“Delilah Wentworth was a vain, silly miss who grew up on the various army posts her father was assigned to. Fort Sheridan. Fort Polk. West Point. Fort Anderson, in the Phi lip pines. She spent most of her time primping in front of her mirror before waltzing the night away at balls and masques. Her primary—her only—goals in life were to marry a handsome young lieu tenant, raise a large brood of children and live happily ever after. I got the ‘ever after’ part right, anyway.”
He didn’t appear to appreciate her attempt at humor.
“How did you die?”
“In the cholera epidemic that swept the country in the summer of ’08.”
“In 1908? A hundred years ago?”
“That’s right. I’d just turned twenty and had become engaged that very month. Much to my mama’s relief.” A rueful smile feathered her lips. “I had refused so many offers up to that point that she warned me repeatedly I’d die a spinster. As it turned out, she was right.”
“So how did it happen? This ‘ever after’ business?”
He didn’t need the details of the horrific moments she’d spent in a reeking mass grave.
“Sebastian, my clan leader, found me seconds after I took my last breath and shared his essence. I’ve been a member of his family ever since.”
The blue eyes holding hers went cold and hard. She under stood why when he raised a hand and tapped the bruise on the side of his neck.
“Is that what you did with me? Shared your essence?”
“No!”
She jumped up, cursing her clumsiness in not making things clearer this morning. He must have been sitting here all day, wondering if he’d joined the legions of the undead!
“I drank from you. That’s all. I told you I was thirsty, remember? And you…”
“I thought you wanted water! Coffee! A beer! I didn’t think you were going to glom onto my throat and suck out a few pints of blood.”
He shoved out of his chair and got right in her face. The ice left his eyes, replaced by fury. Delilah stood her ground. He was big and he was tough, but he was just a human.
“It wasn’t a few pints,” she countered. “I didn’t take more than I needed or more than you could spare.”
“Yeah, well, how about asking next time!”
“I did ask. And you gave me permission.”
“Like hell I did!”
“Okay, I may have blocked that part of your memory. But you were doing your cop thing, getting all inquisitive and suspicious. Like now,” she added as his dark blond brows snapped together.
“You can do that? Block my memory?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do I remember touching you?”
Anger still burned in his eyes as he wrapped his hands around her upper arms and yanked her against him.
“Why do I remember the taste of you? Your moans when I used my teeth and tongue on you?”
“I, uh, was a little distracted that time.”
Too distracted to block the feel of him on her. In her. All over her. The memory of his sweat-slick muscles and powerful thrusts made her throat go tight.
“I got careless,” she admitted. “I’ve never done that before. With anyone. But I didn’t take more than I needed the first time. The second was to give you the same pleasure you’d given me.”
The doubt and distrust were still there. They stung more than Delilah wanted to admit.
“If it’s any consolation, you made up for those little love bites when you hand cuffed me to the bed.”
“I thought you were a nut job. I figured I’d better restrain you until I worked an EDO. Emergency Detention Order,” he amplified. “I was going to take you in for a mental health evaluation.”
“Instead, you almost fried me.”
She flipped him a smile that showed she harbored no hard feelings. Not many, anyway.
The cheeky grin only added to the emotions that had churned inside Brett all day. Disbelief. In credulity. Disgust that he’d let his driving hunger for this woman push him over the line. At her reminder of the morning’s events, though, remorse surged to the top of the list. He’d never intended to cause her pain.
“I’m sorry about that.”
He slid a hand down her arm, caught her wrist and raised it. The cuff of his shirt fell back to reveal pale, unblemished skin. If he’d needed proof, it was there, right in front of him.
And God knew, he did need proof. He’d just spent the longest nine hours of his life. Good thing darkness came so early this time of year or he’d still be sitting in that damned chair, trying to convince himself he hadn’t gone off the deep end.
