Just not quickly enough.
As much as he hated to do it, it was time to call in the troops.
He picked up the phone and dialed Kynan. “Hey, man, it’s E. I need you to get me in touch with your Army buddy, Arik.” Arik was also Runa’s brother, but Eidolon didn’t want to bother her right now, and besides, Kynan had worked with the guy for years and knew more about the military’s secret paranormal unit than anyone.
Eidolon could hear Kynan suck air. “Jesus… E, I don’t think getting involved with the R-XR would be a good idea.”
Eidolon didn’t either. “I don’t have a choice. This werewolf disease has to be stopped, but I don’t have the resources to do that.”
“And you’re hoping the Army will help?”
“They do operate USAMRIID, and you can’t tell me that the R-XR doesn’t have contacts within the organization. You know damned good and well that half the paranormal unit’s function is to find underworld substances and biological elements to use in warfare. They’d definitely be working with someone inside the Army’s Institute of Infectious Disease.”
Kynan’s curse blistered the airwaves. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll contact Arik.”
Eidolon hung up, wondering if he’d done the right thing. He had no doubt that the military could help. He just hoped the price would be something he could pay.
Twenty-eight
“Beat you there.” Idess darted out of the Harrowgate and raced toward her house. Lore’s curse followed her, accompanied by heavy footsteps that were closing the distance between them.
“Idess.” His shout held a predatory, ominous warning. “When I catch you, I’m taking you where we land.”
And that was supposed to be a threat? “When? If,” she called out.
Laughing, she picked up the pace, dodging tree branches and leaping over tree roots that wove veins into the worn path to her villa. She risked a glance over her shoulder and screamed in delight. He was nearly upon her. Intense hunger burned in his dark eyes, and she suddenly felt what it must be like to be a rabbit running from a wolf.
Somehow she scrounged up one last burst of speed, enough to make it to her front door. He caught her there, pinning her against the wood with his big body. At some point he’d lost the glove he still wore, even though she regularly drained his death power to give him temporary bits of freedom.
One hand cupped her breast and the other gripped her hip and her entire body hummed with anticipation.
“I warned you.” His voice was breathless from the run and with need, the latter of which she could sense all the way to her soul.
She lifted her leg to put her aching sex in contact with his erection, and he hissed in a breath. “Right here against the door?”
“Yes.” His sizzling gaze challenged her as his fingers found her jeans buttons. But she wasn’t going to stop him. In fact, she nearly wept with relief at the soft yet urgent rasp of his knuckles brushing her skin as he tore open her fly. “You should wear skirts.”
“With no panties?”
A wicked smile tipped up his mouth, robbing her of her ability to speak. “With panties. That way I can rip them off with my teeth.”
The words, the images, were dizzying.
“And if I’m in too much of a hurry to take them off,” he said, as he drove his hand down the front of her pants, “I can move them aside.” Which he proved by tugging the silk to the side and pushing two fingers into her core.
She cried out at the wonderful invasion. “Lore…”
He braced his forearm against the door next to her head and leaned in as his fingers began a slow glide in and out. She expected him to kiss her, but instead he watched her, his breaths labored, his eyes half-lidded. Under his admiring gaze she felt like a beautiful treasure.
“I’ll never get tired of looking at you,” he whispered. “I want to watch you come every day. Ten times a day. A hundred.”
“You say the most wonderful things,” she panted. “You are never getting rid of me now.” It had been a week since they’d left the assassin den forever, and she had said the same thing every day since.
“Good.” He made a sinful twist with his fingers, and she arched into his hand, hanging right on the edge. “Damn, Idess. You’re drenched, so wet, and all for me.”
“For you,” she agreed.
“Mine,” he growled.
“Yours.”