by Zoe Forward
She swallowed hard, blinking at him, shaken by her longing to take that bite and taste him again.
Hoarsely, she said, “The two can go hand in hand when there’s passion involved.”
“Ambrose won’t get near you again. He has no idea what he’s underappreciated.” Lexan then asked telepathically, “So…you want to bite me again?”
She zeroed in on his exposed thigh. A fresh red streak dribbled its way toward the edge. She caught it. No way was that getting wasted. Without thought, her finger was almost to her mouth when he grabbed her hand.
“Don’t. We don’t know what silver will do to you.” He wiped the blood off her finger.
Her cheeks burned. Begging for a taste—just a small lick—became a scorching need. Who cared about a little silver? Silver didn’t bother vampires. One itsy, bitsy taste couldn’t hurt. Her gaze locked onto the small bit of blood dribbling down his thigh.
“No,” he said softly.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Was her pull to Lexan about psychosis over his blood, not emotion or a connection? Maybe the pull came back to his ancient magnetism. Maybe it was both. It couldn’t be real. Him here wasn’t personal. Lexan sought her at her bio-Dad’s request. She needed to keep her head screwed on and keep her heart out of this. She needed Lexan to help her figure out how to avoid changing into something with fur.
The king could not have a mix as a long-term partner. She buried disappointment deep in her chest and fell into her comfortable doctor mode. “I need something to cover this.” And eliminate temptation.
Eric tossed paper napkins from the front seat. She packed them onto the wound. “Do you guys have somewhere with supplies that I could work on that wound? Somewhere close?”
Lexan said, “Eric, let’s go to the Vanderburgs’ place. They’ve got medical supplies. Have the other boys meet us there.” He met her gaze. “They’re the ones lending us our home base.”
Vee said, “You need to keep your heart rate down until we get there.”
“Might be easier, catifea, if you stopped flashing me that view.” He grinned his gorgeous smile and gazed down her scrub top.
In her mind, she thought to him, “You might be dying. Be serious.”
“I’m not dead.” She picked up heavy arousal in his mind.
Confusion swamped her. Did he like like her or was he playing with her? Maybe he was a natural flirt. They’d proven they had chemistry—good chemistry. Perhaps that’s all this was.
“Come here.” Lexan pulled her against him, cradling her to his chest. He’d tucked her head into the notch just under his collarbone. “That’s better. You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded. The adrenaline of the past hour fled, draining everything but the relief of being next to him. Even if this was all she ever had—these few moments together seeking comfort in each other in the aftermath of something crazy—it would be enough.
Okay, that was a lie.
It wouldn’t come even close to enough.
…
Lexan lay prone on a hospital table. Vee evaluated the sparse medical supplies surrounding her. He wasn’t going to like the plan she’d formulated, but she didn’t see this working any other way.
Vee injected Lexan with Benadryl and said, “Okay, so here’s how it’s going to go. I can’t do much for what may have already leached into your system. We’re just going to have to hope it wasn’t much and you can survive it. I’m going to lance the entry point, and since there is no way for me to x-ray and confirm the silver is all gone, I’m going to flush the daylights out of it. You’re going to transform to wolf. Then I’m going to clamp your femoral and put things back together—”
“Oh, hell no,” Eric interrupted, “If he transforms, any silver not in his blood will be permanent in his body.”
“I’d prefer to bleed out rather than silver death,” Lexan said.
“I can’t get to your femoral with you as a human. You’re just too…well, you’ve got too much muscle for me to dig through to find the artery before blood loss becomes critical. As a wolf, there’s not as much to get through, and I’m confident I can get to the vessel before you bleed out. I can also safely clamp off your femoral with you in wolf form, and you’d have enough collateral circulation not to lose your leg. As a human, if I toast your femoral, you run a huge risk of losing your leg. Based on that look, I assume losing your leg would be worse than death?” When all she got was a skeptical look, she added, “We lanced and flushed before, and it worked out all right.”
