Hunger Untamed H3

by Dee Carney

  The weight of Victor watching her followed Lucy through the small circle she made. It wasn’t like back in high school when the guys had made rakish catcalls, lewdly staring at her bouncing breasts. What he did was follow with analytical intensity, like trying to solve a puzzle. Even when she couldn’t see him for the forest trees blocking her view, she knew his stare.

  Gasping for breath, she threw her hands in the air, willing her racing heart to mellow and for oxygen to fill her starving lungs. Her vision blurred, the world bouncing in tune with her frantic pulse.

  Victor ambled over, still analyzing. “Do you see me?” he asked.

  Lucy continued gasping, too busy praying for a lung transplant, to follow. “What?”

  “When you look at me, what do you see?”

  “A sadist,” she griped between breaths. God, breathing through a straw would have been less difficult.

  He reached for her, gently cupping her chin. He tilted her face toward his, his eyes searching for something undefined. “Seriously. Do you see me?”

  Her ears buzzed, making it difficult to focus. Between that and her struggling breaths, Victor’s question made absolutely no sense. She would have answered him if she had any clue about the direction of his question, but she had more important tasks to focus on right now.

  What was going on? Why couldn’t she get her damned lungs to open up and gulp down air?

  She pulled away from him, stumbling, searching for a place to sit. Maybe she needed to keep walking though. Her legs carried her away from him on a blind path back to the house.

  Lucy began to cough, each spasm like a knife being plunged into her chest. She arched her back, the only defense against the shredding pain blossoming through her body. Her fingers curled in, the muscles of her forearms and hands bowstring tight.

  She slammed her eyes shut, too caught in this terrible storm to let loose a scream. The barking coughs turned into hacking combined with an attempt to stop the assault on her body.

  “Lucy?”

  The shooting pain found new places to attack. Somehow every joint had become a bottleneck of coalesced torture. She collapsed, moaning.

  Heavy footsteps raced toward her, and between fluttering lids, she saw Victor drop to a knee beside her. “Hey. Talk to me. What’s going on? Where does it hurt?”

  This—this torment. She’d been through a fraction of this before. Her body attacked itself, her blood no longer capable of supporting her.

  “P-poison,” she croaked.

  “When? How?”

  If he expected her to spit out an explanation now, he held her capacity for suffering on a different level than she did. Lucy wanted nothing more than to curl up and die. The memory of Cindy helped keep the thought at bay, but it was so hard.

  Tears trickled from her eyes, the fat droplets a cooling reprieve from the heat flooding her system. She fought to not lie on the ground, stop breathing, stop feeling. So sorry, Cindy. Maybe she couldn’t do this after all.

  She cried out when strong hands grabbed her, hauling her upright into a sitting position. Pain flared out, but in the moment she tried to scream against the horribleness of it, her lungs opened up and a desperate sob brought her the oxygen she’d been lacking.

  Victor jerked her upright again. “C’mon. Breathe.”

  Misery washed over her, but she took another breath, this one as vital and desperate as the last. She started to slump over, but Victor held on. Held tight.

  His intense eyes, his surety, a focal point as she took another breath.

  And another.

  Another.

  * * *

  Fuck. He hadn’t seen that coming.

  He’d been trying to ascertain what she saw in him, why she could possibly seem attracted to him. Why didn’t Lucy care about the defects that greeted him when he dared a glimpse of himself in a mirror? On every one of those occasions, he wished he’d been born into his vampirism, inheriting the inability to see his own reflection. God knew he didn’t want to look at the droop to his eye and cheek or the way his lips didn’t close quite right. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for others to sit across from him and pretend like they didn’t notice.

  But not Lucy. When she looked at him, he always heard the subtle gain in the tempo of her heart. The beginnings of a smile tipped her lips, pure delight in being near him another emotion she wore on her sleeve like a bright red ribbon. He didn’t understand it.

