Night Fall on Dark Mountain (15 page)
That he’d also discovered a wicked delight in torturing her was just an added benefit—and incentive to keep him torturing her until they were old and gray.
His strokes scooted her across the carpet, but she welcomed the hot, stinging burns growing on her knees. She’d beg him to lick them better later. As his hips hammered faster, her cries built into howls that intertwined with his as they both crested the wave.
Alec sank over her, his snout nuzzling her ear. “I love you, Stasia. And you’ll marry me. No argument, hear?”
Tears stung her eyes. She nodded, unable to push words past her tight throat. Slowly, she relaxed, knowing everything would be all right. Alex would take care of her and her sister. They’d be her family. She didn’t need more. She had everything now that she had Alec’s heart.
Her last thought as she drifted into sleep was she couldn’t wait to wear his collar.
*
Quentin woke as
the sun slipped beneath the ocean snuggled next to his beloved’s naked body. His hand cupped a small breast, his thigh rode her slim hip. He kissed her shoulder and fingered the rosy-brown nipple until it spiked.
Her flesh remembered him. If he slid his hand between her legs, she’d cream and he could take her like he’d been dying to do so many nights. But the release she’d bring him would be hollow.
He pulled away his hand and sat up on the side of the bed, bowing his head as he gathered the strength to do what he must. Then he turned back to check the manacles that kept her limbs chained to posts on the floor at both ends of the bed.
His sleeping beauty was healed—in body. The gruesome wounds the wolf had left in her belly and skin had closed, not leaving a single scar to mark the change. Even her belly, that had swelled so with child, was flat—no trace of her pregnancy to mar her pale skin.
He picked up the razor blade on the nightstand and made a thin, but deep cut down his wrist, piercing the throbbing vein beneath the skin. He held his hand above her mouth, pleased she drank without him having to resort to manipulating her throat. She really was getting better.
By the time his wound closed, her mouth stopped moving, her hunger assuaged. Now, he needed to find a meal to replenish what he’d lost. He dressed slowly, always listening to the sounds of her breathing, hoping for some little sign she’d waken—and dreading it, too.
Her injuries had been so extensive she might never wake up. He almost hoped she wouldn’t, because he feared what he’d find in her eyes. A revolver rested in the drawer of the nightstand, a bullet chambered in the awful event she woke…changed.
He wasn’t sure he could do it. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. She’d remained in a coma since the night of the attack, had barely survived as he’d held her torn skin together with his hands and licked her wounds over and over to help her heal and fed her his blood to save her life.
But she could very well carry the werewolf’s poison in her blood. There was a chance, when the next full moon rose in the night sky she could awaken a beast. A nightmare. A maddened rogue with a vampire’s strength.
Perhaps Navarro had been right. He should have let her life slip away that night, but he couldn’t bear the thought. If there was one chance on Earth that she could be saved, he’d give it to her.
Without her he was a shell of man. If he was forced to use the silver bullet to end her life, he’d greet the sunlight and join her in death.
He slid the glass door open and stepped out onto the sand. Two days until the full moon. Two days left to try to save her.
There was only one person on the planet who might possess the magic to awaken her and prevent the werebeast from rising.
The creature who’d sired him.
After the attack, he’d bundled Darcy into a bloody sheet and carried her to the private plane he’d paid a fortune to acquire. With her slack body strapped into the passenger seat, he’d flown her to his birth place in the Caymans on the blind hope that she would help him.
Following the curve of the familiar shore, he felt the breeze lift his hair and plaster his shirt against his skin. The palms creaked as they bent to the rhythmic gusts.
A little farther, his heart beat faster. But where a crude wooden shack with the palm-frond roof had once stood was a white-washed villa with an iron gate. Maybe this journey was for nothing. The past he’d sought to leave behind was really gone.
Maybe there wasn’t any hope left for Darcy…or him.
Pushing through the creaking gate he stepped onto a tiled patio and caught a whiff of an elusive fragrance, like honeysuckle and mint. Hers. Already he braced himself for the sight of her dusky skin and the sound of the island patois in her whiskey-rich voice.
She’d seduced the human man, made him a slave to her passion, until the day she’d taken his life and pulled away the gauzy curtain that had hidden the true darkness in her heart.
A footstep sounded behind him, and he stiffened, closing his eyes to steel himself against her
glamour
.
“’Bout time you come home, husband.”
Delilah Devlin is a
New York Times
and
USA TODAY
bestselling author of erotica and erotic romance with a rapidly expanding reputation for writing deliciously edgy stories with complex characters. She has published over a hundred-fifty erotic stories in multiple genres and lengths, and she is published by Atria/Strebor, Avon, Berkley, Black Lace, Cleis Press, Ellora’s Cave, Grand Central, Harlequin Spice, HarperCollins: Mischief, Kensington, Kindle, Kindle Worlds, Montlake Romance, Running Press, and Samhain Publishing.
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Love Bites!
Emmy Harris knows she’s not perfect. She has a little extra padding and isn’t the brightest bulb, but you’d think she was a sexy rock star the way everyone at a certain night club treats her from the moment she walks through the door. In fact, the two sexiest men there can’t seem to keep their hands off her, until one of them sweeps her away to his private domain. A girl like her isn’t going to waste a chance like that! So he’s a little rough and likes to take a nibble or two while he pleasures her. For a girl who didn’t know she’d never experienced a full-blown orgasm before, Dylan’s eccentricities are delicious!
Dylan O’Hara only wants a night of passion to slake his lusts, but finds Emmy is a full-bodied, red-blooded siren whose innocence and humor draw this Master vampire like a moth to a red-hot flame. When Emmy attracts the attention of a serial-killing vampire, Dylan vows to protect her, but he fears he’ll lose Emmy once she discovers he’s not human.
Just this once…
On the trail of a serial killer, vampire Quentin Albermarle is mistaken for the killer by a police special task force. Once the smoke clears, Quentin finds himself in a delicious position—atop one of the unit’s crack officers, Darcy Henry. In need of Quentin’s access to the vampire sub-culture, the task force leadership invites Quentin to join the crime unit as a special advisor, much to the chagrin of the men in the unit, and especially, of Darcy.
Caught between opposing forces, vampire and hunter…
A no-nonsense cop with no time for romance, Darcy suddenly finds herself embroiled in a steamy love triangle between her mortal partner, Joe, and the handsome vampire. Going from abstinence to wantonness, she is unable to resist the two men’s relentless seduction or her own sensual curiosity about a vampire’s special “kiss”.
A hunger like no other…
When the real killer threatens the life of someone close to her, Darcy makes a choice that forever binds the three of them together.
A member of an elite police unit sworn to hunt vampires, Joe Garcia’s life is turned upside down when he’s transformed into one. On a quest for a cure, Joe’s search brings him to New Orleans in a last-ditch effort to recover his humanity.
Professor Lily Carlson, a renowned expert in vampire lore, has a condition of her own. Her sexual libido has been in hyper-drive for months. Her only defense is to hide behind her glasses and tweed suits and stay as far away from men as possible. However, she’s thrilled to discover vampires really do exist when Joe shows up on her balcony.
Although Joe deflects her attempts to make him a case study and confirm a few vampire statistics, he is drawn by her powerful allure. When werewolves join the chase and track her through New Orleans, Joe’s cop instincts tell him there’s a mystery to solve. Intent on protecting her, he must seek help from the last vampire on Earth he wants to ask.
While his hopes for deliverance from his fate dwindle, Lily’s life is forever altered by an unexpected inheritance.
