Howl for Me (21 page)

The agony of separation was too much for Ian. In a moment of weakness, he reached out—to a vampire. Now he’s a vampire himself, and Levi’s devastation—and rejection—is like a stake to his heart. But it’s nothing compared to the fury of the clan that wants Ian brought to justice for desecrating their most sacred ritual.

Afraid for Ian’s safety, Levi puts the pain aside and races to get to Ian first, but he faces unexpected competition: Darius, Ian’s maker. When they come together, all hell breaks loose, Ian is on the run…and the only way Levi and Darius can save the man they love is work together.

If they don’t kill each other first.

Warning: Contains two vampires and a werewolf who really, really, really want to hate each other. Except when they want each other. And have violent, sweaty, angry sex with each other. But they still hate each other. Mostly.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Given & the Taken: Wherever a vampire was at sunrise, there he remained until sundown.

Sometimes I wondered why someone didn’t just declare martial law against vampires and institute a curfew.

At least winter meant shorter days, which would buy us an extra couple of hours to drive. For now, all we could do was hole up in my apartment and hope we could get on the road before anyone came after Ian.

We stopped to top off both gas tanks, and Ian bought a five-gallon can to keep in the trunk as some added insurance. Then we pulled up to an ATM, and both withdrew as much as our bank accounts would allow. It wasn’t a lot, but it would have to do until we could make another withdrawal tomorrow. Fucking banks and their daily limits.

With enough gas and cash to gain us some headway, we drove back to my place. I pulled into a parking space behind my decrepit building. Ian pulled in beside me. We locked our cars and walked in silence, the rattle of keys echoing in the stillness between us. The barred security door clanged open, then closed, and we climbed the stairs to my place.

Once we were inside, I closed and dead-bolted the door, then leaned against it. From halfway across the cavernous living room of my tiny apartment, we locked eyes. Then he looked away, brushing a few strands of hair out of his eyes with a not-very-steady hand.

We both quietly unzipped our jackets. I stepped away from the door and draped my coat over the back of a chair, then extended my hand for his jacket.

When he gave it to me, our fingers didn’t brush, but our eyes met, and I wondered if he wished we had touched. On some hungry, visceral level, I did.

Breaking eye contact, I put his jacket over mine and tried to figure out what to say. What to do. My only thought tonight had been getting to him before that damned wolf did. When I’d failed at that, my concern had been getting him back here until we could make our next move.

Now, here we were. Alone in my apartment with a hell of a lot of time to kill before we could go anywhere. My mind had time to catch up with everything, and as we faced each other across a narrow expanse of space, anger simmered beneath my skin. It wasn’t directed at him, though. Oh, I was pissed at him. He’d quite possibly just ignited a turf war between two races, and I had my own reasons for the contempt that soured the back of my throat whenever I even looked at him. And I wanted to rip that fucking wolf’s heart out for, well, everything.

But here, now, as I faced Ian down just inches from the couch where we’d once gone from friends to lovers, the fury that crackled against my nerve endings was reserved for myself. Because God damn it, I still wanted him.

Becoming a vampire had a way of intensifying features. Not changing them per se, just…intensifying them. His eyes were a more vivid blue. His angular jaw was sharper, his skin smoother and lighter. People in Seattle often joked about being pale from lack of exposure the sun, but they were positively bronze compared to those of us whose lives depended on avoiding
any
direct sunlight. Still, it wasn’t an unhealthy pallor or death warmed over, just very, very fair.

And, on someone like Ian, fucking beautiful. If a human was a raw, untouched photo, a vampire was the same photo after being touched up, adjusted, and perfected. And Ian’s photo wasn’t one that needed to be touched up to begin with. The silence between us lingered. He didn’t notice my surreptitious glances; he was too busy avoiding both my eyes and the couch beside him. The couch on which we’d spent half a night making out after we’d finally given in to the crackling tension between us. I shivered at the memory. We must have been here every night for a week, sitting on that couch and talking before I finally worked up the nerve to kiss him. Then it was nonstop scorching hot sex whenever we could get our hands on each other until the night—I cleared my throat. “We’ll crash here for now. As soon as the sun’s down, we’ll leave.”

Ian nodded. “Where exactly are we going?”

