by Michele Hauf
Sadly, seconds were all the time they had. They were the wrong kind of strangers, opposites in every way, from the true rhythm of her heartbeat to the name she had called him and what it meant. Protector.
Riding the crest of the temporary time stall, and reveling in the enormity of the pleasure this awkward intimacy gave him, St. John waited to see what she’d do next. Which of them might finally break the spell.
With her chest against his, the beat of life within her seemed strong and slightly intimidating, coming from an organ that monitored itself and needed no reminder to function. He had forgotten how loud a mortal heart could sound. The noise filled his ears.
The heat she radiated was the best thing of all. Soaking it up as though he had never been privy to such warmth before, and as though he’d never get enough, St. John whispered, “What I’m not telling you may come back to bite us both. You will be marked now, from this day forward, as mine. Because of your request for help, and because this is the only way to accomplish that, you will forever crave this touch as much as I will.”
His sigh stirred her fine, baby-soft hair. One lustrous strand tickled his face.
“There is payment due for every action, you see,” he went on. “This closeness is mine.”
With his mouth in her hair, he heard the blood rushing through her veins, beneath her ivory skin, sing a song that called to him as seductively as her body had. That blood meant life. Living, breathing, life. Fragile. Heated. Special. Mortal.
Take me...Madison’s blood sang.
Drink me.
But those were the rogue vampires’ thoughts, not his own. He was tapping into their desires, too, which only somewhat paralleled his. Distance had to be encouraged from the delicate arteries just centimeters from his lips. He wasn’t one of them, and never had been. Christopher St. John had never bitten anyone...for sport.
With that protest live in him, St. John reluctantly and with the greatest effort allowed Madison to tear herself away from his embrace. Once free, she raised her hand and slapped him hard across his face, as he’d known she would. For all the world, he wouldn’t have stopped her.
“Ready?” he asked.
Smiling grimly, and without waiting for a reply, he took a handful of silver spandex and backed up, pulling her overheated, angry, extremely luscious body through the oblivious crowd.
Chapter 4
The suddenness of finding herself fleeing from the dance floor came as a surprise, and meant that the arrogant bastard beside her might actually be keeping his word about getting her to safety.
After all the touchy-feely personal exploration that she’d had no ability to stop, and may even have helped along in a moment of complete mental lapse, Madison didn’t know what to make of any of this. She refused to look closely at the guy holding on to her, afraid of actually believing her brother, and that gorgeous British males could potentially be vampires.
Surely this guy had put a goddamn spell on her?
She had always believed Stewart, one hundred percent, in the past. So, what if vampires were real? Conversely, what if Stewart’s research amounted to a pile of nonsense, which was much more likely the case?
As this guy whisked her through the crowd, Madison kept unuttered cuss words to herself. Shouting obscenities in a night club would be a very bad idea. Any incident centered on her might make the headlines.
Every nerve in her body twanged from the illicit touch of the man who had hold of her. In the case of a quick exit, though, he appeared to be helpful.
At least they were moving.
The fact that her pulse raced was an annoyance. This gorgeous guy leading her might have wanted to help her for dubious reasons, but in his brief embrace she had nearly forgotten about everything else—all the bad things, all the work she had to do.
This was a grim reflection on her present state of mind. She wasn’t often fooled by offers and false ardor from people who wanted something from her, either because of her job or merely to score points by bedding a minor celebrity.
Probably, this guy wanted one of those things.
The arrogant male hadn’t introduced himself. He hadn’t rejected the vampire foreplay, or shunned the title of Protector, a term her brother’s notes had listed as being the vampires’ liaison to the rest of the world’s population.
Of course, this guy could simply have been playing the game she’d started, toying with her by making spooky small talk. She had brought the whole monster thing up. Without that freaky conversation, their meeting might have gone in a different direction, despite her former resolve.
Protector and predator were probably interchangeable terms in swanky nightclubs.
“This is far enough,” she said after passing through some of the club’s back rooms.
“Not nearly far enough,” he countered in that deep masculine voice of his, speaking over one impressively broad shoulder.
They moved on.
He’d said there was a back door somewhere.
The club was aptly named, and much larger than it appeared from the outside. Striding through dim corridors, dodging people doing all sorts of activities that shouldn’t have been open for public viewing, Madison began to breathe in the dank, stale smells of the original portion of the old building. Eventually, the hallways narrowed and the people disappeared.
They were moving quickly through a dark area. She had voluntarily trod the fine line between remaining safe and tiptoeing toward trouble by going out alone tonight, and by asking this stranger to help her. Whatever happened next, she was responsible.
Damn though, he seemed to have the eyes of an owl. A twinge of concern surfaced over that, because she couldn’t see a thing.
Maybe he had vampire eyes?
Wanting to kick herself for the cynicism, she quickly replaced that thought with another.
