“Cut it out, Alpha,” she shouted, punching her fist into his seat back.

He met her furious gaze in the rearview mirror, his own hard and brittle. She was as angry as he was; he had made sure of it by reminding her that he’d hunted her kind, that he’d observed and studied their habits and places of congregation in minute detail so he could kil the ones who stepped out of line.

She deserved to be uncomfortable for putting him through this hunger, for making him want her more than he’d ever wanted anything. The moment he’d stroked his tongue across her skin, her taste had exploded across his senses with the force of an incendiary grenade. There was nothing reasoned or calculated in his response to her. It was pure primal recognition of a unique and potent physical attraction. Lust at first sight, exacerbated by their heightened lupine and vampire natures.

He could stil taste her, damn her. Smel her. His palms burned with the need to feel her. Inside, his beast howled with rage to be freed, forcing him to struggle in a way he’d never had to before. Because he…liked her. Crazy as that was. Crazy as she was. Control ing his baser nature had always been as easy as breathing, but it was exhausting him now. Wearing him down. Clawing at him from the inside and shredding what restraint he had left after a week of painful blows and savage lows and highs. She’d witnessed those trials and, in her own way, been an asset to have around while going through them.

He growled. Vashti’s returning feminine hunger was eating at him like a cancer. As tough as she was, he now knew he could make her soft and submissive, and he wanted her like that. Wanted her limp and panting beneath him, completely at his mercy. He could accept nothing less.

The nearly two-hour drive to Shred ended up feeling like two years, and not just for him. Salem unfolded from the Jeep before it drew to a complete stop and was through the thick metal entrance door in a flash. Vash was fast on his heels, fleeing Elijah as if the hounds of hel were after her. When the door slammed shut behind her, he barked out a mirthless laugh.

As if a simple door could prevent what was coming. If only it was that easy.

Needing to get himself under control before he entered a vampire den, Elijah took his time locking up the SUV and scoping out the exterior of the unobtrusive building for changes. He surveyed the immediate area, refreshing his memory of the industrial properties on the periphery that had closed long before the party got started. He took note of the armed vampires on the roof before they deliberately made their presence known. They smel ed him coming, and because he was spoiling for a fight, he lifted his hand and flipped them off.

One decided to oblige him, leaping agilely from the top of the three-story building and landing in a graceful crouch. The vamp was sleek and sinewy, his world-weary eyes and economy of movement betraying significant age. They circled each other slowly, baring fangs and canines, claws extended. Neither of them looked away from the other when the door opened and a masculine voice shouted out, “Dredge! Leave him alone. He’s Vashti’s.”

The vampress’s protection so enraged Elijah that his spine rippled with a partial change. He didn’t fucking need her to clear the way for him. He could damn wel do it himself.

“Are you a pet, dog?” Dredge taunted, his amber eyes glowing. “Or a meal?”

Elijah’s mouth curved. “Maybe she’s a lycan’s bitch.”

Dredge lunged. Expecting the reaction, Elijah met the vamp’s incoming face with his fist, hurtling him backward across the parking lot and into the side of a delivery van, creating a massive dent that mimicked the shape of his body.

Shaking the sting out of his fist, Elijah turned toward the open door, his ears trained for the sound of a retaliatory ambush from the others on the roof. But none came, proving the extent of Vash’s power—her word was law for vampires. Seeing the proof of it made Elijah’s dick impossibly harder, spurring his need for her, which had grown steadily over days of watching her run the show. She wielded power with the same control and skil that she used to wield her katanas, which turned him on as much as her body did.

Once inside the outer door, he encountered a second entrance. It opened as soon as the first door shut, releasing a flood of pounding techno- pop music and the rich metal ic smel of freshly spil ed blood. The scent of sex engulfed him in a steamy mist, spurring his ferocious mood. He wanted to fight and fuck with unmitigated ferocity, and the need to do both increased with every second that passed.

Rounding a corner, he was thrust into a massive room fil ed with writhing vampires. Some were dancing, grinding their undulating bodies against whoever was close enough. Others were feeding, their bloody mouths latched on to throats, wrists, and thighs. Stil more were openly fucking, like Salem, who was dril ing a vampress from behind as she drank from the femoral artery of a woman spread-eagled in front of her.

