Malakai

MALAKAI by Michele Hauf

Copyright © 2013 by Michele Hauf

Cover artwork by Michele Hauf

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic
form without permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments or events or
locales is entirely coincidental.

This digital edition published by Swell Cat
Press, LLC at Smashwords.

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Malakai Saint-Pierre swung a two-handed
broadsword. It soughed through the air and clanked against his
opponent’s blade. Rafe McLachlan, the Mad Scotsman, slid his blade
along Kai’s weapon. A glint of menace narrowed the Scotsman’s gray
eyes. Kai matched the expression and added a growl.

Spinning, and using the momentum to torque
his speed, Kai sliced his blade through the sky. He connected with
the side of Rafe’s head, blade flat. The Scotsman wobbled—too
dramatically for Kai’s preference—then toppled to the packed dirt
ground.

The crowd cheered and Kai raised his sword
triumphantly. His eyes traced the circle of faces surrounding the
fight. The majority were women, cheering and whistling, and a few
performing a victory hip shimmy.

And Kai…needed. He needed sex. Tonight.
Tomorrow promised the full moon. He had to satisfy his wolf tonight
or set it loose, and he preferred the sexual means to
satisfaction.

Offering Rafe a hand, Kai tugged his opponent
to his feet. The two of them bowed to more applause, but upon
hearing the call of the drummers, the evening crowd quickly
dispersed. Half an hour before the reenactment festival closed, the
drum jam started, attracting one and all with a hypnotic,
heart-racing percussion frenzy.

Scratching the back of his bare knee, Kai
mined the itch the torn hem of his wool tartan had been irritating
since morning. Had to get a new costume; he’d worn this kilt during
performances the past two years. He was a Frenchman by heritage,
but he could play the invading Irishman for kicks.

Rafe preceded him into the cool privacy of
their canvas tent, pitched off the fighting grounds beneath an
aging oak.

“I'm finished for the night,” Kai said.

"Yeah? The way you were eyeing the blonde in
the tight pink corset makes me wonder if you're just getting
started."

Malakai grabbed his water bottle and downed
the quart in a long swallow. A trickle of warm water streamed down
his chest, so he tugged off his dusty linen shirt and tossed it
aside. “I've not seen that wench around here before.”

"How do you do it, Casanova?" Rafe’s real
Scottish brogue was heavy with exhaustion.

Everyone called Kai Casanova. So he'd
developed a certain reputation with the ladies in the small town of
Clover Lake. There wasn't a man in this neck of the Northern
Minnesotan woods who possessed Kai's endurance, virility, and
sexual prowess.

What the mortals didn't know was that Malakai
Saint-Pierre was werewolf. And damned proud of it.

“I just have a way,” he commented.

"Yeah? Here I thought it was a huge
cock."

"Oh, that too."

Kai craned his neck outside the tent and
glanced skyward. Though the sun bobbled on the horizon, he couldn't
see the moon yet. His body hummed with the need for satisfaction,
for rousing, screaming, all-night skin against skin.

Rafe chuckled. "I'm sure you won't go home
alone. You want me to put your things in your truck for you?"

"Thanks. I'm going to check out the dancers."
Kai bid his friend goodbye until next weekend.

Crowded around the pickle wagon were half a
dozen wenches. He spied Kelly of the black leather and metal studs.
Some kind of Xena costume, he decided. She had been a rare second
visit to his bed.

Kai lifted his chin and met her eyes. She
cast him a long look from under her lush black lashes. Despite the
lip ring, those lips were soft, and he remembered sucking and
tracing them with his tongue. She'd liked to dig in those
fingernails all over his body. Ooo, did he love that.

She shook her head and looked away from
him.

"Hell," Malakai muttered. Lately he'd been
having a time hooking up with the locals. Was he seriously so
over-talented that a woman would not take him on after she'd been
with him once?

At sight of MaryAnn's voluptuous hips and
breasts, Kai winced and quickly walked by. He distinctly remembered
her crying after she'd come. "Because I'm so happy," she'd
blubbered.

Right. This wolf didn't do the tears.

The crowd gathering around the drummers drew
him. A fire spinner dazzled nearby. It had become a tradition for
festival workers to gather at the oak tree that spread over the
west end of the jousting field and dance away the day's
stresses.

A flash of silver caught his eye. At the edge
of the crowd a swirl of red and purple silks fluttered. Dozens of
gypsies in all shapes and sizes joined the jam each evening. Kai
had dated a few of them.

Date
was probably pressing the normal
definition of the word. So he preferred one-night stands. His MO
certainly wasn't going to help him start a family—something he
craved. It was the wolf in him. He wanted to lead a pack of his own
and have lots of children. And seriously? The one-night stands were
getting old. Finding a woman he could love was Kai's greatest
desire.

He hadn’t seen that particular gypsy before.
She wore wings to give her costume an otherworldly tone. Of course,
wings, demon horns, and tails were
de rigueur
here at the
festival.

She glanced at him over the heads of the
gathering dancers. Thick tendrils of white blonde hair spilled over
her shoulders like some kind of spun candy confection gone wild.
Her lips were pale, as was her skin. For a moment her eyes held his
and firelight flashed boldly in them, coloring the irises
amber.

Kai ran a palm down his bare chest. A smile
glittered in her eyes, setting his heart to a pace faster than the
timpani. And then she was gone. But not for long; he had seen what
he desired tonight. And he wouldn't leave without it.

Kai entered the breach of bouncing bodies
that formed a crowded circle around the drummers and found a
springy beat. Other men were clad in medieval and Renaissance
costume, some stripped to their breeches, others still in full
regalia, as they danced and beat their fists in the air. Gypsies,
princesses, and wenches exposed gorgeous bosom, and sunburned arms
and cheeks as they swayed in surrender to the music.

