He took a step toward her. She took one toward him. They weren’t able to stay apart even though they tried.
“Your Matri has made you scared of bonding, angry at being with a Prime, angry at being part of our world.”
All of her deep resentment, her anger as thick and hot as lava, throbbed through her, into him. It was a barrier between them, and he had a temper of his own.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
He was on her in a heartbeat, his hands gripping her, his gaze boring into hers. “It wasn’t a request.” His voice was raw with jealousy. “Who is he?”
Chapter Forty-four
Francesca didn’t want to talk about this. This was her private soul, her secret heart. This was the pain that kept her fighting, kept her alive, kept her strong.
“Strong for what? Strong for who?”
“Get out of my head!”
“I can’t. Damn it, you know I can’t.”
He was there, stalking around the walls of her consciousness, looking in the windows. “Sneak thief,” she snarled, curling tightly around her memories. She wouldn’t go there. Let them lie dormant.
Let them turn to poison inside you? Let the poison permeate everything we could be?
She hated her hunger for that word—we. She and Tobias together, forever. Images flashed through her of their hands entwined, their bodies entwined, their beings, ambitions, and lives entwined.
She fought the images that built a barrier around her memories of a mortal lover.
“I’m here. He’s not. You’ve wasted enough time, Francesca.”
Her conviction wavered. Had it been a waste? The waste of her life, her love, her time—
Patrick could never be everything she needed, wanted. She couldn’t give herself freely. She’d held back. She’d had to hold back, for her species’ sake. For her Clan’s sake.
The pain came out in a banshee howl.
“Oh, goddess, I never even tasted him! Not once. I loved him but I didn’t dare . . .”
“Loved who? Talk to me, Francesca. Let me help.”
Tobias was holding her tightly yet somehow tenderly as she clawed and fought to get away. She tasted blood but couldn’t tell if it was his or her own. Was that some trick of bonding?
It was Tobias’s blood—yes. His pleasure still reverberated through her, pushing back her panic. He’d let her sink her fangs into him.
It made her crave what she could share with him.
She spat onto the floor. “Damn you! You’re trying to make me forget him.”
“I’d like to,” he answered. “Ow!” He shook her. “Keep your claws in, woman, and listen to me.”
His hands closed hard around her wrists, trapping her like the silver manacles the Tribes used on their females.
Francesca went completely still. Her voice was as cold as ice. “I will not be your prisoner.”
“You’ve been a prisoner all your life,” Tobias retorted. “I can feel all the invisible chains winding through you. Let them go.”
“You mean let him go!”
She struggled, snapped at him, kicked him, but Tobias would not let her go. All the time his thoughts caressed her.
“You are my prisoner,” he told her. “But I’m yours too. You have as much power over me as I have over you. We don’t have to be crippled by it. Loving this mortal has left you crippled for years.”
No! No! No! You don’t understand! You can’t understand! No Prime can understand—
Love? Don’t be ridiculous. Calm down.
Strahan’s thoughts closed around hers like a vise. Velvet darkness shrouded her pain.
When the soft darkness faded, Francesca was lying on the guest room bed, sheltered in Tobias’s arms. Just as it should be, damn it all to hades.
She lifted her head from his shoulder to meet his dark gaze. “I don’t want your help,” she told him. “Not like that.”
He stroked her hair away from her face. “I only knocked you out because your hysteria was going to wake up everyone in the house.”
“How kind of you to think of everyone else.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “It’s what I do.”
“I wasn’t hysterical. I was . . . all right, I was, but it was your fault.”
His fingertips traced her cheek, her throat, between her breasts, back up the side of her face in a slow, sweet circle. His touch lingered on her skin.
“I don’t understand how it’s my fault, Francesca.”
His complete honesty kept her temper from flaring again. “You want me to forget him,” she said. “That’s infuriating, humiliating, wrong—”
He put his fingers over her lips. “It’s arrogant for me to want you to forget someone you loved. And it is wrong. But I can’t help wanting everything you are to myself. It’s a Prime thing.”
She snapped at his fingers. “Is it any wonder I hate Primes?”
He kissed her with just enough fang to draw a drop of blood from her lower lip. His tongue tasted it and twined with hers. A shudder of pleasure went through them both. No mortal can do this for you.
So very true. I never wanted him the way I need you. Francesca hated to admit it but couldn’t deny it.
“How did you want him? Tell me about him, Francesca,” Tobias said. “I need to know why you hurt for him. I won’t try to take away the pain if you don’t want me to. I won’t try to take him from you. Your memories, your history, belong to you.”
His sincerity touched her very deeply. “Thank you.”
“You know a lot more about me than I do about you.”
It was true enough. Francesca took the hint, but it was incredibly difficult to let go of the secrets she’d kept to herself for so long.
“His name was Patrick.” The words came out as a rough whisper. “He was a big, blond jock, a hell of a lot smarter than he looked. So funny, and kind, very comfortable with who he was. He never knew I was a vampire.”
“You didn’t believe he’d be comfortable with what you are?”
