Blood Lust (A Paranormal Romance: Preternaturals Book 1) Read online

Dayne shrugged. It was no longer his problem. Let someone else handle it. He wasn’t going to become a hero; they didn’t normally survive long.

  He climbed the stairs and found Greta’s abandoned bag beside the front door. Sorting through it, he found makeup, clothes, and a few tacky books with shirtless men and women with heaving breasts.

  He crossed back to the computer, loaded the web browser, and typed, “sacrifice,” “therian” into the search box. Several sites popped up, most about werecats. This breed liked their sacrifice.

  Dayne clicked the link that looked most helpful. The screen filled with morbid drawings of beautiful women, sometimes men, chained down to stone slabs, blood being drained from them into a type of moat around the altar as the others shifted into their animal form.

  The images showcased a type of twisted sadism that most reserved for those not of their kind. Further down the page were photographs. One in particular caught his attention.

  The woman’s hair was longer than Greta’s, but the same shiny dark brown. Otherwise, she resembled her enough that Dayne could almost see Greta on the slab instead. He scrolled the mouse over the arrow to leave the page.

  A warmth prickled over his senses. The kitty was still in the house. He should have been angry, but after the photos what he felt was relief that she was still safely ensconced in his well-warded fortress. Somewhere. Cats were experts at hiding. If not for his ability to sense magic, he might never have known.

  And now she was terrified of him. Had he worked the evil persona so strongly that he’d become so? He wasn’t all fluffy goodness and light, but he hadn’t thought he’d sunk to mustache-twirling levels of evil.

  He focused on the bookcase, causing one of the books to fly off the shelf into his hand. He flipped to the appropriate passage and whispered the incantation necessary to lock all the doors and windows, then he allowed the book to fly back to its place.

  He needed to get out and socialize more. Even ten years ago, Dayne never would have made a speech like the one he’d made in the basement about locking her up. It sounded like it had come out of Evil for Dummies. A less insane sorcerer would lock up the books he didn’t want her in, not lock her up. Or perhaps a sorcerer would lock her up.

  He started down the hallway, his footfalls light and measured.

  “Here, kitty kitty.”

  Chapter Four

  Greta huddled under Dayne’s bed, her fur pressed flat against the wall. She’d barely maintained her form in the basement. Now she was too keyed up to shift back and climb out the window. Footsteps thudded and stopped with heavy finality just outside the door.

  Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me. Her heart beat erratically in her tiny chest, in tempo to her silent pleas. She wondered if a cat could hyperventilate. If it had been Simon outside the door, he would have heard her panting and it would have been all over.

  She tried to stay focused on the plan. Of course, Dayne would return to his room. That was the point.

  He’d finally go to sleep and she could slip out and eat something, then keep out of sight until after the full moon.

  After all, what kind of idiot hides in the bedroom of the bad guy? It was probably a bad question given her current circumstances, but it had seemed halfway brilliant at the time she’d thought of it.

  She couldn’t be sure why she’d slammed the door earlier without first going through it, except that Dayne was her only hope.

  Without magic to cloak her, she was at the mercy of the tribe. And no one else in Cary Town was strong enough to counteract the magic of the few witches in the tribe’s employ. If Jaden thought Dayne was her only chance, then he was.

  The bed dipped above her and the bed springs creaked as Dayne laid back and sighed. “You can come out now. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Yeah right. She remained hidden, though she was sure he could use magic to bring her out. She couldn’t be that difficult to levitate at house cat weight.

  “Greta . . . ”

  The bed creaked again as his weight lifted, then his eyes were level with hers. He held out a hand. She hissed.

  “I’m not having a conversation like this,” he said, his voice sounding so reasonable she almost trusted him. “You have to come out eventually.”

  She wished she could ask him to back away so she could come out on her own, but her cat-shaped mouth wouldn’t form human words, and it seemed unlikely he was fluent in the subtle nuance of the meow. When she finally edged out, he picked her up.

  She reacted.

