by Talyn Scott
Keys rustled outside the door.
He gripped her chin. “We’re not finished.”
The slide of metal as a single key clicked in the lock.
“Get out of here,” Jenny demanded, turning her face away from him.
Releasing her, Niall lifted his wings and flew from the balcony doors just as heels clicked down the short hallway between the bathroom and bedroom. Cyna rounded the corner wearing a scowl of disapproval. To her right, a large Sentinel appeared but hovered in the shadows.
Jenny wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, before she smiled. “Good evening, Cyna, I see your eye has healed nicely.” Next to her was the blade Niall had taken moments ago. She wondered at him returning it as she discretely shoved it beneath a pile of pillows. “In the werewolf world, we females always say two are better than one.” She sat up. “That goes for eyes, too.”
Cyna crossed her arms over her chest. “Why is the balcony table overturned?”
“I hated the food.”
Her upper lip curled at the corner. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Jenny shrugged. “Who cares what you believe?”
Snapping her fingers, Cyna directed the Sentinel forward. “I warned our Master against this, not to take a pureblood into our little fold, but dollar signs always get the best of him.” She ran her fingers down the front of her dress, as if dismissing Jenny. “I will report your dismay over your dinner to Maxim, and he can handle you accordingly.” She gestured to the Sentinel. “Meanwhile, I’ll add another guard to you.” When she entered the mouth of the hallway, Cyna glared over her shoulder, a promise of death lurking in the Undead’s eyes. “You agreed to attend this ball. Don’t disappoint us.”
After a thundering click of heels, the door slammed.
“Congratulations on staying low-key,” the Sentinel muttered beneath his breath, his hands a sudden hot brand on her upper arms when he shook her. “Couldn’t you have waited until I got you out of here before lifting suspicions?”
Jenny’s heart stopped. “S-searlas?”
He closed those denim blue eyes a heartbreaking moment, then glared at her in a wholly vampiric way. “Where do I even begin?”
“Searlas?” Tears blurred her eyes as she lifted her hands to his face, rubbing the scruff of his dark blond stubble. He looked different, his features more pronounced, his skin a shimmery porcelain. And his canines were gone, replaced with thinner fangs. But somehow, he was still Searlas - her Searlas.
“Jenny, I’m furious with you.”
“I know.” His words brought heartache anew. “It was selfish for me to try and keep you. But you’d died for me and the Gryphs nearly killed me afterwards, too.” She started rambling. “Your ultimate sacrifice was almost in vain, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. At all. So by the time the,” she froze, barely remembering she was never to utter who transformed Searlas into an Undead. She’d said too much just now. “But I had no right. I never had that right.” Hindsight, vampires should never have the right to raise Undead.
“I’m not furious over my transformation.” He kept on glaring. “Well, not now anyway. What I cannot possibly understand is why you’re doing this?”
“I can’t say.”
“I’ve been in this investigation on the backside, for over a year now,” he confessed. “It’s my job. Not. Yours. Now, answer my question.”
“I can’t.”
Searlas looked wild around the eyes, his luscious mouth flattening into a line. “You were a waitress, sweetheart, waiting tables while you attended college. Now, all of the sudden, I find you in the worst crime lord’s house imaginable since Maestru busted up Poison’s Habaline labs.” He shook her again. “And you’re not on our side of the investigation, that’s for sure.”
“We’re always on the same side.” She thought that Searlas was even sexier when he was pissed off. With his hands on her, Jenny remembered him thrusting deep. “Maybe you missed the memo.”
“I wouldn’t need a memo, because werewolves would never, ever risk their females this way!” For a moment, Searlas looked like he would throw up. “I can’t believe you’re working for the vampires.”
“Calm down.” She watched red flush across his cheeks. “You’re going to make yourself thirsty.”
