“I’d lost my temper and killed one of Deth’s buddies. He was going to sell me to a blood gallery—”
“A what?” Con snarled, and she swore she heard the slide of his fangs shooting out of his gums.
“You sound like you’re familiar with the galleries.”
“You could say that,” he muttered. “I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life.”
And frequenting a place where drugs were available to anyone who was willing to give up their blood—and bodies—to feeders like vamps, would be pretty stupid, in Sin’s opinion. She’d been to a few while hunting targets, and while most had standards and strict rules, like how you couldn’t kill the junkies, they were still little more than underground cesspools. And in the really bad ones, where the druggies weren’t exactly volunteers, the victims rarely survived more than a couple of days at the hands—and claws—of the vampires and demons who used them.
“Well, obviously, I didn’t get sold. Lore signed up with Deth to save me.”
“He must love you a lot to have done that.”
“He felt guilty for leaving me the way he had. And you know what’s so shitty about the whole thing?” She said that as if all of it hadn’t been one big, stinky pile of ghastbat guano. “At first, I was just happy that since he was tied to Deth, he couldn’t leave me again.” Shame welled up like acid in her throat, and she curled in on herself—as much as Con would let her, anyway. “They always leave, Con. Always.”
Fourteen
The damned Harrowgate wouldn’t open. Which meant a human was nearby and Lore would have to wait until the human—or humans—left the area. Great. He was going to be late for breakfast with Idess at her favorite Italian restaurant.
He tapped his boot on the stone floor. Stared at the walls, which were pulsing with crude neon outlines of the street map of Rome. There were three Harrowgates in the area, but this was not only the closest to the cafe, but it was also the only one that was aboveground. He might be forced to get out in one of the sewer Harrowgates and hoof it back in this direction.
Shit.
He was just about to tap one of the other Harrowgate symbols when the gate shimmered and opened into an alley. He stepped out quickly—the stupid things had been known to solidify and chop people’s limbs off. Or worse, slice people in half.
It was late morning in Italy’s capital, and as Lore emerged from between the buildings and onto the shop-lined sidewalk in the Trastevere district, the scent of coffee and baked goods tickled his nostrils and made his stomach growl. Every time he ate here with Idess, he felt like a damned king. Before they’d met, he’d been content with bologna sandwiches and cheap fast food. His angel had introduced him to the finer things in life, and he was rapidly becoming spoiled.
He strode up the walk, weaving among crowds of people… and then he stopped. His scalp tingled and his adrenaline kicked in, and something definitely wasn’t right. He’d spent thirty years as an assassin, and he had one hell of a sixth sense and self-preservation instinct, and his oh-fuck meter was spiking off the charts.
Casually, he eased into a recessed doorway, putting his back to the building. His hackles raised as he scanned the street, and his heart stopped when he saw Idess moving toward him, her normally sexy, rolling gait stiff and forced. A ter’taceo, a demon in a human suit named Marcel, walked beside her, one hand gripping her upper arm, the other in his pocket. Lore knew exactly what the assassin—one of Sin’s own—was concealing because Lore had worked with Marcel before: a pen that shot out a retractable six-inch bolt meant to go through the eye, through the back of the skull, or into the heart. It was a quick, relatively bloodless way to kill if used right, and Marcel never fucked up.
Slipping into stealth mode, which meant controlling his breathing, his thoughts, and even his heartbeat, Lore blended in with the crowd. He strolled past Idess, whose gaze never wavered from looking straight ahead, even though she was aware of Lore’s presence. He kept an eye out for anyone who might be working with Marcel, Lycus in particular. The warg and the Sensor demon had been doing a lot of tag-team killing over the years… some of it just for fun.
Tugging the glove off his right hand, Lore did a slow turn in the crowd and eased up behind Marcel, whose unremarkable height, looks, and mousy brown hair allowed him to become practically invisible in a group of people. But Idess was tall, striking, and she definitely stood out. Males eyed her with lust, women with envy, and Lore was going to have to use every bit of his stealth skills to get her out of there and get Marcel dead.
