Eternal Breath of Darkness (35 page)

Joseph paid no
attention to her protest other than to take her arm, lift her out of her chair,
and say, “Later.” He didn’t have time to argue with her. “Teresa was never your
boss. You were in charge. You never had to go through her for anything. And we
are done when I say we are done. And for now we are done, Larissa.” He led her
to the back entrance to his office.

“We are done
when you say we are done? I don’t think so. What do you think you’re doing?”
The defiance in her voice let him know that getting rid of her wasn’t going to
be easy. She was naturally stubborn and bold. It was why he’d chosen her to be
his second in command. “I don’t need your help to walk, Joseph.” She yanked her
arm out of hand and then turned and walked back over to his desk.

“I said we’re
done.” Joseph was monitoring Mia as she walked past the front desk, giving no
regard to the receptionist who had attempted to stop her. “You’re leaving.”
Mia’s thoughts were jumbled. They didn’t make any sense at all. No matter how
deeply he examined her thoughts, Joseph still couldn’t figure out what had
spurred her temper. All he knew was that she was mad as hell. Using his mind,
he prevented the receptionist or any other person from pursuing her or
attempting to stop her. “Right now, Larissa. You need to get the hell out of
here.”

Her entire body
visibly stiffening, Larissa glared at him. “I know.” She took a deep breath and
released it with a hiss of irritation. “I’m not deaf. I heard you.”

She was moving,
but too slowly and in the wrong direction. He had to get her out of his office
before Mia walked in. He caught Larissa’s shoulder to stop her.

She spun around
and pointed her finger in his face. “I sure hope you don’t think that just
because I’m a woman you can put your hands on me. I won’t tolerate it.”

Joseph released
her immediately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. But you need to leave
right now.”

Clearly annoyed,
she shook her head and made a ‘screw you’ face at him. “Whatever.” And then,
once again she moved in the wrong direction, toward his desk.

The woman had absolutely
no sense of self-preservation. Joseph had never felt so totally overwhelmed
with desperation and fear. If he didn’t get Larissa out of the office before
Mia walked in, his VP would very likely be seriously injured.

He was mentally
kicking himself in the ass, hard. He’d known Mia’d been bothered over the way
he left her earlier, and he’d planned to make it up to her later. When he’d
felt her partially withdraw from their mental link, he’d allowed it because
he’d been preoccupied, taking care of business matters with Larissa. He
should’ve seen Mia’s retreat from him as the warning it was. He should’ve
pushed harder to monitor her thoughts more closely. “You need to leave,
Larissa. Right now.”

“I told you that
I heard you. I’m not deaf.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You don’t have to
keep saying it. I heard you the first ten times you said it.” Head pounding, he
watched as she picked her phone up. “I just needed to get this.”

Turning around
to face him, lifting her chin, she stared into his eyes. She looked as if she’d
like to throw the phone at him as she waved it his face. Truthfully, he didn’t
blame her for being mad. “If you need me for the next two weeks, don’t bother
calling. I’m taking off for the weekend, and then I’m on vacation. You can deal
with the housekeepers threatening to quit because there’s too much work for
them.” She turned and walked toward the front door.

“That’s fine. I
hope you enjoy your vacation.”

Larissa turned
and frowned at him. “Whatever.”

Joseph felt
Mia’s hand resting on the doorknob as she hesitated just outside his office.
Moving with blurring speed, he got in front of Larissa. “No. Use the back
entrance.” Larissa shook her head defiantly. “Go out the back now.” He used a
powerful compulsion Larissa wouldn’t be able to defy.

Normally, to
avoid exposing the existence of his kind, he wouldn’t have used his
supernatural power carelessly in front of or on a human he spent a great deal
of time with on a regular basis. This time he didn’t have a choice; he knew Mia
was attempting but failing to regain control. As soon as Larissa walked out,
Joseph waved his hand to lock the back door so she couldn’t come back in.

As he turned
around, Mia opened his front office door and slammed it behind her. “What the
hell have you done to me, Joseph?”

