Blood Crave

by Jennifer Knight

  “Deal.”

  “Odd,” he said, still smoothing the lock of my hair in his fingers. “There’s never been a human in existence that had any power over me. And you—the one person with the power to make me do anything you wanted,” he shrugged. “Hell, you don’t even need it. I’d already do anything for you.”

  It was kind of strange to think that a three-hundred-year-old werewolf was Jell-O in my hands, but if we were going to be together, then I really wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, I was Jell-O in his. Might as well make it even.

  I was about to dive in for another exquisite kiss, when he said, “Hey, you know what this means?” A devious smile crept over his lips. “If we’re matched or whatever, then I’ll bet you really can suppress my trigger. We might be able to . . .”

  Now he was getting it. “Yeah, I thought of that, too.” I settled closer against him. “Actually, that’s the whole reason I brought it up.”

  He began kissing me, harder now, and my body felt like it was on fire. “Try it,” he said against my lips. I could feel his energy growing more and more uncontrollable along with the passion of his kisses. He began to shake.

  I wanted to try and repress his trigger, but I couldn’t think about anything except how amazing his hands felt as they crept lower along my sides and the fact that if this went well, we might actually be able to make love for the first time ever. Like now. And, yeah, I was nervous. “It’s . . . kind of hard ... to concentrate. . . .”

  He laughed lightly, pulling back. “Yeah, I guess. And there’s one small problem, too.”

  Panting slightly, I gave him a questioning look.

  “You smell,” he said.

  “Bad?” I asked, mortified.

  “Sort of. Like vampire, but different. I guess it’s Derek.”

  I pressed my nose against his chest and sniffed his skin. He smelled like an aphrodisiac, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

  “You don’t smell so hot yourself,” I said.

  Lucas buried his face in my hair. “Do you want to shower with me?” His voice was husky in my ear. “We can test this theory out in there.”

  My heart thrilled at the thought, but I was still nervous that I wouldn’t be able to do it, matched or not.

  “Maybe,” I managed to say.

  “I think you do.”

  Lucas hopped off the bed and scooped me up in his arms. I squealed as he hauled me to the bathroom across the hall and set me down. Eyes burning into mine, he locked the door behind us.

  It worked. Oh, did it work. Lucas and I didn’t make love, but I managed to keep him from changing during a very long shower. It had been difficult at times because I was so easily distracted. To my credit, trying to concentrate while Lucas was pressed up against me, totally naked and dripping wet was more than a little unfair. And God, Lucas looked amazing wet. The way his hair plastered itself to his forehead made me crazy, his lips dripping with water, the rivers running down his chest, over his hips ...

  Plus, I had never been naked in front of a guy before, and I’d certainly never been naked with a guy so I was more than a little nervous. But the obstacles were part of the fun, and by the time the hot water ran out, I’d almost gotten his trigger completely subdued.

  Once we’d toweled off, it was well past nightfall, and it was time to check on Derek—a much less pleasurable event. Not that I didn’t want to see Derek. I did. But dragging ourselves out of that shower was torture.

  Lucas and I walked hand in hand across the living room. The house was now empty of most of the werewolves that had been here last night. I could hear murmurings in the kitchen as we passed, but I saw no one. We stood in front of the door to the basement, staring at it.

  Lucas pecked me on the cheek one last time as if to signify that it was the last time he’d do it for a while (a thought that deflated the happy bubble bouncing in my chest) and pulled the door open. Derek was sitting on his sleeping bag, his chin resting on his hands. He perked up when we entered and stood up in a superfast movement that rivaled Lucas’s speed.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “Jeez, I was bored. I was too scared to go up there—you know—since everyone pretty much hates me.”

  “Nobody hates you,” I said, but quickly changed the subject. “We’re going back to CSU tonight. It’s time to get back to—well, some semblance of normalcy, anyway. You got all your stuff?”

  Derek made a face at me. “The only stuff I have is me. These aren’t even my clothes.”

