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  Darkest Temptation

  Sharie Kohler

  Pocket Star Books

  New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Soul So Wicked’ Excerpt

  Chapter One

  The car rolled to a hard stop beside the house’s perimeter wall. Lily’s head bounced against the headrest, her seat belt biting into her chest. The moon-soaked night throbbed around her. Alive. As palpable as heavy fog.

  This was it. Where he lived. She knew it. Felt it in the tightening of her scalp. The tingling of her flesh. The dull, nagging throb at the core of her. Already, she felt the change. The difference, her humanity fading.

  Fighting back a swell of nausea, she rotated her still tender arm, gently fingering the deep wound there, cringing at the sticky warmth of her blood.

  The man beside her spoke, his voice as rough and gritty as the asphalt burns on her hands and knees. “Remember what I said. If you lose the gun, use the knife. Lose both, and you’re dead. Nothing else will work on him. Got it?”

  She turned to stare at the hunter. Curtis. Moonlight streamed through the dirty windshield, limning his narrow features a pearly gray. He reminded her of a rat with his straggly hair and hooked nose. His small, dark eyes darted anxiously around them, as if he expected an attack. “I’ve been hunting this bastard a long time. Fail me and you die.”

  She nodded once, wishing he would stop talking and let her get it over with so she could put this nightmare behind her. She recalled his brutality. He had cut down those… things without a blink. She was nothing to him. A means to an end. Expendable. She knew what needed to be done.

  “Fuck him if you have to, just kill the bastard.”

  She flinched at his harsh words despite all she’d been through. All she had seen tonight. All she still felt…

  Bile rose in her throat and she shivered. She’d only ever been with one guy—her high school boyfriend. Before he’d graduated and left for Berkeley. Before Mom had gotten sick and Lily’s life had become about working two jobs, paying bills, playing nurse. About making it through the day, the week, the year. About giving up on her dreams in order to survive.

  He chuckled and closed a hand over her bare thigh, sliding moist fingertips beneath the edge of her skirt. “You’re a nice enough piece. You got that going for you. Use it.”

  She pried his hand from her thigh, gritting the words, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And she would. She always had. For her life. For Mom.

  He grunted and motioned for her to get out of the car. “I’ll be around. Don’t screw up.”

  She stepped from the vehicle, eyeing the stretch of white stucco wall that guarded what lay within from the outside world. A shiver chased down her spine. You know what lies within. You came face-to-face with it over an hour ago. Watched as it made a meal out of Maureen.

  Gleaming silver eyes, swiping claws, and gore-stained teeth flashed in her mind. She shoved the images back with a ragged breath. Maureen’s short-lived scream echoed in her head. Lily closed her eyes against the stinging memory and sucked in a deep breath.

  Clasping a hand over the nasty bite on her arm, she assessed the wall, the headlights of Curtis’s car warm on her back. Gnats and mosquitoes danced around her, attracted to the light and the aroma of spilled blood—hers and Maureen’s.

  Craning her neck, Lily tried to imagine a way over the ten-foot wall and not think about what waited on the other side. The gun tucked in her jacket bumped her hip, offering solace as she walked. Curtis’s eyes burned into her from where he sat in his car.

  She could do this. She had to. She couldn’t fail. Couldn’t vanish and leave Mom alone. Not now, so near the end.

  Fueled with determination, she climbed up a large oak tree beside the wall, biting her lip against the pain in her arm. Blood ran over her teeth, warm and sweet, but still she climbed. She worked her arms and legs, fingers digging fiercely into rough bark. Fresh blood rose on her scraped palms, making her grip slippery as she dragged herself onto a branch. Inch by slow inch, she progressed further, holding her breath, praying the branch did not snap beneath her weight. Finally, as far out on the bowing limb as she dared, joints stretched and screaming in protest, she jumped.

  With a muffled shout, she caught the wall. Grunting, she clung, slippery hands curling around the edge. She hauled herself up, dragging her body. Chest heaving, shoulder screaming in protest, she collapsed atop the wall. She had done it.

  Curtis reversed and turned his car around, the lights swinging wide. She watched the taillights disappear down the hill, the purr of the engine fading as he vanished into the night.

  She had made it over the wall. Now she was on her own.

  * * *

  For several moments, she fought for breath, the coolness of the stucco seeping through her, chilling her legs, penetrating through her jacket and silk halter top. The halter top Maureen had loaned Lily when she’d shown up at Maureen’s house wearing a “boring blouse”—Maureen’s words. Fresh-hot pain rolled over her. Maureen. Dead. Mauled and rotting behind that nightclub. The image flared, a burning imprint in her mind. She jammed her eyes in a tight blink, but the horrible image clung, scraping behind her eyelids.

  Opening her eyes, she stared at the moon burning brightly through the night’s clouds, seeing it with fresh eyes. The eyes of someone who knew its curse, understood its power. It would be the end of her if she let it. Its intense force seemed to flow to her even now, reaching for her, into her. The wound on her arm tingled in response.

  “The hell with you,” she growled. “You’re not going to get me.” Sucking in a breath, she surveyed the drop down from the wall.

