Taken By Lust (3 page)

“Let go you bitch!” He lashed out and his claws dug into the flesh of her right breast, ripping through meat as he pulled away. She whimpered, the pain too much to get enough air to cry out. He dragged her from the back of the cab. She lost her shoes, her feet bumping over the rough pavement. The demon grabbed her by her hair, jerking her painfully to her feet. He lifted her off the floor and when she looked at his face, one eye missing and the lid shut around the hole, she saw his face for what it really was. He looked like a great cat. He looked like a man mixed with a panther. He roared in her face, his sharp teeth only an inch from her face, his scalding breath bathing her face, and she felt then that she was crying.

“I’m going to rip your insides out and show them to you, and then I’m going to take your body in every way imaginable as you die.”

Ice. She was ice. It was more than fear. She felt like she was close to death, like every cell in her body was dying. She trembled in his paw as he drew his other arm back, preparing to strike at her stomach. A roar behind her filled the alley. The cat man holding her froze and then dropped her. She rolled on the pavement and watched as her blood spilled over the pavement, bright red in the night, while a giant leopard came rushing from the darkness. Its golden coat, covered in darker rosettes, gleamed in the shadows as if lit from the inside with the sun. It had to be at least four times the size of any leopard she’d ever seen in a zoo.

The large cat’s body compacted, muscles moving under its fur, and then leapt. Its body exploded into the air, the hind legs a straight line and together, the front legs open wide, claws fully extended. Its mouth was wide open, a roar erupting again, and landed in the cat man’s face. Its hind legs dug and left deep furrows in her attacker’s stomach, front legs wrapped around his body. When the cat man fell back she could see the cat that had saved her had clamped its mouth around the would-be rapist/killer’s neck. No matter how much the cat man struck or tried to move the other cat held on. Black spots filtered on the edge of her vision as the cat still dug into the cat man’s stomach with its hind legs until her attacker stopped moving. The cat that had saved her then twisted its head in a quick motion over and over again until the attacker’s head popped off. Disgust and fear welled up inside of her, but she just couldn’t bring herself to cry out. She was so cold, just so cold.

She didn’t panic as the cat stalked its way to her. It watched her, its golden eyes reflecting the night around her as it took each step. With slow, freeze-frame movements it got closer and closer until it was almost upon her. The cat hunched down, crawling to her the last couple of steps and then butted her chin with its head. When she didn’t react the cat sniffed down her body and then began to lick over the wounded flesh that was probably her breast. She felt the sting but didn’t react. Every raspy pass of his tongue hurt, but was oddly soothing. She lay there as the cat licked at her blood and wondered why she wasn’t afraid that it was going to try to eat her, or make more damage. She felt safe. She felt protected. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew the cat was trying to save her.

Too bad it couldn’t.

She wished that she could touch him. She wished that she could feel his coat and sink into it, gather his warmth, but she was so tired. She whimpered when he licked deeper into a wound and then stopped. He resumed after a second and she couldn’t feel the blood seeping from her anymore. He moved and sat next to her. She watched him glow, as if in a dream, until he was brighter than the sun, and she couldn’t see a thing. When she could see again
he
was Pietr, in all his naked glory, kneeling next to her. He looked down at her, his gaze worried. She wanted to say something like “un-fucking-believable” but knew she couldn’t.

“You are already cold, mikro,” he whispered, his fingers soft against her cheek. “I have to get you warm.”

He rolled her over and then lifted her into his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather. He took each step smoothly but each time his foot hit the ground it sent a shock through her system. He took her into the darkened alley and she now could see there was a car inside. He opened the door for her and sat her in the passenger side and covered her with a trench coat. It smelled of him, warm and sweet like cocoa. He opened the driver’s side door and then pulled on his pants and an undershirt that had been in the seat. She hadn’t had time to see much of him. He did every motion quicker than her eyes could follow.

He got behind the wheel, barefoot, and started the car. They sped out of the alley, still on the back streets, and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She tried to tell him that she was grateful, that she was happy that he had come for her. She didn’t care that he seemed to have the same power as the thing that attacked her. She was just happy that in the end he had come to save her. And maybe, now that her life was ending, she could admit that she wished she hadn’t run away from him, that maybe he could have been what she wanted. But she couldn’t say any of that. She could only slip into the darkness, without uttering a single word.

