The Claimed (20 page)

“You think this is right?” she asked, motioning between the two of them with a fitful action.

“The Shadows who attacked you were likely sent by my father. He believes that the Light Hunters are nothing more than prey. That Adam’s energy can be depleted to save our Shadow clan, only my father is wrong.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked. In her voice Christopher could hear how she strained to contain her anger.

Christopher jammed his hands in his jeans and looked away for a second. He knew he needed to give Victoria a
reason to believe in him—to believe in those possibilities she wanted so badly. With a heartfelt sigh, he said, “How can I be so sure?”

A long moment passed before he shrugged those broad shoulders in seeming resignation. Reaching for the hem of his polo shirt, he jerked it over his head and tossed it aside, exposing the muscled plains of his chest and lean ridges of his midsection.

Victoria’s eyes glowed as desire jolted through her. He could feel the heat radiating from her core.

“There is no pox, is there, Victoria? The ageless ways of hunting are pure. My people, those who have left my father’s clan, believe in this. Believe in me,” he said, and pointed to that perfect chest.

The lack of pox was only one sign of his purity, and as their gazes met, he seemed to understand that she needed more proof. That she needed to see the real him. To see the true nature of his energy.

Legs slightly apart, Christopher raised his hands to shoulder level and spread his legs wide. He closed his eyes and tossed his head back as he reached deep into his core and called forth his life forces.

As the buzz of his vitality surged across his body, Victoria sensed his Equinox rising with the summoning of his power. Neither could deny the awakening of their needs, which pulled them to each other like magnets, any longer.

He dropped his head and faced her, his eyes blazing with the neon brightness of his real spirit. The aura surrounding his body was a clean sapphire blue limned with silver, like the surface of the ocean on a sun-drenched summer day. Tendrils of white and navy calmly swam in the field of his life force.

“Light Hunter pure,” Victoria faintly whispered and dropped her energy shield. Walking toward him, she released her own Hunter vitality until the edges of their auras touched.

There was no stopping the melding of their energies. They rushed over the couple with the speed of a Hunter in flight along the winds of the cosmos.

Christopher shook from the force of Victoria’s aura. From deep within him his own life force answered, yanking alive painful need. His body hardened and his erection swelled to near bursting beneath his jeans, but deep inside, he hoped for it to be about more than satisfying the physical.

Laying his hand at her waist, he eased her near, and their fields of energy were as one, surrounding their bodies in a blaze of brilliant waves of shimmering aqua and sapphire as a testament to their common affinity. Her eyes gleamed with teal light, and as her gaze traveled over him, observing every inch of his body, it was as potent as any caress.

But he needed more. He needed to touch her. And he suspected that after this joining was done, he would still want more from her. He would want her to declare her love, sensing she was unprepared to do it this night, much as he was not yet ready.

He raised his hand to the neck of her light cotton tank top. Ran a finger along the line of it, watching with satisfaction as her nipples puckered into tight peaks.

She drew in a shaky breath and whispered, “Touch me.”

But Christopher couldn’t just touch. And he couldn’t wait, so great was his need to have her.

Taking the fabric of her shirt and the lightweight bra in his hands, he tore them apart with one powerful tug, ripping them open to her waist. Spilling free her full breasts with their pebbled coral tips. With a tug of the hand at her waist, he pulled her forward until those breasts flattened against the hardness of his chest.

Her sharp gasp attested to her shock at his actions. As their gazes locked, he saw the mirror of his passion in her eyes. At that realization, they released the hunger they had been containing.

They tore at each other, removing clothing in their haste to have skin against skin. To allow every inch of their life forces to contact, creating a whirl of energy passing through their bodies.

Christopher cupped her breasts as he brought his mouth down to hers, kissing her. Parting his lips to accept the dance of her tongue along his as she encircled him with one hand while cupping his balls with the other. He groaned at the smoothness of her skin and the heat of her hands.

Her soft cries into his mouth drove him on and he ripped away from her to bend and taste those rock-hard nipples. He rolled his tongue around them and teethed the tips, eliciting a rough shudder from her that reverberated through his body.

He nearly came and she knew. She rubbed that first drop of moisture along the head of his penis and then brought that finger between her legs, spreading the dampness along her cleft.

“Sweet goddess,” he called out, and dropped to his knees, grasped her buttocks with his hands to keep her near as he dipped his tongue in to lick the center of her,
wishing they were near a bed so he could lay her down and take his time exploring. But there would be no finesse this time. No waiting.

She was salty sweet, drenched with the juices of their desire. He licked all along her sex before driving his tongue into her, preparing her.

Urging her thighs apart with a nudge of his head, he slowly rose, kissing his way up her body as he trailed his erection along the smooth skin of her thighs to the center of her.

He delayed then, the tip of him poised at her entrance, the heat and wet of her bathing him. He locked his gaze with hers and waited. He needed her to recognize her own want, which she did with a slow dip of her head before she lowered her hand and guided him into her.

The tip of his erection sheathed in her created the first quiver of connection as their energies and bodies became one.

They both shook and cried out, aware there was no turning back now.

He drove into her and she lifted herself, burying him deep as she wrapped her legs around his waist. She encircled his shoulders with her arms and met his mouth with hers. As their energies combined, it sang along the synapses and sinews of their bodies. The power surged from one to the other as their forces formed a perfect circuit.

