The Claimed (21 page)

His erection jerked beneath her belly and hardened.

Despite all her misgivings, she wanted him again and let him know, covering him with her center as she braced her hands on his chest.

“This feels right, doesn’t it?” he asked as he cupped her breasts and lazily stroked his thumbs back and forth across her nipples.

“Yes, it does,” she replied and bit back a moan when he took each tip between thumb and forefinger and tenderly kneaded them.

“It will take time to understand this. Understand each other,” he admitted, nuzzling her face with his before biting the tender skin just beneath her jaw. Then he licked the spot before opening his mouth and sucking the skin.

He was marking her physically, much as he had already left his signature on her aura with the kiss of his power.

Over and over he pulled at her skin with the suction of his mouth and each tug yanked at her center until she had to fill the emptiness. Reaching down, she guided him to her and eased down onto him.

His breath exploded against her skin roughly and when he looked up, bits of neon glittered in his gaze. She could see the teal of her own eyes reflected back in his, but she reined in her Hunter power, wanting to savor his physical presence.

As if understanding her reaction, he harnessed his energy. Running his hands down her sides to grasp her waist, he guided her movement as she rode him, her movements slow at first as she enjoyed the languid slide of flesh along flesh. Their skin warmed from the growing heat of the sexual friction.

The waters lapped around them from the motion of her body. It splashed up onto his chest and she shifted her hands down across that slick skin and the hard brown nubs. She caressed them with her fingers and he smiled. “I like that,” he admitted, and she grinned, bent and bit the tip of one, earning a more powerful thrust of his hips into her.

Christopher skimmed his hand up and held her head to him, tangling his fingers in the silky strands of her toffee-colored brown hair. Kissing her temple, he then whispered against the shell of her ear, “I’m not sure I’ll ever get enough of you.”

Her body quaked and then she sat down, driving him deep into her. She cupped her own breasts and offered them up to Christopher, also wanting more of him.

He surged upward, sitting so that he could kiss her nipples. Suck them into his mouth before licking all around them.

Victoria wrapped her arms around his head, held him close as she began to move once again. Shifting her hips, she stroked him ever closer to climax as his body tightened and he shakily released a breath that cooled her skin.

She was tiring, but he brought his big hands to her hips and helped her. He pumped up into her, forcing her to hang on to his shoulders for stability as her world wobbled with the strength of the orgasm building within her.

Her breath was choppy, matched by his harsh breathing and the tension simmering beneath his skin, snaking along the big, beautiful muscles of his body until with one powerful thrust of his hips, he propelled them over the edge.

She gripped him tight, murmuring his name along his lips before she kissed him once again. She accepted the spill of his breath uttering her name and the tender way he wrapped his arms around her.

“Do you think this was meant to be?” Victoria asked as she bonelessly sank back onto his lap and tucked her head against his shoulder in a gesture so touching he felt his heart constrict.

He had seen what had happened with his parents. The unhappiness and hatred that came from being irrevocably bound to someone when love didn’t last. The way his mother had disappeared, her spark of life gone. He wanted more than that for himself.

“We can try, Victoria,” he promised, wanting this to develop into more.

Together they could forge a new future for their clans. Light and Shadow Hunters united peacefully.

Together they might find love with each other and experience the bonding that would unite them and produce the next generation of their people. A more powerful generation, thanks to the greater power that a binding would bring.

With the brush of her kiss along his shoulder, she said, “Let’s go inside. Get some rest. We’ll need it to plan what to do next.”

R
yan didn’t knock as he threw open the door to Maya’s room. He was convinced that she would be missing since he had no doubt that she had been involved in the earlier incident that night. To his surprise she stood by her balcony doors, dressed in a revealing black peignoir that highlighted all of her womanly attributes.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, one dark brow inching upward with annoyance at his abrupt entry.

He pushed forward to stand before her. “Where were you tonight?”

“Really?” she said, and gestured to the small table to one side of the room where the remains of a half-eaten meal sat uninvitingly.

“You’re telling me you’ve been here all night?” Ryan said with disbelief, although the guard outside the door had seen no one come and go except the maid. A new guard sat outside the balcony doors where Jason had been stationed earlier.

“I’m here aren’t I?” she said, and strolled negligently to the table, picked up her nearly empty glass of wine, and refilled it. Holding the bottle over an empty glass, she asked, “Would you like some?”

Was it his imagination or did her hand have a bit of a tremble? Ryan wondered. “A drink between friends? Why not?”

There was no doubt about the tremor in her hand this time as she poured the wine.

He strode over and opened up his senses, searching for signs of aberrant energy deposits around her. In much the same way that a gunshot left residue behind, if she had released an energy orb recently there would be traces of the blast along her life forces. Although her energy field was strong, attracting him to her, he could find no evidence of battle. Only the pull of her sex, so difficult to ignore.

The sly smile and half glance she shot him as she handed him the glass acknowledged that she was aware of the fact that he was not immune to her charms. She ran her finger along the edge of her glass, playing the coquette. “Why do you deny yourself, Ryan? We could be quite good together.”

Ryan had no hesitation about that. With Maya’s affinity, she could make any man a king, and he had been tempted more than once. Even when she had been Christopher’s fiancée she had fascinated him, maybe because he refused to believe anyone could be so amoral and selfish. Call him foolish, but he believed in the inherent goodness of people.

He took a sip of the wine, needing to brace himself as she released a little more of her power, clearly caught
up in her web of desire as well as her nipples hardened beneath the sheer fabric of the nightgown. The wine was tasteless in his mouth as he imagined suckling her. Feasting on all that luscious femininity.

