Beautiful Danger

by Michele Hauf

  “Love you back.”

  And that response fortified her need for survival.

  Dodging behind parked cars, as they passed, Lark scanned inside the interiors for keys. They wouldn’t be so lucky. Grabbing Domingos’s shirtsleeve, she ran with him alongside her, not moving as fast as she’d like, but not wanting to risk him stumbling.

  His hand slid down to clutch hers. He’d trusted her, even when she had been prepared to stake him. Somehow he had known that, by asking for a kiss, she would remember. Or perhaps he had not, and simply loved her that much.

  Ahead queued a row of brick buildings, most in disrepair and with boards nailed across the glassless windows. This section of town was undergoing construction, and the sidewalk dropped away to exposed dirt. She clutched his hand tightly and did not slow her pace.

  Pulling him into the abandoned brick building, she tugged him down against the wall. “You need blood,” she said. “So you can see.”

  “Yes, but there’s no way—”

  She pressed her wrist to his mouth, stopping his protest. “Do it.”

  He gripped her wrist with both hands and shook his head. “I’ve taken too much from you, Lark. Mercy, but I almost killed you at the hotel. I have no right—”

  “Don’t argue with me, vampire. If you love me, you’ll save us both by getting back your sight and strength. I need you to win against the knights.”

  Fangs entered her wrist in a painful piercing. Lark moaned with the pain and pleasure of it, then pressed her face to his shoulder to muffle the noise. He sucked greedily from her. It felt so good that she struggled not to sink into the giddy coil of orgasm that always accompanied his bite. Never had she thought an orgasm could prove a threat. There’d be time later to reason out that strange thought.

  When they heard her fellow knights’ footsteps pounding across the packed dirt and construction debris outside, Domingos tore away his mouth from her wrist.

  “Christ, it’s dark, but I can see now. My sight is back, and so is— Fucking cats!”

  Upon hearing Domingos’s outburst, the knights clattered toward the building. And while her lover began to bang his head against the wall, raging against the madness within, three knights with stakes appeared from around the corner.

  Chapter 22

  Lark was impressed that Domingos stepped before her, trying to protect her as the knights approached. But the two of them could work better as a team, so she stepped up alongside him and twirled her stake. She winked at her vampire lover.

  He winked back and nodded, indicating that she take the floor.

  “Boys,” she said to the knights who stood before them. “Three against two? Those odds will work for me. What do you say, Domingos?”

  “Not even a challenge.”

  “Traitor!” Debraux yelled, and charged toward her.

  The other two knights, Moore and Dumas, headed for Domingos.

  Stepping before Domingos, and hooking her arms back and within his, Lark levered up from the ground and he supported her as she kicked Debraux in the jaw and sent him reeling toward the other two knights.

  “Should have had on your fancy boots with the blades,” Domingos said as he set her down and went for Moore. The vampire punched the knight in the gut and deftly dodged the swing of the stake.

  Much as Lark worried a stake was going to eventually end up in someone’s heart—and she prayed it wasn’t Domingos’s—she couldn’t keep an eye on him and win this fight. So she abandoned that worry and charged into the fray.

  Dumas’s arm clocked her across the chest, forcing the air from her lungs. Gasping, she maintained her footing and slashed around with her fist, squeezing the paddles to release the stake, which cut across his scalp and sliced a crimson line above his ear.

  Bending forward and swinging her leg up high, she clocked the knight who now clutched his ear right across the face, hearing the cartilage in his nose crunch. Dumas went down, cursing her with a nasty oath.

  Domingos’s shoulder crushed up against her back as he stumbled away from a punch. He rolled through the hit, somersaulting backward over her and landing on the ground before her. Another wink reached through the darkness and tickled her heart. God, she loved that vampire!

  Domingos’s smirk quickly dropped and he charged toward her, grabbing her by the wrist and swinging her out of the way just as Moore’s body collided with his. Lark landed before the other knight, who stood holding the stake in challenge.

  “You would side with a vampire?” Debraux asked. “Typical woman.”

  “I’m not typical of anything.” Lark kicked high, knocking the stake from his grasp. Landing the move, she spun and swung up her fist, clocking him aside the jaw and dropping him in a blackout at her feet. “Was that typical, buddy? Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  Domingos yelled. She turned to see Moore toss a handful of dirt at the vampire’s face. The dust cloud disoriented Domingos. Moore swung the stake toward her lover’s chest and planted it with his fist.

  “No!” Lark stepped over Debraux and landed on Moore’s back. Her hand grasped the fist he had wrapped about the stake just as the paddles were depressed. The repercussion pulsed up both their hands, away from the vampire’s chest—yet the stake did not cut through muscle.

  Domingos charged Moore, bringing him down, with Lark still clinging to his back. She landed on the ground hard, her breath chuffing from her. The two men scuffled while she lifted her head to assess the other two. Still down, though Dumas was groaning, and would be up soon enough.

  She saw Domingos form a spade of his hand above Moore’s chest. The same move he’d made before ripping out the werewolf’s heart.

  “No,” she said, but it was only a gasp.

  If he killed a knight, he’d start a war. The Order would not rest until it had hunted down Domingos LaRoque and made him suffer.