  “Oh!” I suddenly remembered that Derek was still in need of a shower and clothes, not to mention a big honking meal so that he wouldn’t feel inclined to eat me on the way home. Shame overtook me when I thought of him sitting down there in the dark, filthy and starved, while I luxuriated in the shower with Lucas.

  Lucas sent Derek to the guest shower and instructed him to get his stuff from the bedroom he’d stayed in while he transformed. Once Derek was off, Lucas led me to the now abandoned kitchen to cook him some thick, bloody steaks.

  Twenty minutes later, Derek came downstairs in a pair of Lucas’s jeans and a black AC/DC concert tee. I smiled at him and handed him the plate of steaks like it was an Olympic gold medal.

  Lucas had his own towering plate of steaks, while I contented myself with some cereal. All three of us sat at the breakfast nook in the kitchen and dug in.

  “My mom’s gonna freak,” Derek said as he chewed. “I saw myself in the mirror just now. I look like a corpse.”

  I squeezed his arm briefly. There was nothing to say about that. He did look dead.

  “And what the hell are these?” Derek asked, baring his teeth. He pointed at his elongated canines.

  “Fangs,” Lucas said flatly. “I got ’em too, you wanna see?”

  “No!” Derek and I said at the same time.

  Lucas leaned back in his chair, seemingly proud of himself for scaring us.

  I turned to Derek. “You can just tell your mom you haven’t got much sun since you moved here.”

  “That’s a heck of a way to put it.” He sighed. “Man, I’m gonna miss the sun. I remember you and me at the beach, baking all afternoon.” He smiled for a moment and then turned to his plate. “Guess that’s not gonna happen anymore, huh?”

  “We can still go to the beach,” I said. “We’ll go at night. The sun causes cancer anyway.”

  For a long time, the only sounds in the kitchen were of silverware clinking and Derek clearing his throat awkwardly the way he did when he was feeling anxious.

  “So, speaking of the beach,” I said, trying to maintain the conversation. “We still have six days left before class starts. Why don’t we go to San Diego to visit? I know my mom misses me, and your parents will want to see you—even if you look a little ... peaky.”

  “How’re we going to get all the way over there when I can’t be in the sun?” Derek asked. “And don’t you think it’ll look pretty suspicious to my parents if I only visit them at night looking like I just crawled out of the grave?”

  “Since when do your parents notice anything?” I reasoned.

  Derek lifted his eyebrows and nodded, taking a massive bite of his steak. His parents were divorced and totally into their own lives.

  “Come on,” I cajoled him. “Don’t you want to feel the sand again? Smell the salt of the ocean? See our old friends?”

  Derek was still silent as he chewed on a bite of steak. I was about to start mentioning our favorite hot dog stand near Del Mar beach, when Lucas said, “Yeah, well, I’m not sure I’d go, either.”

  “What?” I asked, crestfallen.

  He shrugged. “A vacation sounds great right about now, that’s for sure, but, I don’t know ... with the uprising . . .”

  “What uprising?” Derek asked loudly.

  “Shh!” I hissed.

  Lucas and I exchanged glances. Last thing we needed was for Rolf to hear we were still discussing this. I motioned for Derek to come closer and quickly whispered everything he needed to know.
>
  When I’d finished, he sat back looking a little paler than usual.

  “So yeah,” Lucas said. “With all of that still unresolved. It feels a little frivolous to be jet setting to Cali.”

  Under normal circumstances, I would have agreed, but these were not normal circumstances. Over the course of the last four months, I’d not only discovered a secret world of supernatural creatures, I’d also been kidnapped by a vampire, almost turned against my will, attacked by a rapid pack of werewolves, and been forced to turn my best friend into a mutant. I needed to get out of Colorado and I needed it now.

