James and Merc were friends from way, way back. Long before I was born, human or otherwise. But I could almost swear that Mercer didn’t seem all that happy to see James. Though he grinned, there was a tightness around his eyes that only I seemed to notice.
James didn’t smile back, but he did lift up from his seat to do a violent body-grabbing sort of hug thing with Merc. Wolves were demonstrative in their affection, more so than vampires, but that affection was always honed with a fine razor’s edge of violence, as there was to just about everything they did.
I had to admit I liked the way wolves did things. There was no scheming with them. They either liked someone or they didn’t. If they were gonna stab a person, they’d do it right to their face, so people always knew where they stood with wolves. Vampires, they would smile in someone’s face while stabbing them in the back. There was so much politicking behind the scenes to everything they did, just a few hours in their courts left me feeling exhausted and demoralized.
James glanced back at me, the look heated but brief, before answering Mercer’s question. I wet my lips.
“I arrived an hour past,” he said. “I rang at yer residence. Alpha said you were here.”
Gawd, I’d always been a sucker in life or death for European men. Especially of the Gaelic variety. Give me an Irishman or Scot in a kilt and I was lost.
I glanced between the two of them, wearing a small frown. My brother was far older than me; I’d become a vamp only roughly twenty-five years ago. I’d died when I was just barely twenty, which made me pretty damn young in immortal circles. Mercer was going into his three hundred and thirtieth year; clearly those two had history I’d never heard about. And would love to know about, except there was the little problem that I technically didn’t know James.
James’s silver eyes twinkled, as though he knew how frustrated I was that he’d still not introduced himself. That rat bastard. Biting down on my back teeth, I glowered at him before saying, “Does someone plan to introduce me at some point?”
Mercer’s frown grew even deeper, to the point that even James should have noticed by then. If he’d been looking at my brother, that was. But I didn’t have time to worry about why Merc suddenly seemed so put out, because I was trapped by silver.
James turned those mercurial eyes back on me, studying me from the crown of my head down to my waist. I imagined that if I’d been on the other side of the bar, he’d have studied me right down to my booted feet.
First time I’d met James had been fifteen years ago, give or take. I’d never forget the look of shock on his face when he realized a vampire had been running free through shifter territory.
Things had been tense between us. At first. And then there’d been heat of a different kind. Vampires and shifters didn’t mate.
But oh, we’d come damn close.
It hadn’t been easy sneaking away to find places to have sex. It’d felt like being in high school all over again and trying not to get caught by my parents, except in that case, by an entire pack of mangy, angry wolves.
My stomach twisted as I remembered the things James had done to me. The things I’d done to him. And then one day, he’d gone away. Leaving no note. Nothing. I hadn’t heard from him since.
Until right now.
I could say I’d been hurt, but I hadn’t been shocked by it, either. I’d always expected him to bail on me eventually and tried to guard my heart as best I could. But when he left, it cut me deeply.
I couldn’t help glancing at his hand, looking for a ring, wondering if maybe he’d been mated yet. There was no band, not even a tan line. My stomach flipped again.
I wasn’t the same woman I’d been then. I’d seen things, grown up some. The hurt was still there, but only the memory of it.
“Scar, meet James Black. James, Scar,” Mercer said quickly, then turned and set about making that whiskey sour.
James held out his hand and said with laughter, “And yer full name is?”
I narrowed my eyes at him, wanting to punch him hard, and at the same time I wanted to yank him to me and wrap myself around him.
That strong, shivery highland burr had my skin tingling. Swallowing hard, I gave him my hand. His skin was rough, padded thickly around the fingertips and calloused. He worked with them often. And well I knew, James was a lone wolf. The lone wolf. aka, the Alpha’s favorite assassin.
Not many people knew that.
Actually, I was pretty sure that apart from a few really higher-ups, no one else knew. I knew, but not because I’d been told.
