The Spell (25 page)

And Lucas ripped the shirt open. Again Danny gasped, arching her back under the assault, but Caige was there, his long, hard body meeting her and lowering her back down onto the mattress. His lips claimed hers once more, this time prying her open with determined hunger and delving deep. She felt a growl move through him, a vibration of thunder, and the heat from her chest coiled and shot down through the rest of her body.

She felt warm air caress her breasts and knew they were bare. She was exposed to him and he wasn’t stopping there. He pressed harder, devouring her with his kiss as his hand made its way to the waistband of her jeans and grasped it tight. His genteness was leaking away, making room for his wolf.

For a heartbeat, she feared he would rip them open – that would hurt. But he seemed to possess some remnant of sense as he opened her up before him. With a care that seemed in stark opposition to the animal that raged just beneath his fevered skin, Lucas popped the button and unzipped the jeans. Danny was drowning in the sensations flooding her. Her skin prickled and tingled and felt hot. Her core ached and throbbed, slick with need. Her lungs drew in quick breaths over and over. Her heart raced like a rabbit’s and her throat let loose a cry of surprise and longing as Lucas’s hand slid into her jeans and under the elastic band of her underwear.

So hot!
she thought with a moan of pleasure-pain. Lucas’s fingers were like embers, searing her, branding her where they pressed in heated trails through the curls over her mound to the silken juncture of her legs. Her hands curled into the soft sheets beneath her, gripping them tight as if she needed to hold on for dear life. He slid lower, pushing her jeans over her hips as he went, bearing her to him completely and shamelessly. With practiced ease, he rose without breaking the kiss and the brands of his fingers were momentarily lifted. She missed them at once as air rushed in and chilled her tender flesh. She moaned against his lips, a small sound of longing, and he growled a nearly heartless chuckle in response.

Distantly, she heard something hit the stone floor beside the bed and she knew it was her clothes. She was stripped, laid bare before him.

She cried out against his lips when the heat of his hand was suddenly back on her. He pressed, parted the curls once more, and his fingers brushed her clitoris. She bucked beneath him and he ate her cry, as his fingers moved on until they slid over the slick opening beneath. Some ancient, old-brain instinct puppeted her body and she tried to move away, to escape the probing insistence of his searing, expert hand. She closed her legs and he laughed darkly, deep in his chest. It rumbled through him just like his growl and she gasped as she felt his strong knee press between her thighs, prying them apart.

The rough material of his jeans scraped her skin, tempting and taunting her with the fact that she was naked beneath him and he was still fully clothed. She desperately wanted to remedy that. She thought of how she had dreamed of him and fantasized about him – Lucas Caige, the biker, the werewolf, the rebel – and there was no way in hell she was going to deny herself every inch of him here and now.

As Lucas got her legs apart, Danny put her hands on his chest and pushed hard, almost slamming her hands against him. The zipper and hard angles of the leather armor hurt a little against her delicate palms and Lucas paused above her, clearly concerned that she was in pain and not the good kind.

Danny took the opening and caught him slightly off guard. She shoved again, just enough to finally break the kiss and allow her to clear her head. Lucas pulled back with a snarl of warning, and Danny shut her eyes tight. If she looked up into his burning red irises, she would be gone for good. She forced herself to ignore him and his overriding dominance and instead concentrated on her own body – on her magic.

With a whisper that shook slightly through her swollen lips, she willed his clothes away. It was such a small spell. It was all she wanted.

The atmosphere above the bed changed, growing thicker and hotter and Danny opened her eyes, half afraid of what she would find when Lucas realized she’d just used magic on him. Again.

But when she looked into his gorgeous face and saw him smiling a sinful and nefarious grin, sharp white fangs and all, her fears disappeared. Emboldened, she allowed her gaze to trail across his strong, perfect features – his cheek bones, his lips, his teeth, his chin, his neck….

Danny stopped breathing and went still beneath him. No dream could have done him justice.

