More Than Life (Arcane Crossbreeds) (6 page)

“That’s enough!”
He forced the weight of his voice into her mind.

“What?” Something moved through her eyes, something vulnerable, but it was gone before he could fully identify it. “You don’t like the new skills?”

“Katya,” he rasped, pushing away the lingering pain. “I can’t possibly guess what your life has been like these last few months, but – ”

“No.” She advanced a step, and there was the tiniest flare of light in the wide dark pupils. “You can’t. You couldn’t possibly even begin to guess.”

Raife frowned. Had he just seen a retinal spark in her eyes? That was a Drachon trait and a warning that instinctively had him tensing in anticipation of trouble. It wasn’t long in coming.

Her fists clenched, and she screamed again. It started as a purely feminine sound of fury, but soon morphed into a silent, more destructive force. He leaped out of the way as the curtains where he had stood moments before smoked, erupting into a flame that quickly moved up the fabric.

She snapped her mouth shut and stared at the curtains, bemusement marking her features as the fire consumed them.

The panel fell from the window, harsh midday sun streaming in. He lunged at her, wrapping himself around her to protect her from the fall, and rolled them to the smooth cement floor on the opposite side of the bed, away from the sun.

“Damn it, Katya. You could have been seriously burned.”

Her blue eyes were confused as she looked up at him from her position beneath the bulk of his body. “What – How did I do that?”

Raife pushed up, his arms braced on either side of her head, trying to keep from crushing her as he inhaled deeply to slow the panicked pounding of his heart. Every cell in his body seized.

She was in heat.

Full-blown, time’s-up, they-were-both-fucked heat.

The scent from the heat of her body infused the air between them, called to him, offering him that ever-elusive chimera of hope. His dragon was mindless, desperate in its need for survival. It didn’t understand that she couldn’t make life from his seed. They were two different species. It only comprehended that she was a fertile female and possibly his only chance.

An unnatural growl of hunger roiled up through his stomach, clenching the muscles, filling his chest and his throat. He closed his eyes to discourage the ravenous bastard crouched inside him, but it could scent her. It wanted her, and he couldn’t blame it.

He
wanted her.

The last vestiges of his sanity knew how futile it was even if the dragon didn’t.

Powerful tremors of that unrelenting hunger rocked him. Ever present, gouging at his soul, dehumanizing him. He clenched his hands, tried to control it, tried to resist.

Katya had been so sweet and innocent, her white blonde hair curling around her shoulders like a halo. As she grew into a woman, it had gotten harder and harder to ignore the current of sensuality he felt when he spoke telepathically to her. He had wanted to be the one to delve into that well of untapped sexuality seething beneath her surface for the longest time, but she was Sanguen. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice her future on a hollow promise of a life. Not when she couldn’t ever share his.

Or could she? He glanced back at the bare window. Manipulating sound to such an extent was definitely a Drachon trait, and she’d rocked it. Hard. Could she truly mate him? With a trembling hand, he reached out to touch her.

She wrapped her small fingers around his wrist, stopping him. Her pupils were still ringed in the blood aurora, and her breasts rose and fell with each labored breath. “What is happening here?”

“Mating.” He closed his eyes, tried to escape the intensity of his urges, but her scent surrounded him. “You’ve come into heat from my blood.”

“Mating.” She breathed the word, as though tasting it for the first time, and then jerked her hand back from him with frantic shake of her head. “That can’t be possible.”

“What did you think was happening all those months ago?” Raife met her eyes and pushed up to his knees. “
You
marked
me
.” He ripped his tattered T-shirt over his head and pressed a hand over the scratches that burned like a fresh brand. “It’s not only possible, kitten,” Raife rumbled. That alluring scent teased his dragon, tempted him. “But it’s damn near
im
-possible to stop.”

Chapter Four

“Well, you’ll just have to make a better effort.”

Katya huddled on the floor between his legs. It was too intimate a position, especially since she could feel the heat of him, see that telltale bulge behind the fly of his jeans. She pressed back against the unyielding concrete floor, the responding throb between her legs almost painful.

