She didn’t even know how she felt about that last part, but the warmth between her legs gave her an indication which way she was leaning. Sighing in defeat, she moseyed to the bookshelf. “I still don’t understand why you insist on the secrecy part. Why do I have to close my eyes?”
“I’m getting naked.”
She couldn’t help the head-snap reaction. She flipped around. Saw him fully dressed, grinning ear to ear. Damn it. “That’s not funny, Slade.”
“Maybe not to you.” He circled a finger in the air, round and round. “Now close ‘em.”
She did as he asked. For a second. Right after her lids clamped shut, she opened them again and turned around.
Slade was gone.
“What the hell?” She looked down one hallway as far as she could, to where it curved around a sharp bend. Then looked down the other corridor that appeared exactly the same as the last. No Slade. No noise either. Just her breathing in and out and her heartbeat muddling her thoughts. He couldn’t have gone that far, certainly not where her eyes or ears couldn’t pick him up. “Slade? Where’d you go? This isn’t funny.”
She walked a few steps down the corridor on the right, back toward the lines of martyred tombs . . . at least she thought this was the way. Why couldn’t she have had the wherewithal to lay breadcrumbs or something to show the way? It was more than a little disheartening that two nursery-tale children were brighter than she was.
Loud flapping sounds floated down the hall, halting her progress. There was only one animal that made such rhythmic flapping noises: bats.
“Slade?” Dylan spoke to hear a sound, any sound, other than that skin-crawling flapping. “Slade, come back. I don’t like this.”
The flapping increased. She retreated, taking step after step backward, keeping her eyes on the tunnel. If that really was a bat coming at her, it was one granddaddy bat. And she’d be damned if she was gonna let it anywhere near her.
She searched right, left, for anything she could use as a weapon. Intending to knock that disgusting thing right out of the air, she grabbed a handful of rocks and started throwing into the dark.
Each rock flew with fear-propelled precision. “Get. Away. From. Me. You vile creature.”
Then it happened.
It came into view, its beady red eyes piercing her own, its large wings flapping violently. Around and around the room the rabid beast flew as if on some crazy mission to freak her out.
She screamed to high-heaven, loud enough for the entire khiss to hear through fifteen feet of earth, then crouched in the corner, hands crossed over her head. When she glanced up again, the bat wasn’t circling above her. It was perched on a loose boulder against the far wall. And it was staring at her intently, like . . . almost like . . . it knew her.
She heaved the heavy rock in her hand straight at the black thing’s head. “Take that!”
It shrieked a deafening roar on contact and flapped its glossed, vein-tinged wings. Falling a great distance to the floor, the furry thing landed with a heavy thud.
Dylan peeked up, a smile lighting her face. She’d never known herself to be such a good shot before. Maybe she should take up archery. Or baseball.
Wondering if there was a stick nearby to poke at it and make sure it was dead, Dylan stood up—hovering, back to wall—until the thing twitched.
“Please be dead,” she whispered, freezing in her Nikes. “And please don’t be pissed off.”
Almost when she thought she was in the clear, that her aim was not only accurate but deadly, the thing shuddered, twitched, and flickered.
Flickered.
It was like a car accident she couldn’t pull her eyes away from. The disgusting thing flipped on its side, then in a flash of light flipped back, facing her. Its eyes shone bright red, enlarging with each passing second. Hair shed from its body like it was growing too fast to keep it attached. Skin peeled back too, as a larger creature emerged with the final flash of light.
She may’ve never seen a therian shift in her elongated lifetime, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out normal cave-dwelling bats didn’t flicker and shed their skin like wizards or snakes. Frantically, she searched for a bigger rock. As soon as this traitor came to full form she intended to end its life for once and for all.
Taking one careful step at a time, Dylan approached the naked form on the ground; the muscular, caramel-skinned form of a man.
He lifted his face out of the dirt.
She raised the giant rock.
He tilted his head and looked at her with onyx-black eyes that were much too knowledgeable to come from the form that was a dumb, shrieking bat minutes ago. Raising a hand in protest, the therian opened his mouth. “Dylan, please don’t.”
Breath froze in her chest. She lifted the rock higher. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
“I . . . told you . . . I told you to keep your eyes closed.”
“I asked how you knew my name. You better talk fast, this boulder’s getting heavy.”
He struggled for breath, his body drenched in sweat, his limbs flailing behind him as he tried—and failed—to sit upright. “It’s me,” he panted. “Slade.”
“Liar! What have you done with him?” She pulled her eyes off the therian’s bulging back muscles and quickly scanned the side corridors. “Slade? Can you hear me?”
“For God’s sake, woman, put that boulder down before you tear something in your shoulder.”
For a split second Slade’s voice came from this hard-bodied therian. In fact, his baritone was close to the same, his voice gravelly and exotic, like handfuls of sand being massaged into her skin. No, it couldn’t be . . . and if it was, so help him.
She took a step back, boulder at shoulder level. “If you’re Slade, then tell me something only he would know.”
“ReVamp . . . you work at ReVamp.” Color was returning to his cheeks. Both plump sets of them . . . not that she was looking.