  Turning on her stomach, she slid her legs over the edge. Feet dangling, she lowered herself until she hung by her fingers. Arms burning, muscles stinging from the strain, she dropped…

  And landed hard, toppling and rolling to her back in a winded pile.

  She rose slowly, assessing the grounds around her. Well-tended lawn cushioned her feet. The perimeter lights of a large house with a surfeit of windows winked at her through the wind-brushed trees. The windows gleamed like dark sheets of ice in the night. It was beautiful, a showpiece. But oddly soulless.

  She stepped forward, every muscle tense, ready. Do-or-die time. She couldn’t leave Mom. Not now. Not after sticking with her through all these years.

  Body taut as a bowstring, she advanced through the trees, hoping they would shield her, offer some cover until the last possible moment. “Fuck him if you have to, just kill the bastard.” She ground her teeth to block the thick rise of bile in her mouth. She would do whatever it took to win back her life… to keep her soul and not turn into a monster with a taste for human flesh.

  To be there with Mom at the end.

  She thought of tonight again, of Maureen’s screams, of the white-hot pain as teeth ripped into her. That wasn’t going to happen again. Now that she knew monsters were more than make-believe, more than the stuff of nightmares, she was ready. Her hand slid inside her jacket’s pocket.

&nbs
p; I’m the hunter now.

  * * *

  Luc crouched high in a tree, more shadow than man, watching the interloper through narrowed eyes. He had felt her the moment she’d stood outside his gates. Smelled her. The female heat of her. The freshly spilled blood she wore like perfume. The fear.

  Inhaling her scent, faint and earthy beneath the taint of blood, his throat thickened. The old dark hunger rose in him as he observed her weave through the trees.

  Silent as the wind, he jumped to another tree, loosely climbing the trunk and perching on another branch with the agility of a jungle cat. He flicked an angry glance at the moon. Bad timing for her. Its lure thrummed through him. The heavy pull alive and strong in his muscles and bones. He would be hard-pressed to control himself tonight. She was a fool to come during moonrise. When he felt so little restraint. When hunger rushed him. His heart raced with predatory speed in his chest.

  She was not the first. Others had come. Mortals and lycans alike. Although never alone. Hunters came in groups. Lycans in packs. They hunted him for one reason only. To kill him.

  As he watched her, he knew the same purpose filled her, saw it in her deft, determined strides. Felt it in the vibrating tread of her feet over the ground. And he knew he would do what he had done to the others. Destroy her. Leave no trace behind. Those who intruded on his life never lived to carry tales or spread word of his existence. They thought him something else. Another lycan. Only too late did they learn he was more. More dangerous. More of a threat.

  He would destroy her and then move on. Continue. Cursed and alone. Existing. But not living. Never living.

  He had carved for himself the closest thing to peace he had ever known here. Far from his cousin and the army of evil he’d built. Brethren whose taste for blood was not limited to moonrise. Nothing save total dominion over the world would satisfy Ivo. Luc wanted no part of the mad schemes, wanted only to escape from the corruption.

  He glanced a final time through the branches at the moon that called, beckoned, tugging him down dark paths. The same moon that had conquered Ivo. And Danae.

  Luc looked down, cocking his head and watching the female as she moved. He inhaled through flaring nostrils. Hunters always carried a certain stink to them, righteous zeal combined with the odor of stale blood from countless kills. He had never come across a female hunter. Not in Europe. Not in the States. He did not think they existed. He frowned, shaking his head.

  Moonlight sifted through the latticework of branches. Her hair, glossy dark under the kiss of pearl beams, fluttered through the wind as she moved. His body leaned forward, eyes following the path she cut. He inhaled her scent again, her woman’s heat filling him. Earthy, musky dark and ready to mate. His cock grew heavy. Need pulled at the back of his skull.

  He growled low in his throat. Time to finish this. Her. Before he surrendered to those urgent needs and fell victim to the curse he had spent lifetime after lifetime avoiding. Somehow, he’d clung to his soul through all these years. One tasty female would not break him now.

  With an epithet burning the back of his throat, he dropped twenty feet, his large frame landing lightly before his prey.

  Chapter Two

  He dropped from the sky like a hawk, landing on the balls of his feet in a crouch, an animal ready to spring.

  Swallowing down a scream, she spit out with forced bravado, “Nice trick.”

  He would expect her to cower. To scream. To beg for her life. She would disappoint him.

  He answered her with a low growl.

  She could make out little beyond his enormous size and the flash of eyes homing in on her, a predator intent on the kill. Doubt clawed hot fingers through her. Something was… different. He was different. His eyes glowed down at her a yellowy-brown. Nothing at all like the pewter-colored gazes of the beasts that had attacked her outside the club. Baltic amber with white fire flaming in the center.

  He flew forward then, slamming her down on the ground. Her teeth clacked together at the sudden collision with hard earth. He loomed over her, around her. Like the night, he was everywhere all at once. A massive wall of flesh, bone, and muscle… indestructible, yet she had to destroy him. She had to.

