by Laura Wright
He cleared the last step, stood there for a moment sniffing. Where was she? Wet and cruel. Where had she run off to?
Then he spied droplets of water in the carpet leading down another hallway. He took off, ran down its length and into a room that contained her scent, her wet, teasing, diabolical scent.
Could’ve been the kitchen, could’ve been the garage—he was too blind to everything else but her to notice or care. He thought maybe there was a bed on one wall, but all he saw, all he wanted was the veana undressing near the window. He was on her in seconds, had her around the waist, had her yanked back against his chest, and without thought had his mouth on the back of her neck.
She tasted like sweat, and it was the sweetest, most erotic flavor to ever hit his tongue.
His fangs extended to pin-prick sharpness.
“Fuck, Gray!”
She wrenched free, turned in his grasp and slapped him hard in the face with the palm of her hand.
It felt like the brush of a butterfly’s wings. That’s how gone he was—beside himself. Hunger like he’d never known—predatory desire like he’d never known—coursed through his blood. The need was insatiable and he was unstoppable. He moved forward, struck again at her neck and this time made contact.
Dillon sucked in air, gripped his shoulders hard, painfully hard, but she didn’t push him away. He knew she could—knew she was stronger than him by a thousand.
Blood, delectable blood snaked down his throat, and as it did he heard her moan, felt her nipples—naked and cool—grow hard against his chest. Oh shit, he wanted to fuck her senseless. His head dropped further, his fangs plunging deeper into her skin until he could do nothing but drink, drink and lap at her skin with his tongue.
“Fuck,” she cried out, her nails digging into his skin. “Fuck!” And then she was slapping him. Slapping his face, his cheek, over and over as she ground her hips against his.
It only made him drink harder, deeper.
She knew her effect on him.
He knew she knew it.
Suddenly, he stilled, stopped feeding, his mind racing. But how did he know it? It wasn’t in her head. The thoughts, the silent cries of need, the ever present push to keep going, harder, faster, deeper, that he’d heard in the heads of every female he’d ever bedded.
The world, the moment, once wide and fever-pitched, shrunk down to a pinprick. He rocketed back, his fangs pulling out of her skin in one clean movement. What the hell was going on here? His breath coming in heavy gasps, he wiped the blood from his mouth and stared at her.
She grinned at him, her breathing normal—her eyes clear, not glazed with passion. “You have a very nice set there, Impure. Sharp. Thick. Got the job done and then some.”
She was unaffected. Completely and utterly. And he wanted to rage at her about it, force her to admit her attraction to him, but there was something far more worrisome on his heart at that moment. Eyes narrowed, completely uncaring of his nude frame and heavy cock, he said, “I can’t hear you.”
She turned away, grabbed a tank top and threw it on. “No worries. The buzzing will wear off in a moment. It’s my blood. Pure, powerful—”
“No.” He shook his head. She had to be thinking. Right now she had to have some thought in her head. But he was picking up nothing. She was a blank screen.
It was impossible.
Her eyes narrowed on him. “What’s wrong with you?”
Did he tell her? Did he share his concern and ask her for a probable answer to the mystery? His head cocked, his gaze took in her fine features, cat eyes and firm set of her mouth. She seemed way too closed and he wasn’t in a very trusting mood. Until he figured out the reason for this blip in his gift himself, he wasn’t about to share it with the class.
“Maybe you need to go lie down,” she said, nodding toward the door. Her bedroom door, he now realized. “Get some sleep.”
Her bedroom. His gaze moved around the room. White walls, white bed, white, white, white except for the small stuffed animal wedged in between her pillows. A cat, or some kind of wild feline, he couldn’t tell.
“Your room’s upstairs,” she said, her voice tearing him from the bed, from the odd plaything among all that virginal white. “It’s right next to the bathroom.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.” Then headed for the door.
“And when you wake up,” she called after him, “all this—everything that’s happened––will have been just a bad dream.”
