He grabbed her, hauled her up his body, and claimed her mouth in a fierce kiss as he rolled with her, ending up between her thighs. He rocked hard against her, his kiss stealing her breath and his hands clutching her tightly, pinning her beneath him. She tried to keep up, her own passion rising as he unleashed his wilder side. She loved him like this. Wild. Untamed. Hungry for her.
She gasped as he broke away from her and his lips descended on her bare breasts, his mouth working black magic as he sucked one nipple into his mouth and rolled it between his teeth. She moaned and arched off the bed, eager for more, unable to stop herself from silently begging him to give it to her. He pinched her other nipple between his finger and thumb, squeezing the bud and sending hot shivers racing through her. They all collided in her belly and pooled there and lower.
Iolanthe writhed again, rubbing herself against his cock, unable to stop herself as her passion seized control.
He groaned and rocked against her, teasing her sensitive nub, taking her higher but not high enough. She needed to soar. She needed to fly again.
He prowled down her body, grasped her hips and shoved her up the bed, so her head hit the pillows. The feel of him using his strength on her thrilled her. No male before him had ever done such a thing with her. None of them could compare with him. Her wild male.
She threw her head back and moaned as he speared her folds with his tongue. His hands wedged her thighs apart and she felt as if she would overload as he swirled his tongue around and lapped at her before flicking the hypersensitive bud and sending fifty thousand volts arcing through her veins.
Her dream of him like this didn’t even come close to the reality of the act. He mastered her with his mouth, bringing her close to the edge before backing away and slowing down, waiting for her to begin to relax again before sending her soaring higher towards Heaven.
Iolanthe alternated between clutching the wooden headboard and clutching his sandy hair. He slid his hands beneath her buttocks and raised them off the bed, and she arched upwards as he teased her entrance with his tongue, flicking it around before gently probing.
“Kyter.” She rocked against him, her body beyond her control as she sought release.
He slowly eased the tip of his tongue into her sheath and withdrew it the moment she moaned.
Curse him.
She reached down to grab his hair again and her hand fell to her belly when he slid two fingers into her core. Her body eagerly flexed around them, desire pulsing through her. She tried to rock but he held her firm, stopping her. He thrust slowly, groaning low in his throat as he rubbed the pads of his fingers along her sheath.
Iolanthe couldn’t take it.
She needed release.
He stroked his tongue over her pert nub and flicked it. She moaned, the desperate sound filling the room, and flexed around his fingers.
Kyter growled.
The room spun past her in a blur as he flipped her onto her front on her knees, knocked them apart and entered her in one swift delicious stroke. She cried out and grasped the pillows as one hand clamped down on the back of her neck and the other pressed hard into her lower back, holding her pinned against the mattress.
She moaned as he pumped her, long deep strokes that had his flesh meeting hers with each thrust. She edged her eyes towards him, her cheek pressed to the pillow, and groaned as she saw him behind her, his golden eyes locked on hers.
He bared emerging fangs and a thrill bolted through her, a powerful need to feel those fangs in her flesh. He was beautiful. Deadly. Hers. And she was his. He claimed every inch of her with every powerful thrust, as lost to his passion as she was to hers, consumed by the need to mate.
The gold in his eyes burned brighter and she knew her eyes looked the same, the violet in them shining. Her fangs dropped, cutting into her lower lip as she bit it, climbing towards her climax as he pumped her hard and deep. Each delicious thrust of his cock took her higher, making her cry out. Each deep plunge had him grunting, his face twisting as his desire peaked.
“Iolanthe,” he growled, his lower canines as sharp as his upper ones.
His fingers pressed harder into the back of her neck, his eyes shifting to it as they blazed. She fought the urge to writhe against him, to goad him into losing the last shred of his control, unwilling to surrender to the part of her that wanted him to bite her.
Needed him to lay claim to her.
The fight was right there in his eyes, a battle she wasn’t sure whether he was winning or losing. He was resisting his instincts and the needs that burned within him, and she knew he was doing it for her.
“Iolanthe.” It came out as a deep guttural moan this time as his hips jerked and his thrusts turned uncoordinated.
She moaned as his cock throbbed and pulsed, his seed pumping into her. His rough hard thrusts sent her plummeting over the edge with him, crying out his name as her entire body convulsed and fiery heat burned through her, sending shivers down her trembling thighs.
Kyter stilled inside her, his cock buried deep, his hand still holding her neck. He breathed hard, his muscular chest heaving with each one, his eyes locked on hers.
The need in them hadn’t abated, and it hadn’t faded in her either.
He stared down at her for long tense seconds that felt like hours to her as she fought the urge to do something that would coax him into biting her, forcing herself to keep still instead.
He finally closed his eyes, withdrew from her and flopped onto his back beside her. He grabbed her around the waist and she squealed as he dragged her back against his front, and stilled as his hot breath fanned across the back of her neck.
She waited.
Half of her afraid he would bite her.
The other half begging him to do it because she wasn’t brave enough to take that leap.
He exhaled hard, his heart settling together with his breathing, and placed a gentle kiss on her neck.
