glanced away. That muscle in his jaw flexed again.
Dominus smiled. He’d noticed it before, the hunger that wafted from the tattooed warrior like perfume whenever his only daughter was near, and he welcomed it. Eliana would never find him attractive; of that he was sure. She had suitors aplenty and was quite literally out of his class. And Demetrius—rebellious, insubordinate, combative Demetrius—had more than once been induced to follow some order he found egregious simply because he’d had Eliana utter it for him.
Oh, how he loved to prey upon weakness. Just thinking about it warmed the frozen cockles of his heart.
“I heard a rumor a strange full-Blood male was spotted near the Vatican,” Eliana said, turning back to him with a little furrow between her dark brows. “An Alpha. Are you in any danger?”
He smiled down at her. Out of necessity, he’d told her—everyone, actually, he’d told everyone long ago— that they were being hunted by others of their kind, that they’d be massacred if found by these savage interlopers.
That his own father had been killed by one of them.
“That’s nothing for you to worry about, love,” he said with a meaningful glance at D. The big male met his gaze straight on.
Slowly, D nodded his head yes, and the King’s smile grew wider. “That’s nothing for you to worry about,” he repeated, and sent the warriors on their way.
22
When Xander opened the door to the gym and stuck his head inside, the perfume that hit his nose was so lusciously overpowering he sagged against the jamb, momentarily stunned.
“Who’s there?” came Bartleby’s aggravated voice from behind a folding screen erected in one corner of the darkened room.
Morgan’s scent, a voluptuous bloom of heated woman and exotic dark loveliness, drew him forward, had him salivating like one of Pavlov’s trained dogs. Following it was a compulsion, a decision made in some deep, animal part of his brain that overrode all logic and restraint. He pushed off the doorjamb and let the door swing shut behind him.
It was hot in the room, a tropical heat, the air humid and perfumed. Along with the lack of light it reminded him of a night he’d spent once in Bali, but there hadn’t been this amazing, sensual force pulling him forward then. There hadn’t been this
Because it was need. As basic as the need to eat or breathe or Shift, the urge to mate with the source of all that lovely, deep, feminine scent was a lashing demand in every cell of his body.
He took several steps into the room but froze when he heard a low moan.
Morgan’s moan.
“Go away,” hissed Bartleby from behind the screen, “you’ll make it worse!”
He staggered across the polished bamboo floor of the gym one step at a time, trying not to breathe too deeply because it sent the animal inside him into a frenzy of snarling hunger. Morgan moaned again, and the doctor cursed. Xander rounded the side of the folding screen and froze, looking down with his lips parted and his heart a sudden throbbing clench in his chest.
She was lying on her back on a futon unfolded on the floor, arms and legs akimbo, a sheet bunched up around her waist as if she’d been thrashing in it. She was clothed, but not by much: a simple camisole gone see- through with sweat, a glimpse of plain, girlish white panties beneath the wrinkled sheet. Her hair was a tangled dark mess over the pillow beneath her head, her eyes were closed, her skin shone with the Fever and a fine sheen of perspiration. Strands of hair curled mermaid damp across her brow, clung to her neck, and he itched to push them from her skin with his fingers.
Looking at her, every atom in his body, every nerve, screamed,
“I told you, it’ll make it worse if you’re—” Bartleby, crouching over Morgan with a syringe in his hand, turned while he spoke. When he saw Xander standing there, he broke off in surprise and came to his feet. “You’re up! How are you feeling?”
Xander’s mouth felt like baked stone. He didn’t take his gaze from Morgan when he answered.
“At this exact moment?” he said, his voice shaking. “Like King Kong on Viagra.”
“It’s the hormones she’s emitting,” Bartleby said, sending a worried glance toward Morgan. As if she knew he was looking at her, she let out a whimper. Her head rolled back and forth on the pillow, and she arched on the futon, radiating heat. Bartleby glanced back at Xander, whose mouth had begun to water. “You can’t be in here. You know that,” he said, moving between Xander and Morgan so he blocked the view.
A low, warning growl rumbled through Xander’s chest. He couldn’t help it.
“Alexander,” said the doctor, careful to keep his voice mild, “I’m only trying to make this easier for her. She is in a lot of discomfort—pain, actually—and though I’ve just given her a shot of morphine, she’ll still be able to feel you here and it will make the pain worse. You need to leave. For her.”
He didn’t move. His brain sent the command, but his feet refused. His entire body was in mutiny. Desire pounded through him in wave over dark, powerful wave, and he stood there fighting it, fighting the almost overpowering urge to rip off that sheet and those innocent white panties and take her right here, on the gymnasium floor.
“Why would Leander send me with a female about to go into her Fever?” he wondered aloud.
His voice cracked over every other word. “Why would anyone be so stupid?”
Bartleby sighed and set the syringe down on a low table that was filled with towels and water bottles and various medical supplies, then turned back to Xander. “He didn’t know. She said it’s her first Fever.”
Xander started. He’d never heard of a female going into Fever for the first time later than puberty. “What? That’s impossible! She’s—how old is she?”
“Twenty-six,” came the reply. “And, yes, it’s almost unheard of to happen this late. But not impossible.” His tone shaded with sarcasm. “Clearly.” He put a gentle hand on Xander’s bicep and gave a small push. It was like trying to move a building.
“I just want to move her somewhere more comfortable,” Xander said, licking his lips. “I can’t stand seeing her on the floor. Just to one of the bedrooms, downstairs.” He glanced at the doctor. “Will it hurt her if I move her?”
Bartleby shook his head. His eyes were worried. “But it might hurt you.” A flush spread across his cheeks.
“The wound is healing,” Xander said. “It hurts, but you know I heal fast. And she probably only weighs a buck ten, a buck twenty at the most—”
“It’s not your wound I’m worried about, old friend,” said the doctor, then sent a pointed glance at the front of Xander’s trousers, at the bulge straining there. Bartleby coughed into his hand and glanced away.
Xander dismissed that. He was under control. If he had stood here with the scent of her readiness pummeling him for the past few minutes and had done nothing to satisfy the screaming need it unleashed in him, he could control himself.
He was relatively sure of that.
He brushed past Bartleby and knelt beside the futon. He leaned over Morgan. His gaze traveled over her flushed face, her tangled hair, her chest...
He squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the sight of hard pink nipples straining taut through the sheer, clinging fabric of the camisole, of her breasts, so full and round.
“Morgan,” he whispered, opening his eyes. She made a little sound in her throat and her brow furrowed, but her eyes didn’t open. “I’m going to move you to a more comfortable place, to a bed. All right?”