“There’s a town called Kayenta in Arizona,” I said. “It’s on a reservation, and it’s about the only place where vampires are protected over wolves.”

“A reservation?” He shifted his weight. “Like, a Native American reservation?”

“Yes. We cut a deal with the Navajo people. Kayenta’s the safest place I can think of. For now, we should probably…” Without thinking about it, I gestured toward the bedroom. Then I caught myself. “We should get some sleep.”

“Yeah.” His eyes met mine. “We should.”

I swallowed hard. I knew that look. When he was human, Ian wore his hunger and desire on his sleeve, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he wanted now. Or
why
he wanted it now, I thought bitterly.

“So, should I take the couch, then?” He nodded toward the guilty piece of furniture as if I’d forgotten it was there.

“Unless you’d prefer the bed.”
Darius, don’t
…

“It’s your call,” he said. “Where do you want me?” As soon as the words were out, he dropped his gaze, a flush of pink blooming over his cheekbones. “I mean, where would you prefer I sleep?”

I hesitated. I knew where I wanted him. Now, where did I want him to
sleep
? Did I really give a fuck about that? Ian raised his eyes, the unanswered question still there in the faint creases above his eyebrows. After a moment, the creases faded. He searched my eyes. I searched his. All at once, he reached for me. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him to me, and as soon as our lips met, there was no turning back. I had to have him. Right here. Right now.

I slid my hand up into his hair, then tightened my grip and pulled his head back, dipping my head to kiss his neck just in time for his helpless whimper to hum against my lips. So much for the urban legend about us being the walking dead, because my pulse soared with every taste of his hot skin. Whoever said vampires were cold and lifeless had obviously never fucked one.

Breathing him in, I was more than a little thankful that the conversion hadn’t taken away that deliciously musky scent. I could smell and taste him for hours. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this hard, this deliriously aroused, and we hadn’t even taken our clothes off yet.

Ian nudged me with his chin, and when I raised my head, our lips met in another frantic kiss. I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and tugged it free of his pants. Our mouths separated just long enough for me to push his shirt up and off, and as we came back together, the heat of his skin beneath my hands and arms took my breath away.

Ian dragged me down onto the couch, keeping an unrelenting death grip on my shirt as if I thought to pull away. Like there was any chance of that. No one was getting up off this couch until there was an orgasm or two. Preferably one deep inside him.

The hookup from hell…or the ride of his life?

Midnight in Berlin

© 2012 JL Merrow

Leon’s drifter lifestyle gives him the freedom to attend as many music festivals as his heart desires. Even the ones that leave him covered in feathers.

Wet
feathers, thanks to the rain as he hitchhikes back to his hostel. When he’s offered a ride by a good-looking man in a Porsche, Leon thinks it’s his lucky night. Until he discovers his savior from the storm hides a dark secret: he’s a werewolf.

At first glance, Christoph thinks the shaggy stranger walking Berlin’s streets is a rogue werewolf. By the time he realizes his mistake, it’s too late for both of them. Forced to turn Leon into a monster to save his life, Christoph still has to suffer his pack leader's brutal punishment for endangering them all.

Leon awakens, horrified by what he’s become—but it’s his lover’s fate that spurs him to action. Freeing Christoph is easy, but the aftermath complicates everything as they go on the run, desperate to uncover the secrets their pack leader is hiding. Secrets the pack will kill to protect…

Warning: Take a trip to Europe. Soak up the local culture, meet a creature from your worst nightmares. Contains werewolves behaving badly, clothed and unclothed. Author is not responsible for unexpected, uncontrollable urges to consume massive amounts of, um, bacon.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Midnight in Berlin: We drove a ways through the forest before psycho guy turned down a

bumpy track that had to be hell on the Porsche’s suspension. It damn sure wasn’t doing mine any good. With the way we had to go slower here, the thought of trying to get out crossed my mind again, but my limbs were too heavy to move and there was a sick feeling in my gut. While I was still swallowing bile, we pulled up outside a crumbling old villa.

“Get out,” Christoph said, baring those damn teeth again.

The rain had finally stopped I noticed as I climbed out of the car, all stiff like my body had gotten rusty during the ride. I still couldn’t believe this was happening. Shit like this didn’t happen to me, only to sad losers who let themselves get picked up by creeps because they were so damn desperate for company.

