Primal Pleasure: Pendragon Gargoyles, Book 3 Read online

  Everything inside him skidded to a stop. Right up until Emma looped her arms around his neck and sucked his bottom lip between hers. The teasing nip and slide of her mouth across his threw a switch in his head, wiping out the insane thought he hadn’t been able to finish.

  Later maybe, when the stunning female with haunting gray eyes wasn’t pressed against him and kissing her way down his chest.

  Sweet Avalon.

  Unable to make it the rest of the way across the room, to the bed, he took the few steps needed and backed her against the wall. The predator in him growled in triumph at cornering her, trapping her.

  Emma’s chest rose and fell in quick bursts. “This isn’t… I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

  Neither did he.

  Slanting his mouth across hers, he tugged his trousers down, and the second his shaft brushed smooth, hot skin, he groaned. She didn’t wait for him to nudge her legs apart, reaching out instead and closing her hand around his cock.

  Fuck.

  For a second he felt like he had on the roof. Disoriented and overwhelmed, and much too close to losing his mind. And then she pumped her hand up the length of him, and pleasure rushed in.

  “Closer,” she whispered against his mouth.

  With her hand guiding him to her sex, they were about to get as close as two people could. He cupped her ass, massaging his way to her hip and then down to lift her leg. She hooked it around him, sighing a little as he fit against her.

  In one smooth thrust he was inside her, sinking all the way to heaven. Her nails dug into his biceps, and when she released the breath she’d been holding—and she wasn’t the only one—her body relaxed, letting him get a little deeper.

  He dropped his forehead to hers, trying to remember how to make his lungs work, then he withdrew and pumped his hips to fill her again and again.

  Instinct rushed in with his animal half’s need to dominate, and for a long minute he fought it. Fought it until his muscles ached from holding back. One last slow push inside her to savor the clench of her slick sex around him, the incredible sounds she made against his mouth, and then he thrust harder.

  Her mouth found the curve of his neck, where she pressed hot, wild kisses in between each soft cry of pleasure. Both of which were testing his ability not to explode inside her any second. And he wasn’t ready for it to end. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to find you.” It had to be one of the most insane thoughts he’d ever shared with a female. Even more insane was feeling it right down to his bones.

  He searched her eyes, unsure what response he was looking for—hoping for?—until a slow smile lit up her face. Crushing his mouth over hers, he lifted her a little higher, getting as deep inside her as he could.

  At some point both of Emma’s legs were wrapped around him, their hands linked before she needed to hold onto him as he pounded into her. Next to them the painting rattled, falling on the floor a few seconds later.

  “There,” she hissed. “Right…” She moaned into his mouth, the hot walls of her sex rippling around him as she came a moment later.

  “Emma,” he growled, pumping his hips faster…faster.

  He dropped his head to the crook of her shoulder, burying himself inside her and holding on as his release slammed into him.

  “Cian?” Her voice soothed him, and he slowly raised his head, wondering how long he’d been lost in thought as his body came back down.

  “I wasn’t expecting that,” she admitted quietly, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Wasn’t expecting you.”

  Serious gray eyes tunneled straight into his soul, flipping a panic button in his head.

  Even as he eased away from her, need clawed through him. The cat wanted to curl around her, stay with its mate—

  He stumbled back.

  No. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be his mate. She may have been all he’d thought about for the last three days, but if she were truly his mate he would have felt that instant awareness of her the night she’d cursed him.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He caught her arms.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Tell me what you did to me. What kind of spell did you cast?”

  Confused, she shook her head. “I didn’t cast any spell.”

  “Undo it. Now.”

  “Evidently you and your brother have been drinking the same Kool-Aid.” She flattened her palm over his chest. “Do you really think that what you felt, what we both felt, was because of some spell?” Her tone dared him to disagree.

  So he did. “You turned me to stone. If I felt a fraction of the hunger for another female that I feel for you, do you think I would be here?”

  She flinched and shoved him back a step, seeming surprised when he retreated. “I did not enchant you.”

  “You’re lying.” There was no other explanation.

  She jerked on the chain cuffed to one wrist. “Maybe you didn’t get the memo, but this makes it impossible to cast.”

  “So you found a way around it.”

  “Clearly spending a century as a rock left you a few pebbles short.”

  It took him a minute to get her meaning. The sorceress talked circles around him. To purposely confuse him more than he already was?

  She shoved past him.

  He growled and reached for her, stopping when he realized how badly he wanted to be closer to her. “Where are you going?”

  “To the bathroom,” she snapped. She slammed the door behind her.

  Cursing, he rubbed his hands over his face. Whatever Emma had done left him turned inside out, and she had done something, hadn’t she? She was powerful enough to channel the dagger’s magic, had used it to curse him. Any sorceress capable of that might have been able to find a way around the magic-nulling cuff she wore.

  The cat raked the edges of his mind, feeling betrayed by Cian’s thoughts. Torn in two, he prowled the length of the room. Maybe she hadn’t found a way around the cuff. Maybe this was all part of the original spell, a safeguard to prevent him from hurting her in case the curse was broken.

