A Hunger Like No Other (Immortals After Dark, #1)

by Kresley Cole

“Never run from one such as me, female.” Her attacker didn’t sound human. “You will no’ get away. And we like it.” His voice was guttural like a beast’s, yet his accent was . . . Scottish?

Against her mouth, he growled, “Kiss me back, creature, while I decide if I should spare your life.” With a cry, she moved her lips against his. When he stilled completely as if to force her to do all the work, she slanted her head and brushed his lips lightly again. “Kiss me like you want to live.” She did.

Once she’d hung up the telephone again, Lachlain strode around the corner without even acting like he hadn’t listened. She jumped again, then her brows drew together. “You eavesdropped, didn’t you?” “Aye,” he answered without compunction. “Learn anything new?” she asked in a nervous tone. Not really. “Your accent’s odd and you speak too quickly,” he answered honestly. Then he smirked. “But I did hear that you think me ‘wildly handsome.’ ” He wondered why he’d felt a flare of pleasure at that. As if he cared what she thought.

“The next man I take into my bed will accept me for what I am and won’t look at me with disgust for the way I’m forced to survive. I want a man who goes out of his way to make me comfortable instead of the opposite. Which means you’ve disqualified yourself from the competition from night one.”

He needed to learn that in the last seven days, she’d become a creature with which one did not fuck.

“Would you run into his arms?” Nïx asked. Her aunts believed that a Valkyrie would know her true love when he opened his arms to her and she realized she would forever run to get within them. Emma had thought it a quaint legend, but her aunts swore by it.

When he watched her sleeping, he often thought, My heart lies vulnerable outside my chest.

“It’s not if you castrate an entire Roman legion, it’s if they believe you did. Perception is everything.”

“I’ve searched for you for years, ever since I heard rumors of your existence. I want you to be my queen.” “I get that a lot,” she said, wiping her face on her sleeve. There were two options. Into their hands, or out the window into the sun. “But I’ve already accepted a position elsewhere.”

His voice was so strong, so like Lachlain’s when he said, “Because that’s my queen, and I’ll die for her.”