3. Chapter 3
3
I gasped awake at the sound of growling. My breaths came shallow and rapid, and my heart hammered, but the room was silent. Disturbed and disoriented, I looked around, surprised to discover I was in my bed. The rumble that had awakened me was merely a remnant from a nightmare.
Quite reassuring, except I couldn’t remember going to bed. Hadn’t I fallen asleep in the back of a car? With Bastian ?
Growling rumbled from the corner of my bedroom. My heart lurched into my throat, and panic froze my muscles.
Not a nightmare after all. Assassins from the House of the Sun. The shifters had found me, at last.
Breaking through the fear-induced paralysis, I sat up and scrambled backward on my bed.
A pair of yellow eyes glowed in the dense shadows in the corner, the rest of the shifter’s form concealed by the cloak of darkness. The assassin prowled forward, revealing a lithe cougar’s body, its tawny fur turned gray in the darkness. It leapt onto my bed, making the mattress dip.
I pressed myself back against the headboard and curled my legs as it stalked closer. “Please,” I whispered, holding my hands up to guard my face.
The cougar growled again, so close now that its hot breath blasted into my skin.
“I don’t know anything,” I wept. “I have no power. I’m not a threat. You don’t have to kill me.”
The shifter opened its mouth and struck. But before its long, sharp teeth could sink into my upraised forearms, something slammed into it, knocking it off the bed.
Two growling creatures wrestled on the floor beside my bed: one feline, the other wearing the form of a man dressed entirely in black. To move like that, faster than my eyes could track, it had to be an undead vampire. I had seen Javier move with such speed and strength. To my child’s mind, he had been invincible.
The pair grappling on the floor fell still, and for several heartbeats, I was uncertain who had prevailed—the shifter assassin or the mysterious vampire who had saved me.
But it was the man who groaned and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. The cougar remained unmoving. So, the undead had won.
I lowered my arms as my rescuer stood beside my bed, his chest rising and falling from the exertion of the fight. His eyes glowed silver in the darkness.
“My queen,” he said, his voice rough from the exertion. He bowed his head, but those luminous silver eyes remained locked on me.
I held out one hand to him, unable to stop myself. “Come here,” I said, my voice unexpectedly sultry. “I need you.”
A low, knowing laugh rumbled in his chest, and he eased down to sit on the edge of the bed, placing his hand in mine.
I pulled him closer, and he crawled onto the mattress. I parted my knees so he could position himself between my legs.
“Come here,” I repeated, raising my arms and sliding my hands over his shoulders. I drew him nearer still and traced my nose along the column of his throat. The subdued scent of his rich blood called to me.
His hands bracketed my waist and glided higher under my T-shirt to tease the underside of my breasts. His touch was pure pleasure, and our union would make me powerful.
An inferno blossomed in my core as I grazed my teeth over the pulsing line of his jugular vein. He tugged my sleep pants down, and I lifted my butt off the mattress so he could pull my pants and underwear lower. A moment later, I felt him, hot and hard, pressing into my slick entrance.
I shifted my hips and bit down on his neck at the same time. He thrust forward, filling me as my teeth broke through his skin and blood like the darkest, richest chocolate coated my tongue. I drank from him greedily, taking what I needed. His blood. His body. His life force. His power.
He was mine .