She couldn’t form an attachment to him because there was no rosy future waiting for the two of them. He was undead. And she was so very much alive.
Disgusted with himself, he kicked at the snow under his feet and his boot sent a flurry flying into the ever present wind. This was why he rarely involved himself with humans. This was why he kept to himself. Caring about someone—someone mortal—was an invitation to pain. Their lives were so short, comparatively speaking, and watching as they aged and sickened and died—while he remained always the same—was simply not something he enjoyed.
And vampire friends were few and far between. Most of them cared only for the hunt and those that were different were more like Grayson and kept a distance between themselves and the others of their kind.
Tessa. Even her name brought a glow of something warm into the darkness he carried with him always. Standing here in the biting wind and the flurries of snow, he got hot and hard just thinking about her. They made love often, as if each of them had realized that their time together was nearly done. As if they both wanted to savor whatever pleasures they could in the time they had left.
The lingering flavor of her, the staggering realization of the trust she’d placed in him. The link between them, thick and shining. All of it was both gift and burden.
And Grayson hated himself for using her. For taking what she offered so freely. His honor demanded that he keep her safe—but damned if he could leave her alone.
The demon was gone, but the threat remained. Now Grayson knew for sure that the vampires were aware of just where he was. Now he was certain Tessa was in danger.
For the last two days, Grayson hunted at night, stalking the perimeter of the house, despite the sharp teeth of the storm that held them in an icy grip. Snow piled high, the wind shrieked under the eaves of the house, and in the shadows, menace still lurked.
He didn’t sense a vampire, but since an older demon would be able to mask its presence as well as Grayson could, that proved nothing. There were stirrings of humans nearby, but he couldn’t pinpoint a particular threat.
And so he watched. And waited. And stayed primed for a battle he knew was coming. He’d tried to contact Damon, the king, in an effort to get the dogs called off. But phone service had been affected by the storm as well.
It was as if they were cut off from the rest of the world, something he ordinarily would have enjoyed. But it wasn’t only his own neck he had to watch out for now.
He stood, silent and still in the swirling snow, and stared at the house across the yard from him. The twinkle of the lights blurred in the blowing snow, but they shone on, despite the cold. Despite the threats. And he considered that Tessa was much like those lights.
In spite of—or maybe because of—the things she’d been through, she continued on. Unstoppable. Unquenchable. And the shadowy threads of the man he used to be stirred for her. She was amazing. She didn’t allow fear to overpower her. Didn’t allow her past to control her or make her decisions for her.
More than he could say for himself.
He scraped one hand across his face, turned away from the house and slipped into the trees. He had to stop thinking about Tessa. Had to stop pretending, even to himself, that he was the man he once was.
A scent twisted in the icy wind. He lifted his head as it shot past him and caught at his throat as he recognized it.
Blood.
Tessa screamed.
The deer had been viciously slaughtered and laid across the back porch.
Blood. So much blood.
A river of red poured over the whitewashed wood and dripped down the steps in tiny, determined rivulets. Even over and above the sound of the storm, Tessa heard the splash of each drop as if it were the beat of a drum.
She couldn’t tear her gaze away. She couldn’t stop looking at what had become of the doe. Her stomach lurched and spun. She swayed, looked down at the deer, its soft brown hide drenched in its own blood. And the smell of the kill rose up to fill her nose, her mouth, her pores. A sob choked her, trapped in her throat, and then Grayson was there, leaping across the porch to land beside her.
He turned her face into his chest and she let him. She couldn’t look again. Couldn’t face the death someone had brought to her home.
“I opened the door.” She shook her head and inhaled the sharp, spicy scent of him to counteract the horror at her feet. “Was going to bring in more wood for the fire. I smelled it first. Smelled—”
“I know.” He cupped the back of her head and held her to him. “I caught the scent only a moment before you screamed.”
“So whoever did this…just did this.” She inhaled and forced herself to stop trembling. To stop being so damn scared. “Which means they’re probably out in the woods now. Watching me. Watching us.”
“Yes.” She felt him turn his head to stare past her, through the wall of white that blew past the house, into the stand of trees that bowed beneath the snow and offered so many hiding places. “I can sense something. Someone.”
Tessa took a breath, steeled herself and said, “Vampire?”
“No. A vampire wouldn’t have wasted the blood to make a point.”
Wasted. Dear God.
She fisted her hands in his shirt and the chill of the snow clinging to him slapped at the panic inside her. “God. God,” she breathed and didn’t know if it was a plea or a prayer.
“Go inside.” He turned toward the still open door and gave her a gentle push.
But she didn’t move. Didn’t want to step out of the circle of his arms. She wanted—needed—him close.
“A human did this, Tessa.”
A human.
As if it were palpable, Tessa felt a sense of evil swell from the woods and reach for her. She shivered and Grayson’s arms tightened around her. Death hung over the inn and Tessa knew that this was only the beginning.
A vampire had tried to kill her two days ago. And now a human was adding a new threat to the mix.
And she knew who it had to be.
Felt it in her bones.
“It’s got to be him,” Tessa said, pulling back from him, looking up into dark eyes. “It’s Justin. Has to be. He’s found me. No one else would have done this. No one else hates me this much.”
