King of the Asheville Coven (Winterset Coven #1)(9)

Her skin sealed with her shifter healing, and he sucked gently there as if he was silently thanking her.

He hadn’t taken much from her. Not even enough to make her feel faint or for her fingertips to turn cold. He’d stayed in control and only sipped at her through their orgasm. It shouldn’t have been, but that was the sexiest thing she’d ever been a part of. What did that say about her? Right now, she didn’t care. Not when Aric was trailing kisses down her collar bone and stroking along her arm, coveting her. And she repaid him in kind—kissing his skin, biting him gently, rubbing her cheek against his affectionately. She would never tell him, but that was a sign of deep adoration for shifters like her.

Aric lifted up and smiled as though he’d heard that last thought. And then slowly, he eased forward and nuzzled his cheek against hers. Her chest heated with something unexplainable. Something incredible, blinding, and overwhelming.

The door creaked open. “Hey boss, do you have any extra twenties?” Garret asked. “Oh, shit!”

With a gasp, Sadey covered her face in mortification as Aric threw the covers over them. “Garret, get out!”

Sadey peeked through her fingers, but Garret was standing there, staring at Aric with such a strange frown on his face. “What’s happening right now?”

“Garret, I’m serious, get the f*ck out of my room. That’s an order.”

Garret’s eyes narrowed to slits as he dragged an angry gaze to Sadey. “What did you do to him?”

Aric blasted off her, melded into a thick plume of bats and smoke and waved violently this way and that until there was a deafening crash. Aric was across the room and pinning Garret to the wall, which had shattered behind him. “I gave you an order, so why the f*ck are you still here? How I feed is my business.”

“Except that wasn’t just feeding!” Garret yelled. “I can feel your goddamned bond.”

He lifted an accusatory gaze to Sadey, but she was crouched defensively on the bed, ready to Change and rip his throat out if the vamp came a step closer.

Garret huffed a humorless breath. “All right, King. I’m leaving.” He lifted his hands in surrender as power hummed through the room.

When Aric pushed off Garret, he was holding a splintered piece of two-by-four against Garret’s chest, right over his heart.

Garret meandered to the door but paused at the open doorframe. “Nice eyes, shifter,” he growled out with one last hate-filled glance at Sadey.

The slamming door rattled the room, and Aric yelled a feral sound and chucked the two-by-four against the wall so hard it speared the sheetrock and hung there, five feet above the ground, shaking from the force.

And she could feel it now, too. Something invisible tethered them and drew taut as he paced away, then eased when he came closer again.

Hand over the hot spot on her chest, she asked, “What just happened?”

Aric settled his hands on his hips and shook his head over and over. And when he lifted those pitch-colored, blazing eyes to her, she could see it there—the realization of what they’d just done.

“I didn’t just feed on you, Sadey. I think I gave you a claiming mark.”





Chapter Five


Aric wanted to break everything after that meeting with his coven. Such vitriol had spewed forth from his people, he wanted to throttle every last one of them.

His truck nearly went up on two wheels as he turned into Sadey’s driveway, but when he slammed on his brakes and rocked to a stop, he couldn’t understand the scene before him.

Her rental car had all its doors wide open, and the trunk was packed with boxes. The ding, ding of the keys in the ignition sounded, and the front door to her house was wide open. One of the boxes had tipped over, and the porch was scattered with papers and books. Long claw marks ran down the side of the box.

What in the hell?

Slowly, Aric slid out from his ride and froze, listening for Sadey. He took the keys from the ignition to stop the annoying sound. They jingled in his hand as he made his way across the yard to the porch stairs. The floorboards creaked under his shoes as he peeked inside her house. Boxes were everywhere, but that made no damn sense—she’d only left his house two hours ago. That wasn’t enough time to do this amount of packing.

He locked his arms against the doorframe, his frown so deep his forehead ached. “Sadey?” he called out carefully.

Nothing. No scuffle of her shoes, no clatter of rushed packing, no greeting. He listened harder, but there was nobody here. There was no pulse in the house. “Shhhit,” he murmured, pushing off the door. He couldn’t go in without her invite, but he didn’t need to. Sadey was in the wind.

Aric rested his hands on his hips and glared down at the shredded box thoughtfully. He inhaled deeply. Fur and Sadey. And that’s when he felt it—the hair raising on the back of his neck that said he was being watched. That he was being hunted.

He scanned the woods around the house, but even with his heightened night vision, he couldn’t see the reflective eyes that would tell him his hunch was right. Clever little predator.

Inhaling deeply, he hopped over the last couple of stairs on the porch and made his way slowly to the tree line. His scorched arm tingled, as if reminding him what had happened the last time he’d messed with a pissed-off shifter, but that was different. Sadey was different, and he couldn’t even imagine what she was going through right now. Anger, maybe, but definitely fear over what they’d done. She had grabbed her purse and left his house, him trailing after her, begging her to stay and talk about the claiming mark. And that’s when he’d seen a name in her mind—Brock. She’d thought that name with such hatred he’d almost missed the fear she kept bundled in the middle of all that anger.