Primal Cravings (8 page)

Now that he’d found the youngest Leviathan he could bring him back to the Tribe fold. Would the boy obey a simple order to come home? He wasn’t a boy anymore, was he? No matter if that was how Leviathan saw him, he was a Prime, one who had pledged himself to a Family. He let a female rule him. He took the drugs that weakened his instincts even as they let him exist in daylight. He was chained by rules. Perhaps he was so used to the chains he didn’t feel them anymore.

Poor boy.

Leviathan would make his brothers whole again.

Chapter Fourteen

“What did you do?” Piper demanded. McCoy was kneeling beside the altar. She was shaking. He dropped down beside her. “Tell me!”

His words were harsh and angry. He was angry with himself, for being scared, and even more angry at McCoy for scaring him. Something reckless and stupid had just happened, and he wanted to shake her for putting herself in danger.

What physically happened was that McCoy touched the bound woman. What Jake felt was a powerful surge of dangerous energy rushing out of the woman and into McCoy. It was not his imagination, even if he had no tangible or telepathic proof anything had happened. Magic? Had to be magic, which was far too weird for a simple vampire’s understanding of the world.

McCoy looked up slowly. She might be mortal, but Jake was certain her eyes glowed bright electric blue for a moment when their gazes met. Her intensity certainly burned into him, leaving him hot, hard, and shaking. What the hell?

He pulled her to her feet. Touching her skin sent electric shocks of desire through Jake. She swayed for a second when he abruptly let her go and stepped back.

“What did you do?” he asked again.

McCoy blinked slowly, took a shaky breath. “She’ll be okay now,” she said. “She’ll be okay.”

“What about you? Are you going to be okay?”

McCoy’s tongue slowly moistened her lips. The gesture was incredibly sensual. “I’ve got to keep it together,” she said, voice husky. “Just get through it.”

Jake watched worriedly as McCoy slowly turned to Laurent Wolf. Wolf had freed the prisoner from her bonds. He wrapped the black satin covering around her and gently lifted the woman into his arms.

“She’s asleep,” McCoy told the other vampire. “She needs to sleep it off. Be careful with her.”

“Of course,” Laurent promised.

Harry put a hand on Laurent’s shoulder. “Clean up crew’s been called. We better get going.”

Laurent nodded. He looked at Jake. “Thanks for the help. Here’s what I found out.”

Jake opened his mind for the rush of telepathic information Laurent sent into his head. He put it aside to sort through later. Time for him and McCoy to get back to their own assignment—and hope that helping find the missing woman turned out to be more than a sidebar adventure.

Besides, he had an almost overwhelming urge to get Dee McCoy alone. He wanted her away from every male in the world but himself. He accepted the instinctual urge to make this female his exclusive mate. He didn’t know what to do about it in the long term, but for now he had to get her alone before he started snapping, snarling, and making an utter vampire fool of himself.

“Let’s go,” he said to McCoy.

She nodded. She took a step, and stumbled. Only to jerk away when Jake would have steadied her. She looked at him with wild, hungry, pain-filled eyes. “Don’t touch me! For both our sakes, you can’t touch me right now!”

He backed off, and let her proceed him up the basement stairs. He tried not to notice the way her hips swayed invitingly in her tight jeans as he followed.

Jake was glad to get out of the house, to have a few moments alone outside before once more suffering being closed in the SUV with the female he couldn’t touch. He took deep breaths while squinting in the light of the rising sun. He stretched and rolled his shoulders. His body wanted sustenance, his brain wanted sleep. Even vampires needed to sleep sometimes. Stress and sleep deprivation did things to a mind, even a strong, telepathic mind.

Someone was watching him.

Jake looked around cautiously. He didn’t see anyone. Was someone there? He turned around slowly, searching with all his weary senses. What he felt wasn’t tangible.

“Probably nothing there,” he muttered. He waited until the passenger door had closed behind McCoy before following her to the SUV. He imagined a gaze on his back, like a knife between his shoulder blades, the entire way.

* * *

“May I make an observation?”

