Diamond Wolf

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Lyrical Press, Incorporated 17 Ludlow Street Staten Island, New York 10312 Diamond Wolf Copyright © 2008, Kate Haeske Editing by Colleen Simpson Cover Art by Renee Rocco www.lyricalpress.com All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Lyrical Press, Inc. electronic publication: October 2008

DIAMOND WOLF by Kat Haeske

DEDICATION This book is for Susan, always there, always patient. For commas, grammar and my evil moments of perfectionism. Thank you

DIAMOND WOLF “Do you regret it?” I hate the night. When everything is quiet and so goddamn silent I can hear the cars on the other side of town. I hate it because it makes me think. Because I don’t sleep very well. Because I dream. And because I always hear my cousin Crystal´s question. Crystal, the one with the psychology degree, who literally grabbed me and locked me in her secret spirit-world room for eighteen hours after I got away from those fucking bloodsuckers. She drew every dirty piece of information on what had been done to me out of my brain. She pestered me into screaming and crying, coaxed me into telling her everything, and then held me and rocked me and consoled me, as if I was a baby. Yeah, that witch, who talked me out of killing myself in some seriously stupid blazeof-glory attack on the vampires. She’s the only one who knows, who saw the truth below the wounds. The burns, the cuts, the lashes. Who saw the bite marks. The one who knows how I lost my virginity—arse-wise. She told me to write it down and burn it in some ritual-cleansing thing. She has bugged me about it for two years now, but still I carry it with me, inside my head, and turn it over and over again, every night, instead of sleeping, until I’m too exhausted to stand anymore and fall unconscious. The reason? One question.

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Do you regret it? Now, I do it because I need to find an answer to that question. An answer to all the crazy things I’m feeling at times like this. A kind of sadness and regret, a kind of longing that has everything to do with what happened, and nothing to do with how it happened. I’ve waited two years. At some point I will have waited too long, won’t I? *

My name is Kieran MacManus, my people call me Silverscream. And yes, ladies, you may faint now. I’m Scottish. Not in the way of “immigrated during the 1700s to the US and faithfully participating in the New England Highland games every year” Scottish. I own a kilt and a tartan and I know how to look good in it, and yeah, sometimes during summer I wear them just for fun. I even have an accent. I was born and raised in the beautiful Grampian Highlands, just outside of Aberdeen. At least until most of my pack got erased in a bust-up with the bloodsuckers. Old feud, old war, old story. I was sent here to live with extended family. Where ‘here’ is? I won’t tell. Sorry, no go, guys, but ‘still on the islands’ is as much I can tell, and not in bloody vampire-infested England, either. So, what else is there to tell? Hmm, I'm forty-two years old which, in supernatural terms, means that seventeen years ago I reached adulthood and started to have some fun. It also means I've still got about a hundred-and-fifty years' worth of fun ahead of me. Neat huh? My dear and most beloved idiot of a cousin and business partner, who tries not to go after his adopted sister for morality reasons, (they are both adults for God’s sake and yes, we’re talking the witch here), usually describes me as decently-enough good-looking. As I said, he’s an idiot, or blind or jealous. Whatever it is, I’m fucking drop-dead gorgeous. I am. Six-foot-four and a-hundred-and-eighty pounds, I’m not only tall but well muscled and, damn him, I can beat him in a fight and it shows. Isn’t self confidence just sexy? Yeah, well, as for more. I’ve got the typical pale blue eyes that are so deeply ingrained in all of the family that you will recognize anyone who originated from a

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McKellan daughter just by looking at their eyes, no matter how far back in the line. Contrary to my extended family, however, I don’t have the McKellan black hair and fair, porcelain skin. My skin is a little darker and, gasp, my hair is a fucking dark blood red. Women either love or hate me for that color, there seems to be no in between. But usually it´s just another reason for the ladies to faint over me. Not that I’ve had a lady since, yeah, well, back then. At least, not when I was sober enough to clearly remember. *

I was so stupid. An idiot. An overblown lobotomized moronic dumbass idiot. Just some tough guy shit: I can handle it wherever I go. Like hell. Going downtown, right into the middle of the vampire territory, was the dumbest move even I’ve ever pulled. The bar looked innocuous enough. I only wanted a few drinks and a lady or two. I came in and all seemed fine. The smell of old beer and sweat covered all the scents and I didn’t notice the faint smell of stale, cold decay until I was too far inside to turn back. They were used to the smell, and sure enough they could sense a lupine just as well as I can smell a fucking vampire. It was an interesting ten minutes. Did I mention that going into that bar was the most stupid stunt I ever pulled? What do you know? Five vampires knock out a werewolf in a killing rage faster than he can say “Oops.” I know that now. With age comes wisdom. And with being tortured, too. I’m not talking about the beating I took. It hurt, but living with four cousins, you get used to fists. The vampires took me to their boss, Mr. I´m-the-Uber-Vampire Sir Edward Lawrence, self-proclaimed duke of the city.

Kat Haeske And... There are no words to really describe what he is. Everything seems so tame and small when it comes to him. He’s older than I can even guess, soulless, greedy, psychopathically brilliant, and a sadistic monster if there ever was one. And I doubt he would ever have given the pleasure of torturing me beyond anything I could bear to anyone else. I’m smirking as I write this. Not a good kind of smile, but not a nasty one, either. He tried everything to break me. Fucking everything you can come up with in your darkest hours, he has invented before. Anticipated everything, tried everything, except sex. But I was too much for him. Too much for him because of one little trait, some kind of DNA shift some of us develop now and then. What am I? My people call me a hunter. A tracker. A wanderer. I’m one of those very few of the remaining Scottish packs who got Bran’s gift. The raven’s flight. I can leave my body and just wander around and look at my surroundings, and I can search for that special brand any soul has, if I’ve ever been close enough to it before to recognize it. But let’s stick with the leaving my body part. I don’t—can’t—sever the connection to my body completely. Hell´d break loose if I did. Okay, my death would break loose, but that’s loose enough for my liking. Most of the time. Sir Edward brought me to the brink of it. You can’t make yourself not feel the pain by leaving your body. You can only dull it. So I did. But I still got the incredible pleasure of being whipped, my skin being burned, electroshocks, my fingernails being ripped out and well, anything else you can think of. Yeah, but the pain wasn’t that bad, was it? It was bearable, barely, but what I lacked in pain, sound, sight and smell made up for plenty. When you smell burning flesh and know it’s yours, it gains a hell of a lot more significance, believe me. I was later told that it was five days, or one hundred and twenty hours, that he or an “assistant of choice” had their hands on me. Torture, being fed blood to make me heal and keep me strong enough to survive the next round of torture.

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I didn’t know back then that a vampire couldn’t bind another supernatural with his blood, except for younger vampires. I think that was the scariest part. No, it was the second scariest part. The worst came when he discovered that he couldn’t break me that way and his fun—simple childish fun in torturing another living being—was spoiled. *

It was some time toward the end. Don’t ask me for exact time stamps, because I don’t know. I’d completely lost track of when and where, only clinging to the hope I wouldn’t crack and hand him my family on a silver plate. I was relieved, actually. I had finally gotten some rest, had been well fed by him, and his blood had worked magic on my wounds. I’d even dared to go back into my body, to strengthen the weakening link to my soul, and to sleep. A few hours of wonderful, beautiful sleep. Just as I am today, I was too exhausted back then to care. At some point sleep becomes the only thing you think about. I don’t know how many hours I slept. Three or four perhaps, before I was awakened by a bucket of cold water. And hell, did I feel good. I was scared, shit yeah, but then, something feeling this good couldn’t really mean something bad, could it? God, my wounded pride. I was washed, roughly washed, but who would complain? I was taken from the fucking silver shackles, which had burned my wrists down to the bone, and then I was allowed to use a bathroom—okay, it was more of a bucket—to clean up some more, to do all the things that make you feel like a civilized being again. I was convinced the pack had found me and were negotiating me out. Yeah, the stupidity of youth. I’d avoided growing up for way too long. I was forty, for God’s sake. A human blood slave came to put me back in the shackles, apologizing for the inconvenience. No shit. I should have fought. I thought about it, but no one who hasn’t been without real food for several days can imagine the weakness. I was in no state to fight. I didn´t know

