Curse Touched: A Paranormal Vampire Romance (A Touch of Vampire Book 2)

by Becky Moynihan

  “Let me,” Lochlan said before I could touch it.

  Already flustered and embarrassed at the mess I’d made, I hesitated.

  “Consider this part of your training,” he added, a challenge twinkling in his blood red eyes. “Pain is a distraction, but it doesn’t have to weaken you. Push through it. Don’t let it control you.”

  He held out his hand, patiently waiting for me to decide. Blood dripped from my fingers as I inwardly warred with myself. The pain was manageable, but I could still hurt him if I lost control, even for a split second.

  “I-I can’t,” I stammered, my heart thundering at the thought of hurting him like that again.

  “You can,” he countered, softly yet firmly. “But not if you don’t try.”

  I continued to struggle, wanting to master my abilities but afraid of losing control. And then he said it, words that changed everything for me.

  “I trust you.”

  My breath caught.

  “I trust you, McKenna,” he repeated, letting me clearly feel his confidence. “So let me help you.”

  My heart swelled with so much emotion that I thought it would burst. He trusted me. Lochlan D’angelo—the cursed vampire prince—trusted me, the witch with a lethal touch.

  The invisible hand reached inside me again and gently wrapped around my soul. My lips parted in startled wonder as the strangest sense of peace filled me. Of rightness. The feeling lingered longer than last time, and when it finally faded, it did so almost regretfully, like it wanted nothing more than to stay.

  I slowly blinked back to reality, watching as Lochlan did the same. He was as shaken as I was, fighting to catch his breath.

  “Our souls,” I panted, “touched again?”

  “Yes.” He released a shuddering sigh, then refocused on me. “And I think they want us to as well.”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. He was right. I had felt a nudge toward him. The call to touch him, to further strengthen our bond. I couldn’t let fear keep us apart. We’d come too far, gone through too much together. The only way forward was to place my hand in his and trust that it would all work out.

  So I did.

  29

  KENNA

  The pain was brief.

  His fingers were gentle, removing the glass with infinite care. My freshly enhanced healing immediately began to knit up the wound, but not before a small pool of blood formed on my palm.

  Lochlan’s swallow was audible as he stared at my blood. I could feel his powerful desire to have it. Still, he tamped down the urge and shifted in his seat to retrieve a towel. Until I stopped him with a single word.

  “No.”

  His eyes shot to mine. They were half-wild with barely suppressed need. He was so valiantly trying to fight it, but he didn’t need to.

  “It’s yours.”

  I wholly meant the words, but they still surprised me. Not as much as they surprised Lochlan though. His hand beneath mine began to tremble.

  “McKenna.” He breathed my name like a prayer, searching my face for any sign of doubt. When he found none, his breathing sped up. I saw the moment his guard went down, witnessed the second he gave into his need. He brought my palm to his lips, darting his tongue out to capture my blood.

  A thrill shivered up my arm when he closed his eyes and quietly groaned. The second he swallowed, though, his desire spiked like a raging fever. Grabbing my wrist, he sealed his mouth over my skin, sucking and licking hungrily. I needn’t have worried that my abilities would flare up in response to the possessive act. Desire engulfed me instead. Wholly mine. To give him more.

  He suddenly dragged me across the table and into his lap. I was dimly aware of a plate clattering to the floor and more glass shattering, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything but him. On making sure I didn’t hurt him as he greedily fed. On his erection pressing between my legs. On our soulmate bond exploding like fireworks.

  The sensations thrumming through my body were heady. Overwhelming. I fisted his shirt with my free hand and desperately held onto my control. Stay focused, stay focused. After a while, I started to relax. I was doing good, great even, enjoying the feel of his mouth and tongue on my sensitive skin. I was in complete control of myself. He wasn’t in any pain—if his emotional high was anything to go by.

  But then he switched gears, catching me off guard. He stopped suckling my hand and guided it to the back of his neck.

