Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Jennifer Ashley

  Blood pooled around Eve, flowing freely from the long gash in her thigh. She was losing too much. The bastard had severed her femoral artery.

  The sound of boots hammering the flagstones didn’t even pull his focus from Eve. Let the bastard run. He was still a dead man. He just had a stay of execution while Tor took care of more important matters.

  He crouched beside Eve and reached out to check the wound she clutched. She growled at him and bared her fangs, her eyes blazing crimson. She was already in the danger zone, under the influence of her instincts. Tor cursed her now. If she had been feeding, this wound wouldn’t have made her lose herself to her vampire nature, at least not this rapidly. He would have had more time.

  Tor pulled his sweatshirt over his head, ripped one of the sleeves off, and dragged her hands away from her thigh. She fought him every step of the way as he bound her wound, hoping to stem the flow of blood enough that he had a chance to save her. Her claws sank deep into his bare arm, her snarl drawing the attention of too many prying eyes. He needed to get her back to the hotel room. The last thing he needed on top of everything was the Law Keepers pinning him with a death sentence for revealing the existence of their kind to humans.

  He pulled Eve into a sitting position and put the remains of his sweatshirt on her slim frame to keep her warm, and then lifted her into his arms. She growled again and snapped at him, and for a moment, he thought she would bite him and take the blood she needed.

  She shrank back before her fangs could touch him, huddling into a ball in his arms and whimpering. He moved as swiftly as he could through the streets, holding her tightly to clamp her thighs together, putting pressure on the wound in the only way he could. She trembled, shaking so violently it was hard to keep hold of her at times.

  Tor reached the back streets that led to their hotel and shifted her in his arms, bringing her mouth closer to his bare neck.

  “Feed, Eve,” he murmured, as soothingly as he could manage while fear tore at him, whispering that he couldn’t save her, that she was going to slip through his grasp and he was going to lose her. “Come on, Eve… you have to feed.”

  She inhaled deeply, moved closer until he could feel her breath on his skin and shivered in response, but then drew back again. She writhed and moaned, her pain flowing through him as if it were his own. There had to be a way to make her feed. She needed blood, and animal blood wasn’t going to suffice.

  He reached the hotel and used a burst of speed to move through the reception area without anyone noticing him, not slowing until he reached their room. He refused to set Eve down while he unlocked the door with the key card, opened it and closed it behind them.

  Tor carried her to the bed and set her down on the white sheets. Red immediately seeped into them, spreading in a grim, stark pool beneath her thigh. He growled and she snarled back at him, flashing her fangs again, her red eyes narrowed in warning.

  She needed to feed.

  He bit into his wrist, kneeled on the bed beside her and offered it. Her gaze fell to the trail of crimson running down his arm but she didn’t move to take it.

  “You’ll die if you don’t drink, Eve.” He stared hard at her, clutched the nape of her neck and drew her closer to his bleeding wrist. A drop of blood fell onto her chin and she turned her face away from him.

  Frustration burned through him, twisting his insides, tearing another growl from him.

  He pulled himself away and looked at her leg. He would deal with the wound first and then figure out how to get blood into her once she was out of immediate danger.

  Tor removed the makeshift bandage from around the wound and immediately replaced it with his hand, keeping the pressure on. He monitored the flow of blood for a few seconds, watching it seep from between his fingers.

  It was slowing.

  He risked taking his hand away and moved them straight to the waist of her jeans. She didn’t protest as he unzipped them and dragged them down her legs, carefully as he manoeuvred them over her thighs and then swiftly when he had reached her knees. He pulled off her boots, and then her jeans, and tossed them on the floor.

  Tor settled himself on the bed with her, kneeling with her injured leg between his. He stared at the long, shapely lengths of her legs and sucked down a few deep breaths, preparing himself for what came next. He needed to seal the wound. He swallowed hard, his gaze zeroing in on the angry gash on the inside of her thigh.

  His hands shook so he clenched his fingers into fists.

  He pulled down another deep breath and scrubbed a hand down his mouth. It smelled of her blood, the rich intoxicating scent flowing into his lungs and invading his body, stirring feelings long dead and forgotten.

  Tor exhaled hard, dropped onto all fours, and darted his tongue out, trailing it up the length of the wound. She moaned and writhed, the sound far too erotic for him to handle. He closed his eyes and tried to shut out what he was doing, but it was impossible. It was painfully intoxicating to be licking her soft thigh, to feel her flesh give beneath his tongue and taste her blood. He stifled a groan he swore was dismay and not born of pleasure.

  Eve writhed again, her other leg brushing his, her moans sending fierce fiery jolts through him, hot shivers that only grew worse as her breathing turned to shallow pants.

  It had been a long time since he’d had physical contact with someone, and even longer since he had touched a woman. Licking her thigh, hearing her moans, feeling her body brush against his, it almost undid him, threatening to shatter the ironclad restraint that had been weakening with every minute he spent in her company. Now, the glacier that encased his heart, the cold emptiness that had kept him alive for centuries, melted completely, leaving not one shard of ice behind.

