Out of the Darkness: Taken by the Panter #1 (Taken by the Panther, #1)

by V M Black

  He grabbed her bare forearm, and an electric reaction rippled through her—his skin against her skin, his human body touching hers, and for an instant, the animal was beaten fractionally back.

  Frantically, Tara grabbed his other hand, holding it so hard in hers that her bones hurt. The panther was driven back a little more.

  “Tara,” he repeated, a statement, a call to her human self.

  “Touch me,” she said—no, not said. Begged.

  She put his hand to her face, and the bulging, shifting bones and muscles there went still. But the panther was still in her head—and angry now, because Tara knew how to defeat her, if only for the moment.

  “You have to touch me,” she said again, sliding her hand so that they were in contact down the length of their arms.

  Chay’s face was twisted now, his dark eyes unreadable. He swore, long and inventively, using words Tara had never heard before. Then he bent his head to her upturned one and kissed her.

  It was as if someone had taken the chaos in Tara’s head and set it on fire. Even as her body’s external changes were quelled, her mind exploded. A shot of lust went through her, raw and untampered by the kinds of human thoughts she was used to, and she made a noise in her throat—a panther’s growl through her own lips.

  His tongue was in her mouth, stroking it to the rhythm of his body, to the rhythm he forced on her as she rode his thigh that pushed between her thighs even as her ass came up against the cold porcelain of the wall sink. His hot mouth tasted so good she thought she could get drunk on it.

  Her hands slid under his shirt, skimming the contours of his belly, his chest, slipping around behind him to pull him harder against her. She knew this was all wrong—that this man whom she barely knew, whom she’d just met, should not be breaking off his kiss only long enough to jerk her shirt and bra off over her head together.

  But that voice was very faint now. It belonged to the Tara from before, not to the panther that beat against her brain and throbbed in her veins or to the Tara that was merely an avatar of herself, the human form.

  She yanked his shirt up, exposing his chest and belly, and he pulled it off over his head before he kissed her again, hard and rough and demanding, bruising her lips. The place between her legs was hot, throbbing, swollen, and she needed him there more than she had needed anything in her life. The panther was not defeated, merely contained, and what it wanted this body to do was what this new Tara must have.

  Tara bit down on Chay’s lip as she found his belt, jerking it loose. He pushed her hands away and tipped her head back under his, urging, forcing her jaw open farther with his fingers hooked around her neck, his thumb on her chin.

  His tongue shoved deep into her mouth. A tiny, distant part of her was dazed by the fierceness of the pleasure that it brought to her. Her clit and her nipples and her lips and her brain all throbbed with it as his other hand slid under the waistband of her pants and the elastic of her panties, across the triangular patch of curls to plunge deep inside of her with a shock that stole her breath and crackled down to her toes.

  He stroked her with his hands and tongue, rocking her with him. Her body was now entirely hers again, but her mind was alive with a kind of feral energy that drove her desperately deeper into his power. But even that wasn’t enough, and she regained enough control of her hands to jerk his belt open, twisting his button free and sliding his zipper down the fly.

  “Tara—” He broke away long enough to say her name. It was a warning this time, but even as he spoke, his fingers inside her kept urging her toward the edge.

  With a small cry, she leaned her head forward, against his shoulder, as the first tremors of her approaching orgasm overtook her.

  “Please, Chay,” she demanded shamelessly as her hand encircled the hard girth of his cock, not knowing or caring whether she was fighting or submitting to the beast inside her head.

  “Oh, frakking hell,” he said, and he freed himself just long enough to yank her pants down, over her knees and ankles so they tangled on her shoes. He stepped into the circle formed by her leggings, and she grabbed for his waistband again. But he caught her wrist, his hands slick from her wetness, and angled his cock into her body.

  Tara gasped as his body came up against hers. His hand under her ass boosted her onto the edge of the sink, and she wrapped her legs around his waist convulsively. He was so hot inside her, his thick length filling her body and searing into her brain.

  He drove into her hard, almost hurting her, and she took his mouth, biting his lip again in return. A kind of small tremor went through him, and he thrust into her again and again, building speed until she had to break her kiss. Her breaths matched his, and her fingernails scored deep lines along his back under the assault of sensation as she leaned against the solid wall of his chest.

