Twice Cursed (25 page)

She sighed, but the sound was full of
regret. Her body craved his too, but unlike hers, his need was
primal, driven by a desire more lunar than love-starved.

His mind was a barrage of want,
buffeting at hers at every turn since she left Maine. It was
exhausting, and after the day she’d had, the last thing she wanted
was to deal with Sean and his amped up sex drive. Moreover, she
hadn’t had the chance to talk to him, to tell him what she had
found out.

He had warned that things would get
wilder the closer they got to the full moon, but he’d never said a
thing about how their separation would worsen the effect on him.
Sean was in agony, and her heart broke. But as things stood at this
moment, he would have to wait. Guilt washed over her like a cold
rain despite the heat from the shower. But what else could she do?
She needed Sean rational so they could figure out what to do, and
if that meant putting a lid on his libido for the time being, then
so be it.

She pulled the shower
curtain back and stepped out of the tub, wrapping a long, thirsty
bath sheet around her body, humming even louder. Sean was in the
back of her mind, and she sighed.
Lily…
he called, and she sighed,
again.
Ding, ding…round one.

***

It was dark, but the full
moon hung high in the blackness, illuminating the trees in silver
light. “
Lily…
”
His voice held a desperate edge even as it brushed gently across
her mind.

He heard her humming, as she tried to
drown out the feel of his voice in her mind. The sensation of warm
water and the gentle rasp of a sea sponge feathered back along
their shared path. She was in the shower, and his groin tightened,
even as his paws scored the earth.

The wind picked up, and he howled, the
sound like a lover’s lament reverberating through the trees. He let
the sound carry a caress, soft but insistent against her lame
attempt at ignoring him.

He sent an image of her, wonton and
wet, from the last time the two shared the shower together. Her
hair wild and hanging in wet strands clinging to her breasts, her
chest heaving as she straddled him on the marble shower bench. He
sent the memory of how she’d looked to him as she climaxed, with
her eyes dark and dilated with need.

Lily moaned, and the sound
echoed through his mind. Her body tingled, the feel echoing through
him as the ghost of his hand skimmed across her belly to stroke the
juncture between her legs.
“Lily…I need
you.”
His voice was a pure growl, rough
with desire.

The pull of the moon stirred his body
as it rose to its zenith in the sky. Her body reacted intuitively
to his, and his craving for her filled her mind, overwhelming her.
With a shove, she forced him to the back of her mind, his ache and
her guilt flooding them both completely.

He was as relentless as the
animal living inside him. More images flowed, filling her with his
desperation. He showed her his body, tense and aching as he tried
to give himself release, his hand working his cock, but the wolf
inside him refusing to be satisfied.
”Lily, I am on the edge of insanity. I need you.”

Lily turned the water off, twisting
the knob with a jerk of her hand. Through their mind link, Sean saw
everything, felt everything and she let the full force of her own
frustration flow through. He was not the only one who was torn.
There was more involved here than just the need to satisfy
pheromones.

Barefoot, she grabbed a
towel and wrapped it around her, humming loudly as she charged out
of the bathroom, dripping across the cold, hardwood floor. Through
her window, she gazed up at the same moon that had him pacing like
a caged animal, the wind whipping at him.
“Sean…I want you too, but I want you here…there’s too much
going on.”
The words drifted past, along
with her silent plea for the full moon to be done with,
soon.

Lily rested her palms on the
ice-frosted glass, her mind and body at odds. Sean felt so close,
but the glass beneath her fingers might as well have been a chasm
between them.

He howled, the sound mournful and
heart wrenching, but Lily felt the underlying violence beneath the
surface. Sean was walking a razor’s edge, and she prayed she hadn’t
pushed him over the precipice.

“
Please Sean, Stop this. I
need you…I think I’m in trouble.”

Lily froze. Sean was all of a sudden
lucid. The hardwired need to protect and defend had completely
overruled his cock.

“
Does this have anything to
do with why I couldn’t reach you this afternoon?”

“
Yes.”

“
Where’s Jack? Does he
know? He told me everything was fine…”

“
He knows. But only
just…”
she hesitated.
“I was going to call you after I got out of the shower. We
have a huge problem, Sean. There’s a vampire wreaking havoc in the
city. We saw it tonight. I was in its mind, but I’m telling you,
something’s wrong with it. Whatever it is, I swear it’s familiar,
but not.”

“
A vampire? Are you
sure?”

Lily pressed her lips
together. Didn’t anybody trust her assessment these days?
“Yes,”
she shot back,
allowing visual and olfactory images from the scene at the park to
filter through their link.

Sean’s growl was as
menacing as it was worried.
“Tell Jack,
I’m on my way.”

***

Sean coasted down the highway heading
toward the Henry Hudson toll bridge, just north of Manhattan. He
was making good time, considering GPS set his arrival at just over
five hours before reaching Lily’s apartment. The roads were clear,
and if luck held, he’d be at her front door in about a half
hour.

It felt like days since he’d briefed
Mitch and his hunters about the situation in New York. While they
were privy to what was going on and where he headed, Sean had
instructed them to say nothing. As far as the disbanded council was
concerned, the Alpha was otherwise occupied with a full
investigation into the recent assassination attempt.

Mitch had full authority by proxy
while Sean was in New York, with the complete understanding he
would supply the alpha with a daily dossier of all Edward Parr’s
comings and goings. Not one of his hunters balked at the idea of
Sean going to New York, not when they learned it was to investigate
a rogue vampire. Weres and vampires were notorious enemies, yet
their differences were set aside when it came to protecting their
mutual anonymity. An unwritten truce existed for the greater good
of keeping both their worlds hidden.

