by Kari Gregg
“Garrick couldn’t be less interested in my heart. Or what’s in my head.” She raised a silencing hand when Luc opened his mouth to argue. “Oh, he’s determined to see through the whole mating thing. I’ll give him that much. But I—me, who I am—I’m an inconvenience. A necessary evil.”
“You are no evil to him. Inconvenient? Yes. You aren’t the woman he would have chosen for himself, but you’re exactly the woman he needs.”
Luc exhaled a long breath. “You’re right, though. You are extremely necessary to him. Vital. If your mating fails, you can choose another. He cannot. He will die. So God leveled the playing field for us. While mating, your fear will lessen and die, replaced by instincts more fundamental. More basic. Your vampyr will ease your apprehensions until they fritter away and make Garrick as essential to you as you are to him. It’s already begun.”
She shifted in his arms, anxious at his implacable tone. Luc, who she’d come to depend on in the crazy world she’s stepped into, had a core of unbending steel. “Essential? I still don’t get it. You’ve explained the why, but not the what. Not the how.”
He frowned. “You refuse to accept what you do not wish to see so plainly before you.”
“Tell me!”
He cupped her cheek in his palm. “You will taste our need. I don’t know how long—a couple weeks. No more than a month.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Clothing will become more unbearable, too abrasive for your increasingly sensitive skin. The heat need not precede marking. Obviously. You’ve stripped out of your clothes in your sleep since we arrived—”
“Heat. Did you say heat?” Her heart stuttered inside her chest. “Like a cat?”
“No, bébé. An alley cat will lift its tail for any tom. Your body, your blood will be for Garrick only. Soon, you won’t even tolerate me.” His mouth crooked to form a sad smile. “You are for Garrick and for Garrick alone. No other will satisfy you, and your desires, Kate, will be ravenous.”
* * *
With only the stern warning to remain within the house’s interior—unnecessary since she recalled the wolves that prowled the swamp with perfect clarity—Luc left Kate to her own devices. The uncommon freedom should’ve felt liberating. Between Garrick and Luc, Kate didn’t think she’d had more than scattered minutes to herself in weeks. And the house was fun to explore. The place was huge, two stories, with narrow windowed corridors along the perimeter so that the large rambling rooms in the center were protected from the sun.
At least Luc had finally given her that answer.
The virus destroyed some sort of enzyme in her body during the worst of the infection’s onset. Without the enzyme, her skin had no defense against ultraviolet light. It wouldn’t char her to a pile of ashes like in the horror movies, but the burns could be dangerous for a new vampyr like Kate if competing secondary infections weakened her. Luc promised that she’d be able to do all the things she’d enjoyed before. Beach volleyball. Hiking through the mountains. Baking next to a crisp, clear swimming pool on a blistering summer’s day. But her body would take a few years to replace the enzyme the virus had destroyed. Until it did, she needed to be careful. Very careful.
Garrick had designed his home to best protect her tender skin.
He had been careful for her.
He seemed to have considered everything, from the basest considerations to the most extravagant. Fresh flowers filled vases. Fabrics draped in lush abundance. Lovingly preserved antiques mingled with contemporary pieces that were as comfortable as they were beautiful.
Her nervous, darting gaze reviewed one room after another, but her attention refused to settle.
Kate’s skin felt too tight. When Garrick’s sweatshirt and loose pajama bottoms grew too coarse, she returned to her suite to reconsider the clothing the weres had brought for her.
She’d never worn anything so risqué in her life.
Her wardrobe had been selected, apparently, to tempt Garrick.
She laughed bitterly.
Did the weres not know she would soon start tearing at him like an animal in heat?
Perhaps.
Only yesterday, she’d shivered inside Garrick’s sweatshirt.
The weres had provided suggestive, flirty dresses of the sheerest fabrics—in March—and her skin still felt too hot, too flushed, too…everything.
