Blood Instinct (17 page)

‘
Y
ou’re still punching
like you’re hitting candyfloss,’ Jonah declared. ‘Your lower limbs are good – you’ve got strong legs, but it’s your upper body that’s letting you down.’

Sophia stood panting, her hands on her hips as she gave herself a minute to recover from her three-minute non-stop attack on Jonah.

The results were depressing; his feedback even more so.

She’d spent a week in training under Jask’s instruction. At first she’d been assigned Nokes. Since concerns had arisen with those who had taken the later dose, she’d been transferred to Jonah, who had taken the initial full dosage.

‘Your agility has definitely improved, Phia, as has your speed, from what Nokes has told me – and you’ve clearly learned some promising techniques from him – but you’ve got a long way to go. You might be able to give a human a good blow to the jaw with that right hook, but I’m barely feeling it. Just keep telling yourself: if you can take down a lycan, you can take down a vampire.’

So, as instructed, she fought harder. But Jonah quickly upped the tempo and the exactness of his self-defence, meaning she had to work even harder to strike a blow.

She reverted to using the strength in her legs again, finally able to make an impact on more than one occasion, until he swept her legs out from under her, causing her to land on the rugs with a graceless thunk.

He was on all fours above her a split second later, his shins against hers as he pinned her legs to the floor, his hands doing the same to her wrists.

‘This is why we have to improve what’s happening with your upper body,’ he said. ‘Once you’re down like this, you’re not getting out of it.’

A flashback of the wasteland, of Jask bringing her to the ground, hit her hard.

Running. Running from Jask. Running from what had happened in the subterranean hovel. Her hands secured to the damp and rancid wall. The terrifying sense of helplessness washing over her as the vampires laughed and joked at the table, obscenities leaking from their mouths as they discussed how they were going to get the information they needed out of her and pleasure themselves in the process.

And then their agony as they bit into her. Until both they and she realised she was anything but a normal human.

Amidst the recollections, amidst her frustration at being taken down by Jonah, she could feel it deep in her gut again: something burning to take over. The room became hazy as adrenaline pumped through her veins. It was no longer Jonah above her but opposition.

She shook her head as if it had just been immersed in water and tried to block out the sense of disassociation it brought with it.

‘Phia? Are you okay?’

Jonah’s image blurred for a moment until it came back into focus.

He was frowning, his grey eyes quizzical. ‘I haven’t hurt you, have I?’

J
ask pounded
through the water against the current, it drawing every breath out of his body as he battered himself in the process. He would swim until he was exhausted. He would cleanse himself in the time that passed.

Seeing the soldier had got to him more than he’d realised. Seeing him so soon after he’d left the compound, so soon after what he’d done to Quinn, had affected him more than he’d wanted to accept.

And the soldier’s laughter…

Having to contain himself… Having to walk away…

He’d been doing too much walking away. And now he was feeling it in the most visceral of his instincts. From deep within his core, the lycan was scratching to get out, to regain control.

When he could swim no more, his every muscle burning, Jask hoisted himself out onto the bank of the river and bent forward, his hands on his thighs as he caught his breath. He dried off his body and his hair before dressing himself in his vest and sweatpants, the rock cold beneath his bare feet as he made his way back through the opening in the wall and up the corridor.

His spine was still tingling though, his talons having already lengthened from beneath his nails. He fisted his hand to stop the process, a headache beginning to strike his temples.

He could control it. He
would
control it. Despite the decades that had passed, he still had it in him. The worst of it would be over by dawn. He’d take a couple of hours to himself. He’d head to the training room. Another hour or two of exertion and he would be through the intensity of the blue moon. Dawn would be there in a matter of hours, and the worst would be over – for him and the forty other members of the pack who’d been showing symptoms. Forty of his best, who were now tucked away in various parts of the bunker working it off too.

They were lucky there hadn’t been more. Very lucky.

Taking a left and then a right, he heard a voice through the open door ahead. A voice that both stole and held his interest.

Sophia.

He stopped. He knew he needed to do an about-turn, needed to find another way to work through his tension.

But then he heard a male voice too. A male voice alone with Sophia.
His
Sophia.

Something inside him sparked. Something he knew he couldn’t walk away from.

He headed down the corridor to the first open door. He passed through the car park as he followed the source of the sound to the room beyond.

Seeing them together, nestled in amongst the shadows of the maze of scaffolding, Jask leaned against the open doorway.

They were so engrossed that neither had noticed him – not even Jonah.

