by Amelia Elias
He realized his mistake at once when she snorted with disbelief. He’d forgotten that in this age, mortals sought healing at a hospital, not in a home.
“What in the world are you talking about?” She glanced around again as though looking for medical equipment and shot him a look when she didn’t find any. “How?”
Oh, you know, magic. That’s the usual way for vampires. It even sounded crazy in his head. There was no way in the world he could explain to her without making her think he was insane on top of being a kidnapper. A change of subject was definitely in order.
“Look, we got off on the wrong foot.” The one she’d stomped was still throbbing. It was a night for understatements. “Let’s start over. I’m Diego Leonides. What’s your name?”
She frowned as if this was the strangest question he could have asked and he had the strong impression he hadn’t fooled her at all with his misdirection.
“Sian,” she finally answered, and he didn’t miss the omission of her last name. “Wish I could say it’s nice to meet you, but under the circumstances…” She looked pointedly back at his hands on her wrists. “Mind letting me go, Diego Leonides? That would go a long way toward convincing me you’re on my side here.”
He stifled a shudder. He had to gain her trust somehow, but she’d already caused him more pain than any mortal had in longer than he cared to remember. The thought of what she could do with both hands free definitely didn’t appeal.
“Do you plan on punching me again?” he asked, buying time. “Because while I’ve never harmed a woman in my life, I have to tell you I am sorely tempted to turn you over my knee for that.”
Sian glared at him again, her eyes flashing blue fire. “Try it, caveman,” she growled. “You might get a surprise you won’t like.”
He’d already had several of those tonight. He released one wrist. “A compromise,” he said, making sure his hand still covered the runes on her left wrist. Maybe it was cowardice but he didn’t want to have to explain those one second sooner than necessary.
Sian planted her newly freed hand in the center of his chest and shoved hard. He didn’t move for a moment, ignoring his wailing ribs and letting her know without words who was in charge, before taking a step back. “Better?” he asked quietly.
Sian pulled at the wrist he still held. “Let me go,” she repeated. “I don’t like being trapped.”
Yeah, you and me both, Diego thought bitterly, wishing Eli was here to witness the chaos he’d created—or maybe just so Diego could throttle him. Yes, throttling him held a definite appeal. “Listen to me first,” he said instead. “Sit down. You were hurt pretty bad and you’re still weak from it. I don’t want you passing out again.”
“Don’t get any ideas. I’m nowhere near passing out.”
It was a blatant lie. Sian followed her captor back to the bed and perched on the edge, not that she had any choice. She hated admitting he was right, but her head was pounding and her vision kept going black around the edges. Right now, pure adrenaline was the only thing keeping her upright. It wouldn’t last forever.
She needed to pick her battles carefully right now. This man, whoever he was, clearly outmatched her physically. Not only that, he seemed too stubborn to easily sway. This wasn’t a situation she’d be able to muscle her way out of. She glanced around the room as subtly as she could, looking for her clothes and especially her purse.
Where was her gun?
She glared at Diego when he sat beside her and scooted back as far as his grip would allow. She didn’t want to give him any reason to think she wanted to be on a bed with him.
“Okay, I’m listening,” she said coldly, hoping he couldn’t tell how muddled she felt. Had he drugged her? There was something she was forgetting, something important, she knew it, but the memories wouldn’t focus. “Talk. Tell me how you saved me, all alone, without any medical equipment, when you say a hospital wouldn’t have done me any good. I’m just dying to hear this.”
He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, hesitating. It gave her a moment to take in his features while he wasn’t looking. Sian hated herself for it but she just couldn’t help but notice how very gorgeous this man was. His hair was long and black as night and fell loose around his shoulders. His sensual mouth and glittering green eyes beneath dark eyebrows combined to create a face of pure male perfection. She’d never seen eyes like his before. They almost seemed to swirl and change in the dim light. Even with his dark goatee she saw his jaw was firm and stubborn, and those lips…sinful came to mind.
She already knew he was strong from his grip and the press of his body against hers, but the sight of his well-muscled bare chest made her mouth go dry. A black panther was tattooed on his right biceps and rippled temptingly with every move he made. And he was so tall. Although she was tall for a woman at five foot ten, this man towered over her. If they were in any situation other than this she would be seriously drooling at the thought of being in bed with someone this completely delicious.
But she didn’t dare indulge in the luxury of fantasizing anymore, and especially not when it came to Diego. He reminded her of a wolf, beautiful and strong and deadly. She scooted further away from him on the bed. Something about this man made her want to run and hide and Sian wasn’t the type of girl who scared easily.
“Well?” Sian prompted when Diego still didn’t answer her.
Finally he looked back at her and she actually shivered at the intensity of those amazing eyes. “You won’t believe me unless I prove it to you,” he said softly, almost as if he were speaking to himself. She had to strain to hear him. “And if I prove it to you, I’m afraid I’ll terrify you.”
“You’ll find me difficult to terrify,” Sian said, lifting her chin and meeting those remarkable eyes head-on despite the little thrill of fear that shot through her at his words. Damn, he was good with intimidation.