  Her orgasm finally came, and it came so hard that it ripped a keening wail from her throat, a victorious declaration of her certainty in the body that was now the only thing in her world—

  Apart from him, Chay, the man whose very smell went straight into the base of her brain, whose hands and body were everywhere on her, around her. As she was coming down, he shuddered as he came, deep inside her, still pumping against her body to play out the last waves of her climax.

  Finally, he stilled, and for a suspended, indefinite moment, Tara just clung to him, her eyes shut tight, pushing away the thoughts that she knew would come. Eventually, though, the spell was broken, and he stepped away, pulling free of her.

  Tara looked up into his dark eyes and breathed into her very human lungs.

  “What the hell did we just do?” she said.

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  The story continues in...

  Out of Chances

  Taken by the Panther – Book 2

  Aethereal Bonds

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  Chay Bane’s years of experience tell him that Tara Morland is doomed, destined to lose against the panther who took over her mind and transformed her body. But even though the former SEAL panther shifter has made a career of rescuing other shifters in trouble, his connection to Tara goes far beyond his role in freeing her from the military prison where she’d been confined. And from the moment he lays eyes on her, Chay is determined to save her—whatever the cost.

  All Tara wants is to master the beast inside of her, and she finds herself as dependent on the brilliant hacker Chay as she is attracted to him. But there are terrible secrets in the Black Mesa facility where Chay spirits her away—secrets that can threaten her hard-won sanity and her life.

  Want to keep reading in the Aethereal Bonds world? The billionaire vampire awaits you. Try Life Blood—for free!

  Life Blood by V. M. Black – Now Free!

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  She wanted life. He needed her blood.

  Cora Shaw will do anything to live. Diagnosed with terminal cancer in her senior year of college, she is given a choice: Call hospice, or seek out a mysterious man who promises an impossible—and insanely dangerous—cure.

  She knows him only as Mr. Thorne, a reclusive billionaire who seems full of contradictions. A man with strange, impossible powers over her.

  A man, she discovers, who is not a man at all.

  In the Vampire’s Office ....

  “Cora Ann Shaw. T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia. Terminal. Is that correct?”

  The cold summary hit me like a blow. I opened my mouth, and for a moment nothing came out. He raised his gaze to meet mine. His eyes were icy blue, and they seemed to look right through me.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “That’s right. Dr. Robeson said you could help me.”

  “You
must understand that you are first required to pass the initial tests,” he said, his brow low and stern.

  “I understand,” I said, even though I didn’t.

  Mr. Thorne opened a drawer and took out a small black case. He stood and circled the desk until he stood above me, so close that I might have reached out and touched the hem of his pinstripe suit jacket. He was, I thought, quite tall.

  He set the case on the edge of the desk and unzipped it, opening it to reveal a kind of blood collection kit. I sat up straighter. With the last round of medication, I’d become used to regular injections, but I still wouldn’t say that I was exactly blasé about needles.

  And anyhow, blood collection? In an office? That was...unconventional.

  “The results of the screening will indicate if you are a good candidate for the procedure,” Mr. Thorne said. He selected a needle from the array inside the case, locking it into a holder. “But you must know, even if the outcome is encouraging, the treatment is only successful in a small minority of cases.”

  “How small?” I asked, as much to distract myself from his preparations as out of a desire to know the answer. I could always Google for details later.

  “One in a hundred,” he said. “Perhaps less.”

  “Oh,” I said in a little voice. “That is small.”

  “And if the procedure is unsuccessful, it always results in death,” he continued.

  “Wait, what?” What the hell kind of procedure was that? “So a one percent chance of cure, and a ninety-nine percent chance of death? That doesn’t sound like smart odds to me.”

  He looked up from the needle. His gaze pierced me, his eyes deep and hollow under his straight black brows. As handsome as he was, he didn’t exactly look the picture of health, either. “What are your chances now?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. My chances were exactly nil. Put that way, gambling on an outside chance didn’t seem quite so insane.

  “That is why we only select terminal patients,” he said, pulling out a glass blood collection tube.

  “What about relapse?” I demanded. As a cancer patient, I’d learned that the disease could lurk in my body for months or years, undetectable until it spread out again to kill me.

  “There is no risk of relapse. If you are cured, you are cured.” That mesmerizing gaze caught me again. “Forever.”

