Knight of the Hunted (NSFW Edition) (Born Vampire Book 1)

by Elizabeth Dunlap

  Balthazar had referred to Knight as ‘the marked’, and now Knight had been called a ‘werewolf’ instead of a Lycan. What the hell was he?

  When we reached the border of Texas, I was instantly hit with the scent of pack territory, the fragrant smell of warm piss. Oh god, why?

  Knight started fiddling with his keys to distract himself from growling out of instinct. We continued until the smell was gone and checked into a fancy hotel for the night. Staying at only fleabag hotels was a pattern, and easily tracked, so we went off the trail every so often and stayed at very expensive hotels. That night, we had our own beds in a two-room suite, room service, and a large pool to swim in.

  Knight left to go swimming as soon as we put our stuff in the suite. I drank the last few droplets from my bag of blood. It was now empty. I set it on fire in one of the trash bins until it was ash and then flushed the ashes down the toilet. My hand shook and I clenched it into a fist. I’d be okay. I’d figure this out.

  Being alone in my room was only going to make me feel weaker, so I put on the denim jacket I’d bought in Chicago and walked down to the pool. The humans had all gone to bed, leaving Knight alone in the water swimming laps. I sat down on one of the pool chairs and hugged myself tightly against my cold body to watch him. I had no doubt that he knew I was there, but he didn’t stop.

  Now that I was seeing him shirtless, I could see he was way more muscled than I’d originally thought from that small glimpse of his abs. And yeah, it was much hotter than it sounds. He looked like a carved sculpture, designed for my viewing pleasure. I mean, human females. Not me, a vampire.

  Diving under, he resurfaced and stood up in the shallow pool, the water only coming up to his sternum and revealing a very small patch of black chest hair. His rippled chest was decorated with five long scratches that looked pink like he’d gotten them recently, but I could tell they had been there awhile. He ran his hands through his thick black hair to get it out of his face, and then he noticed me sitting there watching him.

  “Do you always peep on your friends?” I watched a drop of water go from his neck, down his chest, and flutter along his abs before stopping at the waistband of his swimming trunks. I wished I was that drop of water.

  No, stop it! Focus!

  “You want to come in here with me?” Blinking, I looked away from the way his trunks were sticking to his body and found his face. He smiled at me and my heart fluttered inside my chest.

  “I don’t umm…” I cleared my throat. “I don’t think that would be appropriate. I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  He shrugged and his grin taunted me. “That’s never stopped me before.”

  Oh, you are a bad man.

  He noticed me hugging myself. “Why are you wearing a jacket? This is Texas. It's not cold.”

  I took it off and smiled disarmingly. “I’m used to living in New York State. It’s not as warm there. Habit, I guess.” He studied me for a few seconds but didn’t press me further.

  “Sure you won’t come in? I promise to behave. The water is nice. I know it’s cliché to be a wolf and like water,” he added with a roll of his eyes. I laughed and tried not to shiver. The lack of blood was making my body temperature fall. If anyone touched me, my skin would be cold. Because of that, the thought of swimming in cold water wasn’t appealing to me, as much as I would’ve enjoyed it under normal circumstances. He must’ve sensed my suffering because Knight stopped smiling and got out of the pool. He walked over to me, leaving puddles of water and large footprints. “You need blood,” he stated when he stood in front of me. He didn’t have to ask.

  “I’m fine,” I lied, my teeth chattering a few times. He picked my jacket up and draped it over my shoulders, then he slumped down in the chair next to me.

