Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

no’ take kindly to an overbearing male.”
    “Aye, I ken that.” He exhaled. “If Lousha and I are fated, then why is this so difficult?”
    “Everybody says the mate phenomenon makes the bonding easier. In my mind, it usually only brings grief, at least at first. Especially if a mate is
other
. Bowen and I could no’ be more content with our mates, but we each went through hell to get her.”
    Hell.
I’m there right now.
Restlessness weighed on him. He wasn’t running at night, wasn’t providingfor his mate, and could find no threat to protect her from.
    “You’re still no’ bedding her?” Lachlain asked.
    “Nay,” he said, then added in a mutter, “Everything but.” With each storm, he was taking her back to their cabin. But even when it hadn’t been raining, he was tempted, barely stopping himself from it.
    He’d grown so desperate he wouldn’t have cared if Lucia’s lightning struck all around them on a cloudless day.
    And when they were in bed together, he was only just keeping his promise to her. Claw marks riddled the cabin wall from the times he’d struggled not to take her, when his shaft had prodded right at her tight core—and instead of fighting him, she’d moaned,
“Please…”
    Each time he somehow found the strength to deny her, he resented her vows more and more. “I’m trying to be patient,” he told Lachlain now, “trying to respect her beliefs, but I doona know how much longer I can do this.”
    “What will happen tonight?”
    “Unless I can get her to accept me, I’ll be praying the cuff holds true…” His voice trailed off. Garreth scented her desire. And rain on the air. He turned to Lucia, found her gazing at him with expectation. “I’ve got to go!”
    “Why, what’s happening?”
    Garreth said, “Ah, brother, a storm’s coming!”
    By midafternoon, once they were both spent, Garreth petted her hair, gently sifting his fingers through it, watching fascinated as the lamp light played off the strands.
    “Your eyes turned completely blue,” she said, her voice drowsy. “Is it because the full moon is tonight?”
    When he nodded, she said, “The cuff will work?”
    “Aye. It’s working.” Because already his reaction would’ve been much stronger.
    “Tell me more about the beast inside you, about turning.”
    “It’s like a possession. When we turn, we call the transformation
saorachadh ainmhidh bho a cliabhan
—letting the beast out of its cage. Think of it as four different levels of turning. Say I got into a heated dispute. I’d feel the beast stirring inside me—like it’s waking. If I felt rage, it’d make my claws flare, my fangs sharpen. And lust to mark a mate?” He raked his gaze over her. “It’d take over my body. I’d still be there, still remembering all, comprehending everything, but the beast is definitely in control. To fight it would take a will that few are known to possess.”
    “What’s the fourth level?”
    “It’s the worst—turning so much that you canna come back. If one of our kind canna handle some experience, something that’s too hard to take, the beast rises too much, maddening its Lykae host forever. He’d never revert from his animal state.”
    “What happens then?”
    “He’d have to be locked away in our dungeons,” Garreth said. They should have known something was amiss with Bowen’s first “mate”—since he’d still been able to carry on after he thought she’d died…. “That’s why we doona change others into our kind—anyone newly made would have to learn to control the beast,a process that takes decades, if it works at all. We’d be forced to imprison them for all that time before we could even think of freeing them.”
    “Change others, like Rossiter.”
    “Exactly,” Garreth said, not
un
moved by the mortal’s plight. “He’s no’ out of the game yet. Maybe he’ll find his orchid—or a pretty immortal who does no’ follow Lore rules….”
    As the rain poured outside, they talked of other things, plotting what would happen tomorrow night when they arrived at Rio Labyrinto. With each stroke of her hair, her lids grew heavier, her expression soft and sleepy, until she finally drifted off.
    Now he lay beside her with his head propped in his hand, lightly grazing his fingers up and down her sleek back. He exhaled, simply savoring the luxury of having her with him, in his bed, in his life.
    But she didn’t trust him. And that pained him.
    When she whimpered, his brows