He was in.
His dick throbbing with each step he took. Down the long winding, underground hallway and up two sets of stairs, Phelan moved steadily, his mind and body focused on one thing only. Sex.
The urges had driven him for the past two hours as he’d pressed every bit of speed out of his Ducati 1098 Superbike on the highway leading him from Blackbriar to Bozeman. He’d made this ride weekly in the past two months, needing more than he’d ever had before.
Phelan was a lycan who possessed every lycan trait, including the insatiable sexual appetite. At thirty-one years old, six feet and three inches tall, 184 pounds, he was almost as powerful as an alpha and better trained than any of the human’s military soldiers. He’d lost count of the number of people he’d killed in his lifetime—human and others. There was no family for Phelan, just his pack. No fun and games, just the mission at hand. Life wasn’t a gift, it was a job, and Phelan knew how to do his job.
He also knew how to slake the burning need that for the last eight weeks had been raging through his veins like adrenaline. In the morning when he woke, until the second he was finally able to close his eyes for a night’s rest, he thought of sinking into a perfectly warm and wet pussy, drowning in its goodness until he could think of nothing else.
Not the threat on Blaez’s life.
Not the house full of lycans and their mates where he lived.
And certainly not the curse that Eureka had called herself, putting on him.
Eureka, the beautiful vixen who had taken a part of him one summer’s night long ago and turned him into the cold, hard bastard he was now. It was amazing that one woman could do so much damage in such a short time span. But Eureka was no ordinary woman. In fact, she was a fury.
Phelan yanked the door open, stepping inside the room where he knew they would be. They were always here in the hours before the club opened. Always naked and aroused and doing whatever they could to calm the sexual storm brewing inside of them.
It was as if every being that was not human on this earth was fueled by its sexual desire and inside these walls, in the club that was owned and run by furies, there were no holds barred. They could all find complete ecstasy before they had to return to the real world.
Phelan’s booted feet were silent as they moved over the plush bloodred carpet. He heard the sounds before he saw any of them, moans of pleasure, sighs of bliss. His blood warmed. Turning the last corner to where the furniture would be positioned just right, studio lighting would be in each corner, casting everyone in a bright golden light. Huge black pillows would be thrown on the floor, matching the black drapes at the two windows along that back wall.
He came to a stop at a chair, the one he liked to sit in. It was ready and waiting for him, just as he knew it would be.
She knew exactly what he liked. Always had.
Sitting down slowly, Phelan looked across the room to where a woman with red hair lay naked on the floor. Her legs were spread wide so that Phelan could see the slick folds of her pussy, seconds before another man’s tongue stroked them. Small, palm-sized breasts were being grabbed from each side by two different women, while a fourth woman straddled the redhead’s face, allowing her to lick along the folds of her juicy pussy.
A few feet away a busty brunette stood with one leg up on a man’s shoulder. He thrust deep into her pussy while another man stood behind, pumping wildly into her bottom. The moaning grew louder, mixing with the sound of sweaty bodies slapping against one another, tongues slipping and slurping. It was a smorgasbord of pleasure, one that Phelan knew men and women alike, all over the world, would pay to witness in person.
As for Phelan, he only glanced at them momentarily. They weren’t what had drawn him here. He was waiting for something … or someone else.
She knew he had arrived, just as she always did. The scar beneath his left eye twitched only seconds before she came through a side door wearing all black leather. Boots that came to her thighs, a bra that barely covered the light pink of her nipples, and a thong that displayed the perfect globes of her ass. She walked slowly, being certain not to look at him directly. Her body was slim and compact, breasts just enough to fit into his palms, ass just slightly bigger. Long, bone-straight, dark brown hair hung down the center of her back, barely covering the two dimples above the curve of her ass.
Her nipples were already hard and Phelan was willing to bet every dollar in his pocket, and his bank account, that her pussy was wet. Eureka was always wet, especially for him.
When she’d come completely into the room, she turned her back to him, and gyrated so that her ass bounced for his viewing pleasure. He despised everything about her. From her husky voice to her penchant for revenge and spitefulness. The latter he could attribute to her DNA. She was a fury; her main purpose in life was to punish people by literally driving them insane. Well, Phelan could attest to the fact that she was damned good at her job.
The scar on his face tingled and he lifted a finger to rub along the gashes in his skin that had healed as much as they ever would. Lycans normally healed from all their wounds in record time. But this one, the one that was inflicted by another otherworldly being, was there to stay. Just as the curse she’d said she put on him. Phelan would have tried to argue that curse, but the fact that he was sitting here, for the ninth week in a row, his legs gaped open, dick hard and waiting, was proof to the contrary.
