“Very ready,” Marissa said, her eyes on Lara.
“Leave us,” Jody said to Niki. “I’ll take care of her.” Niki hesitated, then reluctantly left.
“She’s so beautiful,” Marissa murmured when Jody led her to the bed.
Lara lay motionless, her chestnut hair contrasting sharply with her pale, gaunt face. Jody slid the sheet down and smoothed her hand over Lara’s chest to cradle her breast. Lara’s flesh was as flawless and smooth as ivory. A faint pulse, slow and distant, beat beneath her perfect breast.
Jody said to Marissa, “Take off your dress.” Wordlessly, her avid gaze on Lara’s face, Marissa complied. She dropped the garment carelessly on the end of the bed and sat beside Lara.
“Is she alive?” Marissa whispered.
“Yes.” Jody stroked Lara’s angular jaw, running her thumb over her full lower lip. “Lara. Lara, wake up.” Lara’s eyes snapped open and rolled wildly. She lurched upward, snarling, no sign of reason in her whiskey-gold eyes.
“Listen to me,” Jody said firmly, grasping Lara’s face in both hands, capturing Lara’s gaze with hers. “You will do as I say.” Lara writhed, struggling to break Jody’s grip. “Pain. Have to stop the pain.”
“I know.” Jody tightened her hold, her fingertips digging into the angle of Lara’s jaw, forcing her mouth open. Lara’s incisors slid from their sheaths and her eyes flickered like flames against a midnight sky.
“Marissa, touch her.”
Marissa pushed the sheet completely aside and stretched out next to Lara’s naked body. She caressed the arch of Lara’s hip and pressed a kiss to the inner curve of Lara’s breast. Sliding her thigh between Lara’s, she took a nipple into her mouth. Her eyes glazed as she sucked and stroked her, her hips undulating slowly.
Lara’s face was savage as she gripped Marissa’s hips, pulling her closer. Panting, she struggled to break Jody’s grip. “I want her.”
“Your hunger is her pleasure,” Jody whispered, slowly releasing Lara. “Take what you crave. Give her what she needs.” Marissa looked up at Lara, her face dazed with desire. “Please.” Lara stared into Marissa’s dark, eager eyes and then at the pounding pulse in her neck.
“I want you to taste me,” Marisa whispered, tilting her head to one side. “I want to feed you.”
Lara plunged her incisors into Marissa’s neck. Marissa cried out, her back bowing. Jody knelt beside them, caressing Lara as she fed in wild, savage gulps. Lara thrust her thigh between Marissa’s legs, her powerful hips churning.
“Oh, God, she’s so strong.” Marissa clutched Lara’s hand and pushed it into the cleft between her legs. “Touch me. Oh, please.” Growling, Lara rolled Marissa under her and straddled her thigh.
She buried her hand inside her and fed voraciously, her arm pumping in sync with the convulsive waves in her throat. Marissa clutched Lara’s back, her pelvis lifting and falling, faster and faster.
“I’m coming,” Marissa whimpered. “I’m coming.”
Lara’s hips spasmed and she released, burying her incisors even deeper.
Jody clamped her hand on the back of Lara’s neck and pulled her mouth away from Marissa’s neck. “Enough for now.”
“No,” Lara snapped, the bones in her face moving beneath her pale skin. Part Were, part Vampire. “I want her.”
“You’ve fed enough,” Jody insisted. “Feel her heartbeat—how fast, how thready. She can’t give more right now. Let her rest.” Lara struggled against Jody’s iron grip, rubbing her still erect clitoris over Marissa’s thigh. “Need more.”
“Let her take me,” Marissa pleaded to Jody. She licked Lara’s neck and caressed Lara’s breasts with trembling hands. “Please. God. She feels so good. I’m on fire.” She worked her hand lower. “She’s so swollen still. She needs me.”
“In a few minutes,” Jody repeated. Lara needed to learn to tolerate the hunger, control her bloodlust, or she would never be safe around a host. Lara growled threateningly. Her face contorted in fury.
“I want her now. ”
“Look at her,” Jody ordered. “She gave you life. You cannot take hers. Satisfy yourself another way.”
The wild hunger in Lara’s eyes retreated and she braced herself on her arms over Marissa’s shivering form. Gently, she licked the puncture marks on Marissa’s neck until they closed. “Will you let me taste you later?”
“Yes, oh yes,” Marissa cried, twisting her fingers in Lara’s hair.
“Oh God yes, yes.”
Lara moved lower, swirling her tongue over Marissa’s erect nipples until Marissa writhed. When Lara kissed her way down Marissa’s abdomen, Marissa reached fitfully for Jody.
“Kiss me,” Marissa begged, pulling Jody down with a hand behind her neck. “Your eyes are so hungry. Let me feed you.”
“Another day,” Jody whispered, kissing Marissa as Lara pressed her mouth between Marissa’s legs.
Marissa jolted and came in Lara’s mouth, crying out her pleasure against Jody’s throat. Bloodlust carving away her reason, Jody snarled and struggled not to bury her mouth in Marissa’s neck.
Before Marissa’s orgasm waned, Lara rocked to her knees and parted Marissa’s sex with one hand and her own with the other. Panting, she thrust her clitoris into Marissa’s center and pumped in short hard strokes.
“Oh my God.” Marissa bucked in Jody’s arms. “Oh God, she’s making me come again.”
Lara’s pelvis jerked and her face contorted in rage and pleasure.
Groaning, she fell onto Marissa and bit her shoulder. The bite plunged Marissa into another convulsive orgasm and Lara spent herself in a series of hard thrusts between Marissa’s legs.
“God, oh God,” Marissa murmured, stroking Lara’s damp hair.
“You’re amazing. Incredible.”
“I don’t know what I am,” Lara said bitterly, pushing herself up and off Marissa. Her eyes bleak, she stared at Jody. “I can feel you, like I feel the Alpha. What does that mean?”
“I turned you,” Jody said. “We’re connected.”
“Was I dead?”
“Does it matter? Now you’re a living Vampire.”
“No.” Lara pushed unsteadily to her feet. Naked, drenched in sweat and sex and blood, she said desperately, “I’m a centuri. I’m Pack.”
“Yes, you are.” Jody fixed on Lara, and Lara, moaning softly, swayed toward her. Jody kissed her. “You are also mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Moisture dripped into Drake’s eyes and she rubbed her face against her upper arm. Her blurry vision wasn’t from the sweat running into her eyes, but from the tears she barely held back.
The wounds in Sylvan’s chest and abdomen were like nothing she’d ever seen before. Far worse than Misha’s had been. Even the worst cases of gangrene had never been so completely destructive, so relentlessly nihilistic. The beautiful wolf was dying before her eyes.
“We have to get the rest of the silver out of her,” Drake said. “Now. We’re out of time.”
“I don’t know how,” Elena said desperately.
Drake and Elena had probed the wounds for an hour, trying to locate and remove the silver bullets that were poisoning Sylvan. They hadn’t been able to find a single one.
“The Alpha has always been the one to do this,” Sophia said from the head of the operating table where she monitored Sylvan’s vital signs. “Her fever is still climbing—I’ve never seen one so high. If we don’t do something, we’re going to lose her.” The leash Drake had kept on the beast inside of her snapped. Her wolf roared to life—part of her now, not some foreign being, but an intimate, integral part. Her very essence. And her wolf knew, just as she knew, as surely as she breathed, that Sylvan was hers, and she would not let her die.