Chapter 3
And they didn’t already? From her viewpoint, Lainey would have sworn that things were about as serious as they could get. When he’d bellowed, the wolves had taken up with their bloodcurdling howls again, the eerie cries echoing through the tunnels, until it sounded as if hundreds of them were out there...just waiting to get in.
Before she could ask Nick to explain his unsettling announcement, he turned and left the room, disappearing through one of the interior doorways that led to God only knew where. It didn’t make any sense, but she felt bereft without him there. She’d have been worried she was developing that weird syndrome where victims became emotionally attached to their captors, except that he wasn’t really her captor. He was her...hell, she didn’t know what to call him. But for some inexplicable reason, Lainey was positive he would let her go as soon as he thought it was safe. She didn’t understand the whole chained-to-the-wall thing, but she didn’t think he was doing it to be a dick. He truly believed there was a good reason for it. Who knew? Maybe the guy was worried she was emotionally distraught enough to try and take her own life or something.
As she braced herself against the hard wall, she racked her brain for a way to explain why he’d reacted like that before he’d stormed off, but exhaustion soon won out over her curiosity. Not surprisingly, her sleep was fitful. She dozed off and on but could see from the clock on the far wall that only a few hours had passed when Nick finally came back into the room. Well, almost. He stood in the same doorway he’d disappeared through earlier, arms crossed over his chest, shoulder propped against the doorjamb.
Though it was after three in the morning, he obviously hadn’t had any more success at sleeping than she had. If he’d even been trying. His hair was wet and he was wearing clean clothes, making her aware of just how grimy she was. But it was a distant thought because the majority of her brainpower was busy processing how freaking hot he looked. Dressed in nothing but a well-worn pair of jeans that hung low on his hips, his muscular chest and broad shoulders left bare, he was the most mouthwatering sight Lainey had ever set eyes on. Not even the fresh, crimson-stained gauze he had wrapped around his right biceps could detract from his provocative sex appeal. Instead, it just added to the hard, rugged warrior look he had going on, as if he were some ancient Highlander who’d just come in from fighting for his clan.
The modern jeans obviously didn’t fit with that whole scenario, but if she squinted her eyes, she could easily imagine his sexy bod wrapped up in nothing but a kilt. One that he slowly unwrapped with a devilish grin when he caught her staring at him, his deep voice thick with lust as he prowled toward her, telling her in explicit, erotic detail all the wild, wicked, breathtaking things he was going to do to her. Mmm...
When he cast her a funny look and lifted his brows, she realized she’d drifted off into fantasyland, her expression no doubt glazed with lust. Clearing her throat, she sat up a little straighter, knowing damn well that her cheeks were burning with color. If the guy had any idea what she’d been thinking, he’d probably laugh in her face. She struggled to think of something to say.
“Did you, um, take a shower?” she asked, liking the way the golden light coming from the single overhead bulb played over the dark, gleaming strands of his hair.
“Yeah.”
Lucky duck. He obviously had some kind of water tank set up in this place, and she hoped she’d eventually be allowed to shower, too. Despite being trapped in what was essentially an oversize metal prison, the air was warm and humid, making her feel like she was in the tropics, and she desperately wanted to get clean.
But first, Lainey wanted an answer to the question that had been burning its way through her brain ever since he’d stormed out on her. “Are you going to need blood?” She took a quick breath, licked her bottom lip, then tried to hear her own voice over the roaring of her pulse. “Is that why you’re worried about your brothers getting here in time? Will you need to...feed? By tomorrow night?”
The look on his gorgeous face was almost...bemused, as if he found her funny and strange and more than a little confusing all at the same time. “I have blood stored here, Lainey.”
“Oh.” She told herself this was a good thing because it meant he wouldn’t need to feed on her. But she still felt strangely deflated. “That’s, um, good then.” Because she hadn’t been thinking of offering him her neck. Nope. The idea hadn’t even crossed her mind.
