Anne’s scream was cut off abruptly as fangs lodged deep inside her neck. A sweet delirium engulfed her. She thought she heard fluttering in the background, perhaps voices, but the blotches in her vision started connecting with each other and at last, there was only darkness. She collapsed onto the cobblestone alleyway, into the arms of a dreamy sleep that she knew would surely precede her own death.
At least death didn’t cheat, she thought just before she lost consciousness.
Chapter 2
When the woman had entered the chapel, Marcus had seen her face for the first time. He’d known in his heart that he had found her at last. As she’d disappeared behind a pillar of stone, he’d been thirsty for the sight of her.
This is the fating calling to me.
He heard the chicken scratch sounds as she wrote on a slip of paper, heard the pencil being put back into its basket, and the drop of her coin in the prayer box. The flame that roared to life when she struck a match roared an echo in his heart. Blood pulsed throughout his body, making his hands tingle and his face flush. She was so close to him now. After three hundred years of searching, she had finally arrived in his life. “I’ve found her at last,” he said to his companion and the priest. “My fated female.”
He heard the heavy doors at the entrance slam shut, echoing off the ancient stone, as his beloved left the chapel.
Marcus finished his business with the priest, begging off any further entanglements, postponing decisions, duties, and promises, and went in search of her.
As he passed by the bonfire of votives where she had stopped to write, he was compelled to stop. He wove his hands through the air and found the little candle flame that protected her prayer. His fingers were drawn to the stiff cream vellum. He drew it to his nose and drank her scent. He read the words aloud softly:
“Help me find the true love of my life. Help me bring to him all the love that still lives in my soul. Please let me remember the magic and power of this place. Anne.”
Could she have been talking about him? As his eyes had moistened and he’d rubbed his forefinger against the words she had delicately crafted in pencil, he’d heard her scream. With horror, he’d realized the fantasy in his heart had put her life in danger. He’d looked around the chapel. Maya was no longer standing beside the priest or anywhere in the building.
He flew through the ancient doors and into the night, tracing the woman’s steps, until he came to the dirty alleyway where Maya crouched over his female. In an instant, he was at her side. He pulled the vamp by the hair, turning her face to his. The blood of his female was on Maya’s gums, dripping down her fangs and onto her chin. She smiled.
“She is delicious.”
How he wanted to end Maya’s life right there. The directive not to kill another golden on pain of death was the only thing that stopped him, but he felt the urge to twist her neck and remove her head. Gripping her long black locks at her scalp, he swung her like a hammer toss overhead and threw her as far as he could. She cackled, her voice sending an eerie promise of further evil as she catapulted through the sky, end over end until she landed some distance away. Her ghoulish deed had ruined his life, altered his path forever, and that of the woman he now knew as Anne.
He bent down. His female’s body looked pale and fragile. Her dark hair lay across the wet cobblestones, like a matted pillow. The ample mounds of her breasts pushed against her blouse; pert nipples made peaks in the bloodstained fabric. Her waist was small. One knee was bent, with her skirt hitched, to reveal creamy, unblemished flesh that covered her thigh. He cupped his palm under her knee and straightened her leg.
She had sustained a scrape on her forehead, which was bruising, but way too slowly. Her cheek was smeared with grit from the alleyway where she fell. He touched the bite wound on her neck with his fingertips coated in his own saliva. The blood stopped flowing, and she was the color of death. But still beautiful. The sun had set on this human life of hers.
There wasn’t any time to consider other options. He opened the blue vein at his wrist, puckered her chalky pink lips, pulled her jaw down to open her mouth, and poured a small stream of his own blood onto her tongue. She would come to life again. If he hadn’t been too late.
A minute passed with no reaction. He traced his thumb against her lower lip and blew into her face, whispering the ancient calling. There was always the possibility that the change wouldn’t take, that she was incompatible with the vampire blood gene, but he knew she was his fated female, and as such, his blood would heal her as nothing else could. She was getting cold. He rubbed her arms and cradled her against his chest.
All of a sudden, like something out of a fairytale, her body stirred. She arched up, inhaling deeply, but remained unconscious, eyes closed. His Snow White, needing a lover’s kiss to awaken her from a deep sleep.
He covered her mouth with his lips and tasted his fated female for the first time. Her coldness sent a shiver down his spine.
I’ve found you at last.
She would need more blood, and soon, and she would need medical attention. He was sure Maya had damaged Anne’s body, possibly gravely. But it was good she was breathing on her own.
Welcome to my world. Our world, my beloved. I didn’t want it to happen this way.
She would need undisturbed sleep, away from prying eyes and instruments, and then be given more of his blood. Cloaking them both, he basked in the feel of her head, gently propped against his chest, as he transported her through the night sky to the villa he shared with his sister. The touch of her breasts through the fabric of his silk shirt soothed his soul. She would live, he felt certain. He had given her the only chance she had at another life. As he drew her essence in and allowed it to fill his lungs, her scent coated his insides. Where her body touched him skin on skin, he tingled.