  Then the color had drained in her face, a cross between surprise and fear punctuated a moment later as she struggled to breathe. He still had no idea what had happened. He’d discarded his first instinct to call 911 for the human. With a small prayer of thanks, he was relieved that his second instinct—to move her to sitting and open up her lungs—appeared to have brought some measure of relief.

  Victor remained in a crouch beside her, low enough to inspect the flood of color returning to her face. She kept her eyes cast away from his, embarrassed. The occasional cough racked her body, but as quickly as they recurred, they seemed to subside.

  “Better now?”

  She nodded. “It was nothing,” she whispered.

  “The fuck it was,” he bit out, his voice rising.

  “Really, it’s nothing.” Lucy found some invisible spot in the grass to focus on, feigning interest in something there. As if it would be enough to distract Victor from reliving the nightmare of seeing her struggle for air.

  He could respect her privacy. Ignoring her sudden illness would be the smart thing to do. But he was coming to know Lucy a little. There was more going on here than she wanted him to know about, and if he let it slide, he’d be missing out on something crucial.

  He recognized the bond they’d started to form. The slippery slope away from strictly professional to something a little more personal. Maybe friendship. Maybe more...

  “The way I see it,” he said, not allowing her to shy away from him, “is that you did some simple exercise. Nothing strenuous at all. You seem in shape and jogged that circuit without looking like you were going to pass out or anything. You fought with me yesterday and did little more than break a sweat. But today, something happened, something you don’t much want me to know about. That wasn’t allergies or an asthma attack or not being able to catch your breath after running a mile. I heard someone in the throes of a death rattle. Someone with one pinky toe out of the grave. Someone who’s really sick. That sound about right?”

  Her lips parted, and at first he thought she’d actually give him a reply. Instead, Lucy drew in more breaths with concerted effort. “I’m better,” she said at last. Her body decided to betray the lie by forcing her into a coughing fit that lasted almost a full minute.

  When she settled, Victor tried again. “This got something to do with why you’re after Sage?”

  “Why do you think that?” She still wouldn’t look at him.

  “Because I’m not stupid. This ain’t just being tenacious about him, you’re obsessively stubborn. You’re acting like you’re on a deadline and you’re determined to see it done yourself, even if it kills you. Literally. Thing is, you ain’t holding the cards in this. I am. So for the last time, if you don’t want me to walk away right now, you tell me... What did he do to you?”

  The hate-filled look she shot him should have cut him down on the spot. He considered it an improvement over the mild catatonia she’d been caught beneath. “He killed my sister,” she hissed. “And he’s killed me too.”

  The moment the words left her mouth, Lucy deflated. As if unable to hold herself up any longer, Lucy fell onto her side. She dragged her legs toward her abdomen, curled herself into a ball and began to sob.

  He’d heard women cry before, the heart-wrenching keening of someone who’d lost a child or a spouse. The piteous wails of someone going through loss and who felt abandoned and alone. Even her brokenhearted weeping earlier didn’t match the depth of emotion in Lucy right now. This was worse. So much worse.

  Like most men, he hat
ed to hear a woman cry, the sounds reminding him too much of his helplessness in easing her pain. His first instinct had always been to leave her to her grief, maybe come back after she’d poured out her sorrow.

  It slew him to listen to Lucy and because he was growing to like her, really like her, he waited. He respected the hell out of a human who wanted to take down a vampire for a wrong. In particular, he admired her for knowing she faced an almost insurmountable task, yet she pressed on.

  Eventually though, Victor grabbed her by the flimsy T-shirt and tucked another arm beneath her legs. Lucy poured her heart out as he hauled her into his hold, picked her up and carried her toward the house. He expected a small amount of protest or fight, but her raw grief left her vulnerable at the moment.

  She clung to him, and the feel of her hand pressed against his heart made his abdomen tighten. Until now, he hadn’t appreciated how fragile she truly was. She weighed next to nothing, and her skin was so soft and delicate. The amount of strength and determination in her to go after Sage must have been awesome.