“I don’t know
what you’re talking about.” The instant he looked into her eyes he realized
that it wasn’t rage at all. He’d misread her emotions. It was lust. Hot, wild
lust was burning in her eyes.

“Do you really
think I’m going to allow you to stand there and play dumb with me?”

“Mia.” Joseph
said her name in a soft, soothing tone, hoping to get through to her. “I didn’t
do anything to you.”

His attempt to
calm her failed. The energy she was exuding was that of a wild predator
preparing to sink its teeth into its prey. She was being driven to madness from
lust. It shouldn’t have shocked him, but it did. Since meeting her, the
unexpected was the rule. She was trouble. He liked trouble. A lot. But this,
this was way beyond the unexpected.

Her gaze went
from the chair Larissa had been sitting in, moved to the back door, and then
locked onto the hand he’d used to lift Larissa from chair. And then he realized
she’d lifted her chin and was scenting the air.

“Mia.” He once
again lowered his voice, hoping to use it to bring her out of the ‘predator
stalking its prey’ mode.

“You were in
here alone with Larissa.” Her voice was a low, threatening growl. She stared
down at his hand. “You were touching her.” She looked up to meet his gaze.

“No.” Realizing
she was jealous, he grinned like a fool. His reaction was an obvious mistake,
considering her extreme level of frustration.

“Why are you
smiling? Are you having fond memories of her?”

That brought a
frown to his face in a hurry. “Of course not.” Attempting to appear as casual
as possible, he crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned his hip against
his desk. “That’s crazy. What would make you think that?”

“Crazy?”
Frowning, she narrowed her gaze onto his, her teeth chewing her bottom lip as
if expelling pent-up fury. “What are you trying to say, Joseph?”

He shook his
head. Damn it to hell. “Nothing.” Two thousand years of life experience had
just failed him. It had been happening more and more every day ever since he’d
met her. Any fool would’ve known better than to make such an enormous mistake
with an already infuriated woman. The best way to encounter crazy was to call a
hormonal woman crazy. Though he hadn’t actually done it, he knew that was the
way she’d taken it. “I wasn’t calling you crazy.”

“Oh … gee,
Joseph. Thanks. You’re too kind to me.” To most her upturned lips would’ve been
mistaken for a smile, but he knew better. She was snarling, baring her teeth at
him. “I don’t know how I would survive without you. I feel much better now.”
And she planned to use those teeth on him.

Yeah. Right. He
shoved a hand through his hair. He knew better. In fact he feared she was about
to take her wolf form. Suddenly realizing just how close her wolf was to the
surface, his swallow was quite audible. She definitely didn’t feel any better.
If he was right, she was about two seconds away from making herself feel better
by seriously fucking him up and possibly other people if she managed to get out
of his office.

Maintaining an
appearance of calm to avoid triggering her predator attack instincts, he
started to work out a plan. He needed to gain control of the situation, or
rather gain control of her, without harming her. His best option was to grab
her and shift with her to someplace with no one else around. With a thought, he
locked the door through which she’d entered to prevent her from running out
when he made his move.

Obviously
hearing the click, she glanced over her shoulder. In a slow motion, ‘holy shit,
she’s possessed by utter evil and going to kill me’ sort of way, she turned her
head to him and pinned her gaze onto his. “Aw, Joseph, you’re such a silly
man.” Laughing at him with evident satisfaction, she took a small step toward
him. “But I assure you I won’t be the one attempting to run away like a
frightened little girl.”

Fear, true fear,
gripped him, and his pulse skyrocketed. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want you to be
frightened of me.” His dragon began to stir restlessly, pacing back and forth
deep within his soul. He’d been going against his nature, his need to take
possession of her body and soul, for the past six months as he’d courted her
slowly and given her more time to accept him and what he was.

“You won’t be
thinking it’s good when I get my hands on you,” she vowed.