Just the sight of his big body hovering over her had her pressing her thighs together to ease the ache. Her gaze was drawn to those four long, thin marks stretching across his chest like an accusation. A promise. She couldn’t remember putting them there, but she knew she had. She still felt it, a resonance deep inside her of that savage victory she’d experienced when she marked him. It was a ghostly echo that was rousing back to roaring, burning life.

It brought
her
body back to life in a way that she didn’t want to face right now. She ached from the inside out. Even her breasts ached, the tips prickling until she wanted to press her palms against them. More than that, she wanted Raife to do it.

That was the craziest part.

She shouldn’t want Raife to do shit. She wanted to hate him. She wanted the thought of him touching her to leave her cold, not burning hot. Most of all, she wanted to believe that it was just the blood they’d given her that made her want him. But all of that was her denial talking, and she was smart enough to know it. She just wasn’t strong enough to resist the real truth.

She wanted him.

He still looked so big and safe she could hardly believe he wasn’t still the same man from her childhood, the only one she had ever trusted never to hurt her. What a joke! She didn’t know who she could trust anymore. Definitely no one in this place. He’d callously knocked her out and, quite possibly, left her in this hellhole. Yet she still wanted him. Even as she rejected him, she was helpless to prevent her gaze from moving over him with longing and hunger.

She hated herself for that.

Not that the fiery little emotion did much to quell the heat in her body or stop her gaze from wandering where it shouldn’t.

The sun pierced around the angles of his body as he knelt above her, creating a halo that cast him in shadow. Her gaze was inherently drawn to the tribal tattoo of a dragon, the one that had so intrigued her as a girl. It was dark and menacing; its eyes glittered with intent – almost alive. The claws of the mythological beast clutched at the bunched muscles across his chest and wrapped over the swell of his shoulder.

The heat radiated from him, a nearly irresistible need after having felt so cold. Frozen. The sudden onslaught of that sharp, relentless need to touch him, to warm herself, rushed through her, and she gasped. It was a physical pain. Her hands began to shake, and her palms tingled until she curled her fingers tightly into fists to quell the reaction.

It was more than she’d ever seen of him. He was massive, as were most his kind. His shoulders were broad, arms thick. Thick ropes of muscle slid beneath all that bronzed skin, drawing her gaze down the ripples of his stomach and lower. With a flush of embarrassment that should have been burned out of her by now, Katya gaped at his obvious erection. She itched to touch it, to touch him, to map every angle of his hard body with her fingers. God, how she craved it.

But she had to be careful. Be cautious. How many times had she been promised relief from the pain in exchange for her obedience, only to be thrown shivering and vomiting on the cold cement floor of her cell? She didn’t trust anything here. Raife was here as another one of their sick experiments. There was a camera watching her. Waiting.

Analyzing.

With a curse, she rolled her head back against the hard surface of the floor, and a desperate hiss rasped from her. The scent of him filled her senses, making the fire flare hotter inside her, flashing over her thoughts. It made it difficult to think. To decide what she should do, to try to override the demands her body was making. She wanted relief from the burning beneath her skin. She wanted to trust him to give her that.

But she couldn’t. She would never trust anyone again.

“Katya.”

The soft voice slid smooth and calm into her mind. So familiar. Raife’s voice. She wanted to open to it, take it in, let it curl around her like strong arms. It had reached out to her through the chaos of the night her family was murdered over twenty years ago. A light in a darkness that had never receded. Her lifeline.

Now it was a torment. A mockery of the past sanctuary it once represented. She couldn’t stand it, the warm caress of it in her mind more than she could bear. She felt like that little girl again, lost and alone. Only this time, he couldn’t be her light, and she hated him for that. Hated him because the comfort his presence once offered was gone, beyond his power to resurrect.

“I can’t …” Her voice was low and guttural. She was so lost. So consumed by a desire she didn’t dare trust.

