Finding Fire: Paranormal Romance (Bad Boys Of The Underworld Book 1)

by Crowe, Mallory

  “That’s how Mr. X’s number comes up on mine,” said Anna.

  Nicolas looked up to Anna. “I don’t think there’s anything more this Brad can tell us.” She felt the blood drain from her face when she understood the implication. If he was of no more use, Nicolas wanted his breakfast.

  “You’re going to do it here? Right in front of me?” she asked.

  A small smile came to his mouth. “Technically, Annabelle, I’m behind you.”

  “Smart ass. You can’t expect me to be able to drive while you’re sucking the life out of someone in the backseat,” she said.

  “I’m so tired,” he said. She could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “Please let me have this.”

  Now he says please. Once again, she thought about the strangeness of him even asking her permission. He could bite him no matter what she wanted. She just wasn’t sure she could focus on driving in a straight line with that going on in the backseat.

  “How long is this going to take?” She at least wanted to have a timeline.

  He smirked at the random question. “I’ve never timed it before. I suppose five or ten minutes,” he said.

  Five or ten minutes. She could handle that.

  She sighed. “Okay. But try to be nice to him. The last one who bit him wasn’t.”

  He cocked his head at that. “You still care, after all he said to you tonight? He’s wrong to blame you for the situation he finds himself in.”

  “He might be wrong to be so angry about it, but if it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be in this situation, or in this car with you about to bite him. This is my fault. We need to know why I’m of any interest to Mr. X. Brad might not be the only one I know who this vampire has visited.” Anna was suddenly happy about her lack of friends in the city, but she still had plenty of acquaintances. Apparently all of them had been in danger.

  Nicolas looked as if he was about to disagree with her, but then he shook his head. He pulled Brad to him. Anna tried to focus on the road but adjusted the mirror so she could have a better view of what was happening in the backseat. She noted that Nicolas was perfectly visible in the mirror.

  “You’ll not feel anything, and when I’m done, you’ll remember nothing but sitting in the seat untouched,” said Nicolas.

  Brad nodded. It looked as though Nicolas was tenderly holding Brad, but Anna knew better. Nicolas gently bent Brad’s head to bare his neck. He leaned to his neck, and Anna could no longer see his mouth. She thought he’d bitten already when Nicolas looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. His eyes were now completely black, with no whites visible. The second after their eyes met, his fangs sunk into Brad’s neck.

  Anna immediately glanced back to the road. When she looked back, Nicolas still stared at her. She could only see the upper half of his face. The rest of his body was hidden by Brad’s limp one. There were soft sucking sounds that filled the car. She reached for the radio to try to drown out the disgusting sounds.

  The men remained like that for the next two songs. The whole time, Nicolas stared at the mirror that reflected Anna’s face to him. It made her even more uncomfortable than she’d been before.

  When he was done, he gently laid Brad against the opposite window. Anna tried not to look at him. She didn’t want to know if his eyes were still black, or if he had any blood dripping from his mouth. She stared firmly at the road. “Do you feel better?”

  “I feel much better, thank you.”

  She spared a glance at Brad. He looked straight ahead with glossy eyes. He didn’t appear too bad, she supposed. He was just a bit paler than he’d been before. And he had the two fresh punctures, of course.

  “How could you keep your existence secret when you leave marks when you bite?” asked Anna.

  “We can still control their mind. We give them an alternate reason for the marks. My favorite is bug bites. Even if we don’t give a reason, people’s minds these days do not jump to monsters. They look for logical explanations. Vampires are not logical.”

  “Got that right,” muttered Anna. She finally spared a glance into the backseat at Nicolas. He looked much better. His skin was no longer so pale. It almost looked as if it glowed. He sat up straighter, she supposed due to his newfound energy.

  “So, um, where are we going?” she asked. It was bad enough she’d ever gotten into the car without asking where Aleksander actually was. She’d been a bit distracted when she’d left her apartment. Her wits were only just now returning to her. She didn’t think they would do her much good now that there was a full-strength vampire right behind her.

  “Aleksander has a large compound in the interior of Canada. We’ll probably reach there around our third night,” he said.

  Three nights of being alone in a car with Nicolas. Anna took a moment to absorb that. He didn’t scare her that much anymore. She knew she couldn’t physically match him, but he obviously didn’t want her dead. If he did, he could’ve killed her at any time. He needed her, or at least thought he did, to get to Aleksander. Until they reached him, Anna figured she’d be safe.

  As for her safety from his masculine charms, well, she would just have to try her best. She’d avoided men for twenty-eight years. Three more days shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. If she ever felt tempted, she would just have to remember how he looked with his mouth on Brad’s neck. He wasn’t human, and he fed off people. Not exactly boyfriend material.

  He didn’t look like Aleksander did when he’d killed Evie’s father. When she’d seen that graphic display, his black eyes terrified her. She hadn’t realized why until she’d seen Nicolas feeding just a few moments before. When Aleksander had fed, he’d truly enjoyed it. He was killing someone, and he reveled in the fact that he was taking a life. Anna had seen that joy in his eyes, and that’s what had stuck with her.

