How do you think she will react when she wakes? The man in the room with Damian asked only moments before. Good question, she thought now. She wanted to take a few minutes, hours, hell, maybe even days to think about that. She could have allowed herself that time if she remained in bed, pretended to still be asleep, but she hadn't and Damian's next words told her that she wouldn't get even another second.
"I should look in on her." Damian's voice carried to her through the doorway. "I have no idea what to expect when she wakes but she should not have to wake alone."
Kailey walked on legs that felt surprisingly steady considering her sudden realization. "It's too late for that, Damian," she said as she moved through the doorway. What she found there indeed looked to be a sitting room as she guessed and Damian's companion was George, someone she wouldn't have guessed.
Both men snapped their heads to look at her, mirrored expressions of surprise and trepidation on their handsome faces. Damian found his voice first, as well as his ability to move. He walked to her and gently gripped her shoulders one in each wide, strong hand. "Kailey, my sweet. I am so glad to see you are awake, but do you feel strong enough to be out of bed so soon?"
"I don't know, Damian," she said and took a small step backward, enough to free herself from his hands. She didn't want him to touch her, not yet. "Do vampires ever feel so weak that they must stay in bed?"
If she hadn't known what he was, that he wasn't alive, that he didn't truly have blood running through his veins to make it possible, she would have sworn he paled. Then again, she thought, the man could breathe. He could eat, he could sigh. Why not be able to do things like go pale and blush, too?
"How much do you remember, my sweet?" Damian asked slowly.
"Everything, I think," she added after a completive moment. She flashed a look at George who seemed glued to his spot and waiting for her to go postal on them or something. Because she wanted to be angry, thought she should be royally pissed at what happened to her because of these two men, she stepped away from Damian and hardened her expression and her voice as she moved closer to George. "You're the reason, aren't you? You're the reason I am…" Dead, she thought but couldn't quite bring herself to say it. She didn't feel dead. For Pete's sake, she could walk, talk, even breathe, she realized as she took a testing breath.
"It is my fault that you were shot," George confirmed with a slow nod, those strangely colored eyes full of remorse. "I didn't know what she planned to do. I should have been able to stop her."
"You knew she had a gun?"
"No. No way. I don't know where the gun came from or why she even felt the need to have it. It's not like she couldn't have done more damage with her bare hands than a bullet."
Kailey's step faltered at that. She stopped only a couple of paces from George and studied him as her mind reeled. Though Jennifer stood an inch or so taller than Kailey, they seemed equal in body mass and muscle. If anything, Kailey thought she might have had a couple of pounds on the girl. Yet, George thought Jennifer could do more damage with her hands than a thirty-two caliber bullet! Yeah, right.
"She looked to kill," Damian said. Kailey started at his words. Somehow she’d managed to forget he remained in the room. "She knew if she set out to maul, chances that she would be stopped before she finished the job were good."
"There was also the chance that unfinished, the injuries she managed to inflict would leave Jennifer alive and changed werewolf," George added.
Kailey glared at the two men, first one and then the other in utter confusion. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. The confusion turned to the anger she looked for and she welcomed the change. "Jennifer is a human, not a werewolf. She's the one who shot me. " She pointed a finger dramatically at George. "And you didn't stop her."
"I'm not the one who shot you, Kailey." The voice came from the main doorway to the hotel room, a small, remorseful voice with a slight quiver to its sound.
Kailey turned around and found Jennifer just inside the room. She wore a snug fitting T-shirt with a pair of hip-hugging blue jeans. Her long hair was pulled into a tight pony tail. She looked more like a teenager than she had when Kailey first met her.
Kailey's gaze dropped to Jennifer's feet. She wore a pair of white scrunch socks with no shoes. That explained why Kailey hadn't heard her enter the room. Then again, Kailey was a vampire now, wasn't she?
Guess my super hearing isn't on line yet, she thought.
