“Are we on your Maker’s trail or are we chasing memories?”
“I was here last summer with my mother and sister. It’s a genealogy thing. My mom got interested in family history after Jayne came to college. We went on a trip last summer, all of us. We took the scenic route along the Parkway and stayed in B&Bs. Then we continued all the way down to the South Carolina coast. It was nice.”
“And what does all of that have to do with a vampire freak?”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. It was a safe trip. We laughed. We ate too much. My mom dug up all kinds of information about the Raveneauxs.”
The thread she had been following now seemed to float in the air like a strand of spider floss. It drifted. It drifted. She closed her eyes to try to catch it and Winters huffed in frustration.
Had he thought they would find a crypt down here? A nice, gleaming coffin where Dillon slept on red satin with a “Welcome, stake me here” sign on his chest?
“I’m new at this, give me a break,” Holly said as she followed Winters back to the elevator, but her heart interrupted her protest.
It knew before she did and she stumbled as it sputtered to a stop with a sudden, breath-stealing pinch before it started to beat again.
Her stumble, the lack of air to make words, the pain, all prevented her from warning Winters.
She was pulled backwards. The metal gate was slammed down and the latch arm bent into a knot in moves so fast she couldn’t track them even with her vampire eyes.
Winters wasn’t slow to react. It was only that Dillon was impossibly fast. Fiendishly fast.
Holly closed her eyes against the sick feeling in her chest and even before her heart resumed, Winters was throwing his body against the gate.
“This is cozy,” Dillon whispered in her ear. They were close enough to the elevator and his whisper was loud enough to carry. His words were meant for Winters to hear too.
She opened her eyes. Winters had paused in his fight with jammed metal. Their gazes met. Dillon’s iron-lean body was pressed to her back. His arms wrapped around her. They trapped her arms at her sides and his hands held onto her fists, pushing them into her hips. She was immobilized. She couldn’t move away as he rested his chin on her shoulder as if it was a stage and the show was all for Winters.
“Very cozy.”
She shivered as he nuzzled her neck.
Winters grabbed the gate and it shrieked in protest, but wouldn’t rise. Dillon had bent the latch bar into a pretzel. Winters would have to break through the gate itself to get out. Back when they had made the woven, interlocking stands of wrought iron, they had been made to last.
She tried to move her hands. Dillon’s chuckle vibrated his chest against her back.
“Easy, darlin’. No sense gettin’ all riled up.”
He nuzzled her again and this time he let the point of one fang trail along her skin. She was afraid, but it wasn’t adrenaline that shot from where his tooth pressed down to her spine then lower. Her body wasn’t afraid.
Holly swallowed and hoped Winters saw fear and not desire in her eyes.
His eyes were flashing bright copper bolts in her direction. Without breaking eye contact with her, he spoke to the vampire at her back.
“Let her go,” he said, calmly, even though his white-knuckled grip on the gate was anything but calm.
It didn’t sound like he was trapped. It sounded like his knife was poised over Dillon’s heart.
“Never gonna happen.” Dillon’s voice was a silky promise against her ear lobe. “Look at her. Without me, she’s lost. Won’t feed. Won’t thrive. Won’t live.”
“You’re both dead,” Winters argued.
“That I’ll allow. Cold as a wagon’s tire. So, why is she with you? A human easily caged. A human who wants to keep her weak ’til he decides he doesn’t need her anymore. ’Til he decides to kill her.”
“You want me alone because you think I’ll give in,” Holly gasped.
“Oh, you’ll give in, believe me. Parts of you already have.”
He knew. He knew her heart beat for him. He knew her skin tingled for him. He could sense her reactions as she had sensed Winters’ reactions in the elevator. “I’ve got you alone right under his nose.”
Dillon moved his hands up under her sweater. Holly’s hands flew to stop him, but they couldn’t budge him an inch. A normal man, she could have thrown off without breaking a sweat, but her Maker was immoveable. And her stomach was quietly, traitorously thrilled.
