A Hunger Like No Other (17 page)

“Earlier you said you've never killed, never drunk another. Did you mean you've never taken a man's neck even during sex? Accidentally bitten him, even in abandon?”

She exhaled, pinching her forehead, disappointed in him. She'd been almost
comfortable
around him this night, but here came the sexual questions, the innuendo. “Where did this come from?”

“Nothing to do while driving but think. Have you?”

“No, Lachlain. Happy? Never went dental with anybody's arm but your own.” When he immediately parted his lip for another question, she snapped, “Anybody's
anything.”

He relaxed a little in the seat. “Wanted to be sure.”

“Why?” she asked, exasperated.

“Like being your first.”

Was he for real? Was it possible he was asking these questions not to embarrass her, but because he was being a . . . a male?

“Does blood always make you react the way you did tonight—or was it taking from me that made you so wanton?”

Nope. Just to embarrass her. “Why is this important?”

“I want to know whether, if you were drinking blood from a glass—in front of others—you would behave as you did.”

“You just couldn't let me go a few hours without tormenting me?”

“No' tormenting you. I need to know.”

Emma was really beginning to hate speaking with him. Then she frowned. What was he getting at? When would she drink in front of others? She did at home, but that was from a mug or a margarita glass at a party. Not in a bed, partially undressed while a male licked her breast. Her heart sped up, anxiety erupting. Lachlain would never take her among his friends and family as she drank blood like wine, so why was he asking?

Was he making sordid plans that included her? She was struck once again by how little she truly knew about him. “I've heard about Lykae appetites and, uh, your openness with your sexuality”—she swallowed—“but I wouldn't want to be that way in front of others.”

He frowned at her briefly, then a muscle ticked in his cheek. Immediately she sensed his building anger. “I meant in a social situation where others drank. I would
never
even contemplate the other.”

She flushed. Now
her
mind was in the gutter, cruising past his mind's station there. “Lachlain, I'm no more affected than you would be from a glass of water.”

He met her eyes, giving her a look so primal it made her shiver. “Emma, I doona know what you've been doing in the past, but know that when I take a woman into my bed, I will never
share
her.”

“Y
ou doona seem to care that we had to stop tonight,” Lachlain said over his shoulder as he triple-checked the blankets he'd strung over the hotel window.

After midnight, the skies had opened up, rain pouring, making their journey slow going. He'd said Kinevane was perhaps two hours away. Emma had known dawn was in three.

She tilted her head, aware that he was deeply disappointed. “I was game to go on,” she reminded him. She had been, shocking herself. Emma didn't usually
que sera, sera
in matters solar.

After a final inspection of the blanket barrier, he allowed himself to sink down into the room's plush chair. In a bid to keep from staring at him, Emma sat on the edge of the bed, remote in hand, and began to scan the movie channels.

“You ken I would no' risk continuing.” When he'd said he wouldn't let her be burned again, Emma supposed he'd meant it.

Still, she didn't understand how he'd prevented himself from rolling the dice with this one drive tonight. If she had been kept away from her home for one hundred and fifty years and she was within two hours' driving distance, she would have dragged the unwitting vampire along.

Lachlain had refused, instead finding them an inn, not of the caliber they'd enjoyed, he said, but he'd “sensed it was secure.” He'd felt comfortable enough to get two adjoining rooms because he planned to sleep, and as he'd promised, he wouldn't do it around her. A quick calculation told her he'd gone nearly forty hours without.

Even so, he seemed uncomfortable having to divulge his need to sleep. In fact, it was only because his attention had wandered as he'd peered around them with narrowed eyes—which he'd been doing with increasing frequency—that he'd spoken of it. He'd absently admitted that he would have just gone without, but his injury was not healing as it should.

Injury, meaning his leg. The one that looked like a human's leg just after a six-
year
-long cast came off. The injury that she found herself thinking about, imagining scenarios for.

He had to have lost it. Her bite on his arm, which she'd caught him peering down at with an almost affectionate expression—an expression that she might prize even over a rare hug—was rapidly healing. Yet he continued to limp. He must be completely regenerating it.

She glanced up at him, realizing that as she'd been contemplating his leg, he'd clearly been doing the same to hers, staring at her thighs, getting that . . . that
wolfish
look in his eyes. She pinched the hem of her skirt, endeavoring to hop up and wiggle it down. His gaze was glued to her actions, a low, barely audible growl rumbling from him for long seconds. The sound made her shiver, irrationally made her want to exaggerate her movements so he'd enjoy them more.

When sane Emma blushed at her thoughts and tugged the corner of the cover over her, he gave her a brows-drawn expression of deep disappointment.

She looked away, picking up the remote once more as she cast about for a handle on this bizarre situation. She didn't need to be in a hotel room with this Lykae when both of them were lucid and when she was getting in the habit of falling asleep against his naked body in a bathtub each night. She cleared her throat and faced him. “I'm going to watch a movie. So I guess I'll see you at sunset.”

“You're kicking me out of your room?”

“That about sums it up.”

He shook his head—her desires ignored without even a thought. “I'll stay with you until dawn.”

“I like spending time by myself, and for the last three days, you've allowed me none. Would it kill you to leave the room?”

He appeared confused, as if her wanting to be away from him was sheer craziness. “You will no' share this . . . movie with me?”