  Warmth spread through his chest, invading his bones and searing his blood. Tor battled the effect she had on him, unwilling to surrender to her without a fight, desperate to harden his heart again and not soften towards her.

  He lasted barely a minute, as long as it took for her to find his left hand on the sheets and clutch at it as she moaned softly, pain lacing the strained murmur. That reach for comfort from her, a reach she made for him, made him tremble and stripped his strength, leaving him weak for a moment, long enough to see how truly beautiful she was and have it crash over him like a tidal wave, blasting away more of his defences.

  Tor gave in to her, tangling his fingers with hers on the bed, giving her the comfort she sought from him.

  He finished sealing the wound, lingering over the final sweep of his tongue, unwilling to rush it or surrender this closeness to her before he had to. He brushed his lips across her skin, breathed her in, and tore himself away.

  Her red eyes watched him, her instinct to survive still in control. Those instincts should have made her feed and should have made her view all as an enemy, yet she refused his blood and she sought comfort from him.

  Tor ripped a strip of white material from the ruined sheets and bound her thigh, tying it tightly to stop the wound from reopening.

  He sat back and met her crimson gaze. “You need to feed, Eve.”

  Her demeanour changed abruptly. She snarled and snapped her fangs at him.

  He sighed. He had never heard of a vampire refusing blood when they were down to their instincts. Her will had to be incredibly strong to stop her from taking the blood she knew she needed.

  He could understand her refusal to bite humans. She had been trained to place the lives of humans above her own, to protect them from vampires and the other creatures that lurked in the darkness. He couldn’t understand why she would refuse to feed from him though.

  Tor lifted his wrist to his mouth and licked the puncture wounds and then the claw marks from the fight, the taste of his own blood bitter in comparison to the sweetness of hers.

  If she continued to refuse to bite humans, he could at least convince her to bite him somehow. He could be the bridge for her. He was almost human, a devil in that form at least. By learning to bite him, she would be one st
ep closer to biting a human.

  And he would be one step closer to convincing her to embrace what she had become.

  He wasn’t asking her to turn her back on the woman she used to be, the woman she was. He was only asking her to live.

  Tor stared at the ragged marks on his wrist. He couldn’t convince her to bite him though. She didn’t want the precious liquid he had offered her but he knew she wouldn’t want things to end like this either. She wouldn’t want to die here before having her revenge.

  There had to be a way to get blood into her.

  His ears twitched and he lifted his head, focusing hard on the world outside the hotel room window. The sound of sirens cut through the still night.

  He was out of the window a second later, leaping from the fire escape to the building across the narrow alley. He landed hard on the roof and raced forwards, following the sound of the sirens. They grew closer as he leaped from building to building, tracking the vehicle.

  He halted on the edge of a roof above the ambulance and the building it had stopped outside.

  Hospitals had blood, and ways of administering it.

  Tor leaped from the roof and landed silently in the street below. He kicked off, sprinting into the brightly lit building, using all of his speed to his advantage. His senses sparked, the smell of blood luring him deeper down the stark white corridors and through rooms filled with sleeping humans.

  He slowed as he found what he was looking for and ducked behind a corner as a woman came out of a room further along the corridor. He waited for her to pass him before slipping out of the shadows behind her and sneaking into the room she had exited.

  Tor grabbed the first bags he came across, uncaring of the type they contained. As a vampire, Eve no longer had to worry about the correct type for her body. All human blood was good for her. It would nourish her ravaged body and restore her strength.

  He made a makeshift cradle with his black t-shirt, loaded as many blood bags as he could into it, and grabbed several kits that he thought resembled the intravenous set ups he had seen in television programmes. He checked the drawers in the white bench cabinet too, and stole a handful of suture kits and some bandages.

  He eased out into the corridor and scanned it both ways, checking no one was around to catch him. He couldn’t move as quickly with the blood and everything piled into his t-shirt. He grinned at the end of the corridor off to his right and the bright green neon sign that signalled an emergency exit.

  Tor took off through it, the screeching alarms stinging his ears. The sound was distant a moment later as he ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction, heading back towards the hotel. He had to enter through the lobby again, casually this time, even forcing a smile at the woman behind the reception desk to disarm her.

  She smiled and went back to her newspaper.

  He mounted the stairs two at a time, his speed increasing as he neared the floor where Eve waited. He could smell her blood and could sense her. He could even feel a sliver of her pain, a dull ache that vibrated through his body, radiating outwards from his right thigh.

  Tor opened the door, closed it behind him and crossed the cream carpet to the double bed in the centre of the large pale room. He tipped everything out of his t-shirt onto the white covers and sorted through it, separating it into neat piles.

  He removed the makeshift bandage from around her thigh, ripped open one of the suture kits, and stitched the long gash. Eve didn’t stir. She lay perfectly still and quiet, so deathly pale that she almost blended into the sheets and her dark hair was a stark contrast to her skin. When he had finished stitching the wound, he wrapped fresh bandages around her leg and grabbed the IV kit.

  He tore it open with his teeth. It took a few seconds to figure out how it all connected together, so the clear tube fed into the pink plastic end of the needle. He kneeled beside Eve and gently took hold of her hand. It was cold in his. He rubbed his way up her arm, trying to get a little warmth back into her skin, before inserting the needle into a visible vein inside her elbow. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.