His arms tightened around her middle like steel bands. His features went hard and cold and the darkness in his eyes swirled with the promise of vengeance. “He won’t get to you.”
It was a vow and she was glad to have it. Glad to have Grayson with her. Glad to know that he would stand with her. And desolate to know that once the threats to her were over, he would leave.
Deliberately, she put that thought out of her mind, and concentrated on the fear and the anger churning within her to make a combustible mix of emotion. She would not allow Justin to reign over her life again. She absolutely refused to become the terrified woman she had been before she had found this place. This refuge.
“Now, go in the house. I’ll take care of this.” He gave her a shove in the general direction of the open door, but Tessa dug her heels in.
“No.” She pulled in a deep breath despite the stench of blood that clung to it. “I won’t be the little woman, tucked away for safekeeping.”
Grayson scowled—expecting the fierceness of his expression to be enough to get her following his orders. She sniffed and shook her head.
“Forget it. This is my house and nobody is going to drive me off. Not even you, Grayson.”
He studied the deep, steady blue of her eyes and knew he was fighting a losing battle. “Stubborn women are a curse on all mankind.”
“Ain’t it the truth?”
He hissed in a breath he didn’t need. “It’s not safe for you to be outside.”
“Grayson…” She laid one hand on his chest and he would have sworn he could feel the heat of her touch all the way through him.
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not thinking about racing out into the woods trying to track down whoever did this.” She s
quared her shoulders and stiffened her spine. “I’m going to be right here. On the porch. But I won’t be locked away as if I were a child.”
He shook his head at her. In a hundred and fifty years, he’d never met another woman quite like Tessa. Her strength. Her pride. Everything about her was magnificent.
Despite the fact that she wouldn’t listen to him. “Do you know that no one argues with me?”
She smiled and though her eyes were still shadowed, he saw a spark of humor glinting at him. “Well then, that explains a lot. It’s not good for a man to think he’s right all the time.”
The wind kicked at them, spitting snow and tearing at her hair with icy fingers. He smoothed one curl back behind her ear. “You have nothing to prove, Tessa. Allow me to do this for you. This kill has sickened you.”
She gritted her teeth together and completely avoided looking at the dead deer on the porch.
“Your face is white as the snow in the yard. Just being this close to the kill is making you sick.”
“I know.” She swallowed, lifted her chin and kept her gaze on his. “And the faster we get this taken care of, the faster we can get inside by the fire. Okay?”
He gave up. She wouldn’t listen and maybe it was better all around if she were where he could keep an eye on her. “Fine, then. But let’s be quick.”
So he worked, carrying the deer off into the woods for the predators in the woods to finish off. As he moved, Grayson kept his senses on alert, constantly aware of his surroundings. The sounds of the forest, the heartbeats of the animals who slept in the snow. Whoever had left this carcass wasn’t here now. There were no humans close by and if there were any vampires watching, they were blocking themselves from him.
He and Tessa were alone.
For now.
A couple of hours later, when the deer and the blood had been taken care of, and Tessa was in the shower, Grayson stood on the porch, looked at the woods and shouted a challenge.
“Come out of hiding, you bastard.” His voice was iron and he pushed a command into every word. “Come out now and face me. Or are you only capable of terrifying women?”
His only answer…black waves of rage that rolled toward him in thick ripples. Grayson’s hands fisted at his sides and a matching fury rose up inside him. Whoever lay in wait was able to resist the compulsion to obey him.
Vampire?
Or a human so twisted, so evil, that its mind was an empty well, devoid of the normal human emotions so easily manipulated by Grayson and others like him?
The wind moaned and though he strained to hear more, there was nothing. His enemy continued to hide, continued to evade him, and Grayson was fast losing patience. What he wanted to do was stride into the stand of trees and stay there until he found whatever threatened Tessa’s safety. But he couldn’t leave her alone to do the hunting every fiber of his body demanded.
It had been a century or more since he’d hunted humans. But as he stood on the porch, defying the cold, he knew that he would do whatever was necessary to defend the woman he’d come to care for far too much.
“Grayson?”
He turned to look over his shoulder at the woman waiting for him in the kitchen. Fresh from the shower, her pale skin was flushed, her tumbled curls still damp. She wore faded jeans and a long-sleeved red T-shirt that clung to her breasts and skimmed the curve of her waist. She shivered a bit in the draft of cold air sweeping into the house, and that was enough to get him to step inside and close and lock the door behind him.
She walked up to him, linked her arms around his neck and went up on her toes to plant a hard, lingering kiss on his mouth. When she finally pulled back, he saw that her eyes were still troubled, but she forced a smile to belie the shadows in those blue depths.
“Let’s forget about whoever is out there,” she said, smoothing her fingertips through his hair.
“That won’t change anything, Tessa.”
“Does it have to?”
“No,” he admitted, pulling her close, burying his face in the curve of her neck so that he could draw in the scent of her and hold it deep inside him. “No, it doesn’t.”
Then he kissed her and the world fell away.