Kat Haeske if it was night or day and if the vampires would be up or sleeping. Some feeling told me in no uncertain terms that fighting was not a good idea. Had it been day, I might have had a chance to fight my way through the house. I couldn´t sidestep into the spirit world. Even though none of the vampire´s would be able to enter, I would have taken any bet they’d hired a wizard to set up some security there. Anything else would have been a liability the size of Africa for them. And if I wasn´t able to deal with the physical world, how should I deal with angry spirits? It was night. I soon found out, when the fucking Brit came in. I, in shackles in the middle of the room, tried not to feel my wrists burn. And with him was someone else. Someone different. The man was odd, off, and simply different and fucking-as-hell beautiful. Six-foot-two or -three, but not as heavily muscled as I am. His skin was marble perfect, a touch of gold, with pale lips and white-gold eyes, platinum eyes. Yes, fucking platinum-colored, like finest Glenlivet whiskey. His hair was so pale, I thought it was gray, but as he stepped into the light it turned out to be such a pale shade of blond that it was almost silver. It hung down to his arse, flowing like silk in some non-existent breeze. Can you hear the angels singing? By the way, I’m South-American-highway straight, just for the record. I don’t do guys, because they do nothing for me. And this guy was cold as a diamond. Not as ice, no; no shards of ice could ever achieve the sharp perfection of his face, the finely cut angles of those cheekbones, the exotic tilt of his eyes, or the sharp borders of his lips that were so perfectly pulled into a sardonic smirk. Nothing. Ever. Could. Only diamonds were so cruelly perfect, as rock-steady, uncaringly beautiful as he was. Up until then, everything Edward had done had happened above the waist. Which, I’ll be honest, was a surprise, given his reputation for pretty men and a firm young arse. Time was, obviously, up. Diamond shrugged out of his velvet tunic the moment he

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Kat Haeske stepped into the room, and revealed a body as perfect as his face. Slender, sleek, sexy, silken. He had those well-toned muscles, not heavy, just Greek-godlike. And pierced nipples. Platinum hoops, go figure. I was in a panic, but then I calmed myself. Whatever they did, I could leave, and I would leave, never to come back. There was always a last retreat, one that was so deep within they couldn’t block it. After I don’t know how many days, this guy taking off his shirt in front of me did it. I was ready to die. I looked into his eyes and, shit, this is one of those things you can’t describe to anybody who’s never stood on a mountain top in the Highlands. The wild parts, without the roads or cabins the humans seem to build with alarming frequency. No, the pure, untouched Highlands, where the wind sings to you, caressing your face, like a beloved long-lost brother, who is gentle and caring and, at the same time, sharp, cutting under your skin the way only someone so close to your heart can. You can’t understand what his eyes were like if you’ve never crouched next to a mountain rivulet, almost dying of thirst and watched the crystal clear beauty run over your hands, knowing the first sip will make your head explode with pain and, at the same time, resurrect you with its innate essence. “So. This is the one.” One sentence and goose bumps erupted all over my body. Cold, so cold, so precise and perfect. “Can you break him?” He grabbed my chin with vampiric strength and held it. There was no way I could compete with an old vampire in strength while in my human form. His thumb stroked over my lower lip and I had to close my eyes to flee from this gaze. “I can break anybody, Edward.” Even you. He didn’t say it, but the words hung heavy and unspoken between them. I did not open my eyes again as his free hand landed on my groin with a feather-light touch, searching for the zipper of my jeans, while his gaze, no doubt, still held my face,

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Kat Haeske looking for the slightest sign of defeat. I fled, just pulled deep into myself, pulled everything I was, my soul and my mind together, to flee. And found I couldn’t. The pain was intense. It was icy, unspeakably cold. Invisible fingers grabbed me, my inner self, and ripped it out of my head. Somewhere else. A shit-fucking scary black place, a void bubble that was anywhere, but not in the real physical world, floating in nothingness, an unending abyss around me. There were no walls, but there was me, the cell, pictures of the bloody piece of meat I had turned into, superimposed on the void. And, in the middle of nothing, me. He had relocated me. Without flinching, with no sign of distress. He’d kidnapped my soul and locked it up somewhere else. “Then get on with it.” “Shh. Such things need good preparation.” Their voices surrounded me, mocking me from all around. There was wind here, the soft, sharp, stinging caress of my beloved highlands and I was about to cry. My soul was as naked as my body would soon be. I saw him kiss my lips, I felt the caress. I screamed, both with my soul and body. I screamed with rage and panic. You don’t know how it feels to be at somebody´s mercy. You don’t know what true betrayal is, when you’ve never been betrayed by your own body and soul, or felt your strength fading when you need it most. Outside, his lips closed over my mouth, nothing, not the slightest hint of breath brushing over my skin, just the touch was all that came to me in here. Oh, so soft, oh, so deceptively soft, while hands brushed down my bloody, torn and, thanks to the bucket of water, soaking wet jeans. His fingers brushed over my thighs, caressing, barely touching at all, and I whimpered. I didn’t want to. I clenched my teeth and quickly changed the whimper to a growl, but I’ll be honest—I have never ever been that scared in my whole fucking life, and I never will be again. As the lips left, and then the hands, I started to scream again, to thrash. Nothing happened, my body stayed limp and dead in those shackles.

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Kat Haeske Nothingness means you can’t do anything. Try to kick something when there’s not even air to kick. I couldn´t connect to my body in order to make it move. That is how true vulnerability feels. “Edward, please watch from the outside. Your greedy, soiled thought patterns disturbed my hold over him.” Edward gone... Edward fucking gone. Perhaps I... He left with a disgusted snort and slammed the door. But he did not even try to argue with the icy SOB. Had it been any way possible, this might have scared me more than anything else. And then the Diamond knelt in front of me, staining his pretty black suede pants on the floor. I saw my body hanging from the ceiling, the pictures around me moving down, as he did, as he completely undressed me. Clinical, cold, uncaring, detached. He ran his hands back up my legs in a slow gentle caress that I felt all over my astral self, all too real, all too gentle and, well, yes… first goose bumps rose, and then I felt my cock heat. Not harden, but slowly waken to attention. I was disgusted. I felt soiled by this touch. It rocked my world. And not in a good way, I tell you. I shivered. My body shook in the chains. I tried to say something along the lines of a death threat, but all that came out of my physical mouth was a sigh. Fade to gray, die, just go, just run if you can. If I only could. His hands sneaked over my belly and around my waist as he stepped behind me, his cold lips dropping to my shoulder while his hands unfastened his pants. And then I heard the words. I know he didn’t actually speak, his lips were fastened to the skin on my shoulder, I clearly saw that in widescreen 4D surround. He spoke to my soul, or whatever you’d call it. First, it was only a voice while he dropped his pants and revealed a monster of a cock. A rock-hard monster of a cock, that stood to perfect attention, his tool to break me into little pieces. No way was I going to survive. No way, ever, would I let myself survive this. No, no, no, no. Just NO. A gun, a knife, a fucking bridge, I didn’t care, but I would not let them keep me from

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Kat Haeske the privilege of dying. Once he entered me, once they went through with this... I curled up. Just a frigging lad in a thunderstorm, I curled up into a tiny little ball and closed my eyes, but in the void there was no escape. I tried to ignore his hands on my body. I tried to ignore the hands that explored my back and chest and hips again and again, but not one inch further than that. They ripped away anything I was and had. Dignity, pride, determination, strength. And I cried. With every caress, he removed more of my will to live and just left me bare to the easiest touch, a soul stretched thin, so thin an accidental touch could destroy it. The beauty of fragile glass that was meant to die a quick and beautiful death, shattering to pieces in a rainbow-colored waterfall of tiny shard, too small to ever be put together again. Just like that. So quickly, so precisely, so acutely and uncaringly diamond, icy cold. And then he touched me again—not the part of me that was hanging in shackles. He touched my shoulders and slowly turned me around. My curled up form hanging in the midst of non-existing space. He was after my soul. I bit. I turned my head and snapped after the hand that had touched me, and teeth connected to flesh, dug in, tasted blood, and the beast in me took over. I gnawed and ripped and pulled and tasted non-existent blood on my tongue. Blood that tasted like nothing I had ever had before. Sharp and cold, like just the fucking mountain water I had dreamed of when I looked into his eyes. Such clarity, such coldness, and then it changed and burned, the soft golden glow of old whiskey. It burned down my throat, and I awoke. My teeth had opened his hand to the bone, but he just crouched next to me, his other hand still resting on my shoulder, fingernails digging deep, fingers twitching between my lips, when tendons were stretched over their limit. He did not flinch once. And just then it occurred to me what the hell I had just been drinking. Or rather, what I had not been drinking. His blood. This wasn’t real. Not physically real. But then, I was here at least, all of me that was mental. What the hell had I just taken into my soul? “A part of me, Silverscream. A part of my soul, the memory of how a spring morning smells.”