Winters went after the gate again. He cursed and kicked and threw his body against it. It began to bow out, but it didn’t give.
“You should choose your lovers more carefully. That one’s gonna break somethin’ if he keeps that up.” Dillon pulled her back further from the elevator. His hands were cupped under her ribcage, resting on her concave stomach.
“You’re starving. You’re lonely. Come with me and you can be with your mother again. Come with me and you’ll never be hungry again.”
Winters paused. Blood trickled from a cut on his forehead and he panted from exertion.
She’d been hoping he would look up. She wanted him to stop because she needed to see his eyes. She needed to see the doubt in his eyes so she’d be inspired to prove him wrong.
“The answer will always be ‘no’,” she said. It was directed toward Winters, a reassurance, a promise.
Dillon spun her around and she tilted her chin to look up at him. She splayed her hands against his chest to hold him off. Under her fingertips, she felt his heartbeat, a resonant thump in time with her own. He held her with one arm around the small of her back and another buried in the hair at the nape of her neck.
It was a lover’s pose, a passionate pose, and her body responded like the traitor it was. It burned under his touch and the burn sent tickles of seduction into her brain where unimaginable thoughts sprang up after freezing for so, so long.
Her mind, thank God, was able to resist.
“The answer will always be ‘no’.” This time she said it for Dillon alone.
His eyes, so brilliant a blue she felt a sudden pang to see the daytime sky, widened as if her words pained him. Then his eyelids grew lazy as he lowered his head.
Behind her, she heard Winters and his ever-more-frenzied attack on the elevator’s gate, but it was distant. Her body, her lips, were focused on Dillon’s lips and the wicked flick of this tongue in her mouth. The heat filled her. It threatened to blanket her consciousness. It seduced her soul.
It took everything she had not to kiss him back.
He lifted his head and again she thought his eyes held a flash of pain, but it was gone too soon to be sure.
“I first saw you, here, in this room. I followed you. I claimed you. Holly Raveneaux, you’re my greatest discovery.”
He had lost even a trace of cowboy drawl. He sounded like an explorer who had uncovered a beautiful, secret city hidden in lush jungle greenery.
Holly rejected it. All of it. She refused to be moved by his stalk-at-first-sight declaration.
“You stole my life, but you can’t have me.”
A metal shriek interrupted and Dillon looked over her shoulder as if waking from a daze. She looked as well. Winters was prying up one bottom corner of the gate with bloody hands.
“But, I do have your mother,” he reminded her.
Holly swayed and caught herself on a filing cabinet to keep from falling when Dillon let her go. She was instantly cold and disoriented. She fought the slam of bereavement that hit her chest.
“Use him if you have to.” He jerked his head to nod in Winters’ direction. “But, remember, I’m always nearby. Always.”
Winters threw his wooden blade with such force it imbedded in the windowsill with a solid thwack as Dillon sped away.
Chapter Ten
Winters had shredded his hands.
The sink was stained pink and discarded bandages and wrappers lay all around.
Holly rinsed and wi
ped and gathered up the trash. He hadn’t allowed her to do more. He had given himself first aid behind the closed bathroom door and come out stony faced and silent.
She wanted to thank him. She wanted to help him. She wanted to ask him, “Why?”
He wanted to kill Dillon, but that was a cold, calculated desire, not one that would cause him to go loco in a berserker-ish fight against iron lattice. In truth, his attack on the gate smacked of concern, heated emotion, feelings, and yet, he refused to speak when it was over.
Holly climbed into the shower under a spray dialed so hot it should have scalded her skin. There was a new bottle of shampoo on the edge of the tub. He must have purchased it when he’d bought the bandages. She picked it up and popped the lid. The scent of strawberries rose up and joined with the steam to create a sweet mist around her.
He wouldn’t talk, but he would support her bottle-a-night habit. Holly lathered, rinsed and repeated…all over her entire body.