Chapter 10
T essa wrapped her arms around Grayson and held on tightly. Parting her lips for him, she welcomed his demanding invasion and met his tongue with her own in a tangled dance of need and desperation.
What did it say about her life that the one thing holding her together was a vampire? She didn’t know. Didn’t care. All she was sure of was that the one person in the world she felt a connection with was the one person she couldn’t have. Even while Grayson held her, she could feel him pulling away. Keeping an emotional distance when physical distance was impossible.
She knew he’d be leaving soon. Knew that when he did, she would never see him again, and that knowledge tore at her.
His hands swept up, under her shirt, across her skin, lighting up every cell as if she’d been electrified. His hands slid down to the waistband of her old jeans and she took a breath and held it as his fingers undid the button and slid the zipper down. Then his hands were on her, cupping her behind, then sweeping around to stroke the heat of her sex.
She pulled her mouth from his, stared up into his eyes and watched him as he dipped first one finger, then two, into her depths. Tessa sucked air into her lungs, clung to his broad shoulders with a tight grip and parted her legs for him. Giving him easier access.
He smiled and the tips of his fangs seemed to wink in the overhead lights. A ripple of something delicious swarmed through her. His fingers moved inside her, his thumb stroking the hard, sensitive bud at her core until her knees trembled and her body screamed for a release it knew was coming.
She rocked on his hand, swiveling her hips, moving into him eagerly, hungrily, all the while caught in the black swirl of his gaze. Again and again, he stroked her inner heat. Again and again, he took her to the very edge of completion, only to stop short and leave her breathless.
“Grayson…”
“Come and let me watch you.” His whisper was black silk, smooth and dark, tempting and taunting.
“I need…I need…” She couldn’t speak. Could hardly breathe. But oh, she wanted him inside her. Wanted to feel his hard, thick length impale her.
Her body quivered and Tessa gasped. His thumb stroked hard on that bud of sex and she felt the first tiny waves of something fabulous begin to stir. She moved on him, while trying to wiggle out of her jeans so that she could feel more of him. Welcome him higher, deeper.
“Grayson, take me….”
“I am. I will.”
She shook her head, licked her lips and watched his eyes spark and flash in reaction to that simple action. “Now, Grayson. Inside me. Now.”
He, too, shook his head and then bent to taste her lips, scraping her bottom lip gently with the tips of his fangs. A jolt of something incredible shot through her system like a skyrocket, trailing hot sparks.
“First I will see you go over.” He caught her gaze with his as his fingers pressed against her inner walls, coaxing, demanding. “First you will shatter for me.”
Standing in her kitchen, half-dressed, driven to the point of near madness, Tessa could only agree. “Take me then,” she said, her voice jagged with need.
He smiled again, briefly, knowingly, as if he sensed how close to shattering she really was. Then he pulled his hand free of her, sliding his fingers from her heat until she wanted to weep from the loss of his touch. But before she could complain, he’d pushed her jeans down and off, lifted her off her feet and sat her down naked on the cold, granite countertop.
“Grayson…” She flinched against the feel of the cold counter on her bare skin.
His strong hands parted her thighs, his fingertips stroking her skin in long, feather-soft caresses. She shivered. His gaze locked on hers as he slowly bent down in front of her and heat whipped through her like a lightning strike. He touched her core and she
jolted. He smiled, bent his head to her and whispered, “Come for me.”
The kitchen lights shone down on his thick, dark hair as he dipped his head to the heart of her. She watched, breathless, as his mouth covered her. The first flick of his tongue sent her on a wildly spinning spiral. She was so ready. So close to implosion it was all she could do to hang on. But she did. She didn’t want this to end too quickly. Wanted to feel it all, make it last.
His lips and tongue worked at her most intimate flesh. The tips of his fangs scraped against her and she shivered, caught in a whirl of sensation so thick, so hot, she could hardly draw a breath. She ran her hand through his hair, holding his head to her, watching—unable, unwilling to look away—as he tasted her.
He took her higher than she’d ever gone before. He made her tremble with need, with hunger. He turned her body into a pool of molten desire, until she was mindless with the craving that gripped her in a tight fist.
He suckled her and Tessa splintered. She cried out his name as everything inside her shattered into millions of jagged pieces. She felt as if she were bursting apart in a flash of light that was so blinding she closed her eyes against the magic of it.
And before her body’s relentless quaking had ended, Grayson stood, gathered her up close and lifted her off the counter. She wrapped her legs around his middle, and dipped her head to kiss him.
“Free me.” Two words, wrenched from his throat.
Tessa saw the control etched onto his features. Lips flat, jaw tight.
“Do it, Tessa.” He ground out the words in a brief sentence that was both command and plea.
“Oh, yeah.” She reached down between their bodies and unzipped his jeans, reaching into the denim fabric to curl her fingers around his thick erection.
He groaned at her touch and she smiled, knowing he needed as desperately as she did.
Keeping her gaze locked with his, she guided him to her and then slowly slid down on him, taking his hard, full length inside her. Now it was she who groaned. She, whose body stretched to accommodate him, feeling him fill her completely. Feeling the rightness of it all.
Holiday with a Vampire Page 7