Stolen By The Warrior

by C. J. Brookes

  She stopped, jerking on his hand. She sent him a sly smile that had his gut heating. Damn. He wanted that look to be the only thing she was wearing. And soon.

  “They care. What that means is that the rest of my family is letting my brother and uncle look for us. And when they find you, they will most likely kill you for what you and your friends have done. They probably didn’t report it to the police because they don’t want any questions when you disappear!”

  Aodhan threw his head back and laughed. Then laughed again. “Kitten, there is no way a set of puny human males could ever make me disappear. I am the best warrior my people have ever seen. Just ask the historians of my people. Read the stories and legends of what I have done. Me, the male the goddess has chosen for you.” He pulled her into his arms and lifted her off her feet as he stopped laughing and spun her around quickly. “Yes. The goddess has chosen me a mate with a sense of humor. Human men, indeed. Your brother would be so foolish to try to take you from me!”

  “He’ll kill you. And I will watch!” She hissed the words at him, and he wondered if she realized how the tiny fangs she now possessed changed her speech. So pretty, those little fangs. He wanted to feel them in his flesh. She pounded on his back with a fist. “If he doesn’t, Rathan will. Let me down!”

  “Not yet. I’m enjoying holding you close. I’ve waited centuries to do just that, after all.” Her chest was pressed to his and at the angle he held her he could look directly into her green eyes. What he wanted was for her to wrap those long legs of hers around his hips and then let him taste her. “You are beautiful. Perfect in every way. I want to hold you forever. Please let me; there is nothing I have ever wanted more.”

  10

  She didn’t want to believe him. If she believed him, what was next? Mallory tried to ignore the hot male hand on her rear and the feel of his heart beating against hers. His neck was so close, and she could see the pulse beating just beneath the skin. Could smell the blood beneath his skin.

  Could smell it and want it. She wasn’t lost to what it meant.

  Vampire.

  She knew exactly what she was now.

  She couldn’t live like this. Couldn’t go around Becca or Jade or Cass or the kids hungering for blood. It would terrify them and her.

  With her years of tae kwon do, she could hurt her sister or cousins far too easily. Add in what had to be superhuman strength…it would be horrible. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t risk her family. Not until she fully understood what he had done to her.

  She closed her eyes as the smell of him flooded her lungs. As a need she’d never felt before took over. She pressed closer. “I can’t do this.”

  “Do what, kitten?” His tone was sly, but she refused to look at him.

  His hold changed from exuberant playfulness to intent.

  Damn him. He knew. He knew exactly what was going on with her. Even if she didn’t fully understand it herself. Damn him.

  “Suck your blood. It’s gross. It’s wrong. You did this to me; hurt me, hurt my family. You did this. I…can’t…”

  “It’s who you are now.” His hand tightened on her rear, and the other skimmed up her spine to wrap around the back of her neck. “Are you trying to tell your mate that you need to drink, kitten? Do you want that from your male? Do you wish me to provide for you, as is my right as your Rajni?”

  She shook her head, but they both knew she was lying. She needed something from him. “No! Let me go!”

  “Is that what you really want me to do? What your body is crying out for is perfectly natural between mates, my love.”

  She was just supposed to ignore the satisfaction in his tone. He was crazy. Beyond crazy. His hand was firm on her neck, guiding her closer to his throat. She didn’t need any more encouragement than that. Mallory needed it, wanted what he was offering.

  She nipped him, then sank her fangs deep into his skin.

  Mallory just couldn’t stop herself. No matter how hard she tried to pull away. She just couldn’t.

  Just what she was doing sank in.

  Tears ran down her cheeks, but she kept her grip on him firm. This was what she needed to survive. That was what mattered. She would survive.

  His arms were strong around her as he held her. He didn’t move, except when she almost slipped, he caught her.

  Mallory closed her eyes as she continued to drink from him.

  “Take what you need from me, kitten. It is mine to gladly give.”

  She pulled her mouth away from his neck. “I hate you.”

  “I know. But that will change in time.” He dropped a kiss on her mouth. Mallory just let him, too stunned by what she’d just done to protest.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Ever.” Her nails sank deeply into the skin on his arm. She wiped her mouth with the back of one pale hand. “You’ve made me a monster. I’ll never forgive that.”

  “You are not a monster. Not at all. This is what you were meant to be. You need to remember that. The Four Fates have put us together, as has the goddess. We will be wise to remember that.”

  11

  After he led her back to the suite after she’d drunk his blood, Mallory waited until he was gone to do whatever it was vampires did for a living, then took another shower and scrubbed herself clean. She couldn’t seem to remove the feel of his touch against her skin, no matter how hot she ran the water or how hard she scrubbed her body.

  She could still feel his touch.

  It was almost as if she wanted it, craved it even. Finally, after nearly an hour under the spray, she sank to the bottom of the shower stall and wrapped her arms around her knees. Giving up.

  She didn’t cry. She didn’t think she had any tears left to cry. It wasn’t him she was trying to wash away, and she finally had to admit that to herself. She’d fed from him, had touched him and tasted his blood willingly.

  Willingly.

