Free Touch of Temptation by Rhyannon Byrd

left hand shot free, digging deep into the ancient stone. Flakes of gray floated down to the floor, like puffs of smoke, and he shook his head, stunned that he hadn’t been able to control the change in his body. Terrified that he might accidentally hurt her, just like he’d feared he would do, Kellan started to pull away, but she reached down and covered the clawless hand at her hip, holding him against her.
    “What are you doing?” he snarled, his entire body shaking with violent, visceral emotion. “My wolf wants at you, Chloe. Goddamn it, this isn’t safe!”
    “If it wanted to hurt me, your claws would be ripping into my flesh right now, but they aren’t. It just needed to let off a little steam,” she whispered. And then she shocked the hell out of him by moving up onto her tiptoes and pressing a kiss to the back of his monstrous, claw-tipped fingers, then lower, against the battle-scarred back of his hand.
    God, she’s too good to be real.
    Something suddenly caught at the edge of Kellan’s consciousness, like a hand clasping onto him in the dark and trying to pull him back into the light. Noises? Voices? His brows drew together as he forced the irritating intrusion away, focusing instead on the breathtaking sensation of her lips against his skin. On the perfect, bone-melting feel of her tender sex sliding against his heavy shaft as he pushed between her legs. Sweat dotted his forehead, a salty drop trailing into one eye as he locked his jaw and fought the urge to reach down, position himself, and ram up into her with everything he had.
    No! Can’t hurt her. Never hurt her….
    Struggling to concentrate, Kellan fought to remember his purpose, but it wasn’t easy. Chloe kept kissing her way down his arm, over his thick wrist, the ropy muscles in his forearm, until she was nuzzling the hard, round bulge of bicep. “Bite it,” he growled, nudging the muscle harder against her lips, wanting the sting of those sharp little fangs in his flesh. He was more than happy to give up his blood for her, while making her come, no longer able to recall why that was so wrong.
    Not wrong, the wolf rasped. Finally getting what I want. What we need….
    Her small fangs scraped his flesh, just as he bent his knees a little more, the heavy head of his cock nudging inside that small, slick opening nestled within her folds, his breath hissing through his teeth at the blistering contact.
    So soft. So tight.
    Flexing his hips, he pushed the head of his cock a little deeper into her, working against her natural resistance, the snug, slick kiss of her sex the sweetest, most mind-blowing thing Kellan had ever experienced.
    She’d just scraped her fangs across his skin a little harder, getting ready to sink them deep, a low hum of anticipation purring in the back of her throat, her body shivering, on the brink of release…when that invisible hand nudged at him again, warning him there was a problem. He shook his head, hard, trying to focus, and then he caught it. A rumble of voices coming from the upper level. Although they were growing louder, his wolf snarled that it was nothing…to just ignore it. But the voices grew closer, until they were coming from just outside the locked door at the top of the staircase, and Kellan was instantly ripped back to his senses, the reality of the situation crashing over him like an icy bucket of water.
    “Son of a bitch!” He took a stumbling step back, his chest heaving while he fought for a deeper breath, his arms trembling at his sides as his claws retracted.
    “Kell?”
    “Damn it, we can’t do this! Not here,” he growled, scraping both hands through his hair so hard that his scalp stung. “Not like this. If they find us together, we’ll get separated. I can’t let that happen.”
    With a keening sound of frustration, Chloe crumpled against the wall. “You’re stopping?” she whispered, her voice cracking as she turned toward him, her expression shadowed with pain and