by Dee Carney
“Tonight.”
“Tonight,” she agreed. Tomorrow she would be a blood slave again.
Victor backed away from her, his gaze trained on hers. There was prurient interest in his eyes, and it made her shiver. She’d found a stained T-shirt and jeans that slid off her hips to wear today, but the way Victor looked at her, she might as well have been wearing Sarrieri lingerie.
“Now...come to me. Stand here, feet shoulder width apart.”
For the next two hours, under his careful instruction, she threw punches at his face, neck and chest. Sweat circled her neckline, dampening her hair until it clung to her in places. Her arms ached, trembling with fatigue, but by the time he called a break, she felt proficient.
Lucy fell to her knees, exhaustion hugging her tight. She rolled her eyes to Victor, who studied her dispassionately. “You’re weak,” he said. Not an insult, an observation.
She nodded. As the weeks passed, she would grow weaker. Her blood would sickle, her entire body radiating pain. Breathing would grow more difficult. Eventually her organs would shut down one by one. “If I could turn back time, there’d be more hours in the gym with a personal trainer and less time at the MAC counter picking out complimentary colors.”
“What’s a maccounter?”
Laughing, she couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “It’s a girl thing,” she said when her mirth settled.
“I don’t know much about girls.” His imperfect mouth quirked.
She regarded its shape and function. For a split second, her mind wandered to the fantasy of what it would be like to kiss it. Could he move it skillfully over her lips, giving her a moment’s pleasure? “I don’t believe you,” she said softly.
As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t. The stricken look on Victor’s face told many tales. He’d been teaching her to keep her expression neutral at all times, yet at this, he couldn’t follow his own advice. A soul-deep pain lanced her at the understanding that he’d been critically wounded by a woman or women in his past. The wrong side of his face remained passive and stoic, but the side that moved displayed misery. The urge to take his face in her hands, draw him down to her and kiss away the hurt made her tremble from the force of it.
Lucy kept her hands at her sides though.
What was it about him that provoked such responses from her? She rose to shaky legs, somewhat proud of the way they burned with fatigue. “Let me ask you something...you were born a vampire, right?”
Victor walked to a nearby sapling, and Lucy’s cheeks burned as she realized she followed the sway of his ass with rapt attention. He leaned his back against it, regarding her from several feet away. “No,” he said after such a long pause, she wasn’t sure he would respond at all.
“Oh. Well, if you had the chance to go back to being just a human, would you take it?”
“No.”
“Well, jeez. Take your time.” Ass. His eagerness to reply made it seem like being human might have been the worst assignation to hell he could have ever imagined.
“Humans are weak. Fragile. Food. What about any of that could I possibly find appealing?”
“We’re resilient. We love long and hard. We find joy and delight in the things you no longer appreciate.” A vampire’s pleasure came from feeding, but beyond that? They didn’t have much to look forward to from what she could tell. With their impossibly long lives, ennui had to settle in, inciting the coldness that seemed to inhabit each of them.
“Humans are petty.”
She took a step forward, anger beginning a slow simmer in her veins. “And vampires aren’t? You’re still enslaving people. We did once upon a time, and I’m embarrassed to have to admit to it, but we’ve learned our lesson. We’ve evolved.”
“You sure about that? You sure humans don’t make slaves any longer? Because I’m thinking about your drug addicts—slaves. And what about them little girls kidnapped while on vacation? Slaves. Oh, and hey, don’t forget about lines of credit putting a man deeper into debt than a single lifetime will ever get him out of? I call him a slave.
“Yeah, we have our blood slaves, but they come to us willingly. In exchange for their services, we care for them. We cherish them. Almost worship them.”
Rage and his naive ignorance made it impossible to speak for what felt like a full minute. Forcing the words, she said, “That is not true. None of it. I did not serve willingly. I was not cared for and I sure as hell wasn’t cherished. Vampires might have worshiped my body, but they cared little for me or how I felt. Everything they did was for them, not me.” Her throat tightened. “I was a slave in every ugly sense of the word.”
