Beautiful Danger

by Michele Hauf

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her down as she attempted to stand. “Thank you for knowing my heart, and yours.”

  She nodded. “Thank you for touching my soul and putting me back in touch with my heart.”

  * * *

  They weren’t there. The whispers. The crazy music that normally pounded and scraped against the inside of his skull. Not even a meow from a cat whose tail had been run over by the crazy train. His head was clear. Only Lark’s purrs as she lay beneath him entered his thoughts. Such a gorgeous sound.

  He’d hilted his cock inside her and, hands bracketing her torso, rocked above her, not taking his eyes from hers. Though it was dark, the curtains were pulled aside to allow the moon to join in and increase their coupling to a glittering ménage à trois. Silvery light slid across Lark’s breasts and twinkled in her green eyes, and it bejeweled the baubles of perspiration on her skin.

  She felt so good. Hot and squeezing. He could live inside Lark. He wanted nothing more. He probably didn’t deserve her, but he wasn’t going to question this relationship anymore. He’d almost walked away from her, thinking she couldn’t possibly love a vampire who had tried to kill her.

  And when she had been forced to kill him—she could not. In that moment when she had kissed him in the warehouse, Domingos knew she was his forever. Now he had to rise to that challenge and be the best man he could, madness be damned.

  Because they were now an us.

  Her fingers glided down his chest, pinging his nipples in a painful sweet twinge. Domingos gasped and increased his rhythm inside her. She wrapped her legs about his hips and drove him harder against her body, demanding he give her every last atom of himself.

  An easy sacrifice.

  “Be mine forever?” he asked.

  “Oh, hell yes, lover.” She giggled then and pulled him down to kiss her. “I want to move in with you. Be with you night and day. Leave that tiny apartment behind.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll even let you redecorate with some bright colors.”

  “Not here in the bedroom. I love you in the dark. You are mine, darkness and strength.”

  “Lark, I can feel you squeeze me with your muscles. You’re so strong.”

  “You’re thick and hot, like molten steel. God, that feels good. I don’t think I will ever tire of making love with you.”

  He bent and kissed her breast, then nibbled it, but kept his lips over his fangs. To feel her skin against the fangs would ratchet up the need to bite her even higher than it already was.

  “I want you to go to FaeryTown,” she said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “You mentioned that faery dust might heal your wounds? Maybe it could do something for your madness?”

  “You are already a balm to the voices and clatter in my head.”

  She pouted sweetly.

  “Fine,” he said. “But what if I become addicted to dust?”

  “We’ll make sure you don’t. I just want you to give it a try. You deserve to be whole.”

  “Okay. Ah!” He reached the pinnacle, and his body growing rigid and shuddering above Lark, he came inside her, hard and fast and endlessly.

  Collapsing on top of her, he buried his face against her neck and champagne-and-rum-scented hair. Bright and bold, his pretty little hunter, had given him back the light.

  He’d won against the werewolves after all.

  * * *

  Lark placed the backpack filled with titanium stakes, blades and silver bullets on Rook’s desk. The Kevlar vest and Order coat was also stuffed inside. As well, the folded picture of Todd. She didn’t need to look at it. Memory kept him, along with their unborn child, tucked securely in a place that she could access when she wished.

  She stepped back and waited for the man to speak.

  The risk in returning to the Order’s headquarters was great after her escape with Domingos, and their taking out three knights, but she figured her resignation might be the only thing that now allowed her to stand before him and still draw breath.

  Rook launched around the desk and gripped her across the shoulders, wrenching back her head and placing a blade at her throat.

  Regarding her condition of breathing—maybe not.

  “I’ve had a long day, Lark,” he said aside her ear. “And I do not find this ploy particularly funny.”

  “I’m resigning from the knights.”

  “Doesn’t happen that way.” His cool grip tightened painfully on her shoulder. “You want out? You die fighting.”

  “Is that what happened to Gunnar?”

  He released her and stepped back. She had no clue what had become of Gunnar, but a small part of her had hoped the dirty knight wasn’t around anymore to draw breath. Normally when a knight was ousted—meaning killed—it was witnessed by the entire organization. That had happened once since Lark had been a knight.

  Rook strode to the desk and opened the backpack, removing a titanium stake and holding it between them. “You know I designed this weapon?”

  “You’re talented. It’s a remarkable weapon.”

  Yet she thought it had been used since the inception of the Order, which dated back to the sixteenth century. That couldn’t be right. Not if he had designed the thing.

  “You and King own a fine organization, and it provides a good service to innocent mortals not the wiser to the vampires who walk this earth, but I can’t—”

  Slamming the base of the stake against the marble desktop, Rook said, “Never say can’t, Lark. You can do whatever you set your mind to.”

  A mantra he’d frequently drilled into her brain while training. It had worked. Until she had met a man whose influence had touched her very soul.

  He spun the stake and landed it sharply in his grip. “You fell in love with a vampire?”