Dee hoped he wasn’t about to mention the blood on her lower lip. She was biting it so hard to keep the moaning inside that she knew she’d broken the skin. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides. Her eyes were closed as she tried to meditate. She burned with aching need—she was afraid her insides were literally on fire. She fought the need to squirm and writhe and denied the longing to be touched by staying very, very still. As still as death.

She wanted to grab the male beside her and have her way with him, over and over, until the maddening need went away. Since she couldn’t do that, she didn’t want to be reminded of his presence.

“No talk. Drive,” she managed to get out.

“You’re in heat.”

Dee’s eyes flew open so she could glare at the vampire. “That’s—that’s so rude!”

Piper kept his gaze on the road. His tone remained calm, matter of fact. “It is the truth.”

It was.

“You are not the only one being affected,” Piper went on. “Even if I weren’t telepathic, I’d be aware—”

“It’ll wear off,” she said.

“It’s been one hour and fourteen minutes since we left the house. Your arousal is growing, not dissipating. This is disturbing.”

“Tell me about it,” Dee grumbled. It shouldn’t be happening like this, but, well, it was.

“Disturbing for both of us,” he added. “I am Prime, remember.”

“I know!” She shouted. “You were born horny and telepathic to boot! I can’t help this, Piper!”

“But you are trying,” he conceded. “What exactly happened? Why are you this way? Will it endanger the op?”

Oh, he had to add that about their assignment, didn’t he? Dee heard herself growl; a sound of pure animal fury, and need. Damn.

“The girl would have died without some help. The bastards had already poured a hell of a lot of sexual energy into her. The energy was burning her up. It was part of the sacrifice spell they were performing when we arrived.”

Dee kept her eyes tightly closed. She could still see flames behind her lids. The images dancing through her inner vision frightened and disgusted her. Maybe talking with Piper would help keep her mind off all the lewd and lascivious temptations calling in her head.

As long as he didn’t mock her. As long as he didn’t tease. As long as he didn’t touch her. She wouldn’t be able to control herself if he touched her. She could barely keep from touching him as it was. She didn’t think it was any old male she wanted, or simply because he was so close by.

She
wanted
Yakov Piper. The lust had come into her in an artificial way. Her body wanted sex. Her soul wanted sex with a specific male, and that had nothing to do with the spell. Why him? Why now? Damn her stupid soul.

“You are in pain,” he said. “Do you know how to get through it, so that we can get on with our assignment?”

Oh, she knew how she could get through it all right. The cure for her condition was currently driving the car, and asking sensible questions.

“I could seduce you,” she said.

“I could be seduced. You would consider that inappropriate.”

He sounded so calm and clinical she wanted to kill him.

“Yeah.” She thought about the op, about the dynamic of the Dark Angels. How she would be using him, objectifying him, and how wrong that would be, if she had sex with him. Oh, and they didn’t like each other. “Inappropriate.”

“Can anything else be done to help your condition?”

She shook her head. He could probably smell the blood from the way her nails were digging into her palms. She should apologize for unintentionally provoking him like that. “It should be wearing off by now.”

“Do you know a spell to counter the spell you absorbed? We need to stop for gas,” he added in the same matter-of-fact tone he’d used for the whole conversation.

“Maybe. I’m trying to think of one.”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

Was he being sarcastic, even though he didn’t sound like he was?
Change the subject
, she told herself.
Stop making it all about you when there’s work to be done.

She asked, “Where are we heading, anyway?”

“Back to Los Angeles. Not to base,” he said before she could panic. “Don’t worry, we aren’t going home until we’ve solved our leader’s bad feeling about magic, which seems to have a solid basis.”

When Tobias gave you a job, you did it. You didn’t call for help. You didn’t run back to the Angels with excuses. She was happy to know Piper shared her team spirit.

“Back to the Wizard of Oxnard’s place?” she asked.

“Not necessarily us,” he said. “I think we should get a sniffer in to see if a trail can be picked up from there. We can contact Shaggy Harker for a freelance werewolf. Shaggy’s head of the local werefolk.”

