Biting Me Softly: Biting Love, Book 3

by Mary Hughes

  You’d have thought my purse would be practically empty then, wouldn’t you? But pawing one-handed through its depths was about as effective as Googling the name Smith. I needed two hands so I shoved my pepper spray into my coat and tossed my practically-empty purse onto the moonlit concrete.

  The clang of a dozen anvils rang like a dinner bell. Yeah. See, I kinda keep tools on hand.

  I froze, hyper alert, listening as the Come-and-Get-It-Snarlythings echoes faded. Nothing sounded over my thudding heart and raspy breath so I dropped to my knees and started pulling junk out. Cordless screwdriver, snips of wire. Spare batteries, all dead. Mini soldering iron, electrical tape. Shizzle, that’s where that extra motherboard went.

  Finally I found my penlight. I shoveled garbage back (except for the drained batteries. I put those in, then pulled them out. Then I put them back in—and pulled them out again. I did this three times before I finally tossed them. I’m congenitally unable to throw away batteries. Like if I kept them in my purse long enough, they’d magically regain their charges…sure, like you don’t do that too, with paperclips or spoiled meat in the freezer or something). I slung my purse over my shoulder and twisted the light on.

  A thin beam cut through the darkness. I headed into the tunnel, only slightly bent, the pipes being at least five feet in diameter. Apparently the Meiers River had a bigger flood zone than I knew.

  I walked for two, three blocks. It was hard to tell underground. The deeper I got, the slower I went, and not just because I didn’t want to stumble. After the howling and roaring, I’d heard nothing but dead silence. Emphasis on dead. Where was Logan? Was he connected to the ruckus? He’d certainly looked lethal up in the street. And it wasn’t lost on me that several cubic tons of Meiers Corners perched over my head.

  My flashlight swept over a dark smear on the curving wall.

  I stopped, played the thin light over the spot. Dried liquid, paint maybe? Definitely dark, stark against the chalky concrete like blood on a corpse.

  Like blood? Or really blood… Sure, right. Did this happen to everyone who worked at a blood center? I strode determinedly forward.

  And tripped. The flashlight fell from my hand, bounced a few times, came to rest pointing away from me. Its beam dusted the sewer tube far into the distance. The tunnel was straight and long (the Meiers Corners way, even for poop). Except for the clatter and my hiss of breath, nothing sounded.

  I put my hand out to push myself up. Instead of cold concrete my palm hit leather. I froze. Was this what tripped me? I brushed tentative fingers along the leather, identified a work boot attached to stiff fabric, like jeans. Moving farther I encountered what felt like a leatherette coat.

  A man? If so, he wasn’t moving, like…a dead body. I panicked, scrambled on hands and knees to find the neck, to find the pulse.

  Where there should have been a neck, there was nothing.

  A body, su-ure. Like the old story about five people feeling an elephant’s parts, I was fingering trunk and thinking snake. I put my hand on the “leg” and levered myself up.

  The leg twitched.

  I shot to my feet. Dove for the flashlight. It popped out of my scrabbling hands and started rolling. Sewers are pitched ever so slightly. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed but when my only source of light was zipping away from me at a zillion miles a second I noticed plenty.

  It seemed like forever before I grabbed the light, but I actually caught it in two bounces. I took a few deep breaths then turned back to the headless “body” to find out what it really was.

  As I turned, a scuffling came from behind me. I swung toward the noise instead, my light catching two shadows in the distance.

  “You can’t get us all, copper!” The voice was rough, male and belligerent.

  “Still farming the corny dialog, Razor?” The second voice sounded suspiciously insouciant. “Cultivate new threats, please. Or at least rotate your ‘croppy’ clichés.”

  “Huh?”

  “Bottom line, Razor, you won’t get in, even with a new entrance. The security fence is three-sixty.”

  “So you got a bunch of numbers. We got the back way.”

  “Why you villains are always so literal-minded… Three-sixty means all around. Left, right, top—bottom.”

  A terrible roar greeted that information. Lumpy shadows grappled, with scuffles and whistling thunks like a knife biting meat. One shadow flew into the curved concrete wall and slid to a motionless heap at the bottom.

  The second glided gracefully toward me. My beam caught a river of shimmering silk—which framed a contorted, feral mask with two glowing ruby eyes.

