Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 04 (12 page)

Want her, that familiar guttural voice snarled inside
his mind. Need her. Now.

God, this was bad. When she’d showered, he’d damn near
hurt himself imagining what she looked like with water dripping down her
creamy, petal-soft skin. When she stared at him with her big violet eyes, he
had to grit his teeth to keep from coming. And then, when he tried to get
things going, she turned him down, making the animal inside him seethe with
frustration.

“Face it, Aiden. You…well, you’re way out of my
league. I’m pretty average, and I’m fine with that. Honestly. I don’t feel the
need to reach beyond, and I’m also fully aware of what kinds of women you do go
for.”

Raising his brows, he pressed even closer, liking the
way she pulled that full lower lip through her teeth when he nudged his
jeans-covered cock against her belly, the color in her cheeks turning darker.
“And exactly what kind would that be?” he asked, enjoying the way she had to
struggle to concentrate, her smoky gaze hazy with lust. Enjoyed even more that
she didn’t pull back, trying to undo the intimate press of their bodies.

“Um, well, easy ones, for a start.” She coughed,
sounding as if she’d swallowed something scratchy. “And I suspect you also
enjoy a fairly wide variety.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her assessment, even
though she had pretty much nailed it. “That’s an awfully judgmental view,” he
murmured.

“But a true one, I bet. Men like you are easy to peg.”

“Honey, you’ve never known a man like me.” To prove
his point, he gave her a cocky smile, flashing the pointed tips of his fangs.
Then he slowly shook his head. “But my timing probably isn’t all that great
tonight,” he admitted wryly, rubbing the backs of his knuckles against the downy
softness of her cheek. “So I’ll ease off. For now.”

Before Olivia could respond, he took a deep breath and
pulled away from her. The soft glow of the bathroom light made his skin gleam
like satin, drawing her eyes to the wide, muscled expanse of his shoulders and
chest, his body unlike anything she’d ever seen. Perfect and hard and ruggedly
sculpted, the occasional scar somehow only heightening his dangerous beauty,
while reminding her that this was a male warrior who lived in a world
completely different from her own. “If I were to ask what kind of shifter you
are,” she whispered, “would you tell me?”

He pushed his hands into his front pockets, his
powerful muscles rippling with the movement. “Sure I would.”

“Well?” she asked, her chest tight as he held her with
the dark intensity of his stare.

“I’m the scary kind, Liv.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

He gave a low, rusty laugh. “Pretty much.”

“You’re going to drive me insane, Aiden.”

“Then we’ll get along great with each other,” he
drawled around a wide yawn as he took one hand from his pocket, covering his
mouth. “My friends all think I’m crazy as a loon.”

“Are you?”

“Naw.” His mouth twisted, caught between sharp,
conflicting emotions. “I just like to live a little on the edge.”

She couldn’t help but smile at that. “Now, why doesn’t
that surprise me?”

“I guess you’re just perceptive. And since it doesn’t
look like I’m going to get lucky tonight,” he teased, “I say we go ahead and
crash.”

“When was the last time you slept?” Lifting her hand,
she touched the tip of her finger to one of the dark shadows beneath his eyes.

“Few days ago,” he rasped, his body going completely
still as she touched him.

“What have you been doing every night?” she asked
suspiciously.

With one hand across his heart, he gave her another
slow, knowing grin. “I wasn’t out getting laid, if that’s what you’re
thinking.”

She flushed with guilt. “That’s not what I mea—”

“I told you we’ve been searching for the Marker
Jamie’s wearing,” he rumbled, cutting her off as he turned and headed back into
the bedroom, while she followed him. “With Kell’s and my night vision, we were
pretty much able to search through the night, so long as the skies were clear.”

She watched as he pulled the gun from the waistband of
his jeans, reached up and set it on top of the room’s high wardrobe, where
Jamie couldn’t reach, then lay down, settling his long body out over the sofa.
Olivia tried not to wince, knowing he had to be uncomfortable on the short
piece of furniture…with his jeans still on, but he didn’t complain as he threw
one tattooed arm over his eyes, one leg bent at the knee, resting against the
back of the sofa.

“Do you want a blanket?” she asked.