The villa appeared, covered with bright blooming pink bougainvillea that defied the night’s darkness. He brushed back her long, dark brown hair from her pale face that remained caked with her own blood. He laid her down in the small anteroom off his bedchamber. The smell of her wasted and violated blood was dangerous perfume. Anger burned a hole in his stomach.
He looked over the body of his beloved. Her full breasts rose and fell with her shallow breathing. His blood had brought a peach blush to her plump cheeks and full lips. Her delicate neck, marred with the wound that still gaped, had re-opened to reveal a faintly throbbing vein under pale flesh. He touched her there, tracing his finger up to her ear, and heard her moan. She must have felt the same delicious tingle he felt that extended up his arm, warming him all the way to his heart. He sifted his fingers through her hair, then positioned her face, rubbed her temples, and watched her arch and take one long, deep breath.
My touch is good for you. Yes, beloved. I will heal you inside and out.
He had hoped someday this little room would be a nursery, had planned it for over a hundred years. How fitting that he’d brought her here. It was her new birth, her new life of forever. She would take her first breaths as vampire here. Close to him, but not yet in his bed.
He wanted to lay next to her, naked, to take her in the ancient fating ritual, but he could not risk it until the turning was completed and she gained her preternatural strength. Not until she could look at him with her turned eyes and want him as her mate. He would not force her. But how he needed her!
He summoned his sister, Laurel, who examined his female, then dressed the wound to let it bleed out and purge Anne’s body of Maya’s poison. Laurel objectively checked the young woman’s vitals, something Marcus could not do. He retreated to his bedroom to prepare blood for Anne’s next feeding.
Laurel timidly entered his chamber and gave him the news that Anne would live. But Laurel did not smile, and instead told him that the turning had started and taken hold, that Anne was already strong in her new form. But still no smile graced Laurel’s lips.
“There’s a complication, brother,” she said.
Marcus didn’t like the da
rk timbre of her tone.
“Come, and I’ll show you.”
Laurel opened the door and the two of them approached his female, lying naked under a down comforter. He wished he had been the one to remove her clothes. He was jealous of even his sister’s touch upon Anne’s fragile skin. But he would not take what she wasn’t conscious to give her consent to. His fingers fluttered in the glorious feel of her deep breathing, just above her face, as he bent to touch the lips that would soon give back the flame of their eternal love.
Before his fingertips could caress her mouth, Laurel stopped him, gripping firm bony fingers around his wrist.
He stared at his sister’s cool steel blue eyes. Had he overstepped his bounds?
Laurel studied him as she raised the woman’s left hand and showed him the wedding ring.
She is married?
Envy and anger shot through his body. How could someone take from him what he’d been waiting for all these years? Who would dare do such a thing?
Laurel lowered Anne’s arm and tucked the comforter up around her neck, straightening her brown curls still caked in blood. With a finger to her lips, Laurel guided Marcus through the archway to his bedchamber and closed the door.
“This complicates our position here, Marcus.”
The words hung like weights attached to his heart. “Yes. I’ll pay the price if I must. No reason for you to suffer. Once she is out of danger, you should leave and not know anything about her.”
“No. I mean the marriage. She is not free to be your fated female. She belongs to another, Marcus.”
“But the fating . . . I feel it, Laurel.”
“And I believe you, but she is taken already. You know you will have to ask permission. What if her husband is human?”
Marcus’s huge frame collapsed to a sitting position on his bed. He glanced around the room. He had hoped tomorrow or the next night he could begin to spend eternity here with his fated female, at last. He would lovingly guide her, show her their ways. Bring her to life, to a life he hoped she would cherish and make her own. Give her time to feel the fating, and then they would mate, mate forever. He felt trapped in a fantasy of his own making.
His insides felt hollow as he spoke. “Then I will not touch her until I have permission. I will ask them immediately, after she has fully accepted the turning.”
“But you gave her life without their permission.”
“Yes. I had to protect her.” He looked up into the gentle face of his sister, his biggest supporter. A woman who had not yet found her mate, who devoted her life to making him comfortable. Her long face and quietly beautiful features never needed makeup, and she wore none. Her peach skin had a natural glow, framed by a perfectly heart-shaped mouth. Her long shiny light brown hair was tied back in a chignon.
They had spent the last century easing each other’s pain with a deep devotion and filial friendship. She had been his constant companion and kept him distracted from the fact that he had not yet met his fated female. If Marcus was right about Anne, Laurel would soon be left alone. He opened his arms to her and she kneeled to his embrace. “We’ll figure something out,” he whispered to the top of her head. “Maybe I just won’t tell the Council everything.”
Laurel separated, but remained kneeling in front of him.
“The Council will know what you’ve done. You can’t hide this for more than a day or two.”
“Yes, but by then, you’ll not be suspected of helping,” he said as he stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers.
“Is this worth the risk to you?”
“It is fated. I wasn’t given a choice but to answer the call to save her. Maya forced my hand.”
“As she does every time when it comes to you. The woman will claim your soul yet.”
“Her time will come,” he said. He stood, transferred a catheter to another bag, and resumed draining more blood, handing Laurel two full bags. “I must be protector first. Warrior second.” He pumped his forearm up and down. “Thank you, Laurel, from the bottom of my heart.”
