Taken by the Vampire King (Vampire Warrior Kings Book 3)

by Laura Kaye

  Tight enough that she could feel how her drinking from him affected him. Between her legs, his cock was hard and thick and twitching against her, driving her wild with more than just blood lust.

  Ravenous to have all of him, and driven by some primal need she couldn’t explain and had never before felt, Kaira reached between them and grasped his cock. She whined when she realized her shift was in the way.

  Henrik growled. “Here, Kaira? Now?”

  Using every bit of her strength, she released her mouth from him and met his flaring gaze. “I need you in me in every way you can, Henrik. My king. My lord. I want you to take me, too.”

  In fascination, she watched as his fangs stretched out. “My brothers,” he said, his voice like gravel. “You have witnessed our mating. Please leave us now.”

  They rose on a cheer.

  But all Kaira could pay attention to was Henrik’s strong grip ripping away the fabric that separated them. And then he lifted her up and sank her down on his thick cock. Kaira moaned and clutched her hands around his neck.

  “You are magnificent, Kaira. My queen. My wife.” He lifted and lowered her over his lap, the dragging friction lighting her blood on fire. “Drink from me again.”

  She didn’t need to be asked twice. He tasted spicy and rich. She couldn’t get enough. She felt glutinous and decadent and more satisfied than she’d ever felt before. It was glorious.

  And then his fangs struck her neck in return.

  The orgasm that exploded out from her core made her rear back and scream. Henrik guided her mouth to his throat again as she shuddered and moaned. And that was when she felt it.

  That he was flowing into her, and she was flowing into him.

  That their connection formed a circle. That they were complete.

  Tears pricked at her eyes. But she wasn’t breaking the circle to tell him how she felt. Not yet. So she just thought it. Over and over. Like a litany, or a prayer.

  I love you, Henrik. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with how big it feels inside me.

  Oh, sweet Kaira, I love you, too.

  Surprise shot through her, and in her mind she heard him chuckle. “How…?”

  We are a part of each other, and always will be. My blood will call you home, and your blood will call me home. We are a family now.

  It’s so beautiful, Henrik.

  You are what’s beautiful, Kaira. And I will cherish you forever.

  His strong thighs allowed him to fuck her in a strong, steady pace that had her moaning and boneless and on fire all over again.

  I cannot last. Henrik groaned and thrust hard. His strong arms wrapped around her and slammed her down on him until he was grunting and she was whimpering over the beginnings of another orgasm.

  And then his cock was swelling inside her, and coming, and filling her up with his seed. His head reared back on a victorious yell that set off her own orgasm again.

  When their bodies finally calmed, Henrik licked the bite closed on her neck and laid them down onto the soft furs.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.” Kaira stroked at his handsome face, studying him so she could learn every line and scar. She never wanted to forget this moment. “I’m so happy.”

  He gave her the most beautiful smile she’d ever seen, and God it made him sexy. “I have not even the words, Kaira. I am blessed beyond any measure of my imagination to have found you. To be loved by you.”

  She snuggled in closer to him, until her head was tucked into his throat and their legs were intertwined. “Your throat is already healed,” she whispered. He hummed in contentment.

  Kaira felt that, too. Content. Comfortable. Completely at ease.

  She gasped and pulled back from him so she could look him in the eyes.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Henrik. My bones.” She shook her head, struggling to voice what she was feeling inside. “My pain. It’s nearly gone.” She’d lived with it for so long that being in pain was normal for her, which made her nearly ecstatic to feel anything close to its absence.

  “Oh, Kaira,” he said. “It’s just as I hoped.”

  “It’s so much more than I hoped, Henrik. I feel like today is the first day of my life.”

  He took her cheek in his big hand. “The first day of our life.”

  “Yes. I love that. Now, my vampire king, take me again. I need you.”

  And he did. All that night. And all the nights that followed. She saved him and he saved her. Exactly as it was fated to be.