  Her hand flew inside her jacket, the once stylish black suede her mother had bought her two Christmases ago now a shredded mess. The thought of her mother made her chest burn. She had to strike. Now.

  Her fingers closed around the cold grip. She slid it from her jacket. Before she even had time to aim, he grasped the weapon and twisted it from her hand, turning it so that the cold barrel aligned with her throat, the mouth pressing directly beneath her chin, the gun’s cold lips a deadly kiss on her shivering flesh.

  Shit. He’d disarmed her with pathetic ease.

  The wall of man—beast—around her pressed closer.

  “C’mon. A bullet isn’t really your style,” she choked, her skin simmering too hotly for her to care about the wisdom of provoking him. “Shouldn’t you be mauling me like a dog right about now?”

  “You’re either very stupid or incredibly brave.”

  How about desperate? And pissed? His kind had killed Maureen and infected her. If he was going to finish her off, she was going down spitting in his face.

  The gun dug deeper beneath her chin, punishing.

  Sucking in a breath, she waited for the pain. Waited for death. A moment passed and nothing happened.

  Slowly, she focused on his face, all shadowed angles but undeniably human. Baltic-gold, deep-set eyes drilled into her beneath dark brows. Mesmerizing. But not a beast like from the club. He was nothing like the monsters that had attacked her and killed Maureen. The realization gave her a start.

  Why had Curtis recruited her to kill him, then?

  “Silver bullets, I take it?” He leaned in to sniff the gun before nodding. “You came prepared. Except you can never be prepared enough for me.” His face descended in a blurring rush of speed. She gasped. The warm tip of his nose brushed her cheek, moving over her skin until his lips grazed her ear. And damn her traitor body if she did not respond, did not arch against his chest—against the hard body of a faceless stranger holding a gun beneath her chin.

  He inhaled deeply. “What are you?” His voice rippled heat through her body. Warm and guttural, like smoke curling in her veins. And foreign. The exact origin indecipherable.

  As he leaned over her, she felt the thick bulge of him, hot and heavy against her belly. Dread filled her at her rising hunger. She throbbed at her core, and moistness rushed between her legs. She groaned, hating herself—the terrible thing she had become—and hating him but ready to have him. All of him, hard and thrusting inside her right here. Right now. Like two animals in the dirt. And she still couldn’t clearly see his face. She couldn’t live this way.

  God. She shook her head and stopped, the slide of the gun’s mouth beneath her chin too real, too terrible.

  “You’re trespassing.” He sniffed again, then exhaled, his breath a hot gust on her flesh. A dragon breathing against her cheek. Her heart clenched. His will alone stopped the killing fire from spewing forward. This she knew. Somehow. Intuitively. She knew a beast surrounded her despite his human appearance. Curtis must have been wrong when he’d explained the rules that governed lycans. Hope unfurled in her chest. Maybe that meant she wouldn’t be a slave to the moon and primitive urges, a slave to the insatiable need to kill, to feed on human flesh… to screw anything with a Y chromosome.

  “But you know that.” A thread of laughter laced his voice. “Come to kill me, have you?” The hair near her temple feathered, and she realized his fingers touched there, rubbing her hair as if it were something to test between the pads of his fingers. The instinct to turn into his touch and purr like a cat seized her.

  “You’re no hunter,” he announced. His nose buried in her hair then, breathing deeply. She shivered. She heard the frown in his voice as he demanded, “What are you? Why do you wear your own blood?”

  “I—” She stopped, sw
allowing at the horrible croak of her voice. “I was attacked. Bitten.” She stopped again and bit her lip to keep from saying more. Saying the rest.

  He pulled back, a tension that hadn’t been there before seizing him, washing over him—pouring into her. “When did this happen?”

  “A few hours ago.”

  “How did you get here?”

  She opened her mouth, hesitating.

  “How?” he barked.

  “A hunter dropped me off. He said he was an agent from… some group.”

  “NODEAL,” he muttered. “National Organization of Defense Against Ancient and Evolving Lycanthropes.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” She swallowed before adding, “He said this was your fault. That you’re some big pack leader. An alpha. That if I killed you…” Her voice faded.

  “Ah. Did he now?” He smiled then, although no humor lurked in the shadowed bend of his mouth. “So you think I’m your alpha?”

  She nodded her head against the ground.

  “And,” he drew out the word, “he told you killing me would save you. Would break your curse.”

  “Yes.” She surged forward with renewed strength, struggling, stopping at the cold press of the gun.

  “Wrong.”

  She blinked. Wrong? What did he mean, wrong? This was her life… and her mother’s. Killing this monster was her only chance.

  “If I die, you’ll still be a lycan.”

  “But you’re a—”

  “I’m not a lycan. I’m something else.”

  The announcement twisted like a knife in her chest. “You’re lying!”

  “Sorry—either your hunter friend lied to you or he was mistaken. Your alpha is out there somewhere, but it’s not me. You’re one of them—” He rose higher above her, a lengthening shadow, removing himself from her even as the gun deepened its kiss beneath her chin. He meant to kill her.

  “No.” He was lying. She didn’t know why, but he was. He had to be.