Blood Wolf Dawning (18 page)

The connection between him and Aedan had been...impossible to resist. They’d bonded over their shared hatred of their father, and that bond had grown fast and furious, until they were nearly inseparable. Though his arrival
had changed the way Cian looked at his family, destroying everything he’d believed about honor and loyalty and the kind of man his father had taught him to be, he’d never blamed Aedan. He’d seen Aedan as the innocent. The one without blame, and it’d been obvious that the boy’s life with his mother had been nothing like the supposedly perfect childhood Cian had been given. One that, it turned
out, had actually been built on nothing more than lies. Unable to let it go, with Aedan by his side, Cian had searched and investigated, uncovering more and more of his father’s infidelities, each new discovery making his hatred for the man grow.

And his mother...
Christ
. That had been the straw that broke the camel’s back as they say. The one that had driven him away, setting him on a path
of destruction.

Voice graveled and raw, he told Sayre of how he left home, and began his life as an angry sixteen-year-old with Aedan at his side, as if it were the two of them against the world. “I seduced innocents,” he growled, the guttural words stark with disgust. “Got them in my bed, or against a wall, or over a table, and used them. Fed on them, whether they were willing to give me
their blood or not. Killed the dregs of society for sport. Because I
could
. I was angry at everyone and everything, other than Aedan, and I took it out on whoever was unlucky enough to catch my eye.” A quiet, painful laugh fell past his lips, and he squeezed his eyes shut, as if that could somehow shield him from what was happening. “I thought I could take what I had finally started to see that
my father glorified—a vampire’s power and strength and ruthlessness—and shove it in his face. Show him what a bastard he was. But the joke was on me, because he didn’t give a shit what kind of destruction I caused.”

Softly, she asked, “And what about your mother?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered, the words halting and low. “The last thing I said to her was how pathetic I thought she was
for continuing to stay with him, for not leaving him, after what he’d done to her. I told her she embarrassed me for being weak, and then...”

“Then what?” she persisted, when his voice had trailed off.

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her, his breaths coming hard and fast, his throat burning. “She died before I ever made it back to see her again.”

“Oh, Cian,” she
whispered, her gentle voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”

He flinched, but buried the pain beneath the rage that had been his constant companion for so many years. Even when he’d been playing it up as the womanizing jackass, trying to act as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Don’t be sorry,” he snarled. “It was
her
choice. I begged her to leave him, to go back to her pack and start a new
life. But she refused.”

With an impossibly sad look in her eyes, she said, “You sound so angry with her.”

“I am. I always will be. She didn’t fight for herself.”

She nodded, her dark eyes soft with understanding. “And she refused to let you fight
for
her, didn’t she?”

He blinked, feeling just as lost as he had all those years ago, and stunned that Sayre had read him so perfectly.
Swallowing, he managed to say, “She forbid it.”

She took another step toward him, close enough now that he could feel the delicious heat of her body against his arm. “Did you ever think that maybe she was protecting you?”

His brows pulled into an even deeper scowl. “From what?”

Almost afraid of how easily she could seduce him—
intoxicate
him—he watched as she lifted one smooth, perfectly
freckled shoulder. “I don’t know. But if you’re anything like she was, then I think it’s a possibility that you need to look at.”

“Christ,” he groaned, closing his eyes as he dropped his head back on his shoulders. It was barely past nine, but he was exhausted. Tired down to his very bones, the revelations of his sins draining him in a way that physical exertion could never do. When she prompted
him with the gentle touch of her hand against his bare forearm, he said, “I will, Sayre. I will. Just...not now.”

“Will you tell me the rest?” she asked, her other hand softly stroking his spine, her position at his side cocooning him in warmth. He knew she was asking for the rest of the story with Aedan, but he simply didn’t have it in him to unearth any more skeletons that night.

“I’ll give you the long version tomorrow, if you want it. The short version is that I finally got my head on straight, and realized what I was doing. What I had become. I...I went against Aedan because of it, righting one of his wrongs, and he took it as the ultimate betrayal, swearing to take his revenge against me one day.”

“And then?”

