Her Vampire’s Promise

by Jordan K. Rose

  Reade’s fingers curved under her chin, and he tilted her face toward his.

  She blinked a few more tears. “And now, here you are and things are different. I want you. I don’t…I’m confused. I don’t know if I want you or if your blood inside me wants you.”

  She’d never felt anything like this. Her heart ached. She had the strangest urge to kiss him and touch him. She wanted desperately to climb into his lap to be as close to him as possible.

  “I am drawn to you as you are to me.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t even understand. I don’t know how or why, but I think I love you.” This whole evening had been a whirlwind of emotions and strange behavior. “I’ve never loved anyone. I don’t know if this is love or an outcome of my experiment.”

  She knew she shouldn’t make statements that she couldn’t prove and certainly didn’t understand. But, what difference did it make at this point? She’d just admitted she liked drinking vampire blood. He couldn’t possibly think she was any stranger.

  Reade looked down at their hands, and Lawrie could feel him hesitating.

  “What? What is it?” She pulled her hands away, crossing them over her chest and huffing. “Just say it.”

  When Reade looked back at her, she felt all his attention, every cell in his body, focused on her. “I was drawn to you before I drank what your father gave me.” He licked his lips. “From the moment I met you I wanted you.”

  Lawrie’s mouth dropped open. “I…I was just an infant when we met.” Her breaths came in quick gasps and her heart picked up speed. What was he saying? What had he done?

  Reade nodded. “I know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Reade’s own heart raced as he tried to explain. For all these years he’d thought he was disappointed, even disgusted with himself at breaking a pact, one he’d sealed in blood with her long before she could ever understand its meaning. He’d believed himself a useless failure, deserved of a long life of misery where every night was plagued by the constant nagging reminder of how he’d betrayed Lawrence and his baby daughter.

  Not until this evening did he realize he was heartbroken. He’d loved her from the moment she was born. Only now did he realize what that meant.

  “How could you?” Lawrie asked. Again her hands went to her neck, a defensive posture Reade recognized well.

  “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I could never act on the urge. Never.” He shook his head. “But there was something about you that called to me, and I wanted nothing more than to be in your presence, to watch you play and hold you when you slept.” Reade shook his head. “I thought it was some weird regret of not having fathered any children, some horrible joke of fate that now as a vampire the urge to parent would overcome me. And I kept on thinking that all these years.”

  A wave of relief rolled through the car, and he couldn’t tell if it was his own confession or Lawrie’s understanding that made them both relax.

  “It is entirely possible that we were meant to be together.” Reade watched the way her mouth opened as if to argue, but closed instead. “Drawn to one another like two parts to one whole.”

  He knew he sounded ridiculous. Hearing the words come out of his own mouth made him cringe. What if she didn’t think that way? After all she had been only a baby. Maybe her compulsion to drink his blood came from some bizarre addiction she’d developed as a child.

  A goofy grin spread over Lawrie’s face. “Like soul mates? That sounds so silly.” She laughed, then snorted. “Sorry. That just sounds insane, like some sort of fairy tale.”

  He laughed, hoping his disappointment wouldn’t show. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  At the very least she wasn’t trying to beat the crap out of him, so for the moment he had that going for him.

  “Fairy tales.” She sighed and looked out the window into the darkness.

  Reade watched her reflection. Her smile faded and tears pooled in her blue eyes. A sadness he’d felt more times than he cared to remember descended in the car, and he realized that all this time he’d been linked to her, attuned to her emotions just as much as his own.

  “Hey.” He reached across her to pull her into his arms. “Don’t cry. If this isn’t something—”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t know anything about romance or love or relationships. Nothing.” She pushed out of his embrace. “Well, nothing good. I don’t have the slightest idea what to do. I…I want this to work, to be real, but I just…”

  “I hope you’re serious.” Reade leaned forward. “Or I’m probably about to get killed.” He couldn’t stop the urge to kiss her.

  There was nothing more in the world he wanted than to make her pain stop. He wanted her to laugh and be happy. She deserved to know what being loved truly meant.

  When Reade kissed Lawrie he nearly lost control. He’d been dying to kiss her for hours, and between the thrill of finally kissing her and the fear she might deck him, he was lost to her instantly.

  Her lips were soft beneath his. She opened her mouth and kissed him with such passion he nearly climbed into her seat to take her in the car.

  Desire burned through him like he’d never felt before, not with any woman, not once. He wanted her, wanted to make love to her, wanted to taste her, wanted to claim her for his own for all the world to know.

  The soft moan that escaped her when she pulled back for a breath made his cock throb.

  He shifted in his seat, preparing to sit back, but she yanked him to her. “Kiss me again,” she said and pressed her mouth to his.

  He braced himself against the car door to keep from crushing her. She was once again using her borrowed vampire speed to throw him completely off-kilter.

  “Take me, Reade.” The breathy command she whispered in his ear sent rapturous tingles through him. “I want you to have me.”

  “Not here,” he managed to say, though it pained him not to do as she commanded.

