by Cassi Carver
Gavin stepped back and laughed. Now he knew Julian was just being an ass. “Oh, really?”
“Yes.”
“She hasn’t reached maturity yet, Jules. She’s not even thirty years old. You’ll have to do better than that to fool me.”
Julian’s eyes hardened, and he took a step forward. “I make a sire’s claim. Until her next cycle, when we know whether or not she carries my child, no other man shall have her.”
Gavin laughed again—a small puff of breath as the smile slowly melted from his face. The surge of blood in his temples made it difficult to understand what Julian was saying. Sire’s claim? “Impossible. She’s not in season. She hasn’t even made the transition.”
Julian smiled. “It happened. I’m not sure how. She was amazing, brother. She took all of me, buried me to my balls in her tight, hot channel. She couldn’t get enough. And you should have seen her sweet submission when I locked into her. Don’t be upset. She needed a man willing to breed her, and I was happy to oblige.”
What Julian was saying was bad enough, but something in his eyes taunted Gavin, stabbing the truth into his brain with a molten poker when a gentle touch would have sufficed. And Gavin finally lost it.
Kara couldn’t say she was actually tired—she could walk forever and didn’t think it would wind her—but her joy over saving the woman was short-lived. Someone worse was still out there roaming the streets. As she took the elevator up to her apartment, all she wanted to do was lock Pibb in the bathroom again and go to sleep, praying she would have sweet dreams. Well, not too sweet.
But as she passed Gavin’s apartment, she heard a loud crash, like a tornado had descended upon the top floor and was tossing the furniture around like dollhouse toys. At the same time, the air felt thick with a rush of anger and violence. It wasn’t the same as the evil she sensed hunting with Abbey. This was more like righteous indignation, but it was lethal all the same.
“Gavin!” she shouted, pounding on the door. “Gavin! Are you all right?”
The husband and wife in the apartment across the hall poked their heads out. “Is everything okay? Do you want me to call the police?” the man asked.
Kara felt a sudden shift in the air and the anger subsided like a storm cloud scattered on the breeze. She frowned. “No, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Everything’s okay. Sorry about the disturbance. I’ll talk to the new neighbors about the noise.”
“Well,” the man said, “you can talk to them, Kara, but if that keeps up, I’m going to have to call somebody.”
His wife glared up at him. “Don’t report them, Ted. Next thing you know, they’ll report you and your friends during football season.” The man shrugged and his wife pulled him back inside. Kara turned back toward Gavin’s place as the door cracked open.
“Yes?” Gavin barely opened the door past the width of his head.
“What happened?” Kara’s heart beat against her ribs. “Is Julian okay? Did something fall?”
Gavin paused, then nodded briskly. “Yes. The table…collapsed. I guess we didn’t put it together right.”
Kara’s eyes bulged. “All that noise was from one table?”
“Well…the chairs were under it at the time. They were crushed.”
What kind of bullshit was that? “Can I talk to Julian, please?”
Gavin ran a hand through his blond hair and his nostrils flared. “Of course.” The strained smile on his face made Kara uneasy. “Julian, Kara Reed is here to see you.”
Suddenly, the door opened a little wider and Julian’s head appeared next to Gavin’s. “You’re back!” His smile shined down on her like a beacon as he quickly wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smearing an ebbing stream of blood from his nostril to his cheek.
“What happened?” She stepped forward and took his face in her hands.
Julian leaned into her touch as Gavin backed away. “I noticed the table was a little rickety tonight at dinner, so I was tightening the bolts. Gavin stood on it to hang a picture, not realizing I was under there.”
Kara dropped her hands. “He’s six-seven in an apartment with eight-foot ceilings. Why would he need to stand on anything? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Exactly!” Julian laughed, throwing up his hands. “That’s what I was trying to tell him. Stubborn idiot. And now he’s mad the table is broken. It wasn’t his in the first place.” Julian cast an angry glance at his roommate. “Nobody has wronged him.”
