Crave (2 page)

She liked it.

The female werewolf snapped out of his grasp and slapped him so hard across his cheek that he couldn’t fail to realise where he had gone wrong. His fangs cut into his lower lip. He hadn’t noticed them extending. Before he could explain to her that it was just the heat of the moment that had brought them out and that he hadn’t intended to bite her, she was striding away from him, heading back towards the busy dance floor.

Callum growled, swiftly drank his martini glass of blood to take the edge off his hunger and followed her, intent on explaining and tasting her again. The crowd kept closing behind her, blocking his way and frustrating him. He pushed through them, his senses tracking her so he didn’t lose her again. She wasn’t heading out of the club at least. The expansive dark club only had one exit and that was the other way, beyond the bar. She was either heading towards the booths that lined the edges of the room or the dance floor itself. Was she planning on losing him in the throng of people? It would be difficult to track her in amongst so many signatures. There were several other werewolves in the club tonight. Their presence would help mask hers even though he knew her scent now, had instinctively put it to memory when kissing her. Devil, she had tasted so wicked and delicious.

Callum licked the faint trace of blood off his lips and finally broke through the crowd around the bar, coming out near the edge of the dance floor. The heavy beat of the music pounded through his body, thrumming in his veins, pushing the tension mounting inside him, the need to find her and have her in his arms again.

The need to taste her lips.

He scoured the dancers and spotted her heading closer to the DJ. The lights flashed brightest there, hurting his eyes, and the volume of the music would be unbearable that close to the speakers. She knew vampires well. Her species could move around during the day so they weren’t as sensitive to light and her hearing wasn’t as acute when she was in her human form. She stopped there and danced with a male. He couldn’t tell whether her partner was human or werewolf, but he was immense, taller and broader than Callum was. She had intentionally chosen a place that would hurt him and had now selected a partner who could easily protect her. Her wiliness told Callum that the male would be a werewolf.

He only wondered why she no longer looked confident. Her gaze constantly darted about as she danced with the man, her body held at a distance from his, as though she was afraid to get any closer. Why would she fear her own kind?

That question and the challenge she had issued by choosing to dance with an immense werewolf in an area that was uncomfortable for Callum drove him onto the dance floor. He moved through the crowd, his gaze constantly on her, studying her face and the flicker of fear that was gradually surfacing in her eyes. The usual confident shine in them was gone by the time he was within a few metres of her.

The male werewolf caught her shoulders, turned her around and dragged her back against his bulky body, caging her there with a thick forearm across her stomach. His black t-shirt stretched over an obscene amount of muscle and Callum considered the insanity of approaching such a male. Although he was likely older than the werewolf, and vampires were inherently more powerful, his build was almost slender compared to him and he was a good few inches shorter too. That could be an advantage though. A lower centre of gravity gave him a more solid footing than his monolithic rival and his slimmer build gave him the advantage of speed. He could probably incapacitate the werewolf with only minimal injury to himself.

However.

There were two other male werewolves seated on the curved dark leather seat of the booth behind the male dancing with the woman, and both of them were watching the couple. Three glasses stood on the oval black table in the centre of the booth. The male was with them.

One werewolf he might be able to handle.

Three would crush him.

It should have stopped him from pursuing the woman, but his feet still propelled him forwards, towards what could only be a bloody and painful future.

He couldn’t turn back now that he had tasted her.

He hungered for another touch, another taste.

He craved her.

And he would have her.

What was she doing?

When she had fled England, Kristina had vowed to avoid interacting with werewolves. It was safest that way, no matter how much she often craved the company of her kind. All packs had a unique scent, something a werewolf could smell on each other and recognise. Part of her training as a cub had been spent on burning knowledge of the European werewolf packs and their scents into her mind. It was something all packs taught their young. The man now grinding against her backside and turning her stomach with his dominant grip on her was from a local pack here in Paris but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn her over.

She had been on the run from her pack for months now but she was sure they were still looking for her.

This was a mistake.

Kristina tried to get free of her partner but his thick arm tightened across her stomach, holding her firm. A spark of panic leapt through her blood and she struggled to tamp it down and disguise it so he wouldn’t sense it in her. She made out she was turning in his arms and he allowed it, his large hands moving to her backside, clutching and squeezing.

What the Hell had she been thinking?

The vampire had scared her and she had gone running to her own kind. Pathetic. She was stronger than that. So his fangs had come out and she had felt their sharp tips on her tongue, that didn’t mean he had intended to bite her. Not everything she had been told about vampires was true. She had thought she had known that, had accepted it as fact, and had always been proud of herself for being able to see that vampires weren’t really a threat unless you made them one by provoking them. It turned out that she was wrong and she hadn’t accepted it after all. The moment his fangs had touched her, she had panicked and lashed out, her heart rocketing and hackles rising. Everything bad she had ever been told about vampires had shot through her mind and she had gone with it rather than telling herself that it was just desire that had brought his fangs out. It was a reaction her kind shared with vampires. Whenever she got a little overexcited, her canines extended against her will.

She should have been flattered by his reaction to her kiss, not sought to knock his fangs out.

She was no better than every other werewolf. They had driven fear of vampires, horror stories about them, so deep into her mind that she couldn’t escape it even when she thought that she had.

The male werewolf leaned down towards her and she stiffened in his arms, fear of him rising inside her and telling her to break away from him, that he would try to dominate her just as her alpha had. She had to run.

His warm breath washed over her skin, turning her stomach, and she shrank backwards, trying to escape his touch. She had been a fool to run back to her own kind for protection. She had probably been safer with the vampire than she was with this male. They all wanted the same thing from her, all smelt her readiness to mate and took it to mean that she wanted them when she didn’t. She wasn’t interested in bearing cubs like a dutiful female. She wanted a life.

