The Claimed (10 page)

As he took hold of her hand, the sizzle of power continued. She glanced down to where their hands were joined and the glow intensified. Tendrils of silver and blue twined around the spot and she waited, fearing that if he was a Shadow he’d sink his ravenous filaments deep into her aura and try to drain her of her life force.

But he didn’t.

If anything, his power seemed to be similar to hers, complementing it—arousing physical passion and bringing immense curiosity about him.

“So
who
are you?” she wondered, following his lead for the moment, allowing her fascination with him to overrule common sense.

One side of his lips quirked up with the first hint of that sexy smile and boyish dimple. The moonlight cast a silvery glint to his gaze which gleamed with intent as he said, “I’m a man who desperately wants to kiss the beautiful woman beside him.”

This time it was his words that dispatched a wave of heat over her. Man-woman heat that she didn’t want to deny because more than almost anything, she wanted to have normal in her life.

“What’s stopping you?” she said with an inviting arch of her brow.

He bent his head and she raised on tiptoe to eliminate the couple of inches that separated them. His lips were
warm as they covered hers, hesitant at first, but from the moment skin met skin, desire grew until Victoria wanted more.

She laid her hand on his shoulder and leaned into him, opened her mouth to taste him and savor the shape of his lips with hers. Hard-edged, but tender at his full bottom lip.
Tasty
, she thought, nipping at that fullness.

Her inviting bite dragged a groan from Christopher and he eased his arm around her waist and drew her close, pressing her long delicious curves against him. He explored her mouth with his tongue as she opened to him.

The heat of passion grew in his gut until he wanted to touch more. Taste more.

But it was too soon, he told himself, and slowly pulled back. As he did so, his gaze skittered across her features and for a moment, he detected the glimmer of neon green swirling within her silver-gray eyes. Or at least he thought so, because it disappeared with a rapid blink of thick lashes.

However, it was a daunting reminder of how little they knew about each other and of the risks involved in additional discovery, especially as she laid her hand against his cheek. There was no avoiding the power there, sending a calming wave of energy through him.

He covered his hand with hers and allowed a greater hint of his own power to emerge. Beside him her body shuddered from the release. In the bright light of the moon, it was impossible not to see the tight points of her nipples against the thin cotton of the scooped-neck blouse she wore. Yet as much as he wanted to touch, he also wanted to know more about her and her power.

“Who are
you
?” he pressed, wanting to have enough information so he could trust her.

She leaned close to him once more and placed her free hand over his chest. Tipping her head up invitingly, she said, “I’m a woman wishing you would touch me.”

He sucked in a breath and shifted slightly, his big body providing a screen from anyone along the boardwalk. Releasing her hand, he brought his up between their bodies and cradled her breast, running his thumb along the hard nub.

As he took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, tweaking it, Victoria’s breath exploded from her lips. Then he bent, taking her mouth again. Kissing and licking at her lips. Dancing his tongue with hers and mimicking where their interlude could lead, especially as Victoria brought her body flush to his and experienced the long hard ridge of his erection against her belly.

The loud screech of a seagull broke through their desire, reminding them of where they were. Warning them about going farther in such a public place, especially as the gull swooped close by and appeared to screech an additional chastisement.

“I should walk you home,” he said, cupping her cheek and running his thumb along the flush of color on her cheekbone.

“I’d like that,” she replied, slowly. Her tone told him that she was reluctant to end the night, but he knew that a little distance was needed. It was too much too soon, and she knew too little about what he was.

With cautious distance between them, both carefully hiding their powers while testing the boundaries of the
other’s, they walked farther down the beach toward the Shark River Inlet and her home.

Rafael dive-bombed toward Victoria and released another raucous cry before flying away as Victoria and her date resumed their stroll down the beachfront.

Anger churned through his veins since his bird’s eye view had let him see way too much. The kisses were filled with hunger. The human’s filthy hands had been all over Victoria.

His gut tightened and twisted and with that, he realized that his rampant emotions were forcing him to lose control over his transformation.

His glide along the updraft of wind faltered as the feathers on his body slowly retracted and began to form smooth skin once again. Aiming downward, Rafael hurtled toward the sand, wanting not only to hide his full alteration back to human, but also to avoid a drop from a height that would surely cause bodily injury.

He was about five feet from the ground when he lost all of the feathers along his body. With a painful thud he landed on the sand which drove all the air from his lungs. He lay there, stunned for a moment, but then with a surge of pain, his body continued its morph back to a human shape.

Aware that he was completely visible to anyone on the boardwalk or beachfront, Rafael could not allow a slow change in order to conserve energy. Blasting his Hunter power from his core out through his extremities, Rafael restored his body and everything on him to normal in the time it took to draw a breath. When he was finished, he lay on the sand, appearing to one and all as a man just
resting on the beach, appreciating the sights and sounds of an early summer evening.

But the swift morph had drained him and he had trouble moving. When he finally was able to rise, his legs could barely hold him up thanks to his intense weakness. The sweat along his body and lightness at his center warned him of how much energy he had expended.

Too much energy
, he thought as he stumbled and had to grab hold of the edge of the boardwalk planks. He needed power to restore his life forces, but there was only one way to get it: feeding from one of the Quinchus.

If he went to Victoria’s parents, they would wonder what had caused him to deplete his energy so quickly. As angry as he was with Victoria, he could not violate her trust and let her parents know about their daughter’s dalliance with the human.