Good thing just a brush of the fingers would end the guy—Lore didn’t even have to fire up his killing gift, which was cool, because Marcel didn’t deserve the energy it would require to do so. No one who touched Lore’s female did.
Lore allowed himself a grim smile as he “accidentally” bumped into Marcel and allowed his hand to graze the demon’s arm. Instantly, the guy dropped, and in the resulting rush of people who stopped to help, Lore grabbed Idess and quickly slipped into the alley and into the Harrowgate. He wasn’t worried about the body—as a ter’taceo, Marcel wouldn’t disintegrate; he’d most likely be taken to a human hospital and then to a human morgue, and no one would be the wiser.
Once inside the Harrowgate, Lore didn’t allow Idess a single word as he wrapped himself around her and kissed her desperately until they both needed a breath.
“What happened?” he finally said, as he caught her long brown ponytail, which was held by gold bands spaced every six inches, and drew it over her shoulder. “What did he want? Did he hurt you?” If so, Lore was going to regret not causing the bastard a whole lotta pain before he died.
“I’m fine.” She reached past him to tap the symbol on the wall that would take them to Underworld General. “He said I was going to be bait. For Sin.”
“Son of a bitch.” Lore slipped his glove back on to prevent any accidents in the hospital. Idess and his siblings were immune to his touch, but everyone else was at risk.
Idess curved her hand around his waist, her honey-colored, almond eyes full of concern as she looked up at him. “Have you heard from her?”
He shook his head. “It’s not unusual to not hear from her for days, but with assassins after her…”
“She’ll be fine. She’s tough. I should know,” she said wryly, and Lore smiled despite his worry. Sin and Idess had fought it out, and the results hadn’t been pretty.
Sin was tough, street smart, and hard to kill. But obviously, the people trying to kill her had stepped up their game, and it wouldn’t be long before the roll of the dice went in the bad guys’ favor.
The Harrowgate opened up into the emergency department, but Lore didn’t step out. “Stay here, babe,” he said to Idess. “It’ll be the safest place for you until this whole thing is over.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, and his gaze went automatically to her breasts, which were now nicely plumped by her biceps. Yeah, he was a sex demon. Shoot him. “What are you going to do? And eyes up, mister.”
Busted. “I’m going hunting.” He gave her a quick peck on the lips and then a gentle nudge out of the gate. “I’m going to see how many assassins I can take out before they get to Sin.”
“Be careful.”
“Always, angel cake. Always.” He smiled as the gate shimmered shut.
Kar’s entire body was on fire. Not with fever, but with need. Man, she hated waking up the morning after a Feast moon shift, but usually she woke alone in her own house. This time, she was in a male’s lair, naked, and surrounded by his scent.
She was also alive.
Luc hadn’t killed her.
She sat up with a start, found herself looking into his furious golden eyes. He was crouched over her, as naked as she was. Werewolves always came out of their transitions horny, and clearly, Luc was reacting to her, ready to answer her call.
His hand shot out, and suddenly she was on her belly, his heavy body pinning her to the pallet. He held her down, controlling her with
a grip on her throat and chin as he popped her hips up.
She stifled both a groan and the urge to grind her butt against his erection. Another more vicious urge welled up in her, and she wrenched her arm behind her to claw him in the thigh. He pinched her earlobe between his teeth in response, a punishing nip that only made her want him to bite harder.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he rasped against her ear. “Who sent you?” His hips rocked back and then rammed forward. He entered her, burying himself all the way to his balls, and she cried out at the erotic invasion.
“No one sent me,” she moaned. “I swear.”
He pulled back again, until only the thick head of him was inside her, and she quivered, shoving her hips back to take more of him. He denied her that, holding himself out of reach. “I don’t believe you.”
She snarled in frustration. “It’s true, you jerk.”
He slammed home with a ruthless thrust, and she nearly climaxed. His lips brushed her cheek. “I could kill you right now. Just a twist of my hands is all it would take.”
