Allegiance (The Penton Vampire Legacy)

by Susannah Sandlin

  “Then we’re not in danger of repeating history?”

  “No, because I’m not going to feed from you, as badly as I want to. Just that taste . . .” His eyes lightened at the memory, which corresponded with the tightening Robin felt in her gut. He’d felt the magic as strongly as she had. “I don’t know what it would do to us, a full feeding, and we have to be able to move fast if anything happens.”

  When something happened. There was no doubt in Robin’s mind that events were escalating.

  She crawled toward him and stretched out on top of him, her arms slipping beneath his so she could prop on her elbows. “You aren’t feeding from me, and I don’t plan to bite you, at least not hard enough to draw blood. That leaves one option on the table.”

  His hands rested on her waist for only a second before he slid one hand between them and touched her. Finally touched her where she’d needed him all night. She’d thought the sensation had passed, but the barest pressure of his fingers and the need for him roared to life inside her.

  “The look on your face right now is something I will dream about,” he murmured, rolling them over again and jerking her shirt over her head. “And these. I’ve already dreamt of these.”

  His mouth latched onto one breast, sucking so hard she thought she might die of pleasure or her nipple might come off, and she didn’t really care which as long as he didn’t stop. He released it with a gasp and looked at his handiwork. “Beautiful, red. Too much?”

  She couldn’t speak, just shook her head. “Then I should make the other one match, yes?”

  She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  God, what a talented mouth. Robin threw her head back and just felt. Gave her brain permission to vacate the premises, as she began to slowly rock against him. Clothes, damn it. Too many clothes.

  Cage released her breast with a pop. “Nicely matched now.”

  “Take off your fucking sweater.” She clawed at the fabric, tugging it up, up, until he finally grasped it and jerked it over his head while she moved to the buttons on her jeans.

  “Stand up. I want to see you.” Cage lifted her off him, leaving her little choice but to stand. He shook back that glorious hair and kept his gaze pinned to hers as he finished unbuttoning the jeans, sliding them down her hips, latching his fingers onto her panties along the way.

  Only when they got far enough for her to step out of them did he lower his gaze. She heard his breath hitch, followed by a soft curse.

  “I shave it, just in case you think shifters don’t have hair down south,” she said, loving the way his eyes caressed her, and she adjusted her stance with her legs farther apart to accommodate his exploring fingers. “It also makes me feel . . . oh . . .”

  He replaced his fingers with his mouth, sucking hard on her clit the way he’d caught her breasts. Robin cried out when her knees gave way, but he wrapped his arms around her and lowered her to the mat, never stopping his assault with lips and tongue and fingers until she wasn’t sure what was moving where, only that it was building and building and she heard herself cry out with a primitive plea that bypassed her brain entirely.

  And then he stopped. Blew warm air on her clit until she shivered and ached. God, how she ached for him.

  Emptiness, then cool air. “Damn it, you can’t . . .” She propped up on her elbows and stopped breathing at the sight of him, the hard planes of his body in the gentle play of the lights, and his own jeans on the floor next to hers. His cock was long and ready for her, and she liked that at least a little of the blood fueling that hard-on had come from her. He was every bit as beautiful as she’d imagined.

  “Can’t what, love? Can’t do this?” He dropped to his knees and shoved her legs apart, lowering his mouth to her again until she was aching for him—again. “Or maybe this.” He raised his head and turned it to kiss her inner thigh, and then she felt a sting of pain as he bit, took one quick draw of blood, and sent her off the edge of that cliff. He slid his mouth up the length of her body as the shudders sent her dizzy and spinning.

  Her breathing returned to normal, but she was still shivering when he whispered her name. “Robin, look at me.” She opened her eyes and lifted her head. He was poised over her left breast, her nipple still a rosy red from his attention. He licked his tongue slowly over it, circled it, and she saw the fangs just before he bit on the soft underside. This time she didn’t even feel pain, just the drowning, heaving ocean of mindless pleasure.

