He pulled my shirt off me, tore off my bra, and sucked at my nipple, grazing it with his teeth. An electric burst of pleasure radiated from my breast all through me. I shivered. I sank my fingers into his hair. He pulled my jeans open and slid his hand inside, sliding it against the short curls of hair, over the sensitive folds, and dipped his fingers into me. I gasped. He dragged the slick liquid warmth up and stroked my clitoris. Bursts of pleasure rocked me, sliding through my body, turning it pliant, flexible, and hot. I ground against his fingers, lost in chasing the ecstasy, wanting more. More . . .
He tripped me onto the bed. I fell onto the comforter. My boots went flying. He pulled off my jeans. I was naked, gloriously unashamedly naked. I raised my arms, inviting him in. He pulled off his shirt and paused for a tiny moment, nude, powerful, muscular, long, and mine. All mine. His eyes glowed, drowned with gold. His muscles tightened on his frame, like steel under the heated silk of skin. I knew every harsh edge of that body and the sheer overwhelming strength of it. Curran’s body made me drunk from lust, his eyes seduced me, but the stubborn unbending will that drove it made me love him.
He knelt on the bed, slid his hands under my butt, and lifted me up. His tongue licked the sensitive bundle of nerves.
Oh my God. The wave of pleasure hit me and dragged me under. I cried out.
Each strumming of his tongue stoked the tension inside me. I was burning up and I was moaning his name over and over. My body tightened in anticipation, each caress winding me a little more, until I could no longer stand it.
“I want to come with you inside me.”
“That can be arranged.”
He mounted me and thrust himself inside me. The hard length of his shaft filled me. He pulled back and thrust inside me again, and I arched my back, grinding against him, faster and faster. I kissed his neck, my tongue sliding over sharp stubble. I opened my eyes and saw him, above me. Sweat slicked me.
“Harder!” I whispered.
He sped up, his pace frenetic, rocking me with every thrust. I gripped his back, desperate, wanting to be one, and matching his pace. It felt so right. This was what heaven had to be like . . . My body clamped around him. The tension was too much, almost a pain. Suddenly it crested and broke in quick contractions full of pure bliss. I cried out. Curran’s body shook, tense, muscles taut.
It felt like I was flying . . .
He growled and emptied himself inside me.
We floated through the world, spent and happy. One.
? ? ?
METAL RATTLED. AGAIN.
Curran raised his head and swore.
I raised my head. Once the afterglow wore off, we both realized that the apartment could be a lot warmer. We had pulled the comforter and sheets over us. Curran held me and I had just begun to slip into soft comfortable sleep.
Another rattling. It came from the window.
God, what was it now? Could we not have a few minutes of peace?
“I’m going to twist someone’s head off.” Curran rolled out of the bed and strode to the window. He was still nude. Well, at least I got a little thrill out of it.
I sat up with the sheet around me.
He pulled the drapes aside and swore again.
“What?”
He stepped aside. A vampire sat outside our window, banging on the bars with his fist. How the hell was he doing this with the wards active? Oh wait, my aunt had broken all my wards. If we kept this place, I’d have to redo them. That would be a pain.
Curran looked at the vampire. “What do you want?”
The vampire’s mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear it.
“No,” Curran said.
The vampire said something.
Curran’s eyebrows came together. “Ghastek, if you don’t go away, I’ll rip that thing’s head off and shove it up its ass.”
The vampire launched into a long tirade.
I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to sleep. But Ghastek was now in charge of the People. I so didn’t want to go back to being the Consort. Just for one night, I wanted to be Kate.
Ghastek kept talking. He wouldn’t go away. He would keep on and on. I surrendered to my fate. “Let him in. The sooner he gets it off his chest, the faster we can go back to sleep.”
Curran slid the window up and unlocked the metal grate. The vampire slipped in and strode toward me on its hind legs. “His daughter!”
“Was that a question?”
“His daughter! The lost child. The Sharrim!” The vampire scuttled forward and pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t tell me! We were dying and you didn’t tell me!”
I shrugged. “I can’t help it if you’re the last person to figure it out.”
“Who else knew?”
“I’ve known for a while.” Curran picked up his sweatpants and put them on. “Jim knew before me. Mahon. Aunt B. Doolittle. Andrea. Barabas. The Witch Oracle knows. Saiman at least suspects. Obviously Hugh d’Ambray figured it out.”
The vampire ran to one side of the room, turned, and ran to the other. Ghastek must’ve been pacing back and forth and so caught up in his own thoughts, that he subconsciously pushed the vampire to do the same.
