Beast of Fire -- a Demon Hunting Sexy Romance (10 page)

A deep desire to understand her, to know her, filled him. A desire he’d felt from the moment he’d met her. Yet the possibilities of what that desire could have matured into had been stripped away after only days of being with her. His gaze swept the beauty of her pale skin, traveling the lines of her high cheekbones, the fullness of her sultry lips. He wanted to kiss her then, wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe. Emotion welled inside him, because he knew that he could not change the obstacles that separated them.

Lucan willed himself to have restraint, yet found himself powerless to step away. He reminded himself of how the Guardians had pressed him to claim her. But he didn’t feel them now, and he reasoned away any concern. They had a temporary hold on her; they didn’t need him to get to her.
 

And because he couldn’t help himself, because he burned to touch her, he allowed one finger to travel the elegant line of her collarbone. Their eyes burned in a simmering connection, fire and desire, longing for what might have been but never could be. He felt her shiver beneath his touch, and something inside him snapped. He felt the swift rise of a primal urge to take her, unlike any he had ever experienced. He acted without knowingly doing so, acted on instinct and need. Wasn’t sure if he moved first or if she did.
 

Suddenly, his lips were slanted over hers, tongue sliding past her teeth, stroking, tasting. He lost all sense of self, all sense of time. She melted into him, whimpered as his hand caressed her back, pressed up her spine to mold her breasts to his chest. Her hair tickled his face, a silken caress, his nostrils flaring with its sweet floral scent – honeysuckle, he thought. Honeysuckle that spiced his blood with fire, with need. He deepened the kiss, his hands traveling her soft curves. She was warm; she warmed him where he’d been cold. And he’d been icy cold for one hell of a long time. Suddenly, he hungered for that warmth more than he hungered for life. Desire turned primal, wild.
 

Somehow, Kresley’s leg ended up at his waist, her skirt pressed up her thigh, his cock pressed to the core of her body. He was hard, he was desperate to bury himself inside her, to escape to this woman.
 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he rasped between kisses, his words laden with emotion, with desire.
 

A petite hand pressed gently to his face, even as another hand slid around his waist as if she feared he might escape. “And if it were the other way around?” she challenged. “Would you have left me to endure your fate instead?”
 

His mouth came down on hers, lips firm, his mouth hot, punishing her for the truth behind her challenge. For leaving him with no answer he wanted to speak.
 

She met his demands with her own, panting into his mouth, wiggling against him, breathlessly calling his name. His hand slid around a perfectly round butt cheek, fingers sliding along the silk strip, seeking the wet heat of her arousal and finding it.
 

“Lucan,” she gasped, fingers digging into his shoulders, again offering a plea, but this time more urgently, more demanding.
 

He swallowed that plea, kissing her with long, demanding strokes of his tongue, his finger working that strip of silk and the sensitive flesh beneath it. Feeling that silky proof of her arousal beneath his touch was driving him wild with possibilities. No. More than wild. Insane with lust.

       
Suddenly, with unexpected force, his inner beast flared. He drank of her, took from her, hungered for what only she could give him. Desire began to shift to something darker.
 

Abruptly, the Guardians were in his mind, forceful, demanding, taking him off guard. Time stood still – they owned him fully, completely, directed each stroke of his tongue, each caress of his hand. Take her, claim her, make her eternally yours. The words repeated over and over.
 

Kresley’s hand traced his arms, his back, fueling the Guardians' demands, as though offering her approval. He groaned with the pleasure seeping through his limbs, down his spine, thickening his groin. It would be so easy to rip that piece of silk from the v of her body, to remove the barriers and bury himself inside her. He pressed his hips to hers, rotated slightly, imagined what she would feel like wrapped around him, all wet and tight. As if she, too, imagined the same thing, she moaned and arched her hips. And then his worst nightmare happened, the Guardians resurfaced.
 

Take her, they urged in the deepest, most vulnerable recesses of his mind. Take her. Feel her. Be with her. Yes. Yes. He had to have her. His lust-filled gaze latched onto hers, and his hand rasped up her thigh and reached for the silk panties. She didn’t shy away from it, from the primal heat that had to be in his eyes. She was boldly staring back at him, silently telling him to take what he wanted. And he did want. He did take. He ripped her panties from her body, tossed them aside, pressed two fingers along her silky wet core. She whimpered beneath his touch and he sought more of her.
 

His gaze dropped to her breasts, to the rise and fall of those high, full breasts. He trembled as he contemplated ripping away the dress, exposing her bare chest. Imagined the weight of her breasts in his palms, imagined the color of her nipples, the pleasure of suckling one into his mouth. He kissed her, devoured her with his mouth, even as his fingers slid inside her core, inside the heat he would soon find with his own body.
 

But something happened in the midst of that lust, in the midst of the lost reality. Lucan’s gums tingled and ached. He could feel his cuspids starting to elongate; the fangs–present only once in a Knight's life during mating–began to emerge. He ripped his mouth from hers, jolted by the realization, and buried his face in her neck. The beast inside him screamed to life, clawing at his inner self, reaching for his mate. He could hear his own breath heaving from his chest, feel the pressure to draw in air. Man and beast began to do battle.
 

Nature demanded he sink his teeth into her shoulder, to claim her as his mate. In those moments, sealing her fate to his felt right. It didn’t matter that the Guardians owned him, that they would own her as well if he did this. He wanted this. Wanted his life to be hers, and hers would be his. And she was his, the woman meant to bind his beast for all of eternity.
 

Eternity. The word ripped through his mind followed by more seductive whispers of the Guardians. Make her yours. Take her now. You will never be alone again. He could hear Kresley calling his name, a distant voice, a plea for more. She wanted him to claim her. She wanted to be his. All you have to do is bite her shoulder. Claim her, Lucan, the whisper urged. Claim her now.

