King of Darkness (13 page)

“Not if I do it first.”

“Fair enough.” He nodded. “Now. The wizard thing.” He sat on the bed again and steepled his fingers. “Here’s the problem. I’ve been killing those idiots for the better part of a millennium, and I’m good at what I do, but I gotta tell you, that guy didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. I mean, he did, but it seemed like kind of a tired effort, you know?”

“Maybe he was just a newbie.”

“Maybe. Except that he had a pretty strong aura. And there’s the question of how the hell he found us. We’ve never known of any ability to trace a teleport, and you can bet his finding us wasn’t random.”

Tyra’s face scrunched up in frustration. “I know. That’s been bugging me too. ’Specially since if it’s legit, one of my best evasion tactics just got thrown in the toilet.”

He nodded grimly. “No shit. You’re gonna have to be a hell of a lot more careful. You might need to lie low on your volunteer stuff for awhile.”

“Ugh. Yeah.” She slapped her hands down on the arms of the chair and vaulted up. “Well, I will. After tonight, anyway.”

Lee raised an eyebrow.

“They’re short-staffed tonight. I got a call on my way down about one of our counselors having a seizure or something, and we’ve got a new guy checking in. I’m actually headed over in a few minutes.”

He glanced at the clock, frowning. “You’ve got a new guy checking in, in the middle of the night?”

“It happens more often than you might think. Local ER can’t turn away a patient with no insurance, but once the patient’s stable they want ’em out ASAP. As I understand it, administratively their day ends at midnight, so they try to street them before the clock chimes.” She sighed. “It’s not the best system. Humans don’t always take such great care of their own when there’s money on the line.”

“Yet another mark in the pro column for your mother’s race, eh?” he said wryly.

Her eyes narrowed, and a little pang of guilt squeezed Lee’s chest. Tyra’s mother was a sore subject, and he was a thoughtless bastard sometimes. More than sometimes. “Anyway, I’m outta here. Hit me up if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll try to meet with you and Thad at the end of the night.” She gave him a cutesy little finger wave and faded out of sight.

Hands on his hips, Lee lifted his face to the ceiling and blew out a puff of air. On the bright side, he didn’t see how the night could get much worse. He grabbed his gear from the bed and headed out the door.

A strange sensation pulled Thad from sleep. Trembling. Isabel. Immediately, fear for her well-being made his gut clench, and breathing was a struggle. Disturbingly enough, he had also woken up painfully hard, and being turned on under such circumstances made him feel like a real asshole. It was just that Isabel’s gorgeous backside tucked up against his pelvis that way was so very…
right
. He struggled to reconcile the two base emotions.

“Isabel.” Her fingers were still curled around his. He unclasped his hand and reached to jiggle her shoulder. “Isabel. Are you okay?” Jesus, how was that for a stupid question? She was fine; she was just practicing interpretive dance.

She mewled discontentedly in her sleep and wiggled closer to him, pressing her soft curves more tightly against him. He groaned his frustration a little louder. “Isabel… wake up…” He started to shake her again, but before his hand could move, she came awake with a loud intake of breath and turned toward him.

“Oh, God. Thad?” Her breathing was labored, and her heart pounded against his chest. She still shook like a leaf. “What’s going on?” She started to look around, even as her slender fingers gripped at his arms to pull closer. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice hoarse. Her breathing grew even heavier, and it puffed gently against his neck.

Thad’s cock twitched, and he sighed. Here was Isabel, confused and probably out of her mind with fear, and yet he was primed and ready to do the horizontal mambo again. He really didn’t want to be
that
male. Aware that she could most likely feel his erection, he started to pull away from her.

Isabel’s hand went to his back. “No… please… don’t go anywhere.” She kept pressing, urging him toward her, wiggling and scooting until their bodies were flush again. “I’m really cold, Thad. Please let me be close to you.”

