On The Prowl

Chapter 1

The moon was full and round in the sky, a perfect circle of illumination. It called to us, rose some restlessness within us. Sap rising is what they called it in trees. In humans, they called it spring fever. In the Monere – the children of the moon – it was simply the time for Basking, a time to call down the moon's rays and bathe yourself in the renewing light. Only Queens could call it down and share it with others. That was what I happened to be, a Monere Queen, albeit not the usual kind. Not only Monere blood flowed within my veins, although that predominated, three-quarters of it. The last remaining quarter, however, was human blood. I was what they called a Mixed Blood, the first one ever to be a Queen.

So much had changed in such a short while. Not long ago, I had been alone in a sea of humans, an ER nurse on the lonely island of Manhattan, crowded with people, only not mine. Now here I was in Louisiana, ruler of this territory, ruler of these people – more than four hundred Full Blood Monere constituents. Surrounded by my people. And yet still alone.

Moonlight silvered the room, large and empty. Gryphon's room, my Warrior Lord. The first man I had loved, the first lover I had lost. He was dead now, although not completely gone. He'd had enough psychic power to make the transition to demon dead. But he existed now in another realm, far from my immediate reach.

His scent still lingered along the pillow, on the clothes that hung yet in his closet. But it was faint, so faint now. Almost completely lost in the month I'd been gone when I had lost myself in my other shape, my tiger form, roaming the forest to escape my grief. Had I been purely human, I would not have smelled that last barely there musky fragrance that had been my love. It made me grateful then, in a sad way, for my far acuter Monere senses. But soon, acuter senses notwithstanding, that last whiff of him would be completely gone. He'd been beautiful, like a dark angel, a wicked cherub fallen from the sky, tumbled to earth. White, luminous skin, hair dark as midnight, eyes blue as a summer sky. Would his face soon blur in my memory's eye? Would that fade from me also with time, lost along with the hope of a living remembrance of him?

My hand spread across my stomach, my empty womb. I'd just finished my monthly flow, my red blood spilling down the toilet along with my hopes and dreams of a child from him. But it had been a faint hope, at best. The Monere are not a fertile people, and children are few and far among us.

"Milady."

I whirled to face the man standing in the doorway. Whereas Gryphon had been dark, this man was light, with hair as bright as sunshine, his eyes jade green instead of blue, his shoulders broader, his body more heavily muscled than Gryphon's lean, graceful physique. Whereas Gryphon had been beautiful, this man's features were too masculine, too bold for delicate beauty. He was handsome, strikingly so.

Like a Greek god of old. And he was more than just a pretty face. He was my new master of arms.

"Dontaine."

"Milady. It is almost time for Basking."

"Yes, I know. I feel the moon's call. Is it almost midnight?"

He nodded, his eyes falling to where my hand unconsciously rested low over my belly.

Face flushing, I dropped my hand away, embarrassed to be caught drifting like a ghost in my lover's empty room, mourning my empty womb.

I moved toward the door but he did not step away, allow me to pass. I stopped a mere foot away and looked askance at him. He seemed to be struggling for words. "Did you wish to say something to me, Dontaine?"

"Milady, I know you do not desire my touch, nor particularly my gift." He stopped abruptly, laughed harshly. "Speak truth... you abhor my gift." His gift was the rare ability to arrest his change halfway between man and wolf, his other shape. They called it a Half Form. I'd called it monstrous.

"Dontaine, what I said..." I spread my hands open helplessly. "It was said in the heat of emotions – "

"And after my touch made you lose control," he said deliberately, like one intentionally prodding a sore spot. His power affected me oddly when he was in his Half Form. If I touched him when he was in his half-shifted shape, it called forth my own beast – something that used to terrify me because my beast took me over completely then, but not any more. He'd been careful not to physically touch me since that first accidental triggering of my beast.

I reached out my hand, laid it over his forearm. To prove to both of us that, See, it won't hurt us. Only it backfired. I'd forgotten that his power, his normal power, affected me differently, too. It was like shocking little jolts of electricity danced upon my skin for a moment. Pleasurable in an odd kind of way, but with a hint of sharper, edgier pain if it continued longer. Dontaine didn't exactly flinch at the contact and the reaction, but his jaw tightened, and his face became granite hard. Gently, he stepped back, pulled away from my touch, stopping that odd dancing sensation across our skin. "I know you said that you would never sleep with me. Ever."

I flinched, hearing my words repeated back to me, verbatim. Words that had clearly been seared into his memory. And it hadn't even really been his fault. At the time, Gryphon, my lover, had been trying to throw me into Dontaine's bed so that I might acquire his rare Half Form ability. Another oddity of mine. When Monere men mated with a Queen, they usually gained some of her power, and if lucky, some of her gifts. It worked that way with me, too, but went the other way as well. I tended to gain some of the men's power and gifts, as well. I was like a sexual vampire sucking up gifts instead of blood.

"Forgive me," Dontaine said, seeing the expression on my face. "I did not wish to bring up painful memories for you, though I obviously did so in my clumsy attempt at explanation. What I am trying to say is that I come from a line that has proven fertile. Not just my sister and I. My mother Margaret had two brothers, and her father had a sibling as well. If you desire a child..." He stopped speaking and looked at me, his eyes pained by my rejection in the past, yet generous enough to offer this when he'd seen my need.

"Dontaine – "

"Please, before you rebuff me yet again, let me explain that what you feel will only grow stronger with time."

My eyes widened upon hearing this. "What do you mean?"

"Your yearning for a child. It comes to all Monere women of child-bearing age. An inbred instinct, a need that will grow even stronger with each passing year."

"Oh. I'd thought it simply part of my grief for Gryphon, not an in-built species propagation thing. Though I shouldn't be so surprised by it." Lots of other in-built goodies to ensure that our people spread wide and proliferated. It had worked, up to a point.

"I can give you a child," he said.

I looked at him, this extraordinarily proud and handsome man, humbling himself to offer me this tempting gift. But I could not take it. And he saw that answer on my face even before I spoke.

"Thank you," I said, my voice soft, husky. "It is a most generous offer, but – "

"But you still have another lover, Lord Amber."

"And Halcyon," I whispered.

"Ah, the Demon Prince, too." He was quiet for a moment, obviously searching his memory for when Halcyon and I could have come together. "When you helped him return to his realm," he finally said.

Actually, it had been right after we'd rescued him from Queen Louisa, the former ruler of this land. She'd been a little pissed at having to give up her territory to me. But I didn't bother to correct Dontaine's assumption. No need to get into the details of when and how it had happened. Just that it had.

"I understand, my Queen." He smiled ruefully. "You are young, the need for a child is not yet that strong, and your bed is not as empty as I thought." The light smile he'd forced upon his face dropped away. "But my offer will stand open to you..."

Indefinitely. For as long as I must wait, were the words he did not say. And that scared me. That offer, that yearning for me. I didn't want it or desire it. Too many men had been willing to wait for me – first Amber, then my Demon Prince – and still I did not know why. Why they desired me, a woman common in looks, less than average in build, and of mixed mongrel blood. Life was too short to have to wait for such a tenuous possibility, even among the long-lived Monere, whose lives could stretch three centuries long. But just because you could live that long, didn't mean you did. Look at Gryphon.

"Don't wait for me," I told Dontaine, looking up into that handsome patrician face. "You can have any woman you want. Go to them. Be with them instead."

His eyes lowered and he bowed and stepped back, face impassive, body held stiffly with sudden tension. As if I'd struck him a literal blow. "As my Queen commands," he said, his voice as blank as his face, both carefully wiped clean of all expression.

He turned to leave, and I had a horrible feeling that something was amiss. I almost let him leave. But my instincts were crying out that something was wrong, that his reaction was too strong just to be from my rebuff alone.

"Dontaine, wait please," I said, reluctantly prolonging the agony for both of us. "You said 'As my Queen commands.' You meant that as a formality, right?"

"I am not certain what you are asking, milady."

I struggled for the proper words. "You used that as a polite phrase, like the English would say, 'Long live the king.' Not as an actual command, right?"

"You mean," Dontaine said carefully, "that it wasn't? A command, that is?" He looked up, his green eyes lovely and unsure, an odd look to see in that usual arrogant face.

"Good God, no! Did you think it was?"

"Yes," he said to my shock.

"Oh," I said faintly. "Well, good thing I stopped you then. What... uh, exactly did you think I was telling you to do?"

"To go sleep with our unmarried women. Impregnate them."

Some of it was starting to make horrible sense to me. "Because you told me that you come from a fertile line."

He nodded.

"And you thought I'd use that information to increase our population." And the wealth of my territory. It wasn't just monetary income that counted as prosperity here. It was also in the number of women, usually far outnumbered by males. And in the rare female offspring, of which his line had proven capable of generating.

"You thought I was putting you out to stud," I said with shocked dismay, and had a sudden horrible thought. "Is that what your old Queen, Mona Louisa, did to you?"

"No. She wanted me for herself, even though no child came from our union." He smiled grimly. "Then it became a forked prong for her. She dared not put me out to stud then, as you called it, though it would have profited her to do so. If I proved fertile with other women, it would only prove her barrenness. But with you... you do not desire me in your bed. It would have made sense to use me elsewhere."

"Like putting out a stallion, or using a prize bull to service all the available female stock." I shook my head at the thought. "It's not as easy as that, surely. Handsome though you are, some women would have affections, desires elsewhere. Not every woman would have wanted or accepted you."

"It would not have mattered," he said simply. "If I had been ordered to service them, none of us would have had any choice in the matter."

"That's barbaric," I said, aghast.

"In the human value system you were raised up in, perhaps. But our women are brought up expecting no say in their choice of mates."

"You're kidding," I said. "Who decides then, their fathers?"

"No, our Queens. Access to a woman is usually granted as a reward to our Queen's most loyal men or for special feats of service, though some men are given bedding privileges if they come from a fertile line."

"God," I whispered. "And I thought it was just the men who had it bad here." Warriors who grew too powerful were usually killed by their Queens. "That's horrible," I said, "to have no say in whom you marry."

"I made no mention of marriage, milady. Very few are granted that privilege. Most unions decided by the Queen are temporary, lasting only several full moons. Only couples paired for breeding purposes are usually granted several seasons together to try and bear a child. Or, if one came from a proven richly fertile line, such as I, he would be designated to a group of women to lie with during that time, not just one."

I was appalled. "Is... is that what everyone is expecting me to do, to tell which men to go to which woman's bed?"

"Yes."

"Jesus Christ."

His eyes fixed upon me intently. "Do you not mean to follow that tradition?"

"Hell, no."

"Then what will you do?"

"Let them choose among themselves whom they would like to" – I flapped my hand – "sleep with, marry, whatever. As long as both parties desire it," I tacked on hastily. Best to make things crystal clear among these archaic people. "No raping allowed."

"A very liberal concept, milady," Dontaine murmured, his face and eyes inscrutable so that I did not know if he approved of the idea or not. But it didn't really matter if he did. That was what I was going to do.

"Please let everyone know this. That it is my wish for them to seek out their own lovers, spouses, their own happiness. God, I'd hate to be responsible for that."

"Freedom of choice, and happiness." He murmured it like it was something foreign to him. "A very human idea."

I gave a short laugh. "Well, no surprise there. I'm partly human." And I was clinging to my human ways quite fiercely.

"That applies to you, too," I said more quietly. "That's what I meant before. Go find a woman you like and be with her. But only if you wish to. It's the same thing I told my guards before we came here." And their surprise then should have given me a clue. I was still learning the ropes of being a Queen, of being Monere. And still finding some of those ropes hard and rough to grasp.

"As my Queen commands." He bowed and stepped back, allowing me to finally pass through the door. In the hallway, I unfurled my senses a little, and listened and heard nothing in the house, only a humming of slow heartbeats in the distance, out in the forest.