“Everyone knows I work at ReVamp, Slick. It’s not like that’s a giant secret. You better talk faster—otherwise I’ll have the entire khiss called down like that.” She snapped her fingers and pivoted her toe. Nothing wrong with confidence and a strong stance. Damn, her shoulder was aching from the weight of this boulder.
He sighed, scrubbing his hand across his dark stubbly hair. He really did look like the Slade she knew. . . .
“You smell like fresh summer rain,” he whispered, his face suddenly tender. “Your laugh sounds like the music of angels, and you’d do anything for your race. Even if it means giving your life. Oh, and we’ve kissed. Twice.”
The giant rock dropped out of her hands, rolled across the floor, right along with her preconceived notions about what therians could and couldn’t do.
“Slade?” She knelt at his side, taking in his wide jaw that looked oddly familiar to his vampire form. Then slapped him as hard as she could right across it. “That’s for lying.” She smacked him again, harder. “And that’s for making me feel something for you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You are no different than you were yesterday. Your fangs may be longer, you may crave blood, and you may spend your waking hours in the night, but your inner self has not changed. Not one bit.”
—Newborn Induction Handbook, Chapter 8: Adapting to the Change
Slade barely budged when Dylan hit him, but that wasn’t the point. She wanted him to feel the anger boiling inside her. And now she had to get as far away from him as possible. To do what, she didn’t know yet.
“Wait. Dylan. Don’t leave,” he said, gaining strength by the second.
She spun around. “Oh, now you need something from me? I thought you were the one in control, using me like I’m a puppet on a string. All this time you’ve been trying to get close to me, trying to learn about our khiss. Oh God, you were inducted! A therian was inducted into our khiss.” She paced tight circles in the dirt, her eyes searching the heavens for answers they couldn’t give. “And then you what? Trick me
into coming down here so you can find our scrolls and take them back to your Sheik, is that it? You were spying on us? Now you know how to stop our race, don’t you? Kill us off completely, is that what you want?”
He stretched up another hand. “Dylan—”
“Don’t Dylan me. You lied to me, Slade.”
“I may’ve lied to a lot of people about a lot of things, but I’ve never lied to you. Especially about how I feel.” He scraped his hands across his head. “Damn it, Dylan, it was my duty to blend into your haven and become a member of your khiss. I thought you’d understand how bound I am to duty and honor. I had to do this. ”
Her mind barely processed his words. “I can’t believe I offered to take care of you and . . .”
“And you also offered to lie with me.”
Rage heated her core hotter than anything she’d felt before. She got up-close-and-personal, nearly brushing nose to nose. “You listen here. I only wanted you . . . I mean, at the time I thought you were one of us, and that’s the only reason I was attracted to you.”
She wished she spoke the truth but his thick lips were more than a little distracting. He swiped his tongue across them and for an instant she wondered if he’d taste the same as he did before. She chastised herself for being absolutely ridiculous. Slade was right. She was foolish—for thinking such things about her enemy.
“Could you just hand me my clothes? They’re over there.” He pointed to the corner, to the heap on the floor. As he twisted his torso, she glimpsed an intricate black therian marking stretching over the side of his shoulder that dipped down onto his right peck and wrapped around his back.
When she followed the tattoo-like design up and around his chest, she realized it resembled very closely the design from the scroll.
“Tell me that mark isn’t the same from that scroll we just found.”
“It’s not the—”
“Oh, forget it. Can you lose the sarcasm for once? This is serious, Slade. What the hell is your therian marking doing on the scrolls? Did you do that when I wasn’t looking or something?”
“Yeah, because I carry a magic marker in my ass just in case an occasion like this pops up. If you hand me my clothes I might be able to explain better. Unless you’d rather talk to me while I’m naked?”
She weighed her options fast, then figured it’d be easier to be pissed-off at him if he was dressed. His being naked like this just made her want to . . . never mind.
After chucking his clothes at him, she decided to take a stand. He had a helluva lot of explaining to do before she let him out of her sight.
“First give me the damn scroll,” she said, spinning back around. “It doesn’t belong in lying therian hands.”
Damn, if that jeans and hoodie getup didn’t look better on him now than it did before. Instead of hugging his massive thighs, the jeans hung looser there, but swelled near his inseam. Good Lord, he had to be packing something enormous.
She tried to hide the blush of her cheeks by pulling her hair over her shoulders.
He walked on unsteady legs to the far wall, picked the roll of parchment off the floor and brought it to her. “I know you think everything’s changed, Dylan, but that’s not the case. Now more than ever, I have to find out what Meridian knows—for more reasons than to stop you from going through with the Valcdana. We have to seek him out together. I don’t know how yet, and you may not like it, but we’re connected.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? First Erock, now you!”
“How else do you explain my family marking being on the pages referring to you and the Valcdana and the end of the war?”
She drew a blank. Damn it, now was hardly the time for brain blackouts.
“I asked you to trust me before, and you said you did.” He lifted a hand as if to touch her cheek, then lowered it. “Not so much has changed, has it?”
She tore her eyes away from him. “You weren’t my enemy before.”