"That's not to say that I didn't want to," Jennifer admitted with a pained shrug. Her gaze darted to Damian, to George, to the floor. "But I didn't. I wouldn't have."
"But I saw…" I saw you, Kailey thought, her mind doing a rewind to the party. She saw Jennifer watch as Damian fucked her, saw the contempt on her face.
Wait, she thought and pushed the mental rewind button again. She saw something more, something in that split second as she bowed her head to see if Damian ripped her dress. George. He grabbed Jennifer from behind and lunged with her to one side as if diving out of the path of a speeding vehicle. Blonde hair. A blonde stood mere feet from where George and Jennifer had been, a gun in her hand, her face contorted in anger, her eyes wild with it and something else, something that showed her elevator didn't go all the way up, something clearly insane.
Kailey jerked her head toward Damian who moved closer to her but not yet close enough to touch again.
"Amaranda," he said, his voice low and understanding. He knew that she remembered now. "She is the one who shot you, my sweet."
"Amaranda." The name stirred something in Kailey's frozen memory. "But she wasn't even at the party. Or, at least, she wasn't supposed to be." She turned to George, eyes narrow and accusing. "But she was, wasn't she. She left the werewolf lair and came here to crash the party."
"She did show up, yes." Damian confirmed, his voice tight.
"And she shot me. Why? You said something last night about her temper. Why is she so angry?"
"She is the oldest female of our pack," George answered. "My being the leader and oldest male should put us together, however it does not. I do not choose to mate with Amaranda."
"And she doesn't want you with anyone else," Kailey concluded. So she got caught in a love triangle she knew nothing about, lost her life for it and became a vampire because of it.
"The bullet you took was meant for me," Jennifer said. "Amaranda saw me with George and went loco."
"You knew that could happen." Kailey turned her attention to Damian. "That's why you told Jennifer to stay away from George."
"Yes, my sweet." Damian sighed. "That is why."
"I didn't listen," Jennifer said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You could say that your death was my fault."
Kailey thought about that for a moment. Yes. She could say that, she thought. It would be easy to blame Jennifer. "You were jealous." She watched the girl's cheeks go flush at the accusation.
"Pretty childish of me, huh?"
"Not so much, but going against your master's orders for the sole purpose of making him jealous or merely pissing him off is. To put the lives of others in danger because of that jealousy is."
"You're right."
"Don't be so hard on her, Kailey." George walked to Jennifer, slid an arm around her slumped shoulders. "I asked her to accompany me to the party. I wouldn't take no for an answer."
"And it's not like you listen to Damian when he gives an order either," Kailey said, thinking of the way George had sauntered through the lobby the night of the party in wolf form after Damian specifically asked him not to.
A sly grin unfolded on George's lips and those oddly colored eyes glistened with a bad boy mischief that almost made her smile. "Nope. Not too often. Fact is, Kailey, you owe Jennifer your life. Your after life," he added. "If she hadn't convinced Damian to change you, you would be truly dead right now.
And with that said—" he said after a long pause, a forced cheerfulness in his voice. He focused his attention on Jennifer. "Let’s go roam the grounds. Maybe we c
an play fetch or something."
Jennifer didn't crack a smile at his meager attempt at a joke. She met Kailey's gaze, met Damian's, then in words so obviously meant more for Damian than Kailey, she whispered, "I'm so sorry." She hesitated a moment longer before she turned with George to leave.
"Jennifer, just a minute." Kailey waited until the girl turned to face her again before she asked, "Why? Why did you want Damian to save me, to turn me? I was as good as dead. You could have had what you wanted."
Jennifer shook her head. "No. Even with you gone he wouldn't have been mine." She spoke as though Damian weren't in the room listening to her every word. "He is my master. I am his human servant. It's you that he loves. I could see that so clearly when he thought he lost you. That's why I convinced him to save you. I didn't do it for you. I did it for him." Her face turned hard, her eyes warning. "Don't make me regret that."
