If Dylan hadn’t been in the lab, he would’ve shown that newborn proper respect. You don’t put females in precarious situations and you don’t assault fellow members of your khiss. No exceptions. Ever. Any vampire with half a fang knew that much.
Ruan glared at the clock.
Six a.m.
By now the sun had breached the horizon, and Dylan would be safe, alone, preparing for sleep in her studio. Or maybe she’d be staying over at ReVamp, hunched over her computer screen. He should probably try to talk to her, apologize for being such an ass in her presence. She deserved more from him. She deserved the best.
Certainly more than Erock or Slade could ever give her.
He changed into jeans and his best Abercrombie shirt, checked himself in the mirror, smoothed his hair behind his ears, and strode down the hall toward her studio.
The great room was empty except for a few stragglers heading back to their rooms after a Friday night out. He wondered what people would think of him standing in front of her door. She was now promised to another and therefore even more off-limits than she was before. People would judge them for sure, probably spread rumors back to Erock that Ruan was trespassing on his property.
Although maybe Dylan would invite him in and they could talk in private . . . away from the lingering eyes of the khiss.
He approached her closed door. He knocked. Waited.
And heard someone rustling around inside. Please, don’t let her come to the door indecent. On second thought . . .
Dylan pulled the door open, curtailing the start of another fantasy involving her, him, and a sizzling hot, secret rendezvous.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered. “You really shouldn’t be here after hours.”
She didn’t look like she was heading to bed. She looked surprisingly rested and wide-eyed. And damn it, still dressed.
“I’m so glad you’re here. I mean, I’m glad I caught you and that you’re not staying at ReVamp today. I, ah, wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier. I shouldn’t have disrespected you by acting out against your . . . new friend.”
God, he hated calling that creep a friend. Even so, it was far better than the alternative swimming around in his head.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. I know you were just trying to protect me. But how many times have I told you I can take care of myself?” A smile curled at the corners of her mouth. Her blue eyes glistened in the dim lights of the hall.
The sight made his night. Hell, it made his week.
“Guess I need sticky-notes attached to my forehead to remind me.”
“We can arrange that, you know.” Dylan yawned, covering her mouth with her hand. “Don’t beat yourself up over what happened tonight; it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll see you later, all right?”
She eased the door closed. He caught it with his palm and slowly inched it open again. Anticipation crackled through the air between them. Did she feel it too?
“Yes?” she asked, her eyebrows forming perfect arches.
“How was the Feeders Anonymous meeting?”
“Fine. Fine.”
“Enough for two fines, huh?”
She nodded. “Is there something else you’d like to talk about, Ruan?”
Yeah, I’m crushing hard over you and have been for years and suddenly feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t make a move. Now.
“No, I didn’t want to talk about anything in particular. I just wanted to make sure you made it back to your studio in one piece.”
“You mean, you wanted to make sure I made it back to my studio alone . . .”
“That too.”
She chuckled into an exhale. “There’s nothing going on between me and Slade. At least nothing you need to worry about. I know my duty. I know that by the end of the week I’ll be a mated woman. You don’t have to worry about whether or not my head’s on straight. It is.”
Funny. She looked like she almost believed her own words. He knew what he saw back in that lab. A tingling up his spine told him he wanted to know what it was like . . . what she was like. He had to know once and for all how sweet she tasted. The burning need was unbearable.
“Can I ask you something?” He inched into her room. The air smelled like her, like summer rain. “If the situation were different . . . I mean, if you weren’t going through with the Valcdana and if the blood wasn’t tainted and Erock wasn’t in the picture and ReVamp was holding strong, would we . . . I mean, would I . . . would things be different between us?”
“Ruan,” she began.
He cut her off by lurching forward and kissing her square on the mouth. Her lips were soft but unmoving. Natural for a first kiss. She remained proper and respectful, as a woman should.
She tasted sweet as sugar. He tilted his head, softened for more of her mouth.
