He stared, unblinking, his face hardening into an austere mask of ferocious hunger. His arms fell slowly to his sides, his hands fisting.
“Jesus,” he hissed.
Pure feminine power slid through her, her anger and frustration soothed by his undisguised helpless captivation. When she moved to close her top, he growled low and deep, the rumbling sound an unmistakable animal warning. She stilled instinctively, her body freezing in place as if lack of movement would make her invisible to the predator stalking her.
In her haste to retaliate, she’d awakened the beast. Now the steady, powerful drumming of his heartbeat was spurring her potent vampiric needs. The intrinsic hunger for blood and sex. His blood. His sex. That’s what she craved with a force that shook her, as if the desire for a man’s touch had always been inside her. Lying dormant. Waiting for the right man to jolt it to life.
That man stepped closer. Then lowered his head…
“Elijah.” She breathed his name, her pulse pounding violently. Her body was straining toward his without her volition, every muscle taut with expectation and wanting. She should’ve backed away again, would have done so if she’d been capable of moving. Instead it felt like her feet had been encased in concrete, rooting her in place.
His breath gusted hot over her nipple, his lips hovering over the stiffened peak. “No paws,” he whispered.
Then he stroked his rough tongue across her with a long, leisurely lick. Her gasp was a whiplash in the still of the night; her body jerked as if she’d been tasered. She felt as if she had been. Needles of sharpened awareness swept over her skin from head to toe. The roots of her hair stood on end, tingling with the need to feel his grip fisting the crimson strands.
He groaned, the sound filled with pleasure and torment. “Offer yourself to me,” he ordered roughly, licking his lips.
She swallowed hard, tasting blood and realizing her fangs had descended and pierced her. Her hunger beat at her senses, rushing through her veins, mingling with her sexual desire until they were one and the same. She didn’t realize she’d cupped her breast and lifted it to his mouth until she was scorched by the heat of his lips. The drenching burn was quenched by a sudden hard suck that made her moan and stumble a fraction of an inch closer. His tongue fluttered maddeningly over the elongated tip, worrying it, making her sex clench in jealous greed.
The wind blew softly, riffling through his dark hair and urging the thick silk to brush over her tender skin. He touched her nowhere else, with nothing else but his mouth, which began to tug with rhythmic pulls. The measured tempo pulsed through her, making her wet between the thighs and achy with emptiness.
He released her with a pop of breaking suction.
“I love your tits,” he growled, each word said with arousing vehemence. “I’m going to squeeze them in my hands, holding them together as I slide my dick through all this lush, firm flesh until I come all over you.”
No man had ever talked to her that way, so crude and raw. No man would dare.
Taming Elijah would be impossible, she realized, quivering with longing tinged by apprehension. She was a strong woman, but she couldn’t imagine bending him to her will. Because he was strong, too. Maybe even stronger than she was.
Elijah looked up at her as his head turned slightly to bring his mouth over her neglected nipple. “You want that, too. I can smell how it turns you on to think about giving it up to me however I want it. Giving up all that power and command you’re used to shoving everyone around with.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh…you will, Vashti. Long and hard. It’s only a matter of time.”
He was suckling her before she could retort, pinning her nipple to the roof of his mouth and massaging it with his tongue. She almost came from the sweet sting of it, the delirious pleasure/pain of voracious draws so powerful they hollowed his cheeks. He was relentless in his taking, his teeth sinking into the turgid peak with just enough pressure to send a shiver of wariness through her.
“Vash.”
Salem’s voice behind her startled her into jerking away from the wicked ecstasy of Elijah’s mouth. She cried out at the sharp scrape of teeth over tender flesh, then again with surprise at the orgasm that was almost triggered by the bittersweet pain.
Elijah had her zipped up and steadied with lightning-quick efficiency. If not for his labored breathing, she might’ve thought he was unaffected. Then he caught her hand and cupped it around his erection, grinding himself into her palm.
“We’re here,” he called out, pushing her hand aside and taking a step back.