He lowered his head, and could no more stop himself
from looking at her beautiful face than he could stop needing air. “Then I tried to go home, but I couldn’t stand to be near my father. So I bit the bullet and decided to visit my mother’s family. After she’d married my father and became pregnant with me, she’d never returned, knowing they would never accept us as vampires. She never even told them the truth about my father’s bloodline. They
had no idea when I’d been born, or how old I was meant to be. I came to her relatives as her teenaged son, and that’s when I met the Runners.”

A soft smile touched her lips. “You found a home with them, and wanted to stay.”

Nodding, he said, “I did. I stopped drinking blood as a main source, allowing myself to begin to age again, and when I was old enough to be a Runner, I moved here
permanently. I became one of them, and I left that old life behind as best as I could.”

With a slight catch in her voice, she asked, “So then you can grow old with your friends?”

“I can. I can grow old and die, if that’s what I choose.” A wry grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “And I will, Sayre. There isn’t a single goddamn part of me that wants to live forever.”

Chapter 12

S
ensing his exhaustion, Sayre took Cian’s hand and led him back through the quiet rooms of the cabin, until they’d reached his bedroom. Trying not to blush like the virgin she was, she pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor, the sight of his broad shoulders and all those hard-edged muscles on his abdomen making her mouth water. The guy was just too
freaking gorgeous for words. Taking his hand again, she pulled him with her until they were lying down in the middle of the bed, the open window allowing the wind and moonlight to filter in, their heads resting on the pillows as they lay on their sides and gazed at one another.

Keeping her voice soft, she asked him questions as they popped into her head, both serious and silly, and he answered
each one in a deep, husky rumble that made her shiver with awareness, her body heavy and aching with desire. He explained that garlic didn’t have any affect on him, and he could see his reflection in a mirror, as well as walk into a house uninvited. When she asked about sunlight, since it was rumored among the Lycans that they shared the night with vampires, he explained that he was naturally
more nocturnal than a human, even more so than his fellow Runners, but that the sunlight didn’t physically harm him.

She had no idea how much time had passed when his breathing deepened and his eyes fluttered closed, sleep overtaking him as his voice trailed off. She could sense him relaxing in a way that was whole and complete, as if he were resting easier now that he was no longer carrying
the burden of so many secrets, and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from saying his name. If he needed sleep, then she would simply lie there and watch over him, while everything that he’d told her carefully worked its way through her mind.

There was still so much that she didn’t know, or understand. But there was also so much that now made sense, like pieces of a puzzle slowly working
themselves into place. The way that his arrogance had most likely been a cloak he’d used to hide his self-loathing for the things that he’d done when he was young. She’d also wondered, over the years, if his relentless womanizing was because he’d had his heart broken at some point. And now she knew that he had. Just not by a woman. By his family.

But he had a new family now. One that he could
claim, if he would only stop running long enough and let it happen.

She just...she just didn’t know if she could be a part of it.

But,
oh, God
, how she wanted to. She wanted to hold him and take him into her body and keep him forever, but didn’t know if she could be that brave. If she could say to hell with the fear and simply follow her heart, knowing there was such a strong chance
that he would break it.

Trusting his touch had hardly been an easy decision, but this, tearing down that last barrier and letting him in, now that she was seeing things in a clearer light...
this
was so much
more
. Infinitely more intimate, because she would be showing him more than just her outer layer. She would be letting him directly into her heart, and there would be no more secrets, then.
Not even from herself. Because of her bloodline—because she was
witch
—everything would be out in the open if they had sex, her true feelings laid out before him like a sacrifice, his to do with as he pleased.

That was what her mother had feared. And now Sayre feared it, too. Not because of his bloodline or his tortured past, but because she could feel the walls between them breaking down,
crumbling to dust. Could feel herself being drawn dangerously close to the emotional truths she wasn’t yet ready to face.

But she wasn’t going to let it pull her away from him. Instead, she shifted closer, put her face close to his on the pillow he was using, and lifted her arm, curling it over him, her fingers pressed against his broad, powerful back. They were still lying like that nearly
a half hour later, when his eyelids quivered, then slowly opened. Neither of them said a word as their gazes locked together, the only sound that of their rough, quickening breaths, the air around them building with a crackling tension that was thick and rich and provocative.

