Embrace the Night

by Crystal Jordan

  “Inside me.” Another tear glided down her cheek. “Now. Please, now.”

  “Soon.” He kissed the side of her throat, suckled the sensitive spot that connected her neck and shoulder.

  It excited her more that she knew he’d fuck her when he was damn good and ready, no matter how she begged or teased. It was why she liked pushing his control, even as she utterly relied on that same quality.

  The shower pounded down on them, the hot water nothing compared to the heat they generated. It sealed them together, made their skin slip and slide in an erotic dance that sent her pulse tripping. His hips bucked until the head of his cock nudged his plunging fingers, just barely stroked the lips of her pussy. Her nails dug into his arms, desperation beating through her.

  He froze behind her, all movement jerking to a stop, and his breath erupted in a painful hiss. “Arm.”

  “Oh. Gods.” Her fingers relaxed, and she jerked her hand away, regret washing through her. She turned her head to kiss his shoulder, her hands petting his skin in apology. “I’m so sorry.”

  A rusty chuckle answered her. “Yes. Kiss me, lick me, touch me. Show me how sorry you are.”

  Reaching around to grab the outsides of his muscular thighs, she grinned a little. “I’d be happy to kiss, lick, touch . . . or suck any part of you. Because I’m really, really sorry, of course.”

  “Of course.” He bit the side of her neck just hard enough to make her jolt. Her insides clenched, and she whimpered when he withdrew his fingers from her greedy sex. “Later, I’m going to let you suck me hard, but right now I need inside your sweet little pussy so bad I’m dying.”

  His fingers pulled her slick lips wide, held her open so his cock could spear into her pussy. One of her hands reached back to sink into his wet hair, and she twisted her torso enough that she could draw him down for a kiss. A shudder racked her body as his fingers toyed with her clit, tugged at her plumped pussy lips to emphasize just how wide he stretched her. He was big and hot and hard, and she screamed into his mouth when he pinched her clit.

  It was perfect. Her throat closed on the need to cry, and she tightened her fingers in his hair as she ravaged his mouth, wanting him as close as he could be. Closer, after the terror of this evening, she needed all of him. He buried himself deep inside her, and it didn’t feel like enough to satisfy her craving for him. Nothing ever could, and she sobbed against his lips.

  He released her mouth. “Shh. Shh. It’s all right, sweetheart. We’re all right. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

  Something so huge and beautiful it scared her to even acknowledge it expanded in her chest until she couldn’t breathe, could only hold on to him and hope it would never end, that it would always be this good, this sweet, this intense. Those weak, damnable tears continued to escape, and she couldn’t stop shuddering as the jumbled emotions collided with the inexorable, rising tide of ecstasy.

  “Merek,” she gasped, clamping her inner muscles on his cock.

  He groaned; his hips rammed deep, slapping against her ass, driving her into the slippery tiles. “Chloe. My Chloe.”

  Fiery tingles broke down her limbs, and she felt orgasm building deep inside her. Moans spilled from her throat every time he entered her. He rubbed her clit in time with his thrusts, hard and fast, the movements designed to shove her past her endurance.

  He changed the angle of his penetration, and it was so right it sent her spinning. The breath froze in her lungs as her muscles gathered into one enormous pulse of pleasure. Her channel locked tight on his cock, and his hoarse groan and deep shudder told her she’d dragged him over the edge with her. Her fingers bunched in the wetness of his hair, holding him close as her pussy throbbed around him in waves so powerful she sobbed again. His hot come flooded her, and he rolled his hips, thrusting still deeper into her slick sex. She sagged against him, shutting her eyes as the physical and emotional storm swept through her, changed everything in its path, and left her drifting in its wake.

  He stood there with her until the water turned chilly, his big hands stroking over her skin, cupping her breasts, her hips, the curve of her belly. Somehow he knew she needed the closeness as much as she’d needed the sexual release he could give her. Maybe he needed it too, because he didn’t stop touching her even after his cock softened and slid from her body. He planted light kisses everywhere he could reach. He crooned to her, a soft wordless rumble of soothing comfort and assurance.