They were only yards away from the door. Salem would have seen Elijah’s bent head and smelled their mutual arousal.
“I need your wheels,” her captain said, lingering by the warehouse instead of approaching. Agitated by the scent of desire, he shoved a meaty hand through his electric orange hair. It was a testament to how bad-ass he was that he could flaunt a hair color that was a bull’s-eye on his massive cranium. “Time for a run to Shred.”
Swallowing hard, she stared at Elijah but spoke to Salem. “I’ll go with you.”
Shred was one of Torque’s most exclusive and secretive dens. Located far off the Vegas Strip, it was a way station for fledgling minions and older vamps alike, offering safety, sex, and blood.
“I’ll drive,” Elijah said, bending to pick up the car keys she’d unknowingly dropped from her lax hand.
Any one of the lycans in the building could have snuck up on her and she would never have noticed, her brain fried by the heat of Elijah’s mouth on her breast. It was unacceptable. She needed to get her shit together before she got herself killed. “I’m not telling you where it is, lycan.”
“You don’t have to.” He turned toward the Jeep. “I’ve hunted there before.”
CHAPTER 6
Pissed off and frustrated by his own weakness where Vashti was concerned, Elijah made no attempt to hide his raging lust from either Vash or Salem. Instead he obstinately pumped pheromones into the air around him, permeating the Jeep’s interior until Salem cursed viciously and adjusted himself in his leather pants. Vash had chosen to take a seat in the back, a mistake that guaranteed the smell of his need whipped across her face and through her hair, carried by the wind surging through the window Salem opened.
“Cut it out, Alpha,” she shouted, punching her fist into his seat back.
He met her furious gaze in the rearview mirror, his own hard and brittle. She was as angry as he was; he had made sure of it by reminding her that he’d hunted her kind, that he’d observed and studied their habits and places of congregation in minute detail so he could kill the ones who stepped out of line.
She deserved to be uncomfortable for putting him through this hunger, for making him want her more than he’d ever wanted anything. The moment he’d stroked his tongue across her skin, her taste had exploded across his senses with the force of an incendiary grenade. There was nothing reasoned or calculated in his response to her. It was pure primal recognition of a unique and potent physical attraction. Lust at first sight, exacerbated by their heightened lupine and vampire natures.
He could still taste her, damn her. Smell her. His palms burned with the need to feel her. Inside, his beast howled with rage to be freed, forcing him to struggle in a way he’d never had to before. Because he…liked her. Crazy as that was. Crazy as she was. Controlling his baser nature had always been as easy as breathing, but it was exhausting him now. Wearing him down. Clawing at him from the inside and shredding what restraint he had left after a week of painful blows and savage lows and highs. She’d witnessed those trials and, in her own way, been an asset to have around while going through them.
He growled. Vashti’s returning feminine hunger was eating at him like a cancer. As tough as she was, he now knew he could make her soft and submissive, and he wanted her like that. Wanted her limp and panting beneath him, completely at his mercy. He could accept nothing less.
The nearly two-hour drive to Sh
red ended up feeling like two years, and not just for him. Salem unfolded from the Jeep before it drew to a complete stop and was through the thick metal entrance door in a flash. Vash was fast on his heels, fleeing Elijah as if the hounds of hell were after her. When the door slammed shut behind her, he barked out a mirthless laugh.
As if a simple door could prevent what was coming. If only it was that easy.
Needing to get himself under control before he entered a vampire den, Elijah took his time locking up the SUV and scoping out the exterior of the unobtrusive building for changes. He surveyed the immediate area, refreshing his memory of the industrial properties on the periphery that had closed long before the party got started. He took note of the armed vampires on the roof before they deliberately made their presence known. They smelled him coming, and because he was spoiling for a fight, he lifted his hand and flipped them off.
