He was abruptly sick of playing with Nicodemus. Elijah vaulted ahead, twisting midair to avoid Nic’s snarling maw and coming down on the lycan’s back. Catching him by the throat, Elijah pinned him to the floor, his jaws clenched tight enough to wound and warn but not enough to kill. Yet. Just the slightest increase in pressure would cut off Nic’s air.
Nic writhed for a few moments, his limbs flailing in an effort to shake off his opponent. Then blood loss and exhaustion stole his strength. He whimpered for his release and Elijah let him go.
Elijah’s low growl rumbled through the room. He turned, his gaze meeting those of every lycan in the cave. They stood around the perimeter, their gazes lowering quickly as he dared all comers.
Satisfied that he’d made his point for the moment, he shifted and faced the arched entry to the great room, his attention riveted to that ripe, sweet scent that was making his dick hard.
“Get me a change of clothes,” he said to the cave at large, not caring who did it, just that it got done. “And a damp towel.”
He’d barely finished speaking when she appeared, looking just as he remembered her—black high-heeled boots, black Lycra bodysuit that clung to every curve, scarlet red hair that fell to her waist, and pearly white fangs. She looked like something out of a BDSM-laced wet dream and he wanted to fuck her nearly as badly as he wanted to kill her. The lust was instinctual and unwelcome; the fury was laced with grief and pain. She’d killed his best friend in a slow, agonizing death while trying to get to him, mistakenly believing he’d murdered her friend Nikki, a vampress who’d also been Syre’s daughter-in-law.
Be careful what you wish for, bitch.
Baring his teeth in a semblance of a smile, he said her name. “Vashti.”
Her gaze narrowed as she picked up his scent. “You.”
Shit.
Vash stared at the naked, blood-spattered lycan standing across the room from her and her fists clenched. The lack of the familiar weight of her sword sheaths on her back had already been driving her nuts, but now it pissed her off.
He’d killed her friend, and he was going to pay.
She stalked closer, her booted heels clicking across the uneven stone floor. They lived in a goddamn cave and fought among themselves like animals. Fucking dogs. She’d tried for days to talk Syre out of this fool’s errand, but the vampire leader would not be swayed. He believed the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” She might’ve agreed with that if they were talking about anyone but lycans.
“The name is Elijah,” he corrected, watching her with the focused gaze of a natural hunter zeroing in on its prey.
Another male approached him with a towel in one hand and clothes in the other. Elijah took the towel and began to wipe the blood from his mouth and jaw. His gaze never left hers as the cloth moved across his broad chest and arms.
Vash found her attention reluctantly drawn to the stroking of white terry cloth over golden skin. He was ripped with powerful muscles from head to toe, beautifully defined in a way she couldn’t help but appreciate. There wasn’t an ounce of extraneous flesh on him and his virility was unquestionable, even without his display of impressive cock and weighty testicles. His scent was in the air, an earthy yet exhilarating fragrance of clove and bergamot that was rich with male pheromones.
He handed the towel to the lycan standing next to him, then stroked his long, thick penis from root to tip.
“Like what you see?” he taunted in a deep, rumbling voice that affected her physically. Blood oozed from a nasty gash in his calf, the scent so delicious her mouth watered for a taste of it.
She forced her gaze to lift from his groin with insolent leisure. “Just marveling that you don’t smell like wet dog.”
His nostrils flared. “You smell like sacrificial lamb.”
Vash laughed softly. “I’m here to help you, lycan. You’re safe while you’re underground. But you’ll have to surface at some point, and beneath the open sky is where the angels will slaughter you all. Since you’re already fighting among yourselves, you won’t have a chance in hell against Adrian’s Sentinels without allies.”
The lycans around the room rumbled their disgust at the very idea. She raised her voice and spoke to the assembly at large. “I absolutely agree with you. I don’t want to work with you either.”
“Yet you came when Syre sent you,” Elijah said, stepping into a loose pair of jeans. “Walked straight into a wolf’s den at his order.”