But if he went to Victoria, she might also know that he had been watching her and become furious that he had seen those brief, but intense personal moments. Maybe Victoria would even come to hate him for violating her privacy.

He would rather die than have Victoria hate him, Rafael thought, and slowly staggered back to his car.

V
ictoria closed the door to her home and leaned against it, her body pulsing with need once again from the sexy interlude she’d had with Christopher just moments earlier.

Now that she was in the safety of her home, she freed her life force from the tight grasp she had over it. Desire increased as the natural flow of sexual energy traveled over her as the first stirrings of the Equinox erupted, surprising her. She was still young for that bonding call to fully emerge, plus it normally came in response to sympathetic Hunter power.

But there was no denying that the call of it was here and it was equally impossible to ignore the demand it had awakened in her body.

Reaching up, she tweaked the tight tips of her breasts, recalling Christopher’s intimate touch. She had to acknowledge that there had been power there that was something other than human.

Whether he was Hybrid or Hunter, their energies had been amazingly similar. Incredibly attuned to each other, she thought as she imagined what might have happened if she had let him come in tonight. How he could have pleasured her with those wonderful lips, gifted hands, and masculine body. At the thought of all that size and strength satisfying her, her sex grew wet and ached to be caressed.

Leaning back against the wall by the front door, hidden from view of any of the living room windows, she reached downward, opened her pants, and slipped her hand past the gap of khaki and the silk of her panties to find the nub between her legs. With the insistent pressure of her fingers, she brought herself to the edge, her body shaking. With a tighter tweak of her nipple, she slipped her fingers into her damp center and with a few short powerful strokes, savored her release with a soft cry of completion.

Her body was still caught in the throes of passion when she sensed the vibration of familiar energy nearby. Hurriedly rearranging her clothes and forcing away the last vestiges of her desire, she yanked her front door open.

Rafael was slumped against the jamb and fell inward onto the floor of her foyer as the door opened. His body was soaked with the dampness of death, and the incredible fragility of his life force scared her.

Had he been attacked by a Shadow? Victoria wondered, riddled with worry at what had caused such a hazardous drain to his system.

Slipping her hands beneath his armpits, she dragged him into her home and closed the door. Despite the urgent need to recharge his energies, she couldn’t do so where it might be publicly visible.

She laid her hands on him, trying to create a connection,
but it was impossible since his life force was so weak. Only a major blast of energy could bring him back now. Rising, she stretched out her arms and pulled power from not only her center, but from the free-floating energies in the air around her. In the palms of her hands, tiny pinpoints of light coalesced, increasing the pull, and growing the small bits of light into balls of tightly wound energy she would use to recharge Rafael’s life force. It was a delicate balance since too much energy could kill Rafael instead of heal him.

When she thought she had the right levels of power, she focused on her captain and hurled the first ball into the center of his body. Rafael jumped from the blast and moaned with pain. A second later his eyes fluttered open, but then rolled back into his head as the initial flare of his aura faded almost to nothingness.

Victoria quickly hunted yet more energy for the second ball and then carefully zapped Rafael. This time his aura held a bit of glow, clearly strengthened. But she knew it was still not enough as he failed to rouse, releasing another low groan.

With his aura flickering wildly, she collected the last of the energy from the ions in the room and dropped to her knees. Splaying her hands across his chest and midsection, she released another surge of power directly into his body. Rafael flopped up and down on the ground like a fish out of water, but this time his body held on to the vitality more forcefully. His aura remained a steady and stable pale blue when Victoria pulled her hands away.

Head sagging to the side, Rafael finally opened his eyes. Pinpricks of neon green in his irises confirmed the presence of more potent Hunter energy in his system.

Gathering the power had also opened her own life
force to the world and her aura was so bright that it cast its aqua-silver glow across his body. She reached for him, intending to offer him yet more of her life force to drive back the death that had only been moments away just a short time earlier.

“No, Quinchu. I am fine,” Rafael said, and weakly held up his hand.

“But you’re weak,” she said and reached for him, but he scooted away on the floor, sitting up against the wall for support, so weak he could hardly keep his head upright.

“I’ll be fine in just a moment.”

Sensing that he would not accept additional assistance, she leaned back on her haunches and placed her hands on her thighs. “What happened, Rafael?”

“I was guarding you, Victoria. Following you, when someone grabbed me by the Pavilion,” he lied.

She narrowed her eyes, considering him. “You followed me? Onto the beach?”

The flush on her cheeks bore testament to what he had seen and yet he could not let her know how much it had troubled him. “Only for a few steps, Victoria,” he said, using her name to attempt to call forth their friendship rather than the Master/Servant vibe that also existed between them.

She nodded, and her embarrassment ebbed as she accepted his lie. “Was it a Shadow that grabbed you?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied, and looked away, so uncomfortable with his deception that he could not meet her gaze.

“We will need to be more careful,” she said, rubbing her thighs nervously.

“I will be more vigilant,” he said, and dipped his head feebly.

“You’re too weak to go home tonight. Let’s get you set up in the spare bedroom,” she said, and rose, offering her hand to help him to his feet.

Rafael girded himself to her touch and she eyed him warily. “Is there something you want to say?”

Her question gave him the perfect opportunity for venting his gut about her date that night. “He is wrong for you, Victoria, especially since we do not know what he is.”

The flush on her cheeks this time was clearly from anger. “I’ll be the judge of that, Rafael. For now, I expect you to be more careful so that you’re not surprised again.”