Peter didn’t blame her. Sloan had already proven them wrong once before.
In the middle of the room, the one large vamp who’d been shot—Diego, Peter assumed—was now on the ground and the two younger vamps were hovering over him. They were trying to stop the bleeding much as he was. And much like he was, they seemed to be fighting a losing battle.
Peter looked down at Samantha, who had a small smile on her face. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said.
“What?” He applied greater pressure as yet more blood leaked from between his fingers.
“Dying. It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would,” she said in surprisingly calm tones.
He wanted to argue with her. He wanted to tell her she wouldn’t die, but she was losing way too much blood. He didn’t want to waste her last moments with a lie. “I love you.”
She smiled, but it turned to a grimace of fear as she struggled for breath.
“Easy, love. Easy.” He battled back the fear in his own voice to ease her discomfort.
Samantha cradled the side of his face. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more time together.”
Ryder returned and kneeled beside them. As he saw her condition, his look turned grim. “Whatever I do may not be enough.”
“Hurry,” Peter said, removing his hand from Samantha’s wound so Ryder could reach it.
Diana stepped over to assist Ryder. She tore away the upper part of Samantha’s shirt to expose the wound and dabbed the area with gauze to keep the area clean so Ryder could locate and extract the bullet.
Samantha moaned and shifted with Ryder’s probing.
Peter held her tighter and murmured calm words to gentle her. It seemed to take hours for Ryder to pull out the silver bullet, although Peter knew it had only been minutes. Almost immediately, the flow of blood slowed, but she was still too pale and her breathing was shallow. Erratic.
Ryder moved away to help the other wounded vampire. “What can I do?” Peter asked Diana, fearing that what Ryder had done had not been enough.
“She may need to feed. Ryder has blood in the van.”
With a nod, he took Samantha in his arms and followed Diana outside. She helped him get settled in the back of the van and removed a blood bag from a small refrigerator. “Do you need help?”
“I’ve never done this before.”
She kneeled opposite him and brought the bag to Samantha’s mouth. At the contact of the plastic with her lips, she roused. He saw confusion on her face, and then shame.
He realized she was hesitant to feed in front of him.
Cradling her cheek, he bent his head close to hers. “Please, Samantha. I don’t want to lose you.”
As he pulled away, her eyes began to glow and her fangs slowly inched down. He held the bag to her lips again and watched as she punctured the bag and fed.
He thought he would be repulsed, but instead, it was fascinating to see the change in her as she drank the blood. He could feel her body growing less limp and more substantial. Her skin warmed and gained color.
But not enough, he realized as she finished the bag and sagged back into his arms. The blood had only temporarily helped. Diana went back to the refrigerator, but there was no more.
“We’ll have to get her back to town. There’ll be blood at either the shelter or at Ryder’s place.”
Although Samantha’s breathing was a little stronger, it was still too weak for his taste. “Can she make it back to town?”
“I don’t know, Peter. Maybe Ryder can tell us once he’s done inside,” she said. “I’m going to go see if they need my help.”
Peter nodded and leaned back against the side of the van, holding her tight, as if he could warm her with his body. Give her a little bit of his strength just with his nearness.
But with each minute that passed, her body became weaker and once again her breathing grew shallow and barely noticeable. He kissed her forehead. “Don’t leave me.”
He had barely uttered the words when the side door of the van slid open. Meghan and Blake sat on either side of Diego, holding him upright. A second later, Ryder tossed in the bodies of both Sloan and his assistant.
“Why are you bringing them?” Peter asked. Ryder looked his way and, seeing Samantha’s condition, he picked up the dead assistant’s body. “No way,” Peter said.
Ryder snarled at him, “Squeamish? Well, they need to feed if they’re to survive. Seems to me it’s only fair.”
“Ryder.” Diana laid a hand on his arm. “Let the other three help themselves to these two. I’ll take care of Samantha.”
“No way, darlin’. I should be the one.”
“Drive, Ryder. We’ll need your strength to get all these people up to your apartment,” Diana said.
As if recognizing the truth of her words, Ryder nodded, exited the van and closed the door behind him.
Diana moved over to where Peter held Samantha. As the three other vamps shared the corpses, Peter tried not to notice. Diana pulled closed a curtain to seal off the sight of what was happening.
Ryder started the van, jostling them.
Diana reached out to him. “She just needs a little to hold her over until we get back to the apartment. I can do that.”
A confused whirl of emotions created a tumult within his brain. He wanted Samantha to live. He knew what it would take, but couldn’t imagine anyone doing it. Much less his friend Diana.