His hand closed around the doorknob.
“And I mean, everything.”
Slowly, he glanced over his shoulder. Dillon stood there in a black tank and jeans, her hair a little wild, her eyes trained on him—her thoughts a mystery. She looked hard, mean, insensitive and untouchable, and if Gray would have allowed himself to sink back into hunter mode, he’d have been all over that. Again.
“You understand, right?” she said, dropping her chin, her eyes narrowing. “You get it?”
“Get what, D?” he said with barely restrained bitterness.
She shrugged. “You know. It was as close as I’m ever going to get to Sara.”
He stared at her. For one very long, agonizing moment. It stung. Her words. Stung like a motherfucker, and instead of wanting to walk out of the room, it made the newly unleashed predator in him want to prove her words a lie. But he was tired, tired of getting dicked around, and so he did it—turned and walked out. He walked down the hall, up the stairs, past the bathroom still heavy with steam and into the bedroom that supposedly belonged to him. He sank down on the mattress and prepared to wait. A minute, an hour, however long it took for her to forget that he existed so he could get the fuck out of Dodge and back where he belonged.
Where he had always belonged.
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The Leader of the Impures
Her scent was still all over him when he walked into the warehouse twenty-four hours later and hit the stairs. Just as her taste was permanently tattooed on his tongue. Maybe he was the biggest idiot on the planet, but he wasn’t looking to alter that fact until he had to, was forced to. He was about to give himself over to the Cause, wholly and willingly, but there was one part of him that would always belong to her.
Deservedly or not.
Cruel, nad-crushing words, or not.
He trotted down the long hallway and when he reached the heavy metal door, he knocked. Six times, then a pause, then three more. At first he thought that no one was there, that perhaps they’d abandoned their home, their training grounds, or shit, they were just ignoring his empty-headed ass. But then the metal latch inside clicked. Then again. And Piper’s face, then body, appeared on the other side.
She lifted one pale brow. “Back so soon?”
They weren’t going to make it easy and that was fine. He didn’t really deserve easy. “You know where I was, Piper?”
“In the back of a limo, right?”
“After that.”
Riordon showed up beside her, his massive frame strange so near to Piper’s petite one. “Yeah, we know, Impure. Did the Order take your . . . blood?” He said the last word like it gave him just a touch of pleasure.
The hulk of an Impure would come to heel in time, Gray knew. He’d have to. Not only were they looking at their final puzzle piece, but the one with the most to lose, to gain—to discover.
“What they took is far more valuable than my ability or desire to fuck,” Gray told them in all seriousness.
Riordon sniffed. “Is anything more valuable than that to you, Gray?”
“Yes. My family, my father’s life. My love for my sister.” He paused, looked at each one in the eyes. “And the success and implementation of the Impure uprising.”
Riordon’s brow lifted, Piper’s mouth kicked up at the corners, and from behind them both, Gray heard Vincent’s words, both in his head and out, “Get in here, Donohue.”
The pair before him opened the door wide and Gray walked through. This t
ime it was out of choice, out of care and thought—and out of a deep and unabashed need for vengeance.
As all three Impure warriors watched with amazed expressions, Gray went to stand over the symbol carved into the floor. He held out his hands to them, then closed his eyes and opened his mind.
He was ready. Ready to work, ready to lead.
Please read on for an excerpt from
ETERNAL CAPTIVE,
a brand-new book in Laura Wright’s
Mark of the Vampire series.
Available from Signet Eclipse in February 2012.
Mark of the Veana
Boston
Present Day
Her fangs had been inside him only once, and yet they had left an unseen mark on his skin, his blood, even his breath. In consuming his blood she had consumed his very soul and now—every day, every moment he existed, she moved inside him, her unending hunger deafening as she searched and slithered through his veins, circled his muscles, squeezed until his brain threatened to explode.