  He swung around to face the bathroom. “Emma?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  He deliberately softened his tone. “Emma?” He knew yelling at her was not the best way to get answers. At least that’s what he told himself when he knocked on the door.

  No response.

  “Damn it, Emma. Talk to me.”

  When she continued to ignore him, he walked in. A blur of white sliced across his peripheral vision, and then pain exploded across his skull and everything went dark.

  Chapter Five

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “A few pebbles short apparently.” Cian tried once more to pass his sister, and each time Briana blocked his path.

  “It’s only been two weeks, Cian. It’s not long enough. You’re not ready to go gallivanting after a sorceress.”

  “If I don’t find her, I’m going to go out of my mind.” And that was putting it mildly.

  He didn’t say anything anymore than that. Didn’t want Briana worrying about him any more than she already was. If she knew he was hardly sleeping, afraid to dream about Emma, or knew how much time he spent on the roof, lost in his few memories of her, she’d be afraid of more than whether or not he could handle a world still so foreign to him.

  Briana threw a helpless glance over Cian’s shoulder. “Do something.”

  Behind him, his brother Cale arched a brow. “Like what exactly? Ground him?”

  “He’s not ready.”

  “According to you,” Cian pointed out, though he wasn’t certain she was entirely wrong. But facing the fast-moving world outside his family’s home had to be better than hungering for a female that wasn’t truly his.

  They’d all hoped the spell would fade after Emma had pulled her vanishing act. Though he still hadn’t been able to live down t
he concussion she’d given him using the ceramic toilet tank cover.

  Weeks later and he longed for her just as much as he had those first few moments when he’d awoken and realized her fading scent was too buried beneath a hundred neighborhood smells to track her.

  Sorcha hadn’t had a whole lot of success either, and the oracle, a rare clairvoyant immortal, who’d told Cale how to find Emma in the first place, didn’t have much to offer. But Cian couldn’t sit and wait for someone else to find her. She was his problem, and if it took staking out every place she’d regularly frequented in the last fifty years to find her, he would do it as long as it took.

  The alternative, pining away for a mate he couldn’t call his own, wasn’t an option. Not when gargoyles embraced their animal halves entirely, becoming the Forgotten for a lot less than a spell.

  After Camelot had fallen to Morgana’s army, Cian had watched the grief that consumed a few of his fellow soldiers lead them to surrender their humanity to their beast halves. Once those ties were severed, they struggled to recognize friend from foe, and if they didn’t strike out on their own soon after it happened, someone often ended up dead.

  “You can’t go alone,” Briana argued.

  “Tristan has Pendragon’s to run and Cale and Sorcha have other daggers to find.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  “No, you won’t.” He’d deliberately waited until close to sunrise to leave, anticipating her stubbornness. “The sun will be up in less than an hour. And you were the one who warned me about stone gargoyles stuck in the middle of an intersection.”

  Briana poked him in the chest. “Don’t you dare use that tone with me.”

  “What tone?”

  “The same one you used when you ran off and joined the Guard when we were barely more than cubs.”

  “For the thousandth time, you couldn’t have come. Females weren’t allowed.”

  “Thank the gods this realm isn’t as chauvinistic as ours.”

  Cian snorted, but before he could reply, Cale stepped between them. “Is this where I have to step in and threaten to toss both of you around by the scruff of your necks?”

  “I’d pay a small fortune to see that.” Sorcha strolled into the room. “Or more specifically the part where they team up to take you down.”

  Cale scoffed, hauling his mate into his arms. “I can take you down.”

  Sorcha nodded. “When I let you.”

  Cale growled softly at the challenge, and both Cian and Briana rolled their eyes.

  Turning her back on the couple, Briana caught his arm. “You don’t need to do this alone. I can—” She broke off, glancing at Cale.

  “You can what?”

  Her brows drew together. “Help,” she finally answered, leaving Cian with the impression she’d wanted to say something else.

  “I need to do this on my own. She may not be my mate, but the cat thinks she is. Someday you’ll get it.”

  Pain blinked across her face so briefly he might have imagined it.

  “Hey,” he began, unsure of what he should apologize for. He’d swear he spent half his adolescence telling Briana he was sorry for something, whenever he wasn’t dragging her into whatever trouble he’d found.

  A smile curved her lips but didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just be careful and if you need me, call. Promise me.”

  He pulled her into his arms for a fierce hug, the sudden tightness in his throat preventing him from responding right away.

  Briana’s eyes were suspiciously shiny when she drew back. “And if you’re stupid enough to let that sorceress curse you again, just know that I’ll be using your stone ass to hang my lingerie on.”

  “Nice,” Sorcha quipped.

  Cale shook his head at her. “Don’t even think about it.”

  The huntress grinned at him. “C’mon. I’d bet you’d look fabulous in a little black or red lace.”

  Shooting his sister a dark look, Cale turned Sorcha back the way she’d come. “Thank you for that.”

  Briana smiled. “Anytime. Don’t worry, I won’t mention how good of a target you’d make the next time she and Nessa are playing paintball.”