"They're all waiting for us," I said with surprise as I quickly wound my way down the spiral staircase, my long black skirt billowing up around me so that I no doubt looked like a balloon about to take off. Or a bloated black widow spider that had just sucked all the blood out of the poor male she'd mated with, I thought darkly. Black was what Queens were expected to wear, and for tonight, I humored them by wearing a long black formal gown and leaving my dark hair flowing loose down past my shoulders, though jeans, sneakers, and ponytail were more my usual style.

"Careful, milady. No need for haste, we are not late." Mild humor laced Dontaine's voice. "And even if we were, the ceremony cannot start without you."

True enough, but still I. walked quickly out into the night, Dontaine beside me, a tall guarding shadow. The wind blew cool and soothing across my restless skin, and the night welcomed us with dark embrace, folding us into its silent shadows as we stepped into the forest. The swish of my sweeping hem across the plants and foliage of the forest ground were the only sounds that marked our passage. Aha, I thought dryly, another reason why they wanted their women in long skirts, so they would be easier to keep track of... or chase down. A shiver prickled my skin at the phantom image of unwilling women fleeing, being pursued by warriors awarded rights to their bodies by their Queen.

Sometimes I wondered what I was doing here among these primitive people, in this strange, feudal society. I shivered as I felt the collective power of the gathering ahead of us thrum across my skin like a heavy blanket of awareness. So many of them.

Then I stepped into the clearing and saw him. One of the reasons why I was still here. My other Warrior Lord. A man, tall and majestic like a giant oak tree, powerful in body, rugged in face, blunt of features. As beautiful to me as my Gryphon had been. His sea blue eyes met mine and all others faded away. Oh, how I had missed him. His big body, his big heart, the love and devotion he bore me glimpsed naked in his eyes. Only in those huge arms did I feel safe, loved, protected. "Amber," I whispered.

"Mona Lisa." The low rumble of his voice came to me like a dark rough caress, stirring my body, speeding my heart.

A discreet jolting electric touch on my hand, there then suddenly gone, drew me back to my surroundings and the sea of waiting faces all turned to me. Oh yeah, Basking first. I swallowed, threw Dontaine a thankful glance for his reminding touch, and made my way to where my heart wanted me to go – toward Amber. He was surrounded by faces I did not know. A handful of them were young men from my Louisiana territory who had taken positions with Amber after it became clear they would not have any chance at my bed. Fresh virgin lads, too young to have acquired any threatening power, were usually favored by Queens for indulgent bed sport, picked up and tasted like new candy. She's different, was the rumor that had spread about me. She likes older men.

I smiled, thinking that the rumor was not without some merit. All my lovers had indeed been older, Halcyon more than six hundred years old. When the Queen avenue had been nixed, most of the young available men had eagerly elected to serve and train under a powerful Warrior Lord, a rare opportunity. All the previous guards in the western Missouri territory, more than twenty of them, had been slaughtered. Not by me, though I had taken a few lives. Or even by Blaec, Halcyon's father, though he had been the tool in sending them on to the final darkness. But by their Queen, who had ordered them to rush us and try to kill us, a suicide mission against the High Lord of Hell, whose very touch was death. So many wasted lives just to give Mona Louisa a chance to escape.

In the center of the clearing, to the left of Amber, were my own personal guards. Men who had sworn their service to me earlier, before this prosperous territory had even been awarded me; men who had risked their lives to protect mine. Aquila, a man not much taller than my own five foot eight, with brown waved hair. Neat and proper, with a crisp Vandyke beard, you'd never guess him to be a former outlaw rogue – one of those who had kidnapped me, in fact. Tomas, with soft brown eyes, wheat-colored hair, and a voice that spoke with the honeyed flow of the deep South. Both men were older, powerful warriors, one gone rogue, the other just about to before I had saved him from that fate.

Beside them stood a woman, massive of girth and height, towering a couple of inches taller than both my guards. Rosemary, my cook, my unofficial chatelaine who ran the monstrous mansion we now lived in, Belle Vista – a house that had its own name, can you imagine? She'd left her coveted position at High Court to follow me to whatever territory I might be assigned to because of her two children, Tersa and Jamie, Mixed Bloods like me. They were not here tonight. Neither was the other Mixed Blood among us, my brother, Thaddeus. And the most deadly, the most unwanted among my guards, Chami, my chameleon, my assassin, was also not present. He'd stayed behind to stand guard over Rosemary's two children and Thaddeus.

I stopped and took my place before them, Dontaine standing beside me with the rest of my guards. Ringing out behind them in a thick spreading throng was the rest of my people – so many faces and names I did not know. I blocked them out for now, blocked everybody out, and lifted my face up to the night, to our light, our source of power and life – the moon, full and beautiful in her round glory. It called to me, that distant planet, tugged at something within me, and I opened myself to her, loosened that something within me in welcome, in acceptance. Yes, I am your child. Bestow your blessings on me, and I will anoint the others in your stead as your vessel, Mother Moon.

A warm, thrumming power unfurled within me, was pulled from me outward, upward, like an invisible arrow reaching for the sky, reaching for the moon, and finding it. Like a soft sigh breathed down from the heavens, light began to shower down, glorious rays that illuminated the night and bathed me in its glow. Little butterflies of light darted within me, filling me anew with energy, with power. Filled me tight, so tightly within, until I overflowed and burst outward, spilling the light onto the others, spreading it to them in a glowing, flowing wave that undulated over them, then entered them, too, bowing their backs. Renewing them, filling them with life and energy and power. Sending us all aglow, incandescent creatures of the night. Children of the moon.

Basking. This was what made me Queen. This was what ran our society. A society that centered around its Queens because only they could call down the lunar rays each full moon, to renew us and to extend our lives. Without Basking, we aged as humans did. We died sooner.

The glow faded, dissipated, disappeared within us. My duty was done, and the people slowly dispersed into the night. "Don't go," I said, turning to Amber.

"No," he answered, his voice a soft, reassuring rumble in the night.

"The rest of your people?"

"Your people," he corrected me gently. "They will return back to Missouri."

"How?" I asked with a small smile. "Flying, crawling, loping?"

He returned the smile with one of his own, a slow curving of lips that stoked warmth within me. "By car. We parked in the woods by the eastern border, half a mile away."

"Stay with me tonight," I said softly.

His blue eyes deepened, darkened. "Yes." He glanced behind me to Dontaine and the rest of my men, and told them, "We'll be at the west cottage tonight. Keep everyone away."

"Yes, my lord," Dontaine replied.

I left, conscious only of the power and presence of the man at my side as he drew me deeper into the woods, darkness folding like a comforting shroud around us. The night breathed with life – the rustling of leaves blown by the wind, the hooting of an owl, the chirping of crickets in song, the swoop of wings, the splash of water in the distant bayou. So alive. Every sensation so sharp, every sound so clear. It felt as if I were coming back to life, emerging from deep hibernation. A painfully long one, away from my love. More than two long weeks since he had left me, though he had done so at my bidding.

Rule for me. Be safe for me. And return to me whenever you can. And he had.

"You haven't touched me," I whispered as we walked, so close, a hairbreadth away from each other, but without that final contact.

He turned his head, looked at me then, and my breath caught. His eyes burned that rich yellow-gold, the color of his beast. What he had been named for – Amber. The color of his eyes whenever he was moved with passion or power. Or both.

"If I touch you now, I will not stop." His voice was deep and dark and so rich in timbre that it vibrated the air. "And the cottage is yet a mile away."

"I don't want to wait," I said huskily, feeling my own eyes dilating, expanding, so that everything came to me even more sharply, clearer.

"You must," he said, and I blinked at the hard command, the quiet arrogance in those words. He was changing, my Amber. Becoming more confident, more... dominant.

I almost purred. "Must I?"

He slanted a look at me, eyes narrowed, a tiny smile lifting his lips. "Yes," he said deliberately, "you must."

Oooh. He wanted to play. Or rather, he wanted to dominate.

I licked my lips and his eyes followed the gesture, darkening. My clothes were suddenly too constricting, my skin too sensitive, my breasts too full, my nipples too peaked. I unzipped the dress and stepped out of it, leaving the discarded, hateful dress on the leaf-strewn ground, and kicked off my shoes. Cool air teased over my skin, wisped through the blush-colored lace of my bra, the triangle of my panties.

Now it was Amber's turn to catch his breath, to run his hot eyes over the unclothed paleness of my skin. For his nostrils to expand and inhale in the rich ready scent of my softening body. My turn to tease him by running a hand down my neck, between my breasts, and trail tantalizingly lower. "Are you sure?" I asked in a slow, languid drawl.

He growled. And I laughed.

In a blink, my laziness slipped away. "Catch me if you can," I challenged. With my eyes aglow, I leaped away.

And large predator that he was, dominant male that he was becoming, he gave chase.

I made him work for it, truly fight to get what he wanted – me. I ran like the hounds of hell were behind, chasing me. I ran like the wind. A blur of soundless speed that whipped the air with my passage. So fast that had a human seen us, he would not have seen anything, only sensed the stirring of movement through the rippling air currents left in our wake. And he was right behind me, as fast as I, his form bigger, stronger, even more powerful. He caught the heel of my foot, tumbled me to the ground. I rolled, went with the momentum, kicked out of his grasp, and bounded away again, my trailing laughter teasing him like a ghost.

I darted among the trees, under overhanging branches, deliberately using my greatest advantage, my smaller size, to my benefit. I glimpsed him to the left of me, running parallel, cutting his own course through the forest rather than follow my height-challenging one, and flashed him a glimpse of my white teeth before veering sharply to the right, leaping over a bushy shrub, then cutting right yet again. He put on a burst of speed and intercepted me. His large arms wrapped around me and brought me down, his big body like a safe cocoon around me as we rolled and rolled until we had safely stopped.

"I've caught you," he said in a gritty ramble, his voice rough, his yellow-gold eyes gleaming. "Now yield."

"No," I said. Grinning, I bucked him off me, leaped to my feet, and sprang away. But he was on me again, magically fast. He caught one of my wrists, mid-leap, and swung me against a thick tree trunk, my back pressing against smooth bark. He captured my other wrist, pinned them both above me. Heaving, straining with effort, I slowly pushed my hands away from the tree, lifting them away from the bark against his resistance... one inch... then two. Amber's eyes widened, expressing both our surprise. "You are getting stronger," he murmured, just before his head swooped down and he captured my lips.

I melted at the first taste of him, his dark sweet flavor like roasted chestnuts, and he pinned my arms once again above me. When he drew back, both our breaths were coming faster, mingling together in the cool air in frosty puffs. Taking advantage of my pliancy, he shifted his grip so that both my slender wrists were anchored firmly in just one broad hand. His other hand he placed like a victorious raider on my pale skin, sweeping it with low rumbling pleasure across the wings of my collarbones, up the lifted vulnerable undersides of my arm. Back down.

"Not fair," I gasped, that deliberate stroke up and then down tingling my skin. "You distracted me with that kiss."

"All's fair in love and war. Is that not one of your human sayings?" he asked, his breath puffing warmly against my ear as he hunched his big body over my smaller one, pinning my legs down with his great weight. I was surrounded by him, weakened by my desire for him, and not really wanting to escape. Captured, at his mercy. But with that brutally harsh face above me, hard with male excitement and purpose, he didn't look like he had any mercy. He looked so grim, male, implacable. Almost unrecognizable, like a stranger. And his power vibrated strongly against me with more than just his Monere self; the animal part of him thrummed so strongly there at the surface, so clearly that I could feel it, sense it. As if it was ready to burst out in a wash of fur and fluids with but the lightest touch, the slightest willing. He was clearly channeling the greater strength and hunger of his beast.

It shivered a feeling of apprehension in me. A feeling almost of fear as I looked up into that hard, hard face, with those inhuman alien eyes gleaming down with hungry harsh intent upon me.

I stilled, licked my lips, a nervous gesture this time. Swallowed. "You... uh, you're not going to eat me, are you?"

