Before he gained enough sense to stop himself, he bent over, tilted her head up, and pressed a kiss to her lips.
“Keep the door locked.”
She nodded again.
Kearn walked over to the door and out into the hall. He closed the door and swept his hand over the locks, clicking them all into place.
His senses delved deep into his blood, opening the connection between him and Amber. It was still strong. He closed himself off to her and walked down through the building. She didn’t need to know his feelings while he was with the Venator and he knew that she would be trying to if he left the connection to him open. She had figured out that something happened between them when he had tasted her blood. She was a bright girl.
And beautiful.
Kearn wiped a hand down his face and sighed, trying to expel that thought and the feelings attached to it.
She was bait. It didn’t matter what her blood had told him or how he felt about her. When this was over, they would part ways and never see each other again.
Was he alright with that? No, but it was how things had to be. As much as he desired her, wanted to give her the gift of immortality, he couldn’t go through with it. What life would she have if he did? Condemned to spend eternity despised by humans and vampires alike, in danger every day, and with only him for company.
He stepped out of the front door of the apartment building and spotted the truck parked up on the side of the quiet road.
A blood bank van?
The smile touched his lips before he could contain it. It seemed the Sovereignty had developed a sense of humour. They used to be more subtle.
He rapped his knuckles on the side door. It opened and the female Venator looked down at him with emotionless eyes.
“Venator Savernake.” She bowed her head.
It was strange to have someone act humbly towards him when he had been the one behaving that way last night. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t deserve such respect, but he took it all instead, enjoying how it made him feel—strong, proud, and cruel.
Her behaviour unleashed a side of him that he had forgotten. He felt like the man he had been before becoming a Venator.
He stepped up into the truck, glanced around the white insides without hiding his disgust at having to do such a thing for the Sovereignty, and then stared at the woman.
“Venator Greystone. You witnessed what happened last night at my uncle’s ball.” His voice was pure ice and darkness. A thrill bolted through him when she lowered her head and nodded. “Then you are aware that I took blood from that human so she would heal.”
That human?
Amber. She had a name. Was his desire for his old life so strong that he would cast her aside to reclaim it?
“Such information is inconsequential,” Venator Greystone said in a small voice. He felt her fear inside him—the tremble that gave away more than just her awe at his position and strength. She dared to look up at him. Her pupils were wide, admitting her desire to him. Such a female would look to mate with a strong male. The tip of her tongue caressed her lips and she swallowed. Her eyes could barely hold his. Did she honestly expect him to want such an inferior and weak female? Her bloodline was worthless. “I only need to test for large quantities, not trace doses, my lord.”
Her lord?
He grinned the moment she dropped her head again. That was right. To her, he was the highest echelon of society. A Noble of house Savernake.
Large quantities?
Sense crashed over him. He had taken more than a trace from Amber. He had wanted to drink her all down and savour every last drop. The vision of her drenched in red, her black bodice barely holding her breasts in, and his marks on her throat hit him hard. He wanted that.
He shut out the image, sat down on the black leather patient’s chair, rolled up his right shirtsleeve and stared at Venator Greystone.
“I am busy. Let us get this over with.” The coldness in his voice didn’t go unnoticed by her. She dropped her gaze and nodded, as though shamed by wasting his time.
Her touch was light on his forearm, tracing the marks on his skin. The feel of her fingers on him turned his insides and made him want to tear his arm away from her, or knock her hand aside. He didn’t want her hands on him. He wanted the human’s.
Amber.
The way she had touched him had set his blood aflame, burning with the desire to kiss her and claim her body as his own, to sink his fangs into her throat and join them eternally.
He would kill for that.
Venator Greystone went to a long row of white cupboards, opened a drawer and took out a needle and a tube. His heart gave one hard beat at the sight of it and the thought of what she was going to do. He couldn’t refuse to be tested. It would only look suspicious if he did that. The Sovereignty had told him to do this. It was an order.
“This won’t take long, my lord.”
Those softly spoken words drew his gaze to her face. Her pupils were still wide. Amber had looked at him like that more than once. She had watched his mouth with eyes full of fire and hunger. She had wanted him to kiss her.
And he wanted it too.
Kearn closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the chair. The Venator tied his arm and the whole of it felt tight, the blood trapped there. Blood. He reopened the connection between him and Amber, needing to feel her. She wasn’t just a human to him.
He focused on her. The Venator spoke to him but he was high above them, within Amber, trying to hear her thoughts and feel her feelings. He wanted to know her from the inside.
Her blood had said she wanted him. It asked him to drink it.
He had never experienced such a thing. He had only ever drunk from another vampire. His parents had believed it too unrefined for their children to hunt. They had brought them the finest blood from the hunts they had led.
He only knew that to bite someone was profound. To surrender to his instincts and bite another vampire had been intoxicating. More thrilling than sex or Source Blood. It had addled his mind and driven him to behave like a beast. It had freed him.
Biting a human would be different.
What would it feel like?
