Haunted by Your Touch

Chapter One

The car rolled to a hard stop beside the house’s perimeter wall. Lily’s head bounced against the headrest, her seat belt biting into her chest. The moon-soaked night throbbed around her. Alive. As palpable as heavy fog.

This was it. Where he lived. She knew it. Felt it in the tightening of her scalp. The tingling of her flesh. The dull, nagging throb at the core of her. Already, she felt the change. The difference, her humanity fading.

Fighting back a swell of nausea, she rotated her still tender arm, gently fingering the deep wound there, cringing at the sticky warmth of her blood.

The man beside her spoke, his voice as rough and gritty as the asphalt burns on her hands and knees. “Remember what I said. If you lose the gun, use the knife. Lose both, and you’re dead. Nothing else will work on him. Got it?”

She turned to stare at the hunter. Curtis. Moonlight streamed through the dirty windshield, limning his narrow features a pearly gray. He reminded her of a rat with his straggly hair and hooked nose. His small, dark eyes darted anxiously around them, as if he expected an attack. “I’ve been hunting this bastard a long time. Fail me and you die.”

She nodded once, wishing he would stop talking and let her get it over with so she could put this nightmare behind her. She recalled his brutality. He had cut down those… things without a blink. She was nothing to him. A means to an end. Expendable. She knew what needed to be done.

“Fuck him if you have to, just kill the bastard.”

She flinched at his harsh words despite all she’d been through. All she had seen tonight. All she still felt…

Bile rose in her throat and she shivered. She’d only ever been with one guy—her high school boyfriend. Before he’d graduated and left for Berkeley. Before Mom had gotten sick and Lily’s life had become about working two jobs, paying bills, playing nurse. About making it through the day, the week, the year. About giving up on her dreams in order to survive.

He chuckled and closed a hand over her bare thigh, sliding moist fingertips beneath the edge of her skirt. “You’re a nice enough piece. You got that going for you. Use it.”

She pried his hand from her thigh, gritting the words, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And she would. She always had. For her life. For Mom.

He grunted and motioned for her to get out of the car. “I’ll be around. Don’t screw up.”

She stepped from the vehicle, eyeing the stretch of white stucco wall that guarded what lay within from the outside world. A shiver chased down her spine. You know what lies within. You came face-to-face with it over an hour ago. Watched as it made a meal out of Maureen.

Gleaming silver eyes, swiping claws, and gore-stained teeth flashed in her mind. She shoved the images back with a ragged breath. Maureen’s short-lived scream echoed in her head. Lily closed her eyes against the stinging memory and sucked in a deep breath.

Clasping a hand over the nasty bite on her arm, she assessed the wall, the headlights of Curtis’s car warm on her back. Gnats and mosquitoes danced around her, attracted to the light and the aroma of spilled blood—hers and Maureen’s.

Craning her neck, Lily tried to imagine a way over the ten-foot wall and not think about what waited on the other side. The gun tucked in her jacket bumped her hip, offering solace as she walked. Curtis’s eyes burned into her from where he sat in his car.

She could do this. She had to. She couldn’t fail. Couldn’t vanish and leave Mom alone. Not now, so near the end.

Fueled with determination, she climbed up a large oak tree beside the wall, biting her lip against the pain in her arm. Blood ran over her teeth, warm and sweet, but still she climbed. She worked her arms and legs, fingers digging fiercely into rough bark. Fresh blood rose on her scraped palms, making her grip slippery as she dragged herself onto a branch. Inch by slow inch, she progressed further, holding her breath, praying the branch did not snap beneath her weight. Finally, as far out on the bowing limb as she dared, joints stretched and screaming in protest, she jumped.

With a muffled shout, she caught the wall. Grunting, she clung, slippery hands curling around the edge. She hauled herself up, dragging her body. Chest heaving, shoulder screaming in protest, she collapsed atop the wall. She had done it.

Curtis reversed and turned his car around, the lights swinging wide. She watched the taillights disappear down the hill, the purr of the engine fading as he vanished into the night.

She had made it over the wall. Now she was on her own.

For several moments, she fought for breath, the coolness of the stucco seeping through her, chilling her legs, penetrating through her jacket and silk halter top. The halter top Maureen had loaned Lily when she’d shown up at Maureen’s house wearing a “boring blouse”—Maureen’s words. Fresh-hot pain rolled over her. Maureen. Dead. Mauled and rotting behind that nightclub. The image flared, a burning imprint in her mind. She jammed her eyes in a tight blink, but the horrible image clung, scraping behind her eyelids.

Opening her eyes, she stared at the moon burning brightly through the night’s clouds, seeing it with fresh eyes. The eyes of someone who knew its curse, understood its power. It would be the end of her if she let it. Its intense force seemed to flow to her even now, reaching for her, into her. The wound on her arm tingled in response.

“The hell with you,” she growled. “You’re not going to get me.” Sucking in a breath, she surveyed the drop down from the wall.

Turning on her stomach, she slid her legs over the edge. Feet dangling, she lowered herself until she hung by her fingers. Arms burning, muscles stinging from the strain, she dropped…

And landed hard, toppling and rolling to her back in a winded pile.

She rose slowly, assessing the grounds around her. Well-tended lawn cushioned her feet. The perimeter lights of a large house with a surfeit of windows winked at her through the wind-brushed trees. The windows gleamed like dark sheets of ice in the night. It was beautiful, a showpiece. But oddly soulless.

She stepped forward, every muscle tense, ready. Do-or-die time. She couldn’t leave Mom. Not now. Not after sticking with her through all these years.

Body taut as a bowstring, she advanced through the trees, hoping they would shield her, offer some cover until the last possible moment. “Fuck him if you have to, just kill the bastard.” She ground her teeth to block the thick rise of bile in her mouth. She would do whatever it took to win back her life… to keep her soul and not turn into a monster with a taste for human flesh.

To be there with Mom at the end.

She thought of tonight again, of Maureen’s screams, of the white-hot pain as teeth ripped into her. That wasn’t going to happen again. Now that she knew monsters were more than make-believe, more than the stuff of nightmares, she was ready. Her hand slid inside her jacket’s pocket.

I’m the hunter now.

Luc crouched high in a tree, more shadow than man, watching the interloper through narrowed eyes. He had felt her the moment she’d stood outside his gates. Smelled her. The female heat of her. The freshly spilled blood she wore like perfume. The fear.

Inhaling her scent, faint and earthy beneath the taint of blood, his throat thickened. The old dark hunger rose in him as he observed her weave through the trees.

Silent as the wind, he jumped to another tree, loosely climbing the trunk and perching on another branch with the agility of a jungle cat. He flicked an angry glance at the moon. Bad timing for her. Its lure thrummed through him. The heavy pull alive and strong in his muscles and bones. He would be hard-pressed to control himself tonight. She was a fool to come during moonrise. When he felt so little restraint. When hunger rushed him. His heart raced with predatory speed in his chest.

She was not the first. Others had come. Mortals and lycans alike. Although never alone. Hunters came in groups. Lycans in packs. They hunted him for one reason only. To kill him.

As he watched her, he knew the same purpose filled her, saw it in her deft, determined strides. Felt it in the vibrating tread of her feet over the ground. And he knew he would do what he had done to the others. Destroy her. Leave no trace behind. Those who intruded on his life never lived to carry tales or spread word of his existence. They thought him something else. Another lycan. Only too late did they learn he was more. More dangerous. More of a threat.

He would destroy her and then move on. Continue. Cursed and alone. Existing. But not living. Never living.

He had carved for himself the closest thing to peace he had ever known here. Far from his cousin and the army of evil he’d built. Brethren whose taste for blood was not limited to moonrise. Nothing save total dominion over the world would satisfy Ivo. Luc wanted no part of the mad schemes, wanted only to escape from the corruption.

He glanced a final time through the branches at the moon that called, beckoned, tugging him down dark paths. The same moon that had conquered Ivo. And Danae.

Luc looked down, cocking his head and watching the female as she moved. He inhaled through flaring nostrils. Hunters always carried a certain stink to them, righteous zeal combined with the odor of stale blood from countless kills. He had never come across a female hunter. Not in Europe. Not in the States. He did not think they existed. He frowned, shaking his head.

Moonlight sifted through the latticework of branches. Her hair, glossy dark under the kiss of pearl beams, fluttered through the wind as she moved. His body leaned forward, eyes following the path she cut. He inhaled her scent again, her woman’s heat filling him. Earthy, musky dark and ready to mate. His cock grew heavy. Need pulled at the back of his skull.

He growled low in his throat. Time to finish this. Her. Before he surrendered to those urgent needs and fell victim to the curse he had spent lifetime after lifetime avoiding. Somehow, he’d clung to his soul through all these years. One tasty female would not break him now.

With an epithet burning the back of his throat, he dropped twenty feet, his large frame landing lightly before his prey.

Chapter Two

He dropped from the sky like a hawk, landing on the balls of his feet in a crouch, an animal ready to spring.

Swallowing down a scream, she spit out with forced bravado, “Nice trick.”

He would expect her to cower. To scream. To beg for her life. She would disappoint him.

He answered her with a low growl.

She could make out little beyond his enormous size and the flash of eyes homing in on her, a predator intent on the kill. Doubt clawed hot fingers through her. Something was… different. He was different. His eyes glowed down at her a yellowy-brown. Nothing at all like the pewter-colored gazes of the beasts that had attacked her outside the club. Baltic amber with white fire flaming in the center.

He flew forward then, slamming her down on the ground. Her teeth clacked together at the sudden collision with hard earth. He loomed over her, around her. Like the night, he was everywhere all at once. A massive wall of flesh, bone, and muscle… indestructible, yet she had to destroy him. She had to.

Her hand flew inside her jacket, the once stylish black suede her mother had bought her two Christmases ago now a shredded mess. The thought of her mother made her chest burn. She had to strike. Now.

Her fingers closed around the cold grip. She slid it from her jacket. Before she even had time to aim, he grasped the weapon and twisted it from her hand, turning it so that the cold barrel aligned with her throat, the mouth pressing directly beneath her chin, the gun’s cold lips a deadly kiss on her shivering flesh.

Shit. He’d disarmed her with pathetic ease.

The wall of man—beast—around her pressed closer.

“C’mon. A bullet isn’t really your style,” she choked, her skin simmering too hotly for her to care about the wisdom of provoking him. “Shouldn’t you be mauling me like a dog right about now?”

“You’re either very stupid or incredibly brave.”

How about desperate? And pissed? His kind had killed Maureen and infected her. If he was going to finish her off, she was going down spitting in his face.

The gun dug deeper beneath her chin, punishing.

Sucking in a breath, she waited for the pain. Waited for death. A moment passed and nothing happened.

Slowly, she focused on his face, all shadowed angles but undeniably human. Baltic-gold, deep-set eyes drilled into her beneath dark brows. Mesmerizing. But not a beast like from the club. He was nothing like the monsters that had attacked her and killed Maureen. The realization gave her a start.

Why had Curtis recruited her to kill him, then?

“Silver bullets, I take it?” He leaned in to sniff the gun before nodding. “You came prepared. Except you can never be prepared enough for me.” His face descended in a blurring rush of speed. She gasped. The warm tip of his nose brushed her cheek, moving over her skin until his lips grazed her ear. And damn her traitor body if she did not respond, did not arch against his chest—against the hard body of a faceless stranger holding a gun beneath her chin.

