Primal Temptation

by Sydney Somers

  Dedication

  To Jeff…

  I love you more!

  Prologue

  He dreamed of her death.

  The images shadowed his mind, creeping along the edge of conscious thought as he jolted awake.

  He struggled against the heavy chains around his wrists and ankles, the abrasive steel tearing at his skin. Caught between dreams and the reality of his imprisonment, it took a few moments to recognize the dark, impenetrable crystal walls of his cell, the claustrophobic ceiling that left barely enough room to stand.

  How long had he been here? Weeks? Years? Centuries?

  It was impossible to tell.

  He leaned into the cool stone where he sat on the ground, the uneven rock digging into his back. He ignored the uncomfortable sensation. It would pass as quickly as the irritation from the already-healing scrapes on his wrists.

  He tipped his head back, staring up at where he imagined the sun might be shining overhead. By the gods, he longed to feel the warming rays on his face, the heated tingle of them sinking into his skin.

  Instead he felt only the damp, gritty earth beneath him and the chill of the dark broken only by fragments of muted light from a torch in a nearby tunnel. A tunnel that might as well have been on the opposite end of the world for all the good it did him.

  His eyes slid shut, the dream growing more distant as it did every time he fought to recall the details—blood, darker than crimson and smelling faintly of old magic, the cold unforgiving metal of the blade, the crippling sense of betrayal, heartbreak and fear.

  So much fear it coated the back of his throat until he nearly choked on it.

  The harder he concentrated, determined to learn everything he could from the images that would come to pass, the more he grappled with slippery fingers to catch hold of a cloud.

  He punched the ground and threw a bloodied handful of dirt and rocks at the wall. He couldn’t remain here, couldn’t wait for his sentence to pass, especially not if he was meant to rot here for eternity.

  If he did nothing, she would die.

  And it would change everything.

  Chapter One

  “You are a goddess.”

  Grinning, Briana Callaghan wiggled out from under the desk after checking the local connection on the custom-built security system she had nearly finished upgrading. “Say it any louder and you might be struck down by the real deal.” Immortal beings could be notoriously vain, and the goddess who came to mind was known for striking out for far less.

  Mac sprawled in the chair pushed away from the desk, arms crossed and legs stretched out in front of him. He wore a white shirt and dark suit that probably cost more than her commission for this job, the top buttons undone and his tie half stuffed in his pocket.

  He looked like he’d just come from a cover shoot for sexiest man of the year—an image at complete odds with her earliest memories of him swinging a sword, covered in dirt and sweat as he sparred with her brothers on a muddy field, talking of one day joining King Arthur on the battlefield.

  The six-foot-plus gargoyle shifter shrugged, his wolf half glittering in his eyes. “What’s Rhiannon going to do? Curse me to spend my daylight hours trapped in stone?” He straightened in the chair, changing positions for the tenth time in less than three minutes.

  Briana stood, smiling and bumping him with her arm in passing. “I’d tell you to get over it already, but you’re too broody to forgo personal pity parties.”

  Mac’s eyes narrowed, and she laughed.

  Every predatory cat, wolf and dragon gargoyle who called Avalon home had felt the goddess’s wrath when King Arthur, her only son, died on the battlefield at Camlann centuries ago. The vicious and bloody war between Arthur and his half-sister over Camelot had raged for years before Arthur fell at the hands of his own nephew.

  Blaming the gargoyle race for Arthur’s fatal wounds, Rhiannon had made sure that even those who crossed the veil to hide in the human realm couldn’t escape the curse of being trapped in their stone gargoyle from sunrise to sunset. Overnight, the mystical stone once viewed as a gargoyle’s ultimate protection against enemies was turned against them, a prison sentence with no expiry date.

  Although plenty of gargoyles shared Mac’s lingering resentment for the unjust punishment following Arthur’s death, Briana had made her peace with it a long time ago.

  It was the latest change she struggled to adapt to.

  With a glance at her laptop, she crouched once more to check the installed hardware. “Shouldn’t you be used to it by now?” How many centuries did the rest of the gargoyle race need to get used to the way things were? She scanned the programming code on her screen.

  “Easy to say coming from someone—” Mac leaned forward, his voice lowering, “—who can now control the shift to stone.”

  Her head snapped up, her smile vanishing. “My brother has a big mouth.” Considering how much time her brother Cian spent with his new mate, it was a wonder he’d pried his mouth off Emma’s long enough to do more than devour a few Big Macs, let alone confide in Mac.

  Feeling the wolf’s curious gaze burning holes in her back, Briana deliberately focused on her laptop.

  Control was still too loose of a term to describe the fact that she didn’t automatically turn to stone with every sunrise, and she’d gladly give that up if it would undo the fact that—like her three older brothers—she’d found her mate.

  She refused to discuss who her mate was with her brothers, so she sure as hell wasn’t talking about it with Mac. He might have a reputation for getting people to open up to him, but she knew better. For every second he spent looking like he didn’t have another place in the world to be, he was pinpointing a weakness that he could use to his advantage later.

