Barbara Hancock - Legendary Shifter

“You are brave. Braver than I hope you’ll ever know,” Romanov said. It was almost a growl, uttered past a tense and tightened jaw.

“What is it I should be afraid of? What could possibly be worse than being captured by the witchblood prince who stalks me?” Elena asked. She closed her eyes and willed away the hot moisture that threatened to rise behind her lids. She’d already betrayed too much of her vulnerability to him and he refused to be moved. She wouldn’t give him her tears too.

“I don’t know the prince of whom you speak. And I know many monsters. Some man, some truly beast. The Ether claims more of my humanity with every Cycle. And you ask what you should be afraid of as if a threat doesn’t stand before your very eyes,” Romanov said. His voice had dropped to a low, agonized whisper. It seemed confessional. Yet he told her nothing she didn’t already know. He was dangerous. She could sense it. She could see it. But he was also so much more. Compelling. Alluring. Seductive. More attractive to a civilized woman than he should be.

“I will not give up. I will not go away,” Elena insisted. A sudden persistent pull on the silver chain caused her eyelids to open quickly. They were closer. There was only the slightest brush of contact between them, but the tips of her breasts burned. She did hold her breath then because respiration caused an agonizing allure of friction she couldn’t resist.

But she didn’t pull away.

And she didn’t close her eyes again.

There were no tears now. Only a giddy heated pleasure radiating from her distended nipples to the rest of her body. The glittering intensity of his gaze was locked on hers, but he must have known the chain was indenting the nape of her neck because he allowed the silver links to go slack. Now it was up to her to stay close or move away. He no longer held her in place.

She stayed.

And the attention of his eyes fell to the key in his hand. She watched him as he focused on placing the key against the hollow of her neck. The heat of his hand had warmed the iron. Nevertheless the contact sent shivers down her spine, especially when he allowed the key to fall. It slid down until the hollow of her cleavage caught it. The warmed iron between her breasts caused her to gasp. But then when he lifted his free hand to touch her, the sudden weight of his calloused fingers and palm cupping the back of her neck was so much hotter. Her gasp became a trembling sigh and then a whimper when his fingers brushed under the chain as if to soothe the mark it had left on her skin. He was moved, but she wasn’t sure what to expect. She suddenly feared she’d woken a sleeping giant, one that might consume her body and soul if he decided to stay awake.

“I won’t send you back out into the snow. But you won’t find what you seek at Bronwal. There are no champions here. Only heartache and defeat. Only darkness and danger,” Romanov warned.

Elena breathed freely now. Her whole body burned and she didn’t care. For so long she’d been harassed and harried. She’d been injured, physically and emotionally. Plagued by nightmares and loss. Desperation hadn’t been the only thing that drove her to climb the mountain, but it was desperation—a different kind—that caused her to lift her arms. She placed her palms against Romanov’s sweat-dampened chest. She felt the thudding of his heart, his powerful muscles and his heat. He jerked at the contact. But he didn’t jerk away. He stilled as she slid her hands up inch by inch, measuring his height and his solid reality, until she held a broad shoulder in each hand. She didn’t understand what had called her to Bronwal, but she understood this.

Her hands had been trained to be a graceful expression of her art, but in that moment they were strong. They held a legend. And he was the one who trembled beneath her fingers. His mighty form reacted to the delicate intimacy of her touch.

His hand tightened on the back of her neck. She was held again. And she didn’t mind. For the first time in a long time she focused on pleasure instead of pain. It was warm and immediate and all else fled from her thoughts.

“One word and I’ll let you go. I’m not so Ether-addled that I have no self-control. I will be a man, not a monster, for as long as I’m able. For now, I’m able. Walk away from me,” Romanov said. But as he spoke he pulled her close and it was gentler than she could have imagined. He didn’t crush her against him. He pressed and her curves complied until they were melded together.

She tilted her chin to meet his descending face. And still he paused. Their lips were only millimeters apart. His warm breath tickled her slightly open mouth.

“I’m a dancer. I’ve spent more time as a swan than as a woman,” Elena said softly. The tears were back, burning her eyes. She ached to kiss him. And more. He was big and powerful, and when his other arm came up to press against her lower back the sensation of being held, safe, away from all that had come before, left her light-headed. But she was at a loss off the stage. She didn’t know how to claim a new life now that her old life was over.

“No. I’m holding the woman. Without a doubt, it’s the woman’s mouth I’ll taste,” Romanov said.

Elena drew a shuddering breath of air as he traversed the last distance left between them.

Their lips touched and his mouth moved with eager hunger against hers. In nightmares, she’d endured depravity. This was pure, human and real. She tightened her hands on his shoulders as her stomach swooped and soared and her legs went weak. She also opened to the masculine seduction of his rough, slick tongue teasing between her lips.

Living off the stage was more instinct than practice. She swooned into the kiss without thought to form or precision. Romanov was all heat and pleasure and he consumed her easily. The thrill that rushed beneath her skin echoed the call she’d followed up the mountain. She couldn’t separate the sensations. She’d wanted his hair unbound because she wanted this wildness. He’d seemed to offer it with every glance, with every move, even though he’d withheld it.

Her tongue hungrily licked past his lips and twined with his. He held her tight as if he hadn’t been offering to let her go seconds before. She didn’t want to go anywhere. Her search seemed to be over. The call was silenced because it had been answered, somehow, someway, by his lips and teeth and tongue.

“You risk much. This woman is protected by her mother’s spilt blood and claimed by Grigori, the witchblood prince. You might be Vasilisa’s plaything, but that won’t stop him from torturing you for eternity if you despoil his prize.”

Romanov tore his lips from hers and whirled around to face the interruption. A man had entered the courtyard from the keep. Elena immediately found her footing as she was shoved behind the warrior she shouldn’t have been kissing.

Her life wasn’t a life free to indulge in sensual assignations. Especially with the legendary master who refused to help her engage the help of the alpha wolf.

The man who had entered the courtyard cautiously approached them. Of course, he was no man. He was Volkhvy. And judging from his intimate knowledge of her tormentor, he was Dark, not Light.

“You’ve come for the Romanov blade, but you’ll find it buried deep in a cross purified by generations of my honorable men. It won’t come to you easily, and the sapphire has long lost its glow,” Romanov said. He’d placed himself between her and the Volkhvy. But he had no weapon in his hands.

The Dark witch was dressed in black leather from head to foot. He shone like obsidian in the winter sun. His white hair was braided in a thousand plaits and piled on top of his head, and his movements were young and quick. He was at least as tall and strong as Romanov himself. Elena’s heart pounded, overwhelmed with the rude transition from passion to fear. The wolves would come. Surely, the wolves would come.