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“The Witch Oracle and the neo-pagans can bite me,” Curran said. “They’ll get over it. If anybody comes to challenge you, we’ll kick their ass. We’ll find a way to handle Roland. And if the Pack Council produces any kittens, we’ll give them to Jim to raise. He needs to mellow out anyway.”
I looked at him.
He took his hands off the wheel and held them apart about six inches. “Cute fluffy kittens. Just sitting on Jim’s lap.”
I pictured Jim with his badass-chief-of-security expression covered in small fluffy kittens. It was too much. The numbness inside me broke, like a dam. I giggled and laughed. Curran laughed, too.
“Cute kittens, meow-meow,” I managed. In my head, Jim held up his finger and sternly lectured a pack of kittens. Oh God. “He’d make them all hard-core.”
“He’d take them to the Wood to hunt deer,” Curran said between the bouts of laughter. “They’d . . . pounce.”
I would’ve doubled over if the seat belt had let me.
We were still laughing like two idiots when he pulled into a parking lot before a dark apartment building. The place looked familiar. Oh. This was my old apartment building. I had inherited an apartment from my guardian, Greg Feldman, and made it my own during the time I worked for the Order. But my aunt had gutted it. The last time I saw the place, it was completely destroyed.
“There’s nothing there,” I told him.
“Let’s go see anyway,” he said.
Why not?
I got out of the car. Surprisingly my legs held me. We went up the stairs together. A new door barred the access to my apartment. A mechanical combination door lock secured the door. A column of numbers, one through five, each with a button by it, waited above the lock.
“Four, four, one, two, three,” Curran said.
I pressed the buttons in order. The lock clicked. I swung the door open.
A clean, furnished apartment looked back at me. The floor in the hallway was wood. I could see a little bit of the kitchen through the doorway, backlit by feylanterns. New oak cabinets had replaced the broken wrecks of the old ones. I stepped inside. On the left, the living room, which I had used as a bedroom, stood perfectly intact. The walls had been repaired and painted in soothing blue-green. A queen-sized bed with a dark, soft comforter stood against the wall. Another feylantern hung above it. A plush beige rug lay on the floor. Across the room, by the window, a flat TV set was mounted on the wall, next to bookcases filled with books. Gray curtains matching the comforter framed the window. Outside the glass windows, steel and silver bars glowed weakly, reacting with magic and the light of the rising moon.
I moved through the living room and glanced into the small room that Greg had used as his bedroom and I had turned into a library. Bookcases lined the walls, waiting for books to be put in them.
“I know it’s not an exact duplicate,” Curran said, turning the valve on the radiator. He’d had a radiator installed. Wow. The super must’ve finally caved and fixed the damn boiler. “But I thought you might want to come back here one day.”
It wasn’t an exact duplicate. It looked like a brand-new apartment and that was so much better. Too many memories had been tied to the old one.
Curran strode through the room, coming closer. He moved with a kind of smooth contained power. His gray eyes focused on me. He looked at me as if I wore nothing.
We were alone. In an apartment. The door was locked.
I unbuckled the belt that kept Sarrat’s sheath on my back, slipped out of it, and put it on the night table.
He closed the distance between us. His arms closed around me, one across my back, the other pressing in on the curve just above my butt. He pulled me to him. My breasts brushed against his muscular chest, my legs bumped against his hard thighs, and the rigid length of him pressed against my stomach. I was caught in his arms. He had collected me and trapped me. His body caged me. I could barely move.
My survival instinct kicked in, screaming at me to escape. My eyes widened. My breath quickened, each rise of my chest pushing my nipples against him. My body tightened, as if before a fight, the muscles gathering themselves in anticipation. I breathed in his scent, familiar and tempting. It said Curran. Male. Sex. Lust flared inside me like a well-laid-out fire.
He stroked my ass, pressing me closer against him. A narrow predatory smile lit his face. He caught me. I was his and he was determined to enjoy every second. A tiny spark of instinctual alarm flared in me and mixed with an overwhelming need to have him, like spice adding a punch of heat to a dish. A needy warmth spread through me, turning into liquid heat between my legs.
“Mmm,” he said. “Kate Daniels, the great and powerful.”
I raised my chin. My voice was a challenge. “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?”
He grinned a crazy feral smile and kissed me. His mouth sealed on mine, his lips hot, capturing my breath. We connected and the pure exhilaration of that contact resonated through me in an electrifying rush. The dread of the claiming’s consequences and the memories of Mishmar that hung around me like a dark tattered shroud vanished, annihilated in a rush of lust, need, and love.
He buried his hand in my hair, pulling me closer. My body snapped to attention as if I had been asleep for ages and suddenly woke up. I loved the way he kissed me. I loved how he tasted. His tongue thrust into my mouth, possessing, seducing, enticing, pulling me in, deeper and deeper. I loved him so much. I loved him more than I could say. I locked my arms around him and kissed him back. I love you. I want you.
We broke apart. He made a low masculine noise, halfway between the happy half-growl of a predator catching his prey and the deep chuckle of a man confident he was about to get laid.
“I’ll tell you what you can do for me,” he growled. “Better, I’ll show you.”
My breath was coming in ragged gasps. My nipples tightened. I wanted him in me now. “Decided to do some claiming of your own?”
“Yes.” His eyes shone with gold. “Mine.”
He pounced on me, trapping me again, and kissed me. His hands roamed my body, caressing my back and my butt. It wasn’t a kiss; it was an assault. If I had put up any defenses, he would’ve demolished them, but I offered none. I just let him ravage my mouth and I reveled in it. He tasted male, hot, and eager. He tasted like Curran, my Curran. If someone threw a mountain between us now, he would rip right through it just to get to me and I loved it.
I slid my hand into his sweatpants, found the hard length of his cock, and ran my hand up and down its shaft.
