Blood Oath: What Rough Beast

by Kari Gregg

  Awestruck—and humbled—she took in the banquet of lush blooms and spears of silvery plants.

  “How long have you worked on this?”

  He shrugged a diffident shoulder. “I needed something to do while I waited for you.”

  Emotion tightened her throat. “You did this for me?”

  “Of course I did it for you.” He looked down at her, tucked a lock of her hair behind one ear. “I can be much more romantic than a colonoscopy.”

  She laughed at his crooked smile, the mischievous sparkle in his eyes, but that glimmer slowly faded, replaced by beseeching warmth. His hand lifted to cup her cheek, cradling her jaw so that his thumb stroked her smooth skin. “Just give me a chance, Kate. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Her shoulders sank. “You want a lot more than a chance.”

  “You’re right. I want an end to this bloody disaster of a war. No more killing. No more brutal slavery and death. I want a home. A safe haven for my weres, for weres everywhere, and a sanctuary for Luc to mature into adulthood.” He bent so that his forehead kissed hers. “But none of it would mean anything without you. Give me the chance to win you, Kate. Let me prove myself to you.”

  His eyes glimmered in the silvery darkness, bluer than any sky Kate could remember, purer than the sunlight she could barely recall and hardly missed. The love shining in his stare warmed all the cold spaces inside her. Made her heart wish for more and fear it all at the same time. “But we’ve mated,” she said, waiting in trembling anticipation of his mouth on hers. “I killed you and brought you back. It’s done.”

  “Our blood-mating has ended.” Gaze never faltering from hers, he slowly shook his head. “Another step, an important one, but blood-mating completes only the most elemental aspects of pair-bonding among our kind.”

  She gulped, heart knocking against her ribs. “There’s more?”

  His lips curved. “You know there is.”

  That was the problem.

  She did.

  And she wanted no part of it.

  She pulled away from him, jerked her glance away.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, and without his body’s shelter against the night’s chill, she rubbed to warm herself. “Talk to me.”

  He sighed.

  She moved to the bench that had been strung to the tree with chains to form an old-fashioned swing. Goosebumps pebbled her skin when she settled on the seat. She shivered when it swayed. So cold. Without him, she was so cold. “Tell me about your war.”

  He hung his head, shook it. “Kate.”

  She flashed eyes that spit foul temper at him. “We’re supposed to pretend to be normal, Garrick. One hour. You agreed to give me one hour. Would it kill you to stay out of my head for sixty lousy minutes?”

  “We’re supposed to pretend the war isn’t knocking on our door too.”

  “Your rules, love. Yours,” he said, voice tight with aggravation.

  Her lips pursed. She knew she was being unreasonable, but that didn’t seem to matter. “If they’re my rules, then I’m allowed to change them whenever I see fit.”

  He pivoted, shoved his hand through his hair once he’d turned his back on her. Snarling, he jerked back around to face her and marched several steps forward. He jabbed an angry finger at her. “You are so frustrating!”

  She arched a cool eyebrow. “Stay out of my head, and I’ll be the soul of peace and tranquility. Butter wouldn’t melt, yadduh, yadduh, yadduh, blah blah blah.”

  He stared at her.

  The glitter in his eyes softened to a gentle sparkle.

  His mouth quirked.

  He threw his head back and roared with laughter.

  Kate’s heart lifted.

  She couldn’t help but grin in return when, shoulders still quaking, he planted his hands on his hips and snickered gleefully. “You’re impossible. Insane. Completely irrational,” he said. “Worse, you’re driving me stark-raving mad right along with you.”

  She snickered, amused at her own perversity. And his. “Better find yourself another vampire girlfriend, then.”

  “I don’t want another vampire girlfriend, and doesn’t that say a lot about my state of mind,” he said, chuckling. His eyes abruptly narrowed at her violent shiver. “You’re freezing. Scoot over.” When she did, he plunked next to her on the swing, tucked her to his side.

  Her body stopped shaking.

  With him beside her, his heat enveloping her and his awesome scent wrapped around her, the night wasn’t so bitter cold.

  Not anymore.

  “We’re going to be okay, Kate. We’ll drive each other crazy.” He kissed the crown of her head. “But we’re going to do just fine.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  She arched her spine, panting out exquisite release as Garrick skated his mouth up her quivering stomach. When he brushed his jaw against the curve of her breast, she tossed her head and moaned out her passion. “Bite. Please.”

  His teeth scratched the swell of her breast, releasing a taunting, miserly drop. “Stay with me, love,” he said after he’d licked it free, his breath warm on her skin, voice raw and husky.

  Kate shivered. Frustrated delight reignited her desire to flashpoint. “Rick.”

  His weight settled in the welcome cradle of her thighs as he moved his body above hers. “Stay with me.”

  Her eyes snapped shut at the wondrous pleasure, to have him there, where she most wanted him. Hard as steel, his body aligned with hers so his rigid cock slid against his bared cunt. She fought the instinct to lose herself in the tremendous feelings he stirred inside her. Instead, she opened her eyes, unwilling for even one stingy second to forego the luxury of looking at him. Face-to-face, her greedy stare met his. His eyes focused hot and needy on her as they made love.