He inhaled deeply. “What are you?” His voice rippled heat through her body. Warm and guttural, like smoke curling in her veins. And foreign. The exact origin indecipherable.

As he leaned over her, she felt the thick bulge of him, hot and heavy against her belly. Dread filled her at her rising hunger. She throbbed at her core, and moistness rushed between her legs. She groaned, hating herself—the terrible thing she had become—and hating him but ready to have him. All of him, hard and thrusting inside her right here. Right now. Like two animals in the dirt. And she still couldn’t clearly see his face. She couldn’t live this way.

God. She shook her head and stopped, the slide of the gun’s mouth beneath her chin too real, too terrible.

“You’re trespassing.” He sniffed again, then exhaled, his breath a hot gust on her flesh. A dragon breathing against her cheek. Her heart clenched. His will alone stopped the killing fire from spewing forward. This she knew. Somehow. Intuitively. She knew a beast surrounded her despite his human appearance. Curtis must have been wrong when he’d explained the rules that governed lycans. Hope unfurled in her chest. Maybe that meant she wouldn’t be a slave to the moon and primitive urges, a slave to the insatiable need to kill, to feed on human flesh… to screw anything with a Y chromosome.

“But you know that.” A thread of laughter laced his voice. “Come to kill me, have you?” The hair near her temple feathered, and she realized his fingers touched there, rubbing her hair as if it were something to test between the pads of his fingers. The instinct to turn into his touch and purr like a cat seized her.

“You’re no hunter,” he announced. His nose buried in her hair then, breathing deeply. She shivered. She heard the frown in his voice as he demanded, “What are you? Why do you wear your own blood?”

“I—” She stopped, swallowing at the horrible croak of her voice. “I was attacked. Bitten.” She stopped again and bit her lip to keep from saying more. Saying the rest.

He pulled back, a tension that hadn’t been there before seizing him, washing over him—pouring into her. “When did this happen?”

“A few hours ago.”

“How did you get here?”

She opened her mouth, hesitating.

“How?” he barked.

“A hunter dropped me off. He said he was an agent from… some group.”

“NODEAL,” he muttered. “National Organization of Defense Against Ancient and Evolving Lycanthropes.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” She swallowed before adding, “He said this was your fault. That you’re some big pack leader. An alpha. That if I killed you…” Her voice faded.

“Ah. Did he now?” He smiled then, although no humor lurked in the shadowed bend of his mouth. “So you think I’m your alpha?”

She nodded her head against the ground.

“And,” he drew out the word, “he told you killing me would save you. Would break your curse.”

“Yes.” She surged forward with renewed strength, struggling, stopping at the cold press of the gun.

“Wrong.”

She blinked. Wrong? What did he mean, wrong? This was her life… and her mother’s. Killing this monster was her only chance.

“If I die, you’ll still be a lycan.”

“But you’re a—”

“I’m not a lycan. I’m something else.”

The announcement twisted like a knife in her chest. “You’re lying!”

“Sorry—either your hunter friend lied to you or he was mistaken. Your alpha is out there somewhere, but it’s not me. You’re one of them—” He rose higher above her, a lengthening shadow, removing himself from her even as the gun deepened its kiss beneath her chin. He meant to kill her.

“No.” He was lying. She didn’t know why, but he was. He had to be.

“You’re infected.”

“No—”

“You’re ruined.”

Her voice fell harder, her denial hotter. “No! I’m not. I’m a person! Not a monster.”

“Not anymore.” He pulled back the hammer, the grinding click twisting her stomach, and she realized all the shouting, all the no’s in the world, would not stop him. He meant to kill her. To end her life here on the cold ground of autumn, miles from Los Angeles, miles from her mother. She closed her eyes in a long, agonized blink.

“Please. My name is Lily.” The words rose from deep within her. She was a person. With a name. Not some monster in need of killing. Not like the thing that had bitten her. He had to see that.

Gradually the pressure beneath her chin eased. The gun moved away. His weight lifted as well. Before she had time to orient herself, she was pulled to her feet.

“Come,” he commanded, moving ahead of her. Leaving her.

For a moment, she stood alone, surrounded by trees and quiet night. Moonlight infiltrated the thick canopy of branches as she watched his lithe movements carry him forward, confident and fully expecting her to follow.

And for whatever reason, she did. Nothing had changed. Her mission was the same. She didn’t believe his vague I’m something else. Right. He was the key to her survival. Killing him meant life. That had to be true. She wasn’t giving up.

Lily.

A flower. Sweet and pure. He dragged a hand over his head to the back of his neck. Even better. Now she had a name. Now he would think of her as Lily. Lily with the great hair. With breasts that wouldn’t quit. With the fascinating scent that affected him on a primal level. Oh… and a fresh lycan bite on her arm that marked her as property of some pack out there. Lily, who would turn in the next month and no longer be so sweet, so innocent, so pure. So just take her. What does it matter? Satisfy your lusts and then destroy her.

Lily. The name cracked his resolve. She was too vulnerable, too… human. A girl. A woman.

Even if she wasn’t anymore.

Except for the bite on her arm, everything about her still screamed “human.” Vulnerable mortality. All that he had ever wished to be.

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d shared an honest moment with a mortal. His mother’s family had raised him, reviling him as a child, then, later, as he grew into a man, fearing him.

He had never justified their fears. Never harmed a human who hadn’t tried to kill him first. He’d never wished to dominate and enslave man—as Ivo did. Luc believed humans to be generally good. Even the hard-core agents for NODEAL and its European counterpart, EFLA.

He’d witnessed war and atrocities in his lifetimes, but he’d also seen goodness and honesty and dignity within mankind. And that was what he saw in her. Goodness. Honesty. Dignity. He couldn’t destroy that. Lily—his first brush with humanity in countless years. And he couldn’t make himself destroy that—her. At least not yet. On the next moonrise, he would. When there would be no mistaking what she was. When all the humanity had faded from her DNA.

He could feel her stare drilling into his back as she followed him, could feel her uncertainty, her confusion. Because he’d denied being her alpha. Because he hadn’t killed her. A delay only, he assured himself. A way for him to do what needed to be done and not suffer guilt for the rest of his too-long life.

He strode inside his house, waiting for her in the mosaic tiled foyer, pausing near the stairs, one hand clutching the iron railing until he felt her arrival. Once her soft steps cleared the threshold, he pushed on, not daring to look over his shoulder and see the temptation he heard with every step… or smelled with every breath. He didn’t need to. He had seen her perfectly in the dark, his vision homing in on a face alluring in its sweetness. Round and apple-cheeked. Fresh. She would look young at forty. Not that she would ever see forty. She was lost. He would do well to remember that unless he wished to join her in the afterlife.

Blinking hard, he shoved back the stinging thought. He might struggle now with what needed to be done. But not later. Later he would perform his duty and not blink an eye.

Maybe he needed to venture into the city and find a woman for the night. Occasionally he succumbed and did such a thing, although he hated the risk, never fully trusting himself.

He walked down a corridor of bare walls, the soles of his boots sinking into the plush runner. He’d bought the house fifteen years ago, already furnished and decorated for some Hollywood big shot who had run out of funds before closing.

She trailed him silently, the sweet fragrance of her blood wrapping seductive tendrils around him. He passed through the kitchen, striding past top-grade utilitarian appliances, the gleaming steel of the oversized refrigerator revealing a blurred reflection of himself. The sharp blade of a nose. The harsh set of his dark brows over primal eyes. The black, close-cropped hair. Once, before his fourteenth winter, his eyes had been a light hazel, dark moss when he’d laughed. Or so he’d been told. Scarce laughter had filled his childhood. He and Ivo had had only each other. Born two days apart, they’d been more brothers than cousins. Cursed before they’d even left the womb.

Shoving thoughts of Ivo away, he descended to the cellar. Her steps echoed behind him. Standing in the center of the icy-cool room, he pulled the chain of the single bulb dangling near his head and faced her. The bulb danced wildly, sending light around the room like some kind of dizzying strobe.

She was tall. Her body full, like women used to be, when a little meat on your bones had meant wealth, prestige, status. A time he remembered. Ripe breasts pressed against the silky fabric of her top, the nipples prodded to attention. He could make out the tiny bumps dotting her areolas. His cock grew hard as he stared. Her eyes stared back at him. She had yet to survey the room… her prison for the next month.

Her dark eyes feasted on him in the sudden light, pupils dilating as they crawled over his face, seeing him for the first time, missing nothing. He felt the rise in her body temperature, noted the slight increase of blood flow in the heart that already thundered in her chest. He saw. He felt. He heard. He knew. One lift of his finger and he could have her. Could spend himself inside her until his animal passions subsided. The thought of sinking between those ripe thighs tormented him.

Quickly, desperate to flee, he lifted his arm and pointed to the wall, where chains hung, dark as slate, against the gray concrete. A mattress sat on the floor below the chains. They were there for him, although he’d never used them before. Never had the beast risen inside him to the point that he’d needed to restrain himself. He simply needed to be prepared. Needed precautions in place. If that day ever came.

“There,” he growled.

Her eyes widened and she shook her head, the brown waves tossing. “You cannot mean—” Her mouth trembled, those plump lips so appealing, so tempting…

“Get on the mattress.” Urgency sped through his veins, mingling with the pump of hot sexual need. He had to get out of here. Away from her. It had been too long.“Get on the mattress. Now.”

Chapter Three

Heart beating like a drum against her too-tight chest, Lily bolted past him. Only he was too strong. Too fast. Not a lycan, my ass!

He lifted her off her feet, one steel-muscled arm wrapped around her waist. She kicked, landing several solid blows, but it did no good. He didn’t slow, didn’t even grunt from the sharp dig of her boot heels. He was too tall, too big… too male. She was not a small woman, but his body swallowed hers.

He was something all right. Something inhuman. Something Curtis hadn’t gotten around to explaining, but she would bet this guy was still the key. The key to her survival. If she could just manage to kill him. To get the knife from her boot…

He stopped beside the mattress, the soles of his shoes making a rough slide on the concrete.

She twisted in his arms, her hand snatching a fistful of his short hair and pulling with enough force to rip out the roots. Still, he did not react, did not even appear to feel pain.

A sob scalded at the back of her throat. Struggling was useless. Lily girl, you’re in trouble.

She fell limp, breathing heavily within the hard clasp of his arms, her mind working feverishly, trying to figure a way out of this nightmare.

“Are you done?” he growled against her ear, his lips soft. Soft, as they shouldn’t have felt. For a man. For him. For whatever he was.

Then she remembered. Curtis’s ugly voice floated inside her head. “Fuck him if you have to, just kill the bastard.”

Could she do it? Her gaze scanned his face, the glowing eyes, the square jaw, the wide mouth with its top lip sharply defined over a fuller bottom one. “Attractive” didn’t accurately describe him. He was beautiful.

Closing her eyes to the dark temptation, she thought of her mother… of the last seven years they had endured together. According to Dr. Grazier, the end loomed close. Lily hadn’t given up on her dreams in order to care for her mother just so she could end up chained to some monster’s wall. She’d be there with her at the end. One way or another. She would do whatever it took to survive.