She trembled from it, a rush of tingles racing down her spine, and her fear ebbed away as he did something that made her smile and left her feeling he was content to leave things as they were between them.
For now at least.
A deep rumbling sound echoed through his chest as he rubbed his cheek across her shoulder and settled against her.
He purred.
CHAPTER 18
Kyter rubbed his left hand on his olive-green combat trousers, wiping the dust from it, and then shifted the pick into that hand so he could do the same with his right. They had returned to Pompeii at nightfall to dig in the temple.
Iolanthe had distanced herself after teleporting them back to the site, heading down into the chamber beneath the temple base for another look. He hadn’t gone after her. He was coming to learn her patterns now. She would step closer to him, letting her guard down, and then she would ease back. Eventually, she would stop with the easing back, but he had to be patient and wait for that day.
He rested the pick against one of the pale stone blocks that formed the remains of the altar and raked his fingers through his hair, brushing it back as he took a breather. He had been digging around the altar for the past hour, lifting the stones to reveal the mixture of earth and rubble beneath. He hadn’t found anything yet.
He crossed the enclosed area of the temple to his backpack where it rested against one of the broken columns that lined the low wall and took his black shirt from on top of it, setting it down on the marble pillar. He unzipped the black pack, swiped his canteen from it, and unscrewed the cap.
It was another stuffy night at the ancient site. Out in the countryside where his villa was, it was cooler and more comfortable. Here it was humid and warm, the stone giving off all the heat it had collected during the day.
Movement out of the corner of his left eye caught his attention and he slowly turned to watch Iolanthe as she approached. His heart beat a little quicker, a reaction to the sight of her that he was coming to think he would always experience. She was trying to kill him though. She had t
wirled her black hair up, using her long silver pin to hold it in place, lifted away from her neck.
His gums ached as his fangs threatened to emerge.
Hell, he wanted to sink those fangs into her neck.
She realised he was staring at her and dropped her gaze, the shy reaction drawing a smile from him.
“Anything?” he said to break the thick silence and make her more comfortable.
She shook her head and her violet eyes came back up to meet his. “Nothing.”
Her hairstyle had another downside. At least for him. It revealed her pointed ears. Before she had emerged from the bathroom tonight with her hair pinned back, exposing her ears, he hadn’t realised just how much they added to her otherworldly appearance, drawing him to her, or how they gave away her feelings.
When desire had darkened her eyes on seeing him half-dressed, his upper body exposed, her ears had grown pointier and had flared back a little. He had teased her about it and had earned himself a hiss and a flash of fangs. Her ears had flattened against the sides of her head then.
She fascinated him.
He had half expected her to teleport and leave him at the villa, but she had calmed down and had taken the hand he had offered her, and the kiss he had given her when he had pulled her into his arms.
“Have you found anything?” She peered past him to the stones he had removed and lined up across the front of the altar, ready to replace before they left the site so the humans didn’t know they had been digging here.
Kyter swigged his water and then offered the canteen to her. She held her hand up and shook her head.
“Nothing.” He echoed her earlier words. “But there is earth and rubble to dig through. We might find something.”
She didn’t look hopeful.
Another pick appeared in her hand. “I will look with you.”
He still wasn’t used to her ability to teleport things to her. She had explained how it worked and he had started to wish that his was a species that could do what she could. It would beat having to fly everywhere and it would be nice to just think about something in his apartment and have it pop into his hand no matter where he was in the world.
Kyter walked back to her and grabbed his pick. She began digging at one end and he worked in the opposite corner. His mind kept drifting back to the hours they had spent in his villa, tangled up in bed together, making love and talking, his digging slowing whenever it did.
He dragged his focus back to his work for what must have been the twentieth time, slamming the pointed end of his pick into the dirt and pulling it up to break the ground.
Something glinted in the moonlight.
He crouched and picked up the gold and silver discs, rubbed them to reveal their faces, and studied them. Coins. He went to toss them onto the stones lining the edge of his hole but Iolanthe was there, crouched beside him. She held her hand out and he placed the coins into her palm.
She looked at each one in turn, studying both sides, and discarded every single one of them. “Are there more?”
He went back to the hole, swung his pick and cut into the earth around the place where he had found the coins. Iolanthe joined him, breaking up the dirt and revealing larger coins. These ones looked more like gold medallions.
She rubbed them on her black combats, tilted them towards the moonlight, and studied them. She discarded the first two.
She stopped on the third.
“What is it?” He closed the distance between them and peered down at the one she held, wanting to see it too because her eyes had gone wide again and he was sure that she had paled.
“I know this mountain range,” she whispered, her voice distant as she stared at the relief on the medallion.
The mountains were a series of cragged, dangerous-looking peaks that looked impossible to scale. He had never seen mountains like them, not in all his travels.
“I’m not familiar with them. Are they around here?”
She shook her head and swallowed hard, her hand lowering as she lifted her gaze to meet his. “They are in Hell… the borderland with the Devil’s domain. My first mission took me there. I almost died.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, or the burst of fear that laced her scent. She raised the medallion towards him and froze.