“It wasn’t liquid silver.” Eric crossed his arms and blocked her from Lexan.
“Does someone have a plan other than letting him die?” She looked around.
“Bloody hell,” Eric said.
Vee picked up the bottle of saline and stood poised above Lexan’s leg. She raised an eyebrow, waiting for approval. His guys acted like they’d already moved on to the grieving stage. “He is going to make it through this.”
“Lexan, you think she can do it?” asked Eric.
“I trust her, but swear on your life, Vee, that if you don’t get that silver out and you see me going into silver death you’ll let me just bleed out.”
“You aren’t going to die today.” She thought to him, “I will not watch you bleed out.”
Lexan signaled Eric close.
She shouldn’t eavesdrop. But she did.
Lexan said, “I couldn’t have asked for a better second. But, old friend, I’ve got two favors to ask, if I don’t make it.”
“You’ll make it,” Eric said. “I didn’t risk my ass in this backwoods country for you to stroke out now.”
“Please…”
“Of course.” Eric brought their joined hands to his chest and bowed his head.
“Get her out of this country. Help her through the change.” Lexan waited for Eric to nod. “Once you get her away from here, keep her safe.”
“And second.”
“Call Michael.”
“That wolf is psycho…uncontrollable.”
“Only call him if this doesn’t go well and I’m not around. He’s irritable because I forbade him from killing vamps in France. Now, let him kill. He’ll be a powerful ally now that we have outright war.”
…
Vee washed her hands in the sink across the room from Lexan. In the mirror, she noticed the blood spatters across her scrub top from the few good sprays Lexan’s femoral had shot after she ordered he transform to wolf and before she was able to clamp off the vessel. She picked at the dried blood on her arm.
Her fingers trembled. She fisted her hands to make them stop. They never shook. Not even when she’d nicked the vena cava accidentally while removing a Great Dane’s kidney. That had been a moment when she’d freaked out to the max.
The absolute terror of the past thirty minutes crashed through her. Watching Lexan’s lifeblood flow out of his body until she’d gotten the hemorrhage controlled…well, she’d done what she always did and put her emotions on hold to get the job done. Now, the crash of holy shit hit. Her knees threatened to buckle. She gripped the metal sink and hung her head, fighting nausea.
God, what was she going to do if she hadn’t gotten all the silver flushed out…if he didn’t make it?
“You did all you could,” Eric said softly. She flinched and caught his grateful gaze in the mirror. Eric hadn’t changed out of his tactical clothes—black muscle shirt, black camos, and tactical vest amply loaded with weapons.
“Did I? What if it wasn’t enough?”
“If you open that door, then it’s all you’ll think about.”
She tried to suck in deep breaths, fighting the urge to puke. Her vision hazed. “I can’t think otherwise.” A world without Lexan in it… She couldn’t imagine.
“He’s a tough sonuvabitch. Now that he found you he won’t be giving up life easily.”
She smiled at Eric but wasn’t relieved. Her gut told her the silver scare wasn’t over. That medical instinct was never wrong.
E
ric ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry about earlier when I found you and Lexan. He’s my first priority. I didn’t know you and he…you know.”
“I get that.”
“Without Lexan, we’d all be lost. We’re a bunch of messed-up soldiers he salvaged from near death. We’re cast-offs and criminals no one else wanted or trusted. Someone like him shouldn’t have trusted beings like us, but he can see deep. Damn scary deep, and knows your soul better than you. He gave each of us a chance at redemption. For that, our debt to him is great. Him dying because we failed to do our job would be unbearable.”
She reached out and touched Eric’s arm for a moment. “You’re as vital to him as he is to you, but not just for protection. He trusts you in particular more than any other in this world.” She watched Lexan through reflection in the mirror. Lexan breathed deeply, sleeping.
“How would you know?” Eric asked.
“I’ve caught this impression from him a lot.” She touched her head in meaning.
“Yeah, I forgot you’re Blay’s kid.”
