Darkest Temptation (2 page)

With an epithet burning the back of his throat, he dropped twenty feet, his large frame landing lightly before his prey.

He dropped from the sky like a hawk, landing on the balls of his feet in a crouch, an animal ready to spring.

Swallowing down a scream, she spit out with forced bravado, “Nice trick.”

He would expect her to cower. To scream. To beg for her life. She would disappoint him.

He answered her with a low growl.

She could make out little beyond his enormous size and the flash of eyes homing in on her, a predator intent on the kill. Doubt clawed hot fingers through her. Something was… different. He was different. His eyes glowed down at her a yellowy-brown. Nothing at all like the pewter-colored gazes of the beasts that had attacked her outside the club. Baltic amber with white fire flaming in the center.

He flew forward then, slamming her down on
the ground. Her teeth clacked together at the sudden collision with hard earth. He loomed over her, around her. Like the night, he was everywhere all at once. A massive wall of flesh, bone, and muscle… indestructible, yet she had to destroy him.
She had to
.

Her hand flew inside her jacket, the once stylish black suede her mother had bought her two Christmases ago now a shredded mess. The thought of her mother made her chest burn. She had to strike.
Now
.

Her fingers closed around the cold grip. She slid it from her jacket. Before she even had time to aim, he grasped the weapon and twisted it from her hand, turning it so that the cold barrel aligned with her throat, the mouth pressing directly beneath her chin, the gun’s cold lips a deadly kiss on her shivering flesh.

Shit
. He’d disarmed her with pathetic ease.

The wall of man—
beast
—around her pressed closer.

“C’mon. A bullet isn’t really your style,” she choked, her skin simmering too hotly for her to care about the wisdom of provoking him. “Shouldn’t you be mauling me like a dog right about now?”

“You’re either very stupid or incredibly brave.”

How about desperate? And pissed? His kind had killed Maureen and infected her. If he was going to finish her off, she was going down spitting in his face.

The gun dug deeper beneath her chin, punishing.

Sucking in a breath, she waited for the pain. Waited for death. A moment passed and nothing happened.

Slowly, she focused on his face, all shadowed angles but undeniably human. Baltic-gold, deep-set eyes drilled into her beneath dark brows. Mesmerizing. But not a beast like from the club. He was nothing like the monsters that had attacked her and killed Maureen. The realization gave her a start.

Why had Curtis recruited her to kill him, then?

“Silver bullets, I take it?” He leaned in to sniff the gun before nodding. “You came prepared. Except you can never be prepared enough for me.” His face descended in a blurring rush of speed. She gasped. The warm tip of his nose brushed her cheek, moving over her skin until his lips grazed her ear. And damn her traitor body if she did not respond, did not arch against his chest—against
the hard body of a faceless stranger holding a gun beneath her chin.

He inhaled deeply. “What are you?” His voice rippled heat through her body. Warm and guttural, like smoke curling in her veins. And foreign. The exact origin indecipherable.

As he leaned over her, she felt the thick bulge of him, hot and heavy against her belly. Dread filled her at her rising hunger. She throbbed at her core, and moistness rushed between her legs. She groaned, hating herself—the terrible thing she had become—and hating him but ready to have him. All of him, hard and thrusting inside her right here. Right now. Like two animals in the dirt. And she still couldn’t clearly see his face. She couldn’t live this way.

God
. She shook her head and stopped, the slide of the gun’s mouth beneath her chin too real, too terrible.

“You’re trespassing.” He sniffed again, then exhaled, his breath a hot gust on her flesh. A dragon breathing against her cheek. Her heart clenched. His will alone stopped the killing fire from spewing forward. This she knew. Somehow. Intuitively. She knew a beast surrounded her despite his human appearance. Curtis must have
been wrong when he’d explained the rules that governed lycans. Hope unfurled in her chest. Maybe that meant she wouldn’t be a slave to the moon and primitive urges, a slave to the insatiable need to kill, to feed on human flesh… to screw anything with a Y chromosome.

