by Amanda Vyne
Too bad her body had other opinions.
She threw her legs over the edge of the cot and sat up. Running her fingers through the short strands of her hair, she sighed in resignation. “Can I at least get some water if you’re going to grill me?”
She could use an entire water cooler and about twenty hours of sleep right now but would satisfy herself with what she was going to get – the paper cup of water Gabe offered her and what was obviously going to escalate into an argument.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d lost too much blood?”
Rolling her eyes up to look into his face she put the cup to her lips to hide the smile. He towered over her with his fists clenched around the handles of his blades. He had a tendency to touch them when he was irritated. Kel thought the habit was a bit sexy. His shoulder-length blond hair was tousled as though he’d repeatedly run his hands through it.
“At what point would have been a good time? Before or after you laid me out on the hood of that car?” Kel said blandly, ignoring Dr. Mahoney’s cough. “Does the hood of sleek sports cars have special significance to your people or is that just a personal preference?” She looked down into the empty paper cup and swallowed hard. God, she was so thirsty. Gabe’s anger burned her from the inside out, and she jerked her head up to glare at him. He was creeping around inside her again like he belonged there, like he had a right to know what lay in the deepest core of her just because they'd shared blood. Or because she thought he had the best ass and the sexiest set of…blades.
“If you do not tell me, how can I properly care for you?”
“Properly care for me? What, am a pet goldfish or something?” Kel shot another glance up at the unit of blood hanging from the hook above her head. Infuse already! “Besides, I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it since I was twelve, no thanks to…anybody.” It had been on her lips to say “your people” and even though she’d stopped herself the words still rang between them.
He pulled his hand through his hair again and paced away from her. Those broad shoulders hunched forward in agitation and her eyes were drawn to the play of muscles. His scent seemed to surround her and her gums throbbed, an ache curling low in her stomach. She licked her lips and swallowed hard as she looked down into the empty cup again. Her reaction to him was getting worse and he wasn’t even aroused. He was just damn irritated and yet – still – she wanted to throw him down on the cold tile floor and lose herself in his heat.
With a frustrated sound she looked up at the blood hanging from the hook and gave it a little shake. She needed some air. There was a tingling in her gums that made her want to drag her claws over the vinyl top of the cot in frustration. She wanted him in every way possible. She wanted to feel his hard body pressing into her again but this time she wanted to taste the rich tang of his blood sliding across her tongue. She wanted it with a ferocity that was almost frightening in its intensity.
He swiveled and his gaze traveled slowly over her, the thin flare of his nostrils quivering as he scented her. His eyes devoured her but just as suddenly he shot a glance to the unit of blood running in a thin tube to her arm. His lips tightened, and he spun away from her again.
“Blood loss retards your ability to heal yourself,” Gabe recited, as though to focus himself.
“Sudden extreme blood loss,” Dr. Mahoney corrected, never looking up from her microscope.
“You obviously need to eat often.” His eyes darted a glance to her. “You are always hungry. What happens if you don’t get food often?”
“I get cranky,” Kel snapped, giving the IV pole an angry shake.
“Her body will begin to break down other cellular tissue for fuel. Although I have not noted such phenomena specifically in Kel” – Dr. Mahoney continued, casting a frown at her agitated patient who was rattling the tubing leading up to the mostly deflated bag of blood – “but there are cases where extreme hunger has initiated the feral, the beast that dwells within Guardians.”
Kel rolled her eyes. “I’m not likely to go hunting for small game in the city park when there’s a hot dog vendor on nearly every corner.”
“Does she have any irritation from the sun?”
“Not that I have observed. Any sun damage would be healed quickly, in any case. Perhaps mild photosensitivity may be an issue.”
Gabe nodded as though that were very important to know.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Kel snapped in exasperation. They were discussing her like she was a brand-new puppy. Rattling the IV pole again in agitation she responded in a mocking tone. “She wears sunglasses and can even put them on herself.”
Gabe glared at her, but Dr. Mahoney seemed to be mildly amused by her surliness. Kel wanted to snarl at them both. The doctor peeled off her latex gloves and tossed them in a waste can before coming over to deftly cinch the IV tubing. She pressed a piece of gauze over the needle before sliding it out. Kel bent her arm to apply pressure on the IV site.
“Yes, that is more like it,” Dr. Mahoney crowed as she completely peeled away a slightly bloodied bandage from Kel’s ribs. Looking down at herself she nodded. Instead of the oozing wound she’d last seen, there was a fresh pink scar. Within the next hour it would be completely gone. Perhaps then Gabe would get off her ass.
When she looked up Gabe was still staring intently at her. “You are angry. I can understand that. You resent my interference.” The green of his eyes was deep and intense. “I need to be able to protect you. It is a need I cannot control. I’m sorry if it causes you distress.”
“It causes me nuts,” Kel shot back, then sighed. “Listen, Ferrar, things will just go better for us if you let me take care of myself. If I do for myself then I don’t have to worry about…things not getting done. It’s safer.”