Her strange bodyguard was rescuing her from a bunch of idiots bent on trouble, but he could just as easily be taking her from the club for nefarious purposes of his own. He, or someone like him, could have taken all four Yale girls away in a similar manner, pretending to take charge of their safety. Those girls had just dropped off the face of the earth.
Finally, her strange guide led her through an unlocked back door. They emerged into an alley. Hit by a blast of cold night air that seemed extreme after the closeness of the club, Madison sighed with relief. This guy had done what he said he would, but her nerves remained jumpy. Her skin felt red-hot where his hand fastened to her wrist.
He didn’t stop in the alley, or show signs of slowing. Rounding the corner of the club’s exterior, Madison dug in her heels, sliding on a filthy stretch of pavement.
“It’s quite possible this won’t be far enough,” he said with a tug that effectively got her moving again.
“Wait a minute. Stop.” Madison swallowed gulps of the chilled night air. “You’re saying those idiots watching me might follow us all the way out here?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Pursuing you, or me?”
This earned her a lingering look.
“Okay. So, why me?” she asked, deciphering his look. “They recognized me?”
“You’re beautiful, exotic,” he said. “In that outfit, you look like a piece of some distant constellation, and yet you feel like the sun. Who wouldn’t want to be close to that?”
“Even taken as a compliment, is that supposed to make sense?”
“It does if you know what your pursuers are, and what drives them,” he said.
Before she could address that, he pulled her off balance, tipping her sideways onto the hood of a conveniently parked car. She landed in a compromising position with her skirt hiked up and her bare legs dangling over an icy metal fender. No blaring car alarm went off to warn anybody within hearing range. There was no one around to resp
ond to a shout.
Primed to fight, Madison struggled to get up. “You can’t tell me this position helps in a getaway.”
“Yet it demonstrates how easily you might be overpowered by someone stronger than yourself.”
She was held down by her companion’s hands as he arched over her. His outrageously angular face came close enough to see each shadow that outlined his face in the faint illumination of a nearby streetlight.
“Okay. I get that,” she said.
Light eyes searched hers intently. She avoided the scrutiny by glancing away. Adrenaline spiked through her in a sharp, nasty flood. Usually she thrived on this kind of scrambled energy.
“I need you to listen, and to pay attention,” he said. “You requested my help, and I am helping. At least I’m trying to, because danger is close behind. Can’t you sense it, smell it? Aren’t journalists supposed to have a nose for danger?”
“My reactions to everything so far have danger written all over them,” she said pointedly, referring to her current position on her back. “What I’m smelling is bad, and way too close to me right now.”
The comment hadn’t been lost on the man hovering above her. He had the audacity to crack a smile, and said ominously, “Do you want to continue to argue, discuss the mysteries of the world, or get away from what could turn out to be your worst nightmare? They are coming.”
“Then it might be a good idea to let me up and dial whatever the hell the emergency number is in England.”
“What will you do then? Run? How far do you think you’d get on your own, not knowing the city?”
“Farther than this.”
Her next intake of air drove this guy’s scent deep into her lungs. The masculine odors, topped by the faintest trace of musk, had nothing artificial or perfumed in them. No hint of aftershave, because it was highly possible, she again thought cynically, that vampires, being the walking undead, couldn’t grow a five-o’clock shadow.
“Just who is the danger here, anyway?” she demanded.
When he turned his head to listen to a sound she didn’t hear, another round of apprehension struck her. He sniffed the air, in the manner of an animal detecting its prey.
“What the hell?” She resumed her struggle to rise. He held her easily—this mystery man who possessed a graceful, threatening, controlled elegance that made him more than a little frightening and at the same time disarmingly seductive. Sort of like a big, sleek panther decked out in a really expensive, perfectly tailored suit.
His eyes might have been blue. She upheld her refusal to check them out. Every horror movie she’d ever seen proposed that it would be suicidal to meet a vampire’s gaze, though the same should be said for all predators.
She figured that looking into the eyes of any incredibly chic bastard would be the equivalent of handing him her hotel key. On her back like this, underdressed and on a side street, she wasn’t going to take that chance.
Screw the heat beating at the air between them. Getting away was urgent. This man was too darn sexy for anyone’s good, and pushed all her buttons, some of which shouldn’t have been up for debate.
Kicking out with her legs, she managed to sit up.
She froze.
“Oh, shit,” she said, the sound of her pounding heart nearly drowning out everything in the surroundings. “You weren’t kidding, were you? I think I hear them.”
Her companion nodded. “They’re young and persistent. They’ve found the scent.”
“What scent?”
“Yours,” he said.
That reply, made so casually, brought on a quick stab of real fear. “Let me go,” she demanded.
He obliged.
* * *
St. John let Madison slip off the car, regretting the necessity. Emotions, long ago buried along with his mortality, had no place here.