It was like they’d slipped into another world where the two of them were the only inhabitants. His eyes narrowed,
focusing on her mouth as she caught her lower lip in her teeth. It was the hunger, the
need
, she could see tightening his beautifully masculine face and darkening the tops of his cheekbones that gave her the courage to reach down and undo the top button on his jeans. Then she undid his zipper, biting her lip even harder when it became abundantly clear that he wasn’t wearing any underwear, and
she eagerly reached for him.

He grabbed her arm so quickly it made her blink, his low voice little more than a choked whisper. “What are you doing, Sayre?”

“Learning you.” She flicked her wide-eyed gaze up from where she’d been watching her trembling fingers try to curl around his long, shockingly thick erection, and she smirked when she caught his stunned expression. “What’s wrong,
Cian? Did you expect me to run and hide when I finally got a good look at your goods?”

“Uh...”

She laughed softly, loving the way he felt against her palms, so hard and feverishly hot, the thick veins that pressed beneath his skin throbbing with the pounding beat of his heart. “I might not have your
extensive
experience in these matters, but I’m not afraid of you or the way you make
me feel.” She stroked him tightly with both hands. “I’m not afraid of
this
.”

“That’s good,” he groaned, shuddering so hard that it shook the bed. “’Cause you’re his favorite thing in the entire fucking world.”

She smiled so big it made her face hurt. “That’s awesome,” she drawled with a wealth of satisfaction, unable to get enough of the way he was looking at her. His hooded gaze pierced
her with its intensity, his every reaction telling her how much he loved the feel of her hands on that utterly magnificent part of his body. Her confidence built with each tremor of muscle and serrated moan, her touch becoming bolder as she gave herself the freedom to explore him like she’d always wanted to do. With her hot gaze focused on her actions, she gently tested the weight of that heavy,
rounded part of him with one hand, while she stroked the other to the top of his shaft, studying the broad, flushed head. He was getting hot and slick there, and she used her thumb to rub the slippery moisture into his hot skin, encouraged by the way he hissed through his teeth, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a harsh, ragged breath.

“Damn it,” he growled, the rigid shaft getting even
harder—and
bigger
—in her hands.

If it weren’t obvious by her scent and the drunk-on-lust look on her face that she was thoroughly enjoying herself, the skittering sparks of light suddenly shooting off of her were an unmistakable sign.

“You gotta stop before this goes too far,” he rasped, his hooded gaze burning with molten heat, as if his beautiful eyes had been lit from within.

“Not gonna happen,” she responded, shaking her head.

He made a guttural sound deep in his throat, and pushed her onto her back. “You’re so playing with fire, little witch.”

She shot him a feisty smirk as she continued to stroke him, her power crackling in the air like an electrical storm, illuminating the room with glittering points of light. “Look around you, Cian. Fire doesn’t exactly
scare me.”

His incredible silver eyes smoldered with craving as he lowered his face over hers, then lower, until their lips were softly touching. She shivered, loving the way he breathed her in, as if he couldn’t get enough of her scent, or her taste, his tongue stroking against her bottom lip once...then again. He nipped it with his teeth, his next breath a little harsher, tension coiled
tight in the long length of his body as he pressed harder against her, his heavy erection throbbing in her grip. With a guttural curse on his lips, he shifted position, kneed her legs apart and moved between them. Then he pulled her hands off his cock and pinned them near her head as he pressed that massive shaft right against the seam of her shorts. She gasped, thinking it felt beyond wonderful,
until he pulsed his hips, grinding against the moist cushion of her sex, and
that
felt so insanely amazing that her eyes nearly rolled back in her head.

God, in that moment, she would have given
anything
for there to be nothing between them. To feel him so deliciously hot and hard against her naked flesh.

“I want you so badly,” he growled, the gritty words vibrating with need as he braced
himself on his elbows, his forehead dropping against hers. “So badly, Sayre, I think it could break me.” He reached down with one hand and shoved her shirt up under her breasts, his body pressed so close she could feel the mouthwatering flexing of his abs. Then he lowered his hand again, curled it behind her left knee and jerked it up against his hip, his next rolling thrust rubbing against
her in a way that made her sob with pleasure, her nails digging into the sleek, powerful muscles in his back.

“Cian,”
she moaned, unable to say more than his name.