  “Ow!” Dayne howled, dropped her, and cradled his bleeding arm. “Fuck!”

  Greta scrambled onto the bed and burrowed underneath the pillow, her little black face poking out at him. Her eyes widened at the long, bright bloody trails she’d left. Didn’t Dayne know anything about cats? It wasn’t like she could shut that instinct off.

  She inched out from under the pillow, arched her back, and hissed. She expected to see anger in his eyes, instead she saw . . . guilt? She settled on top of the feather pillow and wrapped her tail around her as he disappeared into the bathroom.

  When he returned, his arm was bandaged. She could smell the hydrogen peroxide he’d used to disinfect the cuts as if he’d been wounded on a battlefield instead of getting a few cat scratches. Men could be such babies.

  “I don’t like blood,” he said.

  “Mrarr?” Greta cocked her head to the side. He’d taken her blood not an hour ago. He didn’t seem to have a problem then.

  “My own blood. I have no trouble with the blood of others.”

  Those calmly spoken words should have had her fleeing back under the bed to the safety she’d just left, but she remained frozen in place. She would have felt better if she could shift back to a form she could fight in. But she couldn’t, not with him there.

  “If I sit next to you, are you going to claw me again?”

  She shook her head, and Dayne settled beside her.

  “I apologize for my earlier behavior. I was nearly killed because of Jaden many years ago. So I have a hard time trusting Weres. Especially Weres from your tribe.”

  Greta growled.

  “Therians,” he corrected. “However, at this point I don’t believe you’re lying to me. Ordinarily I wouldn’t get involved, but you’re right. I need your blood. This is how it used to be done. None of this ordering blood off the Internet nonsense. Magic shouldn’t be so sanitary. It has no right to be.”

  He’d started absently stroking Greta’s fur, a soothing rhythmic motion from the tips of her ears to the end of her tail. It was causing an inappropriate response, and before she could stop herself, she’d shifted.

  ***

  Fur changed to soft flesh under his hand. Greta rolled onto her side, her legs curled into her, trying to cover her nudity. Warmth flared in Dayne’s stomach at the action. It was a strange and oddly endearing quirk for a Were. Usually they flaunted whatever they had to flaunt, in their skin or in their fur.

  “Could you go get me some clothes out of my bag? Please?”

  “Of course.”

  As he made his way down the hall, a visual came unbidden of those beautiful legs on his shoulders, and Greta moaning and writhing beneath him. He had to shake himself physically to loosen the thoughts from his mind.

  If she’d been a dog, no pun intended, he might not have had such a problem. His resolve with her would be melted way before the moon reached fullness. And if history was choosing to repeat itself, by the time he needed her blood he’d contract a full-blown case of stupid. Dayne retrieved a pair of faded blue jeans and a flimsy T-shirt that barely qualified as clothing.

  He returned and tossed them to her, then looked away. He heard her catch the garments and bit the inside of his cheek as he listened to the fabric slide over her skin.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He turned. Clothing did nothing to help the situation. The jeans hugged the curves of her hips too enticingly, and the shirt was cropped to reveal a small expanse o
f golden stomach. Without a bra, her nipples protruded through the thin pink material.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  “The gardens are warded as well,” Dayne said, searching for anything to say so he could stop looking at her nipples. His eyes darted up to catch hers as she nodded. Her cheeks were flushed. Who knew a werecat could blush? Jaden had been shameless.

  “Will you be sleeping in the guest room?”

  “Are you going to lock me up?” Her eyebrows rose in challenge as the pink faded from her cheeks.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not used to being around people. I’m sorry.”

  This was an understatement and a testament to how much the tiny creature unnerved him. Once he’d had time to think, he’d realized how extreme his threat to lock her up had been. All the dangerous books required extensive magical knowledge to decipher. It wasn’t as if she could cast a curse on him or destroy any of the wards he’d built.

  “We’re going to have to try to trust each other.” He watched her lips draw into a tight line at the hypocritical comment, but she nodded again.