  She stirred when the water turned off, felt like she was floating as he lifted her into his arms. “How long do we have until we have to catch our flight?”

  Setting her on the counter, he ignored her gasp as the cold tile touched her bare backside. The sharp contrast with her hot, over-sensitized flesh made her shudder. He grabbed a towel and dried her, his touch gentle. “A couple of hours, maybe.”

  “Okay.” She took the terry cloth from him and worked on her hair. “How did they find us today? Was it the blood tracking?”

  He pulled another towel from the stack and swiped at the moisture on his skin. “No, they put out a reward for us in the Magickal community, and the elf who ran the campgrounds turned us in.”

  “Asshole.” Her jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitched, her teeth grinding together as she fought the desire to hunt the bastard down and hurt him. Bad.

  Merek looked away, shrugged. “He’s dead. They killed him.”

  That gave her pause, and she managed to wrench open her locked jaw to growl, “I wouldn’t have wished him dead, but considering the danger he put us in and what happened to Alex, I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “I kicked him when he was down.” He wiped the towel over his face and then scrubbed at his hair.

  She blinked at him. “Seriously?”

  “I needed a distraction.” His tone was defensive, but the look on his face was completely unrepentant.

  Again, she just blinked. “I’m not sure if I should laugh or be horrified.”

  He wrapped the towel around his waist. “A little of both probably isn’t out of line.”

  “All righty, then.” A grin broke across her face as she hopped off the counter to pick up her discarded shirt. Then she remembered that her yoga pants hadn’t fared so well. “Um . . . you’re going to need to go get me some clothes from my room. I can dry these magically, but not that fast. Not after all I’ve burned through tonight.”

  “Okay.” He dropped a kiss on her mouth, came back for another quick taste, and then pulled away with a rueful smile and a shake of his head. “Be back in a minute.”

  “Thanks.”

  The last thing Merek wanted was to go rooting around in Chloe’s bespelled bottomless suitcase looking for clothes. He’d rather keep her naked, wrapped in his arms, while he got the only few hours of sleep he was likely to get for some time. His eyes burned with fatigue, and he shut his mind off from the fact that she’d tried to pull away from him in the shower.

  Why it pissed him off so badly that she would want to put any distance between them, he didn’t want to contemplate. He was too fucking tired to contemplate anything right now. He just wanted a bed and Chloe to share it with him. Shucking his towel and leaving it wherever it happened to fall, he jerked on a pair of sweats and a shirt from his duffle.

  “Damn it, Ophelia, I don’t want to hurt you. Get out of the way.”

  A deep snarl that he wasn’t sure was from Alex or the cat sounded clearly through the door joining the two rooms. Merek eased it open to see a fully dressed and alert Alex facing down a pissed off cat who stood, back arched and hair on end, directly in front of the exit.

  Bloody scratches were already healing themselves on Alex’s hands and arms, so he’d been tangling with the familiar for at least a few minutes, if not longer.

  “Going somewhere?” Merek kept his voice mild, his arms crossed over his chest.

  The teen inhaled sharply, surprise flaring in his pale eyes as he whipped around. Then his jaw flexed, and he pulled his backpack over his shoulders. “
Yes.”

  Merek shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

  “What the hell do you care?” Frustrated rage flashed across the teen’s normally impassive face. “This way you can keep Chloe safe. I’m a liability.”

  Merek pushed away from the doorjamb and crossed to plant himself directly in front of the wolf. “We all have things about us that make us liabilities. We learn to work with our limitations.”

  Shaking his head hard, Alex sent a fulminating glare toward Ophelia. “I won’t be responsible for another—”

  “It wasn’t your fault your mother died, any more than it would be your fault if Smith’s men killed Chloe.” No, that was a responsibility that would fall squarely on Merek’s shoulders if he failed to keep her safe.

  “If you guys had spent a few more minutes in the shower, I’d have been history.” A huff of breath that sounded close to a sob emerged. “Damn cat.”

