by Joey W. Hill
Slowly, she lifted her lashes, looked up at his face, so close to hers. The sensual lips, slash of cheekbones, those glittering, dangerous eyes. She saw it all, and knew her heightened senses weren’t because of her almost dying. The energy pulsing from him had always been this, a creature of the shadows.
"I knew you were something marvelous,” she whispered. And then she said it in her mind. What she knew had to be the truth.
Vampire.
His eyes darkened. Her hands lowered to his chest as he moved his to her shoulders. He gathered her hair with one hand, a slow twist that bared her neck. Tightening his grip, he made her tilt her head, exposing that area further. When he dipped his head, brought his lips to her flesh, he followed the pulsing artery up to her jaw. Every nerve focused on what he was doing. There was so much power in this kind of stillness; she thought it could shockwave the world out of existence with nothing more than a sigh.
His tongue teased her flesh, and she swayed, but it was all right. He had her now, his strength holding her, and it took so little, he had so much of it, even diminished from injury. His teeth grazed her. With them pressed against her, she felt the exceptional sharpness of his canines, felt them lengthen, thicken, as they unsheathed.
She felt his hunger, and knew she could feed him.
In the alley, it had been all adrenaline and survival, no pause for trepidation. She didn’t feel trepidation now, exactly, but a rippling anxiety that she answered by tipping her head further away, toward the hand holding her opposite shoulder. She put her lips on his knuckles, an act of obedience, homage, and acceptance.
He growled, something that turned her to liquid, and then he bit down, that spike of pain followed by something in her that embraced the impalement. Only this time, her reaction was even stronger than what she’d felt in the alley.
The climax shuddered from deep within her womb and expanded outward, a rolling, undeniable tide that took her muscle by muscle with excruciating pleasure. A cry broke her lips and she bucked in his hands, trying to stay still but nothing was in her control. Her feet sought purchase against the tops of his, her fingers clenched on his shoulders. He dropped that hand she had her mouth against to her backside, bringing her full against him, lifting her one-handed against him, so her core was settled against his erection, firm and straining against the cotton trousers. She rubbed herself there, the climax increasing in intensity as he kept his fangs embedded in her neck.
He banded his arm around her waist, carrying her writhing body to a table. He sat her there, shifting his hold to her nape. When he withdrew his fangs, he licked the wounds with a sensual enjoyment that made her shudder with need. He let go of her waist only long enough to yank the cotton trousers out of his way. She already had her legs locked over his hips.
He sheathed himself in her damp, spasming cunt, which clamped down on him, making him utter a reverent curse against her flesh. She moaned in answer, her fingertips slipping down to dig into his chest like claws.
He withdrew and thrust back in, powerfully enough to push her back a foot. He returned the arm to her waist to keep her anchored and she held on, her glazed eyes resting on his face, taking in every flex of his jaw, the movement of his body, everything happening behind his eyes.
I want to know who you are. I want to know everything about you.
It was new to her, having someone in her head when she had these spontaneous, heartfelt feelings that she normally concealed.
She wanted so much to put her arms all the way around him, but enough of her brain cells were functioning to remind her that his back wasn’t up to being scraped raw by her fingernails. Which would happen, because even though her climax was ebbing, every stroke of his cock inside her was creating intense aftershocks, wresting more cries from her throat.
“Love hearing you plead for more,” he muttered.
She loved hearing the strain in his voice. She tightened down, lifting her hips to meet his every thrust.
More, more, more. Yes. She didn’t want him to ever stop. Except she loved it just as much when, with a ripple of his muscles under her legs and hands, and a hard groan, he let himself release. He jetted inside her wet heat, making her cunt wetter and sending her into another incredible roll of sensation, just from the friction of his seed spurting inside her body.
He went on for awhile, as if he was trying to plow deeper and deeper into her. Sensing a change in what was happening inside him, she levered herself up. He helped, his arm immediately curving around her back, and she overlapped her arms high on his neck, palming his smooth skull with both hands. She pressed her upper torso fully against his, holding on, her face against his throat and shoulder.