  I gasped when he slid my fingers into the soft hair at his nape and left them there. “Lochlan—”

  “I need more of you, McKenna,” he said, his voice both guttural and breathless. “I’ll pull away if you lose control.”

  He met my eyes, and through his lust-filled haze, I could still see his confidence in me. His trust. And so I weakly nodded, needing more as well.

  He rewarded me with a toe-curling kiss. It was unlike anything I could have ever imagined. He cupped the back of my head and fitted our lips together like two perfectly matched puzzle pieces. My stomach swooped giddily, making me feel untethered and drunk.

  I slid my other arm around his neck and arched against him, pressing my core into his erection. His free hand gripped my waist and pushed me down on him even more. I moaned into his mouth as sharp need throbbed through my center. My thighs shook, instinctively rocking to the rhythm of his answering thrusts.

  Pleasure consumed every inch of me. It was everywhere, in and around me. The world fell away and only this moment remained. Yet, somehow, I clung to the ragged threads of my control.

  Then he pushed me—no, shoved me—into a new stratosphere by tilting my head back and deepening the kiss. Fates alive, he tasted like manna from heaven. With the first sweep of his tongue across mine, I lost all focus. All sense of control. Pleasure shot straight to my core, making me tremble even harder.

  He abruptly pulled back with a hiss. “McKenna.”

  I immediately yanked my hands off him when I heard pain in his voice. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he panted, gentling his hold on me. “This was beautiful. You are beautiful. Your control will only grow stronger with time.” He tugged on a lock of my hair. “And with practice.”

  Despite the panic still fluttering in my chest, I snorted. “This wasn’t what I had in mind when I asked you to train me.”

  He cocked a brow. “Are you saying this training method is ineffective?”

  “No, but . . .” I snapped my mouth shut before I said something stupidly embarrassing.

  “It does come with a need for cold showers though,” he muttered, lifting me off him in one fluid move. He supported me while my legs wobbled unsteadily, then put some much needed space between us. “Be right back. Make yourself at home.”

  I pressed my lips together as he turned and rather stiffly headed to where I assumed his cold shower awaited. He suddenly paused to unbutton his shirt. Good grief, was he trying to kill me?

  “Here,” he said, tossing it to me. “To replace the ruined one.”

  As the shirt and his overpowering scent hit me, my fangs descended in a powerful rush. They jabbed into my lip, but I barely felt the pain. Not when my mind was suddenly consumed with thoughts of sinking my fangs into Lochlan’s neck. Crap, not this again. I hadn’t even tasted his blood recently.

  Clearing my throat, I spoke carefully around my lengthened canines. “Um, you should go. Like right now.” His mouth slowly curled into a knowing grin. “Now, Lochlan.”

  He did, but not before saying, “I don’t have any wives, by the way. Or anyone, for that matter. Only you.”

  He left then, leaving me to speechlessly gape after him, which he’d clearly done on purpose.

  Only you.

  Did he consider me his? Well, duh. He’d shouted in his brother’s face that I was.

  Did I want to be his?

  Don’t ask stupid questions, Kenna.

  It took several minutes of standing in the middle of his kitchen before I could finally move.
When I did, I threw my head back and groaned. He wasn’t the only one who needed a cold shower right now.

  * * *

  I woke to a featherlight touch on my cheek.

  Not cold. Or leather.

  But warm. Soft.

  My lashes fluttered open, and I sleepily blinked Lochlan’s face into focus.

  “You fell asleep before storytime,” he softly said, crouching before the cream-colored couch I’d accidentally passed out on. “But it can wait.”

  “No,” I mumbled, rubbing the shirt he’d given me against my cheek like a blankie. “Story.”

  He chuckled quietly and leaned forward to scoop me up. We were halfway across the room before I realized where he was taking me. The bed. His bed. And, holy crap, was it made for a giant? Maybe the king had given his sons extra large beds in hopes that they’d form their own harems. And now my tired brain wanted to figure out how the whole polygamy thing worked. Did they all sleep together or take turns? Because that could get really—

  “Does that brain of yours ever stop churning?”