“Come on, spill it,” she added when he hesitated, knowing she wouldn’t believe a single word he said. Never mind her innate ability to hear a lie and never mind those same instincts telling her he’d spoken nothing but the truth so far. She couldn’t afford to trust him.
He sighed and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Sian gasped.
Still just as green, still every bit as intense, his eyes were nonetheless completely different. The pupils had changed and were no longer round but now cat-like slits. His irises had expanded until only a hint of white remained around the edge. That impression of danger, of an untamed predator not quite concealed beneath the surface, intensified until she really did feel the first tickling of terror at the base of her spine. A sudden flashback to the terrifying vision that had made her lose control of her car streaked across her mind’s eye and was gone before she could make sense of it.
She pushed the fear and confusion resolutely away. All right, he had strange contact lenses, and somehow he’d managed to slip them in so deftly she hadn’t seen the movement, so what?
“Nice trick,” Sian forced herself to say in a calm and unimpressed voice. “Are you ever going to get to your explanation?”
But when he opened his mouth to speak and Sian saw his teeth, she suddenly decided she didn’t want an explanation anymore. She scrambled to her feet and tried to break for the door again, desperately attempting to pull her hand free, hardly listening to his words in her desperation to escape.
He had fangs. Long, gleaming, razor-sharp fangs!
Only three words registered before shock overtook her and the blackness closed over her vision, taking her down with the sight of those unnatural eyes and wicked fangs burning in her mind.
“I’m a vampire.”
Diego caught her as she fainted and carried her back to the bed. “Well, I guess this means you believe me,” he murmured to her unconscious face.
He sighed heavily. Damn, he hadn’t meant to make her faint. He could have kicked himself. Impress her a little, maybe, especially since she’d shown such unflattering surprise when he�
��d told her he’d brought her here and healed her single-handedly, but not make her faint.
“Good first impression, Diego,” he muttered as he tucked the blankets around her. “Oh, yes, all happily mated pairs start out this way—a good fist-fight followed by scaring each other to death.” But then again, most happily mated pairs had actually chosen one another.
Right now he could happily stake every single member of the Council out for the dawn.
Well, there was nothing to be done for it now. He couldn’t imagine any way this pairing could help but start badly. His job now was to make the best of it, as Eli had callously suggested, and soothe and protect his new bondmate the best he could.
When she regained consciousness, that was.
Diego sighed again. Sian was nothing if not a fighter. He’d best be prepared for another attack when she woke. Damn it all, he was hungry, he was hurting, and he was just too damn tired for this. He knew the sun was about to peek over the horizon by the lethargy that multiplied his fatigue almost beyond bearing. Thanks to Eli’s interference there wasn’t even time for James to come tend to his wounds before dawn.
Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d slept injured. At least he could try to make sure Sian didn’t injure him even more before he woke up again. He stretched out beside her and pulled her into his arms again, grasping her wrists and pinning her legs with his. There was nothing romantic in this embrace—it was purely self-defense. He had no desire to get socked in the jaw again, or worse, wake up to find himself staked through the heart in his own bed before he could figure out what to do with her. It wouldn’t surprise him a bit for her to try it if she’d believed him after his ill-fated demonstration. He murmured a compulsion that would keep her asleep until sunset—
And ran into a mental block so strong his magic glanced right off.
Diego fought the urge to roar with frustration—it wouldn’t help and his ribs hurt enough already. Apparently nothing was going to be easy in this. Why did he have to get stuck with a strong-willed woman resistant to mind control? There was only one option at this point.
“James!” he shouted. “Get your butt in here now!”
It only took a minute before his bedroom door flew opened and his Steward skidded into the room. “What’s your prob—whoa, hey now, I don’t need to see that!” James protested, clapping a hand over his eyes after one glance at Diego and Sian entwined on the bed. “I mean, I know modesty wasn’t a big deal in the fourth century or whenever you were born, but you need to keep up with the times, man.”
Diego ground his teeth. “It was the tenth century and forget modesty. I need you to get her out of here.”
James cracked an eye open and looked at him disapprovingly. “That is way cold, man, even for you,” he said. “Getting you out of the morning after isn’t in my contract, Diego.”
“Doing whatever I tell you is your contract, boy,” Diego snapped. “And right now I’m telling you to take her out of here, without waking her up if at all possible. Get her something else to wear, too.”
James rolled his eyes. “If I had a gorgeous woman in my bed I wouldn’t be so hasty to get her dressed and out of—”
“Are you quite finished dissecting the biggest mistake I’ve ever made? Can we skip to the part where you help me now?”
James raised an eyebrow and gave Sian’s curvaceous form outlined beneath the sheet a long, appreciative glance. “If you think she’s a mistake, Diego, you need way more help than I’m qualified to give. I always said total celibacy was a sure-fire ticket to insanity.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Diego growled. “Now do you want to become my breakfast or are you going to get your rear in gear?”
James shrugged at the threat. “It not only looks like it, Diego, it sounded like it, too. I heard the shouting and wall thumping from across the house. Tone it down a little next time, okay? I don’t want to deal with the neighbors complaining.”
