Fury of Fire

by Coreene Callahan

  Showing no mercy, she stroked him, each pull a rhythmic, soul-stealing draw. She paused to pay special attention to the tip of his shaft, drawing out the pleasure. His balls fisted up tight, and he growled, long and low, throbbing in her hand, fighting to hang on and…wait for her.

  But…fuuuuck. He was so close.

  Twisting beneath her, he rasped, “Bellmia, please…let me touch you.”

  Stroking him one last time, she lifted her head. As her gaze met his, she set her mouth to his and whispered, “Green light.”

  On a snarl, he released his death grip on the sheets. His arms came around her so fast she gasped as he reversed their positions. Mid-flip, he latched onto her breast and, suckling the beaded tip, spread her beneath him. Securing her hands in one of his, he drew her arms above her head and held her prisoner.

  “Payback’s a bitch, bellmia.”

  “Bastian…”

  Her husky murmur nourished him, and not wasting a second, he settled deep, hips between her thighs, erection against her heat. Still at her breast, he nipped her gently. With a moan, she arched, asking for more. He gave it to her, laving the sensitive peak before lifting his head to pay equal attention to its mate.

  Soft skin slid against his and need spiked, spiraling into explosive sensation. As it raged, Bastian burned for her, listened to the sexy sounds she made, reveled in the way she clung to him, loved the way she begged for his kiss. Unable to deny her, he returned to her lips, tangled their tongues, tasting her deep.

  Hmm…beautiful female. So welcoming and hot…so incredibly demanding.

  Wrapping her calf over his hip, she undulated, opened her mouth wide, giving as good as he gave her. The roll and release pushed her hips up, and…oh, yeah. He got bathed in slick and creamy heat.

  Temptation called. Bastian shifted, releasing her wrists to slide down her body.

  “Oh, yes…please,” she murmured as he pressed his mouth to the soft swell of her belly. “Bastian…yes.”

  “Where do you want me, baby?” Licking over her hip-bone, he headed south and, grasping her knee, pushed her thighs wide. And…oh, God. She was beautiful here, too. So pink and slick.

  He brushed her damp curls with his fingertip. “Here?”

  “Please.”

  “Mouth or fingers?” He kissed the inside of her thigh, giving her time to decide—because…shit. No way around it. He would have both before he finished: her taste on his tongue and his fingers deep inside her. Questions was…which did she want first?

  He flicked her with his tongue, working his way closer to her core with each stroke. “Tell me, love.”

  “God…” She panted, tight nipples rising and falling on frantic breaths. “Anything…please, just—”

  He dipped his head, spread her slick folds, and licked deep. He groaned as he got his first taste. Hmm…yeah. A feast for a starving male.

  Pressing in, he worked his tongue deeper: exploring her softness, coating the back of his throat with her cream. With a wild cry, she jerked beneath him, hands flexing in his hair, begging him for the pleasure. He flicked the little bud at the top of her sex. Playing, cranking her high, he did it again and again, circling with the tip of his tongue.

  “Bastian!”

  He tongued her again then settled in—holding her down while he stoked, drawing on her sensitive flesh. With a whimper, she caught his rhythm, rocked against him, asking for more. Lured by her scent, undone by her taste, he upped the stakes and slid one finger deep. She pulsed inside, fisting up tight, moaning when he set a pace designed to drive her wild. He stretched her gently, slipping a second finger into her heat, and sucked harder with his mouth.

  Spread wide, deep in the pleasure, she threw her head back. Hips churning, back bowed off the bed, she came in a screaming wave of energy. As she throbbed around his fingers, the blast hit Bastian dead center, splitting him wide open. Ferocious need stepped through the fissure, killing gentleness in one broad stroke.

  Bastian tried to hold on, to cage the undeniable urge to take her hard and fast…without mercy or feeling. He wanted inside her so bad that…Jesus. He didn’t trust himself not to hurt her. Couldn’t control the animalistic need and—

  She came again, clinging to him, sobbing his name. Her need pulverized restraint, sending him over the edge with a snarl. Spreading her beneath him, he rose above her. As she panted, riding another wave of delight, she wrapped her legs around him, inviting him home. He thrust deep, buried himself to the hilt inside her with one powerful stroke, then roared in ecstasy when she clenched hard and held him tight.

