She spat in the sink then packed her things, taking up her comb last. She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink while she worked what few tangles she had out of her hair.
Had it grown in the last week? That was weird. She put her comb away and scrutinized herself. Her bruises were gone, hands scabbed over from last night but healing nicely, and her knee a little sore. All in all, not so bad.
She moved her hair all down one side of her neck to expose pink scars. Her skin was turning white a bit faster than she’d expected. There wasn’t a blemish on her, and her hair was a couple inches longer than it had been a week ago. Her eyes were so blue that it looked like she was wearing colored contacts.
What was happening?
She’d been under the impression that Alessandro would have to purposefully inject her with venom to change her into a vampire, but what if it was possible to change slowly over time. Was she even Kendra anymore? Would she ever be again? She was part of him now. Part of a vampire.
Part vampire.
“Breathe,” she told herself, holding onto the sink for support. “Just breathe.”
There was a soft knock at the door. She winced even though he’d been very quiet.
“What is wrong?” he asked. “You have to tell me. I can feel you, not read your thoughts.”
Thank God for that.
She took a breath, then went ahead and opened the door to him. With Alessandro there were no such things as boundaries so there wasn’t any point in hiding behind something as inconsequential as a door.
He stopped in the doorway, looking at her with concerned honey eyes. “What is it, habibti?”
Kendra turned back to her reflection in the mirror. “What do you see?”
He smiled. “Ya habib alby.”
She frowned. “Translation?”
“The love of my heart.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it and frowned.
He came around, gently wrapping his arms around her waist. He was no longer a normal human temperature. Was it that time again already? She was just as anxious as the last time.
She looked at the both of them in the mirror. “What are you doing to me? My hair has grown since I met you, and I look different.”
He settled his chin on top of her head. “Even a curse can give back. Brother Philip used to say that within every curse was hidden a blessing. It’s the shared essence between us,” he continued. “You give to me, and I give back to you.”
He bent, kissing her neck. As he neared her scars she cried out before she could stop herself.
He let go of her with a low hiss, pulling back quickly like he couldn’t trust his self-control when he was hungry. Not minutes ago she’d been panicking, and now… now she wanted him like nothing ever.
Kendra turned to go after him. He was outside the bathroom, looking at her the same way he had at the mini-mart when her nose had bled.
Like she was about to become lunch.
She ignored the warning voice in her head and went to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, trying to bend him to her. He was cold and thirsty, and she had what he needed. She wanted to give it to him. She had to. He needed her.
He needed—blood.
He wouldn’t budge, standing there like a statue save for the way his breath heaved. Hers did too. It seemed to consume all the air around them and she felt lightheaded. Why did he have to be so tall? She’d need a stepladder to reach him.
“Please,” she said, not recognizing her own voice. “Alessandro, please.”
He released her arms from around him and moved away. The floor spun and surged and she reached out, finding the wall and leaning against it.
She heard his voice from the other end of the room. “We need to go. It’s hard for me to control myself right now. Too hard for you.”
She laughed at that. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one with the monstrous urges?
“Me?” she said, looking at him like she could force him to come to her by thinking about it hard enough.
“Leave with me now,” he said. “Move slowly. Don’t set me off.”
Kendra stumbled back to the bathroom for her toiletry bag. He took it from her as she came out, handing over her coat. She put it on numbly. His expression was guarded as they left the room and made their way to the elevator. She knew he would be even more protective of her after the attack last night. She was more scared than ever because of it. Scared too, of the gnawing ache in her stomach and how crazy she felt from it.
They were both weak tonight.
“Should we feed you more often?” she said in the elevator, clutching her stomach.
He looked her over, then slipped his arm around her waist to support her. “I’m sorry. You’ll get used to it.”
She swallowed, throat tight, mouth parched. She should have had some water before they left. “I was worried about you, you stupid man.”
“You’re worried about me?” He shook his head. “I’m all right. I wouldn’t misuse you like that.”
Yes, because that would mean her losing even more blood to him. “This really isn’t so great either.” She leaned against him, cringing as the elevator descended and made her stomach spasm. She grabbed a hold of his jacket and arched up to him. “You could just stall the elevator.”
He bared his fangs, eyes dark and warning her off.
“You wouldn’t kill me. You said so yourself.”
He set her at arms-length, his hand out to keep her there. Kendra held onto the wall.
“You’ll be better soon,” he said.
The door opened and he took her hand, walking too fast across the lobby.
“Slow down, please.”
He changed his pace to a normal one as they went out into the dark parking lot. She tucked herself closely, imagining every shadow was a vampire, aware of how stiff he was every time she touched him.
“There’s nothing here,” he said, prodding her into the car and closing the door behind her.