  He closed his hand tightly over Alex’s shoulder. “You can’t do that to Chloe. She would never forgive herself. Ever.” Merek knew enough about her now to know how true that was. “She’d tear off and go searching for you herself, and Smith’s men would catch up to her in under a day.”

  Alex shut his eyes, but not before a sheen of moisture showed. “I can’t stay.”

  “Can you honestly do that to her? Just walk away and never look back?” For a moment, the young man’s future wavered before Merek’s eyes, superimposing over the boy before him. A tall man, smiling down at a woman holding a wolf cub in her arms. Then another flash of the same man, sitting alone in a darkened room, bitterness poisoning his expression. Different possibilities? Different events in the same time line? The images disintegrated before Merek could tell.

  Those green eyes locked on his face. “Can you? Isn’t that what you’re going to do if Luca ever closes the case and we get out of this?”

  “I’m not the kind of guy who’s into hit it and quit it with his women. That’s not my style. I don’t play those kinds of games.” But that wasn’t the whole story. He’d gone into each of his relationships since his wife’s death knowing when it would end and how. His heart had never been involved, and though he’d cared for the women, he’d known there would be no deeper demand on his time or emotions than he’d already foreseen.

  With Chloe, everything was different.

  Merek sighed and dropped his hand from the kid’s shoulder. What the hell did you say to a kid who’d been dragged away from his life, had a bullet dug out of him, didn’t trust men for shit because his dad was an asshole, and said asshole dad had disappeared without a backward glance? Merek had no fucking clue. He didn’t even think there was a right thing to say. “Look, I know your dad bailed on you in every possible way after your mom died, but—”

  Alex cut him off with a snort.

  “But if I was really looking to dick someone around or to score an easy lay, this isn’t how I’d do it.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.” Alex shoved a hand through his dark hair and looked away.

  Merek sighed and waited for those green eyes to meet his again, too damn exhausted to care if he put his foot in this one. “I get why you don’t want to trust me, but I’m not your father. I’m in this until the end. I’m not going to bail on you when the brown stuff splatters. I haven’t yet, and I won’t.”

  “It’s not just you or my dad or anyone else, it’s . . . shit.” The wolf sniffed and scrubbed at his bloodshot eyes, grief and guilt ripping through the façade of indifference. “I was completely useless back there. I couldn’t help either of you, even if I hadn’t been shot. Not against a full-grown vampire or Fae or . . . hell, not even against another wolf.” His hands lifted, flexed until the muscles in his forearms stood out. “Some of it is instinct, you know? Just being a wolf. But I know computers, electronics. Aside from the instincts, I don’t know shit about guns or spells or fighting.”

  “I can teach you to defend yourself. Even against spells, even though you can’t cast them like I can.” He gestured to the door. “If you don’t bail on us, that is. I can help you hone those wolf instincts even more.”

  Wariness and old pain flashed in the boy’s eyes, but it wrestled with the desire to believe. “Why would you do that?”

  Nothing but sheer honesty was going to keep this from turning into a total clusterfuck that Chloe would never forgive him for, so Merek laid it out there. “Because I can. Because I’ll take any edge I can with protecting your godmother. Because I like you, and you need to know how to save yourself when the time comes. And, yeah, you might have been someone who was just along for the ride because I wanted to keep an eye on Chloe and she wasn’t going anywhere without you, but you’re a good person. There aren’t a lot of those in the world.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Alex rubbed his side where the bullet had struck, his ancient, weary eyes meeting Merek’s. They searched his face for a long time, looking for gods knew what, but Merek met his gaze without flinching.

  Finally, his face guarded by his usual inscrutable mask, Alex nodded. “I’ll stay.”

  10

  Merek kept them hopping from one plane to another for three days straight, bouncing from one coast to the other, sleeping in airport hotels, only to drag them out of bed to do it all over again. The pace he set for them was grueling, but he had to make sure Gregor wasn’t behind them. Or any of Smith’s other operatives. Merek wanted to be as sure as he could that they could drop off the map again, so he pushed them all to the breaking point. Neither Chloe nor Alex said a word of complaint, but their expressions took on a perpetual look of bleak exhaustion. When Merek glanced in the mirror, he saw the haggard strain on his own face.

