My next library shift was absolute hell.
Suzie was all glowy and I had to listen to her blather on non-stop about Tommy. At first, I just gaped at her, taking in her hippie-nerd glasses and her perfectly planned boho chic outfit that screamed purposeful casual. Then I took in her flushed cheeks and the way she kept playing with her wavy dishwater blond-brown hair.
I narrowed my eyes. Fucking Tommy.
“What did he do to you?” I demanded.
She stopped her description of his sexy voice and nearly dropped the book she was shelving. “Uh…what?”
I drew in a deep breath. She didn’t smell like my ghoul. No. Suzie smelled like rainbows and overpriced lattes.
“Stay away from him,” I warned as I shelved the book for her. “He’s an idiot.”
She got all puffed up and offended. “He is not an idiot!”
I rolled my eyes. Tommy would wreck her faster than a shot of heroine. She was rainbows and college lectures. He was death and shadows. He wasn’t even technically alive. “He’s rotten to the core,” I muttered. “Literally.”
She huffed at me. “You just don’t think I’m good enough to date your cousin. We can’t all be dramatically dark and cool like you, Tess.”
I bared my teeth at her. She stepped back, hands white on the countertop behind her. She might think the fangs were fake, but the primitive danger center in her brain wasn’t fooled.
“You think I’m scary?” I whispered. “Trust me, Tommy is worse. He’s not playing at being a bad boy. He’s the real deal. And you are a creampuff.”
I stalked off to finish my work.
When I left for the evening, I wasn’t in a great mood. If I hadn’t tried to eat Tommy, killed him, and brought him back as some sort of undead puppet, he and Suzie would have been perfect for each other. The weight of the life I’d ended was heavy and suffocating.
And, it made me feel less than human. A monster who preyed on innocent apple-pie store clerks and ruined them before they were really adults. Although, I smirked at the memory of the way Tommy had kissed me back when he was human and still trying to get into my pants. Maybe not so innocent.
That boy had some sort of past he’d kept hidden under charming smiles and hometown boy-next-doorness.
Lost in thought, I didn’t sense Brutus until I walked into a mountain of golden muscle. My instincts roared to life, demanding I devour.
He begs for death, the cold voice that wasn’t mine whispered. I shuddered. I couldn’t say I disagreed.
Big hands wrapped around my shoulders, keeping me from falling. Or running away. “Checking out a library book, Wendigo?”
His eyes followed Suzie as she made her way to her car, her eyes wide at the sight of my hulking companion, who was making no effort to hide tonight.
I snorted. He thought I was going to eat her. Meanwhile I was trying to keep my ghoul from corrupting her. “I work here, Jackass.”
He looked down at me and a smile curved his chiseled lips. It wasn’t a nice smile. My hunger and my body didn’t care.
“You should not be mingling with humans. There is too much risk of you losing yourself to your monster aspect and harming them.” He gave me a shake that rattled my teeth. “Even now, I sense the hunger and desire to glut yourself. It’s rolling off you like a soured perfume.”
I laughed.
“It’s not the humans who make me so angry I want to draw blood,” I said, glaring up at him.
Yeah, he could probably murder me. Maybe. But I’d make sure it cost him.
He considered it. I could see it in his eyes. He really did want to exterminate me then and there and be done with it.
At least I thought that was what that look meant.
He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “So hungry, demon spawn. Does your keeper not slake your thirst?”
The innuendo and invitation in his words were blatant. Oh, for fuck’s sake.
My monster roared to life, demanded I eat him while we mated. I reached up and grasped his forearms where he still held me, claws digging into his smoothly muscled skin, drawing blood that smelled like my nemesis—sunshine. I growled. “Fuck Off.”
He laughed. “Your words and your truth never match up, do they little monster?”
His power pulsed over me, demanding I extinguish it. Goddamn him. He was manipulating me and I couldn’t keep fighting my animalistic nature much longer.
Thanks to the string on my wrist that shackled my powers, I was about to lose control just enough to get into serious trouble, but not enough to actually do anything productive. Like murder his ass.