  Thank you for reading! I hope you loved meeting Henrik and Kaira! If you love vampires, you’ll love my standalone vampire romance, FOREVER FREED. Lucian Demarco is the epitome of the tall, dark, handsome, and tortured vampire, and his love for Samantha and Ollie is epic.

  CLICK HERE TO READ FOREVER FREED NOW!

  “OH.MY.GOD. Laura Kaye delivers as only she knows how….The sensual tension is…h.o.t. and the love making is…*sigh* Laura Kaye’s fans will fall in love yet again!” ~In Love with Romance Blog

  Reviews are so helpful to authors and other readers. Please leave reviews of this book on Goodreads and your preferred retailers’ sites. Thank you!

  Come hang out with me and talk about my books with other like-minded readers, come Read Hard in my Laura Kaye Reader Group!

  Be first to know about new releases, sales, and cover art, or you’d enjoy exclusive giveaways and prizes, sign up for my newsletter.

  READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM SEDUCED BY THE VAMPIRE KING

  Get more vampires!

  FOREVER FREED

  CHAPTER 1

  The sleek silver Beemer swerved roughly to the curb in front of my driveway, cutting me off as I pulled out. The bike fishtailed underneath me as its tires fought to grab the concrete.

  “What the hell?” My boot heel caught the kickstand. I dismounted as I tore off the glossy black helmet. I hadn’t eaten in over a month. I was in no mood.

  The passenger window eased down. “Lucien Demarco,” a deep voice called. “Thought that was you. This must be fate.”

  “Langston?” I peered in the window and found his trademark grin. He stuck his hand out and we shook across the empty passenger seat. I leaned against the door frame, helmet in hand. “Holy shit. Good to see you. Been a while.”

  “What? Ten, twenty years?”

  “That’s about right.”

  Langston’s pale yellow eyes glowed against the warm brown of his skin. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, but was more like seventy-five. “Look, man,” he said, “I gotta be somewhere five minutes ago. Here—” He thrust a business card into my hand. “—I’m thinking you might want to come see me.”

  The embossed lettering read:

  LANGSTON BROWN

  DIRECTOR

  DETROIT MEDICAL CENTER BLOOD BANK

  My eyes snapped back to his, which were full of the same humor I’d started tasting. “Well, that’s…interesting.”

  “Tell me about it. I work again tomorrow. Come see me in the evening, around seven?”

  Distracted by the realization of what he was offering—a much-needed alternative—I murmured, “Yeah. Okay.”

  “All right, then. I’m outtie.” He tapped his hand twice against the center console. I saluted him with his business card and stepped back up on the sidewalk as he pulled away from the curb.

  I scrubbed my hand through the length of my brown hair, still trying to wrap my brain around the coincidence of Langston’s offer just as I was heading out to hunt. Filled with an unusual hopefulness, I walked the Harley back into the garage. I was used to going hungry. What was one more day?

  The next evening, energized by my anticipation of guilt-free sustenance, I approached the hospital just as the spring sun dipped below the city’s skyline.

  Out of nowhere, feelings of amusement and awed curiosity filled my chest with intense, comforting warmth. I had learned to control my empathic ability and could gene
rally tune out others’ emotions if I concentrated, but there was always a low buzz of perception in the back of my mind, one that flared when the emotions had to do with me. A defense mechanism, of sorts. I turned and scanned the plaza.

  A little girl’s blatant stare caught and held my gaze. “Hi,” she said with a smile. She waved her tiny hand. The evening breeze blew long strands of gold across her face.

  She was so focused on me that she stumbled, which only brightened her smile. She continued to grin and look at me over her shoulder as an elderly black woman drew her toward the entrance and through the automatic doors to the lobby. Then she was gone.

  I was stunned.

  Humans generally didn’t interact with me unless I wanted them to.

  Yet, the girl saw me. Not only that, she met my eyes and held them. I smelled no fear from her at all, just that unbelievable curiosity and amusement, and an inexplicable touch of affection.

