A Hunger So Wild by Sylvia Day Page A

second-in-command with warm familiarity. “Are you well?”
    Elijah interjected. “You didn’t care about that when you sent her to me alone and unarmed.”
    “Let me see him,” Syre said, prompting Vash toangle the screen in Elijah’s direction. “Ah. The lycan Alpha. You’re precisely what I expected.”
    “I expected you to be smarter.” Elijah crossed his arms.
    “You’d be an idiot to harm my lieutenant. I would hunt you down and spread your hide in front of my fireplace as a rug.”
    “My hide is worth the same as hers?” He glanced at Vash, irritated that he gave a shit about the respect—or lack of—that she was shown by her commander.
    “If you’d been able to take her down, yes. She’s a damned fine warrior, armed or not.”
    Vash flipped the phone back around to face her. “How did you get your hands on Lindsay?”
    The hair on Elijah’s arms and nape rose with his sudden fury. He’d pinned the vampress to a tree by the throat before she knew what’d hit her.
    Vash found herself flattened into the coarse bark of a tree trunk by over six feet and two hundred twenty pounds of bristling, growling lycan. Her fury over being caught unawares was exacerbated by her prickling dislike of Elijah’s proprietary feelings toward Lindsay Gibson.
    “What?” she taunted, catching the wrists of his hands presently wrapped around her neck. His heavily muscled thigh was shoved between hers and his lean hips pressed against her pelvis in a way that set her heart racing. “Got a hard-on for Adrian’s woman?”
    “Where is she?”
    Her smile was mocking. “Why do you care?”
    “Lindsay saved my life.”
    “I knew I hated that bitch for a reason.”
    “She’s with Adrian.”
    Elijah’s head turned toward the iPhone on the ground and Syre’s steely-eyed visage. “Is she unharmed?”
    “If she’s still alive, she’s healthier than she’s ever been.”
    A chill slid down Elijah’s spine. He looked at Vashti, whose eyes were bright with challenge. While a mortal would have lost consciousness by now from lack of air, the vampress was merely flushed, which made her even more beautiful. “What did you do to her?”
    “What she wanted done,” Syre answered. “Release my second, Alpha, before I decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
    “Not yet.” Maybe not ever, if his growing suspicions were realized. His gut knotted as the fear deepened.
    Vash smiled. “How did you get her, Syre?”
    “She was brought to me by members of the Anaheim cabal.”
    Elijah growled. “There’s a vampire nest in Southern California?”
    “We prefer to call them cabals or covens,” she corrected, “depending on the size.” She turned her gaze to Syre. “Did they tell you how they got her out of Angels’ Point?”
    It was no secret that Angels’ Point, Adrian’s compound in Anaheim Hills, was a fortress. Set high above the city, it was guarded by Sentinels and lycans—beforethe revolt—as well as the finest electronic surveillance millions could buy.
    “No.” The turning wheels in Syre’s mind were evident in his contemplative tone. “I assumed they’d acquired her somewhere between her work and the Point.”
    “We need to talk to them. They have a winged contact they’re not sharing.”
    “I’ll see to it. And I’ve sent the Alpha’s blood sample from the scene of Nikki’s abduction out to be analyzed for anticoagulants, as you requested. I’ll let you know the results when I have them.” There was a pause. “Are you all right there, Vashti?”
    The circle of her fingers released Elijah’s wrists, freeing her hands to slide up his arms like a lover. Teasing him. Goading him. “Of course.”
    “Check in regularly, so I can be certain.”
    “Yes, Syre.”
    Yes, Syre.
Elijah was determined to hear her cede to him as thoroughly…while she was beneath him, taking hard, deep thrusts of his aching cock. That he could want her and want to kill her at the same time was fucking with