back for comfort, was pleasing without intent or artifice. So why this sudden sense of danger?
Even through the mellow, meaty warmth of horseflesh the woman’s scent called to him, enticing, demanding. He had known many women, some beautiful, some brave, some seeking to destroy him; and he had known that the pleasure they offered would never be more than fleeting. This one could be no different.
He tried to subdue the wolf-senses, but it was too late. And she was sublimely unaware…or did some flickering reaction cross her face?
If so, it was gone at once. She wore no uniform, but carried authority in her bearing and her clear gray eyes.
“Hold it right there, please.”
He was done with orders, even in a voice that sent ripples across his skin. He moved back a step or two to ease the mare and then began to circle toward his car.
She urged the skittish horse forward. “Don’t be an idiot. I’ve got twelve-hundred pounds between my legs.”
He glanced at the long slim jeans gripping the horse’s flanks, and then, with one dark eyebrow raised, looked up into her face.
Her official stance wavered. She struggled to suppress a grin. “Sorry. Forget I said that. I’d just appreciate it if you’d let me inspect your car.”
“Sure.” He tossed her the keys. She dismounted and then, still holding the reins, searched briefly but professionally through his car and trunk.
“Forestry students raising marijuana in the clearings?”
“I wish that were all. Somebody’s been setting out traps and poisoned bait for the coyotes. You’re anxious to leave, and wearing camouflage; it seemed worth checking out.”
“The clothes are army leftovers. I’ve only been a civilian for six months.”
“Sorry. I take this coyote-killing too personally. I live near here, and it feels like a violation of my territory.”
Coyote-killing. A smoldering rage heated his veins. Wolves in a pack would kill coyotes to wipe out competition for their prey, but that men should do so, and with traps and poison, was something else entirely.
The mare tossed her head and half reared. Had he growled aloud? The rider shot him a startled look as she mounted and brought the horse under control.
The man-voice came with an effort. “I take it personally, too.” She stared into his narrowed eyes, nodded, wheeled and let the horse move swiftly away up the trail.
Fury wrestled with fear. Fury at the killings; fear at the lure of the woman’s scent.
He changed deliberately that night. The moon showed only three-fourth’s full, but he had long ago learned to change at will.
In the forest blood called him, though he had no honest hunger; he killed and fed for pleasure, like a man, and felt shame, like a man, and hoped a bloody muzzle would curb the urge to seek out the woman where she slept.
The coyote pack watched from a distant hillside, assessing the danger, noting that he was only a solitary hunter. They shared with him a wide and subtle range of cues and signals, but to ask of traps and poison, offer help, was beyond him.
Which brought him back to the woman. As all thoughts brought him back to the woman, even while a separate part of his mind kept on with his studies at the university.
His army pension was enough for subsistence, and he had not always ignored the opportunities for extra income that came with covert operations. It would have been easy to find work as a mercenary, but he had done enough killing under the dubious justification of service to country. It had come too close to turning him into an “animal” of a kind that had nothing to do with the wolf. No more killing under orders.
What he wanted from education was a different perspective on humanity. What he wanted was a reason better than lust not to abandon the man-form altogether.
Which brought his thoughts again to the woman. He knew her house, had seen the horse trailer there that first day. The mare, luckily, was stabled on campus in the valley. It took three days to find the woman at home in daylight; night, he told himself, ignoring the press of the inevitable, was out of the question.
She tensed in recognition. “Yes?”
“I can find the coyote killer.” He thrust a thick envelope into her hands. “Special ops. Tracking skills, night-movement training. Look through my papers, military discharge, citations, health records, before you decide whether to trust me.” Much of it was lies, but the army’s lies, not his own. She leafed automatically through the papers, then paused at the health records.
She was not, after all, unaware.
“Ten months ago, negative,” he said. “No one since.” The HIV and STD testing had amused him at the time, made him wonder what they might find in his blood if only they knew how to look.
“Three years,” she said, meeting his eyes, a slight flush spreading from throat to face. Then, scarcely skipping a beat, “I’ll show you where I’ve found the traps.”
They walked along the logging road together. The top of her head came only to his eyes, but her stride matched his; he was keenly conscious of her long legs.
She turned onto a narrow trail among white birches. He was aware as always of the texture of the forest, the sounds and scents; aware too that she observed him, assessed him. Three years! No wonder she felt the pull.
He had always avoided any females perceptive enough to be dangerous. The world still offered plenty of silly, blankly pretty faces, but it was harder and harder to feel any interest in them.
Now he walked with a woman through a forest as much her world as his, one who was neither silly nor pretty, but utterly compelling. And dangerous.
“There was a trap here, and poisoned meat farther along.”
He smelled recent death.
“There were at least two other places, half a mile or so from here. I’ve cleared it all away, turned in the traps, so he must know I’m watching.”
“‘He?’ Just one?”
“I think so. I have pretty good tracking skills myself, but I’m open to a second opinion.”
Wolf-sense tested the air while human eyes took in visual details. He moved along the path, the
n off to one side, finding where the poison had lain.
“Yes, one alone.”
She took him to other roads, other trails. “The same one.” He would know that foulness now at a mile or more with the wind in the right quarter.
“This is university land, for forestry research, but there’s not enough manpower to patrol here. I search out the traps on my own time. The coyotes may be learning, and he may have given up, but damn! I want to get him!”
Beneath her savage expression he was startled to see tears. “If you had seen…I had to finish one off myself out of mercy. A cub. Maybe that’s why I’m mad enough to think of sending an ex-commando into the night woods.”
“There’s no way you could stop me.”
Her eyes glinted. He tried to defuse the challenge. “No weapons. Not even a knife. You could search me before I go.”
The glint in her eyes was of laughter now. “How could I turn down an offer like that?” She moved back down the trail, her scent, movements, swaying hair, the rhythm of long legs and curving hips, promising everything. The place and moment were her own to choose.
They were close enough to the paved road to hear passing cars when suddenly she stopped. He pushed on until his body pressed against hers. A flock of wild turkeys was crossing their path; he should have sensed them sooner, but his blood was pounding to other rhythms than the hunt.
The woman was silent, her body language clear as her hips moved against his urgent pressure. When he bent to nuzzle her neck she reached behind to grip his flanks and force him even harder into her softness.
Then she pulled away, leaving a cold ache where her heat had been. The turkeys scattered and flapped up into the branches.
In the car he touched her knee, stroked slowly up her thigh and then down again. She kept her eyes on the road, just a hint of unsteadiness in her voice. “Saturday is the full moon. The coyotes will yip and howl at the moon and each other. You should come to hear them.”
Wait three days? Impossible, and her body knew it as well as his. Just as they came to the house she reached out and traced a searing path along his inner thigh that jolted him like lightning.
Darker Edge of Desire Page 11