  Home.

  Fuck, yeah. He’d finally come home.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Shifting the precious bundle in his arms, Rikar willed the door locks open with a thought. The deadbolts double clicked, and he shook his head. He’d lost his frickin’ mind. Bringing Angela home was a bad, bad, bad idea. But leaving her at the bar—surrounded by males sucking back Budweiser—hadn’t been an option.

  Not with her like this. Sleeping hard after the mind scrub…and his feeding.

  Shit, he hadn’t meant to do that. Taking her energy hadn’t been part of the plan. As far as he knew, his agenda had read: Angela Keen, quick mind scrub; Ian MacCord, wash, rinse, repeat if necessary. Not stay out all night getting your ass kicked by a gorgeous redhead with serious pool skills.

  Rikar snorted. Trust a female to screw up a perfectly good plan.

  He glanced down at her, trying not to brush the top of her head with his mouth. But, man…it was hard. Her hair was so soft. He knew it firsthand from when he’d buried his fingers in the fiery strands, pressed his thigh between her legs and her back to the wall, and drank deep, taking his fill.

  Now, she lay content in his arms, curled like a kitten, head on his chest, hands tucked inside his leather jacket, her scent all over him.

  Fuck, she was pretty.

  He sighed, flipped the handle, and shoved the door open. The security system fired up, beep-beep-beeping a warning. He deactivated it with his mind, but his boots stayed planted on the paisley carpet in the corridor. He stared into the dark hole of her condo, unable to turn away, but not wanting to go in. There was no doubt a bed in there. And he’d have to get close to it to lay Angela down. Dangerous territory for him right now.

  He blew out a long breath. Maybe he could leave her sitting in a chair or propped up on the couch and avoid the bedroom all together?

  Now who was a jerk?

  Him, that’s who.

  Christ, leave her sitting upright, getting a kink in her neck? What the hell was wrong with him?

  Unlocking the clamp down on his legs, Rikar crossed the threshold. He kicked the door closed behind him, shutting out the light from the corridor. His night vision fired up as the condo plunged into darkness around him. Huh. Pretty sparse…not much to look at in the small, upscale apartment.

  He walked past a galley kitchen on his left and into the small living room. Long couch, two rattan chairs, a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. No area rug, no pictures hanging on the washed-out walls, nothing but hard surfaces and floor-to-ceiling, steel-framed windows with industrial blinds on them. Nothing that would tell him who she was or what she liked to do in her off-hours. Then again, maybe she didn’t have any. Cops were notorious workaholics, spending more time on the job than in their real lives.

  The place was blissfully cool, though, like she’d cranked the heat way down. Score another point for Angela Keen. Her tally was now somewhere in the range of plus bazillion on his sliding frosty scale.

  Glancing right, he found a narrow hallway. The bedroom was somewhere down there. He glanced at the couch. No way he’d leave her there. She’d wake up with a chill and…

  Yeah. He soooo needed to get the hell out of here.

  A death grip on his urges, he hit the hallway, turning sideways so her feet didn’t bump the wall. Two doors faced each other across the corridor. A quick check through doorway number one and he located the bathroom
. He went right, shouldering the door open, heart picking up pace, pissing him off as he crossed into her personal domain.

  Her scent was stronger here, as though she spent all of her time in the small twelve-by-twelve-foot box. Rikar swallowed, breathed in through his nose, out his mouth, and rounded the foot of her bed. The thing was compact, just like her. A steel-frame double with silky-looking sheets and no other embellishments. No throw pillows. No fancy quilts or embroidered anything. No nonsense…just like her.

  Man, he liked that about her. Clean, simple, straightforward on the outside, beautifully complex on the inside.

  Okay. Enough of that bullshit.

  This was an in-and-out mission. And not the sexual kind.

  She sighed as he set her down. He watched her snuggle in, the muscles across his abdomen pulling at his hipbones, fisting his balls up tight. Yup. No doubt about it. Time to get the hell out of Dodge, but…

  With a curse, he grabbed the heel of her boot and pulled it off her small foot. He attacked the second, dropping it beside its mate on the floor, and went to work on the duvet. Drawing the covers down, he tugged them from beneath her and then brought it up, wrapping her in the warmth of silk and feather down.