The way he'd phrased his question almost made her grin.

“Then after, you could finally drink again.”

The urge to smile faded at his sexy, gravelly words, but she didn't look away, too fascinated by the heated way he studied her face.

He continued to ask her to drink, reinforcing her belief that he'd enjoyed it as much as she had. Though it had baffled her, she'd felt his erection—hard to miss, that—and had seen the desire in his eyes. Desire just like she saw right now . . . .

The moment was broken by the sound of some woman screaming her way to ecstasy. Emma gasped, and swung her head around to the TV. She'd been inadvertently pressing the remote and had somehow wound up on Cinemax. This late at night, Cinemax meant Skinemax.

Her face was hot with embarrassment as she frantically worked the remote, but even the regular channels seemed to delight in showing
Unfaithful
or
Eyes Wide Shut.
Finally, she landed on something without sex—

Oh, shite.
An American Werewolf in Paris.

In full gory attack scene.

Before she could change it, he shot to his feet. “Is this how . . . is this how humans see us?” He sounded aghast.

She thought about other werewolf movies—
Dog Soldiers, The Beast Within, The Howling,
the oh-so-subtly-titled
The Beast Must Die
—and nodded. He was going to see these things sooner or later and he would learn the truth. “Yes, they do.”

“Do they see all the Lore like this?”

“No, um, not really.”

“Why?”

She bit her lip. “Well, I've heard the Lykae never concern themselves with PR, while the vampires and the witches, for instance, throw money at it.”

“PR?”

“Public relations.”

“And this
PR
works for them?” he asked, still watching with a sickened look on his face.

“Let's put it this way—witches are viewed as
powerless
Wiccans. Vampires are seen as sexy . . .
myths.”

“My God,” he murmured, sinking onto the bed with a long exhalation.

His reaction was so strong, she wanted to delve. But delving meant being subject to the same. Just then, she didn't care. “So the werewolf appearance there . . . it was
all
wrong.”

He rubbed his bad leg, looking weary. “Damn it, Emma,
can you no' just ask me what I look like when I change?”

She tilted her head at him. His leg clearly hurt him, and she hated to see
anything
suffering. Apparently even crude and rude Lykae, because to take his mind from his pain, she asked, “So, Lachlain, what do you look like when you change?”

His expression was surprised, and then he seemed not to know how to answer. Finally, he said, “Have you ever seen a phantom mask a human?”

“Of course I have,” she answered. She did live in the most Lore-rich city in the world.

“You know how you can still see the human, but the phantom is clear, too? That's what it's like. You still see me, but you see something stronger, wilder, with me.”

She turned toward him on the bed, lay on her front, and bent her elbows to prop her chin up, ready to hear more.

When she waved him on, he leaned back against the headboard, stretching his long legs in front of him. “Ask me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Very well. Do you grow fangs?” When he nodded, she said, “And fur?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Christ, no.”

She had many befurred friends and took offense at his tone, but decided to let it go. “I know your eyes turn blue.”

He nodded. “And my body gets bigger, while the shape of my face changes, becomes more . . . lupine.”

She grimaced. “Snout?”

He actually chuckled at that. “No. No' like you're thinking.”

“Then it doesn't sound that different from you now.”

“But it is.” He grew serious. “We call it
saorachadh ainmhidh bho a cliabhan
 . . . letting the beast out of its cage.”

“Would it scare me?”

“Even older, powerful vampires cower.”

She bit her lip, contemplating all he'd said. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine him as anything other than
hot.

He ran a hand over his mouth. “It's getting late. Do you no' want to drink again before dawn?”

Embarrassed by how badly she wanted to, she shrugged and studied her finger tracing the bedcover's paisley design.

“We're both thinking about it. We both want to.”

She murmured, “I might, but I don't want what comes with it.”

“What if I vowed no' to touch you?”

“But what if . . .” She trailed off, her face heating. “What if I forget . . .
myself?”
If he kissed her and stroked her as he had before, she had no doubt she'd soon be begging for him to bend her over the bed, as he'd put it.

“It would no' matter because I'd put my hands on this cover and I would no' move them.”

She frowned at his hands, then nibbled her lip. “Put them behind your back.”

He clearly didn't like that. “I would put my hands”—he glanced around, then spread his arms over the top of the headboard, palms down—“here, and I would no' move them. No matter what occurs.”

“You promise?”

“Aye. I vow it.”

She could try to convince herself that mere hunger compelled her to walk on her knees over to him. But it was so much more than that. She needed to experience the sensuality of the act, the warmth, the taste of his skin beneath her tongue, the feel of his heartbeat speeding up as though she'd
pleasured
him by drawing greedily.

When she knelt before him, he leaned his head away, exposing his neck, beckoning her.

She saw he was already hard and grew nervous. “Hands stay put?”

“Aye.”

Unable to stop herself, she eased forward, took his shirt with her fists, and sank her fangs into his skin. Rich warmth and pleasure exploded within her, and she moaned against him. She felt his groan reverberating beneath her lips. When she almost toppled over from the rush of sensation, he bit out,
“Straddle . . . me.”

Never taking her lips away, she did, gladly, better able to relax and revel in the taste and feeling. Though he never removed his hands from the headboard, he thrust his hips up against her. Then, with another groan, he seemed to make an effort to stop.