by Rachel Lee
But she knew. At some level she knew. He’d given her a taste of something the other night, and that taste was pushing her toward him despite all the warnings.
At this point, maybe she could live without him. Maybe not if they went any further. Already just thinking of never seeing him again caused a deeper pang than almost any she had known.
He pulled out his phone. “Jude, what’s going on? Why aren’t you back? Okay.”
“Are they all right?” Dani asked as soon as he hung up.
His smile was crooked and a little wry. “I’m running on vampire time, expecting them to be back as fast as I could. Terri is still shopping. She says you all need a decent dinner.”
“At the risk of her neck? Not likely.”
“I have observed that when it comes to Terri, Jude would risk his life rather than deny her the least little thing she wants. And Creed is with them, keeping watch.”
Dani tried to imagine such love, but came up short. Although she shouldn’t, she reminded herself. Her family had come here and allied themselves with vampires because they loved her.
At once she felt small and ashamed. Before she could beat herself up any more, however, Yvonne emerged from the bedroom, freshly showered and dressed but looking weary and yawning.
“What’s going on? Do I smell coffee?”
They gathered at the table, the two women with coffee, while Luc and Dani filled her in.
“Wow.” Yvonne sighed. “I missed a lot. I wonder if I’m coming down with something. I don’t usually sleep so long.”
“Stress,” Dani suggested. “I slept all day.”
“Maybe. Life with vampires is seldom dull, I’ll give them that.” She yawned again and rubbed her eyes.
Dani looked at her. “How did you and Creed meet?”
“You’ll never believe me.”
“Try me.”
Yvonne shrugged. “I went to Jude on the recommendation of a friend of mine who is a detective because there was some weird stuff going on in my condo. I met Creed there.”
“You didn’t have any trouble with him being a vampire?”
“I found it surprisingly easy to deal with, maybe because I write fantasy novels. I don’t know. The biggest thing, most likely, was actually getting to know him.”
“That makes a difference,” Dani agreed. It had certainly made one for her. “I always knew vampires existed.”
Yvonne nodded. “That’s right. You’re lycan.”
“Not really, but my family is. And we always knew about vampires. So believing wasn’t my problem. Getting over our…aversion to them was. Briefly.”
“These guys are extraordinary,” Yvonne said. She shook her head. “I have to admit I’m afraid. I’ve seen a little of what vampires are capable of. If they square off, all bets are off.”
Luc said nothing. Dani looked at him, trying to read something on his face but failing. Her phone rang and she pulled it out. It was her mother, and she was on her way to visit them.
Almost at the same moment, the door opened and Terri, Jude and Creed entered with bags of groceries.
“Dinner,” Terri announced brightly. “The three of us are going to have a feast.”
“Make it four,” Dani said. “My mother’s on her way.”
“We’ve got plenty. Am I feeding a wolf or a human?”
“Most likely she’ll come in human form. Easier to get past security downstairs.”
Terri laughed. “Very true.”
Dani helped her and Yvonne set the table for four. The three vampires disappeared briefly into the bedroom, probably to have their own dinner in a place that wouldn’t offend Lucinda’s nose or sensibilities.
“It’s snowing again,” Lucinda announced as she arrived. She paused, looking Creed over, and frankly sniffing the air around him. Then Dani introduced her to Yvonne, and Lucinda joined them at the table for a meal of rotisserie chicken, potato salad and a green salad.
“The pack is out hunting again,” Lucinda said while they ate. “Looking for more corpses. We were pretty thorough last night, but there’ll probably be more soon. It’s a big city, too.” She paused, biting into a drumstick and chewing. “I left a watch at the morgue, to see if they’d home in on it as a problem. It’s early yet, though. They might not have realized we got most of their monsters.”
“Perhaps not,” Luc agreed. “They have no interest in controlling the newborns that I can imagine, and sometimes it takes several nights for the change to complete.”
Lucinda nodded. “And some may have already changed. So far we think we’ve identified ten vampires in town apart from you three.”
“Only ten?” Dani felt immensely relieved.
“Ten is enough,” Luc remarked. “They’re not expecting us to have help from the lycans, though. My guess is once they have a sufficient number of newborns terrifying the city, they’ll turn their attention to Jude. To me. Creed, you may still be off their radar.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t bet on it. I work with Jude a lot.”
“I don’t get it,” Dani said. “If it’s Jude they want, why not just come after Jude? They can do the terrorizing part later.”
Silence answered her. Clearly, Dani thought unhappily, vampires didn’t read minds.
It was Lucinda who surprised them by answering. “If I were them, the first thing I’d want to do is prove Jude is an utter failure. That even though he’s tried, he can’t protect this city. He hasn’t kept his own kind safe from notice.”
“What good will that do?”
Jude answered. “It’ll undermine vampires everywhere who follow the same rules.”
“But you called for help from others like you. Why didn’t they come? Don’t they see how important this could be?”
“They now have to look to their own areas of concern. None of them believes there is only one group of rogues.”
“Not exactly,” Lucinda said, calmly continuing her meal.