  Even Ophelia went where she was told, which was a first. They’d had to abandon the cat carrier the day they left Seattle because she just wasn’t having it. He’d even put some hexes on the thing to try to keep her temporarily contained, but Millie was right—the cat was a little Houdini. The spells he’d used had worked at locking down hardened Magickal criminals, but not Chloe’s familiar.

  Traveling with an animal on an airplane would have been a dead giveaway, but the cat had sniffed at him and gone transparent as soon as he’d voiced the thought. Not even a ripple in the air around her showed where she passed. The damn familiar was better at invisibility spells than he was. He couldn’t even sense her with his magic, nor could Alex sniff her out. How she got through or around airport security and stayed clear of the thousands of feet ready to step on her, he never knew. He didn’t want to know how she managed without a litter box.

  He kept a sharp eye on Alex to make sure the boy didn’t try to give them the slip during their travels, but he spent most of their flights unconscious. Part of his exhaustion might be the lingering effects of the silver penetrating his system. Merek suspected Ophelia literally sat on the kid to make sure he stayed where she wanted him, but couldn’t be certain.

  Chloe staggered a little as they left the airport in Phoenix and the wave of desert heat slapped them in the faces. Both Merek and Alex reached out hands to steady her, and she managed a ghost of a smile for them. “Where to next?”

  “Not far. An apartment building across town.” He steered her toward the shuttle to the rental car lot, Alex falling into step behind them.

  “You mean, we’re staying here for longer than a layover? We can sleep in a bed for eight whole hours?” The look she gave him was so hopeful he had to grin. That her hazel eyes were bloodshot and bleary made him want to pull her into his arms, but he nudged her along and kept an eye out for anything or anyone out of place.

  They made it to the rental office and drove to the apartment without incident. Chloe made him stop at a pizza parlor for takeout on the way, and he could hear Alex’s stomach growling from the backseat.

  Merek made them wait while he checked the place out, searched the furnished apartment for anything off, swept it with his magic to see if there were lingering vibrations from another Magickal. Nothing. When he loosed the reins on his p
recognition, the past of the building swept to him with stunning clarity. He saw them breaking ground on the site before it went up, and time swept forward until long after they’d left the place. The space of days they would be there was a gaping maw in his visions, but the time directly after showed no evidence of violence. No blood spatter, no bullet holes riddling the walls. Nothing.

  He motioned Alex and Chloe forward, watched them trundle in, dump the pizza off in the kitchen, and separate into bedrooms to drop their stuff. Chloe paused to turn on every lamp and hit every light switch along the way. He’d seen them do the same thing many times before, and the normalcy of it felt good. He was swinging the door shut when Ophelia’s yowl made him pause. He didn’t bother looking around for her, just waited for her skinny body to begin stropping his ankles while she dropped her invisibility spell. Snapping the door shut, he secured the lock and set warding spells on the apartment. Then he stooped down to pick the familiar up and carry her into the kitchen to wait for Alex and Chloe.

  They’d be under five minutes unloading everything, and he knew Chloe was currently managing to hog every inch of counter space in the bathroom. A smile twitched across his lips before it faded, and his gut twisted as something besides the need to outpace Gregor seeped into his consciousness. He was starting to like them too much, know them too well. The problem with forced proximity was it also forced intimacy. He hadn’t let anyone this close for this long since . . . since his family. Since his wife. He sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Fuck.

  No, the problem wasn’t that he was stuck with them now that he’d agreed to keep them safe. The problem was he liked it. He liked them, liked knowing their routines. He liked being around Alex, who hated not having his gadgets, but had managed to find books on nanotechnology in airport stores.

  Merek sensed a basic similarity between himself and the kid. They were both too watchful, too serious, too alone. And that was where Chloe came in, a mouthy, acerbic counterbalance to them both. Despite all her own baggage, she managed to remain optimistic that obstacles could be overcome. She was smart, brave, and when the chips were down, she fought. She survived. He admired that in anyone, let alone someone with a traumatized childhood. He just liked her.