One decided to oblige him, leaping agilely from the top of the three-story building and landing in a graceful crouch. The vamp was sleek and sinewy, his world-weary eyes and economy of movement betraying significant age. They circled each other slowly, baring fangs and canines, claws extended. Neither of them looked away from the other when the door opened and a masculine voice shouted out, “Dredge! Leave him alone. He’s Vashti’s.”
The vampress’s protection so enraged Elijah that his spine rippled with a partial change. He didn’t fucking need her to clear the way for him. He could damn well do it himself.
“Are you a pet, dog?” Dredge taunted, his amber eyes glowing. “Or a meal?”
Elijah’s mouth curved. “Maybe she’s a lycan’s bitch.”
Dredge lunged. Expecting the reaction, Elijah met the vamp’s incoming face with his fist, hurtling him backward across the parking lot and into the side of a delivery van, creating a massive dent that mimicked the shape of his body.
Shaking the sting out of his fist, Elijah turned toward the open door, his ears trained for the sound of a retaliatory ambush from the others on the roof. But none came, proving the extent of Vash’s power—her word was law for vampires. Seeing the proof of it made Elijah’s dick impossibly harder, spurring his need for her, which had grown steadily over days of watching her run the show. She wielded power with the same control and skill that she used to wield her katanas, which turned him on as much as her body did.
Once inside the outer door, he encountered a second entrance. It opened as soon as the first door shut, releasing a flood of pounding techno-pop music and the rich metallic smell of freshly spilled blood. The scent of sex engulfed him in a steamy mist, spurring his ferocious mood. He wanted to fight and fuck with unmitigated ferocity, and the need to do both increased with every second that passed.
Rounding a corner, he was thrust into a massive room filled with writhing vampires. Some were dancing, grinding their undulating bodies against whoever was close enough. Others were feeding, their bloody mouths latched on to throats, wrists, and thighs. Still more were openly fucking, like Salem, who was drilling a vampress from behind as she drank from the femoral artery of a woman spread-eagled in front of her.
The unrestrained hedonism bombarded Elijah’s ravaged senses, the thick humidity in the space almost suffocating him. Maddened to the edge of insanity, he searched for Vash among the crowd, his beast lunging against the cage of his control, trying to batter its way out at the thought that she might be spread for someone else.
Leaping onto a tallboy table, he roared, drowning out all sound. The room froze, the music becoming glaringly loud within the absence of sound. Then a slender blonde mimicked his leap and gained the bar top. She ripped her shirt apart and exposed her tits, shaking them with wild abandon and screaming, “Fuck yeah!”
The crowd ignited into a frenzied mass. Drunk on endorphins, they resumed their carnal excess, the pounding bass of the music spurring them like a war drum.
Elijah vaulted up to the second-floor balcony, hunting his vampress.
Vash entered the third-floor VIP lounge and scanned the room’s occupants with a sweeping glance. She was searching for something in particular and she found him. He was long and lean. Blond. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his lounging pose was insolence personified. His chest and feet were bare; his skin was pale and smooth. The antithesis of Elijah. But best of all were the piercings riddling his body—his ears, brows, nose, lips, nipples, navel…She was certain there would be more in places she couldn’t yet see. And the carvings in his skin. Intricate designs that had been sliced by a skilled blade and prevented from healing by application of silver-laced cream or shavings.
The man enjoyed pain. Sought it out deliberately and found beauty in it. And she wanted to inflict pain on someone who could take it and wanted it. Because she hurt and was infuriated by that hurt. Because she’d pushed her way through dozens of beautiful, desirable male bodies to reach the lounge, and none of them had moved her or stirred the hunger simmering in her blood. Because she was dead to every male just as she’d been ever since the day Charron died…every male but one.
“You.” She beckoned her quarry with a crook of her finger.
He straightened with a slow, sensual smile and came to her with a leisurely, confident stride. Reaching her, he took her in from head to toe with a covetous glance, then licked his lower lip. “I was beginning to think you’d never come for me.”
Bored already, she raised her brows. “Oh?”