“Are you done?” he repeated.

“Yes.” She hardly recognized the breathy gasp of her voice. “I’m done.”

She hadn’t even started.

Slowly, he released her, relishing the slide of her body against his. Satisfied she wouldn’t run again, he pointed fiercely at the mattress and chains.

Defiance still gleamed in her eyes. And then there were those ripe, trembling lips… hell, there was a reason he avoided the world. He didn’t need this. Didn’t need some newly turned lycan showing up on his doorstep to torment him.

His eyes fixed on her mouth again and he cursed, dragging a hand through his short-cropped hair. He needed her out of his sight. And quickly. Before he surrendered and acted out his every primal instinct on her.

Gritting his teeth, he ground out. “Get on the mattress and put the manacles on.”

Her chin came up. “Make me.”

Dark fire sparked inside him at her words. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, little girl.” He stepped forward, schooling his face into an unforgiving mask. Hard. Inflexible. No way would he let her know how much she tempted him or how difficult it would be to destroy her. But he would. He wasn’t a killer by choice. Not like Ivo. But when necessary, he got the job done.

His hands closed around her arms, and he felt the heat of her flesh, the rush of her blood beneath the fabric of her jacket, beneath her soft skin.

Something flickered in her gaze. Something dark. Unreadable.

She glanced down at the mattress beside them. Moistening her lips, she faced him again, those liquid brown eyes with their fast-fading humanity twisting his insides into knots. “It looks soft enough,” she purred.

Even as he held her, she leaned forward, straining, pressing herself against him like a cat in heat, itching to crawl into him. And, God, he wanted her to. It took every ounce of will he possessed to hold her away.

“What are you doing?” he growled, fingers flexing on her.

“Trying to get to know you.”

Yeah. Right. It might be a full moon. And he might be a slave to his impulses. But he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t buy for a second that she wanted to go at it with him. She’d come here for one reason and that was to kill him. “So you can get close enough to kill me?”

“You took my gun,” she reminded with a coy arch of her brow.

“And that should make me trust you?”

Her lips curled in the barest hint of a smile. “Don’t you want to be friends?” She strained harder against his hands, and his gaze dipped. Her jacket parted wide. His focus fell on the breasts being hugged by her silk blouse. His mouth alternately dried and watered at the hard nipples pushing against the sheer fabric, prodding points he ached to palm.

Fire scored him. His gaze shot to her face. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

Her smile deepened, a single dimple appearing in her right cheek. “I like games.” Her voice teased, brushed him like the stroke of a feather.

“You want to fuck me?” he drawled, desperately needing the harshness of the question… hoping it would scare some sense into her. And jog reality back into him. The reality of what she was. What he was. And why they couldn’t do this.

Her wantonness was the beast asserting itself. It had to be. Either that or she was into one-night stands with supernatural creatures she had determined to kill. “Is that it?”

She shrugged and glanced down at the mattress. “Doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.”

And it didn’t. At least not with his blood a burning rush in his veins and his logic fading fast. Shit.

“You want to go at it? Right here? With me?” he bit out, his voice thickening to an animal growl that sent a bolt of alarm through him. Careful. Steady. “Some guy you came here to kill?”

“I don’t want to kill you. Not anymore.” Her voice purred on the air, stroking a fiery trail through him. He let it burn its path, weave a spell of seduction.

She had a great mouth. Wide with the corners permanently angled upward, the top lip nearly as full as the bottom. Those lips moved slowly now, hugging every word as she spoke, her words a slow, sexual drip. “Just… a… kiss?” she coaxed.

Cursing, he hauled her fully into his arms, claiming her lips as she had taunted him to do.

It had been too long. Too long since a woman had melted against him, too long since he’d risked intimacy. Too long since Danae. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been kissing a lycan. Newly turned or not. Damned or not. Either way, she was as good as dead.

She touched her tongue to his, and the kiss turned raw, blistering. Their teeth clanked and he tasted a hint of blood, Still, he kissed her. And still, she kissed back just as hungrily. Giving. Taking. Her fingers curled, digging into his shoulders, pulling him down on the mattress. Over her.

He fell between her thighs. Her skirt pooled around her hips. He pulled back and ripped her scrap of small black panties in one feral swipe.

His mouth devoured her lips again. She gasped into his mouth as he rubbed between her legs, playing with her satiny flesh, spreading her moistness. She lifted one boot-clad leg and hooked it around his waist. He slid a hand along the warm flesh of her thigh, squeezing, kneading, caressing his way to the smoothness of her ass.

He wedged himself deeper between her legs, regretting the barrier of his clothing as he pushed himself against her sex, the moist heat there too much. He moved to free himself—only to freeze at the sudden sharp tip of a blade to his back.

He blinked down at the woman beneath him, all hint of seduction gone from her eyes. Hard resolve glittered in its place.

“This is your game, then.”

She smiled those full lips, bruised from his kisses, a brutal curve. “I told you I like games.”

“A knife won’t kill me,” he announced in a voice surprisingly calm given the aching burn to possess her singeing his veins.

The point of the blade dug hard into his back, grinding into his spine. Her face inched closer as she hissed, “No? How about a blade dipped in silver chloride?”

He tensed, wary. “That might slow me down a bit.” Silver wasn’t the deadly allergen to him that it was to lycans. But it definitely took him some time to recover from it.

“Liar!” Desperation tightened her voice. “It will kill you.”

“I already told you I’m not what you think.”

A flicker of apprehension crossed her face before the cold resolve returned, slipping back into place. “No? If you’re not a lycan, then what the hell are you? You’re not human.”

“I’m a hybrid. A dovenatu.”

“Dovenatu?”

“Loosely translated to mean ‘double birth.’ The easiest way to explain it—I’m a half-breed lycan. I can shift at will, not just at moonrise. And silver can’t kill me.”

While she digested this, he twisted around to grab the knife. The move sent the blade into his back. Not too deep, but just the same, he hissed. Her eyes flared in horror. Clearly a woman unaccustomed to administering pain.

He slammed her arms down on either side of her, flattening his body over hers. Her blade fell softly to the mattress.

“You cut me,” he growled, relishing the mash of her breasts against his chest.

She glanced left and right to where he pinned her wrists.

“What’s wrong?” he mocked.

She snapped her gaze back to him, and the raw fury there flayed him. Moisture shone in the brown depths.

“Don’t you dare cry on me.”

“I don’t cry,” she denied hotly.

Before he caved and lost all his good sense, he tightened his grip on one of her wrists. Doing his damnedest to ignore the delicate sensation of her bones, he clamped one manacle around her. She didn’t protest. Simply stared at him with her wide doe-brown eyes, something else creeping in, edging out the fury. Understanding. Acceptance. Defeat.

“I’m really going to turn into one of those monsters,” she whispered.

He sighed and dropped her bound wrist. The manacle scraped the wall, echoing somewhere deep inside him, where he’d thought feelings, emotions, forever buried. “Yes.”

“Killing you won’t change that. Won’t save me.”

“No. It won’t.”

Lily nodded, dark shiny waves of hair rolling against her shoulders. “I just wanted a night out. Some fun for a change—” She shook her head, stopping hard, whatever else she would have said lost.

She met his gaze, no self-pity visible. Most women in her position would have been full of tears and self-pity at this moment. Hell, most men. That she didn’t succumb to weakness only made her more attractive—harder to resist. Easy to admire. To want.

“Do whatever you have to. Just don’t let me become one of them.” She offered up her other hand.

He circled the slight wrist with iron, feeling like a bastard. Whoever she was, whatever had happened to her tonight, she didn’t deserve this. She’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He’d been born what he was, felt its stigma since childhood. But her? She had run full force into it tonight. It was enough to drive anyone over the edge. Yet here she was… so strong, so alluring to his long-dead heart.

She spoke, her voice as tremulous as a feather drifting on air. “What’s your name?”

He rose quickly to his feet, as if distance would cure him of his hunger for her. “Luc.”

“Luc,” she repeated. “What’s going to happen to me?” With her eyes she really asked, What are you going to do with me?

The sudden image of spreading her thighs and pumping himself inside her slammed into him as hard as a rock. He gave his head a fierce shake. Moonrise. He was a victim of the moon’s curse. Nothing more. He’d be better in the morning. Better three days from now, no longer such a slave to the hunger. To thoughts of possessing her.

He craved relief. A quick lay. Only not with her.

Even in this darkened cell of a room, he could feel the moon’s full power, its strength urging him to release the base impulses he had managed to control these many years.

A quick drive into the city and he would return home sated. Safe. At least from her. Then, in a month’s time, he would finish it. Finish her. When she was fully turned, her humanity nowhere in evidence, he would not hesitate to destroy her.

Pocketing the key, he stood over her for some moments without answering. Turning on his heel, he left her alone. Safe in her prison. For now.

Chapter Four

The stink assailed him as soon as he drove outside the gate. Lycan blood. Nearby. Luc inhaled deeper, identifying the origin. Days-old blood. A mortal wore it. A man. A hunter. The odor lingered beneath the moon’s glow, the scent weaving through the air in tendrils of death. Ancient evil.

Parking his Aston Martin down the hill, he moved stealthily through the night, more shadow than man. Man. Hell, he had never been that.

His first impulse was to kill this hunter, as he was clearly stalking Luc. This hunter wasn’t some misguided soul with noble intentions. Luc could feel the rot of his soul as he cut through the breezeless night. This one was zealous, relentless.

Then an idea formed, teasing at the edge of Luc’s dark thoughts. Moving with the speed of hurricane winds, he appeared at the driver’s door before the hunter could react.

Luc crashed his fist through the glass and snatched the man by the throat. Fingers tight around his narrow neck, he pulled him through the window, flinging him on his back to the asphalt.

“Please!” The hunter waved his hands wildly. “I mean no harm.”

“No harm?” Luc leaned low, hovering over the hunter’s face. “Is that why you sent that girl after me?”

“She’s a gift, a present,” he babbled. “You don’t like her? I can find another one—”

“Enough!” Luc roared, knowing just what kind of man he dealt with. He didn’t doubt some hunters were driven by a higher purpose—to see lycans eradicated from the world. But something far from altruism drove this guy. “I’ll have the truth or rip out your heart. It makes no difference to me. Why are you after me?”

“I…” He paused, wetting his lips. “Rumor has it you’re running all the packs in L.A.”

“Well, your information is wrong.” Luc tightened his grip and hauled the hunter to his feet, slamming him against the side of the car. Shattered glass crunched beneath his feet as he stepped closer. The hunter’s small weasel eyes bulged.

Luc flicked a glance skyward to the gleaming moon. If he were a lycan, he’d be in full shift now instead of battling the moon’s call, the beast in him simmering just beneath the surface. “Do I look like a lycan to you?”

The hunter scanned his face with rapid ferocity. “N-no.” His brow creased. “But you’re not human. You’re too strong. What in hell are you?”

“Someone you’ve vastly underestimated.”

Comprehension washed over his face. “Jesus. You can’t be.” He shook his head, straggly hair falling in his face. “Dovenatus don’t exist. It’s just a myth…”

Luc twisted his lips savagely. “Wrong again. And that’s going to cost you.”

