Free Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 05 by Touch of Surrender

Kierland
helped her pull the shirt over her head, then tossed it onto the counter. “That
was the dirtiest I’ve ever seen you fight tonight,” she murmured, a slight
tremor moving through her body as she lowered her head, waiting for him to get
on with it.
    “I didn’t have time to be chivalrous,” he rasped,
holding a thick washcloth beneath the hot-water faucet. “Those assholes
would’ve liked nothing more than to get their claws into you.”
    She gave a soft, feminine snort. “One of them did,
actually.”
    “You must be masking pretty strongly to have covered
the scent of your blood from me.” He wrung the washcloth out, laid one hand
over her shoulder to hold her steady, then pressed the cloth against the
bleeding wound as gently as he could. “If you weren’t, I would have picked up
on it the second you walked into the room. What’re you trying to hide?”
    “It’s habit. That’s all.” She drew in a deep,
shuddering breath, and surprised him by saying, “Do you realize this is the first
time we’ve been alone together in…God, it’s been years.”
    Kierland grunted in response, not trusting what might
come out of his mouth at that particular moment. The skin beneath his hand was
soft and silky, and as he carefully cleaned the edges of the cut, it occurred
to him that this hadn’t been his brightest idea. He wasn’t some green-eared
innocent, for God’s sake, and had seen far more than his fair share of naked
female bodies in his lifetime. But they hadn’t been Morgan, damn it, and that
seemed to make a hell of a difference.
    Tossing the bloodstained washcloth into the sink, he
reached for one of the plush hand towels to dry her back. Then he took some
bandages from the first-aid kit and began applying them to the slice in cross
sections so that it would stay closed. As he finished the last bandage, his
gaze wandered over her smooth shoulder, up to the feminine curve of her throat
and his mouth watered like a starving man standing before a banquet of
succulent food. Though he didn’t need blood for feeding, in the way that the
Merrick and Deschanel did, he still wanted the taste of it. The feel and the
warmth of it sitting in his mouth. Wanted to know what it would be like to sink
his long fangs deep into that pale, petal-soft flesh and have the warm rush of
her blood spilling over his tongue.
    Kierland locked his jaw and tried everything he could
think of to keep his gaze from shifting to that bathroom mirror, where her
reflection was just waiting for him. Calling to him. He thought about her and Ashe
together, his stomach knotting as he imagined them wrapped around each other,
going at it hard and fast. Thought about the fact that she was no doubt still
in love with the bastard. Thought about how she had thrown herself at the cocky
vamp, when Kierland had needed her most.
    But in the end, none of it was enough, and he lifted
his gaze, staring with hot eyes over the top of her head, his gaze locking onto
the mouthwatering sight of her breasts encased in that sheer, flesh-colored
lace. If he’d ever seen anything more erotic, he couldn’t remember it. He must
have made some kind of hungry, guttural sound, because her gaze shot up. She
caught him staring at her reflection in the wide mirror, the soft wash of
golden light spilling from the overhead lights lending an amber glow to her
skin. His jaw clenched as he waited for her to say something cutting or snide,
but she appeared speechless, her breath coming in sharp, jerky bursts that made
him think of how she would sound when he was covering her with his weight,
pressing her down, driving his body into hers with a hard, relentless rhythm.
    “You might be a kick-ass little soldier, Morgan. But
the lace suits you,” he managed to choke out, the husky words scraping his
throat.
    She opened her mouth, but still didn’t say anything.
Or maybe she couldn’t. Her chest rose and fell with the rushed, hectic cadence
of her breathing, her gray