Immortals After Dark 04 - Wicked Deeds on a Winters Night by Kresley Cole Read Free Book Online

estate in Scotland or at the Lykae compound in Louisiana. The clan’s property there was vast with miles of swamps and forests to run. There was a central, main lodge for gatherings, and then separate, large hunting cabins were spread throughout.
    Louisiana intrigued Bowe. Lazy fans always seemed to be overhead. Unusual food scents and the strains of music continually carried on the breeze. Surely Mariah would love it as he did.
    And when he had her back with him, he would seduce away her fears of him so he could finally claim her, at last having her completely.
    Gods, he needed her beneath him. Since that night in the jungle tomb, his long-neglected desires had come blazing to life. Even with his body battered, each day he’d needed to take relief from the throbbing ache in his shaft.
    Though it shamed him, his mind would wander to the witch as he stroked himself in bed. His usual fantasies of laying Mariah down and gently claiming her were replaced by ones of Mariketa, even though her glamour made memories of her hazy.
    He could recall being so damned pleased and aroused by the witch’s body but not remembering why. More clearly, he recalled the small tattoo on her lower back—he’d imagined rubbing his face against that mark. Even the remembered feel of the back of her leg against his palm could put him into a lather; he would shudder at mere thoughts of her soft, giving thigh under his thumb claw.
    Fantasizing about tasting the wet flesh he’d cupped would make him spend so hard his eyes rolled back in his head.
    Once he’d taken his release, a bitter shame would set in. But each night, shame turned to determination to win.
    When the tunnel opened up into a soaring cavern chamber, filled with smoke and wafting ash, Bowe hurried inside—and spotted Sebastian Wroth at the edge of a pit of lava, his arm trapped under a huge boulder.
    The vampire? When Kaderin should be here tonight?
    “What’s happened here?”
    “A quake... rocks,” Wroth grated with difficulty.
    “Where’s the Valkyrie? She ought to be here, not you.”
    “I’m here in her stead.”
    Bowe had suspected that Wroth was newly turned—relatively—but now he knew it. An older, more powerful vampire could have traced out from under the rock.
    “You can’t reach the prize,” the vampire told him in his accented English. “It’s on the other side of the pit... and the cable across it snapped.”
    Bowe surveyed the area and saw the coiled remains of a thin cable hanging loose from the opposite wall. He had rope in his truck but couldn’t spy a single place in the sheer rock face to lash it to. Besides, the truck was aboveground several miles away, and with every minute that passed, the curse was siphoning off more of his strength.
    He knew the vampire could trace them across with a blink of his eye, but to free him would be a great risk. Yet, though Bowe was weak, Wroth looked much more so. And Wroth didn’t want the prize as badly as Bowe—he used this contest only to win over Kaderin.
    The vampire was pale as death, blood pooling all around him. If Bowe left him to gear up to cross the pit on his own and failed, would Wroth even be conscious when he returned?
    Decided. “I could free you to trace me across. Then, an open contest to take it.”
    “I could double-cross you.”
    Bowe narrowed his one eye. “No’ if I’ve got ahold of your good arm.”
    After a hesitation, the vampire said, “Do it.”
    Bowe crossed to the boulder and shoved at it. Though he was constantly reminded of how weak he’d grown, he was still confounded to be unable to move a single boulder. He muttered, “ Bloody, goddamned witches. ” Putting his back into it, he asked, “Where exactly are you tracing us?”
    “Below the cable, there’s a lava tube, another cavern.”
    “I doona see anything,” Bowe gritted out.
    “It’s there. You want the prize? Then you’re just going to have to trust a vampire—”
    The boulder toppled over. Before Wroth