  She came with a great, frenzied call to the heavens and before she was done, he was inside her, filling her as surely as she knew he would, not being gentle or cautious as she feared he would, but grinding her into the mat with every thrust.

  And when he came, it was his turn to cry out to whatever being had given them this moment of beauty and joy in the middle of their disintegrating world.

  CHAPTER 22

  If Nik had come barreling into Robin’s bedroom at the comm-house thirty seconds later, Cage might at least have been wearing trousers. As it was, he had to treat the human to the scenic view while holding his jeans—well, technically Aidan’s jeans—in one hand while holding his finger over his lips with the other.

  Nik looked at Robin, rolled his eyes, threw up his hands, and stomped back into the hallway.

  By the time Cage joined him in the living room a couple minutes later, Nik had collapsed on the sofa, black shaggy hair askew, clearly in a temper.

  “Sorry about that.” Cage patted his pockets, looking for his cell phone. Next hiding spot he checked was the end table, and then the coffee table that had been knocked aside when he and Robin got started on round two of the sexual Olympics—or was it round three?—on the sofa.

  “Looking for this?” Nik held up the small black phone. “It was on the floor in the hall. Which I know because it started ringing a half hour ago. Apparently, one of the vampire lieutenants isn’t where he’s supposed to be and it’s a half hour until dawn. No one’s seen him since ten o’clock last night.”

  Like he was in any danger of missing sunrise? “We don’t exactly catnap, you know.” Cage stuck the phone in his pocket. “I’m not likely to forget such a momentous event, which takes place daily, by the way. Haven’t missed one in seventy-five years. I’ll make it with five minutes to spare.” Though he had to admit—but only to himself—that time had gotten away from him and he’d have to hurry more than he’d like.

  “Yeah, well, expect a lecture from Mirren when you get there. He’s in a temper.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but he’s always in a temper.”

  “Whatever.”

  Mirren wasn’t the only one in a temper, and Cage had to wonder if his being with Robin might bother Nik more than he’d thought it would. After all, Nik was a friend she occasionally had sex with. For Cage’s part, while that fact hadn’t bothered him yesterday, it now bothered him a lot. A whole lot.

  He needed to bring the subject into the open. “Look, about Robin. We—”

  Nik waved him off. “Robin’s my friend. Nothing you can do will change that. If you make her happy, go for it. You both deserve it. I’m just enjoying a hangover from using the Touch too much yesterday, first going through the burned house and then with the flyer. I need to sleep it off, which is hard to do with insomnia.”

  Cage started to tell him to sleep all he wanted because Robin should be plenty tired and sleeping late herself. He thought better of it. “Need anything before I leave?”

  Nik waved a hand in the air, which Cage interpreted as a negative, so he let himself out the back door and set off in a straight, speedy clip for the Quik Mart. No time to lay false trails this morning; if a killer jaguar was stalking him—or a coyote—he couldn’t do much about it.

  Mirren waited in the hallway, much as Nik had anticipated. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Laying about.” And inside and around and, hell, maybe upside down.
<
br />   “Well, keep your phone on you next time you”—Mirren reached out and held out the bottom of the brown sweater Cage wore, which now had a big hole in it—“go laying about. Hell, you didn’t feed from her, did you?”

  Cage grinned. “And end up accidentally mated? Hell no. I like to forge my own way, and I hear that’s been done already, mate.”

  “Fuck you, Reynolds. Here’s a new path for you to forge.” Mirren shoved a forearm against Cage’s sternum and stalked back toward his room.

  Cage hit the floor hard and got up rubbing his ass. The look on Mirren’s face had been worth every ounce of pain.

  He entered his daysleep thinking of soft kisses and hard, pounding flesh, and he came out of it worrying. What had he been thinking, locking himself away a whole night when the world could be on the verge of coming down around their heads? He’d come back to Penton to protect it and find a home, not let Rome burn while he fiddled away in the old mill with a woman.

  An amazing woman, admittedly—but Robin Ashton did not have a role in his game plan. Maybe after all of this was over he’d revise that plan, but not now. She was too big a distraction.