  When she heard him fidget again, she turned around. “Don’t you have a casino downstairs to oversee? I’m almost done anyway, and you know you don’t need to be here for this.”

  He stared at her, waiting.

  “You know that dominant wolf thing and staring everyone into submission doesn’t work on me.”

  His eyes narrowed, and she knew he was probably trying to remember a time he’d been successful with it before. She rocked back on her heels, glad she wasn’t at the mercy of the whole “pack” mentality that wolves placed such an importance on.

  A few moments later Mac stood, wisely giving up on probing for more information. Cian had undoubtedly put him up to it. “I’m going, but only because we both know that when you say you’re almost done, it really means you’re going to tweak things for another couple hours.”

  “I like to be thorough.”

  “For what you’re charging me, I’d damn well hope so.” He shuddered. “Cristo would have only cost me half as much.”

  Briana snorted. “That hack? He’s also the reason you needed me to begin with.” Frowning at the screen, she pulled up the chair Mac abandoned and dropped into it. “You’re not going to have any more theft problems when I’m done with this upgrade.”

  “And you’re sure it will scare the shit out of any human thieves stupid enough to break into the hotel guest rooms, but not give them a heart attack?”

  “I can’t promise that the Fae glamour I’ve got wired into this system won’t make a mortal piss his pants, but the illusion is nothing that’s going to bring the media or a huntress to your doorstep.”

  Mac shuddered at the mention of the latter. “Crazy bitches. Did you know they got their girdles in a bunch when I refused to rent out my penthouse a couple weeks back after they decided to turn the Wolf’s Den into their new favorite playground?”

  Laughing, Briana swiveled away from the screen. “Well that explains the naked picture of you they were circulating on the net.”

>   Judge, jury and oftentimes executioner, huntresses were hand-picked by Rhiannon to hunt down rogue immortals that threatened to betray the existence of Avalon to the human race. Getting on their bad side left immortals in a world of pain or dead.

  Since Briana had become close friends with some of them after her oldest brother had taken a huntress as a mate, she knew firsthand how much trouble they could be. And that was if they liked you.

  Apparently they weren’t fans of Mac’s.

  She might have regretted mentioning it until she glimpsed the scowl on Mac’s face. It wasn’t easy to get a rise out of the laid-back wolf. “Could have been worse,” she added. “They could have Photoshopped in a really small pe—”

  “Try not to have too much fun up here.” Cursing under his breath Mac headed for the door. “I’ll be in the control room when you want to check out the feed from down there.”

  “I shouldn’t need to this time.” Still smiling, she turned back to the screen.

  “You say that now. We both know you won’t be able to help yourself. You like to poke around down there too much.” He added something she didn’t catch, but sounded a little like room service.

  She lifted her head. “Hmmm?”

  He laughed. “Never mind. You’re too distracted with work and will just forget to eat anything I send up for you anyway.”

  Sometimes it felt like she had four older brothers.

  He paused in the doorway. “What should I tell Cian?”

  “That I threatened to kick your ass in your fancy ultimate fighting ring down the hall when you asked me about it.” If she’d been more careful, Cian wouldn’t have discovered she turned to stone more out of habit than because of Rhiannon’s curse.

  Mac scoffed but thankfully left her to her work.

  The wolf turned out to be more right than she would have guessed. After another hour and a half of fiddling, she reengaged the security system in Mac’s penthouse and walked down the hall. By the time she reached the main room, she’d deliberately tripped the silent alarm, triggering the counter measures she’d programmed to deal with an intruder—human or immortal.

  The whisper of shadow that crossed her peripheral vision was real enough to stir the predatory cat half of her. She fought the instinctive urge to drop into a crouch and shift.

  The bright glow of the Las Vegas strip lit up the night sky beyond the wall of windows, making it easy enough to track the shadowy figure. Moving closer, its claws emerged from the phantom shape that had the cat snarling in her head.

  Everything about the glamour looked and felt real as she watched, motionless, tracking the eerie glide that carried it toward her.

  Leaving her wide-open to be jumped from behind.

  Knocked sideways, the incredible force behind the unexpected attack threw her to her knees. Her claws burst through her fingertips, scraping the floor in an effort to maintain her balance.

  What the hell?

  Another blur of shadows materialized next to her. Only the silky kiss of awareness that teased across the back of her neck kept her animal half from pushing all the way to the surface.

  Lucan.

  She raised her head, watching the former knight face the menacing glamour bearing down on them. Only the top half of him seemed solid, the lower part of his muscular frame lost to the same shadowy webs of blackness that licked along the floor toward them like something out of a nightmare.

  “It’s okay.” She pushed herself to her feet just as Lucan positioned himself between her and the wraith-like glamour now close enough to strike.

  The system was programmed not to attack a human who could be injured simply by believing that what it was seeing was actually real. With immortals, however, the system was meant to be more aggressive. It wouldn’t take long for Lucan to realize his opponent wasn’t any more real than the Easter Bunny, but he could still be injured in the meantime.

  “Lucan,” she tried again.

  The rest of him seemed to evaporate on the air, and the temperature in the room plummeted.

  “Disengage.”