  When he sat down on the bed a few minutes later, he struggled with his next decision. While his mind instructed him to release her onto the comfort of the mattress, his hands kept her tight against him. Where he could feel the brittle beat of her heart.

  The cold trickle of her tears against his skin stoked a quiet rage within him. He would sit here and hold her for however long she needed, and he would wait. He would, because if he didn’t hear what happened, sit back and assess their next steps, he would defy the werewolves and confront Sage himself.

  To keep himself from doing just that, Victor began to sweep his lips over Lucy’s temple. If he kissed her mouth or cheeks and tasted the bitterness of her tears, he didn’t know if his common sense would be able to overrule his impulse. So, he kissed where it was safe.

  Eventually, the shaking of her shoulders and the uncontrolled gasps subsided. She shifted in his hold, nestling against him. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but Lucy brushed her lips against his jaw, then chin. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Tell me,” he said softly.

  She wiped beneath her nose with a hand, then took a deep breath. A barely perceptible nod followed. “A vampire noticed us, me and my sister, and we were brought into the blood slave’s life. The best of everything. Money, no object.”

  He knew this already but refused to interrupt her. This was her story to tell in whatever manner she needed.

  “At first, it seemed like a dream. A lot of people could look down on what we did, but a lot more should be jealous. In the early years, we only had to be a vessel and supply a vampire his food. Later, when we were of age, sexual indulgences were included.” Her voice grew softer. “My first vampire lover was so gentle with me. He knew I was afraid and a virgin and he took his time. He made sure the experience was memorable. Special. All of them during those early years, in fact. They were always nice to me.”

  “What changed?”

  “About a year ago, we were introduced to a new set of patrons.” Her face hardened, deadly intent in her eyes.

  “Sage.”

  “One of them. He and his cadre weren’t satisfied with the way things had been done. Tradition was passé, and vampires deserved more than what had been given to them in the past.”

  Victor wasn’t surprised to hear this. As one of the Council, Sage would have wanted a change in vampire thinking, but at its most fundamental, the Council had been created to uphold the basic vampire traditions. The contradiction wasn’t lost on a lot of the community.

  “According to them,” Lucy continued, “there was a way to heighten the experience of feeding. They’d already been doing it in other parts of the world and wanted to introduce it to us here.”

  “Feeding can be one of the most intimate, highly sexualized activities two people can participate in. Beyond introducing an individual’s fetish, how could it ever become more?”

  “By enhancing our blood, the blood of a slave. By making it an almost addictive substance. By making blood so potent in the way it aroused and empowered a vampire, his lust for it almost superseded everything else.”

  “Christ.”

  “My master said no. Not yet. He didn’t agree. Didn’t want to damage the product he’d spent almost twenty years perfecting. He was a good man. But to this day, I don’t understand how the contract worked. How we were loaned to Sage for his pleasure.”

  Victor knew from his early years a little of how a blood slave could be passed from one owner to another. Only the wealthiest and most venerable of vampires owned them, their wellbeing something most owners took extreme pride in. “Sage would have had to agree to your protection. Dishonoring that type of contract is unheard of, so I’m not sure I’m following how he could have dismissed it.”

  She began to trail her finger over a vein in his forearm. “You know about spice?”

  An addictive drug to vampires. Outlawed. “Yes.”

  “Somehow they figured out that if they fed spice to humans, letting us serve as a filter for it, the addiction was muted. The sensation and the rush were still there, but no one would kill or steal for a hit. No nasty withdrawal effects to deal with. The cravings, all of the bad stuff about spice, gone.”

  “The best of us, the oldest and most elite of us, they wanted this transformed spice for themselves. So they used you, they used the blood slaves to deliver it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sage did this.” Not a question, but a horrified statement.

  “I didn’t meet him until much later on, but yes. He took an instant liking to Cindy, who is—was—much prettier than I am.”

  He squeezed her closer. No matter what she said, he couldn’t believe that could ever be possible.

