by Jessica Lee
“What?” She pulled from his hold and backed away. “Why? There had to be a good reason.”
“He never gave me one, not then when I found him with Derek dead at his feet, nor when I saw him again after he joined the Enclave.”
“You found him, right after he’d killed your master, and he never told you why?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This didn’t sound like Arran. It was as if Logan were describing a perfect stranger. Arran was protective, loyal—to a fault. How could the man she knew have done these things?
“When I confronted Arran about what he’d done, all he’d said was he had his reasons, and what the fuck did it matter what explanation he gave, no one would’ve believed him.” He shrugged. “And he might have been right. Arran was the newest member of the colony, and with his reputation, it didn’t exactly make him the bearer of light and honesty.”
She rubbed her arms with her palms, but it did little to bring any heat back to her suddenly chilled bones. “Arran isn’t a true master, but since he did…kill the colony’s leader, did he claim the position for himself? That is the way it works in a normal colony, right? The vampire who takes the life of the leader has the right to assume control of the colony.”
“No, you’re right.” He shook his head. “The asshole could have claimed the colony as his own, but he disappeared.” One large hand came up, and Logan threaded his fingers through his hair. “The whole damn thing never felt right. That’s why I said what I did to Kenric right after he brought Arran into the Enclave: I didn’t like or trust the bastard back then, and even though a century of time had passed at that point, I wasn’t sure if he was Enclave material. I’m still not sure.”
Sighing, she headed toward the kitchen. She didn’t need this on top of trying to find her sister. What she needed was a drink, desperately. The sound of boots thumping against the wood floor told her Logan followed.
At the pantry, she yanked open the door. “Alex has to keep some liquor in here somewhere.” At the casual mention of her name, Elle jabbed her teeth into her lower lip, making sure a tremor hadn’t been activated. Because once that gate opened, releasing a sob, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to lock it back down again.
Pushing through the swelling wave of grief, she scanned the scattered remains of groceries that were weeks old. Dammit, she was determined to get through the rest of the night without a breakdown. The only thing she’d added since her arrival was some fresh coffee and two boxes of blueberry Pop-Tarts—the two indulgences she refused to live without.
In the very back, behind a box of only-God-knew-how-old Frosted Flakes, she spotted her prize: a half-full bottle of Cuervo Gold tequila. Hello, darling, come to mama. She palmed the bottle, and pulled it out. Spotting a stack of red plastic cups sitting on the bottom shelf, she grabbed those too before closing the door with a bump of her hip.
Logan’s large frame was already perched on a chair at the table as she plopped the bottle and cups on top of the round oak top. After dropping onto one of the remaining three chairs, she opened the liquid gold. She poured a generous shot into one of the large cups meant more for soda and lemonade than for straight tequila. But at the moment, she didn’t give a shit. She just wanted the quickest path to fry the rebelling section of her brain cells. The ones that said the man she loved was a bloodthirsty killer, and the only thing that mattered to him was his blade and his dick. She lifted her cup, tossed the liquor to the back of her throat, and swallowed. Fire singed her esophagus, and the burn traveled all the way to her gut. She coughed and sucked in a wheeze of air from the burn.
“Damn, sweetheart. Take it easy, okay?” He rubbed the middle of her back. The hard thump of her heartbeat against her chest downshifted into a lower gear under the anticipation of the liquid anesthetic. She poured one more dose and quickly tossed it back as well. This time, the burn wasn’t quite as breathtaking, and she felt more of the heat along her limbs than the fire in her chest. Yes, this was the perfect cure for what ailed her.
“Do you think Kenric ever knew about the things Arran did?” Twirling the empty cup in her hand, she watched the leftover drops of Gold roll around the bottom.
“Maybe. I never told him. But it wouldn’t have mattered if I did. Kenric has his own code that he lives by. And it’s his Enclave. His decision on whether he brings a male on board or not. I gave Kenric my opinion when he asked, and it was all that was requested. Wasn’t my call or my place to question his judgment.”