Tears of humiliation burned in her eyes, but Kate brushed them away with determined hands and reached for a pale blue sundress, the most conservative piece among the lot. Spaghetti straps plunged to a narrow bodice that lifted her breasts and showcased cleavage Kate hadn’t realized she possessed. The fitted waist tapered to a V, showing off her flat stomach. The flaring skirt emphasized the curve of her hips, and high cuts in the fabric flashed glimpses of her legs and thighs.
The weres had brought neither slips for under the dresses nor shoes, but Kate didn’t suppose she’d need either. It wasn’t like she’d need to worry about the sun outlining her legs through skirts for a while, and who needed shoes? She didn’t dare leave the house.
The only pantyhose she found were a lonely pair of thigh-high fishnet stockings.
Unacceptable.
She stuffed them back into the drawer.
Turning, she started, then gaped at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the closet door.
That enticing creature couldn’t possibly be her.
Her hair was mud brown, had always been a lackluster mud brown. She’d certainly never had chocolate highlights or shades of toffee in it, nor had her loose, unruly curls ever given her hair so much body, so much life. Her eyes seemed darker too, her lashes thicker, her lips fuller.
She knew her own face. Her features hadn’t changed, though she might be tempted to believe so given that everything else in her life had. But that was her same pert nose, same dimpled chin. Same giraffe neck…
She simply felt differently about them.
Confident.
Though imperfect, certainly attractive.
Exploring her newfound self-assurance, she studied her reflection and shifted on her feet so that the part in the fabric of her skirt flared to display the same legs she’d shaved since she’d turned ten. They’d always been long, the bane of her existence. She’d felt like a stork.
Until now.
Wow.
She examined her hips as well—the hips she’d inherited from her mother and her grandmother before that. Too generous, she’d thought in her kinder moments. Fat, she’d vowed at her most self-critical.
In this dress?
Wrong!
Combined with the miraculous lift the bodice gave to her breasts, the rounding of her hips was devastating. Alluring.
Garrick would love it.
The smile on her lips quivered but did not falter.
With every passing hour, each minute, Kate’s body confirmed what Luc had told her. She wanted Garrick. She’d only meet him a week ago. She didn’t love him. She wasn’t even sure she liked him. But she did want him, the desire for him building moment by moment, with every beat of her heart.
She hated him for that.
He’d known.
Garrick had tricked her into biting him. She understood that now. All his pretty words about waiting until she was physically and mentally ready, giving her time, the mind-bending kisses to entice her—they were all lies. His every word, every action had been choreographed to bring her to this point.
Kate would spend the night with Garrick.
If she believed Luc—and she did—she’d spend the next several weeks in his bed.
She hadn’t long resisted her new need for blood, so Kate had few illusions that she’d withstand her traitorous body’s demands for the Machiavellian vampire either. Not when she felt desire for him clawing at her already. She wouldn’t be able to fight the instinct to seek him out much longer.
Mortified embarrassment had paralyzed her at first. Not only by what was happening to her, but by what she’d already done. Goodness gracious, Luc was right—she
’d rolled around on the couch with Garrick like a horny teenager. She barely knew the man! And if Luc hadn’t interrupted…
Kate shook her head to clear the unwelcome arousal stirring at just the memory of how he’d made her feel.
She wasn’t a prude. She had exercised a moderate degree of discretion in her old life, sure. With STDs and HIV, casual sex was nothing short of suicidal, but she dated. She’d had lovers—in the context of a serious relationship.
Her normal discrimination and caution just seemed to evaporate every time Garrick happened to be nearby.
Once her horror that the man had turned her into a tramp faded, terror had taken over. She didn’t want to be attracted to him. She didn’t want these feelings churning inside her.
But Kate was a grown woman.
One who realized that life seldom asked her what she wanted.
Now, she was simply resigned.
The virus would drive her to Garrick, so to Garrick she would go. She couldn’t fight it, couldn’t change it.
That didn’t mean she accepted it.