"Not yet," he growled. "My hunger for you is too great for such restraint this first time."

"Amber," I said almost desperately as his head dipped down, as I felt the brush of his lips and the alarming edge of his teeth stroke over the base of my neck where my pulse bounded suddenly like a desperate thing. As he lingered over it, fear and desire pumped my heart equally. A delicious combination, that edge of danger. But only if I knew there truly wasn't any.

"Amber," I said more sharply. He lifted his head, his nostrils flaring, his eyes dilating as he breathed in my fear-tanged arousal. "I mean as a meal. You don't see me as food, do you?"

He shook his head as if coming out of a daze. His eyes still looked cold, inhuman, but his voice, his voice was the Amber I knew and loved, warm with reassurance... and a bit of amusement. "No, love. I want to fuck you. Not eat you."

"Oh good." The tension left my body, leaving an almost painful, sagging relief in its wake.

His body shook. His breath hitched against my skin as he bent his head once more to my neck. "Amber." Alarm kicked in once more. Had I hurt his feelings?

His head remained lowered.

"Amber, you're not... crying, are you?"

"No," he choked, his breath huffing against me.

"Look at me."

He did. Mirth danced in his eyes, not tears.

"Beast," I said succinctly.

"Don't worry," he choked out, "not too much of one."

His body shook with the laughter he was trying to suppress. "Don't be mad, my love." But his words were ruined by the shaking merriment of his heaving body, and he suddenly lost the battle. A shout of laughter burst out. Then another, and another, until he was fairly howling with it, shaking against me not with lust but with hilarity.

Oh, the bastard! He was laughing at me!

My eyes narrowed in a look that would have alarmed him had he seen it. But he was too busy snorting away like a pig to see it.

Without a whiff of compunction, I brought my knee up, taking advantage of his inattention. Only his quick reflexes saved him. He twisted to the side and my knee struck his muscled thigh instead of his groin. But his grip on my wrists loosened with the maneuver and my hands were suddenly free.

"You can take your twisted humor and sleep with that," I snarled, shoving him off me with enough force to tumble him backward onto the ground, and took off.

The laughter stopped abruptly as he came after me, a dark and silent force. I ran this time with determination, with angry cunning. But still he caught me again, his hands catching my wrist. I turned, slashed at him, my nails leaving bloody red furrows down his forearm, and with a twist, was free once more. I ran south toward the house, toward Belle Vista and the rest of my men.

"No," Amber said harshly behind me as he realized my intent. "You are mine tonight."

"In your dreams," I muttered, darting left then right, evading his sudden snatch for me. I put on a burst of speed, but he was even faster.

He tackled me from behind, still gentle in bringing me down, but more determined. I cursed, twisted, and writhed, but in the blink of an eye he had me pinned against a tree again. This time, though, he lifted me so that my feet no longer touched the ground. Standing his full height, he leaned into me, my lower legs immobilized against the trunk by his.

His breath came faster from his effort, and humor was wiped clean from his face, I saw with some satisfaction. Harsh determination replaced it.

"Yield to me," he demanded.

"Not if your life depended on it," I snarled and tried to bite him. He levered his upper torso away from me, an odd smile on his lips.

"But it does," he said, his rough deep voice gentling. "My life does depend upon it. Upon you."

I shut my eyes but could not shut out his words, the caress of his voice. Anger still stirred within me but with less steam, cooled by his tender words.

"I live for you. I dream of you. I count the days until I can return to you. Do not deny me now, my lady, my Queen, my love. Mona Lisa." He breathed my name like a benediction, a vow. "Be mine again," he whispered, and the last of my anger melted away with his humble plea.

I looked into his bold, craggy face. So harsh, so dear. And suddenly realized I did not want to see this big man humbled, begging, as his former Queen had made him do. She had made him grovel in the dirt.

"Yield yourself to me, please," he whispered against my lips.

I smiled, and that smile drew him back a little, wary. "Make me," I said, my eyes gleaming challenge at him.

The white of his teeth flashed like pearls shining in darkness. He grinned like a pirate. "It shall be my pleasure to."

With a quick maneuver, he shifted both my wrists until they were held secure in just one powerful broad hand of his. An almost gentle tug and my bra snapped apart. A big calloused hand smoothed down low over my belly, then moved down even lower. His eyes had swirled back to blue, as tumultuous as the deep dark sea, and no less dangerous. Perhaps more so in its potent allure. Come into my depths, they beckoned, and how I yearned to do just that. Those sea blue eyes darkened as rough fingers whispered over delicate lace, the last barrier that covered me, as they passed over my sultry waiting heat. With a sharp rending tear that stopped my breath and wet me even more with its controlled violence, the lace covered me no longer. That marauding hand paused briefly in its gentle pillage, savoring me, cupping me tightly, then moving on down to my thighs, drawn tightly together.

"Open to me," he murmured, rubbing that calloused palm between my legs as if he could open them with the light stroking tease of his hand. Almost. Tempting. But not enough.

"Like I said..." My eyes grew sultry, the lids heavy like my waiting pulsing body. "Make me." And with a smile, I clenched my thighs even tighter together, capturing his hand between them in a firm squeeze.

His breath caught, his hand stilled. Then moved again. Less teasing, less tentative, more bold and commanding. A more purposeful search and find now, coming to rest just above my knees. His eyes holding mine, he slid his fingers in the tight barrier I had created and wrapped them around my right knee. With calm deliberation, he began to pry my legs apart. He growled, a warning rumble as I resisted him. I made him work for it. Made him earn it, sweat for it, only yielding that which he could take by brute overpowering force. When he had opened my legs enough, his knees slid between them, forcing them even farther apart, and he rested his weight full upon me. His thickness was wedged right against me, long, tight, and hard in the opening he had fought for. Almost home. Only problem, his pants were still on.

"You forgot to undress yourself," I said, my lips curving up in laughing feline delight as I saw the realization of his dilemma reach his rueful eyes.

"Will you make me work for it all over again if I step back and undress?" he asked.

I smirked. "You betcha."

He smiled in return, then moved so fast that I did not see it. Just heard the ripping tear as his lower body left me for one brief splinter of time. And then he surged back, and up, and into my body with one forceful plunge, pushing a startled cry from my throat as my inner muscles convulsed around his thick invading length.

He stilled, halfway in me, his great body shuddering. "Am I hurting you?"

"No," I gasped. "Oh, God." I wriggled, strained against him, but my hands were captured, held firmly by him, my body forced open by his, pinned by his body in the most primitive and effective way of all.

He filled my soft emptiness with his hard fullness. Crammingly so. He was a big man, everywhere. And his sudden invasion stretched me almost unbearably, caught me between the prongs of acute pain and acute pleasure, blurring the line between them.

"I am hurting you," he muttered and started to pull back, out of me.

I whimpered, cried out, "No!" and wrapped my legs around him, holding him to me.

"Are you sure?" he asked me fiercely, his cheekbones slashed red, his face as rock hard as how he felt within me.

"Yes."

His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared. "All right. Then take me. Take all of me." His free hand anchoring my hip, he heaved himself into me, pushing in his long thick length until he was buried in me so deep I thought he'd come out the other side.

I opened my mouth to scream. With pain, with pleasure. I wasn't exactly sure which. And he covered my mouth with his own. Swallowed my cry. Pushed his thick tongue into my mouth so that I was filled with him there too, held suspended by him, chained by his hands, his male hardness buried deep in my soft feminine sheath.

He took me as I had asked him to, challenged him to.

He pulled back out of me – both my inner sheath and my oral sheath – then pushed with slow, insistent deliberation back within me, stretching me, filling me abundantly simultaneously above and below. I mewed, sucked on his tongue, and echoed the action by tightening around him below, within.

His stomach muscles ridged so hard they felt like stone slabs against me, and he made a desperate sound against my lips as he ground himself even deeper inside me. Pulled out. Then another slow, deliberate, stretching push back into my tightness that had us both groaning, trembling. With the third stroke, it was as if the magical threshold of my body had suddenly been reached. It finally eased its almost unbearable tightness, loosened, became more receptive. And like a leash suddenly let go, Amber began a fast, almost furious rhythm, pistoning, pouring himself into me, his tongue stabbing me above as he stabbed me, pounded me, below. And I welcomed him, clung to him, wrapped my tongue and lips and body around him, and asked him for more with arcing body, sucking cheeks, hungry cries. As hungry to hold him, absorb him, become one with him, as he was to pour himself into me.

Our passion, our pleasure, lowered the barriers of our flesh. Called forth the lunar lightness that dwelt within us, so that our glow illuminated our skin and filled the night with building incandescence, growing brighter and brighter as I wound tighter and tighter. Until I finally crested and burst. And it was like the world trembled with my release. His climax followed a heartbeat after mine. Light streamed from us in almost bursting luminosity. Then faded gently away until darkness once more cloaked the night.

Chapter 2

I dreamed of flying, of floating in the air above, and the sweet scent of dead flesh below me, and woke up gasping, alone in my bed. Amber had left before dawn, gone back to his men, his people, safe and unaware of where I would travel that day. To High Court, the ruling seat of our people on this continent, set high and remote in the northern reaches of Minnesota, bordering Canada. They'd summoned me for questioning on Mona Louisa's death, the former Queen who'd ruled my Louisiana territory. The bitch who'd ripped Gryphon's heart out, literally, from his chest, killing him and a part of me. I'd killed her in return, although it was not truly I who killed her finally, though I'd done my best to. It had been Blaec, the High Lord of Hell.

The Council had waited for me. They'd had to, while I roamed the forest in my tiger form, in my separate tiger mind, until the day my human thoughts and feelings had finally filtered into my other self, and I could know and control that animal part of me, and realize that time had indeed eased my grief until it had become bearable.

A Queen had been killed – so had a Warrior Lord, but that was of secondary concern, I learned to my fury – and questions needed to be answered. I was going now to answer them. Up to a point.

The plane landed and we disembarked, Dontaine, Tomas, and I. I'd left all the others behind, those who needed protecting, the youngest among us – Jamie, Tersa, my brother, Thaddeus... him, especially, I did not want there – and the others to protect them... my ex-outlaw rogue, Aquila, and Chami, my deadly assassin. Left behind deliberately, also, was what remained of my heart – Amber, a powerful Warrior Lord, but even more vulnerable than the children. Queens feared him. Feared his bigness, his power, and the legacy his infamous father had left behind – Sandoor, who had raped his Queen and then faked both their deaths. San door, who had inconveniently returned to life and heaped even greater infamy upon himself when he had been discovered to have kept that Queen captive for over a decade, a Queen whom he'd had service his needs and that of his band of rogues. He was truly dead and gone now, killed by my hand. But his son was still paying for the father's sins. Amber would be looked upon with suspicion forever by other Queens, watched carefully by the High Court to see that he, too, did not turn rogue. Turn upon his Queen.

"Two men are not adequate enough to protect you," Dontaine repeated now, as he had many times before during the flight.

My answer remained unchanged as we disembarked and walked to a waiting gray van. "You and Tomas are enough. And I can protect myself."

"We should have brought Chami and Aquila, milady," Tomas said, speaking up for the first time. His southern twang softened his consonants, stretched out his vowels. Brown of hair, plain of face, as loyal and true as the sword he had sworn into my service, he was one of my trusted guards, an older warrior grown too powerful who had been cast out by his Queen and taken in by me. I smiled bittersweetly. Even plain and simple Tomas knew enough not to suggest Amber, the most powerful among us. And the most defenseless against the suspicions he would have faced at High Court.

"I needed them to watch after the others, see them safe," I said to Tomas.

"With all respect, milady," Tomas said in his soft drawl, "but your safety is the most crucial factor to ensure theirs."

"I will be fine, Tomas. I will be spending most of my time answering questions in the Council Hall. Having you two along is already luxury enough."

