Primal Instincts (9 page)

She was also taking this remarkably well—so far. He waited for her to spring a trap, at least a tantrum, but offered honesty of his own.

“In my dream you were naked on red satin sheets,” he told her. The bed was actually covered in pale blue bedclothes.

“Isn’t that just typical sexual fantasy material?”

“Tattoos?” he countered.

“Tats are very sexy.”

“Shameless wench.”

She shrugged. He couldn’t help but notice the way her breasts moved beneath the cotton shirt. This didn’t help calm his hard-on any. He took slow, deep breaths and thought about unattractive things.

“What are you doing in here?” she repeated.

“Here” was a small guest bedroom in Ben Lancer’s house. He ran a hand across his short hair while he searched out how his steps had led him to Flare’s bed.

She reached over to a bedside table and switched on a small lamp. They didn’t need this extra light, but maybe it made her feel more normal, less psychically vulnerable—less connected. Nothing could help or change his awareness of the unconscious, unwelcome connection.

“I was in the kitchen,” he recalled. “A few of my people reported in. Then—I went looking for you.”

She sat up straight and folded her hands on her stomach. “You planned to sit by my bedside to keep me safe all night?” Her tone was dangerously sweet.

“No. I wanted to fuck you.”

She threw back her head and laughed.
Goddess, what a lovely throat!

“Don’t think about it, big boy,” she said.

“Can’t help it,” he answered.

“Primes.”

“Any man in the world would be turned on by you.”

She frowned but accepted this as her due and not as a compliment. She had no modesty.

And why should she? Primes had none. Why expect it?

“The thing is, I don’t remember coming in here,” he said, returning to the subject. “What I remember is—”

“The dream,” she said, glaring at him.

He wasn’t going to be intimidated or apologize.
“You had it too. It was a shared fantasy. We’re telepaths. And we’re—”

“Don’t say it!”

“—bonding.”

Francesca leapt out of the bed. She was tempted to leap on him but told herself the urge to scratch and bite was residual arousal from the dream. She wanted his blood—the dream her wanted his blood.

The real her denied what tasting him would bring.

Never. Never. Never. She’d never get that close to a Prime. To a soldier.

“I told you not to say . . . that word, Strahan.”

“Not exactly.”

“You knew what I meant.”

He stood, towering over her, and came very close. His size, the male heat and scent of him, his
arousal, all of it surrounded her. He was so very dangerous to her—so very attractive.

He put his hands on her shoulders. Warm, strong hands. “We can’t deny it.”

“We can ignore it,” she snapped back.

Even as she spoke, she fought the urge to press her body against his. Softness to hardness. Female to male. Memories of the dream swirled around her, burned through her. She was too tempted to make the dream real.

She pulled away from his touch and fell onto the bed when she turned around. “Totally undignified,” she grumbled as she rolled across the bed and got to her feet on the other side.

“As flouncing away in a huff goes, that was pretty pitiful,” he agreed.

She put her hand across her mouth to stifle her laughter, and he smiled with shared humor.

Strahan made her want to laugh, and that made him far more dangerous to her hard-held defenses than a typical Prime’s arrogant attempts at seduction.

“I can be arrogant,” he said.

“I know you can.”
But . . .

Just how closely were their thoughts already meshed together? This was only surface communication, right?

“We don’t want to be part of each other,” she told him.

“You should not make pronouncements concerning what other people want. That makes you arrogant.”

“Everyone knows I’m arrogant.” She put her hands on her hips. She considered tossing her hair back over her shoulder but thought that was probably a bit much. “You don’t want spoiled arrogance in a mate.”

He shrugged. “You can be tamed.”

This should have made her angry but sent a dark thrill of excitement through her instead. “Now, that’s a ploy no Prime has tried on me before.”

His hot look told her he wasn’t bragging. He wasn’t joking. There was no ploy to get her interest involved. If he wanted her interest, he’d take it.

“You have an army to run,” she pointed out. “You don’t have time or need for a bonding in your life.”

