“You wouldn’t. He’s a good mile away.” Raking a frustrated hand through his hair, he turned toward her. “But I can hear the engine, and I feel his power field fading. There’s no way we can catch him before he’s out of range.” Shaking his head, he started toward her, purpose in his stride.
Despite herself, Beth cringed.
The vampire stopped in mid-step and glowered. “I’m not going to hurt you, dammit. I’m just going to take the chain off your neck. Doesn’t it hurt?”
Beth swallowed, suddenly aware of the links digging into her skin. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it does. I’d… umm… appreciate it.”
Painfully conscious of her bound wrists and the collar around her neck, she watched warily as the vampire approached and bent to examine the clasp. Warm fingers brushed her skin as he went to work on it.
He had to be at least seven inches taller than she was. Something hidden and feminine within her purred approval -- of that impressive height, of the width of his chest, of the warmth of his fingers on her throat. Oh, God, Beth realized, looking up into his face, he’s gorgeous.
His eyes were beautiful, large and deep-set, the color of melted chocolate striated with honey and gold. His brows were thick and black, matching surprisingly long lashes.
But there was nothing at all feminine about his lean, angular face or the width of his mobile mouth. His sensual lips tightened as he struggled with the clasp, and she felt her nipples peak.
Shame stung her at her own heated reaction. Cut it out, Beth! The man is a vampire.
He might not be soulless and undead as the legends insisted, but judging from the last ten minutes, he wasn’t exactly a choirboy either.
Until this moment, Beth wouldn’t have thought it was possible for her to feel any attraction for a vamp at all. Not after what happened to her parents, and certainly not after what Ramirez had done to her.
Yet there’d been such grief in the vampire’s voice for his Elena. Her inner romantic insisted that any man who loved a woman with such passion couldn’t be evil.
Besides, there was something about him that made her body ache. Even his scent was tempting -- dark and male and strangely sexy.
He looked up and met her dark eyes, and everything… stopped.
She was painfully aware of the warm brush of his knuckles on the upper curves of her breasts.
Then the vampire blew out a breath. Beth instinctively inhaled. He smelled of mint. With an effort she could almost feel, he tore his gaze away from hers. As if against his will, his gaze dropped to the cleavage displayed by the silk nightgown Ramirez had forced her to wear.
He swallowed.
Beth wanted to step away, but even that seemed beyond her as her traitorous mind produced a dangerous question.
How will it feel to kiss him?
He straightened convulsively, then hastily did something to the clasp. It came loose and he stepped back, dropping it on the floor. “Turn around,” the vampire ordered. “I’ll get the ropes around your wrists.”
Beth stared up at him, feeling as helpless as a bird hypnotized by a cobra. With an effort, she shook off the spell and turned her back. Steel whispered as he drew a knife. Oddly, she felt no fear. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her.
He sliced the ropes with a single pass of the blade, then retreated a pace. Though common sense warned her to put more distance between them, Beth turned to him again.
The desire and guilt she’d seen on his face was gone now, replaced by a distant courtesy. “Give me your name and address. Then you can nap while we take you home.”
Listening to the emphasis he’d put on those last words, Beth realized he’d intended them as a telepathic compulsion, the kind few mortals could resist. “Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not going to work. I’m Kith.”
His brows raised, and his attention fell to the healing vampire bite in her neck. Suspicion hardened his dark gaze. “So Ramirez was trying to Turn you.” He took a step back, eying her. “But why did he leave you here for us to find?”
Oh, God, what should she say? Would he kill her if he knew the truth?
He tensed, his expression going icy.
He’ll definitely kill me if I lie. Taking a deep breath, she met his gaze. “Actually, I suspect I’m bait.”
Chapter Three
Morgan hated to admit it, but Ramirez had good taste in bait.