  “Look,” I said firmly. “Rolf has straight-up refused to believe that there’s an uprising, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. We’ve risked our lives to try and make him believe and all he does is resist us. What more are you going to do without the help of the other packs, Lucas? We don’t know where the lair is, we don’t know how to find it without more clues, and we don’t know where the vampires will strike next. I’m just as upset as you are about the murders. I want to stop them. But there is nothing we can do.” I leaned in and held his gaze, making sure that he grasped the magnitude of what I was about to say. “And honestly, babe, if I don’t get out of this place and around some normal people soon? I. Will. Lose it.”

  To my surprise, a small, almost impressed, smile turned his lips up at the corners and he said, “You convinced me.”

  I did? Score.

  I rounded on Derek, fixing him with the same menacing stare.

  “Okay,” he said, relenting.

  I relaxed. “Thank you.”

  “But I don’t think I’ll be visiting the parents,” Derek said. “They’ll definitely notice I’m different. I wonder what they’ll say when they find out I’m off the football team.” His expression darkened. “Do you think they’ll kick me out of school? I don’t have the money to afford it without my scholarship.”

  I opened my mouth to spew some comforting bull, when Lucas spoke up.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  “What?” I asked. “Take care of what?”

  Lucas’s eyes met mine and they were kind, but laced with something sour, maybe sadness. “I’ll pay for his classes for the next four years,” he said. “He won’t get kicked out.”

  My heart just about melted onto the tile as I gazed at Lucas. I entwined my fingers with his under the table and squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Derek said. “Thanks, man. I don’t know what to say. I wish I could pay you back, I just—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lucas cut him off. “I got more money than I know what to do with. But you are off the football team. Rolf’s gonna call the school and explain that you got sick. Leukemia. You can use that as your cover if you ever get stuck. We’ll forge all the documentation you’ll need to back it up. I’ll give everything to you when we get to campus.”

  Derek’s mouth had parted slightly. “You guys are good at this, huh?”

  Lucas shrugged. “We do it a lot for the runts.”

  “Well, thanks. Really.”

  I squeezed Lucas’s hand again, loving like crazy that he was doing this for me, even though I could sense how much it was killing him.

  Oh, the heat, how I missed you.

  I was baking in the sun and loving every glorious second of it.

  I lay on my big hibiscus-print beach towel and shaded my eyes as I watched Lucas play Frisbee with some of my friends from high school. The beach was exactly what I needed. It was hot, full of life, full of regular people doing regular things. Nobody was changing into wolves, trying to suck anybody’s blood, or running for their lives. The sand, the warm breeze, Lucas smiling, my old friends chatting next to me.

  I was in heaven.

  The only thing missing was Derek. He was sleeping—dead to the world until the night woke him. I had him stashed in an abandoned fallout shelter not too far from our old high school. It was underground, which was perfect. Lucas and Derek had spent the first night fixing it so that it was lightless. Lucas even went to some expensive home security store and bought a high-tech-lock thingy that only he and I had the keys to. It locked from the inside too, so Derek could get out if need be, and also lock himself in when I left him. It was safe. Derek was safe.

  But, boy I wished he could see this sun with me.

  It had been such a perfect vacation thus far. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been missing my mom until I saw her face, bright with awe, as we greeted each other. She was totally stunned when I showed up at her door at eleven o’clock at night, with a pale Derek on one side, and a tall devastatingly sexy—okay, and somewhat scary—boy on my other side. She was wild with happiness once she got over the shock, but I could tell she was thrown by Derek’s new look. We told her that he was getting over the flu, since we couldn’t use the leukemia spiel. She’d obviously call Derek’s parents to send her condolences, and they didn’t know about this yet.

  Surprisingly, my mom really liked Lucas. My mom’s a lawyer, and she’s one of those overly opinionated people that’s sometimes hard to get along with, but she and Lucas seemed to have the same views on pretty much everything. They spent hours griping over politics and global warming and other stuff that put me to sleep.

  I was glad that my mom liked Lucas so much. She was kind of my moral compass when it came to life and if she approved, I approved.

  The deal was officially sealed.