  In the front seat of his Corvette was not the place he wanted this to happen. He wanted her to have a more romantic, comfortable, intimate experience, and besides, there was not nearly enough room for him to do all the things he planned to do.

  “We’ll go home.” He tried to pull back.

  “No.” She looked in his eyes. “I feel your hunger. You need me.” Her eyes blazed, and Reade could feel her looking into his soul. She tilted her head to the side. “Take me.”

  Reade pulled back. “You’re sure?”

  “Never more.” She pulled his head to her neck. “Make me yours.”

  Reade couldn’t bother to think twice about the offer. He could barely believe what was happening. His fangs descended and he buried them into the soft flesh of Lawrie’s neck.

  She tasted just as sweet and perfect as he remembered, only this time he didn’t beat himself up for enjoying her. He didn’t tell himself what a sick and demented creature he’d become.

  This time he savored what she willingly gave him, enjoying every bit of her essence.

  He pulled back from her neck to see her eyes flutter open.

  “That didn’t hurt,” she said.

  He smiled. “It wasn’t meant to.” He cupped her cheek and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “I’ll never hurt you.”

  “Promise.” She pressed her forehead to his.

  “I swear my life to it.”

  Excerpt from

  The Vampire’s Partner

  by Jordan K. Rose

  Bright headlights lit the window seat of Central City Coffee. Alice squinted. “What the hell with the high beams? Jeez.” She glared at the passing car, grumbling about idiots and morons being allowed to drive.

  Hunter didn’t mind the lights of the passing cars so much, and not just because they were to his back, but more because her front was fully illuminated.

  He reached for the half-filled jar of coffee beans, turning it around in his hand and listening to the beans rattle. Dark roasted Sumatra beans had nothing on the color of Alice’s eyes.

&n
bsp; Hers were the darkest brown he’d ever seen, and over his many years he’d seen a lot of eyes. Mostly they’d been glazed over by the time he was done staring into them. But not Alice’s.

  “This was a stupid seat.” She picked up her to-go cup and sipped her Earl Grey tea, replacing it in the center of her perfectly folded napkin. “I knew better than to let you pick. This is not incognito.”

  He barely nodded. “By incognito you mean hiding in the back corner where no one would ever think to look for us.” He gave her a full nod. “I thought I explained that being obvious is sometimes the best hiding place.”

  “I thought I explained that Central City is not the type of place to use your sophisticated theories.” She used air quotes for sophisticated. “The people of this town are a lot more basic than that.”

  The bells on the door jingled as another customer entered the shop. The scent of freshly ground coffee beans swirled in the air.

  “Which is why being right under their noses will work.” He replaced the jar of beans at the end of the table. “I know I’m the senior member of our team, but do I have to teach you everything?”

  “Smart-ass.”

  Alice turned her head, watching the activity at the counter. Her black wavy hair caught the light of another passing vehicle, and Hunter saw one gray strand streaking through her bob.

  It didn’t curl under her chin like all the others. Instead, it stuck straight out as if it was screaming to be noticed.

  He bit back a laugh. She’d been making him pull unruly gray hairs for the last two months. Twenty-three and going gray, she’d squawked. Apparently his partner came from a long line of early grayers, as she called them. Why she worried about the occasional strand was beyond him, but then most things women did made no sense.

  The lady at the counter ordered a coffee and a dozen donuts, then sat at a table in the back corner.

  Alice watched the counter where another customer placed an order.

  He loved the face she made when he annoyed her. Perfect eyebrows drew down. Her lashes twitched, and her lips pulled tight over her teeth. It all served to make those dark brown eyes sparkle with ire.

  “Stop it.” She looked out the window. “I can feel you trying to get in my head.”

  “Come on.” He reached across the table, taking her hand in his. “We’re supposed to be lovers.”

  When he walked into work tonight, he learned the rumors were true. Panthera Corporation was up and running again, and Raymond Tyrone was still at the helm, which meant only one thing. That evil prick was up to no good.

  Alice tsked. “We’re supposed to be working, pretending to be lovers, not real lovers.”

  Since it was a pretty fair bet that no one in Central City knew him it made the most sense for Hunter to help stake out the area. He’d been assigned to take Alice and to fit in.

  “Semantics. Either way people are supposed to believe we’re lovers.”

  “And they will. They’ll think we’re having a spat.” She rolled her eyes.

  He leaned forward. “That means makeup sex.”

  Just the thought of it made his gut tighten—his gut, his chest and another muscle, quite useful to lovers. He smiled. “Look at me, baby. Don’t make me beg.”

  “Shut up, Hunter.” She pulled her hand from his. “If you weren’t always trying to whammy me, we wouldn’t always have to pretend to be sparring lovers.”

  The word lovers rolled off her tongue, and his fangs ached. His tongue pressed to the back of his teeth, trying like all hell to keep them from dropping. Not an easy task when the object of your every desire sat three feet from you, unknowingly teasing you into a frenzy.

  “Are you saying that if I stop doing that…” He lowered his voice to a deep whisper, one he knew worked quite well with other women. “…we could be more intimate?”