Sophia’s feet were two feet off the ground as she clutched the scaffolding pole above. Her T-shirt – more to the point
his
T-shirt, which she was wearing loosely knotted round her waist – had lifted as she’d hauled herself up. Her low-slung sweat shorts revealed the dip of her waist and the feminine curve of her hip – which did nothing to appease the possessiveness inside of him.

A possessiveness not helped by Jonah’s grip on her bare midriff as he supported her into position. Because right then, she couldn’t have looked more enticing. She couldn’t have smelt more enticing: the lingering scent of her perspiration reminding him of their more fervent sessions, how she felt beneath him when she was slippery, damp, hot.

Skin on skin contact between her and Jonah was bad enough, but Jask’s territoriality peaked as, to leverage her higher, Jonah placed his palms halfway between the tops of Sophia’s thighs and her behind, both to lift her and hold her in position.

Worse, Sophia wrapped her legs around him. And looked Jonah directly in the eyes as she did so.

Jask folded his arms and whistled sharply through his teeth.

It was too high a pitch for Sophia’s human ears, but it immediately snagged Jonah’s attention. His startled eyes snapped in Jask’s direction, Sophia’s doing the same a split second later.

Jonah instantly removed his hands. Sophia, losing her leverage, then slid down his body to the floor.

His head lowered – aptly in Jask’s opinion – Jonah sheepishly hurried over to his alpha’s side.

Jask didn’t need to say anything, the curt cock of his head towards the room behind a clear enough reprimand for Jonah to exit promptly.

But Jonah hesitated for a moment. He cast an anxious glance back at Sophia as she wiped the light perspiration from her brow before resting her hands on her hips.

It was a hesitancy that aggravated Jask even more.

Despite the concern evident in Jonah’s eyes, he knew better than to argue with his alpha.

Jask closed the door behind him as he exited and dropped the latch, securing it from the inside – and from any interruptions.

T
he ripple
of the plastic sheets above could have been mistaken for an intermittent drum roll, the moonlight barely illuminating the room adding to the tension that coiled in Sophia’s chest, because Jask’s controlled saunter in her direction sent her self-preservation instincts reeling.

His demeanour was one she didn’t recognise, as if he were a stranger again. Like a predator taking its time with its already-cornered prey, his direct, unflinching gaze stopped her from approaching him like she usually would have.

Partially masked by shadows, he stopped directly in front of her, his hands catching the pole above. The position emphasised the strength in his forearms and biceps, and her gaze unavoidably wandered down his toned, broad chest.

Despite her anxiety, heat pooled involuntarily in the depths of her abdomen.

‘It’s good to see you’ve been keeping yourself busy in my absence,’ he remarked.

She tried to convince herself she was reading too much into the situation, but she recognised a glint of jealousy when she saw it – reinforced by the possessiveness in his stance as he blocked her exit.

A trait that was uncharacteristic of Jask, but maybe not of the lycan.

‘We’re looking at ways to improve my upper-body strength.’

‘Uh-huh,’ came his simple response as he raked his gaze slowly down her. ‘From the grip he had on your arse and the way you wrapped your legs around him, he was right to identify it.’

His gaze locked back on hers; a gaze echoing a reprimand. The gaze of a pack alpha through and through.

And she saw it: the tiny rim of red around his beautiful azure irises.

His dangerously dilated pupils.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Her self-defence instinct kicked in and told her to stay calm and composed for both their sakes. But the heat flowing through her intensified, as did her awareness of the rattling plastic above. She took a steadying but shaky breath as the deepest and darkest part of her threatened to awaken at the intent – the possible threat – of the lycan in front of her.

She knew she had to get out while she still had the self-control to do so. She needed out while she still had the resolve; while she was still in her right mind and able to make that decision.

And from the adrenaline pumping in her veins, from the way she could barely take her eyes off his body, she knew she needed out as quickly as possible.

‘And now I need a shower,’ she said.

An ice-cold one.

But as she moved to sidestep him, he braced his arm on the pole to her right, barricading her against the backdrop of the scaffolding.

Her breath involuntarily snagged; her pulse picked up a notch.

‘I didn’t excuse you,’ he said calmly.

Her pulse switched to pounding. Her sense of fear was only for him. For them. A sense of fear she knew she needed to suppress if she was to remain rational – in charge – and not the serryn.

For him, she had to stay strong. So many times he’d been the controlled and tempered one – now it was her turn.

‘We agreed to stay apart for the next few hours,’ she reminded him.

‘Except now I’m wondering what fun there is in that?’