Gavin faced Julian and squared his shoulders. “I was the first to eat at it. I know how to care for furniture so nobody gets hurt. I won’t turn my back on my family, no matter how comfortable the flaming cushioned seats are.”
Kara looked back and forth between the two men. Holy crap, were they on drugs? She couldn’t deal with this tonight.
“Sorry you got hurt, Julian. I gotta go to bed. Try to keep the noise down,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.
“Kara.” Julian rushed out the door and grabbed her shoulder. “I—”
She turned to see he was wearing nothing but a blood-speckled sheet and her brows shot up. Seeing him still naked from their encounter, it suddenly hit her what might have happened. She was the idiot. “Did Gavin punch you? Over me?”
Did Gavin care that much? If she’d thought he had, she never would have messed around with his friend. She did have some boundaries. Fuzzy ones, but they were there.
Julian stilled. The sheet wrapped around his waist left the rest of his glorious body on display. “The table…” he began, choosing his words carefully. “Oh, hellfire. I don’t want to lie to you. He attacked me when he found out we’d been together.”
“No! You’re kidding me.” She didn’t peg Gavin as the violent type. And she’d let him go down on her.
Julian nodded sadly. “Yes. I don’t know what came over him.” Then he looked down into Kara’s eyes and took a step closer. His skin smelled like their mingled sweat. “Do you think I could stay with you tonight? I don’t feel safe at his place.” His muscled body brushed against her. He reached down and ran his thumb across her cheek. “For one night, until we get things straightened out?”
Kara glanced over at Gavin’s apartment and narrowed her eyes. What an asshole. And now she had to let Julian invade her space because he didn’t feel safe. Well, screw it. Let Gavin try to pick on Julian when Kara was around. She’d taken down bigger men than him. Okay, maybe not bigger. She didn’t know if she’d ever met anyone as big as Gavin.
“Sure, Jules. Just one night. Tomorrow we’ll talk with him and let him know there’s nothing going on between us, that this is all a big misunderstanding.”
Julian frowned. “There isn’t?”
“Isn’t what?”
“Something going on between us.”
Kara unlocked her apartment and opened the door to her naked neighbor. “No.”
Julian closed the door behind them as Kara unzipped her boots and threw them in the corner. When she dropped her purse, it fell to the floor with a heavy thud from the weight of the knife hidden inside. Julian turned to her and let the sheet fall. Kara’s eyes glued to his groin as his heavy shaft stirred to life. Holy crap he was huge! How could she have forgotten something like that?
“Really? Because I definitely thought I felt something—” he stepped closer and pressed his erection to her belly, “—between us.”
Kara’s mouth watered at the sight of his dusky nipples just inches from her lips and the feel of his stiff rod pressing into her. “It was a hell of a first date, but I’m not ready for anything more. My life is complicated right now.”
“I’m not trying to rush you,” he said, cupping her ass and fitting her tightly against him.
She smiled. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Her skin felt clammy. Wanting him was like a fire inside her, burning up any rational reason to say no. She leaned in and smoothed her lips across the soft skin of his chest. His scent made her thoughts fuzzy.
Julian moaned when she ran her
hands over the globes of his naked ass and squeezed. “If you get any harder, you could do some damage with that thing.” She trailed one hand across his rump to slide over the base of him.
He hissed out a breath and grabbed Kara’s face in his hands, then crushed his lips against hers. She massaged her hand up and down his length as he probed her mouth with fevered strokes of his tongue.
After a minute, he broke the kiss but held her face so close she could feel his lips move against hers as he spoke. “I want you, Kara. Tell me you want me, too. Only me.”
She swallowed. She did want Julian—she’d be crazy not to—but she didn’t want to lie. He’d been honest with her and he deserved as much.
Instead of telling him what he wanted to hear, she dropped to her knees before him and traded her hand on his shaft for her lips and tongue. She should have been exhausted from her time with him before and her domestic intervention with Abbey, but as soon his pearly fluid hit her taste buds, her whole body flared to life.
