Page 16

Garth drank another glass of water, gulping it to the point it spilled down the front of his bare chest.

Nicolette’s laughter filled the kitchen as she stood there, holding what was left of the gray drink she’d managed to talk him into trying. The cupcakes tasted awesome in comparison.

“It’s not that bad!”

She snorted.

He swallowed more water, trying to wash down the taste. Clara was right. It did taste of grass despite looking like paste. “It’s horrid.”

She laughed to the point she hiccupped. “Drama queen.”

Garth set the glass on the counter and used the back of his hand to wipe the excess water from his chin. He faced Nicolette, standing naked in her kitchen. She had on her Viking T-shirt once more, but nothing else under it. Unlike Garth, she wasn’t comfortable walking around naked. He couldn’t understand why. She was breathtaking. He wished she’d burn all her clothing and go naked forever.

Though he had to admit, seeing her nipples through the Vikings T-shirt was far more erotic than he’d have ever guessed. He didn’t even care about the horned helmet. Not when he could see the outline of her erect buds there, teasing him. And he could smell her scent and knew if he simply inched her T-shirt up some, paradise would be exposed to him.

His cock hardened, and Nicolette looked down at it as she sipped her gray drink. Her brows lifted.

“You cannot be ready again,”

she said. “Garth, we’ve had sex twice since we got home.”

“Three times,”

he corrected. “Or are you not counting jerking me off? I am. I came; therefore, it counts.”

She laughed. “You’re a sex addict, aren’t you?”

“I never used to think so but with you, yes. I am.”

The blush that stole across her cheeks only served to turn him on more. He’d meant what he’d said. He was addicted to her. Reaching down, he stroked himself at the sight of her.

Nicolette followed his actions with her gaze and then shook her head. “No way. I need a break.”

“You told me the gray drinks give you energy,”

he said as he neared her. He eased the glass of foul-smelling liquid from her hand and put it on the table, as he continued to work his cock with his free hand.

Nicolette backed up and shook her hands out in front of her. “No way. I’m conquered. Totally and completely. I need to sit on a bag of ice.”

He chuckled as he drew her closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair, breathing in her alluring scent. “Beauty, I love spending time with you.”

“I like being around you too,”

she confessed, easing her arms around his waist. She put her cheek to his upper chest and squeezed lightly. “Something deep down inside tells me we’re on borrowed time right now.”

“We have all weekend,”

he said, caressing her back. “I’ve put a call into work to take some much-earned vacation time. That means we could have longer.”

He’d left a message for General Newman asking for permission to use some of the months’ worth of vacation he had banked. Garth didn’t think there would be an issue, but with everything blowing up at work lately and with Grid coming out of the woodwork, with links to The Corporation, Garth wasn’t sure his request would be granted. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure he’d returned to Division B right now, even if given a direct order.

That wasn’t like him.

But the idea of leaving Nicolette set him on edge.

James had texted back, letting him know that Gram was showing signs of adverse side effects of the serum—something to do with hallucinations. Nothing too serious. That being said, James still felt Garth had more than likely metabolized the serum fully by now. That meant Garth shouldn’t still feel the ridiculous pull he did to the human with him, but he did. In fact, it seemed to grow with every passing hour he spent with her.

He’d not lied.

He was addicted to her.

She picked then to kiss his chest. When she stepped back and looked up at him, her eyes were moist.

“Beauty?”

She walked away from him and left the kitchen.

He followed quickly behind her, wondering what had upset her. He caught her hand in front of the dining room. “Talk to me.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m not wrong. Our time is coming to a fast end.”

“It’s not,”

he protested.

She touched her upper chest with her other hand. “You don’t understand. I know things. I know this is true. You’re going to leave soon. Very soon.”

“No,”

he said sternly, his wolf rising slightly. “I’m not going anywhere, beauty.”

“I’m not sure you’re going to get a choice,”

she said, something off in her voice.

“Nicolette?”

She turned in his arms. She went to her tiptoes and kissed him full-on. Unable to stop himself, he lifted her and walked her into the dining room. He set her on the edge of the dining room table and then adjusted her, wrapping her legs around his waist. He reached between them and rubbed her clit as he captured her lips with his own.

Nicolette squirmed under his expert touch.

