Candy tipped her head to the side and glared up at Harper out of the corner of her eye. “I remember you two now,” she hissed. “You worked for Sentry. You’re murderers!”
Murderers is a little harsh, Harper thought, feeling vaguely offended.
Harper had been recruited by Sentry when she was just a kid. The psychic visions she’d been “gifted” with were a great asset to the organization. They allowed slayers to get the jump on vampires and other paranormal threats to humanity. And threats were eliminated with extreme prejudice. Until vampires came out of the coffin, that is.
About seven years ago, when vampires earned human rights, public backlash had shut Sentry down. No one liked the idea of a covert government agency putting vampires down like rabid dogs, so ex-Sentry employees were often met with prejudice and disdain these days, especially by prospective employers (hence her glamorous current gig).
And as if that weren’t bad enough, since then, Harper had spent enough time with vampires to know that like humans, they weren’t all bad, as Sentry had led her to believe most of her life.
She’d no doubt be judged one day for her actions—no matter how misled she might have been by Sentry. But she’d be damned if a thieving little wench like Candy would be doing the judging.
A muscle in Riddick’s jaw twitched, letting her know he didn’t like Candy’s little reminder about Sentry, either.
Riddick had been a slayer for Sentry—but not just any slayer. His strength, speed, and hunting ability hadn’t come from Sentry-administered drugs, as it had for other slayers. Riddick had been born with his talents.
According to Mischa, her BFF who’d worked for Sentry as a watcher, natural-born slayers were no better than wild animals: unpredictable, untamable, deadly if provoked. Riddick struggled every day to keep his inner beast in check and remain in control.
And for the most part, Willy’s shattered knee notwithstanding, he succeeded. He was her partner. The guy who’d helped her triple the agency’s business over the past year. The guy who’d saved her life. Twice. The guy who always let her have the last piece of pie. The guy who held her while she slept every night, all night, even though he could only sleep about four hours at a time.
The guy who was an absolute God in bed.
And in Harper’s experience, men who knew their way around a clitoris and a G-spot were rare animals indeed.
“Sticks and stones, sweetheart,” she said lightly. “Call me whatever you want, but don’t insult him or I’ll make what he did to your boyfriend’s knee look like a love tap. I’ve been authorized to bring you in using whatever force is necessary.”
Which was a total lie, but Candy didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, you’re in luuuuvvvv.” Candy sneered. “How pathetic.”
“Yep. And you’re going to jail mostly naked. Who’s pathetic now?”
That shut her right up. Thank God.
“Hey, Riddick, do you have an extra zip tie?”
What a stupid question, she thought as he reached into his leather trench coat. The man was a walking arsenal. He had everything from silver knives and short swords to zip ties, cuffs, and duct tape on him at all times.
Her hand brushed his when she reached for the tie, and a vision hit her right between the eyes. Harper pressed her hands to her temples, letting the vision roll over her.
She waited to see the usual vampires and blood and death, but they never came. Instead of some random victim, this time Harper’s vision was of…well, Harper.
She stood on worn red velvet carpet at what looked like an altar. An old man in an even older suit stood before her, holding a Bible. Next to her was Riddick. They looked happy, if a little (okay, a lot) dirty and disheveled. And just as Riddick moved to slide a ring on her finger, the vision faded.
“God dammit!”
Riddick knelt beside her, looking concerned. “You okay?” he asked.
She blinked away the remnants of her vision. “Yeah,” she said after a short pause. “It was just a vision.”
“Meditation stopped working, huh?”
Her friend Hunter, a vampire who was so old that—if you got him drunk enough—he’d tell stories about what a pompous jerkoff George Custer was, had been helping her learn meditation techniques to control her visions. It had been working, for the most part. Nine times out of ten these days, she could channel her energy into avoiding moments when random contact with other people sparked a vision, which allowed her to trigger one herself when she really needed it (like during work hours).
Hunter had warned her that it probably wasn’t going to be foolproof, though, since psychic gifts were unpredictable by design. She supposed this incident proved he was right.
“That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” she told him.
He raised a brow, looking shocked. It had been a pretty bold statement, she realized, considering some of the freaky shit she’d seen over the years.
“That bad, huh?”
Harper shook her head. “No, not bad at all. But…”
Riddick brushed her hair off her forehead. “But what?”
Her mouth went dry. Could she voice this out loud without sounding like a crazed girlfriend pushing her guy for a forever kind of commitment?
She shuddered. God, that even sounded pathetic in her head. “Well…I thought I just saw…us…getting…”
Beneath her, Candy groaned. “If this is a sex story, let me be the first to say eeeewwww.”
Harper smacked her in the back of the head with an open palm. Riddick took the zip tie and bound Candy’s wrists, probably a little too tight based on Candy’s grunt. But at least she shut up.
“You saw us getting what, Sunshine?” Riddick asked, still looking concerned.
“Ummm…married.”