“I would sell my goddamn soul for the right to take you,” he panted. “Take you for fucking ever.”

Her nails dug in a little harder, and she could tell by the flare of heat in his eyes that he liked the bite of pain. “It
is
your right.”

He grimaced at her husky burst of words and stilled at the end of a powerful stroke, his color fever-high as he started to pull his head back, his eyes wild. “God, I wish that were true.”

Curving her hands behind his strong neck, she pulled his mouth to hers as she gasped, “It is.” Then she kissed the hell out of him, hard and wet and aggressive, tangling her tongue with
his...until he ripped the control right out of her hands, and took it for his own.

* * *

Claiming the sweet, sleek inner surfaces of her mouth with his tongue, Cian kissed Sayre so deep and explicitly, it was like he was trying to decode her. Lure out her unspoken emotions and secrets, craving the flavor of them. Needing anything of hers that was private and sacred, just so he could
feel
close
to her. So he could hold a little part of her that no one else had ever held. Needing it to be his, and his alone.

He was thrusting against her with so much power now that the bed was slamming against the wall, and he wasn’t even inside her. But that wasn’t going to stop him from crashing over the edge so hard he damn near turned himself inside out. When it hit him a moment later,
the force of his release was so intense it was like his heart had stopped, every muscle and tendon in his body straining and taut. He kept his mouth locked tight against hers, growling hoarse, broken curses into that sweet, honey-flavored space as his body shuddered and pulsed, his climax spilling him all over her soft stomach and that sexy-as-hell tattoo. He could only breathe out a huge groan
of relief that she’d climaxed with him, her throaty cries echoing in his ears, while the rich, drugging scent of her pleasure hit his system so powerfully he gave another hard pulse, completely drained.

Collapsing onto his side, back in his original position, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling her onto her side, as well. She lay facing him again, her flushed cheek pressed into the pillow,
eyes closed, and he didn’t even spare a second glance at the god-awful shamrocks. He was too lost in Sayre, his heavy-lidded gaze devouring the sight of her still flushed from her orgasm. Then she lifted those long, gold-tipped lashes and looked right at him, and the smile she gave him was so damn beautiful it made Cian feel as if he’d been knocked upside the head with a bat, his ability to think
all but obliterated. So he simply let himself feel...and enjoy. They lay there for what felt like forever, faces close together, breathing the same air, completely lost in the moment. Unable to keep the words burning on his tongue inside, he eventually said, “I know it doesn’t change anything, but I just...I want you to know that the women who came here to see me yesterday, they don’t mean anything
to me, Sayre. They never did.”

She touched her fingertips to the stubble darkening his jaw, the tender caress making him tremble. “God, Cian. I don’t know if that makes it better, or worse.”

Understanding what she meant, he shifted forward until he could press his lips against the center of her forehead, trying to show her the tenderness she deserved as he cupped the side of her face
in his hand and stroked her soft, warm cheek with his thumb. When her breathing became deep and slow, he gently pulled his head back, lost in the precious sight of her as she fell asleep against him, those beautiful lips curved in another soft, satisfied smile that made him feel like he’d conquered worlds. He wanted to stay there and watch her forever, but the gnawing feeling in his stomach reminded
him that he hadn’t eaten dinner. Forcing himself to get up, he changed his jeans for clean ones with hands that still weren’t quite as steady as they should be, and headed into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. A few minutes later, he went out onto the front porch for a cigarette, needing some more time to think in the quiet about everything that had happened...and how the little witch had
surprised him, once again.

Instead of pushing him away after he’d unloaded about his bloodline and his past, she’d pulled him closer, and he didn’t know what to make of it. How to wrap his head around it, when he’d been so sure she would run screaming and never want to set eyes on him again.

Not yet ready to go inside after he finished his smoke, and not wanting to spend any more time
worrying about Aedan, he pulled out his phone, took a seat on the top porch step and spent a long time cruising her blog, watching videos of her with the sound low. It was probably kind of stalkerish, but damn it, he was drawn to every part of the woman, and he couldn’t help feeling incredibly proud at what she’d achieved. Isolation would have broken most people, but Sayre had found a way to survive.
And while he might be physically stronger, he didn’t doubt for an instant that she was stronger than him where it counted.