Clearly, her
statement was meant to be a threat, but he heard it as a promise of hot and
wild carnal pleasure. “I wouldn’t be sure of that.” Normally his dragon
wouldn’t have become agitated unless he was engaged in some type of battle, but
its edginess had nothing to do with his dragon wanting to fight and everything
to do with heightened arousal caused by her aggression.

Joseph’s dragon
reacting in this way was strange; in fact it had never happened during his
entire existence since he’d not yet found his destined mate. No matter how much
he wanted Mia to be his true mate, she wasn’t. As in the past, his dragon
should’ve remained aloof even though she was aroused and he was aroused. He
figured it was because he had been fighting an ever-growing need for her, for
her body.

Regardless of
why it was happening, it was far more than a bit unnerving. It was downright
alarming. Normally, even in the heat of battle, Joseph had control over the
dragon’s nature, but he could feel it slipping away. And that was dangerous. He
could kill her. Not from the act of sex. Oh, no. He would make damn sure the
sex was superbly satisfying, but with his dragon so aroused and fighting to
dominate the situation it was likely he would lose all thought to the passion
and attempt to take her last mortal breath to replace it with his immortal
breath. For his destined mate it would ensure their eternal union. For Mia, it
would ensure her eternal demise.

He narrowed his
unblinking eyes on Mia, devouring every lush, curvaceous inch of her feminine
beauty. He ached to feel her soft skin against his, to cradle the weight of her
full breasts in his hands as he buried his hard, throbbing cock deep inside her
hot body.

For one
terrifying second as she stood there laughing at him, it seemed impossible for
him to keep his dragon, the darkest and most dangerous portion of his essence,
from making a move to take possession of her. His cock, hard and heavy with raw
lust, throbbed angrily. For the first time in his existence, he had reason to
fear he would lose control of his sexual urges. He fought to rein them in,
fought the urge to rip off her clothing and slam into her; luckily, years of
discipline made it possible for him to remain in command.

He could smell
the adrenaline surging through her bloodstream, causing her heart to pound too
quickly. He could easily hear it from several feet away. Or maybe it was his;
he couldn’t tell. His plan to grab her and get her the hell out of there was
far from perfect. If she shifted into her wolf form, he was going to get badly
torn up. Still, it seemed to be his best option.

Uncrossing his
arms, he took a step in her direction, his movement setting off her predator
instincts and kicking them into overdrive as she watched his every move. He’d
never seen her wolf front and center, so powerfully incited.

Flames burning
in her eyes, she kept her gaze locked onto his. “Tell me what you did to me,
Joseph.” She was trembling. Not from fear. Not from morphine. In fact, he
couldn’t detect any morphine in her body at all. She was mad as hell and
sexually frustrated, but anger and frustration weren’t what were spurring her.
Something else, something far more powerful, had roused her wolf.

He wasn’t sure
what she believed he’d done to her, but he knew that, whatever it was, it was
bad. Normally, simply asking would’ve been the easiest way to proceed, but it
wasn’t an option this time. She was struggling for control, and he sensed she
wouldn’t believe he didn’t know. Asking would push her over the edge. Hoping to
figure it out, he expanded his mind and reached a little deeper in her mind
than ever before.

Shocked by what
he found, he almost withdrew from her thoughts. Her mind, her body were a
burning caldron of lust. She was desperate for relief. Her flesh burned. Her
body ached. It couldn’t be—she didn’t even know she was lycan—and yet, it was:
she was in heat. As a result, her body was in a constant state of arousal. Her
mind was confused. Her thoughts were centered on Joseph because in her mind no
other man could ever give her the relief her body demanded. While that was
good, it was also bad because of the timing. She didn’t have any way of knowing
why she was suffering. But it was good her focus was on him. It was the sort of
thing that brought a smile to man’s face.

“It’s some sort
of a spell, isn’t it?” She took another step him. “Isn’t it?”

“No.” A one-word
response wasn’t enough, but as taken aback as he was, it was a miracle he’d
managed to find his voice to say that.