Consumed: The Vampire Awakenings, Book 8

by Davies, Brenda K.

  She would have drooled at the prospect, if her mouth wasn’t so dry.

  * * *

  The sun was touching the edge of the horizon when Mike discovered the small alcove created by a pile of rocks. Years of erosion caused the stones to rise out of the earth and lean against each other in such a way they created a small cave.

  Mike bent to peer inside the alcove. The space was about five feet deep and four feet high and would help keep them warm against the growing wind coming off the ocean only fifty yards away.

  “We can stay here for the night,” Mike said as he rose to survey the woods. “I’ll gather some branches to cover the entrance and mask our scents.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  Mollie tossed the quilt into the shelter and went to help Mike gather dead branches and rocks. When they had enough supplies, they crawled inside the small cave and used them to block the entrance. They worked until only a bit of fading sunlight filtered through the branches covering the opening. Mike used some of the smaller rocks, dirt, and forest debris to plug the larger holes while Mollie retreated to the back of the shelter.

  Her breath sounded abnormally loud in the small space as she gathered the quilt and settled against the rocks at the back. Draping the blanket around her shoulders, she used it to block out the coldness of the stones. She propped the rifle against her knees while she watched the daylight fade completely.

  “What if they find us?” she whispered.

  “Then we’ll kill them.”

  He said this as if taking a life was so simple, but then, if it came between her and one of those things, Mollie would gladly take them all down. Her fingers stroked the barrel of the gun as she strained to hear anything beyond the rocks.

  Aida. Closing her eyes, she refused to shed the tears that thoughts of her sister brought to her eyes.

  A strange, animalistic howl pierced the night. Mollie gripped the rifle closer as a shiver ran down her spine. “Are there wolves in Canada?”

  “That wasn’t a wolf,” Mike said.

  “Then what was it?”

  “The Savages are hunting.”

  Mollie gulped. “They’re not very stealthy about it.”

  Mike turned away from the barrier, and undoing his belt, he pulled the pot and cup free. Setting them on the ground, he crept toward her. When he settled in beside her, his shoulder brushed hers in the small space.

  “They’ll be stealthy when they’re homing in on someone; now, they’re trying to intimidate their prey,” he said.

  “So, when they go silent someone is in trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  Mollie lifted the quilt from her shoulder and held a piece of it out to him. He took it from her and slid under it. His body warmed her far more than the quilt, and she found herself melting against him.

  It made no sense, he could kill her as easily as any of those things, but she felt a thousand times safer with him by her side.

  Draping his arm around Mollie’s shoulders, he cradled her protectively against him.

  “I’ll keep you safe,” he promised.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A blood-curdling scream jolted Mollie awake. She went to bolt upright, but a hand on her shoulder kept her restrained from leaping to her feet.

  A hand! Why is someone touching me?

  Panic flooded her, and a scream lodged in her throat as some instinct told her to remain silent. She searched desperately for the source of that hand, or to see anything, but the darkness was absolute. She went to jerk away from the hand, but Mike’s whispered words froze her in place.

  “It’s okay.”

  The memories of the past few days crashed over her, and Mollie relaxed beneath his grip. Another scream pierced the night and rose higher until it bounced off the walls. She clasped her hands over her ears as the person’s agony dug into her until she was certain it became a part of her. Mike held her against his chest and rested one of his hands over her ear.

  The scream abruptly cut off, leaving them in nerve-racking silence. Mollie slowly lowered her hands as she pressed closer against him. Mike’s heart lumbered beneath her other ear while his chest rose steadily. She didn’t have to witness what happened; she knew the screamer was dead.

  Mike lowered his hand from Mollie’s ear when she sat up beside him again. In the rays of the moon filtering through the cracks of their barrier, he could barely make out her extraordinary eyes. She looked helplessly at him before turning her attention to the front of their hiding place.

  “That didn’t come from too close by,” Mike assured her.

  “How do you know?” she whispered.

  “By the sound quality.”

  Another howl pierced the night, and then the maniacal, hideous bastards out there hunting the escapees laughed. She loathed them all.

  “Is that the first one they’ve caught?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She’d slept through the death of at least one other then. Gripping the rifle, she drew it closer and held it against her chest as more howls answered the first. The final cry sounded far too close for her liking.

  When she tensed against him, Mike ran his hand over her hair to soothe her, but she didn’t curl up and relax against him as she had while sleeping. He’d enjoyed the warmth of her body, the feel of her fingers against his chest, and her steady breaths.

  Then the Savages caught the scent of their prey and woke her.

  And he was glad she was awake because he needed her to help ground him. He despised it, but a part of him was as enticed by the prospect of the hunt as it repulsed him. He hated those things out there, he’d rather die than become one of them, but he could not deny his vampire nature, and it was lethal.

  His hands stilled on her hair before sliding around to clasp her head. He tugged her gently toward him and held her against his chest. She remained rigid before gradually relaxing and melting into his embrace.

  He rested his lips against her ear as he spoke. “It will be okay.”

