by J. R. Ward
"You're almost ready," he said softly. "And it's coming fast."
If the it he was referring to had anything to do with their getting naked, she was totally on board with the plan. My God, this had to be what people talked about when they waxed poetic about sex. She didn't question the need to have him inside of her. She only knew that she was going to die if he didn't take his pants off. Now.
Beth reached out, curious to touch him, but when she let go of the wall she started to fall. In what seemed like one motion, he put the cigarillo between those cruel lips of his and caught her easily. As he swept her off the floor, she leaned into him, not even bothering to put up a pretense of fighting. He handled her as if she were weightless, crossing the room in two strides.
When he laid her down on the futon his hair fell forward, and she lifted her hand, touching the black waves. They were thick, soft. She put her palm on his face, and though he seemed surprised, he didn't pull back.
God, everything about him radiated sex, from the strength in his body to the way he moved to the smell of his skin. He was like no man she'd ever come across before. And her body knew it just as clearly as her mind did.
"Kiss me," she said.
He hovered above her, a silent menace.
On impulse her hands went to the lapels of his jacket, and she tried to pull him down to her mouth.
He captured both her wrists in one of his hands. "Easy."
Easy? She didn't want easy. Easy was not part of the plan.
She struggled against his hold, and when she couldn't get free she arched her back. Her breasts strained against her T-shirt, and she rubbed her thighs together, anticipating what it would feel like to have him between them.
If he'd only put his hands—
"Sweet Jesus," he muttered.
She smiled up at him, relishing the sudden hunger in his face. "Touch me."
The stranger started shaking his head. As if he were trying to clear it.
She opened her lips and moaned in frustration.
"Pull up my shirt." She arched again, offering her body to him, dying to know if there was something even hotter inside of her, something he could bring out with his hands. "Do it."
He took the cigarillo from his mouth. His eyebrows were drawn tight, and she had some vague thought that she should be terrified. Instead, she brought her knees up and lifted her hips off the futon. She imagined him kissing the insides of her thighs, finding her sex with his mouth. Licking her.
Another moan boiled out of her mouth.
Wrath was dumbfounded.
And he wasn't a vampire who got struck stupid very often.
Holy shit.
This half-human was the hottest thing he'd ever gotten anywhere near. And he'd cozied up to a lightning strike once or twice before.
It was the red smoke. That had to be it. And the stuff must be getting to him, too, because he was more than ready to take her.
He eyed the cigarillo.
Well, that's some damn good rationalizing, he thought. Too bad the shit was a relaxant, not an aphrodisiac.
She groaned again, her body undulating in a sexy wave, her legs opening wide. The scent of her arousal hit him hard as a body shot. God, he would have been sent to his knees if he hadn't already been sitting down.
"Touch me," she moaned.
Wrath's blood pumped as if he were in a flat-out run, his erection throbbing like it had its own heartbeat.
"That's not what I'm here for," he said.
"Touch me anyway."
He knew he should say no. This wasn't fair to her. And they needed to talk.
Maybe he should come back later in the night.
She arched up, pushing against the hand he'd clamped around her wrists. As her breasts strained against her T-shirt, he had to close his eyes.
Time to go. It was really time to—
Except he couldn't leave without at least having a taste.
Yeah, but he was a selfish bastard if he laid one finger on her. A nasty selfish bastard to take any of what she was offering in the haze of smoke.
With a curse, Wrath opened his eyes.
Man, he was so cold. Cold down to his marrow. And she was hot. Hot enough to make that ice go away, at least for a little while.
And it had been so long for him.
He willed the lights in the room off. Then he used his mind to close the back door, usher the cat into the bathroom, and slide home every lock in the apartment.
He carefully balanced the cigarillo on the edge of the table next to them and let her wrists go. Her hands grabbed his jacket, trying to push it back from his shoulders. He wrenched the thing off, and as it hit the floor with a thud, she laughed with satisfaction. His holster of daggers followed, but he kept that within reach of the futon.
Wrath bent down over her. Her breath was sweet and minty as he captured her lips with his mouth. When he felt her flinch, he pulled back immediately. Frowning, he touched the side of her mouth.
"Forget it," she told him, pulling at his shoulders.
The hell he would. God help that human who'd hurt her. Wrath was going to rip the guy's limbs off and leave him to bleed out in the street.
He dropped a soft kiss to the healing bruise and then drew his tongue down her neck. This time when she thrust her breasts out, he slid his hand under her thin shirt and onto her smooth, warm skin. Her belly was flat, and he spanned it with his hand, filling the space between her hip bones. Greedy to know the rest of her, he peeled her shirt off and tossed it aside. Her bra was pale in color, and he traced the edges of it with his fingertips before cupping the creamy swells with his hands. Her breasts filled his palms, her nipples tight buds underneath the soft satin.
Wrath's control snapped.
He bared his fangs, let out a hiss, and bit through the bra's front closure. The thing snapped back, and he latched onto one of her nipples with his lips, drawing it into his mouth. As he suckled, he shifted his body and stretched out on top of her, falling in between her legs. She absorbed his weight with a throaty sigh.