Kendra folded her knee to her chest as they pulled out. She focused on her breathing. All she could think about was scrambling across the car to press his mouth to her neck. When they stopped at the first red light she seriously considered it. By the time they stopped at the second light she was unbuckling her seatbelt.
His hand shot out so fast that it knocked the wind out of her.
“You’re bruising me,” she wheezed.
“Stay,” he said. Alessandro put down the windows even though it was cold out.
“What are you doing?”
“Your scent is very strong,” he said through his teeth.
“My scent?”
“Don’t underestimate your ability to attract me.”
“I’m not.” She pushed on his arm. “Too tight.”
He let up a little, but it was clear that she wouldn’t be moving from her seat until he allowed it. “Neither am I,” he said.
They were like this with no conscious effort on their parts? Damn.
When they pulled into the dark parking lot at a Red Cross he finally let her go, pinning her with a look instead as he got out. She came around his side and he grabbed her hand, taking her, too fast again up to the building. She didn’t ask him to slow down. She needed to be in that building and one step closer to him relieving her of this.
They were buzzed in like at the other one. She didn’t think she could hold out much longer. He knew. Alessandro scooped her up in his arms, using mind control on the guard cursorily and then carrying her toward the back room.
“Be fast,” she said.
“I will.”
He set her down and she leaned against the wall, fighting the urge to follow him into the dark room. He wouldn’t have allowed it, she knew, and if she’d tried he’d have to take the time to stop her, and she couldn’t stand any delays. Kendra sank to the floor clutching her stomach and waiting for what seemed like an eternity.
Then her head began to clear.
Her stomach stopped its spasms.
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She gripped the wall with her fingernails as she pulled herself back to her feet.
“Alessandro,” she said hoarsely. The ache inside her had changed. He wasn’t thirsty anymore. But he did want her. She could sense it.
A second later he was there, pulling her into warm arms. She clutched at his shirtsleeves as his mouth closed over hers. She was already feeling him before he’d bitten her. Kendra knew they weren’t going to make it out of the building.
“Don’t wait this time,” she said. “Do it here.”
Without hesitation his teeth slid down her neck. When he found the hypersensitive scars she cried out. A pinch. Then heaven. She was beyond control, beyond awareness. Flooded.
He lowered her to the floor, still joined, Kendra draped over him like the victim of some late night B movie. Her hands fell away from his head. She didn’t know how much blood he was taking, or whether or not she would survive. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
She didn’t come back to awareness until he had stopped, fangs still in her neck. There was no pain, only the need to remain one with him. She felt her way over his shoulders and to his face, touched his lips sealed on her neck.
“Don’t leave yet,” she said hoarsely.
One hand held her head steady over his leg as the other worked down her stomach, found the button on her jeans. She was well aware of her body’s need for him, but within her mind enough to not really want to do it there on the floor. His fangs slid free.
“Don’t go…”
His mouth closed over hers, cutting short her words. Next thing she knew they were both on the floor, Alessandro over her, Kendra pinned by him, her hands loosening his shirt, palms pressing against the hot skin of his back as he worked free the zipper on her jeans.
His hand cradled her head, a cushion between her and the tile floor as he continued to kiss her, still very hungry.
A different kind of hungry.
“No, not here. Not like this,” he said, whether he was talking to her or himself she wasn’t sure. “I can’t stand by and watch you suffer either. From now on,” he said, lifting her off the floor, “we do this right.”
She couldn’t remember how but the buttons on her shirt had gotten open. She pushed his hand away when he moved to button them back up. “Don’t stop.”
He heaved a sigh, looking at the ceiling as if eliciting help from above. His eyes closed for a moment, and then he nodded to himself. “I won’t have you here, but I’ll help you.”
She didn’t understand at first, not until he backed her against the wall, his hand, with those long fingers finding the open zipper on her jeans. He caught one wrist up with his other hand, pinned it above her head. He found the point of her need like a man who knew well his way around a woman’s body. It didn’t take her long. She pulsed hard and angry against his hand, Alessandro groaning with longing.
He did up her jeans and buttoned her shirt. Kendra was fluid in his arms as he scooped her up and carried her outside.
Next thing she knew she had woken up in the car, and it was midnight.
***
“Am I okay?” she asked, touching her neck.
“Physically, yes,” Alessandro said. She was better than okay. Her skin was luminous even in the dim light. Her hair shimmered gold and her eyes were a deeper, clearer blue than before. She was an enhanced version of herself.
“Mentally, not so much?” she said.
“You need more, habibti.”
He couldn’t continue taking her in with him while he fed. Kendra was making it hard for him not to drink too much of her. He couldn’t take the risk that he might lose control, especially while he was thirsty, and she kept throwing herself at him.
If they could stay anywhere for more than a night he would arrange a payoff for blood, do this at their home, wherever home was. Kendra needed more than a vampire could give her. She needed a man, and something resembling a life.