A firm cool hand on her shoulder caused her to jump. The start of a shriek escaped her before she clamped down hard on it and the world whirled past her in a blur of blue and purple neon and laser lights. A hard wall of black slammed against her and a low threatening snarl curled out over the pumping music.

Her instincts sparked, senses zeroing in on the male werewolf at her back and the dark presence of vampire in front of her. The vampire’s arm tightened around her, pressing her to his chest, and he snarled again, a feral sound that a werewolf would have been proud of making. The werewolf growled back but it lacked the strength and ferocity of the vampire’s, sounding weak and tailing off at the end.

Kristina glanced up at her unlikely saviour, looking past the strong defined line of his jaw and the sensual mouth that had sent her head spinning with only a kiss, beyond his straight nose that said he might be an aristocrat vampire, to the red coals of his irises and the vertical slits of his pupils. He growled again, bearing his fangs. They were enormous now, fully extended as he threatened the werewolf behind her.

The werewolf snarled back at him and she sensed the two other male werewolves rise from their seats, heading out of the booth to back up their leader.

Kristina wasn’t sure how to defuse the situation before it exploded. She did the first thing that came to her.

She tiptoed, caught the vampire’s cheek in her palm, and kissed him.

The werewolves behind her stopped moving. The vampire froze against her, his mouth slack and unmoving. With all four males shocked, Kristina made her move. She grabbed the vampire’s hand, twisted out of his embrace, and dragged him into the crowd. They had made it halfway across the dance floor before she heard the werewolf growl and felt the vampire come back to his senses. His hand shifted in hers and he spun her into his arms. He looked down at her, the flicker of coloured lights over his face turning his eyes from red to blue to purple and back again.

Kristina expected him to shout at her, or try to escape her grasp and return to fight the werewolf, or do something.

He just stood there in the middle of the dance floor staring at her.

His pupils gradually widened, switching back to their normal state, and the colour of his irises shifted, so the lights now made them flicker between green, blue and purple.

“I wasn’t going to bite you,” he said in a low voice that she barely heard over the music and stepped towards her, until she could sense his body close to hers and the temptation to move the bare few inches and bring them against each other hummed through her. “But he was.”

The hard look that entered his emerald eyes caused her to divert hers and she stared past him, not wanting to admit that he was right and the male werewolf had intended to mark her right there in front of everyone and she had been too weak and scared to do anything about it.

“What’s your name?” she whispered and shoved her weakness away, cleared her throat, lifted her chin and looked directly into his eyes. “I think I have a right to know the name of my hero.”

“Hero?” He laughed and shook his head, causing a silken strand of his long black hair to drift down against his cheek. He casually swept it back behind his ear, so it curled around it, and then smiled at her. “I’m hardly the good guy here... but you can call me Callum.”

Callum. Cal. Although he didn’t look like the sort of man who would easily accept someone shortening his name without permission.

Kristina bravely closed the gap between them and ran her hands over the soft black cotton of his obviously expensive shirt. His chest was granite hard beneath the material, the feel of it sending a hum of pleasure through her body as she recalled the strength of his grip when he had kissed her and when he had rescued her from one of her own kind. She slid her palms up to his strong broad shoulders, looped them around his neck, and started to move against him.

He kept perfectly still, the calm confidence in his eyes melting away to allow something akin to confusion to surface.

“Well, Callum.” She tipped her head back and looked up into his eyes. They were locked on hers, searching, probing, as though hers might tell him what she was up to and what she intended to get out of him by swaying in his arms. His pupils dilated with the first brush of her hips across his and his bowed lips parted to reveal the barest trace of straight white teeth. “Don’t you want to know my name?”

Kristina rotated her hips into his and held her nerve when she felt the growing bulge in his black trousers. He looked beautifully startled when she pressed her groin against his, moving up and down his body, teasing him with the friction.

The hunger for him that had begun as little more than a spark of interest when she had noticed him watching her around six days ago had slowly grown into a burning desire for him three days ago and she had been teasing him since then, toying with him. She had wanted to speak to him so many times so she could know why he watched her so closely and why he was following her. Her initial reaction had been one of fear but then she had realised that he was a vampire, not one of her alpha’s goons come to take her home. The feel of his eyes on her had given her confidence that she had never felt before. She had danced with men, aware that he was watching, putting on a show for him. Her nightly repertoire had grown in the strange pre-dawn twilight this morning, climaxing in her feeding on a human man while he watched from the shadows.

When she had stepped away from the man and wiped his mind of the incident, replacing the memories with ones of passion, she had felt sure that the vampire would make his move, that the sight of her feeding would have driven him over the edge. He had stayed in the shadows for long minutes and then left. Had he fought his desire and won?

Part of her despised him for that, for having better control than she had over herself. She hadn’t been able to overcome her curiosity tonight and had gone to him, only to run away like a cub when she had felt his fangs. Well, that wouldn’t happen again.

Kristina wiggled her way back up him, twirled the long black hair in the ponytail at the nape of his neck, and smiled into his eyes, giving him her best seductive look.

His pupils dilated further and he finally moved, his hands coming to settle on her hips and then sliding upwards to the low waist of her tight jeans. She shivered with the first caress of his cool palms over her waist, his hands under the flowing loose material of her top. His thumbs pressed into her stomach, fingers firm against her back, the touch electrifying her. It was dominant but in the best way. He was reconfirming his strength and silently telling her that he could easily take control of things if he wanted, while his expression told her that he was also more than happy to comply and let her take the lead.