by Cynthia Eden
Not bad at all.
He glared down at her. “I want all that. I want you. Right now, I’m scared because I think you’re about to tell me to get out because from the moment that I came into your life, I’ve just brought you trouble, while you’ve brought me…everything.”
Oh.
He sucked in a breath, and stepped back, releasing her. “I’m not going to force you to stay with me. I couldn’t, even if you weren’t strong enough to kick my ass.”
Her lips wanted to curl. No, she wanted to laugh. For him.
“You want to walk out that door and go back to the life you had before me, then do it.” Simon moved aside. “But know this—you won’t find another man who loves you like I do. And if you do, I might just have to show up and kick his ass.” He yanked a hand through his hair. “If you wind up with that demon bastard, ah, Dee—just don’t.”
Zane.
“We almost slept together once.” The admission came out, probably at the wrong time. She always said the wrong thing.
His eyes closed in a slow blink and his face hardened.
“We’re friends. Thought maybe we could be more.”
His fangs were coming out. A jealous vampire was a dangerous one.
“But we were better friends than anything else. Zane understood me, the anger and pain inside.” Because he had the same brew stirring in him.
“Why didn’t you sleep with the prick?”
“Because I wanted a friend. Needed one, and I never let my lovers get close.” Not even Tony. “Until you.”
That had his eyes widening. “What are you saying?”
So hard. Dee inhaled and took a risk. About time for one. “I’m saying I didn’t count on falling for you, vampire. I knew you were using me. I thought I’d use you, too.” Brutal truth time. They should have that, now. “I couldn’t hurt you physically. You could handle my strength and my bloodlust and me.”
He just watched her. Dark gaze so steady.
“I never counted on falling for you,” she said again, softer now. “That wasn’t part of my plan.” But she’d gone and fallen anyway. “I taste you, too. I want you, always. I want to protect you. Fight for you. I want you in the dark. Even in the light.” Though it seemed like she’d had little light in her life. Maybe that would change now. Who would have thought? It might have taken becoming a vampire to see the sunlight.
And to see that sometimes, the best things could be hiding in the darkness.
Not just monsters.
Men.
“I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.” Cold. Hollow. Pain shadowing her. “I want to try living this time. Really living, and I don’t want to be alone.”
His lips parted. “Don’t tease, babe, just don’t fuckin—”
“You’re not perfect, Simon Chase. We both know you’re a liar and a dirty fighter.” She smiled now. A big, wide smile. For her. For him. “Good thing for you, I am, too.”
Hope lit his face.
When was the last time she’d felt hope? Right now. “I think I love you, vampire.” Loving what she’d feared most.
Had Catalina seen this one coming?
No, she’d just seen death.
Dee shoved that thought from her mind. The sun would rise in less than an hour’s time. The witch had been wrong.
Life. Love—that was what waited for her. Not death.
Not again.
It was time for her to be happy. With her vampire.
Dee let the sheet fall. “You want forever?”
His gaze slipped over her body. Heated.
“Let’s start with right here, this moment, and we’ll let forever come later.” Right now, she wanted him.
Love.
Scary. But she could handle scary. She’d proven that, and she could handle him.
She lifted her hand and offered her palm. “Stay with me?” Love me?
His fingers curled around hers, warm and strong. “Always.”
She had to blink because her eyes were tearing. Silly. “Kiss me.”
His lips brushed hers. A tender caress. She knew he could be tender, with her.
When the knock came at the door, she didn’t turn from him. Dee pulled him closer.
But Simon tensed against her. His tongue slipped over her lips and his head lifted. “Is that…”
She stared up at him. Dawn hadn’t come.
She knew the instant he caught the scent. The same scent that already filled her nose.
Catalina is wrong. Wrong.
But Simon was already spinning away from her. Grabbing her jeans and a shirt and tossing them to her before he turned to the door, fangs bared.
“Since when does evil knock?” She asked him, only half-kidding because a knot was tightening in her belly. This close. She’d come so close to being happy.
Should have known fate would screw her over again.
Dee pulled the shirt over her head and shimmied into the jeans. “Why aren’t they kicking the door down?” And it was them. She could smell ’em. At least five vampires. Six?
You were surrounded. Catalina’s stupid words wouldn’t stop playing in her mind.
Simon shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Not like vampires were into playing nice.
He grabbed their weapons, tossed her a stake, then reached for the door knob.
“Simon!”
A pause, then he glanced back at her. Dee wet her lips and said, “I really do love you.” That regret wouldn’t be with her, no matter what was waiting out there. She’d tell him how she felt.
Like she hadn’t been able to tell her family.
“Why do I still feel like you’re saying good-bye?” His fingers hesitated over the knob.
Because I could be.
No, no, Catalina was wrong. “Do you think our futures are set? That what witches and demons see, those images are the only future we can have?”
“Hell, no,” Simon said immediately. “I don’t give a shit what they see. I know my future.” His stare could have burned a lesser woman. It just made her blood heat. “I’m looking right at her.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “Once these assholes out here are gone, I’ll be taking her again, too.”