He’d gotten up a dozen times, approached the bathroom door, then turned around. The viciousness of her burn, the miraculous way it had healed, kept playing and replaying in his mind. During one of those endless replays he’d placed a call to his unit and con firmed they’d received no missing-persons report for a woman matching Delilah’s description. Nor was there any record of her in the data bases the Oklahoma Highway Patrol tapped into.
That’s when he’d powered up his laptop. The number of websites out there dedicated to vampires had astounded him. Some were informative, others down right scary.
He’d spent hours cruising the Net, and took a break only long enough to bring in more wood and the groceries he’d stashed in the trunk of the cruiser and almost for got ten. The more Brett read, the more he realized he was about to share his Christmas Eve dinner with a vampire. Or become her Christmas Eve dinner.
“How often do you have to…you know…drink?”
Her gaze dropped to a point just under his jaw. The look on her face was enough to make a vein jump in the side of Brett’s throat. He could feel it throbbing as he stared down into her dark eyes.
“Not often,” she murmured with a touch of regret.
His vein pulsed harder, faster. “Define often.”
“Every few weeks if I conserve my strength. Every few days if I engage in strenuous activity.” Her gaze lifted. “Like last night.”
“Right. Last night.” He cleared his throat. “Just out of curiosity, how much of that was me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got these powers. You can block memory. You can move beds it took two grown men to haul in, piece by piece. You heal vicious wounds with cold water. What else can you do, Delilah?”
She cocked her head. Her dark auburn hair spilled over one shoulder as a smile crept into her eyes. “Oh, I get it. You want to know if can I make an Oklahoma State Trooper overcome his training and scruples and treat a female detainee to two mind-blowing orgasms.”
“Yeah,” he drawled, “that’s pretty much what I want to know. Although I should point out you weren’t technically a detainee.”
“I’m happy to inform you, Officer, that you did that all on your own. I merely provided a little incentive.”
Brett wasn’t sure he believed her. He’d never experienced that kind of unrelenting hunger before. Not even with Cindy. He’d buried his heart with her five years ago. Until last night, he was sure he’d buried all desire for anything except the occasional one-night stand.
Maybe that was why Delilah roused such savage need in him. She’d tasted darkness. She’d survived death. She was the woman he’d lost.
Not in temperament. Or in looks. With her fiery hair, dark eyes and forceful personality, Delilah Wentworth couldn’t be more different from the shy brunette whose face Brett had to work hard to recall these days.
It was what she stirred in him. A yearning that crossed time. A hunger that knew no physical bounds. He’d wanted her out there, on that cold, deserted road. And again, here in the cabin.
And now.
All he had to do was look into her eyes and the need to hold her, to have her, came alive in his belly. He could feel their pull, see himself in the dark pupils. See, too, the regret swimming in their depths.
“I have to go,” she whispered. “I’m late for a meeting of my clan.”
> He curled a knuckle and brushed it across her porcelain-smooth cheek. “Be a little later.”
“I can’t. There’ll be…repercussions.”
A tremor rippled over the surface of her skin, so slight he thought he’d imagined it.
“Thanks for taking me in, Officer.”
He couldn’t keep her here by force. Much as he wanted to. Yielding with a reluctance that went bone-deep, he dropped his hand.
“Anytime, Ms. Wentworth.”
“I’d better get dressed.”
BRETT’S UNWILLINGNESS to let her disappear from his life took a sharp spike when she emerged from the bathroom in her cat-burglar outfit. She strutted toward him on those wicked boots, the spike heels clicking on the floor boards. Her black leggings and turtleneck fit her like a second skin. Her hair was a tumble of wine-colored curls. She looked wild and un tamed and exotic.
When she shrugged into her shaggy fur vest, Brett was seriously considering clamping the cuffs on her again. The urge was powerful, atavistic and not entirely sexual. He hadn’t missed that brief tremor when she’d mentioned repercussions. The thought she might be facing danger when she left him ripped a hole in his gut.