Beth Chase was tall and slim, with a delicately pretty oval face and big brown eyes balanced by an erotic mouth. Her dark hair frothed around slim shoulders, drawing male attention to the plunging V neckline of her silk nightgown and the sweet double curves of her cleavage. The whole damsel-in-distress effect was heightened by the bruises on her slender arms and the vampire bite purpling the long, slim column of her throat.
All in all, she brought every one of his protective instincts to quivering attention. That didn’t really bother him; it was to be expected.
The problem was, his dick found her equally fascinating.
It was the first time Morgan had felt this kind of arousal since Elena’s death, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t have time for women right now. Once Ramirez was dead, things would be different, but until then he had far too much to atone for.
Yet as the girl described meeting Ramirez, Morgan still found himself much more aware of her than he liked.
His gaze dropped to her swaying backside under the soft silk of her nightgown. When he inhaled, he breathed her scent, delicately feminine and spiced with arousal. She wanted both him and Garret, though he wasn’t sure she was aware of it.
“She reminds me of Elena,” Garret said in their link. He’d joined them after Ramirez had made his escape.
“Too thin,” Morgan said shortly. Elena was a voluptuous seductress, not leanly muscular like this girl. Why the hell did she appeal to him so?
“But there’s something about her.”
“She’s a fighter. Elena was a fighter.” That was all it could be.
Beth turned to face them, raking both hand through her long, tangled hair. Unable to hear their mental conversation, she was describing the events leading up to her abduction. “I’m not sure when he realized I was Kith, but after my gallery show, he started trying to seduce me.” As if unconsciously, her fingers dropped to gingerly explore the fang punctures in her throat. “We went out a few times, but I broke it off when I realized something about him made my skin crawl.”
“You have good instincts,” Garret told her.
“He reminded me of Ridgemont.” She turned to pace again, the full silk skirts of her gown kicking out around her long legs. “He had the same kind of slick surface charisma with something nasty underneath.”
Morgan frowned. “Ridgemont?”
“Edward Ridgemont, my brother-in-law’s sire. He kidnapped me a few years ago as part of a sick game he was playing with Cade and my sister.”
Garret’s brows rose. “Is getting abducted a hobby with you?”
Beth grimaced. “Does seem like I should have used up my quota. I mean, what are the odds that I’d be taken by vampires twice?” She sighed, shaking her dark hair back from her fine-boned face. “So this jerk -- your jerk, I mean, Ramirez --”
“He’s not our anything,” Morgan growled.
“I hear that. Anyway, after I refused to see him again, he kicked down the door of my apartment and snatched me right in the middle of a phone call with Val.” She stopped and stood staring at the floor, her mouth tight. “He brought me here, bit me, and forced me to drink his blood.” Brown eyes brooding, she looked up at them again. “That was night before last. Last night I didn’t see him at all -- evidently he was off leading Val and Cade on some kind of wild goose chase, with a couple of assassins thrown in for good measure.”
“That does sound like Ramirez.” Garret frowned, contemplating his rapier and pulling a cloth out of his pocket. Slowly, he started wiping the drying blood from its length.
“My sister must be going nuts.” She headed for the end table and the landline
phone that stood there. “I’m going to try calling her again.”
A sudden thought made Morgan frown. “Could Beth be working with Ramirez?”
Garret scowled. “That’s a bit paranoid even for you. Besides, if she was lying, we’d smell it.”
“Maybe. I’d feel better if we could touch her thoughts.”
“Well, we can’t. She’s Kith, so she’s shielded. We can’t get into her mind, and we can’t compel her the way we would an ordinary mortal. We’re stuck with doing this the hard way.”
Beth finished leaving a message on her sister’s cell and dropped the phone back in its cradle. “Val’s still not picking up.” Worry drew a line between her brows as she raked her fingers through her tangled hair. “What if Ramirez’s killers have gotten to her?”
“Don’t leap to conclusions,” Garret told her. “There are a lot of places on the planet that don’t have cell service. Knowing Ramirez, he probably lured your sister to one deliberately.”