He reached around and pulled the guy’s wallet from his pocket, scanning the name and address. “Listen well, Curtis. You’ve got one chance to live.” Luc jerked his head toward his house. “It’s simple. Find that girl’s alpha and you live. Got it?”

Curtis’s eyes drifted toward the gated house. “But I thought it was you. How am I supposed to find—”

“Now that you know you’re wrong, do what you do. You’re a hunter with NODEAL, right? You hunt lycans. So hunt.”

Curtis gave a single nod of his head.

Luc continued, anger churning in him as he thought of the woman chained to his basement wall. “Use your fucking resources. Put together a team. I don’t care how you do it, just find the bastard or I’m coming after you and your whole damn branch. Understand?”

Curtis nodded fiercely.

“One month.” Luc flung him away. “Go.”

Luc watched as the hunter scrambled into his car and sped away. Turning, Luc made his way back to his own car, knowing he needed to take care of one more thing before returning to his house.

The full moon followed him as he drove toward the lights of the city, to the beckoning throng of humanity, where he could find release from the urgent needs that moonrise had ignited in him. He was no fool. If he didn’t find relief, he would return and follow her scent to the room below. He would take her. The beast would demand it.

A month with her in his house would be bad enough. But tonight, with the moon at its zenith, the pull a deep burn in his blood… she was not safe from his appetites.

He would find some dissolute soul hungry for the coarseness of a sordid tryst and leave Lily alone until he found the courage to destroy her.

Lily struggled against the manacles, fighting the steel that cut her tender flesh. Her mind raced. She thought of Mom. Maureen. The rat-faced hunter who expected her to kill Luc. Luc. A hybrid.

“What the hell is that, anyway?” She was still trying to wrap her head around lycans… around what they were… and the fact that she was now one of them.

Lily fell back on the mattress with a curse. Until a few hours ago, she had never known werewolves existed. Now she did. Now she was turning into one of them. She might not know all of what that entailed, but clearly an out-of-control libido was part of the deal. Great. Probably why her play at seduction had not gone as planned. She wasn’t supposed to enjoy it. That enjoyment had distracted her.

Maureen had teased her about hooking up with a guy tonight. A one-night stand will be good for you. A little pick-me-up. Somehow making out with some hot half-breed werewolf had escaped Lily as a possibility. Maureen would laugh if—

The thought ended abruptly, before completion. Maureen would never do anything again.

Hot tears burned at the backs of her eyes. She slid to her back, the chains rattling as her arms fell limply to her sides, dead weights. Her skin tingled, crawled. Her gaze drifted. A thin ribbon of moonlight floated from a single narrow window set high on the wall, finding her, stroking her with a tender hand.

A great tiredness swept over her. A sudden lethargy she couldn’t fight. Her achy eyes closed, the lids too heavy. She tried to stay awake, to think, to plan a way out of this mess. What is happening to me? She managed one weak blink. No use. Her body could no longer move, her eyes no longer stay open. Darkness rolled in.

Luc cut through the crowd, his arm hard around the woman’s waist. She tripped on a step and he pulled her up.

“Hey, you’re in a hurry,” she gasped, her breath a giggly rasp over the club’s heavy pounding thrum.

He stepped outside, senses alive, alert on the night. Striding across the street, he kept a firm hand on her as the beast in him coiled tighter and tighter, ready to spring unleashed.

She gasped in approval at the sight of his car. “This is yours?”

Unlocking the door, he pulled the front seat forward. A coy smile on her painted lips, she slid into the back. He followed, pressing her down onto the black leather upholstery, his body wedging between her ready thighs, his need hard and consuming, tightening his balls. He felt the dangerous pull at the back of his skull and swallowed down a growl. If he wasn’t careful, he’d turn right here. Something he hadn’t done in years.

He bunched fistfuls of skirt and yanked the fabric up the woman’s waist.

She laughed. “Hey, aren’t you eager?”

Moonlight bathed her through the back window, giving her tanned skin a pearl hue. Her flesh felt warm and toasty beneath his hands, the scent slightly acrid from her frequent visits to the tanning bed.

“What’s your name?”

“Luc.”

“Hmm, Luc. I like your accent.”

She wasn’t young. Bottle blond with dark roots rising in her part line. Bleary eyes revealed her night had started long ago. Nothing like the girl he’d left at his house. But that was good. He didn’t want someone like Lily. Someone whose freshness reminded him of everything he’d never known. Everything he could never have.

He needed a woman like this. Hard and jaded with tired lines edging her face, accustomed to trysts in backseats with strange men.

A smile pulled at her lips, practiced and full of artifice, accustomed to smoky bars, late nights, and hard men. Precisely the kind of woman he wanted. One who wouldn’t mind a quick tumble, minus the sweet words. One who liked it rough. With the moon bearing down on him, foreplay fell short.

She rose up to kiss him. His lip curled at her stale breath, and he dodged her mouth.

“Don’t be like that,” she pouted against his cheek. “Can’t you kiss?” She groped her breasts through her nonexistent top. “Guys usually like these. They cost enough. Can’t you say something nice about them? Maybe play with them a bit? The girls would like that.”

Ignoring her, he moved a hand to his zipper. Closing his eyes, the sight of Lily filled his head, her breasts, fresh, ripe… not readily available to every guy in L.A. Air hissed between his teeth and his cock swelled at the thought of her.

“Sorry. I’m low on foreplay tonight,” he bit out, his voice thick and guttural in his mouth. He stilled at the sound, tensing, fighting the swamping sensations. His eyes flew open. Imagining Lily was a bad idea.

“Never mind. C’mere, big guy.” Her hand closed around him and he shuddered. Not because of the way she worked her palm over him… because it just wasn’t right. He saw only Lily. Tasted her. Smelled her scent swirling around him.

With the beast prowling for release, howling in need, he flung himself off the woman. “Go,” he snarled. “Get out.”

“Shithead,” she snapped before vanishing out the door.

He dragged a deep breath inside himself and collapsed against the leather seat, the back of his hand against his brow as he stared out the window at the moon, live and pulsing in rhythm with his heart. Blood rushed in his veins, and his pulse quickened, fought against his body, urging him to turn, to shift… to seek his release on the female waiting back at his house.

He should remain where he was. Even if it meant spending the night in the backseat of his car.

At least he wouldn’t be anywhere near the temptation that resided in the basement of his house. A woman—a lycan—he would have to kill in a month’s time if the hunter failed to deliver her alpha to him.

She had no hope of battling her urges and resisting the shift. She would turn. A slave to her hunger. A killer. Without remorse. Without a soul.

For his sake, he should stay away. For both their sakes. Until next month.

Chapter Five

Luc told himself he was only checking on her to make certain she had not escaped. His steps fell silently. He ignored his reflection in the stainless steel appliances as he passed. He rarely looked at himself. Had not since his family had turned from him, rejecting him so many years ago. He resembled them, saw their faces in his own. The olive skin. Gypsy-dark looks with gold eyes. His mother. His grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. They were all there in his face. He could do without the reminder.

Ivo had been his only true family… and even that relationship had not lasted. Not withstood the test of time. No relationship ever could. Not the endless stretch of time that faced him, anyway.

He eased the door open, wincing at the blackness that greeted him. His eyes adjusted to the dark, instantly finding the still shape lying on the mattress. He could see his way through a subterranean cave. It was part of his gift—his curse.

A soft whimper scraped the air and he tensed, hearing the pain, sensing it, feeling its echo deep inside himself. Remembering his own time.

Initiation had begun. Long, torturous hours in which her body… died. And her new self was born. A new Lily.

Next moonrise, she would answer its call and shift into a beast that fed on mankind. If he did not stop her. If the hunter failed to find her alpha. Luc grimaced. He wasn’t holding much hope for that idiot. The guy had thought Luc a lycan—the alpha of the pack devastating the area.

His feet slid unerringly to a stop beside the mattress. She lay on her side, her manacled hands curled in front of her. Perspiration speckled her brow. Salty-sweat drops he could smell. Waves of heat emanated from her, like the warmth emitted from a fire.

Crouching beside her, he touched her brow and winced at the fiery skin. She rolled to her back, crying out against the manacles impeding her movements. She struggled, possessed, desperate to be free.

“Don’t,” he commanded, even as the manacles cut into her tender wrists. The skin already glowed raw, an angry red.

The memory of his own Initiation rose up in his mind to torment him. His grandfather had locked him in the family crypt. In that dark prison, surrounded by the corpses of his ancestors, he had thrashed on the cold earth, only vermin for company as he’d suffered the bleeding-hot death of his humanity. He cast a quick glance around the dark cellar, not so different from his crypt.

A low keening moan swelled from her lips. A death cry. This girl, Lily, was dying before his eyes. Something shivered through him, and his gut tightened.

Standing, he turned, determined to walk away, determined to leave her alone to endure. There was nothing he could do to prevent it from happening. He’d endured Initiation without anyone being there for him. He’d suffered it alone. Why not her?

He froze at the base of the stairs, hands flexing at his sides, stomach clenching at her pained whimpers. He jammed his eyes tight, as if he could block them out. No use. He couldn’t ignore her. Couldn’t hide upstairs. Even in his room, he would still know she was down here. This strange girl who smelled of innocence dying.

Cursing, he dug the key from his pocket and whirled around. Squatting, he unlocked the manacles and freed her. He rose, holding her close to his chest, adjusting her feverish body in his arms, his jaw set in a savage clench. Her cheek pressed against his chest so trustingly, defenseless, the heat of her burning through the fabric of his shirt.

With hard strides, he carried her from the basement, taking the servants’ stairs to the second floor, passing countless empty rooms until he reached the master bedroom. He hesitated before entering, knowing he could drop her in one of the guest rooms and leave her there, in a comfortable bed, satisfied he had done the best he could to alleviate her pain.

But then he remembered what regeneration had felt like. Like dying and being reborn at the same time. He simply couldn’t abandon her to the agony. Couldn’t let her suffer through it alone, as he had.

She moaned, and the sound cut through him, reaching something buried deep… something forgotten, dark and untouched. Striding into his room, he yanked back the comforter and lowered her onto the great bed he had occupied—alone—for the last fifteen years.

Stripping her jacket from her shoulders, he tried not to caress the smooth slope of her shoulders. She arched her spine, almost as though she understood and wanted to help. Her boots followed. He concentrated on the side zipper, not the sexy, supple feel of her calves against his palms. Not the pressing need that throbbed through him, stinging his flesh, pulling at his bones until he feared he had gone too far.

Tossing each boot on the floor, he settled her in the center of the big bed. He dragged a shaking hand over his tightening scalp, watching her as he hovered above the bed. Sinuous limbs twisted, working the skirt higher, to her hips. His palms tingled, burning to feel her again. She arched her neck off the bed, dark brown strands brushing his pillow. Her body shuddered as the lycan twisted its fiendish path through her, killing the old DNA and regenerating new. A jagged moan ripped from her lips.

With a curse, he slid in beside her and folded her in his arms. “Shhh,” he said, smoothing a hand over her forehead, pushing back sweaty tendrils as he absorbed some of her scalding heat into himself.