He had to see the way she looked when she kissed. He peeked through heavy-lidded eyes.
She stared back. Wide-eyed. Shocked.
He retreated. Could he have misread the stiffness of her mouth as not proper . . . but unwelcome? Oh God.
“Oh . . . kay.” She rubbed her bottom lip. “That was unexpected. Mind telling me where that came from?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He backed into the hall, staring at the ground, the walls, anywhere but directly into her eyes. “I thought maybe you might’ve felt the same . . . that you might’ve felt something too.”
“I do feel something for you. You’re a great friend.”
Yowzer. That hurt his pride worse than the kiss.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “This doesn’t have to be weird. So we kissed? I’m not saying it’ll do wonders for our friendship, but there are certainly worse things that could happen.”
“Yeah, okay, this is awkward already. I’ll catch you later.”
Turning, he bolted into the great room. He passed Savage, who had his head buried in an old leather-bound book, oblivious to the world around him. If Ruan hadn’t been so focused on hiding his head in his studio, he might’ve stopped to ask why he insisted on reading Brave New World over and over again.
He heard Dylan call his name but wasn’t about to stand around and listen to her make excuses for her feelings.
Goddammit, he shouldn’t have said a word. He should’ve kept his trap shut and his feelings in check. Why was he so weak and helpless around her? So out of control? He felt raw and skinned, like his muscles were shaved down to worthless sinew from the elegant whip of her lips.
He felt used and hollow, far from the man she needed.
His insides squirmed as his breathing quickened. His skin clammed. Falling against the great room wall, Ruan took deep breaths and tried to slow down the spinning in the room. Jesus, he was going to be sick.
He glanced up, spotting a group of girls slouched into the great room couches, cackling like a bunch of hyenas. Glossy-lipped and sparsely clothed, the eye-candies were clearly looking for a meet-and-greet between the sheets. Or maybe they were simply looking for a few hours nestled against a cool-blooded companion to drown out the loneliness that rose in their spirits like the coming of the sun.
Either way, Ruan didn’t care. He had bigger problems on his plate than ones that could be fixed with a slip of his finger and crafty tongue roll.
When a butch-cut redhead turned and glared his way, her desirous gaze settled on Ruan’s skin, leaving a runway of pinpricks jet-setting to his loins. He diverted his eyes, breaking the pressure of their connection, and took an unsteady step toward his studio.
The nauseating stench of B+ and whiskey seeped from their glasses and swirled around the room, slamming into Ruan’s nostrils with the strength of a fighter’s jab. As if the intoxicating hit wasn’t enough, their high-pitched laughter pierced his ears—a disorienting onslaught to his senses that knocked his logic down and out.
Maybe it was the way the redhead was a polar opposite of Dylan. Maybe it was the way his insides felt like they were going to explode, but Ruan made a split-second decis
ion and snapped around, facing her.
To hell with this masochistic bullshit. Enough of fawning over Dylan like a damned lovesick puppy. He didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone. If this was the aftermath of giving his heart—having it sliced and diced for the world to see, he’d simply never give his heart again.
He could do that, he told himself.
He could give his body freely without giving his heart. Yeah, he could. He didn’t need anyone looking at him with loving blue eyes and long flowing locks, no. He sure didn’t need Dylan. Far from it.
He’d prove it for once and for all. Right now.
He lifted his chin at the slender redhead and took another step toward the back hall.
Smiling slowly, she roped her bag around her arm and whispered something to her friends. They sized him up and down in a single, analytical glare, and went back to their drinks and banter just as quickly. He seemed to gain their approval easily enough. At least for tonight.
She walked his way, her narrow hips slinging side to side, like striding the stone catwalk was a common occurrence. Her flaming red hair was cut longer in front, framing her face, nearly touching her chin. Her eyes . . . they were bright red too. Against her abnormally pale skin, the flaming depths of her irises made her seem like she was plucked straight from the fires of hell.
