“Some salve. You’re pretty red. But I didn’t break any skin.”

  “Were you trying to break skin?”

  “I wasn’t trying to do anything. You pissed me off. I told you what would happen if you said this thing between us would end.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “And you said it anyway.”

  “I did.”

  Then he chuckles. “Princess, you and your thigh-high boots. Your ruby red lips. Your long and sexy legs. You like a little kink, don’t you?”

  I don’t dignify that with a response.

  “You wanted a spanking. You freaking wanted it. Well, you got it.”

  Again, I say nothing. Whatever he’s rubbing on me smells nice. Kind of like marigold and mint.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “Whatever you’re rubbing on my ass.”

  “It was in the bathroom.”

  “Are you going to tell me where we are?”

  “We’re in a standard hotel room in another resort. One I keep as a safehouse.”

  “Oh.” I look around. In the corner is a shelf filled with canned food and a few flashlights.

  “I keep it stocked,” he says. “We may be here for a while.”

  I turn then, roll over on my back, and wince at the pain in my ass. “No, we’re not going to be here for a while. You’re going to tell me all about those two vamps you killed, and then I have to leave. I have to go to give my father the information.”

  “I’m thinking about your safety,” Rogan says. “You’ve got a horde of demons and their king after you. I think your father will understand if you lie low.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I scoff. “My father has no love for me. I’m a tool for him, Rogan. That’s all.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that.”

  I scoff again. “How the hell would you know anything about it?”

  “Your father sent you to me for a reason,” he says. “How did he know?”

  Trust me. He’ll jump through all kinds of hoops to get to you.

  Those words. Those enigmatic words that turned out not to be quite so enigmatic.

  “I thought the same thing,” I say. “Somehow, my father knew we’d be drawn to each other.”

  “You’re my damned mate, princess. This goes way beyond being drawn to each other.”

  “How, though? How could a wolf be fated mates with a human-vampire hybrid?”

  “Hell if I know, princess.”

  “Can you at least tell me now? Tell me about those two vamps. Who they were, and who you were defending when you killed them?”

  He nods then. “Yes. I will tell you. It’s time.”

  33

  “They were brothers.” Rogan meets my gaze. “Your father seems to think I’m aligned with a demon. I’m not, princess. I have relationships with demons, those on my payroll, but I’m not in alliance with any of them. They—those two vamps—were in line with a demon. One demon specifically.”

  “Which one?”

  “One guess.”

  He doesn’t have to say the words. I already know.

  Richard Tomlinson, my stepfather. The demon king.

  “Now do you get it?” he asks.

  My ass throbs. But it’s a good throb. Good pain. Pain I needed.

  “Okay,” I say. “Anyone aligned with that evil bastard deserves what they get. But you still claim you were defending your pack when you killed them. Who in particular were you defending?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. It matters to me.”

  “Why? If those two rogue vamps were aligned with your stepfather, why do you care who I was defending?”

  “I don’t care about the two vamps,” I say. “What I care about is you, Rogan. I want to know why you killed them. I want to know how you got into a situation where you were defending your pack from those two.”

  “I will always defend my pack, princess. I will always have their backs. Every single one of them.”

  “Even those who aren’t worthy?”

  “Blood is forever.”

  His words stick inside me like flies trapped in a spiderweb. Blood. Fucking blood. I haven’t fed in a while, and I’m hungry. Starving.

  But I must stay in control.

  So I’m surprised when Rogan slides next to me, offers me his carotid. “Feed. You need it. I can tell.”

  How does he know me so well?

  The pulse in his neck beats rapidly, chanting to me.

  Take me. Take me. Take me.

  And I lunge, sinking my fangs into his hard and pulsating flesh, sucking the red nectar from his carotid, and sating myself.

  Dark chocolate, black raspberry, cinnamon, and clove.

  It tastes even more delicious than normal—this elixir, this nectar made in Rogan’s body.

  I feed, and I feed, and I feed…letting his blood slide down my throat, nourish me, comfort me.

  “Princess, that’s enough.”

  But I sink my teeth farther into him, and the blood flows into me, strengthens me.

  “Princess!” Rogan yanks away from me, blood trickling down his neck.

  Damn, the carotid! I scramble from the bed and lick his wounds closed. “Did I take too much?”

  “I’ll live.”

  I’m sorry. The words hover on the tip of my tongue, but they do not come forth.

  Hannah Bates doesn’t know those words.

  “I’ll be fine for a while now,” I say. “But I took a lot. You should rest.”

  “Well, then. It won’t hurt us to stay here for a little while.” He smirks at me.

  “Then you can finish telling me…”

  My head flops onto a pillow, and blackness descends.

  Princess.

  Princess.

  Princess!

  Something jars me out of my stupor.

  “Princess, wake up!”

  Rogan is shaking me, jostling me.

  “We have to leave.”

  “What?”

  “It’s your stepfather. He knows where we are.”

  His words jumble in my head. I need to get a grasp. Clear the haze. “How?”