Kai closed his eyes and allowed the crowd to
move him. Arms brushed his. A female hip shimmied against his
kilted thigh and then his backside. He savored the feel of skin
against skin, the frantic rush of energy coursing through his
system. After a day playacting the fight with Rafe under a hot sun,
his exhaustion transformed into something else, a warm welcome to a
trippy kind of pleasure he couldn’t get from any drug.

The brush of silken hair against his back
heightened his sensory awareness. The drum beat crowded his ears
and coursed through his veins. Were the moon visible he'd let loose
a howl, but he wasn't so foolish to think that would not stop the
crowd dead to stare at him in horrific wonder.

Yet it was the moon that called to his innate
needs:
Must have satisfaction. Now!

When he opened his eyes, the faery in gypsy
veils danced before him. Lost in a trance, her hips swayed. Her
pale skin looked soft as peach flesh. Pink rosebud lips parted.
When she opened her eyes, she focused directly on him with those
flame-streaked irises.

Kai's heart lost the beat. He swallowed.

A shy smile curved her mouth. She turned and
shimmied away. Amethyst wings at her back were frilled with
homemade filaments and lacy edges; they shimmered and glowed with
glitter. A glance over her shoulder captured him, and he followed
the glints of silver coin strung about her undulating hips.

Yet the faery wings disturbed him. Kai—and
his twin sister Kambriel—had been cursed at birth. If he ever fell
in love with a faery he must ransom his heart—literally.

A real faery would not wear fake wings, he
reasoned. So he followed her.

Together they snaked through the crowd as it
chanted to the night, defying its fall. He wanted her spun silk
hair tangled in his fingers, and her hips that slinked and shimmied
rocking against his hips. The man he was growled for intimacy. And
his wolf wanted to fuck the pretty little gypsy faery tonight.

Kai slapped a hand to his chest. His
heartbeats thundered. Grass crushed under his suede lace-up boots.
Still lost in the beat, he passed a hawker's stand strung with
colorful ribbons. A copse of maples beckoned, and a delicate hand
grasped his. He turned to find the faery leaning against a tree
trunk.

Pulse racing, he stepped up to the woman. So
small, she clung to the tree, yet opened herself to him, inviting
him closer with a beckoning smile and shadowed eyes that no longer
flickered with flame. One of the wings pressed against the rough
tree bark had a tear in the nylon and he touched it, refuting the
fleeting suspicion that she may be something more than merely
mortal.

Kai plunged his fingers into the pale cloud
of silken hair. Neither spoke, and if they had, they would not hear
over the heart-numbing, soul-clutching noise. Caressing, clutching,
rubbing the gorgeous softness, he wanted to imprint her in the
whorls of his fingers.

She leaned up onto tiptoes and kissed him.
And with that daring permission to intimacy, Kai slid a hand around
behind her back, below the fake wings, and pulled her delicate
frame against his rigid body.

She tasted like honey, pure, sweet nature
warmed by the sun and thickly vibrant. Sticky in his mouth, but
like a treat he never wanted to melt away. He kissed her as if he’d
known her a lifetime. And yet, her newness, the utter abandon of
the kiss proved more unique than anything he’d known. Sighs stuck
at the back of his throat. Sweetness coated his tongue. His
erection pulsed beneath the kilt.

"Take me home with you," she said in a
steady, sure voice that belied her frail appearance. Her palm slid
down the front of his kilt. "Big boy."

"Uh…"
Yes!
That was his cock thinking.
But seriously? Was she that easy?

Propping a hand against the tree trunk, Kai
leaned down and sniffed her hair. Like summer, warm and sweet and
as sticky as her kiss. Beneath the kilt and her teasing strokes, he
turned to steel.

He bent near her ear, tilting out his hip to
lean away from her dangerous touch. "You're very…delicate."

"Got a problem with that?"

No! Yes. Not at all.

"If we take this any further, I might break
you," he teased.

"Is that why you followed me through the
crowd? To see if you could break me?" Her shadowed eyes defiantly
danced with his need to remain stoic.

"Wouldn't want to ruin you for other men," he
commented wryly. Crossing his arms over his chest to display his
massive biceps, he allowed her to take a good long look. He was two
heads higher than her and twice as wide. The tiny bit of silk and
wings was a bird to his behemoth.

Yet as those pale lips parted and the tip of
her tongue teased out, Kai sucked in a breath. He could already
feel her tongue tripping over his skin, breezing a cool pink path
down, down, and lower. Mmm…imagining what she'd feel like wrapped
about his cock made him shudder.

She tapped his bicep with a pink fingernail
and tilted her head. "I like it rough."

The drumming ceased. Dirt and dust plumed
about the crowd. The dancers cheered and hugged one another then
gaily dispersed for the exit gates.

Yet Kai's heart continued to dance to the
anticipatory beat of getting his needs met.

The woman turned away from him and—he caught
her about the waist and tossed her over his shoulder. "Tonight your
world changes, sugar. I don't want to hear you begging me to stop
later. You got that?"

"I don't know the meaning of the word
stop."

Inside, his wolf shivered in anticipation.
He'd chosen well.

Marching out of the gates and to the employee
lot, he tossed the faery up into his natty old Ford truck and
headed out to his cabin in the woods. The moon was bright. His
werewolf nudged for release. But more so, his libido needed to
learn the flavor of her sassy mouth.

***

The truck lights gleamed over a large wood
cabin tucked within a fairytale setting. An ancient maple tree hung
over one side of the house and a lush carpet of moss-thickened
grass spread over all. In the distance, moonlight glittered on a
creek.