  She nodded, and did not bow her head in shame, instead defiantly and proudly holding the man’s gaze. “By killing the wolves Domingos LaRoque was doing what he needed to do. The pack had tortured him.”

  “I get that. And I took a job on behalf of the Order and promised to fulfill it.”

  “Some jobs aren’t worth the money,” she offered.

  “No, they’re not.”

  Surprised by that admittance, Lark held her breath to keep from admonishing him for the mistake.

  “We’ve worked with werewolves in the past,” he said, “but it’s never been a common thing. King and I intend to rethink any future alliances with the breed.” He held out the stake to her, and she reluctantly took it. “Can you love a vampire and still pursue those of his breed who would bring harm to others? The job the other night—you were able to complete that.”

  “Yes, but...isn’t it an Order rule not to fraternize with the enemy?” There was no manual, but Lark was pretty sure she’d had that tidbit drilled into her skull during training along with the doing-anything mantra. “And if you think I could ever use Domingos to get to other vamps—”

  “What I know is that I don’t want to lose a talent like you, Lark. It is unfortunate that you’ve taken up with LaRoque, but that’s from my perspective. Yet the truth I see in you now? I have to admit, it dazzles me.”

  She pressed a palm over her heart, feeling dazzled as well by the love she had found from the least likely source. And the surprising reassurance from her leader.

  “How can you see people’s truths?” she dared to ask. “Are you mortal?”

  He tilted his head, giving the question some thought. Then he wandered around behind the desk and tapped the computer keyboard, bringing something up on the screen Lark could not see from where she stood.

  “King wants you eliminated,” he said. “I’ve convinced him you’re worth the save.”

  So he was going to avoid the question she most wanted an
answer to. She’d give him that. He was sparing her life.

  “If,” he added, “you’ll remain with the Order.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “You need to tell me one thing before I decide.”

  “I can’t answer the question you most want answered.”

  “It’s a different question.” She waited for him to lift his gaze to hers, and when he did, she felt no fear. “How did you convince me that Domingos used persuasion on me? He didn’t do any such thing, Rook. I know it.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “But I believed,” she protested. “For a while there, I was ready to stake him.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got some inner demons that still need facing before you commit completely to a vampire. Anything else?”

  The man was a master at avoiding the truths that he claimed to read so easily in others. Maybe that was his actual truth: others’ truths were clear to him, while his were blurry as mud.

  “Can I get a week or two off to think about all this? I confess, I do believe I excel at my work, and I feel I’m only getting stronger. And I want to help those who cannot help themselves, but...”

  “Two weeks,” Rook said, gesturing for her to retrieve the backpack from his desk. “Report back in with a phone call. I’ll be waiting.”

  She grabbed the backpack and headed toward the door. As she gripped the knob, Rook said, “I warn you that Domingos LaRoque had better walk the straight and narrow. I will not hesitate to send another knight after him should he prove a danger to mortals.”

  “He won’t,” Lark said, and left.

  Epilogue

  Months later

  Lark slipped around the side of the building, eyed her prey and scampered forward, light on her feet, despite the extra weight she carried. Stake in hand and ready for action, she ran toward the vampire, who had wrapped his hands about a young mortal man’s throat. Choking him before the bite? That was a new one.

  But not according to Order intel. This vampire liked to take his victims home with him and torture them for days before finally draining them completely of their blood and then tossing the body in the Seine.

  “Time to die,” she growled, and made a leap for the back of the vampire. She hooked an arm around his neck, sharply jerking back his head.

  The vampire took the surprise with skilled reaction. He dropped the male, who scrambled away, screaming. Slamming his back toward the wall of the building, the vampire crushed Lark between his body and the rough bricks.

  Air gushed from her lungs. Her stomach revolted, shifting miserably. She felt a sharp tug at the base of her spine. A kind of not right pain.

  As the vampire turned with a fist prepared to slam into her gut, he suddenly paused, staring at her huge belly.

  “You’re pregnant!”

  That was the distraction she required. Slamming her fist against his chest, she did not pause to compress the stake paddles. The weapon entered flesh, bone and muscle. The vampire yowled, then dusted before her, hanging there in a distorted shape of his body for seconds, before dropping to the tarmac at her boots.

  “And you’re dead.”

  The sharp pain in her spine attacked again. Dropping the stake, Lark winced and doubled over the pile of vampire ash. She eased a palm around her eight-months-pregnant belly. Something was going on in there.

  “Not due for another three weeks,” she gasped.

  Clutching for the wall, she was shocked to feel what she suspected was a labor pain, a tight, clenching squeeze in her uterus worse than any PMS cramps she’d ever experienced.

  Three weeks after telling Rook she didn’t wish to leave the Order, she’d learned she was pregnant. That first time with Domingos had been the kicker. Thing was? Domingos had been standing right there with her, watching the pink line appear on the stick. They’d both cheered to see it, and then had hugged each other in joy.

  No doubts. No regrets. This baby was a miracle they were ready to welcome with open arms.

