Touch of Temptation (7 page)

Chloe watched as Kellan blinked against the blood and sweat dripping into his eyes, the look on his battered face as he stared up at Spark one of tangible revulsion.

“Now, or the deal’s off,” she snapped, flicking a quick look toward Raine.

“Fine,” he growled, looking as furious as he sounded, the muscles in his shackled arms bulging beneath the gleaming surface of his skin. “It’s in Canada. Buried up in the Canadian Rockies. The town’s name is Houghton, and the Marker’s a few miles north of the town center.”

Spark indicated for two of the Casus to pick him up, their claws digging into his muscular arms as they secured him between them. Moving closer, Spark took his blood-covered chin in her hand, her voice deceptively mild as she said, “If you’re lying, Kellan, I’ll have the Casus cut you into cubes of meat, slow and precise like.”

“I’m telling the truth, but it doesn’t matter,” he rasped. “There’s a Watchman unit not far from where the cross is
buried, and they’ll have already been mobilized. There’s no way you can get there fast enough.”

“Then we’ll steal it away from them.”

A deep, guttural laugh shook his bloodied chest and shoulders, the corner of his mouth curling with arrogant humor. “You can try.”

“And Gregory?” she murmured.

“What about him?”

The human struck him across the face again with surprising strength and speed, making Chloe wince. But Kellan just looked pissed.

Spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor near her boots, he growled, “Gregory is going to be here soon.”

“How soon?” she pressed.

Curling his lip, he stared her down, saying, “You’ve gotta explain this one to me, Spark. Because I just don’t get it. I mean, I know ol’ Gregory is a twisted dickhead and all, but Westmore wasn’t afraid of him before. If that’d been the case, he wouldn’t have dared to take Chloe. So what’s got him so scared of Gregory now?”

Spark snorted. “Like I’m telling you.”

“Ah.” Kellan gave her a cocky smile. “You don’t know, huh? Westmore must not trust you as much as you think he does.”

“Shut up.”

Pushing her, he said, “You’re just his lackey, huh?”

“He tells me everything!” she threw back at him, rising to the bait.

Sounding as if he was starting to enjoy himself, Kellan’s drawl became more pronounced. “Obviously not.”

Spark practically vibrated with rage as she snarled, “DeKreznick’s human host was mortally wounded
during that little battle you guys had back in the fall, which meant that Gregory’s shade should have returned to Meridian. But he didn’t.”

“Ah. So Westmore’s worried about how he was able to survive. Smart guy. He
should
be worried.” Lowering his voice, he added, “You know, maybe you should be worried, too, Spark. I have a feeling ol’ Gregory’s gonna take a liking to you. You’re just his kind of tramp.”

Taking two steps back, her voice trembled with fury as she looked at the Casus and gave a single command. “Make him hurt.”

The monsters descended on him this time with a violent rain of punches and kicks, his body falling back to the floor as they attacked him. Raine was screaming for them to stop, for Kellan to stop being stupid and fight back, but Chloe didn’t make a sound, her nostrils flaring as she plastered herself against the iron bars of her cell and waited for Spark to come closer.

She hadn’t gotten the blood she needed from him. And she hadn’t come. But at the moment, she and the Merrick were too pissed to care.

As her fury rose, the Merrick rose with it, her senses sharpening until she could smell the blood and sweat that glistened on Kellan’s skin, the flickering, maniacal flames of the fire taking on colors and hues that no human eye could ever discern. She could hear the furious pounding of every heart in the room, as well as the muffled groans Kellan was trying to hold back.

Shocking in its intensity, the Merrick’s rage was unlike anything Chloe had ever known. More visceral than any anger. More demanding than any hunger. It thrived on the emotions that she’d always tried so hard to keep locked under tight control, but they were seething
within her now. She couldn’t tap into its full strength without a proper feeding, but she could feel that ancient creature rising up within her, its power pulsing through her body, potent and hot.

When one of the Casus delivered a brutal kick to Kellan’s ribs that sent him skidding across the floor, Chloe finally got what she’d been waiting for. Spark took a sudden step back to avoid getting hit, and the Merrick silently howled with satisfaction. Reaching through the bars of the cell, Chloe quickly fisted her hand in the assassin’s long red hair and gave it a vicious yank, jerking the human clear off her feet, the back of her head slamming painfully into the iron bars.

Outraged, Spark fought to twist free as she screamed, “Let go of me, you little bitch!”

With her mouth close to the woman’s ear, Chloe said, “Who are you calling
kitten
now, skank?”

