I’m safe.
For now.
I have things to do, but first I must sleep.
Kat
“No!”
I lean out the window and look down into the alley, expecting to see the patient lying broken on the ground, my heart plummeting at the thought. But he’s not there. He’s nowhere to be seen. I clutch the broken frame, staring into the shadows until my eyes tear up, then I realize I’ve cut myself on a shard of glass. High on adrenaline from the shock of seeing him towering over me, looking as if he would consume me, oozing power and lethal force, I’m numb to the pain I should feel.
I can’t just stand here. A patient has run away.
A janitor needs to cover the broken window until it can be fixed. Pulling up my phone, still staring at the gaping hole with the ragged glass edges, I call for hospital security. They ask questions, but I have no answers.
I haven’t slept for twenty-six hours, I need to get home. It’s all too much.
His face burns in my mind, and I’m not sure how I make it through the traffic without incident. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again? I need to know more. What’s his name? How did he survive the fall?
Sleep doesn't claim me like the usual soft sliding out of consciousness. It knocks me out and throws me into a brutal world of images and scents.
I sense a presence. Twitching awake, I sit straight up and stare into the dark shadows. Someone’s in my bedroom. My apartment is on the sixth floor. I have two locks and a safety chain.
“Who’s there?”
I feel for the light switch next to me on the bedside table and as the yellow light chases away the shadows, he steps forward. His beauty shatters my heart. His feral expression fills me with primal terror, making my stomach clench. Scrambling back, connecting with the headboard, I stare transfixed as he approaches. It’s as if his feet don’t touch the floor. He seems to float.
The mattress sinks down on his side as he kneels next to me.
Kat. His voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper as he lifts his arm and puts his hand against my cheek.
My eyelids flutter. I’m afraid to lose eye contact, but my body seems to be weighed down by an invisible force and I have no choice but to close my eyes. I arch my neck and exhale on a shudder as his fingers trace along the side of my throat, past my collar bone, brushing my nipple. I tense and choke down a groan as heat rushes between my legs.
“Who are you?” I whimper.
He splays his fingers over my belly, holding his large hand there, heavy, demanding.
Forget about me.
His lips don't move, but his grave voice fills my head. I’m so happy to hear him and I want more. I want his eyes on me again. I want to touch his silky pale skin. I want his hands on me. I don’t want to forget.
“I can’t.”
He’s gone.
I jerk awake. I’m beneath my comforter. I’m not sitting up. The light is off. I’m unreasonably sad to realize it was nothing but a dream. The feeling his touch left still lingers, making my nipples hard little pebbles. Squeezing my eyes shut, I turn on my side, hug a pillow and pray I’ll dream of him again as a tear slips from the corner of my eye and leaves a cold trail on my cheek.
I haven’t slept this badly in years. I wake again in the late afternoon, sweaty and cold at the same time. The air conditioning is cranked up too high and I wrap the comforter around me as I flick the switch and make my way to the kitchen for my first cup of coffee. My next shift is tomorrow. I have a feeling this is going to be a long day, and an even longer night.
I scour the media outlets for anything related to my mysterious patient without any results. Another trauma victim is nothing to report. A runaway from the ICU is a nuisance for the hospital board, but nothing of interest to the public. Unless he is dangerous.
Is he dangerous?
His feral expression as we locked eyes in that abandoned corridor, right before he jumped out the window, was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Wild hunger, darkness, and desire. In my dream he told me to forget him.
Yeah, not happening any time soon.
I bury myself in work. It’s not hard. I’m reinforcement in the ER and when I get off at ten in the evening, I almost don’t want to leave. The hospital is the only connection I have with what happened yesterday, and on my way to the locker room, I stop by the boarded-up window on the third floor. Touching the broken frame with the tips of my fingers, I imagine tracing his profile, remember the sadness I felt. Then I force myself out of my near-trance. I have to stop obsessing. It was odd. It happened. Time to let it go.
