by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
Stupid to be afraid. They’d gotten every ounce of vampire out of him.
Yet the others—Claudia, Star and Mina—were a different story, their bodies having embraced the disease for years and years. Their progress was understandably slower. They’d be the dangerous ones to release.
There was no reason to be threatened by Griff.
Still, she drew back her hand from him. It wasn’t bleeding much—only a slight bead remained. But what if it was enough to…?
“Camille.” He pressed his lips against her temple. “You’re the only one who understands. We’re both alone now. Removed because of the shame of what we’ve done.”
Please don’t remind me. I want to forget.
He’d started to toy with their baby ring, testing it between his fingers. “I want you.”
And so did she. Already, she was heating up again, that pulse beating steadily between her legs, making her wet with the thought of having him.
And what was stopping her? She was a big girl who’d done a damned good job of taking care of herself this past year. Besides, Griff was okay now. He really was.
She told this to herself over and over, even as he sniffed, closed his eyes, pressed a palm against a temple—something he hadn’t done for a while now.
Camille covered that hand with hers.
Griff tensed. Another sniff. A low, strangled sound.
Then he wrapped her in a shuddering embrace.
He needed Camille just as much as she needed him, and she wasn’t about to turn him away. He was everything—her soul, her savior. Her every thought.
“Let me take care of you,” she said.
“My head.”
“Would ice help?” She made a move toward the fridge. “Or maybe we should go back to the lab—”
Flash quick, he backed her against the kitchen wall, cuffing both her wrists over her head with his fingers.
A sharp breath tore out of her.
Even though he had her caged, she forced herself to relax. When she’d furnished the apartment, she’d stored defensive supplies in cabinets, under the bed. Everywhere.
Not that she didn’t believe he was better, but…
“Tex?” His voice was snarling rough.
“Did my blood get to you?” How could she sound so calm when her heart was thrashing around?
“No. It’s…” He scented the air again.
Slowly, he drew her to him, glided his mouth down her body. Friction heated her breasts, her belly, as his hands stroked down her spine, her rear. He parted her legs from the back, and she gasped, fingers threading his dark hair.
“I love you so much.” His breath heated the slick area between her thighs, even through her faded jeans.
Blood rushed there, making her wetter. Swollen.
He loved her. It was a human sentiment, not animal.
Her fingers released his hair as he nuzzled her, nudged her, brought her to utter weakness.
It’d been so long, too long, and…oh.
He was gnawing at her jeans, between her legs, making her squirm.
Losing all strength, her knees buckled, sending her in a perilous slide down the wall. She braced a hand against the nearby cabinets, barely noticing that he was undoing the buttons of her fly, then easing off her boots, jeans, underwear. Her heartbeat filled her ears, her skin.
When he guided one of her bare legs over his shoulder, Camille grabbed at the cabinet door for something to hold on to, swinging it toward her. Griff pushed back one knee, spreading her wide, and she bucked forward, slamming the wood closed again.
“Camille.” He’d formed her name on her inner thigh with his mouth, trailing it upward. Closer.
When he parted her with his fingers, Camille reached out with her other hand, knocking down a standing Big Ben clock. It crashed to the tile, and she faintly saw the cogs and springs spill out.
She’d spent so much time hunting that thing down, she thought. She’d hoped it would remind him of hooo-ome….
She rose up in response to his tongue circling back to the center of her. Then, with maddening strokes, he kissed her thoroughly, lapping at her juices, feeding on her heat.
Mewing, she moved with the motion of his mouth. More fluid pumped out of her, bathing her inner thighs, his face.
He coaxed one hand up her belly, under her tank top, seeking her bare breast. While he used a finger to tease her nipple, Camille ground against every suck, every pull, greedy with want.
When he plunged his tongue into her, he growled. In a way, it was almost as if her fluids had taken the place of mere blood. He was being strengthened, primed.
Maybe I’m something you never planned to create, he’d said.
Her head whirled, shot through with pleasure and confusion.
Transudate.
Secretions from blood vessels mixed with humanity’s most powerful life force.
Passion.
Her pulse raced around her body, charging every cell, every nerve ending. Making her skin prickle. Build. Heat to a searing flare.
Explode.
Something. Never. Planned.
The pieces of his doubting words spiked into her, abrading, tearing, stinging.
This wasn’t a thank-goodness-we’re-together-again Griff making love to her. This was…
Panting, she threw open the kitchen cabinet, tried to dive inside for what she’d stored there.
But a forceful yank brought her back to Griff, and she lay there, gaping up at him.
She stared at the new creation that had maneuvered himself between her legs again. He hovered, then stalked upward, skimming his palms over her thighs, hipbones, belly.
She gasped at the touch to her sensitive tummy, instinctively opened her legs wider. Air blew over the most vulnerable part of her. Eyes a blaze of gold, he peeled up her tank top, lowering his mouth to her ribs, sliding upward to the underside of her breast.
Golden eyes, she thought, holding her breath, almost afraid to move.
Had the serum changed their color from strigoiaca- red to this?
Had he become a new kind of monster?
The breath sliced out of her as he bared his fangs, flashing a lethal smile.