Christopher staggered with her wrapped around him until her back rebounded against the living room wall as he sought stability. He brought his hands around to cradle her back from the hardness of the wall and eased out of her before driving back in. Each stroke created pleasurable friction and a sympathetic vibration at her core.

Victoria pressed her hips down into him, striving for release. Needing to feel the explosion of the forces gathering in her center. She marveled at the shimmering field of aqua and sapphire surrounding them, streaming with bits of life.

As her pleasure built with the shift of his hips, the threads of life quivered and danced in their auras. Slipped in and out of their bodies until the moment came, hanging brightly in her vision. Tightening her body like the string on a bow.

He arched his back, lost in his own release as he shot his seed deep within her and she climaxed, drawing it in.

Their auras surged outward like a supernova before being sucked back into their cores, and yet she still sensed their individual nature. Realized that although they had joined physically, they had not been bound by their Equinoxes.

Bodies shaking and breath rough from the force of the union, they held each other and kissed. Gentled each other as the reality of what had just occurred settled in.

Christopher didn’t want to leave the comfort of her body, but he could feel the weakness in both of them. He didn’t know how much longer he could stay on his feet. Tenderly, he eased from her and picked her up in his arms. At the question in his gaze, she said, “Outside. The hot tub is fed from the river.”

With a nod, he took an unsteady step and then another, moving out the door to the balcony and then down the two flights of steps to the hot tub tucked privately close to the house.

He eased her down carefully into the Jacuzzi. She hit a few buttons along the edge and the water began to swirl.

He joined her, the side of his hip against hers. His arm draped around her as the two of them sank up to their necks in the heated water as it shifted around them. The liquid was alive with the energy of the minute life forces of the river within it, recharging them. Reawakening desire as Victoria rolled onto him, straddling his hips, and framing his face between her hands. She ran the smooth pads of her fingers against the rasp of his evening beard.

“Why didn’t it happen?” she wondered aloud, and was surprised at the hint of disappointment in her voice. She had wanted him physically, but had been uncertain about bonding with him for that reason alone. Now that it hadn’t happened, she should have been glad, but instead…

Christopher ran his hand along her hair, shook his head, and shrugged. “Maybe there is too much difference between us. Between our energies.”

“You don’t believe that for a moment, do you?” How could he when from the very first moment they had come near each other their life forces had been pulling them together?

He slipped his hand beneath the weight of her dampened hair and cupped her jaw, caressing the line of it with his thumb. His eyes were almost sad as he looked up at her and said, “Maybe it takes more than what exists between us.”

R
afael still could not believe that Mike was dead. No one was supposed to have been hurt. Maya had promised that their only interest had been in Adam Bruno, but his fellow cadre member had died protecting Victoria.

Victoria
, he thought, as he parked and rushed across the street to her home. She had been angry with him for his absence at the compound and his very public challenge. Had he also detected a bit of mistrust in her posture?

He had to make things right with her, but as he neared her yard, he sensed it—the pulse of immense Hunter power. Too great a mass of energy to be just Victoria alone.

Was one of the other Quinchus with her? he wondered, approaching the gate to her yard, but as he did so, he heard voices.

A man and a woman. Victoria.
Christopher?
he thought, his temper rising swiftly.

He marched to the entrance to the fence closing off her backyard, but paused as the voices became more distinct, along with the uniqueness of their life forces. Their energy pulled at him with its strength, arousing not just desire, but ever greater anger and guilt.

Christopher, he confirmed. A Shadow Hunter.

On the night one of their own had died at the hands of the Darkness, Victoria was apparently sleeping with the enemy.

Rage bubbled up within him. At Victoria. At himself.

He had betrayed his people, but Victoria had betrayed them as well. Fists clenched, he reached for the gate, intending to seek revenge for Mike. For himself.

But as he laid his hand on the wood, the sweetness of her was carried on a sea breeze to him and her life force sang within him. So caring and so pure.

Despite his rage, he could not destroy such beauty. But he would not let the Shadow savor it either. He would have it for himself, Rafael thought.

And he knew just the person who could make that possible.

Maya. She owed him for messing up tonight’s plan. Besides, she wanted the tainted Shadow Christopher for her own and Rafael knew she wouldn’t stop until that was accomplished.

Just as he wouldn’t stop until he had Victoria beneath him, calling out his name. Sharing her energy and Equinox with him so that the clan’s future would be secured.

Racing away from the scene of her betrayal, Rafael planned what he would do and imagined how he would suck the life from the Dark One who had ruined Victoria.

Victoria considered Christopher, wondering at what had prompted his statement.

“I always knew the bonding between my parents was not as strong as it should be. I watched my mother wither away in a relationship that lacked love,” he said, opening himself up to her.

Victoria welcomed his attempt at intimacy of a different kind, because whatever this was between them could not grow without honesty.

“I was luckier. My parents cared for each other deeply and… that’s what I want for me. Not just a relationship based on obligation or necessity.”

He grunted his agreement and stroked his thumb along her jaw once again with one hand while with the other he urged her close.

“I want that, too,” he confessed, and she laid her head against his shoulder, their bodies plastered together as the revitalizing liquid washed over them. The water bore the lingering traces of heat from the long summer day, but nothing could compare to Christopher’s intense heat as he tucked her tight against him, the throb of his energy sparking her essence. Between her legs came the quiver of expectation and her nipples stiffened into pebbly peaks that brushed along the soft hair on his chest as she moved.