by Dee Carney
He made it to her before another attack, her luck more than his because surely by now he was out. After dropping to his knees, he strained to pull her into his arms, trying to find a way to hold on to her while keeping his gun ready. His mangled arm hung uselessly at his side, and he didn’t know how long it would take before he regained control of it. Lucy couldn’t have been more than one hundred and thirty pounds on any given day, but as dead weight, it might as well have been three hundred. He struggled to throw her over his bad shoulder, one part of him demanding he not injure her further while the other knew his best course of action meant getting away.
“Locke!” His voice, hoarse with pain and grief, echoed around the empty street. “Leave me the fuck alone, and I won’t take down any more of your people.”
God, his arm. The back of his head throbbed too. Might have hit it at some point.
“You hear me, Locke? Leave us the fuck alone!”
No one answered, but he couldn’t hear any further movement either. That had to count for something. Maybe the werewolf leader was around or maybe his people had decided he was too much work. He’d take whatever advantage they tossed his way.
Not daring to look into the face of the woman raggedly drawing breath, he stumbled forward. His legs refused to function the way they should and he dropped to one knee, almost spilling her in the process. Staggering, he labored to get upright and away from the immediate location. When the cops arrived, he didn’t want to be there to explain the overlarge werewolves still in the process of healing. From what he knew, by morning they’d revert back to their human forms, sending the local police into conniptions.
He almost dropped her twice more, but Victor made his way into a side street unaccosted. After the second time when she didn’t make a sound despite his rough handling, fear gripped his throat. He hoped the lycans had abandoned him to retreat. Maybe to try another day. She needed him now.
Every time he scraped past a car, he lifted the door handles, silently begging for one of them to allow him entrance. By the third car, his energy flagging and his hope waning, he started to look for another plan. Maybe lurch into one of the shops, demand shelter until he could heal. But Lucy was on borrowed time. She needed to get to a hospital or at least a doctor. As much as he didn’t trust either, they would be able to provide care he couldn’t.
A gold sedan unlatched. Startled by the swinging door, Victor stumbled before realizing the victory for what it was. Carefully, so very carefully, he lowered Lucy into his arms, grimacing at the sight of his blood dragging across her skin. A flare of pain where they connected brought tears to his eyes, but he blinked them back to focus on her careful management. With one numb arm, the other trembling with fatigue, he did his best, apologizing to her softly the entire time. He hurt, but he was hurting her more.
The car must have belonged to a teenager with a heart or asthma condition. The number of burger wrappers and French fry containers on the floor created a mountain a small child could have hid in. Not only that, the layer of dust would be perfect for starting a potato farm. Cigarette burns in the driver’s seat created interesting textures and probably necessitated careful position of the driver or risk being scratched. It wasn’t an ideal locale, but it kept them off the street for a few minutes. It would do.
Victor brushed a few Snickers wrappers onto the floor before getting Lucy inside. When he got her propped in the backseat and saw the damage the lycan had done, he swallowed down a roar of frustration. “Lucy, doll? Talk to me.”
She’d been dragged by the lycan, her skin abraded and bleeding. It had bitten her at least once and even in the dark car, he could see the spread of her blood saturating her T-shirt. She’d gone sallow, an unnatural color, making her paler than him. Her chest rose and fell in choppy movements, and it was obvious her breathing couldn’t sustain her for long.
“What do I do?” he whispered. Leaving her to get help meant he could move faster, but at the same time, it felt like abandoning her too. He rejected the thought. “I have to get you to a hospital.”
He scrambled over the backseat, biting back a scream when he jarred his bad arm. In the movies, they made it look so easy to jump start a car, but he stared at the steering wheel, at the empty key slot and had no clue what to do. He could break into a building and kill a man barehanded, but jacking a car went beyond his skills. Yet, if he didn’t get her to help soon, she was going to die.
She moaned, and Victor whipped his head around to study her. Her closed eyelids fluttered until at last they opened, barely slits. “Help me.”
Victor scrambled to his knees and peered at her from the front seat. “Beautiful, I’m here. I’m here. I’m going to get you to help.”
She swallowed, and the grimace of pain that spilled across her face became more evidence of her discomfort. “No.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Victor looked around, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to do this. He could take her back to the humans, and they’d get her help. There’d be more questions than answers. He’d most likely be incarcerated, but whatever—doctors and nurses could start patching her up. Maybe he’d been selfish in taking her away in the first place, but he hadn’t been thinking. He’d gone on instinct and for the first time, maybe his instinct had failed him.
“I’m dying,” she said in a voice so soft even his vampire hearing strained to pick it up.
“No, you’re hurt, but you’re not dying.”
Her lips twisted into a smile. “Liar.” She coughed, her back arching as she choked on air and fluid. Almost imperceptible droplets of blood landed on the back of his hand. He pretended he couldn’t see them while his heart spasmed in alarm.
Too much time passed as Lucy fought to regulate her breathing. Her hands clenched the armrest, and it killed him to see her suffer. “I’m going for help,” he said after the attack had subsided.
“If not the wolf’s bite, then spice. I’m dying,” she insisted.
