STORY EXCERPT

Whatever his motive, Gideon wanted him. Kahil knew damn well the werewolf felt the same connection to him that he felt with Calista. It was a powerful, magnetic attraction that had nearly brought Kahil to his knees back in Afghanistan when he’d first sensed the werewolf’s presence. He’d been on a mission with the SEALs, but he’d known Gideon and Michael were out there watching him. He’d also known he’d found his mate.

“Can I fix you a drink?” Gideon preceded him through the front door and straight into the parlor.

Kahil had been in the immense house before. It was a classy place and nothing like the small apartment he kept in town. He knew Gideon and Michael had built it themselves, electing to resurrect what had been known as the Delacroix Plantation during the Civil War, the time when Gideon and Michael had been changed into the vamp and wolf they were today.

His tennis shoes squeaked on the polished hardwood floor as he followed Gideon. Though the Delacroix brothers had added modern amenities to the house, they’d filled it with period furniture. His gaze dropped to Gideon’s booted feet as they carried him to the bar on the far end of the parlor and he slowly dragged his attention up. Leather pants molded the werewolf’s powerful legs like a second skin Kahil itched to peel from his flesh and delineated his tight ass with a perfection that tortured Kahil’s already throbbing cock.

“Are we alone?” He was pretty certain Michael, Andrew, and Chrystal were still back at the club. He figured that could be both good and bad. Gideon would be pissed when he finally realized who he’d brought home with him, but Kahil was prepared for that. In his current state of intoxication, such anger would likely snap Gideon’s control over his wolf. He’d shift and the threat would call upon Kahil’s beasts. It would test his feeble control over the worst of the strains of lycanthropy he possessed. As a lukoi, Kahil could control Gideon’s shifting, but only if he managed to rule the beast without allowing the monster to dominate him.

Gideon turned from the bar with two crystal glasses of whisky in his hands and a seductive smile full of promises and heated intentions on his lips. “We are.”

He moved across the parlor floor. Kahil’s heart hammered with each long stride that brought Gideon closer to him. The man was a true work of art. His ebony hair flowed in straight, satiny waves to his shoulders, framing a face with potent midnight blue eyes and a square chin and strong jaw that sported a day’s growth of stubble. He wore a solid black shirt that barely reached the waistband of his leather pants and clung to every muscle and sinew of his torso. But it was the way the leather lovingly hugged the man’s cock that made Kahil weak in the knees.

Gideon held out one of the glasses even as he sipped from the one he kept.

Kahil pulled off his gloves, tossed them onto the nearby coffee table, and took the glass.

“You can take the mask off now, too. There’s no need to keep up the Halloween masquerade here.”

“You may not want me to do that.” Kahil didn’t want to do it yet. The instant he took off the mask, everything about the night would change. He would’ve never gotten this close to Gideon and certainly wouldn’t have gotten his hands on the man if Gideon knew who he was coming on to. They might work for the same agency, but Gideon had always made a point of keeping as much distance as he could manage from Kahil. When he couldn’t pull off that distance, he caged himself behind a wall of derision Kahil had never been able to penetrate.

Gideon’s eyes flashed with amusement. “Why? Do your super hunk powers disappear when you take off the mask?”

“They might.”

Gideon threw his head back and laughed. “I doubt that, baby.” His gaze slid down Kahil’s body and his eyes filled with a predatory lust that had Kahil’s cock weeping. “You might be wearing a costume, but I can tell you’ve got one hell of a body. You can’t be hideous under that mask.” He closed the last bit of distance between them, pressing his body against Kahil’s, and hooked his free arm around Kahil’s waist. “You can’t drink with that mask on and, more importantly, I can’t kiss you with it in my way, either.”

Kahil couldn’t help himself. He tunneled his fingers in the hairs on the side of Gideon’s face and grazed his thumb lightly over the man’s cheek. Though Gideon had raised his shields against him, Kahil had kept his down. He didn’t have any armor in place to protect him. Power. Intense, otherworldly, animalistic power mixed with a dose of profound ecstasy that seeped into his palm at the touch.

“You’re sure you want to kiss me?” The desire surging through Kahil made his voice thick and husky.

Gideon’s hand fell to Kahil’s ass and he angled his lower body into Kahil’s, pressing his cock more firmly against his. “I’m sure I want to do a whole lot more than just kiss you, baby.”

Kahil eased his hand from Gideon’s face, immediately missing the sensation of touching the man skin-to-skin. “Hold this.” He gave Gideon his glass, needing both hands to pull off the helmet.

The gold of Gideon’s werewolf eyes started consuming the midnight blue the instant his gaze landed on Kahil’s face. Power thickened the air, overtaking the sexual chemistry of before, and turning it dark as Gideon’s anger rose.

Inside himself, Kahil called upon the lukoi and his power to prevent Gideon’s change even as he readied himself for a fight that might send one of them to their death.