And, God, was she bad at lying. Even to herself.
“I also have food,” he murmured, watching her so intently she felt like he was trying to crawl inside her head and look around. But he simply said, “I stocked up on fresh supplies just a few days ago. There’s a small kitchen behind me that runs off a generator. Are you hungry?”
She bit her bottom lip and nodded, surprised to realize that she actually was. “I had dinner last night at the inn, but I feel like I haven’t eaten in years.”
A brief smile touched his mouth. “That’s the adrenaline working through your system.”
Before she could say anything in response, he disappeared again. She could hear water running, then the sound of things being set on a counter, and a few minutes later the mouthwatering scent of fresh-brewed coffee reached her nose, making her want to whoop with joy. She knew the reaction was a bit extreme, making her wonder if there really was some truth behind the label of “severe coffee addict” that was always being thrown her way.
When Nick came back into the room, he was carrying a tray with two steaming mugs of coffee, along with a plate of hot scones that had already been sliced open and smeared with cream and jam. As she took in the sight of such a deliciously dark, gorgeous, dangerous male doing something so domestic, Lainey couldn’t help but smile.
Who would have ever thought that a vampire could turn out to be such a nice guy? Oh, he could be grumpy and taciturn, with some of the most mercurial mood swings she’d ever witnessed. But it was obvious that he wanted to take care of her.
With the tray balanced on one hand, he pulled one of the chairs from the table over next to the bed, set the tray on it and then pulled over another chair for himself, though she could tell he was careful to keep a certain amount of distance between them, as if he didn’t want to unsettle her any more than she already was. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be that close to her. Whatever the reason, she was charmed by the fact that he’d made her a snack. Of course, she’d been pretty charmed by the way he’d saved her life before he ever set foot in that kitchen. The culinary skills were just a delightful bonus.
Then again, if a guy couldn’t figure out how to heat scones and make coffee after more than two hundred years of life, he didn’t deserve to still be breathing. But Santos didn’t just make coffee. He made damn incredible coffee, she realized, after he’d handed her one of the mugs and half a scone.
As she watched him pick up a half for himself and take a bite, she murmured, “So you actually do eat real food? I half expected you to just pretend so that I would feel more comfortable.”
The husky sound of his laughter was so sexy it made her toes curl. “I eat,” he said in that deep, rugged voice that seemed to contain a blend of too many accents to name. “Probably about as much as any human male around my size would, even though I also drink blood. I need both sources of energy because of an accelerated metabolism.”
“From who?” she whispered, liking the way he sat with his body angled forward, elbows braced on his parted knees. It was one of those purely masculine poses that did great things to his chest and thighs, not to mention his powerful arms and rock-hard abs.
Swallowing another bite, he asked, “You mean who do I feed from?”
“Yes. Or is that too personal a question? I don’t want to offend you,” she told him, taking a bite of her scone.
He shrugged those incredibly broad shoulders. “I’m not offended. And I don’t feed on...victims.” He gave her a wry grin when he spotted the look of relief on her face. He went on, saying, “There have
always been those who are willing to provide their blood for my kind, and they’re well compensated for it. Occasionally, we might feed from a willing source, but we usually just store our supplies in the fridge the same way humans store their milk. When we need it, we heat the blood up and drink it from a glass.”
“Oh.” She was silent for a moment, then asked, “Which do you prefer? From the source...or from a glass?”
His chest shook with another one of those rugged laughs. “That’s like asking which tastes better, tofu or steak? The tofu can nourish you,” he drawled, “but it’s nowhere near as good.”
“Ahh...I understand.”
Jerking his chin toward the plate, he asked, “You want another one?”
She shook her head, marveling once again at the bizarreness of the situation. Nibbling on the last bite of her scone, she said, “You know, you’re pretty dangerous, Santos.”