  “Being with you is….” I waited for him to finish his sentence. Damn it, was this his leaving speech? “...hard.” I let out the air I’d been holding. I didn’t feel like having this conversation so low on blood. When I tried to get up, he grabbed my arm and sat me back down. “Being around a vampire is like a priest living with Rosemary’s baby. Your habits, drinking blood, I can’t stand them. When I was a boy, we were taught that vampires drank because they were monsters. No one said anything about you needing it to stay strong. I’ll admit, it’s not your average diet, but…” He raked his hands through his hair again. “It’s clear you can’t survive without it, even though you’re trying to. And again, I’m sorry for what I said about that.” I tried to speak, but I was too cold. So cold. Icicle Lisbeth. Maybe I’d turn into a gorgeous ice statue and Knight would come to admire me on Tuesdays. “Come here,” he beckoned and patted his knee. I stared down at it like it was a grenade. No, I couldn’t let him touch me. My attraction for him was something I wasn’t supposed to feel. He clicked his tongue, stood up, and grabbed me. Even shirtless, he was so fucking warm. Any trepidation I’d had was out the window and I buried my face in his chest, pulled him closer to me as much as possible. “You weren’t freezing the last time,” he noted and held me so tightly with his thick arms.

  “S-s-side effects v-v-vary every-t-t-time,” I chattered out and moaned against him. “You’re so warm.”

  “Shit,” he swore, and his hands curled against my shirt. “Here, let me help.” He let me go before I could ask what he meant. I needed his warmth so badly, my hands reached out for him without thinking, and I looked up into his deep brown eyes to see what was wrong. Slowly, his right hand came up to slide across my cheek where he held my chin in place. His other hand smoothed my long curls out of my face and knotted amongst their length.

  He leaned into me and stopped with his mouth inches from mine, stroking my chin in a soft dance. My breath came in ragged bursts, my body was in flames from his touch. And though this was only my first time being this close to him, I needed more. I hungered for this Lycan’s touch like I’d never wanted anyone’s before. But why, for the love of god? He was a Lycan, for fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t be this attracted to him.

  Those lips just inches from mine whispered, “Are you still cold?”

  I had no concept of cold with a furnace of passion standing in front of me. I shook my head, and he was gone before I could blink.

  Mother fucker.

  His bitch ass was halfway down the sidewalk to our room when I opened my eyes. I followed him and he was already in his room with the door shut by the time I got there. With our perfect hearing and the rooms so close, we could hear everything the other was doing. If he started jerking off, I’d hear it.

  Why had he done that? Was he teasing me again? Teasing was the worst. No, jack ass, I was certainly not cold anymore. Now I was burning internally from his touch, and I hated myself for it. After I fluffed my pillows five times, Knight sighed and started talking to me from the other room.

  “How old did you say you were?”

  I adjusted my hair against the pillow. My skin was still overheated from his touch. Damn him. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a lady how old she is?”

  “Fine. Just tell me the century.”

  “16th.”

  He paused and I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or about to make a joke. “Okay then. What was life like...you know…four hundred years ago?”

  “You’re probably expecting me to say something like it smelled terrible.”

  “Probably.”

  “It actually smelled like shit had died and gone to heaven, and then was reincarnated as shit again. But beyond that, it was also hard. Life was hard. Not just simple things like washing a shirt or plucking a pheasant. Living was so damn hard. There were no guarantees about anything. You could go to bed and wake up to the news that five of your friends had gotten sick and died. Or they were victims of robbers. Or the king had ordered a village slaughtered because he fucking felt like it.” I swiped my eyes to catch some tears. “We were more connected with the humans in those days. Their fragility was always around us, staring us in the face. That’s why we keep to ourselves now. It�
�s easier that way. Plus, some of us have superiority complexes. Present company excluded.”

  I was trying to make him laugh, but Knight was silent for a long time. When I’d convinced myself he’d fallen asleep, he suddenly sighed and said, “Since we’re sharing, I should tell you something.”

  “Okay?”

  “I was born over a hundred years ago.”

  Ten

  What. The shit.

  “Okay. I think my brain just went for a walk. You said what now?”

  “I’m not repeating it,” he insisted grumpily.

  “Is that umm….normal for Lycans?” As much as I wanted to sound smart, I really had no idea if it was or not. “Or are you just a weirdo, as I suspected you are?”

  “You’re not being very reassuring considering you’re the only person I’ve ever told.”

  I was about to ask him more when he opened the door between our rooms and walked in wearing pajama bottoms, carrying pillows and a comforter.