  They shouldn’t be loving each other at all.

  Not for lack of desire.

  His craving and hers hadn’t lessened since the first heady night her vampyr had driven her to him. No, the physical distance between them had simply focused their need for each other. Intensified it.

  But she’d tempered that yearning.

  Kate rather than Garrick had denied them the joyous fucking their bodies craved. They waited to recover from Peter’s poison and for the stripes the were alpha’s whip had flogged into Garrick to mend.

  She wanted him.

  Kate seemed to always want him.

  She needed him more and more with each passing moment, every hour.

  But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow their passion to consume them. Not until his body had healed.

  She would never, ever carelessly endanger him again.

  Garrick hadn’t been that patient.

  He’d tolerated the physical distance from one another only until they’d returned to their rooms from the magical moonlight garden he’d created for her.

  Six days.

  Six days since he’d faced the whip and the wolfsbane that had nearly ended them both.

  But it hadn’t killed them.

  It had made them stronger.

  Healed or not, the wait was over.

  They lay, bodies entwined and slick with sweat, in front of the roaring fire he’d built in their bedroom’s hearth, clothes now scattered about them in reckless abandon.

  “I love you, Kate.” His mouth moved over hers in an aggressive, claiming kiss. “I need you.”

  When she dug her fingers into his sides and her thighs squeezed his hips, he flinched. “Your back,” she murmured at his sharp hiss of pain.

  “Forget my back,” he said on a low growl.

  His hand stroked down her shoulder to manacle her right wrist in his grasp. Then he reached across her quivering body to handcuff her other wrist.

  Helpless.

  Kate knew if she tugged, he’d release her, but her vulnerability felt good.

  Right, somehow.

  With him.

  Only, forever, with him.

  Instead of pulling from his grasp, she smiled.r />
  His lips curved into an answering predatory bow that took her breath away.

  He gently pushed her arms over her head and held them there. “Hook your leg around mine, love.”

  Her eyes widened.

  Her breath caught.

  “Garrick?”

  With his free hand, he shoved her left thigh into the tangled blankets, well away from the slashes that had been torn into his hips and ass. “You’ll hurt me,” he said, his eyes glittering sharp arousal when he stared down at her, “if your hands and legs are free when I fuck you.”

  Her pulse rocketed.

  Her hands, tightly locked in his grip, shook.

  “Your other leg, Kate.” He nudged her with his hip, though the brushing contact with his torn skin made him wince. “Anchor your leg. If you cripple me, I won’t be able to make love to you again after.”

  She sucked in a shuddering gasp.

  So long.

  He’d made them wait so long.

  All the nights, the endless nights, they’d reveled in his talented mouth and hers, the impassioned skill of his hands stroking her, her touch exploring him. His body had become more familiar to her than her own. She’d learned what pleased him, what pleased him best, and he’d mastered the responses he could wring from her like a maestro. There had seemed little end to the pleasures they could give each other.

  But he’d robbed them of his dick sliding and spilling into her. The final consummation of the soul-deep bond between them would await the success of their mating, he’d vowed. Over and over and over again.

  But he’d also said in the garden that they hadn’t finished mating. That blood-mating hadn’t ended it.

  “No, we haven’t finished mating, but I can’t stand it anymore. To hell with it. If our mating fails, I want to carry the memory of fucking you with me. I want that much before I die.”

  Her heart hammered against the wall of her chest, but his eyes shone the love he’d sworn was hers from the first.

  Her senses swam because this time, she believed him.

  He loved her.

  He truly loved her.

  Her.

  Not the idea of what she was, the survival a mate represented. Right now, he didn’t care about winning her loyalty or her trust. He wasn’t focused on seducing her or plotting how best to tie her to him so he could go on fighting his infernal war.

  He didn’t love the woman he thought she should be either.

  He loved Kate. The woman who screwed up his carefully laid plans more often than not. The one who made him laugh when he didn’t want to laugh, who’d towed him away from his bloody vampyr scheming to walk with her in the moonlight of his creepy-romantic garden. The Kate who’d compared him to colonoscopies and kitchen appliances.

  She was the last person in the world he should have ever considered remotely attractive.

  But she was the one he wanted.

  God help them both, because more and more every night, she was coming to realize that he may be the man she wanted too.

  Had she really likened him to a Cuisinart?

  One of the Borg?

  Why?

  She hardly remembered those awful and mistaken impressions of him. She couldn’t have been more wrong. He wasn’t flat or emotionless. Oh, he still occasionally presented the cold, detached persona that had so misled her at first, as it had no doubt fooled countless others before her. But he wasn’t cold or callous or any of the other things he’d pretended to be. Far from it. Garrick’s heart was so open and giving, so vulnerable, he had to protect himself, guard his soft, sensitive core. Too many of their kind would hurt him if they could. And had.

  With her, he’d shielded his heart most fiercely. She had the power to hurt him as no one else could. Not even Luc, who could kill him. No, he’d hidden and zealously protected his vulnerable center from her, most of all, because only Kate had the power to destroy him, body and soul.