The unrestrained hedonism bombarded Elijah’s ravaged senses, the thick humidity in the space almost suffocating him. Maddened to the edge of insanity, he searched for Vash among the crowd, his beast lunging against the cage of his control, trying to batter its way out at the thought that she might be spread for someone else.

Leaping onto a tal boy table, he roared, drowning out al sound. The room froze, the music becoming glaringly loud within the absence of sound.

Then a slender blonde mimicked his leap and gained the bar top. She ripped her shirt apart and exposed her tits, shaking them with wild abandon and screaming, “Fuck yeah!”

The crowd ignited into a frenzied mass. Drunk on endorphins, they resumed their carnal excess, the pounding bass of the music spurring them like a war drum.

Elijah vaulted up to the second-floor balcony, hunting his vampress.

Vash entered the third-floor VIP lounge and scanned the room’s occupants with a sweeping glance. She was searching for something in particular and she found him. He was long and lean. Blond. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his lounging pose was insolence personified. His chest and feet were bare; his skin was pale and smooth. The antithesis of Elijah. But best of al were the piercings riddling his body—his ears, brows, nose, lips, nipples, navel…She was certain there would be more in places she couldn’t yet see. And the carvings in his skin. Intricate designs that had been sliced by a skil ed blade and prevented from healing by application of silver-laced cream or shavings.

The man enjoyed pain. Sought it out deliberately and found beauty in it. And she wanted to inflict pain on someone who could take it and wanted it. Because she hurt and was infuriated by that hurt. Because she’d pushed her way through dozens of beautiful, desirable male bodies to reach the lounge, and none of them had moved her or stirred the hunger simmering in her blood. Because she was dead to every male just as she’d been ever since the day Charron died…every male but one.

“You.” She beckoned her quarry with a crook of her finger.

He straightened with a slow, sensual smile and came to her with a leisurely, confident stride. Reaching her, he took her in from head to toe with a covetous glance, then licked his lower lip. “I was beginning to think you’d never come for me.”

Bored already, she raised her brows. “Oh?”

Tilting his head, he exposed his neck…and the tattoo that was written there with silver-tainted ink: VASHTI, BITE HERE.

A shiver moved through her at the craziness of the act. They’d never met, yet he’d marked himself as her property.

Of al the men to meet her criteria for the night, she had to pick a groupie, one of the far-too-many minions who were aroused by the thought of being a blood slave to one of the Fal en.

She almost waved him away—there was enough crazy in her life as it was. Then she heard Elijah’s roar, felt it vibrate through wal s and rattle the bloodstained glasses on the tables. The fierceness of the desire that shot through her made her sway on her feet, as if she was hardwired to answer that dominant cal . She didn’t have time to be discerning. She needed blood to manage her desire for Elijah and she needed it now.

Knowing she had maybe five minutes at most before the lycan worked his way through the crush of bodies on the stairs to get to the third floor, Vash shoved the vamp into a chair and circled him, grabbing his jaw from behind and yanking it out of the way to expose his neck. She’d prefer his wrist, to keep it impersonal, but she needed to be quick and nothing beat an arterial gush for speed.

Her fangs descended, her gaze riveted to the thick pumping vein at his throat. As her stomach gnawed in hunger and dizziness swept through her from the need to feed, the lounge door was ripped off its hinges and thrown over the balcony into the teeming mass of vampires below. Elijah fil ed the threshold, his body big, hard, and virile. His irises glowed in the shadows cast by the muted wal sconces.

“Mine.” Just the one word, spoken low and terrifyingly deep, as if ripped from the beast inside him instead of from his human throat.

Something warm and slightly twisted slid sinuously inside her, some alien feeling of…pleasure that such a magnificently masculine creature should be so powerful y possessive of her.

His gaze dropped to the minion seated in front of her. “Go, before I kil you.”

“I need to eat, damn you!” she shouted, weary of fighting herself over him and desperately clinging to the hope that a replenishment of nutrients would free her from her inexplicable fascination.

