by D
He drew in a deep breath and reached out, spreading his considerable telepathic awareness to ensure there were no enemies waiting to ambush their arrival, no unwanted spies lurking about to report. He didn’t care so much for himself—he had more right to be in Edinburgh than most—but he didn’t want Erskine’s filthy eyes on Julia. The Scottish lord would know everything about her soon enough. That couldn’t be helped. But there was no need to help him figure out why she was with Lachlan and where they’d been in the meantime.
“Do you have a hidey-hole here in Edinburgh, or should I call a hotel?” Julia asked as she sat next to him, her long legs making a silky sound as she crossed one over the other beneath the tight skirt she’d donned for their arrival. It seemed a questionable choice to him. Edinburgh was cold this time of year. But he couldn’t fault the view. Or what the smooth slide of her skin did to his cock. Her fingers tightened on his, as if to demand he answer her question.
He turned with a jaundiced look, one eyebrow raised in cynical response. “Hidey-hole?” he repeated. “Does that mean you think I have some dank basement with a moldy mattress waiting for me?”
She tsked loudly, pale eyes rolling behind thick lashes that he knew she’d darkened with some kind of makeup. “Of course, not. Let me rephrase . . . Lord Lachlan, do you have an estate nearby, where we might rest from our journey, or should I, your faithful lover, secure accommodations suitable to your august self?”
“I lost you at ‘Lord Lachlan.’ I think you should always address me as such.”
She snorted her opinion of that. “Fuck me.”
Her pale skin reflected the golden glow of his eyes as he scanned her elegant form, from her sleek legs and firm thighs to the full breasts barely contained behind a virginal white blouse. “With pleasure, princess. Shall we start now, or wait until we reach the basement?”
Julia laughed, the sound once again full of an innocent joy that made him want to protect her from a world that would do its best to destroy her. Given her job, and the sorrows life had already visited on her, he didn’t know how she’d managed to maintain that touch of innocence.
“I’m serious, Lachlan. Do we need a hotel?”
The jet pulled to a rocking stop, as the pilot spoke over the intercom. “We’ve arrived, Ms. Harper. If you want to avoid entanglements, I can go straight to the hangar, and you can deplane there.”
Julia looked over at him.
“I don’t think it’s necessary, but why risk it?” he said, in answer to her silent question.
She nodded and pushed the intercom button. “The hangar, please, Captain. Thank you.”
“It’ll be a few extra minutes. Remain seated, please.”
They sat in companionable silence, fingers intertwined as they took a tour of the Edinburgh airport via plane, ending up at a small private hangar whose door rolled back as they approached. Ten minutes later, the jet halted again, the engines winding down with a high-pitched noise that made him wish for ear plugs.
“Can I get up now?” he asked playfully, squeezing the hand she’d kept clasped with his, as if afraid he’d escape.
“I just wanted to be sure you didn’t try to walk about the cabin while we were moving. I know your type.”
“I don’t have a type, princess. I simply am.”
“Groan,” she said, putting sound to the word.
He laughed as he stood and pulled her into a tight embrace. “If you don’t get me off this plane soon, I’m going to drag you back to that uncomfortable bed and fuck you until you can’t walk.”
She gasped in mock outrage, but there was nothing artificial about the hot flush that stole over her fair skin. “Where are we going?” she asked, somewhat breathlessly. “You never said.”
“Inverness,” he said, drawing a frown from her.
“Inverness? But that’s—”
“A three-hour drive for mere humans. Less for someone with a vampire’s reflexes and night sight.”
“What’s in Inverness?” she asked, still scowling.
“My second-favorite hidey-hole.”
“Drop the hidey-hole crap,” she groused. “Where’s your favorite, by the way?”
“I’ll have to show you that one. You’ll never have heard of it.”
She sighed. “That’s true of most of Scotland, but I’m game. Your car?”
He checked his cell phone. “It’s already there.”
