Dark Cravings
Madeline Pryce
Ella Grey’s life sucks. A half-breed vampire, she does her best to pass the time killing demons and secretly admiring her Shadow Hunter partner, Micah. He’s hot, dangerous and knows it. He’d be just Ella’s type if he weren’t likely to kill her the moment she put a toe out of line.
A chance encounter with a succubus changes everything. From the second the succubus’ spell washes over them, Ella and Micah are helpless to keep their hands off one another. The sex, when it’s not leaving them on the verge of death, is earth shattering and for the first time in ages Ella is connected with someone on a level she’d feared lost forever. But a dangerous prophecy has been set into motion, and if Ella’s not careful it’ll pull her straight from Micah’s arms and into the deepest bowels of the underworld.
A Romantica® paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave
Dark Cravings
Madeline Pryce
Chapter One
A breeze stirred the air, teasing the fragrance of rust and honey closer. The bittersweet aroma of blood surrounded me. I froze. As if savoring the first bite of a favored delicacy, I drew in another slow, deep breath and let my eyes fall shut. I struggled not to moan.
Don’t fight it, min älsklin. The voice inside my head was velvet, compelling and so wrong it made everything right. I feel your need. My sire’s whisper was taunting, persuasive. Feed. Drink. Take what belongs to you. The voice amplified my need to sink the fangs growing in my mouth into warm flesh. I uttered a strangled, pathetic sound.
I swept my tongue slowly over my lower lip. Copper. I’d cut my lip on my fangs again. It didn’t matter that it was my blood awakening my senses. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t more than a drop or two. I wanted more.
“Hey, fang girl, snap out of it,” a voice, not one inside my head, growled from behind me.
The rich male baritone made even the crudest of remarks appealing, unless of course he was talking to me. Instead, his drawl sobered me quicker than a bucket of cold water. Micah McGregor had that effect on me. For an instant I’d actually managed to forget my fellow Shadow Hunter was stalking behind me, waiting for me to make a mistake so he could tattle back to Daddy.
“Letting you out of your cage is suicide,” he mumbled.
He didn’t seem to notice or care that my back stiffened at his words. A gentleman would have ignored my bloodlust, would have looked away and let me compose myself without snide remarks. Not Micah. He loved two things—himself and throwing my flaws in my face. I’m not sure which was number one on his list.
I didn’t turn to face him. Mind over matter. If I didn’t acknowledge him, he didn’t exist. Instead, I concentrated on what we’d come here to do. My gaze wandered over the cracking marble headstones, huge crosses and decaying stone lions that marked Barnstable County’s oldest, deadliest graveyard. A pack of red-eyed, rabid vampires was on the loose and it was my job to put them down—if I could find them. I’d lost their trail almost an hour ago.
I eyed the rusty, wrought iron gate of the cemetery’s perimeter we’d just come through. If the barricade wasn’t deterrent enough, the willow trees that hung low with their drooping green tendrils might as well have had a sign that flashed, It’s creepy in here, stay out. A gust of wind spurred those branches, drawing them along the ground like caressing fingers.
Pushing everything from my mind, I closed my eyes. Julian, my sire, ex-lover and sacred member of the Vampire Court, had taught me how to immerse myself in the shadows and let my senses guide me. That was the only meaningful thing he’d done before abandoning me after the attempted turning.
Attempted was the operative word. I wasn’t human, not anymore. But I wasn’t fully a vampire either. When Death stood laughing behind my shoulder, Julian had shown what an opportunistic bastard he was. That night, my once-lover had both saved my life and condemned me to hell. Trusting him had been the one mistake I would never be able to forgive myself for. In the end, I’d neither died nor survived. My soul had been corrupted into something that should not have been possible. I, Ella Grey, Shadow Hunter, was now the thing I’d been raised to kill.
Doing as I was taught, I roused life into the darkness that clung to my soul like a parasite. If Micah and I botched yet another hunt, Uncle Roy would skin us alive. Concentrate.