The strawberry afterglow didn’t leave room for even a hint of snow-kissed pine, but she continued the whole process, again and again, until the bottle was empty and the water ran cold. And rinsed in the freezing spray longer still.
Her teeth chattered by the time she turned off the shower and wrapped herself in a scratchy hotel towel.
Dillon had called her Holly Raveneaux. She wondered how a monster would know her mother’s maiden name.
***
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to realize what Holly Spinnaker was up to every night when she showered for hours. She might be a vampire. She might be a monster, but she was also the victim of a brutal, intimate attack.
Winters tried to fist his hands and hissed in reaction when bandages scraped raw flesh. She was a victim and she was being stalked. And he was encouraging it with no earthly idea how it would all play out.
The freak had led them straight into an almost dead-end situation and he’d been blind to it.
Was he losing his edge?
In the elevator, on the way down into unknown territory, he’d been so thrown by Holly’s nearness he hadn’t prepared for attack. Oh, sure, he’d been feeling a little adrenaline rush, but that had come from playing with fire. He’d touched her lips, for God’s sake. His thumb still tingled. He had liked the way it had surprised her. Had liked the way her gray-blue eyes had gone to midnight in a flash as the pad of his thumb traced sensitive skin. Worst of all, he’d liked the way her white pointed canine had looked indenting the tender flesh of her lip.
He had saved her lip from inadvertent penetration, but in doing so he had touched her and set off a sudden, hot fantasy of those sharp little teeth penetrating him.
Winters shuddered, shivered, but it wasn’t in revulsion.
Holly had followed Dillon because there was some kind of blood tie between them. What if he was tied to Holly because he’d given her blood? He’d never been a superstitious person, but times had changed. How much had he changed?
He’d never been into whips and chains. He’d never had a thing for pain. His life had gone intense and bloody and violent and maybe he was a different man. Then again, maybe he wasn’t his own man at all anymore.
The water shut off in the other room and he looked at the clock. She’d set a new record. Part of him wanted to grab her and shake her and tell her she was clean. Part of him knew he better keep his hands to himself.
He hadn’t been rational when she was in her Maker’s arms. He had reacted like a madman and he had the torn skin to prove it. When the freak had actually kissed her, he had found the strength to rip the metal barrier from its frame.
He wanted to believe he would have done the same thing to get to a vampire a week ago, but he had to face facts.
Holly affected him. He didn’t understand what had risen up between them. He didn’t know if he wanted to understand it, but it wasn’t normal.
He had wanted to kill Dillon, but as soon as the freak had touched Holly he had wanted to annihilate the vampire and scatter its ashes to the corners of the earth.
That couldn’t be natural, not when Holly was next on his hit list.
Winters looked at his bandaged hands. Blood seeped through in places and he glanced at the bathroom door thinking of sharks and one drop of blood in a swimming pool of water. He had to remember she was a predator. Her penchant for strawberry shampoo didn’t change that. She was a vampire and he was a vampire killer. His job didn’t come with a neatly typed and filed-by-human-resources description, but there were some standards you set for yourself even when you were self-employed. He figured becoming a vampire’s plaything was a definite no can do in his line of work.
He was a vampire killer not a knight in shining armor. Besides, Holly Spinnaker was a lost cause. He had to refocus. He had to get his head on straight or his distraction with one vampire was going to get him killed by another.
They had met with her Maker twice now on this crazy drive-by-night hunt and they had played into his hands both times. It was time to admit it was less of a hunt and more like a fishing trip with Holly being the trout on a hook and Dillon being the one reeling her in. He thought of sharks again and smiled a grim quirk of a smile. It was time for the vampire freak to realize he wasn’t the only one with teeth.
Chapter Eleven
Immortal or not, a fella could never be too careful. Dillon went to ground early on nights when he longed for the sun. Once, when he’d been younger and none too smart, he had watched and waited for the lightening of the sky. The pink glow he’d witnessed was burned behind his eyes for eternity, literally. He saw it every time he lowered his lids.