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Kat Haeske I loosened my teeth and stared up into those eyes. My goodness, those eyes. If diamonds could be sad and cursed, he was. For a second, long pale lashes covered his gaze and then it returned, just too intense, too pained, to be real. “You will go through this. There is no way for you or me to stop this.” I’d have dared to move had I been able to, non-gravity, non-anything kept me just as helpless as I had been before, and no way was I going to bite him again. But not trying was... “Socair, trodaí!” He almost smiled, as if he was almost feeling something. I pondered if I should tell him that he’d spoken Irish Gaelic and not Scots? And he smiled, now he really smiled. “I know, but it’s the only one I know.” His fingers tangled in my hair, stroked it back from my forehead until I felt thoroughly sick. Yes, Silverscream, Tracker and Wanderer, was so close to defeat it would take only a small “snip” and he would break. And do you know what? That bastard knew it. “Of course I do, your mind is open to me like a book. I only need to understand and read the pages, if I want to. I can break it right now if you want, and be done with it. You will not feel anything. Your soul will be so wounded, you will not know how you give away your family and friends and deliver them to death and torture. Edward would love your younger cousins. His current playthings have almost lost their appeal to him.” “Manipulative bastard.” This time he didn’t smile, only bowed his head. “Put your life into my hands, saoi. Fight and live, and one day survive this. Give your soul over and take the hard road, and you will walk out of here. Alive. Damaged, but not broken. Able to still fight. Stronger, wiser and smarter than before. Dare to.” “What...” And my fucking voice failed me. Like a fucking pansy I had to swallow a few times to get the clog out of it. And I did not even have physical vocal cords. “What will you do?” He smiled and bent down. And kissed me. And whispered. All around me, his voice told me just what I didn’t want to hear. I stared at him in disbelief when his teeth nibbled on my lower lip, and tried to push

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him away. Futile. He had created ground to kneel on, but not for me. His hand swept down my belly, his fingers I swear finding every ridge in my muscles, and finally—and goodness, how I arched into his touch—they found my cock. *

I’m hearing his words again, staring blindly at this damned sheet of paper with the pen hovering over the white, only waiting to soil it with ugly black words. He whispered it, barely audible to me, but they rang, and still do ring, in my ears, like the howling of the wind or the rush of a waterfall. And I find myself shuddering from dread, from senseless, sick longing. “Out there I will rape your body, make you scream with agony, make you cry and beg and break you, visible to anyone who sees it. I will turn you into a begging, whimpering heap, stripped of anything that ever made you worthy of your spirit’s name, Silverscream. “And in here, I will show you pleasure, the sweet, pure pleasure only I can bring you.” At that point, he raised his hand from my body and a fine silver thread flowed from it. No, to it, wrapped around his fingers and then sunk into the wound I had inflicted, marking the marble skin, connecting us. What it was and what I had done I didn´t know and honestly I could have cared less at that point. “The pleasure I want to bring you, and the comfort your soul needs to survive.” Damn it to hell, I could no longer look into his eyes. They were too sad, too deep, too open and vulnerable. Although that was impossible. I tried to close mine, only to open them again when I conjured pictures I didn’t want to see. And then I tried to turn my head away. Mistake, big mistake. Seeing him fist my cock, my real physical cock, was not… NO! I turned to him again and suddenly realized my treacherous member had all too eagerly stretched into his touch, though he had not moved. “You can’t change who you are. And what you are to me.” My hips pushed up a little and, yes, let me tell you, that was a hell of an embarrassing thing to do. “What am I?” I had given in. Or perhaps stood up again. He knew I would not betray my family. I

Kat Haeske had lost my own to that. And I wasn’t a quitter. Whatever it took. I could still kill myself later. But not give in now. Just not now. Something soft appeared under me and I felt myself being lowered onto sheets. Was this real? Any of it? Did I ever leave my body, and if I did, was anything I felt in here real? I didn’t care where the sheets had come from, when there had been nothing before, not even air. I was already dead, and this was my personal hell. He lifted a leg over my thighs and crouched over me, so fucking diamond beautiful, so impossibly perfect. His hair caressed my skin, and I only stared. Aside from not knowing exactly what to do, I was frozen or too weak to move, I can’t really remember which, but I remember the sensations. How he kissed me and caressed my lips with his firm, cool touch, coaxing his way into my mouth after endless seconds while, as I found out with another look I shouldn’t have been casting, his nails drew bloody welts over my real world body. “Don’t,” he said, shielding my eyes with his hand. “Trust me.” He breathed a kiss on my lips when I asked why I didn’t feel the pain. “Because this is my world, the little bit of space I granted you within me. Because I keep the thread to your body as thin as possible. Because you will feel way too much later and I want you as strong as you can get now. Because I don’t want you in pain, Silverscream.” His lips grazed down over my neck and I still lay unmoving, staring into the blackness above the walls plastered with my torture. “Tell me what you want to see, saoi. Show me where you want to be right now. Where is the safest place you know?” “Loch Dhun,” I breathed and not breathed. On the mountains overlooking the Loch, near that little stream that raced through the fissure in the stone, gurgling, sparkling with light, casting silver reflections on the walls left and right. I wanted to feel the wind in my hair and be home. Just home. I came here when the pack became too much, when the impressions they left all around me became too much and I had to be me. Once in a while just be with the wind and the spirits of the mountains and the water. My place. A small rock plateau half up the tiny canyon, almost impossible to reach, but as far away from anything human, lupine, fae or vampiric as possible. He grabbed one of my nipples and slowly twisted, breathing and nibbling on the other at the same time. And the wind joined him, caressed my naked skin, tousled my

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Kat Haeske hair, though the bed under me didn’t change at all, it was there, and the rush of the water and the fine spray on my face and his thigh between my legs, opening me for him, it all mingled and I lay motionless, drawing all my strength not to falter under his gentle, but oh so fucking male, attention, and the way I reacted to it. I opened my eyes and there were clouds above me, and stone walls around me. As I looked to the side, the I saw the Loch in the distance, and, barely discernible, my body in chains and he behind me interlaced with it all, covered by it all. I started to weep like a fucking sissy. I know women say they don’t have a problem with men crying but, honestly, I think that’s bullshit. Women want manly men. But I promised myself to be honest. To write it down. All of it, even the breaking down and crying part. He soothed me with his hands, skillfully administering touches to every piece of skin down to my navel, caressing my cock with the taut ridges on his belly. And shit did that feel good. Not “some strange kind of good.” Just plain good and... right. He didn’t do anything else for what like seemed hours, until I finally relaxed and sank back. I couldn’t resist. Not the arousal part, but his way of touching, his way of reaching out to my soul and caressing the parts that really hurt, by gently stroking my astral self. “Yes or no?” He looked at me, dead serious, and I knew he was asking for a definite decision, the ‘no turning back’ variety. I answered the only way I could think of answering to myself. A joke I had invented as a youth, before I was told my real name at the initiation ceremony. A bitter joke, the unshed tears over the deaths of so many I had loved in the destruction of my childhood pack.

And you, my stars, shine one more night, Just watch me one more time, I pray, Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas was Welsh, not Scottish, but I hadn’t been too picky back then, and I

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Kat Haeske wasn’t now. Again he kissed me and then looked at me, and I looked at him. God help me, he was beautiful. A diamond in the dark. “Yes.” I let a sigh of relief pass my lips and, as he smiled, there was this irresistible urge to smile back. And the need to arch into his hand when he touched my body, pinched my nipples, licked them, then nibbled, massaged my cock. Let me do it, enjoy, trust me, relax, he seemed to say, in just the way he bent over me, his hair creating a shielding curtain. When he sat back and caressed the insides of my thighs, I tensed again and, just as quickly, arched again when he closed his lips around my cock, his firm, cool, sensual, and incredibly skilled lips. It was soft at first, a slow caress, a lick of his tongue, a slow coaxing. Too slow! I reached out and grabbed his hair and he chuckled, deep in his throat, as my body soared. And then he lowered his head, slower and slower, until he finally had my whole shaft inserted in the silken cavity of his mouth, and the tip hit his throat, and then he swallowed. I swear, I was mewling, purring like a little kitten. His fingers kneading my balls was a nice addition, but what he did to my cock was...was... And he moaned. I tell you one thing, gents, a good, skilled whore who does her job with at least a little enthusiasm, is great at giving head. A man who likes what he does, and believe me, that he did, is beyond anything you can imagine. When he slowly pulled his head up, sucking every fucking inch of my cock, I was screaming with pleasure. I know I ripped at his hair, pulled, fisted into that living flowing silk as if my life depended on it, but he wouldn’t go any faster. He went down again, just as slow, distracting me, oh so skillfully, from the finger he sneaked between my legs, behind my balls, and then dipped into the crack of my arse. I noticed it only when he started to caress my hole in slow, easy circles that perfectly

