Death, The Vamp and His Brother

by Lexxie Couper

  A dark light ignited in Ven’s eyes and an expression of furious grief etched his face. “If it means I get to kick the shit out of arse-holes like Pestilence and Raziel, consider me signed up for life.”

  Patrick studied his brother. There was more to Ven’s uncharacteristic response than physical pain and he would ask him about it, as well as fill him in on their family connections, a little fact his brother would probably find highly amusing, or irritating. Just not now. Not while his obvious anguish simmered so close to the surface.

  Later.

  He turned to Fred, smoothing his hands up her back. All he wanted to do was bury his head into her neck and breathe her in until he was giddy on her scent, but something still troubled him. “Tell me,” he said, fixing her with a steady look. “Where did I send Pestilence? Cause frankly, I haven’t got a bloody clue.”

  Fred laughed. “The only place befitting an egomaniac asshole with delusions of grandeur. The lowest pit of hell. Kinda like being sent to detention for demons and entities.”

  “Can he come back?”

  A distant expression crossed her face for a moment, her eyes glowing a brilliant white before they returned to their normal blue and she shook her head. “No. The First Horseman is where he is meant to be. The punishment is sound and the Weave has been rethread. The Order of Actuality is restored.”

  Patrick suppressed a sigh and tugged her closer. “Is that it? Is it over? Can I go back to being just a lifeguard now?”

  She gave him a long look, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Well…”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “If you say no, you’re going to miss out on the best sex of your existence.”

  “Oh, in that case.” She grinned. “It’s over. The beginning has ended.”

  Patrick touched his lips to hers. “About bloody time.”

  Epilogue

  Death looked at herself in the mirror and sighed, a smile curling her lips. She looked good naked. Damn good. Maybe that’s why the lifeguard couldn’t keep his hands of her, a situation completely acceptable in her opinion. For the last five human days they’d done nothing but make love and when it came down to it, she could definitely go the rest of eternity with Patrick Watkins unable to keep his hands off her. Definitely.

  “Are you done yet? Or do I have to come over there and help you check out how goddamn gorgeous you are?”

  Fred threw him a grin over her shoulder. “Promises, promises. And you should probably rethink the blasphemy. You’re going to piss off the family.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her and straightened from the bed. “The thing with family,” he murmured, walking towards her, his lean, surfer’s body as naked as hers. “They’ve all got that embarrassing cousin that just can’t seem to keep his mouth shut.”

  The pit of Fred’s belly twisted. Her nipples pinched tight. She watched him approach her, her sex growing heavy. Thick. Wet.

  Yes. An eternity of Patrick Watkins she could really go for.

  An eternity she didn’t have.

  She sighed and turned back to the mirror. Despite the fact Patrick had no date of death she was aware of, one day he would die. She couldn’t see it any other way. He was mortal. All mortals died eventually. The Order of Actuality demanded it so. One day, Patrick’s number would be up and no matter how much she hated it, she would—

  She cut that line of thought dead and sighed again. By the Powers, she didn’t want to think about this. She really didn’t.

  “That’s a lot of sighing for a woman just paid a blasphemous compliment.” Patrick slid his hands over her hips and tugged her back against his body. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Fred closed her eyes and leant into his delicious embrace. He felt so damn good. So damn right. How did she tell him they didn’t have an eternity? That she would continue long after she’d brought his life to an end? How did she tell him one day he would—

  “Die?” he murmured in her ear, pressing her closer to his body. “By your very hand?”

  She stiffened, closing her eyes. “I thought we agreed to not peek inside each others thoughts.”

  Patrick lowered his head, nibbling on her neck. “Didn’t need to be in your head to know what you were thinking, babe.” He smoothed his hands up over her ribcage, skimmed his knuckles along the bottom curve of her breasts. “I seem to be able to read your face better than I do the waves.”

  She laughed, shifting her weight until her ass nuzzled his very impressive erection. “That well?”