“Did you know Blay? I have a hard time imaging him, well any wolf, as my father.”
“Not well, but we crossed paths a few times. I heard he was a great fighter in the War, not that I was alive back then. Many breathed a sigh of relief when Blay died. The guy could flicker in and out of your mind and pull funny tricks. Damned scary stuff.”
Dead? She’d wanted to meet her bio-dad and try to understand what happened between him and her mother. Lexan hadn’t spoken about Blay in the past tense.
TC appeared, scratching wildly at his arms and cursing. His whole body came to a startling halt. A sneeze detonated, raining a shower of spittle down the front of his shirt.
Vee examined TC from afar. “What’s wrong with you?”
TC looked desperate. “Fucking Vanderburgs keep cats.”
“What?” She stared at his arms.
He held out his arms, which were rashed up to his T-shirt sleeve. Lines from his scratching welted up in horizontal streaks up his forearms.
“You’re kidding. You’re allergic to cats?” Vee bit back a laugh, but it broke free. All three of them laughed, the humor shattering their tension.
“Got any Benadryl left over, Doc?”
Chapter Eighteen
Lexan dragged a hand through his hair and pulled on a clean T-shirt. He yelled across the medical room to Eric, “You find any clothes for Vee?”
Eric held up a sweater and pair of jeans. “Donated by Vanderburg’s wife.”
For a frozen moment, she stared at Lexan. Everything she wanted to ask him about the two of them crowded into her brain, along with a demand he tell her about his condition. She couldn’t vocalize the words. Hearing he wasn’t 100 percent clear of silver would devastate her. Despite her diligence, his battle wasn’t over.
She accepted the clothes, mumbled “thanks,” and left to change in the half bath down the hall.
When she returned, dressed in the ill-fitting sweater and jeans, she looked around, baffled. “Where’d everyone go?”
Lexan said, “To the cars. I have a meeting we’re going to be late for, but attendance is a non-negotiable for me, not you.”
“You’re feeling…?” She didn’t want to know. Everything felt cold. Sure, the air-conditioning blasted air on high to combat the eighty-something outside, but the cool air froze her much deeper than an arm-hugging chill.
“Alive.” His unreadable expression scared her.
Trembling started in her arms and spread.
He took her hand. “Come.” He pulled her into the room across the hall from the hospital room and kicked shut the door. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“I’m f-f-fine.”
“Yeah, okay.” He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight to his chest. Her cheek fit into the nook beneath his chin as if they were made for each other.
Ah, sweet warmth. Wonderful warmth.
“You’re shocky, Vee. It’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that. None of us knows that. Ambrose… He would’ve killed me before your guys showed up. If he took me to Dominic after he did his mind-meld thing, I’d definitely be dead. You almost died. The war is going worldwide. All of it because of me.”
“The war isn’t your fault. It’s been active underground worldwide for at least ten years. We’ve been teetering on an edge of it being open warfare for decades.” He smoothed her hair from the crown of her head to her back. “You’re safe. I’m getting you out of the country tonight.”
Every defiant neuron in her brain fired at once. She struggled to get out of his grip without success.
“Shhh,” he said, hugging her tighter against him.
“I can’t go with you.” I won’t. But she wanted to. Good Lord, she wanted to stay right here with her head against Lexan’s hard chest forever. The girl who’d fought Dominic her entire life reared her independent head. She wouldn’t trade being under the thumb of one ancient being for another.
“Let me get through this meeting and then we’ll figure things out,” he suggested.
She glanced up. A half smile lifted his beautiful lips. His hand came up and stroked her hair back from her face, his thumb caressing her cheek. The same thumb traced across her lips, mesmerizing her. He lifted her hair away from her neck and pressed his warm lips over her jugular, sucking hard. Her heart hammered as her body bowed against him. Not a fair move on his part.
He whispered, “God, you smell amazing.”