I’m here, Master. I’m here. You saved me. You protected me.
His hand cupped her skull in return, and slowly, slowly, he stopped. He stayed within her, though, as they both drew deep breaths. The lore said vampires didn’t breathe, but both he and Anwyn did. There were a lot of things she’d wonder about, maybe even ask about, if he was okay with that.
But later. Not now. Now, she didn’t need to know anything. She just needed to be in his arms.
Right where she knew, deep in her heart, he needed her to be.
Chapter Sixteen
Wolf’s phone call had been to Fortuitous Jones. Wolf and Fort shared the same sire, Robert Nolan, who’d been Fort’s best mate in the trenches during WWII. Nolan had unfortunately died in an explosion when he did contract covert ops work during the Korean War, but he’d planted in Fort the idea of turning humans with intelligence and military backgrounds, whose human lives had reached a dead end.
He’d also taught Fort how to choose such people, in a manner that had resulted in less of the impulse control and stability problems that often plagued made vampires. A problem that routinely caused born vampires to look down on made ones, as an inferior strain of their race.
There were undeniable advantages to having vampires with intelligence and military training. Fort was one of the few vampires with almost carte blanche approval from the Council to turn humans, those who met his specifications and gut feel about how they could benefit the species overall.
He’d brought two of those vampires with him to Atlanta, a three-vampire team. They were onboard not only with providing transitional security to Atlantis, but restructuring and increasing it. Predictably, Daegan waited until they arrived before he left to pursue the other loose end—the cell who’d committed the attack. Just like with Wolf’s interview, Daegan personally vetted the security team himself through Gideon and Anwyn’s minds, the vampires who would be watching over his family in his absence. Wolf didn’t take offense. In Daegan’s stealthy shoes, he would have felt the same.
Fort lived up to the name. Built even more like a tank than Wolf, a gorilla might be the only beast with a fighting chance against the male hand to hand, and that was even before he became a vampire.
Allan Walker was an Army Ranger. He considered Fort his sire, though technically, that was another vampire, Clarence Wilson. Clarence had turned him for reasons of his own and then abandoned him. Allan would have likely stumbled into an early death, like many made vamps without a responsible sire, but Fort had found him and taken over the job.
Saturnia had been with the CIA before she became a vampire, and Fort was her actual sire.
When Wolf had met Allan and Saturnia, back when he was in Colorado, and learned of their skillsets, he’d told Fort he was obviously one of his rare mistakes. An observation that had earned him a narrow look and one of Fort’s exceptionally loquacious responses.
“You aren’t.”
Allan had snorted and elbowed Wolf. “Yeah. But don’t be too reassured by that. Fort believes he’s pretty, too.”
That was another unusual thing about Fort. As part of their predatory edge, all vampires had an undeniable sexual appeal and exceptional beauty. But Fort pointed out that was because the transition made the most of a person’s best features.
“When you st
art out looking rough as a cob,” he’d commented brusquely, “You can’t do much with that, except throw it to the pigs.”
His blunt features could easily blend into a crowd. At a glance, in the right clothes, he was the stereotype of the construction foreman, a plumber, a steelworker. A man who’d worked hard, dirty, manual labor long enough that it had stamped its mark on his weathered face.
“Dress him up in the right clothes, and he’s got the physique of a demi-god,” Saturnia had commented once. “But I can’t get him away from the sales racks at the Goodwill.”
“A Hershey bar wrapper is plain, because what’s inside is pure bliss,” Fort had retorted. “And everyone knows it. My mother named me Fortuitous for a reason. When you’re born with this many gifts, the good Lord has to balance it, so as not to incur the jealous wrath of lesser men.”
He preferred his oversized button-down shirts over loose jeans, so his physique looked burly, maybe running to extra pounds. Yet anyone who sparred with him knew his shape was the result of a chest shaped like a barrel, and muscled thighs thick as pilings.