  “Hmmm.” He trailed his fingertips up the under swell of her breasts, circled her nipples once. “Scary isn’t it.” His lips moved over her neck, explored the little dip below her ear. “Just out of interest, why do you think you are going to claim my soul one day?”

  The damp heat blooming between Fred’s thighs cooled and she frowned. She didn’t want to have this conversation. Not while they were both naked. Not ever. She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go, his lips charting a slow path down to her shoulder, as if he wasn’t asking her about his removal from the mortal coil. She swallowed, the churning in her stomach overwhelming. So this was fear? By the Powers, how did humans live with it? Handle it?

  “Fred?” The tip of Patrick’s tongue drew a line along her shoulder, and she shivered.

  “Because you are mortal. One day your time will come.”

  She expected his hands to stop their slow torment of her body. Instead, he scooped each breast into a gentle grip and rolled the pad of his thumb over her taut nipples.

  “Hmmm,” he murmured against her neck again. “If I told you we had the rest of forever, would you be upset?”

  Fred twisted in his embrace, studying him from the corner of her eye. “Why would you say that?”

  Patrick’s lips twitched. “Let’s just say I’ve been talking with the family.”

  She frowned at him, her heartbeat growing quicker. Louder. Thumping in her chest, her throat, her ears. “With the family? What are you—”

  Patrick chuckled, sliding his hands from her breasts, down to her hips to rotate her slowly in his hold. “Turns out that embarrassing cousin is very good at weaving.”

  Fred’s heart thumped harder. Her lips tingled. “Weaving?” She paused a moment, gazing into Patrick’s laughing green eyes, not wanting to believe the squirming hope unfurling in the pit of her belly. “As in rethreading? As in rethreading the Order of Actuality? As in…”

  “Not now, Fred.” He pressed her body to his, hip to hip, sex to sex, heart to heart. “Ask me again in a millennium.”

  About the Author

  Lexxie’s not a deviant. She just has a deviant’s imagination and a desire to entertain readers with her words. Add the two together and you get darkly erotic romances with a twist of horror, sci-fi and the paranormal.

  When she’s not submerged in the worlds she creates, Lexxie’s life revolves around her family, a husband who thinks she’s insane, a pony-sized mutt who thinks he’s a lapdog, two yabbies hell-bent on destroying their tank and her daughters, who both utterly captured her heart and changed her life forever.

  Contact Lexxie at lexxie@lexxiecouper.com, follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/lexxie_couper or visit her at www.lexxiecouper.com where she occasionally makes a fool of herself on her blog.

  Look for these titles by Lexxie Couper

  Now Available:

  Savage Retribution

  An animal rights activist is about to get a crash course in werewolves. One she may not survive.

  Savage Retribution

  © 2008 Lexxie Couper

  Lone Irish werewolf Declan O'Connell has lost everything—his family, his clan, even his freedom—to his arch-rival, Nathan Epoc. The head of an underground werewolf clan and a brilliant scientist, Epoc plans to use Declan to create a super-wolf, a creature capable of shifting the balance of power in the lycanthrope world. But Epoc’s plans are about to be thwarted

  Regan Thomas, a determined animal rights activist, rescues what
she thinks is an ordinary wolf from his notorious animal testing facility in Sydney, Australia. She gets more than she bargained for when the wolf turns into an extremely hunky, extremely naked man who immediately drags her into a world where the clash between two opposing werewolf clans could spell the end of humankind.

  Declan has survived without a clan for more years than he cares to remember, but sexy Regan stirs up all his fierce, alpha-wolf instincts. Now Declan has one last chance at revenge. But can he keep Regan alive, and resist the overwhelming attraction between them, long enough to stop Epoc?

  Summer in Australia has never been this hot…or this dangerous.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Savage Retribution

  Regan’s heart hammered.

  The wolf lay on its side, taking up most of her old sofa, its eyes closed, its rib cage rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths. Dry blood smattered the grey fur on its neck, cracked and thick like black mud. The cushions of her sofa bowed and compressed under the animal’s massive bulk and, as she had in the lab, Regan wondered what species it was. None she was familiar with.

  How can that be?