Smooth skin ghosted over mine, a long arm sliding around my neck, pulling me back against cool darkness and lean, graceful muscle, enveloping me in the scent of leather and incense. I was yanked from Brutus’s grip and swept into darkness in a heartbeat.
We materialized in darkness, stepping from the shadows of an old oak. The park, I thought. A couple blocks from the library. I was panting with hunger and lust, and rage. That bastard had just tried to manipulate me into wigging out.
And he’d almost succeeded.
Cloud’s arm was still around my throat, the other one wrapped around my waist. Her lean body was bowed against my back, wrapped around me.
I started to pull away, all the pent-up need in me wanting to do something I knew would get me killed.
But her grip tightened. “No,” her husky voice whispered. “He almost took you away.”
And that got me pissed off all over again. Brutus just wanted to have control over me. No different than Cloud and Kwan, really. It shouldn't piss me off so much, but it did. I wasn’t his.
And Cloud’s voice had cracked just now. He’d upset Cloud.
“…mine…,” she whispered into my hair, still not letting go.
Hunger uncoiled in me like a lazy cat—then surged like a striking snake.
I twisted and she let me go. I could feel her start to slide into shadows—running away. I reached out and yanked her back into the cricket-filled night around us.
Growling, I slammed her slinky, muscular body against the tree behind us. I followed her with my own body, pinning the taller hunter while I nuzzled up into her neck, scenting the power-rich blood that flowed there. I gloried in the feel of all that sleek warm flesh against me and how it would feel to sink my teeth….
She moaned, a husky sound that goaded me on. I dragged my fangs against the spot where her neck and shoulder met, scraping over her smooth skin, but not drawing blood. Yet.
She fisted her hands in my hair and yanked my head back, hard. I growled, low in my chest, expecting her to use her ninja speed to disable me before the fun even started.
My head was forced back at a sharp angle and I got a good look at glowing yellow eyes and the moonlight glinting on her shiny, midnight black hair.
Then she bent and her lips met mine, devouring in their own right. I rumbled as she feasted on me, licking and nipping, thrusting her tongue into my mouth, curling it around one fang in a way that drove every last coherent thought from my mind.
I bit back, suckling at her bloody lips, my hands digging into her hips.
She pulled away slightly to stare into my eyes and I roared in my head, knowing she was about to stop me.
Then she grabbed my t-shirt and dragged it off over my head, warm hands sliding up over my ribs and cupping my breasts, pushing them upward to spill over my bra. Her bloodied mouth curled into a lopsided grin, full of wickedness.
“Have your feast, wendigo,” she said in that smoky alto. “And I’ll have mine.”
One hand tugged my bra down, exposing me to the night air, and then her mouth was there, sucking hard, tongue working over my nipple, while her other hand drifted down to cup my ass, pressing and kneading. I thrummed with hunger and lust.
I wanted worse than I ever had in my life. I grasped her wrist and brought it up, sinking my fangs into her flesh as she continued to lick and bite, her knee slipping between my legs.
Her blood and power hit me and I orgasmed where I stood, moaning against her, completely lost. What the hell was happening?
Pulling me off her wrist, she lifted my head and kissed me again, not caring that I was covered in her blood. She bit my lip and my own blood mingled there. She hummed as she lapped it up, grinding against my leg, lost herself.
Her hands moved up to tangle in my hair again, pulling just shy of too hard, her fingers wrapping around one of my horns, gripping it to tilt my head into a better angle. Both of us moaned at that. Somewhere inside, I was shocked that she seemed to like the horns.
I curled my hands into her hips, digging into her flesh, as I felt her come completely unwound. The stone-cold hunter I knew was going up in flames right there in my arms.
Her eyes met mine and they flashed from yellow to blood red and back again.
“Tess,” her voice was full of so much emotion, a plea—begging me to just not think. I kissed her again, my hand drifting between us, stroking her through her pants. She sighed and rocked into my touch. I lifted my hand to the button of her fly, my whole body on fire.
Then Tommy was there, like the idiotic bucket of cold water he was.
“Tess!” He stumbled to a halt. “Oh, wow. I was right. And your tits are amazing.” Then he shook himself. “Fuck your hunter later. We have a problem.”