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Embraced by Darkness(9)

By:Keri Arthur

“Look at me,” he growled.
I opened my eyes and met his gaze, and again something quivered deep inside. Desire and passion and something else—something that seemed a whole lot like possession—seared those depths, stirring me in ways I didn’t think possible.
“You are mine,” he said, and his hoarse voice seemed to echo through every fiber of my being.
Yes, I thought. Oh God, yes.
And then all thought evaporated as the passion between us exploded and I was quivering, trembling, whimpering, as his warmth spilled into me.
Sated, I collapsed against him, sucking in his spicy, sweaty scent with every intake of breath, feeling it fill me, consume me, as his body had consumed me. Somehow, it seemed so right. He wrapped his arms around me, holding on tight, and for one brief moment, I had that oh so glorious sensation of belonging.
It was in the middle of that one perfect moment that the phone rang.
Chapter 3
Leave it,” Kellen said, kissing my forehead.
“I can’t. It might be urgent.” I pushed upright.
“You’re still officially on vacation,” he said, annoyance edging in his rich tones. “Nothing is so urgent that someone else can’t take care of it.”
“But it might be Rhoan.” Though I doubted it. He obviously knew Kellen was picking me up from the airport, and he also knew about my fantasy involving the limo—a fantasy I hadn’t finished with yet. He wouldn’t disrupt us, no matter how urgent.
I reached into my handbag and pulled out my vid-phone. As I suspected, it wasn’t Rhoan. It was Jack. He obviously knew I was back—thanks to the damn tracker permanently implanted in my ear—but it was a little unfair for him to be ringing even before my holidays had finished. Of course, tonight was Halloween, and it was one of the busiest times of the year for the Directorate. Rather like hospitals during the full moon. If I’d wanted to enjoy the full length of my vacation, I should have stayed on the island where the sheer distance between us made it impossible for Jack to call me in.
But I never actually got the chance to answer the phone and find out what Jack wanted, because Kellen took one look at the number, then plucked the phone neatly from my hand and threw it out one of the open windows. It hit the road hard and disintegrated into dozens of metal bits that went scattering everywhere.
For a moment, shock held me speechless. “What the hell—”
“You’re still on holiday,” he cut in. “They have no right to be contacting you just yet.” 
Annoyance rolled through me, but so, too, did desire. Nothing got my hormones scurrying faster than a man taking charge for all the right reasons. Still, I couldn’t help adding, “You just destroyed my phone. And it might have been important—”
“This is important, Riley. Us. Not work.” He raised a hand to my cheek, cupping it lightly. “And if it was a matter of true urgency, Rhoan can contact me. He knows where we’ll be. He has my number.”
I raised my eyebrows, curious despite myself. “So we’re not going back to your place?”
“Given your propensity in the past to run off on guardian business, no, we are not. I intend for our night of pleasure to be far away from the madding crowd. And any form of transport.”
I wriggled on his lap, feeling his growing readiness, loving the heat of him pressed against me. “I should be very angry with you. And Jack certainly will be.”
“Jack doesn’t scare me. And you, my love, will enjoy every moment I have planned.”
“Is that an order?” I murmured, my lips so deliciously close to his that I could taste every breath, every move of his lips.
“It most certainly is,” he said, and kissed me.
Our night of pleasure was spent in the Macedon hills, on a property belonging to one of Kellen’s friends.
There was just the two of us, a tent, and a huge picnic basket of food on five acres of manicured lawns and lush gardens. We laughed, we played, and we made love—sometimes in full view of the neighbors—and it was absolutely divine. Even the notoriously fickle Melbourne weather dealt us a nice night for a change.
Dawn had barely begun to creep her fiery fingers across the blackness of night when Kellen’s phone finally rang. He unwrapped himself from around me and fished out the phone from the tangle of our clothes.
“It’s Rhoan,” he said, and handed the vid-phone to me.
“So,” my brother said, expression wry. “Had a good time?”
“Absolutely wonderful,” I said, stretching like a contented cat languishing in the sun.
“I certainly hope so, because Jack isn’t happy.”
