Tall, Dark, and Deadly: Seven Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance

by Laura Kaye

  Sharp nails clawed at her through the open door. He’d recovered faster than she’d expected. Shit!

  She clambered toward the other side of the car. The vampire snagged her foot, and her wet fingers made a sloppy attempt at the door handle. Emily kicked at the arm and head that was yanking her out of the car. Her arm hooked the umbrella sticking up from the floor. She palmed it and placed it against her body, holding it, waiting for the bloodsucker to pull her out.

  Her lower body hung from the car. She twisted and lunged forward onto her feet with the sharp point of the umbrella extended straight for the vampire’s chest. Boxed in by the car door and the protruding rod in her hand, the DEAD had nowhere to go but hell.

  The crunch of cartilage vibrated through the handle as it made its way past his ribs to his heart. She cringed. A loud, rasping puff of air released from the vampire’s mouth before he crumbled like a rag doll.

  A hysterical giggle bubbled up and out of her throat. Her focus riveted on the curved handle sticking out of the dead male’s chest. Good thing she always favored the large umbrellas that looked more like lightning rods than the miniature purse models.

  A new set of hard hands dug into her upper arms and jerked her off her feet. She shrieked.

  The other DEAD.

  In shock, she’d blanked about the second vampire. Why hadn’t she run instead of standing there, freaked out over a dead one?

  The DEAD slammed her onto the wet pavement. Air punched from her lungs in a painful rush. The blow to the back of her head brought the pretty white lights back to dancing behind her eyelids.

  Before she had time to recover her sight, the weight of his body covered hers. He tore at the turtleneck underneath her uniform. The loud popping of the stitches counted down the seconds left on her life.

  Fangs stabbed into her throat. The pain forced the air into reverse, leaving a vacuum inside her chest. She tried to scream, but panic sealed her airway.

  She beat at his back, pounded at his shoulders. Gradually, her attempts to battle him turned into clumsy, weak slaps.

  The twinkling lights were back again. But this time, her eyes were wide open.

  The bright lights didn’t stay long. Their sparkle grew dim, like batteries losing strength.

  Hypovolemia. Rapid blood loss.

  She was dying.

  Kenric, I’m so sorry. Please, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.

  Across the street, the glow from the backlight of a cell phone illuminated the night. The man punched the numbers on his keypad and waited for an answer. A click on the other end of the line connected him, and a voice answered with one word.

  “Report.”

  “Tell our mistress, it’s done.” Markus didn’t wait for a reply. The DEADs were still at work on her body, but at this point, she didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving. He closed the phone and slipped it back into his leather jacket.

  Turning his back on the macabre scene across the street, he sauntered to where he’d parked his motorcycle a block away. Straddled on his red ride, he reached for his helmet. Marguerite would be…

  A stabbing pain sliced through his right eye. He ground the heel of his hand against the source of his agony, as if to hold the contents of his head inside.

  What the fuck was going on? The headaches had to be associated with his fall at the warehouse. They’d plagued him ever since, and they were a bitch.

  Markus scanned the area around him. What the hell was he doing out here? Fuck! He remembered leaving the Enclave for a ride, needing to relax a bit. But then… Nothing. His mind was blank. Markus grabbed his phone from his pocket and glanced at the time display. Three hours? What the fuck had he been doing for the last three hours?

  The pain inside his head receded to a tolerable dull throb, replaced by a gnawing hunger in his gut. And something else. A stomach-churning emotion he wasn’t overly familiar with but recognized its unsettling symptom: fear. The idea that he wasn’t completely in control did not sit well.

  But he wasn’t about to reveal any of this to Kenric or Arran until he knew exactly what he was dealing with. If Kenric thought he wasn’t fit for duty, he’d pull him off the streets. Markus couldn’t risk that. He needed the hunt. Needed a reason to get up every night, and the battles that followed to keep him feeling…something at all.

  His gut clenched once more, reminding him it had been too long since he’d last fed. Markus punched in his partner’s number on his cell. He could use the distraction.