Well, how could he say no when she asked that way? But something was very wrong. He was burning up. How could she be cold and shivering? He wracked his brain, wondering if he should go for more blankets, get a hot shower going. Maybe get the doctor. Yeah. He should get Bray—

The sudden press of Isabel’s lips against Thad’s popped his eyes wide open. The lower half of her body rolled away slightly, and then her hand was pulling at his shoulder. She was trying to get him on top of her.

Oh, this was such a bad idea. It had been a terrifying and emotional night for Isabel. She was worried about her friend. She was…
think, Thad, think!
She might need medical attention. That was important. The truest reason was that this was already about more than just a prophecy for Thad. If he wanted it to be the same for Isabel, they needed time to get to know each other before they made love again. Time for it to grow into something real.

He needed to be more than just another one of her club hookups.

But when he resisted, she tugged harder, parting her lips to slide her tongue inside his mouth and digging her fingers into his back. Her leg hooked around the back of his, and her pelvis got into the mix by bridging upward to grind against his hard-on some more.

“Isabel,” he murmured against her mouth, “we really shouldn’t… not like this.” But even as he said it, his hips pressed harder toward hers, his dick throbbing and straining as if it were loudly urging him to shut the hell up and get with the program. Damn, he had about ten seconds to get himself under control before he lost all of his resolve.

No
good
is
going
to
come
from
this.

But there was more pulling, and Thad shifted so that he was more or less lying on top of Isabel. He hadn’t meant to do that, had he? Hell, maybe he’d already lost his resolve, after all. “Thad,” she whispered against him. God, he loved to hear her say his name. “Please…”

A few quick tugs and his shirt was untucked. Simultaneously, her nibbling teeth and fangs began an erotic assault on his earlobe that sent a shiver straight down his spine Thad knew that it was Game Over. He wanted to be a gentleman, but he was no fucking saint.

A switch flipped, and Thad’s feral nature came roaring back to life in a way he had never experienced with another female. He growled and groaned, nipping at her neck. One hand roughly caressed her jaw while the other moved south to the curve of her waist and then around the back to dip inside the waistband of those
amazing
stretchy pants of hers.

His tongue traced Isabel’s bottom lip before it plunged inside her mouth. His hips began to move of their own accord, his hard length pressing insistently against her core. Isabel, too, moaned deep in her throat as her pelvis started to undulate, the rise and fall of her hips making music with his just like before.

Deliciously cool fingers brushed against his rib cage and his pec, then crept to pinch his nipple. “Oh, yeah…
shit
…” he breathed, trailing hot kisses down Isabel’s throat. Unable to stop himself, Thad swept his tongue across the skin covering her carotid artery, loving the frenetic beat of her pulse beneath it. Jesus… he would just bet her blood tasted
so
sweet. His fangs thrust long into his mouth.

“Thad,” she said urgently. “Thad. Please…”

He couldn’t take it anymore. Thad sucked in a breath and pushed himself off the bed.

***

Isabel’s nipples tightened from the chill in the air. The tremors were so strong that even a gun to her head wouldn’t have made her able to hold still. She fought the urge to scramble off the bed and go after him, to pull his warm skin against hers, to wrap around him so completely that there was no way he could let go.

They really shouldn’t. He was right about that. Not when mere hours earlier she had decided she couldn’t do what he asked of her, prophecy or no. After their brief hookup in her bedroom, it had become clear this male wanted something from her that she wouldn’t be able to give. But God, her body hummed with
need
.

Alexia could have died tonight. Any of them could have. Life may be too uncertain for forever, but clinging to Thad—allowing herself to feel alive for a little while—she needed that. What the hell was he doing off the bed, anyway?

Thad… please don’t go…

Isabel could only watch from under half-closed lids as he unbuttoned his shirt and roughly shucked his pants and boxers. Her head sank into the pillow with a small sigh of relief. As he stood before her, the shadows in the dimly lit room played seductively over all that hard muscle. He was absolutely the most beautiful male specimen she had ever seen. Even the royal medallion embedded in his chest looked erotic, the way it played to the scant light and threw warm flecks of gold into his blue eyes.