Victor pushed away from the tree, stalking closer. “I don’t understand this.” His deep voice went gritty with dark emotion. “How did this happen, and who knew about it? Sage?”
“I only met him recently. I-I don’t know how or when it started. It’s been almost my entire life. Like that. No bright side to being a blood slave except for having a roof over my head and hot meals. The rest of it simply wasn’t glamorous for me or my sister.”
“Your sister?”
Shit. She hadn’t meant to let that slip. “We were brought in together.”
“Has she been freed too, then?”
Lucy found she could no longer look him in the eye, instead choosing to turn around and drop into the offensive stance he’d taught her. “Are you going to let me try to tag you now, or is there more you wanted to show me?”
Her heart raced in frantic beats, it too demanding the change in topic. The tension rolling off Victor’s body suggested he wanted to explore it more, but she wasn’t ready for that. His eyes went expressionless, but he moved closer. He scooped up a branch from the ground and held it toward her. “Use this. Come at me like you’re trying to stab me. I won’t hold back again.”
“You held back last time?” she almost shouted. Her nose still burned from where he’d bounced it.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he said with a low, rumbling voice.
It sent a shiver through her.
Totally didn’t help that he still walked around bare-chested, a sensual beauty of a man. She longed to skim her hands over the dark hair lightly covering his pectorals and forming a perfect line down his abdomen. The muscles of his defined stomach made the most delicious contours. What would it be like to run her fingers—her tongue, maybe—over each ridge and shallow valley?
Lucy mentally shook loose the decadent images bombarding her imagination and planted one foot behind the other. She dropped her shoulders, raised her arms and kept her fists loose.
“Protect your face,” Victor barked at her. He swung out with his left hand, demonstrating how she’d left herself vulnerable.
Lucy ducked, but from the corner of her eye focused on what his right arm was doing. Her defensive crouch turned into a lunge away from him, when as she’d anticipated, he struck out with the other arm. She grinned big as soon as the swing missed her by a country mile. “Is the student surpassing the teach—ooph!”
Damn it. Hadn’t seen that one coming.
She landed hard on her ass after his kick caught her in the side, the shock hurtling up through her spine and throbbing like hell. Her teeth rattled, her eyes watering as pain radiated outward.
He stood over her, glaring. “You stay there, and he’ll kill you. No matter what happens, get back on your feet. Distract him, show him your tits if you have to, but get back on your feet.”
She rolled to one knee, pushing away from the ground with a grunt. Victor stood close enough that she kicked out, screaming in rage as he knocked her foot aside. Almost forgetting about the stick, she shoved it forward, trying to catch him in the ribs with it. Victor whirled, as fast as any being she’d ever seen, knocking it out of her hand.
It arced several feet away, landing in a clump of dirt. Lucy scrambled after it, but Victor grabbed her by the feet and yanked. She went down again, the wind knocked out of her lungs.
Gaspi
ng for air, she waited for the pain to catch up. When was the last time she’d hurt like this?
“Get. Up.” Victor stomped over to her. “You get up or you die. If you learn nothing else from me today, you get it through your head that you don’t stop. Not until you’re dead, you don’t ever stop. Because he won’t stop. You go after him, and that ruthless vampire will rip out your throat for being bothersome. Now...get up!”
* * *
Two instincts warred within Victor. The first, the loudest, wanted to pick her up from the ground, crush her to his side and make sure she never saw hurt or pain again. But the second one, the violent one, saw a woman he craved, vulnerable and wide-eyed, in a helpless position. His teeth elongated, hunger burning in him to ravage her on the spot.
She lay there, panting. Her breasts rising and falling as she gasped for breath. The pulse in her neck fluttering with mad insistence, calling to him. His cock hardened, and he could almost taste the blood rushing through her veins.
A small voice whispered warning. That this human, this blood slave, was delicate. Fragile. If he fell on her now, he’d do damage he could never reverse. Not just the physical kind.