Another lycan came in at that moment. Taller and much slimmer than Phelan, his skin darker than Phelan’s olive complexion, long fingers gripping the black paddle in one hand as he walked. Phelan flexed his fingers, remembering all too well how good it felt to hold that handle in his hand, to wield that dominant power over Eureka.
Without a word Eureka leaned over a high-backed leather chair, so that she was facing the action of the others in the room, her upturned ass on display for Phelan to enjoy. Or to hate, whichever was his passion tonight. It was that way with her now. He hated her for what she’d done to him all those years ago, a searing dislike that went well beyond the physical scar she’d put on him, to the white-hot pain she’d inflicted on his soul. And then there were the moments when he craved her like his next meal. He needed to be near her, to scent her pussy, to watch her climax, to hear her moan in ecstasy, although none of that had come at his hand in the years since she’d scarred and cursed him.
The lycan stepped closer to her, extending his palm and laying it over one bared ass cheek. She remained perfectly still, without him having to instruct her. That was part of the act—she appeared to be submissive when in reality that was the very last thing that Eureka Trisk would ever be.
The lycan squeezed her cheek, gripping it tightly in his hand. and Phelan’s mouth watered. His hand moved down slowly to unzip his jeans and release his thick length. Grabbing the root of his cock, Phelan jerked upward, hard as he watched the lycan rub along Eureka’s other cheek. Without warning the lycan reared back his other arm, bringing the paddle down over her ass with a loud whack.
She didn’t move.
Her cheek instantly turned red.
He paddled her again and again, rotating from one cheek to the next. With each strike Phelan jerked his cock harder and harder, pre-cum already beading and dripping from his slit. When the lycan ripped the black thong from Eureka’s waist, Phelan’s teeth clenched together tightly. The lycan paddled her ass again and again, stopping only to slide his fingers down her slit. When he pulled his finger out, it was dripping with her desire and he immediately put it to his mouth and licked. Phelan pumped viciously into his hand. Another round of paddling and her ass cheeks were so red he could almost feel the heat emanating from them, while rivulets of her essence dripped down the inside of her thighs.
Phelan came at that moment. Like a storm that had been brewing, his release burst free, dripping down onto his hand and the front of his jeans. He cursed with the pressure that had built along the base of his spine and the tension that remained stretched across the breadth of his shoulders. He’d come, but he wasn’t relieved. Not by a long shot. He never was.
Reaching down beside him, he opened the black case that was always left there for him. Using the wipes and hand sanitizer, he cleaned himself, and stood from the chair, not caring to see the lycan finally thrusting his rigid length into Eureka’s pussy, or the others who were still there, very near to finding their final release.
Phelan didn’t give a damn about any of it. He wanted to leave. Just as he always did. Hating the fact that he’d driven all the way out here in the first place, but unable to stop the monotonous routine.
Phelan’s boots thumped loudly on the stairs as he made his way out of the building, thoughts and recriminations roaring through his mind while he moved.
“Leaving so soon,” her voice carried through the air, echoing off the cinder-block walls.
“Got what I came for,” was Phelan’s terse reply.
“And that’s all you ever wanted,” Eureka countered.
Phelan turned quickly, staring up the last flight of stairs to see her standing there, a sheer knee-length robe covering what remained of her leather outfit.
Once upon a time there was so much he’d wanted to say to her, so many things he’d thought about sharing, about admitting, but then he’d found out her true purpose.
Shaking his head, he responded. “Don’t do that,” he warned. “There’s nothing for us down that road.”
“This time?” She arched a brow, crossing her arms over her chest, looking like a goddess—a goddess of temptation and rage.
“Any time,” he said, turning again to leave.
Her screech was loud and long and pierced straight through to his gut, but Phelan didn’t stop moving. So what she was angry. He’d given up on caring about the way Eureka felt about anything he did or said a long time ago.
“It won’t go away!” she yelled after him. “I will never leave you, no matter how far you try to run!”
Phelan kept moving, kicking through the door and stepping out into the night air. He had no idea what time it was now, just that the sky was black, overcast, with no stars in sight. Typical, he thought as his feet crunched on gravel before he stood near his bike once again. Grabbing the helmet, he slipped it on, throwing a leg over and lifting his bike beneath him. He sat for a moment before starting the engine, inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly.
She was right.
