Blood Entangled

by Amber Belldene

  He turned on the lights, and reached for the remote control, powering off the television. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.”

  “Don’t apologize. You saved the driver. You captured that Hun—”

  “You mean that kid.” He shook his head, crossing his arms.

  She stared over her kneecaps, her eyes drawn to his full lips, which had kissed her so sweetly, kissed her everywhere. She wanted them again, but something told her that wasn’t going to happen now.

  Impatient, she asked again, “What is it?”

  His chest rose and fell with a deep breath, and he cleared his throat. “It’s good news. I found you a job.”

  No! No! No! Not now, not when she was so close to what she wanted, so close to Kos. “Oh, thank you.”

  “An old friend, Mason Kearney. He lives in San Francisco. He needs a cook.”

  “He’s your friend?”

  “Yes, we were close for a time, but we’ve been out of touch.” Kos sat next to her and folded her hand into his. “I like him, Lena. And you will too. He’s very amusing. He’s handsome—women love him.”

  An ocean of distance spread between them at the promise that she’d like another vampire. In the end, she was merely a blood source. “Well that’s good for me, I guess.”

  He flinched. If she sounded bitter, she hadn’t meant to.

  “Lena, I think it is good. I trust him, and you’ll be close by. I can check on you, make sure you’re happy, and…satisfied.”

  A piece of lint on Kos’s shoulder captured her focus. He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, gently turning her face to meet his gaze.

  “Everything I said before is true, Lena. I’m crazy about you. I want you constantly.”

  He kissed her. Gentle. Slow. Oh God, his lips were so slow and sweet. She wanted to surrender to the kiss, to him. But every time she tried to fall backward into sensation, her mind yanked her out.

  She pushed him away. “Why?”

  “Because everything about you is sweet.” He put his hand over her heart. “You’re kind, and—”

  “No. I mean, why should I go? I could stay with you.” She looked him in the eye—cloud gray and sky blue swirled, fighting for dominance.

  “Sweetheart, it’s for the best. You’ll be safe away from the Hunters. You’ll have what you’ve always wanted—a place in a normal household. I can assure you Mason will have none of Andre’s compunctions.”

  Everything he said made sense. Surely she was imagining his sadness, just like earlier she’d imagined his eyes on her when they walked to the pantry. Only that time, she’d been right, hadn’t she?

  She rose up on her knees, eye to eye with him. “But I want you.” She hated saying it. It was too close to the way she’d begged Andre.

  “And I want you. But I can’t…I just don’t do commitment.”

  He was a rock. He was the most reliable man she’d ever met. What was he saying?

  “You can have me. I’ll be your household. We can live in your house at the coast.”

  He flinched, drawing back and frowning. She sounded so pathetic. God, she was making him hate her.

  “Lena, I’m just not the type to settle down. I don’t want a household.”

  Finally she understood. He wanted her, but not for keeps. She could feel his desire sparking in the air, in the heat of his hand and the desperation in his eyes. But he didn’t want the burden of her in the future.

  The realization squeezed her heart, stealing her breath. It was Andre all over again, only worse. Kos had thrown this stray dog a bone, then taken it right back.

  “When does he want me to start?” The question trembled across her quivering lips.

  “I’ll call him tomorrow to work out the details.” His words rasped, barely more than a whisper.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to miss you so much.” He pulled her against his chest, stroking her back. His erection pressed into her hip, his fingers sliding around her sides to her breast.

  How could he not feel her tension? She was taut as a bow.

  “Yeah, right.”

  He tensed too. “Krist. This is the last thing I wanted to do to you—make you feel this way again.” His arms still held her firmly. “I should have stayed away from you, let you go back to your room and get on with things.”

  No. It wasn’t Andre again. Kos gave a damn. He was sorry.