  She frowned. She was at least passingly familiar with just about every species in existence—she had to be in her line of work. How could she not—

  The wolf whined again, softer, weaker, and Regan’s puzzlement vanished.

  In a heartbeat she crossed the room and crouched by the wounded animal, skimming her hands over its body. A wave of awe rolled through the cold worry knotted in her chest. It was unwell. Its limbs trembled and each breath seemed weaker than the last, yet its feral strength was undeniable. She’d thought it a creature of primitive power back in Epoc’s lab but now, here in her room with its corded muscles under her examining fingers, its mana seemed almost tangible. “What genus are you, my friend?” she whispered, running her hands over steely quadriceps much bigger and longer than any wolf species she knew. Quadriceps turned to femur, femur to pelvic bone.

  Regan frowned, confusion squirming in her gut. The animal’s pelvis felt wrong, like some sick bastard with a Doctor Moreau complex had taken to it with a bone grinder in an attempt to reshape it into a human hipbone. “What have they been doing to you, mate?” she murmured, tracing the distorted bone. “My God, how can you even walk?”

  She moved her hands up the wolf’s spine, counting vertebrae, looking for wounds or injuries. Curiosity ate at her concern. Where had the creature come from? Wolves were not native to Australia and as far as she knew, the only ones in the country were those housed in zoos and animal enclosures. For this lone wolf to be in Epoc’s lab…?

  Imported illegally, perhaps?

  But from where?

  Her seeking fingers slid through a patch of wet fur low on the wolf’s rib cage and Regan stilled her investigation. She parted the animal’s dense coat, looking for… “There it is.”

  Fresh blood, bright red and warm on her fingers, seeped from a ragged hole puncturing the wolf’s side. Regan prodded the surrounding flesh gently, worrying the bullet may be embedded in bone beneath. She’d have to get the animal to Rick. Whether the bullet was there or not, the wound needed to be—

  The wolf whined. Low. Almost human.

  “I’m sorry, mate,” Regan soothed, removing her fingers from its rib cage. Chewing on her bottom lip, she smoothed her palms over its scapular and down first one foreleg and then the other. Both rippled with muscle and once again, uneasy wonderment wriggled in Regan’s stomach. The humerus seemed too close to human in structure to be possible. She ran her hands over it and it seemed to shift. Grow longer. Straighter.

  Regan scrubbed the back of her hand against her eyes. She must be sleep deprived. Bones didn’t change structure. With a slight shake of her head, she went back to her examination. As soon as she was convinced the animal could be moved, she’d call Rick. He’d give his left nut to help her out, any excuse to try and impress her into his bed. But quite frankly, she had no hope of moving the animal herself, even if it would fit in her car.

  Another whine whispered on the air, so soft Regan almost missed it. “Not much longer, my mysterious friend,” she whispered, letting her hands settle on the wolf’s rib cage again, careful to avoid its wound. Its coat felt like fine velvet under her palms and for a dreamlike moment, she felt like pressing her face to the animal’s side. She leant forward, sliding her hands to its shoulder joint in search of wounds unseen and her bare nipples brushed against the wolf’s chest, flesh to fur. Soft. Cool. So much more than she’d expected. So much more than any animal species she knew.

  What type of wolf are you?

  She returned her attention to the wolf’s body. With the exception of the bullet wound, it seemed physically uninjured, but who knew what Epoc’s scientists had been doing to it. She smoothed her hands over the silken fur, a distant more detached part of her mind admiring the wolf’s superb biomechanical construct. It was a creature evolved for one purpose only—to kill—yet its beauty was undeniable. Strength, menace and deadly purpose all combined in the majestic somehow romantic form of—

  The thigh muscle below her palm shifted, elongated, and Regan stumbled backward, landing flat on her bare butt with an ignominious thud. She stared at the massive, powerful and utterly lupine form. Watched it contort. Shudder.

  The dense fur rippled, each strand seemingly alive with its own energy. The back legs grew long, straight. Thick, corded thigh muscles formed on bones no longer short and crooked. “What the…” Regan’s stunned whisper barely left her lips.