  “We didn’t know anything about it,” Lucy said.

  “It wouldn’t affect you the way it does us.”

  “It was in our food for months. Cindy first, because she’d been the one sent to Sage more often than not. It’s why she got sick first, I guess. Why she...she...”

  “Damn it,” Victor muttered. He slackened his grip on her for the moment because a crushing violent wave made his vision go red. “And now you’re sick in the same way. What have the doctors said?”

  “Nothing to be done but keep me comfortable.” Such overwhelming bitterness in her voice. “I’ll die soon.”

  He rejected the thought because there was always a way. He didn’t have a lot of money, but he sure as hell knew a lot of people. The ones who didn’t already owe him a favor would find having a merc who owed them one very useful indeed. “How much time do we have?”

  “Based on Cindy, a month. Maybe two, if I’m lucky. I don’t know... If I’m careful with my health, maybe I can stretch it out longer than that. It’s hard to know or tell.”

  “Oh, doll,” he murmured.

  “This changes nothing. I won’t back out of our deal. I’m still your blood slave until Sage is disposed of.”

  “I know. And when I’m ready for it, you’ll deliver on your promise.”

  She drew back far enough to look him in the eyes. Brow furrowed, she said, “But not tonight?”

  “Not tonight. Tonight you rest, and tomorrow, we take it easier—”

  “But—”

  “Easier. We don’t exacerbate your condition, but you get the training you need.” He understood her need for vengeance and knew the futility of offering to find another way. Her business with Sage was personal, and she’d need to see it to its end herself.

  And if for some reason Lucy couldn’t complete the task, for her, Victor would. He wouldn’t look too hard at how fast he’d started falling for her. What had begun as a way to get his dick wet, now...now he’d help her. He’d make sure she got Sage.

  In deep and, stupid him, loving it.

  Chapter Ten

  Crust had formed on her eyelids and cheeks during her sleep, remnants from waking up multiple times, only to cry herself back to fitful slumber. She was so tire
d, yet it felt as if a weight had been lifted. Carrying the burden of Cindy’s death had taken more of a toll than she’d realized.

  Every time she’d woken, Victor had been there to talk her through the grief. No matter the lateness of the hour, he’d been alert. “What did your handler say about Cindy’s death?” he’d asked at one point.

  “Regrettable, but that’s all he said.” He’d been good to them, but he served the vampires. If one of his human pets couldn’t survive the rigors of that life—no matter how valuable she’d been to him in service—he’d write off the loss and collect another treasure to replace her. Which was exactly what he’d done.

  By the time the sun set, she’d told Victor more about her childhood and the sister she missed so terribly than she’d ever intended. The thing about talking to Victor was that he didn’t offer platitudes, nor did his eyes glaze over. He listened attentively, interjecting with questions or commentary or staying silent. By the time she’d stopped talking, her throat was parched. Her tears had long since dried.

  “Time to get to work,” he said after she’d started to drift to sleep again. It must have been at least the dozenth time.

  They’d settled into a comfortable configuration yet again, his thigh wedged between hers. His arm bracketed her breast, the hold of a lover familiar with his partner’s body. When he spoke, his throat near her ear made for a lulling low-pitched sound that could have soothed another person to sleep again. Probably why she kept nodding off. Until now.

  Lucy jerked awake. “What?” He had been listening, right? He knew she’d had almost no sleep, and not even adrenaline would get her through another hour.

  “A month. Two maybe, you’d said. We could stay here in bed, letting time and life pass us by, ignoring the fact that you’ll be growing steadily weaker every day. We could do that and kiss and fuck and tell everything outside these walls to go to hell. It’d be really easy, doll, I know it. Or—we keep in sight the fact that you’re growing steadily weaker every day. And Sage is already stronger than you are. And that time isn’t your friend. We could stay in bed or we can get outside, train and get you ready as soon as fucking possible so that you can go after the bastard who devastated your family.”