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“Whether they believe there is more than one group of rogues is irrelevant. What did I teach you about the pack wars, Dani?”
“That territorialism made…” Her eyes widened and she looked at Luc, who sat with the other two a safe distance away on the couch. “They won’t leave their own territories undefended. You did say vampires are territorial.”
“Indeed.” Luc nodded and looked at the other two. They nodded, as well. “Perhaps even more than your kind.”
“That’s it,” Dani said. “That explains it all. For the rogues it doesn’t matter. They know no one will come to your aid. They can go after one city or territory at a time, the way the Wilani Pack did. I don’t know what their eventual plans are, but Mom is right. They know you’re not going to get any help.”
Lucinda left after dinner, saying she wanted to check on her pack. She kissed Dani’s cheek, promising to return before morning with any news.
Terri claimed exhaustion and disappeared into one of the bedrooms. “I worked most of the night and all day. If I don’t get some rest I’ll be useless.”
Jude went with her down the hallway to another bedroom and returned a short while later looking quite content. The contentment didn’t last long.
“We can’t leave all the guard duty to the lycans,” he said. “We need to take turns. I’ll go out first.”
Luc rose. “Not alone.”
“Yes. Alone. I can call for help, but we have to divide up the work. Me first. You later. Give our newlyweds here some time together.”
Yvonne blushed but Creed smiled. “I’ll second that.”
Soon he and Yvonne had disappeared into the main bedroom. Jude pulled on his long leather coat, but instead of going to the door of the condo, he headed for a sliding glass door that led out onto a terrace. Snow had begun to swirl thickly, catching the interior lights like jewels.
Luc followed him out. “Take care.”
“You know I will. You keep guard here. With any luck the wind will blow
my scent away from the building.”
Then he disappeared over the ledge.
Luc stood outside for a while, hardly aware of the snow and certainly not aware of the cold.
Right now, for him, the bigger danger seemed to await him inside Creed’s condo: Dani.
He was drawn to her, dangerously drawn. She had awakened him in ways he thought would never be possible again. Every whiff of her scent aroused his hunger almost beyond control. She awoke the predator in him, the predator who wanted to take what it chose and damn the consequences.
He ached for her. He had told her he could make her crave him beyond her ability to manage, and he could, but he already craved her that way. Stepping back into that condo, filling his lungs with her enticing scent would test every bit of his self-control.
And being around her was fraying that self-control seriously. He tried to focus on the danger they were facing from the rogues, but powerful instincts kept pushing those thoughts aside. He wanted that woman. He wanted to seduce her, taste her, carry her with him to that pinnacle between life and death where bliss knew no limits.
His problem was that he knew exactly what that was like. She didn’t yet, and he had no business showing her. He had seen what became of humans who visited that place and then were abandoned by thoughtless vampires: they became addicts, always on a hunt for another fix, prey to the unscrupulous.
He didn’t want to do that to her. And after Natasha and all he had endured since her death, he didn’t know if he could offer any more than that.
He smiled with bitter amusement at himself. Before his change he hadn’t much thought about anything. He’d been utterly absorbed in agrarian pursuits on his estates, pleasant enough to those he dealt with, but he wasn’t sure he could ever remember suffering the pangs of conscience.
Well, why would he? Being born to a title and wealth had given him a certain level of arrogance; he knew which lines he dared not cross, and some that he was allowed to cross but never had. Nothing in his life had ever tested his conscience, although in retrospect he thought some of it should have.
So somewhere over the centuries, while living as a predator and pretty much using his wiles to get what he wanted, he had developed some kind of moral code. Amusing. Which brought him to this point in time. Fighting vampires to protect a rule he had accepted only reluctantly at first, and fighting himself to protect a human female from the consequences of ultimate pleasure.
Hell, it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d carefully taken the blood he needed from willing women because it was the only way he could survive. Now he was reluctant to do even that, miserable as it was living on that stuff out of a bag, so full of preservatives.
But did all his reluctance arise from some moral code? He doubted it. He and Natasha had frequently drunk from the willing. They were easy enough to find at clubs that catered to human vampire fetishists. But since Natasha, he hadn’t even done that.
Until he had held Dani in his arms in the snow and had been unable to prevent himself from taking a taste, a mere taste, of her lifeblood.
Even that little sip had been enough to intoxicate them both. He could see it in the way she looked at him, in the way she smelled sometimes. She wanted him. Oh, yes.
But he wouldn’t give her what she wanted if it meant taking something too precious from her.
He couldn’t.
He wondered if that would apply across the board now, or if it only applied to Dani. Troublesome question, one he had to find an answer to.
He sniffed the cold air again and found it clean. Jude’s scent had vanished. If the rogues were abroad tonight, they were far away. Good.
At last he gathered his willpower around himself like a cloak and stepped back inside, only to be assailed by Dani’s maddening, tempting scent. He closed the door and paused, looking around until he spied her curled up as small as she could get in a corner of the couch.
His heart quickened with need. Hunger pounded in his veins. He stood frozen.