She reached out to casually brush her thumb across his vest at his waist, before lifting herself onto her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I’m sure we’ll make up for it,’ she said, trying to make light of the situation. ‘Abstinence makes the heart grow stronger.’

She sidestepped him again, ducking under his arm.

And this time he let her.

Each footstep, as few as they were, felt as though she was ploughing through melted tar as she kept her eyes on the door forty feet ahead.

‘Do you really think you can make it out of that door before I make it to you, Phia? More to the point, do you really want to try, knowing what the chase could incite in me?’

She froze to the spot, her breathing ragged. The sound of wafting plastic faded into the background. She looked across her shoulder, directly into his eyes. Caught between a move of submission or a move of retaliation, she wavered on the spot.

Recollections hit her: spinning to face him outside of the outbuilding, giving him a mouthful – goading him, pushing him. But she wasn’t going to be that Sophia.

She clenched her hands by her sides – she wasn’t going to succumb.

‘How’s that adrenaline rush now, Phia?’ he asked, closing the gap between them; forming a barricade between her and the door again.

As he braced his arm in front of her once more, she looked squarely up into his eyes. Only a week ago, he would have had an elbow in the stomach. She would have fought whatever the consequences.

But now she understood too much – how it would incite and intensify what was inside him even more.

She wouldn’t do that to him. There was no way she’d do that to him.

‘You’re smarter than this, Jask.’

‘And you’re more reckless than this reticence suggests, Phia. I know you want to play.’

‘This is hardly a game.’

‘It can be whatever we want it to be.’

‘Ever heard the expression “you’ll regret this in the morning”?’

‘Ever heard the expression “live dangerously”?’

‘Too many times,’ she said. ‘I have the scars to prove it.’

He smiled. He raked his gaze over her slowly before meeting her eyes again. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Yeah, well I’m not convinced you’re the best judge of what you’re capable of right now. You know what happened last time.’

He placed his hand on her left hip, the one nearest to him, as he moved behind her. ‘And I also remember those noises of satisfaction escaping your lips.’

His touch sent sparks of electricity racing beneath her skin, his cool fingers capturing her total attention as he slid his hand from her left hip bone, across her stomach, to her right, until he’d wrapped his arm around her waist. His other hand crossed her body from right to left to reach under her T-shirt, to find its way over the cup of her bra where his thumb brushed her already-hard nipple.

And the familiarity of his expert touch was anything but unpleasant, her desire to rebuke him fading fast. She tried to steady her breathing as he worked his hand fully into the cup to feel flesh on flesh, his body hard and steadfast against her back.

She kept her attention on the door ahead, her palms plastered against his thighs as she found herself torn between pushing herself away from him or melding into him. But the door soon became the end of a distant tunnel, her peripheral vision fading to black.

‘You know this isn’t a good idea, Jask.’

‘Which adds to it,’ he said breathily against her ear, his erection pressing against her a fatal distraction, drawing her further away from their promise to each other and, instead, to the promise of Jask’s potential for so much more. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘I’m trying to do the sensible thing and stick to our agreement. For us.’

‘I can think of better things we can do for us,’ he whispered before brushing his lips up behind her ear. ‘And I know you can too.’

As his hand found its way into the front of her shorts, into her knickers, it was a lethal reminder of the magic in his fingertips, his cool fingers finding her sex, his thumb taunting the most sensitive part of her while his other did the same with the most tender part of her breast.

And as he pressed his solid body more firmly against her, her escalating breathlessness became more difficult to curb.

‘Then let’s take this to our room,’ she suggested. Anything to break the tension, to give him time to rethink, maybe even to get distracted along the way.

To give herself time to rethink.

‘Nah,’ he said, the tension in his thighs, pressed against the back of hers, not abating. ‘I’m to fuck you
right
here. Right now.’

And she gasped as he slid two fingers inside her.

Sophia could see nothing but white sparks behind her eyes. She could focus on nothing beyond the feel of him inside her.

She lifted her hand up behind his neck, keeping him tight against her despite the sensible part of her willing herself to pull away before it was too late.

But she knew she was already past the point of no return.

A feeling of nonchalance was sweeping over her and eclipsing her better judgement. It was fast becoming about the sex act and the sex act alone, her body calling the shots. It was about what he could do to her – the pleasure he could incite to curb the frustration she’d been left with beneath the surface after their last two failed attempts.

She leaned back into him, her fingers gripping the hair at the back of his head as he eased his fingers deeper into her sex.