  “Logan?” My hand shook. The quivering light blurred the form like it was disappearing in a cloud of mist.

  Then it was right in front of me, grabbing me, crushing me to a hard chest. “What are you doing here, Liese? Damn it, you didn’t see anything. You just got here and didn’t see anything strange.” Logan’s voice, but hollow and dark. Alien. It echoed in my head.

  First the howling, then the “body” and now the mad Rasputin voice. This was seriously creeping me out. “It was too dark to see. But I heard wolves.”

  “You heard dogs,” Logan said in that same dark voice.

  “No. Definitely wild animals. And you were talking to someone named Razor and then you kind of fuzzed out. It was so weird.”

  “Shit.” Logan dropped the hollow voice for annoyed. He gave a decidedly un-Logan grunt of disgust. “You’re a perversely willful creature, aren’t you?”

  “What? No. Strong-minded, maybe.”

  “Strong-minded. Stars above.” Logan’s fingers threaded tight in my hair. I felt his lips touch the top of my head, a strange mixture of possessiveness and protectiveness. He expelled an exasperated breath and released me. “Liese, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “But why were you fighting that Razor? Is he okay?”

  “Questions later. Right now, we’d better get out of here.” He caught my arm and started toward the exit.

  “But Razor might need help.” I shook loose and trotted the other way.

  “Liese…damn it, no.” Logan grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me in.

  I slammed into a wall of muscular male—rock-hard, powerful and hot. My breasts smashed into chest, my nipples tightened like nuts. My belly rasped against washboard abs. My mons hit zipper. Under it, the continental drift was piling up the Rocky Mountains. Is that a cock or does Logan have Vesuvius in his jeans?

  Bolts of desire hit me like chain lightning. I sparked from top to bottom, inside and out. I lit so hard I must have glowed.

  “Fuck.” Logan’s voice was rough. “You smell like all-night sex. Like desire glistening on sleek, hot skin.” He spun me into the pipe wall, his hands landing next to my head with twin slaps. His body heat threatened to flash-fry me.

  I jumped out from under him. “I smell like Ban roll-on.” Heart thudding, I backed away, step by step. How did that happen? How did Logan Steel zap me from Six Feet Under to Sex and the City: Monsoon Season? Had the Sex Fairy smacked me upside the head with his wand?

  “Gotta go help…help that Razor guy. Yup, that’s it.” I edged away, the wrong way but at that point I didn’t care. “A friend in need is a friend indeed. That’s Mom-wisdom. You have to follow Mom-wisdom.”

  “Come back here, Liese.” Logan’s voice reverberated with power laced with a dark desire that hit me square in the gut and froze me in my tracks. Slowly I raised my flashlight—and sucked in my breath.

  He stalked me, big and muscular, a magnificent dangerous male animal. Hunched because of the tunnel, but that only made him more intimidating.

  “Come back?” I trembled, the deer caught in the hunter’s sights. “Um…why?”

  “Because I want you. I want to pound into you until you scream my name. Until you go dizzy with need. Until you explode like a volcano. And then I want to do it again.”

  Okay, I’m not always brave. I ran.

  And went sailing
over the lump of jeans and leatherette coat. The flashlight popped loose. I skidded a few inches, rolled to my hands and knees and tried to carry my momentum into a leap so I could continue running.

  The not-a-body grabbed me.

  I screamed. Scrabbled away, got nowhere. I shrieked again but fingers wrapped around my neck and it came out a choked whimper.

  A curse exploded, quite near, sounding like Logan but rough and guttural. A couple hard smacks and the body let go. Trembling, I pressed myself against the curved wall, concentrated on getting my breathing under control. But I totally lost it again at the chunk and pop of meat being butchered. It was so real I expected to inhale the tang of blood but there was only musty sewer.

  “Logan, what the hell is happening?” I shoved away from the wall, snatched up the flashlight and swung it wildly. The beam landed full on Logan and stuck.

  His skin was hammered steel plates. His eyes glowed red. His teeth—shizzle. Either he had the worst overbite in history, or those were fangs.

  My light shook. “What happened to your face?”

  “Damn it, Liese, you are the most exasperating…infuriating…” He passed one hand over his forehead, as if he had the mother of all headaches. When he released it, he looked perfectly normal.

