More Than Blood

by Amanda Vyne

  Gabe looked down at the woman, but she was staring off into the yard, watching the game.

  Mae turned to look at him, her expression serious. “But if you can manage to win her you have all of her all the way. Forever. There is no halfway in that girl.”

  Gabe nodded, his eyes colliding into Kel’s across the field with a little rush of pleasure. The question was, how did he win her?

  IT WAS JUST past sunset when they left Haven House. Kel made Mae and Tala promise to keep Madison within their sights at all times and to walk the girls to and from school every day. They’d shimmered back to Incog, and Gabe had insisted on driving her home.

  She’d tried to convince him she could return to her apartment on her own but he’d insisted on delivering her safely to her front door. Kel wasn’t buying his chivalry act, though. She suspected he just wanted to be able to shimmer directly to her apartment if the need struck. She told him as much but his lips only tipped up in one corner, his eyes concealed by the dark glasses.

  “They should be able to tell us something about the body of that little girl by tomorrow.” Kel said it softly as he pulled into a space in her apartment parking garage, but it still sounded cold and ugly in the darkness of the car and something in her shrank.

  Immediately she felt him moving inside her, his looming presence warming and comforting her. Is this what it meant to be bonded? Would there be no part of her that remained her own? Already her body seemed to belong to him, responding to just the sound of his voice or the scent of his arousal.

  Without thought she pulled herself deeper, away from his presence in her.

  Gabe reached out to tilt her face up to his. Pulling the glasses off he frowned down at her. “It is futile to fight it.”

  Kel met his green gaze. There was no give in her. She met everything head-on, but she was not above a little evasion in this case. She felt trapped in her own body and that took a little time to get used to.

  “I didn’t ask for this, and I need time to process what ‘this’ means for me.”

  Kel swallowed, her eyes falling to his lips and the pale points of his canines. The bite from crazy Karl had been excruciatingly painful. What would it feel like to be blooded by Gabe? To feel his fangs sink into her flesh and the warmth of his lips against her skin? Her own gums tingled and she ran her tongue over the aching area absently. Did he crave her bite like she did his? What would it feel like to bleed him, to feel the heat of him flowing across her tongue? It was a craving she could hardly control anymore. The flesh between her legs grew moist and hot, her core clenching around the aching emptiness. A little tremor shook her.

  Instinctively she knew it would be an experience that would completely change her. She couldn’t be his mate. There was nothing of her to give him. Theirs would be an empty parody of a bond. And she could never return with him to the Ferrar complex. She’d vowed to herself, all those years ago, that she would never go back. It was a promise she’d made as she had lain in her own blood at the Triumvirate home.

  “I would never hurt you.” His words whispered against her jaw as he lowered his head to brush his lips against her cheek. His hot breath fanned the shell of her ear and she gasped at the shiver of sensation that streaked through her.

  “You don’t bear his mark.” His fingers trailed over her neck.

  Kel swallowed. “I’m a quick healer.

  This was getting carried away, especially since his ultimate goal was to have her for dinner. At least his dinner invitation was a hell of a lot more pleasant than crazy Karl’s had been. Gabe tempted her. He’d held back last night, forced her to hold back. She wasn’t sure why but now she was more drawn to him than ever.

  That scared her more than the bite itself.

  Chapter Seven

  Kel pushed the car door open and jumped out. It occurred to her she was being a bit erratic, and she made herself calmly shut the door and meet his eyes over the hood when he rose from the car.

  “Well, this is my stop. I’ll see you back at Incog Monday.” Okay, that sounded a bit squeaky. One golden brow cocked up at her in a way that said he knew she was running. She closed her eyes against the need that shook through her. “Back off. Just back off. It’s all too much.”

  Yet not enough.

  When she opened her eyes she could see a strange warmth in his green gaze. It affected her in a way that she didn’t dare examine too closely. In another moment she’d be sticking an apple in her mouth and offering herself up to him like a stuffed pig.

  And he knew it.