The first thing I sensed was the five-point arsenal I carried on my person. The stench of sulfur tickled my nose from the two Brimstone daggers in sheaths attached to my forearms. I had a single stake holstered at the small of my back and two Silverstone knives tucked into my boots.
Despite the obvious death around me, the cemetery was reeling with vitality. Awareness filled every ounce of me. Sights, sounds, smells—they all intensified until it was almost impossible to tell up from down. In that chaotic mess I found my answer. No vampires.
Damn it.
The brittle sound of leaves breaking shifted my attention. Each crunch disturbed the silence of the night. Not even crickets dared chirp here. My perception morphed against my will, narrowing until the only thing I could focus on was Micah walking behind me—his scent, the strong beat of his heart, the way he drew in breath and pushed it back out. Focusing on him was a mistake, one that could get us killed. I was too distracted by the details and not concentrating on the big picture. I didn’t have to worry about what was right behind me. The real danger came from the shadows lurking in the distance.
Micah was too close for me to sense anything other than him. The way my body reacted to his was unsettling. The man didn’t occupy space, he claimed it. The heat from his too-hot body lined my back and set my nerves on edge in a way that was both unnatural and wholly unwanted. Heat engulfed me and I knew it was his fault. Despite the icy clouds from my breath, sweat beaded along my upper lip.
I needed to step away and put some distance between us. Thinking became impossible when Micah’s hot breath fanned across the back of my neck. I shoved my bloodlust to the side with ruthless abandon. All that remained was an overwhelming surge of sexual desire. What the hell was wrong with me? Micah was sexy, sure, but he was also an ass. I’d never—okay, I rarely—wanted to rip off his clothes and rub myself against him.
“It’s almost dawn, are the vamps here?” The roughness of his voice sent a shiver down my spine.
“No.” I swallowed. “I think tonight’s a wash.”
My galloping heart chased away my self-control. When my hands began to tremble, I shoved them into the front pockets of my tight leather jacket and hugged the lapels around me as if it would protect me. He took one more step. My body hummed with the restraint it took not to turn around and nuzzle his throat. The closer he got, the more erratic his thunderous heartbeat became. The rushing sound of blood was gasoline on a fire that was rapidly surging out of control. Did the man know nothing about vampire hunger or raging hormones? Both were equally dangerous.
The cold, dark night spun around me. Black skies blended with serried gray stones. Between the two there was a splash of green and then there was Micah. Right in front of me. I didn’t walk to him. I didn’t spin around to close the distance between us. I just blinked, vanished, blinked and appeared in front of him. The muscles in my stomach jerked. Shit. I shouldn’t have been able to do that. My brain raced with the implications of what I’d done. The technical term was phazing. I was too young. Lightheaded and nauseous, I stumbled and rammed my nose into Micah’s chest. If it weren’t for him cupping my elbows, holding me upright, I would have fallen.
Despite the fact that the organization I worked for had been around for the last six hundred years, keeping humanity safe and ignorant of vampires and demons, the information we had on the so-called “enemy” was pathetically weak. As far as I had been taught,
phazing was an ability only ancient, master vampires could achieve. The fact that I could, on scarce occasion, manage the feat was terrifying. Not that I’d ever really accomplish it, though. The dozen or so times I’d done it over the last several months were because I’d been so irrationally angry at Micah that the only thing I could focus on was my hands around his throat. Poof. The second I appeared before him, dizzy, disoriented and ready to throttle him, I normally ended up on my knees, puking my guts out. Micah thought it was hysterical.
Either I was getting better at this phazing business or there was something about the delicious warmth of his body against mine that soothed the side effects. This time I didn’t throw up.
The longer I stood there, nose against Micah’s sternum, the harder his pulse drummed. Push away. Push away. Push away. I wanted to. I really did. Palms flat over his hammering heart, I caressed the hard muscles of his chest beneath his leather jacket and molded myself against him. I loved the scent of leather. Adored the way it creaked when it moved. His jacket smelled of darkness, cologne and the very faint odor of smoke he’d picked up frequenting clubs in the district where he preferred to hunt. I tilted my head up, gaze lingering on the curve of his square, muscular jaw before meeting his eyes.