  Her unusual attention made me feel present in the world, for once. The goodness of her emotions felt warm, tasted sweet.

  I craved more. I wanted her to see me again. Which was why I needed to get the hell out of there.

  I flipped open my cell phone and made a call, then left a message: “Hey, Langston. Sorry. Tonight’s not good after all. Can we do this in the next day or two? Let me know.”

  My hunger too greatly tested my control, my judgment. I couldn’t risk staying. So I retreated through Detroit’s blighted streets back to my hulking, dilapidated manse on Edmund Place. The crumbling dark red sandstone, rusted ironwork, and numerous boarded windows were more than good enough for me.

  The house’s poor condition brought me no special attention given the surroundings. Once posh, the Brush Park neighborhood had decayed with the rest of the city during the twentieth century. Abandoned mansions stood guard over debris-filled vacant lots. Just across the street a Gothic-style church sat empty—even God had forsaken this place.

  I entered my dark parlor, then knelt down before the hearth and built a fire. Starvation clawed at my gut. The girl’s unprecedented observation nagged at my mind. I needed a distraction.

  Pulling a chair closer to the radiating heat of the fire, I bent and flipped the latches on the antique case. Raising the lid revealed one of the few mementos I permitted myself from my human life. The neck of the reddish-brown instrument filled my hand and felt like the only home I’d ever known. Nothing helped fill my endless time like my violin.

  The instrument smelled of pine rosin, reminding me of idyllic days in Italy. Whenever I played, my human memories echoed as loud in my head as the notes sounded in the room.

  Any pain those memories brought…well, it was deserved.

  Soon, rich yearning tones filled the room. The melancholy of the anniversary hung over me still, and my dire need for sustenance didn’t help. It didn’t take long, therefore, before the image of the smiling blonde girl transformed in my mind’s eye into another girl, with olive skin and chocolate ringlets.

  A girl who had once been my whole life. A daughter whom I had failed.

  ****

  Two days later, I was back again to see Langston, finding myself in more urgent need of his assistance.

  From the empty waiting room of the blood bank, I sensed him immediately. He had an expectant smile on his face when he came around from the back to the reception counter. “Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. How the hell are you this fine evening?”

  “Okay, Langston.” I surveyed the laboratory space behind him. “Interesting work you’re doing here.”

  “You have no idea. Come on back through that door,” he said as a buzzer sounded. I walked through, and he extended his hand, which I shook as the door clicked behind me. “So, what have you been up to all these years?” He led me into the more private space in the back.

  “I’ve been around. Lying low. You know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  We stared at each other. “So…”

  “Laumet finagled me this job,” he offered. “Been in it about a month now. He figured a more formalized relationship with the blood bank was overdue.” He smirked as he leaned against a counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

  I frowned at the mention of Laumet’s name. “Well, there aren’t many of us who could do it, I guess.”

  Langston broke into a grin. “That’s for sure.” From Langston’s first moments as a vampire, he’d been completely free of bloodlust. It was his special gift, one Laumet found quite useful.

  So here was my biggest concern about being back in touch with Langston: Antoine Laumet. Laumet was the oldest and most powerful vampire in the city, and we’d both worked for him. In fact, I’d already been with Laumet for two decades by the time Langston was turned and I’d helped train him. Having fought free of Laumet’s criminal underworld, however, I had no interest in interacting with him again. But Langston was still under his thumb.

  Yeah, but you need this blood source, Lucien. It was a chance I had to take. “So, can you supply me from time to time?”

  “Yeah, man, of course. I figured you might be interested…with everything.” The compassion that filled his words also warmed my chest. I was so unused to someone looking out for me I found myself surprised he had thought about me. But I wasn’t surprised he knew what feeding did to me, knew my empathy forced me to suck in my victims’ emotions with each accursed draw of blood. We’d worked together for over two decades, after all. “Just, Lucien, you realize Laumet will have to know.”