  Backing up with a little shake of her head and a frown she turned to shimmer to her apartment but paused. Her instincts were damn good and at that moment they were screaming at her. Something wasn’t right. Her highly evolved eyesight scanned the garage. It was too dark. A quick glance confirmed the lights around the elevator had been shattered.

  She scented the air and smelled the stinky bastards just as they appeared.

  Kel wanted to kick herself in the ass. She should have smelled the unwashed Sanguen thugs from inside the car. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with Gabe she would have. He was becoming a serious liability. Four of the knife-carrying skunks circled behind him where he lounged against the open door of the rental car, seeming almost bored. Two more stood in front of the elevator against the car behind her.

  The two men behind her suddenly shimmered next to her, one grabbing her by the arms. She felt the prick of a needle in her neck. The man holding her shimmered, but she managed to knock the other one back before he shimmered. The hypodermic still protruded from her neck. She reached up and yanked it out and glanced down at the mostly spent hypodermic in her hand. Swaying slightly, she raised her eyes and met Gabe’s across the parking garage in confusion.

  “Kill the marshal.” One of the Sanguen growled, his eyes fixed on Gabe. “He wants the woman left alive.”

  She felt hands wrap around her upper arms and she was jerked up between two unwashed bodies. Kel wrinkled her nose.

  What the hell was going on here?

  With a roar, Gabe shimmered to the hood of the car, two long wicked blades in his hands. His eyes bore into the two men on either side of her, that strange flickering of red around his pupils. There were four men circling him, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

  With a sigh she brought her arms up and around, sending the two men holding onto her flying forward. Even with the drug raging through her system she was stronger than the bloodsuckers. They hadn’t expected that. Shimmering in midair they reappeared next to her, more cautious this time. She almost went down to one knee with the effort it took to throw them the first time. She wasn’t about to let them get that close again. Stumbling to the side, she shook her head and buried her elbow in the face of the man lunging in to grab her from her left. She heard the satisfying sound of bones and cartilage in his nose being pulverized before he shimmered back out of her reach.

  Kel blinked several times, trying to clear her vision. It felt like she was looking up through the surface of water. The smell of blood tainted the air, and she smiled as she delivered a side kick to another man coming at her from the right. He swung a knife at her wildly, and she distantly registered a sharp pain just before her small foot made contact with his chest. Even as the sound of cracking bones filled her ears, she shimmered behind him, grabbed his head between her small hands before he hit the ground, and snapped his neck. Then she promptly fell back, cracking her ass hard on the concrete. The dead Sanguen fell on top of her. It should have smarted, but she felt nothing. She felt oddly numb. She couldn’t even move the weight of the Sanguen off of her.

  They must have shot her up with some kind of sedative. An incredible lethargy weighed heavily on her body and she didn’t think she’d be able to rise. At least right now. Her body would process the drug quickly, like it did everything else. She just had to wait it out. Meanwhile the burning in her side was damn uncomfortable and permeated the fog in her brain.

  “Shit!” Kel curs
ed thickly when she reached down to touch her side beneath the weight of the damn Sanguen and felt the dampness but she already knew what she’d find. She could smell her blood. Actually, she thought drunkenly, she could smell a lot of blood. Kel heaved the body off her with a groan and rolled to her side.

  “Shimmer.”

  Kel jerked her head up drunkenly at the growling command, and immediately her unguarded body reacted. Gabe was magnificent. He spun, the knee-length jacket flaring out as his arms slashed at the men he fought. The two short swords glittered in the golden light of the setting sun and he wielded them with a remarkable skill, shimmering in and out among the four men around him. He was poetry. Violent and bloody poetry, but inspiring in motion nonetheless.

  And he was seriously outnumbered.

  Struggling to her hands and knees, she painstakingly crawled a couple feet toward them and extended her claws on one hand. When one of the bastards shimmered in she swiped at his leg, severing his Achilles tendon. He screamed in agony and shimmered out. That should even things up a little.