  “I don’t fucking know. All I know is he’s been alerted to our whereabouts. We have to get out of here. Can you move?”

  “Yes. I have my strength. You gave me a lot of blood. I fell asleep, kind of like you do after a really good meal. Are you okay? I took a lot from you.”

  He touches the wound on his neck. “I’m fine. You’re my priority, princess.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “We’re going back to The London.”

  “You said that wasn’t safe.”

  “It’s not, but I have to make a choice, princess. You may be my priority, but I also have a responsibility to my pack. And right now, some of them are in danger.”

  “Can you finish telling me first? Who you were defending when you offed those vamps?”

  “This will be hard for you to grasp,” he says.

  “This is all hard for me to grasp, Rogan.”

  He nods. “I suppose I owe you the truth. I was defending…you.”

  34

  “Me?” I glare at him. “You said members of your pack.”

  “I didn’t know who you were at the time,” he says. “I was defending my mate, and at that time I figured she was a member of my pack. I just hadn’t found her yet.”

  No way. No freaking way. “So these vamps…”

  “Yes. They threatened my mate. They claimed they knew who she was, and that they would get to her before I would.”

  Rogan’s words make an eerie kind of sense, though I’m not sure why. Still, they ring true to me. Is my father involved in this? He seemed to know something about Rogan’s attraction toward me before we even began this investigation.

  Who were these vampires? And if they were aligned with my stepfather, who has he recruited to take their place?

  “Just the mere mention of my mate,” Rogan continues. “I couldn’t help myself. I killed them. But I didn’t cut out their hearts. You have to believe me.”

  “I do believe you. But Rogan, they didn’t harm me. It was only a threat.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We live by the laws of man, but within our own ranks, a threat against a mate isn’t tolerated.”

  “You realize you can go down for this,” I say.

  “I do. But I won’t. I won’t let it happen.”

  “How? Your bite marks are all over those two, and now you’ve admitted to doing the killing. How will you get out of this?”

  “Because this was the work of evil, princess. No one knows who a wolf’s mate is before the wolf himself. But somehow these vamps knew. I felt that they knew. And I felt their evil. There’s only one species out there that is evil for evil’s sake.”

  “Demons,” I say, more to myself than to Rogan.

  But that still doesn’t explain how Rogan plans to get out of this. Perhaps he knows something I don’t.

  I wasn’t raised in this world. I didn’t find out my true lineage until I was into my adulthood. Sure, demons are evil. Everyone knows that much. But there’s still so much I don’t know. If no one knows a mate before the wolf himself, how did my father…

  “You still killed the vampires,” I say. “I have to give this information to my father.”

  “I know that.”

  “But I don’t want to. I want to protect you as you’ve protected me.”

  “Your father doesn’t scare me, princess. Neither does your stepfather. The only thing that scares me is losing you.”

  Warmth coats my body. I almost feel as if I’m drinking from Rogan again. That amazing feeling of true completion—almost as good as an orgasm with him. Better than an orgasm with anyone else.

  Just hearing him say that he was scared of losing me…

  I like it. My whole body quivers.

  And I really don’t like how much I like it.

  I’m a loner. Have been all my life. I’m not ready to be part of someone else. Except that I am. Everything about Rogan calls to me—his blood, his body, his heart, his soul. I don’t understand, yet I do. It’s already in me. I’m already there.

  Rogan grabs me and kisses me hard.

  And again all that need and yearning torpedoes through my body.

  Then he lets me go almost as quickly. “I can taste my blood when I kiss you, princess. And I…”

  “What?”

  “It tastes…so wrong and yet so right at the same time.”

  I nod. Though I can’t imagine how his own blood tastes to him on my lips, I understand the feeling flowing through him. So wrong yet so right.

  I’m feeling the same thing.

  “I don’t have any explanation for it,” I tell him.

  “I’m not asking for one. There is no explanation. What makes a fated mate is beyond our limited comprehension. It’s not a physical level, a chemical level. It goes so far beyond any of that.”

  “I understand.” I pause a moment. “I mean… I don’t understand, but I do.”

  He nods. “I understand it because I know of these things. Even though they’ve become rare it does still happen. It just…”

  “Doesn’t happen with someone of another species,” I finish for him.

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “It seems as though neither of us has a choice in this matter,” I say.

  “Do you want to have a choice?”

  “Yes, I do. And at the same time…I don’t. You have to understand me, Rogan. I’m independent. I always have been. I don’t depend on anyone, and I don’t want to begin depending on anyone now.”

  “I get it.”

  “Do you? That was never something I had to concern myself with. At least I never thought I did.”

  “I get it now. I get why you insist on saying this will end between us.”

  He’s partially right and partially wrong, and he knows it. He knows I wanted that spanking.

  “It won’t end, princess. It will not end, and I don’t want it to.”

  Fire shoots through me, heating my entire body. I’m taut, like the strings of a violin, waiting for a musician’s bow to bring forth music from every part of me.

  “When do we go back to The London?” I finally ask.

  “After I make you mine. Again. And then again.” His lips come down on mine.