  I pulled my blanket up to cover my chest, even though I wasn’t the one who was topless. I could be, easily. “Uh…. what’s up?”

  “Your scent gets stronger when I’m too far away,” he said simply and deposited his pallet on my floor.

  “You’re in a lady’s bedchamber,” I told him. He lifted an eyebrow at me, silently reminding me we’d been sharing a room for a while now, not to mention what had happened at the pool, and continued adjusting his comforter.

  When he laid down, he said in a sarcastic tone, “I’ll try not to pleasure you in my sleep.”

  Disappointing.

  The next day we traveled through a town that grew fruit, so we decided to stop early and get a room at a bed and breakfast. We’d been traveling together for about two weeks, and I’d been running for even longer, so it was time for a tiny break. The bed and breakfast we’d decided on was part of a peach orchard. Fruit trees dotted the acreage around the old white house, most of them peach, but several were apricot and plum. As part of our room deal, we could pick a bushel of fruit to take with us.

  Knight picked the fruit expertly, knowing which were ripe, too ripe, and not ripe enough. He could reach the branches without a ladder, so I stood next to him with the bushel. His face was so excited, it was becoming contagious. After placing another fruit in the basket, with an enormous grin on his face, I gave him a questioning look.

  “I didn’t realize you loved fruit this much Mr. I’ll-take-the-largest-fucking-burger-you-have.” I’d never seen him eat vegetation that wasn’t between sesame seed buns or deep fried in oil.

  He shoved me playfully and almost made me drop the basket. “I grew up on an orchard, almost exactly like this one, in fact. It was before the war.” By war, he meant the Civil War. “The trees were so stunning in the spring. Pink peach blossoms are the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen. It made me wish I could paint them just to capture their beauty.” He gave a mournful grin and tossed another peach into the bushel. “That was a long time ago. I came back after the war to run the orchard with my mother, but a plague of locusts came. Those fuckers ate everything green and beautiful. Then when everything green was gone, they chewed the wood on the house, the clothes we left out to dry, the rope on the fences. It was a shit storm.” He sat down and played with the peach in his hands. I could easily picture him over a hundred years ago, seeing everything he’d ever loved being destroyed.

  “I was in Japan around then,” I said quietly. “We had to escape in case anyone found our castle during the way, so we all went to different countries. They have cherry trees in Japan. Have you ever seen one?” He shook his head, still lost in the past. I started picking peaches from the lower branches and had to use a step stool.

  “Sorry,” he said after several minutes of me struggling to reach the fruit. I usually wore heels to make me taller, since I was only average height, but right now I was sticking to hipster sneakers and sandals.

  “Sorry for telling me all that or sorry you’re cruelly reminding me that you’re over a foot taller than I am?” He laughed then and the past was gone from his face. “A little help?” I asked him and pointed to some peaches I couldn’t reach.

  “You’re doing fine,” he answered with a mischievous grin.

  “Jerk.” I threw a peach at him, but I should’ve known better because he started a fruit fight with the bruised peaches that lay on the ground. I wasn’t that good of a throw since I wasn’t at top strength, but I held my own. Hiding behind a tree, I picked up a few peaches to throw and searched for him. I couldn’t see him, and I couldn’t risk using energy to push my senses out. My sense of smell was very limited this low on blood. “Stop hiding, butthole,” I shouted. “You know I can’t smell you right now.” He dropped down from the peach tree and I screamed, dropping the fruit onto the ground while he laughed at me. “Asshole!”

  The sight of him laughing took my breath away, and I didn’t stop him when he leaned in and pressed my back against the peach tree. The sticky bark was rough under my hands, my nails dug into the wood when Knight reached up to pull a twig from my hair.

  Would he kiss me? Of course he wouldn’t. He said he found me repulsive, and rightly so. “That is so gross,” he’d said. Those four words repeated in my head until I had to look away from his gaze.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. You’re a tease, that’s what’s wrong. And I shouldn’t have been attracted to you, but I was.

  “We should get back,” I answered.

