Jade (Rare Gems Series) (12 page)

“How do we do the change?”
She let his question float over her, trying to think of a way to lock the door and have him naked at the same time. “Jade?”

“I want you.”
He licked the pulse at her throat, and she moaned. “You’re not helping me. I have to go out into the lobby and into your car before we can get home so you can fuck me.”

“Or I can give you what you need in the limo
, then take you home and we can play on the bed.” She moaned when he cupped her ass, bringing her flush against his erection. “You have any idea how badly I want to lean you over this couch and fuck you?”

“Yes,” she hissed at him as he rocked into her harder.
“Quentin, we can’t do this here. Any number of people are going to come into the room soon, and we’re going to get caught.”

“Then we have to hurry.” Taking her hand
, he led her out to the waiting limo and helped her into the back seat. She wasn’t even completely on the seat before he had her lying down on the seat and was pulling her pants off. Christ, she was going to come just from the anticipation.

As soon as her pants were discarded to the floor
, he was kneeling down on the carpet and pulling her to him. She felt her pussy float with desire. And when he licked her from gate to clit, she nearly screamed.

“You’re going to have to be quiet
, baby. Our driver is old, but I’m betting he could hear you scream when you came if you do it like I love.” She nodded, not really caring if the entire world heard her right now. “If you be quiet when you come, I’ll let you scream your head off when I take you on our new bed.”

“I don’t know if I can.” She moaned when he pressed a finger into her sheath.
“Quentin, please don’t tease me. I need this.”

“As do I.”
He licked her again, then suckled her clit into his mouth and nipped before lifting his head. Her entire body was on fire, and she needed some relief right now. Curling her fingers into his hair, she pulled him back to her pussy and held him there. When he suckled on her clit again, she nearly cried out, but didn’t want to know what he’d do if she didn’t do as he asked.

Jade came twice before they were out of the city.
And when she reached for her service pants, he pulled them from her and pulled her over his naked cock. She rode him slowly at first until he freed her breast and pulled her nipple into his mouth.

“I want you to start the change now.” She nodded but only continued to take a slow ride over his cock. When he stopped her with his fists at her hips
, she looked at him.

“You’re sure about this?”
He nodded. “Blair has given me permission, but I need you to say the words to him. I’m not going to have someone say that you were forced because of the things going on right now.”

“I would never say that and I’ve already spoken to Blair. He said for you to do it and he’d be there if you needed him.”
Quentin kissed her throat, and she threw back her head to give it all to him. “He told me that it would be painful but that I was healthy enough that I could take it.”

“You’ll be sore for a few days.”
He sat up and she felt his cock throbbing deep inside of her. “Quentin, you’re going to make me come if you continue to do that.”

“Do it, Jade.
Make me yours.” Her canines dropped suddenly, and she felt her wolf move along her skin. When Quentin bared his throat for them both, she and her wolf leaned in and licked him. As soon as he rolled her to her back and began pounding hard into her, she let her wolf come out to mark him, and she growled low as she sank her canines into him.

Quentin cried out
, but she was sure it was from his release rather than any pain she might have caused him. By the time she came, screaming, he was well on his way to becoming a wolf like her.

Chapter
12

Kent watched the wolf as he paced. He wasn’t aware of him yet, but that was because Kent didn’t want him to be, not because the man wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. When he stopped suddenly and looked at the door, Kent moved deeper into his shadows and waited for whatever came through the door before he moved in any direction.

The woman who came in seemed to know Witt
, but not well. She nodded to him once and hugged him to her. When she left again, Kent had a moment to wonder if Witt was going with her, but he only sat down in the chair and closed his eyes. He sat that way for perhaps five minutes before Kent heard him snore loudly. He went to him and kicked him in the feet to wake him.

“You have time to sleep now, wolf? What of the assignment that I gave you? Have you located the woman?”
He nodded but didn’t rise. For a reason that Kent could only think was arrogance, Witt laid his head back and closed his eyes again. Another kick to his legs this time had him sitting up.

“What?”
It took Kent several minutes to get his temper back under control when Witt continued to stare at him before the wolf spoke again. “I’m working on it. I’ve feelers out, and the fact that she’s got several body guards around her at all times is not making my job any easier. Did you know that they’re looking for you?”

Kent hadn’t realized that she knew he was coming for her
, but then he’d not heard all that the fucking bitch of a human had told before he felt her. Killing the human that Witt called Debra had been a mistake, he’d admit that now, but she’d pissed him off. Firstly, because she was not where he’d told her to be, which was in his bed. And secondly because she’d been telling them about him and what he’d planned. Which he’d strictly forbidden her to do. Humans were so unreliable.