The virus—and Garrick—would tie her to him with sex, at least temporarily. Could be worse. At least he wasn’t a troll. If you ignored the whole vamp thing, Garrick was actually a gorgeous guy. Tall, muscled. A thick pelt of dark hair and fathomless blue eyes.
Too bad he was such a jerk.
He would touch her body, and judging by their kisses in the library, Kate would enjoy that. Very much.
But no matter what Luc said, he wouldn’t touch her heart. She wouldn’t allow it.
And her mind would remain her own.
Kate turned her back on the man as efficiently as she pivoted from her reflection.
She walked with determined steps from the closet to the jewelry chest by her vanity table. One drawer after another slid open to reveal pendants, earrings, and bracelets, some heavy with semiprecious stones as big as the tip of her thumb.
Ick.
What she wanted, what she needed to truly set the dress off was…
Aha.
She lifted a gold chain as fragile as a baby’s breath from its hook and fastened it around her neck. A delicate cross rested just above the swell of her breasts, understated but very much a defiance she relished. The perverse irony of the tiny gold cross and the legendary vampire aversion to them pleased her. A Protestant cross, no less, empty to emphasize Jesus’s finished work as opposed to the Catholic crucifix Garrick never took off, with its suffering Jesus hanging from it.
He hadn’t converted her yet.
She smirked at her reflection in the mirror.
Nor would he.
She’d walked halfway to the den where the men waited before she realized she’d dressed for him. For Garrick. Even her Protestant cross, especially her cross—to defy him.
To her credit, her pace slowed only a little.
Chapter Eight
Garrick scented Kate before she crept into the den—or rather shifted foot to foot at the door. Luc pretended to watch an American stock-car race on the widescreen TV. He pretended to tend the fire in the massive stone hearth. They both noted her change of clothes, Luc with the defeated droop of his shoulders, Garrick with the abrupt hardening of his cock.
“Kate?” he said, his voice pitched low and beckoning.
Her gaze darted to greet his, her pupils dilated so wide with equal measures arousal and terror they appeared black.
She hadn’t fed tonight. Luc had thought it best to wait, to force her to come to them. If not for the hunger no new vampyr could long deny, Kate might’ve hidden from them, too miserable and afraid of what was happening to her to reach out for the comfort both were desperate to give her.
As it was, she’d waited four gut-wrenching hours before seeking them out. The translucence of her skin spoke volumes of the battle she’d waged inside herself before succumbing to her body’s need for blood.
Had she succumbed to her body’s need for sex—for him—as well?
She held Garrick’s stare as she stepped forward.
“Kate,” Luc murmured from his chair.
He read the answer in her eyes before she shifted, gliding to Luc instead.
Garrick turned his head away rather than watch her climb into her guardian’s lap. Disappointment squeezed the air from his lungs. She’d drink from Luc this night, but Garrick vowed it would be the last. She belonged with her mate. With him. He jabbed at the glowing embers of the fire with the fireplace poker.
“Patience, Garrick. How many times have you warned me—”
“Shut up.” He glared at Luc as he settled his mate against him, tucked her lips against his neck. “Just shut the hell up.”
Eyes glimmering with silent laughter, Luc bent his head to Kate as she nuzzled the pulse at his throat. “Make the wound, bébé.”
She stiffened in his arms, murmuring in protest when his hand held her lips to his neck.
“You must learn this skill, to make the bite not only painless but pleasing. You hurt Garrick last night.”
The horror he felt filling her mind hurt him worse. “Luc.”
“It’s true and you know it.”
“The pain wasn’t as terrible as Luc portrays, love, just a small sting—”
“Left to you, she’d rip your throat out, and you would apologize for so rudely staining her dress while you bled out. I’ve time for this lesson, one of many I should have taught before she mated. This, she shall learn.”
Garrick jammed the poker to the fireplace and settled back on the thickly carpeted floor. He leaned against one of the chairs he’d arranged before the hearth, spreading his legs to shift his rigid dick for comfort. He stared into the licking flames, letting it mesmerize him, praying it would, but Luc’s murmured instructions drifted in and out of his mind through the link they all three now shared.