  He spotted her when he entered the mill for the town meeting, sitting next to Nik on the big wooden spool. He gave them a casual wave and moved to where Aidan and Krys sat, but not before he noticed Robin’s narrowing eyes and lowering brows. She wasn’t going to make it easy to step away.

  They’d either lost more people or some had stayed away—probably the latter. Cage counted fifteen vampires, including himself; eight humans, including Nik Dimitrou; and one known shifter, Robin. Fen had come in early, and Shawn had slipped in right before Mirren and Glory. Of Britta Eriksen, there was no sign. If she were innocent and realized they suspected her of being a plant, missing this meeting was bad form indeed. If she were guilty, well, it made her look guiltier. He’d never said two words to the woman, so he didn’t know enough to form an opinion.

  Perhaps if he’d spend more time learning Penton’s new players and less time learning his way around one sexy little woman, he might remedy that.

  When everyone had found seats, either in the chairs Mark and Melissa had brought in with Nik’s help, or on the mats, Aidan walked into the middle of the group. Off to one side, Mirren leaned against the wall near the door like Earth’s biggest sentinel.

  Silence fell immediately when Aidan held up the flyer. “First off, in case you haven’t heard, this is a fake. Somebody took a photo of Will, put it on another body using computer software, and made it look as if he’d been tortured. I talked to him this morning, and he and Randa are fine. They should be back in Penton in about a week.”

  He talked about psychological warfare and even asked Cage to elaborate.

  “Remember the stories from World War II about Tokyo Rose?” A few nodded—several of the vampires had already been turned at that time, but likely most of the older ones had paid little attention to the war unless they lived in a place where fighting would impact their feeding. “Well, Tokyo Rose wasn’t a single person, but was the pseudonym, if you will, for a group of Japanese women who had an English-language radio show broadcast throughout Europe and the Pacific. Tokyo Rose would report so-called news about the war, and the soldiers and Navy men and flyers would listen to it. The reports were mostly false, and the whole point was to destroy the morale of the Allied troops.”

  Fen spoke up. “Say you’re right about this being psychological warfare. How do we know the reports are false? I mean, after the fact, sure. But once you see something like that flyer, isn’t the damage already done?”

  “You have to assume that it’s a lie,” Aidan said. “Anything you see like this, or anything you hear, come and talk to me or Mirren or Cage. During daylight hours, those of you who aren’t in daysleep, talk to Nik or Robin over there—they’re our newest Omega team members. If we don’t know the answer, give us time to find out before you make a rash decision. Another week, and I think things will improve.”

  One of the human fams, a guy named Rusty who’d been in town before everything went to hell, stood up. “Aidan, what about Matthias Ludlam? I heard he was out?”

  Hell. Cage watched eyes widen and people lean over to whisper to each other. Aidan had been able to keep the news about Matthias quiet until now, which made him wonder who spilled it to Rusty. Still, maybe it was for the best that people knew. They’d either leave or they wouldn’t.

  “He escaped, but no one has seen or heard from him,” Aidan said. “All I can tell you is that we’re doing our best to keep everyone safe, but be on your guard. Travel in pairs. Don’t take off without letting someone know where you’re going. Keep your cell phones charged and within reach.”

  Aidan paced around for a full minute, and everyone fell quiet, waiting to see what was next. “Okay, look. I’m just going to ask. Has anyone seen a strange animal around town or in the woods outside town?”

  “Stranger than that ugly bloodhound of Hannah’s?” Rusty asked, which got a chuckle even from Aidan. That was one ugly dog, Cage had to admit, but Barnabas had probably kept Hannah sane.

  “I’m particularly looking for info about a coyote or a black big cat, like a jaguar.”

  Well, that brought the silence again. Finally, a scathe member from Florida stood up. “I saw a big black cat last week, but I just thought it was cool. I grew up not far from here, and there were always rumors that there were bobcats and black panthers in this area. I just thought maybe it was one of them, venturing out of the woods because there are so few people around here now.”