“I told you to call me Nick,” he responded in a low voice, watching her from beneath his dark lashes as he set his empty mug on the tray and leaned back in the chair, fingers laced behind his head. She could see the dark tufts of hair beneath his arms, his biceps freaking huge in that position, straining the gauze on his right arm, his forearms corded with muscle and sinew. She’d never seen a man look so sexy, his voice a deep, throaty rumble as he added, “And I meant it when I said that I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Not that kind of dangerous. You’re the keeping kind,” she mused, wondering if he’d put something in the coffee to make her loopy. Or maybe she was still suffering from shock? Out of her head crazy? One egg short of a dozen? But the words didn’t feel...insane. They felt...real. Truthful. Even painfully honest.
His expression was almost comical in its surprise. “I’m afraid to ask, but what in God’s name are you going on about now?”
“You.” She took a quick sip of her coffee, holding the mug now with both hands as she studied him through her lashes. “You’re all smoldering and intense. Smart and sexy and too masculine to be real. But you’re also not afraid to set foot in a kitchen, which means you’re the kind of guy that makes a woman think you’d be worth keeping around once the afterglow has faded.”
He shook his head slowly, looking kind of worried about what she would say next. “Afterglow?”
Shrugging her shoulder, she said, “Sex. Orgasms. It’s great and all, but a guy’s got to offer more than some fun times between the sheets, right?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” he croaked, his expression arrested.
She laughed at his reaction. “You know what I mean.”
He studied her for a moment, and then his dark brows suddenly snapped together in stunned confusion. “Are you...are you saying that you’d like to keep me?”
Lainey’s eyes went huge. “God, no!” she blurted, feeling her face go bright red. “I was just pointing out the obvious. But I’d never try for a man who wasn’t even in the same league as I am.”
“Why’s that?”
She didn’t know what to make of the hard, tight edge to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago. With a frown, she said, “Well, you’re...you know. And I’m...well, you’ve got eyes, Nick.”
Confusion was quickly giving way to what looked like formidable anger. “So how many leagues under you am I, exactly?”
“What?” she gasped, reaching out and just managing to set her mug on the edge of the tray. “No! I meant you, Nick. You’re way above me. Not the other way around!”
He scowled. “That’s ridiculous.”
Rolling her eyes, Lainey said, “You don’t need to flatter me. I’m not fishing for compliments—I’m just stating the obvious. You can see exactly the kind of woman I am.”
He didn’t say anything at first. Just leaned forward in the chair again, braced his elbows back on his knees and took his time looking her over. He started with her face, his own expression impossible to read as he studied her individual features, one by one, then moved down to the rest of her. He looked at the way her breasts strained against the tight T-shirt, her nipples hard despite the fact she wasn’t cold. Then he looked lower, at the soft swell of her stomach...her hips, before following the curvy shape of her legs encased in the black denim. When he was done, he slowly brought that dark, blistering gaze back to her face. His voice little more than a whisper, he rasped, “Considering my X-ray vision, Lainey, I can actually see a hell of a lot more of you than you think.”
Her heart jerked into her throat so fast it nearly choked her. “What?” she wheezed, chains clanging as she quickly crossed her arms over her chest and threw one leg over the other.
The corner of his mouth twitched, and she saw an unmistakable, devilish gleam in his eyes. “Calm down. You don’t need to pass out on me again,” he said, holding up his hands. “That was a joke.”
“Geez, Nick! Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
“Sorry,” he murmured with a wry twist of his lips, looking even more surprised by his teasing than she was. “I couldn’t resist.”
“Try,” she told him, her tone sharp and her eyes narrowed to piercing slits. “Or I’ll make you sorry.”
“And how would you do that?” he questioned, sounding more than a little curious as he leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head again, the position doing downright sinful things to the muscles in his arms and torso. Lainey took a moment to consider the question, more than a little distracted by those mouthwatering abs as she tried to think of something that would be really torturous for a vampire. Finally, she came up with one that brought a smirking smile to her lips. “I’d hold you down and tickle you until you were crying and begging for mercy.”