He latched on to Amber’s blood, sensing her through it. She wanted him. Would she cry out if he bit her or would she moan into his ear?
In the darkness of his mind, he could easily imagine how it would play out. It would be perfect. An intense moment when his lips touched her neck and then her shiver of pleasure when he eased his fangs into her flesh. There would be nothing quite like it. His arousal soared at the thought and he reached out to her through their blood. He felt her awareness, sensed her own desire flare at the image of him biting her throat and holding her close, never to let her go. She wanted it.
He could never do such a thing.
His heart reproached him for his false chivalry and empty nobility. It was all a lie, something he kept telling himself because it was the right thing to feel in the situation. Only it wasn’t. It wasn’t what he wanted.
He had done nothing but lie to himself since meeting her.
He wanted her.
He would bite her and suck her blood like a beast, feasting on it and slaking his unending thirst for her, and he wouldn’t give her a choice. She wouldn’t be able to stop him. He would do it without consent and make her belong to him.
His heart darkened at the thought of her hating him but he wouldn’t care as long as she was his.
Kearn cursed himself for being so inhuman and then almost laughed out loud. Inhuman? He couldn’t be such a thing when he wasn’t human. He was a vampire and desired to do what his heart and his blood dictated.
He would make Amber into a vampire.
And she would stay with him forever.
“Lord Savernake?” A voice reached through the haze of hunger and he slowly opened his red eyes.
The female Venator leaned over him, her long silver hair caressing her face.
“I thought you had pa
ssed out.” Her eyes told him something different to her words. Something she feared saying and with good reason. It didn’t matter if she had noticed his aroused state and was openly inviting him to take her body with her parted lips and wide eyes. It wasn’t going to happen. He shut down his hunger so she would no longer sense it and stared at her, cold and hard. “I had not expected you to be so very docile, Lord Savernake.”
Kearn realised with a spark of panic that she had strapped him into the chair. He quelled his fear before she detected it. It had been a few years since his last blood test but he hadn’t expected any of the process to have changed in that time.
“Is this standard protocol now?” He raised a dark silver eyebrow at the leather wrist cuffs and experimentally tugged at them. They were tight and strong, reinforced inside with steel by the cold feel of them.
“We need to take more blood now since it was discovered that only taking a small vial could give false readings. It is only a pint. It should not take long.”
“So why the restraints?” He eyed them again, unable to bring himself to trust the woman now that she had tied him down.
“Some Venators have an adverse reaction to having such a quantity of blood taken. It… it awakens our nature.”
Their nature? That was a very polite way of saying he was about to become little more than a beast. Was only a pint enough to trigger that? He had lost a lot of blood in the past due to injuries and only once had it been enough to prompt such a reaction. He had killed every vampire present at the time.
He corrected himself.
He hadn’t killed them.
He had slaughtered them.
Venator Greystone swept her hair aside, exposing the left side of her neck. “It isn’t that I do not trust you, Lord Savernake. It is that I fear your strength.”
Thick ragged scars cut over her skin, distorting it. She would have come close to dying from such a deep wound. It was understandable that she was cautious now, especially around a Noble of his bloodline. He was far stronger than she was. If he lost his mind to his instincts, she wouldn’t stand a chance.
He looked up at the ceiling.
And neither would Amber.
Her blood was with his. After killing the Venator, he would go after her to satisfy the gnawing hunger he had felt since first tasting her.
He nodded to Venator Greystone.
She picked up the needle and carefully eased it into the soft flesh on the inside of his elbow. It didn’t hurt. The yellow tube turned deep red and Kearn leaned back.
His focus drifted to Amber and he closed his eyes.
“It will not take long, Lord Savernake.”
That name brought him back to the truck. It grated on his nerves now. He hadn’t been Lord Savernake in over sixty years, and the Venator knew it, so why was she persisting in calling him that. Venator Savernake. That was his only title now, and it was as worthless as her bloodline.
A deep sense of discontent stirred within his heart. It grew as he lost more blood and he began to feel the effects. His defences dropped and his instincts pushed for control but he didn’t allow them to take over. He was strong enough to keep a level head. It was only a small amount of his blood and there was no threat to him. Hunger gnawed at his gut and the memory of Amber’s blood made his own call out to her. He wanted her to come to him, to straddle his lap, and let him sink his fangs into her.
He imagined her above him and it was as though she was there with him. Her hands came to rest against his chest and a smile curved her lips when she glanced at his bound wrists, as though she enjoyed the thought of him being at her mercy. He was. He was a beast at her mercy, tamed by her and longing for her to whisper him a command. He would obey.
She leaned over him and the waves of her long brown hair caressed his bare chest. Her fingers followed suit, tracing the line between his pectorals while she purred her approval of his body. He liked the way she looked too. He tried to reach for her but the cuffs stopped him. Her smile widened and she raised herself, so her face was above his. He tilted his head back to keep his focus on her and she rewarded him with a kiss. Not searing or passionate, but slow and tender. A kiss that fanned the flames within him and his desire for her blood.