Fuck. What did she want him to do then? They’d talked enough for him to know how much the poison in her system pained her. The respiratory distress she’d suffer until she couldn’t stand breathing. When he got her help for the damage the lycan had inflicted, she’d still have to contend with the poison in her system.
No matter how he tried to deny it, she was right. She was dying.
Victor squeezed his eyes shut. Indecision ripping a hole in him.
Death wasn’t the only option for Lucy.
“Kill Sage for me.”
He shot his gaze to her face. “That’s your task, what you need to do for yourself. I’ve got to get you to a doctor so you can handle your business the way you want it done.” Pain blossomed in his chest. “You need to do this for yourself and for Cindy. Stay alive to see it through.”
She coughed, and a full minute passed before she could gasp for air again. Although she tried to cover her mouth with her arm, she abandoned it to brace her chest.
He swallowed hard. “What if...”
Victor scanned their surroundings. That final lycan could be anywhere. The human authorities were no doubt on the scene and canvasing the area for the shooters. Taking stock of the casualties. The sedan made a good, fast shelter, but wasn’t the ideal place to be for more than a few minutes.
A dozen thoughts assaulted him at once, none of them important to what weighed heavily on his mind now. They served as distractions and nothing more.
The consequences for the thoughts running through his head right were astronomical. If anyone in the vampire nation found out...
“Promise.”
“Lucy. Death isn’t the only way. It doesn’t have to be. You can finish what you started with a little help.”
“I didn’t think I’d die like this,” she whispered.
Victor climbed over the backseat for the last time. He wrestled with the decision to tuck her into his arms, but for this, he had to be certain. Based on her shallow breathing, Lucy probably didn’t have much time to spare
either. Her limbs were cool to the touch, and up close, he realized her lips were tinged with blue.
“I can t-turn you,” he said, his voice catching. “You don’t have to die.”
The consequences for an unauthorized creation of a vampire were astronomical. Once the vampire Council discovered a newly turned vampire—and they always found out—they’d dispatch an executioner to kill both sire and progeny. He couldn’t say if they would be buying her another week or another decade. He’d given her the highlights of this during pillow talk, but how much she understood, he couldn’t be sure.
But one more week with Lucy would be worth it. A chance he would willingly take.
“Tell me it’s okay and I will. If not for yourself, then do it for your sister. She’d want to know you made it out okay.” Please.
Lucy began to gasp for air. Her heartbeat slowed. Slowed.
She rolled her eyes toward him, but he needed to hear her say it. Her feelings for vampires were strong, and he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to become one. He offered her a chance at life though. A way to get at Sage and live. After the life she’d led, no one else deserved it more.
“Say it,” he demanded.
Her fingers dug into the armrest when she began to cough again. Victor watched her face for a sign—just one—that gave him the permission he desperately needed. He couldn’t tell if she heard him anymore. She was desperate for oxygen. Suffering for it.
He didn’t think she had the strength left to talk. Nor the time.
“Blink twice, and I’ll know you want this. Damn it, blink twice.”
Victor watched the life leaving her face.
Then she blinked. Twice.
Chapter Eighteen
Victor’s hands trembled as he scrubbed them clean. He couldn’t get the smell off, though. The stench of unnatural death.
He kept his gaze on the task at hand, refusing to look at the poor animal’s carcass lying on the tapestry. He didn’t want to see the reminder of what he’d been reduced to. What Margeaux had forced him into doing just to stay alive.
Alive. It lost its meaning a long time ago to be replaced by a disdain Victor could scarcely hide. He loathed to touch her, to kiss her.
The weight of her stare followed him now, witness to the way he stroked over the flaccid side of his face. Streaks of blood coated his hand, requiring him to wipe it against his trousers. Margeaux didn’t have much to do with him these days, beyond sex and feeding, but vowed to end his miserable existence if his carelessness drew attention to their activities. A scant amount of blood observed by the wrong person could raise questions.
“I used to think you the most handsome of men. Now look at you,” she tsked. “Ruined for the rest of time.”
The same speech every time she saw him. The same lament that for some reason, his transformation hadn’t cured the palsy as she’d expected. The same threat to just end him and be done with it.
“I thought to keep you at my side, but I see now that won’t be possible.”
Victor whirled on his feet, surprised by this new proclamation. He’d assumed she’d never let him free, not when his monetary debt to her amounted to a fortune. With no skills and his family’s estate squandered, repayment would be near impossible. “Madame?”
His heartbeat began to speed and he prayed she wouldn’t hear the excited betrayal of his body. After a year of servicing her needs, he hadn’t considered she would ever release him. He now had to wonder at cost this would come.
“I need a companion. And you...you were never mine, even when I turned you. When I changed you, you kept your mind and heart from me.” She sipped her morning tea while dressed in a modest gown. No one who looked at her now would have believed the way she’d drunk from his vein the night before, caring little for the damage she’d wrought. Never—not once—did she allow him to feed from her. “If you had,” Margeaux continued, “your palsy would have lifted, don’t you think?”
Was she suggesting that the paralysis of his face resulted from his mental state? Was that even possible? He would have to consider whether there could be some truth in this.
