Haunted by Your Touch

you’re not a lycan, then what the hell are you? You’re not human.”

“I’m a hybrid. A dovenatu.”

“Dovenatu?”

“Loosely translated to mean ‘double birth.’ The easiest way to explain it—I’m a half-breed lycan. I can shift at will, not just at moonrise. And silver can’t kill me.”

While she digested this, he twisted around to grab the knife. The move sent the blade into his back. Not too deep, but just the same, he hissed. Her eyes flared in horror. Clearly a woman unaccustomed to administering pain.

He slammed her arms down on either side of her, flattening his body over hers. Her blade fell softly to the mattress.

“You cut me,” he growled, relishing the mash of her breasts against his chest.

She glanced left and right to where he pinned her wrists.

“What’s wrong?” he mocked.

She snapped her gaze back to him, and the raw fury there flayed him. Moisture shone in the brown depths.

“Don’t you dare cry on me.”

“I don’t cry,” she denied hotly.

Before he caved and lost all his good sense, he tightened his grip on one of her wrists. Doing his damnedest to ignore the delicate sensation of her bones, he clamped one manacle around her. She didn’t protest. Simply stared at him with her wide doe-brown eyes, something else creeping in, edging out the fury. Understanding. Acceptance. Defeat.

“I’m really going to turn into one of those monsters,” she whispered.

He sighed and dropped her bound wrist. The manacle scraped the wall, echoing somewhere deep inside him, where he’d thought feelings, emotions, forever buried. “Yes.”

“Killing you won’t change that. Won’t save me.”

“No. It won’t.”

Lily nodded, dark shiny waves of hair rolling against her shoulders. “I just wanted a night out. Some fun for a change—” She shook her head, stopping hard, whatever else she would have said lost.

She met his gaze, no self-pity visible. Most women in her position would have been full of tears and self-pity at this moment. Hell, most men. That she didn’t succumb to weakness only made her more attractive—harder to resist. Easy to admire. To want.

“Do whatever you have to. Just don’t let me become one of them.” She offered up her other hand.

He circled the slight wrist with iron, feeling like a bastard. Whoever she was, whatever had happened to her tonight, she didn’t deserve this. She’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He’d been born what he was, felt its stigma since childhood. But her? She had run full force into it tonight. It was enough to drive anyone over the edge. Yet here she was… so strong, so alluring to his long-dead heart.

She spoke, her voice as tremulous as a feather drifting on air. “What’s your name?”

He rose quickly to his feet, as if distance would cure him of his hunger for her. “Luc.”

“Luc,” she repeated. “What’s going to happen to me?” With her eyes she really asked, What are you going to do with me?

The sudden image of spreading her thighs and pumping himself inside her slammed into him as hard as a rock. He gave his head a fierce shake. Moonrise. He was a victim of the moon’s curse. Nothing more. He’d be better in the morning. Better three days from now, no longer such a slave to the hunger. To thoughts of possessing her.

He craved relief. A quick lay. Only not with her.

Even in this darkened cell of a room, he could feel the moon’s full power, its strength urging him to release the base impulses he had managed to control these many years.

A quick drive into the city and he would return home sated. Safe. At least from her. Then, in a month’s time, he would finish it. Finish her. When she was fully turned, her humanity nowhere in evidence, he would not hesitate to destroy her.

Pocketing the key, he stood over her for some moments without answering. Turning on his heel, he left her alone. Safe in her prison. For now.

Chapter Four

The stink assailed him as soon as he drove outside the gate. Lycan blood. Nearby. Luc inhaled deeper, identifying the origin. Days-old blood. A mortal wore it. A man. A hunter. The odor lingered beneath the moon’s glow, the scent weaving through the air in tendrils of death. Ancient evil.

Parking his Aston Martin down the hill, he moved stealthily through the night, more shadow than man. Man. Hell, he had never been that.

His first impulse was to kill this hunter, as he was clearly stalking Luc. This hunter wasn’t some misguided soul with noble intentions. Luc could feel the rot of his soul as he cut through the breezeless night. This one was zealous, relentless.

Then an idea formed, teasing at the edge of Luc’s dark thoughts. Moving with the speed of hurricane winds, he appeared at the driver’s door before the hunter could react.

Luc crashed his fist through the glass and snatched the man by the throat. Fingers tight around his narrow neck, he pulled him through the window, flinging him on his back to the asphalt.

“Please!” The hunter waved his hands wildly. “I mean no harm.”

“No harm?” Luc leaned low, hovering over the hunter’s face. “Is that why you sent that girl after me?”

“She’s a gift, a present,” he babbled. “You don’t like her? I can find another one—”

“Enough!” Luc roared, knowing just what kind of man he dealt with. He didn’t doubt some hunters were driven by a higher purpose—to see lycans eradicated from the world. But something far from altruism drove this guy. “I’ll have the truth or rip out your heart. It makes no difference to me. Why are you after me?”

“I…” He paused, wetting his lips. “Rumor has it you’re running all the packs in L.A.”

“Well, your information is wrong.” Luc tightened his grip and hauled the hunter to his feet, slamming him against the side of the car. Shattered glass crunched beneath his feet as he stepped closer. The hunter’s small weasel eyes bulged.

Luc flicked a glance skyward to the gleaming moon. If he were a lycan, he’d be in full shift now instead of battling the moon’s call, the beast in him simmering just beneath the surface. “Do I look like a lycan to you?”

The hunter scanned his face with rapid ferocity. “N-no.” His brow creased. “But you’re not human. You’re too strong. What in hell are you?”

“Someone you’ve vastly underestimated.”

Comprehension washed over his face. “Jesus. You can’t be.” He shook his head, straggly hair falling in his face. “Dovenatus don’t exist. It’s just a myth…”

Luc twisted his lips savagely. “Wrong again. And that’s going to cost you.”

He reached around and pulled the guy’s wallet from his pocket, scanning the name and address. “Listen well, Curtis. You’ve got one chance to live.” Luc jerked his head toward his house. “It’s simple. Find that girl’s alpha and you live. Got it?”

Curtis’s eyes drifted toward the gated house. “But I thought it was you. How am I supposed to find—”

“Now that you know you’re wrong, do what you do. You’re a hunter with NODEAL, right? You hunt lycans. So hunt.”

Curtis gave a single nod of his head.

Luc continued, anger churning in him as he thought of the woman chained to his basement wall. “Use your fucking resources. Put together a team. I don’t care how you do it, just find the bastard or I’m coming after you and your whole damn branch. Understand?”

Curtis nodded fiercely.