  Lucas jogged toward me from the surf, the sun glancing off his damp, caramel skin in the most enticing way. The girls lying next to me, Nicole and Alexis, suddenly stopped talking. I looked over and had to smother a laugh. They were staring at Lucas with their mouths hanging open. Yeah, he was cute when he was happy.

  Lucas crashed in the sand next to me, spinning the Frisbee on his finger.

  “Wanna play?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Careful, I think your tail is wagging.”

  Lucas flicked the Frisbee at my stomach, and I grimaced, acting injured.

  “Play for just five minutes,” Lucas wheedled.

  “Fine, but don’t laugh at me when I trip over myself.”

  His smile widened. “Never.” He tugged me up and ran down the beach, holding his arms over his head for me to throw.

  I threw it and he returned the thing with lightning speed. I fell over in the water trying to catch it and Lucas laughed at me. He laughed at me big time. Not that I cared much. I was just enjoying having fun with him instead of trying to evade death. I think he liked it too.

  New Year’s Eve was the following day, and Lucas and I decided to do something special together since we’d had little time to ourselves lately.

  It wasn’t the warmest, but I took Lucas surfing anyway. He admitted to trying it once, a couple decades ago, but gave up quickly because salt water didn’t gel with him. Apparently, it tasted too much like blood for his liking.

  “You’re not supposed to drink it,” I said. “Don’t be a grump. Just roll with it.”

  He turned out being better at it than I had ever been. Which was expected. And annoying. He actually ended up helping me improve, something he teased me about to no end. After we were spent, we ate lunch on the pier and fed the pelicans our scraps as we talked about school and what classes we wanted to take this semester.

  Later Lucas took me to a club where they throw glowing paint on the crowd, and we spent the night dancing. I expected Lucas to refuse to dance with me—he didn’t seem the dancing type. More the brood-in-a-corner type—but he’d astounded me by refusing to actually stop. At twenty seconds to midnight, I was panting and exhausted, but Lucas had never looked more alive. Or happy. As the music blared and the countdown began, he pulled me close, pressing his hips against mine.

  I heard his rough voice in my ear, sending my heart flying.

  “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  And then his lips consumed me. I threw my arms around his neck, peeking only to see the crowd around us going
insane and people knocking into each other as they scrambled to find someone to kiss. I closed my eyes tight again, thanking everything I knew that I’d never have to find someone to kiss again. Lucas would always be right here.

  Not long after that, we drove back home, ears buzzing—mine anyway—and hearts still throbbing erratically.

  “That was fun,” Lucas said.

  Actually it sounded more like zz zzz zzzz, but I got the gist. I nodded at him, and suddenly he got this funny look on his face. A spark in his vibe told me he’d just decided something, but I couldn’t tell what. I was also a little tipsy, which affected my power.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  I heard the hissing sound of his laugh. “Loud much?”

  “I can’t hear,” I admitted, knowing I must still be yelling.

  “In that case . . .” He started moving his mouth as though speaking, but I couldn’t hear a word.

  I swatted his arm playfully and he laughed.

  “I wanna show you something,” he said, checking to see if I’d heard.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Something I painted. It’s ah . . . kind of big.”

  “Cool. Where is it?”

  “On the back wall of your mom’s building.”

  I stared as he pulled into the overhang of my mom’s apartment and got out. He came around and opened the door for me in an uncharacteristically gentlemanly gesture. “You coming?” he asked, offering a hand.

  I took it warily. “Suck up,” I accused.

  “As long as you don’t rat me out to your mom.”

  I wouldn’t have done that anyway, but I liked the special treatment. “Keep it up or I just might.”

  The tip of his mouth curved upward as we walked around the alley between the two apartment complexes and around to the back of my mom’s building. It was a narrow space with a chain-linked fence on one side and some Dumpsters in the distance. Five back doors punctuated the brick wall at intervals, the third one being my mom’s place. We walked down the alley, but I stopped when the bright white moonlight hit the wall and illuminated Lucas’s piece.