  “I know. Cazzo,” I grumbled. “I expected as much. You can pass on that this is just a business deal. That’ll make it more acceptable to him.”

  Langston nodded. We worked out cost, transport, and storage arrangements. He agreed to contact me in a day or two when he had extra again, the blood he’d set aside for me before having been used in a trauma. I only hoped it wouldn’t take too long—my pallor, dropping body temperature, and the dark circles beneath my eyes all reflected the nearly five weeks since I’d last fed.

  This new source promised freedom from my ancient dependency on the weak blood of animals and the punishing blood of evildoers. Imagining what that freedom could mean for me, I wound my way through the hospital corridors toward a side exit.

  And gasped as I walked into a haze of pure bliss. A young woman approached the same exit, wearing the green scrubs of a doctor or nurse. Her golden blonde hair hung in a thick braid well past her shoulders. Her arms were tanned and, as I caught up with her, I could see where the sun brought out a light freckling across her upper cheekbones and nose. The color of her eyes was striking—a dazzling blue-green with nearly black edges around the iris. She was young and vital and pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way.

  As beautiful as she was, her most remarkable quality had captured my attention in the first place: the extraordinary feelings of joy, affection, gratitude, and contentment washing off her. Her emotions tasted sweet and gripped every part of my body in warmth and pleasure. My borrowed euphoria left me dumbstruck as she hurried through the door and around the hospital drive. The intensity of the feeling diminished in direct correlation to her growing distance from me.

  I gasped for more. Having lived without such feelings for so long, this reminder of true unqualified happiness beckoned to me. So I followed her. I stalked her emotions, grateful for the cloud-covered evening, and learned the location of her residence.

  And then an unbidden thought entered my brain: If her emotions felt this good, what would it be like to consume her blood?

  Certainly I’d feel her regret. But what came out of her would also be life-giving, humanity-restoring, beautiful, and sweet.

  The thought of it was intoxicating. She was a temptation of such magnitude, I lost all capacity for reason or rationality. I simply had to have her, had to have that one fleeting feeling of light in the darkness, that one richly sweet moment free from pain and grief.

  In that instant, I was so far gone it never occurred to me that my efforts to avo
id the blood of bad humans led me to plan to kill a good one.

  ****

  Driven by the promise of rapturous relief, I lurked around the edges of the beautiful woman’s life that night, but had no opportunity to claim her. She always seemed to be surrounded, as if the humans she knew were equally drawn to her.

  I wasn’t interested in taking out others to get to her—hell, going after her at all was unconscionable, violated the rules I’d created to try to bring meaning and structure to my unnatural life. But defying her pull was about as possible as a moth resisting the lure of a flame.

  The following night, I made my way under cover of darkness back to her townhouse on Farnsworth Street. She lived in an unusual enclave in this city— a full square block of adjoined tan townhouses, arranged around new streets carved out of the interior of the block. I stood in the shadows on the side of her building until I captured the feeling of her mind. To my relief, I found her easily, the sweetness of her contentment palpable even as she slept.

  A long branch of a thick oak tree passed within feet of her window. I jumped onto it and moved as close as I dared, knowing she was unreachable within the confines of her home but needing to see her nonetheless.

  The sheer curtains interfered little with my view as she lay sleeping on her side in the wide bed, her hands tucked under her chin. She appeared to be sleeping peacefully, though the whirlwind of her emotions revealed the intensity of her dreams.

  Oh Dio, her feelings felt good. Too good. But good enough to harm an innocent, something I’d avoided since I’d largely harnessed the bloodlust over a century ago?

  I hated how flippant it sounded, but this woman was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. When I saw her, I had not fully emerged from the melancholy of the anniversary of my human family’s murders at the hands of my maker. Each May, I attempted to pay penance for failing my wife and daughter by secluding myself and observing the old Italian mourning rituals I’d known in life. And I denied myself all sources of pleasure, all means of distraction from my loss of them: no television, no music, no Internet, no books, no violin, no companionship, no blood.