Lucian Roman sat perched, as he had for the past seven nights, on the snow-crested roof of Bronwyn Kettler’s brownstone. Still and menacing as a gargoyle, he ignored the vibration of his cell phone in the pocket of his coat and stared without purpose into the heavy snowfall, which dropped bride-white over the silent Boston credenti landscape. An hour ago, the streets had been alive with Impures, running about, adorning the doors of their master’s dwellings as well as the gates, fences and lamposts leading up to the Gathering Hall. The tasteful bunting and subdued winter flowers were a testament to how the Boston community viewed the binding ceremony of its true mates; with serious and reverent celebration.
Now, the streets were empty and silence reigned, as did the snow, and Lucian sneered in appreciation as the decorations for tomorrow’s Veracou were quickly being buried in heavy white frosting. Would a blizzard annul the binding ceremony between Bronwyn and the paven who claimed her mark? Lucian thought not. But he would remain, affixed to the roof to watch. To wait. To see the binding done and over. Or—if his blood had its wish—to see Bronwyn run from her true mate, reject her body’s choice.
As another wave of longing, of desire-ladened torment pulsed in his bones and brain, Lucian’s fangs slowly descended and the blade in his fist trembled.
There were only two ways to stop this madness.
Fuck her or kill her.
And yet, he could do neither and remain free. The former would turn him into a Breeding Male one hundred and seventy-five years before his time; a rutting animal with no conscience, no control—only a hunger to claim. While the latter would send him to Mondrar, the vampire prison, for all eternity.
Again, he felt the vibration of his cell phone and again he ignored it. He knew Alexander would never give up looking for him, and in fact had seen his brother walking the streets below once already this week. But the eldest Roman had never looked up, and down below had found only snow and the censure of a community who reviled anything with a matching set of Breeding Male brands.
A sudden rush of sound, a faint cry, like air released from a balloon stole Lucian’s thoughts and left him with nothing but a raw, feral craving. He sprang to his feet, his entire body going forest-fire hot as a growl sounded in his throat.
Damn her. With one bite, she had made him into this, this animal, this creature of destruction, and though perhaps it hadn’t been her intention to ruin him, he would make her pay.
His hand fisting the knife, Lucian moved like a panther down the pitched roof and over the edge, dropping to the small balcony attached to her room in near silence. The window was a large square and in the handful of times he’d stood there watching her sleep, he’d surmised rather easy to maneuver through.
Darkness blanketed her bedroom, the only light coming from the streetlamps below. But to Lucian’s keen gaze, it was enough to make out the furniture, the artwork on her walls and the veana lying in her bed. As usual, she was on her back, her dark hair spilling out over her stark white pillow. In nights previous, she had slept soundly, unmoving, like the princess Lucian had insisted on labeling her.
But tonight, she moved.
Leaning closer to the glass, his insides still blazing with heat, Lucian narrowed his gaze on her lower half, specifically on her legs as they stirred beneath the white coverlet. It was as if she were running a race in her sleep, and yet as his gaze trailed upward to her thighs, to the outline of her hips, he realized that the race she was running was the one that ended in climax.
Madness splintered his mind once again, and instead of pushing away from her window and returning to his rooftop perch as he normally did, he quietly broke the lock on her window, eased up the frame and stole inside her room. Instantly, the scent of her yet unclaimed orgasm washed over him, and he flew to the bed and coiled over her like a snake, any last shreds of stability he may have had upon entering now dead, drowned, forgotten.
The white coverlet blinded him from the act she performed, but Lucian could imagine her hands working her core, just as he could scent the dance of her fingers inside her cunt.
He snarled softly at her, at the pale, perfect face that was framed with long black hair.
No veana had the right to be this beautiful.
No veana had the right to hold him captive.
Held in her own state of captivity, Bronwyn’s eyes remained clamped shut, but her cheeks held the delectable stain of desire, and her pink lips were parted, just enough for the ragged breaths of desire to escape. Like a dog in heat, Lucian leaned in and took one long sniff.