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Kat Haeske matched his tongue. He raised his head and looked at me, holding my gaze, held my fucking soul steady with those eyes. “Trust me,” he said, and pushed it inside. It hurt just a little and I heard a distant scream. Mine. Not mine, my body’s. He circled my cock again and slowly moved his finger out. And in again, slowly, just slowly. “Let yourself go.” It was his ice-perfect voice that surrounded me, and his lips that applied quick sucking motions to the head of my cock, that made me fall into it. Actually, I let my body sink on his hand, and lifted my hips again, toward his mouth and again and the friction was… Burning, marvelous, sweet. Right. Looking back it felt so fucking right to have a part of him inside me. Even the second finger. Looking back, he had some kind of lube. His world, his rules? I don’t care, and I didn’t back then, not when he hit something inside me, while at the same time dipping the tip of his tongue into the slit on the tip of my cock. I saw stars. Just stars. He chuckled again, and again I soared. God, I would have cracked jokes all day, only to have him chuckle with his lips around my cock. And then the strangeness started. Not with what he was doing with me, but in my feelings, a kind of double vision, double feeling. The pain and no pain, sharp shards lancing into my physical body and the warm burning in here. One distant and one oh, so close. He raised my hips and this time I locked my gaze with his. First the pain came. A pain that was not mine, but had me cry out all the same, a fearful wail that shocked me to the bone, had he not chosen just this moment to press inside. Again I lack the words to really describe how it felt. Had it been any other man, I might have been able to, but not him. It hurt, but compared to the detached reminder of what my body felt right now, there but not really close, it was just a fine sting that heightened my senses. For a moment I

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Kat Haeske panicked when the realization of what he was really doing hit me. I stiffened and he halted as if the delay meant nothing to him. His gaze shone with a patient expression, but underneath there was the need to keep control over a mix of so many different things. It all flickered over his face in one short second. Strain, something almost painful, and a softness I’d expect from a lover and not... him. The pain intensified and I tensed up more for just a second. And then he was there. Wrapping me up, whispering words, sweet words, encouraging words, words that had me melting into him and that’s exactly what I did. Melt, on him, on his cock, as he pushed further, welcoming what he was, whatever that might be. And, more importantly, who he was. And what he did. The first time is painful? You got no clue. It wasn’t, because he didn’t make it hurt. He moved slow, oh so fucking slow, put my legs over his shoulders and caressed me all over with his incredible, silky skin, just as he caressed me inside with his cock. Did I mention he was huge? I mean, I’m well endowed, but he was huge. And I was mewling. I wanted more, so much more. And he gave it to me, speeding up, slowing down, while the distant pain grew not so distant, lodged in the back of my head like the beginning of a migraine. I didn’t care. I begged him, “More. Faster. God, please, deeper. Harder.” And he complied. Whatever I asked, he answered. “That’s it, Kieran. Take me. Take all you want. You get it. Just take what you want. Accept me, baby. And you can have it all.” It was then I came. My whole world zeroed on one point and that was his cock, within me. That’s where it started, and then raced through my body. And that’s where it ended, crashing into the base of my spine with the force of a thunderstorm. And further into my cock. My eyes were wide open so as not to miss anything on his face, not to miss the sign that he was feeling anything. He was breathtaking, the way his head was thrown back and he panted through his open mouth, groaning, whispering soundless rows of meaningless words. His eyes were almost closed, almost, except for the tiny slit I knew he was watching me through.

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Me, who lay tensed in the last after-throws of orgasm and then his whole body went rigid, the tendons on his neck standing in sharp contrast to his perfect, smooth skin. “Oh, Kieran.” *

You can’t see the tears that mar those last lines. Can’t even remotely fathom what I feel, hearing those words in my memory. The beautiful, soul-tearing perfection of that moment and the honesty and sweet, unconditionally giving gratefulness that lay in those words. And the sound that thundered, far away through the landscape he had created within him for me, for us. Boom boom Just once, so silent I barely heard it through the fog that clouded my mind after a truly mind-blowing orgasm. boom I looked up at him after searching for anything that might have produced the sound, and finding nothing. He looked down at me, with the wide, disbelieving, and absolutely helpless eyes of someone who had just spoken to the Virgin Mary. boom A slow tear rolled down his cheek and he dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes closing in the way that, in a movie, was usually the final hint that some side character had died after saying some meaningful words to the hero. boom. boom. Back then I was just confused, too tired, too exhausted to understand, but now I do. “Sleep, mo croí” I was so fucking dead, I didn’t even have the strength to think of protesting. I would have cared about his tears and, yeah, I should have, had I been able. But damn. I know I couldn’t. Still, that doesn’t keep me from feeling about it. Almost guilty. Even though he saved me in a very fucked up and sick kind of way, I know exactly

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what he did to my body out here, outside of his own mind. And, after waking up the next day, screaming in pain, in my own bed, held down by my cousin and my uncle while our spirit speaker (another uncle) tried to put me back together, I know there was nothing gentle about what he’d done. And that it had a name. But still, something keeps me from calling it what it technically was. Because my family found me, out in the streets, right over the border of our own territory, carefully wrapped in a blanket and stitched up hastily so I wouldn’t bleed to death. Because someone had crossed our border to alert the spirit guards. Someone who’d done so during the early morning hours, with the sun up. Because that someone had not been human, or lupine. Because our sentry guards only gave alarm when it was an enemy. And there was only one kind of creature out there we dubbed enemies without caring for the individual. And because of a fucking question my fucking distant adopted cousin asked me, after listening to all of this for twelve hours and six more hours of letting me cry and rage. “Do you regret it?” *

I woke up knowing his name. I slept knowing his name. And I don’t sleep any more because of him. Every time I close my fucking eyes, I see this silver thread, and hear him whisper my name and see the gratefulness in his gaze and wake up screaming his name. Wulf. Diamond. And then I hear the heartbeat thundering over Loch Dhun again and I’m scared to hell of finding out what really happened between me and him. And I miss him. In the dark hours, when there’s nothing to distract me, when I can’t lie to myself, there’s an emptiness in my soul that wants to make me cry. And yep, that’s the big question. Do I regret it? It’s four in the morning, and I can feel him out there, not as good as he should be, not as good as I want him to be, not as whole as I dream of being myself.

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Me, South-American-highway-straight Scottish werewolf. Hunter of the Black Claw pack. Silverscream. Who carries a part of Diamond forever in his soul. And no. The answer is no. Going back, not in captivity, not forced and tortured, knowing what I do now. No, without regret I would let him do it again. *

Kieran stood in front of his window and peered outside into the landscape, what little of it he could see behind the thick blanket of fog. He had not slept for four days straight again. Had only sat and stared at the sheets on his desk. The words written by his own hand. He hadn’t dared to read them, had only watched them, as if they would burst into flames by themselves. Or start to ooze acid, or suddenly disappear. And the rest of the time he had spent dodging worried glances, had kept to himself and played everything over and over again in his head. And come up with nothing. Everything was silent throughout the house. His young cousins weren’t screaming; nobody had gotten into one of those daily arguments, nobody yelled or laughed. It was just him. boom Again. boom Wondering what Sir Edward had had to say about his disappearance. boom And who had suffered for it. Kieran closed his eyes. Who was he trying to fool? He knew the answer. And it only left him with more questions.

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The man wanted to stay here and go on hiding. And the wolf wanted to go searching. “You can’t change who you are. And what you are to me.” “What am I?” He closed his eyes boom And opened them again, determination burning in the pale blue depths. *

The town was dead at this time of night. The vampires had already retired into their safe havens, and most of the wolves were sound asleep. On a night like this, the shadows governed the world. Hidden beneath the fog, another world pushed through. The Tuatha de Danaan were out tonight, doing whatever the fae did when they brought their magic realm this close to the normal one. He didn’t care. It was not his business tonight. He felt them, just behind the veil that separated him from the spirit world, and ignored each and every magical one of them. He was searching the humid, cold night air for a certain silver shimmer. Following a fragile, fine silver thread that seemed to spring right from his inner self and down the road, he was led over a bridge into the really nasty parts of town. Where no man in his right mind would go at night. But he was neither, so he didn’t care. Let someone try and mug him. A body in the streets. Who cared? But no one came close. They sensed the animal in him. The hunter that was after his prey. As non-elusive as it was. And unique, and thus easy to find. *

He crouched on top of a building, looking down into a dirty bystreet. Litter covered every square meter. Paper boxes, discarded newspapers, rotting leftovers, twisted metal and a shivering body curled up into a corner, teeth clacking so loud in the chilly night Kieran heard them three stories up.