She had let him do it.
On occasion the old girl gave him his head and let him follow any trail he chose, but never for long. Blood was a powerful bridle with a cruel bit.
And Holly made him feel like a broken mustang that longed to run over the open prairie. Dillon felt a smirk curl his lips. He couldn’t remember the last time he had even seen a horse much less a mustang. Those days were gone. Hell, days were gone…period.
He had chosen an old crumbling mausoleum for the night. It was covered with weeds and, judging by the faded date on its stone face, it hadn’t seen an internment for a hundred years. ’Til tonight, that is.
He dusted a jumble of rags and bones from one of the vaults and lay himself down.
Behind closed lids, he saw the colors of sunrise and on his lips he tasted Holly. The sensations went together well, he decided. Holly was sunshine walking, for sure.
And she was destined to be his queen.
Not for the first time, a thrill went through him at the thought. He tried to control it lest his current queen intuit too much from his excitement. Even separated by hundreds of miles, his thoughts were hers to plunder.
She was used to nostalgic thoughts, he was certain. Hardly a night went by lately when he didn’t think about his life…horses, trail dust and the sun on his face. All that was well and good and expected.
But Holly brought with her thoughts of salvation. And that wouldn’t do at all.
He turned his thoughts to the vampire hunter and was rewarded with a nice cover of rage. He hid behind it and allowed it to blossom so the queen would feel it too.
That bastard wanted Holly. Had her for now, too, which made it worse. Thank his Maker the idiot was torn between killing her and loving her. If he chose either one before Dillon won her over, he would be very, very sorry.
The sunrise behind his eyes sparked red when Dillon thought of losing Holly to someone who didn’t begin to recognize her true worth. He had wanted to pluck her from the vampire hunter’s side and carry her away, but the queen said no.
Holly had to come to them. To him.
The queen had been his boss for two hundred years. Ever since a tired and dusty cowboy had rewarded himself after a long cattle drive with a paddle-wheel cruise on the Mississippi. He’d wanted to gamble a bit, drink some whisky and maybe find a lady friend or two for company. Instead, he’d attracted the attention
of a lady who was no one’s friend.
Dillon “Jones” had just come off the longest, hottest, dustiest cattle drive he’d ever been on and he was thirstier than a stagecoach driver who’d dropped his flask in the first turnover of a long haul.
Even after he paid for a bath and scraped the dirty, unwanted beard from his face, he still felt like he had dust in his nose, in his hair, in his ears and in his throat. He took care of his nose, ears and hair with extra scrubbing. His throat he saved for last.
All shined up with a pocket full of greenbacks, he headed for the nearest saloon. St. Louis had plenty to choose from.
The open range was his first love. He’d been forced to ride drag this time because he had signed with a new outfit. He’d brought up the rear with the greenhorns and ate his daily ration of dust to prove himself to the trail boss…and he’d loved every minute of it.
He figured a bastard learned to like proving himself if he was ever going to amount to anything at all.
Dillon ate dust and smiled. He was the first to cut out after a wayward longhorn. He was the last out of the saddle at the end of the day. The boss noticed. He would be moved up to flank next time. He’d be wrangler before he turned twenty-five. Then, he’d start over with another outfit and do it all again.
He liked the challenge. He liked to see the respect build in the other men’s eyes. Most of all, he liked the transient lifestyle. It suited his temperament and his background. He didn’t have a home, had never had one if you didn’t count the rooms above the saloon where his mother had finally settled down.
His mom had been a beauty with golden blond hair and warm brown eyes and a southern drawl that had half the men in Dallas, Texas, vowing to make an honest woman of her. His mother never married. Instead, she’d bought the saloon and ran it and refused to answer Dillon’s questions about his father when he was old enough to ask.
By the time he was nine or ten, he had known Jones was a name people chose for themselves when they didn’t want to use their real ones. There were a lot of Joneses in the west. A lot of Smiths too. He had given up on ever knowing his father or his real name.
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