A Very Alpha Christmas

by Anthology

  He’d gone through longer periods of self-imposed celibacy and, until today, he was doing pretty well this run. Had the revolving door of willing women coming in and out of of Club Nitris been tough to resist? Sure. And the seasonal masquerade balls that never failed to become orgies been the purest form of torture? Yeah, they had. He was a vampire with dark needs, even if he refused to indulge them.

  But never.

  Never had he wanted to fuck and feed like he did now. Like there was an animal inside him trying to claw its way out to get to her.

  Zara Matheson.

  Possible vampire hunter and thereby his sworn enemy.

  And the worst part? She wouldn’t have to do a thing. Smelling her…hearing her talk…watching her move?

  It was killing him already.

  “Sure, I’m thirsty. Got any Scotch?”

  * * *

  “I’ll have one more, if you will.”

  Zara blinked at her guest and nodded, her brain feeling slightly fuzzy, but in a good way. She stood and held out a hand for his glass.

  “Only if you’re one hundred percent positive you don’t want me to call the ambulance to check you out.”

  The man who had introduced himself earlier as Gabriel Thorne frowned and drained the rocks glass of amber liquid before handing it to her.

  “I feel great. I swear. Those tiny British cars weigh about as much as I do. I’ll count my blessings you aren’t an SUV kind of girl, and we can drink to that when you get back.”

  She giggled—giggled—and covered her mouth with her hand. She was such a lightweight. Three glasses of wine, and she was acting like a schoolgirl with a crush.

  Lord, did this man make it easy, though.

  She crossed the room into the kitchen and reached for the bottle of Scotch she’d set on the countertop after their first round. Her cheeks were flushed and she tried to tamp down what felt like a perma-grin.

  Ridiculous that she felt so giddy.

  Especially given that she’d been knee deep into one of the worst nights of her life not two hours ago.

  The gut-wrenching call from Rick…and then running Gabriel over—

  “No!” she muttered under her breath as she uncapped the bottle with a snap. “Don’t think about all that. Think about it tomorrow.”

  She added some more Scotch to his glass and refilled her Merlot. Maybe it was wrong, this. Feeling so good when everything was shit. But it was almost like she’d hit rock bottom, and then finding out that she hadn’t killed someone had made everything else seem just a little less bleak. The relief had been enough to take her from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs.

  It would wear off soon enough. Of that she was sure.

  But tonight? She wasn’t a murderer. Surely that deserved another glass of wine?

  She made her way back into the living room on light feet, and Gabriel stood as she entered. Always the gentleman. He’d been that way all night, insisting on calling the towing company to service both of their cars and then waiting patiently while she contacted Steph to let her know she couldn’t make it to the party.

  “Thanks,” he murmured as he took the drink from her. Their fingers brushed and a jolt of electricity arced from her head to her toes.

  God, he was fine. Fine in the way that made her tongue-tied and fidgety and hot and needy.

  Annnd, he had just gotten run over by a car—her car—so maybe she should rein it in. But the fact was, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself so much.

  She looked up at him, that very admission on her lips, but it died as their gazes collided.

  He was so very close. In fact, if she leaned up onto her toes, she could—

  He was staring at her. Through her. Like he was trying to read her thoughts. Her cheeks flamed at the idea of it. Dear lord, the things he would see right now.

  Her breath caught and his jaw flexed in response.

  She could feel it all happening like it was in slow motion.

  Setting down her glass with a clink. Rolling up onto the balls of her stockinged feet. Pressing her free hand to the muscled wall of his chest. Willing him with everything she had to dip his head lower to meet her mouth with his own.

  “Zara…”

  Her name sounded like it was torn from his lips on a groan and hearing the want in his voice made her blood sing.

  Had she ever done something so reckless? Even considering a one-night stand had been too scandalous for her taste, but now here she was, hoping against hope that he would—

  “I have to go.”

  Her ears began to buzz as his words penetrated the haze of desire she’d been lost in.

  “G-go?” she heard herself ask, sounding as confused as she felt. Had she seriously been so screwed up from all that had happened that she’d read him so completely wrong?

  Her face burned with humiliation as she stepped back.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so embarrassed. You’ve been so nice that I—”

  He slid a hand into her hair and pressed a finger to her lips.

  “No, it’s not that. I think I hear the tow truck out front, and he’s my ride.”

  Before she could respond, his mouth was slanted over hers in a kiss unlike any she’d ever felt. Firm, but sensual, his tongue magic as it swept over the tender flesh of her bottom lip. She gasped as he delved deeper, fisting a hand in her hair, moving in close until their bodies were plastered together.

  If there had been a question in her mind as to whether he was attracted to her, it was put to rest as his thick erection pressed against her stomach. Her nipples tingled and peaked in response as a rush of wet warmth flooded her core. Instinctively, she tilted her hips toward him, seeking the relief her body knew he could provide. He responded instantly, wedging his thigh between hers until she was grinding against him.

  And then it was over. He released her abruptly and tore his mouth away from her with a growl.

  “Jesus, woman, you’re going to be the death of me.”