IT WAS AS close as she would get to admitting her fears. It was the closest he’d come thus far to the reason those shadows darkened her eyes when she looked at him. She used sarcasm and wit to hide a deep vulnerability that she resented and somehow blamed on his family. Despite her bitterness toward his House, she obviously feared depending too much on him, which told him that she wanted to.
He could work with that.
For now.
Despite her hostility he still felt the need to care for her, protect her. Her blood merged with his, flowing through his body, feeding all his organs, infusing every cell in his body with her. She was a part of him. She was his. There was nothing she could do to reverse it, to deny it. Soon her hunger for him would become too much for her to resist. The thirst for his blood would overwhelm her, and she would need to bleed him.
It was one of the reasons Sanguen males did not feed from the same female too many times. It sometimes signaled the female’s body that a bond was forthcoming. It could bring on the hunger in females.
Females took blood from their mates only and just for the initial bond. It served a dual purpose. His blood would bond to hers to serve as a warning to other males that she was taken and could no longer be blooded, and it also would make her body receptive to his seed. He was definitely not going to relate that information to her. At least not right away. He somehow suspected that particular truth would send her running.
He couldn’t risk losing her. Not at this delicate stage of their bonding process.
He needed her, needed her in a way that she didn’t quite need him. Not yet.
Gabe studied her. Her incredibly rich dark eyes betrayed a deep, carefully guarded vulnerability and a healthy amount of hostility. She was beautiful and dangerous. She had the delicate features of a Sanguen female and the core strength and instincts of a Guardian. The combination was heady – a lure he never imagined would have such an intense effect on him. Yet, beneath her sarcasm and cynicism, he sensed a vulnerability that called to him on a completely masculine level.
For a long moment they just looked at each other, and he could feel her closing herself off. Anytime he tried to merge mentally with her, she seemed to hold herself back from him, tolerant of t
he probe but cautious of revealing too much. While she was unconscious he’d been able to feel a deeper connection with her and he’d felt a yawning shadow in her that seethed with betrayal and pain. He knew she’d grown up in a Triumvirate home and that she believed his father, the Ferrar House doyen, was somehow responsible.
As though sensing the direction of his thoughts, she flinched slightly and plastered on the sarcastic little smile that she usually wore. Giving a last dab at the inside of her elbow, she tossed the gauze in the waste can and turned toward Dr. Mahoney.
“So, tell me, Doc, I believe you had info for me about the girl.”
“Hmm,” the doctor mumbled as she looked up from her microscope and scribbled on a piece of paper. “The vial from the blood dealer. It was the blood of an adolescent female. And she was a crossbreed. Guardian and Sanguen. I cross-referenced it to the girl you found in the park. It was a match. But there is something I do not understand.” The doc stood and turned, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully behind her glasses. “Why adolescent females?”
Gabe started at that information but Kel didn’t seem surprised. “It is forbidden to blood children.” He was appalled. It was one of their most sacred tenets. “Blooding children carries an immediate penalty of death.”
Kel’s smile was bitter. “Only if you get caught. And this dude is being very careful to avoid that.”
“But why children?” Gabe muttered darkly. He disliked the bitterness in Kel. She must have seen it too often. He wanted to believe that over the alternative. “There is no nutritional value in prepubescent females.”
Kel plucked a pipette from a jar and studied it. She seemed to need to be in constant motion. “Because he’s a freaking sicko. Do they need a specific reason? Besides I think the girls he took were in the beginnings of the change.”
The redheaded doctor plucked the tool from her hand and replaced it. “That may indicate that they were beginning to produce the extra protein in their blood required for nutrition. While you were at the blood spa, I was analyzing your boyfriend’s blood.”
Kel made a face but remained silent.
“I didn’t find any trace of Guardian blood.”
Gabe cast a glance at Kel to gauge her reaction. She’d grown still, poised, with a frown creasing her lips. He was unsure of the exact biological process involved with blooding. He knew his blood absorbed the blood he ingested. Sanguen were forbidden to blood any other species, especially human because of the effect it had on them. Not only did human blood lack what they needed but it contained a hormone that affected their central nervous system.
“What did you find? I think you know better than most that I’m half Guardian.”
“Indeed. I found crossbreed blood. Sanguen and Guardian to be exact.”
Kel relaxed her body but Gabe frowned. He was sure there was something the doctor wasn’t telling them.
“Well, yeah, my blood would be crossbreed blood and he definitely took enough of it for it to show up.” Kel scoffed.
Dr. Mahoney’s smile had that clinical quality that put Gabe on edge. “No, Agent, I don’t believe you quite understand. I found crossbreed blood. Your boyfriend’s blood tested as that of a crossbreed.”
Kel jerked upright. “What!”
Gabe processed that. It definitely explained his new strengths. The enhanced hearing and sight. The sense of vitality that infused him, a hyperawareness that affected his every perception. He could even slide in and out of Kel’s mind with greater ease, although the new strength of their bond might be mostly to blame for that.
Dr. Mahoney was appraising him, and he almost felt as though he were smeared on a slide beneath her microscope. In a way, he guessed he had been.
“You are probably experiencing heightened sensory perception. You may even experience an increase in strength and agility.” Her pale blue eyes lit with an eerie inner fire. “Perhaps even accelerated healing. You may even see a diminished sensitivity to solar radiation. And who knows what affect it may have on your existing strengths. This is uncharted territory.”