“How would you know that? What else do you know about newly Undead, Jenny? Maybe that they pay a price to their Masters for at least a year, often longer?” His eyes narrowed. “Funny thing I’ve noticed. I don’t have a freaking Master. I sense one but I sure as hell don’t know who he is. And no one’s come to collect my Blood Debt or requested my year of service.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it then.”
“Because you’re in with the vampires to pay my Blood Debt!” He flashed a deliberate fang. “So why should I worry?”
She stayed quiet.
“You’re mine, Jenny. Neither time away nor my transformation into an Undead has changed anything for me. What about you?” He thrust his fingers through his hair, hissing in frustration. “Am I repulsive to you now?”
“Absolutely not!” But Jenny may be repulsive to Searlas, once he saw her naked and scarred.
“Then we still belong to each other,” he said matter of fact, “and whomever sent you here, intended on signing your death warrant. Or worse.”
“You’re wrong.” She’d pressed Syon for this mission, and he’d tried to talk her out of it. “I insisted on this assignment.”
“What?”
“I insisted on this assignment,” she reiterated. “It’s not just our kind here, but humans. Three that we know of, and all were taken during the ambush on the Sanibel compound.”
His eyebrows slammed down. “Who gave you that intel?”
She refused to say.
His head dropped, his mouth skimming over the shell of her ear. “I’ve been deep inside of you, and you still can’t trust me.”
She squeezed her thighs together. “I trust you with my life.”
He thought about that for a moment. “But you don’t trust me with my life.” Searlas lifted his head. “Otherwise, I’d know who my Master is so I could pay my own debt.”
She nearly broke. “I can’t back out now.”
“Oh, you will back out!” he growled at her. “Your intel is seriously lacking.”
“What do you mean?”
“The three missing females you’re here to find turned up two days after the Gryph attack. Unharmed,” he added. “They’d simply partied at the university, then spent the weekend with some humans on Fort Myers Beach.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive, so intel months old is… Jenny,” he breathed, “what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“I’m wondering the same thing.” She had to ask him. “The night you were meeting with Jed. Was he, by chance, working on this same investigation?”
“Jenny, don’t ask me about another operative.”
“Fair enough.”
“But why are you asking about Jed?”
Jenny told him everything she’d gone through with Niall Donn, and to her utter shock, Searlas didn’t seem too surprised.
“He’s coming back?”
Jenny nodded. “So he says.”
Searlas promised, “I’ll take care of Niall.”
“I know you’re stronger and — ”
“I’m tired of you not trusting me,” he snapped. “I want to hear the words.”
“The words?”
“Say the words,” he hissed on another flash of fang. “Right now.”
She hesitated. “I’m not the same since the accident. Emotionally? I might be stronger. But physically, I might as well have been born a mixed blood. I can’t run like I should. Or climb anything substantial without pain ravaging me. My reflexes are off, really off.” But she was alive. “The burns went deep, Sear, and — ”
“I know,” he confessed. “I read your medical reports after you disappeared.”
“Then, you know abou
t my body.”
“You’re trying to tell me that you’re no longer perfect?” he asked in disbelief. “I can never walk in the sun again, can never taste my favorite foods, and often feel like killing or maiming when I should only be a little ticked off.” He shrugged. “Since my rising, sometimes I just wanna burn shit down to watch it roast.”
Her mouth fell open. “Searlas.”
“I could go on.” His eyes were hot, his body suddenly sweltering with anticipation. “But if you don’t say the words, I’m going to reach inside and pull them straight from your heart. Because they’re there, beating inside of you.”
“Vicious vampire, beautiful Beast,” she said, swiping a tear. “Searlas MacGelton, you are mine.”
His eyes flared wide, his cheekbones sharpening beneath his skin. “And you always have been mine, my female.”
Jenny found herself suddenly against the flat of the wall, his thick thigh pressing between hers. Searlas brought his gloved hands to her chest and skimmed her cleavage with leather-clad fingertips, causing her nipples to pout beneath the silk, then slowly, ever so slowly, started parting the front of her robe.