"A necessity, not a luxury, my Queen. And barely adequate," Dontaine muttered unhappily as we climbed into the van. "And my presence was only because they wished to question me as well."

True enough. He was one of the newest guards to my service, and the one I was least comfortable with. He'd challenged Amber for right to my bed, and I had agreed to take him into it when I saw that Amber was losing. Amber had ended up winning, unexpectedly. That knowledge and awareness of what might have been, that we could just as easily have been lovers by now, still sat heavily between us in all our dealings.

We traveled the next several miles from the airfield to the compound proper in silence. Then the woods fell abruptly away and we entered High Court, a pocket of civilization carved out among the otherwise untouched, pristine forests that surrounded it. A scattering of small buildings flanked and circled out from a tall, stately, three-storied manor house. Across from it, matching it in height and grandeur, was a domed stone building, the Council Hall where our ruling heads of state, so to speak, the High Council members, gathered.

An impeccably dressed little man, his black hair lined with silver, stood at the foot of the steps leading to the manor house, three footmen arrayed in attendance behind him. He opened the door of the van and assisted me out with a courtly bow.

"Thank you, Mathias," I said, greeting the steward of the Great House, as his small army of footmen fanned out and gathered up our bags and trunks.

"Welcome back, Queen Mona Lisa," Mathias said in formal greeting.

"I'd rather not have returned so quickly," I muttered in reply, and caught the flicker of a smile on the proper steward's face before he smoothed it away.

"It is always a pleasure to have you with us," he returned. Polite words, but he sounded as if he meant them. "The Council will see Warrior Dontaine first, as soon as you have settled into your quarters, and then you, milady, afterward. I've given you the south wing upstairs, the same as last time."

I nodded, grateful for his thoughtfulness, and followed our bags up the stairs and down the right hallway to a large, luxurious suite with two smaller bedrooms adjoining it. With murmured directions from Dontaine, our individual pieces of luggage were sorted out and set in the proper rooms, and the footmen discreetly filed out. With just the three of us, we each had a room to ourselves.

"If you will stay here until I return, my Queen," Dontaine said, his face grim. And though politely couched as a request, it was a clear order. I lifted my brows but had no desire or plans to wander elsewhere, so I simply said, "Sure."

After he left, I showered and changed into a fresh black gown. I had brought all three – all that I owned – with me. No jeans and T-shirts here.

I dried and brushed out my hair, leaving it loose in a dark spilling cloud down my back, and with Tomas glued to my side, ventured downstairs for something to eat, knowing they'd be awhile with Dontaine.

He returned an hour later, as we were finishing our meal.

"That wasn't long," I said, gesturing for him to sit down. Dontaine did so reluctantly.

"There wasn't really much to tell. Nor was it the important part." Meaning, he'd had no actual part in killing the Queen, what the Council was most interested in knowing about. "They will see you now."

I gestured a young footman over, although calling him young might have been inaccurate – all Monere under two hundred and fifty years of age looked young – and told him to bring out the plate of food I'd asked them to prepare for Dontaine. "They can wait five minutes. And" – I smiled – "you can talk fast while you eat. What did they ask you? And even more important, what did you tell them?"

Between gulps of red meat – they liked their meat raw – Dontaine spilled out the details of his testimony. Even with the talking, it didn't even take five minutes to wolf down the entire bloody steak. Part of it was he didn't want to keep the Council waiting long; the other part was that his appetite was back now that his part of it was over, and relatively painlessly so, by his accounting.

Downing the last gulp, he wiped his mouth with the napkin and stood. "If we may go now, milady."

I walked out into the night with my men flanking me, feeling like a prisoner heading for my execution, although that wasn't true. Or at least I hoped not. My greatest danger lay not with the Council, really, but with the secrets I held – and that I had to take great care not to reveal.

A multitude of guards, dressed in various colors according to the Queens they served, crowded the wide corridors of the Council Hall, some sitting, some standing, others milling around, chatting, all waiting. None of each court numbered less than six guards. The two sentries standing watch before the large double doors leading to the inner chamber dipped their head in greeting to me. "It is a private hearing, milady. Your guards must wait outside," one of the sentries said.

I'd kind of gotten that idea already. "Of course."

I walked alone into the high-domed chamber, the heavy doors closing silently behind me. A dozen of the Council seats were occupied, all women but for one man, Warrior Lord Thorane, the Council speaker. Other Queens were there – I felt their distinct irritating buzz against my skin – and over them, I felt the weightier presence of the Queen Mother. But it was a new odd sensation, the awareness of a presence that I should not have been aware of, that caused me to stumble, almost fall. Before I even saw the darker skin, I knew the demon was there. Because I felt him. And I should not have.

Demon dead are children of the moon who have died, but had enough psychic power to make the transition to that other realm. Their hearts did not beat, they did not breathe. Perfect predators, making no noise. Nothing to betray their presence. We barely felt them or sensed them, their presence no longer that sharp rush of attraction as with a Monere male or the comforting recognition with a Full Blood female or the buzzing abrasion with another Queen. We had only a muted awareness of their presence, so that we sensed them only when it was too late, when they were too close to us. Almost upon us.

When I lifted my eyes to the chair on the raised platform to my far right, I knew that the person sitting mere would be a flash of warm golden color among the sea of white Monere skin and have nails that were long, sharp, and pointed. All that was true, I found, as my eyes settled upon that suddenly vibrant presence. Not a pull, not a repulsion, but an almost thrilling awareness; like a burn that did not hurt, just tingle a bit. But with this demon, not only its skin was golden. And it was not a he. It was a she. Her hair waved long and thick about the delicate heart of her face, a striking metallic gold color against the duskier hue of her skin. She was incredibly beautiful and incredibly tiny. Not little, per se. Oh no, not that, with her voluptuous bosom straining the burgundy silk of her shirt, and the generous swell of her hips stretching the tight leather of her black pants. The only thing little about her was her height and her wasp-thin waist.

Lucinda, Prince Halcyon's sister. And her presence was a shock to me because I had been expecting to see her brother, my lover, Halcyon. Or his father, the High Lord of Hell.

"Lucinda," I whispered, and fell weakly to my knees, swaying suddenly not only with awareness but with another growing discomfort within me – something sharp, something painful, something like sharp talons ripping me apart inside, trying to be born, trying to get out. I gasped, clutching my belly. With my next breath, I screamed.

Raised voices sounded outside in the hall, and the double doors burst open, spilling in the sentries, and behind them, a sea of guards. Dontaine and Tomas were suddenly there, beside me.

"What is it, milady? What's wrong?" Dontaine demanded, pulling my hands away so he could see if I was injured. With the first touch of him, the little shocking electric jolts that came from contact with him, the pain eased and I gasped, almost cried in relief, sagging against him.

The room was a messy swell of noise and feeling, a collective sudden milling of presences that felt too powerful, too much to all be contained in the same room. Questions and demands were shouted. Then Warrior Lord Thorane was above me, looking down, his older face creased with worry. "Mona Lisa. What's wrong, milady?"

"I don't know," I said, as bewildered as he. "Something inside me just suddenly started to hurt."

That awareness flared over me again, even surrounded as I was with the presence of powerful men and the electric sensation of Dontaine's touch. It pulled me, called to me. I turned my head and, in the sea of encircling faces standing about me, unerringly locked upon that one darker face. I found her not because of her distinguishing color, but because! knew exactly where she stood. And the scratching and clawing inside me, that horrible ripping pain, started again. Shit. I doubled over and another scream was torn from my throat.

"What's wrong, what's wrong?" Tomas shouted, his strong hands trying to pull my hands away as Dontaine held me, huddled upon myself, writhing in his lap.

"Get me away," I whispered, so softly, almost no sound because I had no breath. If I had enough breath, I would have screamed again. But he heard me. They both did. Dontaine lifted me up in his arms and with Tomas's help pushed through the gathered crowd and made his way outside.

"Where?" Dontaine asked, his voice and body hard, while I was soft. Soft with relief against him as the pain lessened with each step he took away.

"The forest," I whispered, my voice hoarse from my screams or from my breathlessness. I wasn't sure.

He plunged into the thick woods. Wrapped in his electric touch, the night cool upon my skin and the soft rays of moonshine falling gently upon me, I felt immediately calmer, the restlessness within me stilling. Dontaine walked in silence, in quiet, and I lay in his arms in blessed painlessness as he took me deeper into the woods until we no longer sensed anything, heard anything, and the chaos of High Court was far away.

"Is this far enough?" Tomas asked.

At my nod, they stopped. "Can you stand?" Dontaine asked.

"Yes," I said, even though I wasn't entirely sure if I could. But my legs held me as Dontaine gently stood me on my feet.

"I never knew how wonderful it was simply not to hurt," I murmured in the quiet of night. The wind blew, rustling leaves in a gentle shuffle, an airy shimmer of sound, moonlight dappling our skin as it shone down through the thick forest of trees.

"What happened back there, milady?" Tomas demanded, his voice clipped and harder sounding, his usual soft drawl absent.

"I don't know."

"Do you not?" came a voice, soft and sultry. I felt her first before I saw her. Felt that tingling vibrant awareness, that sensing of demon dead.

She stepped out as if from the very shadows, a part of it, startling my men because they hadn't sensed her, spinning them around.

She stood far enough away so that I felt her but was not writhing yet in pain. Because I understood now that it was her presence that had caused it, triggering something to life within me, something that wanted to come out, even if it had to claw its way out of me.

"Do you sense me, young Mixed Blood Queen?" she asked, her beautiful face still and unsmiling, looking unreal, like a golden statue come to life.

"Yes," I answered in a quiet voice. "I sense you. How can that be? What have you done to me?"

She smiled then, a human expression that warmed her still perfection, brought it to life. Then she laughed, that touchable laugh, the one that stroked you like a living, tactile thing. We all shivered, my men and I.

"I? I have done nothing," Lucinda said. And though her voice was slow and languid like honeyed syrup, her eyes were hard and observant. "It is from what you have done to yourself."

I frowned. "Because I have been with Halcyon?"

She shook her head, causing her long metallic tresses to dance and shimmer about her face like a flow of hammered gold come suddenly to life.

"No. You could have taken him into your body a thousand times and it would never have caused you to sense him a fraction more. It is that other thing you have taken into your body – Mona Louisa."

My body chilled as her meaning became clear to me. And her words had been deliberate. She had called Mona Louisa a thing. And she had been. A Monere who had drank demon blood and become a little of both, breaking the demon dead's greatest taboo... the tasting of their blood. And for good reason. Because drinking that blood had made Mona Louisa strong, demon dead strong. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had killed her and slaughtered her entire retinue of guards to keep that demon secret. He'd let me live because he knew I would keep his secret in return for his keeping mine.

What was my secret? Mona Louisa had been strong enough to kill Gryphon, my first love, by literally ripping the heart out from his chest. She'd killed him, and I'd wanted to kill her in turn, but I had not been strong enough to do so. She'd fought me and was beating me. And in my anger, my despair, my desperation, I'd turned to the source of us all, our Mother Moon, and begged her vengeance, begged her for help.

Then I had done something I hadn't known was possible to do. I'd pulled the moonlight out from within Mona Louisa. When we Queens Basked, we pulled down the moon's rays, and they entered us, resided within us. I'd turned that power that all Queens had and used it upon another Queen: pulled the light out of her and into me. Sucked her power, her essence, her energy into me, drained her dry until she had been nothing but a wrinkled bag of shriveled skin holding together dried bones. Weak, helpless, but still living. I'd beheaded her, but she hadn't died because she had become more than Monere; she'd become part demon, and demons did not die even when beheaded. I could have chopped her into little pieces and she still would have existed. It had taken Blaec's touch to kill her. Make her finally cease to be. Only she hadn't, it seemed. Ceased to entirely be.