“Wait!” Kel paced a half circle around him, her dark gaze sliding up and down him. “You mean he’s becoming a crossbreed?”
“Hematologically, yes. To determine the extent of the change I would need to go beyond blood. I would need to conduct more invasive testing. If I only had a sample of his blood before the exchange for a comparative study.”
Gabe frowned. “Do you have a theory why?”
The doctor blinked her eyes back into focus. “When Sanguen males ingest blood a special gastric acid separates the different cells. Special proteins get absorbed directly into the bloodstream and bond to the red blood cells. What’s left gets absorbed by the white blood cells and disposed of. Crossbreed blood that includes Sanguen blood must somehow make a permanent bond. I would need to recheck his blood intermittently to determine the long-term effect.”
Something didn’t seem right. If the killer was after the benefits of crossbreed Guardian blood why would he use adolescent blood? Surely he wouldn’t get the same effect if he used blood from a fully grown crossbreed female.
Kel’s eyes lingered speculatively on him, and he would have given one of his blades to know what she was thinking. “It explains the high temp I got off of you. But” – she turned her dark eyes back on the doctor – “that still leaves us with the question of why our perv chooses children when the goods are obviously in the adult females.”
“Perhaps he isn’t aware of the enhanced response he would receive from an adult. If the victim was an adolescent crossbreed, especially one going through the change, there may still be a minor effect,” Dr. Mahoney theorized. “I think I may go down to the morgue and analyze our young victim myself. I will know more in a day or two.”
“Good. We need to check in with our fearless leader and then I’m off to grab some grub and catch a couple hours shut-eye. Tomorrow, I think we should go after our friend Jimmy. His scent was on the girl, and I’ll bet anything he’s up to his beady little eyes in this.”
Gabe nodded. “I need to retrieve some items from my hotel.” He motioned to the shirt he wore that was stained with her blood. He’d used it to stanch the bleeding and it was all he’d had to pull on at her apartment earlier. Following her out of the lab he waited until they were out of earshot of the interfering doctor. He knew what he said next would not be received well. Despite her protests otherwise, he could not leave her vulnerable to attack again.
“I will be staying with you tonight at your apartment to be certain you are safe.”
Chapter Ten
Kel spun on her heel to stop the overgrown babysitter with one hand to his chest. “What do you mean you’ll be staying with me? Didn’t we already have this discussion about me being a big girl?”
There was no way she could get through an entire night with his tantalizing scent wafting through her apartment. The mere thought of lying in her bed with that heat and spice smell in her nose made her tighten and throb. No, absolutely not.
How much could one woman take in a single night?
A small smile played on those full lips, and once again she remembered the contrasting feel of his soft beard and softer mouth moving with unbearable hunger over her own lips and down her neck. The heat was like a flash fire, leaving her smoldering before she could even make an effort to put it out.
Get a grip, woman.
“Someone was trying to kill you.”
“No,” Kel corrected, ramming her index finger into his chest. “Someone was trying to kill you. Someone was just trying to incapacitate me. Quite unsuccessfully, I might add.”
Kel turned and started down the hall toward Kye’s office, leaving him to follow or not as he so chose. The gall of this man. She’d been taking care of herself for years now and she’d managed to stay alive thus far. That first hellish year on her own had taught her a lot about how strong she was.
Living in a Triumvirate home had been a learning experience. She’d been so naive
and unprepared for what was coming that the memory of it almost hurt. Rubbing the burning that started in her chest she frowned when it began to ease and a sense of comfort began to infuse her.
She jerked to a stop and spun around, nearly colliding with Gabe. He was worming around inside her again. It was like invasion of the body snatchers. “Knock that off. Stay out of my brain. Play around in your own. Stretch out a bit. There’s probably a lot of unused space.”
She spun on her heel and started walking down the hall, feeling the faint impression of his humor in her mind. Ass! The man was driving her crazy. It was bad enough she was stuck with him but did he have to be so overbearing as well?
They barely knew anything about each other and yet they had been irreversibly bound together. Until death do us part bound. It was nothing more than blood, and yet it gave him free rein to go strolling through her emotions whenever he wanted to. Just because he was bound to her by blood didn’t mean he had any right to her emotions. It didn’t mean he loved her.
Kel cast a glance over her shoulder as her heart thudded into her throat. For one brief moment she wondered what it would be like if he did love her. What would it be like to have the unconditional love and acceptance of this one sexy, protective Sanguen? Would he smother her? Would she lose what she’d worked so hard to create in herself? Could she trust him to not make her dependent on him and then leave her?
It didn’t matter because he didn’t love her. She was his meal ticket and nothing more. Not that it was a major hardship on her side. His blooding of her had definitely not been the horrible experience she’d initially expected it to be. The feel of his warm lips brushing the skin of her neck and the rough heat of his tongue had been over the top. Then once his canines had slid smoothly into her and he began to suck she had exploded. Or imploded. Who could tell? Who in the hell cared? It was just incredible and had her wondering when he would need to drink again. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was bordering on obsession about it by asking him.
