Kat
“Arik,” I whispered, my voice husky with something too close to fear. I needed to say more, to slow down, to speed up, something, but my tongue refused to force out any other word but his name.
A talisman. A lifeline.
Arik growled. The sound rippled up my legs and down my spine to meet low in my pelvis. His eyes shed their amber glow, throwing stark shadows across his face, making him appear animalistic. Or maybe that was his griffin rising beneath his skin. Whichever it was, it captivated me, made me burn, made me want to relax onto the mattress and spread myself for him. But something held me back, something I’d seen in his eyes when I’d first stepped into the office.
Rage. Frustration. Hate.
Whatever had happened tonight while he was gone, it had been powerful. The emotion it engendered lurked beneath the hunger suffusing Arik’s expression now, burning me down to my core, even deeper than his need could go. Searching his face, my heart stuttered, caught, tumbled over itself into a frantic pace, and yet all the while, those beautiful, intense eyes held me in thrall.
“Arik, what’s going on?”
The words came out too breathless, too hesitant, but at least they came out. Arik didn’t seem to register the question, didn’t hesitate as he crawled, one hand, one knee in front of the other, up the bed. I let myself go soft, relax back onto the pillows, surrendering to his approach despite the warnings blaring in my head.
His gaze dropped to my body, trailing over me as if he owned me, tension threading through his muscles until they stood in stark relief under his taut skin. My throat went dry at the lure of that dark desire. My mind blanked when he reached my feet. Wrapping a single palm around my ankle, he jerked, quick and hard, laying me out flat before him. Socks were removed, pajama pants, panties. His head lowered. His nose trailed along my ankle, my calf. The sound of his deep inhale, the vibrating purr that escaped him should have reassured me, but when his tongue sneaked out to trace the line of muscle, I tensed instead. Arik rubbed each cheek along my skin, marking me—no, this felt like his griffin marking me. Laying claim. I was no longer sure which animal I was in bed with, wasn’t sure I cared.
And when he reached my pelvis and paused to nuzzle into the apex of my thighs, I knew for certain I couldn’t care either way.
Then his fangs pricked my skin.
“Arik!”
He grunted against my inner thigh. “Kat.” He nipped me again, then again, startling little bites into my flesh. Marking me, making me his. I shook with fear, with need, but my legs opened to give him access anyway.
Arik licked the crease between thigh and pelvis. Moved down. And down, down, down… Hot breath hit the wet, aching center of my being. I arched up, begging silently for his mouth on my most private places. His laugh was dark, satisfied, and then his tongue speared deep once, twice. I cried out at the exquisite feel of him sliding inside me.
Arik reared back. I opened my eyes to him looming above me, his breath heaving, the racing of his heart visible in the pulse at his throat. The thin cami I wore was no match for his claws. It ripped down the center like butter, baring my aching flesh to his ravenous gaze—ravenous but somehow empty, as if I could be anyone, as if he’d cut himself off from me somewhere along the way. I squirmed, only then realizing my legs were trapped by his weight. “Arik, no.”
He blinked, a hint of awareness filtering into his stare; then he zeroed in on my face. As I watched, his pupils dilated to capture every nuance of light. A hunter who’d cornered his prey. He clasped a hand around each wrist and forced them to the bed on either side of my head.
“Arik—”
“No.” He shook his head, that predator’s gaze dropping to take in my naked body once more. “No stopping. No waiting. I can’t wait. I need this.”
I tossed and turned—whether to get away or to ease the need building inside me, I didn’t know—but Arik held tight, refusing to let go. Instead he bent and sucked one aching nipple into his mouth. And like his tongue inside me, his lips and teeth on my breast melted my resolve. We would do this; we had to do this. There was no choice, no need to hold back any longer.
My mind surrendered. My fisted hands relaxed. I opened my body to his hunger, and Arik indulged. A searing red haze blinded me to everything but the feel of him, his skin, his heartbeat, his hard male form covering me, completing me. Shocking heat flowed between us as muscled chest met rounded, needy breasts, as rough skin met soft. I tilted my head instinctively, exposing the secret, feminine hollow of my neck to his mouth, even as sharpened tips pricked my own tongue.
The scrape of his fangs across that sensitive spot made my eyes roll back in my head.
“Do it. Bite me,” I begged. “Oh God, Arik, please!”
Some part of me went hot with shame, but I couldn’t stop. All I knew was the driving need to feel him take me. But Arik didn’t bite. He jerked upright, muscled arms holding him above me, and separated his hard thighs between mine, forcing my already open legs wide apart.