  Nicolas didn’t take joy from feeding off of Brad. It was more like something he had to do. She just didn’t know why he’d stared at her the whole time he was doing it. His gaze had been so intense, it had been hard for her to focus on the road. Was he imagining that it was her neck under his fangs? Was he trying to gauge her reaction to him biting a man right behind her?

  She was tired of his long stares at her. After spending most of her life avoiding attention, it was unnerving to get so much from someone who could kill her so easily.

  “Do you want to give me the directions, so I know I won’t miss an exit?” asked Anna. It would be nice to know how to find Aleksander without Nicolas.

  “It’s rather difficult to find. You’ll need me to direct you. It would be best if I drive as we get closer,” he said.

  That didn’t sit well with Anna. “You don’t want to tell me how to get there, do you?”

  He grinned at her deduction. “You did just see me feed. If you want to turn back, now might be the time.”

  “No, the time to run would be when I found bottles of blood in your refrigerator. I’m way past the running time. Now give me the directions,” she said.

  “We need to find a motel to drop off our guest.”

  Great. Now he was changing the subject. “Guest? How about ‘hostage’ or ‘dinner’?”

  “I thought the word ‘guest’ would appeal to your delicate sensibilities,” he said.

  Anna had never considered herself someone with delicate sensibilities. “Everyone has ‘delicate sensibilities’ compared to you. You’re practically barbaric.”

  He laughed. “Barbaric?”

  Apparently the thought of being similar to a caveman amused him. She scowled at his laughter but remained silent. They drove like that for a while. Soon enough, a large glowing sign above the freeway signaled a motel was close.

  As they pulled up to the motel, Anna asked, “Are we going to drive Brad’s car the whole way?”

  “No. We can use it for the rest of the night, but then we’ll have to find another vehicle,” he said.

  “Why? Will your mind stuff eventually wear off?” she asked.

  “Mind stuff? I’m no
t sure if you’re trying to insult me or not,” he said. “My control won’t wear off, but I can’t make everyone who comes into contact with him believe something. Anyone who knows Brad won’t believe he just gave his car to someone. They’ll be suspicious, and we can’t chance them calling the police.

  “The best thing to do would be to have him wake up and think his car has been stolen overnight. He won’t be able to contact the police until daylight, and by then we will have already abandoned the car.”

  A thought occurred to Anna. “Are we going to have to steal cars?”

  “If it makes you feel any better, we’ll try not to damage them. The police will eventually find the vehicles and return them to the rightful owners.” He seemed to be smiling at her hesitation to commit auto theft.

  “As a matter of fact, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  Nicolas shrugged. “It’s too late for you to turn back now.”

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind as you keep on pissing me off.”

  He laughed as he got out of the car and walked inside of the motel office. She stayed in the car with the still catatonic Brad.

  She watched Nicolas’s back as he talked to the clerk at the front desk. He was only wearing a lightweight black long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans. He was probably cold in the brisk night air, but Anna doubted he would want to stop for something warmer.

  The light fabric stretched over the muscles in his back, and Anna fixated on how they would move when he shifted his weight. She hadn’t been around many men in her life, and she definitely hadn’t seen many shirtless.

  She’d been to a couple of parties in college, but that was about it. The main place she could think of where men commonly went shirtless was the beach, and she never went there. The rare occasions she did have to swim, she wore a t-shirt over her suit to cover the scars that marked her back.

  Her PE teacher in high school had gotten so worried about her body image that he’d sent her to the counselor during the first few days of the swimming portion of her gym class. When Anna had finally gotten tired of trying to convince her teacher that her body image was fine, she’d pulled him aside and shown him her back.

  He’d taken it as well as he could, considering. People generally didn’t understand abuse. The whole concept confused them. They didn’t understand how parents or family could commit it, and they didn’t understand how kids could live through it. Ever since then, that teacher had been as nice as possible to Anna, and always took extra care with her. It was as though every time he looked at her, all he could see were her scars.

  Since then, she’d avoided showing anyone else her scars. She didn’t want anyone’s pity. She would like to just pretend they weren’t actually there. So that’s how she existed. She tried to act as if her life had only begun after she’d moved in with Abigail. However, there were a few problems with that, and their names were Evie and Charles.

  Until she knew what had become of them, she could never move on with her life. So here she was, admiring a vampire’s back as she sat in a car outside of a motel in the middle of the night.

  And to make matters worse, she now had a very strong urge to see what Nicolas would look like without his shirt. She’d already felt him up close and personal once. What would it be like to run her hands all over him when he had no clothes on at all? She closed her eyes and thought about the feel of his hair in her fingers. The teasing scrape of his teeth at her neck. But it hadn’t scared her. It excited her.

  Nicolas opened Brad’s door and Anna jerked back to reality. She tried to appear as normal as possible, but a blush crept up her cheeks. She didn’t think she’d ever blushed so much in her life.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Just a little jumpy,” she said. “It has been a crazy night.” And she hadn’t lied at all.