  “Come on, Eve,” Tor whispered and wrapped some tape across the needle, sticking it to her skin to keep it in place. “We’ll get this blood in you and you’ll be stronger. You’ll have that revenge you want. You’ve got to live for that, right?”

  He picked up the first blood bag and attached it to the tube, and then stood, holding the bag beside him and acting as her IV stand. Crimson dripped and flowed down the tube to the catheter.

  Tor willed her to accept it, to take what he was offering—a shot at life.

  She didn’t want to live, but he couldn’t let her die. And it had nothing to do with his duty.

  This slender, fiery, broken female was beginning to mean something to him. He wasn’t sure how to process the feelings she stirred in him or make sense of them. He just knew that he couldn’t let her slip away from the world like this. He had to ensure that she lived. There would be part of her, buried deep, that would hate him for snatching her back from death, but he could live with that, because it would mean she was alive, and still with him.

  He lost track of time as he stood sentinel over her, changing the blood bags as necessary. The dawn came and went, and he refused to succumb to the lure of sleep. He swayed on his feet, fighting the fatigue sweeping through him, keeping his focus on Eve and her needs. Night was falling by the time he ran out of blood to give her and she still looked pale against the white sheets and crimson stains.

  Tor set the empty bag down on the nightstand. He removed the bandage around her thigh, checked the wound was healing now, and replaced the crepe when he saw that it was. Her body was absorbing the blood and using it, but he still wasn’t certain it had been enough. She had been starving, living on a ridiculous diet that had barely kept her alive before the mortal injury.

  He leaned over her and lifted her right eyelid. Her red irises stared sightlessly up at him. He checked her mouth and found her fangs were still down. A cold sliver of fear went through him. She was healing, but it was too slow. The blood he had given to her hadn’t been good enough.

  Tor looked down at his arm and the vein on the inside of his elbow.

  She needed stronger blood.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eve woke in deep throbbing pain that ebbed and flowed through her slack limbs. She tried to move but everything felt heavy. She licked her lips, trying to wet them and ease her dry mouth. Her body burned, every cell screaming. She frowned and tried to remember where she was and what had happened. Nothing came back to her. Her mind was a red haze, a blur that refused to come into focus. She tried to open her eyelids but they scraped like gravel across her eyes, hurting them.

  She resigned herself to keeping still and trying to find the source of her pain so she could shut it down. It began to fade before she could figure out where she had been hurt and she began to feel stronger, more aware of her surroundings. The hotel room. It smelled like flowers.

  She couldn’t remember how she had made it back.

  Eve gathered her strength and carefully pushed herself up onto her elbows. Something tugged at her right arm. She forced her eyes open and blinked rapidly to clear them. There was a catheter taped to the inside of her elbow. Her stomach tightened, knotting at the sight of it and the memories that came flooding back.

  She had fought Adam.

  He had stabbed her in the leg. She couldn’t remember anything after that except pain and then darkness and a sense of peace. It had felt like when she had died. Death had opened its arms to her and she had happily fallen into its embrace.

  Only she wasn’t dead.

  Someone had given her blood and had tended to her wound.

  They had done all in their power to sever death’s hold on her and bring her back from the brink.

  She followed the red tube past empty blood bags on the bed beside her and her eyes widened when it ended in Tor’s elbow where he sat beside her in a low taupe armchair, wearing only his black jea
ns. His arm rested on one of the curved sides of the chair, the other slumped in his lap.

  He sat with his eyes closed, as if asleep, but he was pale and gaunt, his skin grey and dark arcs curving beneath his lashes.

  He had given her blood from bags and then from his body, and by the looks of things he had substantially weakened himself in the process. For her. Why?

  Eve pulled the needle out of her skin, grimacing as it tugged, and sat up with effort.

  “Tor?”

  He didn’t respond.

  She shuffled to the edge of the double bed and tried to stand. Her legs gave out and she hit the pale carpet, a sharp jolt running through her bones and making her thigh ache.

  Tor snapped awake and instantly launched from the chair, scooped her up as if she weighed nothing and set her back down on the bed.

  “Are you alright?” he said, genuine concern warming his crimson eyes as he checked her over from head to toe.

  He looked at the end of the tube on the floor and then at her arm. His pale eyebrows drew down above his beautiful eyes and the corners of his firm mouth dipped with them.

  “You were meant to be resting.” He looked as if he was considering ordering her back into bed.

  She had been worried for nothing. He was as strong as ever, and as bossy too.

  “I’m fine.” The moment the words left her lips, he wavered and slumped back into the armchair.

  A hazy smile curved his lips. “That’s good.”

  He closed his eyes again and the back of his head hit the armchair.

  Blood dripped from the end of the tube he had left in his arm, spotting the carpet.

  Eve risked his wrath and took a scrap of bandage off the bed, slowly moved across the small strip of carpet to him, giving her legs time to adjust to her weight, and pressed the material to the inside of his elbow. She eased the needle from his skin, her stomach turning as it slid out of his flesh, and kept pressure applied.