“But you know that.” A thread of laughter laced his voice. “Come to kill me, have you?” The hair near her temple feathered, and she realized his fingers touched there, rubbing her hair as if it were something to test between the pads of his fingers. The instinct to turn into his touch and purr like a cat seized her.

“You’re no hunter,” he announced. His nose buried in her hair then, breathing deeply. She shivered. She heard the frown in his voice as he demanded, “What are you? Why do you wear your own blood?”

“I—” She stopped, swallowing at the horrible croak of her voice. “I was attacked. Bitten.” She stopped again and bit her lip to keep from saying more. Saying the rest.

He pulled back, a tension that hadn’t been there before seizing him, washing over him—pouring into her. “When did this happen?”

“A few hours ago.”

“How did you get here?”

She opened her mouth, hesitating.

“How?” he barked.

“A hunter dropped me off. He said he was an agent from… some group.”

“NODEAL,” he muttered. “National Organization of Defense Against Ancient and Evolving Lycanthropes.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” She swallowed before adding, “He said this was your fault. That you’re some big pack leader. An alpha. That if I killed you…” Her voice faded.

“Ah. Did he now?” He smiled then, although no humor lurked in the shadowed bend of his mouth. “So you think I’m your alpha?”

She nodded her head against the ground.

“And,” he drew out the word, “he told you killing
me
would save you. Would break your curse.”

“Yes.” She surged forward with renewed strength, struggling, stopping at the cold press of the gun.

“Wrong.”

She blinked. Wrong? What did he mean,
wrong
? This was her life… and her mother’s. Killing this monster was her only chance.

“If I die, you’ll still be a lycan.”

“But you’re a—”

“I’m not a lycan. I’m something else.”

The announcement twisted like a knife in her chest. “You’re lying!”

“Sorry—either your hunter friend lied to you or he was mistaken. Your alpha is out there somewhere, but it’s not me. You’re one of them—” He rose higher above her, a lengthening shadow, removing himself from her even as the gun deepened its kiss beneath her chin.
He meant to kill her
.

“No.”
He was lying. She didn’t know why, but he was. He had to be.

“You’re infected.”

“No—”

“You’re ruined.”

Her voice fell harder, her denial hotter. “No! I’m not. I’m a person! Not a monster.”

“Not anymore.” He pulled back the hammer, the grinding click twisting her stomach, and she realized all the shouting, all the no’s in the world, would not stop him. He meant to kill her. To end her life here on the cold ground of autumn, miles from Los Angeles, miles from her mother. She closed her eyes in a long, agonized blink.

“Please. My name is Lily.” The words rose from
deep within her. She was a person. With a name. Not some monster in need of killing. Not like the thing that had bitten her. He had to see that.

Gradually the pressure beneath her chin eased. The gun moved away. His weight lifted as well. Before she had time to orient herself, she was pulled to her feet.

“Come,” he commanded, moving ahead of her.
Leaving
her.

For a moment, she stood alone, surrounded by trees and quiet night. Moonlight infiltrated the thick canopy of branches as she watched his lithe movements carry him forward, confident and fully expecting her to follow.

And for whatever reason, she did. Nothing had changed. Her mission was the same. She didn’t believe his vague
I’m something else
. Right. He was the key to her survival. Killing him meant life. That had to be true. She wasn’t giving up.

*   *   *

Lily.

A flower. Sweet and pure. He dragged a hand over his head to the back of his neck. Even better. Now she had a name. Now he would think of her as Lily. Lily with the great hair. With breasts that
wouldn’t quit. With the fascinating scent that affected him on a primal level. Oh… and a fresh lycan bite on her arm that marked her as property of some pack out there. Lily, who would turn in the next month and no longer be so sweet, so innocent, so pure.
So just take her. What does it matter? Satisfy your lusts and then destroy her
.

Lily
. The name cracked his resolve. She was too vulnerable, too…
human
. A girl. A woman.

Even if she wasn’t anymore.

Except for the bite on her arm, everything about her still screamed “human.” Vulnerable mortality. All that he had ever wished to be.

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d shared an honest moment with a mortal. His mother’s family had raised him, reviling him as a child, then, later, as he grew into a man, fearing him.