But she knew he wouldn’t let her drink from anyone else, not now. The act of feeding was too innately sexual, even when the only contact was fangs to vein and lips to skin. He was too territorial to al ow that connection, however impersonal. Yet she couldn’t afford to drink from him… wouldn’t drink from him, because she knew, instinctively, that she would have the same reaction to the taste of him as he’d had to the taste of her—the hunger wouldn’t be appeased; it would grow. She would crave more. More of his potent lycan blood. More of him.

She would have to restrain him long enough to get a meal in edgewise.

Taking command of the situation, Vash closed the distance between them and caught him with a fist in his shirt. “Come with me.”

She pul ed him, but succeeded only in ripping the shirt off his back. Elijah didn’t move at al , was too powerful for even her vampire strength. Her sex clenched with greed for this male who was more than a match for her.

Flushed and breathless, she skirted him and exited to the hal , trying to get herself under control before he realized how close to the edge she was. If she wasn’t careful, he’d have her begging for his cock. The thought of that weakness terrified her as nothing else could. She had to be strong, for herself and for Char, and for al the vampires who needed her to keep them alive and thriving.

Elijah fol owed so closely she could feel his heavy exhalations on her nape. Stalking her again. And she couldn’t deny that some recessed part of her wanted him to. Because it ratcheted up her desire, made her hot and wet.

Vash saw the smal green light lit above a door and went to it quickly. There were more doors and more lights. Most were red, which signaled locked and occupied. Some were yel ow, which signaled vacant but in need of housekeeping. Only a few were green and she chose the nearest one, opening the door and cursing as Elijah crowded her into the smal playroom. He caught her around the waist and tossed her onto the massive bed, barely giving her the time to scoot up before he pounced.

“Elijah,” she gasped, as he landed neatly on al fours, caging her to the bed with his hands pressed to the mattress at her shoulders and his knees hugging the sides of her thighs. Fear paralyzed her, not of him but of the raging desire that was quickly consuming her. The need to arch upward and offer herself to him was a driving force. It pounded her heart against her ribs and squeezed the air from her lungs.

Her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, the only il umination provided by recessed lighting in the baseboards. His eyes glowed with preternatural green fire and his head lowered, his chest expanding on a deep inhale as he breathed her in.

“Should’ve brought us here when we arrived,” he said gruffly. “You’d be coming now.”

He took her mouth before she could reply, his lips sealing over hers and stealing her breath. His tongue swept inside her on a groan, his hand moving to her zipper to slide it down to where it ended at her pubic bone. She’d barely swal owed her first rich, dark taste of him when he pushed his hand beneath the edge of her suit and claimed her breast in one big, hot hand.

Her fangs sharpened in a rush of need, piercing his tongue. His blood flowed into her mouth, the flavor intoxicatingly exotic. He kneaded her breast, plumping it, then focusing his thumb and forefinger on the tip, rol ing and tugging on her hardened nipple until her sex spasmed in the same rhythmic tempo.

Out of her mind for him, Vash sucked on his tongue with the same voracious pul with which he’d sucked her nipples earlier, drawing more of his blood over her taste buds. Her eyes rol ed back in her head, her ability to reason lost to the addictive deliciousness. He growled into her mouth and sank between her thighs, grinding the rigid length of his cock into her aching sex. Whimpering, she gripped his hips and tugged him into her, rocking her hips upward to stroke her clit against his erection.

Elijah lifted his head and watched her as he rol ed his hips, watched her head arch back as an orgasm hovered just out of reach. “Tel me you want it, Vashti. Tel me you need my cock in you like you need blood to live.”

Her body quaked violently as he gave voice to her greatest apprehension.

I won’t be led around by my dick, he’d said what seemed like ages ago in the Bryce Canyon caves. But she feared she wasn’t as strong as he was. She’d never been so desperate for sex as she was at that moment, and he was the only man she wanted to have sex with. Her attraction to him wielded too great a power over her, and she feared giving him what he demanded of her—total surrender.

Tossing her leg over his hip, she gained the leverage to flip him to his back. Moving as fast as if her life depended on it, Vash focused on the purpose of bringing him to a playroom to begin with. In a split second, she had him restrained, his wrists and forearms banded with barbed silver- plated steel cable. He roared as the tiny rounded points pierced his flesh, scarcely enough to draw blood but enough to expose the wounded flesh to the one metal that weakened Sentinels, vampires, and lycans alike.