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?”