She had never left him. Not in the ten years they’d been separated, the years since he’d found out she’d been sent to kill him. Her excuse for betraying him had been that she’d fallen in love with him, but that was a lie. Just like everything else she’d said and done. She hadn’t loved him, only the thought of bringing him and the leader of the Trekas pack to Zeus had intrigued her. Aroused her, yes, that’s one thing Phelan could lay claim to. But Eureka was easily aroused. She was fuckable and she was an evil bitch with vengeance flowing in her veins.
And she had been with him every day since then in his mind and, infuriatingly, his soul. Every fucking day. The scar was the physical reminder, but the hardening of his heart, the firm set of his jaw, everything down to the strict rules he put on his sex life, were a direct result of his experience with Eureka.
Starting his bike, Phelan drove away from Club Entice. He left the thoughts of his past behind to instead focus on more pertinent matters. The human world had been aware of the existence of shape-shifters living among them for a year now, but the residents of Blackbriar—the small Montana mountain town where Blaez, the alpha of his pack, had moved them more than a year ago—were now up in arms about them being there.
After Malec had killed the Solo—a lycan with no pack and no affiliation to the Hunters or the Devoteds—who had been threatening Malec’s mate, Caroline, in her apartment, the town had let loose on the pack that had renovated the log cabin in the woods. So far, however, the security measures that Phelan had instituted had kept them away from the lodge, but tempers were brewing. The humans were planning and Zeus was still hunting Blaez. A bounty had been set for the capture or killing of the half demigod, half lycan, and Phelan and the other betas in the pack were charged with keeping him safe.
To say Phelan had other shit on his mind besides the claw marks on his face and the still-raging hard-on pressed uncomfortably against his thigh was an understatement. And as he rode along the highway in the dark of night, nobody would ever guess the weight lying heavily on the lycan’s shoulders.
Nobody, but …
The night air had been growing cooler as it was now in the midst of the fall season. It had rained earlier in the day drenching the area in scents of wet leaves, damp mud-packed grounds, and, for a Devoted lycan, the scent of their archenemies, the Hunters. The pack had picked up the aroma earlier in the week, even though they’d all been expecting more of the lycans who had vowed to destroy all Devoteds and especially the one true-blood relation to their creator, Nyktimos. But the full moon was weeks away, so an attack wasn’t expected until then.
Yet as Phelan inhaled deeply once more, his shoulders hunched, his fingers tightening on the handles of his bike. He leaned in closer, his gaze trained forward, to the car driving a short distance in front of him. The scent was coming from there. He sped up without another thought, leaning into a lane change until he came along the side of the SUV. The windows were tinted so that he could not see inside, but the stench had grown stronger, more potent than it had been just seconds before.
It wasn’t simply a Hunter’s scent, either.
No, Phelan thought with a shake of his head. It was too strong, too feral, unrestrained, desperate, and possibly afraid.
It was a new blood.
* * *
She was going to be sick.
Marena had never gone through a registration so quickly in her life. But she’d barely managed to get out of her car and run up the steps to the quaint little B and B nestled just off the road, surrounded by a copse of trees. Once inside she murmured something about needing a room for the night and slapped her credit card on the desk. Deep breaths while the desk clerk spoke what Marena knew was probably important information but somehow sounded like gibberish had kept her from keeling over right there in the lobby, on the lovely and most definitely expensive Aubusson rug.
By the time the clerk, a woman wearing a thick beige sweater and wire-rimmed glasses, handed her the credit card and room key, Marena could feel the bile burning at the base of her throat. She snatched the items from the woman’s hand and raced up the stairs, barely reading the room numbers but somehow getting the key into the right lock and flying into the room, heading straight to the bathroom. She made it just in time and ten minutes later felt like collapsing on the pretty black-and-white-tiled bathroom floor.
She’d just managed to pull herself up to use the facilities in another way and then went into the outer room to retrieve her toothbrush from her bag when she heard something. Footsteps, she thought, but then shook her head when she also heard some ringing and the definite rumbling of her stomach reiterating the fact that she hadn’t bothered to eat during her fifteen-hour ride from San Francisco to Montana. Of course, she’d stopped for gas and to use the restroom, but somehow food just hadn’t appealed to her tumultuous stomach. Now she was thinking maybe she should at least try something light.
Marena was in the bathroom, toothpaste foaming at her mouth, when she heard the footsteps again. This time they echoed in her head as if someone were walking right beside her. Inside, her heart thumped wildly, sensations moving just beneath her skin like a live entity, and she shivered. Leaning forward, she rinsed and spit, grabbing one of the soft light blue towels from the pearl-white rack and wiping her mouth. After she shut off the water, Marena stood, listening.