She’d been around him for months, but never in this state of arousal. Was her intense stimulation his latest trigger?
She crept her hand farther into the cabinet.
“Quiet now.” He petted her inner thigh, fangs still lingering over her chest. His fingers crept into her tender folds again, but she was too on guard to respond.
Her hand wrapped around a mouth sealer in the cabinet.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. The quicker she got him back to the lab, the better.
With split-second speed, she grabbed the restraining device, flicked it on, reared up to slap it over his mouth.
But he beat her to the punch, grabbing her wrist, latching his mouth under the swell of her breast and piercing her with fangs.
Crying out, she jerked at the sting, the flow of blood draining out of her.
Then, while grinding her teeth, Camille pushed at him, but he was too powerful.
He kept sipping. She kept getting weaker.
Using her palms, she shoved at his forehead, intent on getting that sealer on his mouth, on saving them both from tragedy this time.
Desperate, she levered her leg against his chest, pushing with all her might. “You’ll kill me, Griff!”
Startled, he bounded upward, her blood coating his lips, his chin. A drop shivered from a fang. Dripped to her stomach.
Like an abandoned plaything, she rag-dolled against the wall, spent.
Head swimming with fright, she saw Griff cock his head, draw closer to her. Sniff.
Then he froze, glowing golden eyes focused on her chest.
On the baby ring.
A look of pure devastation wracked his face.
But Camille had listened to her heart enough to turn away from it this time. With her last burst of energy, she surged forward
and smacked the sealer over his mouth.
He reared backward, hand to the device.
“No choice,” she whispered, reaching back into the cabinet for the dart gun now.
At the same time, she smoothed her hand under her breast, applied as much pressure as she could to stop the bleeding. He hadn’t taken much, but it was enough.
With the stain of feeding, the flush of shame suffusing his skin, he tilted his head at her, his eyebrows lifting in question. Then, he reached for her jeans, covered her with them.
Don’t let him fool you, she thought, even though the gesture wrung out her heart. He sucked your blood.
Dart gun in hand, she loaded it.
He was shaking his head, getting to his feet. The old Griff.
“Let me sedate you. Please.”
Now he stiffened, eyes heating. The monster was back.
“No!”
Too late. He’d bulleted to the locked door.
She took a trembling shot at him. Missed.
The sound of hinges being torn from the wall urged her to reload. But dizziness slowed her down, made her clumsy.
Pressing a hand to her wound, she realized that she couldn’t stand. Needed to rest for a second, just like after a blood donation. It gave her time to put on her jeans, dial the cell phone in her back pocket.
First, a call to the guard station. Then one to the lab, alerting Bea and securing first aid for herself.
But it needed to be done damned quickly. She had another monster to hunt.
And, this time, Camille Howard had no idea what she should do when she caught him.
Chapter 14
Blood.
His body screamed for it, quaked because it craved more.
More.
The creature that had once been Griffin had sped out of the apartment, away from its appetizer—Camille. Lady Tex. Whatever he used to call her.
Now he was crouching in a supply closet just inside the lab, working at the mouth sealer, having arrived before the scientists and the two guards who’d just been posted at the door. They were armed with the dart guns that had worked so well during Camille’s castle rescue.
Too bad for them that UV wands weren’t an option anymore, Griffin thought. The vampires had been exposed to too many treatments for the rays to be effective now.
But that was brilliant for him and the strigoiaca. The less defense, the better.
The sealer sucked at him, numbed his lips with a quiet mechanical hiss. Since, for the past three months, Camille had shared all her science projects with him during their touchy-feely conversations, Griff knew exactly what the sealer was about. How the device lasted for fifteen minutes. Consequently, he’d learned to breathe through his nose, to wait out its short, battery-operated life.
After that, he could carry on.
Saliva flooded his mouth as he anticipated the blood, the rush. The snap of sublime energy he’d tasted from Camille already.
Today’s sudden hunger was as much a surprise to him as it’d been to her. He’d become conditioned to her scent with her daily visits, had convinced everyone—even himself—that she was no longer a stimulant for his wild side. But today, the intensity of her body had gotten to him. The arousal. The resulting animal lust and thirst.
And that blood he’d sipped from her hadn’t done anything but make him long for more.
Just outside the closet, the doctor, Grasu, paced in her Ugg boots, skirt and lab coat, plucking at her latex gloves. Because of the crack between the door and wall, he’d been able to watch her flitting all over the place since she’d gotten here.
Minutes before, the doctor had sent her assistant, Ike, out of the lab with a first-aid kit. Probably for Camille and her little fang wound.
As Griffin visually stalked Grasu, jagged pain shot through his forehead. He lurched, almost knocking over a broom, then pressing his hands against the wall for balance. His mind separated into pieces, images, like sand in a whirlwind.
He reached out to grab a grain of memory. Camille’s face, her pale-blue eyes shiny and soft with wanting him. Warm, comforting, uplifting.
Then another vision whipped into its place. Mina, waking him up during the dead of night, her white skin and red gaze making him instinctively smack her away. Dark, freezing, horrifying.