She faced him again, her chin lifting. “We’re more civilized than you, lycan. We know the value of a hierarchy of power.”
He approached her, his barefooted stride sleek and predatory. The tight roping of muscles over his abdomen flexed as he walked, riveting her gaze. A surge of heat moved through her as his scent grew stronger.
Fuck. She’d been celibate too long if a lycan could make her hot.
Her hands fisted as he stopped in front of her. Too close. Invading her personal space. Trying to intimidate her with his powerful body and sharply edged hunger. She saw his need in his eyes and smelled the enticing pheromones in the air around him. He hated her, yet he desired her.
Despite her height and heels, Vash had to tilt her head back to look up at him. “Just tell me to fuck off and I’m out of here. I only agreed to present the offer. I really don’t want you to accept.”
“Ah, but I have no intention of turning you down until you go into the details.” He caught a lock of her hair between his fingers and rubbed it. “And I want to see your face when you find out I didn’t kill your friend.”
Her breath caught. She told herself it was from surprise and not from the feel of his knuckle brushing over her breast. “My sense of smell is damn near as good as yours.”
One side of his mouth lifted in a cruel smile. “Did you check my blood sample for anticoagulants?”
She stepped back in a rush. She knew the Sentinels kept samples of every lycan’s blood in cryogenic storage facilities at the lycan outposts, but she hadn’t considered that those samples might be vulnerable to abuse. “What the fuck?”
“I was set up. You, however, are guilty of killing my friend. Hopefully you remember him, since his murder signed your death warrant. The redhead you pinned to a tree and left for dead?”
He circled her. Dozens of pairs of emerald eyes watched her with open hostility. The chances of getting out of the cave alive diminished to zero.
“If you kill me now,” she warned, “you’ll have both the vamps and Sentinels after you.”
“That’s problematic,” he murmured, rounding her shoulder from the back.
“But there’s something I want more than my life. If you help me get it, I’ll let you kill me in a way that looks like self-defense.”
Elijah stopped in front of her again. “I’m listening.”
“Clear the room.”
With a wave of his arm, he gestured everyone out.
“Alpha…?” Stephan questioned.
“Don’t worry,” Elijah said. “I can take her.”
She snorted. “You can try, puppy. Don’t forget I have a few eons on you.”
In less than a minute, the room was emptied.
“I’m waiting,” he said, his eyes glittering dangerously.
“One of your dogs killed my mate.” Familiar rage and pain raced through her veins like acid. “If you think what I did to your friend was bad, it was nothing compared to what was done to Charron. You help me find the ones responsible and let me kill them, I’m all yours.”
His gaze narrowed. “How do you plan on finding these lycans? What are you looking for?”
“I have the date, time, and place. I just need to know who was in the area then. I can narrow it down from there.”
“Such bloodthirsty loyalty.”
She turned her head to look at him. “I could say the same about you.”
“You’d have to stay with me,” he pointed out. “I expect to be present anytime you question a pack member. It could take days, ma
ybe weeks.”
The scent of his lust grew stronger by the moment and she—damn it all—wasn’t immune.
“I’ve been searching for years. A few weeks more won’t kill me.”
“No, but I will. Eventually. In the meantime, I don’t have to like you,” he said softly, “to want to fuck you.”
She swallowed hard, damning the elevated rate of her pulse, which she knew he could hear. “Of course not. You’re an animal.”
He circled her again, leaning in and inhaling deeply. “What’s your excuse?”
She had none, which was screwing with her head. In all the years since Char had been killed, the need for sex had been less than an itch. But she wasn’t about to confess that he was getting to her in a way no man had since her mate. Especially when she was certain her reaction had less to do with him than with her own anxiety at being in a den full of creatures she hated without a weapon on her back. With her fangs and claws, she could take down a half-dozen lycans; with Charron’s twin katanas, she could hold her own against a legion. Only Char himself could rival her skill with the swords. “No excuses necessary. I’m a heterosexual woman and you’re an exhibitionist who likes to fondle his big dick. The show had its merits.”
He bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile and crossed his arms. “What does Syre want in return for protection from the Sentinels?”
Vash studied him, noting his wide-legged stance and uplifted chin. He was a solid, anchoring presence. She could almost imagine him remaining an immovable object in the midst of a tornado. Although his rage was a tangible force, battering her senses along with his desire, his beautiful emerald eyes were shadowed with pain. Whatever else he was, Elijah was loyal. If he was trustworthy as well, he could be an asset to the vampire nation. And to her.
Her arms crossed in mimicry of his pose. She watched his eyes dip to the vee of her neckline and his jaw clench. He didn’t want to want her. That made her smile inwardly. She’d been using her sexuality as a weapon since Charron died; she was as deadly with it as she was with a blade.
Something Elijah was about to discover firsthand.
“You’re going to kill me,” Vash said softly, “in retaliation for the death of your friend, who died because I was seeking the same vengeance for Nikki. No…let me finish before you argue. I’m not going to renege on our agreement. When all is said and done, you’ll be doing me a favor. I’ll even lay my neck across a stump and make it easy for you.”
The lycan’s gaze sharpened. “Your point?”
“I’m not asking for your sympathy or compassion. I just want you to look for the same fidelity in me that I see in you. I’ll come into this alliance with all I’ve got. You do the same and we’ll both end up with what we want.”
“Will we?” His tone was low and intimate, belying the anger that thinned his sexy mouth.
“If you keep your wants realistic,” she qualified drily.
“You’re dodging my question, Vashti. What does Syre expect to gain from this?”
“It’s an almost even trade.” Lifting her hand, she ran her fingers through her hair, noting how his eyes followed the fall of the crimson strands. She meant to tease him with what he hungered for, but instead found herself heated by the fierceness of his regard. The desire of such a gorgeous, virile beast of a man was a seduction all by itself. “We both need bodies.”
“I won’t lead the lycans into war with the Sentinels.”
“No? Still feeling the pinch of the collar?”
“Still aware that the Sentinels serve a purpose,” he shot back. “They’re needed to keep the rogues in check. That’s why I think Adrian hasn’t fallen like you did, even though he’s crossed the same line. He’s the weight that balances the scale, which makes him too necessary to throw away.”
Her jaw clenched, pushing infuriating thoughts of the Sentinel leader aside because she needed to keep her head cool. “You also need money now that you’re all unemployed. The vampire nation has amassed considerable wealth.”
“You want me at a disadvantage. You want me grateful.” He unfolded his arms and stroked a hand down his chest, rubbing his palm over one beautifully defined pectoral. Showing off his mouthwatering body. Playing her game. His voice was gravelly. Warm crushed velvet. It brushed over her like the stroke of a tongue. “I won’t subordinate the packs to anyone. We’re equals or we’re nothing.”
Her mouth curved. “You can’t afford to see this fall through.”
“I know what I can afford. And what I’m willing to pay. I’ve got nothing left to lose, but that doesn’t make me desperate. Take it or leave it.”
She started to turn away, hiding a smile. “I’ll grab what I need and return tomorrow. Be ready to get down to business.”
“Vashti.”
Looking over her shoulder at him, she realized he could hold his own. Sandwiched between two powerhouses like Adrian and Syre, she felt little doubt that he could and would take on either side in battle if necessary. The submissive qualities she was so used to seeing—and disparaging—in other lycans were notably absent in the Alpha. Yet Adrian had kept him in service, a marked deviation from his usual practice of segregating Alphas from the others. Not only that, the Sentinel leader had trusted Elijah with Lindsay’s safety. “Yes?”
“Don’t play me.” His voice rumbled with warning, setting off a sweep of goose bumps over her skin. “I’ve admitted I want you, but I won’t be led around by my dick. Two can play the game. It won’t leave my mind that you want me, too. I don’t need to hear you say yes when I can smell it.”