“Scarlett Smith,” I murmured, dripping saccharine Southern sweetness that promised retribution of the most violent sort for trying to make a fool of me.
James’s grip tightened. And then we were no longer even pretending to shake hands, we were devouring each other with our eyes. I hadn’t thought I was angry anymore at the way he’d bailed on me, but staring at his handsome face, I felt a cold burn inch through my veins. Fifteen years with no word. No note. To just turn around and come back and think I was going to just blithely accept any of that...surely he was smarter than that.
He must have sensed my mood because he tried to pull away, but I bore down on him, curling my fingers around his in a locking hold he’d be unable to break unless he was willing to snap a finger or two. “And what’s made you decide to visit this backwoods town, James?” I stressed his name.
James glanced down at our fingers. I squeezed just a tad tighter. If I’d been really petty, I would have broken at least his pinkie. But Mercer was watching our interplay, and I had no desire to fess up to a past I knew damn well he’d never have approved of.
Shaking off the surge of anger, I grinned broadly. Releasing James quickly, I shrugged as if it’d been nothing but a joke. “So, how do you two know each other?”
My smile was winsome and innocent, and judging by Merc’s confused countenance, I wasn’t fooling him at all. But my brother, awesome guy that he was, decided to play along with my sudden show of curiosity.
Mercer slid the whiskey sour across to the Viking, then nodded. “We fought in the Vampire War of 1895.”
James chuckled, and that deep, textured voice felt like sun-warmed honey rubbing across my flesh. Holy hell. I latched onto the bar as my knees grew temporarily weak. That bastard still had the power to turn me to putty, even after all that time. After being abandoned by the shithead, my body still rushed with that secret thrill I got whenever he was around, though I’d never felt the ache quite so strong before. I could only blame it on my stupid long dry spell.
I hated him so much.
Crossing my arms, I glared at the asswipe who didn’t bother looking back at me. He just grinned and continued to trade barbs with Mercer. I hadn’t had this type of bone-deep visceral reaction to a male since I’d lost Boo to that psychopathic vampire I unfortunately got to call my maker, back when I was human. It had been so long, in fact, I’d half assumed I’d begun to turn sterile. Or at least asexual.
But there was nothing wrong with me down there. I was tingling in parts I hadn’t felt tingle since the first Bush took office. And no, they hadn’t tingled for Bush. It was more like that’d been the first night Boo and I had finally done the deed.
“You fought like the devil,” the giant said, tipping his glass in Merc’s direction.
“Yeah, well, if I fought like the devil, you were Lucifer himself.”
Mercer had grown a rather large beard in the past few years, and he reminded me of a sexy lumberjack. But back in the day, when I’d first known him, he’d been clean-shaven. I loved the beard, but I sometimes desperately missed the peekaboo dimples he got when he grinned.
What Merc and James were talking of had been well before my time, but I knew my history. That war was directly responsible for the independence of shifters from their overlord masters, my kind.
Sure did make living here fun, constantly being a reminder to those around me that I was one of the bad guys. Oh, wait. Did I say fun? Yeah. Not re
ally. Made living here a little bit of hell sometimes. For the most part, the wolves ’round here knew me. Some even respected me. But on the whole, I was an unavoidable thorn in their flesh.
For reasons I’d never understand, though, the Alpha liked me well enough to allow me to live on his lands. I would never truly be considered one of the pack, but I belonged in a very weird and convoluted sort of way. It was because of the backing of Clarence—our Alpha—and Mercer that I survived and thrived. Mercer wasn’t my only “brother.” But I was definitely closest to him.
I rubbed my head. The headache was starting to crawl back and make its presence known. Mercer must have noticed, because he stopped chatting with his brochacho and turned to me with a worried frown pinching between his brows.
“Have you fed recently?” he asked as he leaned in, his peppery breath caressing the shell of my ear. His hand slid to the small of my back, squeezing gently.
I frowned at the sudden rush of warmth and blinked up into his worried face.