  But who was she to demand he restrain himself? He fought for his life. And hers.

  Grabbed from behind, Lark grunted as Dumas landed beside her and yanked her arm, twisting her body about so she sat up to face him. “Say goodbye to your vampire,” he said with a sneer.

  “You say goodbye to Moore.”

  The vampire struck, plunging his hand toward Moore’s chest. Lark and Dumas watched, frozen in a defiant hold against each other. And when Lark thought Domingos would rip out Moore’s heart, instead the vampire released a primal yell and shoved the man aside. He stood over Moore and delivered a hard right fist to his jaw, knocking him out cold.

  Relieved, Lark exhaled. Domingos stalked toward her and he grabbed Dumas. Another iron fist took out the knight and left him sprawled on the uneven dirt ground.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, pulling her up.

  Gripping her by the back of the head, the vampire pulled her in for a hard kiss. He tasted like dirt and blood, but she only held him tighter and kissed him harder. Here was where she belonged, in the arms of the one man who would never betray her, and whom she trusted completely.

  “You didn’t kill him,” she said.

  “I have no beef against him. Any of them. Unless, of course, they had managed to kill you.”

  “I’m still in one piece. And they are starting to rouse.”

  He tugged her out of the building, and the twosome ran into the night, elated to have escaped what should have been sure death.

  * * *

  Rook and King stood in the shadows beneath an eighteenth-century limestone building that had once been a patisserie yet was now a bookshop that offered explicit tales bound between discreet covers.

  Rook had preferred the patisserie, even though he hadn’t been into all that sugar and frilly decorated sweets. He felt sure King had fond memories of the shop; he had dated one of the shopgirls for a while.

  “This is his
favorite spot?” King asked.

  The man leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He rarely worked in the field, and the fact that he’d worn a white shirt over gray slacks tonight proved as much. Not so easy to blend while wearing white.

  “Every week, intel reports.” Rook nodded across the street. “That’s him.”

  The Levallois principal exited the Noir nightclub across the street from the bookshop, a sexy redhead squeezed into a tight pink dress under his arm. She stumbled, stepping out of one of her überhigh heels and drunkenly floundered to get it. Remy, probably not too drunk, stood back, watching her with a lascivious grin. Order intel reported the pack principal was a known womanizer.

  Although he understood King had more intimate knowledge of the wolf, Rook wasn’t sure what that implied. Friends for a long time—hell, they considered each other brothers—they still didn’t tell each other everything.

  Rook hadn’t the patience to watch this drunken tête-à-tête, and he sensed the same impatience from King’s ready posture. Clad in black, Rook blended with the shadows as he moved in swiftly, slamming the werewolf against the graffiti-littered wall of the nightclub, just outside the line of streetlight that beamed across the garishly painted wall.

  The idiot woman asked what was going on.

  “Get out of here!” King ordered her, and she turned and ran back inside the club, muttering something about always picking the wrong man.

  “We have unfinished business,” Rook said to the wolf, who did not struggle, but he could feel the man’s strength beneath his hands and knew if he didn’t maintain authority the wolf would overtake him.

  “You did not slay the vampire,” Remy said. “You’re right. We do have unfinished business. Never thought the Order was so inept. You must be King. We have a connection, and you know it.”

  “We are connected in no way,” King said calmly. He nodded at Rook, and Rook understood the order implicitly.

  He squeezed the wolf’s neck, wanting to rip out veins, but cautioned his anger. He never let his emotions get out of control, because when they did, bad things emerged—literally—from inside him. “What I want to know is why you didn’t have your own personal knight do the job instead of coming to me.”

  Remy snickered. “I wanted to do things properly.”

  “More like you didn’t want me to know you have Gunnar in your pocket.”

  “I had hoped you’d assign him to the job, but...alas. You assigned me a knight who preferred to deputize the very vampire I wanted eliminated as her own personal sidekick. And an ineffective female, at that. Watch it, knight. My talons are itching to come out.”

  “Keep them sheathed.”

  Rook let the wolf go but did not step back from his imposing stance. He peered into the man’s heart, and what he saw there made him sick. This man’s truths were ugly and vile. He would not suffer him to walk away unscathed, but he would neither kill him. This wasn’t his fight.

  And yet he couldn’t decipher what Remy had meant by him and King having a connection.

  King stepped forward, his shoulder paralleling Rook’s. The man spoke calmly, as usual, “You make a wrong move toward the Order and we will retaliate. Hard. From this day forth, the Order severs all ties with pack Levallois, you understand?”

  “Does that mean I lose my own personal knight?”

  While King had requested Rook to send a knight to terminate Gunnar, he never agreed with destroying a perfectly capable, smart man. Gunnar had gotten involved in a side job, and it went against everything the Order believed in. He could no longer remain a knight. But he’d not bought his death.

  “Gunnar Svedson has been banished,” Rook provided, knowing he’d answer to King later for that executive decision. Perhaps that would be an opportune time to discuss King’s connection with this wolf. “He’s your problem now. And I will charge you with keeping him in line. If Gunnar, or any in pack Levallois, sets foot near the Order’s knights, you remember our promise of retaliation.”