Four more scents joined hers.
Kyter growled and shifted in front of her, guiding her behind him as he turned to face the four males who had appeared in the open area of the temple ruins. All of them wore black, just like the demon he had defeated at Herculaneum.
Iolanthe’s client had sent more men after her.
These four radiated danger, a lethal air to their scents. They were powerful. More powerful than the demon he had fought.
Two were demons from different realms, almost human in appearance with the exception of the short horns that curled from behind their ears. One smelled human, with an undertone of herbs. A sorcerer.
The fourth male, a tall slender one with pale eyes and short black hair, Kyter wasn’t sure about. Whatever he was, Kyter had never met one of his kind before.
Iolanthe shifted out from behind him and her short black blade appeared in her hand as her armour swept over her body, transforming her fingers into vicious claws.
The mystery male slid her a dark look edged with desire.
Kyter couldn’t contain the fury that burned through his veins, the need to annihilate the male for daring to look upon his female with lust in his eyes. He launched himself at the male, growling through his fangs.
The male smirked, a cold look in his pale blue eyes, and disappeared.
Kyter screamed as white-hot pain ripped up his right leg and stumbled a step before slamming into the stone floor. Fire radiated through his bones and he snarled over his shoulder at the dark-haired male who now stood behind him, a silver katana tipped with blood in his right hand, his smirk still in place.
Kyter wanted to punch it off his face but he could only clutch at his leg and growl through the agony. His animal side snarled with him, the pain of having his Achilles tendon severed too much for him to handle.
One blow. One goddamned blow.
It was all it had taken for the male to defeat him and the bastard knew it.
He loomed over Kyter, victory in his icy eyes laced with disgust and disappointment.
Whatever the male was, he knew how to disable a shifter of his breed. The pain was too strong, stopping Kyter from transforming into a jaguar, the form in which he was at his most powerful. The male had seen straight through his mixed blood to what he was.
Kyter’s gaze shifted to Iolanthe and he caught the fear in her violet eyes and her need to come to him. She was barely holding herself back. The part of him that was disappointed that she hadn’t called his name or come to him when he had been bested burned away as the male stepped on his bleeding ankle, crushing it beneath his weight and sending fresh agony tearing through Kyter. He threw his head back and bellowed in agony, the sound so loud it drowned everything out together with the throbbing in his head.
The world dimmed and he fought towards the light, refusing to pass out and leave Iolanthe vulnerable.
He would make the male pay for daring to look at her with desire in his eyes and he would show the bastard that he was stronger than he had thought. He could still fight.
Kyter brought his other leg up, slamming his boot into the male’s thigh before he could evade it, knocking him sideways. The moment the male’s weight left him, Kyter rolled onto his front and pushed up onto his good leg. He turned on the male with a snarl and the male charged him, raising his blade at the same time.
Iolanthe appeared between them just as the male brought that blade down and blocked it with her own sword, knocking it away from her and Kyter. She hissed and attacked, each swift strike of her black blade driving the male backwards.
The two demons launched into the fray, the first slamming into her back and knocking a cry from her as she staggered forwards.
; “We only want to talk,” the dark-haired male said and evaded her, sidestepping when she swept her blade in a deadly arc towards him. “I would say it is in your best interest to cooperate.”
The male slid a pointed look towards Kyter.
Pain blazed up Kyter’s leg again and he crumpled, his knees hitting the stone flags with jarring force.
“Son of a bitch,” Kyter snarled and clawed at the stones as his vision wobbled again.
Iolanthe froze, her fine black eyebrows furrowing as she looked back at him, fear and concern filling her beautiful eyes and lacing her scent.
She turned towards him but the males didn’t give her a chance to reach him. The two big demons grabbed her arms, one twisting the sword from her grip, and the sorcerer flicked his hand towards her, binding her ankles together.
Kyter tried to stand, making it onto his knees before the sorcerer hit him with a spell that pinned his arms behind his back. All he could do was kneel and watch as the dark-haired male advanced on Iolanthe. She stood perfectly still, her violet eyes turning cold, no trace of fear in them now.
Kyter growled low in his throat as the men closed rank. The demons turned at angles to face her, their bodies pressed against hers. Intimately. He snarled at the way the dark-haired male didn’t stop until he was almost pressed against her too, his front to hers. When the man dared to touch her cheek, to cup it and tilt her head up towards him, bringing her lips close to his, Kyter roared and tried to move.
The man looked over his shoulder at Kyter and slid him another cruel smile.
Kyter bellowed again as pain ripped through him. He arched backwards and screamed at the moon until he was hoarse and his voice died, every inch of him tensing as he fought the agony tearing him to pieces.
The pain subsided and he collapsed forwards, his bound arms aching as they pressed against his back with each ragged breath he drew.
What the hell? It felt as if the male had struck him again. It had felt that way earlier too. Both times the man hadn’t touched him, but it felt as if he had. Did it have something to do with his sword? Did it give him some sort of control over the wound he inflicted?
Hunted by a Jaguar Page 18