She nodded. So true. It never mattered to Kenric what happened in your past. He placed his trust in the person who stood before him today. She allowed her eyelids to drift closed. Her arms and legs tingled, and her head lolled with the alcohol humming inside her veins. God, did she have the strength to do the same? Unlike Kenric, she didn’t have any powers to crawl inside someone’s mind and know their thoughts. Or the advantage that three hundred years of life gave one in the ability to read a person.
But Kenric had trusted Arran. Shouldn’t that tell her something? Or was she allowing Logan to give her the excuse, or the ammunition she needed, not to face her own demons?
It was also one very good reason to push Arran away.
She picked up the bottle of Cuervo, poured another shot, and then held the bottle up to Logan. “You are welcome to some, you know.”
“Thanks.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Wish it would help. But it’s not worth you wasting what’s left when it won’t even touch the pain inside my head.” His gaze locked with hers. She would have needed a few more bottles of tequila not to recognize the longing she saw in his eyes. She’d seen the same look staring back at her in the mirror when Arran had walked out.
Logan loved her.
The bottle in her hand made a slow descent back to the table. The soft thud of the glass base meeting the wooden table echoed the hollow feeling inside her stomach. “I’m so sorry.” He jerked his head away. Oh, God, this was so damn hard.
“What do you have to be sorry for?” he rumbled, staring at the oak grains in the tabletop. He reached out and picked at some invisible crumb stuck to the wood.
She swiped her fingertips under her eyes, going after the smudges of dark eyeliner that had to be present by now. Her head buzzed, and she pulled in a cleansing breath through her nostrils. She had to get her thoughts together. Logan deserved better than a drunken kiss-off. He was a good man—well, vampire. She shook her head. Any woman would be a fool not to fall into his arms. But despite the seven years she’d been with the Enclave and had worked with Logan…She didn’t love him, at least not with the passion she felt for the one male in this world that Logan despised.
“For not being able to return the feelings I know you have for me,” she started out saying, her reasoning strong, but the words ended up shaky at the end. His gaze darted from the table to her. She’d rather go another round back in the basement of Wicked Ways than have to hurt him. But this had to be said. “I care a great deal for you, Logan.”
“But you don’t love me.”
She captured her lower lip between her teeth. God, the way he dumped the words out there sounded so…cold.
Taking her hands in his, Logan’s gaze bore into hers. “But I love you, Elle. Maybe in time you would grow to love me in return.” He squeezed her fingers.
“Please, don’t make this worse.” She worked her hands free from his. “I don’t want to hurt you, but…”
Logan pushed from the table and onto his feet. “But what? Don’t tell me you love him.” The way he looked at her, and the way he said the words “love him,” it was as if the idea was vile and unthinkable. He shook his head, his long hair swaying. “Not after all the things I told you he was capable of.”
Elle launched from her seat. The legs of her chair squeaked from the shove against the linoleum. “What you told me happened more than a century ago.” She wrapped her hands around his upper arms. “I can’t turn my feelings off just because you say so. It doesn’t work like that, highlander.”
/> He opened his mouth as if to speak and then sealed his lips, his expression tortured. And it chewed away at her insides, because she was the source of his pain. Logan’s hand came up and he gently traced her cheek. On a deep breath, he seemed to find his words again. “You have no idea how much I wish I had the power to make that a reality. To be able to say, love me and not him, lass, and it would be so.”
She couldn’t halt the warm trail of tears down her cheeks. He lowered his head, placing his lips next to hers, and hovered. Her heart ached. He was there for the taking, waiting for her to make the next move. The proud warrior wasn’t going to beg or take what wasn’t his. It would be so easy to take the coward’s way out. She wouldn’t have to face the demons sitting all cozy in the back of her brain. Logan would wait. And she could too, since her body didn’t go up in flames every time Logan was near.