My car is in the hospital garage, but my feet are inadvertently drawn to the back of the hospital, toward that dark alley. It’s late. There are a few people on the sidewalk, a group of laughing college kids who suck at trying to hide their beer bottles as they see me.
The sounds of the city seem to grow distant. I stand below the window, the glass on the asphalt crushing under my feet. Measuring the distance, I don’t understand how he could jump down and then keep running.
It’s not a sound—I don’t see anything, but something suddenly puts my senses on high alert. Goosebumps race across my back as I squint at the shadows at the far end of the alley. I take a step back, then another, my heart pumping furiously. A draft makes my hair blow wild around my head.
I blink, then I’m suddenly pressed up against the wall with a shadow towering over me. I squeal and get a large hand over my mouth. His eyes burn black as the night, hot and cold at the same time, making my chest clench. My knees almost fold. It’s him. My senses register it before I know it consciously. His light cinnamon scent, his presence, his being.
Every inch of his unyielding body presses against mine. Hard, unforgiving muscles hurting me with their brutal intrusion. Everything inside me screams danger, that I was stupid to come, stupid to be so curious, and that this is death. At the same time, my heart somersaults with triumph.
It’s him.
I twist my head from side to side to get free, tears forming in the corners of my eyes. “Please,” I moan against his palm.
He snarls and as his lips parts, his canines elongate, turning into sharp fangs. It feels as if all blood leaves my head and my whole body goes numb. If he didn’t hold me so tight, I’d fall into a boneless heap. Pulling my head to one side, baring the side of my throat, he puts his mouth to the skin over my rapidly beating artery. His lips are soft, the touch sending shivers down my spine.
Suddenly, he stills completely. The only sound comes from my harsh breaths.
“Doctor Donovan.” His voice is a deep, smooth baritone that sends waves of unexpected joy through my chest. It sounds like hot chocolate after a cold winter’s day and it makes my insides melt.
“Mmmph!”
“No screaming,” he whispers, his breath fanning my ear. Pulling back a little, he catches my gaze, and if I was lost before, I’ll never be found now. I’ll drown in those deep, brown eyes, over and over, until my days come to an end.
I nod, eager to please. I want to know more. This man has haunted me with every beat of my heart, with every breath I’ve taken, no matter if I’ve been awake or asleep.
His tight hold over my mouth eases up a little, as if testing me, then he removes it completely.
“You—you jumped out of the window.”
“And I suddenly had a pulse,” he counters, his tone slightly mocking.
“That too. What… what are you?”
“I was just a lucky trauma victim, Doctor Donovan. Lucky to end up in your competent hands, or I would surely have stayed dead.”
I frown and look him over, my thoughts running a million miles per hour.
“Don’t let your imagination run amok, little one. Forget whatever it is you’re thinking and you can go.”
“I can’t forget,” I whisper.
He cocks his head, a brief look of sadness crossing his features. “Then I can’t let you go.”
He opens his mouth and his fan
gs, his fangs, I wasn’t hallucinating, descend again. I scream and throw myself to the side, only to get caught between his arms as he slams his palms to the wall on either side of my head. I try to dodge, but end up with his thigh pressed between mine, fixing me in place.
“Don’t.” My voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper, my throat constricting with primal fear.
He frowns and his expression turns sad as he strokes his curled fingers along my cheek. “I could make you forget, Doctor Donovan, but it’s a fickle tool, and you might never be the same brilliant young woman after. I don’t much feel like doing that.”
“Then don’t.”
“Forget me.”
“I can’t.”
He shakes his head. “Then—”
“But I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
His eyes soften. “You don’t know how much I wish I could believe you.”
“You can trust me,” I say quickly. “Patient confidentiality.”
He laughs. “Clever. But it hardly applies.”
