Read Online Blood Rules by Christine Cody - Free Book Online

just short of my face. His eyes were back to burning into mine, and I reared away, pushing my hands against his chest as he hissed.
    â€œIf you tempt me,” he said through his elongated fangs, “I just might take you up on it. So don’t.”
    But I did, perversely leaning my head to the side so that the ugly moonlight would shine over the thudding vein in my neck. I could hear my pulse beating throughout my body, even between my legs, where my sex was going achy and damp.
    His skin was cold, but mine was heating, and the balance of temperature seemed to clash in the small space between us, resulting in a hammering dirge.
    He hissed again, obviously hating that I was doing this to him. I hated myself a little, too, but I wanted him in me again, healing me.
    When he kept restraining himself, I looked up into his blazing eyes. Fevered, I locked onto his open thoughts, sensing the struggle of a man in an ancient tale trying to push a boulder uphill. And Gabriel had never been taught by his maker how to do anything but keep pushing that weight forward, even though he always ended up backtracking because of the fruitless effort....
    Stung by his tragedy, I closed my eyes.
    Why was I goading him? I was acting like a true monster—the kind humans thought we were. No wonder they’d wanted to kill us.
    My fever seethed over and through me. A change was coming—it was pounding harder and harder—and I shrugged out of my backpack, then my holsters, sprinting toward the diner.
    The feracat, I thought, juices flooding my mouth. Time to hunt for it, to divert my growing appetite toward something less destructive.
    As my skin and muscles got hot enough so that the growth and thrust of bones came fast, I wiggled out of my shirt. My heightened werewolf senses sprang to the forefront—the piercing bluish sights, the vivid scent of night and dirt—and I skidded to a halt, shucking off the rest of my clothing just before my body shot up and out, so much taller, wider.
    My claws sprouted, and I panted in hollow time, my teeth thrusting out of my gums, hair flowing out of my skin. I bit back a howl, then sniffed the air, tracking the feracat near the diner, which was only yards away by now, and finding its tangy scent.
    I was an animal who saw through that blue-hazed vision, latching onto a hole beneath the diner and pouncing to it, then howling again as the massive, black, glow-eyed feracat screamhissed at me and I lost all humanity with one, fast swipe.

    When I came to, I was lying on my heat suit, which covered a dirty, uneven linoleum floor. My clothing lay on top of me. Round me, upset tables and lopsided aqua-upholstered booths loitered like shocked observers. The murk-weakened moon spied through the broken shades on the windows, creating barred shadows.
    I sat up, clutching my shirt to my chest, my pants to my lowers.
    Sore. Damn, my body was sore.
    Across the diner, near some stools, Gabriel sat, reclining against the counter panel, staring straight ahead at a long fluorescent bulb that hung from the ceiling, scratched by wires.
    â€œI already checked this place inside and out,” he said in a near whisper, but I suspected his forced calmness wasn’t so much about his trying to be quiet as it was about his coming off a blood high. His chin was streaked with red. “No other preters about. No Shredders, either.”
    I felt so very naked in front of him, and not because I literally was, either. He’d seen me change. And it wasn’t just about turning into a were. I’d confronted him with some disgusting words, and it’d happened way before I’d gone wolf. I’d exposed my true thoughts, and they’d been grotesque.
    He kept talking, as if that would keep him from looking at me. “I already buried the feracat’s remains and cleaned out its cove underneath the diner. Lots of critters have settled in there, but they can come back after we’ve rested in