Rumor had it that feeding from an ancient food source could give a vampire a rush, like a rush of adrenaline. But I’d never believed it, considering my food sources generally didn’t tend to age past seventy, if they were lucky.
What I felt rolling through me was like living fire. Every inch of me snapped, crackled, and burned. My limbs felt twice as powerful as normal. As if I could snap through a redwood’s thousand-year-old trunk as easily as batting away a gnat.
I wanted to run. Wanted to hunt.
“I’ll call it due. Don’t worry about that,” he said.
And since I was no longer hounded by my need for blood, that voice of his worked like magick on me all over again.
“Who said I was talking about owing you?” I grinned evilly. I was still pissed at him.
Throwing his head back, he laughed uproariously. My flesh broke out in a wash of goose bumps, and that awareness of him I’d had back in the bar came back tenfold.
Blood always made me a little high, but his stuff...gods, it was making me feel powerful.
“How old are you, James?” It was a question I’d always asked him. One that he’d never answered, telling me not to worry my young little head about it.
He smirked, brushing a hand down his no-longer-bleeding neck and smearing the small bit of blood that’d leaked out. I wanted to lean in and lick every bit of it off his fingers but figured that was probably bad form. Still...I expanded my nostrils, teasing myself with the scent of him.
Come hell or high water, I was feeding on shifter again. No wonder Merc had laced his with wolfsbane; I’d have ripped him to pieces trying to get at his veins, otherwise.
Thankfully I’d grown some and knew that killing one’s food was a bad idea. Still... I wet my lips, and he chuckled, as if he knew exactly where my thoughts had been.
Those silver eyes twinkled. “If I tell ya, do you promise no to call me ancient?”
I twitched a brow.
One, he’d teased me. God, that was sexy. Two, he’d said “no” instead of “not.” That Gaelic burr was making me all tingly. And three, it seemed I might finally learn his age. Would wonders never cease? There’d only ever been sex between James and I before, never any kind of sharing or heart to hearts after the deed had been done. We’d never even kissed goodbye when it was time to part our separate ways. Maybe things were finally changing.
In bed, we were as compatible as it got. But he’d never given me more than that before. And though it’d bothered me, I hadn’t pushed the matter, either.
“Sure.” I shrugged. “Why the hell not? How old are you really, Viking?” I was ninety-nine percent sure he was teasing me, just as he always did.
“I’m no a Viking, lassie, as you well know. I’ve told you this before.”
“Viking. Highlander. Who the hell cares? I’m not from the old world, Jamie, as I think I’ve told you before.” I flashed a grin.
“Respect. Lost on the youth,” he mock growled, and I snorted.
He lifted a shaggy dark brow, and his lips twitched as though he’d found my teasing amusing, then he quietly said, “I’m over six centuries old, Scar.”
“Gross.” I snorted.
“Woman,” he growled, but his silver eyes glowed.
I chuckled, holding up my hands as I shook my head. “I’m sorry, shug”—I tapped my breast, putting on my best Southern airs—“I don’t know how that slipped out. Whoops.”
Moonlight sliced across his face, kissing those harsh, blunt features of his and softening them just a little. Before my rebirth, I’d been a purely sunshine girl. I’d never really felt comfortable with the night or the things that roamed in it. Even then I’d known that Veilers ruled the night. But since my turn, I found everything about the night exotic, enticing, and beguiling.
The night was full of possibility, of secrets and shadows and darkness hiding my most secret wishes. Like tonight for instance, oh how my head pounded—not with pain or hunger but with a sudden desire to kiss him.
That was it. Just a kiss. Something any human did on a pretty night, standing out in the dark with a sexy and unnervingly arresting male. A male I intimately knew every square inch of, who still made me squirm with remembered need.
I could do this. Just a taste. Just to get him out of my system again. I’d matured; I would never again let James trample my heart. But I’d been so long without touch that just this once I was willing to ignore the small voice inside me that said playing with James was like playing with fire.
My lips tipped up at the corners, and his eyes narrowed.