  “Fuck it all, woman. I said shimmer.”

  “Whatever, Ferrar,” Kel slurred softly. Feeling a little nauseated she hung her head for a moment and willed the world to stop spinning. Whatever they shot her up with was strong. Her body was having a hell of a time trying to work it out of her system. The smell of blood was heavy in her nose, and she struggled to determine if it included Gabe’s. She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure. She needed to look to be positive he was still holding his own. Although she didn’t know what she’d be able to do if he wasn’t. She’d figure something out.

  She struggled to gain a sitting position and then let her head loll back on her neck. Blinking, she focused on him and frowned. Two men littered the ground, ripped apart, and Gabe was slashing furiously at the last man with his silver blades. He spun and slashed, shimmering in and out around him.

  Kel had never seen anything like it before. His lean, lithe body moved smoothly, like a lethal dancer. The red flickered in the centers of his green eyes as the last man sank to the ground, and Kel almost laughed. The sight of him like that made the muscles in her stomach roll and clench with instantaneous desire. She was sad, but damn, the man was sexy.

  And he left a serious mess, she thought as her gaze strayed over the carnage. Four bodies littered the parking garage, and Kel seriously hoped none of her neighbors pulled in. She fumbled for the phone on her belt and called for cleanup, never taking her eyes off of him.

  Gabe was cleaning his blades on the shirt of one of the fallen men, his chest heaving with the exertion of the fight. Sliding the cell back into her belt she braced herself against the gritty cement and watched him with an embarrassing intensity. The new churning in her stomach had nothing to do with the drug and everything to do with the sexy Sanguen standing a couple feet from her.

  The parking garage had stopped spinning, and it didn’t take as much effort to keep herself upright. Thanks to her Guardian heritage, her metabolism worked drugs through her system at an amazing rate. She doubted the men who attacked them had been aware of that.

  Gabe turned his strangely flickering eyes on her and slid his blades into the sheaths strapped to his thighs. His nose flared, and his eyes lowered to rake over her body. He could smell her blood.

  “Whoa!” Kel yelped when he suddenly shimmered in front of her to scoop her up under the arms like a child and deposit her on the trunk of a nearby sports car. “Holy cow, warn a girl or something.”

  Gabe ignored her as he jerked her shirt up to get a better look at her wound. He pulled off his jacket and threw it up on the trunk and quickly jerked his shirt up and over his head. He might have pressed it to the knife wound in her side, she wasn’t exactly sure. The last thing she would remember with any clarity was the sight of his wide, smooth chest and the smell of his heat rising and surrounding her.

  It was a very distracting combination.

  His body was hard, the muscles of his chest and shoulders finely sculpted beneath his golden flesh. He was saying something to her. Distantly she thought he might be lecturing her, which could be a good reason why she wasn’t actually hearing any of it. Who wanted to hear words when they had a beefcake buffet at the tip of their nose?

  Beefcake buffet?

  Had that thought really gone through her head? Those drugs must have sent her on a trip because she wouldn’t be sliding her hands up the rock-hard ripples of his stomach if she wasn’t under some kind of influence, would she? His whole body jerked at the touch, and she thought maybe he might have stopped talking. Good.

  Allowing her fingertips to slide up and over the bulge of his pectorals she saw he wore some kind of carved stone medallion around his neck on a leather thong. She circled it with her finger and wondered what the symbol meant. His hands clamped around her wrists, stilling her exploration, and she looked up into his face.

  Kel couldn’t turn her head away, getting caught and drawn into the depths of those green eyes. The centers were flickering with gold and red, like twin flames. That ever present desire flared hot and consuming, engulfing them. Kel drew his scent deep into her body and allowed it to infuse her.

  It was unlike anything in her experience, waking her instincts and bringing parts of her nature to roaring, screaming life. She felt so alive, every part of her throbbing with want. She pulled her hands free and speared her fingers into the dark blond hair that fell around his face and jerked his head down to hers with a growl. She needed to taste him.