She grasped his length in both hands but had trouble fitting her mouth over his crown and sinking down far enough to cover much more than the head. But his low groan echoed in the room and his hands laced around the back of her head, so he must not have minded much.
“Kara,” he whispered. “You’re a goddess. Don’t stop.”
He thrust into her open mouth, but her tight fists around his base kept him from penetrating deep enough to hurt her. Her engorged clit pulsed so hard with excitement, it might as well have been his hand stroking between her legs.
Kara sucked greedily on his shaft, trying to squeeze every drop of moisture from him. She paused her gliding strokes only long enough to lick his slit as a low growl began to vibrate in her chest. She needed more. She needed to feed on his essence.
But suddenly, Julian tugged her head back and yanked her to her feet. “Inside you. Now,” he demanded, no longer smiling or playful. Kara almost came from the deep rumble of his voice.
He drove her against the wall, his black eyes so feverish with desire they burned like torches in a dark cave. Her fluids rushed to coat her channel as it contracted in waves, ready to milk him in its silky-tight embrace.
Julian pulled up her short denim skirt then shredded her panties at the seams and threw them aside. When he lifted her knee over his hip and shoved his big cock into her opening, she cried out in pleasure. He was too large, but he grasped her ass in his strong hands, lifting her feet off the floor as he began to work his length into her in sharp strokes, sinking deeper, inch by inch.
If she wasn’t so slick and ready, his girth and length would have been impossible to accommodate. But she reveled in the feel of him. He stretched her until she doubted she could take any more, then he proved she could.
“Julian—” she began, but he licked her lips and smashed his mouth into hers, silencing her as he fit the last of himself into her tight pussy. With the wall at her back, he braced one arm under her as his upper thighs slapped against her ass. She couldn’t believe how strong he was.
Julian thrust against her clit, and she groaned in need, wanting him to pump his liquid desire deep inside her, as if she were starving and he was the only thing that could nourish her.
Once he was buried to the hilt, thrusting up from under her, his flesh smacking against her tender nub while the head of his cock found her womb, he captured her breast through the fabric of her sweater with his free hand. Unsatisfied, he growled and ripped the thick material straight down the front, then sucked one pert nipple deep into his mouth, using his hand on her breast like an anchor as he pummeled her over and over.
Kara clutched at his shoulders and arched her back against the wall, pressing her chest to his ravenous mouth. She was completely at his mercy, her feet dangling at his sides, helpless to even meet his thrusts as his hips plowed into her. Yet she felt so complete, she wanted to weep. “Do it,” she cried. “Deeper.”
Julian didn’t speak. He panted and huffed as he plunged into Kara, consuming her mind and spirit. She felt him straining for release, felt the tremors racking his body as his hands found her hips again and angled her toward his pelvis. When he began his delirious murmurs, Kara could swear they were in a language she’d never heard before, but she understood what his heart cried.
Mine.
And as she contracted around him, and a tidal wave of ecstasy washed over her, she had to agree. This man was hers.
“Harder!” she urged, tilting her ass up into the onslaught to keep her orgasm going as his desire rained down on her. She clutched and clawed him desperately. “Come in me!” she pleaded.
Julian cried out, and his fingers dug into the soft skin of Kara’s ass as he began to empty himself inside the warmth of her body.
Then suddenly, a rush of wind to her left blew Kara’s hair into her eyes and a large, ominous shape flashed at the corner of her vision.
Chapter Ten
Kara’s lips were still parted in rapture when she looked over and saw a shirtless Gavin appear across the room, eyes blazing blue, dressed in buckskin leather pants with an enormous sword in his right hand.
His lips peeled back in a snarl. “Son of a human whore! Put her down!”
One moment Julian was pounding her into the wall and the next, he almost exploded into the air. He turned and leapt halfway across the living room, as if he could defy gravity. Kara couldn’t make sense of how Gavin got into her house, or why he was so angry, but as she glanced back at Julian, to her utter disbelief, two slits on either shoulder blade split open and silver-gray wings burst forth. Julian hissed at Gavin as long, dark claws stretched from the tips of his fingers.