His lips touched hers, lightly skating the surface. Her stomach roiled. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She yanked her lips from his. His eyes cleared, and the hardened Enclave warrior put back up his shield.
“Is this what this trip was all about? You lied about visiting your sister, so you could see him?”
“Oh my God. You’re so off base.” Turning away, she grabbed the bottle of tequila again.
“Then why don’t you educate me?”
The liquor sloshed into the cup in one large splash. She screwed the cap back on the bottle and fell back into her seat. It wasn’t the most gracious descent, but she didn’t feel like a lady tonight. She felt like a miserable bitch who needed to get a hell of a lot more drunk. Elle tossed the shot of Gold to the back of her throat and swallowed the mouthful in one gulp.
“For your information”—Elle began after the burn had passed—”I did come here for my sister, except it wasn’t to visit with her”—she glanced up. Logan stood leaning against the door of the refrigerator, his attention centered on her—”it was to find her.”
“Your sister’s missing?” He straightened, stepped forward, and gripped the back of the kitchen chair. “For how long?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. We didn’t stay in touch on a regular basis. But it’s been more than a month since her last e-mail.” Clasping her hands in front of her, she rested her chin against her fingers. “When I arrived, I went to where she’d told me she’d worked. She’s an esthetician and had a position at one of the local day spas. A perfect job for her. She was always the girly-girl who loved to play dress up, and I was the tomboy. God, I remember all the times she used to harass me to let her style my hair.” Her heart constricted, and she slammed the dam gates shut on the flood of memories threatening to take her down. She would not cry. She would not cry. Alex wasn’t dead. She would see her again.
As if he knew the battle she fought for control inside her head, he gave her a gentle smile, then spun the chair around and straddled it, facing her. “What did her employer say?” Logan’s brows drew down in concern, heaping another round of guilt into the growing swill in her stomach. It didn’t matter that she’d, for all intents and purposes, punched him in the gut with her declarations of undying love for another. Damn…he still cared. She tilted the bottle back and surveyed the remnants of liquor swirling at the bottom. Nope. There wasn’t enough tequila to wash away the shitty feeling swimming around inside her gut. With a long sigh, she settled the bottle back on the table.
“Her boss said she hadn’t seen her. She said Alex never came back to work after her vacation. They assumed she’d quit.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing here all this time.” He shook his head. “Dammit, Elle, I can’t believe you would come here alone. You had no idea what had happened to her, lass. You could’ve been putting your life at risk.” He reached out again and took her hand in his.
“I’m a grown woman. I know how to take care of myself.” She smiled past the pain in her chest. “Thanks to you.”
Logan’s face lit up, and it was a sight she’d never tire of. Elle might not love him the way he needed and deserved to be loved, but she wanted him to be happy. And man, did he have a beautiful smile.
“Besides,” she said and pulled her hand back, wrapping it around her drink. “I would have called if the situation turned out to be something I felt I couldn’t handle. And if you want the whole truth…” She tapped the side of her cup. “I needed time away.”
“From me.”
She glanced up. Yes and no. The words cycled inside her head. It wasn’t that she was running from him, exactly. He had been pressing to make their relationship more, and she was nowhere near ready. She’d needed to get Arran out of her system. And that meant time away from the Enclave, and even though their location had changed, everything about the place reminded her of Arran. At that moment, the correct answer came to her. “For me.”
“But it doesn’t look like you’ve actually spent your time searching alone. How is it that our prodigal warrior found you here?”
“That’s kind of a long story, and one I’m sure he would like for me to keep to myself. But my sister is too important to me, and I care enough about Arran that I don’t want him making this a suicide mission.”
“This sounds like a story I’m not going to like, am I?”
“Oh, I think you’re going to like this news flash.”
Logan’s emerald gaze flashed. “You definitely have my attention.”
Moving her cup to the side, she leaned forward, forearms resting on the table. “This involves one very popular goth club called Wicked Ways and two vampires who played a disappearing act two years ago.”