Saturnia, in comparison, was so thin she could stand behind him and disappear, but her agile mind made her more deadly than most of the far more physically intimidating vampires Wolf had met. Her mind was four steps ahead of almost everyone else’s, all the time. A mix of races, she had smooth fawn-colored skin, and gray-blue eyes that held a multitude of secrets. When Wolf had last seen Saturnia, she’d had her head shaved, a lightning bolt sculpted in the peach fuzz on the right side. Now she’d let her hair grow out in the front, silky strands covering her fine brows and long lashes, while she’d left it shaved in back. It made her striking eyes even more piercing. The look reminded Wolf of the badass mute girl fighter in the second John Wick film.
She had a servant, Holliman, nicknamed Hollow. Hollow had worked at the CIA as well, a level so deep she wouldn’t even discuss it now. No matter that classified material from their human life wasn’t relevant to the vampire species; some things were just ingrained. In her world, she only shared on a need to know basis.
Hollow still did some work for the Agency, which allowed him clearance to resources Saturnia might need for the team projects. As such, he arrived a day after the others, because he’d pulled together some info on the latest tech in security measures that she said would help their efforts at Atlantis.
Hollow was a guy no one with any sense would ever play poker with, because his face was so expressionless it made his nickname eerily appropriate. He spoke very little, but he was never far from Saturnia. He provided her blood, and the team technical support, on anything they needed. Saturnia said the male could lay his hands on any electronic information source in existence and get it to talk to him.
He could also blend into a crowd. Like Fort, in appearance Hollow was an anomaly for a servant. Most servants were as striking as their vampire counterparts. Hollow was strong but angular, almost awkward looking. He always looked like he needed a sandwich. His face was blotched with freckles and his brown eyes were sharp enough to pierce rock. He had a beautiful head of dark hair, his only attractive feature. He kept it pulled back in a tail on his shoulders.
Neither Fort nor Allan had a full servant. Allan had been a vampire less than a decade, so it wasn’t unusual for a made vamp of that age not to have a full servant yet. Fort had had one until five or six years ago, when he’d lost her to a car accident. A truck carrying rebar had flipped. Eleven metals rods had speared through the windshield, and Gemma couldn’t escape the law of averages. Two of them got her in the chest, metal through the heart, the one sure-fire way to kill a fully marked servant.
Wolf sat with Fort the night after it had happened. Fort had plowed his way through a case of Jack Daniels, trying to get drunk enough not to feel.
“What the fuck is that?” Fort had demanded, gesturing at him with the bottle. “Goddamn invincible most the time, they are. And then out of nowhere, a damn truck carrying a load of metal poles? Fucking hell. Why didn’t she change lanes? Hell, if I was behind a truck carrying a load of survey stakes, she sure as shit would have told me to change lanes, right? Bossy little thing.”
Vampires got close to their servants, though everyone knew they weren’t supposed to admit to getting “too” close. Fort’s situation was a little different. Gemma had been Fort’s wife and submissive, before he was turned.
Fort had made her his servant, something that was now prohibited. Even then, it had been frowned upon. The Vampire Council felt a made vampire in particular was too vulnerable to human influence, which would make them resistant to putting the vampire species first. The physiological nature of a vampire that took over after the transition helped adjust that loyalty in the right direction, but the Council kept a close eye on factors that could make it less certain.
That said, if Fort ever did have a servant again, Wolf expected it would be decades from now, because the male still grieved, still missed the curly-haired woman who’d been inside his soul even before she’d been third marked.
Love could do that, right? He thought of Ella, of the ability to be in her mind. At dawn, after their memorable encounter on the second level of the club, he had to go to the basement apartment. He’d wanted her to stay with him. He could have ordered her to do that. She had already called into the diner and told them she couldn’t work that morning.