Kailey found herself both wanting to bristle at the girl's threat and admire her for standing up for and wanting to protect someone she loved. After Jennifer and George left the room and closed the door quietly behind them, she turned to Damian. "You aren't ordering her to stay away from him?"
"The damage has been done," he said, his voice soft and full of regret. "The fact that you would ask, that you would care what happens to Jennifer now, surprises me."
"I guess you believe me now, that she is in love with you."
Damian hung his head, his voice almost a whisper when he said, "Yes. I believe you now. We have talked, Jennifer and I. She has confessed her love for me, but she also knows how deeply I feel for you."
"Yet you were going to let me die. Why?"
"I did not want to. Oh, how I did not want to. But bringing one over, making one a vampire, I have not done that in over a century."
"So what? You were afraid you’ve forgotten how?"
He studied her. A frown marred his brows. "You are angry with me because I hesitated. That is something I did not expect."
Kailey sighed and buried her face in her palms. She did sound angry and her questions sounded accusatory. She wanted to be angry with him, felt she should be. Yet, her anger contradicted itself. First she blamed George for her death, then she all but comforted Jennifer for causing her death, now she jumped Damian for not turning her into a vampire fast enough. Her anger seemed to latch on to any excuse whether it made sense or not. No wonder the man looked so confused.
"I don't know what to be angry about anymore," she admitted. Even muffled by her hands, her voice rang with desperation. She felt his hands on her arms and didn't make a move to stop him as he pulled her to him, embraced her tightly.
"I knew how to change you. That is not something a vampire forgets once learned."
Her head rested on his chest and shivered when she felt him bend slightly, brush his lips over the top of her head in a chaste kiss.
She must have shivered from the inside out because he asked, "Does my kiss repulse you now?"
"Quite the opposite, I assure you," she whispered as desire exploded through her body. She pulled back, just enough to meet his gaze. She wanted so much to see inside him, to know exactly what he felt at that moment. And she should have been able to. She was a vampire now, after all, and he the one who made her. Shouldn't she have much of the same abilities, the same powers as he? Shouldn't she be able to invade his mind, read his heart the way he did hers?
"I did not want you to die," he said and cupped her cheek in his hand, leaned in for a featherlike kiss.
"Yet you were reluctant to change me. Would you have had it not been for Jennifer's encouragement?"
"I would have. Yes," he said on another kiss. "I would have brought you over because I can not imagine returning to life without you." He licked her slightly parted lips, coaxed her mouth to open further. When she complied, his tongue slipped inside, slid over, under and around hers in a now familiar dance.
Seconds, maybe even minutes, passed before his lips moved from hers to trail satiny kisses along her jaw line, her cheek and her neck. Her head lolled to one side and exposed more skin for him to kiss, to explore. "I wouldn't have thought I could say it," she whispered, "but I'm glad you brought me over." She felt him grow stiff in her arms at that and when he pulled back to meet her gaze she saw nothing but utter surprise in the deep blue depths of his eyes.
"Are you? How can you be? I have dammed you to an eternity of night, of darkness, of predator and prey and so much more that you have yet to be introduced. I have forced you into an eternity you know not all because of my own selfishness."
And your love, she thought. She took his face in both her hands and held it there to prevent him from looking away. "Dammed or not, I will thank you for what you have given me. I wasn’t ready to die, Damian. You gave me life. Maybe not the life I had, maybe not life in the true definition of the word, but a type of life nevertheless."
"Will you spend that life with me, my sweet?" he asked. His hands slid down her sides and when they moved up again they brought the sides of her nightgown with them. "Will you stay with me for eternity?"
Eternity. Wow! People talked about forever, talked about loving someone for eternity all the time but the true concept of exactly how much time that entailed eluded them. She could understand that better now than she ever thought she would. She was a vampire now, immortal. She would live for eternity, but would she live it with this man?