“Whatever reason do they have to be searching for me?
Unless it is because you told them of me.” He waited for the wolf to say something, but he only stared at him. Kent moved into his mind and could see where he’d talked to Jade, but he’d not taken her. There had been too many people around. Like he cared about whether or not the wolf would have been caught.

“If they would have caught me with her
, you’d never get her.” Soundly put, but Kent didn’t have to like it. He sat down in the chair across from Witt and moved into his mind again. He didn’t care if he hurt him, but he had information that he wanted.

“She comes and goes without thought to me getting her
, I see.” Witt nodded but still didn’t move off the couch. There was something wrong with him, and it took him several minutes to figure it out. The wolf was dying.

“I have a plan to pick her up in the morning. Once I have her…once she’s here
, you’ll let me go, right?” Kent didn’t answer him but continued to think how the wolf could be dying. “I want to go and try to rest for a while. I don’t…I haven’t been myself lately.”

“You’re dying.”
Witt nodded and leaned his head back against the couch again, closing his eyes. “What happened to you? Drugs? Heart? I thought you were in perfect health if you shifted.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with
me.” Kent raped his mind and was angry with himself when he did it gently. But he needed the wolf, he told himself, and didn’t want him to die before he had Jade. He only found that the man was dying, and he honestly didn’t know why. There was something there, but Witt spoke before he could chase it down.

“I’ll have h
er here when you rise next. You can count on that.” Witt lay his head back and it tilted to the right. Kent’s hunger spiked at that moment and he wanted to bite the wolf and taste of him. When he stood up, he heard the lure of his blood moving through his body and leaned over the sleeping man. Sinking his fangs, he drank deeply.

He’d only taken a few hard pulls on the man when he felt the first tingling of fear. He at first thought it to be Witt’s
, but soon he realized it was his own. Staggering back from him, Kent sat on the couch again and felt the blood rush through him like a drug. Then the pain struck him. Christ, he was doubling over with it. It wasn’t long before Kent was on the floor and in a great deal of pain. He looked up at Witt when he realized he was awake.

“It’s silver.
I knew you’d drink from me again and I had someone put a spell over me so that you’d not be able to tell until it was too late.” Witt stood up and staggered slightly before falling back to his seat. “Of course I knew that someone as powerful as you claim to be would need more than I had in me originally, so she had me drink a little more. It’ll kill me quicker, but I was going to die anyway.”

“You poisoned me?”
Witt laughed and nodded. “What the hell for? What the fuck did I do to you but offer you everything you ever wanted?”

Which wasn’t true. The only thing he’d given the wolf was orders and a lie that he’d give him his brother when this was over.
Another cramp hit his belly, and Kent doubled over in pain. Witt laid his head back, and Kent realized that he’d never sealed the wound at his throat. Standing as best he could, mostly leaning on the couch and anything else that was close, he moved up to the wolf and sank his teeth into him again, this time careful not to drink, and tore his throat out. When Kent leaned back to watch the man drain out, he was startled to see a smile on his face.

“Thank you.”
Kent wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly and started to ask him what he’d said. But he continued talking in a much lower voice. “She’s going to kill you now, and I hope that she makes it slowly. Jade will tear you apart, and I can die happily knowing that I saved them all from you.”

Kent lay on the floor and
tried to think while Witt took his last breaths. He had to find someone to drink from, someone with untainted blood. A faerie would do nicely, but the only one he knew wasn’t speaking to him at the moment. He smiled at the memory before he realized he needed fresh blood. Standing again, he moved to the door and went out into the hall. There he found a woman just putting trash in a cart, and pulled her to his mouth before she could scream. It helped, but it wasn’t enough.

There were two more women on the floor he was on
, and he killed both before he felt his strength returning. He was going to have to find shelter soon, something underground to heal, but he knew it was going to be a long time before he could rise without feeling the effects of the silver, if he ever got over it. When he went into the night, he found three more victims, but none of them what he really needed. But going to ground was not an option. He moved through the night and killed five more people before he took shelter in a cave miles from the wolf and his prey. Kent was going to have to lay low for at least a few days. And when he came out, he was going to find Jade and her family and feast on them all for what they’d done to him.

It was nearly sunrise when he finally felt the pain recede enough that he could rest.
He’d been in a great deal of pain for most of the night. And now that he could rest, he began to feel his anger surge forward.

“The fucking cunt is responsible for this.”
Kent tried to think through the haze of pain who he was thinking about, and Jade popped into his mind. “I should have killed her when she tried to leave me. I will know better next time.”

He laughed slightly but winced at the pain it caused him. When he rolled to his back
, he felt the silver race through his veins and wanted to find the wolf and kill him again. The fucking bastard had actually tried to kill him. “What an ungrateful bastard. And to think I was going to let him…he would have been able to kill that fucking bastard of a brother if he’d only done what I’d ordered him to.”