“I hate lycans,” she said without heat. It was a simple fact, best laid out there in case he missed the memo. “The thought of fucking one makes my skin crawl.”
“But the thought of fucking me makes you wet.” His tone was as emotionless as hers had been. “Let’s put that on the table from the start. I’ll wring you out and you’ll milk my last drop, and we can still hate each other in the morning. Nothing is going to change how this association will play out.”
Genuine amusement slid through her. “Good to know.”
His gaze dropped to her throat. “And whoever’s been feeding off you is done. The only lips that will be touching your skin are mine. I don’t share.”
Her fingers lifted involuntarily to the twin fang tears that were healing with unusual slowness. Lindsay had taken the bite out of her after Syre’s failed attempt to recover the soul of his daughter, Shadoe. Vash was reminded that the first time she had seen Elijah he’d been with Lindsay, protecting Adrian’s mate with his own life. “Not that it’s any of your business, but it won’t be happening again.”
She began the long walk back to the cave entrance, feeling unsettled in a way she hadn’t in…forever. Elijah was going to help her find the lycans she sought. As adversarial as their “association” was, she trusted that he’d follow through, if only to get his revenge at the end. That should make her feel good about working with him. Instead, she felt twitchy.
She was now dependent on the trustworthiness of a creature whose breed she’d long reviled for its treachery. The lycans had once been Watchers. Instead of taking the same punishment as the rest of their brethren and becoming vampires, they’d begged the Sentinels for leniency. Adrian had given it in the form of indentured servitude as lycans. With transfused werewolf blood sliding through their veins, they’d lost their wings but retained their souls…and their mortality. They lived, they whelped, and they died as slaves, which is the least of what they deserved.
But now they’d betrayed the Sentinels—just as they had the Fallen—by switching allegiances again.
She’d be damned if the dogs would have the opportunity to be faithless to the Fallen a second time. Whatever she had to do, she’d make sure that if someone was going to get a knife in the back, it would be a lycan.
CHAPTER 3
“I have the right to kill her,” Rachel snapped, her eyes lit with a roiling fury. “You can’t take that from me.”
 
; Elijah stood with his palms flat on his desktop. He kept his gaze on the schematics in front of him, following the red lines that showed where electrical cables would transfer power from generators into various caverns. “I can delay that right and I am.”
Because they weren’t the only two people who had a claim to a piece of Vashti’s luscious hide. Lindsay, too, had lost a loved one to the vampress.
“Micah would have avenged you, El. Don’t forget he died protecting you. Vashti killed him trying to find out where you were.”
To avenge Nikki’s death, because his blood had been planted to frame him for the crime. It didn’t matter that he was innocent of Nikki’s abduction. He was nevertheless guilty of being the reason Micah died. “Micah didn’t have thousands of lycans depending on him, Rach. We need this alliance to keep us all alive.”
“Damn you. You want her.”
He lifted his head and looked at her.
“Don’t try to deny it.” She held his gaze. “It’s obvious.”
“He’s still going to kill me,” Vashti interjected as she joined them.
All eyes turned toward the arched entrance and the vampress who strode through it. In direct opposition to her appearance the day before, Vash had returned armed to the teeth. Katana scabbard straps crisscrossed between her lush tits, and two knife sheaths hugged her lithe thighs. She carried a small navy duffel in her hand. Her stride was long and sure, her chin lifted high and proud. As usual, she wore black from head to toe, this time sporting skintight cotton pants topped with a leather vest that was secured with brass snaps down the front. Her hair was twisted atop her head into a bun that was secured with what he suspected were slender throwing knives.
Like the first time he’d seen her in a parking lot in Anaheim, the look of her hit Elijah like a fist to the gut. His visceral response to her was so strong he sucked in a breath to push through it, then forced himself to exhale slowly.