My gasp sounded loud in my ears, more a frightened, aching sob, but my pelvis arched to meet his sheathed erection, desperately seeking his relentless drive inside the tight, wet confines of my body. Arik’s stare pinned me as surely as his body while he thrust inside, deep, deeper, filling me until all I could do was scream his name.
Arik swallowed my cry with a kiss. I pushed my tongue into his mouth, needing to penetrate him as he did me, needing him to surround me as my body surrounded his steel-hard shaft. He filled me, thrusting over and over in a frenzy neither of us could deny, didn’t want to deny. What did a little fear matter? It didn’t; nothing and no one mattered but Arik, his taste, his rough hunger, his need. It fed my own. Thought fled, questions fled, and all that remained was the drive to get closer. To be one.
I gripped his surging hips, pulling him tighter, my fingernails gouging the firm muscles of his ass. All I wanted was him. All I wanted was the ecstasy he gave me. It was right there, right at the edge of my awareness. Just a little further…
My body clamped down on the hard length inside me. My eyes flew open as I teetered on the very edge of the abyss. “Arik! God, I love you!”
Then came the roughest thrust of all. My body went tight as a bowstring when he hit my clit dead-on. The first thump of Arik’s climax jerked inside me, his eyes going wide and wild as my words seemed to register in the midst of ecstasy.
He yanked himself away.
For a single moment I was held, suspended, not sure what had happened. My body protested the abrupt cutoff of my pleasure, but the faint echo of my climax registered in some distant part of my brain, crowded out by the swell of emotion coming from my lover. As if he pushed it along the telepathic link between us, a feeling without words, a picture without explanation, without description.
My brain labeled it quite well without him: disgust.
I turned my head slowly, the move costing me more than the physical energy needed to complete it. Arik hunched on the edge of the mattress, his body shuddering with what could only be the rhythmic pulses of his release. My chest went cold at the sight. Not just my flesh but my soul hungered to reach out, to share the closeness of the body if nothing else, but he’d already refused me. As if admitting that I cared about him made me unworthy of his touch. I’d lived my whole life with that rejection, and I’d never expected to go back, not now, not with him, and certainly not like this.
This…this hurt.
I didn’t reach out. I curled onto my side, facing away from him, pulled my knees up to ease the unsatisfied ache low in my belly. I could hear Arik’s ragged breathing, loud in the silent aftermath. Questions circled, but no answers came in the endless moments of waiting except one: I hadn’t meant to say it. I’d known on some level that I was falling in love with him—how could I not? He was the first person I’d been close to, the first person who seemed to understand me, enjoy being with me. My first lover. I’d known, and now Arik knew too.
And even tightly closed eyes and the gathering of my ripped clothes around my naked body couldn’t protect me from what I knew was coming. What I didn’t know was why.
“Shit!”
The word was low, vicious, more cruel than any I’d heard from this man who’d befriended me when I needed it most. It lashed at me like a whip. I hugged my knees closer, wishing I was anywhere but here. But moving was impossible; instinct froze my muscles in place, leaving my body and soul vulnerable to the man behind me.
The sounds of Arik crossing to the bathroom scraped at my ears, then clothing slapping, sliding, accompanied by more curses, but it was the distinct slide of Arik’s zipper that jarred my self-protective instincts. I wasn’t a coward, whether he believed that or not. We were stuck here together, Arik was my trainer if nothing else, and we couldn’t work with this between us. I rolled to a sitting position, facing off with my opponent.
The movement drew Arik’s attention. He stilled, every molecule of his tight, angry form seeming to zero in on my barely covered body.
“What’s wrong?” I finally asked.
Not a great opener, but hey, I was new at this.
Arik snorted. Scathing. Ugly. Who the hell was this male? He was nothing like the Arik I’d agreed to drink blood from a mere handful of hours ago, nothing like the man I’d thought I was giving my virginity to. This Arik, the one who’d just crawled through my body as if he owned it, was a stranger, and yet, like a mask lifting from my eyes, I had the uneasy feeling he’d been this man all along.
“What, you can’t figure it out?” He snagged his T-shirt from the floor before pinning me with his gaze again. “Come on, Kat, you’ve got psych abilities. Read my mind. What the hell do you think is wrong?”
I sat, stunned, tongue-tied, watching him yank the tight black tee over his head. A cool breeze reminded me of my lack of clothes. I grabbed the sheet, pulling it up and over my bare breasts and shoulders. The cloth gave me some small semblance of safety.
I managed a shrug. “You’ll have to enlighten me.”
