“Hunger?” The word was thick in my mouth.
I couldn’t feel my lips. Couldn’t feel anything but that raging fire inside me.
“You saved my life,” he growled, and dragged thick fingers through his short hair. “Back there. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I sucked in hard breaths, unable to understand what he was saying. “I feel…” I started, before the room tilted too far and the bright lights dulled…to darkness.
Strong hands caught me. Agony burned at his touch. But it wasn’t a normal kind of pain. It was unrelenting and bestial, making an animal of me as I was lifted. He crossed the room in three long strides before I jerked from his hold, and hit the bed. I moved fast, scrambling to the other side of the massive bed, and scanned the room. “Stay…stay the fuck away from me,” I warned, jerking my gaze to his once more.
Hard breaths punched me like blows as I searched for a way out of there. Something pinched and burned in my chest. I looked down at the sparkling green fragments that glittered like emeralds in my skin, and lifted my hand.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he warned.
But I touched them anyway. The burn moved deeper, sickness and frenzied desire drove deeper, making me close my eyes. “Hospital,” I mumbled. “I need a hospital.”
“And you’d be raped a hundred times by morning.”
I flinched as fear stabbed deep. Terror like that changes you. Makes you volatile…makes you weak. I opened my eyes to stare at him across the room.
“Easy.” He lifted his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I shivered with fever, and my knees trembled, making me double over and grip the corner of the mattress.
“How about I get you some water?”
“No,” I growled, and lifted my gaze, finding him through the sweatstained strands of my hair.
He watched me with careful eyes, taking in every tremble and cataloging every twitch.
“This is going to go a lot easier if you just give in.”
He stepped on the back of his boot, dragging it free before stepping out of the other. His socks were next, quick sweeps of his hand and he straightened, pulling off his shirt, then reaching for the button of his jeans.
“So, you’re going to rape me instead?” I forced out.
I knew the fucking deal. I was here…alone, all the way across the river. No backup…not even a call to dispatch. No one knew I was here. I was as good as dead.
“Rape you?” His hands fell from the waistband of his jeans. “I might be a fucking monster…but I’m no rapist. You’re sick, female…and you’re growing sicker by the second. There’s Fae magic in you now. I don’t know how long it’ll last for, but I’ve seen the effects of it without someone to protect you. Your scent will change…” his nostrils flared. “I can already taste it. Fervid, carnal. Irresistible to males…especially to males like me. I’m offering you a way out of this.”
He reached for the button of his jeans once more.
Brass slid through the denim.
The zipper slipped low.
“I’m offering myself here.” His nostrils flared, and something primal moved behind his eyes.
This fever had me by the throat now. Its fangs pressed against my skin, their honed points driving deeper as he pushed his jeans low, sliding them over his hips to reveal thick thighs and the biggest cock I’d ever seen in my life.
“You can use me. It’s just sex, isn’t that what you said?” A flicker of satisfaction curled the corner of his lips. “Have you ever been serviced?” he murmured, and stepped out of his jeans in all his animalistic glory. Silver shone in his eyes as he took one slow step forward. “I bet you haven’t. You’ve got that hunger inside you, an ache that Fae magic has taken over. It can’t create what wasn’t already there. How has it been for you, Special Agent? A few slobbery kisses, fumbling in the dark until the pathetic excuse for a male shoves it in? Did he pump ferociously, barely making you warm with hunger before he grunted and was done?”
My face burned. “You know nothing about my sex life.”
“You’re married to your job, aren’t you?” He licked his lips. I didn’t like the way he looked at me now…didn’t like it at all. “Leaves no room for a husband. I bet they don’t stick around long enough to warm the other side of the bed, do they? The ones you keep in secret…I bet they don’t stick around for long at all. You’ve never been fucked, Carina. Not the kind of fucking that owns your soul. Not the kind you can’t run away from. One damn taste and you’re a slave.”
“Owner of strip clubs and prostitutes, I bet you get all the fucking you can stand.”
An image blasted through my head. Him on his back, some random female riding that cock over and over. “I bet you don’t even know their names.”
He stopped, and that spark of excitement dulled in his eyes. “I don’t sleep with the girls. None of my men do. Period.”
I’ve seen the dancers he has here. High class models. The man would have to be blind not to want them.
Emeralds glinted and sparkled in my chest and down my side, casting that sickening green glow across the room.
“Not long now, Special Agent. Once that hits fully…there’s no turning back. I can either take care of you…or I can let you leave.”
I could smell the sickness wafting from my body. A dark, lush taste that wafted in the air. Heat moved between my thighs, making me shift my stance as I closed my legs tighter. The friction of my cargos making me whimper.
I wouldn’t even make the corner…I knew it in my bones.
They’d smell me…and there’s no way I could fight. Not like this.
Use me…his words rolled through my mind. It’s just sex.
I licked my lips and tried to find the words. “Shower. Got blood in my hair.”
White fangs flashed in the dim light as he smiled. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Still, I glanced at the darkened doorway. My heart was thundering, the cracks in the glass wall opening wider, leaving bigger fragments in their wake.
He crossed the room, switched on the bathroom light, and stepped inside. The hiss of the shower was so loud, it made me flinch. I wanted it, wanted to wash this shit off me…wanted to wash it all away. I shoved against the mattress and stumbled around the side of the bed.
He was waiting for me as I entered, leaning against the vanity, his rippled body like a god’s.
“Don’t stand there like that,” I bit.
“How would you like me?” He shoved forward, towering over me as I gripped the edge of the door. “You want me on my knees, Carina? I can do that…On my knees. You on your knees. I don’t give a fuck how this happens…as long as it happens.”
I nudged off my boots and reached behind me for the clasp of my bra before I stopped. His voice was deeper, guttural and strange. There was a beast in his eyes…and that beast watched every inch of me as I worked the metal hooks and let the garment fall.
That guttural growl mingled with the hiss of the shower.
The same sound that had filled the car.
“Careful, Wolf,” I cautioned. “Your fangs are showing.”