  “I don’t wish that.” She flattened her palm on his chest. “We would never have become friends. We would never have—”

  Then he was kissing her again and not gently. His tongue was in her mouth demanding she accept his affection. She tried to relax, to enjoy his kiss. Probably the last one…

  He withdrew, kissing the side of her mouth and up her jaw. He circled her ear with his tongue. “Let me make love to you, show you how special you are to me.”

  His breath was hot on her wet skin, igniting her desire.

  If she said yes, he could give her what she was longing for all those years with Andre—sex, and blood, and pleasure beyond belief. She could surrender to him now, let him show her his version of love—warm, and generous, and freely given to any woman he cared about.

  She could admire that about him, if she weren’t flat out in love with him.

  He nuzzled her neck and her body responded. She had to act fast, or it would be too late.

  “Kos.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I can’t do this.”

  He stopped instantly and looked at her. He was that kind of male—no meant no.

  “I’m sorry. It’s not enough, anymore.”

  He blinked his sad gray eyes and nodded. It was impressive to see the way he reeled himself back in, his heat, his embrace, slowly coiling up inside him with immense self-control. She was burning for him, electric blue on the inside, and he was made of steel—they obviously were not meant to be.

  Chapter 11

  SLOUCHED OVER THE STURDY OLD DESK, Lucas divided the piece of office-supply paper into four squares because that was how many illustrations he remembered. His memory stopped there. He creased the folds in the stark white paper again, but no images from the damn book came to mind.

  Damn it. He knew what he would have to do, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. In order to access the images, he must descend deep into the past, back to when he saw the Hunter relic for the first and only time as a teenager. Most of the time, his childhood hadn’t been a terrifying nightmare inside the very normal two-story house with wood siding and dormer windows. The Hunter stuff—the hate and violence—was well hidden under placid domesticity, not infrequently interrupted by his father Stephen’s rages. But that just made them like every other family on the block.

  Lucas lay on the bed and let his mind wander back to how he had found the book. As a kid, he’d had the habit of skulking around the house, always preferring to remain invisible. Coming down the stairs of their suburban Boston home, he’d overheard Ethan and Stephen talking about a special book locked away in the basement.

  “Where did you get it?” Ethan asked.

  “It’s always been in our family, like the tapestries, and the weapons.” Stephen’s gravelly voice made Lucas cringe, even from where he lurked on the stairwell.

  “What language is it written in?”

  “I don’t know. No one can translate it. But the pictures are self explanatory, don’t you think?”

  Smiling to himself, Lucas had begun to plan how to get his hands on the book. He was dying to see it simply because his father had hidden it from him. It was one more teenage rebellion in his singularly subtle style. He didn’t join the punk scene, or go downtown and let older men suck him off. Instead, he messed with Stephen’s mind—broke into all the locked cabinets in the basement and shuffled artifacts, forged checks to move Stephen’s money between accounts, even impersonated his father on the telephone. Every trick he played was harmless, causing just enough confusion to disorient his asshole of a father and make him pa
ranoid.

  Late one afternoon, Lucas had the house to himself. He rummaged through a wall of cabinets in the basement. Before Stephen had remodeled the basement to preserve artifacts better than the Louvre, his security had been a joke. In the bottom drawer, the objects were shallower, closer to the rim, hinting that something had been stored underneath. Below them, he discovered a case with a far more sophisticated lock than the ones on the cabinets.

  He started to pick it, but grew anxious. Would he run out of time? Tense, he listened for the sound of a car in the driveway, sweating with concentration until he felt the lock give. With his tools stowed in his back pocket, he perched himself on the edge of Stephen’s desk chair, which smelled of his father’s aftershave—not cheap, but not nice either.

  The ancient book was wrapped in a cracked, mottled leather cover, and it smelled of vellum. The binding was intact but looked fragile and would require careful handling. If he damaged it, Stephen would discover his snooping. Lucas wielded his picks again, using one to turn each page. He looked quickly, fearful he would be interrupted, and then started over from the beginning.

