Crave by Felicity Heaton

with the werewolf last night. Afraid that the man would know her pack from her scent and contact them? He wanted to ask about it but held his tongue. The fire now blazing in her eyes warned him not to even dare to disagree with her. She would be out of the door again if he did, and he didn’t want that. As much as he wanted to know her past, he wanted her more fiercely.
    Callum nodded.
    He would wait until her guard was down and then do a little digging. It wasn’t just her safety at risk. If she was running from her pack and they were after her, he could end up caught in the crossfire. She had said that he would start a war by killing the three werewolves from last night. She would start one herself if her pack discovered she had chosen a vampire over her own kind. They would want vengeance. His death would be the start of another bloodbath between vampires and werewolves.
    “Fine.” Callum rose to his feet. He brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek and her armour fell away again, lowering to reveal a touch of warmth in her eyes that he was growing to like seeing. “I won’t ask why you’re running.”
    A flicker of steel in her gaze and the twitch of her body as she tensed told him that he had presumed right. She was on the run from her pack. Why?
    Kristina stepped up to him and rested her hands on his chest. Her fingertips caressed him through the silky grey material, teasing and pushing the thought out of his mind as his body responded to her touch. He slid his hand around the nape of her neck and tipped her head back so her eyes met his. The rosy gloss on her lips still tempted him with its scent but it was the lingering fragrance of her blood in the air that had saliva pooling in his mouth and his fangs itching to taste her. He clamped down on the desire, forcing it deep inside him and keeping it there. She was already on edge as it was. Transforming in front of her again would probably send her dashing for the door. As much as he desired her, as fiercely as his hunger for her rode him, he would keep himself under control.
    He wouldn’t bite her until she asked.
    She hesitated and so did he. The hunger that had given him confidence last night was little more than a fizzling ember, reduced to ashes by everything that had passed between them in the past half an hour. He wasn’t sure what to do to bring it back or how to move past this awkward silence. He wanted to kiss her again, craved the flavour of her on his tongue, but wasn’t sure if she wanted it too.
    “This is stupid,” she muttered under her breath, leapt up and wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his shoulders. It caught him off balance and sent him tripping backwards across the room, desperately clutching her bottom to support her. He hit the door hard, the brass knob jabbing him in the back and pushing the air from his lungs in a harsh grunt. She beamed at him. “Wow... I had thought you would have been able to handle that.”
    “A little warning wouldn’t go amiss,” he grumbled and straightened his back, grimacing as the area that had collided with the door knob throbbed and ached.
    “Clearly you’re not as strong as I thought you were.” She grinned.
    Callum stared at her, feeling as though she had mentally cast him out of the role of male vampire and onto the reject pile labelled ‘human’. Not as strong as she thought? Well. If she had thought to challenge his masculinity, she had chosen the perfect words for it, and he would respond with the perfect counter argument.
    Still holding her, he strode across the room, tossed her onto the bed, and before she had stopped bouncing in the middle of it, was on her. His fingers clamped tightly around her wrists and pinned them hard to the soft striped dark blue and gold covers. Her smile fell away and her pupils dilated when he growled down at her, his hips against hers, holding her immobile and powerless beneath him.
    Her fingers flexed and she struggled, a wicked