She clung to him, hands digging into his shoulders as if she would crawl inside him. Unable to resist, eager to feel her skin against his own and knowing it would ease some of her fever, he pulled his shirt over his head. Her whimpers softened as he wrapped himself around her, gritting his teeth to keep his sigh of pleasure inside. Her hands gripped hold of him, the smooth, satiny skin of her palms sliding over his back. Her body writhed, twisted against him, desperate and hungry to both escape her death… and embrace her rebirth.

Her skirt puddled around her waist and he cursed himself for tearing off her panties earlier. Her rich female scent rose on the air, folding him in a fog of lust. Her movements changed. Became more deliberate, driven from blind, primitive impulse. She clenched her hands around his shoulders and thrust her moist heat against him in a simulation of sex. Air hissed from between his teeth.

He pressed a palm to her damp forehead and made hushing sounds, willing her to still, to calm, to sleep…

After a while, she relaxed.

Holding her tightly, he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep as well, to escape to where he wouldn’t feel… where the beast would cease tormenting him and he could forget how much he craved the hot press of her body. Not some stranger from a bar that he sought to satisfy his body’s insatiable demands, but this woman. One part assassin bent on his death. Another part dying innocent.

Bone-deep weariness closed its fist around her. Lily struggled through the heavy shroud of her thoughts, fleeing the heat, the flames that licked through her, intent on devouring her. Mom. Maureen. A man with eyes of yellow amber who made her quiver inside.

Then her thoughts slid into something else, something new and terrifying. Her senses came alive, stretched taut and sizzling with awareness. Yellow fog rose up to surround her. Yet she wasn’t alone. She felt them. In the wild thrumming of her blood, in the huge moon overhead, summoning her, a pearl in the black sky. Shadows crowded her, lengthening and widening… taking shape, becoming them. She tasted their wild hunger, knew it for her own. Silvery eyes cut through the fog, homing in on her.

She ran. Fled the demon beasts, so real, so terrifying, so… tempting. They surrounded her, silver eyes glowing through a fog so thick she could not see her own hand before her. They were everywhere. They chased her. Hunting her. Tempting her. Her enemies… her brethren.

She winced at the heat swamping her, at the sensation of her skin tightening and pulling. Shivers shuddered through her despite the terribly wonderful burn. Moaning, she writhed, wiggled as if she could shake the fever free, as if she could lose it—them—herself, this terrible thing that was happening to her. As if somehow she could make her skin stop tingling and itching and aching all over.

Another burn began to consume her. This one a hurt she could take care of… if the hard body against her would press closer, deeper, ease the clenching ache…

She opened her eyes to a darkened room… but saw everything with amazing clarity. Colors everywhere. Vivid colors she never knew existed before. The golden brown of a firm chest, rising and falling with deep, even breaths. She lifted her cheek from that chest and inhaled deeply of salty masculine flesh. Her gaze drank him in. Lithe lines and sculpted muscle. Her skin tingled anew, humming with a sort of electricity. Her already pounding heart beat even harder, and she felt dangerously close to fracturing apart.

While he slept, his lashes cast crescent-shaped shadows on his cheeks. She shook her head and tried to focus on his face, to clear the grogginess from her head, her thoughts thick as syrup.

Her hand slid down the center of his chest. Down, down, down…

She knew him. Even in the grip of whatever seized her, she remembered. Remembered the hard hand that had torn her panties in one feral swipe. The steel thighs that had pinned her down, squeezing around her hips. The molten taste of his lips. The liquid caress of his tongue. The gold eyes that drilled into her.

The fact that she fondled the man she had come to kill did not faze her in the least. His was a body that could make her forget. A warrior’s body that heightened the already throbbing pull between her legs. She shook her head, knowing such thoughts were absolutely not her… and still not caring. Not enough to stop, anyway.

He was too delicious. And she was too hungry, too achy in all the wrong places. The right places. There was that voice again, its dark little whisper whipping across her mind, directing her in all things wicked and wild. Strangely enough, that voice felt comfortable. Right.

The hunter, Curtis, had told her lust ruled lycans. And now she understood that. Embraced it.

With a desperate little moan, she crawled atop him and covered his sleeping lips with her own even as her hand freed that part of him she craved. Needed. Closing her fingers around the satisfying length of him, she stroked him, elated to find him already hard. She gasped her own excitement against his lips, directing the hard tip of him between her thighs, grateful for the lack of clothing.

A pair of hard hands closed around her arms, stopping her.

Before she could draw breath, she was flung through the air. Flat on her back, she arched against the hands imprisoning her, desperate for the pleasure she had been so close to claiming.

She growled, her gaze snapping to his. To a fierce pair of eyes, brutal enough to chill anyone’s blood.

Only Lily wasn’t anyone. She wasn’t even herself. Not anymore.

Her blood ran scalding hot in her veins. Baring her teeth, she hissed her frustration, her desire. Desperate to tempt him, she managed to free one hand and wedge it between them. He kept her bound to the bed with his other hand, preventing her from moving an inch. As if she were some wild animal that might devour him given the chance.

Smiling, she wrapped warm fingers around him, her touch seductively gentle despite the fantastic surge of strength coursing through her. With a purr, she flexed her fingers around his increasing hardness.

“Stop,” he ground out.

She pumped him in a deep, languorous stroke. Once. Twice. “That’s not what you want.” She didn’t even recognize the sound of her voice, all thick and guttural in her mouth.

“Yes. It is.”

She slid her thumb over the tip of him again, smiling in dark satisfaction at the drop of moisture rising to kiss her. “It’s not what your body wants.”

He snared her wrist between them, stopping her. “Fortunately, I’m a lot smarter than my cock is.”

“Are you really?” She rotated her hips, locking her thighs around him tightly. He groaned at the sensation of her hot sex nudging against him. Her scent rose, heady and ripe. Every fiber of her being screamed in need. She had to have him. She would not relent until they were one. Until he was hers.

Chapter Six

Silver eyes gazed up at him, and something withered, dying inside of him at the sight. She was one of them now. But then he had known that would happen. Seeing her lovely brown eyes gone just drove home that she was no longer an innocent girl. No longer like the girls in his boyhood village. Girls he could not have had. The ones his family had beaten him for for even looking at.

She was something else entirely. Something even more exciting. In the throes of dark and primitive lusts, she was overwhelming to him. Something the beast in him could not resist. Every instinct demanded that he claim her, even as his conscience screamed against it—against having her, loving her body only to later destroy it. As he must.

He flexed his hands around her slender arms, his fingers tightening along smooth limbs that would tear and stretch and twist into something dangerous and terrible in a month’s time. The same kind of creatures that had brutalized his mother and aunt years ago, resulting in his and Ivo’s births. Creating them both—blights on the family.

Still, he craved her, and he could not keep himself from releasing her hand to continue its sensual assault on his body.

She resumed sliding slim fingers over his cock, the feverish touch of her skin deliciously hot. Dangerous and desirable. He arched into her clasp, closing his eyes tight and imagining it was her sheathing him.

He thrust several more times into her hand before opening his eyes and locking gazes with her. The silvery pewter of her eyes gleamed up at him, as wild and menacing as the animal clawing to be freed inside him. Lycan eyes. Beautiful in a way he’d never thought eyes like that could be. She rubbed the head of him against her moistness, teasing it at her opening, sucking the tip of him inside her. Exquisite torture.

Gritting his teeth, he held back, preventing her from going any further. Any deeper. Sweat beaded his brow at the agony of it. The bliss. She was no longer human. Nor was she a dovenatu like him… like Danae, his cousin’s mate. He had thought Danae loved him, had thought she’d wanted the things he had—had wanted him. Instead she’d chosen darkness. She’d chosen Ivo.

And he’d chosen this life. A life of solitude. His lip curled back over his teeth. Perhaps not the best choice if it drove him to crave the touch of a lycaness. Clearly he’d gone mad during these years of self-imposed exile.

Air hissed between Lily’s teeth and she released an inhuman growl, surging against his hands, struggling to fully merge their bodies.

Clearly he was not the only one moved to madness. In her right frame of mind—as her proper self—she would never have acted this way. He’d seen that when he’d dropped from the trees and landed at her feet. He’d seen the terror, the revulsion, the wide-eyed stare of a good woman. A woman whose careful, controlled life had unraveled. A woman who would never let someone like him touch her. A woman who would have chosen death over a lycan’s existence. Knowing her only a night, he knew this much about her. She would never choose to live in the darkness.

No matter what happened, he would lose her.

His most primitive self rose from within him in a hot surge of rage. But you can have her now. For this night. Take her, take her.

An answering growl emerged from deep in his chest.

Of all women, this was one he should not touch, yet his hands loosened their hold. The last of his will crumbled. His hands dropped to his sides.

She lifted her hips, impaling herself on him with a satisfied moan.

Buried deep, he groaned at the slick heat of her tightening around him. Not since Danae had he felt this. Perhaps not even then. So feral and yet so right. As if she’d been made for him alone, her fit so perfect. He felt the tightening of his face, the telltale pull of his bones, and knew he was losing himself… letting the beast come out.

She worked her hips, her nails scoring his chest, oblivious that he was more beast than man in this moment. He gripped the softness of her hips, one hand sliding around to squeeze her plump cheek. Clenching his teeth, he held his passion in check and shoved the beast back into darkness, but hers was on the rise. He watched her in her frenzy, wondering how much she would remember later.

He gripped her face with both hands and brought his head down for a kiss, his lips gentling over hers, tender, thorough, opposite from the beast in him that scraped to be free. Different from the beast in her that struggled into… being.

He took her… her old self dying, the new self emerging. He took her death inside himself, kissing her with his eyes wide open, watching as her pewter eyes drifted shut.

“Look at me,” he commanded against her lips. Her lids slid open over those steel eyes, clinging to his gaze. He claimed her lips again as she took her pleasure of him, gyrating and working toward her own release with single-minded intent.

At last she reached it, crying out into his mouth. She stilled. Unfinished, he surged inside her, earning a hot little whimper against his neck. Again and again, he moved. Close now himself, he hooked a thumb beneath each knee and spread her wider for his pleasure. Mewling sounds tore from her lips and she writhed beneath him, roused again.

They cried out together, the sounds sharp and desperate—as desperate as the painful wringing of his heart. Too long. He had been too long without a woman. That had to be it. There could be no other explanation. No reason why it seemed like he would never get enough of this. Enough of her.

Suddenly, in that moment, she became everything to him. The one he had been waiting for all these years of hiding, pretending the world did not exist. All his life he had been holding his breath, time propelling him toward this moment, toward her—where he could draw his first breath.

Luc cradled her for a long moment, allowing himself the weakness, allowing a moment during which he could pretend he was normal. Just a man. And she was just a woman he’d asked out on a date, and then another, and another… until everything had traveled its natural course, leading up to tonight.

He stroked her spine, running his palm over the sweet arch of it, caressing each and every tiny bump of vertebrae with his fingertips. Danae had not felt so good. So trusting in his arms. There had always been something missing, a rightness that he now felt with Lily.

Sighing, he released her. Lying on his side, he watched her for several moments. She still breathed quickly, chest lifting and falling as if she had jogged a great distance. It would be that way until her transition was complete. He could leave her while she regenerated. She wouldn’t rise from this bed for days.

And yet he didn’t move. Even as dawn crept upon them, vivid fingers of red and gold clawing through the bedroom toward them, he remained where he was. Beside her.