My mouth dried and my heart stuttered. And deep, deep within me, it was as if someone laughed. Screeched with glee. I fell to the ground, feeling weak, feeling horribly frightened. Feeling something move within me like the stretching of wings.

"The High Lord should have killed you," Lucinda said in a voice gone quiet, causing a reaction quite opposite from that tranquil sound. Tomas grabbed my hand, staying beside me. But Dontaine moved forward, toward Lucinda. His sword sang free as he pulled it from its sheath. "Leave us, demon," he demanded.

She smiled, standing there calm and serene, a head shorter than Dontaine but not at all frightened. "And if I don't, white knight, will you try and make me?" she purred.

He didn't answer her, just came at her, sword drawn.

"No," I said, but my voice came out weak and thready instead of the harsh command I had intended. Beside me, moonlight from Tomas' sword reflected into my eyes. He'd drawn his weapon too, quietly, less flashy. Just there suddenly in his hand.

"You've drawn your blades. I shall have to draw mine," Lucinda said, the sultry flow of her voice flavored with two things you usually did not hear when a man advanced upon you with a naked sword shining sharp and bright in his hand... amusement and eagerness. And it was the latter that scared me most.

A shimmer of power, a darker, more subtler force, and the sharp fingernails of her left hand extended, grew four inches long. Thick, wide, and curving. Became deadly claws like five sharp knives suddenly growing from her hand. "It's not always length that matters most," she said, luscious lips curving, eyes laughing, like a sex kitten about to seriously play.

She sprang. Only you couldn't see her move. She was just suddenly no longer there but behind Dontaine, like a wind blown past him. Something he felt but could not see, she moved so fast. Beside me, Tomas sucked in a shocked breath. Nothing stirred for a moment, then a blonde lock of Dontaine's hair, sliced free, floated lightly down to the ground like a dying leaf parted from a tree.

Lucinda laughed at what she saw on Dontaine's face as he swung about to face her. "Still want to play?" she asked, her dark brown eyes sparkling like hot chocolate, eager to melt, eager to burn.

Dontaine growled. Literally growled, a deep warning animal rumble that sounded odd coining from a human throat. Then he moved, with Monere quickness, a fast blur. But still motion you see. He struck at her but she was no longer there, like a ghost suddenly vanishing to reappear yards away, closer to me, closer to Tomas.

Tomas gave no warning, like the sword he had drawn. He simply rushed to attack her, to fend off the threat he perceived to me. Both my men rushed her from opposite sides, coming together in a blur of motion. And Lucinda stood there, a calm little demon, until they were almost upon her, a fierce light in her eyes, a little smile curling her lips. And then she moved. They all moved. With sound and motion and grunts and thuds as they fought fiercely. As Dontaine went tumbling head over heels, tossed away like a stick playfully thrown for a dog to fetch. As Tomas slammed hard to the ground, Lucinda kneeling on his chest, looking too tiny to have done what she had done – overpower two strong warriors.

Looking like a kitten who had the claws of a monstrous tiger, the sharp points of her left hand were buried like nails through Tomas's wrist, pinning his hand and the sword he still held to the ground in a brutal, effective manner. But his other hand was free and had drawn a hidden dagger.

"Not fair odds." Lucinda tsk-tsked. "Too little men to challenge me. But then I never claimed to be fair." She drew back to strike, to move.

"Don't!" My voice rang out in a hoarse croak. And Tomas's dagger froze in its striking drive, not because of my command, but because Lucinda's tiny hand gripped his. "Don't... hurt," I gasped.

"Don't hurt whom? Him or me?" Lucinda asked, both menace and amusement in her voice.

"Both," I whispered. "Both." I tried to stand, to move toward them, but that other thing within me fluttered, stirred in protest. No, it screamed. Not closer. Away. Away from the danger, not to it! I fought to stand and lost the battle, unable to. But you didn't need to stand to move. I started crawling toward them, on hands and knees, my whole body trembling, shaking, resisting, as I dragged myself closer.

"Halcyon's sister. No, Dontaine," I rasped as I sensed movement behind her. I blinked the sheen of pain-driven tears from my eyes – odd that fear dried your mouth, but pain moistened your eyes – and as my vision cleared, I saw Dontaine frozen like a literal statue behind the dainty golden demon, his sword angled for a downward thrust into her back, held unnaturally poised on the brink of that violence. And I knew it was not from obedience to my command – I would have been too late – but from the invisible power of her will. Her psychic powers were what held him immobile, a frozen prisoner in the tendrils of her invisible force. She didn't need physical touch to stop him. It was not just their physical strength that made demons greatly feared.

She stood, pulled her claws casually from the ground, from Tomas's pierced wrist as his face writhed with silent agony. With a thought, she held him immobile, too. A shimmer of that dark shadowy power, and that hideous claw shrank back down to just pointy nails. She licked each bloody tip, slowly sucking each digit clean, savoring it; her cheeks hollowed with each sucking pull, her lips pursing around her fingers like a puckered kiss, making the motions dangerously sensual. The flash of ivory fangs I glimpsed made her just plain dangerous. She swayed her way to me slowly, seductively, like death come to play.

She crouched down before me, looked into my eyes, those sharp nails freshly cleaned of Tomas's blood inches from my face. Curiosity was in those dark, dangerous eyes. "Halcyon's sister," she said, repeating my words. "What an odd creature you are to wish me no harm just because I am your lover's sister."

The tremors shaking my body were becoming wilder, stronger, with her near presence. It was as if my very skin tried to crawl off me, away from her. The skin on my back, shoulders, and arms rippled, moved, as if it had a will of its own. As if something beneath it was moving, struggling to come out, like a vulture's wings – Mona Louisa's other form. My skin burned as it stretched and I gasped at the pain, at the fight I had within myself just to stay planted there, not scramble away from her as every instinct in me was screaming to do.

"Me," I wheezed, fighting to take the breath back into my lungs that the pain had forced out of me. "Just me. Let my men go." I deserved to die, for so many reasons, not just one. They didn't.

"You would not still be living, breathing, had my brother not claimed you as his mate," Lucinda said, and her voice was no longer sensual. Just hard, as if all pretence had been stripped away. "My kind hunted and killed things like you long ago." Her eyes, dark like bittersweet chocolate, the one feature so like her brother, looked down at me with none of the affection, the warmth, usually in his. And I realized then how cold those eyes could be without emotion. "But he did, and my father spared you when he should have destroyed you after what you had done and become. I shall abide by his choice. For now." She stood and smiled, and it was not a friendly gesture. "I can always kill you later," she said like a soft promise, and walked away.

Like a breeze blowing cobwebs away, the invisible bonds holding my men vanished and they were free. They rushed to my side, crouched protectively in front of me. But she was truly gone, back into the night, a child of darkness. Demon dead. And suddenly all I could smell was blood. The rich heady scent of it, its pounding, throbbing call. I could almost taste it like sweet wine rolling down my tongue. My eyes, my body, my entire being was drawn to the man who stood to my left, slightly before me, the flexing of his hand gripping the sword, pushing the blood out of his wounded wrist, two gaping holes where Lucinda's claws had pierced through like Crucifixion nails. Fat drops of red blood fell to the ground like precious wine spilt wastefully, and an ache started in my body, in my soul, for that dripping blood. An ache that throbbed and grew with each spilling, hypnotic drop... plunck... plunck... plunck... A thirst that seemed enormous, unquenchable. I wanted to lap that blood up, take it into me like air, as if I would perish and die if I didn't have it. And it was not the hunger of my tiger beast for raw meat. I just wanted to drink down his blood, a horrified part of me realized.

A burning sensation filled my mouth, my gums, my teeth, as if that part of me wished to morph, to change, also. Into what? Dear God, into what? What was I becoming?

Tomas. I forced his name into my mind, tried to see him as a person, and not something I could drink to quench that burning, aching thirst. Wounded, bleeding Tomas. He protected me from a threat in front, already gone, when the real threat now lay behind him, so close, a hand grasp away. My fingers spasmed where they lay planted on the ground as I desperately fought the need to reach out and grab that bleeding wrist, touch my fingers to that blood, squeeze it tighter to wring out even more of that redness. The need punched me hard in the gut, drew a small sound of distress from my throat.

At the sound, my men turned back to look at me, saw me doubled over. "Mona Lisa," Tomas cried, reaching for me. "What's wrong?"

"No. Don't touch me!" I choked, throwing myself back away from him, my eyes fixed on the jagged holes of his pierced wrist, on the torn flesh that cried red tears of sorrow at being wasted so, untasted, unsavored. It drew me, beckoned me like a siren's call. Taste me. Taste life.

I shook my head violently, dragging myself farther away from his dripping temptation, frightened that if I tasted his blood, I would have fangs in truth; it was a burning promise a thin skin away from a violent, erupting birth. I pulled myself back until I came up against something solid, something warm, something electric as my skin met it. I tamed my head to see Dontaine crouched down behind me, hands set carefully on his spread knees. "Tell me what's wrong," he said in a gentle soothing voice, the kind of voice that one used to talk a jumper down from the roof.

I looked at him with wide wild eyes. "His blood." My voice cracked on the words, on the intensity of my hunger.

"Tomas, leave," Dontaine commanded.

Tomas's honey brown eyes flashed with ire, with rebellion. "I will not leave her like this," he said with a fire I had not seen in him before.

I whimpered as he took a step closer, my eyes fixed on that dripping, red blood.

"Look to where her eyes gaze, Tomas. Your blood is calling her beast's hunger up, and she is trying to fight it. The only way you can help her is to leave."

It was a hunger, all right, but not that of my beast's. That animal hunger was at least something I could understand, relate to. This... this was an undead hunger, thirsting for life itself. Heavenly Father, how had Lucinda been able to walk away so calmly from him after she had pierced his skin? How had she not slaughtered us all? Drank us all down?

"Is he right? Do you wish me to leave?" Tomas asked, and I had to force myself to concentrate on his words, to understand them.

"Yes. Please go," I said in a careful trembling voice, forcing the words out when a larger part of me wanted to scream for him to stay. Stay and feed me!

Head bowed, he turned and left us, and that hungry, thirsty part of me howled inside as I saw my food walking away, punished me by driving that sharp longing deeply and fiercely into my body like a dagger thrust. I put my face into the ground and screamed, my fingers digging into the cool damp earth, anchoring me there so I did not ran after him, chase him down, and sink my teeth into him.

Little electric jolts ran through me as Dontaine touched my shoulder, trying to distract me, I think, bring me back to myself. But it only served to draw my attention to another food source. Here, too, was blood.

Slowly I turned and looked at him, at his hand, smooth and white, skin so soft-looking, so easy to pierce, to tear open to get to that rich flowing blood beneath. That call of life.

"Your eyes," he whispered. "Dear Goddess, they're blue like Mona Louisa's." And I felt his fear jolt through me with thrilling pleasure, almost as sweet a sensation as blood smeared upon my lips would have been. Crap.

"Don't... don't be afraid," I said, my voice strained as my own fear – fear of myself – flooded over me.

"Mona Lisa, what's happening?" he asked like a child begging a grown-up to tell him there was no bogeyman in the closet. That he was only imagining it. But he wasn't. And the bogeyman wasn't something hiding in the closet. It was me.

"Touch me, Dontaine," I whispered. "Hold me. Make it go away."

Carefully, he sat me up and held me from behind, so he would not see my disquieting eyes. And perhaps, so my teeth would not be near his throat, a wise move. But though he pressed his chest again my back, wrapped his arms around me, encircling me with his electric presence, it did not chase that terrible blood thirst from me. I was aware, so aware of that slow, beating heart that pounded against me like an ancient primitive dramming. Calling: Here. Here I am. Come get me.

And how I yearned to do so. So much that I shuddered.