  He nodded and stepped away from me. I started towards the bed and breakfast with him beside me, both of us silent. Our mood was further killed as we came closer and saw a police car sitting in front of the house. Knight took my hand and we scurried behind a shed where we wouldn’t be seen. The local sheriff was talking to the owner of the bed and breakfast, who gestured to the Impala and then the window of our room.

  He was here for me.

  Knight tugged on my hand and put a finger to his lips, then gestured he was going to get our bags from the room and I needed to stay here. He left, and though I knew it would use up most of the blood I had left, I pushed my senses out to listen in on the sheriff and the proprietor. It was extremely difficult, but I managed to keep it up for a few minutes.

  “…so she didn’t look suspicious?”

  “No! I can’t believe she killed a little girl!” What? What was she talking about?

  “What about the man with her?”

  “He was…. well, he’s a big man, but he wasn’t rude. Just being near him was enough to make you piss yourself.” I tried not to laugh. Knight was intimidating, with just his height alone. Good thing he hadn’t flashed his pointed teeth. Ooo. I’d like to see that.

  “He must be an accomplice,” the sheriff concluded, unfairly.

  I gasped as my senses pulled back in. I felt even weaker now. Knight was there before I noticed he was near, carrying our bags over his shoulder. He took my hand again and said one word:

  “Run.”

  A month ago, running would’ve been so easy and so much fun. But weeks of drinking bagged blood had turned me into an invalid. Only a blood frenzy would strengthen me now, or just, you know, drinking from someone. I wasn’t even sure a frenzy would work at this point. So, when Knight grabbed me and told me to run, I failed miserably. I ran for about two minutes, but then my legs stopped working properly and I started tripping over my own feet.

  “God damn it,” he cursed, and then he adjusted the bags, picked me up, and kept running. With my legs wrapped around his waist and his arms holding me against his chest, my mouth was right on his neck. His warm skin was an invitation, not just to drink, but to have my fill of him in other ways. I was too weak to be turned on.

  Knight ran across the Texan countryside for over an hour, not slowing and not even winded. Every minute or so he adjusted his hands on me to make sure I was still there and not falling off him. My arms were too weak to even anchor myself on his neck. He finally slowed down and stopped for a few minutes to rest, though fro
m the way he was breathing, you’d never have known he’d just run that far carrying a vampire and two bags.

  He sighed like he was about to speak, and I stilled, waiting for him to complain or maybe grab my ass. “My car,” was all he said. I giggled and he laughed too, the movement shaking my head.

  “Call Jesse, he’ll keep it for you.” The Alpha had said to call him if we needed anything. This was anything.

  “Text him,” Knight said to me. “Where’s the phone?”

  I dropped my head against his shoulder. “I don’t think I can make my hand hold it.”

  He rubbed my back to soothe me and held me closer to keep me from falling. He was so nice to me. “Just wait a little longer.” We were off again, Knight navigating the terrain like a pro until we’d been gone for several hours. The sun was setting when he stopped again. I vaguely registered the sound of him stepping into a pool of warm water and then he set me down on the stone floor of a cave. Behind him was a waterfall and we were slightly hidden in the curtain of water. He sat down at my feet and we both rested. The water was a natural hot spring and the steam of it made the cave air warm.

  After a few minutes, he glanced over at me. “I think your lotion is all rubbed off.” I felt certainly pale, so I was probably a lot whiter than normal. I started sliding down the wall since I couldn’t hold myself up, but Knight was there to catch me.

  I let him guide me onto his lap, I was kind of powerless to do otherwise, but when he tilted his head to the side to expose his neck, I froze. “What are you doing?” I asked him with trepidation, though I knew full well what he was offering. A small part hoped he wasn’t just offering blood.

  “I heard the humans back there. Your kind has involved their law enforcement to find you. The hospitals will probably be on alert as well. Stealing blood was already risky. Now it’ll give us away.” He swallowed, met my eyes, and his hand came up to grip my arm. “I’m offering this willingly. I told Jesse I would protect you, and I meant it. Now drink before I change my mind.”