Kiss Me Before I Die

by Rena Marks

  “You would leave me unsatisfied, bella?”

  “Go find another human to toy with, Ethan. If I run into you again, I’ll be forced to leave.”

  Before he could respond, I vanished. Morphed into the night to wreak havoc and soothe my frustrated emotions. It was time to leave again. I’d made it an entire year without him and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back to where I was the previous year. But until then, it was off to another nightclub.

  This time, I traveled with paranoia. Ethan’s words kept popping into my head, “You unknowingly head for my own jurisdictions. There’s a reason. You are mine.”

  What other choice did I have? I could just cross my fingers and hope I managed to miss one of his. Luck wasn’t on my side.

  He was there. I sighed when he snuck up on me for the third time. He reached for a lock of my hair, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger. It was long enough to bring to his nose to inhale the fragrance of my shampoo.

  “You smell exactly the same, bella,” he murmured.

  “I am exactly the same.”

  I turned around. He had on a short-sleeved shirt that exposed muscular arms. His left arm was covered in tattoos, the same tattoos I knew well. A few new ones adorned his right, though it wasn’t yet a sleeve.

  There was something different about him. I’d have to study to figure out what it was. But I refused to give him the satisfaction of me staring, lusting after his body.

  And lust I did, it was as uncontrollable as breathing. I resented my own lack of control more than I resented his knowledge of my desires.

  Yet how could I not? His chest was amazing, broad and tapered to a narrow waist. I loved when he pulled me up against him, my softness against his hardness. My heart beat faster at the remembrance of how I wanted to trace each cut of muscle with my tongue, softening the harsh lines and tasting the warmth of his skin.

  Somehow I craved him, like a vampire craved human blood. Yet it was opposite in my case, for he was the vampire, not I.

  The air around us grew warm. Realization dawned, almost instinctual. Neither of us had to voice a warning at the intrusion. Our gaze connected briefly before we simultaneously ducked in perfect synchronization.

  Extinguishers materialized not ten feet away. They couldn’t attack, not with human patrons in the club. But we couldn’t risk it. As they made their way toward us, Ethan and I elbowed our way out the back.

  We burst through the door to face the entrapment of an alleyway. A heavy metal dumpster of open trash was about ten feet away. We made our way to it, intending to use it as a shield.

  Time stood still as we waited.

  This was an odd skirmish. The first two burst through the door, only to be taken out with well-aimed knives to the chest. It was standard, taught procedure from an Extinguisher training course.

  Naturally, the rest of them knew those two would be taken out. They willingly sacrificed two of their own for the chance to get at us. Extinguishers were rare. That they were willing to lose two showed their desperation. Could it be they’d banded together to take Ethan out? He’d be considered quite a prize catch. I’d always worked alone and never managed the takedown.

  Of course, there was the tiny bit in me I’d never acknowledged that wasn’t sure she wanted to destroy him.

  Maybe they wanted the status of being the best now that I was retired. It just so happened I was with Ethan both times they attacked him and forced me to pick sides. Defend or die. I was a little surly over my forced choice.

  A foolish man morphed behind me. I broke his neck before he fully materialized and the rest looked surprised. Apparently that was a skill of only the Originals, the speed beyond that of a modern Extinguisher. Or maybe it was the premonition of where one would appear during a morph. In either case, I’d have to keep their surprise in mind. They retreated to various spots but continued full frontal with the attack.

  Which was another shocking tactic, for we had been taught to retreat at losing. When it came down to it, vampires always had the upper hand on strength. Our skills were speed, cunning and agility. The element of surprise. Yet, these Extinguishers weren’t retreating. They were losing and would have no one left to morph out of here at this rate.

  “Why the hell do they continue to attack?” I whispered harshly.

  “You’re still fighting, are you not?” Ethan asked dryly.

  “They’re forcing me to kill.”

  “Not the first time you’ve killed,” he reasoned.

  “I don’t normally go after humans,” I scorned.

  His voice grew cold. “I never understood the reasoning. You have a license to extinguish my race with silver to the heart, but take that same blade to one of your colleagues and it’s considered killing.”

  It was the same old argument he and I always had. The one I had no answer for.

  The assassins were either better trained in the last year, or I had grown soft. A blade missed my heart but plunged into my shoulder as I shifted a split second too late.

  The Extinguisher had materialized right beside me, way too quick for me to sense him. An unheard-of event, for I always sensed them first. It was what made me the best.

  Ethan roared and charged but the Extinguisher vanished before Ethan reached him. Instead, my lover grabbed me and morphed us both out of there even as the light dimmed from my eyes.

  Chapter Two

  It was a cave I awoke in. A darkened cave, good for improved night vision for those more than plain human. Hushed whispers all around me. Not a lot of body heat.

  A vampire nest.

  “It’s awake,” said a childlike voice. A tiny, fanged creature no more than six or seven, pointed at me. His father grabbed him, moving him from my reach. As if I’d harm an innocent.

  I did a double take. An innocent? Surely blood loss was to blame for my brain failure.

  “What are you?” the blond boy asked. “You smell like us. But you look human.”