“Rushing sound, just under the pulse. Listen, Kate. Do you hear it?”
He grunted, focusing on the flickering tongues of oranges, yellows, and reds.
“Let the sound and his smell guide you. The weres he feeds on give his blood a particularly sharp scent, a wildness.”
“There’s power in were blood.” Garrick intruded only into Luc’s mind, reluctant to disrupt Kate’s concentration. “You’ve benefited from it, as has she.”
Luc tucked Kate close to his neck, continuing the lesson as though Garrick had never interrupted “Artery is best. His neck, wrist, or his thigh.”
“How badly did I hurt him last night?”
“I ache at just the memory of how good you felt feeding above my heart.” Garrick let hunger, his need of her wash into her mind, shared his desire with her so she’d know what he said was true. “I want it again. I want it now, so much I can hardly breathe.”
She gasped, her pulse quickening.
“Be quiet, Garrick.” Luc scowled at him from the chair.
He smirked. “When I’m loving you, bite me anywhere you want.”
“In passion, by all means, bite his damned dick off if it makes you both happy.”
Garrick laughed, felt the ungentle push of Luc crowding his presence to the perimeter of her mind and, so pleased by Kate’s instant response to him, allowed it.
“But when you feed for sustenance, you must pierce the neck, wrist, or thigh.” Luc glared at him. “Not his thigh.”
Garrick mentally withdrew from them. Luc knew her hunger and his, his awesome crushing hunger, and so also knew this would be the final time Kate would choose her guardian’s blood.
Luc was friend enough for Garrick to admit they’d robbed the young vampyr of that. Luc should’ve had weeks longer with Kate. Weeks of her softness while he introduced her to what it was to be vampyr, weeks of her soothing company while he maneuvered Garrick to mate with her. If Luc hadn’t been so young, had he not stubbornly remained at Kate’s side and nearly killed the two of them in Chicago…
Garrick sighed.
No, he would have interfered had Kate’s guardian been fledgling or ancient, a
lly or enemy.
He was not a patient man. Not when it came to Kate.
Too young to be a proper guardian or not, Luc deserved better than the terror and hardship of fleeing from Krystiyan only to lose Kate upon reaching the safety of Pridemore. Luc had endured full measures of the difficulties and suffering involved in fostering a ward, but precious little of the joys.
So Garrick slipped from Luc’s mind and hers.
He kept his gaze focused on the fire instead, though his body tightened by painful degrees as Luc whispered his endless instructions.
Did he not believe Garrick would never tutor Kate of her new nature? When Garrick had mentored Luc through his fledgling years himself?
Intermittent words and phrases broke his concentration, the same words he had spoken to Luc when he was young and they both were fresh from Nathaniel’s stable. How to feed, the mechanics of it. The harsh warnings against making the kill while feeding and so becoming as Nathaniel—hunted and beyond redemption.
Dark.
Lost.
Ah, but there were so many things Kate need never be troubled. She’d never hunt. Never. Garrick had heard rumors of women who hunted, but he did not believe the tales. Females fed from the males who protected them and those males alone.
In truth, Kate must be protected from the humans whose blood sustained them, so weak and vulnerable a female’s new vampyr was. Someday, she might grow resilient enough to stand against them, but not for many years. She must also be guarded against the masters who stalked vampyr and human alike. They’d kill her if they could, Kate and any other female who helped the rebels elude them.
But she had power, great power, and great blessings to accompany them. Every male, mated to her or not, would die to shield her from the dark masters who sought their annihilation. And in time…
Garrick had heard legends.
Every unmated male had.
Gossip whispered in darkened bunkers about women who set fires with their minds, who manipulated the eye’s blind spot to conceal her and her mate. Females who could kill humans or drive vampyr mad simply by looking at him, whose songs could lure unwary dark masters to their doom and whose tears healed all but the most grievous wounds.
