Chapter 50 #3
Eric only gave a muffled grunt. A moment later, Will’s cheek slammed against the floor again.
“Fighting is pointless.”
Will’s thoughts raced. He no longer knew who he was speaking to. It sounded so much like Eric, even distorted by that strange maw and the fangs. But why did he still want to kill Will? Why would he not let him go?
Instead, Eric straddled his hips, and one great paw settled once more against the small of his back. A pleased growl vibrated through him, and Will caught a glimpse of the monster above him, watching its prey with satisfaction.
“What do you want from me?” Will tried to move his hands beneath himself again, but Eric pressed him mercilessly down.
“You. Will. You,” Eric growled. “Always. Since the moment I saw you on that damned train. Until then, my world—my promise—had been so simple.”
The promise to sacrifice himself for Elodie. To save her and this city. To become the Red Hand.
Will shivered, though fear of death and adrenaline still pulsed through his blood. How desperately he had wanted to hear those words. But not like this. Not pinned down and bleeding out.
“Then let me go.”
“Never.”
Again, Eric sank his teeth into Will’s shoulder, but this time into the uninjured one. Will cried out, but the monster did not stop. It only lowered itself farther over him, engulfing him, pressing against his helpless body, its hips against Will’s backside.
A shudder ran through him when he felt the hard length pulsing there.
And his treacherous, confused body responded.
Fire shot through his groin. Muscles tightened, clenching with unwanted, aching arousal.
Blood—blood he could hardly afford to lose—gathered in his erection as it rubbed against the hard floor beneath him.
“Eric, this is madness.”
“Are you refusing me?”
Gods, it sounded so much like Eric. That faint, mocking smile hidden in the words. That possessive claw closing around Will’s waist where his hipbone pressed against the parquet.
“Is it really you? Or is it the beast speaking?”
Eric drank only lazily now, but nothing about his posture or the sweep of his tongue had lost its hunger.
“Entirely me. I warned you about me. Warned you that only monsters dance here.”
As though to prove his point, he caught Will by the hair and pulled his head back. But his body betrayed him just as Will’s did, because his hips pressed instinctively against Will’s backside, letting him feel the full hard length of him.
Will gasped.
Blood ran from both bite wounds on his shoulders, his body trembling with tension, his scalp burning, but his awareness turned inward, toward every point of contact where wildfire caught and spread until his whole body seemed ablaze.
Because he had known. Eric had told him. Warned him. Mocked him for continuing to return. For thinking he could join a dance more dangerous than anything he could ever have imagined. His head spun, though that was probably the blood loss.
“Oh, pup,” Eric murmured and licked the blood from Will’s shoulder blade. “So na?ve. So willing.”
The monster’s paw moved lower until it closed around Will’s erection through the fabric of his trousers.
Will laughed breathlessly as still more blood rushed down into it. “Did you really have to lose control before you dared take me to bed?”
The answer was a roar that sounded nothing like a human voice. Eric released him and pulled back, and for one mad, deranged second, Will felt disappointed.
He looked over his shoulder at the man kneeling above him, breathing heavily.
The maw of a beast still deformed him, along with glowing red eyes, but the rest of Eric’s features had regained their usual elegance.
He was still larger and broader, but his posture was no longer that of a predator preparing to spring.
No.
He was human enough again to sweep his hair back from his forehead with a crooked smile far too wide for his face. Wet as it was, it settled almost into its usual style, with only a few strands hanging loose over his brow.
Will swallowed. Because even now, Eric was the most beautiful man he had ever seen.
Only slowly did Will’s survival instinct return, and he slid away from him. His fingers brushed the skirt of a carelessly discarded dress—velvet and pearls, he registered without meaning to.
“How much longer are you going to remain this hideous beast?” Will asked.
The corner of Eric’s mouth lifted into a devilish smile.
“Don’t you like my true face?”
Will raised an eyebrow, unsure whether he should take Eric at his word. “I do. It makes it easier to kick you.”
With that, he drew up one leg and drove it into Eric’s chest. In the same breath, he seized the dress and flung it into his face.
Without waiting for a reaction, Will sprinted away through the library, past Elodie’s bed and dressing table.
Behind him, Eric cursed and rose.
“Run!” Eric called. But something glittered in his eyes that Will could only call mischief. The gleam of a great cat playing with its prey. “Run, because when I catch you, I’ll destroy you.”