Hunger Untamed Read Online Free Page A

friends from a Daemon spirit trap."
    Oh, sweet goddess . She couldn't help him.
    Struggling for control, she yanked the icy mask tighter over her features. "No. I'm not. I don't give a damn about your Ferals." Which was partly true. Most of his men had been as opposed to their mating as her maidens had been. Only Horse and the Wind had ever been friendly to her. But whoever the two were who were lost, they were Kougar's men. If she could, she would certainly save them. For him.
    But she couldn't help him. And she couldn't keep up this pretense much longer! She had to get him to leave.
    Lifting her chin, she gave him her haughtiest, coldest look. "Go, Kougar, and don't come back. You're not welcome here."
    In a flash, his anger ignited. She'd pushed him too far.
    A chill of fear skipped down her spine as his eyes turned the pale gold of a cougar's, as fangs dropped from his mouth. One moment he was standing still, the next he lunged, grabbing her around the throat with a wickedly clawed hand. Fiery pain exploded as his claws pierced the sides of her neck, as warm blood ran down into her scrubs. As he slammed her back against the wall.
    Too late, she fought him, her instincts off, her gut-deep belief he'd never really hurt her causing her to move too slowly when it suddenly became obvious he would.
    "You bitch. " The words were a growl in his throat, his furious face mere inches from her own as his hot breath wafted over her chilling flesh.
    She began to tremble from a combination of shock and the knowledge that without her unique Ilina weapons, she was virtually helpless against his far superior strength. If he chose to rip out her throat, she couldn't stop him.
    That alone wouldn't kill her. Ilinas, like all immortals, healed almost any wound within minutes. Only if he took her heart would she die. But if she died, so too would her maidens. Her life force would dissipate, spreading to the other Ilinas. And with it, the poison she'd protected them against for a thousand years.
    As badly as she wanted to protect Kougar, her first responsibility must be to her maidens.
    "Kougar." Her voice gurgled with the blood in her ruptured windpipe.
    He flinched, his gaze dropping to her neck, to where the blood ran in rivulets, soaking her top. Almost as quickly as he'd attacked, his claws and fangs retracted, but he didn't pull away. His large hand remained closed around her throat as her pulse beat against his palm.
    His gaze locked on hers and held as her wounds healed, as the pain in her throat died a quick death. And still he watched her, pale eyes probing, digging too deep. She tried to look away and couldn't, her parched heart drinking in the sight of the man she'd longed for, whom she'd missed, and loved, for a thousand years.
    In so many ways, he hadn't changed. His hair was much shorter than he'd worn it in those days, his beard trimmed to encompass only his mouth and chin. But he'd always exuded a powerful pull on her physically, nearly overwhelming in its intensity, and that hadn't changed. For a thousand years, she'd blamed herself for giving in to her feelings for him. But standing within the heat of his body, enveloped by his raw, masculine scent, snared by the power of his eyes, she remembered all over again how impossible he'd been to resist.
    But she must resist him now. His life absolutely depended on it.
    He released her neck but continued to crowd her, forcing her to meet his glittering diamond-hard gaze. "You're going into that spirit trap, Ariana. You're going to get them out."
    She swallowed the words of regret. The soulless regretted nothing, and he must believe her soulless. "No. I'm not."
    He growled low in his throat, the sound of an animal, his hand tightening around her throat. "Seventeen Ferals died in one of those traps six hundred years ago."
    Seventeen. Her mind reeled.
    "Horse died. You could have saved him. You could have saved them all."
    Sweet goddess, Horse had been one of his oldest and closest