Gavin risked a glance at Kara. “Did he have you again?”
Kara opened her mouth to say something, she was sure, but only a huff of breath emerged. “Huuuu…” she tried again, scooting farther from the two men ’til her knees hit the edge of the sofa.
“Did he spill his seed in you?” Gavin shouted.
“Not nearly enough!” Julian answered for her, his speech slightly slurred from the two long fangs protruding from his mouth. His clawed fingers curved like scimitars, ready to slice into his adversary. “How dare you interrupt my time with my woman.”
Adding to the mind-numbing vision of the massive silver wings stretching across his back, his large cock was still standing at attention, pointing toward Gavin as if in accusation.
A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped Kara’s throat. “What the hell is this?”
Were they witches? Were her new neighbors some sort of crazy-ass warlocks with powers she couldn’t even begin to comprehend?
Gavin’s jaw flexed and he raised the sword higher, never taking his eyes from Julian. “Consider it an intervention.”
Without another word, Julian launched himself at Gavin, knocking the sword out of his grasp and toppling him to the carpet in one fluid motion. He straddled Gavin’s torso and wrapped his claws around his friend’s neck, but Gavin kept his hands at his sides. “Julian! Do you see what’s happening to you? You’re in a mating rage. Calm the fuck down. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Julian lowered his face slowly to Gavin’s. His lips pulled back to bare his teeth as a deep growl roiled in his chest. “You’re trying to take her from me. Admit it.” As he said it, a dark fog rolled up from the ground and Kara felt a truly ominous presence stir in the air, like the darkest shadows were being summoned from the corners of the earth and Julian’s anger was giving them substance. The dark shapes billowed around Gavin’s head like living smoke.
Fear flickered in Gavin’s eyes for less than a heartbeat, then he steeled his jaw. “In a thousand years, you would never do that to me, my brother. You’ve lost your senses. And you leave me with no choice.”
Gavin raised his hand toward Julian’s face as blue light shot from his palm, like lightning seeking a place to touch down. The energy illuminated Julian’s features for the barest second, casting his handsome face and onyx hair in a tangle of light and shadow b
efore he convulsed, limbs straightening then going limp as he crashed to the floor beside Gavin.
Kara had never seen magic like this. She didn’t know what the hell was going on, and she wasn’t going to wait around to find out. She shot to her feet and sprinted for the door, yanking her skirt down as she went. She reached a hand toward the doorknob just as Gavin materialized before her, causing her to bounce off his broad chest instead.
“Kara. It’s all right.” He held his palms out.
“This is not all right!” She threw her shoulder into him, trying to move him from her only escape route as she grunted out her response. “Not…by…a long shot!”
But as strong as she was, she couldn’t budge his massive body. So she did the next best thing. She drove her knee into his groin with all her might. “Move it, motherfucker!”
When Gavin clutched his crotch and doubled over, Kara used her bare foot to kick him off balance, out of the path of her front door.
“Kara,” he pleaded, his voice choked with pain. “Stop. You’re in danger.” He reached out and grasped her foot in an iron grip before she could even turn the handle.
“No shit.” She stomped his hand with her free foot but couldn’t break his hold. Where were her damned boots when she needed them? “Let. Me. Go.”
She glanced around for her purse, wishing she had the knife, but it lay out of reach on the other side of Gavin. One more quick glance confirmed Julian was breathing deeply, his claws and fangs retracted, his long, limp shaft lying against his thigh and his silver wings tucked against his back.
Wings? Really?
Gavin shifted to his knees with a grimace and looked into Kara’s eyes. “Your father sent me.”
Kara froze. Even her heart seemed to slow. She couldn’t imagine any words powerful enough to keep her feet glued to the floor at this point, but Gavin had found them. “My father?”
“Don’t run. Please listen to what I have to say. Promise me.”
Kara glanced again at her naked guest’s feathered wings and Gavin’s epic sword across the room. “I won’t promise you a thing. You have one minute to explain, or I’ll cast a spell on you so vile it’ll make your light show look like a cheap trick.”