  He looked at her curiously for another second but then told Brad to get out of the car. Anna considered following them but decided it would be safer to sit in the car and try to cool off from her earlier thoughts. It was going to be a long three nights.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nicolas almost dragged the human to the room the clerk had directed him to. It was nothing much, but as long as it had a door that locked, Nicolas would’ve taken it.

  He ordered the human to lock the doors once he was alone, and then sleep for the next twelve hours. That should keep this Brad out of his hair for the time being. But that wouldn’t make the man safe. He knew where Annabelle’s apartment was and could go back at any time. He didn’t want Annabelle to have to worry about the next time this crazy man would pay her a visit.

  He’d been tempted to take care of the problem in the backseat of the car, but he knew Annabelle wouldn’t see the logic in it. She was so young. Even though she’d seen the full force of this human’s rage, including listening to him try to break down her door, she was still afraid Nicolas would hurt Brad.

  He didn’t know whether to respect or pity her for it.

  Nicolas walked out of the room and stood by the door. He didn’t move until he heard Brad obediently lock the door and then lie down on the bed.

  After he was satisfied he’d taken the necessary steps to keep Brad safe, he took out his phone and checked the time. It was about midnight. If they drove most this night and the next, they would have plenty of time on the third night to reach Aleksander’s Canadian compound.

  Annabelle was right when she accused him of not wanting her to know how to get there on her own. Right now it was the only thing she needed from him, and he didn’t want her to get rid of him so easily.

  He had a rather simple plan to reach Aleksander. He would send her in first. In her eagerness to discover the secrets to her past, she would do as he said. He would send her on a route where she was sure to be caught. When the guards discovered a human had breached the compound, they would rush to her, and Nicolas would slip in when they were distracted.

  It had always been his plan, but he’d never had a volunteer before. He could force a human to act, but it would be obvious to any other vampire that the human was under his influence. The only thing a controlled human would achieve would be to alert Aleksander that a vampire wanted to come in. Nicolas might as well ring the damn doorbell.

  Then Annabelle had walked into his apartment and life. Offered herself up on a platter, saying she would do anything to find Aleksander. Saying that she would die to find him. And Nicolas was happy to provide her an opportunity to die to find Aleksander.

  The only problem was that the more time he spent with her, the less he wanted her to die. Which was…curious. He knew he wanted to fuck her. He also wanted to feed from her. He would prefer to do the two at the same time. He hoped that if he got the opportunity to do that while they were on this little trip, these feelings would leave him alone, and he could focus on Aleksander.

  Maybe there was a way he could work this so she could survive. She’d probably never be able to talk to Aleksander, but that was a price he was willing to pay. Nicolas would have to kill him as soon as possible. He couldn’t keep him alive to talk to Annabelle because his chance of escaping was too great. He couldn’t let Annabelle come with him when he went to kill Aleksander, because she would probably die before she ever had a chance to ask any questions.

  Vampires were too much for any one human to handle, and the compound was crawling with them. Nicolas supposed he could ask Aleksander her questions for her, but he doubted Aleksander would remember anything about one child’s missing father. The night that had so greatly affected Annabelle was probably long forgotten by Aleksander.

  She would get over it if he refused her the opportunity to interrogate Aleksander for herself. At least she would be alive. Maybe one day she would even thank Nicolas. Maybe once she saw what he’d done for her, she would even crawl into his bed.

  He smiled at the thought. He was sure that eventually she would come to him. She’d responded well enough to him the other night. All he needed was enough time with
her and she would change her tune about her no-sex rule. Either way, he’d never agreed to the stupid thing, so that meant he could try to convince her to change her mind at all opportunities.

  With that thought fresh in his mind, he walked back to the car. Annabelle must have been watching out for him because she didn’t jump this time. He opened up her car door. “I’ll drive for a bit.”

  She gave him a scowl. “I’m a perfectly capable driver.”

  He tried to appear charming. “I’m sure you are, but I happen to enjoy driving.”

  “I have a feeling that isn’t the reason you want to drive.”

  “What makes you think that?” he asked, genuinely curious.

  “I always get suspicious about you when you make yourself look so—” She broke off as she searched for a word. “Cheerful,” she decided on.

  He laughed at the observation. “Charming,” he corrected. “I’m trying to appear charming to you. Is it working?”

  She smiled back at him. “I don’t think charming is a word that could really be used to describe you.” She looked so different when she smiled. Her lit-up face made her look even more like a college freshman. It made him want to kiss her.

  He inhaled and her scent filled his head. The temptation to lean down and take her mouth became so strong that he felt his fangs start to slide out. He needed to stop this before his eyes changed and she really saw how un-charming he could be.

  She’d seen through his lie, so he told her the truth. “It will be a long drive tonight. I have nothing to do but breathe in your scent. I’m worried that if I do not have something to distract me, I will not be able to control myself around you.”

  Her smile disappeared, and she sharply inhaled. He could hear her heartbeat speed up. He wished he knew whether it was in arousal or fear. The sound caused his fangs to fully extend in his mouth. He made sure his lips kept them covered from her sight.

  “Am I going to be in danger?” she asked.

  He was amused by the irony of that question. If she only knew how recently he’d planned to sacrifice her to further his own means. She was much safer now than she’d been ten minutes ago.