“Scarlett, what are you—”
I shrugged again, hooking my thumbs in my belt loops as I swaggered close on my ostrich-skin boots. Just one kiss. Just to remember what that felt like, the constant hunger for something other than food. I wet my lips, and he moved back, but there wasn’t really any place to go other than back against the tree.
Feedings didn’t normally make me randy. But they sure had today. And I’d been dry for far too long.
“Well, it’s simple, really, James. I want a kiss. I’d say it’s the least you owe me after abandoning me fifteen years ago. Don’t you? And before you start wondering, no, I don’t want you in my bed again. But you’ve fed me, and I’m horny as hell, so stop talking and let me do this.”
He groaned, long and deep, and my body trembled in response. I hated how much I still wanted him. I stood so close to him that we were boot tip to boot tip.
“You want a kiss?” he asked, his voice shivering with grit and bravado.
I wet my lips in response and was thrilled when his irises flared.
Even leaning up on tiptoe, I hardly came to midchest on him. But James was no shrinking violet, and he didn’t try to run away or stutter his way out of kissing a vampire.
Those silver eyes twinkled, and a ghost of a smile creased the corners of them. He was taunting me. Daring me, telling me without words that I didn’t have the balls to do it.
I wasn’t sure what it was about James that called me to him. He wasn’t at all my type. Big and a bruiser, he was way too fucking tall for me. I’d have to crane my neck to look up at him.
His thighs were the size of friggin’ tree trunks. He made me feel small. I should have hated that feeling. But I didn’t. I really, really didn’t.
I wet my lips again, and his eyes zoomed into the movement. The irises flared, and I saw his wolf peeking back at me. Wild and untamed and ancient, flowing with power.
His voice was deeply guttural as he said, “No biting.”
“Shut the hell up,” I snapped, and he groaned. Pissed and excited as I don’t know what, I snarled as I wrapped a free hand around his neck and yanked him down to me. I wanted to beat the snot out of him and never let him go.
Then with a hungry moan, I stretched up as far as I could, and he met me the rest of the way.
Our kiss went from tasting to a duel of teeth, tongues, and bites in zero to sixty seconds flat. His big, meaty hands were all over my ass, grinding me hard into his stiff center, and I was all over him, monkey crawling my way up his body just like last time.
Before I knew it, he had my shirt off and my bra halfway undone. His hands were on my nipples and rolling them expertly, and I was dragging my suddenly extended claws down his hard-as-steel chest. His skin shivered, and I sighed as I ran my fingers through his chest hair. I’d always loved the scruff of wolves versus the unnaturally hairless bodies of my own kind. And then James was reversing our position, slamming me up against the base of the tree trunk, and I was moaning like a hellcat in heat, more than ready for what came next.
And it was all so glorious, until my fingers scraped the cold metal pendant hanging from the necklace around his neck.
“Fuck you! I’ll do what I want, when I want! You don’t own her.”
A hulking James stood with his arms spread wide and a mean snarl transforming his face into one of violence and rage. In front of him stood Mercer—my golden Adonis with eyes glowing like e
merald flames as he glared death at James. They stood outside the den.
“I’m only going to tell you this once, James. You leave her the fuck alone. You’re no good for her, and you know it. You’re gonna break her heart, and I swear by all that’s holy in the above and below that I won’t let that happen. Leave and never come back...”
Gasping, I shoved James back. He frowned, looking dazed and confused.
“Scarlett?” There was an obvious question in my name, but I shook my head. Lost to my vision.
What the hell had I just seen? An image not of death but of rage and fury between my brother and James.
I stared at him with wide eyes, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I needed to get away. Right then. “I gotta get back to work.”
Without giving him a second to gather his wits, I turned on my heel and ran.
~*~
Mercer looked up when I returned alone. His brows were twisted into a question mark of confusion and relief. I gave him a tight smile, wondering about a lot of things. Like why he’d had James banished, if that was indeed what it’d been. He cocked his head, glanced over my shoulder, and then his eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits.