The footsteps had stopped, but whoever had been walking wasn’t gone. No, that person was near. Very near, and Marena wondered what that meant.
Without even knowing why, she walked into the bedroom and stared at the door. Not only was her heart pounding, but her temples throbbed now, too. The sickness in her stomach rolling around as if it were ready for an encore. She was standing there, holding her stomach with one hand, her head with the other, when the first knock sounded.
She didn’t want to answer. A voice yelled loudly in her head for her to ignore the intrusion, while something deeper inside told her not to. It didn’t make sense. None of this did. Why couldn’t she open the door? She had no idea who was on the other side. And why the hell was she feeling all these strange sensations? She wanted to sit down, or lie down and get some sleep. Surely that would make her feel better.
But then it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do because he was there. He came up behind her, pushing her hand away from her head and wrapping something over her eyes. Instinct told her to turn and fight, to swing and kick and get to her purse, to her gun … again. But something else, that same something that had insisted she let him in, calmed her and Marena stood still. The thumping in her heart and the pain in her temples ceased immediately. Her stomach stopped churning and warmth ensconced her.
“You don’t need to see right now,” the male voice said from behind her. “You need to feel. To experience and to learn. It is just the beginning.”
Marena jerked against the covering over her eyes, but he was stronger and he pulled it tighter, and, when he was done, let his hands slide slowly down her arms to grasp her wrists. She moved again, a weak attempt at getting away because there was something overriding all the fight-or-flight instincts she’d developed over the years of being a single woman. Something that she craved much more than her own safety. It was peace.
Her head no longer throbbed with incessant pain and her stomach was no longer revolting against her. In fact, Marena felt calmer now than she could remember ever feeling in her entire life. Why was that?
His hands moved back up her arms after her seconds of contemplation. Tender touches that she wasn’t sure were meant to be intimate but had her thinking of warm winter nights, cuddled in front of a fire with a man who loved her as much as she loved him. It was a foolish thought to have at a time like this. Foolish and out of place. Weird and unexplainable. Just like most of the things that had been happening to her in the last forty-eight hours.
When those fingers touched her shoulder, heat soared through her body and still she shivered. She wanted to open her eyes, to turn and look to see who this was who had come into her room this time. Her luck with hotel rooms and guys walking in on her sucked!
Marena took a step forward, until his hands were no longer on her. She turned slowly in the direction in which she’d thought she’d heard his voice. Then, as if just realizing it, she reached up and yanked the blindfold from her eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked immediately upon seeing the tall man dressed in black leather standing in the middle of the room. “And how did you get in here?”
For a few seconds—which actually seemed like an eternity—he simply stared back at her. The intensity in his piercing green eyes warming her in places they definitely should not be able to touch. She had no idea who this guy was or what he wanted. And she wasn’t anywhere near her purse this time.
“You left the door ajar. I knocked, but you didn’t respond,” he told her.
“So you just came inside,” she countered. “You came inside and tried to blindfold me. Who does that? Never mind, don’t answer. Just leave. Now! Before I call the cops.”
She’d made the threat, but she knew she wouldn’t do that. For all she knew there was now a warrant out for her arrest due to Davis’s disappearance. Well, at the very least the cops in San Francisco were actively looking for her to question her again. She hadn’t checked her phone in the last few hours, but at the last rest stop she had noticed that Gail hadn’t returned her urgent call. That troubled her, just as this guy who was still staring at her did.
“They cannot help you,” he told her simply, hooking his thumbs in the belt hoops of his pants.
It was a cocky sort of stance, one that said “you need me and you don’t even know it.” Marena didn’t like it, but she couldn’t help staring back at him with what she felt might be intrigue.
“And you can? You don’t even know me,” she quipped. “Are you high? Did you get lost and need to find your own room?”
She attempted to walk around him then, to go to the door and hold it open wide for his departure. But he grabbed her arm. The touch was electrifying, sending jolts of what felt like fire-tinged tendrils up her arm and exploding throughout her body.
“Let me go,” she started to say, attempting to pull away from him but stumbling back instead.
