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  Now, hours later, Aylia walked out onto the back porch of the house to find Marcus on the back porch waiting on her. Not only had Cassie been safe upon her arrival with Troy, she’d calmed Troy enough for him to shift back to his normal, blood sucking self. Aylia had then bound the magic in him, giving him control over the wolf that was now a part of him. It was the best she could do. She couldn’t destroy the wolf inside him without killing him.

  “You did good, darling,” Marcus said, leaning on the wooden railing, the midnight full moon behind him.

  She grimaced. “You know I hate when you call me that.”

  “Would you rather I call you ‘little witch’?”

  “Not funny,” she said at the reference to Nico’s nickname for her. “Where is he?” He’d been there during the spell casting, dressed in one of the Brooks brothers’ clothes he’d borrowed, but had disappeared with Marcus as soon as it was over.

  “Some Werewolf business to attend,” he said. “A bone to chew or something like that.”

  Hurt by Nico’s absence, by the fact that he didn’t want to see her, somehow, she managed a weak attempt at a smile. “You know, Nico hates your dog jokes as much as I hate your nicknames.”

  “That’s why I tell them,” he said. “Wolf boy is too uptight.” He pushed off the railing. “Need a lift to your apartment?”

  “Yes, please,” she said. For now, she really had no choice but to go back to the rental Marcus had provided when he’d promised to help her located her necklace. She touched her necklace, knowing it was time to leave the past behind, no matter how painful. “I…I need to return to Texas, back to the Coven. Andres is dead and I have my necklace back.”

  “Have you told your mother you’ve located the necklace?”

  She nodded. “Yes. She cried like I’d just told her I was dying; so did my step-father.”

  “And your father?”

  “Is my father,” she said, which meant he was too busy and almighty as one of the Twelve Lords in the Central Coven to worry about the mistakes that were she and her mother.

  He studied her a long moment, his eyes too intelligent and knowing. “I’ll spare you the flight home and take you when you’re ready.”

  “No,” she said. “I think I want to fly.”

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll have a ticket waiting for you.” He walked to her side to touch her arm and flashed them into motion without warning. After an instant of stilled time, she was suddenly standing in front of a Vegas hotel and casino, one of the few not secretly owned by The Werewolf Society, and smack in the middle of the valet area, with people around.

  “Why are we here? Aren’t you afraid of being seen popping in and out places?”

  “It’s Saturday at four in the morning in Vegas,” he said. “The people here are either drunk or they think everything is part of a show. And we’re here, my darlin’, because Nico thought you’d be more comfortable meeting him at a non-Society property.”

  Her breath hitched. “Nico?”

  “Nico,” he confirmed and produced a paper sleeve with a plastic key sticking out.

  She hesitated and then took it. Marcus disappeared without another word. Aylia cursed the vampire and closed her hand around the key, then turned to face the hotel. Her purse had been lost long ago. She had no money, no phone, nothing but the key, but there was no way she was going to a hotel room with Nico. Why? Why wasn’t she going to a hotel room with Nico? Her mind was blank a moment before she silently cursed herself for her short memory. He’d kept her necklace, he’d sent her away. He’d blamed her for Andres when she’d wanted to save lives. No. No, she was not going to a hotel room, where she would be blinded by passion.

  Aylia marched forward and didn’t stop until she was inside the hotel at the courtesy phones. She punched in the number written on the paper sleeve. He answered on the second ring.

  “I’m not coming up,” she said before he could speak. “You come down. Meet me in the lobby.”

  “Come upstairs, Aylia,” he said softly, a rough wolfish texture to his tone that sent a shiver down her spine.

  “No, I-”

  “Come upstairs, Aylia,” he repeated more forcefully. “We need to talk and we don’t need an audience.”

  “We won’t just talk.”

  “We’ll do whatever you want us to do.”

  “Talk.”

  “Talk,” he repeated.

  She inhaled and let the breath out. She shouldn’t be considering this, “Just talk.”

  “Come upstairs, Aylia.” He hung up.