Chapter Eight

“No.”
 

Kresley heard Lucan’s murmured word against her neck a moment before he pushed away from her, distanced himself, pressed his back against the door as if he would have gone farther if he hadn’t hit a barrier.
 

“No,” she repeated, the one syllable choked out with effort and laced with complete, utter disbelief. Embarrassment and confusion ripped through her. She didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know what to do. She just stood there, legs wobbling. Her gaze searched his downturned head, his refusal to look at her, to explain. “Lucan.”
 

He did not look up. “I . . .need . . a . .. minute.”

Her gut twisted in fear. Was something wrong? Were the Guardians hurting him? She pushed off the wall, walked toward him. His gaze cut to hers, hands motioning for her to stop. “No, Kresley. Don’t touch me. Not. .. now.”
 

“Are you hurt?” she asked desperately. “Is it the Guardians?”
 

“Yes. No." He lifted his head, his eyes half-veiled, a raw edginess radiating off of him. “You should never have come here.”
 

“Why are you so angry all of a sudden?” she asked, baffled by the change.
 
"I had to come. We just talked about this.”
 

“By putting yourself in danger, you disregarded my sacrifice. You threw it in my face, as if it didn’t matter.”

Kresley froze, the harshness of his words like an acid burn. Embarrassment over what had just happened, over a reprimand following their intimacy, rushed through her limbs, settling in her stomach with a hard thud.
 

She started to back away, not sure what to do, what to say. Her heel snagged something and she looked down. She saw what was left of her thong pooled on the floor. She squeezed her thighs together, mortified at her actions, at his rejection, the ache of need still thrumming within her core like the soft purr of a guitar played with expert hands – his hands. Anger came hard and fast to match his, a replacement for the vulnerability eating her from the inside out.
 

Kresley reached down and grabbed her panties and shoved them at his chest, challenge rolled from her lips, an accusation in the form of a hissed reprimand. “You sure didn’t seem to mind me being here when you were ripping my panties off.”
 

She turned away, started walking away, needing distance from the ache that had moved from her thighs to her chest. Lucan reached out and shackled her arm but didn’t pull her close. She whirled around in confrontation. “I thought you just said don’t touch you? Or does that rule only apply to me. Not
 
whenever you want to manhandle me?”

His jaw was tense. “Everything I had under my control to bargain with is gone. I can’t save you on my terms this time, and operating with Adrian’s playbook is a lethal proposition."

“This isn’t your negotiation anymore, Lucan. It’s mine." Kresley cut her gaze, willed the burn in the back of her eyes to go away before looking at him again. She didn’t know what she’d expected from him, but it wasn’t rejection. “Let go of my arm.”

“I’m trying to protect you, Kresley,” he said, his voice low, grippingly intense. “That is all I’ve ever tried to do. I don’t want you hurt.”
 

Right. Protect her. “If this is what you call protection, I think you should stop while we’re both ahead.” She looked at her arm and back at him. “Let go.”

His expression hardened into silent refusal. “There are things you don’t know, Kresley. Things are ... complicated.”

"If anyone understands complicated, it’s me.” Anger over his bullying her, over his coded words, and his silence, flared red-hot. That’s all she’d gotten from the Knights. Now, that’s what Lucan was offering as well. “Let go of my arm!” He ground his teeth but complied, and she instantly took a backward step, going on the verbal attack, “Whatever I don’t know, I should. I deserve to know what is going on.”
 

She stared at him, willed him to answer. Willed him to make her understand why he had pushed her away. Instead, his eyes clouded with distance, his jaw firming with the resolve of silence. Where there had been fire moments before, there was only ice now. She stood her ground, staring at him in confrontation, trying to remain angry so she wouldn’t feel the hurt. She motioned toward the door he still leaned against, as if he were afraid to move, afraid to get any closer to her. “Part of me wants to kick you out of that door you are leaning on.”
 

“I know,” he said in a low, rough voice. That primal edginess she’d noticed minutes before seemed to deepen, as he took on the unyielding presence of the hunter from back at the bar. “But we both know I wouldn’t leave if you tried.”
 

Kresley’s eyes narrowed on Lucan, something in his demeanor prickled along her nerve endings, a sense of barely contained emotion. In the heat of embarrassment, she’d missed the obviously unnatural quality about him. His eyes were dilated, almost completely black where they were normally blue. A white line framed his top lip, and his jaw flexed in a barely perceivable back-and-forth movement. Guilt jabbed at her. He wasn’t simply rejecting her and being a jerk.
 

"What is it, Lucan?” she whispered. “What is it that you aren’t telling me?”

His lashes lowered and he said nothing. The charge in the air, the intensity of emotions, spiked.
 
Frightened for him, she stepped forward.
 

His eyes snapped open. “No,” he said abruptly, seeming to recoil against the door without moving. And then his voice softened somewhat, a plea hidden in the gruffness of desperation. “Not safe. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She didn’t know what to do. “They promised me you wouldn’t be in pain.”

 
"I need to be …” He grimaced. “Alone.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to leave you like this.”
 

“You have to.” His eyes collided with hers, dark, shadowed. “Please.”
 

Her stomach clenched painfully with that plea, but she backed away. A sense of relief seemed to wash over him as he tilted his head back against the wall, his eyes shut. She turned away, unable to see him like this without going to him. Upset that she seemed to somehow be the cause of what was happening to him.
 

She walked to her room with hurried footsteps. Entered the bedroom, flipped on the overhead light, quickly shut the door behind her. Dim light filtered through the room with only one of the three bulbs working. She slid down the door's wooden surface and stared at the empty, white wall and the sparsely furnished room. Just a bed. A dresser. A nightstand. And her. Alone. Lucan was alone, too. A door separating them that felt like a world.