The mistake of it hit him instantaneously.
His fangs dropped to needle sharpness against his lips and all he could see was blood, all he could taste was sex.
All he could do was place his blade to her throat.
Bronwyn’s eyes slammed open at the feel of cool metal. “You.”
“Not who you were thinking about, Princess?”
Her arms shot out from beneath the covers, her fingers wrapped his wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t move.”
“Get off me, you bastard!”
The scent of her fear did nothing to stall him, only pushed his madness further. “Don’t talk. Even your breath on my face makes me want to scratch at your skin to get inside.”
Her gaze narrowed on his. “What’s happened to you? You look—”
“I said don’t talk!”
“If you’re here to kill me,” she said, her nails digging into his skin, “don’t expect me to die easily or quietly.”
Her lips pressed together, with fear tensing her jaw and the skin around her eyes—though the scent of arousal still lingered temptingly in the air.
The blade still held to her throat, Lucian’s fangs dropped even further as he uttered, “I hate you.”
She stared up at him, unblinking, her nostrils flaring as she breathed in and out. “Hate me or yourself?”
He leaned in closer. “You’ve turned me inside out,” he whispered near her mouth. “Do you understand that? I can’t feed, I can’t fuck.” His head began to pound, his muscles too . . . Dammit, he wanted her mouth under his, her blood rushing over his tongue—her death on whatever was left of conscience. If he pressed the knife just a hair closer, he could have it, have it all . . . “That night you came to me—”
“I didn’t plan it, Lucian,” she interrupted fiercely. “Goddammit! I didn’t plan to feed—”
He cut off her words, pressing the blade nearer to her throat. “Another word and I will be feeding from you.”
RELEASE THE VEANA, LUCIAN. NOW.
Before he even had the chance to respond, the knife was ripped from Lucian’s fist. For one brief moment, the cold, metal hovered in mid air, then shot past Lucian’s face and disappeared behind him.
Lucian whirled around to face his intruder, in the back of his mind hearing Brownyn slip from the bed, taking her freedom. But his gaze, his focus was pinned on the hooded figure lurking in the sh
adows near the window. He hissed, “What do you want?”
“To keep you from harm,” replied the ancient paven.
Lucian sneered at his father, the Breeding Male—the Order. “Too late.”
“It will be if you continue on this path.” Titus raised his hooded head toward the corner of the room. “I am sorry for this, Mistress Kettler.”
Lucian turned and narrowed his eyes on the veana who, even in her fear, stood tall and imperious.
“I thank the Order for its help in this matter,” she said, nodding at Titus. “Now, pray get him out of here before my parents awake.”
Instantly, Lucian felt the pull of his father, magnet to iron. “Come with me, Lucian.”
It was a solid yank, and yet Lucian was immobile, his eyes locked on Bronwyn. He uttered a pained, “I cannot.”
Bronwyn turned to look at him.
“She is to be mated in the morning,” Titus said tightly. SHE WILL FEED FROM ANOTHER AND HE WILL FEED FROM HER.
“Shut up!” Lucian roared.
YOUR TORMENT WILL PASS.
“My torment has only begun!”
Lucian’s gaze caught on the mark near the base of Bronwyn’s thumb. The paven’s mark—her paven. Feral rage slammed through him and he shot across the room, forcing her deeper into the corner. She belonged to him. Her mouth, her gaze, her neck, her vein, her voice, her cunt. He grabbed her hand and pulled it to his lips. But just as his fangs entered her marked skin, he was yanked back, slammed into the one who had given him not only life, but the curse of the Breeding Male.
No blood met Lucian’s dry tongue, but Bronwyn’s cry of pain ripped through his black soul as Titus flashed him away.
Bronwyn stood in the corner of her bedroom, her legs shaking from both terror and unfulfilled desire—her mind already spent with questions she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted the answers to.