He’d learned her body well already and knew what she liked. With deft fingers he tweaked her swollen bud and moisture flooded her sex. His head filled with the scent of her cream. He broke the kiss and pressed on her, forcing her to lay back on the table. She did. He kept her ass on the edge of the table and bent, his lips finding her sex.

He stared up with the length of her spread out on the table like a buffet for him. He grinned and opened her legs more, his tongue finding her heated core. She cried out and writhed on the table as he thrust a finger into her.

Garth stayed like that, bent, his mouth on her sex, his tongue moving over her clit as he thrust his finger in and out of her.

Nicolette tossed her head back in wild abandonment and Garth used that moment to let his mouth shift slightly.

As a shifter, his saliva had a healing agent in it. Permitting his mouth to shift, even a small amount, increased the level of the healing agent tremendously. He slipped his tongue into her, licking around her core and then swiping his tongue over every bit of flesh between her legs.

She continued to wiggle on the table, crying out and shaking as her orgasm hit. He didn’t stop. He kept going, kept coating her in his healing saliva.

Nicolette screamed in pleasure and slammed her palms down on the tabletop, coming hard. Her inner thighs quivered, and her body came up and partially off the table. “Ohmygod, that feels awesome!”

Garth caught her, keeping her pinned there as he continued his actions, making her cry out in ecstasy more. The next he knew, the buzzing he’d heard before returned. It was faint, but there. Along with it came a brush of power. He stopped what he was doing, his intent to find the source.

Nicolette slid away from him on the table and moved with a speed that shocked him. In the blink of an eye she was off the table and looking at him from the other side of it, a wanton expression on her face.

She bent her head, her gaze narrowing on him as her lips curved into a tempting smile. “Viking.”

Her voice moved over him in a way that demanded his attention.

“Come and get me,”

she said and the urge to do so overtook him.

He tried to contain the beast within in him, but when presented with the opportunity for a chase, the wolf wasn’t backing down.

Nicolette grinned and then ran for the hall, managing to skate past Garth before he could reach her. That was saying something because he was really freaking fast. Her scent washed over him.

“Catch me, if you can,”

she teased, her voice holding addition sway over him. If he wouldn’t have known better, he’d have said she had a gift similar to a vampire—the power of compulsion, but that was absurd. She was human.

That, in itself, should have made him come to his senses and stop. It didn’t. His wolf pulsed, controlling his actions. It wanted to hunt the prey Nicolette presented. It wanted to track her, corner her, mark her, and claim her.

Garth reached out and grabbed at the wall in an attempt to stop himself.

It didn’t work.

He followed Nicolette out in to the hallway and found her there, near the bottom of the staircase, lifting the Vikings T-shirt over her head and tossing it at him.

She locked gazes with him. “Do it, Garth.”

He had no choice but to obey. He wasn’t even sure what “it”

was, but he was about to do it. He took off after her, the thrill of the chase exciting him more.

Nicolette squealed in delight and ran up the stairs, going straight for her room.

Garth rushed up the stairs, following behind her. He overtook her and lifted her, her ass pressing to his erect cock.

She laughed.

“Nicolette,”

he said, barely managing to swim through the mass of hormones he felt. “Run!”

She wiggled her backside against him. “No.”

He released her quickly and backed up fast. “Go!”

She glanced over her shoulder at him and then the woman did the unthinkable. She went to the bed and bent over it, presenting her backside to him like a fucking present. Didn’t she know how dangerous he was? Couldn’t she feel the beast in him threatening to burst free? Did she have any concept of self-preservation?

Fuck.

The sight of her there, bent, waiting and willing was too much for him to resist. Garth went at her and bent over her, lining up with her pussy. He thrust in with one long, powerful stroke, making her cry out and claw at the bedsheets.

He pounded into her like a depraved animal, his wolf guiding his movements. The low buzzing continued, as did the feel of foreign power around him. Was that Fae magik? It couldn’t be.

Unable to think beyond how good it felt being in Nicolette, Garth concentrated on her. He laid his body over hers fully, effectively locking her in place as he fucked her like a mad man.

She slapped at the mattress, moaning as she did. “Yes.”

He kept going.

She reached back fast, grabbed his upper thighs and jerked him to her more with a force that was normally reserved for supernaturals. She clawed at his thighs, drawing blood in the process. That only excited his wolf more.

He fucked her so hard the bed began to move across the hardwood floor. He didn’t dare stop. He couldn’t.

Nicolette lifted her hand and he caught sight of blood on the end of her fingertips. His blood. The vixen brought her hand to her mouth and licked the blood clean.

