Kresley Cole - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Then he’d realized he owned nothing but hole-ridden jeans, broken-in boots, and pullover shirts.

Hardly a fitting match for a lass with her delicate beauty. Hell, it hadn’t mattered anyway. She’s no’ coming. What he didn’t know was why . Yes, the Valkyrie hated the Lykae, considered them animals. But she’d responded to him.

Gods, how she’d responded. She’d taken her release and left him stranded and aching for his. He’d witnessed Lucia in the grip of passion, and she’d been like no female he’d ever imagined.

At the memory of her lust, his cock swelled in his worn jeans, and he rubbed the heel of his palm down his raging erection. All week, he’d been like this, randy as a lad in his first brothel, no matter how many times he took release. He’d hoped to be inside her this day, imagining it in a thousand different ways.

But she’s no’ meeting me. He checked the clock on his sat-phone. Ten at night. Clearly, he needed to call this. Lucia, it seemed, was in no way easy . He’d gotten his wish, and wished he hadn’t.

As soon as she’d left him here that night, Garreth had dragged Munro and Uilleam out of the still-going game and told them, “We need to find out everything we can on our new neighbors, the Valkyrie. All of them.” He’d been amazed at how little the Lykae knew about that faction of the Lore. And again he’d sworn his friends to secrecy. “Say nothing about this to anyone .” If word got back to the clan elders that they were about to have a Valkyrie for a queen…

He and the twins had agreed that no one could know about Lucia until she was bearing Garreth’s bite mark upon her neck. The beast inside any Lykae would recognize the claim as Garreth’s, would know she was forever under his protection.

Then the three of them had combed the streets of New Orleans, a city they hadn’t visited often, and all the while, Garreth impatiently counted down the hours till this day.

Finding information had proved difficult. Big Easy Loreans were suspicious of the Lykae newcomers to their city and on guard with the Accession approaching. Garreth had come up empty in his search, but the twins had charmed a voodoo shopkeeper who’d told them much.

Now as Garreth waited in the swamp, he thought back over all they’d learned about Lucia….

“She’s legendary for her archery skills,” Munro had said. “Nothing else unique about her.”

That was all she was known for? “There must be more. What does she like to do? What are her interests?”

“No one knows,” Uilleam had answered. “She’s just the Archer.” As if nothing more needed to be said about her. It was how she was identified.

Munro had added, “But it’s rumored that she feels agonizing pain whenever she misses a target.”

Luckily, Garreth couldn’t see that happening too often with her skill. But then his chest had grown heavy.

Was that how she’d gotten to be so good?

Above all, they’d learned the Valkyrie were peculiar creatures. Their origin alone fascinated him. Each Valkyrie had three parents. Whenever a maiden faced death with uncommon bravery, the Norse gods Freya and Wóden struck her with lightning, rescuing her to Valhalla. The maiden would wake there—healed, safe, and pregnant with a Valkyrie daughter.

The birth mothers hailed from all Lorekind—furies, witches, shifters, even humans. So the daughters would each possess the unique coloring and characteristics of the mother, but they all inherited Freya’s fey features and her notorious acquisitiveness—in fact, they could be mesmerized by shining jewels, diamonds especially.

The Valkyrie were rumored to have glass-shattering shrieks, preternatural speed, and no need to eat or drink. Instead they consumed electrical energy from the earth and produced lightning when they experienced sharp emotions.

That had been a legend about Valkyrie he’d never quite believed until he’d been in the throes with one. Lightning had speared the night, and not only from the storm.

Garreth had learned about various individual Valkyrie as well. Nïx was their soothsayer, rumored to be three thousand years old and mad as a hatter. Regin was the last of the Radiant Ones and had skin that glowed. Annika was the dauntless leader of the New Orleans coven, a master strategist who lived to war with vampires.

No one knew who Lucia’s birth mother was—or what she’d been—but the shopkeeper had said this Accession would be Lucia’s third. Which meant that she was over a millennium old—near his own age.

In the end, Garreth had more questions about her than answers….

She’s no’ coming. Damn it, why? He’d shown her passion—and patience. But she’d been skittish toward the end. Wild-eyed and spooked. Perhaps she feared the intensity of her own reaction? Or of his ?

He recalled what Bowen had once told him. “We doona understand our own ferocity.” His cousin’s deadened eyes had been filled with loss. “What’s normal to us is no’ to others.” Bowen’s own mate had loved him, until she’d seen him turned. Then she’d fled.

Lucia too had fled—yet she hadn’t even seen a glimpse of the beast.

The Lykae called their transformation letting the beast out of its cage . Garreth would grow taller, his muscles extending, his fangs and black claws lengthening. The brutal and menacing shadow of his beast would flicker over him.

No, Lucia dinna see me like that. He scowled at the waxing moon. But she soon will.

She would run far, if he wasn’t careful. Another glance at the moon, and he knew what he would have to do on that night. “Ah, Lousha, my lass. It’s going to hurt. But there’s no getting around it.”

For now, she wasn’t coming to him, so again he’d go to her. He stood and turned for the Valkyrie’s home of Val Hall. Since he’d met her, he’d staked out the bizarre place. Lightning bombarded the property, flashing constantly above the antebellum manor. All over the grounds, lightning rods jutted up. Smoking moss dangled from burned oaks. From within, Valkyrie shrieks sounded.

None of that mattered but for the fact that Lucia would be within. He strides took him closer and closer to her.

“Lykae in our backyards. Horde vampires seeking out Valkyries all over the world. Happy Accession!” Regin cried from her “command center,” also known as the dining room table, which now stood covered with maps and papers—all lit by her glowing face.

The more excited Regin became, the more she glowed. Yet that wasn’t the only reason she was called the Radiant One….

Lucia made a noncommittal sound, only half listening. She’d thought she’d spotted something outside the manor. She was curled up in a window seat, bow in her lap, peering out at the night. The gaslights flickered outside Val Hall, like tentative steps into the blackness.

On this day, she was supposed to have met the werewolf. All week she’d been in a daze, knowing she couldn’t meet him, yet tempted to so badly. She wanted to know if she’d imagined the addictive taste of his lips. She wanted to discover why she hadn’t been able to shoot him between the eyes. Why had everything in her rebelled against the idea?

And why had he taken her underwear?

That had confused her as much as anything from that night. Unlike her sisters, who were all obsessed with lingerie, Lucia wore athletic underwear—seamless, utilitarian. She didn’t buy sexy silks like Agent Provocateur, instead favoring brands like Under Armour—the kind sold in a pack. She’d never expected anyone to see them, yet he’d stolen them. Why?

She sighed. Surely MacRieve would leave her alone now that he’d been stood up. Even as she thought this, she half expected to see him advancing on the manor, pissed off, his gorgeous face creased in a scowl.