Kat Haeske Had Kieran seen him in the street, he might have given the man ten cents and turned away. Had he not smelled him, or followed the fine silver thread that ran between them. Or heard the thunderous howl of triumph the wolf within that told him he had found who he was looking for. He jumped. One story at a time, wasting not a moment to actually climb down the fire ladder. But the man in the corner did not raise his eyes. His arms slung around his body, he just sat. Like a rag doll clad in a fucking joke of a coat. Kieran approached him slowly and crouched one meter away, waiting for any sign of recognition. Anything more specific than the silent hum within himself, and the distant reminiscent echo of a faint, silent heartbeat. boom Wulf didn’t move. If anything, he lowered his head a little farther. Kieran didn’t move, either. Was it five minutes, maybe longer? Do you regret it? He reached out and pushed the matted hair aside, carefully wrapping his fingers around the vampire’s chin, slowly lifting Wulf’s head. First there were the eyes. Glenlivet, twelve years old, forty percent alcohol. Shadowed diamonds, crystal clear and made to last forever. And then the face. The heart-wrenching remainder of destroyed beauty. Perfectly cut features distorted by the deep, jarring evidence of debts paid. Starting at Wulf’s forehead, just below the hairline, a partially healed wound, forced its way down through an almost silver eyebrow, narrowly missing an eyelid fringed by thick lashes before starting again over a high, stone-cut cheekbone. The sharp edges, cutting through the skin looked like shards of ice. Barely healed, eternally engraved. Just above and next to narrow, oh-so-sensually-modeled lips, it ended. Reminding Kieran all too clearly of what he had known all along. Of who had paid the bill. But there was recognition in those eyes, and joy, and a softness he had never expected to see. And the sardonic smile. The sarcastic “I’ve told you all along…”

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Kat Haeske He dropped his forehead to Wulf’s and took a deep breath. Suddenly he did not know anymore why he had waited two years to search him out. It was all so clear. “I told you, one day, you would survive it.” Kieran squelched his eyes shut and tried to fight the tears. What was it about this guy that made all the wrong emotions boil up? When a hand with years-ago broken, maimed and twisted fingers came up and reached around his back, he sighed. boom “Took me a while.” The voice was just the same. The cool, crystal sound of water over stones. “I would have waited a while longer. Not much more to do these days.” Kieran huffed and tried to turn the sound into an aborted laugh, trying to convince himself it had not been a sob. Fuck that. He was bringing Wulf home. Even if home meant a tiny apartment where he usually crashed after a night out or when his family was grating his nerves too much again. “Can you stand?” Wulf straightened his legs for an answer and raised an arm to lay it around Kieran’s shoulder. Kieran gladly pulled him up, wrapping him in his arms. Holding on to him. “I never thanked you.” And this time Wulf gave a silent, sad laugh. “You can’t change who you are. And what you are to me.” Slowly the vampire shifted his weight, his left arm slung about Kieran’s shoulder, and really stood. Six-foot-three and now much thinner than Kieran, he weighed about nothing. No wonder, if he had been hiding here all the time, wounded, crippled and left to die. Cursing, Kieran bent down and picked Diamond up. Lifting the vampire into his arms, he started to walk. Wulf would sleep in a bed tonight. And every night of his remaining life. No matter

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the cost, Kieran would get him the best healer he knew. His Uncle Dane. Might it separate him from his family forever? He couldn’t change who he was, and what Wulf was to him, and they could fucking try, if they wanted to. There were some things that went deeper than family. *

Kieran’s guilty conscience finally slowed down, came to a stuttering halt, and was replaced by a deep, contented warmth. Kneeling on a rug in serious need of replacing, next to a king-sized bed that was the most expensive piece of furniture in the apartment, holding Wulf’s hand, encased in a fresh cast, Kieran found something he had forever thought lost to him. Some kind of peace. Dane’s hand lay heavily on his shoulder as they both watched the slow rise and fall of Wulf’s chest. “It has happened before, Kieran. Rarely. Rarely enough that it’s a miracle, but it has happened. A vampire reclaiming his soul and his body changing again, from immortal to something else. But it takes rare and exceptional circumstances.” “I know. Will he be all right?” The spirit speaker reached out and stroked his nephew’s hair. Kieran didn’t see the smile, but he heard it in the words. “He already is, now that you’ve finally given in to the inevitable and claimed him. And, if you’re asking whether he will be healthy again? I don’t know. Being what he is, he will need blood. A lot of it, and strong, too. I did what I could. Now it’s time for someone else to step in.” Kieran took a deep breath and lowered his head to the hand, so warm and vulnerable. I can’t change who we are, and what fate made us to be. “His mate, for example.” The spirit speaker smiled and tipped his head. “Thank you.”

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His uncle dismissively waved his hand. “The road ahead is rocky enough. I’m just giving the two of you a head start.” And then he winked and stepped into the man-high mirror on the opposite wall. Kieran looked until nothing but his own reflection was left on the surface. *

Time is the strangest thing. Now and then you want to grab the clock and force it to go faster, and then there are times when you wonder where all the minutes and hours went, when everything seemed so important to you as it happened. I don’t know the answer. I can tell dozens of stories where the fae captured a human and slowed his time, while the world kept going. Sometimes I’m ready to believe that Diamond bewitched me and my little cottage in the valley. Right. Sometimes I can convince myself it’s his fault that everything seems to blur and change into an even stream of colors and sounds whenever we’re in the same spot. He surely is fae-like enough, pale as moonlight with those strange whiskey-colored eyes and his body lithe as a dancer’s. Nothing on him seems normal or natural. But that’s just him—your regular everyday human turned vampire and almost back again. I doubt he was born fae, not that I know for sure. He´s kinda silent about his days before The Bite. I spent tonight, while my uncles where discussing pack politics, thinking about him, forcing myself to remember everything that had happened, lining events up in a neat, clean row I could remember. And all I saw were pictures. How he lay in the bed, pale and weak, how I had to tie his arms to the bed frame to keep him from hurting his hands as the bones mended. Pain. Yes, Wulf and my city apartment combine to form the memory of seeing him in pain. But now I can revisit those memories without flinching; they blend with the rest that went on there. Baby Jesus be my witness, werewolves react badly to vampire´s and there´s nothing more vampiric than drinking blood, but, gods, his eyes as he watched me when he drank. All those Goth-type Byron-junior guys make a huge fuss out of a vampire drinking and,

Kat Haeske they’re right. First I hurt him and held him down and forced him to knit his bones back together by sheer force of will, and then I made it all better for both of us by offering him my vein. There´s barely anything more intimate than having another dig his incisors into your skin and suck your blood while he´s watching you. Did I suddenly overcome all my prejudices? Nu-huh! But it surely was sexy as hell. Yeah, and that is all there is to say about our relationship. At first, when it all was about bringing Wulf back into Wulf, it was so easy and straightforward. Make him heal. Help him adjust. But as soon as I brought him to my cabin, the place I’d imagined being when... when we met and all of this happened, it got awkward. And I don’t know why. Wrong, I do know, but I have no idea how that happened. Loch Dhun is my place, the most personal it can get, aside from this stupid book holding my thoughts. And having him there, just his normal, beautiful self, was a kind of intrusion that something inside me couldn’t deal with. Man, ain’t I just the great philosopher today. The first week was okay, mostly, getting him settled, introducing him to the lake, the mountains, the sun. That was okay. The sun, oh yes. I’ll always cherish that part in my heart, how I grabbed him and threw him out of the cabin while the sun was just rising over the water. It had been pretty easy to combine Fact A: “Vampires are afraid of the sun, because it kills them,” with Fact B: “He survived for two years without getting roasted in indirect sunlight like a hamster in the microwave,” to Conclusion: “There’s nothing he should be afraid of.” Convincing him had been so difficult that in the end there had been only force to show him that, while pale was beautiful, there was no reason for him not to get a tan. He sat there for a total of fifteen minutes, too shell-shocked to move while the sunrays slowly crept closer over the lake. When they finally touched him, he really flinched, but he didn’t run. And there’s the trust thing again. He could have tried to run. Granted, he wouldn’t

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Kat Haeske have gotten far. After all, I had been standing right behind him in my battle form, ready to catch him should he bolt, but also ready to shield him if it didn’t work out.