“Did you smell something out there?” she asked, her voice small.
“No. Nothing.”
“Then you were staying out there to avoid me.”
He didn’t know how to answer that. Nothing he could say would make things any better. Natasha had taught him that sometimes the only thing a man could do was say nothing at all.
Dani shook her head. Her chin quivered. “You didn’t want to come in because of me,” she repeated. “I’m driving you nuts.”
He considered the word, then answered carefully. “That’s an adequate description.”
“Then go. Or I’ll leave. This is making us both miserable.”
“Both?” But of course he knew, although he doubted she could be anywhere near as miserable as he was. She had merely glimpsed the paradise he knew they could find together.
“Oh, don’t equivocate with me, Luc. You say you want me and back away. You know I want you, and you still back away. It’s not like there’s some cosmic question here. Either you want me or you don’t. If you really do, then my being here drives you nuts. You’re certainly driving me nuts.”
“Dani.” He tried to make his voice stern, to put all the command in it a vampire could manage, even though he’d suspected from the first that he couldn’t vamp this one. “It can’t happen. You don’t seem to understand, and I don’t know how to explain any better than I have already.”
“Why should you care if I crave you for the rest of my life?”
Good question, some hungry portion of his mind answered.
“People survive broken hearts,” she said, and her chin quivered again.
“Who is talking of hearts? We’re talking of lust here. Desire. Passion. I want you, yes. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in nearly forever. But you refuse to grasp the risks.”
“You don’t have to claim me.”
“I might not have any choice!” He thundered the words and watched her curl up even tighter and hunch away from him. He expected Yvonne or Terri to come running out, but the condo remained still and silent.
He’d have given anything just then for some human intervention, but no rescue arrived. It was just him and Dani and the building electricity between them. Her scent filling his nostrils. His hunger pounding deafeningly in his veins.
The air was thick with things he knew too well and she couldn’t understand at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said brokenly, then leaped up from the couch to run to the back of the condo.
He should have let her go. But he was still a predator, whatever veneer he might choose to put on it, and seeing his prey flee unleashed an instinctive reaction.
He reached her before she had taken three steps, banding his arms around her like steel. He turned her toward him and she gaped up at him, real fear in her gaze. Ah, the fear. It intoxicated him as much as anything. The smell seeped from her pores, joining the electric desire that had dominated only moments ago.
He was losing it. Losing it bad. And he didn’t know how to prevent what was about to happen.
He would not drink from her. Not one drop. He could satisfy some of her longing without crossing that threshold. Satisfy some of his need, as well. He knew of no other answer.
Bending his head, he took her open mouth in a kiss.
An instant later he felt her response, and triumph filled him.
She was his.
Chapter 10
He would be vulnerable. There was nothing as vulnerable as a vampire in the throes of passion, not even a sleeping one. Even if he didn’t drink from her, he’d be so locked in the moment that he would notice nothing but the desire and Dani.
This was not the place or time, some still-sane part of him argued. All those exposed windows, two human women and another vampire who might emerge from their rooms at any moment…
Not the place. Not the time. But he couldn’t seem to let go of Dani, couldn’t seem to free himself from the miasma of desire long enough to think. He needed to think.
All he could think was that he needed to take Dani somewhere. But he couldn’t do that because he was guarding them all right now. He had a duty.
He swore as he tore his mouth from Dani’s. “Not now,” he said hoarsely. “Not now. Not safe.”
With a supreme effort of will, he vaulted away from her and across the room. When he dared to look at her, her expression nearly crushed him.
She looked so forlorn, yet sleepy still from passion awakened. Disappointed. Abandoned.
Oh, he was so brilliant. All those feelings that tormented her about being not good enough had just been fed by his moment of thoughtlessness. He very nearly hated himself.
“It’s not safe,” he said again. “We have no privacy. Those windows wouldn’t hold back a determined vampire. I’m on guard duty.”
She gave a little nod, her eyes wide and wounded. And her chin quivered again.
He swore in French and turned his back.
Then, as if summoned by his frustration and worries both, Creed emerged from his bedroom. He paused on the threshold, tasting all the emotions in the air. He could probably read them as clearly as a letter.
Then he looked straight at Luc. “I’ll take over now. Yvonne is feeling restless and wants to write. You two get some rest in the bedroom.”
Luc had never before looked at Creed as the devil incarnate, but in that moment he very nearly did. The temptation was almost more than he could bear, and he was sure Creed had figured it out.
But of course Creed had claimed a mortal woman. Why should he think it so bad if Luc did the same thing? He didn’t know. Creed couldn’t possibly know the agony of a claiming ended. He hadn’t had to face it, so how could he truly perceive the dangers to both Dani and Luc in this craving?
Then he looked at Dani, read all her doubts, insecurities and fears, and knew that if he were damned eternally he couldn’t leave her this way.
“Merci,” he managed.
Yvonne followed Creed out. She seemed to sense the tension, looked at them in perplexity and said, “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting? I have a deadline and the ideas started flowing. I have to write, unless it’ll cause problems.”