“Jesus, it’s Ridgemont all over again.” She grimaced, dropping wearily into a chair. “And he’s bitten me.” Fisting her hands in her lap, she stared into space, her expression fearful. “I’m going to become a vampire.”
“No, actually, you’re not.” Morgan forced himself to meet those big brown eyes. It was best to be honest with her. “Considering the amount of time that’s passed since he bit you, you should be a lot sicker than you are. That you’re still relatively healthy means he hasn’t drained enough of your blood or fed you enough of his.”
Hope lit her face, stabbing guilt into his heart. “So I’m going to be all right?”
Garret moved to crouch at her feet, taking her hand in his. “No, sweet, I’m afraid not.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “What do you mean?”
His grip tightened on her hand. “Ramirez may not have given you enough blood to turn you, but even a little can kill you.”
The blood drained from her face. “How long?”
“That depends on your immune system,” Garret said gently. “You’ll get sicker as your body fights the virus. None of us is really sure how it works, but Elena thought that in a partial transformation, the immune system turns against the victim’s organs. Eventually so much damage is done that everything starts shutting down.”
Morgan rested a hand on her shoulder and met her gaze. “The only thing that will save you is if Ramirez completes the process.”
She pulled her hand from Garret’s and sat up straight, her expression grim. “At which point I’ll be the bastard’s slave. I don’t think so. I can already feel him as it is, and I don’t much like what I’m feeling.”
Morgan came to attention. “What?”
She shrugged. “I can sense him. Evidently, we’ve already got some kind of mind link. Not all that strong -- I just get impressions, not thoughts.”
“What’s he feeling now?” Garret asked.
“Smug.”
The cousins looked at each other. “Yeah, that’s Ramirez,” Garret said.
“Could another vampire complete the Change?” Beth asked, hope and fear struggling on her face. “My sister, maybe?”
Both men simultaneously winced. “The process is a bit… sexual, Beth,” Garret pointed out delicately.
She grimaced. “I see your point. Even Cade… No.” She slumped.
Garret looked over at his cousin. “We could do it.”
Morgan stared back, incredulous. “Are you out of your mind? I feel sorry for the girl, but I don’t care to be linked to her for the next century.”
“Not even to kill Ramirez?” There was a speculative half-smile on his cousin’s lips Morgan knew all too well. Garret was cooking up a scheme. His gaze slid to the girl visibly fighting terror. They couldn’t let her die without lifting a finger to help. He sighed. “What do you have in mind?”
* * *
Garret watched hope and angry guilt war in Morgan’s dark chocolate gaze. He knew had to play this carefully. This girl could save them all, if only… he clamped down on his own emotions, knowing his cousin could sense them. “If we Turn her and she retains that link to Ramirez, we could use it to track him down.”
A muscle ticked in Morgan’s cheek. “Or he could use her against us, which is probably his intention. In retrospect, I think it’s more than a little suspicious that we happened to encounter the one mortal who knew where this place was at this particular time.”
“Morgan…”
Anger sizzled through their psychic link like heat lightning. “The girl is right -- she’s bait for some trap we don’t even see. Why else would he leave a half-turned Kith for us to find, especially when he obviously tried to make her as appealing as possible.” He jerked a thumb at her. She watched them warily, her pretty face cool with distrust. “Look at that dress -- hell, look at that cleavage. He might as well have hung an ‘eat me’ sign around her neck.”
Garret grinned. “I’ve got to admit, I wouldn’t mind taking a bite.”
“Except that apple is poisoned, coz.”
“How? How can he use her against us if we Turn her? We’ll be her sires --”
“We? I’ve never heard of a vampire having two masters --”
“And I’ll bet Ramirez hasn’t, either. He may be planning to use her against us, but if we both Turn her, there’s no way in hell he could overcome our control. Maybe we could even use her against him.”
Breath held, he watched Morgan weigh the idea, consider its consequences. “It might work,” his cousin said slowly.