Fuck. Dying for a ride home.

I wondered if I’d see my brother in whatever afterlife I was headed for. But if there was a heaven, Ben would be there for sure, and I figured my chances of ending up in the good place were pretty damn slim. Funny how making something of your life never seems a real priority until you’re about to lose it. I looked up at the house, which was big, old and tired. Shutters leaned off drunkenly like they were getting ready to jump ship, and the paint was stained with neglect. It looked like someplace Scooby Doo and the gang might stay if they ever took a vacation in the Fatherland.

It was about now, though, that I noticed something else, which was a damn sight more cheering: I was free, I was out of the car, and there was the thickness of a Porsche between me and the crazy guy with the sharp teeth and the pincer grip. I ran.

Not back down the track—that’d be too easy to follow. I lurched into the forest like the Terminator with metal fatigue, my wet clothes making it feel like I was carrying a dead man on my back. I breathed a sobbing prayer of thanks that the skies had cleared. There was enough cold light from the moon filtering through the forest canopy that I didn’t brain myself on a tree. I was thinking that where there was one house, there were maybe more. All I had to do was make it to the next one whose inhabitants were actually sane…

I didn’t make it.

I didn’t hear Christoph coming after me—all I could hear was the sound of my blundering footsteps and the frantic pounding of my heart. For a moment, I was back there in the tent with the clash of metal upon metal, the brutal noise of destruction all around. Then there was a great weight upon my back, and I was falling. Suddenly I realized it was me who was the dead man, and the destruction was all mine.

“
Verdammt noch mal!
”

It was more of a growl than a curse as he rolled me over and pinned me down again. I was still winded from the impact, but that was okay because I didn’t reckon I could breathe anyhow. He wasn’t the guy who picked me up in the Porsche anymore. My mind flashed crazily to stories I’d read of Peter Stübbe, the werewolf of Bedburg. He met a gruesome death four centuries ago, but it looked like he might have left a descendant or two. I was pretty sure I was staring at one of them right now. I was really going to die.

Christoph’s face had lengthened. His nose and mouth had fused and distended to form a shape more animal than human, covered in fine, dark grey hair. His ears had grown, turned pointed, and weren’t in the right place anymore. Those sharp little canines had turned into vicious long fangs; all the better to tear your throat out with, my dear. There was no white in his eyes now. They were pure amber, shining with malice and flecked with hunger. I looked at his hands, then wished I hadn’t. They weren’t hands anymore. Hands aren’t that hairy, and they don’t have claws.

The worst thing—absolutely, gut-churningly the worst—was that he was still wearing the clothes he’d had on in the car. Still recognizably—well, not human, but there was no mistaking that’s where he was coming from. So I couldn’t even pretend to myself that this was some wild beast or some escaped pet. This was a nightmare, an
Alptraum
. This was a fairy tale in the blood-soaked original, the version first written down by the brothers Grimm they don’t dare tell the kiddies anymore.

There was a strange, animal noise. I realized it was me who’d made it, not him. I guess that’s all we are in the end, predator or prey, and there were no shades of grey there, only black-and-white certainty. So I lay there beneath his body, waiting to die in pain and horror, and if I made a few more noises that might possibly have been described as whimpers, so what? Everyone craps themselves when they die, at least that’s what a med student I was with for a week or three once told me. You want to hang on to your dignity? Forget it. You’re human, so basically you’re screwed. Ashes to ashes; shit to fucking shit.

I waited, but it seemed to me that either he hadn’t read the script or I’d missed a cue as the beast that’d been Christoph stilled suddenly, then lowered that face that was almost a muzzle to me and sniffed, long and hard. “You’re human,” he growled at me, his breath hot on my face but oddly sweet smelling, his voice so thick I could barely make out the words. The crazy thing was it came out like an accusation. Hurt, and shocked, even, although what the hell he had to be shocked about I couldn’t begin to guess. It was almost as if he thought I’d betrayed him somehow. “You are not one of us.” His face changed; I could see the hair receding and the nose flattening, shrinking. The teeth got way less scary until finally I was left staring up at Christoph. His hair had gotten loose from the tie and was draped wild around his face, but you know what? He wasn’t any less terrifying that way.