“Cult.” He squeezed her breast through the cloth, making her eyes water, but her pelvis arched toward him. “Didn’t think you were so dim. You saw me that night.”
Her heart thundered in her ears. “I saw”—her voice hitched—“I-I saw a pervert in a Bigfoot costume. Sooo not impressed.”
A laugh started deep in his chest and vibrated through the arm behind her shoulders. An arm that shifted position. Around behind her. And lower. Pulling her into him.
“I am so much more than that.” His voice was hoarse and raspy.
Jessie shivered. Her thoughts swirled, carried away on his musky scent as he leaned into her. She braced one hand against his chest. It was like touching steel. Her legs were useless. He held her, or she’d be in a puddle on the floor.
“You are d-delusional,” she managed.
“Rarely,” he answered. Fingers slid beneath the waistband of her scrubs, caressed silky panties, and then curled to cup her bare buttock. The very tips reached...
He growled low in his throat. “Your body knows what it wants.”
No. Effing. Way. Jessie twisted just enough to get a leg into position. Braden was distracted, his fingers sliding deeper. He was making soft growly sounds of satisfaction. And her traitorous hips were tilting into him. Obliging him.
Bastard.
Jessie put everything she had into an upward thrust of her knee. It flew true, hitting him squarely in the balls.
Braden grunted. His mouth dropped open, but he didn’t cry out. Instead, a low rumble vibrated beneath her fingers as he lowered his head.
Despite her resolve, her gaze dropped to his lips. She didnotwant to kiss him, damn it. But all coherent thought died abruptly.
Because blood trickled from his mouth.
Huge, pointed teeth pushed through gums on a jaw that was growing, and changing shape. The canines, already dagger sharp, lengthened. No way all those teeth should have fit in that mouth. The jaws extended to accommodate them. The nose changed along with them, and the skin turned as black as the hair that raced over his brown face.
No, no, no, no...The words chanted in Jessie’s brain. His forehead broadened and his eyes glowed gold. The shoulders swelled, the tee shirt fabric ripping free. Muscles writhed along the arm holding her, expanding as thick hair sprouted. Deep grunts accompanied the pops of his altering bones.
She jerked against his arm, but as she pulled back, both hands, tipped with claws, sank into her shoulders. His thighs burst straight through his jeans. As the cloth fell away, it revealed that his muscles weren’t the only things growing.
Terror engulfed Jessie. Mindless and all consuming. She fought his grasp, her fingers tearing out hunks of dark hair.
His long jaws dropped open, revealing pointed teeth clear to the back of his throat. He leaned forward, pushing her struggling form flat to the wall. Panted hot breath across her face. And then ran his long, wet tongue from one ear down along her jaw to the other ear.
“Mine,” he growled. The word was slurred but decipherable.
Jessie tried to scream, but no sound emerged.
The door to the room crashed open. “Cops!” Troy shouted. “They’ve found us.”
Braden snarled. His hands spasmed, the claws digging into her flesh.
“We’ve gotta go, Boss. They’re all over this place. No way we can take the women and get out of here too.”
Braden glowered at her shaking form. Her face was only inches from those savage jaws.
“Yoou are mine. Body and soul.” He smirked. “And I will come for yoou.” Then he released her.
She dropped like a stone, her legs refusing to hold her for another moment. One second he stood there, glaring at her with glowing gold eyes, and the next he was gone in a blur of black hair.
Troy vanished with him.
Jessie swayed. He was gone. Relief swept through her, but it was followed by a surge of overwhelming loss. Even through her horror, she reached after him, fingers extended. Grasping for him.No.This was not who she was.
Gritting her teeth, Jessie folded her arms close and wrestled the longing down deep. Locking it away. She rocked herself back and forth against the wall as sirens shattered the silence of the night.