Her hands came between them as she reached for the front of his shirt, but he didn't have the patience to let her undress him. He lifted up and ripped the material off his body, popping buttons and sending them scattering across the floor. When he came back down, her breasts hit the wall of his chest and her body surged under his.
He wanted to kiss her mouth again, but he was way past anything soft and gentle, so he worshiped her breasts with his tongue and then moved down to her belly. When he got to the waistband of her boxers, he drew them off her long, smooth legs.
Wrath felt something in his head pop as her scent reached him in a fresh wave. He was perilously close to orgasm already, his release poised in his shaft, his body shaking with the need to take her. He put his hand between her thighs. She was so wet and hot that he growled.
Crazed though he was, he had to taste her before he invaded her.
Drawing off his sunglasses, he put them next to the cigarillo before pressing kisses over her hips and across the tops of her thighs. Her hands tangled in his hair as she urged him exactly where he was headed.
He kissed her softest skin, drawing her core into his mouth, and she came over and over again for him until he couldn't fight his own need any longer. He pulled back, shrugged out of his pants, and covered her with his body once more.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, and he hissed as her heat burned his erection.
He used what was left of his strength to pull back and look down into her face.
"Don't stop," she breathed. "I want to feel you inside me."
Wrath dropped his head into the fragrant hollow of her neck. And slowly drew his hips back. The tip of his erection slid into place beautifully, and he sheathed himself in her body with one powerful stroke.
He let out a bellow of ecstasy.
Heaven. Now he knew what heaven was like.
* * *
Chapter Nine
In his bedroom, Mr. X ch
anged into black cargo pants and pulled on a black nylon shirt. He was satisfied by the way the meeting with the society had gone this afternoon. Every single lesser had shown up. Most of them had fallen into line well enough. A few were going to be trouble. And a small number of them had tried sucking up.
Which had gotten them nowhere.
At the conclusion of the session, he'd chosen twenty-eight more to stay in the Caldwell area, based on what he knew about their reputations and the impressions he had of them up close. Twelve of this group were on the very top of their game, and those he'd split equally into two prime squadrons. The other sixteen he'd cut into four groups of secondaries.
None of them liked the arrangement. They were used to working on their own, and the primes in particular resented being tied down. Tough. The advantage to the squadron orientation was that he could assign different parts of the city to them, establish quotas, and monitor performance more closely.
The rest he'd sent back to their outposts.
Now that he had his troops aligned and assigned, he was going to focus on the information-gathering procedure. He had an idea as to how to make it work, one he was going to beta test this evening.
Before he headed out for the night, he tossed his pit bulls two pounds of raw hamburger apiece. He liked to keep them hungry, so they were fed every other day. He'd had the dogs, both males, for about five years, and he chained them on opposite sides of his house, one in front, one in back. It was a logical arrangement from a defense perspective, but there was also the matter of expediency. He'd tied them up together once and they'd gone for each other's throats.
He picked up his bag, locked the house, and walked across his lawn. The ranch was an early-seventies nightmare of fake-brick siding and he'd purposely kept the outside ugly. He needed to fit in, and the rural neighborhood's price point wasn't breaking a hundred thousand anytime soon.
Besides, the house was immaterial. The land was what mattered. Ten acres, so he had privacy. Plus there was an old barn in back that was surrounded by trees. He'd turned that into his workshop, and the buffer of oaks and maples was going to be important.
After all, screams could carry.
He fingered his ring of keys until he got to the right one. Because he was going to be working tonight, he was leaving his only extravagance, a black Hummer, in the garage. The four-year-old Chrysler Town & Country minivan was much better cover, and it took him ten minutes to drive the POS downtown.
Caldwell's Whore Valley was a stretch of three dimly lit, trash-strewn blocks over by the suspension bridge. Traffic was heavy tonight down the corridor of iniquity, and he pulled over to watch the action under a broken light. Cars meandered the dark street, brake lights flaring as drivers inspected what was working the pavement. In the thick summer heat, the girls were out in a big way, tottering in their mile-high shoes, their breasts and asses barely covered by easy-access clothing.
Mr. X zipped open his bag, taking out a hypodermic needle filled with heroin and a hunting knife. He hid both in the door and put the passenger-side window down before easing into the flow of cars.
He was just one of many, he thought. Another schmo, trying to get a little.
"You lookin' for a date?" he heard one of the whores call out.
"Wanna ride?" another said, shaking her ass like it was a can of paint.
On the second pass, he found what he was looking for, a blonde with long legs and a big rack.
Just the kind of whore he would have bought for himself if he'd still had an operational phallus.
He was going to enjoy this, Mr. X thought as he hit the brakes. Killing what he couldn't have anymore carried its own special satisfaction.
"Hey, sugar," she said, coming over. She put her forearms on the door and leaned in through the window. She smelled like cinnamon gum and sweaty perfume. "How you doin' tonight?"
"I could be better. What's it going to cost me to buy a smile?"
She eyed the inside of the car, his clothes. "Fifty will get you off good. Any way you like."