  “Where was it?” Aidan asked. “What was it doing?”

  “It was kind of funny, because it was slinking out of that greenhouse that you used to keep over by your house on Mill Trace—not far from the collapsed end of the clinic.”

  Yeah, Cage knew exactly where it was. That greenhouse had a door into a tunnel that led to the suite of rooms beneath the clinic itself. The tunnel had collapsed after he’d used it to help Melissa escape Matthias earlier this summer, but it was possible someone could’ve dug enough debris out to stay in one of the rooms. There was no electricity, but portable lighting was easy to buy.

  “Thanks, Joy,” Aidan said. “Anyone else?”

  While a discussion about the size and coloring of jaguars ensued, Cage saw Aidan look over at Mirren and give a slight nod. Then the big guy crooked a finger at Cage and walked outside.

  Good. Cage was tired of talking, and it looked like a trip to the tunnel was in his future. On his way out, he looked back and expected to find Robin watching him. She wasn’t, and that annoyed him more than it should have.

  It took Mirren and Cage ten minutes to walk to the old neighborhood on Trace Way, stopping at the comm-house first to get a couple of high-powered flashlights. Before all the shit began with Matthias Ludlam’s first attack on Penton last January, Aidan had lived here near the end of a cul-de-sac, with Mark and Melissa next door. Now, both houses lay in burned rubble and ruin, but the glass greenhouse that stretched from the house to the edge of Aidan’s property remained intact.

  The plants inside should by all rights have been dead, but a few hardy green ones dotted the greenhouse shelves.

  “The tunnel was still clear up through that first suite last time I was in here,” Mirren said, walking toward the back corner where the trapdoor lay beneath a layer of artificial turf and a pile of flowerpots. “I was with Glory, and it was just before Matthias had his big show downtown that sent us into the Omega facility. So you’ve been here since then—is that part still open?”

  “I’m not sure.” The steel-framed room at the foot of the ladder had still been clear, and he tried to remember whether or not the cave-in had blocked the tunnel altogether. The memories were fuzzy, though. He’d been shot, trying to get Melissa to safety, and had been pretty certain he was about to die.

  They shone their flashlights over the stuf
f piled on top of the trapdoor. “If it’s been moved recently, whoever moved it did a good job of camouflaging it.” Cage knelt and studied the edges of the turf. The dirt around it didn’t look as if it had been disturbed, but it wouldn’t be that hard to lift the whole thing up—especially for a shape-shifter.

  “So, in your dealings with Robin, did you ever get around to asking her if she could, I don’t know, smell another shifter?” Mirren began studying the dirt floor of the greenhouse, probably looking for footprints—or paw prints. “I mean if she ran into Mr. Coyote or Mr. Jaguar in human form, would she know?”

  That had been one of the few coherent conversations he and Robin had managed to work into their busy evening. “In my dealings with Robin, we did talk about that. She says sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think it’s like us with other vampires. An older, savvier vamp can scent out another vamp whereas a younger one, or one who’s too self-absorbed to pay attention to what’s around him? Probably not.”

  “That’s a fucking lot of help.” Mirren walked to the corner and pulled the turf mat aside, revealing the trapdoor. He pulled a small ring of keys from his pocket but pulled on the door’s metal ring before trying any of them. The hatch top lifted off easily.

  “Wasn’t locked.” He trained his flashlight beam into the hole. “Nothing looks out of place.”

  Cage had already decided that, short of a life-threatening emergency, he wasn’t going down there. He’d managed before only out of sheer desperation. Melissa had to be gotten out of Matthias’s clutches, and working through the tunnel had been the only way to do it. Plus, his gunshot wound had helped to distract him from any claustrophobic panic. Today, Mirren would have to shoot him to get him down there.

  “You going, or am I?” Mirren planted his hands on his hips and gave Cage a look that probably meant I’m a lot bigger than you and it would be easier for you to crawl down in that hole.