“I only hope when I find my fated male it doesn’t cause me the amount of pain this is going to cause you. And everyone around you.”
“And then I will come to your aid, if needed.” He patted the top of her head. “Go tend to your patient, sister. Tell me she needs my touch, my blood.”
Laurel moved back to where Anne lay, and gave Anne Marcus’s blood. As minutes passed and the last drops drained, Anne opened her eyes and became fully conscious, inhaling deeply as if she’d nearly drowned. Marcus watched from the crack in his bedroom doorway.
“Where am I?” Anne whispered, suddenly looking at the plastic blood packet hanging from the stand.
“You’re at our clinic,” Laurel answered. “A private clinic, dear.”
“Where?”
“I think very near where you were . . . attacked.” Laurel picked up a chart and began to write in it. “May I have your name?”
“Anne Bal—”
Anne. Marcus whispered it, but noticed both women looked to the crack in the door. Had she heard him?
“Well, Anne, you are very lucky we came upon you when we did. I’m quite sure you would have died in that alleyway tonight.”
Anne searched the room, her eyes darting over sterile instruments and a jar of bougainvillea blossoms Lauren had placed on the counter. Marcus knew she would think this odd for a hospital room. Her gaze rested on the stand that held the bag of blood.
“I needed blood?” she asked at last.
“Yes. You were drained to within an ounce of your life. How do you feel?”
Anne clutched the blanket close to her, and then looked under it.
“I’m naked. I guess a little cold.”
“You feel well enough for a warm shower? It might do you some good, but only if you feel up to it.”
“Oh, yes, I’d like to get clean, get all this . . .” She fingered the long curls matted with dark red blood.
Laurel helped her fragile, naked body up. Damn. She was still wrapped in that damned comforter. He longed to see her naked form. Anne allowed Laurel to escort her to the bathroom so she could wash up. Marcus had to work not to throw himself in there and rip that blanket off.
Anne, I could warm you, warm you in ways you can’t comprehend.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Marcus heard his sister whisper.
“Yes, oddly.”
“We use lots of lemons here, so I have wonderful smelling lemon soap and blood orange shampoo. But keep the bandage on your neck for overnight.”
Laurel closed the bathroom door and shot Marcus a disapproving frown. She scooted him away and closed the door behind her as she whispered her disapproval, “Voyeur! Mind yourself.”
She barred the door to his prying eyes and listened, waiting for her patient to finish. He returned to his bedchamber to retire for the evening, alone.
Marcus knew Laurel would make a good sister to Anne, in time. His fated female was going to need a confidant if they were all going to survive together. He heard the loud click of a lock and knew Laurel had intended to keep him away from her tonight.
He smiled at the thought. Nothing could ever keep him away. Not now.
Anne had been convinced she was in an outpatient treatment center and had decided to stay overnight and until mid-morning the next day. She was dosed with another infusion of the blood cocktail she’d received the night before, and the blood seemed to heal her further. Marcus wanted to join them for breakfast, but Laurel insisted he not. Anne didn’t finish her eggs, but took three glassfuls of blood-laced orange juice.
“What is this? It’s delicious.”
“I put a spot of my sweet tomato puree into the orange juice, along with some cranberry juice. Unlikely combination, I know, but our water here doesn’t taste very good and this masks it.”
“Never had it before. I love it.”
Laurel explained they were a neighborhood center run by a charity that tended to victims of st
reet violence, alcoholics, and drug addicts. Marcus overheard her tell Anne they liked to operate outside the jurisdiction of local police, but offered her the chance to file a report, which Anne declined.
“You’re going to feel a little different, as you heal. I have given you our ‘miracle drug,’ formulated for this very purpose. It aids especially in the healing of skin scrapes, and . . . puncture wounds, like those on your neck,” Laurel said.
“But she bit me.”
“No, I think you hit your neck against a couple of sharp objects, perhaps some glass, as you fell against the curb. In these dark places at night, it is easy for the imagination to fly.”
Marcus could tell Anne wouldn’t argue, but she didn’t believe Laurel one bit.
“You may hear strange sounds—even think your hearing is changed. And you might have more difficulty sleeping. You’ll have the desire for more . . . protein, especially meat, which would be good for you right now. But stay indoors at night. And don’t wander around alone.”
“But I am alone.”
“Forgive me, but I see that you are wearing a wedding ring. Surely your husband must be curious where you spent the night last night?”
“No. He’s back in California. I am here alone.”
“Most unusual for a woman to be traveling alone.”
“It wasn’t planned that way. It was supposed to be my honeymoon. I was married just two days ago.”
“Ah, then perhaps it would be better to go back to him, now that this has happened?”
Marcus’s hands balled into fists and he clenched his jaw. The thought of his woman going back to the arms of her husband in California filled him with fury. How could a true and honorable man allow his new bride to travel unaccompanied?
“No. I’m afraid the wedding has been a huge mistake, so I’m going on without him. I planned it, paid for it. I’ve always wanted to drive the coast of the Mediterranean, and I’m going to do it. All alone.”
Honeymoon Bite (Golden Vampires of Tuscany) Page 2