“Will you let me come first?” She couldn’t believe she’d said that, but her body was screaming for release, was teetering on the very edge, and he was just being cruel.
“We’ll both come.” His teeth sank into the back of her neck, holding her in the most primitive way possible as he pumped into her… slowly. Way too slowly for her to get what she needed, damn him. After several excruciating minutes, he released his bite hold. “How did it happen?”
“How did what happen?” she asked between panting breaths.
Luc kept one hand on her chin, but slipped the other down her belly and between her legs. “Your turning.”
Right. That. He flicked his finger over her tight knot of nerves, and she whimpered. “My Aegis partner and I were battling a wizard.” Oh, yes, right there… “After we killed him, I found a woman chained in his basement. She begged me to kill her. Said she would turn into a werewolf in a few minutes. I thought she was crazy. It was still weeks until the full moon.” Pausing to catch her breath, she squirmed, chasing Luc’s elusive touch. “She turned and bit me.” Thankfully, Kar’s partner, Emilia, had been searching the mansion’s attic, so she hadn’t witnessed the attack.
“And you didn’t tell The Aegis?”
Son of a bitch. How could he sound so calm and unaffected while Kar could barely get her lungs to work? “Luc, please…”
Rearing up, he gripped her hips with both hands and hammered into her. Finally, oh, finally! The wet sound of his cock sliding through her core blended with the snap of the fire and the slap of their flesh coming together, and she’d never heard anything so erotic in her life. Her sex contracted with the beginnings of her orgasm, and Luc fisted her hair, drew her head back, and tilted her face around to kiss her.
It was rough, a kiss meant to punish and dominate, and it worked. She was more than ready to submit to him as long as he relieved her of this delicious agony.
He clipped her lower lip with his sharp teeth, propelling her to the very brink of climax. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Did you come here to kill me?”
The rough, guttural words sent her over. “No!” Her cry of denial and of pleasure filled the tiny basement, and then he joined her, roaring into her mouth and filling her core with his hot seed.
Her orgasm went on and on—one of the benefits of becoming a warg was longer, stronger orgasms. She thought maybe he came again, too, but she was too focused on her own pleasure, and when it was over, he collapsed on top of her.
When she could breathe again, she shoved him and rolled away, taking the blanket with her. A twinge of nausea made her swoon as she sat up, and she winced as she tucked her legs beneath her and brought the blanket up to cover her breasts.
Luc reached out and tugged the blanket down to her waist. “Don’t hide from me.”
She jerked it back up. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
He stretched his long, muscular body out and propped himself on one elbow. Between his legs, his thick sex lay, still semi-erect, on his thigh, though she tried not to stare. “You sought me, not the other way around. And you’ve lied to me.”
More than you know. Guilt and anger at being called out made her cheeks hot, and with a snarl, she yanked the blanket down so it pooled in her lap. Despite their lovemaking, his gaze heated as he took in her breasts, the soft swell of her belly.
“Good girl,” he purred. “Now, tell me what happened after you were bitten.”
“Why?”
“I’m curious. I’ve never encountered a Feast warg before. Did you know what you were bitten by?”
Even though she wasn’t cold, she shivered. “Not really. She looked like a werewolf, but I knew she couldn’t be. I mean, it wasn’t a full moon, right? And when nothing happened to me during the full moon, I figured I was safe.” And relieved. Being bitten by any underworld creature, especially demons, usually wielded nasty results.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“My dad.” She fisted her hands in the blanket to keep from fidgeting. “He’s a Guardian. He’s why I was in Egypt in the first place. You know, when we met. We were there for training.” She’d been raised in Texas, born to an American mother and an Italian father, but after her parents divorced when she was a teen, her father had taken her to Italy with him. It was there that he told her the truth of what he did for a living, and she’d joined up with the demon-slaying organization as soon as she was out of school.
“And?”