Maya was no fool. She could tell from the look in Ryan’s eyes that her bait had been swallowed.

She ran a finger along her neckline, inching the fabric lower and lower until it barely covered her breasts. At his low groan, she set her glass aside, lowering the fabric to reveal her breasts. She took her own nipples between her fingers and pinched them, sighing with the pleasure it brought.

“Why not join me, Ryan? It’s not as much fun to play by myself.”

He set his glass on the table. Against the placket of his pants he was already aroused to almost bursting. He hated that she had that much power over him, but he would not be weak and give in to it.

He raised his hand, but instead of touching her, he dragged the fabric back over her breasts.

“Please, Ryan. It can be so good for us,” she pleaded and reached down, stroking her hand up and down his erection, yanking a groan from him.

“That’s it, Ry. Let me in. Life is too short to keep on denying yourself,” she urged with another strong stroke of his erection, but her words awoke another emotion in him.

Ryan stumbled back and pressed forward with why he had come to her room in the first place. “Life
is
too short, Maya. That’s why I’m here. Jason was murdered tonight.”

Shock traveled over her, but not about Jason. He suspected the greater surprise was that he had broken off their interlude, but in a matter of seconds, she had
schooled herself and straightened her clothing. Composed, she said, “No matter what Christopher wants to believe, we cannot trust the Light Ones.”

He narrowed his gaze at her words. “Who said anything about the Light Ones being responsible for Jason’s death?”

With a tremulous flip of her hand, she replied, “Who else would want a Shadow dead?”

Ryan marched back up to her, but when she would have released her energy again, he slashed his hand through the air to stop her. “You may have hidden your tracks tonight, but we will find out what happened. Those involved will be punished.”

She tilted her chin up at an insolent angle and glared at him. “I am not afraid, Ryan. I have done nothing wrong.”

“Then you have nothing to fear,” he said and strode out the door, needing to check with the maid who had been attending to Maya to see if she had anything to report.

Maya flinched as the door slammed shut. Nothing was more sacred to a Shadow than another Shadow’s life. Only an Añaru could take such life without impunity. If Ryan and Christopher discovered that she and Alexander’s men had left Jason in the quicksand to die, she was as good as dead herself.

If only Alexander’s men had listened to her, they might have been able to take Adam without the loss of Jason. It would have been a coup to bring all that power to Alexander. She was convinced that he would not cast her aside the way Christopher had, and worse yet, for a Light Hunter.

It burned like acid in her gut that Christopher was attracted to a mewling Quinchu female instead of her.

The only benefit from tonight’s botched mission was
that the Light Hunters would never trust Christopher now. She had no doubt that the orb shot toward the Quinchu bitch had instead taken down one of her men. At such a close distance and as charged as Alexander’s men had been, the blast had to have been fatal.

Too bad it hadn’t taken her out, but at least the deaths tonight would foment trouble between Christopher and Victoria. Maybe enough to break them apart and allow her to work her way back into Christopher’s good graces.

And if not, there was always Alexander, she thought. But if she was going to pursue that avenue she might need the help of Victoria’s cadre captain once more.

In the morning
, she thought, heading to bed. It was late and her short interlude with Ryan had left lingering demands she had to fulfill. But as she pleasured herself, she couldn’t find any real satisfaction.

It was no fun being alone and unloved.

Victoria experienced the coming of morning. Her Hunter body was attuned to all the forces of nature around her, warning her that the day would soon arrive.

She lay tangled together in bed with Christopher, legs intertwined. Arms wrapped around each other. Her head was tucked beneath his chin and against the muscled expanse of his chest, listening to the sleep slow beat of his heart. Savoring the warmth of him and the stream of energy that flowed from him to her and back, unending vitality shifting together.

But even with that sharing, the pulse of her Equinox still was centered deep inside her. As Christopher had suggested, it would obviously take more than their very pleasant interlude to allow their energies to bond.

Love, maybe. Trust definitely, since love could not exist without it, she considered as she lazily rubbed her fingertips along the line of his collarbone to rouse him. He needed to go to avoid discovery and she needed time alone to consider all that they had learned about each other.

Christopher awoke with that touch, his body stirring, her own responding to that arousal, trembling with the slow burn of desire. She forced away that need, because they had more important things to handle before morning.

“You’re troubled,
warmi
,” he said, using the ancient endearment of their people, and she liked the sound of it on his lips. In fact, she could easily picture waking beside him like this every morning.
Could love be so far behind?
she thought.

“The morning is almost here,” she replied, drawing attention to the rising dawn.

“It’s still an hour away. Ample time for us to…” His voice trailed off as he mimicked her actions and ran his index finger along the line of her collarbone, but then tracked it up to his mark on her neck. As he touched that spot, her body shook with need.

“So not fair,” she warned, inching away from him on the bed, which only served to spring free his erection to poke into her belly.

Christopher grinned. “Then let me make it better.” He bent his head and laid his mouth on the tender spot. She nearly came from the passion tearing through her body, but his kiss was one of healing, sending a gentle breeze of power to that spot to erase the evidence of his love bite.

“Better?” he asked as he raised his head and met her gaze.

He knew it was only a bit better, Victoria thought. There was no denying the state of her arousal. It was there in the tightly puckered tips of her breasts and the dampness against his thigh as it rested between her legs. Still he did nothing to deal with that need, aware of her state of mind.