  Chapter Two

  A witch’s passion, a wolf’s brew…

  Aylia was standing outside Nico’s hotel room, willing herself to knock, when Nico opened the door and pulled her inside. Suddenly, she was against the wall, and he was pressed against her, his fingers threading through her hair, dragging her mouth to his.

  “Now we talk,” he said, his breath warm on her lips.

  “This isn’t talking,” she panted, telling herself to push him away, but melting into him instead.

  “Foreplay to conversation,” he said, closing his mouth over hers.

  Aylia moaned as his tongue stroked hers, as a year of needing him and missing him tore through her. She couldn’t fight this, didn’t even try. She wrapped her arms around his neck, arching into him, craving the feel of his hard body against hers, remembering the sanctuary he’d always been to her.

  He growled low in his throat, deepening the kiss, the taste of him – spicy, male, erotic - driving her wild.

  His hands slid down her waist, one shoving her skirt up, caressing her backside and then cupping it, pulling her against the hard ridge of his erection.

  She pressed her hands under his shirt, seeking skin, seeking that ultimate connection, the freedom from barriers, the escape from everything that had gone wrong between them, everything that still could. She just needed him.

  He shoved down the bra beneath her shirt and tugged one of her nipples before unhooking the front clasp. Aylia moaned into his mouth as he molded her breasts in his palms.

  “This isn’t why I came here,” she panted, defying her words by touching him, stroking the taut skin and flexing muscle. He pulled his shirt over his head and threw it aside. She was touching him, exploring him, before it ever hit the ground. Her teeth scraped the flat nipple nested in dark hair. His hand went to her head, stroking her hair, before he pulled her shirt over her head.

  Aylia shrugged out of the bra the instant the shirt cleared her head and then pressed her breasts against his chest, his hand molding her closer.

  “I need to be inside you,” he growled against her mouth before kissing her again, devouring her with his tongue.

  Aylia reached between them, pressing her hand to his cock, impatient to give him what he wanted, what she wanted. Nico covered her hand with his, stroking his shaft with hers, before freeing himself and shoving his pants down. He grabbed her leg and pulled it to his waist. He ripped her panties off of her and replaced them with his hand. He stroked the intimate swollen flesh, and she dropped her head to his chest, lost in sensations. It had been so long since he’d touched her like this, so long since she felt like this.

  He twined his fingers into her hair, pulling her head back and kissing her, the tip of his cock caressing the wet heat of her core, teasing her but not entering her.

  “Nico,” she pleaded.

  “This is where I belong,” he replied huskily, and then pressed inside her.

  She could barely breathe from the pleasure of him filling her, stretching her. He grabbed her legs and wrapped them around his waist, lifting her. She wrapped her ankles around him. In some far part of her mind, she wanted to laugh at the realization that she still had her boots on and they were all she had on.

  It was the last coherent thought she had as wildness overtook them. He thrust deep inside and she rose up to sink down on top of him. Over and over they did this, their lips and breaths merging, their bodies pumping, but i
t wasn’t enough. Never enough. She didn’t want to come, she didn’t want it to end, but he was hard and hot, and stroking her just right. Nico shifted her weight off the wall, holding her fully. Thrusting and thrusting and…she shattered, the air in her lungs catching with the intensity of the pleasure, her body shaking.

  Nico moaned as she spasmed around him, milking him, pulling his release out of him. He ground into her, his hands cupping her backside to push her further against him. They collapsed into each other, and she buried her head in his chest. Nico settled her back against the wall, still inside her, still holding her up. Their foreheads rested against each other and silence thickened around them, as reality bled into the pleasure.

  “Nico,” she whispered, a ball of emotion tightening her chest. “You said we’d talk.”

  “I know,” he said, his hand stroking her cheek.

  “I-”

  He kissed her. “Not now. Later. I’m not taking any chances of you running out of here on me.”

  “Like Mr. Alpha himself would ever let that happen.”