Lucas rose slightly up and shoved one hand between her back and the bed.
Goddess
, she thought as she took in the corded muscles of his upper arms, his shoulders and his sculpted chest. They tapered to a hard, trim waist replete with six pack.
Holy fuck….

She wanted to touch it.

So she did. The ridges of his body rose and fell between her traveling fingertips. He felt like steel thinly encased in velvet.

Lucas rose again, pulling her up with him, and sat back on his legs, pulling her flush with his body. The shredded remains of her shirt cascaded to the bed, leaving the tanned expanses of her flesh to glow beneath the fire light from the torches.

At once, the heat rolling off of him enveloped her. Her legs, he had parted so that he now sat between them. And she realized her mistake. With no clothing left between them to protect her any longer, the thick, hot evidence of his lust pressed against her slick opening. Her eyes went wide as his heat seared her. But when she tried to retreat, he reacted, moving with determined and relentless speed. His hands wrapped around her wrists, holding her fast, and his gaze narrowed.

She could hear her own ragged breathing in the warm, quiet air of the torch-lit chamber. She could hear her heart hammering at her ribs. And she could hear his own thunderous rumble, low and long as he lowered his head, scorched her with his red eyes, and smiled. “Play with fire, little witch,” he warned her. He yanked hard and fast and she slid forward so that the tip of his manhood slipped past her defenses. She gasped, cried out, and he lowered his head to her collarbone. “You get burned.”

She felt his fangs scrape along the skin over her bone and then nibble threateningly at her throat. He released her wrists then and wrapped one arm around her waist. With his other hand, he grasped the hair at the nape of her neck, and bent her back to once more claim her lips in his own.

This kiss was mean – and wonderful. He drank and took and claimed and gave nothing back. She became a vessel, an instrument beneath him, trapped by him in blissful surrender. One of his threatening fangs finally managed to pierce her lip and she tasted blood. It burst across her tongue, heated iron and magic. Lucas went still above her, a rock of a man almost humming with unspent energy. She had half a second to think coherently.

And then he was rolling with her, grasping her around the waist so that he was on his back beneath her and she sat on top of him, a sacrificial goddess on an altar of solidified fire. Slowly – so slowly – he broke the kiss. Danny gazed down at the slight red tinge to his lips; she was transfixed, stunned, burning up.

He laid back then and gazed up at her with unspoken command. His eyes held her there above him, moved her, and forced her to slide deeper onto him as if he’d spoken the order aloud. She was chained, captured in that gaze, and she did as she was told, relishing in the sensation of near pain that he caused as he slipped slowly into her, stretching her inch by inch, little by little.

An eternity later, he was inside of her, filling her completely, and she was afraid to breathe. But he would allow her no respite. She felt his hands on her slim hips, gripping tight, once more branding her inside and out. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back as he lifted her – and lowered her…. Again.

And again.

A thin sheen of sweat covered both of their bodies by the time he rose, hard and hungry as ever, and kissed her again. He released her hips, hugged her close and turned with her once more. Danny felt the sheet beneath her back and made a helpless sound as Lucas lowered himself over her and let his weight sink fully into her, going deeper than she would have thought possible. It hurt. He was so big…. And she wanted more.

Danny was so lost in the feeling of him within her, riding her slow and strong and steady, she barely registered the fact that he’d turned her head to the side, exposing the long column of her throat. She was pliant beneath him, a slave to his every touch, every whim, ever skilled manipulation.

And then his lips were at her ear and his hand was cupping her breast, his thumb brushing the taut nipple so that she arched against him. “Little witch,” he murmured, seemingly as lost in what he was doing as she was. Again, his fingers teased her nipple, harder this time. She gasped and he drove into her, meeting her movements and forcing her into the bed beneath her. “
My
little witch.”

She inhaled sharply and then cried out in surprise as his grip on her hair tightened and his teeth pierced the taut skin of her neck. He sank in hard and fast and deep, taking her with his teeth as he’d been taking her with his cock, and Danny went rigid as an orgasm ripped through her, eliciting a second cry from her throat.