But as she rolled up the sleeve of her black shirt to expose her forearm, he saw the scar there. The long-healed mark. In his mind, he pictured the two punctures in the middle of that wound before it healed as vampire bites did.
She pulled out a pocket knife.
“No.” He stopped her when she would have cut her forearm.
It was almost as if stopping her had made the decision for him. He held out his free arm. “Cut me.”
She knew him better than to question his instruction. Undoing the cuff on his dark blue shirt, she rolled it up to expose his skin. She raised the point of the knife to his wrist. “Ready?”
At his nod, she cut through his skin, just enough to bring blood to the surface.
“Now what?”
She motioned for him to bring his wrist to Samantha’s mouth.
As soon as his bleeding arm touched Samantha’s lips, she became alert. At first she only sucked with her mouth, but then her fangs slowly emerged.
Diana laid a hand on his shoulder. “The feeding…it may arouse other hungers.”
Her meaning was clear. When he nodded, Diana left, closing the curtain tight to give them privacy.
When Samantha sank her fangs into his wrist, the pain jolted him from other musings. A mixture of revulsion and fascination swept over him as he observed her, and then something else awakened.
With each pull of her mouth came a tug at his groin, dragging passion to life even as he weakened.
“Samantha,” he cried out as his erection became almost painful.
She pulled her mouth from his wrist and sat up, her color restored and her breathing stronger. She straddled him, returning to normal, her eyes losing their glow and her fangs retracting.
“Samantha,” he pleaded again although he wasn’t quite sure what he was begging for. But if he didn’t get it soon, he’d die.
She knew. Her hands were warm as she stroked him. She kissed his lips and made love to him with her mouth, her tongue wet and deliciously wild as it danced with his. He clenched his hips a
nd flexed upward into her hands, close to climax. So near to a release unlike any other he’d experienced before.
She took him into her mouth. Used her lips and tongue to drive him over the edge. His body was shaking. He was nearly close to losing consciousness when she reversed their positions and cradled him to her breasts.
“Peter, do you want me?” she asked even as she undid the buttons on her blouse.
Another jolt raced through him at the sight of her breasts and he immediately hardened again. He groaned and his head whirled with the untamed desire sweeping through his body.
Samantha asked again, “Do you want me, Peter?”
He answered her by taking the tip of her breast into his mouth and sucking on it.
She moaned and whispered, “It can be like this always, Peter. Always.”
Oh please. He bit the tip of her as she stroked his erection. The thrall of vampire passion raced from her body to his. Desire so intense he knew it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t human.
“Is this what you want for us?” he asked even as he sucked at her breasts and, worked his way up to the edge of her lips, where the tiniest hint of fang was emerging. That didn’t stop him. On the contrary, he traced the edge of her teeth with his tongue. When her fang nipped him, drawing blood, the coppery taste of it spiced his mouth.
Samantha’s body was shaking and hot with the taste of his blood. Aching from feeding on his sexual release. It wasn’t the woman holding him, even though she was fighting to retain her mortal form. It was the vampire, wanting him to give in. To beg him to be with her always.
It was why she couldn’t answer him. She was afraid it would be the vampire answering. The vampire offering to make him like her so their love could be for always. So this passion would never end.
The van jolted over a bump, reminding her suddenly of where she was. Of why she was experiencing this sudden surge. Because he’d saved her life by feeding her. Because he loved her.
With a shudder, she forced away the unnatural hunger, and, like a balloon popping, the desire evaporated between them.
They were suddenly just sitting there, facing each other. Clothes torn and gaping open. Their breathing rough from the aftermath of the vampire desire.
Peter’s eyes were wide, his pupils dilated with passion. “Is this what you want?”
It took all of her strength to take a deep breath, battle away the vampire and say, “I want you, but not like that. I want you to want the human in me.”
It took a moment for her statement to register. Then he reached out and buttoned up her shirt. Reached down and put himself back in order.
Samantha wrapped her arms around herself, self-conscious, but he drew her close. She crawled into his lap and grabbed hold of his shirt. “It’ll be all right.” He brushed a kiss across her forehead.
But as she considered all that had happened, she wondered how anything could ever be right again.
Chapter 32
S omehow they got all of the injured vampires into Ryder’s apartment.
While Melissa and Ryder tended to Meghan, Blake and Diego, Peter and Diana left to take care of the bodies of Sloan and his assistant.
Melissa took a quick look at Samantha’s wound and given that it was almost totally healed, left her in a spare bedroom while she cared for the others. It was almost morning, so Samantha called the shelter to let everyone know she was fine. After, she let herself rest for a short time, needing to regain not only more of her physical strength, but some control over her emotions after what had happened with Peter.