“Just forget it.” Running a hand over the rough bristles of hair across the top of his head, he clamped his eyes closed, then opened them. The dark depths were impossible to read. “Just forget this ever happened. It’s gone way too far.”
I cringed, down deep inside where I prayed he couldn’t see, but refused to back down. Thinking over the last hour, I considered the drive, the need he’d seemed to have to tame me. He’d been upset when I found him in the office, and then my words had set him off. Was he starting to feel something he shouldn’t?
Ignoring the childish thrill that sent through my body, I asked, “Is it because you’re my trainer? You can’t get involved with me because I’m your responsibility?”
Arik took a fast, threatening step toward the bed. “You’re not my goddamn responsibility; you’re my prize.”
Prize?
“So this”—I waved a vague hand in the air, indicating what, I didn’t know—“is all just part of the training, is that what you’re saying?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Really, could he confuse me any more? I rubbed cold fingers between my brows, hoping some clarity would miraculously appear. “If you’ve never trained anyone before, why did Sun send me with you?”
“He didn’t. I stole you, right out from under their noses, babe.”
Taking advantage of my stunned silence, Arik stepped closer. “You wanna know why you’re here? Not because Sun sent you, not because that freak Grim sent you. You’re here because I took you away from them.” A rough laugh punctuated the words. “You’re a means to an end. What happened here”—he threw a hand toward the rumpled bed—“this was…nothing.”
I didn’t respond, didn’t breathe, but I couldn’t look away from the train wreck bearing down on my heart.
“That team that attacked you? Their boss and I go way back. I knew the minute I saw what was happening that there was no way I’d ever let him have you. You are my best chance of finally taking that bastard out for good. The perfect bait. The perfect weapon.” He ran a frigid gaze along my stiff form. “If you can manage to get your act together, that is.”
That earned a flinch. I couldn’t help it. There was no denying the truth of his statement, not that I had to like it. I was good enough to fuck, to use, but only if I performed. Obviously I’d failed on both fronts.
Might as well go for broke. “So…I’m a weapon to you? Something you plan to use against…?”
“Maddox.”
“Maddox. That’s it?” I shook my head slowly. “That doesn’t require you to sleep with me.”
The grim line of his sensuous mouth twisted. “Just scratching an itch.”
“Oh.” Guess that why was no longer a mystery.
I should’ve expected it, really. I was just Kat, after all, living in the shadows, always alone. I closed my eyes, and the scent of our lovemaking—or fucking—filled my nose. As the enormity of what I’d done, what I’d lost washed over me, I rolled onto my back, waving a hand in the direction of the door. “You can leave now.”
I forced my face to calm, maintaining the blank facade I’d trained myself to present for so many years. No tears, no hysterics. Right now I needed him to leave, and then I’d figure out what to do. Where to go.
As if he’d read my mind, he said, “You’re not going anywhere, Kat.”
His words jerked me out of my calm, but I refused to let him know. Instead I imagined a wall, block by block, surrounding me, keeping everything and everyone out. Keeping me safe, like I was before this craziness ever came into my life.
“We will finish your training, and then we’ll take Maddox out.” Arik’s footsteps strode to the door, and he snatched it open. “This has to be done, Kat. You may think I’m a monster, but I’m nothing compared to that male. When it’s over, I’ll take you to Sun, but until then, you’re mine.”
I didn’t respond, and he slammed the door shut in his wake. The sound rippled across the room, across my still body. Then the room settled once more into quiet.
The quiet before the storm. If I had a storm in me.
The tight clamp I’d forced on my muscles didn’t ease. It was the only thing keeping me from shaking apart, and I wouldn’t give Arik that satisfaction. I’d gifted him with my body, and he’d been lying all along. He’d given me a glimpse of a different life, a life where I belonged, where I could have someone of my own, love, happiness. Instead all he’d left behind him were the bitter dregs of betrayal.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay there, fighting to contain the pain, but it was the ache in my lower body that pulled me to awareness sometime later. I rolled off the bed, balling myself into a fetal position to ease the throbbing from Arik’s taking. My body, so stupidly new to sex, protested the activity vigorously. Funny how something that had been so pleasurable at the time could leave such painful consequences.
In the bathroom I turned the water as hot as I could get it before slipping into the shower. Only when I was beneath the spray did I allow my guard to fall. Only a little bit. For a few precious moments I didn’t have to be strong. Not yet.
Instead I raised my arms away from my body and lifted my face to the water, let it wash away the evidence of Arik’s possession, the pain of the memories, and the tears of disillusionment that poured down my face, leaving only cold, hard reality behind.