Wrinkling my nose and shaking off that weird feeling that something was wrong with Mercer, I cast a conspicuous glance in James’s direction. I wasn’t afraid to be who I was—I was a vampire, I had to eat—but the only time I ever truly was myself was when I was alone at home or with Merc.
For some reason, my brother had never minded that I was who I was. In fact, he encouraged me to be myself. But I knew that would not be the case with any other member of the pack. Fangers and shifters had a long history of hate and animosity between them.
Shifters were repulsed by my need to drink. Not as if they didn’t love a good bloody carcass themselves, the damned hypocrites. But from the very moment I’d realized my old life was over and my new one had begun, I’d developed protective instincts, one of them being never to let a shifter see me as I really was. Not even James when we’d been hot and heavy.
“No,” I growled. My stress headache was getting worse. “Do we got some Baggies in the back?”
Mercer cringed, rubbing my elbow gently. “No. Emerson didn’t drop off a shipment today.”
Emerson was my middle brother, and I used that term very lightly with him. He was a little shit who believed in the purity of races and hated that I was officially part of the Silver Creek Pack. He’d not brought that blood on purpose, and normally, that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I’d smelled copious amounts of blood tonight, and there was no way I’d last through my eight-hour shift without feeding. Also, like an idiot, I hadn’t fed in over three days.
I’d just been busy and forgotten. I was gonna pay for that oversight.
The music was getting louder. The people drinking, who’d been talking in normal tones before, seemed to be screaming and laughing and hollering. Everything was sort of whitewashed with a background wah, wah, wah noise that had everything to do with my rising bloodlust and nothing at all to do with the fact that the noises were getting shriller.
The world was starting to spin; my fangs were dropping, my gums receding. Soon I’d forget that feeding on anyone inside the den was a big no-no. Or that taking Blue up on his offer was a bad thing.
Gripping the bar, I dropped my head to my chest and breathed deeply. I’d had to do that once before. Right after the change, Merc had found me half dead, gutted, and in a cemetery. Had he been anyone else, I know I wouldn’t have been alive today.
He’d made me go twenty-four hours without feeding. Long enough to burn out the sire blood in me so that I’d be free, but that had been the worst day of my life. I’d begged for death, sworn that when he released me from the cage I’d kill him, him and all his family.
I’d been out of my head with madness. Looking back, I was grateful to him for making the hard choices.
I could survive my current hunger too, but not here among so many humans.
“Give her to me.” That thick Gaelic burr cut through the noise pounding away like a hammer in my skull.
I looked up at James. His features still hadn’t shifted. There was an implacable hardness to him I had a hard time deciphering.
Mercer frowned. “You’d feed her?”
He sounded shocked, and honestly, I was too.
My hands were shaking, and I wasn’t sure if it was the need for food or the fact that a wolf had suggested I feed from him that did it. Back in the day, when I’d had to learn to control the bloodlust, I’d only ever fed from Mercer. But his blood had been so heavily tainted with wolfsbane that the feedings had never been fun for him or me. Much as he loved me, I was pretty sure he was thrilled when I finally got to graduate to the real stuff.
James shrugged. He tipped his glass up and swallowed his drink with one massive gulp. “It’s either let her feed on me or risk her breaking faith with the Alpha.”
Merc’s jaw clenched, and his nostrils flared. As my brother, and James’s superior, he had final say. Humans weren’t forbidden to me, but wolves were. Absolutely. That was a giant gray area for me, though, because the law stated I could never attack a wolf or I’d be cut off from Silver Creek land. But there was nothing in the rules or the bylaws that said I couldn’t feed from a willing shifter.
Because no way in hell would a shifter ever allow a vampire to bite on them—Merc notwithstanding.
I sniffed when a female human walked to the opposite end of the bar, leaning over a man wearing a trucker cap. The sweet scent of her cheap perfume tickled my nose, but beneath that noxious odor was the spicy, cool scent of her blood, and I couldn’t help groaning.