“No, thanks.” The wryness of his tone was unmistakable
as he reached down and rearranged the massive erection trapped inside his
jeans. “With the state I’m in, I doubt I’m going to feel the cold anytime
soon.”

Allowing herself a few moments to simply soak in his
beauty, his chest rising and falling with his deep, even breathing, Olivia
finally turned out the light and settled into bed beside Jamie. Thinking he was
already asleep, she quietly said, “Good night, Aiden.”

His deep voice surprised her, reaching through the
dark like a physical caress. “Sleep tight, Liv. And try not to dream of me if
you can manage it.”

“You are so conceited.” She gave a soft laugh, knowing
instinctively that he was grinning like a jackass.

“Maybe,” he rasped with a wicked drawl. “And you’re
the one who talks in her sleep, honey. So I’ll be listening, just in case.”

Lennox, Kentucky

Saturday, 2:00
a.m.

JOSEF SCHECTER DIDN’T LIKE to lose. As one of the few
Casus permitted within Anthony Calder’s inner circle of power, he’d grown
accustomed to enjoying the privileges and respect that were his due. And after
slowly rotting away within Meridian, the hellhole of a prison that had held the
Casus for over a thousand years, Josef figured he was due a hell of a lot.

No one, however, was paying out. Instead, his time was
being wasted cleaning up after others’ mistakes—a circumstance that a
perfectionist like Josef loathed. It was embarrassing to be surrounded by
mediocrity and failure. Now the Merrick child was not only gone, she was under
Watchman protection, which meant that her capture had just gone from a walk in
the park…to deadly.

Staring up at the two-story house where their prey had
been hiding, Josef was furious they’d been allowed to escape, his rage like a
thick black toxin scraping through his veins. Curling his lip, he shifted his
gaze toward the ominous storm clouds gathering overhead, his eyes burning with
hatred as though the grumbling heavens were to blame for the asinine situation.
But he knew better. No celestial beings could claim credit for the failures
that surrounded him. No, it was his brethren who were to blame. Specifically,
Miles Crouch. As the bitter December winds chafed the chiseled face of the body
his Casus shade now occupied, whipping the shaggy strands of thick,
mahogany-colored hair around his head, Josef slowly flexed his hands at his
sides, struggling to control his anger at those under his command.

“To lose control is to lose your focus,” he rasped,
the low words swallowed by the eerie cry of the wind as it swept through the
thrashing treetops. But restraint wasn’t easy. After all, he wasn’t meant to be
standing beneath a Kentucky moon, dealing with a bunch of incompetent idiots.
Instead, Josef had been meant to come through in the final wave, when
Calder—the Casus who had risen and offered his imprisoned brethren the chance
for freedom—finally returned to this world, bringing the flood with him. But a
change in the time line had been necessitated by the problem of Gregory
DeKreznick. Despite being mortally wounded several weeks ago, Gregory’s shade
had not returned to Meridian. Somehow he still inhabited this realm—and they
needed to know why.

They also needed him dead.

Gregory’s brother, Malcolm, had been the first Casus
who’d escaped Meridian, and it was Ian Buchanan who had used a Dark Marker to
send Malcolm’s shade to hell. Now Gregory was obsessed with destroying the
Buchanan Merricks in order to avenge his brother’s death. He cared nothing for
his orders or Calder’s authority or even his fellow Casus. In short, he was a
loose cannon that Westmore and Calder wanted contained, as well as the Collective
Generals, and so Calder had finally sent Josef, one of his best, most ruthless
soldiers, to see that the job was completed.

Josef was only too happy to send Gregory back to the
pit, if they could actually find the bastard. Westmore had been using all the
resources at his disposal to come up with a lead on Gregory’s whereabouts, and
had even gone so far as to capture Chloe Harcourt, the female Merrick whose
awakening had been caused by Gregory’s return to this world. According to the
rules Calder had established for their returns, her “kill” should have been
reserved for no one but Gregory himself, providing him with enough power to
pull another shade from Meridian without any help from Calder and his
followers. Stealing her was the ultimate insult—and at this point, they were
looking to strike out at Gregory with everything they had.