  Her motherboard was too fried from the heat of their kiss to reply, and he took a step back, his molten gaze burning her alive.

  By the time she found her voice, he’d set down his still-full glass and was gone, like a specter in the night. If not for the cinnamon and clover scent still lingering in his wake and the warmth of her lips from his kiss, she might have thought she’d imagined him altogether.

  She rushed into the bathroom, her wine glass in hand, to find his rumpled, torn sweater still on the floor. She held it to her chest and stared at herself in the mirror, stunned by what she saw reflected back at her.

  Flushed cheeks. Swollen mouth. Dazed blue eyes.

  And a tiny droplet of blood trickling from her lower lip.

  4

  Three days and two nights.

  Nearly seventy-two hours since he’d kissed her, and he was still no closer to a solution to his problem than when it had first begun. On top of being in a near-constant state of arousal, he was starving, moody, and miserable as fuck. Especially since he’d been following Zara from afar every evening and skulking around outside her house like some sort of stalker.

  It was the cruelest of catch twenty-two’s.

  The further away he stayed, the longer it would take for him to gather the information he needed to clear her of suspicion, and the longer he would suffer.

  But if he got close to her again? Close enough to touch?

  He didn’t know what he was capable of. And that was unacceptable.

  He took a slug from his blood-bank-sourced cocktail and grimaced. It was bland and tinny in his mouth, just like everything had been since he’d tasted a single drop of the sweetest blood he’d ever encountered.

  Zara.

  He shouldn’t have nipped her. God knew, his brain wasn’t in charge at the moment, though. She wouldn’t suffer any negative effects from it, and it took a lot more than that to turn a human into a vampire, but it had been careless and stupid. While
he doubted she’d even felt it, he sure had.

  He hadn’t meant it literally when he told her she’d be the death of him, but as it stood now, it felt like it. Before he’d known her, he’d been able to choke down enough of the foul, medically-sourced sustenance to survive without compromising his ethics. Now?

  He craved it, straight from the tap. Zara’s tap. And nothing less would satisfy him.

  The thought brought a second, much more disturbing one on its heels. He’d heard tell of something like this. Read about it in books and legend.

  A pull like no other. An innate, inexplicable draw so strong, it eclipsed the more common bond between vampire and human. Rather than being Master and Familiar, the exchange of power was irrevocably reciprocal. The Familiar needed its Master, but the Master became just as reliant, if not more so. And once it had begun, it was almost impossible to stop. The Familiar became a Necessary, and the emotional well-being of the Master relied on its counterpart.

  From what he could recall, it was said to be something that happened after years together. Certainly not between near strangers, almost at first sight.

  Which was why this thing he was feeling for Zara was obviously nothing more than the unfortunate result of his lengthy celibacy and her balls-to-the-wall sexiness.

  Besides, that Necessary nonsense was the stuff of old wives’ tales and Romantic poets.

  But either way, there was no denying Zara Matheson had him wrapped up right now and he needed to get some space from her before he did something reckless.

  Something truly unforgivable.

  A low knock on the door dragged him from his churning thoughts and he looked up to see Irena standing there.

  “You were looking for me?”

  He nodded and gestured toward the empty chair across from him.

  She took a seat and arched a raven brow at him in question. “What’s up? I only have a few minutes. The club is packed tonight and I need to make sure we have enough staff on the Dark Side to handle any security issues.”

  Irena was clearly still in paranoid-mode.

  The club was nothing more than a convenience for their kind. A way for them to easily make and move cash around to support their lifestyles without raising eyebrows. The fact that it also allowed them to identify humans who were ripe for kinky sexual encounters in a setting that the vampires could control was a bonus. But as pressing as she made all that sound, the staff was comprised of nightwalkers who were trained to handle almost anything, and she didn’t need to be involved in the day to day.

  He didn’t bother arguing, though. If thinking she was needed got her through the night, then who was he to tell her differently?

  That wasn’t why he’d asked her to stop by his office.

  “I think we should take a short recess with the whole Zara thing. Let her go to DC for the holidays as planned. I’ll pick it up when she gets back.”

  Irena’s perceptive gaze locked with his own and he didn’t look away as she tried to peer into his soul.

  “Why?”

  “Mainly because she’s almost certainly not a threat.” He kept his tone neutral as he spoke, hoping she wouldn’t see the edge beneath his cracking veneer. “I spent the evening in her home and have been watching her for days. She’s done nothing at all to raise my suspicions.”

  That was mostly true. Every time she’d left the room the other night, he’d engaged super-speed and done some quick poking around. No diary or journal, no weapons, hell, the woman didn’t even have a copy of Dracula in her vast DVD collection.

  But there had been one little thing that still niggled at him. The urn in a place of honor on the fireplace mantle.

  Her mother had died when Zara was nineteen, and was buried in DC. She was the reason Zara bothered to return there for holidays at all. She would go, visit a few old friends, and then spend Christmas day clearing off her mother’s plot and setting a wreath on her gravestone. There was no father listed on Zara’s birth certificate at all, which wasn’t strange given the fact that her mother had been a teen when she’d had her, and he could find no evidence of any correspondence with a male that would fit the age range of a father-figure. There were no siblings, no living grandparents, no aunts or uncles, and Zara had never married.