He paled a little at the word, and Harper instantly panicked. “Not that I’m pressing you, or anything. I mean, we’ve only been together for a year, and we’ve never even talked about marriage, so I totally get that what I just saw probably wasn’t right, and—”
Riddick cupped the back of her head and yanked her toward him for a hard, fast kiss. When he pulled back, she was speechless. Well, except for the little gasp/moan combo that escaped her lips.
He rested his forehead on hers, fingers still wound in her hair. “I know you’re not pressing me. I just didn’t want to ask you like this,” he said, gesturing with his free hand to the vampire beneath her.
“Holy shit,” she murmured. “You really do want to marry me?”
Candy turned her head toward Riddick. “Really? Her? You’re way out of her league, cheekbones. Murderer or not.”
They ignored her.
Riddick flashed her favorite sexy half-smile, and if she’d been standing, she would’ve wobbled. “Are you kidding? Why wouldn’t I want to marry you? You’re smart and sexy and just dropped a vampire twice your size to the floor without even breaking a sweat. You’re a fucking goddess.”
Candy sniffed. “I’m not twice her size. I’m just bigger-boned,” she said, sounding offended.
Harper’s head was swimming. She hadn’t had much luck with marriage. Her miserable cheating bastard of an ex-husband still might have a restraining order out on her, come to think of it. Did she even want to get married again?
Riddick cupped her jaw and brushed a tear she didn’t even realize she’d shed away with his thumb. “I know I don’t deserve you. Not even by a long shot. And I don’t have a thing to offer you but me…and let’s face it, I’m pretty well and truly fucked up.”
She let out a watery chuckle and his eyes crinkled up at the corners a little with his answering smile.
“But if you’ll have me,” he added, “I’m yours. There’s no one else for me, Harper. I’ll beg, borrow, or kill to give you everything you ever want or need.”
She was pretty sure the saying was beg, borrow, or steal, but hey, who was she to argue with a great speech like that? “So, that’s great and all, but you haven’t really asked m
e anything yet. Are you asking me a question?” she prompted primly, batting her eyes at him expectantly.
His smile grew. “Yes, smartass, I am.” He took a deep breath. “Harper Hall, will you marry—”
“Yes!” she squealed, then threw herself into his arms.
“Thank God,” he said into her hair at the same time Candy said, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Chapter Two
Riddick jackknifed up in bed, gasping for breath and sweaty, tangled in the sheets like he’d been doing battle with them.
In other words, it was a night just like every other.
Still half-asleep and panicked from his nightmare, he flung an arm out to the other side of the bed. He took a steady breath when his hand found Harper’s warm, smooth skin.
She muttered something unintelligible under her breath and rolled closer, reaching for him in her sleep as easily as she reached for him when she was awake.
He envied her that. Her ability to love with complete abandon. Complete fearlessness.
Riddick lived in a constant state of fear. Fear that he’d lose control. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to protect Harper from whatever dangers she managed to find—and damned if she didn’t always find some kind of danger.
Fear that he’d lose the only light he’d ever had in his life.
He assumed it was the fear causing his nightmares. They came every night about four hours after he fell asleep. They were different every time, except for the ending.
Every nightmare ended with Harper dead.
Riddick wouldn’t—couldn’t—let that happen. She was everything to him. All he had in the world.
It had taken him most of his so-called life to realize that he hadn’t really been…well, living before he met Harper Hall. God knew he’d never known love before her.
His memories of his mother were fuzzy at best, and few and far between. He knew that when she hugged him, which was often, her soft black hair brushed against his skin and smelled like baby shampoo and clean, sun-warmed laundry. She made him macaroni and cheese and sang Nina Simone songs, off-key, while she did it.
Then one day, she went to the hospital and didn’t come back.
Cancer, his father told him. He’d been five at the time and had no idea what cancer was. All he knew was that it took mothers away.
It was just him and his dad after that. Ken Riddick wasn’t an abusive father. He never hit his son or really even raised his voice at him. He just…wasn’t there. Even when he was there he wasn’t there.
Riddick quickly learned to take care of himself. He made his own dinner, packed his own lunches, got himself to school on time every day. It wasn’t so bad, really.
The only thing he never got good at handling himself was laundry. So when he showed up to school day after day in dirty clothes, it didn’t take long for kids—asshats that they were—to notice and start picking on him.
He was…oh, maybe six or seven when he got sick of the bullying. And that’s when he first discovered how different he really was.
He never knew the name of the boy who shoved him down on the playground and called him dirty trailer trash, but he’d never forget the strangled sound that came out of the kid’s throat when Riddick punched him in the face, broke his jaw, and knocked out four of his teeth.
He hadn’t even meant to hurt him. Riddick just wanted to be left alone. The boy had been years older, fifteen pounds heavier, and Riddick had broken him with a warning punch that had been backed off to half-strength.
Noah Riddick was officially a freak.
His grade school promptly expelled him, after which his father decided Riddick was too high-maintenance to keep around. He signed him over to CPS the next day.
Riddick spent the next nine years bouncing from foster home to foster home. Most of them weren’t that bad. One of them even paid for him to see an expensive shrink who said he had borderline personality disorder, characterized by bouts of intense anger and abandonment sensitivity.
