We pulled clothing with animal ferocity, tearing at them like they were burning us alive. I found his elastic waistband and released him, and he fell, heavy and hard, into my hand.
“Jesus, Fallon,” he said against my mouth, as I handled him well and thoroughly, his body fairly vibrating with pleasure. “I need to be inside you.”
He stripped me of the clothing that remained and stared down at me.
“Jeff?”
He held up a finger. “Un momento. I’m savoring this moment. Committing it to memory.” He slid the flat of his hand down the middle of my body, then lifted it again to cup my breast.
My body sang with pleasure, eyes drifting shut from the sensations that I’d imagined for so long, finally real.
His mouth clamped on mine again, and he pressed me down to the thick carpet beneath us, his arousal between our bodies, eager for action. With hands and fingers he teased and entreated, his kisses brutal. I dug fingers into his back, pulling him closer.
“Jeff. I need you.”
He growled, low in his throat, and without argument or delay, spread his body over mine and thrust powerfully. He made a noise that sounded like relief, but relief wasn’t on his mind, not for me.
Sweet and geeky Jeff, lover of games, knew how to move. Each nearly brutal motion rode the line between pain and pleasure as his mouth tortured mine. Our magicks rose again, keeping pace as pleasure swamped us, and exploding through the room when we cried out the other’s name.
It was twenty minutes before I could feel my legs again. I glanced at him beside me, smiled. “I’m not sure how we’re going to improve on this.”
He didn’t even pause. “I have several very specific ideas.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and had the sense he’d been saving that response for a very long time.
“Oh?” I turned to my side to face him, propping myself on an elbow. “And what ideas are those?”
“Costumes.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Princess Leia. Wonder Woman. Silk Spectre. Mystique. Hit Girl. So many options.”
“I’m not putting on a costume to satiate your prurient fantasies,” I said, lying back on the floor again.
And then I thought about who he was, and who I was, and our kind of romance. “But if you’re willing to play Bruce Wayne, I might reconsider.”
He was. So I did.
Read on for a special preview of
WILD THINGS
the Chicagoland Vampires novel
coming in February 2014!
Chapter One
Midnight Rider
Mid-February
Chicago, Illinois
Within the last ten months, I’d become a vampire, joined Chicago’s Cadogan House, and become its Sentinel. I’d learned how to wield a sword, how to bluff a monster, how to fall, and how to get back up.
Perhaps most of all, I’d learned about loyalty. And based on the magic that was pouring through the House’s first-floor hallway, I hadn’t been the only one who’d taken that particular quality to heart.
Dozens of Cadogan’s vampires stood in the hallway outside the office of our Master, Ethan Sullivan, waiting for a call, for a word, for a plan. We stood in our requisite Cadogan black with our katanas at our sides because Ethan—our Liege and my lover—was preparing to run.
“Out of one fire and right into another,” said the attractive blond vampire beside me. Lindsey was a member of Cadogan’s guard corps and a skilled and capable fighter, but tonight she looked, as usual, more like a fashionista than a century-old vampire guard. She’d left her suit jacket downstairs and had matched her satin-striped black tuxedo pants with a white button-down and four-inch stiletto heels.
“Do they actually think we’d just let them take him?” she asked. “That we’d let them arrest him—our Master—right there in front of the House?”
An hour ago, a Chicago Police Department detective—fortunately, one of our allies—had come calling, advising us that the city’s prosecutor had obtained a warrant for Ethan’s arrest.
Ethan had killed Harold Monmonth, a powerful vampire from Europe who’d murdered two human guards before turning his sword on us. Ethan had acted in obvious self-defense, but violence had recently rocked the Windy City. Its citizens were afraid, and its mayor, Diane Kowalcyzk, was looking for someone to blame. She’d apparently managed to bring the prosecutor to her side.
That’s why Ethan was sequestered in his office with Luc, the captain of Cadogan’s guards, and Malik, the House’s second in command, making a plan.
Detective Jacobs suggested Ethan seek refuge with the Breckenridges, a family of shape-shifters who lived in Loring Park, a suburb outside Chicago. That meant he’d also be outside the mayor’s jurisdiction. The Brecks were über-wealthy, well connected, and politically powerful. That was a powerful combination and enough, we hoped, to keep the mayor from using him as a sacrificial lamb.
Papa Breck, the family patriarch, was a friend of my father, Chicago real estate mogul Joshua Merit. I’d gone to school with some of the Breckenridge boys and had even dated one of them. But the Brecks had no love for vampires, which was part of the reason for the closed-door negotiations.
Ethan was the other reason. He was nearly four centuries old, and he had the stubbornness to match his age. Going gently into that good night wasn’t his style, but Luc and Malik wanted him safely away. It had been a long winter for the House—including Ethan’s premature demise and resurrection—and we didn’t need any more drama. We certainly didn’t trust Kowalcyzk and feared turning him over to a justice system that seemed to be rigged against us.
The door had been closed for an hour. Voices had been raised, and the disagreement between Ethan and his soldiers spilled tense magic into the hallway. That was my particular point of contention. I was Cadogan’s Sentinel, but I hadn’t been allowed in the office. The words “plausible deniability” had been thrown around—right before the door had been shut in my face.
“The mayor knew there’d be trouble,” I said. “The CPD already said Ethan acted in self-defense. And we just handed McKetrick to them on a silver platter. The city has absolutely nothing to complain about where we’re concerned.”
The detective’s warning had come only hours after we’d managed to prove McKetrick, the city’s now former supernatural liaison, was the source of the riots that had spread violence, destruction, and fire around the city. You’d think that would have put us in the mayor’s good graces. Alas, no.
“They won’t stay away forever,” I said. “Jacobs wouldn’t have warned us if he didn’t think they were serious. And that doesn’t give us many options. Ethan flees, or we have to fight.”
“Whatever their next move, the House will be ready,” Lindsey said. “We just have to scoot Ethan out of here.” She checked a delicate gold watch. “Not much time before sunrise. This is going to be close.”
“Papa Breck could still say no,” I pointed out, wrapping my arms around my knees. He and Ethan were different sups, but equally stubborn.
But Lindsey shook her head. “Not if he’s smart. Arresting a vampire for a bullshit reason isn’t far from arresting a shifter for a bullshit reason. If Papa Breck doesn’t take a stand now, he’ll put the Pack at risk. But if he does take a stand?” She clucked her tongue. “Then he wins, double or nothing. We’ll owe him a favor, and he’ll have stood up to Kowalcyzk. That reinforces his power, and it’s just—”
Before she could finish, the office door opened.