She knew that. No need to be petty and point that out to Piper.

“And perhaps I should take you to Dr. Casmerek’s clinic. They’re used to treating supernatural illness there.”

“They’re used to treating vampires and werefolk. I’m a lowly mortal. And I’m not sure horniness is a medical condition.”

“The way it is affecting you, it might be considered a medical problem.”

“What I need is a witch doctor.”

“Is that an attempt at humor? There’s a gas station.”

Dee opened her eyes as Piper slowed the SUV and took a sharp right turn.

Chapter Fifteen

Jake was out of the SUV almost before the gear was in park. He slammed the door and took deep breaths of the cool, sea-salted outside air. He burned, every part of him, body and soul.

How could she do this to him? Didn’t she know or care what she did to destroy him? He ought to just take her. He ought to throw her into the back seat, bury himself in her heat, use her, claim her, and drink deep until—

Until what? Until he was satisfied and McCoy had ruined the life he’d worked so hard to establish?

This wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t meant to get herself in this condition but Jake couldn’t keep this reasonable thought in his head for more than a few seconds at a time.

He’d learned to be respectful to vampire females, but mortal females—

Jake gave his head a hard shake and rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

It was McCoy’s scent that was driving him to the edge. It always haunted him, invigorated him, attracted him. But now, being locked in the confines of a metal box while she ached with need and gave off the spicy, heated aroma of arousal he’d come so close to losing control before he’d found this place to stop—

The mortal had no clue how much danger she was in.

Somehow, some way, he would remain civilized.

It isn’t natural to be civilized.

Jake shook his head again. By the Goddess he tried to believe in, he was so crazy with lust he was hearing the voice of one of his dead brothers!

Time to get control of his own head—his hungry body and soul—and get back into the real world. At least, into the physical world. Reality was so subjective.

Jake raised his head and made himself look around. Yesterday’s rain had been replaced by a sunny day. He’d gotten used to the look and feel of the daylight world, and appreciated the warmth of light on his skin now. He concentrated on that while fighting down the heat boiling inside him.

He made himself look at anything besides McCoy, who was out of the SUV and leaning heavily on the front hood.

The property around them looked deserted, but he could feel the presence of two mortals nearby, one in the main building, a second in one of the two low, long, flat-roofed buildings in the back of the property. There were gas pumps out front, but the ramshackle place also advertised itself as Clancy’s Store and Resort on a large painted sign over the door of the main cinderblock building. The building was painted a hideous shade of pastel green. The paint on the sign was worn and flaking.

“It’s a dump,” McCoy’s voice rasped.

“It is,” he agreed. He wasn’t eager to jump into the driver’s seat and head away from the dump any sooner than he had to. “Should I call in the Dark Angel medics to meet us here?”

She gave a faint, pained laugh. “Who’s the Crew’s main medic?”

She was.

“Onward to Dr. Casmerek’s, then.” No choice but to continue his own torture.
Maybe I can grab a bite while I’m there,
Jake added to himself.

He crossed to the gas pumps.

* * *

We can’t go on like this,
Dee thought. He didn’t deserve what she was doing to him.

Oh, by the Great Good Lady! She was more worried about his discomfort than hers. What happened to hating the Tribe Prime? It didn’t matter if she hated him, keeping a naturally horny Prime turned on like this was unfair to him.

She had to do something quickly for both their sakes. Enough of the whine and guilt—and moaning and writhing in hot, aching lust—it was time to do something proactive.

Would masturbation do any good? She doubted it, and where was there to—? The gas station bathroom?

“Ooh, euwwh!” She shuddered in disgust at the very notion. Too gross. What she needed was to wash these emotions clean out of her system….

Wash.

Clean.

The memory of a spell nudged its way through the fire consuming her.

“Water,” she said. “Running water. You put out a fire with water.”

She noticed the sign over the gas station door with relief. She walked to the building, moving slow as an old woman, feeling Piper’s impatient glare on her back the whole way. But, she was too aware of Piper anyway.

“You don’t look so good,” the man behind the counter said the instant the door closed behind her.