Crave Read Free Page A

her before she clamped down hard on it and the world whirled past her in a blur of blue and purple neon and laser lights. A hard wall of black slammed against her and a low threatening snarl curled out over the pumping music.
    Her instincts sparked, senses zeroing in on the male werewolf at her back and the dark presence of vampire in front of her. The vampire’s arm tightened around her, pressing her to his chest, and he snarled again, a feral sound that a werewolf would have been proud of making. The werewolf growled back but it lacked the strength and ferocity of the vampire’s, sounding weak and tailing off at the end.
    Kristina glanced up at her unlikely saviour, looking past the strong defined line of his jaw and the sensual mouth that had sent her head spinning with only a kiss, beyond his straight nose that said he might be an aristocrat vampire, to the red coals of his irises and the vertical slits of his pupils. He growled again, bearing his fangs. They were enormous now, fully extended as he threatened the werewolf behind her.
    The werewolf snarled back at him and she sensed the two other male werewolves rise from their seats, heading out of the booth to back up their leader.
    Kristina wasn’t sure how to defuse the situation before it exploded. She did the first thing that came to her.
    She tiptoed, caught the vampire’s cheek in her palm, and kissed him.
    The werewolves behind her stopped moving. The vampire froze against her, his mouth slack and unmoving. With all four males shocked, Kristina made her move. She grabbed the vampire’s hand, twisted out of his embrace, and dragged him into the crowd. They had made it halfway across the dance floor before she heard the werewolf growl and felt the vampire come back to his senses. His hand shifted in hers and he spun her into his arms. He looked down at her, the flicker of coloured lights over his face turning his eyes from red to blue to purple and back again.
    Kristina expected him to shout at her, or try to escape her grasp and return to fight the werewolf, or do something.
    He just stood there in the middle of the dance floor staring at her.
    His pupils gradually widened, switching back to their normal state, and the colour of his irises shifted, so the lights now made them flicker between green, blue and purple.
    “I wasn’t going to bite you,” he said in a low voice that she barely heard over the music and stepped towards her, until she could sense his body close to hers and the temptation to move the bare few inches and bring them against each other hummed through her. “But he was.”
    The hard look that entered his emerald eyes caused her to divert hers and she stared past him, not wanting to admit that he was right and the male werewolf had intended to mark her right there in front of everyone and she had been too weak and scared to do anything about it.
    “What’s your name?” she whispered and shoved her weakness away, cleared her throat, lifted her chin and looked directly into his eyes. “I think I have a right to know the name of my hero.”
    “Hero?” He laughed and shook his head, causing a silken strand of his long black hair to drift down against his cheek. He casually swept it back behind his ear, so it curled around it, and then smiled at her. “I’m hardly the good guy here... but you can call me Callum.”
    Callum. Cal. Although he didn’t look like the sort of man who would easily accept someone shortening his name without permission.
    Kristina bravely closed the gap between them and ran her hands over the soft black cotton of his obviously expensive shirt. His chest was granite hard beneath the material, the feel of it sending a hum of pleasure through her body as she recalled the strength of his grip when he had kissed her and when he had rescued her from one of her own kind. She slid her palms up to his strong broad shoulders, looped them around his neck, and started to move against him.
    He kept perfectly still, the calm