  Mollie didn’t reply; she was too afraid something might hear her words. She cuddled closer to him as the excited sounds of the chase outside amped up before cutting off. In the ensuing quiet, the tick of Mollie’s watch sounded abnormally loud.

  She didn’t know how much time passed before a woman screamed and excited shrieks pierced the night.

  * * *

  She didn’t think she’d ever sleep again, but somewhere near dawn, when the howls and screams died away, she drifted off again. When she woke, she discovered light filtering through their barrier and Mike’s cheek resting on top of her head as he snored softly. He must have fallen asleep after her.

  She should wake him; they had to get moving, but he’d slept less than her, and she didn’t want to disturb him. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was only seven. She’d give him another hour.

  Leaning into him, she ignored the aches in her tired legs as she inhaled his scent and savored the strength of his large body against hers. She’d dated a handful of guys over the years—nothing serious as she always had so much going on in her life, but all of them were about her height or shorter and barely weighed more than she did.

  Aida claimed she went for the mousier guys because she didn’t have anything to fear from them. She’d wanted to tell Aida that was ridiculous, but it wasn’t. Mollie couldn’t deny she did go for guys she wouldn’t become attached to.

  Over the years, she had enough counseling to know that when she was younger, her number one relationship was anorexia. As she grew older, she came to terms with her disorder and gained control over her eating in time for her mother’s cancer diagnosis.

  Her mother, having fought Mollie’s battle with her, had spent many sleepless nights worrying Mollie would destroy herself. After the diagnosis, it became Mollie’s turn to lie awake worrying cancer would destroy her mother.

  Determined to make up for the terror she inadvertently put her mother through during the worst of her eating disorder, Mollie vowed to care fo
r her mother until she was better. That day never came. Then she’d taken care of Aida.

  She never resented any of it, but for many years, she’d put her life on hold and never really experienced what so many others did as a teen and twenty-something-year-old.

  When she was younger, her anorexia kept her from doing many things. She’d avoided parties where there would be too much tempting food and shunned places where she might have to wear something revealing, like swimming pools. At her lowest weight, she was less than a hundred pounds and convinced she was fat. Far too often, she’d stood in front of a mirror, pinching her skin and hating herself for the supposed fat she saw on her hips and belly.

  Not to mention, she’d been depressed, withdrawn, and too tired to embrace all the adventures her friends from high school were experiencing. In the beginning, her friends had called to get her to join them, but they gave up after she kept refusing, and she didn’t blame them; by then, she’d given up too.

  When her mother realized what was going on, Mollie was already well-engrossed in her disorder. Her mother put her in counseling, and at first, she resisted. Anorexia was the only friend Mollie had by that point, and she refused to lose it. However, after a while, some of what the counselor said started making sense, and she started seeing what others did—she was destroying herself, her mother, and Aida.

  It was an uphill battle, but by the time she was seventeen, she’d gained enough confidence that she stopped locking herself away and her obsession with food eased. Mollie still struggled with her disorder, she probably always would, but she would not slip away again. Her mother would be so disappointed in her if she did, and she would not let Aida or herself down in that way.

  During her senior year in high school, some of the friends she’d pushed away came back, she made new ones, and went on a couple of dates. She attended prom with her best friend who wanted more than she did, but he took it well when she turned him down.

  Then, her mother got sick, and dating was the last thing on Mollie’s mind. She gave up the idea of college, went to work, took her mom to her appointments, and made sure Aida’s life remained as normal as possible.

  After her mother died, she went on a few dates with a guy from work and tried a couple of online sites to meet men, but she never found one who excited her.

  She’d never gone for the burlier guys, but she found herself extremely attracted to the one whose breath ruffled her hair with every one of his exhalations. Mollie felt more for this man in the short time she’d known him than any of the other men she’d dated for a couple of months.

  With everything she knew about his life, getting involved with him would be the biggest mistake of her life, but she couldn’t stop her fingers from running down the center of his chest and over the chiseled abs beneath. She bit her bottom lip as excitement pulsed to life in her.

  Mike’s fingers twitched on Mollie’s shoulder before his head jerked up. Beneath her ear, his heart raced while he surveyed their small enclosure. When Mollie ran her hand over his chest in an instinctive effort to calm him, he eased against her before clasping her hand and flattening it against his chest.

  Mollie didn’t try to pull away when his thumb rubbed the back of her hand before rising to her wrist and then up her arm. Warmth pooled in her belly and spread through her limbs as her breath caught in her throat. When his fingers slid under her chin, she didn’t resist him when he turned her head to his.

  Mike stared into her turbulent eyes as she gazed at him with longing and trepidation. He should pull away, take down their barrier, and leave this place; they had to use every bit of daytime they could to their advantage, but he found himself unable to resist her. She inhaled sharply when he bent his head and brushed his lips against hers.

  Mollie forgot all about the fact her morning breath would probably make a dragon tuck tail and run when his mouth settled over hers. If her breath didn’t scare off the guy with the super senses, it couldn’t be as bad as she believed, and then she stopped caring about it as his mouth burned into hers until she felt branded by his kiss.