“Don’t.” It was a plea. She didn’t want Searlas to see her ravaged breasts. “Not yet,” she whispered. “I’m not ready.”
“Look at me,” he demanded in that familiar way. She stared up at Searlas, watching blue flames leap within his eyes — a temperament of a powerful Undead. “You can never say I am yours and then hide from my eyes.” He curved his hands beneath the weight of her mounds, molding and plumping. “Just as you can never say I am yours and then offer your blood to another.”
This claim to blood, Jenny realized, was a possessive trait of vampires no werewolf could completely understand, though a part of Jenny’s soul craved this of Searlas.
She didn’t bother asking how Searlas knew, but instead admitted the truth.“I agreed only because of duty.” She spoke of Syon and Maxim. If not for this investigation, their fangs would never have pierced her flesh.
“Again with the duty?” His fangs grazed her ear, the touch so different from canines. “For saving me?”
Her inner thighs grew stickier. She wanted his lips and fangs grazing every inch of her body, but thoughts of scars screamed against her wishes.
He nuzzled her temple, still in the way of werewolves, and slipped his thigh back and forth, his leather pants abrading her pussy through her panties. “I’m going to get a name out of you.”
“Enough talking, we’re running out of time.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and bit down on the side of his neck, licking away the sting just to savor the salt of his flesh.
He muffled his groan on her shoulder, while lifting his leg higher against her core, as his hands slipped lower and grabbed the globes of her ass. He sliced through her panties, tossed them to the side. Jenny squeezed her thighs around his leg to heighten the friction with pressure, longing for the erection pressed against her hip.
“Smells so good, I can’t… resist.”
“You’re thirsty?”
He answered her by dropping to his knees. “Open wide for your male.” He pressed his gloved hands on her inner thighs and spread her pussy to his ardent gaze. “Oh, sweet Jenny…”
Whisker roughened face sliding between her thighs, Searlas found her swollen nub with his hungry mouth, suckling her greedily. When her legs buckled, he easily took her weight with his hands, keeping them pressed inside her thighs.
“Mine,” he whispered against her pulsating sex, his hold tightening as she tried to pull away from the intense pleasure. When the next wicked shiver shot up her spine, she whimpered behind clenched teeth, her hands digging into his silken blonde hair.
Her pink flesh plumped with every lick, and for a few fleeting minutes, she forgot the world existed.
Searlas moaned with her taste on his tongue, amped up by her gripping hands. “So slick and ready for me.”
“Yes…”
“You will come.” Running one gloved hand down her inner thigh, he brought two fingers to her pussy. Obviously, he’d kept his werewolf tongue, because he elongated it and used it to separate her sopping folds, then stroked her with the sandpaper tip.
“Oh, Searlas.” Jenny undulated her hips, grinding against his face. “Almost there.”
His werewolf’s tongue reached high inside her, curling around her inner walls, the tip flicking each ridge. Teasing her by staying away from the spot she needed him to taste the most, he wallowed his whiskered face against her pubis.
“Please…”
Pinching her clitoris between his thumb and forefinger, Searlas rubbed the bundle of nerves between his leather-clad fingertips as the tip of his tongue finally flicked her G-spot.
She detonated.
“Oh!” She forced back her cry of pleasure by biting her inner cheek, her walls tightening and fisting around his tongue, as her back arched away from the wall. She pressed her pussy hard against Searlas as she slathered him with her flowing climax.
Searlas hissed fiercely as he ate her offering, muttering soft words of encouragement when he pulled back his tongue, replacing it with a single plunging finger — rough from the leather, and a circling thumb on her clit. He brought Jenny down slowly, while staring up between her legs, breathing through his glistening lips and fangs.
She asked him, “Should I be mortified that your face is drenched with me?”