As to keeping things at home status
quo, Mitch and the boys would keep Parr in check. Sean doubted
anything overt or premeditated would happen, not in the time he
planned to be away, and certainly not after the way he’d dealt with
the tracker. Parr might be many things, but he wasn’t stupid, and
he had to know Sean’s hunters would be on high alert.

With accusations fresh on his heels,
Parr would lay low, but not for long. The ruse of gathering
intelligence was the one cover Parr would buy, and if he proved
himself more foolish than Sean or Mitch anticipated, perhaps this
trip would then rid the supe community of two evils, one as cunning
as the other, and both just as parasitical.

It had taken the better part of the
day to tie up loose ends at the compound, with Sean’s inner wolf
gnawing at his gut every moment he was delayed. However much he
wanted to just dump everything and run, his conscience would never
allow it. Being the Alpha came with price tags, and putting the
concerns of the pack before his own wants was one of
them.

Clouds covered the night sky,
obscuring the moon. The air was both cold and heavy; a sure sign
snow was on the way. However, a winter squall wasn’t the only storm
brewing. Sean’s entire body reacted when Lily’s visions filtered
through their mind link, and the violence of the attack wasn’t the
only thing to cause his hackles to rise.

Lily had said that something wasn’t
right, and as usual, the woman’s intuition was dead on. He sensed
it too, but the images and emotion he’d read were not firsthand.
They had been compromised, slanted through no fault of her own, by
Lily’s knee-jerk reaction to what she had witnessed.
Understandable, of course, considering how horrific the images, but
he needed to make his own evaluations.

Based on the severity of the
situation, and the violent, not to mention, overly conspicuous
nature of the attacks, it was curious that vampire adjudicators
hadn’t yet moved to have the rogue destroyed. When it came to
policing their own, vampires were the Nazis of the supernatural
world. In the grand scheme of things, they had the most to lose.
Aversion to daylight and subsisting on human blood limited their
ability to coexist with humanity. But for thousands of years they
had managed to do just that, with only a few rogue instances giving
birth to folklore and legend, and eventually Hollywood’s
fascination with their kind.

It had taken vampires years
to recover from Vlad Ţepeş and his little hiccup in history, not to
mention Elizabeth Báthory and her penchant for bathing in virgin
blood. The advent of modern science and the industrial revolution
almost won them back their anonymity—that is until Irish novelist,
Bram Stoker, rekindled the fervor. His gothic melodrama,
Dracula,
had paved the
way for countless stories of romanticized vampires, forever
fighting against their base nature in search of love and
redemption.

This new depiction presented a
double-edged sword for the vampire council. Newly created vampires
bought into the idealized hype, finding the dangerously romantic
role intoxicating enough to try to live it outside the boundaries
of their kind. Sean had heard stories of how tribunals had tripled
in the last few decades alone, as adjudicators tried to keep rein
on the havoc triggered by the new guise. The situation forced the
council to reevaluate some of its ancient laws. He chuckled,
shaking his head.

Tell me about
it.

Truth be told, Supes were no different
from any other society of beings on this planet. Either you
adapted, or you died. Period. He just wished Parr and his flock of
sheep would see it that way. Sean exhaled. No, Parr knew it all
right; he just twisted it for his own gain. Perhaps the Vamps had
it right. No questions. No quarter. No second chances.

The Westside Highway was a deserted
straightaway, tempting Sean to blow through the traffic lights once
he reached 57th street, and speed south toward Jane Street. He
could almost smell her, and the thought of how close they were shot
jolts of anticipation into his groin. The idea of waking her with
telepathic foreplay, and having her wet and waiting for him when he
got there made his cock jerk, but he’d had enough of the Werewolf
version of phone sex. He wanted Lily in the flesh, warm and willing
and in his arms. Just ten more minutes…

The small-intertwined streets of lower
Manhattan were a nightmare to navigate, but he managed to keep his
focus on driving instead of on the promise of Lily’s warmth. He
wound his way around Abingdon Square, craning his neck at the
postage-stamp sized area the city deemed a park.

GPS had him bear left off
8th Avenue.
“Finally,”
he thought, and turned the car onto Lily’s street. Searching
for a parking space, he raised an eyebrow at the treelined
sidewalks and quaint cobblestoned street, surprised to see
neighborhood shops nestled between the buildings, and a charming
corner bistro with its colorful awning and café seats. He smiled to
himself. New York might be a concrete jungle, but leave it to Lily
to find a place of beauty nestled within its madness.

Forewarned, he wasn’t surprised that
parking was practically non-existent, so he rounded the corner
again; pulling instead, into one of the city’s many 24hr parking
garages. Talk about a racket.

“
How long you gonna be,
Mac?” the attendant asked, handing Sean his claim
ticket.

“
A few days, and I’ll
probably be in and out a lot,” he answered, handing the man his
keys and a fifty-dollar bill. “Park it short if you can. Traffic
here is bad enough, and I don’t like to wait if I can help
it.”

The attendant took the money, stashing
it in his pocket. “You got it, chief.”

Like everywhere else, money talked,
and with a nod, Sean walked out of the garage, turning left to head
the two blocks over toward Lily’s place. The street was deserted,
not a sound except for a few stray cats, at least he hoped they
were cats, but considering the fabled size and prevalence of New
York City rats, he wasn’t so sure.

The sky was almost completely devoid
of stars, and the glare from the streetlights cast a garish sheen
across the dirt-splotched sidewalk. His footsteps echoed in the
dark quiet, and combined with sound of sirens in the distance, gave
the night a certain film noir quality.

He crossed the street and stepped up
onto the curb in front of Lily’s red brick walk-up. Glancing up, he
watched a female silhouette pass behind lace curtains on the top
floor, and his body hardened.