Great, he was angry.
And I didn’t even know why. Well, I was angry too.
Snarling, I flicked my wrist at him in dismissal and made for the office. Needing a moment to myself, to think, to gather my thoughts, to try to figure out what the hell I’d seen back there without stupid, cranky wolves getting in the way.
I was almost to the back when I smelled James come in through the doors. I knew I shouldn’t have turned to look at him, but like iron shavings to his magnet, I couldn’t seem to help myself.
I looked and his silver eyes were already boring straight through me. Fire licked in their center, and something else too. Something dark. Something almost violent. James was an ancient. His blood was powerful. There was no telling what he’d learned about me during that kiss. When I took, I gave too. Not usually a problem when touching a corpse but a big one when touching a living. Maybe he hadn’t felt my pull of his memories.
I hoped.
I trembled, thinking about the way he’d ravaged me. I probably looked as if I’d been sexed up good. I could feel the bits of bark that had embedded themselves into the backs of my thighs. Any predator worth his salt knew I’d gotten hot and heavy out there. A heart that should no longer have been beating gave the merest of flutters, and I grabbed my chest, knowing that it was because of James’s blood that it worked at all.
Clenching my jaw, I clamped down on the thrill that raced through me at the sight of the ancient highlander standing silhouetted in the doorway. And I immediately reversed my decision to be alone, because Merc had been in that vision, and I was going to find out why.
I veered toward my brother, latched onto his elbow, and yanked him hard toward the back room.
“Scarlett?” He growled, assessing me quickly and stripping me down to the point where I felt naked and exposed in front of him. When Mercer looked at me, he looked all the way through me.
“Scar?” he said again. And in his uttering of my name, I heard myriad questions.
What’d happened out there? Why was I covered in debris? And why was I acting so frantic?
He gently extricated his elbow from my punishing grip and lifted a brow. “Mind telling me what happened out there?”
His voice was calm but honed to a razor’s edge.
My nostrils flared. I was discombobulated and out of sorts, and I knew that, but that damned vision was still with me. The rage between the two of them had been palpable. And I knew, I knew, it had been because of me.
“Come with me, right now. We have to talk,” I said in a voice far more steady than I felt.
That tone must have gotten through to him, because he no longer bothered fighting me. Flicking a glance to a blond-haired Candy, one of our servers and Emerson’s pack mate, he motioned to the bar. “Keep an eye on things out here. Anyone steps outta line, kick their ass out.”
Candy and I, we didn’t get along. At all. Not even a little. The bitch was looking at me as if she wanted to clamp her fangs around my throat and rip my larynx out. She’d never been able to understand my control over Mercer and Clarence.
She had it all wrong, though. I didn’t control either of them. Clarence tolerated me at the best of times, and Merc...well, Merc was Merc, I’d stopped trying to understand him a long time ago.
But an Alpha’s word was law in these lands, and no one stepped out of line.
“Yeah, okay,” Candy said with the gravelly voice of a pack-a-day smoker. Then slipping underneath the bar, she took up Merc’s position, doling out drinks like a pro.
Setting his rag underneath the bar, Merc notched his chin toward the back. I marched to the liquor closet without looking back, knowing he was at my heels.
The second we walked through the door, he shut it behind us.
“Mind telling me what’s going on, and why James looked ready to murder somebody? Did you take—”
Flicking my hand through the air like a knife, I cut him off. “You made him leave, didn’t you?”
For a second, Merc looked stunned, but quickly my intelligent brother must have put two and two together. Looking me up and down, he licked his front teeth and sighed, “You empathed him, didn’t you?” And then his brows lowered and a growl reverberated from his chest. “And the only way you coulda done that was to—”
I sighed, not in the mood for my brother’s territorial asshatery. “I kissed him, okay. I all but forced myself on your little friend. Now stop dodging the question and tell me the truth. You made him leave. Which means you knew he and I were—”
If looks could kill, I might have been lying at his feet dead. A muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically, and his nostrils flared. His pupils thinned, and I could taste his rage in the air.
