She touched him.

Wet, silken flesh.

His c**k was already erect and aching. The too-big shower suddenly seemed too small.

“And you scare me, too. Because I know that you’re dangerous.”

Not to her, dammit, never to her.

“You make me feel so much. Desire. Need.” She stood on her tip-toes and pressed her lips to his. “When I’m with you, I feel like you belong to me.”

He did. Had, from the moment he first saw her.

“And I belong to you.”

He pushed her against the tiled wall. “You do.” He didn’t care what twisted magic Lorcan had spun. Jane was his. In life. And beyond death.

He wouldn’t let her go. He’d find a way to break that spell or curse or whatever the hell it was.

He’d find a way.

Jane’s fingers slid down his body. Curled around his aroused flesh as he kissed her beneath the rough spray of the shower. His c**k jerked at her touch. He was so ready for her. Always, for her. She stroked him, pumping his flesh, bringing his arousal to a harder, sharper, desperate edge.

Enough.

He lifted her up against that tile. Took her breast into his mouth. Licked and sucked and when she moaned, it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

Her pleasure.

He kissed a path to her other breast. Her legs curled around his hips, and she positioned his c**k right at the entrance to her sex.

“Now, Alerac, I need you now.”

He drove into her. Her silken heat covered him, straining around his length. His hands had flattened on the tile behind her. Their eyes were on level now. He stared at her.

In her gaze, Alerac saw every dream that he’d ever had.

Saw her.

He withdrew and thrust. Again and again. But he didn’t make the rhythm rough and wild. Not this time. This time, he kept a stranglehold on his control. This time, he wanted to prove that he could be more than the savage who went wild for her.

His c**k angled over her clit as he thrust. Her breaths came faster, harder. Her nails pressed into his shoulders. And her gaze held his.

His c**k swelled even more. He drove deep.

Kissed her. Stroked her with his tongue and his lips, and she came around him, shuddering, her sex quivering along his length.

He held his body still as she came, loving the feel of her pleasure, and then, only when she was sated, he carried her from the shower. Her legs were still wrapped around his hips. His c**k was still in the paradise of her body.

He lowered her onto the bed.

“Alerac?”

He smiled at her. “You make me happy.” As few things in this world ever had.

Jane blinked at him, and her gaze seemed to soften. Then she smiled. “You make me…happy, too.”

He kissed her again.

Started to thrust. Still not too hard, not too wild. He wanted her to come again. Endlessly. He wanted to show her all that he could give to her. Wanted to prove that their life together could be good.

If she gave him a chance.

If she wouldn’t fear him.

Her heels pushed into his lower back. “Alerac, I want everything.” And her sex clamped around him, her delicate inner muscles tightening.

For an instant, he paused.

“Everything,” she said once more, her voice a sensual demand. Then she arched toward him.

He put his hand between their bodies. Stroked her, pushed right when he knew her need was centered most.

He forced his control to hold. Forced it—

She came.

He shattered. No, his control shattered. He thrust fast and furiously now, determined to claim her, every single bit of her. When the pleasure hit him, it consumed Alerac, wiping away his past and his future. Wiping away everything.

But his Jane.

You make me happy.

He would fight for that happiness. Battle a hundred vampires. Slay any beast in his path.

As long as that path led to her.

***

He was dying.

Ryan could feel death coming. Death wasn’t cold. Wasn’t some icy touch. Death burned and twisted and cut, destroying him from the inside out.

He’d known that his time was coming. The pain had been growing.

Every moment, it had been his companion.

Lorcan and his twisted deals. He’d connected Ryan to his sister all right, a connection that had eaten away at him for too long.

He coughed, choking, and wasn’t surprised to see blood come from his mouth.

“What’s happening to you?”

Zoe. Whenever he turned around, she seemed to be there, watching him with her big, dark eyes.

“Nothing.” Death. There was no point in telling her. The witch had been clear on what he needed.

A caged beast—that sure seemed to be Zoe. And it wasn’t the first time that he’d heard that particular line. Lorcan had told him—when he tracked the SOB down fifty years ago—something similar. That his freedom lay with a beast bound by chains that no one could see.

Knowing Lorcan’s twisted streak, it had figured that the beast in question was a werewolf.

Zoe was the only werewolf he’d ever encountered who couldn’t fully shift.

But if he bit her, she’d be destroyed.

For once, he’d do the right thing. He’d keep his fangs away from her.

He coughed again. But he caught the blood in his fist so she wouldn’t see it. Then he turned away from her, smearing it on his jeans. “I’m going to check in the woods. Make sure that Lorcan isn’t around.”

“The pack is patrolling—” Zoe began.

“And I’m going to patrol, too,” he said gruffly.

Lorcan. He’d wanted to help his sister defeat their old clan leader, but he wasn’t going to be any use to her.

A brother found, then lost, all so suddenly.

Maybe she’d grieve for him.

Maybe she wouldn’t.

He didn’t look back at Zoe. She was too much of a temptation to him.

He was just passing two twisted pine trees when Zoe grabbed him. She spun him back around to face her. “I can smell your blood."

Shifter nose. He inclined his head. “Good for you. Now do us both a favor…stay away from me.”

“The pain’s worse.”

He didn’t reply. He didn’t feel like lying anymore.

“Is this really what you want?” She asked him, tilting back her head and letting that heavy curtain of hair fall over her shoulders. “To just crawl off into the woods and die? Is that what you want for your sister? For her to stumble over your body?”