  Except for his eyes. Two smoldering coals were locked on me, hungry, and not in any simple or normal way. No, his desire threatened to consume me. I pressed into the sewer wall. Eyes eating me up, Logan took a single step. I ran like a chicken.

  Eating me…chicken. Okay, probably not the best of images right then.

  Logan snared my wrist, hauled me back. The flashlight wedged between us, shining his eyes like a deep woods animal or a latter-day Svengali. “You didn’t see my face.” His voice reverberated, hollow and dark.

  “Except I did,” I squeaked.

  His eyes narrowed. “My face looked normal.”

  “Um, don’t mean to disagree.” Especially with him going all science fiction on me. “But you looked like Kryten. Like you had a cubist mask.”

  “Damn.” Logan stared down at me, his expression as close to frustrated as I’d ever seen it. “I thought so. You’re immune.”

  “Immune? What are you talking about?”

  His brow creased like his mental wheels were turning fast and hard—and this cerebral grist hurt. “And if you’re immune, that means you’re…” He looked at me like he’d never seen me before.

  “Getting weird here, Logan. You, the howling wolves, the fights—”

  Logan growled a single word before pulling me into a hard, soul-searing kiss.

  The word sounded strangely like “Mine.”

  This was not lazy Logan, sprinkling butterfly kisses over my lips. This was not playful Logan, teasing a warm response.

  This was virile, brilliant Logan, powerful and intense. I was instantly immersed in a flood of mouth and tongue, sucking lips and biting teeth. Awash in hands, fingers hot and abrasive. Blown and buffeted against the cliffs of a rock-hard body. Logan wasn’t just kissing me—he was a force of nature, demolishing me.

  My coat went sailing, my flashlight went clattering. Logan pushed me down onto the tunnel floor. Cool concrete hit my back, blazing hot male pressed all along my front. His hands ran over my body, undoing zippers and snaps. Flying buttons tinkled against concrete but I barely heard them over the roar of my blood. I went completely deaf when his skin burned naked against mine.

  It all happened so fast. One minute I was running, the next my bare ass was on the floor. One minute I was clothed, the next Logan was rubbing his muscular chest against my naked tits. One minute I was worrying over Svengali eyes, the next I was straining into his heavy, hot body.

  His nipples were sharp points caressing my breasts. A line of rough hair scraped my stomach. Something powerful pulsed like hot silk between my thighs.

  Powerful and long. Ten inches and counting.

  That huge something—a sleek, throbbing, incredibly thick torpedo—slid forward along its bay. Slick heat seared my skin. Urgent need bowed my body. My thighs parted eagerly.

  A hot head nudged my labia. It felt as big and smooth as a five-pound sausage.

  Holy episiotomy! I only had a one-pound casing. “What are you doing?” I scrabbled back. My pants, dusted by the light of the dropped flashlight, were hanging off one leg. My shirt and bra were completely gone. How the hell had he done that? I cut him a shocked look—

  And wished I’d gone blind. Logan stalked me on hands and knees, and he was utterly, gloriously naked.

  Clothed, Logan was gorgeous. Physical perfection, the magical gift of the Sex Fairy.

  Nude, he was nothing so puny as gorgeous. Nothing so trivial as stunning.

  Bare-ass naked, muscles pumped huge with desire, face etched with bold hunger, Logan Steel was overwhelmingly, fiercely male. Outrageously virile. I wanted to roll onto my back and flag him in for a landing with my feet.

  But this was going way too fast. And I barely knew the man. What I did know didn’t make sense. He was insouciant one minute, an intense hunter the next. He was deeply sensual, an experienced lover—and he was here to put me out of a job.

  He was a man who told me I was beautiful, and seemed to mean it. And then there was all the weird red-eyes-and-disappearing-mist shit.

  I raised a shaking palm to him. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

  Something in my face must have told him I was serious, because he paused. Only paused, as if he were marking it unfinished business. But it would give me time to dress. To erect a fence of buttons and zippers between me and Mr. Golden Stallion over there.

  Of course, stallions could jump fences.

  In record time I got my jeans untwisted, up and zipped. Keeping one eye on Logan, I retrieved my flashlight and hunted up shirt and bra, leaving the shirt undone because the buttons were gone.