Garth lost it then.

He knew there was no turning back. No stopping his wolf. It had found its version of Valhalla.

Nicolette.

His beast roared upwards, making his mouth change shapes even more, to the point it would be noticeable if she looked back at him.

“Harder!”

she commanded.

He obeyed.

“Mine,”

he ground out roughly, as best he could considering his mouth was locked in a state of partial change.

Nicolette gasped and pushed back against him. “Yes. Yours! And you’re mine.”

As the words left her mouth, Garth lost what little control he had left.

He opened his mouth and sank his teeth into the tender flesh of her upper back shoulder, close to her neck. The buzzing noise grew to epic proportions as he swallowed down the coppery-rich taste of her blood.

His hips moved as if they had a mind of their own as he continued to pound into her, Nicolette’s body taking pleasure from the act as much as his.

A tightness started in his chest and the buzzing noise bordered on just this side of painful and the ache in his chest intensified. Suddenly, it felt like someone was between them, stitching them together with invisible thread, tying them to one another. In the back of his mind, he knew this meant something important. He just couldn’t focus long enough to figure it out. All he knew for certain was that being in her was as close to Valhalla as he was getting, and he never wanted to leave.

He released his hold on her shoulder and licked the spot he’d bitten, his whole body close to fully shifting forms. The wound healed over before his eyes.

“No!”

he growled out, his voice raspy, his head still bent so that Nicolette was pinned to the bed face first.

With a final roar, Garth planted himself deep within her. His cock twitched as his seed spurted into her. The feeling of being stitched together grew to the point he actually wondered if it was happening.

Nicolette cried out again and jerked under him, coming with him.

He held himself there as sweat dripped off his body and onto the beauty below him. His cock continued to release seed into her, as if he’d never come in his life before and had over a thousand years’ worth of buildup to release.

There was a sharp pinching in his lower back, and he tensed.

The reality that he was about to shift into a wolf while he was not only on Nicolette, but still in her, hit him hard. It took every ounce of willpower he had to jerk out of her and rush out of the room.

Garth stumbled out and into the hallway, terrified that he’d suffer the same type of uncontrollable shift as Malik had in Egypt while under the influence of the serum.

James was wrong. It wasn’t through his system yet. It couldn’t be. That was the only explanation for his insanity.

In most cases, a shifter male was in control of his actions in beast form. They were aware, had cognitive thought and reasoning, but not when they were taken by bloodlust—and not with the serum. No part of the human was left in control or aware in those cases. Just an animal. And whatever it wanted was its singular focus, its only mission. Garth already knew his wolf wanted Nicolette, and the idea of what that wolf might try to do to assure that happened scared the living hell out of him.

Garth slipped going down the stairs and ended up falling down the majority of them. The bite of pain helped him hold onto control a little longer. The front door was in sight. He lunged for it, managed to get it undone, and then fell through it and onto the front stoop.

He went to his knees and looked upward at the night sky, knowing there was a high chance a human would see what he was about to do. He couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to. The best he could hope for was that his wolf would catch the scent of a small animal or something to distract it from going back inside for Nicolette—and Odin help if she came searching for him and happened upon his wolf.

A shrill laugh came from his left—and Garth whipped around to see a carbon copy of himself standing near the oversized trash can, grinning.

His brother was there, looking exactly the same as the last time he’d seen the man, except he was now dressed in modern clothing. Like Garth, Grid evolved with the times. Grid’s long hair was pulled back in a thick braid, something Garth had never been a fan of wearing.

No.

It couldn’t be.

I’m hallucinating.

Grid looked real enough to Garth. Was he imagining him or was he really there?

Nicolette’s words when they’d first met hit Garth hard. She’d been surprised his hair was down, and that he’d changed his shirt. She’d mentioned seeing him before, in the square. Garth had never been in the square, nor had he braided his hair fully.

Grid’s hair was fully braided.

She’d seen Grid already.

That meant his brother had been stalking the woman.

No!

Even worse, the smell of cloves, vanilla, and cinnamon filled the area, and Garth realized the source was his brother. Grid had rubbed himself in something that was so overpowering to Garth’s senses, he’d never picked up fully on his brother’s natural scent.

Bastard!