  The cave was so silent you could hear a pin drop. Until the voice of Ethan rang strong. “She’s an Extinguisher.”

  There was hissing from the shadowed corners. “You brought one here? You should have let her die.”

  “You will not harm her,” Ethan said.

  “How dare you bring an Extinguisher into our midst?”

  “You forget who rules?” Ethan’s voice was deadly. Silence was his answer.

  “I’m an ex-Extinguisher,” I said soothingly. To justify Ethan’s actions. For if I were one of the vampires, I’d take me out in a heartbeat.

  “She’s a female. Is she the one?” I heard from the corner.

  The same child inched toward me. His father reached to pull him away but Ethan interrupted. “Let him. Trust must begin. Jordan, go on.”

  The boy tentatively moved forward. “You don’t have fangs,” he said.

  “You do.”

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “How else would I eat? Hey,” he continued as it dawned on him. “What do you eat?”

  “Food.”

  “Like a human?” he asked, eyes wide.

  I simply nodded.

  “But you can morph, like we do. Right?”

  To this child, this…Jordan, I was a scary urban legend. A nightmare parents whispered about in the dark.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Where’s your mommy and daddy?” he asked suddenly.

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  Ethan answered. “Because Extinguishers are taken from their parents before they are even eight years of age.”

  The looks on the faces of the evil creatures around me were incredulous. As if we, the humans, were the monsters.

  “We are trained daily in order to have the strength to extinguish,” I justified.

  “I thought you gained strength by drinking the blood of a captured vampire. One of us,” someone said, bitterness brewing in his voice.

  I had no answer. I certainly didn’t as
k for the benefit back then.

  “At what age were you stricken, Afton?” Ethan asked quietly. He was smart. Had he demanded an answer, I would have clammed.

  “Three.”

  Silence reigned in the aftermath yet again.

  “Why so young? If they are normally taken at eight?” another of the voices asked.

  “I was one of the Originals.”

  “Originals?”

  “The first crew.”

  “An experiment,” Ethan countered. “You were an experiment.”

  “One that worked well,” I reminded him curtly.

  “Yet one that has not been able to be recreated. They don’t know what happened differently with you.”

  “Apparently they figured it out. I’m lying here wounded, aren’t I?”

  “They knew exactly how to wound you. Don’t you find it curious?”

  “Oh, do share with me, Ethan. I’m too tired for games.”

  “They have your blood. They must have infected the assassin with it, instead of blood from a vampire. You are not used to sensing your own blood morphing in and out. Vampires are—shared blood runs rampant throughout our lines. This has been planned for years, Afton. The Extinguisher in the park? He wasn’t sent for me. He was there for you.”

  A shiver ran down my spine, icy cold and making my fingers and toes tingle. Here I thought I had been saving Ethan. Here I thought they’d let me retire.

  Instead, I was being hunted like an animal.

  I guess it was beneficial that I’d spent the last year underground hiding from my lover. It kept the government from finding me also.

  I should have known. There was never any intention of allowing my departure. Not after all the years of training. The inhumane conditions. But I’d earned retirement, dammit.

  I was one of the lucky few who stayed alive.

  “And how are we to feed her?” asked a female. “We have no human food.”

  “We should turn her loose.”

  Ethan tore his gaze from mine long enough to glare in the general vicinity of the voice.

  Dead silence once again reigned in the cave. The tension thickened, the beginnings of a catastrophic tantrum from Ethan. Minds around us would go insane with rage, or at least they should. I wondered if his fits worked on vampires the same way they did on humans?

  “Ethan,” I whispered gently.

  At first, he didn’t hear.

  “Ethan,” I said again, careful to keep any urgency from my voice. When he cut his attention to me, something softened in his eyes.

  There was the key to averting a disaster. Ethan was all-out male, needing to be needed. Frustrated because his twisted mind thought I was his but I was a female born and bred not to need anything or anyone.

  “You know I can take care of myself,” I said softly, “but I am a little weakened right now. I don’t know any of these people. Maybe just you and I can head out to find me something to eat?”

  The air was thinning, becoming easier to breathe. Drier, as though the humidity was evaporating quickly.

  “You shouldn’t be up and about, bella,” he chided gently.

  I could almost see the relief that swept through the inhabitants of the cave. I lowered my eyes to his lips.

  Sensual lips set in a masculine face, his pale jaw whiskered with darkness and his forehead lined with worry.

  For me.

  “You can help me,” I reminded him grudgingly, the way I would have normally. But softer, still trying to pull him from his mood.

  I’d never before asked Ethan for help. He wasn’t too sure about it, I could tell. His eyes swept the cave as he sought out the females of the group.

  I reached out to touch him. “You, Ethan. I don’t trust them.”

  That clinched it. He pulled me to him, much more gently than he would have. “Bella, what will I do with you?”

  I smiled and did what later I might regret but for now couldn’t resist. I placed my lips to his for the lightest brush of a kiss, sealing our relationship and fate before all his people. “Feed me.”

  We had to forage for food. Vampires didn’t eat, they nourished on live blood. Remarkably enough, they’d discovered they could feed from each other, not like the old days where human blood was what they needed. Evolution had fixed them so they replenished much faster, days instead of the months it took humans to regenerate.