  Just the thought of it made his cock rub against his zipper. It was these moments when he wished he wore underwear.

  She whipped back to face him, her lip curled up and those dark eyes narrowed to a venomous glare.

  Hunter could hardly keep from clearing the table and taking her on top of it. Her wild anger did things to him he couldn’t quite explain. He reminded himself that getting arrested for public fornication definitely did not fall under the definition of incognito.

  He smiled. “Is that a no?”

  “A big fat no.” She shifted in her seat, folding her arms over her chest, which he was fairly certain was a very comfortable stance for her, considering how often she used it. Guarded, yet aggressive.

  He quite liked it, too. He loved the aggressive part, but the fact that it pushed her breasts up and at him made it all that much more enticing.

  He reached down to make an adjustment.

  “You know I love you, baby,” he said in the same deep whisper, wagging his eyebrows at her.

  She squeezed her red lips tight between her teeth, but the smile she was battling won out, and she grinned. “You’re an idiot.”

  “Yeah,” he said, making sure to use his sexiest voice. “Say it again. You know just what I like to hear.” He sat back, his legs extended out under the table on either side of hers. “Let me try one more time.”

  “Nope.” She shook her head, and her gaze dropped from his face to his chest, a move she’d been using for months.

  He’d debated writing something on his chest like look up or kiss here or something to make her realize he knew exactly what she was doing. But the idea of her looking somewhere else because she’d been caught stopped him.

  “It’s for your own good. If your ability not to succumb to a vampire’s gaze wanes or fails entirely, you’re screwed. It’s best if we know when it might be happening.”

  That was the absolute truth, without an iota of doubt. The fact that he enjoyed trying to mesmerize her more than he enjoyed most other things was also true, but she didn’t need to know that part.

  She frowned. “A preventative measure?”

  “Exactly.”

  For as long as Hunter could remember, which was about ninety-eight years, seeing as he couldn’t seem to remember anything before his teens, he always planned and prepared for the what-if scenario.

  What if robbers ransacked his home? What if he found himself with no money, no food, no shelter? What if he lost everyone who meant anything to him?

  He’d learned the hard way to always prepare, and he always made sure everyone he respected did the same.

  “You never know when your luck could run out. You don’t want to find yourself at the whim of someone far more criminal than me.”

  Alice had proven to be not only mentally stronger than most humans with her ability to not be influenced by a vampire, but she was also in superb physical condition, managing to hold her own in most fights with any human. That didn’t mean she was safe when it came to vampires.

  “Doubt that could happen.” She watched a couple walk past the storefront window.

  “People need to learn to be responsible for themselves and not expect someone else to take care of them.”

  “Did you hear what you just said to me?” Her tone was less than approving. “As I’ve demonstrated several times, I don’t expect anyone to take care of me.” She leaned forward and stared straight into his eyes. “Least of all some vampire.”

  Deep within Hunter something rumbled. Just the thought of anyone doing anything, good, bad or indifferent, to Alice stoked the fires that fueled his rage. He had no claim to her other than their partnership, but he’d never been a man who liked to share.

  He focused on her eyes, raising the intensity of his influence and directing it at her with all his strength. He centered every ounce of his power into mesmerizing her. Relax. Listen to the beating of our hearts. Feel them move as one. He sent the commands to her in the same way he’d done to thousands of women before.

  Her eyes softened. She blinked a slow, dreamy blink. Her lips parted. Her shoulders relaxed.

  He knew she couldn’t possibly be
immune to vampire powers. It just made no sense. He’d never met a woman he couldn’t handle.

  He leaned forward and whispered, “That’s right.”

  She swayed a bit in her seat.

  “Careful,” he whispered and stroked his hand over hers. “Enjoy the peacefulness.”

  “I will, if you cut the crap.” Her right eyebrow shot upward and her eyes opened wide. “You’re never going to quit trying are you?” She leaned forward so they were only inches apart. “We’re equals, which means you don’t get to treat me like I just arrived in high school.”

  “Equals?” Hunter smiled. “Well, all right.”

  He hadn’t thought of her as his equal. He hadn’t thought of her as not his equal. In spite of being the senior partner when Hunter thought about Alice he thought many things, but how they measured up to each other occupationally was not one of them.

  “Equals. I’m just as good as you.” She snickered.

  He nodded, certain she was just as good as he was at many things. God knew she had better endurance than any other human and she was smart, well, she may have been smarter than him, not that he planned to admit that out loud.

  “I can still kick your ass.” Of this, he was certain. She was a girl, a human girl. He might not have been half as confident if she was a vampire.

  “Doubt it.” Alice pressed her sweet lips to Hunter’s. “Lover.” She nipped him, pulling his bottom lip between her teeth and sucking.

  Hunter groaned. His cock throbbed, and he gripped the table in an effort to keep from doing anything more. He couldn’t care less about finding out who was recruiting for Panthera or anything about their newest weapon. All he wanted was to rip Alice’s clothes off and take her where they sat.

  Shit! He’d lost complete focus.