and everything for each other. Resisting those temptations was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Even though the physical stimulation they experienced together ignited a perfect explosion of exultant euphoria, she would retaliate against the odds because she believed she was destined to discover a deeper connection. She sought to find an emotional and physical nexus that could never be broken or questioned.
Swallowing back her rising needs for the men who turned her body to molten lava and her brain to mush, she said, “I’m sorry, Dominic. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “Technically it was my fault, so there’s no need to apologize.” He inhaled deeply, meeting her gaze. He licked his lips. “I don’t know what came over me.”
He might not choose to admit it and perhaps that was for the best, but she knew all too well what had come over him. He could say the words that he wanted to be her mate, but could he fully accept what those words would truly mean for him, and her? Maybe she wasn’t the only one fighting the bonding link. She smiled to herself as she realized the only one who seemed unaffected by their interestingly strange lovers’ predicament was Reyes.
Staring into Dominic’s magnificent black eyes, hypnotized by the seductive trace of gold that circled the iris, revved-up her heart. Her body was suddenly charged by his, vibrating with awareness. Standing so close to him, she felt the spark of electricity surging from his body slam into hers with a force that nearly rendered her speechless. The force overwhelming her reminded her of the feelings she had for Dominic the moment they’d first met, before she’d even touched the warm flesh of his body.
Swallowing to moisten the dryness in her throat, she told him, “Still, I shouldn’t have slapped you.” She turned away instantly before he could sense the emotions pulverizing her soul.
Fleeing her office and the towering men who had just made love to her, she stepped in close to Zane. She couldn’t meet his gaze. He’d seen her in a way she never wanted her colleague and friend to see her. Even worse than being caught naked in front of him, she’d allowed him to discover her in a most compromising position with the two men she’d admitted earlier wanted to be her mates. Denying her feelings about Dominic and Reyes to Zane would be harder than ever.
Stiffening her spine, she jumped right to business. “Show me the bite marks.”
Standing alongside her assistant in the lab beside the corpse of Mason Levi, she watched as Zane grabbed the large well-lit magnifying lens from overhead and lowered it to Mason’s right pectoral, directly above his pale nipple. His skin had almost healed over the small puncture wounds.
Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated and studied the marks. “Did you find others?” she asked.
“Yes, he has two more bite marks. One on his left inner thigh and the other”—he paused, lowering his voice—“on the head of his penis.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as a wave of warmth flooded her cheeks. She wasn’t embarrassed about the marks on the head of Mason’s cock, but more for the reminder that Zane had seen her in the throes of passion with her mates.
Assumed mates, she reminded herself.
Megan shook the sidelined images from her mind. Her brows pinched tight at the bridge of her nose, and her mind swirled with random thoughts. No vampire she had ever known wanted anything to do with a lycan breed. Vampires were snobs, too high up on the food chain to give two shits about any were-kind. The only thing that might make a vampire touch a lycan would be—
Her gut knotted as she made sense of it all. “They had sex,” she blurted out.
“That’s what I thought,” Zane admitted. “Why else would a vampire mark a lycan like this? Tearing out a throat is one thing, but marks like these are sensual in nature. There was no tearing of the flesh. The puncture marks are
C. J. Cherryh
Learning to Kill: Stories
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