She felt him pull, and swallow. He pulsed within her, smoldering and tight and solid, and he pulled again. Another swallow. The bed tilted beneath her and began to rise. She felt it defy gravity, heard a wind pick up from nowhere, and noticed the dust motes of magic floating around them in the air. Lucas drew back and drove into her again. She felt her nails find purchase in the hard muscle of his back as his teeth pressed deeper into her throat – he wanted more.

Another pull and another swallow and her core squeezed him tight, ringing him over and over again as a second orgasm rolled through her. She was growing weak, splendidly, deliciously weak.

He drank slow and long and held her there beneath him, a prisoner on a floating bed, as his body took hers and made her his. He continued to ride her, a constant, magnificent punishment that took her to the edge of a third climax and kept her there. She could feel it edging closer and knew it would hurt. She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.

But Lucas denied her the release, holding her over that precipice with his werewolf power, controlling her with cruel efficiency. And then, as he pulled on her blood one last time and took his final swallow of her precious life liquid, he rose above her and drove into her with renewed and resolute force. She felt him spear her to the core of her soul and watched through half-closed lids as he withdrew his fangs from her throat, threw back his head, and roared. The orgasm hit them both with precise and pitiless force, rushing through them on a wave of blissful agony that drew the harshest of cries from Danny’s throat.

It seemed to last forever. But after an eternity, the torches finally flickered and danced back into stillness, the wind died down, and the bed settled into its place on the stone-carved floor. Lucas lowered his head and she could see that his eyes no longer glowed. And still her body rode the ebbing tide of pleasure uncoiling within it. Long before she’d fully regained her senses, Lucas had lowered himself beside her and gathered her into his strong arms.

She felt him between her legs, still lodged deep within her, and numbly, she realized that he was still hard.
Unbelievable
, she thought weakly.

He nuzzled her neck, placing the tenderest of kisses upon the marks he’d left there. The sensation was both painful and promising, and she drew in a quick breath under the touch. When she did, she felt Lucas move inside of her.

Then the air around them began to buzz.

Lucas rose; pulling out of her with a painful, horribly harsh sensation. She gritted her teeth, missing his fullness at once. But there was magic in the room, and it wasn’t her own.

She noticed the change in Lucas instantly. His eyes once again flashed into red fury and his teeth were bared, but not in lust. In fury. In warning.

It didn’t matter.

There was a flash of light, a strange and slightly unpleasant pulling sensation, and Danny closed her eyes. She felt Lucas’s body shielding her own, and then the world solidified around them once more.

“Oh shit,” came a male voice. Danny blinked. She recognized it.
Daniel Kane?

“Crap,” came another voice. “Give them some room.”

Lucas moved above her and the room they were in came into focus. As did the faces of the werewolves and witches surrounding them. The Overseer was there – and so were were Charlie and Lily. Daniel Kane and a few members of his pack were there. Imani was there, along with Sasha from their coven. It hit her, all at once, that she was stark naked and laying beneath an equally naked Lucas Caige on the carpeted floor of a room at Council headquarters.

Her magic seemed to know what to do before she did, because in the next instant, she was speed-casting another short and sweet spell and clothes flashed to life over both her and her lover’s bodies.

Lucas sat up, his red eyes once more fading into the star-lit darkness that was their normal color. He gazed down at her and offered her his hand to help her sit up as well. His expression was unreadable. At least, it was at first. But she knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t the fact that they’d somehow been magically whisked away from a warded room and into the Council headquarters that concerned him. It wasn’t their untimely arrival that was foremost on his mind.

He’d bitten her. He’d taken her. The deed had been done and there was no going back now.

Lucas Caige had turned her.

She could feel it happening even then. The world smelled different. It felt different. It sounded different. It was as if someone had flipped a switch – and her senses had come to life.

Beside Lily, Imani shook her head, her chocolate brown eyes glittering with knowledge. “Your weird-ass eyes are glowing, sister,” she said softly. She smiled then, and gently punched Danny in the arm. “You
go
girl!”