He snorted. “You think you could?”
Shaking her wrists, she said, “We’ll never know unless you take these chains off me. Will we?”
His head cocked a fraction to the side, his sky-blue stare deep and measuring. “You know, for a human captive at the mercy of a vampire who kills for a living, you’re very...relaxed.”
“Well, I don’t think you want to kill me,” she murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “or you would have already done it.”
“So now you’re no longer afraid of me?” he asked, that inscrutable expression back on his face.
“Why should I be?”
His voice went eerily soft again. “There’s a hell of a lot I could do to you without killing you, Lainey.”
“True. But you wouldn’t.”
“Yeah?” His blue eyes were shadowed...dark. “And why’s that?”
“I can just...tell.”
“Christ, I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” he muttered, the moment of teasing over as he shoved to his feet. Suddenly she found herself staring up at almost six and a half feet of pissed-off vampire. “You can just tell?”
Her chin went up a notch. “That’s right.”
He gripped the chair they’d been using as a table, their mugs nearly tumbling from the tray as he shoved it out of his way, that raw, violent tension she’d glimpsed in him earlier riding his large body all over again. “The way I see it,” he bit out, glaring down at her, “you should be screaming bloody murder right about now.”
She would have explained if she could, but she barely understood her own mind at the moment. All she knew was that she felt safe with this man...or vampire...or whatever he wanted to call himself. Safer than she had in...a really long time.
Locking her gaze hard on his, Lainey looked him right in the eye and said, “I’m not afraid of you, Nick. So why would I scream?”
“Take off the goddamn blinders,” he snarled, swiping one of those large hands through the air. “The world is shit, as evidenced by what happened to your brother. You shouldn’t trust me. Hell, you shouldn’t trust any man. The sooner you start to realize that, the better your chances of surviving.”
“Yeah, well, you know what I think? I think you need a woman who can help you learn to lighten up a little.”
He went completely still
except for the hard rise and fall of his chest, those big hands fisted at his sides as he stared her down. “Is that right?” he finally asked, his voice doing that soft, raspy thing again that made her feel like the words were stroking her skin.
“Yes,” she breathed out, trying not to shiver.
“You mean a woman like you?” He moved even closer to the side of the bed, the look in his eyes both dark and bright, as if the midnight sky had been spread out over a hot, molten glow. “Is that what I need, Lainey?”
Her temper spiked. As much as she wanted him to flirt with her, she knew damn well that wasn’t where he was going with this. “Cut it out, Nick. Now I’m starting to think you just like being mean.”
He came a little closer, his knees bumping the mattress. “Explain.”
Tilting her head back farther so that she could hold his piercing gaze, she said, “You keep making references to the two of us...you know. So I’m wondering if you’re actually trying to make me dislike you because I’m not afraid of you. Is it that important to you for me to keep my distance?”
His brows went so high they nearly reached his hair. “The idea of having sex with me is grounds for dislike?”
Gritting her teeth, she said, “Despite some of the comments you’ve made tonight...or this morning...or whatever it is, we both know you’re just mocking me. I’m obviously not your...type.”
“Not my type?” He made a sharp sound of frustration, absently rubbing his hand over his bandaged biceps. “You’re being serious, aren’t you? You really think you’re not the type of woman I like to fuck?”
Her face went crimson. “I know I’m not.”
“I don’t screw around with human women,” he grated, veins thickening beneath his dark skin as he squeezed his hand around the wound. “But it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to.”
Her soft snort seemed to set his teeth on edge. “So it’s my humanity that throws you off? Right.”
He cursed under his breath as he turned away from the bed, starting that relentless pacing again. As if they could sense the tension in the room, the wolves started another incessant round of howling, accompanied by the nerve-racking scratch of their claws against the door.
Darkest Desire of the Vampire: Wicked in MoonlightVampire Island (Harlequin Nocturne) Page 5