Raife restrained her when she tried to sit up, to escape him. His big hands moved down her arms, his knees tightening on either side of her hips to pin her.

“I’m sorry, baby. I really am. If it could have happened any other way…” His fingers tightened on her upper arms with a strength that bordered on painful as his words tapered off. He lowered his head, those amber eyes lit with a feral hunger as his gaze raked over her. The sweetness of his breath fanned her lips. “But it’s too late for either of us.”

She didn’t have to try to read him. The clawing hunger, the heat, the drive to mate poured out of him and over her. It licked over her skin. She felt like those damn curtains, curling and burning beneath his touch.

And her responding desire was incredible.

It rocketed through her, filled every cell until she felt radiant. Renewed. The essence of him filled her lungs, and she held it deep inside her, treasured that sensation of being complete. Tears stung her eyes. It felt like life, and God, that drew her, a lure she was just too weak to resist. Her mate. Her soul screamed for him even as her mind cried out in fear. She’d survived so much these last months. Would she be able to survive another betrayal from him?

Unable to stop herself, she slid her hands up his chest and traced the head of the dragon. Her fingers flexed, her blunt nails leaving little white crescents where they pressed into his skin. The sight of it somehow pleased her. Peering up through her lashes, she met the intensity of his golden eyes. The wide expanse of his shoulders nearly dwarfed her, and that was oddly gratifying. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice acknowledged that Raife would be a strong mate. Capable.

Yet she was driven to test him, to make him prove it. The urge frightened her even as it compelled her. She speared her fingers into his hair and clenched them tightly around the thick strands, tugging against his scalp, pulling him back when he tried to kiss her. His eyes flashed, and a small smile lifted one corner of his full lips.

She was challenging him.

Distantly she recognized it. It was an instinct that swelled up fierce and imposing inside her. She wanted him to prove his worth. She craved it with an intensity that was undeniable and terrifying.

“What’s happening to me?”

“Mating challenge.” The explanation sounded as though it was pulled from deep inside him, a low rumble, barely controlled.

She watched the muscles in his throat work, and the rapid flicker of his pulse drew her gaze. She arched against him, bucking him off. She wanted him beneath her, her lips on that vein…her teeth
in
it. She craved the electric taste of him again.

Raife rolled back over her and slammed the mass of his body into hers, pinning her against the cement floor. His hands gripped her wrists and pulled them over her head.

“Raife?” Katya panted, pure instinct a deafening roar in her head, obliterating all coherent objections. She writhed beneath the pressure of his weight and tugged at her trapped wrists. She needed to touch him, to feel his chest beneath her fingertips, to dig her nails across his taut flesh. To retrace those marks. She wanted to draw his blood, revel in the warmth of it welling between their bodies. The compulsion spiked in direct proportion to her fear, shaking her.

Suddenly he was there, in her mind. He was a flare of color that blazed over her, but she was starving for the contact, craved the intensity of that mental connection.
“It’s normal. You’re testing my dragon, demanding it prove itself. You can’t hurt me, and it would never hurt you. Just let it go.”

“I don’t think I can.” A groan ripped from her throat, and she arched, sliding her body against his.

A flicker of light flashed through his eyes again before he lowered his head to nip at her neck.
“You can. You have to, baby.”

Rational thought slowly burned away as something dangerous roused deep inside and demanded her due. It was both frightening and exhilarating. Freeing.

EVERY CELL IN Raife’s body ignited into a heightened state of awareness.

He could smell her. She was there. Ready.

“Katya?”

With a grunt of pain, he pushed awkwardly to his knees and looked down at her. With his dragon so close to the surface, his vision receded to heat signatures. He could see the fiery shape of her body beneath him. Reaching out with one hand, he brushed his fingers over her flesh. She was hot to the touch, and a splinter of concern speared through the cacophony of the mating instinct that blanketed his mind. She may be reacting like a Drachon female, but she wasn’t one – not completely. She was too small, fragile. He needed to get himself under control, press the dragon back. For Katya.