That sounded like one fine plan. Now if the fear in her belly would just go away.
“Forever, Dee. Forever starts now.”
He yanked open the door.
No one waited outside. Just the odor of the vamps, drifting on the wind. A warning? Had they been trying to scare her?
She stalked to Simon’s side. In the distance, she could just make out the faint pink rays of dawn.
I’m not going to die tonight. “What’s happening?”
Simon crept out of the room. The parking lot waited to the right. It looked deserted.
Like she didn’t know how very deceiving looks could be.
“Grim’s men?” she asked. He’d know. He had a better lock on them than she did. Sure, the link to the master was severed, but there was still a connection between his Taken.
And the guy had grown a whole freaking army.
Will they all come after me? Is this just the beginning?
The men stepped from the waning shadows. Two. Three.
A woman rose from the darkness. Another stalked to her side.
Or is this the end?
A hot wind blew against Dee’s face as she stood in the doorway. These weren’t Born vampires. All were Taken. She was stronger, even if she was newer to the Undead world. She could handle them.
Simon’s shoulder brushed hers. No, they could handle them.
Her fingers tightened around the stake.
Two more vampires appeared.
What the hell was this? Some kind of vamp convention? A human was going to look out one of those dirty windows and see them, and the local deputies would swarm this place.
It wasn’t so easy to keep things quiet when the sirens started blaring.
“You came after the wrong woman,” Dee to
ld them, letting her voice ring out. I was so close to being happy.
Stupid. She couldn’t even have a minute’s worth of happiness. They were always going to hunt her, just as she’d hunted them. Always.
The vampires bowed their heads and turned their hands out, showing her their empty palms. Right, like vamps needed weapons to kill.
“We’re not here to fight you,” one of the women called out, not lifting her head.
“Of course. You’re just here to wish me a good freaking morning.” Hurry up, sun, rise. Stupid prediction.
“Born.”
“Slayed Grim.”
The whispers drifted to her.
Dee inched forward. Simon stayed right beside her.
“Your good old leader Grim deserved the death he got.” Actually, he’d probably deserved a much more painful death, but she didn’t exactly have the do-over option. “He was a sick freak and he needed to be put down.” Probably not what these vamps were looking to hear.
Tough. She wasn’t going to sugarcoat. Her eyes scanned the lot. Okay, that made seven total. She and Simon could take them.
“We’re not here to kill you.” The vampire still didn’t look up. Dee realized the vamps had formed a semicircle around her room. She tensed.
Simon has my back. And he did. He stood with her, strong and steady.
“Good,” she told them, determination firing her blood. “Because I’m not dying today.” No, she wouldn’t. She’d just found something to live for and she wasn’t about to give it up.
Screw off, Catalina.
“Are we?” The quiet question floated in the air.
Her brows snapped together and Dee glanced at Simon. A quick, fast glance.
Surrounded. It hit her then. Vampires surrounded her.
But Simon was one of those vamps, and she trusted him. With her life and her heart.
“Are you going to kill us?” the woman asked, still not looking Dee’s way. Her long blond hair covered her face. Dee stared at her, a chill skating its way down her spine.
“That depends.” Let’s try for some honesty. “If you’re twisted like Grim and you get off on hurting humans, then, yeah, I’ll come after you. It’s what I do.” That wouldn’t change. She’d seen too many innocents die. No way would she let a killer walk.
“And you think some vampires can live…without hurting others?”
Before, she hadn’t. But she’d been blinded by her own rage then. She was finally starting to see straight now; it had just taken dying to open her eyes. “Yeah, I do.” Her fingers were wrapped so tightly around the stake that the wood bit into her flesh.
She stared at the line of bodies and wondered who would move first. Who would attack.
Dee wouldn’t draw first blood, but she would make sure she drew the last drops.
“We waited for you.” The woman looked at her then. A long scar cut across her cheek. A scar she must have gotten long ago. In another life. “Waiting was so hard…”
“We’ve been waiting for you, Sandra Dee…” Words from that terrible night. Grim’s men. Waiting for her death.
But these vampires had been waiting, too—for what? Her eyes narrowed as she watched them.
Born.
They’d been waiting for her to free them.
The vampires began to drift away.
Simon’s hands settled on her shoulders. “I told you, Dee. Sometimes, monsters are made.”
And sometimes they were Taken.
A tear tracked down the woman’s cheek. “My son…”
That was all she had to say. Dee understood. Grim had played his twisted games with everyone.
“You won’t see me again,” the vampiress told her. “Not any of us.” Her chin lifted. Pride there. Strength. “We’re more than the evil that people think.”
But people had been fearing vampires for centuries.
And forgetting that once upon a time, vampires were people, too. She’d forgotten that. No, she hadn’t wanted to remember.
The vampires faded as the sun rose. Dee watched them, silent.
Simon stood with her as the sun inched across the sky. Dawn was such a beautiful thing. Pity she hadn’t enjoyed the sunrises more.
“We should go inside. Get some rest.”