"It's not working, Dontaine," I said, trembling against him, my voice tight. God, how it was not working. I pushed to free myself from his hold, from that terrible dramming heartbeat pressed against me, but he would not let me go. His arms tightened and that strength inherent in a Full Blood warrior kept me chained, kept me captive for a moment, as long as I did not fight him.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"Please, my Queen, I feel your panic... Don't run." I felt him tremble against me. Felt his heart quicken under the flooding surge of adrenaline. "My fear. Your fear. It triggers my beast. If you ran..."

His words gave me an idea. Made me think of that other thing that dwelled within me – so many things inside me now.

My own beast.

I tried to call it forth, tried to unleash my tiger self to drive out that other thing – and it was a thing, not truly a person – possessing me with its hungers and desires. Come out, kitty cat. Come out and play.

Always before it roared out of me. Rushed out the moment I unleashed it. But not this time. There was the faintest stirring, the brush of fur inside me. Then it subsided, once more quiescent within me, unable to come out and save me.

"Dontaine." My hands squeezed the arms holding me, kept them pressed down against me. "Call out my beast."

His arms spasmed around me for a second. "You're asking me to change into my Half Form, and I cannot do that. I will have to leave you then. I will not be able to change back until I have hunted. You will be unprotected."

"Dontaine..." Against my volition, my head lowered. My hands wrapped like shackles around his strong, pulsing forearms. And with but a thought, gently, easily, I broke his hold on me and lifted his pulsing wrists up to my mouth. I kept my lips closed, fighting myself, but could not stop myself from whispering those closed lips over that white fragile skin, so thin, where just beneath the surface pounded sweet flowing blood. I smelled it. Literally smelled it like the most alluring perfume. And my mouth, my gums, burned again like something set aflame, and my teeth ached to change, lengthen, become dagger-sharp fangs.

With an effort that made tears spring to my eyes, I lifted my head back up, out of immediate biting reach. But only that one thing I could do. His wrists were still held like willing sacrifices before me.

"Please," I whispered. "Call my beast, I cannot do it, or I fear..." My voice dropped to a mere breath of sound. "... I fear I may drink you dry."

He heard me, and his body stiffened. First with puzzlement, then with fear. "I thought this was your beast's hunger."

"No." And my voice was careful, so careful. As if one loud sound would be enough to break my restraint. For fangs to break through my gums. For me to sink them into that beating pulse there before me like a waiting present. "Not my beast. Something else."

And there was not much for it to be, that something else. Only two things liked blood. Our animal beast. And demon dead. I could almost feel him reaching this new conclusion. And realize that he wasn't holding me, so much as I was holding him now. Realize that it was not my animal self coming to the fore, giving me that greater strength. Nope, something else already there.

"Please, Dontaine. Call my beast." I said it so calmly when I wanted to scream it, especially when his heart started pounding in fright, in terrifying realization that something worse, much worse, was going on.

"Blessed Night," he whispered. Then he gave me what I asked for. The energy in his arms, only his arms, changed, like a distinct line drawn up to his elbows and stopping there. A hot wash of energy poured out from him, powerful waves coming out as if pushed by a tide from the arms that I held. Beneath my touch I felt his skin shimmer and change under the cloth covering it. Felt his bones shift, elongate, tendons and muscles popping into new positions. His hands, the only things visible, stretched, became wider, the fingers rougher, coarser, the skin thicker, less human and more Other. A sheen of fur flowed over the skin as power spilled down his hands. They spasmed once, then huge hooking claws popped from his fingertips like energy let loose to take form and substance and shape. That hot wash of energy flowed up my hands where I touched him, and into me, tingling and heating my palms, then spilling it up through the rest of my body until I was pulsing, vibrating from head to toe.

That Other in me could not stand beneath that warm flooding power. It was pushed aside, and my animal self rose. My tiger stretched and roared, then snarled, caught, unable to come out, unable to fully rise to the surface. That small lingering presence of that demon-tinged Other interfered with it, so that while my beast presence dominated, it could not totally push out the other entity. Both were caught in incompleteness, one coming, the other going, neither able to reach their destination.

His hands – his claws – pulled from me and I let them go, and turned to look up at Dontaine. He was still in human form, his face still etched with that strong masculine beauty. Only his forearms, his hands, had changed, looking unreal against the normal rest of him. "You didn't change completely."

"Neither did you. Your eyes, though, they are that of your beast's... and not of her. Are you better?"

Better? I laughed, and it was a harsh, crying sound. A sound that made Dontaine flinch. "Yes, I'm better. Anything was better than that... but I can't completely change. She won't let my beast come completely out, Dontaine." The urges and needs of my beast, however, were there, though the form was not. The animal hunger, the need to hunt, to bring down prey, to feel the hot spill of blood and quivering meat sliding down my throat... it beat within me. Only I was still in human form, like Dontaine, but not because I willed it. Oh, no. My will was being roadblocked by that she-bitch I had sucked into me.

I was caught in a limbo of in between, feeling the needs of my animal self, unable to fulfill it in my human form. And before me stood something that could sate my hunger, something that still looked like prey. I pushed away from him, gasping, falling onto my back, crawling away from him, hysterical giggles choking my throat. I didn't want to drink him anymore. Now I wanted to eat him.

"Don't... don't..." he warned, and as I watched, his eyes turned from emerald green to autumn-leaf brown. The eyes of his beast, his wolf.

"I'm sorry," I said, knowing I was triggering his own hunting instincts, "but I... I can't stay here." I turned, scrambled to my feet, and ran. Fleeing from my fear, my hunger. But, unfortunately, I couldn't flee from myself.

I ran blindly, desperately. Without that natural liquid grace that had always been a part of me, that came from my Monere blood. Now, for the first time in my life, I stumbled, tripped, almost fell. I ran with human clumsiness, as if that limbo I was caught in shut down other parts of myself, my gifts of strength and grace that I had taken for granted, always there like the air I breathed. Only it wasn't there now. I ran and knew even in my panicked confusion that I could not hunt like this. I could not capture, much less bring down even a rabbit in this condition, and without sating that bloodlust, I could not free myself of this state. I lurched up against a tree, felt the hard uneven bark dig into my palms. I pressed into it with my gripping fingertips, and rested my cheek against its cool rough surface, breathing hard.

A sound, an instinct, brought my head up and I found myself looking into the eyes of a gray timber wolf less than three meters away. Its eyes were feral, wild, hungry. Seeing me as food. For one wild moment I thought it was Dontaine, changed fully into his wolf self. But another sound, a low threatening rumble, swung my gaze to my right. Dontaine stood a stone's throw away, still in his human form – mostly, at least. Only his arms and hands were that of his animal self.

He stood tall, beautiful, and silent, and was somehow frighteningly wild and feral. Even more dangerous than the natural wolf that hunted me. His eyes locked with that of his wolf brother, and a shuddering roll of electric energy rolled off him like silent echoing thunder. He growled, a deep, vicious warning. A totally animal sound coming from a human throat, and the pure menace it contained alarmed something primal in me. Was even scarier than looking up and finding myself face-to-face with a hungry timber wolf.

The wolf turned and slipped away, ceding his prey to a more powerful predator. I turned back to look once more at Dontaine, at those reflective autumn-brown eyes, not because I wanted to, but because I was afraid not to. He came slowly forward, toward me, his body strong, fluid, deadly, a graceful killer with monstrous claws that could rip you apart with the added power of his beast upon him. I tensed to leap away, to flee, even though I knew I could not hope to outrun him.

"Don't, please," he said, voice raw and deep, as if growling like that had hurt his vocal cords. "Don't run... If you do..." He took a harsh, deep breath. "I cannot leave you unprotected, and you cannot hunt. Please, my Queen." He stopped several yards away and dropped to his knees, begging me with those animal-brown eyes. "Please."

And I knew suddenly what he asked of me. What he would not put words to. There was only one other way to rid us both of our bloodlust: To channel it into sex. There was no other choice, really. Had Dontaine not followed me, in my almost human state, stripped of my Monere strength and quickness, the timber wolf would have killed me. Only now did I shudder at coming so close to death.

Adrenaline surged like a flooding tide of life within me, and my eyes fixed upon the man kneeling blonde and beautiful before me, asking me to save him, save us both. If I ran from Dontaine now and triggered his beast's hunting instincts fully, instincts that he was vulnerable to only because I had asked it of him, he might end up killing me himself. I'd left him in a terrible dilemma. It was up to me now to get us out of the mess I had gotten us into.

With trembling hands, I reached back, unzipped my gown, and let it fall from me onto the ground. My underwear followed and when I stepped free and naked toward him, I saw his eyes fill with almost overwhelming relief. No heat yet, just plain and painful relief. I came to him, trusting him not to rip my throat out while I still must look like prey to him. Trusting that though I felt not one iota of sexual attraction for him at the moment, not when a part of me was still screaming for me to run away... I knew, knew, that the innate chemistry between Monere male and Queen would flare to life with close enough proximity. And it did when I was a hand's reach away from him. My aphidy – that innate chemistry, that power that all Queens possessed – sprang out with a force that made me gasp and sway toward him, almost fall upon him. I didn't. Fall upon him, that is. Not physically, at least. But that part of me invisible, not seen but felt... oh yes, felt... that hit him with the force of a flying arrow aimed true, burying itself deep in its target, in a perfect bull's-eye.

Dontaine quivered, his body tensing with a different kind of tension now, his eyes brilliant, almost glowing. I inhaled the musky fragrance of his arousal, and of mine. And welcomed the forceful attraction that sprang up between us, embraced its overwhelming intensity willingly, gave myself over to it fully.

"You're wearing too many clothes," I said, surprised at the seductive huskiness thickening my voice.

"My hands," he said and my eyes fell to his hands – his claws, actually – which he kept lowered at his sides. Monstrous, deadly, and supremely ugly, especially in comparison to the rest of his perfect masculine self. Hands that bothered me hugely. I had no choice but to put aside that discomfort. It could be worse. Oh yes, it could have been much worse.

"Let me," I said, and knelt before him.

My hands whispered down his shirt, freeing the buttons, pulling first one sleeve off, then the other, unable to hide a tremor when my hands brushed over fur. Unable to appreciate the loveliness of his naked chest because of what also had been revealed. Fur covered him up to his elbows. Great hooking claws, looking like curved black exclamation marks, the ends sharp and pointy. It broke the mood of my lustful, blissful state, and I forced my appalled gaze away from it. Don't look at them, I told myself, closing my eyes, inhaling the musky scent of his arousal, concentrating on that lovely pull between us instead, a pull that seemed to originate deep within me, from my very womb. A womb that felt empty, aching. Clenching in its need to be filled.

I felt him pull back from me. Felt a shimmer of electric power dance in the air between us, and my eyes flew open. The furry forearms and those monstrous claws shimmered, faded slowly, then were gone. And the beautiful perfection of ivory-white skin, unblemished, and long, sensitive, strong fingers – the hands of a pianist, of an artist – were in their place. I'd never noticed before how beautiful, how well made his hands were. He leaned back, eyes closed, clearly exhausted from the effort of changing back, perspiration dewing his chest, dampening his face.

"You didn't need to do that," I murmured.

His eyes opened, and that reflective animal-brown color gleamed back at me once more. But the expression in those eyes was pure male. "I didn't know if I could change back so soon. But I wanted to touch you," he said, and tired or not, he reached for me, and I fell into his arms, into his saving embrace, and lost myself to the bliss of his touch.

The smooth muscles of his chest flattened my breasts, tingled and sharpened my nipples at the brash of skin with skin. The feel of his lips was soft as he brushed them against mine, like a painter making his first delicate stroke on clean canvas.

"Mona Lisa," he murmured, and his lips touched mine again, harder, firmer, more possessive. The tip of his tongue touched my lips, lapped wetly over my seam asking for entrance, and I granted it to him and tasted him as he tasted me, anchoring my spinning world with my hands grasping his broad shoulders. He tasted warm, sweet, and nutty. Like mead. Like ambrosia. Flavored like the sun, tasting of the earth. He explored my mouth, tangled his tongue with mine, and I sucked upon him, lapped him up. I felt him twist and move against me as he freed himself of his clothing, and then his hands were finally upon me and I cried out at the joy, at the relief of feeling mem. Of feeling him, naked and hard and ready against me. Touch me, yes. Touch me. And he did.