  Her eyes drifted open.

  Rikar froze, his hands in the covers beneath her chin as he got nailed by her hazel gaze. The impact almost floored him.

  “Hey,” she said, the greeting slurred by sleep and the aftereffects of the feeding. She blinked once, a slow up and down. “You staying?”

  “No.” But man, he wanted to. He brushed the hair away from her temple instead, fingertips lingering on her soft skin. “Go back to sleep, angel.”

  Her eyes drifted closed, dark lashes on pale cheeks. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, tomorrow,” he said, lying through his teeth, trying not to feel good that she wanted to see him again.

  As sleep pulled her under, Rikar straightened and spun toward the bedroom door. Escape was priority one. Nothing else he could do. No sense making another mistake. He’d made enough tonight to last a lifetime. Now he needed to get back to the lair. Back to reality before daylight hit and he got fried by the sun.

  Thirty seconds later, he was out of her apartment and in the corridor, door double-bolted behind him, security panel beep-beep-beeping as ADT reengaged the system. He breathed a little easier. His she-cop was safe, locked up tight behind the steel doors and concrete walls.

  His. Right. He needed his head examined. A total frickin’ reboot. One he was likely to get when he got home and had his hardware rewired by Bastian and his nasty grief-vengeance combo.

  Man, payback was a bitch.

  “Don’t think about it,” he growled at himself, cranking the door to the stairwell open.

  He went up instead of down, taking the stairs three at a time. The underground garage where he’d parked Angela’s Jeep wouldn’t get him anywhere but…well, underground. Not exactly where he wanted to be right now. He needed air and plenty of height to unleash his inner dragon.

  The beast was jonesing to get out. Wanting to stretch his wings, work out the frustration, and forget about the female. About how good she tasted. And where he’d left her.

  Moving as though he had rockets strapped to the bottoms of his shitkickers, he came out onto the rooftop. Arms and legs pumping, he sprinted across the blacktop and, planting his foot on the raised roof edge, swan dived his way to freedom. He let himself fall, cold air blasting his face and neck. Halfway down, he shifted. White scales flashing in the moonlight, muscles stretched to the maximum, asphalt rising fast. Fifty feet from the ground, the wind caught, lifting his bulk as he banked hard, missing the corner of a skyscraper by inches.

  Some fast flying and twenty minutes later, he sliced his way through Black Diamond’s underground tunnel. Water wicking from his wing tips, he pulled up short and landed on the LZ. As his talons scraped stone, he glanced at Myst’s car.

  Fuck him, but he’d have to do something about the Honda. Namely, get rid of the thing. He didn’t want to see it every time he came home. The reminder of her stay in the lair—of his best friend’s love affair with the female and the fact that it was his fault Bastian had lost her—was too much to bear.

  With a growl, Rikar flipped his wings. The spikes running down his spine rattled and water droplets flew, reflecting like diamonds in the light of the floating globes. Or like tears. Rikar shook his head, telling himself to get back in the game…that turning his ass around and flying away wasn’t the answer.

  No way would he pull a disappearing act. He owed Bastian better.

  Shifting into human form, Rikar strode toward the lair’s magical entrance, wrapping his leathers around his body. The fighting clothes suited his mood, and if he was going to get his ass kicked, he might as well do it right.

  Sensation washed over him, pricking his skin as he walked through the solid stone wall and stepped into the corridor beyond. He stood there a moment, a whole lot of nothing ringing in his ears. Which was freaking eerie.

  Normally, Sloan cranked up the volume, thumping out tunes in the pre-dawn hours. A little Jay-Z or Tupac. Sometimes Nine Inch Nails or, if he felt like old school, Led Zeppelin. Anything—even pansy-ass Neil Young—would’ve been better than the ball-busting silence. But no luck there. The lair was quiet as a tomb…or a funeral home.

  Too. Perfect.