“I’m not your enemy now.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Her traitorous heart thumped wildly in her chest. “Slade, look at you. You’re no more a vampire than I am a therian, no matter what that mark on the scrolls hints at. Our races hate each other, have for centuries.”
“I’m not talking about our races. I’m talking about you and me.” He stepped closer. Inches away. Specks of light shone through his midnight irises like ripples of moonlight on a lake of black glass. “Can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me you hate me?”
Air stripped from her lungs. Deep down inside she felt betrayed, hollow. But with each glimpse into his coal-black orbs, something pieced together. Even as she realized it, she knew she could never admit it—least of all to him. “Yes. I hate you.”
He caught her mouth with his, sealing them together with an intense magnetism she couldn’t break if she tried. Lapping draws of his tongue made her knees weak, her mind cloudy. His hands dove into her hair, shot to her lower back, then back up again; they were anxious, on the verge of losing control. He gripped her hips and pulled her close, sending a lick of heat surging through her body.
“If you hate me, tell me to stop,” he breathed against her mouth, his fingers working magic in her curls.
She longed for his eyes to undress her—and not the ruby red eyes from before—but these eyes. These dark and knowing black swirls of eyes that stripped her of every thing she’d ever known to be true. All that mattered was his heart and hers and this electricity sparking between them.
Dylan wanted to tell him to stop before she lost more than she could afford to give.
Instead she whispered, “Damn you, Slade,” and sighed into him, letting her body soften like warm putty in his hands.
He’d never sensed anything like it before in his therian form, especially not from a vamp. Her body was blooming like a flower in his arms: softening, opening up, willing to take all of him in the second he asked.
His body was already responding and he hadn’t even touched her, skin to skin, yet. His erection pulsed with the intensity of a lightning bolt, poised to strike the second it sampled her center. This woman would be the end of him, Slade thought, as the fragrant scent of her arousal struck him like a tidal wave.
Death by tasting heaven—no better way to go, in his book.
He bent down, smudging a line of fevered kisses down her neck. She moaned and arched her back, pressing her breasts against his chest.
“How do you have such power over me?” she asked, nearly gasping for air, her voice desperate. “I know better. I do . . .”
“I’m gonna make your mind blissfully blank if you’ll let me.” He scraped his thumb right under her jaw, tilted her head back, tugged at the powder-blue cardigan that was about to swat the floor. Trying to be as gentle as he could, though far from it at this point, he stripped her sweater from her body, leaving her twisting in his arms in nothing but a revealing white tank and blue jeans.
When he kissed the curve of her neck again, he felt the tantalizing pulse of her vein flush against his tongue.
Chills whipped across his jaw, coiled through his body, struck his loins with a resounding crack. He wanted to sink his fangs into her. Savor that sweet nectar flowing through her veins as he rocked her body over and over again.
As he realized the reaction was from his fangs preparing to drop, he was confused beyond words. He didn’t have fangs—not in this form anyway. Come to think of it, he’d never even had the desire to drink for pleasure when he was a vamp.
Dylan moaned, skimming her hands across his chest, making little pulls on his sweater, reminding him that now was hardly the time to be thinking such things over. There’d be plenty of time for that later.
He ducked out of the heavy cotton, tossed it to the floor. Guiding her arms above her head, Slade peeled off her tank and threw it aside. The sight of her milky-white breasts flowing over the edges of a black lace bra made him lose it.
All restraint left him on a heavy exhale.
&n
bsp; Hungry to see more, his hands darted to her jeans and hers to his. They pressed against each other, flush from mouth to hips, tugging, unfastening, unzipping, and shuffling their pants to the floor, all the while working their mouths against one another.
As he popped open the front fastener on her bra with a single snap, he dropped to his knees and found her breast with his mouth. He pulled her nipples in with little sucks as she whimpered in delight, digging her fingers into his shoulders, his back.
Slade’s teeth hummed in anticipation, craving the sweet red flow just under her skin that they couldn’t have. Determined to taste her one way or another, he aimed lower, laying kisses over the flat span of her stomach, letting his fingers guide the way down to her tender spot.
“Oh God,” he groaned. “You’re so wet, Dylan. I have to taste you. Just one taste.”
She answered by laying back onto their strewn clothes; a long stretch of her beautiful body over the dark earth made him pause. Was her porcelain skin glowing a brilliant amber? Was that possible or were his eyes playing tricks on him? Were her soft blue eyes really melting for him?
“What are you waiting for?” she breathed, her fangs bared. “Please . . .”
He dove into her core with relentless fury, his tongue flickering in and out of her, until she came in undulating waves, her head thrown back, her hips rolling. As she cried out in ecstasy, her voice carried through the catacombs, a resounding thunder that made Slade growl.
Not able to hold back another instant, he rose up, pressed his hips against hers and slipped into her in one swift motion. Her warmth enveloped him like a glove, making him hiss and moan each time she shuddered. He felt every little pulse with an enhanced clarity he couldn’t explain, but never wanted to separate from.
She arched back, her fingers grazing his sides, and he realized she was close to climaxing again.
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