And he knew. Somehow, he knew. I know when he’s trying to read my mind. That’s something you can’t hide from another who has mental gifts, and he wasn’t trying. He just crouched there, his head cocked aside, tracking my every move with his senses while his eyes were transfixed by the nearing rays. There’s the kind of beauty that belongs to a woman with Angelina Jolie´s features, and there’s the beauty of someone tuning in to you and the things you would do so perfectly. W-O-W. By the way, the sun didn’t roast him. I had to leave after the first week. I had to earn money and had a freaking job I outright hated at that time. I had to get my overly concerned family off my back, had to keep them from discovering my dirty little secret and be Kieran with the big mouth again. I had to be the computer guy who programmed freakishly expensive security software, the cousin and friend who could easily drink a whole night away and not ask “How did we end up in that dumpster?” the next morning. I had to be South-American-Highway-straight Kieran. All the while, I had this freak waiting for me in my cabin, someone whose existence was so metaphysical it hurt my head to try and follow his explanations and recitation of old vampire lore. I was looking forward to the weekend, when I would see him again, but on the other hand he so totally didn´t fit into my world. Because my family would try to kill him and me, most likely, as well. When I packed my weekend pack “to go fishing,” something my people wouldn’t question, and climbed onto my bike and rode up there, there was this non-descript anxiety, a certain strangeness I always have when I cross the border between totally different worlds. And our past didn’t help, either. Hallelujah, I was so fucking happy to see him sitting on the front porch, wearing only some really old jeans I had gotten him as hand-me-downs from my teenage cousin’s closet. Talk about slim hips. Those damn nipple piercings glistened in the afternoon sun and he was reading,

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Kat Haeske flipping the pages with breathtaking speed, pretending he didn’t know I was there. No way he could have not heard a Honda Transalp roaring up the mountain, but hey, I had a chance to watch him idle his afternoon away. Sweet. Seeing him happy and healthy and far out of Edward’s reach was all I had wanted, and it was right there before me. The only awkward thing was that it was MY front porch this guy was sitting on. Oh, and the guy part. A girl I would have grabbed, dragged inside and had a nice round of “doing the dirty” with. Him I couldn’t grab. With his vampire blood, his natural strength surpassed mine, and he was male, not soft and pretty and female. And yeah, between what they had done to me, and me not knowing what they had done to him, this was really, really awkward. He acted cautious around me and that, if nothing else, was even worse than the rest. By that point I hated cautious. My family treated me with caution, my friends did also, as if I was about to break at any time. And there you had it—two guys tiptoeing around each other, not really knowing what to do with each other. Or rather, not daring to do what they wanted, which on my part was not a comfortable feeling, I can tell you. The way this feeling resolved itself is almost funny. In some kind of silent agreement we both kept from touching each other and instead discussed the time away. Night- and day-long talks became our replacement for physical contact. I didn’t understand why I had mated with a man, but that I had was undeniable. I wanted to touch him, I longed to, yet couldn’t make myself. And so we talked. It started with football, the very same weekend I found him sitting on my front porch. I resented football and I still ain’t very fond of it, but there was no watching Rugby when the German national team played in the World Championship. Most of the time my vampire is happy and content with a book, but he turns into “stubborn like a rock” whenever it’s about football and, as I found out that weekend, his mother was German, so no watching the Rugby game for me. And from there it went on to books and literature in general as we both love a good read, and then on to the wolf, who deep inside my soul is a playful devil and not afraid of anything, least of all a former vampire who is his mate and has a healthy set of hands to pet with.

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The first time I shifted with Diamond near, something changed immediately; the vampire wasn’t a sexual being anymore. And that took the weight of the freakin’ Himalayas off my shoulders. Of course he was still my mate—sexually, if nothing else— but I was a wolf and he was human. Which made all the difference in the world. Man, ain’t that just fucked up. Every weekend I go to see a man who I feel quite a bit for. I’m looking forward to those weekends, I start thinking of subjects I want to discuss with him on Wednesday. But I can’t make myself touch him. And then, as soon as I change my outer appearance, all is totally fine. In some way I guess I’m just as fucked up as I was before I found him in that backstreet, only now I can hide it. Way too often I see his hand reaching out to me, just fingertips, as if waiting for an invitation. I go out and change, and as a wolf, slip under his hand, rest my head on his leg and think nothing wrong of it. I will nuzzle his hair and be fine and he looks at me with his sad eyes, and I feel like a freaking bastard. Because he’s behaving like a knight, and I like a coward. *

With great power comes great responsibility. Wulf sighed deeply. Like the responsibility to keep oneself from those trying to abuse your power. Before it was too late. He had come so far since being born in the backstreets of London, the son of a religious zealot mother, the offspring of a rape. Yes, he had come far, always running from his origin, a child of the devil. The first had been at age fourteen. From the frequent beatings, the unjust punishments, the constant reminder of his guilt. The guilt of existing. And how he had run right into the arms of a man who had seen the perfect boy toy potential and had turned him into just that, using seduction or force, whatever worked best at any given time. Being rented out for sex had not been the best way of living, but it was comfortable

Kat Haeske enough in turn of the century London, when comfortable living was scarce. And his neat little ability had not hurt either. At least, until the day the man who was to become his sire had found out about it. More training, more being used. As a killer, a spy, a torture device or a quick fuck. Only to be sold to Edward for an outrageous price. Sometimes he wondered if any of the people at Edward’s court were there of their own free will. Those who liked the touch of sadism, most likely. Everything that made him dangerous had been meticulously honed to sharp edges, and all he could do not to hurt those around him was keep an iron control. His fighting abilities, that went from brawl to deadly way too fast, as well as his mind, the deep longing to take control over others’ thoughts, use what he had over them, subdue them. Well, except for a certain someone, who was happily splashing away only sixty feet down the lawn. Trying to catch fish. With his teeth and claws, giving an absolutely convincing display of “stupid puppy,” and who was the reason for all the worries and problems Wulf had right now, as well as for all the happiness he should be feeling. Pale gold eyes watched the wolf jump into the lake, splashing, swimming as if there was nothing wrong in his world. Perhaps there wasn’t, not for Kieran. Wulf righted his pants, trying to relieve the inevitable pressure on his crotch. There was no helping it. Whenever his mate was near, he got a hard-on. And Kieran didn’t. He was attentive, caring, courageous, good-looking and so convinced one was either straight or gay, he didn’t waste a thought on bringing anything sexual into their relationship. Did he? He wished Kieran would stay a wolf for a little while longer. He was showing off, in his four-legged form, daring and careless. The wolf didn’t care about things like morals, straight or not. The wolf let Wulf touch him. Run his scarred hands, scarred but working again, through its thick auburn fur. The wolf loved to play and roll around in the grass with him, as if they were children; it liked to play hunt and catch. The wolf allowed physical intimacy and Wulf was not above clinging to every bit of it he could get.

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Kat Haeske Because Kieran, two-legged, non-furred, beautiful, red-headed Kieran, called him Diamond, and kept an invisible wall raised between them all the time. The pale vampire swallowed heavily as his supposed mate changed form, instead of leaving the lake as a wolf and returning to the cabin to dress, as he usually did. For six months this had been the unconscious ritual to show he didn’t want to be touched. Not even with the eyes. Six long months they had shared the cabin on the weekends, together for three days straight but alone most of the time. Kieran cared. Nothing showed that more than the way he had taken care of Wulf when he had needed it most. How he had let him take his vein and had stuffed him with his powerful blood, bringing himself to the brink of exhaustion. He had spent nights sitting at his mate’s bedside, waiting for Wulf to recover from the wounds Edward had inflicted and the twilight existence he had led after being left in the streets to die in the sun. The sun. Kieran had enjoyed the sun with Wulf, had brought him back into the daylight, never so much as commenting on the vampire’s, or rather ex-vampire’s childish pleasure in it. He had joked around. He had taught Wulf how to fish. They played chess. They hung around, watched Rugby games or football, depending on who won the fight for the remote. Kieran had taught Wulf a kind of life Wulf had never known. But there had never been more than fleeting, casual touches during the last weeks. Come to think of it... Wulf drank in the sight of his mate’s naked body, the way the sunlight caught in the drops of water and the blood-red hair, how the muscles moved under tanned skin and little rivulets adorned every ridge on the hard planes of his back. The scars had healed well, little more than white lines now, accentuating perfection instead of marring it. Kieran stretched, raising his arms over his head, throwing back his head, turning his face toward the sun and his delectable ass in the direction of Wulf. A heavy sigh escaped the man on the front porch of the small, simple house. Paradise. This was what it was. A small cabin in a small vale in the Highlands, woods and a private lake. And his mate was putting on a show. Wasn’t he?