  I blinked up at his crooked smile. “Um, not really. It likes to figure things out.”

  “Good. I’m sure my father will test its usefulness first thing tomorrow. But right now, it doesn’t need to do anything but listen.”

  “It can do that,” I said as he crawled onto the bed and laid me in the middle. I tried to block my brain from thinking, from freaking out that I was in his bed. Kind of hard to do when the satin comforter and pillows smelled like him. His mattress was a body-hugger too, the dozens of pillows behind me equally so. I snuggled against them, immediately feeling the tension leave my body. If I didn’t want to hear Lochlan’s story so badly, I’d probably be half-asleep by now.

  He settled in next to me, propping his back against the upholstered headboard. A long sigh was the only sound he made for several moments. Sensing his need for space, I didn’t touch him like I wanted to. Didn’t curl up against him and offer my comfort. I let him internally struggle, knowing that he had to want this on his own. No amount of cajoling on my part was going to make him let me in.

  When he finally did, uttering that first word barely louder than a whisper, I hardly dared to breathe. This was his story. The story. The one that defined so much of who he was. The one that, in the end, brought our worlds crashing together. I soaked up every single heart-wrenching word, willing to bear the weight of them. To listen and understand and accept.

  His voice was strained, but he didn’t falter. Determination lent him strength as he slowly yet surely unraveled his story, allowing me to see the darkness, the monstrous truth he’d carried within him for so long. “It began at that feeding den I told you about. Everett took me and Troy off the island—it was our first time, actually. I was seventeen and Troy was only fifteen. Father didn’t want us exposed to the rest of the world until we reached our age of maturity, when we’d be at our strongest. But Everett insisted that the worldly experience was the key to maturing, so we went.

  “The biggest mistake we made that night was splitting up. Everett let us find our own humans to consort with while he pursued his. Back then, Troy was different. Cautious and shy, especially around females. So . . . I helped him out. I saw a girl eyeing him from across the room, and since we weren’t trapped in our true forms back then, it was easy to set them up. I . . . I all but pushed him into her waiting arms.

  “Pleased with myself for getting my kid brother his first lay, I hung out at the bar instead of finding my own hookup. I wanted to see him the moment he finished so I could thoroughly embarrass him. You know. Stupid, big-brother crap. Well, after an hour, he still hadn’t emerged. Everett was already on his third female by that point, too drunk on blood and sex to realize anything was wrong. I didn’t either, until the girl emerged from behind the curtains . . . and Troy didn’t.

  “When I got to him, he was . . . I thought he was dead. Which didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been stabbed with silver. His heart was intact. Nothing was broken, including his neck. So I couldn’t understand why his skin was cold and his heart barely beat. In my panic and confusion, I didn’t know she was behind me until her hot fingers were on my neck. The pain was instantaneous and debilitating. I couldn’t even cry out for help. Within seconds, she’d drained enough of my life that I fell unconscious. When I woke up, I was in silver chains, far away from everything I knew.”

  As Lochlan paused for breath, I struggled to keep my composure. To stay strong for him when all I wanted to do was weep. Because something told me the story was only going to get worse. And it did. Fates, it was so much worse than I could have imagined.

  “Her name was Edith. She was the first Syphon I’d ever met or even knew about. I had no clue a creature existed that could kill vampires with a single touch. She kept me as her slave. Blood slave, actually. She’d discovered that the key to immortality was in our blood, so she used me to keep her young. I wasn’t the only one she’d enslaved over the years, but according to her, I was the strongest.

  “She usually preyed on the weaker, easier to handle ones, which was why she had targeted Troy. But when I came along, she couldn’t resist entrapping me. At first, she only drank my blood, keeping me docile with the silver chains. But as time went by and I continued to put up a fight, her interest in me grew. She . . . she used magic and spells to warp my perception. She made me believe that I loved her. After a while, she no longer chained me up. I willingly went to her, allowing her to abuse my body. She would toy with me, bringing me to the brink of death over and over with her touch, only to stop so I could heal.