“Open this cell!” Spark shouted at the Casus, who had stopped beating on Kellan and were now watching the two of them with almost comical looks of shock.

“And what?” Chloe asked with a low laugh, feeling fairly shocked herself. “Westmore will have your ass if anyone touches me.”

“She’s right,” one of the Casus grunted, his blond hair falling over his brow as he nodded.

“See?” Chloe rasped. “Now tell them to undo Kellan’s cuffs and put him back in his cell, and then I’ll let you go. And before you even think of arguing, you should know that if he gets another scratch on him, I’m going to lie and tell Westmore that you tried to make the Casus rape me. And you can sure as hell bet that I’ll make it convincing.”

“Screw you!” the human spat.

In response, Chloe yanked on the human’s hair so hard, she was surprised it didn’t come out.

“All right! Fine,” Spark snarled, her voice cracking. “Do it! Do what she says.”

Chloe waited until a nearly unconscious Kellan had been uncuffed, then tossed back into his cell. When the Casus had gathered at the bottom of the stairs, waiting, she released her hold on Spark’s hair, shoving her away. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Cutting her a deadly look over her shoulder, the assassin said, “You’re going to pay for that, Merrick.”

Though Chloe was sick with fear inside, the Merrick simply smiled and blew the woman a kiss, relishing the look of fury on the bitch’s face as she turned and stormed up the winding staircase.

Monday morning

G
UILT SUCKED.

After seeing what Kellan had done to protect Raine from Spark and the Casus, the foul emotion was eating at Chloe’s insides like an ulcer. She knew he could have gone wolf and killed every one of those bastards if he’d been alone. As a Lycan, he was deadly enough to do just that. She could only assume that he hadn’t because once an alarm had been raised, he wouldn’t have been able to get her and Raine out of the compound safely.

But while his beating accounted for a portion of her guilt, there was still the matter of the curse…and the Merrick’s hunger.

Chloe had managed a few hours of sleep through the night, but nothing more. Too restless, she’d mostly tossed and turned, torn between wanting to call out to Kellan to make sure he was okay…and the gnawing impulse to break into his cell and take what she needed from him, whether it was wrong or not.

You know it’s wrong. No matter how desperate you get, you know using him makes you as twisted as that redheaded bitch.

Shuddering, Chloe pushed her hands through her hair and kept pacing…and pacing, until the soles of her feet
were sore. Her confrontation with Spark had left her weak with exhaustion, the Merrick’s brief flare of power quickly draining her, making her even weaker. She was operating on nothing more than nervous energy at the moment, her thoughts and emotions as chaotic as the swirling colors in a kaleidoscope.

I can’t believe I did that. I almost guilt-tripped the poor guy into having sex with me
.

God, what was wrong with her? It was so hard to think clearly when her fears and needs were consuming her—but she should have known better, damn it. Once Spark and the Casus had returned upstairs and her fury had calmed, Chloe had started to see the situation with a bit more clarity, and what she discovered wasn’t pretty. When she’d begged Kellan to touch her, she’d taken advantage of a guy who was under the influence of a painful poison, and whose ass was in this horrid place because of
her
. And she’d freaking used him, as if her stupid needs were the most important thing. As if the Merrick’s hunger was the only thing that mattered.

There wasn’t any chance that Kellan Scott would have been that hot for her under normal circumstances. She knew damn well that she was
nothing
like the women he normally messed around with. And Chloe had a bad feeling that the situation was even worse than she’d feared, because the things he’d said about her had been too personal. She hadn’t fully realized it at the time, but seeing him nearly beaten to a pulp had sobered her up real fast. Though he’d told her time and again that he wouldn’t touch her, he’d suddenly been all over her, as if she was the most desirable woman in the world, his words and actions flavored with
possession
, rather than mere physical desire.

What if something had happened with the awakening of the Merrick? What if the primal blood inside her was somehow using the curse to project its own hunger onto those around her? As well as cranking up his sexual appetite, was the Merrick somehow
forcing
him to want her as desperately as she wanted him?

Throughout evolution, it’d been proven that species could adapt and change in order to safeguard their existence. Could the Merrick, in its thirst for survival, have somehow keyed into the basic elements of the Mallory curse and twisted them to its purpose? Was that even possible?

Of course it’s possible. Anything is possible!