My world spun, tilted, and I was on the ground, my back crunching fallen leaves beneath as Dontaine covered me from above. His weight upon me was deliriously hard, deliriously dominating, as he parted my legs, and I felt him hard, thick, and poised at my body's entrance. I looked into his face above me, his nostrils flared wide as he breathed in my scent, my body's wet readiness, his eyes hard, intent, a glittering shining brown, almost blind in his driving urge to possess me, the slash of his cheekbones taut and flushed, reddened in rising desire like his lips, drawing my eyes to the chiseled perfection of his mouth, his strong chin, his every feature. Like a Greek god come to passionate life. I wondered how I could have turned from him before. And I stiffened as I remembered what he had offered me then. A child.

Desperately I straggled to push aside the lust-crazed need to mate. Tried to concentrate, focus, think on that very important fact. "Wait," I said urgently, and felt him hold himself coiled and still above me. And realized how terribly vulnerable I was to him in this position. One move and he would be in me and I would be unable to stop him. And I would no longer want to.

My eyes locked with his, and we held ourselves poised there for one terrible long moment, on the threshold of something wonderful. On the brink of something disastrous.

"I can't... No children, Dontaine. I can't get pregnant." Could not risk what I would pass on to a child in my possessed state. No other word for it. Possessed and driven by instincts not just Monere but demon dead.

I felt his entire body clench. Felt every powerful, strong muscle lock in silent protest as he fought himself. Fought against every screaming male and animal instinct he had to plunge himself into me and mate. His brown eyes glittered so sharply down at me that I was surprised they did not cut me. His face was tight, almost brutal, above me, and he growled. Actually growled. One poised terrible moment... then he rolled abruptly off me and lay on his side, breathing harshly.

I went limp with relief. With knowing how closely we had come to disaster. "Thank you. Thank you, Dontaine," I said, touching his shoulder. He flinched as if I had whipped him, his entire body coiled tight.

"We can have sex," I whispered tentatively, my hand frozen still on his shoulder. "Just... I can't risk getting pregnant. Not now. Not while I'm like this."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "All right," he said, managing to sound oddly calm and reasonable, while every muscle in his body screamed with tension.

Hesitantly, I smoothed my hand down his shoulder, ran it lightly down his arm. And that stroking caress flared anew that drowning sensuality, that powerful draw of male to Queen. He shuddered as I drew myself against him, rubbed myself against his back. Stroked my hand against his chest, pausing to circle once each tight flat nipple. I lifted myself over him and rolled him onto his back, and he moved unresistingly where I wanted him to go.

I almost purred at the pleasure of seeing him spread out like a beautiful offering before me, and didn't even try to resist the bounty of his lovely body. I kissed his other shoulder, trailed my lips down a sinewy forearm. Whispered them over his puckered nipples, lapping my tongue roughly over the little soldiers that had come so attentively to attention, while my left hand roamed lower, following the lightly furred trail that arrowed down his middle, leading me to where he pointed straight up like a giant tree towering over thick brush. I touched him, ran my hand up and then down, measuring his length, grasping his generous width. Velvet hardness, pulsing life.

He made a deep rumbling sound, pushed himself against me, and his hands buried themselves in my hair as I suckled and laved his little nipples, then moved my lips lower, following the path my hand had blazed. A light kiss over a ridged abdomen, a gentle lick low over the belly that made him quiver, a nuzzle over where his musky scent lay most thickly, causing his thick shaft to brush against my cheek, allowing me to appreciate how butter-soft his outer skin really was – such softness to cover such hardness – and then my mouth was over him, on him, around him. He was of average length but so thick around that I had to open my mouth fully to take him in. I hummed with pleasure as he slid thick and smooth inside me. I ran my tongue around him, tasting him, more sharp, more bittersweet here.

Then I lost the sweet pleasure of it as my mouth suddenly flared to burning life. As my teeth ached, my gums throbbed. As I realized that what filled that supple hardness in my mouth was not muscle but blood. Blood that called so strongly tome, so suddenly, that I ripped myself away from him, falling onto my back, my elbows. Because for one terrible moment I had almost plunged my teeth into him. Had almost felt his blood running hot and pulsing down my throat.

I cried out and my hand covered my mouth as if by that action I could stop the fangs from coming out. Dontaine knelt beside me, the powerful jut of his arousal too close, too tempting to my burning teeth. I fell back from him, hands raised up to ward him off.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Your blood. Too much blood down there. Too close to the surface."

"What do we do?"

"I don't know." I shook my head, finding it hard to think when I was so suddenly filled once again with bloodlust. Demon bloodlust.

"Let me." He moved down to my feet, touched my thighs gently, asking permission. Opening my legs to him, closing my eyes, I granted it. Yes, yes. Please, anything. Anything to take away that terrible urge, that terrible thirst.

It soothed, eased, with the first touch of his lips on my inner thigh. With the firm powerful grasp of his hands on my outer thighs, opening me up even more to him. To that questing, marauding, wicked, wicked mouth. A lick, a kiss, a gentle nip that stiffened me suddenly in fright, not lust.

"No blood. You cannot take my blood," I said, my heart pounding with the new threat. It was a strong Monere instinct to mark your lover. To break their skin and taste their blood. If he did, I did not know if the demon hunger that possessed me would pass on to him. "You must swear not to take my blood."

"My oath on it."

I went limp at averting that other near disaster. "God, I'm sorry. So many things you can't do... I just – "

"Hush. You are here before me, opened to my pleasure. All is well," he soothed, and played his lips upon my mound, nuzzling the curly hairs there, inhaling my scent, breathing upon me as the golden fall of his hair brushed the sensitive skin of my belly, my thighs, like a thousand whispering kisses. I was too grateful to him to be embarrassed at being exposed so blatantly like that. Too thankful at feeling the bloodlust ease and another lust rise and take its place as he lowered his mouth and licked me, a delicate teasing stroke.

Oh!

Nerves tingled to life within me. Pulsed deep in my core, wetting me, spreading my legs even wider for him. I whimpered, then jammed my hand to my mouth as if to stop the sound.

"No, let me hear your pleasure also as I taste it." And his words and the hot gust of his breath blowing over me there brought another low sound to my throat. Made me writhe, lift myself up to him. Begging, pleading without words to touch me again like that. With a low pleased rumble, he did. His head dipped down and his tongue lapped over me again with a surer, firmer stroke. Then another, and another. Driving me nuts. Giving me a taste of pleasure and making me want even more. "Tell me what you want."

"I don't know," I gasped. "Just more. Harder... Oh God," I breathed as he obeyed me, and sensation lashed me with sharp pleasure. He bent my knees, pushed them back so that I was completely opened to him. And I could only clutch his head, hold him to me as he spread me apart with gentle fingers and speared his tongue into me like a rapier thrusting sharp and deep. I cried out, arched up into him as he began a driving rhythm, pushing his tongue deep and repeatedly into me, his forefinger feathering lightly over my plump and swollen pearl that he had plucked free from the outer folds. And I didn't know which sensation was worse, or better, or more unbearable.

I surged against him like helpless waves lapping against the shore, begging him wordlessly, Bring me home. Bring me home. And he did, with a gentle squeeze, a pinching pluck of my swollen nub. A deep plunge of his thick tongue spearing into me, as if he were driving a blade home. I burst apart as light burst from within me. And a trembling rolling climax took and shook me, but didn't free me. I lay there in quivering aftermath, still hungry. Shit. Not for blood, though, thank the Mother. But for something else. His pleasure. And it wasn't just a woman's desire, but that something else. That something dark and Other that lay within me and held me, still.

I opened my eyes, saw those animal-brown eyes, the eyes of his beast, staring down at me. "You didn't come," I said.

"If you are well now, I can see you safe. Then shift, go hunt."

It was an astounding offer, unexpected, especially for someone who had challenged Amber once and risked his life for the privilege of my bed. I looked up at that handsome, patrician face and this time saw past the surface beauty to the generous heart beneath it, and the unbelievable control he wielded. And my heart melted at what I found there, unexpectedly. It wasn't the sex that opened my heart to him; it was this kind and selfless act. The gift he offered so easily – taking care of my needs and submersing his own. My heart cracked open without my willing it, filling me with something more tender than I had ever expected to feel for him – the softness and sweetness of love.

"No," I said softly, and drew him down to me, "I need you still." And kissed him gently with the new emotion I found welling up within me. Tasted myself upon his lips, his tongue. Sucked him deep into my mouth, fed upon him for a moment, then released him when the blood that filled him there also became too tempting.

"I need your pleasure, your release. I don't know why," I murmured, holding his head buried against my neck, safely away from my mouth. "But I need it. I'm sorry."

He laughed, his face pressed against me. Then lifting his head, he looked down on me. "I'm not. Tell me how."

"From behind." The only safe entry left to us. "Take me from behind." I ran my hands down the strong column of his back and over the tight swell of his bottom to feather over his anal pucker. "Here," I whispered. "I need more than just your tongue in me, sweet though it is. Take me here, please."

He looked at me for a heartbeat of time. Touched my face, as if what he saw there shining in my eyes was something he could not believe. Dared not believe. Looking at me as if I were truly seeing him for the very first time. And I was. I was. He trembled, and emotions too fast and fleeting for me to catch passed across his face.

"Mona Lisa," he murmured with shaking breath. Then as if the emotions, the awareness between us was too much, he lifted me up and turned me around so that my hands and knees were braced upon the ground. He wrapped himself around me, his head buried in the small of my back, and I felt something hot and wet fall against my skin. His tears.

"Dontaine – "

"Shhh. It's okay. I'm all right. Just give me a moment."

I wanted to turn around and hold him, but he would not allow it. His arms tightened around me, holding on to me as if I anchored his world. As if he would be cast adrift and drown if he let me go.

All I could say was his name, "Dontaine," softly and yearningly. He gave one big, almost convulsive shudder against my back then released me until only his hands were upon my hips. The softness of his lips pressed against me. Ran slowly, deliberately down my back, starting from my nape downward. The curtain of his hair fell like a silky halo lightly brushing over my skin. But the greatest sensation were those velvet-soft lips pressing feather-light against me. I couldn't believe how sensitive a back could be.

When he reached down past my hips and continued still... When the silky firmness of those lips and the warmth of his breath fell unerringly on my tailbone and pressed a little bit harder, a little bit firmer, just there... A lightning bolt of sensation shot from my tailbone straight to my groin, washing me with heat so suddenly that I bucked and swayed and cried out beneath him. Had his hands not held me at the waist, I would have fallen onto the ground.

"Oh God. Dontaine!" And his name was a demand, a plea.

"Trust me," he said.

"Yes." How could I not?

"I won't get you pregnant," he whispered. "Just let me play in your wetness for a moment."

I nodded but didn't really understand what he was saying until he lifted my upper torso up off the ground and eased me back against him to lie against his chest. "Just a little wider," he said huskily, and shifted my knees farther apart. My sensitive back was in bliss, cradled against the lean coiled muscles of his chest, my hips and bottom snuggled deep into his enveloping lap. He surrounded me from behind, bigger, harder. And the hardest part of him, that special wide thickness, slid between my legs in the space he had created for himself. He rubbed his shaft against my wet outer lips, so hard, so full, that I felt as if I rode atop a log. A hand, strong and sensitive, spread low over my belly in a stark claiming, holding me to him, holding me still, as his hips undulated gently against me. The softest of motion – a slow push forward, a slow wet slide back – to trigger such an avalanche of rich sensations.