“I never wanted him to know. We met in college. I was this snooty rich girl. He was on a sports scholarship.” A sound rose in her throat, half sob, half laugh. “We did homework together. He taught me how to cook. He was a vegetarian when we met, but a vampire and a vegetarian could never work out. At least I managed to get him to eat fish.”
“Why didn’t you want him to know who you truly are?” Tobias asked. “Vampire females have taken mortal lovers before, even had children with them. Ben and his lady had a son.”
They were in Ben Lancer’s house. Ben had been lovers with a Corvus female for decades before she was called home to her Clan because she was the Matri’s heir. Francesca knew that story very well. The story of the Corvus female’s mortal romance was her story as well, but she hadn’t had decades with Patrick. She hadn’t had children with him.
She went on. “He went into the marines as soon as we graduated. He was the son of hippies whose hobby was making candy, but he always wanted to be in the military.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why did you pretend to be someone you aren’t with this Patrick? Didn’t he deserve the truth? Why do you want to be mortal?”
“How many questions do you want me to answer at once?” she demanded. “You asked about my mortal lover; I’m telling you about him.” She swallowed the aching urge to cry. “I know you deserve to know about him. But all these other things are more than I can deal with right now. And I don’t want to be mortal,” she answered. She closed her eyes but couldn’t keep the tears from leaking out. “Maybe I did pretend to be one for a while, with him. We were married in Las Vegas just after he got his first posting. My family wasn’t invited. His wasn’t, either.”
“Your Matri accepted that?”
“I never told her. Besides, as long as he never tasted my blood, our being together meant nothing to her, at least for a while. If we’d had more time together, I would have told him. But since I could neve
r let myself bond with him—”
“Females can’t bond with mortal males,” he said, interrupting. “It’s not biologically possible.”
She laughed softly. “A couple of days ago, no one admitted that female vampires and werewolves can bond, but look at Sid and Joe. I don’t know if I could have bonded with Patrick—”
“You were born to bond with me.”
He was so sure of himself, of the truth of what he said. His hands moved possessively over her. His lips touched her throat, his tongue flicked over her pulse. She felt a brief caress of fang, a few sharp pricks. Pleasure reverberated from him, through her, and back to him. The erotic cycle was like nothing she’d felt with anyone else.
“See what I mean?” he asked.
Chapter Forty-five
Primes were so damn romantic.
And maybe he was right. Maybe the Über-Prime was the only one the Bitch Queen Flare could share her life with.
“I don’t know if we can bond with mortals,” she said. “I do know that we don’t dare.”
“Survival of the species.”
“Lie back and think of the next generation, as we’re taught in vampire school.”
He laughed at her bitterness. “No vampire female ever just lies back.”
He kissed and nipped a line across the top of her breasts. It felt so very good. She tried to stay still, but her breathing quickened and her craving body rose to meet his skilled touch.
“All right, we enjoy sex,” she admitted. “Do you want to have sex or talk right now?” she asked.
Because she could not do both at once, especially not when the subject was Patrick. That she could talk about Patrick with this Prime and also want to make love to Tobias amazed her. This moment had been impossible to imagine a few days before. She was happy for this moment, and that too would have seemed impossible before now.
There was a glow of lust in the big brown eyes that gazed into hers, but he tamped down the hunger. His expression became calm and steady, though the lust wasn’t completely gone. From either of them, Francesca acknowledged.
“Ever,” he said. And they both laughed. “Tell me what Patrick has to do with your war with your mother,” he said when they were serious again.
She discovered that she was dying to explain this to him. “You’re a casualty of our war yourself now. I can’t apologize for that.”
“No need. Because I’m no victim. Was Patrick?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not really. I made the choices about our relationship, and I was happy with them. With him.”
“Could it be that you were a little too much in control with your mortal?”
Francesca winced, but she answered honestly. “Probably. I didn’t think about it at the time, but we Clan females are used to having everything our way, aren’t we?”
“Not with me.”
Time would tell. A bonding usually ended up as a relationship between equals. The battles in between would be interesting. But before they could work through the future, Tobias deserved to know about her past.
“I moved in with him off base when he was assigned to train on helicopters at Twentynine Palms—”
“He was a jarhead, eh? Good for him.
She stroked Tobias’s cheek. “Damn it, I did not want to be attracted to another war fighter.”
He turned to kiss her palm. This simple brush of lips sent lightning through her.
“How am I supposed to tell you anything if you keep making me want to mate?” And stop looking so smug!
Patrick and your Matri. Show me.
Her memories opened to him without any more prompting.
Francesca had no memory of putting down the phone, but there it was on the table, buzzing at her like an angry wasp. The light outside the windows was fading. Odd. It had been noonday bright when she answered the ringing phone. She hadn’t put it down, had she? She’d dropped it. She put her hand on the phone, and it all came back to her.
“Your husband’s been in an accident. Two copters crashed into each other on a training flight. He’s hospitalized with a broken neck and third-degree burns.”
Why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t she felt it happen to him?
Why had her being filled with hopeless grief and everything else gone blank around her? How long had she been this way? She had to get to Patrick! She had to help him!