Her lips left his and trailed along his jaw and then down his neck. She kissed it, licked it, branded his flesh with her scent until he could barely contain himself, and when he was on the brink of snapping the restraints to get to her, she did the one thing he had never considered in all of this.
She bit him.
Her dull teeth dug into his throat. He bucked his hips against hers and roared. It was divine, turning his blood to fire in his veins until it burned through him, driving him over the edge.
His fangs extended and his eyes switched.
Amber drew back, a trace of blood on her lips. The sight of it fascinated and enthralled him. She had broken the skin. She had tasted him. He groaned and craned his neck to reach her. He wanted to bite her. She had to let him bite her now. It was only fair.
He thrilled and grew hard when she reached around her head and pulled the hair from her neck, holding it back. It was the left side and the cut was still there. A mark made by another man. A mark he would erase.
Kearn growled when she lowered herself, acceptance shining in her hazel eyes. She wanted this. She wanted to be with him forever and she would be.
His lips touched her throat and he lost control. He wrapped them around the cut and then sunk his fangs in. Amber moaned into his ear and her fingers tensed against his chest, nails digging in. He groaned and sucked hard, desperate for her blood and desperate to make her belong to him. She belonged to him.
He wanted to hold her against him but couldn’t get his arms free. The feel of her fingers threading into his hair and holding his mouth against her throat was enough to placate the desire. He fed deep, drawing greedy mouthfuls of her blood and savouring every one. The moment he felt her weaken, he released her neck and licked the cut, carefully sealing it and being gentle so he didn’t hurt her any more. He would never hurt her.
Not now that she was his.
“Lord Savernake?” The voice was dull. He ignored it, wanting to stay with Amber, wrapped tight in her embrace as she held him close to her, as a lover would. “Lord Savernake?”
The world shook and he frowned at it when Amber disappeared.
He fluttered his eyes open and stared at the bright white ceiling. Where was he? Where had Amber gone?
An unfamiliar face appeared in view. It took him a moment to gather himself. The vision had been strong. He had never experienced anything quite like it. Had Amber seen it too?
He reached out to her. She was sleeping. He sensed desire in her and deep contentment. His eyes widened at the thought that she might have experienced it too. If it hadn’t been just his imagination but a vision created by their joined blood, then she had offered her throat willingly.
She wanted to be like him.
“Lord Savernake?” Venator Greystone said again and he snapped himself out of his thoughts. She removed the needle from his arm. “Did you experience any adverse effects?”
He shook his head.
Only the most fantastic vision he’d ever had.
“It will take a short while to test your blood. I have to keep the restraints in place until we are done. I hope that does not offend you, Lord Savernake.”
Kearn shook his head again. The restraints didn’t bother him as much as her persistence in using his former title did. It brought back the ball and the way the man had held Amber. He had felt a violent urge to kill the man with his bare hands, had wanted to unleash his power on him, even before he had known who the man was. He had never killed another vampire without orders to, but he had wanted to butcher any who had dared to look at her. He had wanted to fight his own uncle.
He closed his eyes and sighed. What was becoming of him?
Not only did he consider killing without orders but he also wanted to turn her into a vampire w
ithout consent. Was he that caught up in her? Did he honestly love her?
Kearn.
He frowned.
Kearn? He hadn’t taken long to come back. He felt tired still but rubbed it away and then opened his eyes. Only he didn’t see the truck. He saw a dark room. His apartment.
Who had turned out the lights?
Was it Kearn? Had he come back so soon?
A shape came out of the darkness. Red eyes. Sharp fangs. It wasn’t him. Another man materialised from the shadows. He shook his head. His panic rose and his heart raced so fast that he felt sick.
It wasn’t him.
Kearn!
There were men in the apartment.
Amber. Kearn growled and tugged at the arm restraints, gritting his teeth against the pain and calling all of his strength. Someone was up there with her. Her fear strained the connection between them, distorting it until he couldn’t sense her clearly.
Run. Amber. Run. Hide in the bathroom. He was coming to protect her.
CHAPTER 17
Kearn pulled at the restraints again. The metal bit into his wrists, filling his senses with the smell of blood, but he struggled on, determined to break his bonds and save Amber.
“What’s wrong, Lord Savernake?” Venator Greystone’s eyes were wide, showing her fear. She thought he was suffering a delayed attack from having his blood taken. He could see it in her wary expression.
“You have to unlock me.” He clenched his fists and growled, tugging the cuffs. “Amber is in danger. I need to go to her.”
Venator Greystone’s expression filled with astonishment. “How much blood did you take from her?”
His patience snapped when he felt Amber trembling, felt the threads that bound them quivering with it and sensed her panic. She didn’t want to die. Her blood called to him. It demanded that he go to her.
“It was a deep wound,” he snarled and the Venator stepped backwards, away from him. “I had to seal it!”
He fought again, until blood covered his wrists, the chair creaked and the entire van rocked from his struggle. He wouldn’t let her die. He wouldn’t let the man take her from him.
Forbidden Blood (Vampire Venators Romance Series) Page 19