“Jack’s never happy.” I paused, barely resisting the urge to giggle as Kellen began tickling the underside of my foot. “What does he want me to do?”
“I’ll let him tell you himself.”
“Rhoan, wait—” He didn’t. A second later, Jack’s bald head appeared on the vid-screen. And as Rhoan had already noted, he did not look happy.
“I’m not officially on duty for another day,” I said, quickly, “so this had better be an emergency.”
Which was a pretty dumb thing to say. Just about all the Directorate cases could be classed as urgent, simply because they involved murdering psychos. We very rarely dealt with anything else.
“There is no such thing as vacation for guardians when emergencies happen,” he said, voice dark and full of the anger so evident in his expression. “Next time I damn well ring you, answer the phone. Or else.”
I didn’t ask what he meant by that. I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to know. “So what’s the problem?”
“Dead people.”
“Dead people are a regular occurrence in our line of work, Jack.” And if was just dead people, he wouldn’t be ringing me. Or be so mad.
Jack grimaced, his bald head gleaming under the brightness of the overhead lighting. He had to be upstairs in the main offices—the area the public could enter—not in the underground guardian area. There, the lighting was kept at “dusk” level for the sake of the newer vamps. Not that artificial lighting could hurt them. It was just that some of them tended to get jumpy in bright light. And jumpy guardians were never a good thing.“This is a nasty one,” Jack said, “and I need your talents involved.”
Meaning he wanted me there to see if I could pick up anything along psychic lines. Like a soul hanging around with ready information to impart.
I scrubbed a hand across my eyes. While I hoped like hell Kade, Iktar, and the other non-vamps Jack had employed to fill out the daytime division got through training soon, the reality was, their presence in the unit wouldn’t have saved me from a situation like this. I was the only one with this particular talent.
And yet, as much as I hated the thought of leaving Kellen and heading off to some gruesome murder scene, I couldn’t deny the buzz of excitement that was humming through my system. I was going hunting, and the wolf within couldn’t wait.
As Jack had once said, all werewolves were addicted to the thrill of the chase. It was just society that had, to some extent, tamed them. Certainly it was something I’d denied for a long, long time.
“Send me the address, then,” I said. “But you’ll owe me big-time, Jack.”
Amusement flickered briefly through his green eyes. “I’ll give you an extra week of vacation next year.”
“Yeah, right.” We both knew the likelihood of me taking that was slim. “Just send the details to this number.”
“Will do.”
I hesitated, then asked, “So what did you ring me about earlier?”
“Rogue Vamp,” he said, voice all annoyed again. My bad for reminding him. “I took care of it myself.”
If Jack was taking care of business, then business was bad.
I hung up, but kept hold of the phone. “Seeing you smashed my phone, I’ll need to keep this.”
He touched a hand to my face, gently trailing his fingers down my cheek to my lips. I kissed his fingertips as they brushed my mouth, saw the flare of desire deep in his bright eyes.
“I figured you might have to leave early, so I arranged for a cab to come back at six.”
I glanced at my watch. It was almost that now. I rolled free from his touch and sat up. “I need to go for a quick swim to freshen up.”
He caught my hand, stopping me from moving. “I need you to think about something while you’re gone.”
I raised my eyebrows at the sudden seriousness in his tone. “Sure. What?”
“I want to go solo with you.”
I blinked. “What? Now? It’s too soon.” The reply was almost automatic. As much as I cared for Kellen, as much as I was beginning to think he could be the one, I wasn’t ready to go solo with him. Not after the events of the last few months. Not after Quinn. This time, I wasn’t rushing into anything, free will or not. 
“It’s not too soon when it feels so right,” he said, and paused, studying me for a moment. “Or are you still playing games with me? Still waiting, just in case something better comes along?”
I sucked in a breath and stared at him. “You really think I’m not serious about us?”
“Honestly? Sometimes I just don’t know.”
He couldn’t have hurt me any more if he’d hit me. How could he honestly think I was playing games? I wasn’t Rhoan—I had no hunger to fight the restrictions of a relationship and play the field. I wanted a home and a family and one man to call my own—and Kellen knew that. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”