“Listen, Delilah. If you need a place to go to ground, a place no one in this clan of yours knows about, you can come here.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll leave a key outside. There’s a loose stone beside the stoop. I’ll show you.”
He walked to the door with her, trying to think of ways to convince her to stay. One more night. One more day. But all he could do was offer a warning.
“Be careful. There’s an escaped murderer on the loose. We think he’s gone south, into Mexico, but the bastard has left false trails before.”
With a wry smile, she opened the door and stepped into a frost-filled night. “I probably don’t have to worry, unless his weapon of choice is a flaming cross or a wooden stake.”
“He prefers a knife with a serrated edge. The common kitchen variety. The kind you can pick up in any corner store.”
Brett kept his response flat and even. Too flat and even, he realized when her smile edged into a frown.
But before she could voice the question he saw in her face, a high, thin wail cut through the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
“MIS-TER!”
The panic-filled cry reverberated through the woods on the north side of the cabin. Brett whirled toward the echoes, his eyes slitting as he searched the impenetrable darkness. Delilah spun a few degrees to the left and took off.
“This way,” she shouted.
“Wait!”
He pounded after her, his gut twisting and his mind filled with the smirking face of the killer they’d just been talking about.
“Dammit, Delilah, wait!”
She flew toward the woods. Literally flew. So fast that Brett caught only a flash of silvery fur before darkness swallowed her. He crashed into the tree line three or four seconds after she had. Every one of those agonizing seconds seared his soul.
Not again. It couldn’t happen again.
He didn’t think about his service revolver still locked in the cabinet, didn’t consider going back for a flash light. His one, overriding priority was to get to Delilah.
Relief crashed through him when he spotted her. She was down on one knee a few yards ahead. A kid bundled up to his ears in a yellow ski jacket had her arm in a death grip and was yanking on it frantically.
“You gotta come! Now!”
“We will,” she assured him. “Just tell us…”
“What’s going on?”
The boy’s wild, frightened eyes cut to Brett. “My mom’s sick. You gotta help her.”
Nine or ten years old. Brown hair. Black high-tops caked with mud and dirt. Scrawny build. Bloody scratches on one cheek. The cop in Brett cataloged the details even as he got a handle on the situation.
“Okay, son. Okay. We’ll help you. Where is your mom?”
“There.” He stabbed a finger toward the faint glow of lights across the lake. “Over there.”
Hell! The north shore was only a little more than a hundred yards as the crow flew but completely inaccessible by vehicle from this side of the lake. Brett would have to drive two miles back down the dirt track that led to his cabin, then circle around for another five on a paved county road. Much quicker to shove through the thick woods along the shore, as the kid obviously had.
“We’ll go with you, son, but I need to know what emergency medical supplies to bring with me. Tell me what’s wrong with your mom?”
“She’s all white ’n’ sweaty ’n’ throwing up. ’N’ going to the bathroom. Lots. She said she thinks it was the soy milk she brought from home. That stuff is so gross, but she’s always drinking it.” His panic poured out on a rush of words. “Now she’s lying on the floor all doubled up ’n’ the cell phone won’t work so I can’t call 911 ’n’ my little sister’s crying ’n’ I don’t know what to do!”
Brett dropped a hand and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Sounds to me like your mom might have a touch of food poisoning. We’ll take care of her. Let me get my jacket and the first-aid kit.”
If it was food poisoning, there wasn’t any thing in the kit that would help, but he grabbed it anyway. He also snatched up a flash light and his handheld police radio in case he had to call for medical trans port. The blue steel SIG SAUER went into the pocket of the camouflage hunting jacket he always kept at the cabin. With an escaped killer on the loose, he wasn’t taking any chances.
He was back outside within moments. “Let’s go.”
The boy whirled to crash back the way he’d come. Brett started to follow, but spun around when Delilah opted for another route.
“I’ll go across the lake and meet you at their cabin.”
“No! Wait! The ice is too thin!”