A little over an hour had passed when she rose from the bed, borrowed a T-shirt from Melissa to replace her torn and blood-stained blouse, and checked on her friends.
She was surprised to find Meghan and Blake cuddled together in bed, holding each other as they slept. It was probably a combination of their weakness and the coming of the sun that kept them from rousing as she entered the room.
Diego, however, was alert as she sat on the edge of his bed. “How are you, mi amigo?”
He ran his hand over the wounds in his abdomen. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been close to death. So close to welcoming the peace it would bring.”
“I understand,” she said and sighed harshly. “Except for losing Peter, death wasn’t such a scary thing.”
Diego was silent for a moment before he said, “Esperanza?”
“She’s at your lair. We assumed you would want to say goodbye.”
He gazed straight up at the ceiling, but that didn’t stop her from seeing the tears that came to his eyes and spilled down the side of his face. “I should have protected her better.”
“Sometimes we can’t protect those we care about.”
“Funny thing for you to say, querida,” Diego chastised.
She gave him a puzzled look.
“The shelter. All of us. Ryder. You’ve sacrificed yourself time and time again for so many,” he explained.
Samantha shrugged, which brought a twinge of pain to her injury, reminding her of the truth of his words. “What else could I do, Diego?”
“Think of yourself first for once,” he said. “The good detective. You love him. But I also suspect you’re ready to sacrifice what you want so that he doesn’t have to deal with the complications of loving a vampire.”
They had been friends for too long, obviously. Diego had known exactly what she’d been thinking. She averted her gaze, afraid of what else he might see as she said, “Tonight in the van—”
“It was marvelous, Samantha.”
Her head popped up at his comment. “You felt it?”
“We are all connected now. We all felt it, only…” His voice trailed off, his tone uncertain before he finished. “It was more than vampire, Samantha. It was what we all wished we still had, but can’t because…”
“We’re vampires. What we feel…It’s all wrong, Diego. It’s wrong to drag Peter further into my world.”
Diego sat up in bed and gripped her hand tightly. “It was real, Samantha. It was more human than vampire. It can be what you’ve always wanted.”
What she’d always wanted was to find real love and an honorable man to share it with. It occurred to her that she finally had just that. “A vampire and a human—”
“Do you see Ryder and Diana? Do you see how strongly they’ve bonded?”
“Foley says she is dark inside.”
“Foley,” Diego said with an annoyed and regal huffiness. “Foley’s an idiot. She’s dark, but it’s the light of the love inside her that sustains him.”
Samantha wanted to believe her friend. Wanted so much to think that it was possible for her and Peter to get past all that had happened in the past few days and give their relationship a real shot. “What if—”
“Regrets are for the weak, mi amiga, and you have never been weak. You proved that tonight,” he said. Before she could say anything else, he dismissed her. “I am tired now. Go. Wait for the good detective to come back.”
She did as he asked. Simon was comfortably settled on the sofa, reading a book. Melissa was on the phone, giving someone instructions and indicating that she’d be at the hospital later.
A hard life that of a keeper, Samantha thought, realizing that the young pregnant woman had just spent the better part of the night tending to her friends and now had to deal with her everyday life. But then Sebastian stepped out of the kitchen and came to stand beside his wife.
<
br /> Sebastian held her and whispered, “I’ll walk you over. Stay to make sure you’re fine.”
They shared a kiss before they left the apartment. The emotions the scene roused were too strong. Reminded Samantha too painfully of how she wanted someone to share her life.
She had to leave. Go back to the shelter and try to get her life back in order. But the front door opened before she could reach it.
Diana and Peter walked in. Peter stopped short before her and shoved his hands in his pockets. He jingled the change there in a nervous habit that was becoming increasingly familiar and endearing.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Feeling better. And you?”
He shot an anxious glance over his shoulder and Diana took the cue. She walked to the back of the apartment and the stairs that led to another floor.
“I’m…confused. Concerned. We just checked two bodies into the morgue and had to explain why we had them.” He stared at his feet and shook his head. “I don’t think they’ll charge us. After all, Sloan was wanted for five counts of murder and kidnapping, but we did mess up the crime scene. They may ask for my badge. And Diana’s.”
“I’m sorry. I never—”
He raised his hand abruptly to silence her. “Don’t apologize. And don’t run away, because right now, you’re the only thing in my life I’m sure about.”
“Me?” she nearly croaked. “You’re sure about me?”
“Yes. You,” he answered, no hesitation or doubt in his voice. He took a step closer. “Whatever else may happen—”
“Whatever else? Like what? Maybe getting you killed?” She backed away from him.
“That won’t happen. We took care of Sloan.” He walked toward her and kept on walking until he had her backed against the wall where she could no longer run.
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