  His hands fisted, Rikar bowed his head and forced his feet toward the clinic door. In contrast to the howling inside his head, the glass sliders opened without a sound, closing the same way behind him. Moving with purpose now, he swept past the examination table and pushed through the double doors at the back of the triage room.

  A long hallway lay beyond, stretching out for what seemed like miles. Doors, planted like blank faces in the wall, marched along the corridor’s right side. Bastian was laid up behind the first, flat on his back in the big bed, recovering from brutal injury. Man, he’d never seen the male like that, and it scared him.

  Which cranked his screw the wrong way.

  He couldn’t imagine the lair without the big male. Didn’t want to, either. But losing his best friend hadn’t happened. He’d made sure of it. Hadn’t he?

  His throat went tight, guilt and loss biting deep.

  God, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Given a choice, he would’ve saved his friend another way. But wishing and wanting wouldn’t change a thing. It was what it was. End of story.

  Steeling himself for Bastian’s reaction, Rikar pushed the recovery room door open and…

  Got a whole lot of nothing except mangled sheets in the center of an empty bed.

  What the hell? Yeah, Bastian was a fast healer. They all were, but he shouldn’t be on his feet yet. Should still be sleeping, recovering…healing. Then again, Myst’s energy was unbelievably powerful. As potent as the she-cop’s and…

  Whoa. Not going there. Not now. Not ever. He’d done right by Angela and put her to bed. Alone. No way would he allow her to linger in his mind.

  A soft sound in the next room brought his head around. Without thinking, he strode toward the connecting door and cracked it open.

  Rikar’s jaw dropped as he saw the couple on the bed. His mind took a quick snapshot: naked, mouths fused, Myst’s hands in Bastian’s hair, him between her thighs, her legs wrapped around his hips. Her moans of pleasure. The flex and release of his best friend’s spine as he rode his female good and hard.

  Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy, holy shit.

  Yanking the door closed, Rikar wrenched his hand from the knob as though the thing was on fire and stumbled backward. He took another step. And then another. Feeling like his brain had just exploded inside his skull. When his legs collided with the side of the bed, he sat down, breathing hard, the image of the pair burning a hole in his cerebral cortex.

  He scrubbed his hand over the top of his skull trim. “Jesus Christ.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  With a full body flinch, Rikar’s head snapped to the left. />
  Sloan stood on the threshold, filling the door to the corridor with his bulk, a tray loaded with food in his hands. “You look like you’ve been poleaxed.”

  He felt like it, too. A pickax to the head wouldn’t have stunned him more. “Don’t go in there.”

  “They awake?”

  “Yeah…and busy.”

  His buddy’s mouth curved up at the corners. “Get an eyeful?”

  “Shit,” he muttered, trying to exorcise the image of Bastian and…Christ. Like that was going to happen anytime soon. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I don’t know, but…” Shaking his head, Sloan rolled into the room, footfalls silent on the linoleum floor. The smell of homemade bread and the sweet tang of Daimler’s raspberry jam drifting, he slid the tray onto the table, then turned, linked his arms over his chest, and planted his ass against the stainless steel countertop. “He fed her, Rikar. The second he touched her…man, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Rikar’s brows collided. B had done what? Head still ringing from the earlier sneak-and-peek, he threw a load of WTF in Sloan’s direction.

  “Yeah, I know. It was freaky…the energy going from B to her,” Sloan said, the confusion in his tone mixing with awe. “She’s totally fine now. I checked them an hour ago. Both were sleeping hard.”

  “Not anymore.” Rikar rubbed the back of his neck. Jesus, B had fed her. Fed a female. Totally unheard of, never mind, well…crazy. He didn’t know how else to categorize it. It was off the charts…way out in who-the-hell-knew territory.

  His brows cranked down hard, Rikar pushed to his feet and headed for the door.

  “Good.” Shoving away from the table, Sloan followed. Was right on his heels, a large, looming male, as they entered the corridor. “B deserves a little R & R.”

  Rikar snorted. R & R? Not exactly what he would’ve called it.

  “Daimler’s rockin’ roast beef for the morning meal.” Still shadowing him, his buddy punched past the double doors to the clinic a second after Rikar crossed the threshold. “You game?”

  He shook his head. “Later.”