  He wondered if she felt the room charge as he did. He wanted to shove the jeans past her hips and bend her over the bathroom counter. He wanted her in his bed.

  “I’m hungry,” Greta said, interrupting his fantasy.

  His hand, of its own accord, reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her face as she passed him. She flinched.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You’ve said that a lot today.”

  He didn’t know why he’d touched her. He had no right. There were no strong wizards or good witches she could go to in the city. She must have been very desperate and afraid to come to him, and he hadn’t done anything to put that fear to rest.

  He followed her down the narrow hallway. A picture on the wall of his uncle Arthur reflected oddly in the domed hallway lighting. The photograph showed Arthur with a disapproving look on his stern features. The camera had never captured him without that look, not once in his 443 years of life. Nevertheless, Dayne felt the old man stood in judgment of him now beyond the grave, seeing how far Dayne’s humanity had slipped in recent decades.

  Greta moved ahead of him with an animal grace, each step precise. It was difficult to understand how normal humans couldn’t sense what she was. Dayne could feel the magic pulsing off her, just as intoxicating as the last time he’d felt it thirty years before with Jaden.

  It called to him, begged him to take a taste of that raw natural power, that elusive something trained magic users just didn’t have. A sorcerer, witch, or wizard just knew how to manipulate the magic around them; shapeshifters were made of magic.

  He kept to the corners of the room, doing an old trick he’d learned in his apprenticeship days to make himself fade into the background. It wasn’t full invisibility, more like unobtrusiveness. He wasn’t sure of its effectiveness on a shapeshifter, but at least it would keep his presence from spooking her further.

  He had to restrain himself as Greta took the milk from the fridge and drank it straight from the carton. At first, the restraint was because she was no doubt spreading germs all over the container. Then it became about something else as he felt himself grow hard.

  A few drops of the creamy white liquid dribbled around the sides of the carton and down her chin and long neck. She arched back, and some of the milk dripped down to dampen her shirt.

  She moved on to a steak Dayne had planned to grill for dinner the next day. He couldn’t bring himself to protest as he watched her carefully unwrap the meat and make a show of eating it. A woman eating raw meat wasn’t generally a turn-on. It was the kind of thing seen in a traveling freak show, but somehow the werecat managed to make an act that emphasized bloody death into the most erotic teasing.

  When she finished, she dumped the empty meat tray in the garbage and stretched her arms languidly over her head. She paused by the door on her way out of the kitchen.

  “Goodnight, Dayne,” she practically purred.

  He shed the useless glamour. “Nice kitties don’t tease.”

  “I never said I was a nice kitty. Nice sorcerers don’t stalk.”

  “There are no nice sorcerers.”

  He frowned as the confidence slipped off her face like a mask. She turned and scurried off to the guest room without a backward glance, the spell she’d woven, broken.

  He didn’t know what kind of game she was playing, but he was disappointed to be the winner.

  Chapter Five

  Over the days that followed, a routine and tentative truce formed. Dayne stopped threatening Greta and tried to stop suspecting her of trying to destroy him. Mostly he suspected Jaden. He’d once allowed Jaden’s musical laughter and shapely ass to cause him to lose sight of everything he’d learned as a sorcerer, something he was in danger of doing again now with Greta.

  Jaden had been beneficial in her way. The slaughter in the tribe’s sacred space had ensured the reputation he now enjoyed. It was a reputation he’d cultivated and cared for like a garden full of delicate seedlings. The consolation prize for losing the girl.

  Overall, it had significantly reduced the hassle in his life. Now everything was “Yes, Mr. Wickham,” “No, Mr. Wickham,” “Please don’t kill me, Mr. Wickham.” That suited him fine.

  Whatever Jaden’s plan now, Greta at least believed she needed to be saved. And he needed blood. What was it they said about a gift horse?

  He’d made a trip to the grocery store, stocking enough to feed an army. Weres had quite the metabolism. She could pack it away, but where she put it all, he had no idea.