  He’d scared her. From the beginning. Garrick had terrified her in ways that made her body shake, that set her nerves to shrieking and scrambled the chaotic mess of her heart, of her mind.

  He still did.

  But not as before.

  Then what he was had petrified her. Vampire or vampyr had made no never-you-mind to Kate. He was no less a predator, inhuman, one who pitilessly stalked her. He’d sucked her blood, for pity’s sake. Who wouldn’t be afraid of that? Worse, he’d exercised some weird and intense vampire mojo on her that had swayed her to bite him too. Everything that had followed had grown increasingly alien to her, progressively disturbing.

  He’d represented more than just a personal threat.

  In her mind, Garrick had come to embody the vicious brutality of the new life she’d been dragged into.

  But she’d scared him worse.

  Far, far worse.

  She’d terrified him to the very essence of his being, in his heart of hearts, to the farthest reaches and darkest corners of his mind. And though her fear had lessened over the ensuing days and weeks, his hadn’t. His reeling panic had only increased a thousandfold.

  She understood that now.

  What he was—vampyr—didn’t frighten her anymore. She was vampyr too. More and more every day. The clarity that lack of fear allowed her let her see things she never could have grasped before.

  She’d terrified Garrick from the tips of his sexy dark hair to the soles of his feet, with far more mind-numbing horror than she’d ever been able to muster.

  She was everything he’d believed he didn’t want.

  That hadn’t mattered.

  He fell in love with her anyway.

  So what if she was mouthy? A wee bit irrational? Unpredictable and frequently absurd? He loved her because she was impulsive, odd, and all those other things that drove him crazy. If she didn’t make him a little nuts, she wouldn’t be the woman he needed.

  But to leave himself open?

  Vulnerable?

  To her?

  Kate was lucky he hadn’t taken off running the first time she’d equated him with a food processor.

  Garrick had pushed, always pushed her to trust him. If she’d heard him say it once, he’d said it a million times: trust me. Over and above all else, he’d worked to win her trust.

  Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t genuinely needed her to trust him.

  He’d never needed her trust at all. Not to initiate their mating, not to deepen the bond between them, and definitely not to cement his heart with hers.

  No.

  Garrick had never needed her trust for that.

  She had needed his.

  Kate had been the first to bite.

  And the second, for that matter.

  Garrick had bitten her, taken her mark, only when the lack would’ve been too perilous. Luc had sworn he wouldn’t be able to control Garrick unless she’d marked him, but Kate recognized that for the lie it was. Whether Luc realized it or not, her guardian would have never been able to manipulate Garrick, unless Garrick wanted him to. His overriding affection for Luc controlled Garrick. Blood never would.

  Looking back, it was so crystal clear to her now.

  Without her mark, Garrick would’ve been no more dangerous to her or Luc than he was right now. Or ever had been.

  But she would’ve been dangerous. Oh yes.

  She would’ve been downright treacherous.

  To him.

  A terrible, knee-watering, mind-numbing risk.

  That second time…

  She’d bitten Garrick after Luc had weakened him.

  She might’ve killed him.

  Luc had replenished him, yeah, and Garrick had bent. He’d taken her mark.

  But what if he hadn’t?

  What if Garrick hadn’t bitten her?

  What if he hadn’t taken her blood and belonged to her in the only fundamental way vampyr could?

  God only knew what her instincts might have driven her to do to force him to take her blood next.

  Garrick bit her, not because h
e’d sought to rush the relationship building between them and certainly not because he’d become some incredible danger to her.

  He’d bitten her because she’d become a danger to him.

  Kate had been the first in blood-mating too.

  He’d drained her. Killed her and brought her back.

  From her human perspective, from the outside looking in, Garrick had appeared the aggressor.

  With her new vampyr eyes, she could see that what he’d done hadn’t required any special courage on his part. By then, he’d known her vampyr had chosen him, that she would trust him with her life. Goodness gracious, her need for him had been ripping her apart. Of course she’d returned to him. Garrick had known, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’d revive her. Easily.

  Not so, he.

  Physically weak, she wouldn’t have been able to resuscitate him in the beginning, when he’d killed and revived her. Only now could Kate admit that she’d barely managed it nights ago, after feasting on his blood for so long, her body strengthened by his.

  But Garrick had done it. Initiated their blood-mating.

  For fear that her instincts might drive her to try it if he didn’t. Try it and kill them both.

  And he’d feared that until the end.

  If the damned weres hadn’t tried so hard to kill him, Garrick might never have trusted her to drain him and bring him back. Deep down, her big scary vampire had been mindlessly terrified that she wouldn’t fight to save his life. That she wouldn’t be able to, yes. More importantly, that she wouldn’t want to.

  Staring down at her now, his blue eyes glittered with desperate hunger, the same hot desire they’d wallowed in these past days and weeks. And alongside it, flashing bright and urgently, his fear.

  Garrick was afraid. Still. He was mortally afraid that if he gave her what she wanted, surrendered to the awesome passion that consumed them, he’d have nothing. Nothing to tempt her to remain with him.