Chapter Seven

Lily opened her eyes quickly, instantly alert, every nerve alive and singing, humming with a vitality she’d never known before. As she sat up, her gaze dropped to the man beside her, who emitted warmth and something else. Something that even while he slept stroked a seductive breath over her.

She pulled the sheets to her chin, her mind racing, tripping over the events of last night. She saw the nightclub… creatures. Maureen. Then the hunter’s ratlike face. Curtis. Images swam through her head in an unwelcome blur, cramping her stomach. Then her thoughts crashed on the memory of him. Them. Together. Liquid heat swept through her as she remembered every detail, every sensation of his body joined with hers.

Wild, uninhibited sex was not something she did with any regularity. Not since Adam. And even then it had been gentle, exploratory, their movements always tentative, restrained.

He slept as still as a jungle cat, all long, lean lines, ready to snap and spring at a moment’s notice. She sat up, moving as silently, as quickly, as possible. Inching toward the edge of the bed, anxious to flee. She lowered one foot to the floor.

“Where are you going?”

Tightness seized her chest.

He snatched her wrist and rolled her onto her back in one smooth move, the hard press of his naked body a familiar sensation, yet no less shocking.

All her life she’d slept in the same house, in the same room, same bed—her only lover a high school boyfriend, their intimacies stolen moments whenever their parents weren’t around. Never had she woken in bed with a large, virile man, her body sated and sore from hours of sex. A five o’clock shadow dusted his face of carved granite—menacing and sexy as hell.

She found her voice, pretending to forget that she was his prisoner before their night together. “I have to go. It’s Saturday.” As if that made a difference to him. “I have to work—”

“It’s not Saturday.”

“What?” She blinked.

“It’s Monday. You were bitten, infected, on Friday. The change—Initiation—takes a few days. Your body requires that time to regenerate… to become lycan.”

His words sunk in slowly, unbelievably. Horribly.

“See.” He nodded to her bare arm.

She glanced down, air hissing from her lips at the sight. The bite, her wound, had miraculously healed. Only smooth skin met her stare—evidence she had no desire to see. She struggled against him, against his words, desperate to leave, to see her mom—

“I can’t let you go.” The great wall of his body pressed her deeper into the bed, stilling her movements.

“Why not?” she panted against the smooth wall of his chest.

His fingers flexed around her. “You have one month less now.”

A month. “And then I’m dead.” Her voice rang flat between them. No question, just a simple statement of fact.

His golden eyes drilled into her. “Maybe. Or maybe your hunter friend will get lucky and find the alpha responsible for your… condition.”

“How do you know about Curtis?”

“I spoke with him. He was casing the house… waiting for you.”

Hope swelled in her heart. “And he’s going to find my alpha?”

“I explained to him that I’m not who he thought I was and if he wishes to live he can put all his skills and resources into finding the true lycan responsible for your curse.”

“And you think he can?”

“It’s a long shot. He wasted time assuming I was a lycan and bringing you here when he could have been following leads from the site of attack.”

She shook her head. Desperation combined with the suffocating press of his body made it difficult to draw breath. “You don’t understand. I can’t wait here for a month. I have to go. There’s someone—” She stopped herself, hating to mention her mother, to bring her mother into this, hating to taint her with this dark new world from which she might never escape.

His face clouded over. “Someone who?”

She shook her head.

He lifted her off the mattress, forcing her face near his. “A man? A boyfriend?” The light in the center of those amber eyes flickered brighter. “A husband?” His fingers tightened. “You can’t go back. Even if we break the curse before moonrise, you think you’ll be the same again?” His gaze roamed her bare shoulders. Her breasts tingled against the press of his body.

“Let me go. I need to say good-bye. To my life.” My mom. “I’ll return. I promise.”

“Good-bye,” he muttered, his gaze crawling over her face, hotly possessive, dipping to where her breasts pressed against his chest. “And how will you explain that? Will you tell him what you are? How becoming a lycan turned you into one hot piece of ass? Will you tell him that you willingly spread your thighs for me? A half-breed lycan?”

Fire erupted in her cheeks, and she beat against his chest and shoulders. “Bastard!”

The light at the centers of his eyes grew, eclipsing the amber. As if he didn’t feel her blows at all, his hands moved, skimming down her arms to her waist.

She stilled, feeling herself drowning in those eyes, mesmerized.

He nudged open her thighs with alarming ease and slid his hardness inside her heat. “You can add that you called me names while you gladly fucked me.”

Her mouth opened on a protest, an assurance that there was no one else, but the words never made it past her lips.

Her hands curled into his shoulders. Already she worked her hips beneath him, gasping when he thrust again inside her.

She lifted a leg and locked it around his waist. Her inner muscles squeezed, milking him, racing her toward orgasm with single-minded purpose.

He groaned against the side of her face, one of his hands coiling in her hair. A wild cry ripped from her lips. She shuddered beneath him as he surged inside her several more times, reaching his own climax. Spent, she sank even deeper into the mattress, a boneless puddle beneath him, small ripples of rapture eddying out through her body.

With a groan that sounded part sigh and part curse, he flung himself off her. Pressing her legs together, she scooted as far from him as she could, her fingers digging into her thighs. “You’re an animal,” she hissed.

He stared at her darkly, one arm tucked behind his head. “So are you, baby. Better get used to it.”

“There’s no man! No boyfriend. No husband. I just need to go!”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter either way. “Well, I can’t let you do that. Look. Let’s make the best of the month. I’ll show you a good time.” He scratched his square jaw. “And given your new condition, you’re going to experience urges. Why not experience them with me?”

His words sounded cavalier enough. And simple. But she knew there would be nothing simple about it. In a month’s time, she would either shift into a werewolf… or die—by his hand.

She had opened her mouth to resume arguing when her stomach rumbled.

“Let’s take care of that appetite of yours.” He held up a hand to stop her protests. “And then you can keep trying to convince me why I should let you go.” His gold eyes fixed on her, hard, probing. “And why I should believe you when you say you’ll come back.”

“This is beautiful,” she murmured, sipping her coffee on a deck overlooking miles of wooded hills. “I don’t get to see this in the city.” She gazed again at the stretch of countryside. “Doesn’t appear that anyone besides you enjoys the view, either.” She arched a brow and nodded around them. “No neighbors.”

“I like my solitude.” He bit down on a buttery croissant, identical to the one she had just consumed.

She reached for another croissant and stared out at the sea of treetops. She couldn’t even spot a road. “More like isolation.” At the sudden quiet, she glanced across to find him staring intently at her, no longer chewing, no longer moving at all.

“I’m not human,” he said succinctly, each word a hard bite on the air. “I have no business being around humans.”

She nodded slowly, nibbling her croissant as she studied him, knowing he meant her to take some sort of lesson from those words. Swallowing, she asked, “I suppose you think I should do the same?”

“Yeah. You especially.”

“Why me especially?”

He leaned back in his chair. “I’m a dovenatu, a hybrid lycan. I can control my impulses. Can fight the urge to feed at every moonrise. You can’t. I shift at will. You can’t. Every full moon, you will shift and you will kill—”

“Yeah, Curtis covered this already,” she snapped. “I get it.”

“Do you? Because you have no business going out into the world until this is… rectified. One way or another.”

One way or another. She couldn’t stop the shiver from trickling down her spine. “So instead I should stay here and keep you company.”

His eyes glowed. He idly traced the rim of the glass of juice before him. “The company was good, wasn’t it?”

She felt herself blush, the burn crawling all the way to the tips of her ears. She stabbed at a chunk of pineapple and replied quickly, “As you’ve said, I have a month. I won’t hurt anyone until then. I’m going home.” Popping the fruit in her mouth, she chewed. It was all bravado. She knew he could chain her downstairs again. Could seduce her with a look or crook of his finger and keep her happily in his bed. But she was hoping he wouldn’t. Hoping that whatever impulse had motivated him to free her of that dark basement still held true.

“Very well. You insist on leaving the premises. Fine.”

Relief rushed through her. Her words spilled forth in a giddy rush. “I promise I’ll come back—”

“I know you will.” He cocked his head to the side and relaxed back in his chair. “Because I’m going with you.”

Chapter Eight

Luc followed her into the Sun Valley Rest Home and was instantly assailed by the odor of astringents and decaying mankind. He understood how some people could be uncomfortable with the reminder of their own fleeting mortality. It only made him wishful. Wishful to have lived a life wherein he’d… lived. Instead of merely existing. It made him yearn to age and die in the natural order of man. As God intended, not some witch who’d started the lycan curse over a thousand years ago.

You’ve lived since Lily crashed into your world—your bed.

He shook his head and watched Lily smile and nod to both the staff and the wizened infirmed trudging down the corridors with their walkers and wheelchairs. She showed no sign of discomfort. She seemed right at home here.

“Where are we—”

“This way. She’s in the TV room.”

They entered an airy room with several well-worn sofas and armchairs. Three women played cards at a table. Another sat alone on the couch, staring vacantly at the television set.

Lily eased down beside her. Luc hung back, leaning against a bookshelf of paperbacks so old and worn that the titles on the spines could hardly be read.

“Hello,” Lily greeted the old woman on the sofa.

The woman looked startled for a moment, blinking warm brown eyes several times.

“Hello.”

Lily glanced at the television before looking back at the woman. “I like Paula Deen, too.”

The woman gave an eager nod. “She doesn’t skimp. Fried is fried. Like it should be.”

“Absolutely,” Lily agreed.

“Do you like to cook?”

“A little bit. My mother’s an excellent cook.”

The woman patted Lily’s hand. “Well, you should get her to teach you.”

Lily blinked fiercely and glanced away, the back of one hand swiping at her eyes. And in that moment, Luc knew that the woman with whom she was conversing wasn’t a stranger.

“She did teach me how to make a mean turtle cheesecake,” Lily offered.

“Hmm, I love turtle cheesecake.” Her brow wrinkled in concentration. “I think I might know how to make that.”

Lily gave a shaky smile. “I bet you do.”

He looked hard at the woman on the sofa, studying her face, the confused gaze, the melting brown eyes—and knew it was Lily’s mother.

In that moment, he didn’t know what was worse—being alone and not having anyone to love or having someone you loved no longer know you.

“She wasn’t always that way.”

He flexed a hand on the steering wheel and weaved through traffic. “I’m sure she wasn’t.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

He snorted. “Any pity I feel for you has nothing to do with your mother.” Only partially true. The stark sorrow, the total loneliness he had seen in Lily’s face as she’d sat on that couch, had struck a much-too-familiar chord. It echoed the way he had felt growing up, when he’d endured the hatred of a family that did not want him. When Ivo had fallen to darkness. When Danae had chosen his cousin—and darkness—over Luc.

“So you do pity me?”

“What do you expect me to feel for you, Lily? You’re in a shitty situation here.”

She shook her head. “Couldn’t I just lock myself away every full month? Or sedate myself?”

“That’s a hell of a burden to carry. If you slip up, innocents die.”

She jammed her eyes in one tight blink and rolled her head side-to-side against the headrest with a heavy sigh.

He continued, “You would need one hell of a friend to pull something like that off. Someone to confine you three nights out of every month and then free you. Someone to sedate you if needed. They could never fail. To fail would mean innocents dying.”

“Innocents?” she bit out. “Like me.”