“You know,” Julia said conversationally, “I think I want to be a vampire when I grow up. I like the way everything just shows up when and where you need it.”
Lachlan yanked her close, her breasts crushed against his chest as he lowered his head and put his lips to her ear. “There is no way in hell I’m letting you go vampire. I like you just the way you are, all hot and sexy and filled with delicious blood.”
“It’s not up to you. It’s my—”
“I’ll kill any vampire who touches you.”
She went perfectly still for a moment, then went up on her toes and kissed him, brushing her lips over his once, twice, and then lingering to slip her tongue into his mouth, barely grazing the tips of his fangs. “We could spend the night in the city,” she murmured, her voice husky with desire. “Make the drive tomorrow night instead.”
Lachlan was tempted. He hadn’t gotten anywhere near his fill of her sweet body, and was beginning to think he might never. But that was a thought he wasn’t prepared to face. And there was also the fact that Edinburgh was Erskine’s city, his main base of operations, as close to a lair as he ever got. Although his activities more closely resembled those of a human mobster than a vampire lord. By choice, Lachlan thought. Even though it was his vampire blood that had brought Erskine power and wealth, Lachlan had always believed Erskine would have rather been a human king or prince, someone who ruled absolutely, with no care for the people, or the vampires, who looked to him.
With Julia warm against him, Lachlan calculated the time and distance to his home in Inverness, and the fact that sunrise came late this time of year in Scotland. And the truth that he’d been gone too long. He wanted to be home.
“Edinburgh’s not a good city for me, lass.”
She studied him for a moment. “Erskine?”
“Aye.”
Julia gave a sharp nod. She might be sexy as hell and always ready for him, but she was also a woman on a mission to avenge her dead lover. And that thought gave him pause. She must have loved that Masoud fellow a great deal to pursue his killers like this. Maybe she still did. Before she’d met Lachlan, she’d been ready to seduce her way into Erskine’s bed and kill him while he slept. She’d never come out and told Lachlan that was her plan, but he’d caught the fleeting thought in her mind that second night when they’d met at her apartment. He hadn’t pried intentionally, but she’d been projecting strongly at the time, weighing her chances of going it alone, rather than working with him.
“Let’s go,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended, but the possibility that she could be in love with someone else, even a dead man, made him furious. It was an emotion he hadn’t experienced often. Cold rage? Absolutely. But not this directionless fury that he didn’t know what to do with. He grabbed her small suitcase, along with his own and started down the aisle.
Julia clearly sensed the shift in his mood—how could she not? But she didn’t say anything, only gave him a surprised look, then wordlessly picked up her briefcase and followed him to the open hatch and down the deployed stairs.
He waited for her on the ground, swallowing the unwanted feelings, channeling them into something he could use. It was rare for him to have any kind of emotion surface so abruptly, to the point where it affected his behavior without restraint. He was all about discipline and control. He had been since almost two hundred years ago, when virtually everyone and everything he’d known had been
wiped out in a single night’s slaughter. He’d lived twenty-five years as a human, a single night as a vampire, and in the blink of an eye, he’d become the one his clan had looked to, to impose order in the chaos of disaster, and to lead them into a better future.
He held out a hand as Julia took the last few stairs. She didn’t need the help, but then it was more than support he was offering. She placed her slender hand in his much larger palm, squeezing back when he closed his fingers over hers.
Having no bags but the ones they carried, they walked quickly through the terminal, bypassing the crowded passport control in favor of the more discreet, and much faster, portal available to passengers arriving on private aircraft. Julia kept up with his long strides, despite the high heels she’d chosen to wear for reasons known only to her. Lachlan didn’t mind, since they were sexy as hell and made her already long legs seem even longer.
“Where’s your car parked?” she asked, seeming puzzled when he headed for the pick-up zone right outside the terminal building.
He headed for a familiar black Range Rover. “Right here.”