They were a beautiful fusion of blue and green. Micah would tell you they were blue. His collection of fake IDs confirmed that. He was a liar. The color was teal.
I would’ve expected Micah to look startled that I’d phazed, successfully, right in front of him, or annoyed that I was plastered against him. Nope. Those too-full lips of his were curved in an inviting half-smile that I was ninety-nine percent sure he practiced in front of a mirror. The laughter in his eyes made them watery and the shade electric.
“If you puke on my jacket, I’m going to be pissed,” he said.
Reality backhanded me across the face. The blow stung. This was Micah, for god’s sake! He was the man who had been the nonstop pain in my ass for the last eight months. He was the man who’d been sent to spy on me for his rat-eyed, fascist father. Using the leverage of my hands on his chest, I shoved. He stumbled back a few feet but didn’t fall like I’d hoped. God forbid the son of the Shadow Agency’s leader be thrown on his butt by a girl. The bastard managed to make his lurch back look purposeful, as if he’d meant to do it. When he swaggered over to a dull-gray headstone engraved with an angel and propped his hip against it, I almost lost it.
I funneled all the annoyance and frustration I could muster into my voice. It was a lot. “One more word and I’ll bite you.”
The warmth in his eyes frosted. His nostrils flared and a puff of moisture blew out. When the seductive line of his mouth hardened and bowed, fine lines crinkled the corners of his narrowed eyes. In an instant he was transformed from GQ sexy to hideous. Judgmental damnation wasn’t a look he wore well.
“Try it,” he said, “and I’ll shove a stake through your heart.”
The words didn’t hurt. His unwillingness to accept me did. I’d saved him more than a dozen times. Proven that I wasn’t what he or the fucking holier-than-thou Shadow Agency thought I was. There was no gray area in their eyes. A demon, benign or malicious, was a demon. Vampires sired into this life, by choice or not, were the same—dead, malevolent, bloodsucking parasites. It made no difference that my circumstances were…different. If my ancestors hadn’t been instrumental in founding the agency, I probably would’ve been out on my ass.
Before the debacle of my turning, hunting had been my birthright, my gift. I was a tenth-generation hunter. Within the Shadow community I was almost royalty. Besides the fangs, the bloodlust and the schizophrenic voice in my head, not much had really changed. The major difference was I no longer just enjoyed the hunt. I craved it.
The feel of my hair tickling my shoulders, my neck, my cheeks, when I sprinted through the night was intoxicating. The rap-rapping sound of my fists connecting against flesh in a fight was addicting. Hell, even the feel of my stake piercing flesh and the bitter taste of ash that erupted after the kill was satisfying in a way it had never been before.
My uncle Roy had psychoanalyzed me once. He’d suggested the perverse pleasure I got in slaying my brethren had something to do with self-hatred and guilt. I hadn’t argued.
I stepped closer to Micah, let my gaze drop from his face, to his chest and then lower. His well-worn black jeans weren’t snug, but they were fitted enough to draw my attention and capture it. Every single instinct I possessed told me to back off.
“If you actually had the balls to stake me, I might be scared.” Mirroring his defensive posture, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared up at him.
His disgust melted into something I was too afraid to name. Lust, desire? My pulse jumped in direct correlation to the dark look upon his face. Under his tightly controlled façade, violence and need lurked. The thought of being the one to make him lose control, to bring out all of those emotions, should not have turned me on.
I traced the blur of his movement a second too late. He was quick, frighteningly so. Micah wrapped one hot, rough hand around my wrist and tugged until I was up against his body. He slid the callused pads of his fingers from my wrist to my palm and the pain from his too-tight grip vanished. My stomach clenched. I’d finally driven him to distraction.
“Oh honey. I’ve got the balls.”
I managed to rip my hand away a second before he could press my shaking palm against the zipper of his Levi’s. We stared at each other, eyes large, lips parted and the unspoken challenge heavy between us.
Who knows what I would have done if a high-pitched squeal hadn’t shattered the silence.