He had never justified their fears. Never harmed a human who hadn’t tried to kill him first. He’d never wished to dominate and enslave man—as Ivo did. Luc believed humans to be generally good. Even the hard-core agents for NODEAL and its European counterpart, EFLA.

He’d witnessed war and atrocities in his lifetimes, but he’d also seen goodness and honesty and dignity within mankind. And that was what
he saw in her.
Goodness. Honesty. Dignity
. He couldn’t destroy that. Lily—his first brush with humanity in countless years. And he couldn’t make himself destroy that—
her
. At least not yet. On the next moonrise, he would. When there would be no mistaking what she was. When all the humanity had faded from her DNA.

He could feel her stare drilling into his back as she followed him, could
feel
her uncertainty, her confusion. Because he’d denied being her alpha. Because he hadn’t killed her. A delay only, he assured himself. A way for him to do what needed to be done and not suffer guilt for the rest of his too-long life.

He strode inside his house, waiting for her in the mosaic tiled foyer, pausing near the stairs, one hand clutching the iron railing until he felt her arrival. Once her soft steps cleared the threshold, he pushed on, not daring to look over his shoulder and see the temptation he heard with every step… or smelled with every breath. He didn’t need to. He had seen her perfectly in the dark, his vision homing in on a face alluring in its sweetness. Round and apple-cheeked. Fresh. She would look young at forty. Not that she would ever see forty. She was lost. He would do well to
remember that unless he wished to join her in the afterlife.

Blinking hard, he shoved back the stinging thought. He might struggle now with what needed to be done. But not later. Later he would perform his duty and not blink an eye.

Maybe he needed to venture into the city and find a woman for the night. Occasionally he succumbed and did such a thing, although he hated the risk, never fully trusting himself.

He walked down a corridor of bare walls, the soles of his boots sinking into the plush runner. He’d bought the house fifteen years ago, already furnished and decorated for some Hollywood big shot who had run out of funds before closing.

She trailed him silently, the sweet fragrance of her blood wrapping seductive tendrils around him. He passed through the kitchen, striding past top-grade utilitarian appliances, the gleaming steel of the oversized refrigerator revealing a blurred reflection of himself. The sharp blade of a nose. The harsh set of his dark brows over primal eyes. The black, close-cropped hair. Once, before his fourteenth winter, his eyes had been a light hazel, dark moss when he’d laughed. Or so he’d been told. Scarce laughter had filled his
childhood. He and Ivo had had only each other. Born two days apart, they’d been more brothers than cousins. Cursed before they’d even left the womb.

Shoving thoughts of Ivo away, he descended to the cellar. Her steps echoed behind him. Standing in the center of the icy-cool room, he pulled the chain of the single bulb dangling near his head and faced her. The bulb danced wildly, sending light around the room like some kind of dizzying strobe.

She was tall. Her body full, like women used to be, when a little meat on your bones had meant wealth, prestige, status. A time he remembered. Ripe breasts pressed against the silky fabric of her top, the nipples prodded to attention. He could make out the tiny bumps dotting her areolas. His cock grew hard as he stared. Her eyes stared back at him. She had yet to survey the room… her prison for the next month.

Her dark eyes feasted on him in the sudden light, pupils dilating as they crawled over his face, seeing him for the first time, missing nothing. He felt the rise in her body temperature, noted the slight increase of blood flow in the heart that already thundered in her chest. He saw. He felt. He
heard. He
knew
. One lift of his finger and he could have her. Could spend himself inside her until his animal passions subsided. The thought of sinking between those ripe thighs tormented him.

Quickly, desperate to flee, he lifted his arm and pointed to the wall, where chains hung, dark as slate, against the gray concrete. A mattress sat on the floor below the chains. They were there for him, although he’d never used them before. Never had the beast risen inside him to the point that he’d needed to restrain himself. He simply needed to be prepared. Needed precautions in place. If that day ever came.

“There,” he growled.

Her eyes widened and she shook her head, the brown waves tossing. “You cannot mean—” Her mouth trembled, those plump lips so appealing, so tempting…