“It’s basic intelligence work,” Curran said. “You should’ve put it together. The pieces were there. You need to invest in information gathering. I get that you concentrate on research and development, but you can’t run the People without a solid intelligence network in place. If you can’t do it, get someone who can. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, because really, your ignorance is my bliss.”
The vampire stopped and stared at Curran.
“You didn’t even know your rival had a bestiality fetish,” Curran said. “You were fighting him for the top spot. You needed leverage. If you had known about his trips to the hit-’n’-split, you could’ve gathered evidence. You could’ve publicly embarrassed him, you could’ve sent the evidence to his wife and destroyed his marriage, you could’ve packaged it and sent it to HQ informing them that you had a potential security breach, you could’ve blackmailed him, you could’ve sat him down in private and told him that you have this evidence, but you know how important his family is to him and you’ll destroy it out of solidarity, so he would be eating out of your hand. That’s how you control the situation, Ghastek. You didn’t control it, because you didn’t know.”
And there it was, the Beast Lord in all his glory.
“Are you done?” Ghastek asked.
“You deserve it,” I told him. “You come here demanding to know why you weren’t told. People don’t tell you their secrets, Ghastek. You have to find them out.”
The vampire spun to me. “Do you even realize the enormity of what you’ve done?”
“Yes, I do. That’s why the man I love and I came here to have quiet time before the storm hits. And you’re interrupting it.”
“You challenged him. He can’t let it go unanswered.”
“I know.”
“He’ll come here and scorch this place.”
“I know, Ghastek. I’m his daughter. I know him better than you do.”
The vampire opened his mouth.
“Stop,” I told him.
The vampire stopped, silhouetted against a window. “Do you have it?”
“Have what?” Curran said.
He was asking if I had the Gift. The promise of immortality that kept people like him anchored to my father. I looked at the vampire. “You’re alive, are you not?”
The vampire froze, his mouth slack.
The door fell off its hinges and four shapeshifters tore into the room, Myles the wolf render in the lead.
Curran spun on his foot and roared, “Stop!”
They froze.
Curran in sweatpants, me in a sheet, obviously naked under it, a vampire in the middle of the floor and four combat-rated shapeshifters. I put my hand over my face.
Curran’s face was terrible. “Explain.”
“We were instructed to provide necessary assistance,” Myles said.
“By whom?”
“Jim.”
Great. Jim had us followed.
“We saw an undead enter the room,” Myles said.
Curran’s eyes blazed with gold. His expression turned flat. His anger had imploded. He’d taken his towering rage and distilled it to cold precision. The shapeshifters didn’t move a muscle.
“Did the vampire break down the door?” I asked. “Or did it knock and was let in?”
The shapeshifters stayed perfectly still.
Curran spoke slowly, pronouncing each word exactly. “What made you think that the two of us together couldn’t handle a single vampire?”
Myles swallowed. “It was my call. I take full responsibility.”
“Go back to the Keep,” Curran said, his voice eerily calm.
The shapeshifters turned around and fled.
Ghastek’s vampire slipped out the window. Curran and I looked at each other.
They’d broken the door to the apartment he’d made for me. For some reason that hit me harder than knowing the Pack Council didn’t want him to come and rescue me.
“I’ll have it repaired,” he said.
They would break it down again the next time. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just a door. We might as well go back to the Keep.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I smiled at him. “I knew what I signed up for.”
He was worth it.
? ? ?
WE TOOK OUR time. By the time we rolled into the Keep’s courtyard, the night was in full swing. We trudged up the stairs, while Derek trailed after us and spit out facts: triple patrols, Keep on high alert, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah . . . I stopped listening. The last drops of my patience had evaporated long ago.
We went straight to our rooms. Curran shut the door. I landed on our couch. Outside the large living room window the night reigned, Atlanta a distant smudge of deeper darkness studded with pale blue feylantern lights.
Home . . .
The door swung open. Barabas stepped inside, his face serious, his eyes slightly distant, as if he were looking at something far away. Something was wrong. He always knocked.
“The visitor you were waiting for is here,” Barabas said.
He stepped aside and held the door open. A person wrapped in a plain brown cloak with a deep hood walked in. Barabas bowed a little, walked out, and shut the door behind him. The figure pulled back the hood, revealing my father’s face.
Why me?
Curran started toward Roland. His eyes were on fire.
I shot between them and blocked him with my body. “Stop.”
“Move, Kate,” Curran said, his voice calm.
Roland smiled. “I mean no harm. I just came to see my daughter. No audience, no need for any grand gestures. I simply wish to talk.”
I turned my back to him so I could see Curran’s face. “Please, stop.”
He finally looked at me.
“Stop,” I asked him.