“Merc, you either let me feed on James or you lock me up, ’cause I can’t do this much longer,” I hissed, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Dammit,” he snapped, and his voice sounded frenzied. “Fine, but go out back where no one can see. Keep to the shadows, and for God’s sake,” he growled when James gripped my forearm, “don’t let pack catch you.”
Feeling both weak and revved up like a gym rat on juice, I clung to James’s shirt, burying my face in his chest and taking quick, greedy gulps of him to try to help me forget the tantalizing odor of the humans mingling all around, completely unaware that each and every one of them could have been on my menu.
“You’ll be fine, Vampire. Just breathe,” James whispered in my ear, and for once, his delicious accent did nothing for me.
I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to handle wolf blood anymore. It’d been years since I’d ingested the stuff. All I remembered about Merc’s was that it was bitter, reeked, and turned my stomach, but it’d coated my insides and temporarily quieted the hum of lust enough that I could function.
But once I’d tapped into the good stuff, I’d never looked back. Human blood was sweet, almost syrupy. What I smelled pumping through his veins was far richer, more crisp. Like peppery autumn leaves.
I felt Blue’s look bore through my back as we passed his table. But I said nothing, and he was smart enough to say nothing right back.
The second we were out the door, I had my hand curled around James’s wrist, and we ran.
Wise man that he was, he kept his mouth shut.
I needed to make sure that we kept away from prying eyes and any other wolves. Risking the smell of blood out here wasn’t really the smartest thing, but the sound of a feeding would have them all bearing down on me, ready to shred me to pieces.
In less than five minutes, we’d moved a good ten miles deeper into the woods. If I’d been any less volatile, I might have taken James to my spot.
The haunted shack was hidden from the eyes of all humans, known to only a few in the pack. Merc had shown it to me back in the day, when I’d needed a quiet space to think and get away from the call of lust.
I slammed James up against the bark of a towering willow, and as big as he was, he could have stopped me. But he didn’t. His nostrils widened, his irises flared, and the vein in the side of his neck pulsed with a rush of blood.
But what I scented on him wasn’t fear. I wet my lips, taking an infinitesimal step toward him. And then he smirked, and I went feral.
<
br /> His arm snapped around my waist as I yanked his shirt down, exposing his collar. I could have fed from any arterial point, but I was ravenous and didn’t give a holy hell.
With a snarl, I dropped my fangs, and the next thing I knew, I was practically crawling up his towering body as I sank them into his neck.
I felt him jerk, then tremble powerfully as I pulled deeply from his vein. His blood tasted like wine. It coated my insides like flame, making me greedy for more and more. For all of him.
He groaned, his large palm shoving against my ass as his hips jerked forward. He was hard as a rock, and had I not been so hungry, I might have done something about it. But I wasn’t letting go of my prize, not even for a second. I dug my claws into his chest and sucked harder.
“Woman,” he growled after a moment.
But I was lost on him. On the essence of his life. Drunk on the sweetness of his rich, delicious blood.
Chapter 4
Scarlett
Next thing I knew, I was flat on my ass with a towering brute standing over me, his silver eyes practically flashing neon in the dead of night.
James’s face was contorted, a mixture of man and beast, and something primal inside of me responded. Licking the last of his delicious blood off the corner of my mouth, I smirked, letting him see the animal inside of me. Letting him witness the demon that lurked behind my pretty mask.
Again his nostrils flared. He took several long, slow, deep breaths. And then he made a rumbling noise in the back of his throat, one I’d heard before when a pack member returned after a long hunt. One of satisfaction and the fuel of testosterone.
Clamping down on his delectable lips, he held out his massive hand. I didn’t hesitate even a second. I took that hand, marveling at the rough texture of calluses that coated his palm.
I didn’t let go when I got to my feet but gripped him tight.
“I’d say a favor’s in order,” I said, hardly recognizing the breathy sound of my own voice. I’d not had blood like his before.
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