He nodded. “Like you were.”

Her face tightened, the smooth features pinching in distaste at the truth of his words. Her new ugly reality. “Yeah. I don’t have anyone like that in my life.”

Her words resonated deep inside him. Maybe because he didn’t have anyone, either.

He glanced to his right. The bright sun struck her hair, bringing out the buried highlights.

“Even if you did find someone you could trust like that, he wouldn’t live long enough. Not generations like you. The years pass quickly. Sooner than you think, you would need to replace him with someone else.”

“So what I’m looking for is a keeper who’s reliable, trustworthy, and immortal?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. Can’t be too many of those walking around.”

She met his gaze. For a long moment, their stares clung. He knew the precise moment when she realized that he was the closest she would ever come to finding that.

A flush crept over her face. Her voice rushed forth then. “Don’t think I’m expecting you to do that for me. I don’t need you to be my savior.”

He looked back to the road, biting back the mad urge to say he would do that for her. To put an end to his lonely existence… would it be such a sacrifice? As long as he could have her every night. As long as he could keep her with him forever. His hands tightened on the wheel. Impossible. He couldn’t keep her. She was a lycan, not a pet. As long as she lived, she was a danger. To the world. To her immortal soul… to him.

Besides—she didn’t want him. She wanted her life back. Her freedom.

“Let’s just hope your hunter comes through.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Let’s hope.”

“You can sleep here.”

Lily peered into the guest bedroom, her feet nudging across the threshold. Either he had changed his mind about their enjoying each other for the reminder of the month, or he’d had his fill of her. For some reason, both possibilities made her feel hollow inside.

Something had happened to him during the car drive home. He stared at her as if she were a stranger, the gold fire of his gaze banked, remote. “There’s plenty of food downstairs. Help yourself to anything you like.”

She strolled into the bedroom, dropping her bag on the center of the bed. They had stopped off at her house and gotten a few things to last the month.

Facing him, she crossed her arms. “No jail cell again?”

“I trust you won’t run.”

She smiled, but the curve of her mouth felt brittle. “Do you?”

He advanced on her, and she forced herself to hold her ground. “You said you wouldn’t. And I don’t think you would be foolish enough to try.” He stopped directly before her, his eyes at a hard glint. “I would hunt you. And find you.”

This close, he flooded her, their breaths mingling hotly. Her skin tingled, every pore vibrating in awareness of him. His eyes dilated, the white flame back again at the centers as he read her desire, the beast in him waking and responding.

She felt him, the attraction deep, primal. Beyond her experience. Heady, euphoric. His earthy male scent filled her nose. She tasted him without touching, the salt of his skin coating her tongue, making her salivate.

Hungry for more, she inhaled, a gaspy sound on the charged air. Then, with a blink, the light vanished from his stare. Without another word, he turned and left. She chafed her hands over her arms, willing the goose bumps from her flesh, willing her heart to still its impossibly fast tempo. Looking around, the room suddenly felt bigger and emptier without him in it. She felt alone, but she was accustomed to that. No reason her heart should ache with an expectation for more.

Basic survival at month’s end. She craved nothing more.

But she did. She hungered for more. For life.

For him.

Silence hummed around her as she stepped into the darkened hall and strode toward the winding stairs. Her feet landed unerringly on each step. She moved with ease, as if it were not dark at all. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, seeing everything as if midday light poured through the house’s many windows. A symptom of her newly altered state, she knew. Even her hunger did not belong to her but to her newly altered self. Lily, the lycan.

She’d eaten alone hours ago. No sight of Luc other than his knock at her door and terse words informing her that dinner was downstairs. Alone in her room, little else had occupied her save thoughts of the future… and Luc. Luc and the future. Neither of which meshed together… but for some wild reason she could not separate the two.

In the foyer, she paused, turning away from the hall leading into the kitchen. Moonlight spilled a wide, irregular circle on the tiled floor. She moved, gazing through the front door’s stained glass to the outside world. Turning the lock, she opened the door and stepped outside. The night throbbed all around her. Alive. Pulsing.

She listened, hearing everything in the silence. The wind. The rustle of branches. The scurrying of a small animal nearby. The pulse of the city a half-hour drive from here matched the quick thud of her heart. Closing her eyes, she let herself feel, absorb her new world. Lifting her face skyward, she could see the waning moon even with her eyes closed. Could see it. Sense it. Feel it. Linked, bound to it, she took another step, reveling in the lush, vital world throbbing around her.

Then there was the faintest shift. On the air. In the quickening of her blood. A scent that had not been there before. She whipped around with the speed of a hurricane, the tiny hairs on her arms prickling, telling her she was no longer alone.

One moment nothing was there. Only the whispering night. The next, he was there, unfurling before her like a great wall.

He grabbed her. The biting pressure on her arm made her cry out. “I told you that you could not escape me,” he growled.

“I wasn’t—”

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” His eyes glowed, twin torches in the moon-soaked night. “Wouldn’t feel it the moment you stepped foot from your room?”

Anger swept over her. She wrenched her arm free and growled into his darkly furious face, “I told you I would stay—”

“I don’t put a great deal of faith in the word of a woman. Or a lycan.” He uttered both woman and lycan as if they were the foulest epithets.

“What’s wrong? Some girl do you wrong?” A muscle in his jaw ticced fiercely, and she knew she’d hit a nerve—the truth. “I’m not her,” she hissed, absurdly jealous over any woman who had possessed enough influence in his life to affect him. Unlike her. Someone he merely babysat, waiting to see whether he needed to destroy her before the next moonrise.

A long moment passed before he gave a slow nod. “Maybe not, but you can’t be trusted any more than I could trust her.”

“Yeah? Trust this!” Unaccountably angry, she kicked him hard in the shin and tried to break free. To run, as he’d accused her of doing. Maybe it was his comparing her to another woman, maybe it was the entire hopeless situation.

Or maybe it was just that she was falling for someone she could never have… .

He grabbed her again and shook her. “And why should I trust you? She was a dovenatu and she couldn’t resist the darkness. You’re a lycan. How can you fight it?”

“I’m not her. I’m Lily. And I wasn’t running away. You don’t know me at all. I’ll face this thing. I wouldn’t risk hurting anyone. I would die before I did that.”

Their gazes locked, clung. Impossible words filled her heart. A ragged breath lifted her chest, and, unbelievably, she spoke the words her heart battled to deny. “I want to stay here.” It was true. She didn’t feel that burning need to escape him anymore.

His glittery eyes devoured her. For a moment she feared he would shake her again. Or strike her. That muscle in his jaw ticced wildly. The savage beat of his heart bled into her from where his hands gripped her. She waited, braced and ready.

With a groan, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her in a hug so tight that she feared he might break one of her ribs.

Then they were kissing, dropping to their knees on the ground in a feverish tangle of limbs and hot, melding mouths. Their clothes fell away. Removed or ripped.

He came over her, seized her hips and entered her, driving hard, deep, pushing her into the unforgiving ground. She wrapped her legs around him, indifferent to the dirt and twigs scraping her back as she met his body’s every thrust. Branches swayed above them… the silent moon watching through the latticework of leaves.

He cupped her face, snaring her gaze in the glittering gold of his eyes as they moved fiercely together for several moments. Groaning, he shuddered above her. She arched off the ground, crying out and meeting him in his climax.

He collapsed over her, the heavy weight of him thrilling, intoxicating. The sound of their gasping breaths clogged the air. His lips moved against her shoulder, his voice rumbling through her as he spoke. “I won’t let it claim you.”

His words jerked her back to reality. By it he meant the beast, the surrender of her soul. Moisture burned her eyes. She dragged fingers through his hair, stopping at the short ends, clutching them tightly, never wanting to let go. “It might not.” Her voice faded on the words—words she could not completely believe. Her life hinged on the slim hope of a might.

“I can protect you. Like I talked about in the car. I can keep you safe as long as you’re with me—”

She shook her head, knowing what he was offering yet unable to accept. “I won’t stay this way.” Something so dangerous. An evil creature driven to feed on humans. Like the monster who had devoured Maureen. She had not put her life on hold, caring for her mother for seven years, to lose herself to such a fate. She refused to live that way. She stared hard at Luc, an ache building in her chest at the sight of his too-handsome face. Not even for him. “I won’t put such a burden on you.”

He stared down at her, his golden eyes intense beneath dark brows. “Let me decide what’s a burden.”

A grim, vague smile curled her lips. “We’ll see.”

But she already knew she would not make him spend generations as her keeper. She liked him too much to do that. She winced. Like. A pathetic word to describe her feelings for him. But her mind shied away from anything else. She did not believe in love at first sight. Love took time to grow, to build. Whatever she felt for him… it was something else. Lust. And she would not give up her mortality for it. She could never stay like this. Somehow she would end the curse. Or die.

Hoping to distract him, she ran a hand down the bristly side of his face. “Let’s just make this time we have count.” The sound of her voice startled her—all warm female enticement.

The hard glint returned to his eyes. “Oh, we’ll have more than this month.” His mouth claimed hers again. “We’re just starting,” he murmured against her lips.

She kissed him back, struggling to ignore the doubt she felt in the hot press of his lips. Like her, he wasn’t convinced either.

Chapter Nine

For all the bad that went with being a lycan, Lily could not help appreciating the advantages. Endless hours of sexual gratification. Eating whatever she wanted without weight gain. The heightened senses that made her savor life—living—as she never had before. And Luc. They never would have met otherwise.

But through it all, an uneasiness pervaded. The knowledge that it couldn’t last. That something approached, encroaching like a foul wind with increasing speed.

She swam beside Luc in his indoor pool, imagining that if mermaids had existed, this must have been what they felt. Gliding so effortlessly beneath the water. After nearly a full minute, she emerged, breaking the water’s surface… only to get sprayed in the face.

With a squeal, she splashed Luc back. Growling, he grabbed her around the waist and dragged them in a dizzying little circle. Laughing, she dropped her head back, enjoying the cool water swirling through her hair, gliding against her scalp… and Luc’s hot tongue laving her throat. This, she could learn to love.

You already do.

If Curtis didn’t come through, at least she would have had this. More than anything she’d ever had before.

Suddenly, Luc released her.

“What?” she gasped, treading water.

He waved a hand to silence her, scanning the natatorium with a sweep of his gold-brown eyes. As she watched him, the tiny lights at the centers ignited and grew. And she knew. The beast hadn’t surfaced in him out of desire. Something else had called it forth.

Chill bumps broke out over her flesh. Evil had arrived. She smelled it like a poison on the air.

“Get out of the pool,” he murmured softly.

Lily swam to the edge, Luc close behind her. With a single deft move, he hopped from the water and pulled her up beside him just as a voice rolled over the air.

“Well, you certainly took my instructions to heart.”

Lily’s head snapped in the direction of the familiar voice. Curtis. He emerged through the archway leading to the spa, his rat face smug. Even less comforting was the gun he clasped in his hand.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Fucking him.”

Luc’s hand on her arm tightened, and he shoved her behind him.

“He’s not my alpha,” she bit out, trying to step around Luc. “You wanted me to kill him for nothing.”

“Not for nothing. He’s just as bad—a dovenatu.” Curtis’s eyes glittered with malice. “No one wants his kind around. Not humans. Not even lycans.” The hunter’s gaze narrowed on Luc. “You don’t have anyone, do you, half-breed? Not a pack. No one. Why not just die?”