“I appreciate the fact you guys saved my butt just now,” Beth announced into the silence. “But I still don’t know you from Adam’s house cat. And I sure as hell don’t know you well enough to let one of you change me into a vampire.”
Surprised, Garret looked over at her. “How did you…”
She shrugged. “My sister and Cade have these silent little conversations all the time. I’ve gotten good at guessing the content from expressions. And in this case, it’s not hard to put two and two together. I repeat, I don’t know you.”
Garret ground his teeth. He hadn’t expected opposition from her. “Do you have some other option you haven’t told us about? Your vampire relatives are God knows where, and you don’t know if you can reach them in time for them to save you -- assuming they’re still alive.”
Her stricken expression made him feel like a bastard.
“Even if you can reach them, Ramirez is very old and very powerful,” Morgan pointed out. “Freeing you is not going to be easy. Do you really want to involve them in a mental battle they may lose?”
Beth frowned at him. “I had the impression you were against this idea.”
“I was.” Morgan turned to look at Garret. “But maybe it’s time we all take a chance.”
She went still. Garret could almost see her mind working behind those remarkable eyes, could sense the fears warring in her: her fear of death against her fear of enslavement by two vampires she didn’t know. Her gaze flickered nervously between them. Garret wondered if she was imaging what it would be like to be taken by them both.
Long fingers crept to the bite on her throat again, then dropped. She squared her shoulders. “If I help you, will you help me find Val and Cade? Help them defeat Ramirez’s assassins?”
Morgan studied her thoughtfully. “Yes.” He shrugged. “Though we’d have gone after the assassins anyway. They’re Ramirez’s spawn. We can’t leave them alive.”
Beth took a deep breath, blew it out. “All right. If you save my sister, I’ll do whatever you want.”
Chapter Four
Morgan hadn’t touched a woman in sixteen months. For the first year, he’d simply felt no desire, not with the memory of Elena’s death so vivid. He’d fed, when he fed at all, on the criminals he stalked when the Hunger was on him.
In the past few months, he’d abstained because he hadn’t killed Ramirez yet. It was the kind of quest that seemed to call for celibacy.
Which sounded stupidly
melodramatic, when Morgan actually stopped to think about it. So he didn’t.
Now he realized he’d made a mistake. A mortal man could get away with celibacy, but for a vampire, sex was too closely tied to the need for blood.
The minute they’d decided to Turn the girl, the Hunger had hit. It had been all he could do not to snatch her into his arms, strip off that lace negligee, and fuck her right there on Ramirez’s shabby couch.
Luckily, Garret had realized how close he was and sent him off to get the SUV. Now they were on the way back to the house they were using as a base of operations. Morgan was driving, mostly for something to do with his hands.
Beth rode in the back seat. Every time he breathed in, her sweetly feminine scent seemed to wrap around his balls. He could hear her heartbeat, could almost taste her blood on his tongue. His fangs were aching.
“Are you going to be able to keep it together?” Garret asked in their link. “This kid has been through enough as it is. She’s not up to having you pounce on her.”
“I don’t ‘pounce’ on women.” He flicked on the blinker and made the turn into the upscale development where they had their temporary base. “I’m not a barbarian.”
His cousin said nothing, not even I told you so. Garret had been warning him for months that he was playing with fire, but Morgan hadn’t listened. He’d thought he could handle it.
So much for that bit of arrogance.
“Nice house,” Beth said as they pulled into the driveway. “Is it yours?”
“Belongs to the president of some company around here,” Garret told her as Morgan reached to punch the garage door opener clipped to the driver’s side visor. “We… ah… convinced him it was time to take the family on an overdue vacation. The kids had never been to Disney World. Can you imagine? All that money, and he’d never taken his children to see the Mouse. What’s the point?”
Nobody did distracting small talk better than Garret. Morgan concentrated on parking. It required far more effort than it should have.
His dick was aching. So were his fangs, throbbing right down to the roots. “Why not just get a hotel room?” Beth asked.
Forever Kisses Volume 1 Page 32