  “Hey, man.” Markus raised his voice over the sound of eighties rock in the background. Sounded like Def Leppard. Something about “love me like a bomb” began before Arran turned the volume down. “You free for some drinks, and maybe a sip on the side?”

  “Yeah, I could use some chill time. Where do you want to meet?”

  “How about Tail Spin? Nothing like some sweet ass to go with the bite.”

  “I see you’re suffering no lasting aftereffects from that fall on your other head.”

  Markus laughed. “Bastard. No, that brain’s working just fine. Meet me in twenty.”

  With his phone back in his pocket, Markus slid his helmet in place and cranked his ride. His back tire skidded on the wet street as he burned out.

  He rolled to a stop at the traffic light and glanced at the street sign. Twenty-first and Ocean. What had brought him out to this section of town? He shrugged and flipped his turn signal. These headaches had him doing some fucked-up shit.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kenric battled for control. The storm brewing inside him demanded to be unleashed. Every cell in his body clamored to go back, grab her, and haul her ass home with him. She wouldn’t even answer her damn cell. He’d never met a more frustrating woman in his life.

  Shower jets sprayed steaming-hot water onto his back while he lathered his chest with mechanical swipes of his palm. The bar of soap, fisted in his hand, surrendered under the pressure of his grip. Deep grooves caved the soap in on one side, creating four perfect replicas of his fingers.

  This fucking sucked.

  He had to stay put. The defiant, independent streak in Emily would rip his balls off if he showed up right now. He sighed. One step at a time. At least she would be working tonight. Marguerite wouldn’t touch her with so many people around. Tomorrow night would be a different story. One that ended with her in his home and in his arms.

  He swiped what was left of the soap off the floor and jammed it back onto the dish before shutting off the water. Reaching for the shower door, he staggered back under an unseen force that slammed into his chest and knocked him into the tiled wall.

  The weight against his ribs held his air hostage. He grasped for the rail mounted on the wall beside him. He held on, sliding his hand down the slick, cool metal until his knees bumped the wet stone floor.

  Dark edges crept over the corners of his vision before the pressure on his chest relented enough for a ragged breath. In its place, a wave of misery flooded his heart. He hoisted himself up and stumbled out into the fogged bathroom.

  He grabbed the marble sink for balance, his knuckles blanching under the death grip. Emily.

  Something was horribly wrong.

  Yanking his blue jeans from the counter, he jerked them on along with a black sweater over his head. They stuck to his wet skin, but he didn’t give a fuck. Each moment wasted sent a stabbing pain through his soul. Only one thing could make him want to claw his heart out. His brain couldn’t go there.

  It wouldn’t go there.

  He put his boots on, strapped his silver-plated dagger in place, holstered a nine millimeter pistol at his side, and phased, reaching for Emily’s essence. With the distance that separated them, he could only target her general direction.

  A dark street.

  Vacant.

  After the second attempt, her presence itched inside his veins. The next phase would bring him to her.

  The image of a narrow parking lot came into focus. His world shifted unde
r his feet. Emily lay on a glistening carpet of blood on the wet street with a DEAD at her throat.

  The chain he had so carefully coiled and maintained around the monster inside him snapped.

  His head flew back as an agonized war cry rent the night.

  With claws and fangs extended, he leaped into the air. He landed with a solid thump near the vampire’s crouched form. The DEAD’s head drew back, and it hissed. Kenric’s hands were at the sides of the vampire’s face before the animal could flinch. With a single jerk, the DEAD’s neck cracked.

  He dug into the flesh of the vampire with his claws. A guttural cry, more animal than human, tore from Kenric’s throat, and he launched the filth into the brick wall. The body dropped onto a Dumpster lid with a dull plop and rolled onto the pavement in a heap.

  Kenric pulled his dagger and made his way over to the twisted corpse. A swift kick into the shoulder of the bastard flipped him onto his back. He palmed the hilt of his blade. The wet, silver-plating glinted in the streetlight a split second before he drove it into the DEAD’s chest. A split-second later, he yanked the blade back out and spun on his heels, the rotting carcass forgotten.