While waiting for Westmore’s men to pick up a lead,
Josef had contented himself with hunting down his own awakened Merrick, who had
just so happened to be Chloe Harcourt’s older sister, Monica. It had been the
most delicious of surprises when he’d learned that she was not only part
Merrick, but a Mallory witch, as well. The witch had been the first of her kind
that Josef had ever killed, but she definitely wouldn’t be the last. Not when
he’d discovered just how intoxicating it could be to sink his teeth into warm,
delectable Mallory. Though many of his brethren had hunted the Mallory prior to
the Casus’s imprisonment, that had been before the clan of witches had been cursed—and
it was because of the curse that Monica Harcourt’s death had been so…perfect.
So addictive that he now wanted the woman’s sister and daughter with a hunger
that scraped his insides like metal against bone, but they had been decreed
off-limits.

He’d have liked to rage at the heavens for that as
well, but knew he had no one to blame but himself. If he’d kept his mouth shut,
Chloe Harcourt could have already been his. She was in Westmore’s custody,
hidden away in a place where no one would ever find her. If he’d asked, odds
were that she would have been given to him once he’d completed his mission and
destroyed Gregory. But Josef’s lone mistake had been in telling Westmore about
the intense pleasures of his kill when he’d taken the sister’s life. Upon
hearing Josef’s description, Westmore—who remained embarrassingly eager to
please Calder—had immediately decided that Chloe Harcourt should be kept for
the leader himself, so that Calder might claim the pleasures of her death as
his own.

And despite the fact that Monica Harcourt’s daughter
was too young to wholly satisfy a Casus male’s hunger—since they preferred to
rape their female victims while they fed upon their flesh—there was always the
chance she might give her killer the same kind of kick her mama had provided
Josef. Hoping Calder might enjoy killing the child for her Mallory blood alone,
Westmore had put out the order that she be brought in, as well. Her capture had
been placed in the hands of Miles Crouch, but Josef had been asked to oversee the
operation, since Westmore was no longer in the country.

Though Josef was now busy with his search for Gregory,
a recent lead in Mississippi taking his full attention, he’d gotten to Lennox
as quickly as possible when he’d learned that Monica’s daughter and the child’s
aunt—the human Harcourt stepsister named Olivia—were finally going to be taken
that night. Unfortunately, he hadn’t arrived until a quarter of an hour ago,
and by that time, Miles had not only allowed them to escape…but had also lost
most of his unit in the process.

They’d been waiting weeks for this opportunity, and
now Miles had blown it. It had been impossible to get to the child when the
Harcourt house had been packed to the gills with humans. Too much potential for
exposure, and Westmore had demanded they keep a low profile. Josef knew it had been
a simple case of waiting them out, but now Miles had delivered them right into
the hands of the Watchmen.

Westmore was going to be displeased, to say the least.
And Josef was ready to draw blood.

While his own personal unit of Casus searched the surrounding
area, Josef knelt and scooped up a handful of grass and dirt from the house’s
backyard, lifting it to his nose. With a low growl he pulled in a deep breath,
his muscles coiling as the scent of the child’s aunt slid down his throat. For
a human, she smelled deliciously ripe. He’d given Miles specific orders to
bring the human bitch and the child to him, so that he could deliver them to
Westmore himself. They’d deemed it too dangerous to leave the aunt behind,
unsure what she would do once the child was taken. Josef assumed Westmore had
something in mind for the woman, and though he considered himself a loyal
soldier, he found himself tempted to take Olivia Harcourt for his own. Westmore
wouldn’t be happy, but Josef considered it a fair exchange, since he wouldn’t
be allowed to touch the little girl.

Overhead, the sky splintered with a sudden sharp crack
of lightning, and from the corner of his vision Josef spotted Miles Crouch
stepping out of the shadowed woods, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
The Casus looked worried as he moved across the wide lawn, but then he had
reason to be. This was the second time that he’d screwed up, the first being
when he’d taken it upon himself to try to talk Gregory into being a team
player, instead of taking him down when he had the chance in Washington. That
mistake had resulted in the loss of too many Casus, and now he’d lost even
more, their shades returning to Meridian, where they would have to wait until
they could be pulled back across the divide.