Not long after she’d filled him in on everything that had happened so far, the warrior pulled his cell from his back jeans pocket. “Time to bring the others up to speed,” he stated, and pushed back from the table. After tapping a number from his call list, he placed the slim black device to his ear. In the silence of the kitchen, she didn’t miss the sound of a male voice.
“She’s fine, Commander,” Logan said, glancing at her. From the way he’d addressed the other vampire, he’d called Guerin first, the Enclave’s second in command. “I found Elle here at her sister’s, but that’s not all I’ve discovered. Guess who’s roosting among the humans of Fairfield?” He stood before continuing, pivoted, and braced one hand on the back of the chair, facing her. “Markus and Marguerite have taken over a colony here. Elle just filled me in on the details.”
Inhaling deeply, she reached over and palmed her now-empty cup, needing something to do with her hands. She could only imagine the litany of curses ringing Logan’s ear. She looked up and met his heated gaze, his knuckles blanching around his phone. “I’ll tell you exactly how she ran across Markus and Marguerite’s path,” he added. His jaw ticked, and he turned, deflecting his attention toward the kitchen window. “Arran.”
The plastic crunched under her fist. She knew the Enclave would come the moment she informed them about their enemies. But she didn’t have a choice. Having the team’s support was the only way she could save her sister, stop Markus and Marguerite, and keep Arran alive. Yet she had a nagging suspicion that when they arrived, Arran was not going to be pleased with her or their interference.
Chapter Nine
Tonight, the world would breathe a sigh of relief. With any luck, not one but two of its most vile creatures would cease to exist, and humanity would gain one small victory. Arran leaned into the curve on his Ninja that took him to Gabrielle’s sister’s house.
If Jean-Claude had delivered the message to Markus like a good little pigeon, then Gabrielle would hopefully find her sister or at least obtain some sense of closure regarding her disappearance. And then what? Gabrielle would leave. Return to the Enclave. To Logan.
He tried to ignore the burn in his chest that reoccurred every time he thought of letting her go. Logan was a vampire, same as him, but that’s where the similarities diverged. Logan was one of the good guys. She needed someone who could guide her through the pain of her past with a gentle touch. Someone whose hands weren’t
contaminated by years of carrying out the jobs no one else had the guts to complete. A man whose body hadn’t spent years fucking whatever woman granted him a chance to escape for the few minutes he was inside her.
After rolling into one of the empty spaces in front of her building, he killed the engine and yanked his helmet off. The crisp night air with its low humidity was a rare, nice change of pace for a South Carolina summer. Jasmine bloomed somewhere nearby and filled the air so thickly, he could almost taste it on his tongue. He inhaled slowly through his nostrils, relishing the sweet smell. Another fragrance, one that made his blood hot, his body ache with a need so demanding, sometimes it nearly drove him out of mind, invaded his thoughts. Honeysuckle. He groaned. If only it were that scent flooding his senses, he’d immerse himself in it—in her—and never come up for air.
Shake it off, vampire.
Arran slid from his bike. That one taste he’d had of her the other night would have to be enough. He rolled the memory of her flavor over his tongue. His cock swelled. It pulsed, rock hard and eager to bury itself in the source of the nectar he would never forget. Christ. He willed his desire to recede, thrusting it into the back of his mind. Tonight was about one thing only, bringing down Markus and Marguerite.
Two concrete steps took him up to her front door. The little minx thought she was going with him tonight. She wouldn’t like it, but that wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t corrected her assumption last night after he’d brought her home. She’d already tackled enough with Jean-Claude and his guard dogs, and he hadn’t felt like another fight. Especially one like he knew he was about to have in the next five minutes.
The door opened after his second knock. The breeze that followed, coming from around her, washed over him. And brought his blood to near boiling. Just. Like. That. Arran white-knuckled the doorjamb. The large strip of wood was the only thing that kept him from grabbing her, spinning her around, and shoving her to the floor. With her ass in the air, and his cock in his hand, he’d…