She was so tired.

Chapter Four

Pietr drove as fast as he could toward
Katafygio
. The word meant haven in Greek and it was the compound for his wereleopard leap in south Texas. Everything in him was concentrated on getting his mate to safety. She was already terribly cold. The asshole had ripped into her with partially mutated claws. The only way a shifter could turn a human was to give them a mortal wound while in their partial form. If he had struck her when he was in complete leopard form she wouldn’t be going through the change, she’d just be dead. He supposed he could be thankful for that one thing from Selene’s attack, but it stretched him thin. If he didn’t get her to the leap to help her survive the change it might not matter anyway. She would need her leap’s heat to warm her, to heal her, and give her the strength to pull through on the other side. They would have to deal with her change and what that would mean to her life later. For now he was only interested in her survival. He grabbed for his phone.

“Cirro,” his friend answered after the second ring.

“We have a problem,” Pietr said without preamble.

“Your mate turned you down? It’s okay. She’ll come around. She has to.”

“She’s dying Cirro.”

“Explain.” Pietr told him as quickly as he could what had happened. He didn’t have to share the utter horror he’d felt when he’d sensed his mate’s fear over their tenuous connection. He believed it was only because he’d been heading toward her home on some back roads, hoping to beat her cab there, that he’d been close enough to feel her. Once they were mated no distance would keep him from sensing her but he thanked his lucky stars now. When he finished Cirro was cursing a blue streak and giving orders.

“I’ll send a clean-up crew to take care of the rogue. Your brother is not going to be happy. The rogues are getting worse.”

“Some are trying to purposely change humans into leopards to make them mates. They are desperate. I think he would have tried with Selene too but she’d hurt him.”

“How the hell did she do that?”

“She punched out his eye. That was done before I got there and I could smell the blood. She didn’t go down without a fight but it was probably enough to piss him off. He didn’t care about converting her then.”

“How far out are you?”

“I’m ten minutes from Katafygio. We’ll have to get everyone ready that we can. Her temperature has already dropped drastically.”

“We’ll be ready. I’ll have a
kouarteto
ready. I’ll hand pick them myself, Pietr. Bring her to us.”

“Thank you, my friend. One day I will repay this kindness.”

“Let’s hope not in this way.”

Pietr disconnected. Kouarteto meant quartet, and to make oneself responsible for someone’s quartet was a great honor. The quartet were the healers for the king, queen, and second of the leap. The four wereleopards would come at any time to provide around-the-clock heat and healing to their charge whenever the need arose. Cirro and Laius were two of Pietr’s quartet. They were all a part of each other’s quartet. Pietr was almost certain that Cirro would pull a rabbit out of his hat on this one.

For the many of the leap a quartet was chosen at birth from elders of the immediate family. Later, when the wereleopard gained friendships and alliances, the quartet was then changed. Selene, though, would come to her quartet much different. She hadn’t been born a shifter, nor did she have any close friends within that world. Her quartet, as his mate, would have to be comprised of the most trustworthy of the few precious women the leap had. Cirro would be sure to gather the four that best suited his mate. As his mate was made precisely for him, it could be assumed, at least superficially, that the women of her quartet would be ones he had some sort of friendship with. If she decided to change them later she could.

Pietr saw the side road leading toward home and took it as quickly as he could. About a mile up the great gates loomed. Cirro must has been watching the security screen because the gates slid open before he even reached them and he drove right through. Massive weeping willow trees surrounded the road as he went another two miles up the drive. From the middle of the forest Katafygio arose. It was a compound housing a subdivision of nearly one hundred houses surrounding a large mansion in the center. The mansion was valued at a little over ten million dollars. This was where the majority of the leap lived. Within the main home the Vasilias and Vasiliassa lived, along with the inner core of the security team, including Cirro and Pietr, when he was home. There was room for many others to stay, but that was reserved for the future mates of the unmated leopards in the home. Karen, the Vasiliassa, was currently the only female living in the home outside of the servants.

