Free Black Gate: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 4 by Michele Callahan

probably the first time in his life he’d ever let his dick do his thinking for him.
    He stared at the creamy flesh of her neck. So thin. So delicate. So easy to snap.
    He bit off a curse. There was a reason he lived isolated in the Florida Keyes with water and gulls for company. There was a damn good reason he avoided humans and Immortals both. He was far more dangerous than any idiot with a rifle.
    She turned into him, nuzzling his neck like a snuggling kitten. Power flowed between them in a low but constantly humming circuit. He wanted her, wanted to bury himself in her body and let loose his seed and his power together.
    She would take it all from him, would thrash and burn and whimper his name.
    He watched her breathing. Dreaming. Eyes shifting as memories flickered through her mind. She’d tasted the Gate’s power, all right. And she’d loved it. Wanted more. Was so enthralled by its power that she’d kissed a total stranger with passion, worse, conquered him with her lips and tongue alone.
    She was even more dangerous than he’d believed.
    Teagh set her down gently and removed the thick vest and her boots. When she looked comfortable in her black pants and T-shirt, he tore his gaze from the steady rise and fall of her small breasts and covered her with a blanket. She was still chilled, not yet conscious. His instincts nagged at him, a feeling that as complex a problem as she already presented him, there was more here than he’d yet seen.
    Much more. He couldn’t think without his libido interfering if he held her. So he sat in the chair two steps away and waited.
    <><><>
    Three hours later Teagh leaned back in his chair and traced the contours of her body beneath the blanket with his gaze for the thousandth time. Curve of her hip. Soft depression of her stomach. Rise of small, pert breasts. Lips for kissing. Hair softer than silk. Back to the toes.
    Again.
    Katherine’s breathing hitched, and he leaned forward, elbows on knees, eager to cross wits with her. Hell, eager for any response. She should’ve awoken when he gave her the command to do so. Instead, her weak body had slumbered on, the darkness within her draining his power in a slow, steady trickle.
    She licked her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. A nervous gesture, or an angry one? He wished he knew her better.
    “Where am I?” She tried to sit, but moaned softly and collapsed back onto the couch cushion, her hand at her temple.
    “Safe.” He watched, helpless, as pain flooded her eyes and she curled into a ball, shivering.
    “Where?”
    “My home.”
    Her laughter was bitter. “And where is that? Why did you bring me here?” She grimaced but swung her long, sexy legs over the edge of the couch until her black-stocking toes made contact with his tile floor. She stood.
    “Florida.” Her movement paused then restarted as she digested that.
    “Where’s Frank? Oh, my God. I have to go.” Her eyes scanned his floor. “Where the hell are my boots?”
    “You’re not going anywhere.” He stood and watched in amusement as her body tensed, ready to strike him. He was, most likely, the only being on the planet safe from both her power and her fists. “The darkness nearly killed you. You can’t go back in there yet.”
    “But my men.”
    “Will keep.” Teagh crossed the room until they were toe to toe. He expected her to fall back onto the couch, to retreat. She stood her ground, with agony in her gaze and her willowy limbs trembling like a newborn lamb’s. Damn, she was stubborn. And fearless. He liked it.
    “You don’t know that. Why did it take them? Can you help me get them back?” She rattled of questions even as she swayed on her feet. He couldn’t take it another moment. He swept her off her feet and held her against his chest.
    “Hey!” She wiggled a bit, then sighed in relief. He froze, shocked as the darkness inside his bones, usually cold as steel in winter, shifted inside his body into a thick flood of heat.
    What