  Swirling, red-stained puddles of rain circled his boots as he sheathed his blade and crouched beside Emily’s body. Uncertain of where to touch, where to begin, he hovered over her with shaking hands. So pale. His chest heaved, sucking for air. From exertion—agony—or both? His head and heart were so fucked, he didn’t know. Kenric fell to his knees and reached for her cheek. The chilled surface of her skin had his stomach heaving. He swallowed back the bile.

  “Dammit. Fuck.” The words groaned from his soul. It wasn’t enough. Nothing he said helped him take the pain away. He collapsed onto his rear, cradling her head within his lap. Grasping the tail of his shirt, he ripped a long section and pressed it to the gaping tear at her neck.

  “Oh, God! Please, no.” The pain in his chest surpassed any wound he’d ever received in battle. His eyes burned. Moisture clouded his vision.

  “Emily!” he called to her, wiping at the water pooled within the corners of her eyes. “Can you hear me? Open your eyes.” What the hell was he going to do? Dear God, she’d lost so much blood. Her heartbeat was but a weak thump to his ears. No hospital could save her now.

  Goddamn you, Marguerite! He bellowed inside his head, when what he wanted was to scream until his lungs burned for air. But he couldn’t risk drawing the attention. He groaned and curled over her body, both fists thumping his forehead.

  He should have never let her go. Fool!

  “Emily.” Kenric tried again with a light tap to her cheek.

  No response.

  He reached into her mind. “Emily. Hear me. It’s Kenric.” A chaos of voices and flashes of her memories surrounded him. “Focus on my voice. I’m here for you.”

  A whisper of a reply called to him. “Kenric?”

  “Come back to me, Wildflower. Please, open your eyes.”

  The flutter of her eyelids kick-started his heart. A weak groan escaped her throat.

  “Shhh… Don’t speak, love. I’ve got you.”

  Her lashes, sprinkled with drops of water, drifted back down.

  “Emily! Emily, stay with me!” he commanded with another soft tap to her wet cheeks.

  Her eyelids slowly opened.

  “You have to focus and listen to me. You’ve lost too much blood.” His voice failed him, choking on the damning words, you’re dying. “There’s nothing I can do.” He paused, swallowing the hard knot of pain back down into his gut. “There’s nothing I can do as a man,” he amended. “But there is another way.”

  He shifted on the wet pavement, needing to see her eyes, to know for sure she understood exactly what he offered.

  “I can turn you. Make you like me—a vampire. Do you want that?” He couldn’t believe the words spilling from his mouth. Never in his existence would he ever have thought to turn someone into the very thing he’d despised for centuries. But the idea of Emily no longer in his life trumped all his previous convictions. Having her here, with him, mattered more than all the other bullshit in his head.

  She blinked. Beads of cold rain mixed with her tears and tumbled down her cheeks.

  Bitten three times, she had enough of the antigen present in her system for the conversion, but he had to let it be her choice. Even if the thought of losing her felt like barbed wire shredding through his insides, he would never force her into this kind of life.

  She hadn’t answered.

  He brushed the blood-streaked auburn curls away from her face before repeating the question. “Do you want me to turn you? You have to answer me now, baby.”

  He ran his hand over his rain-drenched face. “You’re dying,” he whispered, unsure how he got those last words out past the constriction in his throat.

  A slight dip of Emily’s chin indicated her answer. More tears fell from beneath her lashes. Her lips parted on a weak cough. He leaned in.

  “I…trust you.” She swallowed. The massacred flesh of her neck barely withstood the movement. Waiting for her next words to leave her lips nearly destroyed him. “Do…it.”

  Kenric’s gut discovered a new definition for agony. She trusted him. He’d never sired another, but he’d be damned if inexperience would stop him from trying to save her.

  Already drained of most of her life’s blood, he needed to only take her a step further, then feed her his own blood.

  And pray.

  Pray that she would survive the change. The next forty-eight hours would be hell on earth for both of them.