Because another night would come. Another. Always another.
With more darkness to fight.
Dee reached for him and rubbed her fingers over the hard line of his jaw. She wouldn’t be fighting alone anymore. No, her vamp would be at her side.
She’d be at his.
The darkness could come. They’d be ready.
They’d kick ass.
Make love.
And live for-damn-ever.
Death hadn’t come for her. Catalina had been wrong.
No, maybe she’d been right. As she stared at Simon in the growing morning light, Dee knew her old life had ended. But a new life…
It waited for her.
All she had to do was reach out and take it.
She kept the stake in her right hand and curled her arm around Simon’s neck.
Then she kissed him in the sunlight. Just as she’d kiss him in the moonlight.
Sometimes, a woman had to make her own happy ending.
And, sometimes, she had to leave room for a little bit of hunting on the side.
Because you had to keep life interesting, and after all, someone had to stop the bad guys.
She’d slay them all, soon enough.
But first, she’d take her vampire and, as he’d promised, he’d take her.
For-damn-ever.
If you liked this book, go out and get Emma Lang’s
RUTHLESS HEART, out now…
Grady had never met a woman like Eliza, if that was even really her name. She talked like a professor, rode around with twenty pounds of books, and could build a campfire like nobody’s business. Yet she was as innocent as a child, had a sad story about a dead husband he didn’t believe for a second, and seemed to be waiting for him to invite her along for his hunt.
He snorted at the thought. Grady worked alone, always and for good. There sure as hell was no room for anyone, much less a woman like Eliza.
He had damn well tried his best to shake the woman, but the blue-eyed raven-haired fool wouldn’t budge. Truth be told, he was impressed by her bravado, but disgusted by his inability to shake her off his tail the night before. Rather than risk having her do the same thing again, he decided to ride like hell and leave her behind. He should have felt guilty, but he’d left that emotion behind, along with most every other, a long time go. Grady had a job to complete and that was all that mattered to him.
The only thing he was concerned about was finding the two wayward wives he’d been hired to hunt and making sure they regretted leaving their husband, at least for the five seconds they lived after he found them.
Grady learned as a young man just how much he couldn’t trust the fairer sex. His mother had been his teacher, and he’d been a very astute pupil. No doubt if she hadn’t drunk herself to death, she’d still be out there somewhere taking advantage of and using men as she saw fit.
The cool morning air gave way to warm sunshine within a few hours. He refused to think about what the schoolmarm was doing, or if anything had been done to her. If she could take care of her horse and build a fire, she could take care of herself. Food could be gotten at any small town, but then again maybe she could hunt and fish too.
Somehow it wouldn’t surprise him if she did. The woman seemed to have a library in her head. Against his will, the sight of her unbound black hair popped into his head. It had been long, past her waist to brush against the nicely curved backside. Grady preferred his women with some meat on their bones, better to hang onto when he had one beneath him, or riding him. He shifted in the saddle as his dick woke up at the thought of Eliza’s dark curtain of hair brushing his bare skin.
Jesus Christ, he sure didn’t need to be thinking about fucking the wayward Miss Eliza. If she
was a widow, no doubt she’d had experience in bed with a man. It wasn’t Grady’s business of course, so he needed to stop his brain from getting into her bloomers, or any parts of her anatomy.
As the morning wore on, Grady’s mind returned to the contents of her bags. The woman didn’t have a lick of common sense and fell asleep, vulnerable and unprotected. Good thing he didn’t have any bad thoughts on his mind or she wouldn’t have been sleeping. She even snored a little, something he found highly amusing as he’d rifled through her things.
Her smaller bag had contained a hodgepodge of clothes, each uglier and frumpier than the last, a hairbrush, half a dozen biscuits in a tattered napkin and some hairpins. A measly collection of a woman’s life, and quite pitiful if that was all she had. Perhaps she’d been at least partially truthful about taking everything she owned and hitting the trail. Her husband must have been a poor excuse for a provider if this collection of tags was all she had.
The bag of books was just that, a bag stuffed full of scientific texts ranging from medical topics to some titles he couldn’t even pronounce. In the bottom of the bag was a battered copy of Wuthering Heights. He didn’t know what it was but it was much smaller than the other books, likely a novel. She obviously put the spectacles to good use judging by the two dozen tomes she had in her bag. He wondered how she’d gotten it up on the saddle in the first place.
“Fool.” He had to stop thinking about Eliza and what she was doing and why. Grady would never see her again.
As a child, Grady learned very early not to care or ask questions. It only bought him a cuff on the ear or a boot in the ass. A boy could only take so much of that before he kept his mouth shut and simply snuck around to find out what he needed to know.
As a young man, it served him well and garnered the attention of the man who taught him how to hunt and kill people in the quickest, most efficient way. Grady had learned his lesson well, even better than his mentor expected. When the job was put before him to hunt and kill the very man who had taught him those very skills, Grady hesitated only a minute before he said yes.
The devil rode on his back, a constant companion he’d come to accept. He didn’t need a woman riding there too.