Kent laid there for several more minutes, the sun pulling at him hard now.
He knew that he had to rest, but his mind would hardly let him. The man had poisoned him. What the hell had he done that for? Kent was a powerful vampire, and now he’d been reduced to hiding out until his body could heal properly. When rest claimed him, his mind was still working on the whys of it all. He would be better equipped to reason it when he rose, he thought, and closed his eyes.

~~~

Quentin opened his eyes and quickly closed them again. The pain of the light sent sword-like pain through his head. And he could swear he heard his hair growing.

“You’ll learn to tone it down.”
He knew that Blair spoke softly, but his voice still sounded as if he’d shouted right next to his ear. “How are you feeling otherwise?”

Quentin took a quick inventory of his body. He was sore in so many places that he felt as if he’d been in an accident but had come out okay.
Opening his eyes again, he looked at Blair, thankful that he’d turned off the lights.

“I hurt.
Am I supposed to?” Blair shrugged. Quentin had a feeling that the man was relieved about something, but was not sure what it was. As he sat up on the bed, he noticed that he was in the clinic and not home like he’d started out.

“There were complications.
You had to be brought here or die. It was nothing that Jade did, but something about your background that had us…did you know that somewhere in your line there is a panther?”

“No.”
He tried to reason around that but he hurt a great deal more now that he was sitting up. “What would that have to do with me becoming a wolf?”

“A wolf is a canine
, and a panther is not.” Understanding started to filter through his head as the haze of pain started to shift away. “When she started the change, you were fine, if you remember. Then something started to shift. You’re not wholly human. Just enough of the cat came to the surface that he started to get pissed off when the wolf started to show. She had you brought here. I had to…she was resting.”

“How long have I been here?”
Blair looked at the door, and when it opened, Quentin felt as if his world righted and the pain completely disappeared. There stood Jade. When she came to his bedside and touched him, Quentin felt something inside of him stir.

“You okay?” He nodded and pulled her down for a kiss. Hunger blasted through him
, and he pulled her over him just as he heard the door click again. Not caring if someone came in or Blair left them, he rocked up into her softness as she moaned.

“I want you.” She nodded and pulled at the gown he had on.
When she bit into his shoulder just enough to cause him a touch of pain, he snarled. The sound was so startling to him he stopped pulling her clothes off.

“Did I do that?”
Smiling, she nodded at him. “That felt…amazing. Like it came from deep inside of me.”

“I think it was your wolf.”
She shifted on the bed so that she was sitting over his lap, and he couldn’t help but pull her over him in a riding motion. “He’s very aggressive, but the cat will be, too, when he finds his ground.”

Quentin
was barely paying attention to her when she leaned down and licked his throat. But she’d said cat, too, and he pulled her up and looked at her.

“What do you mean, ‘when he finds his ground’? I’m wolf
, right?” She nodded, then shook her head. “Jade? What the hell happened to me?”

She got off him and then the bed. When she started to pace
, he started to feel his entire world start to splinter into pieces as parts of his memory from the past…was it a few days or just one? Anyway, he remembered her screaming when he’d clawed at her. Sloan was there and yelling at him to drink. Then he’d shifted. But into what?

“You’re both a cat and a wolf. I’m not sure how that works for you
, but you are both. Sloan said that somewhere in your linage you had a full-blooded panther in your family, and it’s lain dormant for all this time. Up until I tried to convert you into a wolf. He…your cat, didn’t much care for that.”

“I hurt you.” She nodded but
didn’t say anything. “Come here, Jade, and let me look at it. I want to see how badly I hurt you.”

“I’m going to be fine. It’ll heal once I shift
, but I was afraid to do it in the event you needed me. I’ve been…Blair put me into a sleep yesterday and now I feel a good deal better.” He told her again to come to him. “Seriously, Quentin, I’m fine.”

“Then show me.”
He realized that he was feeling her fear, and his animal, whichever it was, started to feed on it. Quentin felt something run along his arm and looked down to see fur sprouting there, and he looked at Jade.

“It’s your wolf. Let him come and you’ll shift.” Nodding
, he closed his eyes and waited. When nothing appeared to be happening, he opened them and had to blink several times before he could focus. “You’re beautiful.”

Quentin opened his mouth to tell her that nothing worked when a growl spilled from his lips.
Looking down at what he thought would be his arms, he saw furred appendages that he assumed belonged to him. When he growled again this time, he felt powerful and leapt from the bed to go to this mate.

“You did that very well. Like you knew just what you were doing.”
He rubbed his head along her leg and bumped his head against her until she moved to the chair. She sat down and ran her fingers deep into his head just behind his ears. “You’re very dark. Almost a blue-black. Probably because of your cat. Your fur is softer, too, slick feeling under my fingers.”