“Yeah. I did.”
After James had vanished without a word, I’d sunk into a depression. Yes, it was supposed to only be fun. A little bit of bed sport, but seeing James tonight and feeling the things I’d felt...I realized with sinking clarity that it’d been a lot more than that to me. I’d locked things down tight in my head, refusing to analyze why my chest had ached for years after he’d left, why I’d suddenly felt abandoned by everyone and everything, except for Merc.
Mercer, who’d stepped in and taken up the mantle of best friend. Who’d teased and laughed and finally brought me out of my shell. But it didn’t make sense why he’d do that to me, why he’d hurt me that way, because Mercer didn’t love me. Not in that way. What I’d seen in that vision had felt an awful lot like the actions of a jealous lover. But I knew that couldn’t be right. Mercer would never put his feelings above the needs of the pack.
James was one of their best hunters. The pack had been weakened by his loss.
“Why?” was all I could think to ask.
And again, he seemed reluctant to speak. I shook my head.
“Why, Merc? Why would you do that to me?”
His eyes widened, and his nose snarled. “To you. To you! You think I did that to hurt you. Scarlett, you don’t know the first fucking thing about—”
“Oh, please.” I felt the anger creeping through my veins. “Don’t act like you really care, okay! I cried on your shoulder for weeks, Mercer, thinking you had no idea why I was so upset. Swallowing that pain because I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. And all along, it’d been you that sent him away.”
“I had to!”
I laughed, but the sound was chilling, causing even Mercer to take a step back. There had to be more to it. Something he wasn’t telling me.
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not just about me.”
“What?” he snapped.
I rolled my wrist. “God, I’m so stupid. Of course it wasn’t just about me. You don’t love me enough for that. I’m property. A belonging. James came sniffing around where he shouldn’t have been, and you didn’t like it. Just like
you didn’t like it with Blue tonight. That it?”
He flinched when I said it, but then that cold, hard mask dropped over his face again, and I didn’t care.
“How dare you say that to me.” He was pissed. His face had blanched nearly colorless, and beneath the rage, I heard pain, and I felt so damned guilty I couldn’t look at him anymore.
Flinching, I looked down at my feet, wishing I could take those words back. Wishing a lot of things right now. Feeling deflated but still kind of angry, I softly asked, “I’m just a stupid vampire, right? I mean that’s what they all think. What you must think.” I could hear the echo of my listless pulse in my ears.
I wasn’t sure why I was acting so unhinged. Maybe it was the blood? When I thought about that, I paused, examining why the deception had made me as angry as it had. Was I in love with James? I wasn’t sure. It’d been so long. All I knew was, I was a vampire in a shifter’s world.
The only thing in this crazy place that made any kind of sense was Merc. The thought of him ever betraying me was a pain worse than death. Not that losing James was some sort of unforgiveable betrayal. I’d bounced back, stronger and better for it. But Mercer and I had promised each other from the very beginning that there’d be no secrets between us. None.
And there never had been. On my end. That was when it finally dawned on me why Merc’s deception had stung.
Mercer snatched up my hand and brought it to his chest. I felt the pulse of his rapidly beating heart beneath my fingers.
“Look at me, Scar,” he said slowly, his voice still full of the wild, caged animal that beat inside all shifters but was tempered by something far deeper and more elemental.
I blinked and shook my head. The anger had vanished as quickly as it’d come on, and I suddenly felt like a moron for losing my shit that way. I grabbed my forehead with my other hand.
“Hey,” Merc said again, “look at me.”
And this time, I did look at him.
When I’d first met Mercer, my world had shifted on its axis. He’d easily been the most beautiful man I’d ever known in my entire, short-lived existence, with his clean looks that showcased a strong jawline and full lips that I’d sometimes had vivid, wicked dreams about licking and teasing. Gods, he was gorgeous. And kind. Patient. But powerful. And if I were honest with myself, if Merc had ever encouraged me, I would have been all over him like white on rice.
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1) Page 5