“Lucy...move.” He didn’t know if he said it more for her benefit or for his. “Crawl if you have to, but you do not stay still.”
“Go to hell.” But she began to drag herself away.
It put a smile on his face.
Victor crouched down beside her, not bothering to attack a second time. What would be the point? “You know what else humans are?”
She raised her middle finger in the air.
He laughed. “Humans are tough. If I told you to stop now, would you?”
She whipped her head around to him. “No.” Rising on unsteady legs, she turned to face him, slowly dropping into the defensive posture he’d taught her. She grimaced but held. “You’re right about the fact that he’s not going to take it easy on me, so I can’t expect you to.”
“Good girl,” he said softly.
The previous hunger for her blood had abated, but now a different kind of appetite rushed to the surface. Victor studied this beautiful woman, her strawberry blond hair wild and untamed. Her cheeks pink from exertion, hazel green eyes dark with emotion. He took it all in, his heart thudding hard in response.
A small part of him regretted offering her the chance to put off their liaison for another night. A different part knew with unwavering certainty, however, that a simple night of denial would make her taking that much more potent. When they came together, it would be a momentous event that rocked his world. He refused to think about what would happen when he was forced to let her go.
“You want to try again, or should we move on to drills?”
“Which is easier?” she grumbled.
Without looking at a watch or consulting the sky, he said, “It’s a little after midnight. Why don’t we do drills for a few more hours? Then afterward I’ll give you one final chance to tag me. You don’t do it by dawn, then I collect regular payment. If, however, it snows in summer, hell freezes over, pigs fly, the sun rises in the west and you tag me, we’ll call it a night with my lips on yours.”
Her mouth twitched up at the corners. “You’re such a jerk. I could do it.”
“Yeah, you sure can. As soon as there are two Thursdays in a week,” Victor teased, a small attempt at infusing her with confidence. While she wasn’t bad, she’d need a lot of training to defeat Sage. Like yesterday, she would only manage to do something to the ancient vampire through sheer dumb luck.
But he had to give her some small credit. Lucy put her weight on her back leg like he’d shown her, prepared to come at him. She didn’t have a lot of skill, but something sinister drove her. The unrelenting tenacity made him keep going when every nagging voice in his head said to let her down easy. She could be someone else’s problem if he turned his back.
That also meant letting her go though, and his stomach clenched at that thought.
“Who knows about this place?” he asked to distract the aggravating thoughts.
Lucy kept working through the left-right crossover combo. “Hardly anyone, I guess. Just a place left to us a long time ago so we’d always have some place to retire.”
He wasn’t satisfied with the answer. “Who maintains it?”
“Little old lady about half a mile from here. I pay her to come through and clear out the cobwebs, mostly.”
Victor kept his attention on the surrounding trees and any shadows that moved or seemed out of place. He hadn’t forgotten that the lycans should be hot on his tail by now, wanting answers or his hide. If they showed up now, he’d be short on answers to supply them.
Lucy’s damp hair clung to her neck, her cheeks growing ruddy as the minutes passed. She didn’t complain, working through the moves they’d been practicing. His goal was to make sure she did the punches, lunges and jabs by rote. No thinking involved. Pure, graceful action.
He ducked as Lucy overextended her reach. To teach her a lesson, he slapped her hand down.
“Ouch!”
“You’re getting lazy.”
“I’m tired.”
“Or lazy. Same thing.” Victor narrowed his eyes as he studied her. Although she hadn’t mentioned it, now that he looked closer, he could see that her arms trembled. Determination kept her working. Soon fatigue would win out, and she’d be useless to do much more. If he wanted to collect on his earnings—and God knew he did—she needed to rest beforehand.
On some level he knew it made him a selfish bastard, but that didn’t stop him from calling out, “Stop.” She shook out her hands and arms, no doubt trying to ease the burning in her muscles. “I think you’ve done enough for now. Let’s put an end to our wager.”
“You can’t keep changing the rules.”