  Another shudder wracked the wolf’s contorting form. Another. And another. Its fur grew thin, retracting into the flesh beneath, disappearing with each violent convulsion until its coat no longer existed and instead…

  Regan’s heart froze and she stared at the naked man laying full-length on her sofa.

  The naked, trembling, gasping man laying full-length on her sofa.

  Looking at her.

  “What the hell?”

  The man’s eyes—the angry color of a stormy winter’s sky—flicked over her face. Like oiled smoke, he was on his feet, hard, lean body coiling, pale flesh glistening with a faint sheen of sweat in the sun-filled room. Regan stared at him. Speechless. Unable to move.

  Shaggy ink black hair fell across his forehead, brushed straight eyebrows of the same color, cheekbones high and angular. Smooth, curved pecs cut down to a hairless torso sculpted in muscle. Nothing detracted from the perfection of his body, not even the mean scar slashing his pale skin from navel to groin. Regan traced the ragged white line with her eye, her stomach clenching as it disappeared into a thick thatch of black pubic hair just above—

  Oh, my God! He’s huge!

  A sharp intake of breath jerked her gaze back up to his face, in time to see nostrils flaring on a nose almost too long, almost too large. Those stormy eyes held hers. Kept her naked ass on the carpet. Frozen.

  Compelling.

  The word flittered through her head, disconnected and surreal and with it came a tight throb, low in the pit of her stomach. A clenching, warm beat between her thighs.

  Damn, Woman! Have you lost your mind?

  She sucked in her own swift breath, tasting his sweat on the air. “Who…” She began.

  Those grey eyes flickered. Grew wild. Dangerous. “You’re in a lotta trouble, love,” he growled, a soft brogue lacing the foreboding words seconds before every muscle in his perfect body coiled and he leapt.

  At her.

  He slammed into her, flattening her to the floor. Back, shoulders, skull. Bright pain spiked through her head, cold and hot at the same time, and she cried out. Strong, long-fingered hands clamped around her wrists, pinning them to the floor beside her head with a grip so fierce her brother would have been jealous. Regan squealed, glaring up into grey, burning eyes. “Get off me, you bastard!” She bucked—all too aware of the muscled body pressed to hers. The naked body.

  Fair Dinkum, Woman! Only seconds earlier he was a wolf! Wake up!

/>   A hot breath feathered her face, ruffled her hair and she bucked again. This was no dream. He was no dream. “Get off me, you freak!”

  Grey eyes flashed, all the more intense for the thick, black lashes framing them. “I’m no freak, lady.”

  The words flowed from well-defined lips, the soft Irish accent she’d heard earlier cut with anger. Long, corded legs battled hers, pinned them to the floor with a brutal strength. His knees shoved at hers, spreading her thighs wide until her lower body was completely trapped by his.

  A rock-hard pressure nudged at the soft lips of her sex and Regan sucked in a sharp breath. Oh no, he was aroused!

  Aren’t you?

  Hot, terrified shame tore through her. Yes. She was. “Get off me!” she screamed, thrashing underneath him in desperate fury. “Get off me! Get off me! Get off me!”

  Love might stand a chance…if they can keep from killing each other.

  Hunger

  © 2009 Barbara J. Hancock

  Holly Spinnaker is a monster. Really. Fangs and all. Never mind the petite figure. Pay no attention to the once-bouncy blonde mane. When Jarvis Winters first encounters…it…he prepares to exterminate freak number one hundred thirty two without a flinch.

  Mistake number one: following it back to its lair. Mistake number two: watching and listening to her…it…replay voice mail messages from loving, clueless parents again and again and again. Mistake number three: having an actual conversation with a bloodthirsty fiend.

  “Make them see you as a person.” Holly remembers the advice from a self-defense class her mother made her take her freshmen year. She couldn’t save her own sister, who ended up a pile of ashes at her feet only one month ago. The night they both found out monsters were real. The night her sister embraced the change. And Holly began to fight it.