That diagnosis pretty much killed any chance he’d ever had of getting adopted or finding a more permanent placement.
Whatever they wanted to call it, Riddick knew the truth: he was a freak, and freaks needed to stay away from normal people.
Mostly he succeeded in isolating himself. He didn’t play sports, didn’t date, didn’t socialize. There were always the occasional bullies or jocks who thought maybe he was an easy target because he was such a loner. They quickly learned he wasn’t. Usually after the first wave of challengers ended up with broken bones, any others with delusions of grandeur gave up and left him alone.
When he was sixteen, he was transferred to a new foster home. And for the first time in his entire foster care career, he ran into a man who didn’t ignore him or fear him.
The guy had a foot in height and a hundred pounds in weight on him, but when he sneaked into his room at night and tried to hold him down, Riddick picked him up and snapped his spine like a toothpick.
There were two other kids in the house at the time. God knows how long they’d been there, abused and scared. Riddick didn’t ever learn their names, but he did remember the look on their faces as the cops led him away in handcuffs.
Complete and utter horror at what he’d done rode their features. They looked at him like he was a monster, no better than the dead man he’d so easily broken.
And Riddick was pretty sure they weren’t wrong, which was why he didn’t tell anyone he’d acted in self-defense. Who would’ve believed him, anyway? He’d broken the guy’s back, for God’s sake. Not exactly the act of a scared kid.
He was actually a little relieved when he was sentenced as an adult to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about hurting anyone or hiding what he was.
And that’s when Mischa Bartone and Sentry found him.
Mischa, a watcher with Sentry, didn’t call him a freak. She called him a natural. Killer, that is. She told him Sentry usually created slayers with huge doses of hormones and performance-enhancing drugs. But he was born with his…dubious skills.
People like him were usually killed by Sentry. Put down like stray dogs. But for some reason, Mischa thought he was different. She saw something in him she hadn’t seen in any other naturals.
Humanity.
So Riddick was plucked out of C-block and quickly became the most celebrated slayer in Sentry history. He was stronger, faster, and smarter than the other slayers.
Which was probably why his bosses tried to kill him when Sentry eventually disbanded. Who knew what he’d decide to do if he was left to his own devices, without orders from Sentry to keep him in line?
But Riddick wasn’t any more dangerous on his own than he’d been with Sentry. He was used to being alone, after all. Had been his whole life.
Until he met her.
Harper Hall had blown into his world like a gale-force wind, a perfect storm of life and color and heat, showing him what living was supposed to be like. He’d merely been surviving before her.
He quickly became dependent on her. She was a drug and he was a strung-out junkie.
Now, a year later, she was the very best part of him. The only part that was worth a damn.
Being with her helped him keep his true nature—which he’d recently started thinking of as a six-hundred-pound, slavering, snarling, wild beast on a chain—under control.
He glanced down at her. The faded flannel shirt she wore—-his, if he wasn’t mistaken—was open down the front but for one button clinging stubbornly between her breasts.
She was sound asleep, her face turned toward him, one leg thrown over his. Her gold-tipped brown curls fanned across her pillow and her lashes rested on her high cheekbones in delicate semicircles. A quiet little snuffling snore escaped her pink lips.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and by some weird twist of fate or random miracle, she was his.
He’d never done a damn thing to deserve her, but he was a s
elfish bastard, and now that he had her, he wasn’t letting go. Ever.
And God help anyone who tried to take her from him.
Chapter Three
Harper awoke to warm, wet kisses being trailed slowly down her neck, over her shoulder, her collarbone. Gentle teeth latching onto her…
“Oh, God,” she moaned, arching her back.
She lifted her head and looked down to see the top of Riddick’s dark head as he dropped feather-light kisses across her belly. She had no idea what had happened to her shirt and panties, and at the moment, she really couldn’t care less.
“Good morning,” she murmured, her voice thick with sleep.
“Not yet,” he said, his lips moving against her skin. “But that’s the plan.”
She all but purred as she shifted under him and felt the warm, smooth slide of his bare skin against hers from chest to thigh. The fact that Riddick slept naked? Yeah…just another thing to love about him.
Again: suck it, other women everywhere!
On some distant level, his words registered with her. She glanced over at her alarm clock. It was only five.
“Why are you awake so early? Is something wrong?” she asked.
He lifted his head to meet her gaze and she couldn’t help but notice the faint dark smudges under his eyes. “I’m fine,” he said.
He could be bleeding from his eyes and ears and still say he was fine. Such a guy. “I can tell you’re not fine. What can I do to help?”
He lowered his head again to dip his tongue into the hollow at the base of her throat. “My plan is to make you come until I’m too tired to do anything but pass out. So, you can help by coming. Again and again and again.”
Harper gasped as his warm lips slid up her neck to her ear and his palms covered her breasts. “Oh, my God. That plan is…genius.”
She felt his smile against the sensitive spot just beneath her ear and she shuddered in the most pleasant possible way.
Harper moved to slide her hands over his chest, but he grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands on the pillow on either side of her head. “What are you—”
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 24