“Hey, sugar,” she coaxed, slinking up to his side, grazing her fingers down the length of his arm. “What’s your name?”
“Ruan.” He cleared his throat, gearing up for what he had to say next. “You should know that I’m not going to pretend this means something to me.”
Her glare measured the length of him, from his uncertain eyes to his shifty feet. Searching the recesses of his soul must not have turned up much because she blinked slowly as if unimpressed by his showing.
He swallowed the ball in his throat before spitting out the rest. “You also need to know that you’ll mean nothing to me. When this is over I won’t think about you ever again.”
When he thought she might’ve slapped him right across his foul mouth, she pursed her lips. “If that’s the way you wanna play it, that’s randy-dandy with me . . . and it just so happens to be my name.”
“Randy?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Ruan’s stomach tumbled at the seductive lilt of her voice, releasing his tension by sparking something else in his core. Something he thought might’ve been raw excitement.
“Then let’s go. Which way to your room?”
She led the way down one corridor, turned right, and strode down to the end. She dug around in her purse for a key, pushed it through the lock, and entered through a thick mist of sweet lavender and baby’s breath.
As Ruan stepped into the dark, he had the feeling he was crossing a precipice from which there was no turning back. He was stepping into the unknown, with a girl he didn’t know, to do God knows what, God knows where.
And there was something . . . electrifying about it. Despite the doubt somersaulting in his gut, there was something very erotic about the endless possibilities sprawled out before him.
His eyes adjusted to the blackness in seconds. He spotted the lone piece of furniture jutting out from the nearest wall—a four-poster cherrywood bed smothered in black silk.
Randy lit a candle on the kitchen counter and turned to face him, her silhouette a mere shadow that exemplified what subtle curves she had. Before Ruan could remark on her lack of furniture or the way the room breathed of sex, she slipped her sweater over her head and tossed it onto the bed.
Screw the formalties, then.
Ruan was on her before he knew what he was doing, his hands palming the narrow span of her back, his head burrowing into the curve of her neck. Her perfume was drugging—thick and spicy. Her hair tickled his face as he sucked at her neck and licked up her chin.
He didn’t waste time unfastening her bra. Instead, he tugged down the fabric, letting her breasts perch on top like silk pillows on a wire. They were an offering he took roughly with his hands, then his teeth, then his hands again. When he pinched one of her nipples much too hard, she moaned, moving her hands to her stomach as if another hint of pain would garner a slap of her hand.
But when Ruan angled her face to the side with his thumb, she let her hands drop to her side—a submission that fueled the onslaught of anger and need scorching through his veins.
He spun her around and guided her step by shadowed step to her kitchen counter where he bent her over and pushed her legs apart. Beneath her just-right-too-tight mini was a strap of useless silk fabric that he yanked aside and out of his way.
The granite must’ve been cold or sealed with a primer of fear—her back shivered with chills.
As he unzipped his pants and grabbed onto his aching shaft, ready to make Randy a little dandier, she flipped her head around. “Kiss me?” she asked weakly, her lungs constricted by the pressure of the table. “Will you kiss me first?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to taste her mouth and take her between the legs at the same time. Those were often the most erotic moments in his experience. It was the thoughts screaming through his mind throwing him for a loop responsible for the hesitation.
This needed to be physical. Nothing emotional or personal. Kissing was the first step toward crossing that sketchy line, wasn’t it?
“No,” he growled with enough authority to rule the khiss. “I won’t kiss you.” While palming the flat of her back to hold her in place, Ruan spread her cheeks apart wide. He entered her on a groan. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop talking.”
She buried her chin against her chest. But she didn’t budge and didn’t breathe a whisper of stopping.
For that reason, Ruan kept pumping into her, ramming her against the counter with thrusts that were bound to leave bruises on her hips. When he was painfully close to climax, far from remorse, he pinched his eyes shut and focused on Randy’s soft center.