He was helping her, not completely for personal reasons, but in favor of keeping bloodsuckers away from the unsuspecting crowds. At the same time, he was preventing another international incident.
The oncoming gang of young vampires demanded action. Their imminent approach needled his skin like tiny pricks from the point of an annoyingly icy blade. He needed them to follow, and had allowed them to play catch-up.
But something else nagged at his conscience: Madison Chase’s heartbeat. When he had pinned her to the hood of the car, their hearts—the beats, rhythm and pulse—had shared an intimate moment on a subconscious level of awareness, as if they’d met like this before.
He didn’t fully understand this new sensation, and found it disturbing.
“Go now,” he said, and she rocked back on her heels as though unsure of how to respond to her sudden freedom.
“What will you do?” she asked tentatively, brushing fiery strands of silky hair back from her face.
“Wait for them.”
St. John wanted to touch those flaming strands, and press them close to his face. He wanted his hands back on her.
“By yourself?” she asked. “You’ll wait for them by yourself?”
“Go,” he repeated. “I recommend that you start right this minute.”
She turned, and started walking. Then she stopped as though halted by a hidden roadblock, and just stood there.
St. John found himself wondering why she’d blow her chance to get away from him, as well as the others, if she was scared. He wasn’t holding her there physically. He hadn’t imposed his will.
For a fleeting, perhaps untrustworthy moment, it seemed possible that she had hesitated, not because of the bond he’d set in place between them on the dance floor, but because she was contemplating the same strange attraction to him that he was experiencing with her.
There was no ignoring the heat of having her so close. He fisted his hands to keep from reaching for her.
“What part of right this minute don’t you get?” he said.
“The part you’re leaving out.”
“The devil is in the details, Madison, and he’s not very attractive.”
“I’m familiar with the devil.”
“Somehow,” St. John said, “I don’t believe that’s true.”
His shoulders ached as the metaphorical knife pricks got deeper, warning that the time for discourse with Madison was over. He felt a pang of remorse over that. She was beautiful, radiant and alive, but it was nearly too late to keep the identity of the approaching vampires from her. One look at those rogues, up close, and Madison would know for sure that their vampire foreplay on the dance floor hadn’t been a game at all.
His interest in her had to wait. All five of the misbehaving misfits were rounding the corner. The sight of the group caused Madison to stumble backward.
“Do this for me, if not for yourself,” he said to her. “Run.”
“Not without you.” Her voice quivered.
“You’re afraid of me,” he pointed out, using up precious time they didn’t have.
“But more afraid of them,” she admitted.
Bloody hell! The woman was interfering with the unnatural order of things by sticking her pert little nose where it didn’t belong. She couldn’t be privy to his dealings with these creeps, and not facing them, not dealing with them in the manner they deserved—the manner necessary for maintaining his community’s anonymity—was already weighing heavily on him.
He wasn’t used to distractions or abandoning one cause for another. This went against his grain, an impressively nonhuman grain. The purest form of immortality animated his body, forging within him a direct link to the source of all immortal blood on earth. Only six other beings in the world could claim this, if in fact they still existed.
They had been the special Seven. Seven men chosen for the gift of life everlasting, and all that came with this gift. A fraternity of souls designed for a
n endless quest.
He had lived through numerous crusades, continent expansions and too damn many world wars. Given all that, what would be the cost of the possible loss of one woman, met at random, in comparison? Why risk anything for her?
When her eyes met his, perhaps accidentally and perhaps because he had unknowingly wished for it, the impact of the connection struck him like a fresh wound to his chest. He knew that losing Madison, if she were to be harmed, or if she ran off into the night, would be not only a shame, it would be unbearable.
He craved the fire. Her fire. He craved her heat, and the beautiful body radiating so much of it. He tried to get a handle on this as he held her gaze.
Her blue eyes, large, round and wary, hinted at depths that contrasted her scandalous state of undress. In those seconds, with their eyes meeting, St. John confirmed that Madison Chase was indeed much more than she seemed on the surface. More than heat and sparkle and a partially naked display.
She was a fighter, strong-willed, confident, and maybe even slightly mad. These were characteristics she shared with her brother, and the very traits that also made her a threat.
Did she want to be like her brother, pursuing vampires? Had she come to London for the same reasons that Stewart Chase had come here for, using the missing girls as a ruse to further their own agenda?
The uncertainty obviously fueling her visible tremors hadn’t budged her. Five vampires heading her way didn’t have her running. For all her wariness and his warnings, when faced with the unknown, Madison Chase was concerned for him.
The Protector was being aided by the damsel in distress.
You really are going to be a pain, Red.
Smelling death’s fetid breath, feeling its presence surf across his senses, St. John whirled. Fighting for control of his automatic reactions that would have made him walk toward that oncoming darkness and confront what was hidden within it, he instead took Madison’s hand.