Ever since Chloe had attacked Spark, she could feel the Merrick inside her, lingering, steadily growing in influence. If the Lycan came near her now, she didn’t trust herself to maintain control. Even as weak as she was, she’d do something crazy and unforgivable, like attack him. And with that embarrassing image burning in her mind, the absurdity of the whole screwed-up mess crashed down on her, and she pressed her hand against her mouth, choking back a sound that was caught somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

Damn it, this isn’t fair! And fate is a cruel, snide bitch I would love to get my hands on!

From the first moment Chloe had been old enough to understand how the curse would impact her life, she’d never been able to stand it when other women bitched and moaned about some big, gorgeous hunk offering them a hot fling…without the promise of a future. It’d always made her roll her eyes and want to shake some sense into the idiots, since they didn’t know how lucky they were to even have that choice. To have the freedom
to say yes if they wanted to, without worrying that the man was only interested in them because of some stupid curse or that they’d be looked down on as a “user” and a “manipulator.” God, she could still remember how cruel a local clan of Saville witches had been to Monica after she’d gotten pregnant with Jamie and her boyfriend had left her, telling Monica that she’d gotten
exactly
what she deserved…and that a Mallory like her was meant to be alone.

If the circumstances had been different, and Chloe had been a normal woman, without this bloody curse hanging over her head, and Kellan Scott had stopped her on the street or in a coffee bar and asked her out, she wouldn’t have worried about being too short or too flat-chested or too
anything
. Wouldn’t have moaned about the fact that she wasn’t the kind of woman who normally caught his eye or who could hold him forever. She would have agreed before the words had even left his mouth and thanked God for the opportunity. Even without expecting it to go anywhere—which she wouldn’t have. She would have known he was just using her. But she would have happily been used. She would have enjoyed every moment with him, knowing he’d be worth any regrets that came later.

It was the curse that screwed the fantasy to hell and back—because no matter how badly she wanted him, Chloe couldn’t stand the thought of being the user, herself. Not when there was a chance that she was not only jacking up his desire, but creating it in the first place. She was screwing with his head, and it was wrong.

So no matter how desperate I get, I am going to stay in control. And keep my hands to myself!

A sound to her left suddenly made her jump, and she
turned to find him standing inside the open door of her cell, watching her with that overtly sexual, deceptively lazy gaze, like a big hungry animal getting ready to pounce.

She’d been so consumed by her thoughts, she hadn’t even noticed him opening the door and coming into her cell. But he was there now, and as she watched, he closed the door behind him, then walked across the floor and turned, leaning his back against the dividing wall, his powerful arms crossed over that broad, muscular chest. Her cheeks warmed, her mind instantly flooding with the memory of the things she’d said to him before Spark had interrupted them…not to mention the things she’d done, but she pushed those thoughts away, focusing on Kellan. He was already healing, thanks to his Lycan genes, but he still looked like he’d been beaten six ways to Sunday. His right cheekbone was scraped raw, the corner of his mouth still a little swollen, his entire torso lined with fading claw marks and mottled bruises.

“You feeling okay?” she asked, nervously running her palms against her shirt-covered hips, wishing there was something she could do to help him.

“Been better.” His voice was a little scratchier than usual, a kinda wry half smile shaping his sensual mouth. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

Something in his expression made it impossible for her to look away. “I was pretty out of it at the time,” he told her, “but I have a hazy recollection of you giving Spark a smack down.”

She licked her lips, her cheeks burning with heat. “I, um, just lost my temper a bit,” she murmured, then
immediately changed the subject, asking, “Was that a lie about the next Marker being buried in Canada?”

“Yeah. Raine told me that with all the commotion caused by my capture, Saige’s work on the maps has slowed down a bit. She still doesn’t know where the next Marker’s hidden.”

“So you lied to them, and picked such a remote location thinking they won’t be able to get there and finish their search before Friday, right?”

Another sexy, kinda crooked smile touched his mouth. “That’s right. And I hope they freeze their asses off in all that Canadian snow.”

Chloe tried to control the tremor in her voice as she said, “You were purposely goading them.”

He winced, scraping a palm against the auburn bristles covering his jaw. “I’m sorry you had to see that, but I knew they needed someone to pound on or they wouldn’t have been satisfied.”

“Is that why you wanted her to take you upstairs? Because you
planned
on getting beaten up?”

The corner of his mouth twitched, his expression as wry as his tone. “Well, I wasn’t looking forward to you seeing me get my ass kicked by a girl. I’m trying to build up a big hero reputation, remember?” She choked back a soft laugh, and he added, “Plus, I was hoping to have another look at things upstairs. Raine has given me a good idea of the layout, but it would help to see things with my own eyes.”