As he emptied himself into her, images of Dylan swamped his mind. With the first shattering orgasm, Dylan was arching up against him, her skin glistening with sweat. In another burst, Dylan tilted her neck so he could easily suck from her vein as her core muscles sucked from his shaft. On the strongest and final eruption, Dylan bucked against him, open mouthed, yelling at him to take her.
Without thinking, he clawed both hands down Randy’s back, leaving bloody rake marks screaming from her shoulder blades all the way down to her ass. Her horrifying shriek brought Ruan scrambling back to reality. When he opened his eyes, he realized his fingers were gouging into the pink flesh of her rear.
“Oh God,” he breathed as his hands started to shake and the last of him filled Randy’s core. “This isn’t me . . . I can’t do this. Damn it, this isn’t me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Be kind to every vampire you meet.
You may not know you’re speaking to an elder, but with one rude word they may know all about you.”
—Vampire Etiquette Handbook, Chapter 10: Elders
First thing the next morning, Slade ditched out on a Newborn Induction meeting at ReVamp. To hell with that Newborn Representative bullshit. They didn’t need him and he certainly didn’t need them. He watched the blacked-out Lincoln SUV drive down Industrial Parkway from the back window of the haven, all the newborns protected inside the coolness of the cab. He felt like an ass for not telling Dylan he was playing hooky, but decided he’d feel like more of an ass if he was forced to watch her bond with someone she despised while he sat back and did nothing.
No, that wasn’t an option. He had to do something. Anything. And being a pathetic Newborn Representative wasn’t going to make shit happen. He had things to do and not enough time to do them. Not to mention, he hadn’t checked in with Moses yet.
Assignments didn’t get any more clear-cut than this, Slade thought.
Moses had instructed him: Find the catacombs. Find the scrolls.
And hey, while he was in those catacombs, reading those scrolls, maybe h
e could discover something about that damn Valcdana ceremony that made a lick of sense. Hadn’t their Primus said it wasn’t customary for non-royal blood to join in Valcdana? Slade couldn’t have been the only person who thought Dylan being chosen for that role was a little out of left field. Especially since she’d made it perfectly clear it’s not what she wanted.
After talking with Eve, a light bulb went off in Slade’s head. David went to see Meridian—someone who could decipher the scrolls—and supposedly found a way to defy the Court and be with the woman he loved. Not that Slade would jump into the Love Boat anytime soon, but at the very least he could discover something that would allow Dylan to be with someone she loved. She deserved that much.
All he’d need is a few hours in the haven’s catacombs to find the scrolls. Once they were in his possession, he’d pay Meridian a little visit to help him break the code.
Whoever Meridian was . . . and whatever the code happened to be.
To succeed, though, he’d need to keep his head on straight. Normally that was a skill he excelled at: keeping focus and making the kill had been the easiest part of his job. Except since changing into vampire form, he’d found it hard to concentrate on anything but Dylan. He’d been told shifting into an incompatible vampire form would throw his head for a loop, but this was different. Dylan was like a black hole, absorbing every thought streaming through his mind.
She was gorgeous; any otherworldly creature with or without a pulse couldn’t deny it. She was all-around smart too, not only with books but with people. Brains were a deadly thing when attached to a pair of long legs and a shelf of breasts that made his tongue lag.
And her scent . . . that drive-him-mad fragrance . . . made him want to kneel at her feet and beg forgiveness for wasting himself on every other woman he’d ever had.
It would’ve been impossible to clue her in to where he was headed for the day. Although spending time in Dylan’s khiss had opened his eyes to the secret lives of vamps, he didn’t think she’d understand his need to take a trip back to his Sheik. As far as she was concerned, therians were still the enemy. Life and war was black and white. Slade couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when things became muddled inside him. All he knew was that things weren’t what they seemed yesterday. He’d walked into a vamp’s skin expecting a black and white world and instead found it full of more color than the pre-morning sky.
Intervamption Page 13