“Don’t make me forget. Please.” I put a hand on his chest. He’s hard as a rock, not warm, but not cold either. Not entirely… human. He’s something else. Something that shouldn’t exist. My mind spins with the implications that there’s something more out there, something med school doesn't teach, something science doesn't acknowledge.
His gaze scans my face, my hair, down along my body. If looks could touch, his caress me with the utmost possessiveness. “I should know better,” he mutters.
I swallow hard, a faint hope flaring in me. “Better than what?”
“If you ever talk about me, Doctor Donovan, I will find you and I will finish this. Do you understand?”
I nod eagerly. “I understand.”
“Little human—” He sighs. “Run. Run before I change my mind.”
His beauty is unearthly, his pull on me irresistible, and I’m so lost in his dark eyes that I don’t register what he says until he puts his nose to mine and roars,
“Now!”
Lou
She stares at me in shock, and awe, and raw desire shoots straight to my cock. If she doesn't leave now, I’ll either rip open an artery or tear off her clothes, and I’m not sure which need is the stronger. Maybe I’ll do both.
The sweet doctor clearly won’t run, she’s too stunned and just as entranced as I am, so I will. It’s the only thing that will save her.
She yelps as I tear away and shoot up along the building, up through the cool night toward the stars. The building is eight or nine stories high, but it could have been thirty, it doesn't matter. I can’t fly, but gravity has nothing against my strength, especially when the monster in me cries for release.
My body roars with hunger, the devil inside howls its disappointment. It wanted me to drain her of every drop of her warm, delicious life essence.
I don’t kill when I feed. I take what I need, then I give my victim’s mind a little nudge to forget that I sank my teeth in them. I don’t wipe more than the last few minutes and it’s nothing that will destroy their souls.
But wiping the young doctor of everything related to me, of her every attempt at a scientific explanation to what she has witnessed, would pull along too many other entwined thoughts and experiences. Chances are it would destroy her. Her death would be the better option, but I couldn’t.
Her scent is everywhere. She hasn’t moved, despite my order, and me, I’m frozen to the spot, perched on the edge of the roof, unable to leave.
”Who are you?” she whispers. My ears catch her words with ease even across the distance.
Who am I?
I’m a sad existence, an abomination. I live forever, superior to the human race, a predator to the predators. I’m a vampire, and a man. I have lost my compass, my north, but the young doctor has made the needle twitch.
Forcing my feet, I turn and run along the rooftop, crossing over it before I hit the street, as far away from her as possible. It takes everything I have not to jump back down and claim her. I can’t take her life nor her body. She’s too pure. I’m as bad as they come, remorseless, strong, and vicious. I’d ruin her existence, and she has so much left to give. She’ll practice her medicine, find a husband, procreate, and continue the circle of life. With me lies only death.
Chapter 3
Kat
I don’t know how I make it home. I don’t feel safe even when I have closed and locked my front door. I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again.
His fangs flash before my eyes. His speed, his strength, his unnatural healing, and his enticing scent that isn’t a perfume, and isn’t the smell of skin. It’s something else. He is something that shouldn’t exist. The scientist in me revolts and I can’t seem to stop shivering. It’s not the cold. It’s the knowledge that something is profoundly wrong with how I viewed the world the first twenty-nine years of my life, that everything I thought I knew was wrong.
I hug myself hard and try to stop the shaking. My heart beats a wild staccato in my chest, wrapping an almost painful band of steel around my rib cage. I do a mad rush through my apartment, pull my curtains shut, and turn on all the lights. I open every closet door to make sure nothing is hiding in the shadows, at the same time disappointed that nothing is there.
He scares me and entices me. Did he follow me here? He knows who I am. ‘Doctor Donovan.’ He can easily find me.
My contact list is pathetically short. I thumb through it with shaking hands. A couple of old friends from high school, a few people I hung with in med school but that I’ve lost touch with since, some colleagues I might have shared an after work beer with one time or two, a shrink, a couple of maintenance workers, and my landlady. It’s too late to call my mom, and I don’t know what to say.