“There aren’t enough Dark Angels to call it an army,” he said. “It’s a defense force.”

“There are plenty who call it a mercenary band.”

Another shrug. “We accept financial donations upon occasion.”

“I am trying to make you angry and disgusted with me,” she said. “You are not helping.”

He crossed his arms over his wide chest and looked her up and down. She knew she had a great deal of thigh and leg showing, but the rest of her was modestly covered. The way he looked at her, she might as well have been naked.

“There you stand,” he said, “the most beautiful female in the world, and you think I’d let a couple of little things like fury and revulsion change my mind about wanting to bed you?”

“Silly me,” she muttered.

This conversation was going nowhere. It shouldn’t even have been happening. She could accept his wandering in and nodding off, and their psyches entwining in dreamland, without any rancor. She didn’t want to recall the erotic details of her own dream and didn’t want to know the details of his. It had happened. It was over. Better to pretend that no specifics had been shared.

He should not have uttered
that
word.

“It’s time for you to leave,” she told Strahan.

“Not yet.”

“Oh, for—!”

He was looming close to her in an instant. She hadn’t seen him move.
I’m a vampire too; I should have seen it!

She looked a long way up into those big
brown eyes. “You’re good, soldier,” she said, conceding.

She hated herself instantly for using the word. A hot knife twisted in Francesca’s heart. She used to call Patrick
soldier.
It was a betrayal of his memory—but this Prime
was
a soldier.

Damn.

He gently put a finger under her chin. His gaze searched hers. Curiosity probed her shielding. A gentle mental touch rather than a demanding probe, but she still didn’t like it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What hurts you so much?”

She jerked her head away from his touch. “I am Lady Francesca Reynard.” She spoke each word with icy precision. “
You
have no right to question
me.
”

This cut direct worked. She really hadn’t expected it to. Anger replaced his concern. His dark eyes went hard, and he took a step back. He drew himself up to his full, impressive height.

She still managed to look down her nose at him. It was a matter of attitude she’d had a lifetime to practice. Rank, pride of place, social superiority, the whole heavy history of their kind was her best armor. Ugly though it was.

“You aren’t Clan,” she reminded Tobias
Strahan. “You’re barely even Family. You’re the son of a Tribe stray taken in by the Strahan Family. You don’t even know who your mother is.”

She knew she was laying it on too thick, but she had to stop this Prime from getting through her defenses. She had to stop him from even
talking
about bonding with her. She desperately wanted him not to want it. Her.

Why?

Get out of my head!

What about out of your heart?

You
are not
in my heart. No one will be. Never again.

So that’s what hurts you. You don’t want me taking someone else’s place.

Damn!
He hadn’t been offended at her aristocratic sneering. He was a better actor than she was.

“Nothing fazes you, does it, Strahan?”

“I’m the father of a teenage girl. Everything fazes me—I’ve learned not to show it.”

He’d done it again, made her want to laugh! And no Prime bullshit about how he was fearless. He was melting her—she who could not be melted.

“Damn!” she spat.

“What?”

It’s gotten too warm in here for the ice princess
, she thought, and hoped to the moon goddess he didn’t pick up the thought.

The next thing she knew he was holding her in his arms. “It’s going to get a lot warmer,” he promised.

Tobias was prepared for a slap or her raking claws leaving a blood trail down his back, at the very least a fang-filled snarl. Instead, Flare put her arms around his neck and drew his head down into a passionate kiss, the heat he’d promised generated by her.

He pulled her closer, made the kiss deeper.

This was just what he had in mind. Needed.

His hands moved up under her T-shirt tracing the warm, smooth skin of her belly and waist . . . but he managed to pull away before touching her breasts. He was in complete agreement with her frustrated growl, but being in control of the first time they made love mattered to him. He pulled away from her embrace.

She stood still, breathing hard, with a stunned expression. Then disappointment flashed briefly across her face, hidden quickly by anger.

“What’s this about, Strahan?”

No Prime ever turned down a Clan female, and certainly not the legendary Flare Reynard.