He eased his finger from her, slid his great body up hers to crush her breasts against his chest. He took that same gloved finger he’d plunged into her pussy and pressed it between her lips, sliding it across her tongue. Jenny’s musky flavor and leather met her palate. Beneath the two flavors, though, lay Searlas, his saliva an aphrodisiac to her even on the heels of a savage climax.
Searlas licked the evidence of her orgasm slowly from his lips, watching her from those blue-flamed eyes. Then he gripped her cheeks between his hands and his mouth was on hers, hard and demanding, reminding her that he still hadn’t found his release.
When he pulled back from their kiss, Jenny whispered, “Let me suck you off.”
“Soon,” he said, taking deep breaths. “I have to get you out of here, yet I don’t have time to move you past the guards before you’re missed in the ballroom.” He glanced around the room, studying the grates leading to the ducts. “We’ll move after the ball is over, when Maxim assumes you’re back here sleeping.”
“If I allow you to take me, I’ll break my oath.”
“To my Master?” Searlas asked, barely stifling his fury.
“He’s my Master, not yours.” She replied, because Jenny was the one who owed the Blood Debt.
“When I smuggle you out of here,” Searlas said with utmost confidence, “it’ll be easier on us both if you’re conscious.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I will,” he vowed. “Having a moment to process what you said earlier, I have a hunch about that dated intel you received on the allegedly abducted humans.”
“Yeah?”
Searlas nodded. “Who’s your contact? Sage, Oycher, or Syon?” She opened her mouth, closed it. He shook her again, his face a mask of betrayal. “I’m yours. You are mine.”
Searlas was right, this wedge of secrecy between them couldn’t continue. “Commander Syon is my superior,” Jenny whispered, letting the rest slip from her tongue, “and he’s also the vampire who raised you to Undead.”
His blue irises bled into the whites, but his tone remained even when he asked, “He’s also the source of your intel?”
“Yes, but I don’t know who first gives the intel to Syon.”
“Can you get a message to him before the ball?” Searlas asked urgently. “We’ve barely two hours before it begins.”
“Yes.”
“Perfect, my female,” he said, “this is exactly what I want you to do…”
Chapter 14
Cyna marched into Maxim’s bedchamber without so much as a knock. “The werewolf you insist
ed upon accepting was the epitome of bad decisions.”
“Back to our charming Jen, are we?”
“We never left the subject.”
Maxim slid his hand over the nearest silken hip, his body glistening from sweat and postcoital feeding. A sex rough hiss escaped one of the three females slumbering on either side of his wings. He swatted her behind, chastising the Undead. They didn’t play well when they were hungry. And Maxim had leeched and fucked them for three hours straight, just as he’d done the night before, all to get a certain black-headed, werewolf temptress out of his head.
Damn, the taste of Jen’s blood on his tongue, the way she creamed from his bite…
Cyna cleared her throat, then the fucking toe-tapping began.
“What were we talking about?” he asked innocently.
“The very creature you’re thinking about right now!”
“I know you can’t read minds, so obviously we’re spending way too much time together.”
Maxim left the softness of the bed, combing back his hair with his fingers. He stretched his wings high, then shifted them behind his back. Cyna fought to keep her eyes level, from dropping and taking a gander at his wet cock. Never again, he mouthed to her with a gleam of his fangs.
“This isn’t a joke,” Cyna insisted. “Jennifer Wulfstan is too risky.”
“Putting us on the map isn’t the worst idea, Cyna. Perhaps, you didn’t see the price tag I placed on her head.” This is the reason Maxim would never take Jennifer for his own. “You’ve wanted this all along, a way to stick it to the family who deserted you without a penny.” He turned his back to her, strolling to the open windows overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, hating how the miasma turned the Florida moon cartoonish, huge and waxy instead of its luminous white gold. “Your cut, once Jen sells, will be ludicrous.”
Cyna toyed with the thick, gold chain around her throat, then pulled a manilla envelope from the crook of her arm and handed it over.
“What’s this?”
“Missives a maid tried to slip past the miasma, that’s what.”