  Stiff with anticipation, he lay on the bed at Kaštel, watching the first illustration come into focus before his adolescent eyes. Most of his mind was still in nineteen eighty-seven, in the cool basement, but he was aware of his goal—to capture the images so that he could draw them accurately. He didn’t rush or try to alter the memory, letting it unfold at its own pace while four, no, five illustrations were revealed.

  Finally his past-self glanced at his watch. It was time to put the book away and return to his bedroom before his father returned.

  He broke from the memory and crossed to the desk in a foggy haze to stare at the blank paper. With relief, he discovered that the images still occupied his mental vision. He sketched quickly, capturing as much as he could of all the illustrations. Later would be the time to enlarge the drawings, filling in color and detail. Now, he could only draw, unable to interpret the significance of the images. That would come later too.

  Hours passed before he finished the last sketch and collapsed backward in his chair, his head lolling against the high seatback. Since he broke up with his cell phone, he had no way to tell time. But he seriously needed a drink. It was dark out, so it couldn’t be too obscenely early for booze. Not that he cared. Ally had mentioned a bar in the living room. He put the drawings in the drawer beneath a phone book. No one used those things anymore, so surely no one would bother to look under it either.

  He found the bar very well-stocked, and more importantly, it had an icemaker. Room temperature vodka and tonic was disgusting. A large television covered half the wall. He rarely watched TV, but why not start? He wasn’t Lucas Bennett Vampire Hunter anymore. He could drink in the morning and watch soap operas if he damn well wanted to.

  It took a minute to figure out the remote with all its buttons and then scroll through some sort of menu. Since when had television become so complicated? He flipped through a documentary about lions—too bloody. Women’s basketball—yuck. Something that purported to be news but wasn’t. It was as bad as he thought. He couldn’t even find a stupid soap opera.

  “I thought I’d learn something about you from what you chose to watch, but you’re a compulsive channel surfer.”

  Lucas froze with his hand raised, remote pointing at the idiot box. He angled his head to find Pedro studying him from the doorway. Butterflies jittered through Lucas’s gut. And, damn it, he was glad to see the vampire.

  “Surfer? Not really. I’m a compulsive avoider of the television. Everything on here is awful. Join me?”

  “Awful TV. How can I say no?” Pedro plopped onto the couch like he owned it, kicking his feet onto the coffee table. “What kind of show do you like?”

  “A good mystery or drama, I guess.” Lucas wasn’t about to admit that if he was going to watch TV, he really liked a trashy soap.

  His skin now supple and smooth, Pedro looked a thousand times better than he had earlier, when he was starving. Boyish and playful—that’s how Lucas would have described Pedro when they first met. His eyes had sparkled, there was a bounce in his step. Facing Lucas on the couch now, Pedro’s features were grave instead.

  Lucas glanced away, powering off the television. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “I came to apologize…” Pedro combed his fingers through impossibly thick chestnut hair.

  Lucas waited, shifting to face him on the couch.

  “For earlier, for…” Pedro’s eyes were downcast.

  The chuckle seized Lucas before any sound came out, but eventually his laughter grew audible.

  Pedro frowned, and shadows clouded his golden eyes. “What?”

  “Just curious how you were going to finish that sentence.”

  Pedro shrugged. “I have no fucking idea how to finish it.”

  His lighthearted admission melted Lucas. “Hey, man, I get it. Although I wish you’d stayed so we could finish what we’d started.”

  “This situation is totally fucked.” Pedro threw his head back against the cushion, looking up. “I want to be angry with you, but I can’t.”

  “Fine by me. If you’re going to need my blood, I’d prefer you less angry. I’m still getting over my vampire phobia.”

  “It’s not that easy to stay—”

  “I know.” Carefully, Lucas inched his hand toward Pedro’s jittering knee. “Just do your best to keep cool when my blood is flowing and things are getting sexy. Neither one of us can handle all that anger and lust at once.”

  “It’s not so easy to keep it on lock down.” Pedro thumbed his chest.

  Lucas exhaled in a rush—the vulnerable revelation was a relief after all the crap that had happened between them. “So we take it slow, nice and easy. See if that makes it easier.”