  The last thing he wanted was to move Emily in her current condition, but if he was going to do this, he had to pull her farther into the shadows so that he could cloak them. Not that there should be much pedestrian traffic at this time of night and with the rain, but another vehicle pulling into the parking lot wasn’t out of the question.

  He cradled her body tightly and, using every ounce of speed he possessed, moved them to the opposite side of her car, away from the street and into the shadowed edge of the building. Gently he repositioned Emily in his lap, then lifted his arms, gathering the shadows into the palms of his hands, and pulled them around their bodies. No one would notice them now.

  He lowered his lips over the wound at her neck. “Hold on,” he whispered against her ear. “I’m not letting you slip away so easily.” He found her weak pulse and drained the remaining essence of her life.

  Jerking his head free from her with an anguished groan, he jammed his fangs into his wrist.

  Her head lay limp in his palm as he pressed his vein to her mouth. The crimson stream trickled down her chin. His arm shook next to her lips. He willed his heart rate to a steady rhythm. He had to stay calm. For Emily to survive, he had to get a grip.

  Reaching back into her mind, he called for her in the darkness. Wrapping a compulsion within the words, he willed her to swallow.

  “Come on. Drink for me.” He pressed his wrist tighter to her lips. “Hold on.” Her cheeks filled, and her throat bobbed. A cough racked her body as the warm flow gargled in the back of her throat.

  “Swallow,” he commanded. “Come on, you can do this.” Another cough. Another swallow. “That’s it.” Her lips sealed around the wound on his wrist and pulled. “Take from me, Wildflower. Take from me and live.”

  A burning ache spread up his arm from where she fed. He hissed as his cock hardened. An erotic high flashed through his veins. With every pull at his wrist, he soared. He shifted her in his lap. Damn, she didn’t deserve this. Not his begrudged arousal, nor the change to her destiny.

  After what seemed like forever in the empty parking lot, he slipped his finger between her lips and removed the source of her nourishment. She groaned. He eased back into her mind, familiar with the pathway now, and soothed her. “There will be more to come, love.”

  He hadn’t properly fed in days, and the amount he’d taken from Emily earlier wouldn’t sustain them both. With her life in his hands, he had
to stay strong enough to get them both back to the compound—alive.

  Lifting her carefully in his arms, he stood and phased.

  The walls of the manor came into view, and Kenric’s legs buckled. He went down hard on his knees, cradling Emily to his chest. The world around him shifted like those crazy funhouse mirrors he’d once seen at a fair.

  Bloody hell. He’d given more than he realized.

  Exterior lights from the house flooded the grounds. The sensors had detected his presence. Blinded, he threw his hands up to cover his eyes right before the anxiety-laced voices of Michael and Elle surrounded him.

  “Sir, let me help. Let me take her into the house.” Michael attempted to peel Emily from his clutches.

  His gums tingled, and his fangs lowered. An ominous rumble surged from Kenric’s throat. “Mine.”

  Michael flinched and jerked his hand away.

  “I have her. Just get us inside and to my floor.”

  Buffeted by the two, Kenric weaved his way to his quarters. He barked orders to Elle for bandages and a hot bath for Emily before turning to Michael and ordering him to get Guerin on the phone.

  Elle stood at his side and helped lower Emily into the large soaker tub. The room continued to tilt with his every exertion. He glanced in Elle’s direction.

  “DEAD attack?” Elle didn’t look up as she asked the unnecessary question. She knew the unmistakable evidence in front of her.

  “Yes.”

  “Good thing you got to her when you did.” She looked over at him this time.

  “I didn’t.”

  Her hands stilled for an almost indiscernible second, before she dropped her gaze and continued working with Emily’s clothes. Kenric went ahead and answered the question he knew burned in her head. “I had to turn her.”

  Elle nodded and then muttered an “oh.” The Enclave’s only human female resident had been down a similar path, and Kenric hated having to ask her to care for another female in the aftermath of a DEAD attack. Luckily for Elle, the damage had not been so great that she had to be transformed to survive. But the trauma had left behind scars only the people who knew her best could see.