  Her toes curled, her hands gripped his forearms as his tongue flickered over her lips, and she opened her mouth to him. She’d expected him to plunge in and thrust his tongue against hers; instead, he leisurely explored her as he stroked her lips again before slipping in to caress her mouth.

  Never had she been savored in such a way, but she felt as if he were memorizing every detail of her. Her head spun from the heady sensation, and she found herself slipping further away from reality as their small space, and all the danger of the last few days, slid away until it was only the two of them.

  The taste of her reminded Mike of the apples he’d picked and eaten on his grandparent’s farm. She was as sweet as those apples, and he wanted to gorge on her as he had them; except, she wouldn’t give him the belly ache the apples had. No, she would give him the release he’d been seeking from his increasingly lonely, mundane life.

  She was what he’d been seeking and missing.

  Releasing her chin, he wrapped his hand around her head and drew her closer as he deepened the kiss. He settled his other hand on her hip beneath the quilt. Her palms slid up from his chest, over his shoulders, and around his neck. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and his cock stiffened when he felt the puckering of her nipples through her bra and shirt.

  Mike growled and pulled her into his lap to nestle her there. The quilt tangled between them, but he jerked it aside before trailing his hand up her side to clasp her breast, which was a little smaller than his hand. With his thumb, he rubbed the puckered bud of her nipple and relished the arch of her body against his hand when she sought more of his touch.

  Against her ass, Mollie felt his erection. Before, such a sensation with someone she barely knew would have frightened her, but now it aroused her further. She didn’t know him, and he wasn’t human, yet for some inexplicable reason, she felt more comfortable with him than she ever had with anyone else.

  In such a short time, Mike had managed to get past the barriers she started constructing the day her father walked out of their lives when she was seven and Aida was two. For years, the image of her father standing in the doorway with his suitcase haunted her, but not so much as the moment he walked out the door. He hadn’t so much as glanced back or waved behind him while Mollie sobbed in her mother’s arms and pleaded for him to return.

  The memory of her father’s betrayal caused something within Mollie to recoil. The desire of seconds ago faded away as the pain of the past returned. No matter how stoically her mother forged ahead without her husband, Mollie had often woken to hear her crying in the middle of the night. And on those nights, Mollie vowed never to let a man break her heart in such a way.

  Mike was not one of those mousy guys who could never own a piece of her. He would get inside her heart and tear it out before she could stop him, and she would not allow that.

  Mike sensed a change in Mollie before she broke their kiss and turned her head away. His dick and fangs throbbed with their need to be inside her, but his hand stilled on her breast.

  “Mollie—”

  “We should go; we have to move while we can.”

  She scrambled from his lap when he eased his hands away from her. Mike battled his disappointment while she folded the quilt and gathered the rifle. She didn’t look at him as she worked.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Mollie glanced at her watch, she saw it was almost one o’clock before Mike stopped walking and settled onto a group of boulders. Striding away from him, Mollie stopped at the edge of the cliff and gazed at the water a couple of hundred feet below.

  In this area, the woods offered them shelter right up to the cliffs, and the cliffs were higher than they’d been by the lighthouse. She tasted the salty water on her lips as the wind whipped up the sea. Usually, she would have found it all soothing and beautiful, but she had no idea where they were, where her sister was, or where the monsters hunting them were, and n
othing was comforting in that.

  Despite her aching feet, trembling legs, grumbling stomach, severe thirst, and all-around misery, Mollie would have preferred to keep walking. Stopped again, she might have to look at Mike, and she couldn’t do that without blushing.

  Move away from the edge! Mike snarled the command in his head as Mollie stood far too close to the cliff for his liking. He bit back the harsh words in case they startled her into stepping over the edge.

  “I’m going to find you something to eat,” Mike said.

  When Mollie turned, she discovered he’d risen from the rocks and stood only a few feet away. She’d never heard him move. “I’m good. I can go longer without eating.”

  “And how much longer can you go without water?”

  That she couldn’t continue much further without. The ache in her head was from dehydration, as was the cramping in her legs. It was a good thing it wasn’t hot out, and Mike had done the running, or she would have dropped by now.

  Mike’s jaw clenched when Mollie glanced away from him. She was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and weakening from it. She lagged more and more with every passing hour and mile they traversed. His fangs pricked and slid halfway free before he regained enough control of himself to retract them.

  He studied the slouch of her shoulders and listened to the steady beat of her heart. She was so strong in some ways, yet so weak in her mortality. She doesn’t have to be.

  The impulse to change her following on the heels of the sudden thought rocked him back a step. His fangs slid free when his gaze fell on the delicate curve of her neck. He could change her, make her immortal, take away her mortal hunger and thirst, and replace it with an inhuman one far more incessant than the ones she dealt with now.

  Struggling to get baser instincts he’d never possessed before under control, Mike turned away from her. Years ago, he’d learned how to deal with his thirst for blood, but he’d never dealt with this compulsion to change another. He’d never expected to have to deal with it unless he encountered his mate and she turned out to be mortal.