She decided to temporarily evade that question. Her hands dropped from his face and moved to unfasten the buttons of his tuxedo style shirt. Impatience won before she unfastened more than three and she gripped one side of the shirt in each hand and pulled, effectively popping the stitches of the remaining buttons. The action distracted him just as she hoped it would.
"My sweet," he said on a laugh.
"You'll buy another," she shrugged as she slid the shirt out of the waistband of his slacks, pushed it off his shoulders and arms and let it fall to the floor behind him. She liked being shorter than her lover. The height difference put her eye level with that pale, muscular specimen of male beauty once again. She kissed his chest, licked her way over ridged muscles. She flicked her tongue over one nipple and delighted in the low growl the action pulled from him.
His hands at her waist resumed their slow slide up. The bunched gown crawled higher as his hands skimmed her flesh, warmed it as he brought the gown all the way up and nearly over her head. He stopped with the neckline over her eyes and used it as a blindfold. He held her wrist together above her head in the same hand he held the bunched gown.
"So beautiful," she heard him whisper and felt just the tip of one finger skim her flesh starting at her neck. It paused to circle around the fang marks at her breast before it continued down. Tingles danced under her skin, chased his finger until she squirmed from both in anticipation. "You will stay with me for eternity. Will you not?"
Before she could answer, he leaned in and drew her nipple into his mouth and sucked so hard and so quick it pulled a cry from her lips. Seemingly satisfied with her response, he did the same to her other nipple—a quick, hard suck then release.
"Yes." The pad of his thumb traced a lazy circle around first one nipple and then the other. "So perfect."
She felt him fold his body over her and lick the side of her left breast. Slowly he began to tug the gown off her head. Just when she could see again, he sunk his fangs into the side of her left breast and her knees buckled.
His arm tightened around her waist, held her up as he drank from her and the sensations felt nothing like the first time. Maybe because of the change, she thought absently. He didn't touch her between the legs, made no move to pleasure her there and yet her pussy felt as on fire as it would with the invasion of his fingers or even his cock. The orgasm built. The pressure of it drew cries and groans from her throat until she screamed with a pulsating release that took the last bit of her energy and left her limp in his arms.
When at last she finally found her footing again and opened her eyes it was to find hi
m gazing at her with eyes that blazed lightning blue, his lips and chin crimson with her blood. A new hunger began in her tummy at the sight. Blood hunger, she realized and ran her tongue along her upper teeth, felt her new set of fangs.
He didn't have to read her mind to know what she thought, what she felt, what she wanted at that moment. She knew her expression revealed it all and his next words only reiterated the fact.
"You want to taste it too," he said, his voice husky and somehow dark yet comforting. He didn't wait for her to answer, but leaned in for a kiss instead. The blood still lined the inside of his mouth and she tasted it, lapped at it, fed from it.
Not enough, she thought as their lips parted all too soon. She wanted more, needed more.
"Then take it," he said and she knew that time he read her mind. "Sharing blood while engaging in the act of making love can be more—how would you say that? It can be more mind-blowing than you could ever dream."
Much steadier now, she stepped back from him and put enough distance between them that she could grab the button of his pants, unfasten it. "Then lets make love," she said and pushed the zipper of his slacks down, tugged at them until they and his underwear fell around his ankles. His cock sprang free, long and thick and hard and completely ready for her.
"The bed, my sweet." His voice quivered just a bit when she trailed a long fingernail down the base of his cock. "Should we not take this to the bed?"
"Nope." She put her hands on his shoulders. "We should not. The floor will be just fine." She gave his shoulders a little push and he lowered to the floor, taking her down with him. She straddled his waist, her pussy hovering just out of reach of his dick. "My turn to tease." She added a sultry purr to her voice and the corners of his mouth twitched just a bit. She wiggled and let her pussy lips brush the head of his dick and all traces of a smile on his face dissolved into a look of torturous pleasure.
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