Diego bared his fangs. “You and Eli both have the wrong idea about this, but at least I can tell you to shut up!”
“I bet you told Eli to shut up just fine.”
“James!”
James sighed and approached the bed. “Fine,” he said, still annoyingly unintimidated. “Unwrap yourself from the gorgeous woman wearing your clothes who you did not make mad passionate whoopee with, and I’ll take care of her.”
“So glad you decided to see things my way.” Diego released Sian from his hold and flopped back on the mattress in exhaustion as James slipped his arms beneath her carefully. “I don’t have the energy to kill you right now, and training a new Steward is such a pain.”
“Yeah, yeah,” James said. He straightened with her in his arms and frowned down at her. “Where does she live, anyway?”
Diego closed his eyes and groaned. He had absolutely no clue where she lived and whatever ID she’d been carrying was still in the car James hadn’t yet retrieved. This was going from bad to worse. “I have no idea,” he admitted.
James shook his head, holding Sian carefully. “Too busy ‘not making whoopee’ to exchange addresses, I take it?”
Diego glared. “May I remind you that provoking a hungry, injured, and exhausted vampire is not covered by workman’s compensation insurance?”
James shrugged again and shifted Sian in his arms. “Well, she’s a luscious armful but I don’t want to stand here with her all day,” he replied, ignoring the threat as he ignored all the others Diego threw at him. “Direct your humble servant, lord and master. I can get her a change of clothes, but what do you want me to do with her? Chuck her out the back door? Install her in a motel? Dump her by the police station? What?”
“Dios, no,” Diego said with a shudder, imagining losing his new mate and having to go find her again. Tempting as it was, he couldn’t abandon her. Honor demanded he keep her safe and he could imagine all too easily what an Outcast would do to any mate of a Slayer.
Ice ran down his spine. The very thought was a nightmare. “Stick her in one of the guest rooms and keep her there until I wake up,” he said at last. “I’ll deal with her tonight.”
James made a face. “Oh, I can hardly wait for round two. Just try to ‘not make whoopee’ a little more quietly next time, will you? I really don’t want to hear all that again,” he grumbled as he turned for the door. He ducked the pillow Diego threw at him and pushed the door closed behind him with a foot.
“You can be replaced!” Diego shouted through the closed door, already mentally composing the scathing email he was going to send to the Council as soon as he got the chance, and pretended not to hear James’s derisive snort as his footsteps faded down the hall.
* * *
Sian woke slowly, not wanting to relinquish the warmth and safety of her dreams. Something horrible waited for her in the waking world and she didn’t particularly want to remember what it was.
She frowned, opening her eyes cautiously, trying to remember what had happened to her. Disjointed bits of an incredibly vivid dream flashed through her mind, flashes of sunset and city streets, shadows and a body colliding with her car, cat-like emerald eyes and gleaming white fangs. She shuddered in spite of the crimson late afternoon light streaming in through the windows. Where the heck had all that craziness come from?
Wait a second.
Her bedroom was always black as midnight. There shouldn’t be any sunlight shining in her bedroom window—it looked out at a tall building right next door that blocked most of the daylight, and her heavy velvet drapes and mini-blinds did the rest.
This was not her bedroom.
She sat bolt upright and stared around at the strange bedroom, fighting down the urge to panic. This shirt wasn’t hers, this room wasn’t hers, and she had no idea where her purse—and therefore her gun—was.
Where the devil was she?
Sian pressed her fingertips to her temples and thought hard. Okay, take it one step at a time. She remembered dropping off her paintings at the gallery, remembered goi
ng out to Baby and driving away. She remembered catching sight of a blue sedan tailing her and driving like a crazy woman until she’d lost it. She remembered—
Nothing else.
It had been sunset when she’d evaded the sedan, but the light outside looked more like late afternoon than dawn. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying hard to remember and having no success. How long had she been here, anyway?
Sian opened her eyes and pushed up the too-long sleeve to check her watch and stopped dead. Her watch was apparently out playing hooky with her purse and gun, but she barely registered its loss. She was too busy trying to figure out where this strange whatever wrapped around her wrist had come from.
It was almost like a tribal-style tattoo, fine black lines twisted into strange symbols and runes weaving together in a band all the way around her wrist. It was unusual, it was gorgeous, and it was nothing she would ever have gotten for herself. Obvious and distinctive tattoos were necessarily discouraged for anyone hiding out with a price on her head. The strange letters in the design looked almost familiar, but she couldn’t make anything of them. She licked her finger and tried without much hope to rub it off.
“Sian, girlfriend, what did you do last night?” she asked herself softly, staring at the dark band.
Another brief flash of memory teased her mind, the barest hint of a recollection of struggling with a man, a tall man with dark hair and goatee, olive skin, and determined green eyes.
Sian froze at the memory. She’d lost her badge, her home, her friends and everything she’d ever known by testifying against a tall dark Spaniard. Her mind flew back to the blue sedan she’d been certain she’d shaken in traffic.
Had she been wrong about losing them?
No matter how hard she strained her mind she couldn’t remember. Sian clenched her fists. Wondering would get her nowhere.
