Free Touch of Temptation by Rhyannon Byrd Page B

come to an end.
    Unless he managed to pull a fucking miracle out of his ass, there was no getting around the fact that he was a walking dead man.
    The voices grew louder at the top of the stairs, and Kellan pressed his face close to the bars, knowing they had little time. “Raine, you awake?”
    She replied immediately, saying, “I’m here,” no doubt sensing whoever was getting ready to pay them a visit.
    “Be ready.”
    “I am,” she murmured, and then, in a lower voice, she added, “You lied to her, Lycan.”
    Kellan stiffened with shock, his tone guttural as he said, “I have never laid a hand on that redhead in my life. Spark is just trying to cause trouble.”
    Raine’s voice was soft. “I’m not talking about the assassin. I’m talking about the poison.”
    Shit , he thought, running his tongue over his teeth. He’d asked Raine to try and get a “read” on Asa Reyker for him, to find out if the bastard’s claim of an antidote was true, but when she’d tried, she’d said the vampire’s mind was too ravaged by the poison for her to see anything clearly. Still, she was as doubtful as Kellan was, both of them aware that antidotes were practically nonexistent when it came to the strains of poison thatexisted in the Wasteland. The psychic knew Kellan was dying…and she obviously thought Chloe should know, as well.
    “Look,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I don’t wanna sound rude, Raine. But this doesn’t concern you.”
    “I consider you my friend, Kellan, so yeah, it concerns me. And Chloe’s my friend, too. She needs to know the truth.”
    Like hell she did. The last thing he wanted was to add to her guilt. And he sure as hell didn’t want her looking at him with pity or thinking he wasn’t strong enough to get her out of there.
    “We’ll finish this argument later. Right now, we’ve got company coming. Can you tell who it is?”
    “Spark. Be careful and don’t do anything crazy.”
    With a snort, he asked, “You mean like piss the bitch off?”
    Raine made a sharp sound of frustration. “That’s exactly what I mean!”
    “I can’t make any promises.”
    “You should try,” she muttered.
    “Yeah, but you’ve seen what I’m like, Raine.” Kellan knew there was more than a little of the wolf in his smile as he drawled, “Believe it or not, pissing people off is usually what I do best.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    C HLOE HADN’T BEEN LYING when she’d told Kellan she was scared, because she was. It was an out of her freaking skull, breaking out in a cold sweat kind of terrified…and it was the only justification she had for what she’d done.
    Yeah, she’d been desperate. But she still felt like a user, because she knew that when he’d finally caved there at the end, it hadn’t been real.
    There’s just no way he was touching me like that without…help.
    The truth was that he’d probably only reacted the way that he had—the desperate, aggressive touching and kissing and make-you-melty sex talk—because of the curse. Because of the way she was jacking up his primal hungers. But what choice did she have? She hated to do it to him, but if he didn’t help her, she was becoming truly frightened of what the Merrick might push her to do in its desperation. If she wasn’t careful, she feared she might find herself begging for what she needed from whomever might give it to her.
    Westmore.
    A Casus.
    Bile rose in her throat at the nauseating thought, and she drew in a deep breath through her nose as she pulled on her panties, wishing she had more clothes to coverherself with. Restless and worried, she moved to her feet and started pacing from one side of her cell to the other. She could hear several sets of footsteps on the stairs now, and knew there was a group headed down to the cellblock, just as Kellan had feared. Their captors had finally given up trying to “feed” her, and Kellan had already been interrogated at length. Which meant they were most likely coming for Raine.