“Isn’t someone supposed to be in the car when it’s parked there?”
Lachlan shrugged as he opened the passenger door. “Not in my world.” He watched her eye the high step of the running board and the even higher seat, probably wondering how the hell she was going to climb up there in that tight skirt. He sure as hell was. But since he didn’t want her to flash every man in the vicinity by pulling her skirt up to free her legs, he put his hands on her waist and lifted her onto the seat. She made a surprised noise that he would never call a squeak—at least not to her face—then tucked her legs into the cab with a graceful slide. She reached for the door handle, but he beat her to it, closing the door with a firm push, then heading around the front of the car and sliding behind the wheel.
They were on the A9, heading north towards Inverness in the thin, late-night traffic, when Julia asked, “How does a person become a vampire?”
He shot her a hard glance.
“Don’t get all pissy with me. I’m just curious.”
“It’s a process,” he said grudgingly. “And most vampires can’t do it. Your blood is drained to the point of death, then replaced by the vamp doing the turning. And it doesn’t always work some people die. As any vampire will who dares to touch you,” he added in a low growl.
She patted his leg. “Point made. No touching.” She left her hand there, rubbing his thigh, as if soothing him. When they’d gone several more miles, she spoke up again. “How would Erskine have known you were in Edinburgh? The airport’s not huge but it’s too big for him to have spies on every gate. And private flights don’t show up on the arrivals board.”
Lachlan glanced over, amused by the idea of Erskine needing watchers to look out for him sneaking into the city. But she wouldn’t see the humor, since she’d undertaken her pursuit of vengeance without having met any vampires. He frowned. Or had she? She’d said she’d spoken to Leighton, but had she also visited the Malibu estate? He eyed her silently. Had she ever indulged? Had some random vampire tasted her blood already? That same fury tried to strangle his throat again, but he choked it back down.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Is the Erskine thing a deep secret or something?”
“Was that your first visit to Raphael’s Malibu estate?” he demanded.
“What? Where’d that come from?”
“Was it?”
She sighed impatiently. “The estate, yes. Malibu, no. Cyn used to live just down the beach from where they are now, in a condo right on the sand. I visited her there before she met Raphael. I’m guessing she’s sold it by now, although I don’t know for sure. Why?”
“You ever meet Raphael before?” he asked, instead of answering.
“Sure. But not there. Cyn and I met for dinner a couple of years ago, not long after she first hooked up with him. He stayed long enough for drinks, then left with Juro and some other guy. Why are you asking me these questions? What does Raphael have to do with Edinburgh?”
“Nothing. Erskine doesn’t need spies to know when I’m in his territory. It’s a vamp thing. I’m powerful enough that if I cross certain boundary lines, he knows I’m there.”
Julia scowled at him for a moment, clearly unsatisfied with his decision to ignore her question about Raphael, but she didn’t push it. Smart woman. Instead, she asked, “But isn’t all of Scotland his territory? Does that mean he’d know even if you entered from somewhere else?”
“Aye. But he wouldn’t care as long as I stayed where he thinks I belong.” He paused. “Well, that’s not true. He’d like me dead no matter where I am, but Edinburgh’s his lair. It’s where he runs all of his businesses from.”
“Does that mean you can’t sneak up on him?” she asked, her words threaded with disbelief. “How are you going to kill him then?”
Lachlan chuckled. “I’ve no need to sneak. It’s not the way we do things, even if it were possible. When I kill him, it will be face-to-face, his power against mine.”
She reached across the center console and laid her hand on his thigh. His cock twitched. “That’s why you should let me kill him,” she said softly. Her fingers squeezed his leg. “I know I didn’t think this through originally, but I didn’t know what I know now, either. We could still do it together, but you could simply distract him. Pay him a proper visit, and while he’s swamped with your presence, I could sneak up and kill him from the shadows. He won’t sense me at all, and no one will be able to blame you.” She paused. “I don’t want you dead, Lachlan.”