A knock came on the door as she snatched car keys out of her purse. She knew who was there before she flung the door open on Primes. They’d never approached her, never spoken to her, but these Reynard Clan Primes had been shadowing her for years, guards assigned to protect a precious female. This time she was glad to see them.
“We have to get to the base hospital,” she told them. “Something awful has hap—”
“Come with us, Lady Francesca.”
They stepped forward, blocking the door. Their senses were tightly guarded, their presence suddenly ominous. One grabbed her arm when she tried to dodge around them.
One of them held a thickly padded envelope out to her. “From Matri Anjelica.”
She didn’t give a damn. “Let me go. Let me out of here. I have to get to Patrick!”
She fought the Prime holding her, but her mother had picked her guards well. There was no getting away from this one.
“Don’t you understand? He’s dying!”
Shouting didn’t do any good. Telepathic orders did no good. They showed no sympathy for her tears.
The one with the envelope finally ripped it open. A folded piece of paper and a ruby ring spilled out onto his palm.
Francesca saw the ring through her tears. It belonged to her mother.
Oh, shit.
The Prime took her hand and made her take the ring, forcing her fingers to wrap around the horrible thing. It was heavy and cold—with symbolism and threat.
He unfolded the paper. She caught a glimpse of her mother’s handwriting as he did. He read, “ ‘By order of the Matri’s Ring, I, Anjelica, Matri of Clan Reynard, require that Lady Francesca Reynard return immediately to Citadel Reynard to accept her duties as heir and daughter of the Clan.’” He let this sink in, then read on. “ ‘I mean it, Flare, or I wouldn’t have sent the ring. It’s time for you to pick a Prime and give me grandchildren.’”
“No! Patrick!”
She wasn’t going anywhere except to her husband.
But the Primes held her. They forced her out the door and into the back of a car. They held her down while the car drove away. She screamed and thrashed, bit and clawed. But it did no good.
“To this day she swears her calling me to the Citadel as Patrick was dying was a horrible coincidence and that those damned Primes exceeded their authority.” The memory of the life she’d been forced to abandon clawed at her soul. “Goddess damn it, I hate that woman.” Her voice came out raw from her aching throat.
“You’ve been screaming.” Tobias’s voice was close to her ear. His breath brushed her cheek, and he wiped tears from her face.
He was stretched out beside her, his arms around her. His size and warmth comforted her as she worked her way back to the present. She stared at the ceiling and breathed in reality. Reality was Tobias. His touch. His presence, physical and psychic, equally strong, equally seductive.
This is now, he whispered in her mind. His hands moved over her, not gently, not comfortingly, but stirring hunger stronger than the pain. Live in the now. With me.
He wasn’t promising to take the pain away, not offering an alternative or a perfect future. He was simply offering himself.
It meant everything in the world to her.
All right, she answered.
Francesca turned into Tobias’s embrace and sank her fangs deeply into his flesh.
Chapter Forty-six
At least she wasn’t cold. She was scared, exhausted, totally pissed off, but Saffie was no longer freezing cold now that they’d switched from the helicopter to the private jet. The helicopter ride had been hellish; the Prime p
ilot was a cackling crazy, riding the storm like it was a wild horse. She’d crouched on the cold metal deck and wrapped herself up in a ball until they landed on an airfield beyond the storm front. There’d been heavily armed Primes pressed in all around her, but worst of all was that Greg stayed close beside her with his hand on her shoulder. She’d wanted to jerk away from him and burned to rip him to shreds.
But she was a mortal surrounded by hostile vampires. She’d been carefully taught that in such a situation the best thing for her to do was to stay passive, keep silent, keep her head down, her manner hopeless, and give absolutely no indication she might have some skills. I’m just a helpless little mortal female, lalala . . .
The Primes other than Greg completely ignored her. She appeared to ignore him even though she was acutely aware that he had possession of her backpack with all the gear that held Dark Angel intel. He was a smart one and knew what he had. What exactly was his role in this? During the helicopter flight she suspected he was also a prisoner, even though Dragomir didn’t have this other Tribe Prime restrained in any way.
She recognized her kidnappers’ leader as Dragomir, the Prime master Greg had asked her about. Greg gave no indication of knowing the mercenary leader. It was all very strange. She was dying to find out what was going on, and now that she’d been brought into the luxurious main cabin of the jet along with Greg, Dragomir, and a couple of bodyguard types, she hoped to find out information she could use to plan her escape as well as feed her curiosity.
She got pushed into a seat on the side of the cabin. Dragomir gestured for Greg to join him at seats around a table. After the jet took off one of the guards set drinks down on the table for them.
“We are on our way to California,” Dragomir told Greg. “The weather is much nicer there.” He took a sip from his glass. “Blood vodka. Have you tried it, Gregor of the Minotaur?”
“And why are we heading to California?”
“Business, of course. My principal has need of Harpy Primes’ expertise.”
Saffie hid a smile. She hoped their destination was Los Angeles. The Crew was there. Dad was there.
Primal Instincts Page 20