  He dropped to one knee next to my chair, and my heart did an unexpected backflip. Oh, God, he was a beautiful man, more beautiful than he had any right to be. I tried to think about something else, anything else, because this certainly wasn’t the right kind of response of a patient to her doctor. But this close, I could smell his cologne, all sandalwood, leather, and musk, and my mind refused to obey my order to find something else to dwell on. Pink elephants, pink elephants, pink elephants...

  How old was he? I wondered. He carried the authority of an older man, but this close, I could see that his pale skin was almost inhumanly flawless, not so much young as...perfect.

  Damn.

  At least it was too dark for him to see my furious blush.

  He held out a hand. I stared at it for a moment before I realized that he wanted my arm.

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” I asked.

  “I am not at risk of blood contamination,” he said, sounding unaccountably amused.

  For some reason, I believed him, even though I had no reason to. I gave him my arm, inner wrist facing upwards. His fingers touched my skin, cool and commanding, as he slid the sleeve of my sweater up to bear the crease of my elbow. It sent a deep shiver through me, a tightening in my center that made me blush even harder. My jacket slipped from my lap to crumple on the floor between us. I tried not to look at him, but I could not stop myself from staring at the top of his head with such intensity that I was half-surprised that his impeccably combed hair didn’t combust.

  He’s about to stick you with a needle, you idiot, I snarled at myself. Don’t you have any sense or dignity at all?

  He looked up at me, one side of that delicious mouth quirking, and my breath tangled in my lungs. No, no I don’t, I thought distantly. No sense or dignity at all.

  Mr. Thorne wiped the inside of my elbow with an alcohol-soaked swab. The smell of evaporating ethanol turned my stomach a little.

  “It won’t hurt,” he said, discarding the swab and taking up the needle. “I promise.”

  I started to protest such an absurd claim, but just then, the needle met the skin above my vein. Something else happened at the same moment—some sensation that came from the touch of his hand against my wrist. It spiraled outward, up my arm and deep into my center, rippling back up into my head so suddenly that I gasped. The needle pushed through my skin at the same moment that a heady wave welled up to carry the pain of the needle and turn it into a deep, twisting sensation that sent my heart racing as heat flooded my groin.

  I stared at the needle in my arm as the shivering reaction swept over me. My skin was burning, my body flushed against the impossible coolness of his fingers. The blood collection tube was almost full. Swiftly, Mr. Thorne pulled it free, then slipped the needle from my vein.

  “No—” I said involuntarily as the sensation was cut off. I needed—I needed it back. I needed him.

  What was wrong with me?

  I turned my bewildered gaze to Mr. Thorne. His face was still as pale as ivory, but there was a dark glitter in his hooded eyes that matched my need and sent my heart skittering out of control.

  “What did you do to me?” I whispered.

  “You would say yes,” he said, the dark hunger of his voice tinged with an infinite sadness as he stood and discarded the used needle, setting the blood collection tube upon the desk. “If I told you right now that I knew you would die, you would still say yes.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, even as my body said, I would—to anything, anything at all...

  He bent over me, and I tried not to notice the scent of him. He touched the bead of blood that had formed upon the needle’s exit. I could hear his breathing now—irregular as mine had become. With the tip of his forefinger, he scooped up the droplet, holding it suspended just as he held me with the force of his regard.

  A shudder went through his frame, and he curled his fingers into a fist, smearing the blood across his palm. Suddenly, he seemed to grow, as if some darkness were uncurling inside him, extending past the limits of flesh and bone.

  “Go,” he ground out. “Go now, before I damn my best intentions.”

  It was as if some invisible bonds that had been holding me to my chair had been broken. I sprang up, snatched up my jacket, and fled, banging through the tall mahogany doors and not stopping until I jabbed the down button on the elevator.

  “Goodbye, Miss Shaw,” the secretary said unconcernedly from behind her desk. “You can expect the results within a week.”

  The door slid open, and I stumbled into the elevator compartment, slapping at the ground floor button frantically until the doors finally, reluctantly closed.

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  My shifter novella serials usually come out on the first Tuesday of every month. Start with Taken: The Alpha’s Captive #1.

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  I’m currently working exclusively in the Aethereal Bonds world, which I’ve mapped out to be big enough to let me tell all the different kinds of stories I want to share with readers. It’s got vampires, demons, weres, faes, and more—all sorts of creatures that are great fun to play with.