  I open for him. Return his kiss with passion and desire. I could kiss this man forever and never tire of his lips, his tongue, the little moans vibrating from his throat.

  In a flash, my mind empties of all thought except Rogan and our passion. Gone is the worry that he killed two of my kind on a mere threat. Gone is the concern that I’m kissing a killer, mated to a killer.

  Gone is everything… Everything except Rogan and me and this kiss.

  And just when I’m sure he’s going to throw me back on the bed⁠—

  A voice I don’t recognize…

  “Victor Rogan. And Hannah Bates. I’ll be fucking damned.”

  35

  I quickly roll the comforter around me to shield my nakedness.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Rogan demands.

  “Good question,” I add, eyeing the figure in the doorway, “and how the hell do you know who I am?”

  “I keep well aware of my alpha’s whereabouts.”

  Rogan grabs a sheet off the bed and covers himself. “This is Dominic Park, second in command of our pack.”

  Dominic Park is light where Victor is dark. Platinum blond hair and eyes so light blue they’re almost silver. He’s wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt.

  “That still doesn’t quite answer the question of how you know who I am.” I pull the comforter around me a little tighter.

  “I contacted Dom once I found out who you were,” Rogan says.

  “Why exactly?”

  “For your protection, princess. What do you think?”

  I cast my gaze at Dominic Park. He’s not quite as tall as Rogan, but his thighs are even more muscular if that’s even possible. I’m pretty sure the denim of his jeans could rip apart at any moment.

  “And you’ve done a hell of a job, Dominic. Not only was I abducted by demons, but it happened at your place of business and your alpha’s penthouse.”

  “You have my apologies,” Dominic says in his deep voice. Then he turns to Rogan. “I’ve been in touch with Delacourt. Everything’s fine at The London. We had to pay a few people off, but there isn’t any big fallout from the bomb scare.”

  I roll my eyes. “Right. The bomb scare.”

  “Her father’s been sniffing around,” Dominic says to Rogan.

  “Excuse me. I’m right here. You can’t miss me. I’m the naked woman on the bed.”

  Dominic turns to me. “Fine. Your father.”

  “My father has reason to sniff around,” I say, not quite believing that I’m standing up for him. “Rogan here offed two vamps.”

  “I’m well aware of that. I was with him when it happened.”

  “And have you found out what they were trying to get from my stepfather?” I ask.

  “Hannah.” Rogan shakes his head at me slightly.

  “Are you kidding me, Rogan? You’re shushing me?”

  “No, I’m not shushing you. But this is pack business.”

  “And as you so succinctly put it before, I’m now a member of your pack, am I not?”

  Rogan turns to Dominic. “She is, actually.”

  “How are we supposed to handle this?” Dominic says. “We’ve never had a non-wolf member of our pack. There are no rules for it.”

  “Yeah, I know. But this woman is my mate, Dom. In fact, I’m holding onto all my sanity right now just trying to keep from attacking you because you’re near her, and she’s naked.”

  “You know I won’t touch her, man.” He steps back.

  “Sure, I objectively know that. But the animal inside me doesn’t seem to trust you.”

  “How did you get in here anyway?” I demand.

  “Same way the two of you did.” Dominic holds up a key card.

  “You might have knocked,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my tone.

  “It’s all right, princess,” Rogan says. “He was following protocol. He had reason to believe you and I were in danger.”

  “I did,” Dominic says, “so I didn’t expect to find you getting ready to get down to business. I brought you both a change of clothes.” He sets the backpack he’s carrying onto one of the chairs in the room.

  Thank God. “Would you mind turning around, then, so I can put something on?”

  A sly smile curls onto Dominic’s mouth.

  “Turn around,” Rogan demands in a voice not quite his own.

  Dominic chuckles but turns around. “Never thought I’d see the day, Rogan.”

  A low growl vibrates from Rogan, but I do my best to ignore what it does to my body. Inside Dominic’s knapsack I find skinny jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of leather ankle boots. All my size exactly. The dude knows his stuff. I quickly dress and then toss the backpack to Rogan.

  “You can turn around now,” I say to Dominic.

  He faces me…and his lascivious gaze follows me from the top of my head to the pointy toes of my boots.

  Another growl from Rogan. “You’re playing with fire.”

  “Sorry, man. She’s hot.”

  And a fiercer growl. “I love you like a brother, Dom, but say another word about her or look at her that way again, and I’ll rip your damned heart out.”

  I cock my head.

  Rogan swore—he fucking swore—that he didn’t cut out the hearts of those vamps. But damn, it sure as hell sounds like he did. Sounds like he’s threatening to do to Dominic what he says he didn’t do to those vamps.

  My heart wants to take Rogan at his word, but my head is telling me something different entirely.

  Who am I supposed to trust here?

  Dominic says my father’s been sniffing around. Why? Isn’t that what he sent me to do?

  And Rogan… Rogan, who all but admitted he’s lying to me.

  I dart my gaze from Rogan to Dominic and back to Rogan again.

  And I realize…

  I have no fucking idea who to trust.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21