  “You’re right,” he said huskily. “If you run, I’ll be faster than you, and if I remember correctly, you like when I chase you.” He withdrew his cock and slid her down his body to settle her feet on the ground. She felt the instant ache of his absence, of needing him back inside her, the dampness of their pleasure streaking her thighs. But even so, she felt a pang at the unimportance of birth control. She wasn’t a wolf. She could never be his mate or his pack, and one day, some female wolf would be.

  He shoved his pants and underwear the rest of the way down, and she realized he didn’t have on shoes. He’d been ready for this. He’d planned this. But she didn’t care. She wanted this. She needed this. And no, she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to forget. Her gaze raked over his lean body, thick with muscle, his shaft jutting out, ready for her again, as he tossed his clothes away.

  She reached down to take off her boots. He stepped forward and turned her towards the door, and she pressed her hands on the surface. “Leave them on,” he said, his hands reaching around her to cup her breast, to pinch roughly at her nipples just the way she needed him to, before he added, “I like them.”

  She laughed in the midst of a moan as he pressed her legs apart, his cock settling between her thighs, his hand stroking her clit. “I thought you were a high heels kind of wolf.”

  “Boots are better to run away in, little witch,” he murmured, near her ear. “And don’t you want to run?” He went down on his knees, and shifted her, until he’d positioned himself so that his back was against the door, and she was in front of him.

  His hands braced her hips and she stared down at him. He slid his finger inside her and she bit her lip. He slid another inside with it. “Or maybe,” he said softly, “you’d rather stay here and let me lick you all over and then do it again. If I remember correctly, and believe me, I do, you like my tongue almost as much as you do my cock.” His mouth closed down on her clit and her knees went weak. She wasn’t running anywhere any time soon, not when they hadn’t even made it to the bed yet.

  ***

  Hours after Aylia had arrived at his room, fully dressed, Nico settled onto the mattress beside her where she lay on her stomach, naked and sleeping. His nostrils flared with the scent of him all over her. His fingers traced the deep scars on her left shoulder; the claw marks from the Rebel wolf who’d attacked her and almost killed her over that damn Coven necklace of hers.

  “Never again,” he whispered, brushing his lips over the marks before pushing off the bed, not allowing himself to look at her. He stopped at the door though, unable to open it, letting his head drop to the wooden surface, but knowing what he had to do.

  Nico straightened his spine, opened the door, and left Aylia there, naked, beautiful, and alone.

  Chapter Three

  Deuces Wild…

  Aylia rolled over in the king sized plush hotel bed with luxurious sheets that were laced with the scent of Nico. She stared at the ceiling, and touched the empty side of the bed where he’d been when she went to sleep. How had she thought she could go to a hotel room to ‘talk’ with that wolf and not end up bent over the bed and every which way afterwards?

  She sat up, the sheet falling to her waist, the cool air conditioning reminding her of how naked she was, and how thoroughly pleasured. She shoved aside the blankets. She deserved last night after he’d held her necklace captive.

  She reached to her neck to touch it and froze. “No,” she whispered. No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. Her necklace was gone. “You son of a bitch.” She pushed off the bed and rushed to the bathroom. Nico had somehow located her purse and her cell phone and had it delivered, and she was thankful now for that more than ever. She grabbed her cell phone and thumbed through the numbers to punch in his; she had almost deleted it a million times before. He answered on the first ring.

  “Give it back.”

  He laughed, low and deep. “I’m at Benedanti. Come and get it if you dare. Witch.” He hung up.

  ***

  You never doubled down with a werewolf. Aylia should have known deuces were more than wild with Nico. They were dangerous and she’d end up a fool. Oh what a fool.

  That was what Aylia was thinking thirty minutes later as she charged through The Werewolf Society’s cover operation for their headquarters ‘Hotel Italy,’ a witch hunting magic. Her magic that arrogant, no good, alpha wolf had stolen from her. Again. He’d stolen it again. All she had left now was a Genius Book sized ‘after the loving is over’ batch of regret.