God, she ached for him. She needed more of the heat, the chemistry that flowed between them with such strength that her body and the air around her seemed to pulse with it.

His erection jutted proudly from between his legs, ruddy and already weeping as he prowled toward her. By the time Thad’s knee once again dented the mattress, Isabel had pulled her T-shirt off and started to caress her breasts. Though her hands were cool, delicious warmth wound through her at the self-touch, more so when the heave of Thad’s chest gave away his need.

He liked watching her, and he was on the verge of losing control. How magnificent.

The bed shifted as his weight came down fully. Her thighs parted to accommodate his immense presence. Slow and gentle segued to a wilder urgency, and she was more than ready for him by the time strong fingers gripped her hips and ripped her leggings off in one fluid motion.

When Thad surged forward to kiss her, Isabel was prepared for wild. Frenzied. Hard and fast and now, now, now, just like it had been the last time. But the kiss was sweet and gentle. Tentative, teasing probes of tongue were accompanied by whisper-light caresses as his fingers traveled over her face, her shoulders… her neck. Her entire body sighed into his touch.

In a gesture that was almost unconscious, Isabel’s chin lifted to bare her throat. The anticipation lit a fire in her core. She’d never offered her blood to anybody and, until that moment, had no idea that she would ever want to. Every lick, every nibble, every puff of breath over the vulnerable column of her flesh ratchetted the wonderful tension in her body and the already too-rapid thrum of her pulse until she thought she might literally explode from it.

But he moved on, trailing more kisses over her collarbone and chest. “Thad.” His lips enveloped first one nipple and then the other, delicately, but the sharp tip of a fang just barely scraped her. The pinch gave way to pleasure almost immediately as his saliva closed the cut, leaving a sizzle of want behind.

He growled, and one large hand splayed its fingers out wide before it began a smooth slide over her stomach.
Oh, yes.
One and then two fingers slipped inside her, pulling a loud moan from her throat.

“Like that?” His voice was a soothing growl in her ear.

Isabel may have responded; she may not have. It was hard to say because the circular motion of Thad’s thumb on her clit while his fingers plunged in and out of her lit up her nerves and veins like a Christmas tree. A thousand questions and problems banged on the door of her brain, but they faded into white noise as Thad picked up the pace with his fingers and murmured filthy things in her ear. All the while, her body rushed toward what promised to be the most perfect of free falls.

“Oh, God… Thad.” A wholly undignified whine came out when he backed off, slowing the pace just enough to keep her riding the edge without going over. Isabel’s fingers combed through the short brush of his dirty blond military haircut and then marched down the back of his neck to grab his arm so she could urge him to pick up the pace. The muscles of his arm bulged and flexed delightfully beneath her fingers.

Firm, velvet lips nuzzled at her cheek. The heat of Thad’s tongue seemed to trace over each and every scar on her neck and face, giving them the sort of loving kindness not even she had ever graced them with. Heat and cold shimmied through her.

The cap of one muscular shoulder hovered near enough for her to do a little tasting of her own. Thad’s skin was musky and salty and all male, and as the pace of his fingers sped up once again, Isabel’s gums throbbed with the lengthening of her fangs. When he paused from his ministrations and his blue-eyed gaze met hers, the swallow and bob of his Adam’s apple pulled her gaze to the frenetic ticking of his pulse like a heat-seeking missile.

Before she realized what she’d done, Isabel had already struck.

She broke apart the second the flavor of his sweet, spicy blood burst on her tongue. Just like before, a blast of searing pain spread across her lower back, although that quickly dissipated and left her with a pleasurable vibration at the apex of her thighs. Thad uttered a sibilant “yes” and twitched against her lips, but somehow he continued to fuck her with his fingers as she rode wave after wave of the most intense orgasm of her life. She clung for dear life while she sucked, raking her nails over his back.