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Kat Haeske Slowly, a lazy grin crept over pale lips as hope blossomed and he remembered all the things that had seemed so casual, so unsuspecting at first. Casual touches, right, but Kieran had touched him, stroked back a strand of hair, patted his shoulder, had cast him lingering glances that were never quite obvious. And now this. Two and a half years was a terribly long time, a very lonely time. Heat filled Wulf’s crotch and he closed his eyes, trying to hold on to the illusion just a little longer. Kieran was still there when he opened them, still naked, trotting back to the house, two fish in his hands, head lowered, as if he tried not to look at Wulf. Which made sense. Perfect sense. A few quick strides brought Wulf to the stairs leading up to the porch, his arm stretched out to intercept his mate. Kieran stopped without looking up, murmuring under his breath words that sounded like “fish” and “kitchen.” Wulf smiled. “You got a problem, Kieran?” There was a short pause and then an answer that sounded breathless, almost lost. “Nay, ´m kay.” Wulf reached out and curled his fingers around his mate’s chin, forcing his head up, only to look into the most woeful, miserable puppy-dog eyes he’d ever seen. Even without Kieran’s half-erect cock, he could have guessed what was up. Should have much sooner. He felt like slamming his stupid head into a wall a few times. Instead, he smiled. A smile that was meant to comfort the werewolf, but instead, caused sweat to break out on Kieran´s forehead. “What are you afraid of, Kieran?” “Nuthin’. I ain’t afraid, kay? Just... aw, fuck. Leave me alone, Diamond. Just leave me the fuck alone! I’m not in the mood for Freudian discussion.” When Kieran tried to shove his way past the man, he found himself trapped against a post. Wulf knew his smirk was outright evil, but there was no time like this to convince his elusive mate of things like right or wrong. Kieran jerked under his hands when he whispered into his ear. “I’ve been waiting for you. Two years and then some six months more. I won’t let you go now, Silverscream. I

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Kat Haeske won’t back away because you’re nervous, or too afraid of your wishes. So, I ask you again. What’s wrong?” Kieran sighed, turned his head away, and then back at his mate again. “You’re asking the wrong questions, Diamond.” The nickname poured down over Wulf’s soul, leaving everything it touched strangely awake. Yet Kieran only chewed on his lower lip, not knowing what he did to his other half, besides waking the wish in Wulf to lean in and lick over the full flesh, to tease a moan out of this luscious mouth. “Tell me the right one, Kieran. Tell me what you want to hear. Or simply take me to bed and screw the talking part.” The werewolf groaned and closed his eyes, his cock twitching, bouncing against Wulf’s jeans-clad thigh, causing a chain reaction that had them both groaning again, Wulf more from the pain of his own shaft pushing against his pants. “It’s not that easy...” This time Kieran really turned his head away, self conscious and worse, blushing wildly, his suntanned skin turning a sweet shade of pink. “I will not start on the…‘What about the friendship part?’” “Oh, Goddamn it, screw the friendship part. We aren’t friends. We’re mates. And that usually includes sex. You know that, right?” Now Kieran looked outright embarrassed and Wulf rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me I’ve hurt you too much to heal. And don’t you dare tell me I’ve had a raging hard-on for six months because you were too shy to tell me what you wanted, either.” The blush got worse and Kieran slowly looked as if he had a really bad sunburn. “Oh... Oh God, Kieran. That’s... ludicrous.” Kieran closed his eyes and bit his lower lip, looking perhaps even more miserable than he had when Wulf had seen him for the first time. Things had been damaged by their first encounter, things that needed time to heal. Trust, for example. But this was perhaps the greatest comedy ever. Kieran had wanted him. And hadn´t known how to approach him about it, because Wulf was a man. Wulf threw back his head and wanted to scream in frustration, instead he did the strangest thing.

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Kat Haeske

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He laughed. *

Being manhandled had rarely been so nice as when Wulf pushed him inside the cabin. Kieran´s insides had turned into a tight knot the moment Wulf had him cornered him and forced him to confront what he hadn’t been able to say. And now, his face lit with fierce intent, the vampire had no intention of letting his partner escape again. Kieran didn’t want to escape, but a little grip on what was happening would have been nice. On the other hand, when Wulf had him in his bedroom and pushed him forward on the bed, smiling a breathtaking, secretive little smile that spoke of all possible pleasures to come, he got a good idea he didn’t need that grip. If he trusted Wulf, it would be all right. And one thing he had learned in the last six months of Wulf holding back, was that he could trust him. Kieran forced his body back into the pillows, relaxing a muscle at a time, waiting. His cock was hard, standing straight and welcoming, waiting too. As the vampire slowly slid his hands over his own stomach, Kieran closed his eyes. He didn’t see Wulf step closer or take his hands to place them on the hem of his jeans. “Your turn, Silverscream,” Had his voice ever sounded so hoarse and pressed? Should it sound like this? Oh yes, it should. Finding a spark of strength within himself, Kieran turned the memories rising from his mind in the right direction and rose to his knees. His eyes found their way upwards and raked over the magnificent body in front of him. Taut muscles under velvety skin that twitched in anticipation. A face right from heaven or hell and eyes that begged him not to pull back. An attempt of a smile on Wulf’s face faltered when their gazes met, leaving only a miserable need that had been growing over the turn of the last months, together with the fear of never finding the kind of fulfillment he ached for. Kieran’s fingers opened the first button ever so slowly, prolonging just this suffering

Kat Haeske as the wolf within him wanted to dominate. The step forward Wulf took was answered with a silent snarl. “Stand still or I stop.” Taut muscles went rigid, but he didn’t move, fist and teeth clenching, his eyes transfixed on Kieran’s hands. Button by button, ever so slowly, Kieran revealed his mate’s cock. Nervous as he was, he was wanting, under his skin a myriad of bugs crawled in splendid chaos, reminding him that he didn’t really know what he was doing, and joined the shadows of a memory he didn’t want in this room. Just another reason why he needed to control the man. He didn’t need any reason to think of the last time. Didn’t! Growling, he ripped the jeans down, revealing the rest of the beautiful body that he commanded right now. Slim hips, straining thighs that quivered with the effort not to move. And a long, thick cock jutting forward, the veins in stark contrast to the pale skin, the head thick and purple, just another testament to the enormous willpower of the vampire. Kieran knew he would have lunged forward already, trying to get relief from the kind of pain Wulf must be feeling. He reached out, not halted by Wulf’s desperate plea: “Don’t touch. Can’t…” Closing his fingers around the vampire’s shaft, hearing the pained hiss, Kieran relished the power he had, that had been given to him. He squeezed the base of Wulf’s cock, hard, then harder, until the moment had passed and Wulf’s panting had slowed down to harsh breaths. Only then did he bend his head and place a tentative kiss on the swollen head, tasting, smelling for the first time. Something new, different and yet so familiar. He registered Wulf’s groan and the way his head fell back only from the farthest corner of his conscious mind. He had it bad, so bad this would be breathtakingly good. This was not a male body in front of him. This wasn’t just any cock quivering below his fingertips; it was Wulf’s. Wulf, who had slowly sneaked into his mind and then taken his heart with his brief smiles and endless discussion of the philosophy of almost everything. The reason Kieran came out here every weekend, because Wulf was here.

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Kat Haeske No heart-stopping passion, a force neither of them could resist, making them fall into the sheets and do things Kieran had not been ready to do. Deep down it was calm, stable, absolute completion. They wouldn’t drop dead if the other wasn’t around anymore. They would wither. His vampire shivered with every waft of breath that floated over his cock. Kieran saw how much the man had to draw on his seemingly endless reservoir of willpower not to explode. For me. His lips pursed and touched the skin again, his tongue lapping a small, clear droplet off the tip. A shudder was the reward. As his thumb slid to the underside of Wulf’s cock and, in slow circles, rubbed over the sensitive veins, teasing for the task of exploration, a sole hiss echoed through the room. His. Kieran smiled. His fingers felt their way along Wulf’s long shaft, and his tongue followed. He loved every tremble, every suppressed moan. All of it was his, only for him. A present, a gift, his for the taking. Looking up, his gaze was met by two pools of molten gold, shifting restlessly, and he smiled. There was a plea there, a man begging for his torturer to do something, either to let him come or to let him go, if only he’d stop the teasing. Anything. Kieran’s smile lost its balance, turning into a lopsided grin. “Tell me...” Wulf didn’t ask what he was supposed to tell his mate, didn’t even think before he reached to his bedside drawer and retrieved a small bottle. Dangling it in front of Kieran’s eyes before dropping it into his hands, his mouth moved. For a tense second no sound left his lips, and when the words finally formed, his voice was so hoarse and husky they were a soft plea in themselves. “Ready me. Dying here.” He swallowed heavily, his eyelids fluttering like a butterfly’s wing on Kieran’s skin for the briefest moment. Through the shock, the information slowly filtered through Kieran’s mind. He’d

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Kat Haeske never thought... He’d been so sure that Wulf would be the one who... He remembered to breathe and shot off the bed, pushing Wulf forward, belly down on the covers. It said a lot that his man didn’t even try to evade him. Taking him down had never been so easy. Kieran had done this before with women, he reminded himself as he poured the liquid into his palm. How different could this be? Honestly. When fate had decided this was his mate, the person who would complete him the best and ensure his survival, there was no second though about him fucking up because of clumsiness in bed. Nope, wouldn’t bloody happen. Catching Wulf’s impatient glance, Kieran smiled and smoothed his hand over the vampire’s—ex-vampire’s—buttocks. Frigging perfect. The part of him that wanted to go slow, wanted to savor this, was quickly drowned by the part that was just hungry. He knelt over his mate’s legs and drew his fingers through the crack between Wulf’s buttocks, slowly dipping inside the dark hole. More lube, more finger and Wulf’s painful panting. This was not hot. It was scorching, and every little bit of it, the tremors in Wulf’s body, the force by which he clamped his teeth shut, his eyes, blazing with lust, and for sure the little whimper that escaped the vampire’s mouth when Kieran started to move his fingers and to scissor them within his body, pushed Kieran higher. Need a hundredfold. Wulf, shaken by almost nothing, whimpered, and it was so heart-wrenching, gutclenching sweet to hear it. Kieran cast him a broad grin, anticipating this, wanting, even though he was just the tiniest bit unsure still. Right until the moment Wulf turned with the amazing speed he possessed and threw Kieran backwards into the pillow. He had reached the breaking point, eyes fixed on the werewolf’s face. “God damned hedonist. Why now?” His hands planted firmly on Kieran’s chest. A wild grin lit his face as he slowly lowered himself onto his mate’s cock. “Need you. Now.