"That's too much." But he was just playing. She was the one he wanted.
"Forty?"
"Let me see your tits."
She flashed him.
He smiled, unlocking the doors. "What's your name?"
"Cherry Pie. But you can call me anything you like."
Mr. X drove them around the corner to a secluded spot under the bridge.
He tossed the money down on the floor at her feet, and when she bent over to pick it up, he drove the needle into the back of her neck and pushed the plunger home. Moments later she slumped like a rag doll.
Mr. X smiled and moved her back against the seat so she was sitting up. Then he tossed the needle out the window, where it joined about a dozen others, and put the van in drive.
In his underground clinic, Havers looked up from his microscope, startled out of his concentration. The grandfather clock was chiming in the corner of his lab, telling him it was time for the evening repast, but he didn't want to stop working. He put his eye back to the scope, wondering if he'd imagined what he saw. After all, desperation could be affecting his objectivity.
But no, the blood cells were living.
Breath left his lungs on a shudder.
His race was almost free.
He was almost free.
Finally, stored blood that was still viable.
As a physician, his hands had always been tied when it came to treating patients surgically and addressing certain labor and delivery complications. Real-time transfusions from vampire to vampire were possible, but as their race was scattered and their numbers small, it could be hard to find donors in a timely manner.
For centuries he'd wanted to establish a blood bank. The trouble was, vampire blood was highly unstable, and storage of it outside the body had always been impossible. Air, that life-sustaining, invisible curtain blanketing the earth, was one cause of the problem, and it didn't take a lot of those molecules to contaminate a sample. Just one or two and the plasma disintegrated, leaving the red and white blood cells to fend for themselves. Which, of course, they couldn't do.
At first it didn't make sense to him. There was oxygen in blood. That was why it was red after leaving the lungs. The discrepancy had led him to some fascinating discoveries about vampire pulmonary function, but had ultimately gotten him no closer to his objective.
He'd tried drawing the blood and channeling it immediately into an airtight container. This most obvious solution didn't work. The disintegration occurred anyway, just at a decelerated pace. This had suggested there was another factor at work, something inherent in the corporal environment that was missing when the blood was removed from the body. He'd tried isolating samples in warmth, in cold. In suspensions of saline or human plasma.
Frustration had kept his mind burning through the permutations of his experiments. He ran more tests and tried different approaches. Retried. Walked away from the project. Came back to it.
Decades passed. And more decades.
And then personal tragedy gave him a very intimate reason to solve the problem. Following the deaths in childbirth of his shellan and infant son a little over two years ago, he'd become obsessed and had started from scratch.
His own need to feed was the driver.
He usually needed to drink only every six months, because his bloodline was strong. After his beautiful Evangaline's death, he'd waited as long as he could, until he had taken to his bed with the pain of the hunger. When he'd finally asked for help, he'd hated the fact that he wanted to live badly enough to drink from another female. And he'd allowed himself to consider the feeding only because he'd been convinced that it wouldn't be as it had been with Evangaline. Surely he wouldn't betray her memory by taking pleasure in someone else's blood.
There were so many whom he had helped that it wasn't hard to find a female willing to offer herself. He'd chosen a friend who was unmated and had hoped he'd be able to keep his sadness and humiliation to himself.
>
It had turned out to be a nightmare. He'd held back for so long that as soon as he'd smelled blood, the predator in him had come out. He'd attacked his friend and drunk so hard, he'd had to stitch up her wrist afterward.
He'd nearly bitten her hand off.
His actions flew in the face of his notions of himself. He'd always been a gentleman, a scholar, a healer. A male not subject to the base desires of his race.
But then, he'd always been well fed.
And the terrible truth was, he'd relished the taste of that blood. The smooth, warm flow down his throat, the roaring strength that came afterward.
He'd felt pleasure. And he'd only wanted more.
The shame had made him retch. And he'd vowed never to drink of another's vein again.
It was a promise he'd kept, though as a result he'd grown weak, so weak that focusing his mind was like herding a fog bank. His starvation was a constant ache in his belly. And his body, craving sustenance that food couldn't give it, had cannibalized itself to keep him alive. He'd lost so much weight his clothes hung off of him like bags, his face turning haggard and gray.
But the state he was in had shown him the way.
The solution was obvious.
You had to feed that which was hungry.
An airtight process coupled with a sufficient quantity of human blood and he had his living cells.
Under the microscope, he watched as the vampire cells, larger and more irregularly shaped compared to the human ones, slowly consumed what he had given them. The human count was decreasing in the sample, and when it was extinguished he was willing to bet the viability of the vampire component would dwindle down to nothing.
All he had to do was conduct a clinical trial. He would extract a pint from a female, mix with it an appropriate proportion of human blood, and then transfuse himself.
If everything went well, he would set up a donor and storage program. Patients would be saved. And those who chose to forgo the intimacy of drinking could live their lives in peace.
Havers looked up from the microscope, suddenly aware that he'd been staring at the cells for twenty minutes. The salad course for luncheon would be waiting on the table upstairs for him.