Free Kiss of Darkness by Loribelle Hunt Page A

a year, in January, and this one was taking place long before necessary. Why? The nightwalkers had asked for the meeting and given Dupree no explanation for it.
    The Alliance only existed because they all shared a common enemy. The nightwalkers and the lupines distrusted, almost hated, each other. There was ancient history there but Winter didn’t know the whole of it. No one quite knew what to make of the Order. Some of the hybrids managed to move in the lupine world with ease, accepted mostly because of her friendship with their alpha, Mitchell Grant, and the few mixed mated couples the groups shared. But the nightwalkers remained aloof.
    Over the last sixty years she had met only a handful, and those times had been in the heat of battle. Not a lot of opportunity to chat then. And lately there was the invasion of her mind. A pair of flashing blue eyes rose in her memory. Marcus.
    She sighed remembering that encounter, using it to strengthen her shields and steel herself against the coming meeting. She saw him so clearly in her mind’s eye that she was almost positive he was projecting the image to her. He was too gorgeous, tall and lean with flowing black hair and a chiseled face. It was the eyes though, those piercing blue eyes, that made her catch her breath.
    They swept her from head to toe. Dark. Hungry. Possessive. Her body clenched in response, exhaustion suddenly wiped away, and a smile teased the corners of his mouth. With Old World charm, he bowed at the waist and disappeared from her mind. She gripped trembling hands tight around the steering wheel until her joints popped in protest. She recognized what just happened as a challenge, a gauntlet thrown at her feet to warn her the hunt had officially begun. Resisting Marcus would be difficult and she tried to remember everything they’d learned about him.
    His identity had been hard to pin down, but once Mitchell had a name she’d done some digging of her own. Marcus. Whispered to be the most dangerous of the nightwalkers. Rumors about him flourished. The most interesting was that he was their Lord. Or maybe he wasn’t and his Lord couldn’t control him. They said he never indulged in sex. She almost snorted. A celibate nightwalker? That was too impossible to believe. Rumor was they fed off psychic energy during sex. To abstain would mean to starve, right? So no, she didn’t believe that particular rumor.

    She scowled. If he was fooling around with another woman while he was so busy teasing her into a ball of need, she was going to kill him. So on second thought, maybe there was a grain of truth to the celibacy rumor. He was really into tormenting her and while he was at it she felt his need, sensed that even as he denied her he denied himself too. God, why did you throw me into this confusing mess? He didn’t answer and she didn’t expect him to. They weren’t exactly on speaking terms.
    She forced her mind off Marcus as she turned on to the road leading to the nightwalker Lord’s home. As a squad leader, she’d never come to these meetings. She was dreading explaining her ascension, the events leading up to it. She’d blocked him from her mind so much of the day she doubted he knew yet. Mitchell wouldn’t have said a word, and Dupree hadn’t either when the call from the Alliance was routed from Ben’s old number to hers.
    Rage and the need for retribution sang through her blood. They were always careful to safeguard their sleeping and living areas. How had the demons discovered Benjamin’s compound? How did they kill so many hunters? The techs still didn’t have a complete list of who had been at the compound, but since the attack was shortly before breakfast it would have been full. She’d have to work that out later.
    She slowed when the Federal-style mansion loomed up before her, following Dupree’s car to a parking area off to the side. They left all their weapons in the trunk of the cars, except the trademark obsidian daggers each wore.