He reached out both arms then, catching her by the waist before she could fall flat on the floor. And that was no easy feat. Marena was a big girl, always had been. She was proud of her size 18 on a good day—20 on a viciously horrific one—curves and went the extra mile to select the most stylish in plus-sized clothing to ensure she looked her very best at every moment. Even now, after hours of traveling, her jeans were still crisp, the long-sleeved charcoal-colored T-shirt was only marginally wrinkled, and her Stuart Weitzman Rialto flats still managed to look cute on her unusually small feet. Still, all of her weight was relying on his hold on her and Marena knew that was no slight matter. Yet he was staring down at her as calmly as if they were sitting on a park bench sharing a hot dog.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said without blinking. “You don’t know why yet, but you need me here. I’m guessing that’s why our paths crossed in the first place.”
She shook her head, noting the electrifying green eyes and the ugly scar beneath one of them. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you.”
“But you know what you feel,” he told her.
His hands were still wrapped securely around her waist as they now stood face-to-face, so that she was a lot closer to this man she didn’t know than she figured she should be.
“You know that you feel better in my arms,” he continued.
“Can you say ‘conceited’?” she asked with an arched brow.
He shook his head. “No. But I can say ‘relief.’ That’s what I see in your eyes. You were sick before I came in. I could hear you all the way downstairs. I picked up your scent a couple miles back on the road. You’re still sick. It will last a few more weeks and then you’ll be all right. Different,” he said solemnly. “But all right.”
“You’re nuts,” she replied, but not with as much agitation as she should be feeling at this moment.
She did flatten her palms against his chest and attempt to push away. He held her firmly without any effort at all.
“If I let you go and walk out of here, you’ll likely be sick again. You need the closeness of a ly…”
His words trailed off and for the first time since he’d come into this room Marena thought he looked indecisive. Contemplative maybe. He was a good-looking—no, correct that, because Marena prided herself on being right the majority of the time—he was a damned fine-looking guy. Broad shoulders and what felt like biceps more commonly referred to as “cannons” beneath the leather jacket he wore. She’d glimpsed his slightly bowed legs in the leather pants and steel-toed boots. The light beard and medium-length spiky haircut he was sporting gave him a definite biker look—a dangerous biker from the looks of that scar. But there was more, she suspected, so much more to this stranger holding her so tightly in his arms.
“I don’t need you because I don’t know you,” she told him evenly. “Now, if you came in here because you were concerned that I was sick, I thank you very much. But really, I’m fine now.”
He looked down at her for another second or so. This meant he was tall, because Marena was five feet nine and a half inches. Yet this guy was looking down at her, almost as if she were no bigger than a nymph. And for all that she’d been declaring she didn’t need him and asking him to go, the second he released his hold on her she couldn’t help but stumble back a step.
His eyes stayed glued on her even as he backed away, heading toward the door, she thought. Good, he’d taken her advice. She was going to lock that door and try her best to push the dresser up against it the second he left. No way was she going to lie down in this bed with thoughts of another man making his way, unwantedly, into her room. No way was she—
The nausea came back so fast and so potent, her knees buckled and Marena went to the floor, leaning forward as her arm clutched her abdomen. As she heaved, pressure built at her temples once more, so intense this time that she felt like she might actually faint. She trembled with the effects, wondering what the hell was going on with her.
And then he touched her.
His hands to her arms again, then down her back and beneath her legs as he easily picked her up from the floor and carried her to the bed. He laid her down, one hand brushing away the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail, while he watched her closely.
“I told you,” he said in a flat, deep voice. “You need me to stay close. It’s just the way it is in the beginning. In a few weeks it will pass.”
“In a few weeks? What the hell is wrong with me? And why you? I don’t even know your name. I don’t know what’s going on,” she whimpered at the thought that her stomach had calmed once again, her head feeling much better at his touch.
Marena hated not being in control of herself, her thoughts, her emotions. She’d worked too damned hard to get where she was to have some guy barge in here thinking she needed him to what? To live pain-free? This was crap and she was getting angry. But she’d never been a fool and she couldn’t deny that he’d spoken a bit of truth—she did feel much better with him standing so close and touching her.
“I will tell you everything you need to know, if you tell me one thing first,” he replied.
“What?” she asked. “What can I possibly tell you about the strangeness that has been going on in my life since that bastard barged into my room last night?”
His brow furrowed. “What bastard? And what did he do to you while he was in your room? Did he bite you?”
Bite?
Her shoulder ached at the sound of that word.
How did he know?
“Oh, my … no … no.” She was shaking her head, sound bites and news flashes sifting through her mind in seconds. Shape-shifters—cats, wolves, beasts. They were real. People had seen them, had worked with them. The stories were true, she knew this, and yet—
Marena opened her mouth with the intent to scream; instead, only one word broke free to be followed quickly by a pitiful moan, “No.”