But when he bit back the urge to offer, she’d given him the out to ease back, get some perspective. She told him she was going to go home, get a shower, sleep the morning away. She had to help the grocery owner in the afternoon, because they were having some kind of big sale. The work would be in the store, not on her bike, which was good. Though the second mark would help her recuperate from the bruises and sore muscles faster than if she’d been without it, it wouldn’t have been an easy day to do that kind of exercise.
He’d told her he’d reach out to her, keep her in the loop. Kissed her thoroughly, held her, then let her slip out of his arms as he stepped into the elevator.
His last view of her when the doors closed was the brave smile slipping away from her face. His heart thudded hard in his chest, like a stone battering his lungs, but he didn’t punch the button to reopen the doors.
Though he wanted to.
The night after the team arrived, Wolf arranged for them all to meet in Atlantis’s small conference room. It was time to focus on the most important priority. Protecting Atlantis and its people, including Ella.
Allan had an errand to run upon rising—his preferred “morning” coffee brand—so arrived in the conference room after Saturnia and Fort were settled in. The former Ranger threw out his usual style of greeting.
“Hey, Fort. Put your head down here so I can knock the mud off my shoes with that butt-ugly buzz cut of yours.”
Fort merely grunted in answer. He was already looking through the file that Wolf and Gideon had compiled for him on the current setup at Atlantis. Saturnia stood beside his chair, reading it over his shoulder. She gave Allan a succinct nod, her gaze glittering briefly with humor. Probably as much at Fort’s ignoring of the jibe as the jibe itself.
Wolf hadn’t seen any of them for nearly a year, but they usually picked up just like this, focusing on the task at hand, if there was one. If the purpose was social, they’d continue conversations they’d started last time they’d met, as if they’d never been apart.
Allan was the closest thing Wolf had to a best friend as a vampire, so the youngest vampire in the group went with the more traditional greeting with him. He clasped Wolf’s hand and bumped shoulders in a man-style hug, balancing his coffee in his free grip. When Allan backed off, he gave Wolf an assessing look Wolf tried to ignore, since he’d already endured much of the same from Fort. “Found yourself some nice new digs here, man.” Allan sipped his coffee. “Much better than that club out in Colorado.”
“You still going?” Wolf asked.
“Sometimes. Club venue’s not my preferred jam, you know. Now you’re go
ne, it’s even less of a draw. Don’t have anyone to drink with.”
Allan winked at Wolf. With a Ranger’s physique, light green eyes and attractive features, he was well aware of his charm, though he could switch it off in a heartbeat, becoming as deadly as a snake. But for right now, he went with charm. He bent over Saturnia, blowing on her neck. She waved her hand at him, like she was shooing a fly. “Still annoying, I see.”
“Still running your flower shop, I see. Or smell, rather. Soil, blooms and manure.”
“Actually, the smell of bullshit is entirely you. Thank God you have vampire compulsion or you’d starve. The world’s sexiest financial analyst, said no one ever.”
Allan grinned at the reference to what he did when he wasn’t helping Fort with one of his jobs. “Hey, say what you want, but I don’t have to worry that I won’t be comfortable in my old age.”
“How quaint. You imagine someone as annoying as you will live that long.”
Another grin and he took the tablet copy of the file from her offered hand. Hollow sat in the chair near Sat, working at his laptop. His thick brown hair was neatly combed, and he maintained a trim beard and moustache. As Allan secured a seat across from her at the table, he spared the servant a glance.
“Still dominating every conversation with your incessant chatter, Hollow?”
Hollow’s reply to that was a lifted brow and a vague grunt. He didn’t stop moving his fingers over the keys. Allan shot Wolf a wink.
Gideon and James slid into the room next. James had arrived hours after the bombing and taken command of the in-house security team again, freeing Gideon up to help Anwyn however needed. Introductions had already been made the previous night, so basic nods were exchanged.
Saturnia, now finished, sat down with her back to Hollow. She went into her odd phased-out Zen style state where she appeared to be looking at nothing and everything, all without moving a muscle.
