“Take from me,” he demanded.

Cormia let out a hiss that sounded like a cobra, and before she knew what she was doing, she nailed her fangs into his jugular. As she struck, he barked out a curse and his body jumped.

Holy mother of Words… His blood was a fire, first in her mouth then down in her gut, an all-powerful wave that filled her out from the inside, giving her a strength she’d never known before.

“Harder,” he bit out. “Suck me…”

She ran her arms under his and sank her nails into his back and took great pulls from his vein. She grew dizzy- no, wait, he was pushing her backward, taking her down onto the floor. She didn’t care what he did to her or where they ended up, because his taste was all-consuming as she consumed him. All she knew was the fountain of his life at her lips and down her throat and in her belly, and that was all she needed to know.

Robes… her robes were being pushed up to her hips. Thighs… hers parting, this time hers parting by his hands…

Yes.

Phury’s brain was up on a shelf somewhere, way out of the reach of his body, way out of sight. He was all instinct with his female’s feeding, his cock on the verge of coming, his sole focus on getting inside of her before it did.

Everything about her, about him, was suddenly different. And urgent.

He needed himself in her in as many ways as possible, and not just the temporary kind of in that sex provided. He needed to leave himself behind, mark her up good, get his blood and his come in her, and then repeat the process again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. He had to be all over her so that every fucking asshole on the planet knew that if they got near her they were going to tangle with him until they spit their teeth out and needed splints for their arms and legs.

Mine.

Phury yanked the robing out of the way of her sex and- Oh, yeah, there it was. He could feel the heat come up and-

“Fuck,” he groaned. She was wet, welling up, overflowing.

If there had been any way to keep her at his vein while he went down on her, he would have shifted around in a heartbeat. The best he could do was whip his hand up and shove it into his mouth and suck…

Phury shuddered at the taste, licking and drawing at his fingers as his hips pushed forward and the head of his cock nudged at the entrance of her core.

Just as he pressed in and felt her flesh give way to his… that goddamn, motherfucking Primale medallion went off on the bureau right next to them. Loud as a fire alarm.

Ignore it, ignore it, ignore-

Cormia’s mouth broke its seal on his throat, and her eyes, wide, fuzzy with bloodlust and sex, lifted to the sound of the rattling. “What is that?”

“Nothing.”

The thing shook even harder, as if it were protesting. Either that or celebrating the fact that it had ruined the moment.

Maybe it was in with the wizard.

Ya welcome, the wizard sang out.

Phury rolled off Cormia, covering her up as he did. With a nasty, vicious stream of curses, he pushed himself back until he was leaning against his bed and cradling his head in his hands.

Both of them panted while that slug of gold banged around the brush set.

The sound of the thing reminded him that there was no privacy between him and Cormia. The mantle of tradition and circumstance was all around them, and anything they did had huge repercussions that were greater than just feeding and sex between a male and a female.

Cormia got to her feet as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Thank you for the gift of your vein.”

There was nothing he could say in response. His throat was too full of frustration and curses.

As the door shut behind her, he knew precisely why he’d stopped, and it had nothing to do with the interruption. Had he wanted to, he could have kept going.

But thing was, if he slept with her, he had to sleep with them all.

He reached up to the bedside table, got a blunt, and lit it.

If he slept with Cormia, there was no going back. He had to create forty Bellas… impregnate forty Chosen and leave them at the mercy of the birthing bed.

He had to be a lover to all of them and a father to all their children and a leader for all their traditions, when he felt as though he could barely get through the days and nights with only himself to worry about.

Phury stared at the glowing tip of the hand-rolled. It was a shock to realize that he would have taken Cormia if it had just been about them. He wanted her that much.

He frowned. Jesus… he’d wanted her all along, hadn’t he.

But it was more than that. Wasn’t it.

He thought of her brushing out his hair, and realized with a shock that she had actually managed to calm him in those moments-and not just through the strokes of the brush, either. Her very presence eased him, from her jasmine scent, to the way she moved so fluidly, to the soft sound of her voice.

No one, not even Bella, could ease him down. Make the cage of his ribs loosen. Allow him to take a deep breath.

Cormia could.

Cormia did.

Which meant that at this point he craved her on pretty much every godforsaken level he had.

And doesn’t that make her a lucky girl, the wizard drawled. Hey, why don’t you tell her that you want to turn her into your new drug of choice. She’ll be thrilled to know that she can be your next addiction, used to try and get you out of your fucked-up head.

She’ll be thrilled, mate, because that’s every lass’s dream- and besides, we all know how you’re the king of healthy relationships. A real golden-boy winner in that department.

Phury let his head fall back, inhaled hard, and held the smoke until his lungs burned like a brush fire.

Chapter Twelve

That evening, as night fell across Caldwell and did absolutely nothing to improve the humidity, Mr. D stood in the hot upstairs bathroom of the farmhouse and peeled off a bandage he’d applied hours and hours earlier to his gut. The gauze was stained black. The patch of skin underneath was much improved.

At least one thing was workin’ for him, although it was only the one. Less than twenty-four hours as the Fore-lesser and he felt like someone had pissed in his truck’s gas tank, fed his dog rotten meat, and lit his barn on fire.

He should have stayed just a soldier.

Although it wasn’t as if he’d had the choice.

He tossed the dirty bandage into the drywall bucket the dead people evidently used as a wastepaper basket and decided not to replace it. The internal damage had been real big, going by how bad it had hurt and how far that black dagger had gone in. But for lessers, the intestinal tract was made up of useless meat. That his guts were a sure-fire tangled mess didn’t matter none, long as the bleeding was stemmed.

Boy, last night he’d barely got out of that alley alive. If the Brother with the sissy locks hadn’t been reined in, Mr. D was darned certain he’d have been deboned like a catfish.

A knocking from downstairs brought his head up. Ten o’clock sharp.

At least they were on time.

He strapped on his heat, picked up his Stetson, and hit the stairs. Outside, there were three trucks and a beater in the dirt drive and two squadrons of lessers on the front stoop. As he let the boys in, the fuckers topped him by at least a foot, and he could tell they weren’t impressed none too good about his promotion.

“In the living room,” he told them.

As the eight of them filed past, he flipped free the holster strap on his gun, palmed the Magnum.357, and leveled it at the last one in the house.

He pulled the trigger once. Twice. Three times.

The sound was like thunder; none of that subtle popping like you got with nines. The slugs went into the small of the lesser’s back, obliterating his spine and blowing a hole through the front of his torso. The guy hit the ratty rug with a thump, a little cloud of dust wafting up.