When he pulled up Cirro was already rushing out of the house with four women behind him. His black cargo pants and black T-shirt were his signature. Pietr recognized Lauren, Drea, Beth, and Adelis, four of the few unmated females of the leap. They had so far proven not to be mates for the local leap. Now, as they would be his mate’s kouarteto until she chose her own, they would not be traveling to find their mates. Beth, the elder of the group, got to the car first.

“Where is she?” she asked and then shot to the other side of the car before Pietr could even answer. She opened the door and lifted an unconscious Selene into her arms. The other three of her kouarteto crowded around, making sure that each of them were touching Selene’s body as they carried her inside.

“I’ve cleared your room for her. The bed has been switched to a mate’s bed so that her quartet will fit there. Do you want your kouarteto too?”

“I won’t need it. I’ll let them warm her. I’ll take over from there. Ladies, just stay on hand.”

“Yes, Pietr,” Beth answered for them. He ignored the majesty of his family home as they bounded up the left side of the dual staircase.

They bypassed the first ten doors in the west wing of the house and walked into the next door on the left side. This started Pietr’s suite of rooms. As they entered Pietr saw that his mate’s kouarteto had been busy. The room was surrounded in lit white candles, his black silk sheets looked inviting and warm in the firelight. The mattress was now double the size it had been before. The mate’s bed was designed from a time that a woman took her mate and his brothers on as a group. The multiple partners hadn’t been done in a while in their leap but the traditions were still observed. Beth put Selene down on top of the comforter and then slid in beside her. She scooted in with Selene until they were near the center of the bed. Lauren climbed on the other side of them and lay on Selene’s side. Adelis crawled over the other women’s heads and curled around the top of them. Drea curled around the bottom of them, draping herself over their legs.

“Keep her warm,” Pietr said. The women nodded in unison and wrapped their arms around whatever body part they could reach on Selene. He could feel the prickle of aura over his skin and knew the women not only used their body heat but the heat of their aura right before the change took over. Cirro waited for him at the door and, with one lingering look at his mate, Pietr followed him out of the room.

“She’s safe now, Pietr, you know she is.”

“Cirro, she almost slipped away. If I had been just a minute late getting to her, if I had been a few minutes late getting here…”

“But you did, you made it. Now she is okay. You will have enough to face when she wakes up. From your account and my clean-up crew he was a wereleopard. They didn’t recognize his scent so he isn’t local. He was encroaching on territory. He deserved his death for that alone. She’s okay.”

“I have never been more terrified in my life, Cirro. As strong as a mate makes us, there is weakness too.”

“Do you regret it, Pietr? Do you regret finding her?”

“Of course not. I regret what she is going to go through. I regret that she didn’t have a choice, and I regret that she will fear what we are because of how she was initiated.”

“You will find a way, my friend. You are mates. There is no other choice. She may be afraid, but you saved her, she will remember that. Just give her time.”

“She will have all the time in the world now,” Pietr said, sighing.

He strolled back into the room, watching the sleeping women on his bed. He would stand vigil, make sure that his mate was healing the way she should. The healing agents in his saliva had stopped her wounds from bleeding. His saliva had also worked to start healing her broken flesh. It was the best he could do until the change could take over. He sat and watched over her, the delicate rise and fall of her chest, the curve of her hip. He realized that she was still in the tattered remains of her dress. Her blood had stained the ruined fabric of her dress. She wouldn’t want to be reminded of that when she woke up, it would be hard enough.

He stalked to the side of the bed, realizing his own barefoot and dirty state. He still smelled of his enemy, had his blood, and Selene’s, on him. He wanted to be free of it before he touched her. He changed direction, grabbed some sweats and a T-shirt and walked to his shower. He stripped his dirty clothes off and turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it. He got in and scrubbed from head to toe. He wanted every trace of that godforsaken man off his skin. He wanted to wash the vision of his mate wounded, dying, and lying cold on the pavement. The water sloughed off him, turning the white suds an odd pink color. He washed his skin until there was nothing but clear water. He climbed out of the shower. In the mirror he caught sight of his chest. There were four scars across the broad expanse. He hadn’t even felt the attack. By morning the one hit scored by his enemy would be gone. He may have more claw marks but they would be from Selene.