  Through it all, Logan watched me, his eyes burning with a hunger that was not mere arousal. Deeper, starker, his intense stare shook me. I kept careful watch as I grabbed my purse.

  Deedle-ee-ee. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Since my shirt was hanging open, that wouldn’t have been hard.

  It was my “Beer Barrel Polka” ring tone, free with the purchase of a quarter barrel from Nieman’s Bar. I got it when I bought the whole city a Thank-God-I-Have-A-Job round on my first paycheck from the Blood Center. I fumbled for my phone. “What.”

  “Liese? It’s Elena.” Intelligent, strong and beautiful, with a low and slightly husky voice, Elena O’Rourke Strongwell was Meiers Corners’s top police detective. She also recommended me for the job at the Blood Center, earning my undying thanks.

  “Elena?” I moderated my voice and tried again. “Elena?”

  “You okay?”

  Logan was tugging on his shirt, which would’ve been a relief if he’d put his pants on first. As it was, his thickly muscled thighs framed a jutting foot-long cock.

  I gulped hard. “I’m fine.”

  “Fine, not counting that load of sand in your throat. Where are you?”

  “Me? Well, I’m…” Elena, I’m trapped in a sewer with a male so outrageously sexy I want to play doggy on his naked leg. Um, no. “I’m at work. You know I work late sometimes.”

  “Working late, uh-huh. Except I’m here at the Center. So, you wanna try again?”

  I glanced again at Logan. Still Mr. Huge Hat-rack. My lolling tongue practically shorted out the phone. No, I definitely did not want to try again. It would only come out ga-ga-ga and Elena’d have to shoot me. Of course, that would put me out of my misery.

  Finally Logan found his jeans and pulled them on—but he had trouble zipping up over the Incredible Hulk. I whimpered.

  “Liese?” Elena sounded even more suspicious.

  I covered my eyes. “Sorry, I was distracted. The truth is I was on my way home and I made a couple stops.”

  “What? Why?” Impossible as it seemed, she sounded even more suspicious. Then she floored me by adding, “There’s not anything…weird goin
g on, is there?”

  Like wolves howling, headless bodies or late-night visits from Mr. Sexgod? I didn’t say any of that out loud. If Elena thought I was mental she’d never recommend me for my next job.

  Another glance showed Logan…gone. Beam me up. “No, nothing weird,” I lied. Hell, I didn’t want to end up in the “Verk Camp”. “So why are you at the Blood Center?”

  “Bo and I were patrolling and saw the lights on. We thought you were here and stopped to chat.” Elena wasn’t foot patrol but she and her husband were involved in a neighborhood watch. “Things have been tense since Chicago tried to annex us, the gangs and all. So I called to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine.” Something scuttled in the dark tunnel. I swept my flashlight but saw nothing. Big strong Logan would actually have been reassuring about then, but a tight three-sixty swish showed only empty sewer. I swept farther out.

  Elena said, “So why’d you leave the light on?”

  “I was in a rush.” My flashlight brushed a misshapen bowling ball. Dark drips smeared something that could have been a forehead. A lump could have been a nose, and scraggly hairs under the lump, a mustache. But if it was a head, there wasn’t any body.

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  “No, nothing.” Nothing that wouldn’t land me as “Dracula’s” roommate.

  Another rustle. I shifted my light, picking out a brownish, body-sized lump with boots, jeans, leatherette coat.

  That moved.

  I shoved my fist in my mouth. A head. And clothes that, as I watched, were crawling toward it. I backed away, my guts running acid and my brain wondering a mite insanely which was scarier, a decapitated head, a headless body—or clothes with free will.

  Although wouldn’t that make laundry easier?

  “Liese, you okay?” Elena’s suspicious bark was the only thing that kept me from screaming like a little girl.

  As it was I gasped. I had to be seeing things. Bodies did not operate without heads. Even if they did, I couldn’t tell show-me-the-facts Elena. “Um, something’s come up.” I clapped my phone shut and tried to force myself to think rationally—not easy with my scalp crawling and my insides turning to ice and my feet screaming run-run-run. Automatically I started toward the exit but my legs were shaky and the patch of outside moonlight seemed much too far away.