  “What makes you think I’ll comply? I don’t take orders from mortals, not even the ones who eliminate the occasional fang in my side.” Remy stared hard at King. Something was going on between the two men.

  Rook lifted the hefty wolf against the wall, and the man’s bulky biker boots left the ground. Rook squeezed his throat and stared into his eyes, a much sharper read than he got by studying a man’s heart. Inside, that other part of him scowled at the vile thing he held in his hand.

  “I can see your truth, werewolf. You are fearful and unsure, and you don’t want to find out what I can do to you if truly angered.”

  He dropped Caufield and stepped back, thrusting back his shoulders and lifting his chest defiantly as werewolves often did when standing down each other.

  The werewolf, noticeably shaken, huffed and tugged down his diamond-cuffed sleeves. He looked at Rook, shivered, but daren’t meet his eyes for more than a split second. “What are you?”

  Rook smirked. Wolves did have a sense that detected the otherworldly. “I’m Rook. And we’ll never speak again.”

  Remy spat to the side and nodded agreement to that. But again he had the audacity to capture King’s gaze. “But the two of us...well, those letters are my get-out-of-jail-free pass, yes?”

  “Indeed,” King replied, exhaling quietly. The man’s heart was racing, which Rook determined was because he stood so close—and that was unusual. “We’re done here.”

  With that, King walked off. Rook followed immediately, not wanting to appear as though he had no idea what the hell was going on—but what the hell was going on between the two men?

  Sensing the werewolf’s need to chase after them, but knowing from the strong fear scent still clinging to his hands that was the last the Order would see of any from pack Levallois, Rook adjusted that innate knowledge to a possibility.

  When they’d turned a corner, King paused. Headlights rushed past them on a main avenue. Across the street, a vendor sporting plastic lit replicas of the Eiffel Tower hustled a crowd of enthusiastic tourists.

  Rook nudged a shoulder against King’s arm. He felt his old friend shudder; out of character. “What’s going on between the two of you?” he asked.

  After a thoughtful silence, King provided, “I told you about the letters.”

  Letters? Rook searched his brain that stored centuries of details and conversation and—ah, yes, the letters. A remarkable mistake that King would pay for one day. Foolishly, neither of them had thought that day would ever come.

  “You plotting a means to get those back in hand?”

  “As we speak,” King replied.

  * * *

  They didn’t stop running until they’d reached Domingos’s mansion and passed through the wrought-iron gate. Both trundled up the sidewalk and they landed at the front stoop beside an overgrowth of purple-blossomed nightshade and fell into each other’s arms.

  “Love you,” Lark said, and kissed him.

  Domingos bracketed her face and bowed his forehead to hers. “Love you back.”

  “I’m so sorry I treated you like that in the warehouse.”

  “What was that about? Did you really believe I could have been so cruel?”

  She sighed and settled against his chest, and he cradled her there beneath the moonlight. Not at all exhausted after their fight, and then the long run home, she was actually exhilarated.

  “Rook and King made me believe you’d used persuasion on me. I have no idea how they did it, but it worked. I thought for sure you’d betrayed me. And yet—” she turned in his arms to find his adoring gaze “—something deep inside me wouldn’t allow me to believe without questioning. It kept prodding at me. And then your kiss won me over. I knew you couldn’t possibly have done such a thing.”

  “Did they use drugs on you?”

 
; “I don’t know. Well, yes. They tranqed me outside the Shangri-La, but I don’t know if that had an effect on my thoughts and made it easy to plant that belief in my mind.”

  He kissed her mouth and she abandoned the worry with ease. In Domingos’s arms, everything was more right than any of her wrongs had ever been. And she intended to never look back. Never.

  “I thought you’d left me when you didn’t return to the hotel,” he said. “You had every right to.”

  “Never.”

  “I hurt you.”

  “It wasn’t you. It was the madness.”

  He nodded and propped his chin on her head, his fingers stroking her hair down her shoulder. “It’ll always be a part of me.”

  “I know. Maybe. I think with music, you’ll get stronger.”

  “Possibly. You make me stronger. But I don’t want to rely on you to be a functioning vampire. And I can’t continue to bite you. The more blood I take, the more I want. Lark, I’m every kind of wrong for you.”

  “Exactly.” Now she straddled his legs and sat on his lap. Moonlight glinted in his eyes, glamorizing them. She touched a scratch on his cheek, likely from the fight. It would heal, but not so fast as it did for other vampires. “You’re my wrong, which is really right. Let’s not even get into this again. We belong together.”

  He stroked a hand along her thigh where the wound hurt from running. “I don’t ever want to hurt you again.”

  “Then we’ll figure something out. Some kind of protection plan, yes?”

  “You do have your stake.”

  She tugged the stake from her pocket and tossed it into the shrub beside the house. “No, I don’t.”

  “Hunter,” he chided, “it’s not so simple as that.”

  “Why can’t it be?”

  He exhaled and shrugged. Within his gaze, Lark watched the moon dance and flicker, and finally, he smiled. “All right, then. It can be simple. We are an us.”

  “It makes me happy to hear you say that. Race you to the bedroom.”