“I’ve been upstairs more than Raine,” she told him, sitting down cross-legged in the middle of her cot, careful to keep her shirttails covering her panties. “I can tell you a little about what’s up there.”

“I didn’t think you would remember any of it.”

With a shrug, she admitted, “Just bits and pieces, really. But I’ll tell you what I know.”

Over the next quarter of an hour, he questioned her about the floor plan, where she’d seen guards posted and what kind of weaponry she’d noticed. Chloe told him everything she could remember, then asked, “Is Raine doing okay?”

A shadow of anger darkened his gaze. “As okay as she can be after what she’s been through. The bit of blood I’ve given her has helped with her physical injuries, but psychologically…” He shook his head, obviously reluctant to voice his fear that Raine might never get over the abuse she’d suffered.

Quietly, she said, “I wish there was something I could have done to help her all those times they hurt her.” She tore her gaze away from his mesmerizing eyes, and stared at the spiraling orange glow of the flames in the hearth. “I can’t help thinking that if I were smarter, I’d have figured out a way to stop them.”

“Eff that. What’s happened to Raine is screwed up, but it’s not your fault, Chloe. There’s nothing you could have done to stop those assholes.”

She thought about what he’d said for a few moments, hoping he was right, and then realized that he’d censored his language. “
Eff
that?” she snickered, bringing her gaze back to his. “Since when do big alpha types like you use words like
eff?
”

“Since a precocious little three-year-old joined the Watchmen, repeating everything we say,” he rumbled with a throaty laugh, his eyes crinkling sexily at the corners. “And if you think I sound funny censoring myself, then you should see Ade. He’s even bigger than I am.”

With a bemused smile, she said, “I honestly can’t believe that.”

“Believe it,” he shot back with a grin, scratching lazily at his chest, and she couldn’t help but watch the hypnotic movement of his long fingers, remembering what it’d felt like when they’d been touching her. Buried inside her, hard and rough and wicked.

Clearing her throat, Chloe forced her mind off sex and back to something neutral. “So, uh…is it really true that Aiden’s talked Olivia into marrying him? Raine told me they were engaged, but I…I don’t think I really believed her.”

And she’d had good reason. Trust didn’t come easily to the Harcourt women, and Olivia had already been burned once by a complete sleaze of a boyfriend. Chloe couldn’t imagine her gun-shy stepsister exposing herself to that kind of risk again.

“It’s true,” he told her, and she was more than a little surprised to find that she’d been wrong. “Aiden bought her a rock for Christmas that just about blinds anyone who gets too close.”

“And what about Jamie?”

His expression softened at the mention of her three-year-old niece, his mouth curving with an easy smile. “They’re going to raise her as their own. Ade is already slipping into his role as daddy like he was born to it.”

“It seems too surreal that you could actually know our little Jamie,” she mused in a soft voice.

“Know her? Hell,” he drawled, “we’re Disney buddies. I’ve watched
Hercules
with her probably ten times now.”

“Are you serious?”

His smile flashed at her disbelieving tone, revealing
a dimple in one of those carved, shadowed cheeks. “You want me to quote it? Sing one of the songs? Because I probably know ’em by heart by now.”

She covered her mouth with one hand as she struggled to hold back her laughter. “Oh, God, I know it’s wrong to laugh, considering the circumstances we’re in, but I can’t help it.”

“Hey, Jamie’s a charmer,” he told her, sliding down the wall until he sat on the floor, the soft denim of his jeans hugging the rigid muscles in his thighs. The pose was casual, his arms resting on his bent knees, his hands hanging loose and relaxed, and yet, she could still sense the wild, crackling energy that was so much a part of him thrumming just beneath his surface. “To be honest,” he added, “she has all of us wrapped around her little finger. Especially Noah.”

“Noah? Raine mentioned him, as well. Isn’t he…doesn’t he have Casus blood?”

Since the immortal monsters had wasted away into mere “shades” of the powerful beings they’d once been, after so many years trapped within Meridian, the Casus were forced to take human hosts once they’d escaped. Thanks to Raine, Chloe also knew that Noah Winston, a recent addition to Kellan’s Watchmen unit, was descended from a human female who had been raped by one of the Casus before their confinement, which meant that his family could be used as hosts by the escaping Casus shades.

“That’s right,” he said in response to her question about Noah’s bloodline. “It makes him motivated as hell to end this thing. He’s determined to keep his family from becoming what he calls ‘meat suits’ for those Casus pricks.”