  It killed her to know that while she had fallen asleep in his arms, more at peace than she had been any night of the time they’d been apart, that he’d been plotting against her. That she still wore the very clothes that he had so expertly ripped off of her. Come and get it, Nico had dared. He didn’t believe she’d go after him, onto wolf territory where she was no longer welcome.

  Alyia cleared the masses of slot machines that were as plentiful as the wolves the humans didn’t know surrounded them, then headed to Tower 3. That would be the VIP section of the property, where only Society wolves and select others were allowed. Like she had been while aiding the wolves in the civil war. Her boots hit the tiled floor. She stopped a few steps before she came into view of the base of the elevators. Just to the left of the security desk was the wooden arched doorway of the VIP bar that was her destination.

  ‘Benedanti’ the sign above the door read, and she ground her teeth, all too aware the location had meant to intimidate her. The name was a reference to a mythical pack of Italian werewolves alleged to have hunted evil witches. Much like Nico, who had apparently hunted her and her necklace. Her fingers balled into fists by her sides. She was going to show him evil all right. The wolf wasn’t the one winning this battle.

  Aylia headed for the bar’s entryway, not the least bit surprised when a bulky security guard, dressed in his typical Men-in -Black-wanna-be dark suit, stepped forward to block her entry. She knew him, just as many of the wolves here would know her.

  “Aylia,” the wolf, Ned Wright, said with a nod. His lips curved with the flare of his nostrils, his hazel eyes raking over her.

  “Ned,” she replied, suddenly all too aware of the wild mass of her long, chestnut hair and most likely smudged makeup. Not that her appearance mattered. A wolf’s sensitive nose would smell sex, anger, and Nico, all over her.

  “What’d he do?” Ned asked, not bothering with a name. “Break out the champagne and roses?”

  Like wolves were ever about champagne and roses, she thought, but Aylia bit back the reply and the reference to the very nasty way she and Nico had parted ways. She’d save her anger for the wolf that deserved it. “Is he here?”

  “Downstairs,” Ned said and she was walking before the word was fully out.

  Almost immediately, Aylia cut to her right, quickly traveling a set of stairs leading to the bottom level of the bar. The sound of an old AC/DC classic, a Nico favorite, touc
hed her ears, bringing back memories better forgotten. She quickened her pace. She wanted Nico behind her; she wanted to stop thinking about him and wanting him. The six months she’d lived here, working to bind the Red virus in the infected wolves, when she’d been in his bed and life, had meant something to her, but not to him.

  Aylia cleared the last step to the lower level of the bar without stopping, a witch back on a mission, a witch about to go alpha on an alpha. He’d betrayed her, he’d used her, he’d hurt her. It was all she could process, all she knew. She rushed down an aisle between packed wooden tables and a leather covered bar, ignoring the stares of a busy Friday night crowd.

  She found Nico where he always was when he was here, in the back room, standing at a pool table, looking like sex and sin in leather; power effortlessly radiated off of him. She stopped under an archway and his amber-colored eyes lifted from where his second-in-charge, Kole Smith, was leaning forward about to take a shot, his long blond hair tied at his nape.

  If she’d expected some show of surprise at her presence, there was none. Those eyes of Nico’s were so calculating, so probing, so aware of her on levels no other man had ever been, and she feared, never would be again. His gaze found hers. Time stood still, and there was only the two of them, the tension between them, the accusations, and yes, the passion. She tried not to think about him naked, her naked, about the things they’d done together, but there was no hope. Even his neatly trimmed goatee reminded her of oh how perfectly it had rasped her skin only hours before.

  That she wanted him after his betrayal defied reason. It angered her that she could still want him after all he’d put her through, both past and present. Aylia funneled that anger into her natural born magic, charging forward and holding her palm so that it faced the table. Every ball on the canvas flew into the side pockets.

  “Damn it, Aylia,” Kole muttered. “I was winning.” It was spoken like it was still the norm to see her here, like her presence wasn’t forbidden by her coven who’d declared the wolves enemies.