She closed her eyes, her legs leaden, any concerns she had about it being a bad decision fading as quickly as her reluctance, her inhibitions.

She didn’t care that his grip on her breast tightened, that she could feel the sharpness of his extended talons. She didn’t care how much rougher his licks and nips were against the tender flesh of her neck.

Instead, her excitement and anticipation spiked as she focused on the powerful body behind her brimming with unpredictability, especially as she knew what would inevitably follow was going to be about far more than just sex. As his fingers delved deeper, more forcefully, it certainly wasn’t going to be about love. And as his kisses became rougher, the hint of discomfort awakened a deeper sense of desire – lust, even.

She was looking at herself down a long-barrelled lens, lost in the pleasure he was so easily stirring in her. It felt like the first time they’d met; the heady rush of that first time in the cell.

Her concern evaporated despite him pushing her face-first against the pillar; despite him tugging down his sweatpants, the adrenaline taking over.

As he grabbed her hand, as he wrapped it around his rock-hard length, as he started to guide her in pressure and tempo whilst his other hand found her sex again, like falling backwards with nothing to grab hold of, he didn’t give her time for second thoughts.

She held her breath as he tugged her shorts and underwear down, the T-shirt she was wearing – his T-shirt – unravelling to the tops of her thighs. Her stomach somersaulted. Her nails clawed the pillar. Her lips parted but no words escaped. Instead, her eyes watered from the discomfort as he entered her without restraint.

The blood rushed from her hands as she clutched both sides of the pillar. She could focus on nothing but the sensations coursing through her body – sensations only Jask could create – her breathing replaced by panting as she consumed every inch of him.

And discomfort quickly switched to the most intense pleasure she’d ever experienced, her ragged breaths hot against the pillar Jask was pinning her to as she savoured his hard body against her, inside her.

But as she teetered on the edge of her climax, a shiver encapsulating her body, she felt his canines graze her throat and she froze.

Part of her was excited at the prospect, part of her terrified, but she didn’t know which was behind her lack of protest as his incisors caressed her skin.

But inside something screamed, as if trying to wake her from her haze.

She felt only paralysis overwhelm her though. Because
it
was back at the helm.
It
that seemed to be relishing in Jask’s distraction. It that wanted him distracted.

As if on autopilot, Sophia slid her hands down either side of the concrete pillar – and felt her skin scuff the jagged piece of metal jutting out.

As if locked in a dream, she pushed her thumb against it and felt it give: a jagged piece of rusted metal loose within its confinement. She wriggled it a little, and then wriggled it a little more, Jask’s breath brushing her neck as he lost himself in his arousal, both his hands clasping her breasts, his fingers as rough as his penetration.

She slid the metal out inch after inch, slowly and carefully. Once she’d removed it fully, her hand coiling around the several-inches-long spear, her thumb brushed the lethal tip – and the inner scream resounded in her depths, the plea to stop herself lodged somewhere deep in the back of her mind.

But she was no longer in control. That’s what her soul screamed – that’s what she knew. Just as she knew what a lycan bite could do. What a lycan tear could do.

As did the serryn, who was stepping up to the mark.

Keeping her hand hidden from him, flat against the pillar, she twirled the metal in her palm like a baton so the sharp end pointed back towards Jask.

She reached back with her free hand and clutched the hair at the nape of his neck, encouraging his distraction.

She raised her knee higher, her inner thigh scuffing the pillar as he grabbed the back of it, lifting it a few inches more, holding her there tight against the wall as he built the force and momentum he needed to draw him closer to his climax – and she tightened her grip on the cold, hard shard she would kill him with.

S
ophia’s lack
of protest fuelled Jask’s desire to take it up a notch to the point he was forgetting what she was. Forgetting her human fragility.

All he could see was Jonah holding her, her legs wrapped around him, possessiveness, the need to reclaim her, the motivation beneath his craving.

He knew a bite was going to be painful for her. He knew it was going to be a rough ride. But once he was done, it would be okay. It would all be okay. The lycan in him would be sated – he would be back in control.

And she would be his.

As her fingers gripped the hair at the back of his neck, as her breathing escalated, and she trembled amidst her climax – the loudest he had ever heard leave her lips – he felt himself come with a force more powerful than he had ever felt.

He let his canines extend as he scraped her neck with them.

Until a sharp pain in his side made him jolt. It wasn’t unlike pulling a muscle, but as he withdrew, as he took a small step back, he saw the pain was nothing to do with muscle pulling.

He stared down at the blood seeping from his side, inches from a major organ.

A stab that
could
have been fatal.