He covered her hand with his, partly to keep her from moving any closer to his growing erection. “Ah’m no gonnae die,” he said in his best Scottish burr.
She muttered something under her breath that he doubted was flattering, but didn’t argue. They drove that way for the next hour, with Julia so quiet next to him that he thought she might have dozed off. She’d eased her seat back and appeared to be on the edge of sleep, her gaze on the passing darkness.
It was as he was moving his eyes back to the road that he glanced in the mirror and by pure happenstance caught the red gleam of a vampire’s gaze in the small sedan coming up behind him. Cursing himself for being caught unaware, he cast a targeted whiff of his power at the car and swore silently at what he found. Four vamps. Undoubtedly Erskine’s, though none of them presented a challenge, which made him frown. The vampire lord would have known these vamps had no chance against Lachlan. So what was his game? There was nothing to be gained by having them follow him to Inverness. His home wasn’t a secret, and again, they couldn’t take him anyway. He glanced at Julia. They’d tried to grab her once. Could she be their target? But how did they think to get her with him sitting right next to her?
“Princess,” he said softly, sliding his hand over her knee and up her thigh just under her skirt.
She jerked out of her semi-doze, looking from his hand to his face. “Lachlan?”
“We’ve got visitors. Do you have any weapons on you?”
She started to shake her head, but then hesitated and said, “Just my shoes.”
Lachlan took a second to think about it. Those spike heels of hers would be brutal in a fight, if she knew how to use them. A big “if.” But it didn’t matter, because he had no intention of letting her get that close to the vamps behind them. “Your gun?”
“In my case in the back, and Cyn gave me some special ammo for vampires.” She twisted in her seat to look behind them. “Who is—?”
She never finished her sentence as a glint of light on metal had Lachlan’s head swinging around, just in time to see a second vehicle, this one a much bigger black-on-black SUV, with no running lights of any kind. It sped into sight, seemingly out of nowhere, coming up on his right and swerving toward their vehicle. Lachlan swerved away from him, avoiding a collision,
as he slammed his foot down on the accelerator in an attempt to outpace the black SUV. His Range Rover’s V8 responded sweetly, pulling ahead of the SUV, far enough that they couldn’t try the same maneuver again. For now.
Lachlan’s Rover had more horsepower, but the same modifications that had made it more secure had also made it heavier. He glanced back. Both the enemy vehicles would catch up in a matter of minutes. The question was, were they kidnappers or killers? Either way, he didn’t intend to let them succeed, but it would be nice to know.
Flooring the pedal for one more burst of speed, he spoke to Julia without turning. “I’m going to pull over and—”
“What? No. They’ll kill y—”
“No, they won’t. Trust me. Lock the doors, stay in the car, no matter what you see. This vehicle’s armored to hell and back.”
“I can climb over the seat. Get my gun and—”
“No. You have to trust me. Stay in the car. Please.”
She stared at him for long enough that he was about to knock her out—which he really didn’t want to do. But finally she snapped, “Fine. But if you die—”
“I won’t. Hold on tight.”
She made a growling sound, but gripped the armrest with one hand and the strap of her seatbelt with the other. Lachlan grinned, rather enjoying himself. Things had gotten almost dull over the last few months while Quinn had been stirring things up in Ireland. But now it was his turn. Every potential vampire lord—that is, vampires powerful enough to hold a territory and all that it meant—possessed a unique gift. There was no predicting what it would be, any more than one could predict which vampires would wake on their first night strong versus weak. Quinn was rumored to possess the ability to manipulate fire—to kill or to torture. That bastard Erskine possessed a talent for fire as well, though by all accounts his was no match for Quinn’s. Nonetheless, he had enough to make him a vampire lord, enough to kill lesser vampires and humans. Lachlan glanced automatically at Julia, grateful that Erskine wasn’t in either of the trailing enemy vehicles. He was confident of that.