“Of course I can. Let me show you.” He stalked closer to her, and before she could react, Victor threaded his fingers into the damp strands of her hair. He forced her head back and, although he’d just taught her a variety of close contact self-defense maneuvers, Lucy allowed it.
Her plump lips opened a fraction, inviting him to sweep his tongue over them and taste her. His gaze did a slow crawl over her mouth. It moved up, until he could stare into her eyes. The green melted into a darker color with flecks of gold. Tonight, the moon blessed her with eyes that seemed shiny bright.
She looked at him with...desire?
But that made no sense. Lucy made a bargain with him out of necessity. Her venom toward vampires overrode almost everything. Yet, when he stared into those eyes, he saw a flicker of passionate emotion in them. And although she might be panting from exertion, the rapid race of her heart suggested something else stirred her.
“You should be fighting me,” he murmured. His cock hardened beyond possibility, a distraction he could ill afford. It wasn’t enough to force his fingers to let her go though.
Despite the warning, Lucy kept looking at him through half-lidded eyes. In that moment, he knew he had her trust. He doubted any other man would have been allowed to hold her in such a vulnerable position, throat exposed, breasts thrust high in the air, yet she gave him the luxury. This she might have done as a blood slave, bought and paid for by a vampire, but now, as a free woman, she did it for some other unnamed reason.
Slowly—oh, so slowly—she reached up to him, grasping his upper arms. His skin sizzled beneath her touch.
Lucy then twisted in a move he hadn’t taught her, breaking out of his hold and landing in a perfect plank. Victor grinned but dropped back, getting ready for the assault she’d just announced. “So it’s on, huh?”
“I’ll try to take it easy on you. What counts as a tag?”
“Grab a stake. You manage to touch me with either end, and you’ve won the night.”
“Just touch?”
“That’s it.” He made it sound simple, but they both knew the odds were against her. Victor toyed with the idea of offering a handicap, but his mind flashed to a vicious image of Sage. Eyes r
ed and wild, incisors bared. He’d be quick to kill her without so much as a second glance in her direction once done.
Lucy selected a branch from the ground, her attention partly focused on him the entire time—good girl—and returned. He’d at least toss her one more tip. “Whether it’s me or it’s Sage, you fight dirty, hear me? Do whatever it takes, because you are outmatched, no matter how you look at it.”
He narrowed his eyes when Lucy dropped her hands to her sides. She circled him, leaving a large enough space between them that whoever struck first would have a few feet to cross. She gripped the stick loosely in one hand, almost feigning like she’d forgotten she carried it.
Then, as if he hadn’t spent the first half of their night working with her, Lucy flipped the stick in her hand and thrust it out toward him. Victor smacked her wrist, expecting her to drop it, but Lucy followed through. As a result, there was less impact against her skin, and she had the opportunity to strike out with the opposite fist.
Victor leaned away from the punch, tempted to sweep her feet with his own. Not yet though. His curiosity wanted to see what she’d bring to the table.
Her stake hand came around in a hook that would have made Mayweather proud. She twisted before it connected though, catching him off guard a second time.
If she wasn’t coming at him like a thunderstorm, he’d have taken the time to be impressed. She wasn’t holding back, and Victor dodged away from the rapid bursts with scarcely a moment to spare. Hell, he’d felt the wind from the last one as her fist flew past him. When had she gotten so fast?
“Fucking hustler,” he called. “You acted like you couldn’t swat a mosquito before, and now you’ve got moves like a pro.”
Lucy didn’t take the bait, charging him before attempting a backhanded stab. Unlike him, she wasn’t against kicking out either. Totally underhanded, she kept him moving and aware.
He loved it.
“You don’t get anywhere in life by just being pretty,” Lucy replied. The stabbing hand kept coming at him. Up, across, two jabs. “And before I was a blood slave, I was a teen surrounded by lecherous boys.”
Victor decided to up the ante. Instead of just defending, he went on the offense, holding back but slashing at her with an open palm. He didn’t take advantage of his vampire speed either, although it was something she’d eventually have to contend with.