  Which begged the question…whose ashes were in the urn?

  He shoved aside the mystery that had been gnawing at him for days, along with the guilt that came with hiding it from Irena. They’d all be better off if he took a step back and gained some clarity. Then maybe he could make heads or tails of whether the urn had any significance at all.

  He continued to press his case.

  “Her computer searches are innocuous, she goes from home to work and back again. No strange purchases, now or in the past, no indication of weapons training.” He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head slowly. “Nada. There’s nothing there, and while I waste my time on that, there are rumblings in other areas that could use my attention.”

  She looked like she was about to argue, but her phone chirped and she peered down at it before holding up an index finger.

  “Give me a second.” She accepted the call and listened as the caller spoke.

  That was good. Perfect timing, really. Maybe she’d have to rush off for some emergency and agree to forget all about Zara for a while. At least until he’d gotten his bearings again.

  But when her dark eyes narrowed as the one-sided call continued, and she leveled him with a strange smile, he knew it wasn’t going to be so simple.

  He focused, fine-tuning his hearing until he could make out the male voice on the other end of the line.

  “Video feed coming at you live. Call me back and let me know how you want me to handle it.”

  “Roger that,” Irena snapped back.

  She pressed the disconnect button and then waited until her phone chirped again a second later. Then she looked down at it and let out a low laugh.

  “Well, well, well. Your wish has come to pass, Gabriel. Looks like you can stop following your little lamb after all.”

  It took a second to make sense of her words, but when he did, a cold knot formed in his stomach. “What do you mean?”

  Irena aimed her cellphone toward him and enlarged the screen, offering up a birds-eye view of the club entrance. A woman stood there, dressed in head to toe black. He could only see her profile at first, but it was enough. A second later, her face filled the screen.

  Zara’s face stared back at him, wide blue eyes darting back and forth as she spoke to the bouncer.

  She’d either come to Club Nitris to find herself some vampires to hunt, or she’d somehow traced him to this address and had come to find him.

  Either way meant trouble.

  Big trouble.

  * * *

  This was a bad idea.

  Maybe the worst of all the ideas she’d ever had, and she’d had some doozies.

  Like that time when she was nine and thought she had the skills to build a tree house just because she saw someone do it once on TV, and consequently almost accidentally killed Suzy Pilkner with a nail gun in the process. Or that time she’d convinced Trevor Milliken that she was a savant with a slingshot and tried to shoot that apple off his head. She’d seen him at their high school reunion last year and he still had a scar, right between the eyes.

  But this stunt? Walking into a mysterious bar that was a money-laundering venture for the mob at best, and a den for bloodsuckers at worst?

  This one topped them all.

  She’d clearly lost her mind. Maybe this apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  Her thoughts drifted to her father, and her heart gave a squeeze. She should have given him a little more credit when he was alive. Maybe then the guilt and regret would weigh a little less heavily on her.

  Sure, she’d placated him. Listening to his outrageous theories when he was especially manic, comforting him when he was low. She’d even abided by the rules he’d set from the time she’d received his hand-
delivered letter upon her mother’s death.

  “Off the grid, 24/7. Pen and paper only, and destroy all evidence. No pictures. No phone contact except via burner phones. No email. Always cover your tracks. Because some day, they’re going to get me, and when they do, I don’t want to lead them to you.”

  She had no idea who they was back then, but, crazy or not, he was the only family she’d had left.

  She’d agreed, and they’d met a few weeks later. She’d found out pretty quickly that they could’ve been anyone, depending on his mood. The aliens that lived among them. Or JFK’s true killers. Or any one of the secret government agencies watching them…always watching.

  But on his good days? Their best days? He was wonderful. Smart, and funny, and engaging. She’d understood his absence and had forgiven all without reservation, grateful she had him in her life.

  When he’d died, she’d gone into a state of shock, going through the motions, but in a fog. She’d adhered to his wishes, ensuring an autopsy through the normal channels and a second opinion through the intermediary he’d set up before his death. It was weeks before she finally had the heart to clean out his house, and what she found there had chilled her to the bone.

  Deep in the bowels of the ramshackle house was a secret room only two people in the world knew about. It was towering with crates full of newspaper clippings and drawings and notes scribbled on anything that wasn’t nailed down. But even in the mess, his focus was clear. Leading up to his death, he’d been fixated on one theory and one theory only.

  The existence of vampires.

  It was full to bursting, and had kept her up many a night. So many similarities between the Bonfire Massacre and the way her father had been brutalized. But why had one been classified a mass murder, committed by a person on drugs, and the other classified an accidental death due to an unknown, wild animal?

  Because someone didn’t want them connected.

  The more she read her father’s notes, the more lucid and thoughtful they seemed. She’d played it close to the vest, not telling anyone, knowing how outrageous it all sounded.

  Until a few weeks ago when she first contacted Rick Gleason with her suspicions, and then again, three nights ago, when she’d told him that she had new evidence.