Mom, help, I’ve met someone who shouldn’t exist, doesn't come out quite right and would land me in the psych ward.
I’m painfully lonely. I’ve lived for my parents, trying to be the good daughter and make up for their overwhelming grief after my brother’s death, then for my studies, and now my work. I spend up to seventy hours a week at the hospital, often staying longer than needed, taking extra shifts. I don’t want to face the fact that I have no one. I’m almost thirty years old and I’m running seriously dry. Right now I just need a hug and someone telling me that I’ll be all right.
As I prepare for bed on routine, my mind is stuck in that alley. One minute he pressed me up against the wall and the next he was gone. I never saw where he went. It’s like he dissipated into thin air. I drink a whiskey, then a second and a tiny drop of a third glass before my head gets too heavy. I’m restless, itchy inside, unable to sleep. Dawn approaches when I’m finally feeling the lethargy claiming me, and as soon as I close my eyes, he’s back with full force.
Kat. You were foolish to come.
I look around me. I’m in an abandoned industrial building. There’s a slight scent of oil, of engines, and of him. A lone lamp shines in the dark, creating a circle of yellow light on the floor. His face is shadowed.
“Is this a dream?”
He steps closer, into the light, his eyes burning, glinting with red. Blood red. What do you think?
“You’re in my mind.”
Or you’re in mine.
“Who are you? What are you?”
He comes even closer and is right before me. I have to tilt my head to hold his gaze. If I lean in, my chest would rest against his and my body yearns for that touch, to feel him again.
You are not asking the right questions, Kat, he says softly and reaches for me. I close my eyes and wait, unable to draw my next breath. His fingers are warm against my cheek and yet goosebumps erupt wherever he touches me. He tucks a few stray hairs behind my ear, then traces a path along my throat, making me gasp, lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.
“What are the right questions?” I whisper.
He caresses along my collar bone, then brushes my nipple. The touch shoots a bolt of heat to my pussy and I sway.
�
��Oh my God.”
The question is, what am I going to do with you?
I whimper as his hand slides to my waist, finding naked skin in the slit between my top and my pants. My eyes fly open and I look down, realizing I’m in my pajamas. I look up and meet his gaze, cold as steel and hot as lava at the same time. It feels so real, but I must be dreaming. In a dream anything can happen, right? I can do anything. I put my palm over his heart and feel it thud, a slow steady rhythm. It’s soothing, and confusing.
“What are you going to do with me?” I hate that my voice trembles.
The corners of his mouth pull up into a sly grin, then he circles his arm around my waist and we fly. We shoot up through the air, toward the night sky. I scream and laugh at the same time. In the next moment I’m on a bed, shivering and naked. By the foot of the bed stands my captor, the most beautiful man I have ever seen. He has black suit pants on, and a black shirt that hangs open, revealing a broad chest with a sprinkle of dark hair. I ache with want for him. My… vampire.
I have to acknowledge that it’s what he is, even though such creatures only exist in fairy tales. Maybe this has all been a dream? I’ll wake up and realize he was never a patient in the ER, that none of this happened. The thought fills me with pain so strong it robs me of my breath. Tomorrow, I’ll wake and he’ll be gone forever. There are no such things as dead men suddenly having a heartbeat, no one has fangs, or can fly.
I— He puts a knee on the bed. Want— He climbs on top of me. Your body. I want your blood, and I want your soul.
Leaning in, he nuzzles my neck. I gasp when something sharp pricks my skin, but then all he does is lick a path down to my nipple, circle it with his tongue before he grazes it with his teeth. I arch up in equal amounts of fear and arousal. He pushes me down, a hand on my throat, the other hand circling my wrists, holding my arms over my head.
“Don’t hurt me!” I cry out.
Give yourself to me. This is all a dream, remember?
Her Vampire Hero (Midnight Doms Book 4) Page 2