Luc cradled her for a long moment, allowing himself the weakness, allowing a moment during which he could pretend he was normal. Just a man. And she was just a woman he’d asked out on a date, and then another, and another… until everything had traveled its natural course, leading up to tonight.
He stroked her spine, running his palm over the sweet arch of it, caressing each and every tiny bump of vertebrae with his fingertips. Danae had not felt so good. So trusting in his arms. There had always been something missing, a rightness that he now felt with Lily.
Sighing, he released her. Lying on his side, he watched her for several moments. She still breathed quickly, chest lifting and falling as if she had jogged a great distance. It would be that way until her transition was complete. He could leave her while she regenerated. She wouldn’t rise from this bed for days.
And yet he didn’t move. Even as dawn crept upon them, vivid fingers of red and gold clawing through the bedroom toward them, he remained where he was. Beside her.
Chapter Seven
Lily opened her eyes quickly, instantly alert, every nerve alive and singing, humming with a vitality she’d never known before. As she sat up, her gaze dropped to the man beside her, who emitted warmth and something else. Something that even while he slept stroked a seductive breath over her.
She pulled the sheets to her chin, her mind racing, tripping over the events of last night. She saw the nightclub…
Wild, uninhibited sex was not something she did with any regularity. Not since Adam. And even then it had been gentle, exploratory, their movements always tentative, restrained.
He slept as still as a jungle cat, all long, lean lines, ready to snap and spring at a moment’s notice. She sat up, moving as silently, as quickly, as possible. Inching toward the edge of the bed, anxious to flee. She lowered one foot to the floor.
“Where are you going?”
Tightness seized her chest.
He snatched her wrist and rolled her onto her back in one smooth move, the hard press of his naked body a familiar sensation, yet no less shocking.
All her life she’d slept in the same house, in the same room, same bed—her only lover a high school boyfriend, their intimacies stolen moments whenever their parents weren’t around. Never had she woken in bed with a large, virile man, her body sated and sore from hours of sex. A five o’clock shadow dusted his face of carved granite—menacing and sexy as hell.
She found her voice, pretending to forget that she was his prisoner before their night together. “I have to go. It’s Saturday.” As if that made a difference to him. “I have to work—”
“It’s not Saturday.”
“What?” She blinked.
“It’s Monday. You were bitten, infected, on Friday. The change—Initiation—takes a few days. Your body requires that time to regenerate… to become lycan.”
His words sunk in slowly, unbelievably.
“See.” He nodded to her bare arm.
She glanced down, air hissing from her lips at the sight. The bite, her wound, had miraculously healed. Only smooth skin met her stare—evidence she had no desire to see. She struggled against him, against his words, desperate to leave, to see her mom—
“I can’t let you go.” The great wall of his body pressed her deeper into the bed, stilling her movements.
“Why not?” she panted against the smooth wall of his chest.
His fingers flexed around her. “You have one month less now.”
A month. “And then I’m dead.” Her voice rang flat between them. No question, just a simple statement of fact.
His golden eyes drilled into her. “Maybe. Or maybe your hunter friend will get lucky and find the alpha responsible for your… condition.”
“How do you know about Curtis?”
“I spoke with him. He was casing the house… waiting for you.”
Hope swelled in her heart. “And he’s going to find my alpha?”
“I explained to him that I’m not who he thought I was and if he wishes to live he can put all his skills and resources into finding the true lycan responsible for your curse.”
“And you think he can?”
“It’s a long shot. He wasted time assuming I was a lycan and bringing you here when he could have been following leads from the site of attack.”
She shook her head. Desperation combined with the suffocating press of his body made it difficult to draw breath. “You don’t understand. I can’t wait here for a month. I have to go. There’s someone—” She stopped herself, hating to mention her mother, to bring her mother into this, hating to taint her with this dark new world from which she might never escape.
His face clouded over. “Someone
She shook her head.
He lifted her off the mattress, forcing her face near his. “A man? A boyfriend?” The light in the center of those amber eyes flickered brighter. “A husband?” His fingers tightened. “You can’t go back. Even if we break the curse before moonrise, you think you’ll be the same again?” His gaze roamed her bare shoulders. Her breasts tingled against the press of his body.
“Let me go. I need to say good-bye. To my life.”
“Good-bye,” he muttered, his gaze crawling over her face, hotly possessive, dipping to where her breasts pressed against his chest. “And how will you explain that? Will you tell him what you are? How becoming a lycan turned you into one hot piece of ass? Will you tell him that you willingly spread your thighs for me? A half-breed lycan?”
Fire erupted in her cheeks, and she beat against his chest and shoulders. “Bastard!”
The light at the centers of his eyes grew, eclipsing the amber. As if he didn’t feel her blows at all, his hands moved, skimming down her arms to her waist.
She stilled, feeling herself drowning in those eyes, mesmerized.
He nudged open her thighs with alarming ease and slid his hardness inside her heat. “You can add that you called me names while you gladly fucked me.”
Her mouth opened on a protest, an assurance that there was no one else, but the words never made it past her lips.
Her hands curled into his shoulders. Already she worked her hips beneath him, gasping when he thrust again inside her.
She lifted a leg and locked it around his waist. Her inner muscles squeezed, milking him, racing her toward orgasm with single-minded purpose.
He groaned against the side of her face, one of his hands coiling in her hair. A wild cry ripped from her lips. She shuddered beneath him as he surged inside her several more times, reaching his own climax. Spent, she sank even deeper into the mattress, a boneless puddle beneath him, small ripples of rapture eddying out through her body.
With a groan that sounded part sigh and part curse, he flung himself off her. Pressing her legs together, she scooted as far from him as she could, her fingers digging into her thighs. “You’re an animal,” she hissed.
He stared at her darkly, one arm tucked behind his head. “So are you, baby. Better get used to it.”
“There’s no man! No boyfriend. No husband. I just need to go!”