ADULT EXCERPT

She jerked away from him and spun around, but kept her hands over her face. “I can’t have this conversation with you.”

Confused and needing her to look at him, Gideon reached for her, closing his fingers around her wrists and pulling her hands from her face. “Why not?”

She still didn’t look at him. Instead, she threw her head back and let out a growl that rivaled any wild beast. “Because what Kahil has seen in my head can’t be.” She lifted her head and finally met his gaze. Turmoil and a sadness he didn’t understand swirled in her eyes. “It was a fantasy. Just because I thought about it doesn’t mean I really want it.”

“You’ve fantasized about him, about being with him, about fucking him?” Yep, he’d apparently filled in the missing pieces correctly.

“Oh, don’t sound so disappointed. You were there, too, damn it.”

Well, okay then. That changed things quite a bit. “What was I doing?”

She made a disbelieving sound. “Oh, no. Hell, no! Sorry, but you’re getting the short end of the stick on this one. You couldn’t see it for yourself, and I’m damn sure not going to tell you.”

“Was I holding you?” Gideon hooked an arm around her waist and drew her against him, noting she resisted for only a moment before her body melted against his. Jesus, her body fit so perfectly against his. Her full breasts flattened against his chest, her nipples poking into his flesh like sharp darts of sheer temptation even through the material of his shirt she still wore. His cock was rigid between them, throbbing madly enough he wondered if she could feel it pulsing against her belly.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Kahil was holding me.”

Gideon felt a pang of disappointment at that. Surely she hadn’t fantasized about him merely standing by and watching while Kahil fucked her. Then a different possibility occurred to him that had him lifting a brow. “Was I touching you?”

She nodded hesitantly.

Bingo! Gideon wrapped both arms around her, easing one hand up her spine and letting the other hand slide down to palm her ass cheek. Her body arched into his, her lips parting on a soft sigh that sounded of equal parts torment and pleasure. “Where was I touching you?”

She shook her head again.

Gideon pulled his upper body back as he slid his hand from her spine to her side and then turned it as he inched it over to cover her breast. The heat of her flesh seared through his palm, nearly hot enough to catch the shirt on fire. “Is this where I was touching you?”

She quivered in his embrace, but didn’t answer. He gave her breast a gentle squeeze and then brushed the pad of his thumb over her nipple, delighting in the way it hardened even more. It became a solid, beaded point at the touch.

He toyed with her nipple for a moment and then released her breast. He fisted his fingers and dragged the backs of them down her abdomen and stomach, opening his fingers again and turning his hand over when he reached her pussy.

“Or is this where I was touching you?” he asked huskily.

Her eyes still closed, head fell back on her shoulders once more, but it was a soft moan rather than a growl that escaped her lips this time.

Gideon palmed her pussy through the material of the shirt and absorbed the heat of her feminine flesh. Needing to touch her, dying to feel her, he bunched the shirt in his hand and pulled it up until he could dip his hand beneath it. He marveled at the discovery that her cunt was cleanly shaven and silky smooth. Apparently, though Nikolas McLeod had been keeping her prisoner for more than two weeks, he’d taken care of his captive.

The idea of Nikolas, or any of his followers, taking care of her set Gideon’s blood boiling. He tempered the anger, wanting to ask her what had been done to her in the time she’d spent in the terrorist’s company, but not wishing to ruin the moment.

“Yes.” The whispered word sounded wrenched from her, as if she hadn’t wanted to say it, but had unwillingly allowed it to escape.

Gideon slipped a finger between her folds, finding her drenched, scorching, and ready. “Did I just touch you with my hand or something else, too?”

She swallowed visibly, drawing his attention to the slender column of her throat. He dipped his head and licked her sweet flesh, starting at her jaw and traveling down her neck, following the vein that pulsed in a wild, rapid staccato beneath his tongue.

“Something else, too.”

Gideon used his free hand to pull the shirt up and over her head, tossing it to the floor. It surprised him that she didn’t resist. He flattened that hand on the small of her back, holding her steady as he slowly sank in front of her.

“Was it my mouth, Calista?” He dragged his tongue down her chest, pausing at her breast to lick her nipple into his mouth.

She whimpered. “Yes.”

Smiling to himself, he closed his lips around the beaded point and flicked his tongue over the tip before moving on down her abdomen.

She made a sound of part protest and part plea as he continued to lick her flesh, painting a path with his tongue down her flat belly to the edge of her pussy. “Gideon, please. No.”

He would’ve stopped at that. It would’ve damn near killed him to let go of this woman right now when he’d barely gotten the sweetest sample of her delicious flesh and his taste buds were screaming for more, but he would’ve stopped. Meant for him or not, he wouldn’t force her. The hand she fisted in his hair and the way she used that hold to keep his head from withdrawing from her pussy made him continue despite her words.