  It wasn’t just raw meat and milk she liked. She ate cooked meat and vegetables, if baked potatoes counted as a vegetable.

  He was certain the nutritional value of the average baked potato was so low they should have their own food group called “nutritionally deficient starches.”

  He could watch her eat raw meat with no trouble, but when she dug into a baked potato loaded with butter and sour cream, he got squeamish. She’d requested an unnatural amount of chocolate, popcorn, and ice cream, along with every werewolf film ever made. She’d insisted that if she was going to be stuck in the house, she needed entertainment.

  When Dayne questioned her, she’d said, “Hey, I don’t blame them for portraying the wolves that way. All the bad press is their fault.” Then she’d started on another tub of popcorn.

  The next day he’d caught her in the basement rolling some of his herbs in rolling paper and smoking them. Then he realized it was catnip.

  He’d wanted to be angry. He had a few spells he needed that for and the good stuff was expensive, but she’d rolled around on the stone floor giggling like a maniac. They’d had the briefest of moments when he was sure he could have gotten her into bed with no trouble, but he’d let the moment pass.

  That had been a mistake, Dayne thought now as he lounged in a wingback chair in the den. He did most of his guilty pleasure reading here, though there were books all over the house crammed onto every bookcase and stacked on most available surfaces.

  There were spell books, of course, but also books on science and history, as well as several books on gardening. He had an impressive garden encased in a stone wall. Climbing vines and roses created a magical effect over trellises, gates, and the garden wall itself. He’d spent many hours the past few days watching Greta in her cat form running around the garden chasing things.

  Then he’d grown hard as he’d watched her shift and sunbathe nude, still cursing the missed catnip opportunity. She must not have realized he had a window with a view. It was easy to lose track of the possible peepholes when the garden felt so remote from everything else. It had been designed that way, though he couldn’t have foretold the current benefit he was getting from it.

  The first time she’d sunbathed, he’d thought she was teasing him as she had with the milk and meat, but her manner was different. Unaffected. She was graceful and sultry as before, but there was an
innocence that had been missing from her earlier purposeful seduction, and one he had a hard time admitting turned him on even more than the show she’d put on to entice him. He still hadn’t managed to determine what that had been about. Greta wasn’t a seductress; it wasn’t her style.

  Something was off, he just couldn’t figure out what.

  He got up to check the window again. He was a dirty old man for peeping at her, though he couldn’t very well warn Greta of the window now. It would only embarrass her and create an uneasiness he didn’t want to see in her again.

  Satisfied with the rationalization and disappointed to find no naked Greta outside, he went back to his chair and horror novel. Three pages into chapter thirteen, he looked up startled to see her standing in the doorway with an odd glint in her eyes.

  He could hear her purring from his chair. She leaned with one arm over her head to support herself, her body so relaxed and loose it looked like liquid in suspended animation. Her eyes were dilated, her lips parted.

  Damn. Dayne knew this. Her lips were parted so she could breathe in the pheromones on the air around her. She was in heat. She’d found him by scent and she wasn’t going to be refused. Suddenly her erratic mood swings made sense.

  She slunk into the room, and it was then he noticed she was wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else. The shirt grazed the tops of her thighs. Her nipples formed points in the fabric, making her arousal evident, in the event he’d missed it before.

  She stalked him, and he couldn’t move. For the first time since they’d met, he was her prey.

  He’d been insane if he’d thought she was dangerous to him before, back when danger was a cute theory. She let out a soft, breathy sigh, and the book slipped from his hands to the floor. She bent beside the chair to pick it up, her ass raised delectably in the air. He sucked in a breath. Sweet mother of God, she wasn’t wearing panties.

  He ran a hand over her bare ass. Greta shivered and turned toward him, straightening with the grace of a preternatural dancer. He felt pinned to the chair by a force stronger than those he usually wielded as she arched back and peeled the shirt from her body, tossing it to the floor.