  The room brightened at the termination of the security program just as Lucan lunged forward. The phantom glamour vanished between one breath and the next, and thrown by the unexpected change, Lucan hit the floor, solid once more. The wisps of shadows surrounding him retreated, and Briana found herself staring down at the blond knight dressed in an Aerosmith T-shirt and faded jeans.

  “What the hell was that?” Penetrating, green eyes locked on hers.

  “Work.”

  Back on his feet, he stood opposite her, searching her face. All at once she felt herself surrounded by his scent. A faint hint of iron lingered beneath the raw, dark pull of him that reminded her of the forest at night.

  She allowed her gaze a moment to track down his chest and the hard wall of muscle that she spent way too much time thinking about touching, and then her control slipped back into place.

  She took a step back to gain more space between them only to lose it when he countered with a step forward. She frowned at the inscrutable look on his face. “I was just testing out the modifications I made to Mac’s security system. If you hadn’t jumped me without a word, I could have told you that.”

  His frown deepened and he glanced over his shoulder like he wasn’t quite sure the imitation wraith was gone. “A glamour?”

  Nodding, she tried again to get a little distance between them, knowing it wouldn’t do a damn thing to soften the scent that tugged at her. It haunted her even in her dreams.

  Lucan ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “I thought you stuck with human stuff. Like Dobermans.”

  She shrugged. “I like to experiment now and then.” Innovating kept her immortal cliental coming back for more. A security system might not prevent an immortal from losing their head—which, along with fire and the rare mystical weapon, was the only way to kill someone like her or Lucan—but worked well as an early warning system for most.

  “Experimenting? With a wraith? How dangerous was that thing?”

  “Not as dangerous as you.” The real thing, she silently added, preferring not to voice where the inspiration for the glamour came from. “Might have given you a scratch or two. That’s all.”

  Lucan scoffed. “It’s not me it would have scratched.”

  She arched a brow at the same overly protective tone she frequently got from her brothers. Turning on her heel, she retraced her steps to Mac’s office. “I’m not the one who ended up eating the floor, unless you count when you shoved me.”

  “You were just standing there.” There wasn’t a trace of apology on his face.

  “I was doing my job.”

  “Then maybe Mac isn’t paying you enough.”

  “I’ll tell him you said that.” Her smile trembled a little from forcing it. She looked away. “What are you so worked up for anyway?” In her experience the knight wasn’t easily rattled.

  As if remembering that himself, his expression became unreadable and he fell into step with her. “I didn’t know Mac was increasing the security around here. No one has targeted him, have they?”

  “Do you honestly think Mac would share something like that with me?” The wolf was even more stubborn than her brothers when it came to handling his own affairs.

  Lucan shrugged, watching her from the corner of his eye. “Impressive, though.”

  Surprised by the praise, she glanced at him.

  “Why a wraith?”

  Wondering if she was hearing something else besides just curiosity, she walked into the office ahead of him. “Because there isn’t a human or immortal who wouldn’t be scared to cross paths with one. No offense.”

  Lucan couldn’t help what he’d become any more than she could help turning to stone during the day. Technically, she supposed she could help it now, but had been hiding it from her brothers for months. Until recently, they’d been too occupied with their mates to notice and ask questions she wasn’t prepared to answer.

/>   “Your brother wasn’t scared of me.” Lucan stared straight ahead.

  “Tristan was protecting his mate. And that wasn’t your fault, Luc.” She paused in front of the desk, not even realizing she’d reached her hand out until he carefully avoided touching her and stepped toward the window.

  “I could have fought it harder.”

  “And driven yourself insane in the process?”

  As bad as the gargoyles had it, Rhiannon had reserved a worse punishment for those closest to Arthur. It didn’t matter that every one of Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table would have sacrificed their life for his—and many had on the bloody battlefield at Camlann—the goddess had made sure their fate was worse than death.

  By enslaving every knight, forcing them to become her personal mercenaries—wraiths—they were blood-bound to complete any task they were assigned. Failure to complete an assignment triggered what some called a madness fueled by excruciating pain and offset by a mindless bloodlust.

  According to her brothers, it was like watching a monster take over, swallowing the man and friend they knew and leaving behind a merciless, unfeeling beast. Finishing an assignment, one way or another, was the only way for Lucan to regain control.

  “It all worked out,” she reminded him. Tristan’s mate had survived Lucan’s attempted assassination and was still keeping both humans and immortals in line at Pendragon’s, the bar Briana’s family ran.

  “She isn’t alive because of anything I did.” He stared out at the Strip. “And the damage it caused…”

  “My brothers don’t hold you responsible any more than I do.” Not entirely anyway. Lucan may have been compelled to kill her brother’s mate, but he hadn’t been the one who’d targeted her in the first place.

  Wishing she could take away the regret in Lucan’s eyes, she contented herself with sharing the view. He glanced at her, but she kept her eyes trained on the neon lights and traffic moving below.

  She wasn’t sure when she’d noticed his presence seemed to soothe the wildness inside her, but as much pleasure as she took in his proximity, she’d give anything to go back to how things used to be between them.