Tilting his head, he exposed his neck…and the tattoo that was written there with silver-tainted ink: VASHTI, BITE HERE.
A shiver moved through her at the craziness of the act. They’d never met, yet he’d marked himself as her property.
Of all the men to meet her criteria for the night, she had to pick a groupie, one of the far-too-many minions who were aroused by the thought of being a blood slave to one of the Fallen.
She almost waved him away—there was enough crazy in her life as it was. Then she heard Elijah’s roar, felt it vibrate through walls and rattle the bloodstained glasses on the tables. The fierceness of the desire that shot through her made her sway on her feet, as if she was hardwired to answer that dominant call. She didn’t have time to be discerning. She needed blood to manage her desire for Elijah and she needed it now.
Knowing she had maybe five minutes at most before the lycan worked his way through the crush of bodies on the stairs to get to the third floor, Vash shoved the vamp into a chair and circled him, grabbing his jaw from behind and yanking it out of the way to expose his neck. She’d prefer his wrist, to keep it impersonal, but she needed to be quick and nothing beat an arterial gush for speed.
Her fangs descended, her gaze riveted to the thick pumping vein at his throat. As her stomach gnawed in hunger and dizziness swept through her from the need to feed, the lounge door was ripped off its hinges and thrown over the balcony into the teeming mass of vampires below. Elijah filled the threshold, his body big, hard, and virile. His irises glowed in the shadows cast by the muted wall sconces.
“Mine.” Just the one word, spoken low and terrifyingly deep, as if ripped from the beast inside him instead of from his human throat.
Something warm and slightly twisted slid sinuously inside her, some alien feeling of…pleasure that such a magnificently masculine creature should be so powerfully possessive of her.
His gaze dropped to the minion seated in front of her. “Go, before I kill you.”
“I need to eat, damn you!” she shouted, weary of fighting herself over him and desperately clinging to the hope that a replenishment of nutrients would free her from her inexplicable fascination.
But she knew he wouldn’t let her drink from anyone else, not now. The act of feeding was too innately sexual, even when the only contact was fangs to vein and lips to skin. He was too territorial to allow that connection, however impersonal. Yet she couldn’t afford to drink from him…wouldn’t drink from him, because she knew, instinctively, that she would have the same reaction to the taste of him as he’d had to the taste of her—the hunge
r wouldn’t be appeased; it would grow. She would crave more. More of his potent lycan blood. More of him.
She would have to restrain him long enough to get a meal in edgewise.
Taking command of the situation, Vash closed the distance between them and caught him with a fist in his shirt. “Come with me.”
She pulled him, but succeeded only in ripping the shirt off his back. Elijah didn’t move at all, was too powerful for even her vampire strength. Her sex clenched with greed for this male who was more than a match for her.
Flushed and breathless, she skirted him and exited to the hall, trying to get herself under control before he realized how close to the edge she was. If she wasn’t careful, he’d have her begging for his cock. The thought of that weakness terrified her as nothing else could. She had to be strong, for herself and for Char, and for all the vampires who needed her to keep them alive and thriving.
Elijah followed so closely she could feel his heavy exhalations on her nape. Stalking her again. And she couldn’t deny that some recessed part of her wanted him to. Because it ratcheted up her desire, made her hot and wet.
Vash saw the small green light lit above a door and went to it quickly. There were more doors and more lights. Most were red, which signaled locked and occupied. Some were yellow, which signaled vacant but in need of housekeeping. Only a few were green and she chose the nearest one, opening the door and cursing as Elijah crowded her into the small playroom. He caught her around the waist and tossed her onto the massive bed, barely giving her the time to scoot up before he pounced.
“Elijah,” she gasped, as he landed neatly on all fours, caging her to the bed with his hands pressed to the mattress at her shoulders and his knees hugging the sides of her thighs. Fear paralyzed her, not of him but of the raging desire that was quickly consuming her. The need to arch upward and offer herself to him was a driving force. It pounded her heart against her ribs and squeezed the air from her lungs.