“We can’t. Especially not when you just almost—”
“There’s only right now. Stop worrying about anything else.” He stretched the v-neck of the sweater off her shoulder and licked his mark. Spikes of lust shot through her body, but she wouldn’t forget he intended to ferret her away. Tonight.
She pushed to move away, needing space between them since apparently his touch sapped her ability to think clearly. But he didn’t release her. She said, “This is never going to work. You’re a… And I’m a vamp. Even if in some alternate universe it might work, I won’t be a secret mistress, and I’m not cut out to be a political wife.”
He stepped forward and kissed down her neck. “Let’s disappear. No more political bullshit. No more assassination attempts. Just you and me. No clothes.”
Didn’t he hear anything she’d just said? “You’re not just any wolf. You’re the king. Your people will paint a bright red target on me, mid-forehead, if we make this anything other than a short-term fling. They’ll think I killed you if we disappear. Everything going on here is a dead end.”
“You’re in shock and don’t know what you want right now.”
“Don’t you dare patronize me.” She shoved at him.
“What’s between us has nothing to do with politics or anyone else. This is real, and it’s about you and me. We’re meant to be together. I know you feel this. If anyone paints a target on you, I’ll kill him. If it becomes too dangerous for you, I’ll appoint someone else as leader. Kiss me.”
Like any ancient, he assumed she wanted him to take care of her. He planned exactly what she suspected—to scurry her away to some hole and never let her escape. Somewhere he could lord over her, own her, and take away her choices. “No.”
He retrieved his vibrating cell phone from his pants. With a quick glance at the highlighted screen, he announced, “Duty calls.”
Chapter Nineteen
They started arguing the second they stepped onto the porch of the borrowed house Lexan had used to set up headquarters.
“I’m contacting my aunt.” Vee tossed her head and gave him a squinty eye glare of defiance.
“No.” Lexan’s temper flared. Jesus, she was driving him nuts with her this won’t work mantra. Her stubbornness made him want to punch something. “You’ll stay off the radar of all American vampires until you are out of this country. No calls. No emails. No texts. Nothing.”
“You can bark out orders all you want, Your Highness. I’m not one of you
r subjects.”
“When it comes to your safety, you will listen to me.” He shifted all his weight off his injured leg, which burned. Not with the agony of a fresh wound, but with a dull thud. Unusual, since he healed almost immediately after injury. The silver wasn’t gone. Bad news. It might’ve rooted in his muscle when he shifted back in the medical room.
Her tone changed. “I understand safety, but please stop being a dictator. There’s got to be a way to safely contact my aunt. She doesn’t deserve to worry when she hears about what just happened with Ambrose through the grapevine. How about a quick text?”
“Definitely not safe.” All discomfort was forgotten. He purposely advanced to invade her personal space, where he could tower above her, making her see how much he was in charge.
She poked him in the chest. “You don’t scare me.”
“You should be scared.” Her noncompliance pushed him to establish which one of them controlled this situation. Didn’t she understand he had to take care of her? Mates only came along once for each wolf. Once. That made her precious. If he lost her… He couldn’t even conceive of it.
“Really? I should be afraid?” Her gaze dropped to his mouth as she leaned forward, bumping her pelvis against his erection. “How scared?”
His body jolted. He stared, transfixed, as her tongue moistened her lips.
“Right now, I’m in charge of your safety. Of your life. I will kill anyone who threatens you. So you damn well better listen to me. Every vamp in this country has you on their kill list.”
She grabbed the knife off his belt lightning fast and pressed it against his jugular. “I can handle myself.”
Lexan waved off TC. “I’m not questioning your ability to defend yourself. This threat is too big.”
“You’re right.” She blinked up at him without a hint of submission in her green eyes. Oh, he liked that. A lot. He pushed the knife away, bent, and pressed his lips flush to hers. Her mouth opened on a sigh as she swayed toward him and dropped the knife. As his arm wrapped her waist, pulling her tight to him, he slanted his mouth to deepen the kiss, taking exactly what he’d wanted since their argument began. Control.