  She’d wrapped herself around a monster who had come to kill her.

  There was no way she could go home. Not and be around her sister and cousins. Some of her male cousins were still teenagers; the youngest, Davin, was barely twelve.

  She couldn’t be around them, couldn’t put them in danger. Neither could Emily, Joselyn, or Mickey. It wouldn’t be fair to any of them.

  It sickened her when the realization sank in that she had to stay right where she was. She had to protect the rest of their human family from what she and the others had all become.

  She pulled the remnants of her strength around herself and stood. Mallory flicked off the still-steaming hot water and then stepped out of the shower. She dried herself and dressed, deliberately donning the turquoise tunic and trousers identical to what she’d seen him wear instead of the jeans and sweatshirt with Dardanos Resort emblazoned across it he’d ordered her from somewhere.

  If she was no longer human, she would no longer dress like one. No, she’d wear this symbol of whatever it was she’d become until the knowledge of the danger she presented others was instinctive. She wound the white silk scarf around her waist deliberately, and another around her hair, then studied herself in the mirror.

  Determination was evident in her face, and she squared her shoulders. Never mind that she’d seen her fangs again and that her eyes had somehow tilted slightly up like a…Dardaptoan’s.

  She had survived so much worse than this—losing her mother when she was seven, her aunt dying when she was eleven, being raped when she was twenty-one—she could get through this somehow.

  He had not killed her yet. She would survive this.

  Her first order of business was to find her family and then learn as much about this place and its occupants as possible.

  Then she’d decide what to do about him.

  12

  He knew the words he’d just said had shocked his normally unflappable sister.

  “She’s a Taniss? As in Leo Taniss?” Aureliana asked.

  “Yes. The second granddaughter. Her name is Mallory, and her eyes are gr
een. She is beautiful.”

  “But she’s his granddaughter. I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like the goddess.” Aureliana shot him a skeptical look from rich yellow eyes. “How do you know this is real?”

  “But it is. She is mine. It is no trick; even if such a thing is possible.”

  “No one will like that she is from him. I didn’t want you to do this idiot plan to begin with.”

  “Yet if I hadn’t—and I didn’t agree, either; I just had to do it—I would not have found her. That is how the goddess works, though. You will like Mallory. Her grandfather aside. I sense she has no love for him, either. She is so frightened, Auri. Terrified of me, but more so of herself and what she has become. She barely felt safe as a human, now I have destroyed her world—and I came to kill her. I’m the boogey monster. How do I help her? How do I make her…”

  “Love you?” Aureliana asked, kicking her foot against the leg of his chair. “She’d be stupid not to. And she’s your Rajni, unless you’re mistaken there, so shouldn’t it just be done by now? Isn’t that the way it works?”

  Aureliana had just turned four hundred sixteen and had yet to find her own mate. Aodhan just hoped his future brother-in-law was wise enough to recognize Aureliana’s strength and perceptive enough to recognize the tenderness she often hid beneath a tough exterior. She was a closet romantic, though she did not want him to know. And she greatly longed for babes of her own.

  “It’s not working that way. She has been hurt so deeply, and fears males. I took her from her home, hurt her, terrified her. Changed her into…”

  “What she sees as a monster. I get it, brother. If someone were to try to kill me, I don’t know that I could be forgiving. Even if he was my mate. I definitely don’t think I would ever trust him again. It would take a lot to change that fear. I think you need to teach her that none of us are truly monsters. Therefore, she has not become one. Let her see the softer side of you, and of our people, in general. Familiarity might soften her view toward us. Unless she’s completely stupid, she’ll eventually see we aren’t really all that different.”

  He shot her a pointed look at the snark she’d slipped in. “I am a warrior, Auri. How am I supposed to show tenderness?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll manage, somehow,” Aureliana said. “In the meantime, what are you doing about her family? You can’t just keep her here like a cat you stole from the highway. Or worse—someone’s backyard.”

  “Watching them for now. Investigating her father and uncles, still. She is adamant that they wouldn’t have anything to do with harming our people. Seems to really admire and respect them. She does not speak the same of her grandfather. According to Rydere and the others, the same is said for her sister and cousins. All insist their fathers and uncles would not hurt anyone.”

  “Do you believe them? Is it possible the bastard kept his…side dealings…away from his family?”

  Aodhan thought for a moment of the videos he had watched, of the evidence he personally had collected against Leonard Taniss. None had any hint that any of Taniss’s sons were involved. Yet. It was entirely possible that Leo Taniss had kept his sons out of his murderous dealings with Dardaptoans. For his female’s sake, and her cousins’, he hoped so. Still, if the second generation Tanisses were innocent, that made what Aodhan and the others had planned to do to Mallory and her sister and cousins even more reprehensible. The blood laws had demanded the blood of those who were knowingly involved—or their children. The line could not split that far. If her father was innocent and she had been targeted, then it was he who had been in the wrong. And she and her cousins the wronged. He would have to ask Theo, who headed the judicial system. It was an archaic law that he did not agree with, but it was what his people had demanded.

  “How do I make up for what I have done to her?”