  Still, they were considered a threat. They probably hadn’t touched a human in years but were still hunted like criminals to be hanged.

  Over time, they’d gotten to the point where their blood was replenished even faster by the introduction of another’s. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt a human to donate once in a while, to bring new nutrients into the blood line but there was always that fear of infection.

  Never mind that we infected ourselves willingly by injecting vampiric blood. Why we thought the disease could be transmitted through their saliva into our throat was beyond me. There was so much more to the equation.

  Death.

  But the greatest gift a human could do for their vampire lover was to donate blood. As far as I knew, I was the only human ever to have a vampire lover.

  I was not good at playing the damsel in distress and had to bite my tongue when Ethan bent to lift me gingerly enough to carry outside. I looked around and noticed the cloudy, darkened day. Very unlike the sunshine I’d expected. Gloomy and gray, like my sudden mood.

  “It is killing you to depend on me, isn’t it?”

  Ahh, so he’d noticed.

  “It was killing me to lie weakened in a cave surrounded by those lusting after my throat,” I snapped.

  The bastard chuckled. “One of us lusts for much more than your throat, my love.”

  “Stop calling me that.” Because it caused the strangest of feelings deep in my belly.

  He ignored my outburst and carried me to a stream. Surely he didn’t think he’d bathe me?

  “Just set me down,” I instructed. “I’ll be fine while you find me something to eat.” One heavy brow lifted and Ethan walked into the water with me still in his arms.

  I shrieked when the cold hit my bottom end first and stiffened my whole body, nearly bucking from his arms.

  “Hold still, bella. You have the strength of an army but a little water gives you fits?”

  “It’s cold.”

  “I know. I am in it, also.”

  “Did you ever hear of heated baths, macho man?” I grumbled. “Even cavemen did it.”

  “You heal as quickly as one of us, Afton.”

  His voice was odd. I looked up at his handsome face to see his eyes fixed on my torn neckline, which plunged to my belly. It had been pulled from my injured shoulder, exposing the wound that was now scabbed over.

  I didn’t know if he was uncomfortable from my exposed cleavage or the wound. But my heightened healing abilities made most people wary of me.

  Except for certain doctors. They had been ecstatic when I’d attained this ability later in life. As though I’d been a personal conquest. Probably they wanted to know how the ability could be duplicated for humans. A huge part of the reason why I’d retired, owing the government nothing for their “care” over the last couple of decades.

  “You’ve seen my body before, Ethan.”

  “Yes but not for a very long time. I have only so much control.” Apparently, if the tic in his jaw was anything to go by.

  He slid me down the length of him to stand in the water. It was still cold, as evidenced by the pucker of my nipples within the thin cotton of the torn shirt. He grasped the edge of my shirt gently and lifted it up over my head.

  I couldn’t be modest or shy. Not with Ethan.

  “A little late to undress me. I’m already soaked, as you are.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, wringing the water from my top and tossing it onto one of the rocks. “But I’d like this to dry out enough for me to twine laces through it so you’re not showing my wares to all the vampires.”

  “Not yours,�
�� I reminded softly.

  He merely smiled, eyes still on my breasts. “You are beautiful.”

  He lifted the edge of his own shirt, whipping it over his head to use as a washrag, carefully cleaning around the wound healing on my shoulder. “What would people think, bella? An Extinguisher, naked in a stream with a vampire?”

  “They would know nothing could possibly happen with the ice cubes floating in the river.”

  Mock concern lit his face. “You are cold, my love?” He pulled me close, pressing my stiff nipples into his chest.

  But, ahh, irony. Feeling the rock hard pebbles poking into him was a double-edged sword for us both.

  “Afton,” he muttered, his voice thick with need. His lips lowered to mine slowly. I ached for his touch.

  The world spun out of control with Ethan’s kisses. I might have resisted had he not reached out and lightly pinched my numb nipples with his thumbs and forefingers.

  The pleasure-pain made me want to climb atop him, to lose myself and thrust my core against him, wanting and seeking parts to fit into me like the perfect interlocking puzzle piece.

  I knew I’d be angry for allowing my needs to rule me but it was only with this one vampire that I ever lost control. My blood pressure rose with my deeper breathing and my heart raced when his hands were upon me. It raced too fast for my recent stabbing.

  I swooned in his arms and was barely aware when he lifted me again, taking me from the water to the smooth rocks still warmed from the sun burning behind the clouds. He covered my body with his, warming me while I chattered with cold…or shock.

  “I am sorry, I should not have put you through this.”

  I smiled weakly. I wouldn’t ever admit it was worth it.

  This time he did leave me to seek food. I lay, like a bare-breasted mermaid on the rocks, waiting for his return. When he arrived, it was with human food.

  Asparagus and strawberries. He’d used my torn shirt to gather as much as he could.

  I felt stronger now. Enough to sit up and eat, my legs drawn to my chest. While I wasn’t shy, after all you couldn’t be when you’d lived in a medical facility all your life, it was uncomfortable being the only unclothed one. Ethan sat and patiently strung the torn halves of my top together with some sort of twine he’d found.