  Cian cringed on his brother’s behalf. Having had the—pleasure? Misfortune?—of meeting Sorcha’s huntress friend, he sympathized with Cale.

  Sorcha held her hand to her ear in what Cian had learned was some universal sign for call me.

  Yeah, his brother had his hands full with that one.

  “Briana’s right about watching your ass.” Cale clapped him on the back.

  Cian grinned. “I’ll miss you too.”

  Briana shoved her hands in her pockets when Cale and Sorcha left the room. “I mean it, call me. I’m number one on your speed dial.”

  “I know.”

  She nodded, ducking in for another quick hug. “Give her hell, Cian.”

  He planned on giving Emma a lot more than that, even if it killed him.

  Emma stared at the cards on the blackjack table in front of her as the dealer waited for her. She glanced at the cards face up in front of the other players, quickly adding the values in her head and ending with a positive count. With a higher number of face cards still in the deck, she had the mathematical advantage. Doubling her bet, she then tapped for another card.

  The dealer laid a Jack of Spades, bringing her total to twenty and beating the house.

  “You’re moping, you know.”

  Emma tinkered with the stack of chips she’d just won, looking anywhere in the busy casino but at her aunt. Surrogate aunt anyway, according to the woman who so closely shared her hair and eye color that they were often confused as mother and daughter.

  Twenty years ago, when Elena had been at the height of her rebellion, they’d found themselves stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Leah had stopped to offer them a ride, and although Emma had half-expected her twin to charm the woman out of her vehicle and whatever cash she had, they ended up hitting it off. Probably had something to do with both Leah and Elena being free spirits.

  When Leah had offered them a place to stay, they’d quickly agreed, wanting to stay off their father’s radar for a while. Since then, they’d both made a habit of dropping in on Leah whenever they were in Vegas. Which was a lot.

  Leah had eventually recognized them as something more than human—Emma was convinced there was Fae blood in her family line somewhere—but not until a pissed-off sorcerer cornered them did they tell her the truth. In true Leah fashion, the revelation rolled right off her back and they carried on with their evening as though nothing had changed.

  “It’s a man, isn’t it?” Leah stood and scooped up her chips.

  Emma kept her attention on the table, setting her initial bet and waiting for the dealer to come back to her.

  What in the hell had she been thinking when Leah asked her to tag along this afternoon? She would have been better off staying at Leah’s, curled up with a stack of DVDs and enough fudge to pave the Las Vegas Strip.

  But no, she hadn’t wanted Leah to think she was moping—which had turned out beautifully—so she’d come along. She’d assumed Leah would vanish within the first twenty minutes, right around the time she inevitably spotted a potential candidate for her next husband.

  As far as Emma knew, they were only ever candidates. As much as Leah adored men in general, she had never really gotten over her first husband.

  “You’ll tell me eventually, you know.” Leah sent another flirtatious smile to the man two seats down from Emma. “Does Elena know you had your heart broken?”

  “I did not have my heart broken,” she hissed, sending the dealer an apologetic look for Leah’s constant distractions.

  He stared back at her. She frowned, then realized he was waiting for her. Doing the math, she doubled down and motioned to stand when he laid down an eight of hearts.

  “Trampled a bit, then.” Leah shrugged as though it was all the same.

  “Hardly.” She might have been foolish
enough to give in to the gargoyle but there was a world of difference between love and lust. Hardcore, hot-all-the-way-to-her-toes lust. The kind she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about—whenever she wasn’t looking over her shoulder for him, or imagining him dangling over the catacomb fire pits.

  “Good,” Leah murmured. “Get right back up on the horse, I say.”

  Since she’d been on a roll for a while and caught the dealer glancing in the direction of the pit boss a couple of times, she pulled her next bet back and intentionally busted. Counting cards wasn’t illegal, but casinos were well known for banning suspected card counters from the premises.

  “And if there was ever a stallion in need of mounting, it’s him.”

  Emma choked on her drink, afraid to look at whatever male specimen had caught Leah’s attention. Instead, she checked the time on her cell phone, ignoring the lingering redness on her wrist from the cuff it had taken her a week to get off, and only with a Fae’s help. She now owed Dolan and didn’t look forward to him collecting any time soon.

  “Oh,” Leah added a moment later, sounding disappointed.

  “What, spot a wedding ring?”

  Setting up for the next hand, the dealer cracked a smile.

  “No, but I’d say he’s off the market.”

  Assuming the guy in question had just been joined by his wife or girlfriend, Emma debated whether or not to give up her seat after the next hand.

  “Room for one more?” a familiar voice said to her right.

  Emma froze, afraid to look. Awareness licked up her spine, and she slowly lifted her head. Her gaze collided with Cian’s.

  “Giddy up,” Leah quipped.

  “Where are you going?” Without taking her eyes off Cian, she reached her hand back to catch Leah, but she’d already backed up.

  “The craps tables are calling my name.”

  Hundred bucks said she only went as far as the bar, where she could keep an eye on Emma and her stallion.

  Emma watched, not a little dumbstruck, as Cian joined the game. The entire scene felt like something out of a nightmare. If it had been a fantasy, he would have been naked, or at the very least without a shirt.