  Pedro faced him, and without a word or a sign, they met in the center of the couch. When they’d kissed before, in the winery’s tasting room a million years ago, Pedro had given a come-hither look, and Lucas had pounced. This time, Pedro did not wait. Their lips met, tongues and teeth collided. Pedro pushed Lucas down and climbed on top, his erection an iron shaft between them.

  Lucas pressed into the cushions, away from the obscenely hard length. “Ouch, no relief since this morning? I thought for sure it would ease up a little.”

  “It did, some.” Pedro hovered over Lucas, still and steady like a plank. “Had to sit around in my briefs for a while until I could get my jeans on. I kept thinking about you in the shower taking care of yourself, and I’d be back where I started.”

  Sucker that he was, Lucas couldn’t help but be flattered. His lips pulled into a gratified grin. “Maybe we should go back to my shower, make sure your fantasy was accurate.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Pedro’s expression remained serious.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not. And I’m also sure your cock is going to burst like an over cooked sausage. I’m offering to help.”

  Finally, Pedro returned the smile. His Spanish accent thickened. “It would be ungracious of me to turn down an offer of help.”

  Grasping Pedro’s muscular forearm, Lucas led him back to his room and turned on the shower in the shiny modern bathroom. He took off the vampire’s shirt and then slid his jeans to his ankles. Pedro wore a pair of black boxer briefs underneath, and his erection peeked out of the fly.

  “Have I ever told you that you are exactly my type?” Lucas took in his muscular torso—a flat stomach and large pecs dusted with dark hair.

  Pedro’s abs rippled as if Lucas had touched him. “Tell me another day, and get your fucking clothes off.”

  Lucas pulled his shirt over his head and dropped his jeans and boxers. He was at half-mast, but seeing Pedro naked and aroused got his blood moving.

  Pedro kissed him again. The hunger in his lips revealed just how desperately Pedro needed a release, but he kept the kiss gentle and his demons locked up tight.

  Lucas wrapped his hands around Pedro’s
erection, and the vampire whimpered. “Okay?”

  Pedro sucked in a breath. “Sensitive.”

  No kidding. Lucas had never seen anything like it. Not just that Pedro was thick, but he was so hard the skin on his cock was pulled too tight.

  Cold granite reared up and hit Lucas square in the chest, pushing the breath from his lungs. No, the countertop hadn’t moved—Pedro had bent him over the bathroom sink.

  Fuck. This was a problem. Their eyes met in the mirror over the vanity. This was backward, he was the one who—

  Pedro’s eyes were begging. He already knew. “I want you like this.”

  Lucas’s chest constricted; his pulse hammered. On display for the volatile vampire, he was too vulnerable.

  Shit, his new fuck buddy wanted to fuck him and not the other way around. He could feel Pedro’s erection against his ass. Pedro, who could be playful and sweet…and who got off on his power over Lucas.

  “Pedro, I don’t do this.” He tried to keep the fear out of his voice, in case it turned Pedro on.

  “You’ll like it. I’ll make it good for you.”

  Pedro was way past reason. What could Lucas do? “Pedro, no.”

  Pedro prodded him gently, and all the muscles in Lucas’s body tensed.

  “Haven’t you ever?”

  “No.” Lucas spoke firmly, as if he were talking to a child, or an animal.

  Pedro just blinked; obviously he wasn’t surprised. They’d never discussed this because they didn’t need to, had sent each other cues from the start. A few things had changed since that moment, but one thing had not—

  “I never have, and I don’t want to.”

  With his new strength, Pedro could do anything he wanted to Lucas. He gripped a hip hard and pressed Lucas’s shoulder into the countertop. But then he stepped back.

  Lucas’s chest filled with air against the cold granite. Thank God. Only, Pedro still looked miserable, with no relief in sight. Well, here goes nothing. Lucas dropped to his knees and took the swollen cock into his mouth.