  Aureliana stared at him for a moment, sadness and longing on her face. “Just love her, brother. As you would if she had been any other female chosen for your Rajni.”

  “I already do.” Aodhan nodded, then watched his sister walk away. Aureliana so longed to be loved. She had been there when her best friend, the healer Kindara, met her own Rajni. And had been there for her friend after that Rajni had been murdered at Leo Taniss’s hands. She understood how deep a Rajni bond went.

  Aureliana had seen many of her age mates find their mates through the last two hundred years. Female Dardaptoans—scarcer than males—often found their Rajnis earlier, usually around their two or three hundred years. But Aureliana was past that, and still alone. Aodhan knew his sister wanted her mate and children, despite her insistence that she was a warrior of equal measure to any male of their Adrastos family house. Aureliana had always had such a soft spot for children.

  Hopefully, his sister would find her own happiness sometime soon. Aodhan hated seeing the hope fade from her eyes a little more each year she spent alone.

  Perhaps tomorrow he would introduce the two. Aureliana could help Mallory understand what it was she had become. And maybe seeing his sister would help her forgive him for what he had been a part of.

  13

  Mallory looked for her sister and cousins as she explored the hotel, but didn’t see them. Probably locked up somewhere in the lap of luxury until they agreed to be vampire brides. Mallory hadn’t been stopped by anyone when she’d left the wing decorated in turquoise and gold, though she had passed quite a few people dressed in clothing similar to hers. After an hour of wandering through the hotel, she decided to find a spot and just watch. To study and learn what she could.

  She sank into a plush orange velvet chair to just observe. It swallowed her, obviously built for someone bigger than her. Were all of these creatures huge?

  Aodhan was at least seven feet four inches tall, and his friends were all at least six and a half feet tall. Even the women Mallory saw milling through the lobby were her height of five-nine, or taller. Why? Something genetic?

  She’d have to ask Joselyn about that. Mallory was an accountant at heart and had been working with her father to eventually become Taniss Industries’ chief financial officer. Genetics were not her thing.

  She closed her eyes at the thought of her father and what he must be experiencing right now with both her and Mickey missing. Longing for him hit her so hard she almost doubled over. She hoped he was ok, that Rand and Becca were keeping an eye on him. Hoped he was remembering to take his heart medication. Despite looking twenty years younger than he actually was, her father had a few heart problems. He’d had them all his life, and Mallory lived in fear of the day his heart finally gave out. Having two of his four children missing could possibly be killing him.

  She didn’t know how long she sat in the hotel lobby, watching the people coming and going. It didn’t take too much to realize that about a fifth of the people—obviously guests—wandering through the hotel were human. That surprised her. Unless the vampires were luring them here as a blood source?

  That didn’t make sense. Mallory was close enough to hear some of the conversation from the front desk area. Many of the humans were checking out of the hotel and leaving. Others were checking in.

  It was a real hotel.

  Every indication said yes, it was. But Mallory knew instinctively that the men posted at the doors, wearing gray tunics with turquoise stripes down the sleeves were there for a reason. Her. And her cousins.

  They were security; she could see it in the way they stood, the way they watched everyone coming and going into the hotel. The way they’d studied her when she’d first entered the lobby and the way they’d tensed. They had fighting experience, most likely martial arts like he did. And just under their tunics she’d seen the holsters. These men were armed, but to keep people out or to keep people in?

  Mallory made a note of where each man was positioned and studied each man’s mannerisms. There had to be a weak link among the security staff somewhere, and though she’d determined she was not going anywhere for a long while, having that knowledge would only c
ome in handy.

  “Well, kitten, have you enjoyed your day exploring in the hotel?”

  His voice came from behind the chair and Mallory turned to look at him. She’d felt him coming.

  He wasn’t alone; the vampire Cormac was at his side, looking dark and dangerous. Criminal. She worried for Joselyn. There was no gentleness about the Dardaptoan dressed in green, and Mallory feared for her cousin.

  “Where’s my cousin?” Mallory asked, ignoring the hand Aodhan held out to her. “Have you hurt her again?”

  14

  Aodhan was thrilled to see her dressed in his colors, despite the wariness still in her green eyes. She stood challenging Cormac, her spirit that of a true warrior. A fighter.

  “Your cousins are all quite well, kitten. Including Joselyn. I believe she and her dog are exploring the gardens at the moment. We can take a walk ourselves, then go to dinner. I’ve arranged something special.”

  “Bully for you.” She said it, but her words lacked heat. Aodhan was resolved to ignore her reluctance to be with him as long as that reluctance existed. The goddess decreed they be together. No one on the planet better suited him than this once-human girl. And what were a few days or even weeks of her resistance, considering they would be together for centuries? He nodded at Cormac, and the other male left, probably to search out his own reluctant Rajni.

  Aodhan brushed a kiss against red curls, ignoring the way she stiffened beneath his hand. “I hope you enjoy fine dining, Mallory. This resort features four restaurants, including one that is quite divine. Our chef routinely takes classes in France. He makes the best seafood. After dinner, we are going to the elementary school. Their theater club is putting on one of my favorite fairy tales.”