I feel everything.
She closed her eyes to try and rein in a shudder that nearly embarrassed her as her body returned to normal and flooded with the endorphins of a successful hunt. She focused on the safe heat of his body at her back and waited a few long minutes in silence while he shielded her from the outside world.
When she finally opened her eyes again, the dark street morphed and resettled. Her hands had returned to normal, the skin healed and no longer burning, a rush of relief and awe following.
She relished the steady beat of Kyan’s heart at her back. His arm around her stomach, keeping her upright.
‘Nicole?’ he asked gently.
Her eyes fluttered shut.
To have him here, close and calming her … She couldn’t help that her body pressed back into the protective cave of his, her hips and backside meeting the solid muscle of his thigh. His chest was already bent close but with her hips against his, he grew deadly still.
She knew he wouldn’t pull away, knew he fought the same urges. Because it wasn’t just the physical, it was the comfort of knowing she was safe with him. That on this dark night, on a hunt that had stolen her body from her, he would be at her back.
She didn’t want to admit it – how much that meant.
Like he knew, his fingers on her hip squeezed gently and that strong thigh flexed against her as he straightened slightly so she could settle right between his legs instead.
Right. There.
She stifled a moan against the damn wall, hearing nothing but his rough breath.
‘Nicole,’ he warned, his lips brushing her temple. The word was pained, as if he said it through his teeth. As if the proximity with their constant interruptions was flaying his control as much as it was hers.
She managed a nod, the hormones of the hunt and Kyan’s nearness having turned the world warm and dark as the skies in a Falero painting.
She tried to reel it in. Tried to stuff all thatfeelingback into her core, tearing it through her limbs until she was tingling with cold and simmering with frustration.
Just suppress it.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked, voice rough. ‘We can change the plan if you need time.’
‘No,’ she ground out, hands fisting against the wall, forcing herself away from him. The loss of the heat of his hands like two icy prints. She moved a few feet away, focusing on the moonlight on the tarmac: the brick walls rising high either side of them. On theplan. Not her body, and her desire to climb up into a hug with him, curl there, stay there.
They weren’t safe yet.
And safety was the priority.
So she turned, and the sight of him made the breath catch in her throat.
He was clad head-to-toe in tactical black. If she hadn’t felt his presence or heard his voice first, she might not have recognised him. But even standing in a moonlit alley, looking every inch the Wake’s immortal assassin, his eyes blazed dark with desire and something more.
‘Kyan,’ she whispered.
Kiss me when you catch me, she almost said.I need it. She needed something harder, something passionate, something with teeth that would match the loud urges and make her feel like this dark and aching desire wasn’t some kind of sinful thing.
His eyes glittered.
I’ll give you whatever you want, they told her.
That warm, gold feeling inside near burned her alive.
His words from Estwood returned to her. ‘I don’t want you to have to feel this need again, without me there to satisfy you.’
Then he dragged on the mask: a sleek balaclava to hide his features for the image they were going to have to paint.
Before he covered his mouth he stalked closer and bent, so all she saw were the lips that had talked her through the harried hours after her first transformation, and had vowed to her in an autumn wood that he’d keep her secrets.