  The kiss was rough and demanding. Gabe speared his tongue past her lips into the moist heat of her mouth, and her body jerked against his as that white-hot electricity of their attraction arced through her. She slid her hands down over his shoulders and over the heated skin of his back, tracing the firm, roped muscles in her descent to his waist. His skin was so smooth and hard beneath her questing hands. Her fingers reached those blades, the metal still warm from the heat of his large hands. She moaned at the memory of how he’d moved with those sleek weapons in his hands and arched into him, clutching the hilts. Even his weapons were sexy.

  Kel could feel the rumble of his chest against her, feel his humor. “Only you.”

  His hips pressed her back into the steel of the car and she lifted her legs around his waist, wanting to feel the heavy ridge of his erection closer to where she ached. The rough texture of his jeans was delicious through the thin silk of her panties. With a low growl he ground himself against her and a sharp streak of pleasure shot out from between her thighs to spread to the rest of her body. Sliding her hands down, she grabbed his ass and jerked him into her, needing to feel it again.

  Gabe jerked her head back with the hand buried in the short, silky strands of her hair. His lips slid from hers and she gasped for the air she needed so desperately as his mouth left a hot, wet trail over her jaw to her ear. The heat of his mouth sent body-racking chills of pleasure through her and she nearly came off the trunk of the car when he speared his tongue into the cavern of her ear.

  Kel undulated her hips against his as the sensation deepened and grew with every stab of his tongue in her ear, with every press of his hips into hers.

  “Mine.” He breathed hotly into her ear, sending another wave of tremors through her body. The hard ridge of his cock rubbed at her clit, the friction causing a sizzling through her bloodstream. “Only mine.”

  With a growl he reached down with one hand, slid his long fingers around the elastic edge of her panties. His thumb stroked lightly over her engorged clit, the callused pad sending shivers through her. Two of his middle fingers slid through the slick cream of her body and ringed the little tight opening to her pussy, teasing shivers from her.

  Kel whimpered under the onslaught of sensation.

  His grip in her hair tightened to the point of pain as he pulled her head back farther with a jerk; his eyes burned a path down her body, focusing with an incredibly arousing intensity on where his fingers teased her pussy. His fingers presse
d just inside her before retreating and pressing again.

  “So hot.” He breathed roughly against her cheek. “I can feel that sweet little pussy squeezing my fingers.” The thrusts of his fingers deepened, his thumb keeping a steady light pressure. His lips left a wet trail over her cheek to her neck. “Come for me, baby. Come on my hand. Let me feel you.” She could feel the pressure of his mouth sliding down over her exposed neck. Panting from the pleasure his fingers were wringing from her body, she jerked under the feel of his mouth.

  The heat of his tongue left a moist trail over the pulse there and without any warning he buried his fangs into the pulsing length of her neck. Kel’s body jerked, her muscles drawing up tightly at the shock and pleasure of it as he sucked greedily from her. Her pussy clamped down around the intrusion of his fingers pressing deeply inside her with tiny strokes, and she arched with a cry. With each draw of his lips on her neck she peaked higher and higher until she trembled uncontrollably against him. She was held in the tight grip of pleasure, her body pulled taut, arching into his until he ripped his mouth away with a gasp.

  As she floated down, Kel felt a coldness settle over her flesh. There was something important she was missing here, but the blissful numbness settled heavily over her, pulling her further down. She heard Gabe curse violently, and he caught her limp body up in his arms as she slid bonelessly down the gleaming side of the sports car. She opened her mouth to comment on his choice of words, but nothing came out, and then the blackness settled too heavily over her for her to try again.

  “DAMN IT!” GABE cursed, pressing his forehead to hers as he tried to regain control of himself. Her blood slid through his body, infusing him with strength and vitality. Blooding usually gave him a feeling of renewal and satisfaction, but drinking from Kel was different. It was more. It was standing in the fires of hell and feeling the rain of heaven fall down over him. He felt amazingly connected to her. Contented.