“We do this on my terms,” he said. “For my reasons.”

“Terms?” she echoed. “Reasons? You already said you wanted to have sex with me. I decided that I wanted to have sex with you.”

“You still want me.”

“The impulse is fading.” Her spine stiffened with pride. Her head came up. She looked him over with an arrogant sneer. “I don’t know what I saw in you.”

“A momentary lapse in good taste?” he asked.

“No doubt.”

“Reaction to tonight’s incident with Jimmy?”

“What incident with—oh, the kiss.” Her smile was vicious. “Jealous?”

“Yes.”

He closed the distance between them and grabbed her shoulders. He read the urge to fight in her muscles and the effort it took her to calm the impulse. She stayed still and waited with feigned indifference.

“You’re used to Primes being jealous,” he told her. “You’re used to being fought over and you revel in causing conflict. That’s how females control the Primes.”

“Your male squabbles have nothing to do with me,” she answered. “The fact that your brains are in
your dicks has never been anything but trouble for vampire females.”

“I can’t afford any conflict among the Dark Angels’ Primes because of you. I’m marking you as mine, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Flare was outraged. “You motherless pig! I never want to have sex with a Prime—and now you are definitely at the bottom of the Dregs of the Universe list.”

His hands, his telepathic awareness, and all his other senses told him she was lying. Flare Reynard wanted him as much as ever. As much as he wanted her. He hoped her fury blocked out her awareness of his desire. He projected as much cold ruthlessness as he could.

“Doesn’t matter,” he told her.

She fought down a brief moment of fear. “Rape for the good of your cause? Even you wouldn’t get away with that.”

He smiled. “You’ll say yes. I guarantee it.”

When she started to laugh, Tobias forced a kiss on her.

She ground her claws into his back, but she didn’t try to escape his greedy mouth. It took every bit of discipline he had not to completely lose himself then and there. To touch was to drive each other to the brink of insatiable lust, no matter what either of them wanted.

He pushed her away, held her at arm’s length. Her
eyes glowed with heat. Her fangs were fully extended. He knew he mirrored her show of arousal. The scent of blood and the tightening of healing skin on his back rushed through him. He hungered to taste—

No blood!
Flare’s thought screamed into his head.
Absolutely no blood tasting!

Her denial of the most basic sharing angered the aroused vampire and pleased the pragmatic commander in him at the same time. He was glad she too fought to control her instincts.

No bonding
, Tobias thought back.

Neither of them wanted that.

The hell they didn’t, but they would both pretend they had a choice.

Instinct versus will. Could they do it? Should they try?

“For tonight, we’ll try,” he told her. “Never worry about what tomorrow will bring.”

Easy for you to say, soldier. Females have to worry about tomorrow.

Let me do the worrying for you. As far as sex goes
, he added just before the mental shout of outrage washed over him. The angry blast of thought disoriented him for a moment, but he grabbed Flare around the waist and swung her onto the bed as soon as his
senses cleared.

He grabbed cloth and relieved her of the Lakers T-shirt, leaving a few scratch marks from his claws on her perfect body. It was hard on his control to catch the aroused scent of her blood and totally fascinating to watch the thin lines of scarlet as they appeared, then healed.

Just as he’d planned, heightened arousal was her reaction to the brief pain. What a pity he couldn’t lick the blood marks from her yielding flesh as he had in the dream, he thought. He could only leave her wanting it, dreaming about how it would feel.

Strahan was trying to tame her and Francesca knew it. Every touch, thought, and word was aimed at controlling her. She didn’t like it, but she was loving it.

“Insane,” she muttered. “I’ve gone insane.”

Strahan grinned. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

For all that she despised the masculine beauty of Primes, she found herself delighted by Strahan’s. That lush full mouth, those huge brown eyes looking into her soul!

“Wonderful,” she breathed.

Damn.

He brushed damp hair from her temples and forehead. Dropped gentle kisses on her face. “I know. It’s not our fault we were born so beautiful.”