He should have saved his breath. With the same blinding speed she’d displayed earlier, she reached the shore line in a single leap. A second bound took her almost to the middle of the lake.
A sharp crack of ice breaking rifled through the night and Brett’s heart stopped dead in his chest. Then she flew the rest of the way and disappeared into the shadows on the far shore.
“Jesus!”
Whirling again, he raced after the kid. The boy had plunged too far ahead to have witnessed Delilah’s acrobatic feat, thank God. He had enough to worry about without adding super natural beings to the mix.
“What’s your name?” Brett asked when he pulled along side, his flash light cutting a wide swath in the darkness.
“Tommy. Tommy Hawkins.”
“I’m Brett, Tommy.”
They pounded through the scrub brush, ducking under brittle branches and dodging stumps.
“You probably didn’t see the cruiser parked on the other side of my cabin. I’m a police officer. An Oklahoma State Trooper.”
The boy threw him a look of unmistakable relief and hope. “You kin, like, call in a helicopter to fly mom to the hospital?”
“Sure can, if she needs one. So don’t worry, okay? Between us, we’ll take good care of her.”
His first-responder’s medical training had focused more on vehicular trauma, heart attacks and gunshot wounds than food poisoning. He’d read enough about it to know most forms weren’t lethal, however, and that the basic treatment was to repeatedly induce small amounts of fluids into the victim to keep him or her from dehydrating. More serious cases—particularly those caused by foods that had been treated with certain pesticides—could require stomach pumping and intensive care.
Praying that wasn’t the case here, he kept his stride matched to the boy’s.
WHEN DELILAH RAPPED on the door of the split-level cabin, a timorous young voice called out from inside.
“Tommy?”
The sister. The boy had talked about a little sister.
“No, it’s not Tommy. He’ll be here in a little bit, though. Can you let me in?”
“Noooo.”
It was a small, frightened cry.
“Mama says…Mama says we’re never s’posed to open the door to strangers.”
“That’s right. You shouldn’t. But Tommy told me your mama’s sick. I want to help her. I’m coming in now.”
The dead bolt might have been strong enough to keep out burglars and bears, but Delilah splintered it easily.
The moment she stepped inside, a barrage of scents assaulted her overly developed senses. The sharp tang of pine from a deco rated Christmas tree mingled with the stink of burned cookies. Over powering both were the odors of vomit and diarrhea coming from one of the bedrooms.
Delilah recoiled, driven back by the memory that sprang into her head. In vivid technicolor and surround-sound, she saw a hospital ward reeking with the same odors. Moaning patients on cots jammed in every corner. Bone-tired orderlies covering the faces of the dead with blankets before summoning the burial detail.
Gulping, she shoved the images out of her head and speared a glance at the youngster clutching a ragged doll’s blanket to her chest.
“Don’t be scared, sweetie.”
The girl popped a thumb in her mouth, her blue eyes wide above the ruffled collar of her pajamas. The candy-apple-red pj’s were the kind with footies and deco rated all over with Santas and reindeer.
“Tommy and my friend Brett will be here in a few minutes,” Delilah told the her. “Just wait right here, okay, while I check on your mama.”
She followed the worst of the scents. Her nostrils flared wider with each step, but she made it to the bathroom tucked between the cabin’s two bedrooms without gagging.
A honey-haired woman in a pink fleece bath robe sat slumped on the linoleum, one arm draped over the toilet seat. Beside her lay a crumpled towel and two empty card board toilet-paper rolls. At Delilah’s entrance, she lifted her head and gasped out a desperate plea.
“Tommy?”
“He’s right behind me. He and Brett Cooper. Sergeant Brett Cooper,” she tacked on for reassurance. “He owns the cabin across the lake.”
The young mother was too relieved to question how Delilah had outdistanced her son and neighbor. Slumping, she rested her forehead on the toilet seat.
Christmas With a Vampire Page 4