Simultaneously we stepped away from each other and scanned the darkness.
All I could hear was the rough in-and-out sawing of Micah’s breathing behind me.
“Will you shut it?” I hissed.
Micah made a rude sound in the back of his throat. “Why don’t you suck it?”
“That’s real mature.”
With a slow, deep inhalation, I pushed my will farther into the distance. Below me, the scent of decay from the rotting corpses that rested as peacefully as they could in a zombie-infested graveyard reached my nose. I walked quickly but carefully, to avoid sinking into the soft soil beneath my boots.
Past the smell of death, I sharpened the vampire senses I’d spent the last seven years learning to cope with and picked out the scent of blood. We crossed the graveyard at a run and moved from the Falmouth Burying Grounds to the Davisville Cemetery.
Hollow. Weighty. The gross thud of something hitting the ground echoed. Panic sped my pace. The threat of yet another death made me sick. The unnecessary carnage of hapless humans was why I remained a hunter. Despite, or maybe because of my current condition, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I’d been bred to protect and serve. Humans, the poor bastards, had no idea how dangerous the night could be.
I rounded the corner and skid to a stop in the damp grass. The pack of feral dogs lifted their black and gray muzzles from what looked like a pig. One at a time, they snarled and bared their canines. Blood and saliva dripped to the ground. Hackles rose.
Gunfire exploded behind me and I jumped. The dogs scattered, leaving their kill behind.
The scent of death filled the air and tickled my nose more powerfully than Brimstone. My appetite was disgustingly roused. Killing blood, animal or not, had a different taste—it was potent with fear.
The unmistakable click of a cocking gun jarred me out of my trance. Micah and his fucking firearms. What self-respecting hunter brought a shotgun to kill a vampire anyway? I’d been raised old school, with stakes and knives. Micah and his younger brother, Elijah, had undergone a more progressive training regime. I suspected it had something to do with their father’s influence. Daddy wouldn’t want his sons getting their hands dirty.
I spun to face Micah, eyed the sawed-off shotgun pointed at my nose. “I told you to leave that monstrosity in the car.”
“Funny. I must have missed the memo
where you took over Roy’s job. I don’t take orders from you.” Micah paused and gave his gun a fond once-over. He looked at his weapon like a man looked at a naked woman.
“Besides,” he continued. “What’s wrong with Ramona? She saved your ass from being eaten by wolves.”
“I kill demons and vampires for a living, a few dogs don’t scare me. Wait.” I help up my hand. “You named your gun?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.
His grin was slow, cocky. “Babe, I sleep with it.”
“That’s not the only thing you sleep with,” I grumbled and fought not to ask how his dates enjoyed waking up to cold metal. He probably didn’t stick around long enough to ask them.
“You did know we were trailing a pack of vamps, right?” I asked in a slow voice that one might use to explain something to a child. “Guns in those kinds of situations aren’t very helpful. We’ve argued about this a million times.”
“Oh come on. What’s wrong with blowing their heads off? Quicker, just as effective. I’ve got Brimstone and silver in these shells.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me the big bad hunter is afraid to get his hands dirty.”
It was times like this, me looking up at him with a serious crick in my neck, that I realized just how tall he was or how wide and muscular his shoulders were. Micah was a little over six feet and that gave him at least ten inches on me. Everything about him made me feel delicate. The feeling was not warm or fuzzy.
I looked him over, a frown pulling at the corners of my mouth. I took in the scuffed, dark leather of his jacket. The coat wasn’t tight, not like the long-sleeved black shirt he wore under it, but it wasn’t oversized. Once again captivated, I let my eyes find their way to his jeans. Did they have to hug him just the right way? I stopped appraising him at his boots and let my head tilt to the side until my hair, almost the same shade as my black leather sleeve, rested on my forearm. Somewhere beneath all that fitted clothing I knew he’d tucked away a stake, two Brimstone butterfly blades and a semi-automatic handgun. I’d watched him do it out of the corner of my eye as I’d strapped on my own weapons. How’d I miss the sawed-off shotgun? Son of a bitch.
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