The lush eroticism of what I saw – that claiming, controlling hand, the brief tantalizing peek of the red-purple head of him pushing out between my legs, then pulling back, disappearing from sight for a pounding heartbeat of time as if into me... it made my eyes flutter close, made me clutch his cock-hard thighs. Made me squirm back against him, groan his name in pleasure and suffering. Because I wanted him in me. So badly that my stomach clenched. And deeper, beneath his splayed hand, my empty womb tightened.

As if sensing my need, his hand pressed harder into me, assuaging my need for a moment, replacing it with an even greater need for his hardness to fill me. "How pretty you are," he murmured, his deep, husky voice a trilling vibration against my neck.

He covered me completely from behind, leaving me feeling oddly vulnerable, oddly naked, in front. It took me a moment to realize that as I could see us, so could he see me, and that he was watching a part of me that under his stirring gaze suddenly ached to be touched. My breasts, small and high, grew even tighter, more swollen beneath the caress of his eyes – the part of my body I was most sensitive about because I was no more than a handful, and barely that. But stroked so intimately below by his thickness, aroused so much by his voice, his careful touches, I was too far gone to be embarrassed. My nipples pointed outward, hard, peaked tips pouting to be touched. And he answered their call. His hands slid upward to cup my breasts, just holding their slight fullness, as if offering my nipples out to the darkness. And the sight of those long, tapered, sensitive fingers holding me so was as arousing as his actual touch.

"Please," I begged, trembled, arching against him, pushing my breasts outward and even more into those beautiful masculine hands.

"Yes," he said, and brushed his thumbs over my nipples. The pleasure of it jerked me back. Pulled a gasp from me. And started the play of moonlight once more upon my skin. A white trembling glow that started there, from where he touched me, spreading outward to the rest of my body. For one moment, I was a brilliant white thing against his skin made darker in contrast, and then light spilled onto him, and he began to radiate with light, also, spilling it out into the black velvet darkness. I watched as the light took us both, filled us, two children of the night aglow.

"Beautiful," Dontaine breathed, a whisper of sound in my ear. As the light played upon us, he played upon me, his artist hands molding my breasts, squeezing them, lifting them, plucking my berry-red tips, squeezing my nipples, pulling them, making me arch and cry out, writhe against him.

"Please, Dontaine. Please."

Heeding my plea, a hand left its nipple play and sought darker, more sultry depths. Two ringers sank into me, came back coated with my fluid. Reluctantly, he released me, urged me forward once more onto my hands. That wet hand touched me where I had touched him, circling my anal pucker, coating it with my own wetness. Eased in a finger gently past the tightness.

"So tight," he murmured, pushing in a second finger. I shuddered, groaned, as he stroked slowly in and out. Lovely, lovely, but I needed him. His pleasure, not mine, sweetly killing though it was. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't. God, you won't. Please, Dontaine, I need you in me."

"Then let me come into you." His fingers left me and I felt the hard wet head of him probe me for entrance. He pushed forward, but I was so tight and he was so wide, he did not enter. "I don't want to hurt you," he muttered, voice tight, strained.

"No, no. You won't. Please, please!"

"Don't..." He pushed in hard and the head of him popped in past the tight sphincter. ". ..let..." Another push. "... me..." A gentle slide. "... hurt you." More of him filling me, cramming me.

"You won't... it doesn't!... Yes, yes, that feels so good... Oh, Dontaine," I cried when he was finally seated deep and full within me. And I both lied and told the truth. He was too big and I was too stretched for it not to hurt a little. But it hurt in a good way. Oh God, yes. So good, so good. I groaned as he shuddered against me, holding himself still, buried deep inside me.

"Mona Lisa..." I felt him trembling with restraint But it wasn't restraint I needed. And pain did not matter. I needed his release.

I pulled forward then slammed myself back against him, and he gave a guttural cry at the tightness of me running over his length so unexpectedly like that. His hands clamped down on my hips, holding me still. "Stop," he muttered harshly. "You'll hurt yourself."

"You're hurting me by not moving," I cried plaintively.

"Behave," he said, his hands like iron manacles as I tried to rock against him. His tone became whiplash sharp. "If you don't, I'll pull out."

The threat stilled me as nothing else would have.

"I'll give you what you want," he said, breathing heavily, "but we do it my way. You'll take what I give you, as slow or fast as I want to give it to you. Do you understand?"

I nodded wildly.

His hands left me, and I stayed obediently still and trembling beneath him. A harsh breath, two, then he leaned over me, covered me, like a stallion blanketing a mare. His lips brushed across my nape. "Trust me," came his warm breath, stirring the soft hairs there.

"Yes," was my reply, and his teeth grazed lightly over my skin. So delicately, so dangerously. Setting off sunbursts of sensation where he touched.

"Don't... move," he said huskily, a stark command. Trembling, I obeyed him as his hand slid across my belly and then lower until his fingertips, calloused and rough from sword practice, lay just over the swollen nub of my pearl. Only his words, and his threat, held me back from surging forward into the waiting promise of his touch. One moment, two. Then he rewarded me for my restraint by pulling a tiny increment out of me and pushing back in. The slow push and slide of him like that pushed me forward with his downstroke, so that his fingertips grazed my swollen nub, spilling a hot wash of sensation in me in both front and back.

"Oh!" I moaned, cried, with that slight movement. But I held still.

"Yes," he crooned and licked my neck, a hot slide of tongue that was both soothing and arousing. "Yes." And did it again. Pulled out, an increment more. Pushed back in. And though he still crammed me, stretched me, it was not unbearably so anymore. The sharpness of pain faded beneath his careful rocking in and out, and more pleasure spilled out, zinging through me with each lengthening stroke. Each firmer, harder thrust back into me, pushing my pulsing, swollen clitoris more firmly against the rough-gentle play of his fingertips. It was exquisitely pleasurable torture, even more so because I had to hold still, had to endure it. I whimpered with my pleasure and with my restraint. He nipped me, grazing my neck again with his teeth.

"Ah, love," he murmured, groaning, burying his head in the fall of my hair. "You feel so good. Remember... hold still," he warned, and I braced myself for more wonderful, terrible things to come.

Like a pulse from deep within him, I felt his energy ease, loosen, rise. Grow sharper, more electric. Until my very skin tingled from head to toe where he covered me with his greater length. He touched me nowhere in front except for the tantalizing play of fingertips upon that most sensitive, swollen nexus of nerves within me, a touch that came and went as he did within my body. And because he touched me nowhere else in front but there, perhaps that was why I felt it most excruciatingly. Tingling, electrifying, shocking jolts that were both blissful and torturous. Both heaven and hell.

My need grew, swelled even stronger, as his thrusts grew harder, more wilder. Until that fine line of pleasure and pain became blurred and then became one, and it took me and threw me up into the heavens. Ripped me apart with agonizing pleasure while I floated there in the air. Convulsing me. But even in my explosive release, a part of me was still hungry, thirsty for something more. And that more was what surged within me like a wild tide battering against the shore. He pulled from me and then stretched me back anew, cramming himself into me with poling, thrusting force, with sharp gasping breath, with soft desperate cries. But still careful of me, not completely letting go. And therefore, still reaching for, still striving for his peak.

His balls, heavy, large, and tight, smacked into me, bounced against my bottom as he seated himself deep. I reached back and grabbed them carefully, and he stilled with his length and thickness buried deep within me as he felt my hold upon him. We both held our breaths as I squeezed his tight sac, his twin balls. Pulled lightly.

Like a rocket suddenly launched, he toppled free. And as he spurted within me, hot pulsing jets, I felt his energy – that electric, buzzing energy – explode out from him in a showering sparkle. His life-force. And that part of me that had been waiting, hungering for this moment, this release, opened up wide and sucked it – him – that part of him in. Swallowed it down as surely as demons swallowed down blood.

Epilogue

I'd joked before that I was like a vampire, sucking up my men's gifts. But I hadn't known before what I was talking about, and it hadn't really been true. Now it was.

My lover had given off energy during orgasmic release, spilt it out of him like firecrackers bursting, and I had drunk it down.

Okay.

I was lucky I was only hyperventilating and not grieving. I was lucky Dontaine wasn't dead.

He wasn't, thank God. He was peachy keen, in fact. With a cherry on top. But it was too close to what I had done with Mona Louisa. The fact that I'd sucked all her energy, all her light, her life-force, out of her – and I'd done that all by my little ole self, no demon-tainted ghost involved – and into me hadn't bothered me much. The bitch had deserved it. But this... doing this to someone I cared for... that just freaked me out.

Knowing that Halcyon, my Demon Prince, had sipped down a little of me when I had come apart, orgasming in his hands... that was fine with me. Actually nice, knowing how good it felt. But that was the trouble – it was too nice. Too wonderful. It could easily become addicting, like getting that necessary shot of caffeine every morning.

I glanced over at Dontaine, sitting next to me on the plane. His long, beautiful, tapered fingers wrapped around mine, and he gazed at me with an expression I'd never have imagined on that proud and arrogant face – the soft and tender look of love. A look that plucked an answering chord within me, God help me. He should have looked at me with fear instead. But that was okay. I had enough fear pounding in me for the both of us.

I looked at that handsome sculptured face sitting beside me and wondered if it were possible to love a man to death. The word succubus whispered through my mind. Creatures of myth, old legends, ancient tales. But the problem with myths and legends and ancient tales was that they were usually based upon a kernel of truth. A little kernel that could take root and grow into a frigging great big oak tree that could end up falling on top of you and crashing you.

I'd given my testimony before the High Council the next moonrise, and compared to what I'd just gone through, it had been a piece of cake. Calmly anchored by Dontaine's electrifying touch, I'd told them all I could truthfully tell them, and left out what I couldn't. I was as honest as I could be, but not stupid. I wasn't going to hand them my head on a platter. Halcyon's secret and mine were safe. For now. When some Council members tried probing into sticky demon matters, like how Halcyon had become weak enough to be captured by Mona Louisa, I'd told them I did not exactly know but that they could ask the High Prince himself at the next Council meeting. That, and a quick glance at Princess Lucinda sitting there with lazy observing menace, had shut them up.

Lucinda. She dressed the most modern, the most human, among us. But was actually the least so. The clothes might be contemporary, but that face, that striking face... And it really was striking when your gaze wasn't distracted by that lush, voluptuous body. With bold features, larger than life – or would that be death? – she had the face of a goddess of old. Something you worshipped, offered sacrifices to. Blood sacrifices. She'd sat there, far enough away from me not to trigger my new inhabitant, my inner demon, sated for now. With Dontaine's distracting touch – I'd clutched his hand like a safety blanket the entire time – we made it through with no screaming, no near possession, no crazy Mixed Blood Queen freak show. Cool. Neat-o. One fit per Council meeting was enough.

Why had I wigged out the previous night? Because the stress had triggered my beast. That was my story, and my men and I were sticking to it. It was the truth, so far as that went. Only they thought I meant my animal beast – I had two of them now, it seemed – when it was really the demon beastie in me causing all the ruckus. I made Dontaine and Tomas swear not to tell the others what had really happened. And they had given me their oaths because they were afraid for me, while I was afraid for them. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had killed all of Mona Louisa's men to keep his secret. I did not want the next men he slaughtered to be mine.

We were flying home. But we were not safe and not sound. Something dead, demon dead, resided within me, like an unpredictable bomb that could go off at any time. It wasn't safe to be around me. True in the past; even truer now. The men who loved me, who stayed around me, died. Only the threat now wasn't from others, it was from me.

I sent up a silent prayer to God for my human side. Help me, please. Then that other part of me that was not human but Monere looked out into the night sky, onto what had once been our home. I looked to the moon, so serene, pale, and distant, but hesitated. The last time I had asked for help, I'd ended up sucking Mona Louisa's demon-tainted essence into me. But old habits – and new habits, too, for that matter – died hard. I lived but did not learn. I sent a prayer winging out to that distant power, to our Mother Moon. Please. Keep my men, my people safe, I prayed. Keep them safe from me.