Blade sharp, another image sliced over the other one: a little boy staring in a mirror that reflected his new bedroom. He wanted to grab all the playthings, the quilt, the clothing in the closet and hold them to his chest, never letting them go. He was doing what he couldn’t do with his parents: keeping what belonged to him.
Another memory.
Mina hissing, laughing in her own demented version of mirth.
Another.
The curves of Camille’s chest as she held him to her, keeping him. Valuing him.
Ano—
Mina opening her mouth, preparing to strike. To feed.
Blankness. Sand settling, reshuffled in different patterns.
His mind resting. A moment of peace. Until he realized he needed help. So much help. Yet…
With a restrained groan, Griffin tried to grab on to something that would stop him from going into the lab. From showing Dr. Grasu how far he’d regressed in so short a time.
But maybe…Should he reveal himself? Should he tell the doctor how he thought the UV treatment and serum had turned him inside out? That the chemical combination of Camille’s aroused scent and his new composition was tearing him apart?
Could she explain why letting go of his morals and taking what he needed felt so right? So good?
Yes, he would go in to see the doctor. She’d know what to do.
He struggled to rise, face dragging over the wall, his braced hands. They were still perfumed with Camille’s erotic scent, the heady memory of her juices.
Without thinking, he took in the smell of his fingers, imagined tasting her again. He shuddered, yearning.
Remembering what he’d done back in that apartment.
God, he’d bitten Camille, sank his teeth into her.
Sickened, Griffin stumbled into the laboratory. The suck-hiss of his mouth sealer whined over the hum of electronics, computers, Dr. Grasu’s anxious footsteps.
As he moved closer, she spun around, horn-rimmed glasses low on her prominent nose.
“Guards,” she yelled, then changed gears and nodded at him as if this were just another daily appointment. “Camille phoned to inform me of the setback. Ike is seeing to her. And as for you, please come with me to the cell.”
Back to his cage.
He heard the two guards enter, come up behind him.
“If you please, Griffin,” Dr. Grasu said, “let us make you comfortable.”
They were going to shoot him up with sedatives.
An explosion of fighting anger rippled through his every cell. Survival. As the vampire-animal took over, Griff spun, gripped the throats of both guards, then squeezed, thumbs on their windpipes.
Then the old Griff came to, panicked by what he was doing. Without hesitation, he loosened his grip, and the guards passed out on the floor.
Meanwhile, Dr. Grasu was fumbling with her dart gun.
Griff’s mouth sealer whirred, jerked, fell away from his mouth. Dropped to the tiles with a clatter.
Saliva coated his lips, and he used his tongue to catch some of it.
He tasted Camille.
Hunger clenched his belly, his mind.
Again, his head scattered into a million fragments, and he swallowed, wishing blood were coating his throat instead of this bland spittle.
“Griffin,” she said, raising the gun, “we will take care of you.”
Hadn’t Camille promised to do that?
His vampire voice came out in a rasp. “You never looked into my soul with your microscopes. Even your psychologists couldn’t predict this.”
Judging by the rise of her eyebrows, the wheels were turning in her mind. “Your results showed no aberrations. This will need further stud
y.”
“Actually, no. Camille and I…” He cocked his head. “How can I politely say this?”
Not understanding, she just waited. Then, “Ah. Aah. So you were not so sensitized to her. Well, this is why we did not allow you out of the lab building. Let us get back to work. We will fetch Camille for a set of very discreet experiments now.”
He thought of the huntress’s blood, how sweet it’d tasted. Then, in a crash of conscience, he thought about how wrong it was to want more.
Sod off, he said to that Griffin. The dead Griffin who had some humanity left.
“Can you imagine what it’s like to feel your teeth cutting into a person’s skin?” he asked. “It’s terrible. Beautiful. Knives through butter. Then the blood…”
He covered his face with his hands, inhaled. The scent of sex filled him, buried him in shaking need.
Dr. Grasu’s gun clicked, but nothing happened. She scrambled, trying to fix it.
He licked a finger, wanting more than just this hint of promise. Wanting something thick, coppery, invigorating.
Sound pounded at the back of his brain, but it had nothing to do with his body. Rhythmic thumps channeled through the floor, the walls.
His preternatural hearing was picking up the far frenzy of music. A mass of heated bodies.
Camille had told him about the disco down the street. How she wanted to take him there as soon as they were able to dance together again.
His body keened at the thought of all those young bodies in heat. All the boiling blood in their veins.
Dr. Grasu raised her gun again.
Irritated, he darted over, knocked it away.
Backing up, she leaned against a steel table, eyes wide and magnified by her glasses. As Griffin came closer, her short gray hair moved with the beat of his breathing.
“I’m departing your lab,” he said, leaning closer, lips against the withered skin of her throat now.
Blood, thumping in her veins. Need. Drink. Thick. “Don’t stop me, Doctor. Just…”
See that Camille is okay.
He shook the thought away, allowing a coat of red to slide over his vision, overcoming his senses.
“The posted guards will not allow you to leave.” She pushed away from the table, her chest knocking against his, her gaze searching for the dart gun he’d knocked from her grasp earlier.