“I gave you a chance to save your life,” Luc replied in an oddly even voice. “Either you give over her alpha, or you’re dead.”

“Oh, I can do better than that.” Curtis paused for dramatic effect. In that time, Lily stopped breathing altogether, the tiny hairs on her arms prickling. “I can introduce you to him. Now.”

They emerged then. Two stepped beside Curtis. Another entered through the main doors. She knew them instantly. Knew them. Recognized them as one species knows another. They were her. Lycans.

The creatures beside Curtis smiled, looking with avid interest at what could be seen of her wedged behind Luc.

“Lily, isn’t it?” one asked, his voice sliding through her like a serpent. “Welcome to the family.”

“No,” she breathed, digging her fingers into the tight muscled flesh of Luc’s shoulder.

“You’re a dead man,” Luc swore.

“What?” Curtis grinned. “You wanted me to find her alpha. I did. I brought him to you.” He nodded. “He’s promised to turn me now. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. To be strong. Invincible. To live forever.”

The lycan at the natatorium’s main doors edged closer to the hunter, and instantly she knew he was her alpha. He patted Curtis on the shoulder, as if he were an overexcited pup. “You did well. And you shall receive all you deserve.”

Before Lily could blink, he took Curtis’s head between his hands and turned it with a violent snap. Lily screamed. Curtis crumpled. Her stomach pitched and rolled at the ease with which he’d been murdered.

“Lily.” The pack leader spoke her name again, his silver eyes intent on her. “You belong with us. Not this half-breed dog.” He beckoned her with a flick of a knife he pulled from inside his jacket. “Come.”

Here he was. The key to her freedom.

The same realization must have occurred to Luc. He faced her. “I hate that you have to see this. Me. But if I don’t—” He stopped, dropping his hands from her. “Look out for yourself. Run if you get the chance. Use your speed.”

She cocked her head, noticing that his voice had changed, altered as it sometimes did when they made love… as though he was on the verge of turning into that thing which he loathed, which he’d spent lifetimes resisting. But he would surrender to it now. For her.

She nodded once in agreement.

Then the Luc she knew was gone. Transformed in a fraction of a second. His face and body shifted, twisted into something horrible in its beauty. Almost feline, with its sleek lines and rippling sinew and muscle. Not swallowed in fur, like the lycans that had attacked Lily and Maureen that first night.

He did this for her. Embraced his beast. All so she could be free. Free of this curse. Free of him. Free of him? The thought swiped a bleeding gouge in her heart. She would never be free of him. She never wanted to be.

Her chest ached, and she wondered if anyone had ever cared enough to risk himself for her before. Aside from her mother, who could no longer even remember her, had anyone ever cared for her that much?

Then he was gone, a blur, a flash from her side. He had almost reached the alpha when the two other lycans intercepted him in a smack of bone and muscle. Animal versus animal. Evil versus good.

They fought like beasts. And they were. Bones that would later heal smacked and crunched together. She moved from where she stood, pressing herself to the wall, watching with suspended breath as the two lycans managed to gain the upper hand on Luc.

Wet and snarling, they pinned him to the ground, a grip on each arm.

Then she saw it. Curtis’s gun, the weapon innocuous in a shallow puddle of pool water. Silver bullets. A lycan’s only fatal weakness. She reached for it, tucking it behind her back as she watched the alpha approach Luc. Her alpha.

“A legendary dovenatu, eh?” His glittering silver stare raked Luc. “Disappointing. I thought you would be so much… more.” Snapping his fingers, he motioned to his two comrades. “Finish him.”

“No!” Lily surged forward, her palm flexing around the gun’s grip behind her back. Her only chance. Luc’s only chance.

“Ah, little one.” The lycan responsible for what she was—the curse she bore—bestowed a beatific smile on her. “I almost forgot about you.” That pewter gaze slid over her curves, and suddenly she wished she were wearing anything but a bikini. His smile slipped, the whiteness of his teeth barely visible as his lips moved. “All heart and sweetness. We’ll rid you of that. Come here.”

She angled her head, for a moment lost in the mesmerizing pull of those pewter eyes.

“No! Leave her alone!” Luc fought harder. He flung one of his captors over his head into the pool with a splash. With a two-footed kick to the chest, he sent the second lycan flying. He hopped to his feet with the agility of a cat just as a lycan sprang from the pool in a spray of water.

Snapping from her momentary stupor, Lily whipped the gun from behind her and surged forward, her heart a wild, desperate thump in her chest. Squeezing the trigger, she fired at the soaking-wet lycan charging Luc, sending him into the pool again.

The other lycan roared and came at her. Lily jerked back a step, slipping on the wet floor and firing one shot to the ceiling. Luc caught the silver-eyed devil before he fell on her. They crashed to the ground near her, biting and clawing at one another in a wild thrash of limbs.

Lily sat up, trying to focus her aim on the lycan. Luc hurled him off with a vicious kick. Those eerie eyes met hers the precise moment she fired.

“Lily,” Luc roared a warning in his thick, guttural voice.

She looked up, finding her alpha practically on top of her.

She swung the gun up, pressing it into his head. He pulled up hard, hands splayed in front of him.

“Easy,” he murmured, inching back a step, easing away from the barrel. His steel-eyed gaze locked with hers and she felt that pull again.

“Shoot him!” Luc shouted.

Shoot him.

Her finger tightened around the trigger. Just the slightest pressure more and it would be over. She would be herself again. Human.

Alone.

The alpha inched back another step. And another.

“Shoot him, Lily! End it now!”

End it. End them.

“Save yourself. Break the curse.”

His words settled in the pit of her stomach like rocks. In that moment, with her finger tightening on the trigger, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. It just felt… wrong.

Luc snatched the gun from her limp fingers. Her alpha was almost to the doors, his back the perfect target. Luc surged forward, arm outstretched, taking aim.

“No!” She charged Luc, jerking on his arm. A shot fired into the wall.

Like a flash of smoke, the lycan disappeared through the double doors.

“What the hell are you doing?” Luc started to go after him, but she jumped on his back, arms tight around his shoulders.

“Luc—let him go!”

Luc peeled her off him. He faced her, his fierce face snarling into hers. “What are you doing? You let him get away—”

“I know!” she shouted, tears choking her throat. “Did you mean it? God, please tell me you meant it!”

He grabbed her face with both hands. In a blink, his face transformed into Luc again. Her Luc. “What are you talking about?” His thumb roved over her cheeks, rubbing salty tears into her overheated skin.

“You said you would keep me with you. Forever. Did you mean it?”

A long, endless moment passed, the only sound her ragged breaths.

Then Luc dragged her into his arms. Forehead pressed to hers, he pulled them both to their knees. “Lily, Lily, Lily…”

She sighed his name.

He pulled back and gave her a small shake, his face tight with a desperation that she felt reverberate deep inside herself. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Swallowing past a throat tight with emotion, she answered thickly, “I chose you. An eternity with you.”

He stared at her for a hopelessly long moment, and she wondered if he had changed his mind. If he didn’t want her… the responsibility, the burden. Maybe she wasn’t worth it to him.

“Say something.” Anything. Just not that.

“Lily.” He hauled her into his arms, squeezing her breathless. “I do want you—I love you. I only hope you don’t regret—”

She pulled back to rain kisses on his face. “Never. What I’m getting more than makes up for what I’ll lose. Believe that. Don’t worry about me regretting this. Instead, think about how we’re going to spend the rest of our lives.”

He muttered against her lips. “I’ve already got a couple of ideas.”

Chapter Ten

Soft rain pelted the bungalow’s window as Lily traced mesmerizing circles over Luc’s ridged belly. “Hmm. What now?”

They’d cleared Luc’s house of his valuables and left, checking into the Beverly Hills Hotel. Luc didn’t want to hang around waiting for more lycans to show up.

“We’ll stay here for a while. For your mother.”

She sat abruptly, staring down into his shadowed face. When she had asked the question, she had been thinking more along the lines of room service… but his answer could not have elated her more. “Really?”

“It’s important for you to be with her.” He pushed a thick lock of hair behind her ear. “We’ll stay. Through the end.”

Lowering her head, she kissed him slowly, tenderly, loving him even more in that moment. With their identities now exposed to the world of lycans, she had expected him to insist on their immediate relocation. Staying here for her mother, for her… It was more than she had ever hoped. Breaking their kiss, she murmured, “And after that? Then what?”

“Well.” A deep breath escaped him. “I want—no, I need to go home.”

“Home? Where’s that?”

“Ankara.”

“Where’s that?

“Turkey.”

She’d always wanted to see the world. Only her mother’s illness had cut short that dream, but there was something in the way he spoke, in the tension of his body beneath her, that made her think a friendly jaunt down memory lane was not what he had in mind. “Why do you want to go back there?”

“I have a cousin there who needs killing. I should have done it a long time ago.”

Lily stared down at him with wide eyes. She’d almost lost him. And herself. She did not relish risking life and limb again. Not so soon at least. She shook her head fiercely. “No.” Then again, louder. “No.”

“He has to be stopped, Lily. You gave me back my life today. Showed me that there are things worth living for. Risks worth taking.” His thumb grazed her cheek. “How can I go merrily about life knowing such a threat lurks out there, working its evil? For you… for us, I can’t do that.”

Looking deeply into his intent gaze for several moments, she nodded. He was right, of course. She was not the only one who needed Luc. The world needed him, too. And the world needed her. She was a part of this now. She would help.

Swallowing down the tightness in her throat, she gave a single hard nod. She would go anywhere with this man… this dovenatu. She’d already determined that with her decision to remain a lycan. “Let’s do it, then.”

He scowled. “There’s no ‘us’ in this. I won’t risk you. You’ll be somewhere else. I haven’t decided where yet, only that it will be someplace safe. I’ll find a way to make sure you’re protected during each moonrise—”

Her chin lifted. “You’re not leaving me. You signed on for eternity, and that’s what you’re getting. If there are bad guys out there to vanquish, we’re going to do it together.”

He opened his mouth, clearly prepared to argue more, then stopped. Closing his mouth, he smiled crookedly. He brushed the hair back from her neck. “I guess I need to get used to this us thing.”

“Yeah, you better.”

“And a bossy woman.”

“That, too.”

“And trusting that you can handle all this.” He waved a broad hand, his expression sobering. “My world isn’t all roses and champagne, Lily.”

“It’s my world now, too. And the one I want.”

He released a heavy sigh and she tensed, prepared for more arguing, anything to convince him that they needed to be together, no matter what. And then his next words penetrated.

“Very well. Guess I should legitimize this and marry you. It does sound as though you’re committed to the thick and thin part already…”

Her heart squeezed. Despite his teasing tone, he stared at her starkly, his heart in his eyes. Beneath her palm, his chest did not even lift with breath. He held himself tense, waiting.

“Luc.” At his growing smile, she cried his name louder. “Luc!” Tossing her arms around his neck, she launched herself against him, sending him back into the bed.

He breathed then, his hard chest expanding as his arms wrapped around her.

And she breathed, too, the air releasing from someplace deep inside of her. Her first breath of life with him. She closed her eyes tightly. The first of many breaths.