  She wasn’t sure she could make it home if the pain persisted, and home was three quarters away. She’d have to call Domingos, and he was going to be angry she’d gone out on a job. She’d promised him to take it easy the last trimester, but this particular vampire had burned her ire. And Rook had trusted she had the skill to complete the job, despite her rounded girth.

  “And I did it,” she managed between wincing breaths.

  Practicing the breathing technique she’d learned in Lamaze class, she closed her eyes, yet kept her ears honed for approaching footsteps. According to intel, the vampire had acted alone, but she would never let down her guard.

  “Oh!” A fierce shock of pain squeezed her innards. And suddenly her water broke, gushing down the inside of her Kevlar-lined pants. “Hell, it’s time.”

  She fumbled for the cell phone in her pocket and dialed up home. Domingos answered immediately, as he’d taken to carrying the cell phone she’d bought him in his pocket the past few weeks. He had suspected the baby would come early because she was so round. Weird vampire instincts? Who could know?

  “Lover,” she said on a gasp. “Can you come get me?”

  “Where are you, Lark? Is it the baby?”

  She nodded, and knew he couldn’t hear her nod, but another labor pain forced her to concentrate and focus on what was going on inside her body.

  “It’s the baby,” he said, guessing. “I’ve got you on GPS. What the hell are you doing in the seventh?”

  “Just come get me, please.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  * * *

  The ride to the hospital was a little tense—Domingos hadn’t been able to hide his anger that she’d gone out on a job—but more so, fraught with anticipation. By the time they pulled before the emergency doors, Lark already felt the urge to push. Domingos paid a nurse to park the car for him because he didn’t want to leave Lark alone, and she was thankful for that as they wheeled her toward an O.R., her lover’s hand firmly clasped in hers.

  Twenty minutes later, Lark admired Domingos, who stood near the window in the quiet birthing room, moonlight spilling over his face, as he looked over the scrunched little face of their newborn boy. Tears spilled down Lark’s cheeks, and she attributed them to hormones, but knew they were from pride and love for the new little man in her life, and the steadfast vampire who would be in her life forever.

  She’d done it. She’d carried their child to term. It was such a relief after having lost one child. The second semester had been fraught with fear of losing the baby, and she hadn’t taken more than two slaying jobs then. The relief was immeasurable. But more so? She had given Domingos a family.

  A family they both desired.

  “He looks like you,” she whispered, not so much exhausted from labor and maybe even exhilarated. “That thick dark hair is precious.”

  Domingos swept his palm over their baby’s black hair, which stuck up a good half inch all over his head. “Why are you so good to me, Lark?” he asked plainly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look what you’ve given me. A tiny creature that we made together. He’s so perfect.” The vampire sniffed back a tear. “I never thought myself capable of creating something like this. This. This goes beyond music. So innocent.” He swallowed, his smile slipping. “I don’t want him to grow up with a crazy daddy.”

  “He won’t.” They’d been looking into using faery dust to cure Domingos’s madness, and it seemed a possibility. But they’d wanted to wait until after Lark gave birth because it required some intensive sessions that would push Domingos toward addiction if not carefully monitored. “We’ll make you better.”

  “This sweet little boy already makes me better. I wish he didn’t have to face such an unsure future.”

  A child born of a
mortal and vampire may or may not become vampire. They wouldn’t know until the blood hunger appeared at puberty. They were prepared for either outcome, but who could ever be ready for such a thing?

  “Stay here in the now,” she said, patting the bed beside her. “Come sit, lover. Let me see what we’ve made.”

  He sat beside her and gently lowered the baby into her arms. He was so tender with the infant, Lark felt he was handling parent duties better than she. She’d never held babies much and didn’t want to drop the little tyke.

  “What’s his name?” she asked. They’d not discussed names, mainly because of her fears of losing the baby. “I want you to name your son.”

  Domingos cupped a hand over their child’s head and kissed his tiny nose. “Kindred was my father’s name.”

  “I love that.”

  “I love you.” He kissed her and then turned to lie beside her on the bed, and together they cradled Kindred LaRoque. “Let’s get married.”

  They had tossed the idea around during the past few months, but neither wanted to do it because it was the thing to do just because they were bringing a child into the world. And getting married because she was pregnant had echoed of Lark’s past marriage. She felt as though she would love and live with Domingos forever, and he felt the same. So a contract written on paper had seemed unnecessary.

  But linking her fingers with Domingos’s now, Lark went with what her heart wanted and said, “Yes. I will be your wife.”

  “And lover.” He kissed her.

  “And friend.”

  He kissed her again. “And my soul. You and I and Kindred, one happy family composed of vampire, hunter and who knows what the future will bring our son?”

  “I only hope that he is happy, no matter what he becomes. When we go home tonight, will you play him a song?”

  “Only if you accompany me.”

  “We’ll give him our love for music.”

  “It’s already in his soul,” he said, and he kissed Kindred’s forehead, then nuzzled against Lark’s shoulder.

  “Love you,” she whispered.

  “Love you back.”