“What would you have me do?” Victor asked. Whether he liked it or not, he was dependent on her for funding. He’d find it hard to survive if she turned him out now.
“Leave.” Her gaze went to the animal carcass. “As distasteful as you might find it, you know how to feed yourself. That’s what matters most.”
“Most? What about shelter? Money?”
Margeaux shrugged. “You’re resourceful. You’ll figure out something. Go now and be thankful for the gift of extended life that I’ve given you.”
Victor stared at her as she rose to standing and then exited the room without another word. In her palatial home, she moved like a queen, walking away as if unconcerned that he might accost her for the way she’d discarded him. Little did she know that he curled his hands into fists to keep from rushing to her and throttling the life from her miserable body.
She’d left him like this—a vampire demon. Permanently disfigured. Without friends or family. No place to go.
How would he survive?
Chapter Nineteen
Oh, God.
Lucy jerked awake, a new type of agony crushing her beneath its weight. She writhed and stretched, trying to break free from the exquisite torture holding her beneath its weight. Her eyelids fluttered as she fought through the fog of sensation, struggling to reconcile it with her last memories.
Her naked skin met the cool sheets of a bed, her head resting on a pillow.
There had been pain then, but different than this. Before, she hurt, but this...this was bliss. The blanket surrounding her brought agony, but she reveled in it. Between her thighs pulsed, forcing her to twist and add friction so she could elongate the pleasure-pain.
She startled when someone pressed a cool cloth to her forehead and began to tenderly wipe at her face. “You’ve been out for almost three days,” he said.
Victor. His soothing voice. Like molten honey. She wanted to kiss the sound.
She wanted to kiss him.
“The worst of it’s probably out of your system, but there’ll be some lingering effects. Do you smell that?”
Lucy brought her hands to her breasts, heavy with the need to be touched, and dragged her fingers over the sensitive tips. She hissed out a breath as the sensation made something low in her belly flare out with wild desire. Then the scent of cinnamon drifted over her, and Lucy inhaled it into her lungs. “Someone’s baking,” she said softly.
He chuckled. “No doll, that’s you. It’s designed to attract older vampires to you.”
The smell didn’t matter. All that mattered was this delicious feeling flowing over her. Somehow it combined until she loathed it and yearned for more. It was the precipice before falling headfirst into orgasm. The momentous build right before the explosion. Such erotic hurt.
“Sip this,” he said.
She opened her eyes to find a straw hovering near her mouth. The cool liquid went down easily, soothing a parched throat. It didn’t stop the sensation swirling through her belly though. “Victor, I need...”
Putting what she wanted into words eluded her. She searched her mind for a way to describe the need crawling through her. Like chasing the dragon.
“I know what you need.”
He brushed his mouth over hers, and Lucy explored the sensation. She needed more. More. Unafraid, unashamed of taking from him, she pushed her tongue into his mouth and teased him with tentative licks. Their tongues touched—a brief caress—then tangled as their kiss heated into a ravenous claiming.
Something in the back of her mind reminded her this wasn’t a good idea, but damn if she was going to listen. Having him close to her, their bodies touching, his hand thrust into her hair, felt too good. As if he heard her thoughts, Victor curled his fingers tighter, forcing her head back and baring her throat.
The frisson of fear that jettisoned would have paralyzed her in the
past, but Lucy arched for it, exposing her carotid. It pulsed with a hard tattoo. He must have heard its rapid beat, for Victor put a finger over the thump. His mouth left hers to brush along the fragile skin. Goosebumps rose in reaction, but her pussy moistened.
The ache went viral. She had this incredible hunger that needed to be sated. Something rooted into her soul told her only Victor could bring relief. She possessed a carnal thirst for him. It could only be relieved after he branded her with his kiss and himself. Her body craved his thick cock pushing inside her, his body claiming her in the most primal of ways.
He skimmed his hands over her shoulders, her breasts and her belly. She parted her legs for him when the hand traveled lower and slid between her thighs. Their mouths connected the moment his fingers dipped into her pussy, swiping at the gathered juices there. Victor’s thick fingers pushed deeper, deeper inside, and Lucy moaned into the kiss.
She gripped his shoulders, pulling him closer because she couldn’t stand this teasing. On any other day, she could have taken it slow, relished the delicate touches, savored the way he explored her body with a lover’s careful attention. Today she needed him hard, fast and deep. “Please, Victor.”
“I’ve got you...I’ll always have you.”
Lucy clung to his words and kissed him with a furious passion. She felt so many conflicting and frightening things for this man. He aroused her in a way she’d never before thought possible. The untamed hunger might destroy them both if he didn’t subdue it with his ardor.
Victor crawled between the cradle of her thighs, and Lucy wanted to weep with thanks. His welcome weight brought her comfort.
He pushed into her, and she cried out as the sweet sensation sent her into an instant rapture. She pulled her thighs high on his waist, rocking her lower body, silently begging him for more, more, more. Her toes brushed his muscled thighs as he elevated on one arm and began to thrust with renewed vigor. His corded muscles bunched beneath her grasp.