“It’s like I want you to take all of me, all my blood,” she whispered, staring blindly out the windshield as she spoke.
“I know.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“Yes.”
“How do you do it? I didn’t know if I was dying. I didn’t care.”
“I do it because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I couldn’t keep you alive.”
There was no way for him to know exactly what she was going through, mentally, emotionally, physically. He could observe, and sense the state of her emotions, but not feel what she did. All he had left was to appeal to her as a man naturally could to a woman. But that would only go so far without a bed, because he refused to have her any other way.
“I think maybe you’re going to have to marry me,” she said, blue eyes searching. “Because you’re right. I have other needs, and as crazy as it sounds I’m really wary about sleeping with you without a ring.”
“I know.”
They’d go to Switzerland first. He didn’t want to endanger the brethren by remaining too long at the monastery. They could go during the day, be married, and then stay the night at a decent inn. He could arrange for a donation of blood from the brethren. He would have them bag the blood and take it with him.
They could do this, at least for her wedding night.
“I’ll arrange everything,” he said. “Paris will have to wait a few days.”
Her brow furrowed. “Clue me in?”
“I can’t keep you safe, and I can’t care for you as you need. We’re going to Switzerland. We’ll pick out rings in the morning. Something that came from one of my mines. I can’t promise what our lives will be like, but I will give you your wedding night.”
He didn’t hear anything from her, glanced Kendra’s way. She was staring at him.
“What?” He looked her over. All he sensed from her was astonishment.
“How do I say, I love you, in Arabic?”
“You can just say it,” he told her.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He wanted to pull over and have her right there. That was the flesh talking. How about the rest of him?
“I love you,” he said.
Chapter Twelve
Lothar picked up his phone. He knew things were getting complicated when Kendra started texting him while simultaneously ignoring Darling’s messages. It had been the same with Nick, when he knew Darling wouldn’t be happy with the choices he’d made. It was the way of it when you were alpha. They were intimidated by you until their lives started falling apart, then they came looking to you for answers.
Darling had done it to him too. Fifteen years he’d lived for her, and then the moment Nick—her genetic mate—had walked into her life, she started fighting with her alpha instead.
Mating instincts.
Challenge the male’s supremacy. Make sure he can lead and protect. Only the strongest are chosen. Nick was enough man for Vesper so he was enough for Darling. Lothar had known it at the time and had been determined to let her go finally, to live her life. Have her children. But she’d already made her choice in a mate.
Survival of the fittest? Making sure her children had the strongest genes possible?
No.
He’d like to think that way, as an excuse. Because it was hard for him to believe she wanted him for his soul. He rubbed his hand over a scar on his forearm in the shape of Darling’s teeth. He had two more of those on his body but for some reason this one still hurt. All in all she’d injected him a total of three times; he blamed that part on himself.
If he’d not known then that he’d be so territorial, he would have—he glanced at her reading a book on the couch, curled up in a blanket looking absolutely adorable—she would have been pregnant long before she’d been ready to be a mother.
He wasn’t being crude.
They’d met when she was seventeen and he’d still been young enough to pose as a high school student. For one, he’d thought he was sterile, like other male Shifters. And two, he’d wanted her like
no one else, had struggled over the last fifteen years through encounters with female werewolves who rarely talked to him again. He’d often wondered what would have happened if they’d run away together years ago, which they would have had to do. Shifters weren’t allowed to claim fertile females for their own.
His phone chimed, a text coming in from Alessandro. He knew he was really talking to Kendra. She planned these things out, had access to Alessandro’s accounts. A three-thousand year old man didn’t hand over the reins to just anyone, no matter how pretty the face. The facts were adding up quickly. Kendra was by no means afraid of her companion.
She was working with him. Lothar was keeping this to himself, not to hurt Darling, but because he didn’t have all the details yet and didn’t want her getting involved, even if she did mean well. Kendra had to make her own decisions. As alpha he wasn’t in the position to tell Darling everything he knew about everyone else.
Even if it was about her best friend.
Her other best friend, since she’d assured him that he was her better best. Whatever that was supposed to mean. What she was to him transcended the limits of vocabulary. English or Lithuanian.
The text said Kendra and Alessandro were going to Switzerland, and included an address not far from the monastery. A familiar hotel. The same one he and Darling had stayed at.
Kendra and Alessandro weren’t part of his pack, but he couldn’t shake the instinct to protect anyone under his care regardless of who they were.
Alessandro had been listed in the roster as inactive for over a hundred years now. Since leaving the monastery a week ago reports of a mysterious disappearance of blood from the Red Cross corresponding with his location had come up on the Database. There were no witnesses. Even the security cameras had conveniently gone out.
He had to hand it to Alessandro. It was rare that one of his kind could pull this off. His age must have had something to do with it. With time came control.
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