“And he didn’t know what I’d been bitten by. He did research, but in the meantime, I shifted on the night of the new moon. I was freaked. Woke up in Spain, with no idea how I got there. There was this woman with me… She was a Feast warg, too. She explained what was going on… Right after that, I got this weird feeling inside. I could sense dozens of others like me. She took me to someone who put the born-warg mark on me so that anyone who sensed werewolf in me would never suspect what I’d been turned into. She said we had to stay hidden and secret because we couldn’t let The Aegis know about us, and regular werewolves would hunt us.”
Luc’s voice deepened, and his eyes flashed. “That’s because Feast wargs were bred to kill us.”
“The first ones were,” she agreed, a little testily.
“So you’re saying that none of you are out to kill us?”
“Oh, we want to kill you. It’s instinct.” She sighed. “That’s what makes us so different from regular werewolves. You shift and want to hunt… hunt pretty much anything that moves. We want to hunt only other werewolves. Which means we don’t usually attack humans, which has allowed us to stay so secret. And rare. Our numbers are shrinking rapidly.”
A wicked smile turned up one corner of Luc’s mouth. “Then maybe you should bite people to make more of you.”
She grimaced. “I would never put anyone through this.” When he looked away, just a flicker of his eyes toward the floor, suspicion bloomed. “Have you ever turned anyone?”
“Wasn’t intentional,” he muttered.
It usually wasn’t. “Did you claim First Rights?”
First Rights, according to warg law, stated that a warg who turned another had the legal right for one year to either claim the newly turned warg as a mate, or kill them without consequence. Of course, the term “mate” was more accurately described as “sex slave,” when claimed under First Rights. She’d heard of many females taken under First Rights clauses being held in shackles until they went into season and got pregnant, which was how a true, permanent bond was formed.
“Nah. She hunted me down to kill me, but she was already mated to my boss, Shade.”
“Your boss? That must have been awkward.”
He shrugged and trailed a knuckle over her exposed calf, and her flesh prickled under his touch. “Was your mate a Feast warg?”
Her heart gave a great thump. Her mouth went as dry as the ashes in the fireplace, and this time, when she tugged the blanket up, it was because she ne
eded a shield, some sort of barrier, flimsy as it was, between her and the male in front of her.
“Kar?”
She’d rehearsed this, had a story prepared about her mate and how they’d gotten together and how he’d died, but now her mind was a blank and her heart was pounding and the only thing she could do was blurt, “I didn’t have one.”
Luc went very still. Even the air around him seemed to go dead. “So… no breeding heat?”
She could practically see the wheels turning in his head. If she got pregnant outside a breeding heat, she could have gotten pregnant at any time. Which meant—
Luc lunged across the pallet and gripped her shoulders in a bruising hold, his eyes flashing. “Who is the father, Kar?” Her throat had closed up, making speech impossible, and he gave her a little shake. “Who?”
“You are,” she finally whispered. “This baby is yours.”
This baby is yours.
Jesus. Luc fell back, nearly tumbling off the edge of the pallet. Son of a bitch! He’d been so careful in his life, had always chosen bedmates that weren’t even close to their season. And if his partner was of a species that didn’t have “seasons,” he could still sense fertility, could tell when any female was ripe for breeding. But for some reason he hadn’t known Kar had been fertile when they’d fucked like animals for that half hour.
“How?” he asked, his voice shot all to hell. “I would have sensed your fertility.”
“My periods stopped when I was turned. I thought I was infertile. It wasn’t until after I became pregnant that my Feast buddies told me fertility and pregnancy are random.”
“Random.” He laughed humorlessly. “That’s just great.”
“Fuck you.” Kar scrambled to her feet, taking the blanket to wrap around herself. “It’s not like I did this on purpose.”
No, she probably hadn’t. And he knew he was being an ass, but she’d blindsided him with this news, and really, he’d never been anything but an ass. He stood, and she shrank away from him, as though she was afraid he was going to strike her, and he realized how insanely furious he must appear. He carefully schooled his expression and concentrated on keeping his voice level.