Garth swayed as the knowledge his brother had already been close to Nicolette came over him. It was already hard enough to fight the pending shift; knowing his sick bastard of a brother had his sights set on Nicolette made it nearly impossible. “Grid,”

he managed to get out through his misshapen mouth. “Go!”

He didn’t want his brother anywhere near Nicolette. He would rip the man to shreds before he allowed him near her. Near his woman.

His brother sniffed the air. “What is that I smell? Sex? Did you fuck the hell out of her, brother? She’s beautiful. So is her friend. Did she tell you about me visiting her the other night?”

Garth shook.

“She thought I was you, brother. I was in her room with her while you were off running around the city, trying to surprise her with gifts. I could have done what I wanted with her then. And I would have, had that fucking vampire Outcast not arrived. He cared more about her safety than you—the man who left her alone.”

Garth snarled.

“Tell me something, brother. How did she feel when you fucked her? Did you make her cry out your name? Wait. I already know the answer. After all, I heard the entire thing. Think she’ll cry out your name when I’m buried in her, fucking her, pretending to be you again? And do you think she’ll feel betrayed when I choke the life from her body during it all—with her thinking I’m you all the while? She’s going to die believing you turned on her. That you’re a monster.”

“No!”

Garth tried to lunge toward Grid, but he was in no shape to do much of anything at the moment. All he managed to do was fall forward onto the ground.

His brother snorted, and then delivered a wicked kick to Garth’s side. Something deep within popped and pain lanced through him. He didn’t care. His only worry was Nicolette.

Grid kicked him again and again before laughing. “Look at you. You’re pathetic. PSI has made you soft.”

Garth’s claws emerged from his fingertips and he narrowed his gaze on his brother. He would not let Grid anywhere near Nicolette. He’d die first.

“Garth?”

The sound of Nicolette’s voice drew a swell of panic from him. She sounded scared and worried. She also sounded like she was still upstairs.

No, beauty! Run!

“Garth, where are you? What’s wrong?”

His brother eased forward but stayed just out of Garth’s reach.

Then Grid’s head snapped up. He sniffed the air and his green gaze flashed to amber quickly. “Seems you have a guardian angel after all. That or she does. This is far from over, brother.”

Garth watched as Grid turned and leapt over the fence.

In the next second, Cody was there. He sniffed at the air. “What the fuck is that smell? Did you run through a cinnamon roll factory?”

Garth tried to spit out the truth—that his twin was in the area. He couldn’t speak.

Cody touched Garth’s shoulder. “You still with it enough to understand me, Garth?”

Garth managed a nod. “N-Nicolette.”

Cody’s brows met. “What?”

“He’s worried about Nicolette,”

said a man Garth didn’t know. The man slid to a stop next to Cody and stared past Garth at the open front door. The man smelled of vampire, but it was off—different from a normal vampire smell. “I can smell her. If she comes out here and sees him lose control and shift, this will end badly. Cody, you need to keep her from seeing this. I can get him away.”

Garth snarled at the newcomer and swiped out, just missing clawing him. “No! Mine!”

Cody sighed. “Garth, stop! This here is Wheeler. He’s a friend—an Outcast. We’re here to help, not hurt her. We were in the area following up on a call we got about a guy lurking and we find you about to shift in front of the whole fucking world! Dumbass Viking.”

Wheeler snorted. “He’s a wolf-shifter, right? They do tend to be temperamental.”

“As opposed to vampires?”

questioned Cody.

Wheeler grinned. “Hey, I’m more than your average vamp and you know it, shark-boy.”

“Now isn’t the time for jokes,”

said Cody.

“Shark-boy, there is always time for jokes. With our pasts if we don’t find funny where we can our lives would be very bleak.”

Garth struggled for control. They needed to know that he’d claimed Nicolette and that his evil fucking twin was close. Nicolette needed to be protected no matter what. “N-not me…lurking.”

Wheeler looked to Cody. “And they say we’re broken.”

“You sure you can get him away from here? I think we need to consider locking him up for his own good, so he can ride this out. It’s that or we end up chasing a fully-shifted Viking wolf through the streets of Savannah.”

“Locking him up it is,”

said Wheeler, making a move to grab Garth.

Garth snarled.

Wheeler laughed. “Whatever, puppy. Let’s go.”

Everything in Garth hurt as his wolf took the lead.

“Son of a bitch!”

shouted Wheeler. “Forget the girl; help me get him out of here, fast!”

That was the last Garth heard before a red haze of fury came over him.