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Kat Haeske Fast.” Kieran fell back and squeezed his eyes shut, only to rip them open again a second later when he felt his sensitive flesh being enclosed by Diamond’s body. So fucking tight. So bloody, bloody good. As his cock vanished into his partner’s body while he watched, Kieran was sure he would explode within the next second only from looking at something so intimate and right. Something between him and his mate. Reaching out, he found first Wulf’s thigh and then his cock. The man whimpered, loud this time, as Kieran closed his fingers, letting himself fall into it. Into the fact he was having sex with his mate. Finally. And into the fact that god, he loved it. The way Wulf moved above him was everything the man was: lithe, elegant, controlled to the last fiber of his body, and just simply beautiful. With his cock jerking in Kieran’s hand, the muscles in his belly rippling with strain, his nipples erect, highlighting those rings that so drove Kieran crazy, and his long hair fanning out behind him like a pale platinum wall which separated them from everything, past, future, pestering families and the worries that came so naturally in their world. Kieran threw his head back, reduced to mere panting nonsense words, while Diamond slowly moved on his cock, fingernails digging deeply into Kieran’s thighs, his hair caressing it all better a second later. They both moved in a slow, hypnotizing rhythm to prolong the act, but all they achieved was skyrocketing toward orgasm way too fast to really savor every bit of their first real lovemaking. Every thought was thrown from Kieran’s mind when, with a muted scream, he came, his body arching in one graceful movement towards the ceiling, shoving his hips against Wulf’s ass, slamming his cock as deep as possible. He stared blindly, unable to see past his mate’s face or to hear more than Wulf’s silent purr echoing through the room. He was so fucking beautiful. So eager, generous, with a fire as hot as hell or love burning under the icy surface. “Shit, Diamond! Wulf!” His! Finally. When he had been forced to stop thinking about it, had been forced to just say yes or no, not what if, why or how, it had all been so easy. Yes, I want you. The purr broke off, changing into a breathless scream. Shockwaves of orgasm rushed through Wulf, forcing his body into a wild shiver, and his ass to clench on Kieran’s cock,

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which almost threw Kieran over the edge again. And then there was silence. They both collapsed to their sides, hands locked, their bodies sticky from sweat and cum, and neither of them caring. For a moment the world had stopped for them. Maybe the rest of it had kept spinning around them. In the center, time had halted. “Wow!” And then Kieran started to grin his sunshine grin, the one that lit up every room, if he put it on, but tonight it was only for Wulf. The other man grinned right back, but still said, “I can’t believe you made me wait for six months because you had a sudden attack of shyness, Silverscream. That was... You’re so going to suffer. I swear.” The words were underlined by laughter that did not quite break free. Kieran felt the joy inside himself, complete and right and all the things he had doubted he would be again. Prying his left hand from Wulf’s grip he raised it to touch his mate’s cheek, awed again at about everything. He did not understand how something that had started so painfully could be so bloody right now. And, no, he didn’t care, either. Running his thumb over Diamond’s lower lip, the grin widened briefly and then dimmed to a content smile. “Got me.” He bowed his head to touch his lips to Wulf’s. Because it felt right. And because he, curse them all, wanted to. “Will make it up to you. Promise.” *

This is it. He’s mine. All the time I thought I didn’t really know him, the patient, easy man he turned out to be. But in the end, I just hadn’t known him before and this is the way he is. A flower that blossomed only under the right care. Mine. Oh Christ! He’s sleeping now. I like that thought, a vampire sleeping at night. I should be there, but I’m

Kat Haeske too excited to close my eyes. “Dare to,” he had said to me in Edward’s cell. “Dare to fight.” In the end, all the worries about the things they had done to him didn’t really matter. He shrugged them off with a dismissive “Edward’s too afraid of me to try to hurt me, like he did with you. You found me. Stop worrying your head off.” Sometimes I want to throttle him. My family doesn’t know yet, and I’m afraid of what they’ll do when they find out. There is no choosing between them and Diamond. I love him. Hell, how can I not? No matter how much he drives me crazy sometimes, he’s special. From the way he wrinkles his nose at a particularly violent Rugby game to the way you can park him on the front porch in the afternoon and pick him up at nightfall, and he won’t have moved an inch. The pack is worried sick about me vanishing every weekend. To go fishing. Yeah, like hell. Aidan (cousin, business partner and still a stupid idiot about the little witch) tries to drag me into every club the city has. To distract me, to get me laid. I hate not being able to tell him how wrong he is. The little witch knows. My nosy distant adopted cousin, Crystal. The one with the psychology degree. The one who has been hitting on my best friend, also a distant cousin (though actually blood related), and business partner in our security firm, since she was a teenager. That one cute little witch, with her big pale green eyes and upturned nose and typically smiling face. She who helped me through this in the beginning. I see it in her smile, and the biscuits she stuffs into my pocket each weekend “So you don’t starve.” Me and which army? I love them. God, I do. They’re my family, but if I had to choose... Would they really make me choose? After tonight, after knowing what it is like to let him close, to have him surrender, and to surrender myself. After seeing him smile and what it was like. I couldn’t. No way. He’s my mate, a part of my soul I can’t change it, any more than he can. I want to go back to him, grab him and hold him and tell him all the things I couldn’t. How sorry I am. How much he means to me. What a smile from him does to my

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mind. That I would follow wherever he goes. Because he’s an idiot, because he almost got himself killed saving me and never asked for anything in return. And sweet Mary, mother of baby Jesus, I’m so scared of his answer. What if he doesn’t want me? What if he leaves one day and I’m left behind, forever mourning what I thought I had, unable to see past him ever again. I’m such a goofball, but, spirits help me, he’s the way I see the sun, I smell the woods in the morning, and when I hear his heart beat, I always think it will break mine. The wolf is raging at the thought of losing him and I... fuck, I want to cry. Who would have thought this would be how it ends. Me happily mated to a vampire, and finding it completely right. And, yes, I’m happy. Fucking screaming-it-out-to-world happy. Whatever comes, and whoever tries to get us apart. He’s mi... *

Wulf leaned down and, sneaking an arm around Kieran’s naked waist, read the words on the wrinkled paper, worn from being read a hundred times, over and over again, in the last few months. Inwardly he shook his head. This wolf and his diary. A warrior poet, and one who worried way too much. “Start a new one, Silverscream. This diary is closed. This chapter is closed.” Kieran turned his head when Wulf’s lingering kiss on the sensitive skin of his neck stopped him. The pen was pulled from his hands. “Diaries are personal, Diamond. You know that, right?” Wulf laughed silently, and scribbled a few quick words under the unfinished sentence, covering the whole rest of the page. “Yes. If I want to know, from now on, I’ll just pick it from your mind.” He grinned and pulled Kieran to his feet. “Stop thinking and come to bed.” The werewolf wasn’t really resisting when his mate dragged him from his desk and the room. His eyes were lingering on the unfinished page he left behind.

Kat Haeske The ink was not dry yet and shimmered glossy black in light of the desk lamp. Crossing half a page. Diamond’s words. Dominating everything Kieran had written tonight. I love you.

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ABOUT KAT HAESKE Kat was born some 30 years ago in the beautiful middle of Europe, under the rule of what is now called a dictatorship. Even as a little girl she told stories to her guinea pigs and had avid conversations via letters written on leaves with Lady Fox and Lord Oak. Just about the same time, she read her first book at age 6 she started to learn English from her mother and head over heels fell in love with the language. Nowadays she lives in beautiful southern Germany with her partner of six years and tries to become a book trader, after her body put a halt to her living as an archeologist. When she´s not reading or writing, she´s giving the men of her dreams a face via 3D Rendering

Website: www.cat-h.com

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