  “I endured this for two years until Everett found me. A bloody trail of witches and warlocks were left in his wake as he scoured the earth for my whereabouts. He had to knock me out, though, because I refused to leave. I was so thoroughly under her spell. It took me years to accept that I’d never loved her. That she’d planted false information in my head. That she’d only ever caused me pain and misery.

  “Meanwhile, I watched as my family changed. Everett became cruel and overprotective. Troy grew jaded and impulsive. I stopped feeling and swore off all witches. My father demanded that justice be done, but since Edith had escaped Everett’s wrath, the order went out for the death of all Syphons.

  “For thirty years, my brothers and I terrorized witches, demanding they give up the location of all known Syphons. We killed any we could find, showing no mercy. We became known far and wide as the Demonic Trinity, and we revelled in their fear at the very sight of us. Until the day they rallied together and cursed our entire race. We’ve been trying and failing to undo the mistakes we made ever since.”

  When the story ended, words failed me. I was too shocked, too horrified at what he’d been through. No wonder he’d made that vow. No wonder he needed to be in control. No wonder he hadn’t trusted me and had wanted to reject our bond. I was a living, breathing reminder of everything he feared and hated. Of everything he lost. Words failed me, but emotions tore through me like a riptide, and I could no longer hold them in.

  “C-can I . . . can I cry for you?” I said, already choking on a sob. “You l-lost so much. You—”

  I felt his pain in my chest, melding with mine. Then his sorrow and guilt and regret. The second I reached for him, he didn’t hesitate to wrap me in his arms. So tightly. So completely. That I knew he no longer viewed me as a threat or enemy. Somehow, despite the horrors of the past, here we were. A vampire and a Syphon. Finding solace in each other.

  Sobs racked my body as I finally let myself fall apart. I mourned his losses, but also my own. The dreams and family and friends that had been taken from me. I let my anger and hurt and helplessness pour out of me in the form of tears, holding nothing back.

  Long after the tears dried up, leaving me utterly drained, I lay in Lochlan’s arms. Through my closeness, I offered him what little comfort I had. Assured him that I was here, that I cared. That I forgave him for past wrongs.

  It wasn’t until sleep tugged at me
that I realized my hair was damp. I hadn’t been the only one crying.

  He’d walked through so much darkness, but I was here for him now. Any light that I possessed was his, and I’d blast that foul darkness away if it ever dared reach for him again.

  30

  KENNA

  “Holy mother of Moses. I keep missing out on all the good stuff.”

  The familiar, teasing voice nudged me from a deep sleep. A sleep so calm and peaceful that I was loath to leave it.

  “When did you get in?” another familiar voice said, rumbling pleasantly beneath my ear.

  “About an hour ago. Had to meet with your father first. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

  A pause. “She had a rough night.”

  “Must have been pretty bad if you let her stay in your room.”

  “Yeah.” Fingers gently slid through my hair, stirring me further awake. “Everett attacked her.”

  At that name, my eyes popped open. The first thing I saw was a pair of bright blue eyes and wavy, caramel brown hair. The mouth attached to the face was scowling, but the moment I moved, it morphed into a huge grin.

  “Kade?” I mumbled in disbelief, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. As the bed shifted beneath me, I lifted my head, startled to find Lochlan there. What the—? I was fully on top of him. Our legs were tangled together like a pretzel, and—my eyes widened—he was most definitely sporting a mega morning boner.

  The second my gaze jerked up to his, those sensuous lips of his curled into a lazy smile. “Morning.” As I wordlessly opened my mouth, still struggling to fully awaken, he rose up and captured my lips in a scorching kiss. Fates! I sucked in a sharp breath, scrambling to find my control. It was instantly there, protecting his skin from mine. I relaxed, allowing myself to blissfully drown in his warmth and scent and taste.

  “Sweet. Mother. Of. Moses.”